Ah my bigoted friend. You were asked to explain the success of Samba and I am looking for it. You have, however, covered your lack of knowledge with attacks. I also don't understand why you are attacking Free Software authors merely because of the license they chose to release their work under. Again, is this the image you would like to portray of yourself? As a GPL supporter and BSD user what am I to think? Should I go and attack BSD software developers?
Your opinion of the GPL is exactly that. Using adjectives like 'cancerous' and 'business destroyer' is not only biased but unprofessional as well. Im wondering how you find you will be recieved? What are you trying to accomplish? Maybe you are just jealous?
I sincerely doubt you know or have worked with code, let alone something as useful and successful as the Samba project. Please, offer an example or two. If you have, why attack your fellow coders? Why scare people away from BSD?
"...Samba is not a business and therefore cannot qualify as a business success. It is, in fact, a business destroyer due to the fact that it propagates the GPL."
Samba is successful. I can't recall compiling a 'business'. If I could compile a business, is it then not a business if it is GPL-licensed?
'business destroyer' probably doesn't make much sense to firms like IBM, Redhat, SGI, and HP. People there and in other firms get paid to, guess what, write GPL'ed code! Know what? They get paid for what they do!
Im sorry I let you waste so much of my time. I do, however, find it sad when one of my brothers of code(you said you write code daily) gets led astray. The saddest part of your jihad against Linux and the GPL is that every argument you made about GPL'ed code applies equally well to BSD code. I wonder how code is 'anti-business' if a business does not use it? You may continue to grumble enviously and reinvent wheels under the guise of false idealism while the rest of us live our lives.
It seems that these types of articles appear sporatically over the years on Slashdot, and they make similar mistakes. This and the recent anti-GNOME articles makes me think Linuxtoday should be FUD-today. Sorry for the cheap shot;)
Funny that the article mentions Eazel and Corel as the 'omens' that Linux is dead, and that the blood of an operating system is money. Strangely, I recall KDE and GNOME existing before the IPO craze. I recall when Caldera/Ransom Love were not so concerned with being 'commercial', and when Redhat worked just as hard without so much money. People existed before the promise of money and we, the developers, can ensure that the good work carrys on.
Lets look at the arguments "Linux is too hard to use" and "theres too much choice". Linux has made great strides in the usability sense, and I am uncertain of why 'choice' is bad thing? Lets also not forget that Win32 operating systems and office products cost large sums of money, and attained this feat through anti-competitive measures. I can't recall being offered the source to Win32 and Office products...
My point isn't to be inflammatory and I hope I have not come across as such. However, I do tire of seeing such statements/articles that completely ignore the largest reason we use Linux and develop these wonderful, free products and applications: We want to. If a company helps me, wonderful. However, its reason and monetary contribution could mean little to me, and certainly those reasons are not how I gauge my success.
Re:What can we do to stop this from happening agai
on
Mandrake Shakeup
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Um Brett, I am looking at your paragraph and nowhere inside it do I see that the GPL is "anti-programmer" or will hurt their wages. Am I missing something?
Little tip: it actually says that there are more benefits to writing code than just monetary rewards. That is a far cry from "Use my evil GPL and I will take your money and company."
Have you ever contributed to either license? Have you ever released code under either license? Let me tell you, if you wrote code you would think much differently. You may prefer one license over another but there is no way you would carry on the way you have been doing so on Slashdot. Im unsure of your goal, but you are leaving a bad impression of yourself and your mission is being clouded by your bigotry.
Explain to me why we need people doing all they can to undo free work merely because it is under a certain license?
Jeremy:
Great job on your Samba work. For as long as I personally have been running Linux, I have been running Samba. Despite repeated attempts to thwart your work, you and the other Samba developers have always prevailed. Thanks for the good work.
Saying that "Samba is built on the back of a Microsoft
proprietary protocol." isn't true. Samba exists to be a solution to a proprietary protocol. You can mix Win32 and UNIX systems now, so much so that Microsoft claims Windows2000 "plays nice with Linux".
I don't understand the people that troll for either license, like the disillusioned gentleman in the parent post. Follow his user bio and see many anti-GPL/Linux remarks. More people are even doing the same. Whats especially sad is that people are directing this now to the very _volunteers_ that make it possible to bicker about how free our operating systems are.
