Is this a troll or something? Seems like an editorial troll to me. Of course I don't have to mention that each and every person on this board knows that unix alive and kicking. Why the silly headline???? Is this the first Slashvertisement or something?
Let's have a close look at the costs involved when running a Linux system.
An important factor in Linux' cost is its maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance, work doable only by the relatively few high-paid Linux administrators that put themselves - of course willingly - at a great place in the market. Linux seems to be needing maintenance continuously, to keep it from breaking down.
Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix file systems are much more tolerant towards unexpected crashes. An example is the FreeBSD file system, which with soft updates enabled, performance-wise blows EXT2FS out of the water, and doesn't have the negative drawback of extreme data loss in case of a system breakdown.
According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage. This means it is not intended for production use (although according to many Linux advocates this shouldn't be a problem, which makes me wonder how (little) valuable they find your data).
The other proposed 'solution', EXT3FS, is nothing more than an ugly hack to put journaling into the file system. All the drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and backward compatibility'. This is interesting, considering that the DOS heritage in the Windows 9x/ME series was considered a very bad thing by the Linux community, even though it provided what could be called one of the best examples of compatibility, ever. When it's about Linux, compatibility constraints don't seem to be that much of a problem for Linux advocates.
Back to Linux' cost. Factor in also the fact that crashes happen much more often on Linux than on other unices. On other unices, crashes usually are caused by external sources like power outages. Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally. Linux advocates try to hide this fact by denying crashes ever happen. Instead, they have frequent "hardware problems".
The steep learning curve compared to about any other operating system out there is a major factor in Linux' cost. The system is a mix of features from all kinds of unices, but not one of them is implemented right. A Linux user has to live with badly coded tools which have low performance, mangle data seemingly at random and are not in line with their specification. On top of that a lot of them spit out the most childish and unprofessional messages, indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.
I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear. Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc.
This office suite will fail competing against MS Office, as any other office suite has done before. People don't care about a bit of RAM. A few MB's cost you a few dollars, hardly an argument against MS Office. The functionality that ISN'T in the other suites is what counts.
Default answer: "I don't use all features."
My rebuttal: I don't f*cking care that you, pimpled smelly UNIX-hacker only uses vi (as I do myself). You is NOT the world!
4-6 people isn't that few. You would like to have people to participate in UI design, icons, etc. But the 'engine' of these applications could be done by a handful of people. Perhaps they want to much and they should concentrate on the word processor. Just an idea.
This is why electronics like CPUs and DRAM usually have a warranty of 30 days, because 99.9% of parts that are going to fail do so in 30 days
This makes no sense. A long warrenty period makes a product sell better. When 99.9% of parts that are going to fail do it in 30 days, it's in the interest of the manufacturer to either have no warrenty at all or a very short one (to prevent claims), or one that is very long, like 10 years or lifetime. After the first 30 days, hardly anything is going to break, so it would be stupid not to prolong the warrenty period. This can be done essentially 'free'. And I've seen RAM that have a lifetime guarantee.
Must have been a problem with your system. I have been running Windows 2000 on a K6-266 with 128 MB of RAM for about a year. It flew. It's important to have good disk access, so I put a 10 MB 7200 rpm disk in it and installed Windows on that, which made it even snappier.
The only reasons I bought a new machine is that I needed the K6 to act as a FreeBSD box and because I wanted to play DiVX and games, both of which demand more than a K6-266 regardless of the OS used.
Sorry dude, but you don't know what you're talking about. First, if you had any idea about the AMD market, you'ld immediatly notice that this is indeed a pre-XP chip. Just look at the price. Furthermore, the XP chip would most likely have been called by it's name (Athlon XP 1600+), not it MHz. Now, who has lack of hardware understanding?
Second: the pre-XP chips do not have a thermal diode, as you mention, but this will mean that UNLESS THE MOTHERBOARD HAS A DIODE WHICH MEASURES THE CPU TEMP AND TAKES APPROPRIATE ACTION WHEN THE CHIP GETS TOO HOT, the CPU WILL in fact burn down. With a T-bird 1400, temps can go up to 350 degrees celcius without proper cooling and this CAN burn a hole in your motherboard Tom's Hardware has tested and captured on video if you don't believe me.
I tried to post a comment at that site, but it seems their comments system is down (slashdotted?). Anyway, I'll post it here:
I miss a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a floppy drive and a cpu cooler (you'll need a good one with that CPU: it will not burn out your pocket, but WILL burn out itself and your motherboard if you don't cool it properly).
Furthermore, keeping a cdrom drive out of the equation isn't really honest. Almost any desktop box needs one. I don't know whether a NIC is included in the "system of the year", but this is the same as for a cdrom: almost any desktop box needs one.
