I know... If it's their choice, let them pick their colors, spend a lot of money on it, and get their computers infected/hacked/hijacked while a nice 3D character says they need an upgrade to cope with all the malware they have running. Yeah, this doesn't happen to you, but we are talking about morons who choose the prettier colors (I disagree, XP themes sucks, they should ship a few more for free or open the themes interface... Of course, our morons happily buy XP Plus). If we are talking about a business scenario the choice is not theirs. Do your homework, pick what better fit your needs and your budget, and go for it. Of course, your needs include that users must be able to do their work, you won't give them a twm session with an xterm and xmh, and your pick could be Windows anyway (or not), but you will have better reasons that prettier colors. The case where both scenarios intersect is the PHB. He likes prettier colors, he likes some toy apps, and you can't argue he can resign that because you have a well-funded choice. Hopefully you can let him a XP box anyway, but even manage to make interoperate with the rest of the staff.
and they want it by an unrealistic deadline(which, with the exception of longhorn, they almost always meet
I guess you are talking about their own, secret agenda, not the one they release to the press and to the public... They had 20 years delaying releases (Windows 1, Windows 95, Windows 2000...)
Seriously, I wonder how much such a disc would cost. I mean, how much money a TV network would ask for a complete Simpsons (or Seinfeld, of Friends, or...) record. They still will do a lot of money yet with reruns, their only incentive to offer reasonable prices are the MPEG homemade copies lying around...
"...Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
Here (Argentina) most commies/lefties complaint against any chance of getting into FTAA (a larger version of NAFTA) claiming it is harmful to us, and exclusively beneficial to greedy, nasty Yankees.
Of course, I'm talking about people with no objectiveness when trying to impose their ideas.
Konqui, while mostly known by KDE users, has a been pretty decent browser since a while, specially since the Apple patches, as KHTML engine is also the base for Safari. Last major release is two months old. It's fast, light, and supports an acceptable CSS2 subset, as any other "modern" browser. Opera has its own herd of devotees, and AFAIK is still improving. Are you a mainstream troll, maybe?
Of course, if you *install* the *right* packages and *configure* them *properly* you should get similar results. But then, you will have different degrees of effort achieving that with different distributions, giving each possible combination of task, skills and personal tastes. Some distros have its emphasis in users with little knowledge, others are for Unix veterans, others for busy sysadmins with enterprise needs... Want a more Unix like, structurally simple distro for small servers or hobbist use? Get Slackware. Want a sophisticated package management system and large, granular package collection? Get Debian. Want a distro with Enterprise features out of the box? Get SUSE. Want a distro for average end users? Get Xandros. (Other popular distros/scenarios left out for the sake of simplicity).
The fact is not the quantity of sites in Internet, but the bias of their visitors towards a browser, respect the total population of web surfers.
If you find a site like that, statistics laws guarantee that you can get results with a certain level of accuracy. Even more, it doesen't matter there are millions of surfers, you need lots of samples if you want a 99.9999...% accuracy, I have limited knowledge about stats (and no enough memory about that), but with relatively few samples you will get an accurate result if the site(s) visitors present little bias.
Good for you. I have a customer that moved on from 95 to XP, mostly because is becoming harder to run new software on it.
However, I have a lot of problems now, as is hard to get running old Win95/3.1/DOS software they still need. I am even scared of SP2, as I guess I could get even more incompatibility I already have.
The fact is, their OS business model is near to finished. They know it and they are concerned since several years.
People is increasingly satisfied with their computers, and there is no reasons to upgrade to Longhorn, and it is so far away there is no much interest besides in Windows loving geeks dying for a stolen beta. People who won't upgrade could switch to Linux, and giving more than 2 years of time with no answers to this is dangerous for them.
Picking some stuff and releasing it early is maybe a way to keep people interested. Of course, it makes Longhorn itself less interesting, but with people sticking with Windows 98 they are in a increasingly difficult position.
But, of course, the key of the business is not in the OS itself, but in the apps you run over it. After Longhorn is out, they will release Longhorn-only apps, don't care if your have an Avaloned/Indigoed WinXP, LH will have newer, larger and probably not fully compatible versions, and the current move will only be a way for MS taking some breath until this happens, in the same way Win32s was when Win95/Chicago was mostly vapor.