Good work on behalf of all of us users, Jeremy. Im sorry that there are ungrateful people with religious vendettas, but what matters is you helped us and we appreciate your effort.
I am a Linux enthusiast. When I learned that IBM was investing such a substantial sum of capitol in Linux, I was pleased.
Though running Linux for the lesser duration of its existence (1997), in that time I have seen it grow. Where once ignored and labeled as a hobby, now the largest software company is calling it their number 1 threat and petitioning United States lawmakers to take measures against its development model. This is a large difference from the times when we would petition hardware and software manufacturers for just documentation, let alone drivers and ports.
Another poster mentioned this but it is worth repeating: $18,000 is well worth the advertising this incident has caused. Many news sites have covered it and IBM is well known for having done it. lwn.net previously reported that Sun Microsystems had offered to 'help IBM remove' the paint. Granted, the publicity for such a reason is somewhat embarrasing but more people now know of this wonderful operating system, and the more than significant investment one company has made. -catpyss, yes an unusual name but you will remeber it.
"Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in
its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."
I am really interested in what Love and Caldera's response to this is/will be. I have always believed it to be in poor taste to insult the license that the majority of your distribution uses, including the heart of it. Yet Love has done so for years, most recently prompting a backpedeling statement that Caldera is committed to the GPL as well as other licenses.
I am not trying to incite a flamewar, but I do think members of our community should grant all of the community respect. Saying that "Mundie was right" when he was attempting cast the GPL against all other licenses, is helping to accomplish Microsoft's tactic of dividing us. Perhaps thats what Caldera wants?
"why should Sun support your old hardware with it's new software?"
Because they are the vendor that you likely bought it from. Keep in mind that around the time many of the 32-bit SPARC machines appeared Solaris was one of the few, if not only, operating systems you could use. Back then it also wasn't free.
I do agree with your point that backward compatibility isn't always wonderful, but it speaks very well to volunteers that neither created nor sold such hardware to support it well and free. Linux as well as Net/OpenBSD have excellent support for 32 and 64-bit Sun hardware. Commercial vendors could learn a lesson from that. -catpyss
I just installed Debian on a SparcStation10 this past Sunday. I run Debian as my home operating system, and noticed no difference between the x86 and SPARC versions. Everything worked the same
I do, however, take issue with the person who asked the question. Merely because Redhat dropped "stable" support (they still offer non-official support) for SPARC doesn't mean it is dead. If I am not mistake SuSE has now added SPARC to their list of supported archs.
The final thing to keep in mind is that SPARC hardware has a much lower userbase than x86. There are much fewer vendors and suppliers. Also, SPARC hardware is very pricey and is usually aimed at corporate dollars.
Still, hopping on Ebay to get an old SS10/20 is a good idea. SPARC's OpenPROM is really, really cool. I installed Debain on mine with no floppy, no CDROM, no keyboard, and no monitor. Try that with x86. -catpyss
I like that the Salon article presents a different view of this case, but I believe this is more 'wound-licking' on the side of free speech.
If there is an industry that has more than enough resources to avoid the simple formality of appearing "anti-academic", it is the entertainment industry.
More likely than not, the RIAA (if even presented with this at all) will trumpet the unpublished paper as a victory for the DMCA. The DMCA in this case has been used to protect corporate interest/intellectual property. So a professor got bullied, who cares if entertainment is so vital to the economy? Such rhetoric is what really matters in these situations. Money will always win over free speech.
As a disclaimer, I am a musician that gives away all of my merchandise freely. That includings CDs, tapes, clothing, and anything else we do. We record, manage, and distribute our work and performances. Interested? mp3.com/leftunsaid and freespeech.org/leftunsaid.
I would like nothing more than the collapse of huge industry trade groups, but we must realize that nothing short of convincing the masses that the system they are used to is wrong will fix things. Etertainment existed centuries before people charged for it, but its strange to think that in this day and age. Thanks.
"tick tock tick tock... counting down to a -2 troll from the Linux loving mods who don't see the underlying facts in this post."
