SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64 has been around for a long time. That's why it was used in all of those Opteron benchmarks after it was released.
For something a little more affordable, SUSE 9.0 for AMD64 will be released tomorrow. (Along with the IA32 version I preordered)
For a no-cost alternative, you can download all 9 ISOs for the SUSE 8.2 for AMD64 beta here.
I have the same experience. Everyone at Codeweavers are amazing and they actually listen to their customers.
Transgaming is a different story. I bought a year's subscription and went out and bought Civ 3 and Black and White, both of which are "officially supported." Neither worked acceptably and their support guys closed my support requests without actually helping me.
Basically, I bought a year's subscription without having used their product for anything. I was seriously ripped off.
I've heard from other SuSE users that WineX won't run at all on SuSE 8.2 and that TG doesn't seem to care. I'm sure that kind of attitude will go over really well with their "business" customers.
I'd bet that 99% of Slashdotters have never heard of what you're referring to.
I'm thinking of the soundtrack right now, as I was listening to it this morning. We're currently listening to the monkey's drum solo. A couple of songs will play, then we'll get to hear the robot's drum solo.
So that's why they sold you MSI. You came in telling them your board was causing you hell, so they gave you the bulletproof one. I'd have reccomended you to stick with it and buy a PCI sound card (heck, if it were my store, I'd probably just give you a used SB PCI128), but hey, that's just me. Then again, I'd have replaced your board with an MSI with the Nforce2 chipset, so you'd have decent sound to start with.
The SB PCI128 doesn't have a real digital output. The store I bought from had one SB with SPDIF, and it was $300. To replace one function of a $250 motherboard with that is absurd. On top of that, I would have had to plug it into the front of my box. That's just ugly.
You're not getting my point, either. The sound was noisy as hell at low volumes, where my Soyo is virtually silent.
Other problems (Offtopic):
The board had two IDE interfaces, even though I told the guy it had to handle 5 IDE devices
It didn't detect or use RAM properly. I had to manually set the RAM timings in order to get it to boot without crashing
It crashed during heavy AGP transfers
I checked out comments about the board on the LKML and everyone agreed that it was a POS. That was enough for me. I brought it back and I now have an ASUS on the way.
A few weeks ago, I thought my Soyo Dragon motherboard had gone flaky because I was getting massive fs corruption when copying between drives. I panicked and went out and bought a new motherboard without having done any research. I told the guy I wanted to replace a Soyo Dragon and had 5 IDE devices, including 3 7200 RPM drives. The moron gave me an MSI KT3 Ultra2. That is not a replacement for a Dragon. The onboard sound doesn't even have digital audio outputs. I was using the Dragon's SPDIF to connect to my speakers. It sounds very nice.
I tried it out anyway. One thing I noticed right away was that I could hear noise whenever I selected text or moved a window. I took it back (for other reasons as well) and got my money back. The fs corruption was caused by the power supply unable to put out the power so I got a new one.
Right now I'm using the Dragon's analog out and there's no noise at all at any normal volume. If I turn everything up to maximum, I can barely hear something above the fan noise, but if I play something at that level, my ears would hurt.
What I'm not sure of is if they track all applications you've installed even if they don't support them.
A list of all installed RPMs are sent to them, and the server that accepts it is closed source.
That's not all, though. It also sends them a list of your hardware. All of this is done over (broken) XMLRPC and it's all tied to your user info, "system id", and possibly your IP. Who knows what they're doing with that data?
If you don't believe me, see/usr/share/rhn/register/rhnreg.py. The functions buildPackageList, sendHardware, sendPackages, and updatePackages are of great interest.
Add to all that the fact that their updates run very slowly.
This is why I use apt on Red Hat boxes, and install SuSE when I have a choice. Their update is just ftp and it doesn't send data back to them.
I think you're referring to the non-commercial edition of Qt for native Windows. That's not GPL'ed.
The only GPL'ed version of Qt is for UNIX systems and it's a different chunk of code. You are free to sell applications linked to it as long as your applications are GPL'ed as well. Remember that the Linux distros have no trouble selling KDE.
Nothing's stopping anybody from porting the GPL'ed Qt to Windows though. GPL is GPL, after all.
Either you're lying, or some idiot at Search King messed with their system for that one search.
I believe the latter. Do a search for 'python' and you won't find python.org or pythonline in there. In fact every single result is one of those pages most of us wish didn't exist. They're bottom-feeding and entirely useless.
Search for KDE and get this page as the first hit. I'm sure the author didn't ever intend to be the first hit on a search of 'KDE.' Yet again, no kde.org, but there are a bunch of side KDE sites such as dot.kde.org and www.kde.com.
