Extra point question: Einstein recieve his Nobel prize for something related to Planck's constant. Question: How does one measure Planck's contant? Physics majors should not respond. This question is for CS majors.
First off, the disclaimer: I am a collage dropout with 20 credit hours over 3 semesters to my name. Combined agregate GPA 1.02. (And they're all nearly 20 years old.)
Q: How would I measure Planck's contant?
A: With a tape measure! Just like I would for a two-by-four.
What a load of crap. So far I haven't seem any Linux distro (well, except for Linux One) that wasn't worth something.
The idea that there will eventually be one Linux distro is one that business/marketing/money people see. If you only know one way to think then of course you will come to the conclusion that that is the way everything works. If we, the open source community, can stop fighting over nonsense like distro wars or BSD vs Linux and other total wasts of energy things would be a LOT better.
I take 11 or 12 differen drugs between 1 and 4 times a day. Pills out the wazoo. Half the time I'm so stoned I can't even remember what I'm doing. It's not uncommon for me to lose track of what I'm talking about in mid-sentence.
OC, this is all due to the physical disability I have and all the pills are perscribed medications. Without them I'm incapable of moving at all.
I can see why RH is dropping the SPARC port (for the many reasons already posted), though I'd wish they wouldn't. There's a funny thing about Linux on the Sparc, though...
Linux on Sparc blows the doors off of Solaris on Sparc. It's just SO much faster. The funny thing is that Solaris on Intel is faster than Linux on Intel, too. It's a backwords world we live in.
Hopefully there will come a time when RH will re-commit to the Sparc platform.
I've been through this kind of thing before (go join The US Internet Industry Association right now!!) and I can tell you from direct experience that email means nothing to Congress. Only 2 Senators actually real email and, AFAIK, no House Reps do.
The best thing anyone can do is to write an actual letter (as mentioned in the original post) and send it to your actual representitive. They only care about comments from their constituants. Make sure that you are polite, brief and "professional". If everyone were to do this it would be just as effective as any of the "Million {whatever} Marchs" that have happened.
Make it a "Million Letter March". It will have an effect.
I tried the DeXtop/Accel-X combination and if you need an exact CDE implimentation it isn't bad at all. I loaded it up at a shop that had a bunch of Sun Solaris systems and no one really noticed it was a Linux box. The DeXtop/Accel-X combination works as well as any other Xserver/Desktop combination, really.
However it is true that if you install it on a running Linux system it will frag all of your other X/GUI options. I had to do a reinstall on the box I tested it on. It doesn't give you anything more than other Open Source options do, either. If you really need the CDE look-n-feel you should try XFce.
There are just 97 days till the beginning of the 21st century and the next millennium!
Solaris uses RAM plus disk for/tmp. It'll put everything in RAM till the ramdisk is full then start using the allocated disk space. It works very nicely, too.
I red the article and some of the posts here and it all seems that everyone misses the real point. It's basically the same situation as the GNOME/KDE thing. When you break it down to actually using the things there is no real major earth-shattering difference between rpm and apt (or Solaris' pkgadd, for that matter). They all work basically the same and they work just fine. Are they the pinicle of package management? No. Is one better than the other? Only from a standpoint of personal preference. It's like "Toh-MAY-toh"/"Toh-MAH-toh". Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
As mentioned, the *BSD ports method is more flexable and better implimented than the Linux options but it's still not perfect. I think that the idea of looking at finding the next level of package management is what we need to do. It's what the article was basically about anyway.
One must always make sure what definition of "easy" is being used in cases like this. The Linux GUI world is a classic example.
Right now GNOME and KDE are the top of the heap. If you look at them from a user interface point-of-view you'll see that they are extremely similar to the point of almost being identical. They look, act, feel and play like the Win95 GUI. The reasoning behind this is that it supposedly makes them "easier" for people to use.
From the standpoint of being useful, though, they suffer from the same problem that the Win95 GUI does. It's only easy for people who have only used it. There are many other options that are actually "easier" to use and work with than GNOME or KDE. XFce/xfwm <http://www.xfce.com> is one of, and likely the best of, the non-Win95 designed GUI's. It is, in fact, the topic of one of the sessions at ALS this year.