Re:Isn't that the ideal of OpenBSD
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My own (not so large, I'm happy with Linux and escape from Bill stuff as hard as possible) experience says that besides the "Administrator as default" issue, certain tasks are difficult to do if you are not Administrator or at least Power User. So, having admin rights all the time is still a must for most Windows non-gurus.
"There were two fears," Buecheler said. "One was that Microsoft could buy the companies. The reality of that was just silly. Microsoft knows how to do technology and software. They don't know how to tell a story.
Didn't they are telling us stories about their software since 15 years ago?
With all those limitations, really they think they can compete with Linux and pirate copies?
A nice portion of people with simple needs, but even willing go a little further than those restrictions allow, as running four things at a time (Browser+IM+email+Word processor?) could pick Linux, anyway.
Even worst is the fact this WILL NOT stop piracy. Believe me, I (3rd world inhabitant) just know about only one computer running XP Home, as it is ugly and running a pirated, cracked Pro version is same as easy as running a pirated Home version.
Of course, I don't care about MS at all, and neither run XP myself, but I wonder if they really expect results about this.
Being myself mostly anti-MS, they took 4 years to release Windows 2000. They got a lot of comments because of that, I remember Nick Petreley wondering about the pains they should have trying to do a product able to finish the negative image NT4 got.
On the other hand, Microsoft is selling stuff they doesn't have ready or doesn't have at all since 1978. They didn't have the Basic interpreter, they didn't have DOS, and they had delayed every Windows release you can mention.
> Driver installation. In Linux, mess around > compiling your kernel and/or modprobing > modules and editing/etc/conf.modules. > In Syllable, just copy the driver into a > directory.
If you already have the binary module for your distro, you can copy it in the/lib/modules tree. About modules.conf (You are using RH6.2 or something similar if you have conf.modules!), autodetection is working better each time. And I doubt Syllabe can magically solve any driver installation problem. I still have an ancient ISA NIC, no OS autodetect it, but at least I can set it manually in Linux and Windows 98 (No, XP doesn't support it).
> User-interface: single toolkit and desktop, > sane design. Consistency is the result.
That doesn't stand up in the long term. If it ever become more used, Qt/GTK+,etc will pop up. Even now it has apps ported from Linux, I doubt those are well integrated in the GUI.
> Plus, there are other things. The initscripts > are cleaner and shorter (one of the factors > involved in the sub-10-second boots), the GUI > subsystem is like X and a toolkit all-in-one, > and others.
Most Linuxes are bloated, I agree, that hurts performance.
I have not very exotic places to do it, but sometimes I read./ in my the terminals in my faculties corridor. Our web/mailserver has 14 of these old beasts, with login fixed to Pine access, but as I administered the thing I had shell access to it. The server is itself and old no-brand PII 350, it will be soon replaced by a new HP server, it is annoying because the HP has no ISA slots for the multiport card, so it will be attached somewhere else.
A shitty page with 107 errors and not rendering correctly enough to be read in three diferent browsers (admittedly, not the one ASP programmers prefers was in there) is not a good example for somebody trying to sell things to a web developer.
I just installed XP on a brand new computer for a customer. Video worked with a generic driver, and sound doesn't works at all, I need to install the drivers that comes with the hardware.
On the other hand, Slackware also comes with a generic (VESA) X configuration, and (using hotplug) sound drivers are automatically loaded if it comes with the standard Linux kernel.
Linux is not perfect, but I'm getting tired of people claiming that Windows is.
1) When you had no choice but editing the config files, you'll learn. Is not bad to have the choice, though. 2) When you edit configuration structure made to be understood by humans, and not by a GUI config tool, you won't refuse so easily to do it. The smaller amount of bell and wistles helps too.
Well, I'd like Slack to be a bit more hackeable few days ago. Let me explain: I installed Samba 3 to become a domain member server, on Slack 9.1 (while 10 already available, I had a nice Samba 9.1 server image I installed two weeks before, and I wanted to work as little as possible). It worked nice, but wasn't able to authenticate transparently with the PDC because it has no PAM. Pat didn't like PAM's security issues. I respect that. But because of this I wasn't able to get the thing working. I installed PAM from source, but it still didn't work, and the fact Samba was the only thing PAM-aware didn't help, because I can't check it on a different service. Affortunately, finally we found the customer needs were trivial and domain auth wasn't necessary at all. Besides that complaint (and a few forgettable things I'd like to see in Slackware), it still is my distro of choice since 1995.