SuSE does not make available their distribution as ISOs (do they make their installation and maintenance tools available under the GPL?), although at least you can download the FTP tree
So where in the GPL does it mention anything about ISOs? I find it scary how many people think a distro is required to be in ISO form. Some of us hate ISOs, actually. I can get a distro on my computer in a fraction of the time directly over FTP/NFS and they save on bandwidth costs.
As everybody around here has beaten to death, YaST is under the YaST license, which allows you to anything you want with the freely-available source, except profit when you make changes. (ie: no rebranding) What hasn't been pointed out though is that the installer is not just YaST. The first piece is Linuxrc, a nice little program written by Hubert Mantel of SuSE, which is GPLed and was used in DemoLinux. The hardware detection part, hwinfo and the libhd library, is very comprehensive, and even detects TV cards and braille terminals. It is also GPL. The base of the OS, a collection of programs and files contained in the aaa_base package, is also under the GPL. That includes SuSEconfig, fillup, and a bunch of other utilities.
You seem to be only concerned with installation/maintenance tools, though. That's good for me, because I don't want to be here all night listing software:-)
Troll Tech has tried to monopolize the market for Linux based handhelds by replacing X11 with a framebuffer-based system (which is less efficient to boot). Authors of GPL'ed software using Troll Tech's system are OK, but other kinds of free software, or commercial developers, need to pay more than they would for GUI development on just about any other platform. If Qt/Embedded catches on widely, you can kiss handheld Linux as an affordable commercial platform goodbye. And if Qt catches on on the desktop, it will harm Linux as well.
These statements have no basis in reality. They're bad even for Slashdot. How do you come to the conclusion that simple framebuffer access is less efficient than X11? Do you even know how these things work? Your monopoly accusation is also preposterous. All of Trolltech's competitors are using the framebuffer as well. That's not what I call a monopoly.
Trolltech, in using the GPL, are encouraging more free software. If you do want to make commercial software, Trolltech's prices are very cheap, especially considering how quickly you can write apps in Qt. Ask any developer using Qt and they will tell you that it more than pays for itself. Also remember that there are no distribution licensing fees, so it will not increase the price of a device/piece of software, only decrease it.
If it said, "If you use this code in your software and publish your software, you owe me 1 trillion dollars" do you think the courts would enforce that?
Yes they would. Why do you think they wouldn't? If I pirated software and the BSA goons caught me, they would make me pay the amount that the publisher licenses it for. (Remember that software isn't sold)
Everything done on this project is for the sole purpose of writing interoperable software under Sect. 1201 (f) Reverse Engineering exception of the DMCA.
Furthermore, these guys are in Germany, not the US.
This is the third time I quoted from the page, and I did it the first time entirely to encourage reading before writing.
Say you download an MP3 from a P2P network. Isn't that streaming too?
Only if you're listening to it while you're downloading it.
Or is streaming defined only as content delivered at its real-time rate
You'd need some major QoS across the entire Internet for that to work. All good streamers cache (buffer) data.
One wonders whether non-realtime "streaming" (read: downloading) can also be made illegal by RIAA/CARP
Whether you allow people to download it or stream it, you're still distributing it. Wireless radio stations pay fees, IP radio stations will soon pay fees. Of course, the point of all this software, in my (idealistic) mind, is for non-RIAA-controlled content, but there will be lots of people playing top40 crap anyway.
Many content providers really like streaming because, in many cases, users can't easily save their content and redistribute it. Note the lack of a 'save' button in RealPlayer.
XFree... yeah. and released them on their CD Distributions as binary only beta drivers, not available to the rest of the world, in order to make a plus-point for their release.
They're called NDAs. That's why they were binary-only. SuSE signed them. It should also be mentioned that the guy who started SuSE was one of the original XFree86 developers.
So - why can't SuSE GPL their developments, such as other Companies (Red Hat, Idealix, Gonicus, lots of others)?
So, if Red Hat are so perfect, where's the RHN server source? Why do I have to register to get automatic updates? Why do I have to pay a monthly fee to get any more than a measly 5kb/s out of their FTP server?
If you check SuSE's zq1 directory, you'll find source for everything they've written and provided, including the widely misunderstood YaST2. You *are* allowed to modify it. There's even a YaST2 development environment complete with project generation and auto-documentation.
But it's not like facts make any difference around here...