The above statement is a self-realization that your post is flawed. This was an article about Wind River dropping Slackware, not an invitation to proclaim your BSD beliefs. Please don't find me harsh, but you are trolling.
"Linux has become a novelty within the past few months and no version no matter which you name, Debian, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, etc, has any standards
regarding anything, desktops, package managers (RPM, PKG_ADD, etc, etc), and ALL of them have many security risks associated with them. "
For starters, Linux has been available since 1991 and has enjoyed great acclaim and status since then. KDE, GNOME, RPM, DPKG, X11, the Linux kernel itself, GNU tools, and the LSB are all standards. Don't confuse standards with lack of choice or being locked into one vendor/distribution. Everything from TCP/IP to POSIX to the BSD Ports system has security issues, so that remark holds the least weight.
"One of the biggest problems also surrounding the use of Linux, is their repeated effort to try to make it a better system by releasing a kernel revision just about every
other week, instead of getting it right the first time around. Why would I want to subject myself to this?" So I guess you don't upgrade your systems ever? I suppose you are running the same Free/Net/OpenBSD version first publically released? The Linux development effort makes things better and is in a constant state of revising and adding. Such is the same in acedemic, medical, and engineering environments. Such is also true of the BSDs. Also, the 4.4BSD that the modern BSDs came from was not written a single time. It was and is a multi-decade effort consisting of revisions, updates, and rewrites.
"The problem with Linux is simple, the creator (Linus Torvalds) dictates what should or should not be installed into the kernel source which is rather unfair as opposed
to the BSD's which most have an unbiased input from the developers as to what should or should not be included." I hope you don't belive that. Free software isn't controlled by anyone. There merely is one person/vendor that is the de facto standard. I suppose there is only one single BSD varient right?
Using one single benchmark as reason to claim 3 operating systems are superior to 1 is stupid. That would be like me saying the BSD varients are usless as they have little native software.
The saddest remark: "Its shameful to see Slackware go under for this short time, being it was the first distro of Linux I started with..." You seem to be yet another bile-spewing ex-Linux user who has found an iceberg of exclusivity to hold onto. Your attacks are unfounded, untrue, and unfair. If you get modded down, I would completely understand.
I really can't comment too reliably on _why_ Wind River chose not to hire the Slackware team, but I am still unhappy about it. I can find no links that better explain the situation. I believe choice is a good thing, and has helped Linux and other free Unix-like operating systems evolve so rapidly. This announcement comes after Wind River needlessly ruffled feathers with their stance on GPL'ed code and Linux. These actions don't seem like smart PR moves for a company operating in a niche that Linux and the GPL created.
I have been reading for some time that SGI is on the verge of dying. Part of their shift to Linux was to remain afloat. I don't think SGI could really sustain lengthy legal battles. That and SGI needs the image of being Linux friendly to win our support.
On another note, I am not too sure that the developers behind 'OpenAL' would fare any better against SGI, unless they had a prior agreement.
Im sure this is going to start a firestorm of uninformed remarks. This is clearly a joke but I am willing to bet we will see all kinds of posts comparing Linux and BSD OSs.
The moon is not our toy. It is reckless and irresponsibe for us to be using the moon for our own energy needs. I personally have been using the moon as my private dumpster, but I think that I might be messing with other nations' space programs. For us to continue to exploit space would be a disgrace.
Im sorry, but I beg to differ. The current "slowdown" in the American economy is taking it's toll on certain areas, but that segment is mostly rich investors that make money on stock speculation. Why the fuss? The reason is the wealthy are the ones with the closest access to the media. Notice people are only alarmed when the wealthy are inconvenienced, not when the janitors, farm workers, and others that are in segments that fluctuate based on the economy are in jeapordy. Programmers are in an employment class that generally doesn't fluctuate based on the current state of the economic continuum. The demand for math/technically oriented individuals, like most programmers, likely will never be satisfied. Those with technical skills usually gravitate to the most prosperous nations. For example, the exodus of highly-skilled Russian scientists to the United States. Unemployed programmers? I doubt it, but look at the media and you would never think otherwise.
"Don't use aim. Who wants to talk to a bunch of aolers anyways?"