I went to work one morning, and found there was no Internet access. I was responsible for connectivity and services in the mornings, So I went to the servers room, followed by my two curious fellows who did developing in the same office.
I found the firewall/proxy Linux box off. The minitower chassis was with the cover off, and placed horizontal, and it has its new, shiny 20GB disk simply put over the MB and peripheral cards. The guy that upgraded the disk was too lazy to set it properly.
I didn't stopped and think that it was off because something was wrong, maybe because the HD board touch something, and the ATM power source saved the day.
I pressed the power button. Boom! It was a spectacular bright spark and a pink cloud of smoke. Goodbye new harddisk.
The only good part was we had the older 4GB disk, so we could get the box up again quickly.
I friend of mine, and coworker by then, had a similar situation. He deleted a customer's FoxPro based system directory, all DBFs included, when I tried to delete a floppy. And, of course, no good, up to date backups available.
We inspected the HD with Norton Diskedit, but we couldn't recover any data, I didn't recall why.
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I know... If it's their choice, let them pick their colors, spend a lot of money on it, and get their computers infected/hacked/hijacked while a nice 3D character says they need an upgrade to cope with all the malware they have running. Yeah, this doesn't happen to you, but we are talking about morons who choose the prettier colors (I disagree, XP themes sucks, they should ship a few more for free or open the themes interface... Of course, our morons happily buy XP Plus).
If we are talking about a business scenario the choice is not theirs. Do your homework, pick what better fit your needs and your budget, and go for it.
Of course, your needs include that users must be able to do their work, you won't give them a twm session with an xterm and xmh, and your pick could be Windows anyway (or not), but you will have better reasons that prettier colors.
The case where both scenarios intersect is the PHB. He likes prettier colors, he likes some toy apps, and you can't argue he can resign that because you have a well-funded choice. Hopefully you can let him a XP box anyway, but even manage to make interoperate with the rest of the staff.
and they want it by an unrealistic deadline(which, with the exception of longhorn, they almost always meet I guess you are talking about their own, secret agenda, not the one they release to the press and to the public... They had 20 years delaying releases (Windows 1, Windows 95, Windows 2000...)
You got the first post and complain? Shame on you!!! :-P
Seriously, I wonder how much such a disc would cost. I mean, how much money a TV network would ask for a complete Simpsons (or Seinfeld, of Friends, or...) record. They still will do a lot of money yet with reruns, their only incentive to offer reasonable prices are the MPEG homemade copies lying around...
"...Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
Here (Argentina) most commies/lefties complaint against any chance of getting into FTAA (a larger version of NAFTA) claiming it is harmful to us, and exclusively beneficial to greedy, nasty Yankees.
Of course, I'm talking about people with no objectiveness when trying to impose their ideas.
Konqui, while mostly known by KDE users, has a been pretty decent browser since a while, specially since the Apple patches, as KHTML engine is also the base for Safari. Last major release is two months old. It's fast, light, and supports an acceptable CSS2 subset, as any other "modern" browser.
Opera has its own herd of devotees, and AFAIK is still improving.
Are you a mainstream troll, maybe?
Of course, if you *install* the *right* packages and *configure* them *properly* you should get similar results.
But then, you will have different degrees of effort achieving that with different distributions, giving each possible combination of task, skills and personal tastes.
Some distros have its emphasis in users with little knowledge, others are for Unix veterans, others for busy sysadmins with enterprise needs...
Want a more Unix like, structurally simple distro for small servers or hobbist use? Get Slackware. Want a sophisticated package management system and large, granular package collection? Get Debian. Want a distro with Enterprise features out of the box? Get SUSE. Want a distro for average end users? Get Xandros.
(Other popular distros/scenarios left out for the sake of simplicity).
The fact is not the quantity of sites in Internet, but the bias of their visitors towards a browser, respect the total population of web surfers.
If you find a site like that, statistics laws guarantee that you can get results with a certain level of accuracy. Even more, it doesen't matter there are millions of surfers, you need lots of samples if you want a 99.9999...% accuracy, I have limited knowledge about stats (and no enough memory about that), but with relatively few samples you will get an accurate result if the site(s) visitors present little bias.
Good for you. I have a customer that moved on from 95 to XP, mostly because is becoming harder to run new software on it.
However, I have a lot of problems now, as is hard to get running old Win95/3.1/DOS software they still need. I am even scared of SP2, as I guess I could get even more incompatibility I already have.
The fact is, their OS business model is near to finished. They know it and they are concerned since several years.