Now, before someone gets all bent over this, I am not trashing GNOME or KDE! I am talking about the UI design, only. The point of being "easy" is the topic and how you define "easy" is the key.
While I find that 95% of what RMS says on any subject is primarily hot air (I think it's a toss-up with ESR as to who loves the sound of their voice, or the typing of their words, the most), it's that other 5% that is golden. There are people who love RMS, hate him, and, god help us, have no clue who he is. None of that matters. He's a religious zealot of the highest order and I, for one, am damn glad of that fact. We need that 5% desperatly.
Pompous, arrogent, self-centered... None of that matters. He and his kind are the voices that keep us looking and thinking and checking ourselves to make sure we are at least close to the path.
Heh, when I was a BBS Sysop I strongly discouraged uploads. I much preferred that user download all the files I had. Back in those days I was one of the major sites to get Linux if you weren't connected to the 'net. I still miss some of the community aspect of the BBS days. It was so much better than anything on the 'net,/. included.
Anyway, to make this semi-topical, I think that if everyone is only taking files via gnutella and not giving the system will eventually collapse under the weight. Something new will come along that will be better.
FWIW, I have only downloaded one file via gnapster, which is the closest I've come to any of the whole music business. I still would prefer it if music was only released on vinyl!
I'm a techie/geek/whatever and have been one all my life. At 37 I'm not an "old" geek but I'm definitely not a young one, either. I mention this because...
It's funny that this article sould come up. I was just thinking about sending a message to CT, et. al. asking why Anime is even being mentioned on/. since it has no connection with techies in the slightest. Now I find that it does. Guess I was out sick when the memo came through.
While I do like quite a bit of Anime I do not feel it has any connection with techdom as it relates to me. I still find more in F&SF (Gibson, Stephenson, Brust, Azimov, Card, etc.) that reaches my soul. I never would have connected Anime with techness until this post.
Anyway, that's just one insignificent mans point of view.
If you want to see UNIX not suck it all comes down to the UI. CDE is the answer. Actually, XFce is a better answer. The problem with KDE & GNOME etc. is that they try to look 'n' feel like Win9x/NT/2k (is that like being a model/actress/spokesperson?) which is what sucks.
You opened up a can of worms, CD. You should have kept the commentary out./. shouldn't be a forum for editorial prostylizing for those who run it. Don't take this as a flame, it's just ment as a comment.
FWIW, if you look at the candidates from an impartial POV you will find that the only real difference between the two is that Gore's hair is a little darker.
No, RedHat (the 'R' in RPM) 'invented' RPMs to close the gap until InstallShield Corporation or someone else came up with a solution that worked in the *nix kernels of various flavors. It was created to distribute distros and make _initial_ installs (of the OS and ancillary packages -the 'P' in RPM) easier and more friendly. Thereafter, it was assumed the user would use 'gzip,' 'bz2,' or 'tar.(gz),' to uncompress the package/product and 'make' to install it.
RPMs have become 'the prototype that wouldn't die' since they -seriously- mess up the target OS (unless it is _precisely_ the OS the RPM binary was compiled on) and strew ungodly amounts of crap throughout the file system.
<sigh> And InstallShield doesn't?
I will never understand the need some people have to find one little grain of sand on the ocean shore that they just can't live with.
RPM vs DEB vs TGZ
RH vs Slack vs Debian vs Mandrake vs etc.
GNOME vs KDE
GTK+ vs Qt
Hell, the whole Linux vs *BSD is just about as idiotic! (I'm not even going to go into Language Wars<tm>).
When you try to say that one whatever is better than all others of it's type you are, in essence, espousing the same position that Billy-Boy used to make the latest Great Monoply. If you have to have a winner you are missing the whole point of life.
All of these things are tools to use to get the job done. As Neil Pert once said:
What you own is your own kingdom
What you do is your own glory What you love is your own power What you live is your own story
To bring this rant... uh, "post", back on topic, Kylix is a Good Thing<tm>. As soon as they have the C++ version out I'm buying it. I have C++ Builder for Win (though I haven't ever used it) just in case I might have to build a Win app. You never know...
Remember, you have to look at this from the corporate world. Yes, you and I and 99% of the readers of/. can make super, kick-ass servers with just about any bit of HW lying around. However, if you were a small to min-sized business with no technical people (I've been doing business with some companies where the system/network administrator was just a guy who knew slightly more than where the on/off switch was) and the cost of the NetWinder is paltry for the capibilities it gives.