The problem is that AOL, with the acquisition of Mirabilis, now controls the majority of Internet messaging. Any singe entity that controls that much of _anything_ could easily leverage their control illegally. So this is less of an issue of a small application but an issue of enormous corporate power.
If there is one aspect of this situation that I find interesting is that it happened first between AOL and Microsoft, and I viewed it differently then. To those of us opposed to eith AOL or Microsoft, the thought of multi-billion Dollar corporations bickering over instant message usage was humorous. I certainly felt a childish sympathy for AOL, despite the fact neither side had good intentions.
Eric Raymond went so far as to write that we community members should 'applaud' Microsoft's efforts. Microsoft used the guise of 'open standards' that it usually will not hold it's own products by. Applaud them I did not, but the situation did call my attention to AOL's near-monopoly on Internet chat.
I suppose I was naive for thinking AOL was simply "sticking it to Evil Microsoft", but now it seems more like the Free community and Redmond are similar in AOL's eyes. Thoughts?
Your post is complete drivel, and yet you get marked up, while the parent (who is clearly correct) gets marked down. BSD users are bigots? Nope. Just Slashdot BSD moderators...
"...FreeBSD has 20% marketshare, and can run Linux binaries faster than Linux does..."
Usually I don't respond to trolling but I find it disheartening that people actually believe things without researching them. Please, if you will, give some quantitative proof of your claim. Really, inflammatory remarks are exactly that, no matter which side you choose.
Re:Hey, would FreeBSD make a good DSL web server?
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Bringing xMach To Life
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"BSD makes a better server than Linux PERIOD. Note I said SERVER. I am personally running OpenBSD as my firewall/router and have seen a few
attempts to exploit it"
According to that criteria, Linux would make a good server as well. I have a firewall/router running Linux 2.4 and also see many breakin attempts without success.
As a multiple distro user, I have to take issue with your remark. Basically you are assuming Mandrake is better because they don't offer a subscription-based update mechanism, and because of the defaults of the OS.
I have run Qmail on Redhat, run/compiled RPMs/SRPMs geared toward my system, and used both KDE and GNOME on it(Need I remind that Redhat pays developers for both projects?).
Now really isn't the time to extol the virtues of another distro merely because they get bad press.
"Except the unstable tree of Debian is actually more stable than the stable tree of Red Hat 7."
The above is the perfect example of comments that make me sigh. I have been running every version of Redhat Linux since 5.0, and am quite familiar with it. I administer three Redhat 7.0 machines as well as a Debian Woody machine.
I would like to explore the issue of stability. Many will criticize an operating system(Redhat Linux here) for being unstable yet fail to give examples. Does the OS fail when under heavy stress? Does the OS operate uninterrupted for extended periods of time? Do included/third-party applications cause the system to fail? Such factors are how I evaluate stability and I have yet to find a Linux distro to fare poorly in any of those categories.
Stablity in most regards is due to the OS kernel and hardware. The Linux kernel is very stable, and is standard across all distributions. X86 hardware leaves much to be desired, but distros can do little in that area.
So as a user of both distros, I take issue with your remark. Given that Linux distros all use the Linux kernel and most use GNU tools, distros have much more in common than they do differences. Sure differences exist but making broad statements is counterproductive.
http://slashdot.org/bsd/01/02/05/1859221.shtml " 'Linux 2.4.0 is available for no money. So is FreeBSD. Linux uses advanced hardware, so
does FreeBSD. FreeBSD is more stable and faster than Linux, in my opinion. "
Basically the precident is that it is acceptable to be inflammatory as long as your aren't Linux. A majority of the articles comparing BSD and Linux do so on a well-known point, stress under high loads. Notice that Slashdot does not post articles comparing native application support, user-base, or multi-processor support. Posting of such articles or comments will likely be considered inflammitory.
In posting this in now way am I trying to start a flamewar. However, I do feel Slashdot holds a double standard in how it treats BSD remarks, especially on the front page. Being immature and biased is useless, regardless of OS choice. Thoughts?
"The difference is that NetBSD is an a complete Operating System, not just a kernel."