Just to add a couple of points to your very good post:
1) This guy's spectrum analyzer output looks too perfect, which makes me think that it's not very sensitive at all. This guy also needs to do some serious calibration on it, as the line is way too "thick"
2) Back in school, we had spectrum analyzers that used regular oscilloscopes for display. They're a cheap, but very good alternative. I forget exactly who made ours, but they were based out of Quebec
Slashdot Mirror
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64 has been around for a long time. That's why it was used in all of those Opteron benchmarks after it was released.
For something a little more affordable, SUSE 9.0 for AMD64 will be released tomorrow. (Along with the IA32 version I preordered)
For a no-cost alternative, you can download all 9 ISOs for the SUSE 8.2 for AMD64 beta here.
I have the same experience. Everyone at Codeweavers are amazing and they actually listen to their customers.
Transgaming is a different story. I bought a year's subscription and went out and bought Civ 3 and Black and White, both of which are "officially supported." Neither worked acceptably and their support guys closed my support requests without actually helping me.
Basically, I bought a year's subscription without having used their product for anything. I was seriously ripped off.
I've heard from other SuSE users that WineX won't run at all on SuSE 8.2 and that TG doesn't seem to care. I'm sure that kind of attitude will go over really well with their "business" customers.
I'd bet that 99% of Slashdotters have never heard of what you're referring to.
I'm thinking of the soundtrack right now, as I was listening to it this morning. We're currently listening to the monkey's drum solo. A couple of songs will play, then we'll get to hear the robot's drum solo.
I can't wait, myself.
The SB PCI128 doesn't have a real digital output. The store I bought from had one SB with SPDIF, and it was $300. To replace one function of a $250 motherboard with that is absurd. On top of that, I would have had to plug it into the front of my box. That's just ugly.
You're not getting my point, either. The sound was noisy as hell at low volumes, where my Soyo is virtually silent.
Other problems (Offtopic):
I checked out comments about the board on the LKML and everyone agreed that it was a POS. That was enough for me. I brought it back and I now have an ASUS on the way.
Properly designed hardware should not do this.
A few weeks ago, I thought my Soyo Dragon motherboard had gone flaky because I was getting massive fs corruption when copying between drives. I panicked and went out and bought a new motherboard without having done any research. I told the guy I wanted to replace a Soyo Dragon and had 5 IDE devices, including 3 7200 RPM drives. The moron gave me an MSI KT3 Ultra2. That is not a replacement for a Dragon. The onboard sound doesn't even have digital audio outputs. I was using the Dragon's SPDIF to connect to my speakers. It sounds very nice.
I tried it out anyway. One thing I noticed right away was that I could hear noise whenever I selected text or moved a window. I took it back (for other reasons as well) and got my money back. The fs corruption was caused by the power supply unable to put out the power so I got a new one.
Right now I'm using the Dragon's analog out and there's no noise at all at any normal volume. If I turn everything up to maximum, I can barely hear something above the fan noise, but if I play something at that level, my ears would hurt.
A list of all installed RPMs are sent to them, and the server that accepts it is closed source.
That's not all, though. It also sends them a list of your hardware. All of this is done over (broken) XMLRPC and it's all tied to your user info, "system id", and possibly your IP. Who knows what they're doing with that data?
If you don't believe me, see
Add to all that the fact that their updates run very slowly.
This is why I use apt on Red Hat boxes, and install SuSE when I have a choice. Their update is just ftp and it doesn't send data back to them.
I think you're referring to the non-commercial edition of Qt for native Windows. That's not GPL'ed.
The only GPL'ed version of Qt is for UNIX systems and it's a different chunk of code. You are free to sell applications linked to it as long as your applications are GPL'ed as well. Remember that the Linux distros have no trouble selling KDE.
Nothing's stopping anybody from porting the GPL'ed Qt to Windows though. GPL is GPL, after all.
If you link your app to a GPL'ed library, you are required to distribute the source for your app. That's why the LGPL was created.
If you want your app to be closed-source, you have to use the non-GPL'ed version of Qt, which will cost you.
I think it's a great situation, myself. Trolltech gets money, while providing an incentive to create GPL'ed apps.
You know, there are many cars out there with more than one door on the driver's side.
This is especially true of these so-called "taxis" which blind people often use.
You apparently don't know that Dlink sells 8139-based cards.
In fact, the majority of cheap Dlink cards use that chip these days.
Apparently you haven't typed 'lsmod' lately.
Do that search again. The results make sense now.
Either you're lying, or some idiot at Search King messed with their system for that one search.
I believe the latter. Do a search for 'python' and you won't find python.org or pythonline in there. In fact every single result is one of those pages most of us wish didn't exist. They're bottom-feeding and entirely useless.