Remember, whenever making a statement about technology and the "real world" you should make sure to look at the real worlds point-of-view first.
Actually the "desktop" NetWinders are not intended to be workstations. None of their products are. They are intended to be small to midsized office servers (that's where the "OfficeServer" name comes from). That's also the reason it comes with Apache & Squid & ht/Dig and all the other junk it has preconfigured.
From that standpoint the NetWinders are very nicely priced.
And before that there was H.J. Lu's boot/root floppies...
And before that there was, well, one 5.25" floppy that more-or-less kinda booted to some kind of prompt.
Ah, the good old days. Does anyone remember when Erik Ratcliffe, now of Caldera fame, wrote the very first text on how to get Linux to boot from your HD back in mid-1992? I bet it was probably one of the first pre-HOWTO's ever.
No Open Source OS, and 99% of the propriatary OS' aren't and likely can't be clasified as "Trusted Systems". There is an actual, formal definition of a "Trusted System" and it has nothing to do with how much any one trusts it. It has to do with specific procedures and designs that follow a very exacting standard. This doesn't mean that Linux or OpenBSD aren't secure. Security is not the same as Trusted in this respect.
For an example of a "Trusted System" you might want to look at something like MLS+ (which is the only trusted system I've ever had hands-on experience with). Once you see what a real trusted system is like you'd be very glad that Linux, et. al. aren't in the same catagory. It's not easy working with an OS that won't let you do things like cd or ls and such.
It's not open source but ApplixWare is really the best of the Linux Office options I've tried. I'm waiting for KOffice and/or SIAG or something open source to come along but till then it's Applix.
FWIW, while I prefer to use open source solutions there is nothing wrong with using a commercial/closed/proprietary solution if it works. It's all a matter of getting the job done. This takes precedence over my zealotism in most cases.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, the disclaimer: I am a collage dropout
<GDaR>with 20 credit hours over 3 semesters to my name.
Combined agregate GPA 1.02. (And they're all
nearly 20 years old.)
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In that case they just have to bring back the Do-Do! That was one cool bird.
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"uber-stable Slackware"
"script-kiddie Red Hat"
What a load of crap. So far I haven't seem any Linux distro (well, except for Linux One) that wasn't worth something.
The idea that there will eventually be one Linux distro is one that business/marketing/money people see. If you only know one way to think then of course you will come to the conclusion that that is the way everything works. If we, the open source community, can stop fighting over nonsense like distro wars or BSD vs Linux and other total wasts of energy things would be a LOT better.
---
OC, this is all due to the physical disability I have and all the pills are perscribed medications. Without them I'm incapable of moving at all.
---
Linux on Sparc blows the doors off of Solaris on Sparc. It's just SO much faster. The funny thing is that Solaris on Intel is faster than Linux on Intel, too. It's a backwords world we live in.
Hopefully there will come a time when RH will re-commit to the Sparc platform.
---
The best thing anyone can do is to write an actual letter (as mentioned in the original post) and send it to your actual representitive. They only care about comments from their constituants. Make sure that you are polite, brief and "professional". If everyone were to do this it would be just as effective as any of the "Million {whatever} Marchs" that have happened.
Make it a "Million Letter March". It will have an effect.
---
Heh, that's like saying why would anyone want to downgrade from Win2k to Linux.
Oh well, There's nothing to be done with people who just don't know what they're talking about.
Moderate this post down to junk status.
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However it is true that if you install it on a running Linux system it will frag all of your other X/GUI options. I had to do a reinstall on the box I tested it on. It doesn't give you anything more than other Open Source options do, either. If you really need the CDE look-n-feel you should try XFce.
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Solaris uses RAM plus disk for /tmp. It'll put everything in RAM till the ramdisk is full then start using the allocated disk space. It works very nicely, too.
---
As mentioned, the *BSD ports method is more flexable and better implimented than the Linux options but it's still not perfect. I think that the idea of looking at finding the next level of package management is what we need to do. It's what the article was basically about anyway.