Wow, your right. All this time I have been interfacing my kernel by hand. You OS-bigots were right all along! What I need is an "operating system". I feel so bad that I have wasted all this time using a kernel when I could have been using a "cool" operating system. Sign me up!
Slashdot Mirror
Your opinion of the GPL is exactly that. Using adjectives like 'cancerous' and 'business destroyer' is not only biased but unprofessional as well. Im wondering how you find you will be recieved? What are you trying to accomplish? Maybe you are just jealous?
I sincerely doubt you know or have worked with code, let alone something as useful and successful as the Samba project. Please, offer an example or two. If you have, why attack your fellow coders? Why scare people away from BSD?
"...Samba is not a business and therefore cannot qualify as a business success. It is, in fact, a business destroyer due to the fact that it propagates the GPL."
- Samba is successful. I can't recall compiling a 'business'. If I could compile a business, is it then not a business if it is GPL-licensed?
- 'business destroyer' probably doesn't make much sense to firms like IBM, Redhat, SGI, and HP. People there and in other firms get paid to, guess what, write GPL'ed code! Know what? They get paid for what they do!
Im sorry I let you waste so much of my time. I do, however, find it sad when one of my brothers of code(you said you write code daily) gets led astray. The saddest part of your jihad against Linux and the GPL is that every argument you made about GPL'ed code applies equally well to BSD code. I wonder how code is 'anti-business' if a business does not use it? You may continue to grumble enviously and reinvent wheels under the guise of false idealism while the rest of us live our lives.It seems that these types of articles appear sporatically over the years on Slashdot, and they make similar mistakes. This and the recent anti-GNOME articles makes me think Linuxtoday should be FUD-today. Sorry for the cheap shot ;)
Funny that the article mentions Eazel and Corel as the 'omens' that Linux is dead, and that the blood of an operating system is money. Strangely, I recall KDE and GNOME existing before the IPO craze. I recall when Caldera/Ransom Love were not so concerned with being 'commercial', and when Redhat worked just as hard without so much money. People existed before the promise of money and we, the developers, can ensure that the good work carrys on.
Lets look at the arguments "Linux is too hard to use" and "theres too much choice". Linux has made great strides in the usability sense, and I am uncertain of why 'choice' is bad thing? Lets also not forget that Win32 operating systems and office products cost large sums of money, and attained this feat through anti-competitive measures. I can't recall being offered the source to Win32 and Office products...
My point isn't to be inflammatory and I hope I have not come across as such. However, I do tire of seeing such statements/articles that completely ignore the largest reason we use Linux and develop these wonderful, free products and applications: We want to. If a company helps me, wonderful. However, its reason and monetary contribution could mean little to me, and certainly those reasons are not how I gauge my success.
Um Brett, I am looking at your paragraph and nowhere inside it do I see that the GPL is "anti-programmer" or will hurt their wages. Am I missing something?
Little tip: it actually says that there are more benefits to writing code than just monetary rewards. That is a far cry from "Use my evil GPL and I will take your money and company."
Have you ever contributed to either license? Have you ever released code under either license? Let me tell you, if you wrote code you would think much differently. You may prefer one license over another but there is no way you would carry on the way you have been doing so on Slashdot. Im unsure of your goal, but you are leaving a bad impression of yourself and your mission is being clouded by your bigotry.
Explain to me why we need people doing all they can to undo free work merely because it is under a certain license?
Jeremy:
Great job on your Samba work. For as long as I personally have been running Linux, I have been running Samba. Despite repeated attempts to thwart your work, you and the other Samba developers have always prevailed. Thanks for the good work.
Saying that "Samba is built on the back of a Microsoft proprietary protocol." isn't true. Samba exists to be a solution to a proprietary protocol. You can mix Win32 and UNIX systems now, so much so that Microsoft claims Windows2000 "plays nice with Linux".
I don't understand the people that troll for either license, like the disillusioned gentleman in the parent post. Follow his user bio and see many anti-GPL/Linux remarks. More people are even doing the same. Whats especially sad is that people are directing this now to the very _volunteers_ that make it possible to bicker about how free our operating systems are.
Good work on behalf of all of us users, Jeremy. Im sorry that there are ungrateful people with religious vendettas, but what matters is you helped us and we appreciate your effort.