I guess we can double the price for this so called budget system, because working without input and output devices (silly unneeded things like a monitor/keyboard etc) is a bit difficult.
Being European and having watched too many American movies, I'm pretty sure burning your thighs because of holding coffee between them would be a very certain case in court.
I mean, how much more irresponsible could the coffee maker be? Did it say on the coffee packaging: "do not hold your mug of coffee between your thighs!" ?
I too once hated vi as much as you. In fact, I advocated the viewpoint that the original creator of vi should be hanged for what he did.
After having used pico for about a year it really started to annoy me. It's even less powerful than MS-EDIT (which it resembles). I started to use vi. I learned it the hard way: changed all my editor environment variables to point to vi and forced myself only to use vi. I had a vi mug standing next to me for reference (a vi mug is a coffee mug with the most often used commands printed on it, as if it were a reference card). After about a week of usage I was proficient enough to be faster in vi than in any other editor.
Surprisingly, the most irritating thing of vi when you don't know it (the command mode), turns out to be you're biggest friend in the editor after you've mastered is. It's so much more relaxed to keep your hands in same position the keyboard. You just don't need to move your hands, not to move the cursor, not the do commands. The hands stay in the same position with you're eyes on the screen (I think you really need to be a touch typist to get the best of this editor), and this is as relaxed as it can be. The only movement which changes your hands position is regularly pressing ESC to enter command mode. But this is so much easier than doing CTRL-BLA etc..
I object to these terms since they are essentially a rape by physicists.
The "K" in kilobyte is NOT the same the the "k" in kilogram. We don't need physisists telling us what expressions to use for things that are not even theirs. We are NOT talking about physical entities here but essentially mathematics.
Slashdot Mirror
"unix isn't dead".
Is this a troll or something? Seems like an editorial troll to me. Of course I don't have to mention that each and every person on this board knows that unix alive and kicking. Why the silly headline???? Is this the first Slashvertisement or something?
Let's have a close look at the costs involved when running a Linux system.
An important factor in Linux' cost is its maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance, work doable only by the relatively few high-paid Linux administrators that put themselves - of course willingly - at a great place in the market. Linux seems to be needing maintenance continuously, to keep it from breaking down.
Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix file systems are much more tolerant towards unexpected crashes. An example is the FreeBSD file system, which with soft updates enabled, performance-wise blows EXT2FS out of the water, and doesn't have the negative drawback of extreme data loss in case of a system breakdown.
According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage. This means it is not intended for production use (although according to many Linux advocates this shouldn't be a problem, which makes me wonder how (little) valuable they find your data).
The other proposed 'solution', EXT3FS, is nothing more than an ugly hack to put journaling into the file system. All the drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and backward compatibility'. This is interesting, considering that the DOS heritage in the Windows 9x/ME series was considered a very bad thing by the Linux community, even though it provided what could be called one of the best examples of compatibility, ever. When it's about Linux, compatibility constraints don't seem to be that much of a problem for Linux advocates.
Back to Linux' cost. Factor in also the fact that crashes happen much more often on Linux than on other unices. On other unices, crashes usually are caused by external sources like power outages. Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally. Linux advocates try to hide this fact by denying crashes ever happen. Instead, they have frequent "hardware problems".
The steep learning curve compared to about any other operating system out there is a major factor in Linux' cost. The system is a mix of features from all kinds of unices, but not one of them is implemented right. A Linux user has to live with badly coded tools which have low performance, mangle data seemingly at random and are not in line with their specification. On top of that a lot of them spit out the most childish and unprofessional messages, indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.
I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear. Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc.
Farmers still raise wine grapes in England. And English wine still sucks.. :)
This office suite will fail competing against MS Office, as any other office suite has done before. People don't care about a bit of RAM. A few MB's cost you a few dollars, hardly an argument against MS Office. The functionality that ISN'T in the other suites is what counts.
Default answer: "I don't use all features."
My rebuttal: I don't f*cking care that you, pimpled smelly UNIX-hacker only uses vi (as I do myself). You is NOT the world!
The average house cat that walks outside for a couple of hours a day kill tens of rodents/birds monthly.
In other words: cats are animals (!). I'ld rather have a puppy.
4-6 people isn't that few. You would like to have people to participate in UI design, icons, etc. But the 'engine' of these applications could be done by a handful of people. Perhaps they want to much and they should concentrate on the word processor. Just an idea.
What a beautiful theme has the MacOS X page in Slashdot!!! I want all of Slashdot to be like this.
This makes no sense. A long warrenty period makes a product sell better. When 99.9% of parts that are going to fail do it in 30 days, it's in the interest of the manufacturer to either have no warrenty at all or a very short one (to prevent claims), or one that is very long, like 10 years or lifetime. After the first 30 days, hardly anything is going to break, so it would be stupid not to prolong the warrenty period. This can be done essentially 'free'. And I've seen RAM that have a lifetime guarantee.