Search for KDE and get this page as the first hit. I'm sure the author didn't ever intend to be the first hit on a search of 'KDE.' Yet again, no kde.org, but there are a bunch of side KDE sites such as dot.kde.org and www.kde.com.
"Search King" indeed.
After looking at that picture I started wondering if the moon will have "CHA" on it tonight.
C'mon, most Slashdotters are completely incapable of performing basic fact-checking. It's as if they've never written a paper before.
I think I'm the only person on Slashdot to ever point out the GPL parts of SuSE's installation programs.
That's pretty sad.
So where in the GPL does it mention anything about ISOs? I find it scary how many people think a distro is required to be in ISO form. Some of us hate ISOs, actually. I can get a distro on my computer in a fraction of the time directly over FTP/NFS and they save on bandwidth costs.
As everybody around here has beaten to death, YaST is under the YaST license, which allows you to anything you want with the freely-available source, except profit when you make changes. (ie: no rebranding) What hasn't been pointed out though is that the installer is not just YaST. The first piece is Linuxrc, a nice little program written by Hubert Mantel of SuSE, which is GPLed and was used in DemoLinux. The hardware detection part, hwinfo and the libhd library, is very comprehensive, and even detects TV cards and braille terminals. It is also GPL. The base of the OS, a collection of programs and files contained in the aaa_base package, is also under the GPL. That includes SuSEconfig, fillup, and a bunch of other utilities.
You seem to be only concerned with installation/maintenance tools, though. That's good for me, because I don't want to be here all night listing software
These statements have no basis in reality. They're bad even for Slashdot. How do you come to the conclusion that simple framebuffer access is less efficient than X11? Do you even know how these things work? Your monopoly accusation is also preposterous. All of Trolltech's competitors are using the framebuffer as well. That's not what I call a monopoly.
Trolltech, in using the GPL, are encouraging more free software. If you do want to make commercial software, Trolltech's prices are very cheap, especially considering how quickly you can write apps in Qt. Ask any developer using Qt and they will tell you that it more than pays for itself. Also remember that there are no distribution licensing fees, so it will not increase the price of a device/piece of software, only decrease it.
Yes they would. Why do you think they wouldn't? If I pirated software and the BSA goons caught me, they would make me pay the amount that the publisher licenses it for. (Remember that software isn't sold)
The courts would certainly enforce it.
In mod_points, of course.
Furthermore, these guys are in Germany, not the US.
This is the third time I quoted from the page, and I did it the first time entirely to encourage reading before writing.
Maybe I was too subtle...
Munich is in Germany, where the court system isn't nearly as flawed as in the US.
Ahem.
Only if you're listening to it while you're downloading it.
You'd need some major QoS across the entire Internet for that to work. All good streamers cache (buffer) data.
Whether you allow people to download it or stream it, you're still distributing it. Wireless radio stations pay fees, IP radio stations will soon pay fees. Of course, the point of all this software, in my (idealistic) mind, is for non-RIAA-controlled content, but there will be lots of people playing top40 crap anyway.
Many content providers really like streaming because, in many cases, users can't easily save their content and redistribute it. Note the lack of a 'save' button in RealPlayer.
They're called NDAs. That's why they were binary-only. SuSE signed them. It should also be mentioned that the guy who started SuSE was one of the original XFree86 developers.
So, if Red Hat are so perfect, where's the RHN server source? Why do I have to register to get automatic updates? Why do I have to pay a monthly fee to get any more than a measly 5kb/s out of their FTP server?
If you check SuSE's zq1 directory, you'll find source for everything they've written and provided, including the widely misunderstood YaST2. You *are* allowed to modify it. There's even a YaST2 development environment complete with project generation and auto-documentation.
But it's not like facts make any difference around here...
I mean, come on, people. Everybody knows (or should know) that there would be no pigeons if there were no Gnus. They're symbiotic.
To ensure the proper respect the Gnus deserve, Google should have at least changed Lin/ax to Gnu/Lin/ax in the article.
Sheesh.
While I've found you, I've been meaning to ask:
Shiny side in or out?
Just to add a couple of points to your very good post:
1) This guy's spectrum analyzer output looks too perfect, which makes me think that it's not very sensitive at all. This guy also needs to do some serious calibration on it, as the line is way too "thick"
2) Back in school, we had spectrum analyzers that used regular oscilloscopes for display. They're a cheap, but very good alternative. I forget exactly who made ours, but they were based out of Quebec
Your evidence doesn't actually make the correlation. Linus used a PC and Linux was a few years old before it ran on the Amiga.
I don't think any of Linus' decisions back then had anything to do with Amigas.
Do you really like Amigas *that* much?