I am a Linux enthusiast. When I learned that IBM was investing such a substantial sum of capitol in Linux, I was pleased.
Though running Linux for the lesser duration of its existence (1997), in that time I have seen it grow. Where once ignored and labeled as a hobby, now the largest software company is calling it their number 1 threat and petitioning United States lawmakers to take measures against its development model. This is a large difference from the times when we would petition hardware and software manufacturers for just documentation, let alone drivers and ports.
Another poster mentioned this but it is worth repeating: $18,000 is well worth the advertising this incident has caused. Many news sites have covered it and IBM is well known for having done it. lwn.net previously reported that Sun Microsystems had offered to 'help IBM remove' the paint. Granted, the publicity for such a reason is somewhat embarrasing but more people now know of this wonderful operating system, and the more than significant investment one company has made.
-catpyss, yes an unusual name but you will remeber it.
"Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."
I am really interested in what Love and Caldera's response to this is/will be. I have always believed it to be in poor taste to insult the license that the majority of your distribution uses, including the heart of it. Yet Love has done so for years, most recently prompting a backpedeling statement that Caldera is committed to the GPL as well as other licenses.
I am not trying to incite a flamewar, but I do think members of our community should grant all of the community respect. Saying that "Mundie was right" when he was attempting cast the GPL against all other licenses, is helping to accomplish Microsoft's tactic of dividing us. Perhaps thats what Caldera wants?
"why should Sun support your old hardware with it's new software?"
Because they are the vendor that you likely bought it from. Keep in mind that around the time many of the 32-bit SPARC machines appeared Solaris was one of the few, if not only, operating systems you could use. Back then it also wasn't free.
I do agree with your point that backward compatibility isn't always wonderful, but it speaks very well to volunteers that neither created nor sold such hardware to support it well and free. Linux as well as Net/OpenBSD have excellent support for 32 and 64-bit Sun hardware. Commercial vendors could learn a lesson from that.
-catpyss
I just installed Debian on a SparcStation10 this past Sunday. I run Debian as my home operating system, and noticed no difference between the x86 and SPARC versions. Everything worked the same
I do, however, take issue with the person who asked the question. Merely because Redhat dropped "stable" support (they still offer non-official support) for SPARC doesn't mean it is dead. If I am not mistake SuSE has now added SPARC to their list of supported archs.
The final thing to keep in mind is that SPARC hardware has a much lower userbase than x86. There are much fewer vendors and suppliers. Also, SPARC hardware is very pricey and is usually aimed at corporate dollars.
Still, hopping on Ebay to get an old SS10/20 is a good idea. SPARC's OpenPROM is really, really cool. I installed Debain on mine with no floppy, no CDROM, no keyboard, and no monitor. Try that with x86.
-catpyss
I like that the Salon article presents a different view of this case, but I believe this is more 'wound-licking' on the side of free speech. If there is an industry that has more than enough resources to avoid the simple formality of appearing "anti-academic", it is the entertainment industry.
More likely than not, the RIAA (if even presented with this at all) will trumpet the unpublished paper as a victory for the DMCA. The DMCA in this case has been used to protect corporate interest/intellectual property. So a professor got bullied, who cares if entertainment is so vital to the economy? Such rhetoric is what really matters in these situations. Money will always win over free speech.
As a disclaimer, I am a musician that gives away all of my merchandise freely. That includings CDs, tapes, clothing, and anything else we do. We record, manage, and distribute our work and performances. Interested? mp3.com/leftunsaid and freespeech.org/leftunsaid.
I would like nothing more than the collapse of huge industry trade groups, but we must realize that nothing short of convincing the masses that the system they are used to is wrong will fix things. Etertainment existed centuries before people charged for it, but its strange to think that in this day and age. Thanks.
"tick tock tick tock ... counting down to a -2 troll from the Linux loving mods who don't see the underlying facts in this post."
The above statement is a self-realization that your post is flawed. This was an article about Wind River dropping Slackware, not an invitation to proclaim your BSD beliefs. Please don't find me harsh, but you are trolling.