---
Right now GNOME and KDE are the top of the heap. If you look at them from a user interface point-of-view you'll see that they are extremely similar to the point of almost being identical. They look, act, feel and play like the Win95 GUI. The reasoning behind this is that it supposedly makes them "easier" for people to use.
From the standpoint of being useful, though, they suffer from the same problem that the Win95 GUI does. It's only easy for people who have only used it. There are many other options that are actually "easier" to use and work with than GNOME or KDE. XFce/xfwm <http://www.xfce.com> is one of, and likely the best of, the non-Win95 designed GUI's. It is, in fact, the topic of one of the sessions at ALS this year.
Now, before someone gets all bent over this, I am not trashing GNOME or KDE! I am talking about the UI design, only. The point of being "easy" is the topic and how you define "easy" is the key.
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Pompous, arrogent, self-centered... None of that matters. He and his kind are the voices that keep us looking and thinking and checking ourselves to make sure we are at least close to the path.
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I saw it last night on freshmeat.
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Anyway, to make this semi-topical, I think that if everyone is only taking files via gnutella and not giving the system will eventually collapse under the weight. Something new will come along that will be better.
FWIW, I have only downloaded one file via gnapster, which is the closest I've come to any of the whole music business. I still would prefer it if music was only released on vinyl!
---
It's funny that this article sould come up. I was just thinking about sending a message to CT, et. al. asking why Anime is even being mentioned on /. since it has no connection with techies in the slightest. Now I find that it does. Guess I was out sick when the memo came through.
While I do like quite a bit of Anime I do not feel it has any connection with techdom as it relates to me. I still find more in F&SF (Gibson, Stephenson, Brust, Azimov, Card, etc.) that reaches my soul. I never would have connected Anime with techness until this post.
Anyway, that's just one insignificent mans point of view.
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But what do I know... I took the blue pill.
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But hey, what do I know. I took the blue pill.
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FWIW, if you look at the candidates from an impartial POV you will find that the only real difference between the two is that Gore's hair is a little darker.
Ritchie Blackmore for President!!
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RPMs have become 'the prototype that wouldn't die' since they -seriously- mess up the target OS (unless it is _precisely_ the OS the RPM binary was compiled on) and strew ungodly amounts of crap throughout the file system.
<sigh>
And InstallShield doesn't?
I will never understand the need some people have to find one little grain of sand on the ocean shore that they just can't live with.
- RPM vs DEB vs TGZ
- RH vs Slack vs Debian vs Mandrake vs etc.
- GNOME vs KDE
- GTK+ vs Qt
Hell, the whole Linux vs *BSD is just about as idiotic! (I'm not even going to go into Language Wars<tm>).When you try to say that one whatever is better than all others of it's type you are, in essence, espousing the same position that Billy-Boy used to make the latest Great Monoply. If you have to have a winner you are missing the whole point of life.
All of these things are tools to use to get the job done. As Neil Pert once said:
To bring this rant... uh, "post", back on topic, Kylix is a Good Thing<tm>. As soon as they have the C++ version out I'm buying it. I have C++ Builder for Win (though I haven't ever used it) just in case I might have to build a Win app. You never know...---
Remember, whenever making a statement about technology and the "real world" you should make sure to look at the real worlds point-of-view first.
---
From that standpoint the NetWinders are very nicely priced.
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And before that there was SLS...
And before that there was TAMU...
And before that there was MCC...
And before that there was H.J. Lu's boot/root floppies...
And before that there was, well, one 5.25" floppy that more-or-less kinda booted to some kind of prompt.
Ah, the good old days. Does anyone remember when Erik Ratcliffe, now of Caldera fame, wrote the very first text on how to get Linux to boot from your HD back in mid-1992? I bet it was probably one of the first pre-HOWTO's ever.
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For an example of a "Trusted System" you might want to look at something like MLS+ (which is the only trusted system I've ever had hands-on experience with). Once you see what a real trusted system is like you'd be very glad that Linux, et. al. aren't in the same catagory. It's not easy working with an OS that won't let you do things like cd or ls and such.
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FWIW, while I prefer to use open source solutions there is nothing wrong with using a commercial/closed/proprietary solution if it works. It's all a matter of getting the job done. This takes precedence over my zealotism in most cases.
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Got a K7-600 MHz that's been running fine AFAIK. But, OC, what the hell do I know...
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