Another distribution. Just what we need!
If they actually thought that 128 Kb ought to be enough and that more Kb's don't make a difference, I consider it a design flaw.
I wonder why there is a limit in the first place?
Must have been a problem with your system. I have been running Windows 2000 on a K6-266 with 128 MB of RAM for about a year. It flew. It's important to have good disk access, so I put a 10 MB 7200 rpm disk in it and installed Windows on that, which made it even snappier.
The only reasons I bought a new machine is that I needed the K6 to act as a FreeBSD box and because I wanted to play DiVX and games, both of which demand more than a K6-266 regardless of the OS used.
Worse, there is even an older article about this subject.
Sorry dude, but you don't know what you're talking about. First, if you had any idea about the AMD market, you'ld immediatly notice that this is indeed a pre-XP chip. Just look at the price. Furthermore, the XP chip would most likely have been called by it's name (Athlon XP 1600+), not it MHz. Now, who has lack of hardware understanding?
Second: the pre-XP chips do not have a thermal diode, as you mention, but this will mean that UNLESS THE MOTHERBOARD HAS A DIODE WHICH MEASURES THE CPU TEMP AND TAKES APPROPRIATE ACTION WHEN THE CHIP GETS TOO HOT, the CPU WILL in fact burn down. With a T-bird 1400, temps can go up to 350 degrees celcius without proper cooling and this CAN burn a hole in your motherboard Tom's Hardware has tested and captured on video if you don't believe me.
Ah, the hidden cost of the Athlon: you need a $300 power supply. Or did you mean 300 W.. ;)
I tried to post a comment at that site, but it seems their comments system is down (slashdotted?). Anyway, I'll post it here:
I miss a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a floppy drive and a cpu cooler (you'll need a good one with that CPU: it will not burn out your pocket, but WILL burn out itself and your motherboard if you don't cool it properly).
Furthermore, keeping a cdrom drive out of the equation isn't really honest. Almost any desktop box needs one. I don't know whether a NIC is included in the "system of the year", but this is the same as for a cdrom: almost any desktop box needs one.
I guess we can double the price for this so called budget system, because working without input and output devices (silly unneeded things like a monitor/keyboard etc) is a bit difficult.
No, the new Duron is still unlockable with the penciltrick, unlike the XP.
At least the 1 GHz Duron with Morgan core is: I have one and unlocked it this way.
I rather see it Europe centric, as I am a European, not USian. :)
After looking at the latest three articles I would think I loaded slashdot.org.tw or something instead of just Slashdot.org.. ;)
Being European and having watched too many American movies, I'm pretty sure burning your thighs because of holding coffee between them would be a very certain case in court.
:)
I mean, how much more irresponsible could the coffee maker be? Did it say on the coffee packaging: "do not hold your mug of coffee between your thighs!" ?
Let them pay up, the bastards.
(sorry, your Hollywood says so..
I too once hated vi as much as you. In fact, I advocated the viewpoint that the original creator of vi should be hanged for what he did.
After having used pico for about a year it really started to annoy me. It's even less powerful than MS-EDIT (which it resembles). I started to use vi. I learned it the hard way: changed all my editor environment variables to point to vi and forced myself only to use vi. I had a vi mug standing next to me for reference (a vi mug is a coffee mug with the most often used commands printed on it, as if it were a reference card). After about a week of usage I was proficient enough to be faster in vi than in any other editor.
Surprisingly, the most irritating thing of vi when you don't know it (the command mode), turns out to be you're biggest friend in the editor after you've mastered is. It's so much more relaxed to keep your hands in same position the keyboard. You just don't need to move your hands, not to move the cursor, not the do commands. The hands stay in the same position with you're eyes on the screen (I think you really need to be a touch typist to get the best of this editor), and this is as relaxed as it can be. The only movement which changes your hands position is regularly pressing ESC to enter command mode. But this is so much easier than doing CTRL-BLA etc..
But they forget that IT IS NOT A SI UNIT. It is not a unit from physics ! It is a mathematical/computer science unit for information !
Dude, you are so wrong I don't even know where to begin.
Kilo does NOT mean 1000 in computer science. It does in physics. Physics != all exact sciences.
You are definitely in need of a cluestick.
I object to these terms since they are essentially a rape by physicists.
The "K" in kilobyte is NOT the same the the "k" in kilogram. We don't need physisists telling us what expressions to use for things that are not even theirs. We are NOT talking about physical entities here but essentially mathematics.
DON'T touch our kilobytes!
Your sig sounds like something George Bush would say by accident.