"Linux has become a novelty within the past few months and no version no matter which you name, Debian, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, etc, has any standards regarding anything, desktops, package managers (RPM, PKG_ADD, etc, etc), and ALL of them have many security risks associated with them. "
For starters, Linux has been available since 1991 and has enjoyed great acclaim and status since then. KDE, GNOME, RPM, DPKG, X11, the Linux kernel itself, GNU tools, and the LSB are all standards. Don't confuse standards with lack of choice or being locked into one vendor/distribution. Everything from TCP/IP to POSIX to the BSD Ports system has security issues, so that remark holds the least weight.
"One of the biggest problems also surrounding the use of Linux, is their repeated effort to try to make it a better system by releasing a kernel revision just about every other week, instead of getting it right the first time around. Why would I want to subject myself to this?"
So I guess you don't upgrade your systems ever? I suppose you are running the same Free/Net/OpenBSD version first publically released? The Linux development effort makes things better and is in a constant state of revising and adding. Such is the same in acedemic, medical, and engineering environments. Such is also true of the BSDs. Also, the 4.4BSD that the modern BSDs came from was not written a single time. It was and is a multi-decade effort consisting of revisions, updates, and rewrites.
"The problem with Linux is simple, the creator (Linus Torvalds) dictates what should or should not be installed into the kernel source which is rather unfair as opposed to the BSD's which most have an unbiased input from the developers as to what should or should not be included."
I hope you don't belive that. Free software isn't controlled by anyone. There merely is one person/vendor that is the de facto standard. I suppose there is only one single BSD varient right?
Using one single benchmark as reason to claim 3 operating systems are superior to 1 is stupid. That would be like me saying the BSD varients are usless as they have little native software.
The saddest remark: "Its shameful to see Slackware go under for this short time, being it was the first distro of Linux I started with..."
You seem to be yet another bile-spewing ex-Linux user who has found an iceberg of exclusivity to hold onto. Your attacks are unfounded, untrue, and unfair. If you get modded down, I would completely understand.
I really can't comment too reliably on _why_ Wind River chose not to hire the Slackware team, but I am still unhappy about it. I can find no links that better explain the situation. I believe choice is a good thing, and has helped Linux and other free Unix-like operating systems evolve so rapidly. This announcement comes after Wind River needlessly ruffled feathers with their stance on GPL'ed code and Linux. These actions don't seem like smart PR moves for a company operating in a niche that Linux and the GPL created.
I have been reading for some time that SGI is on the verge of dying. Part of their shift to Linux was to remain afloat. I don't think SGI could really sustain lengthy legal battles. That and SGI needs the image of being Linux friendly to win our support.
On another note, I am not too sure that the developers behind 'OpenAL' would fare any better against SGI, unless they had a prior agreement.
Im sure this is going to start a firestorm of uninformed remarks. This is clearly a joke but I am willing to bet we will see all kinds of posts comparing Linux and BSD OSs.
The moon is not our toy. It is reckless and irresponsibe for us to be using the moon for our own energy needs. I personally have been using the moon as my private dumpster, but I think that I might be messing with other nations' space programs. For us to continue to exploit space would be a disgrace.
"Good news for unemployed programmers"
Im sorry, but I beg to differ. The current "slowdown" in the American economy is taking it's toll on certain areas, but that segment is mostly rich investors that make money on stock speculation. Why the fuss? The reason is the wealthy are the ones with the closest access to the media. Notice people are only alarmed when the wealthy are inconvenienced, not when the janitors, farm workers, and others that are in segments that fluctuate based on the economy are in jeapordy. Programmers are in an employment class that generally doesn't fluctuate based on the current state of the economic continuum. The demand for math/technically oriented individuals, like most programmers, likely will never be satisfied. Those with technical skills usually gravitate to the most prosperous nations. For example, the exodus of highly-skilled Russian scientists to the United States. Unemployed programmers? I doubt it, but look at the media and you would never think otherwise.
"Don't use aim. Who wants to talk to a bunch of aolers anyways?"
The problem is that AOL, with the acquisition of Mirabilis, now controls the majority of Internet messaging. Any singe entity that controls that much of _anything_ could easily leverage their control illegally. So this is less of an issue of a small application but an issue of enormous corporate power.
If there is one aspect of this situation that I find interesting is that it happened first between AOL and Microsoft, and I viewed it differently then. To those of us opposed to eith AOL or Microsoft, the thought of multi-billion Dollar corporations bickering over instant message usage was humorous. I certainly felt a childish sympathy for AOL, despite the fact neither side had good intentions.
Eric Raymond went so far as to write that we community members should 'applaud' Microsoft's efforts. Microsoft used the guise of 'open standards' that it usually will not hold it's own products by. Applaud them I did not, but the situation did call my attention to AOL's near-monopoly on Internet chat.
I suppose I was naive for thinking AOL was simply "sticking it to Evil Microsoft", but now it seems more like the Free community and Redmond are similar in AOL's eyes. Thoughts?
Your post is complete drivel, and yet you get marked up, while the parent (who is clearly correct) gets marked down. BSD users are bigots? Nope. Just Slashdot BSD moderators...
"...FreeBSD has 20% marketshare, and can run Linux binaries faster than Linux does..."
Usually I don't respond to trolling but I find it disheartening that people actually believe things without researching them. Please, if you will, give some quantitative proof of your claim. Really, inflammatory remarks are exactly that, no matter which side you choose.
"BSD makes a better server than Linux PERIOD. Note I said SERVER. I am personally running OpenBSD as my firewall/router and have seen a few attempts to exploit it"
According to that criteria, Linux would make a good server as well. I have a firewall/router running Linux 2.4 and also see many breakin attempts without success.
As a multiple distro user, I have to take issue with your remark. Basically you are assuming Mandrake is better because they don't offer a subscription-based update mechanism, and because of the defaults of the OS.
I have run Qmail on Redhat, run/compiled RPMs/SRPMs geared toward my system, and used both KDE and GNOME on it(Need I remind that Redhat pays developers for both projects?).
Now really isn't the time to extol the virtues of another distro merely because they get bad press.
"Except the unstable tree of Debian is actually more stable than the stable tree of Red Hat 7."
The above is the perfect example of comments that make me sigh. I have been running every version of Redhat Linux since 5.0, and am quite familiar with it. I administer three Redhat 7.0 machines as well as a Debian Woody machine.
I would like to explore the issue of stability. Many will criticize an operating system(Redhat Linux here) for being unstable yet fail to give examples. Does the OS fail when under heavy stress? Does the OS operate uninterrupted for extended periods of time? Do included/third-party applications cause the system to fail? Such factors are how I evaluate stability and I have yet to find a Linux distro to fare poorly in any of those categories.
Stablity in most regards is due to the OS kernel and hardware. The Linux kernel is very stable, and is standard across all distributions. X86 hardware leaves much to be desired, but distros can do little in that area.
So as a user of both distros, I take issue with your remark. Given that Linux distros all use the Linux kernel and most use GNU tools, distros have much more in common than they do differences. Sure differences exist but making broad statements is counterproductive.
I completely understand your point and agree, but if I may offer an example or two of Slashdot reporting:
3 4&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/21/14502
"it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the handheld arena."
http://slashdot.org/bsd/01/02/05/1859221.shtml
" 'Linux 2.4.0 is available for no money. So is FreeBSD. Linux uses advanced hardware, so does FreeBSD. FreeBSD is more stable and faster than Linux, in my opinion. "
Basically the precident is that it is acceptable to be inflammatory as long as your aren't Linux. A majority of the articles comparing BSD and Linux do so on a well-known point, stress under high loads. Notice that Slashdot does not post articles comparing native application support, user-base, or multi-processor support. Posting of such articles or comments will likely be considered inflammitory.
In posting this in now way am I trying to start a flamewar. However, I do feel Slashdot holds a double standard in how it treats BSD remarks, especially on the front page. Being immature and biased is useless, regardless of OS choice. Thoughts?
"The difference is that NetBSD is an a complete Operating System, not just a kernel."
Wow, your right. All this time I have been interfacing my kernel by hand. You OS-bigots were right all along! What I need is an "operating system". I feel so bad that I have wasted all this time using a kernel when I could have been using a "cool" operating system. Sign me up!