People is increasingly satisfied with their computers, and there is no reasons to upgrade to Longhorn, and it is so far away there is no much interest besides in Windows loving geeks dying for a stolen beta. People who won't upgrade could switch to Linux, and giving more than 2 years of time with no answers to this is dangerous for them.
Picking some stuff and releasing it early is maybe a way to keep people interested. Of course, it makes Longhorn itself less interesting, but with people sticking with Windows 98 they are in a increasingly difficult position.
But, of course, the key of the business is not in the OS itself, but in the apps you run over it. After Longhorn is out, they will release Longhorn-only apps, don't care if your have an Avaloned/Indigoed WinXP, LH will have newer, larger and probably not fully compatible versions, and the current move will only be a way for MS taking some breath until this happens, in the same way Win32s was when Win95/Chicago was mostly vapor.
My own (not so large, I'm happy with Linux and escape from Bill stuff as hard as possible) experience says that besides the "Administrator as default" issue, certain tasks are difficult to do if you are not Administrator or at least Power User.
So, having admin rights all the time is still a must for most Windows non-gurus.
"There were two fears," Buecheler said. "One was that Microsoft could buy the companies. The reality of that was just silly. Microsoft knows how to do technology and software. They don't know how to tell a story.
Didn't they are telling us stories about their software since 15 years ago?
With all those limitations, really they think they can compete with Linux and pirate copies?
A nice portion of people with simple needs, but even willing go a little further than those restrictions allow, as running four things at a time (Browser+IM+email+Word processor?) could pick Linux, anyway.
Even worst is the fact this WILL NOT stop piracy. Believe me, I (3rd world inhabitant) just know about only one computer running XP Home, as it is ugly and running a pirated, cracked Pro version is same as easy as running a pirated Home version.
Of course, I don't care about MS at all, and neither run XP myself, but I wonder if they really expect results about this.
Being myself mostly anti-MS, they took 4 years to release Windows 2000. They got a lot of comments because of that, I remember Nick Petreley wondering about the pains they should have trying to do a product able to finish the negative image NT4 got.
On the other hand, Microsoft is selling stuff they doesn't have ready or doesn't have at all since 1978. They didn't have the Basic interpreter, they didn't have DOS, and they had delayed every Windows release you can mention.
> Driver installation. In Linux, mess around /etc/conf.modules.
/lib/modules tree.
> compiling your kernel and/or modprobing
> modules and editing
> In Syllable, just copy the driver into a
> directory.
If you already have the binary module for your distro, you can copy it in the
About modules.conf (You are using RH6.2 or something similar if you have conf.modules!), autodetection is working better each time.
And I doubt Syllabe can magically solve any driver installation problem. I still have an ancient ISA NIC, no OS autodetect it, but at least I can set it manually in Linux and Windows 98 (No, XP doesn't support it).
> User-interface: single toolkit and desktop,
> sane design. Consistency is the result.
That doesn't stand up in the long term. If it ever become more used, Qt/GTK+,etc will pop up.
Even now it has apps ported from Linux, I doubt those are well integrated in the GUI.
> Plus, there are other things. The initscripts
> are cleaner and shorter (one of the factors
> involved in the sub-10-second boots), the GUI
> subsystem is like X and a toolkit all-in-one,
> and others.
Most Linuxes are bloated, I agree, that hurts performance.
My Windows experience says:
* \Setup.exe
* \Install.exe
* \xxx\Setup.exe
* \Oemsetup.exe
And even you find more than one of these in the same bundle.
Please don't picture the scenario better than it really is.
I have not very exotic places to do it, but sometimes I read ./ in my the terminals in my faculties corridor. Our web/mailserver has 14 of these old beasts, with login fixed to Pine access, but as I administered the thing I had shell access to it.
The server is itself and old no-brand PII 350, it will be soon replaced by a new HP server, it is annoying because the HP has no ISA slots for the multiport card, so it will be attached somewhere else.
A shitty page with 107 errors and not rendering correctly enough to be read in three diferent browsers (admittedly, not the one ASP programmers prefers was in there) is not a good example for somebody trying to sell things to a web developer.
I just installed XP on a brand new computer for a customer.
Video worked with a generic driver, and sound doesn't works at all, I need to install the drivers that comes with the hardware.
On the other hand, Slackware also comes with a generic (VESA) X configuration, and (using hotplug) sound drivers are automatically loaded if it comes with the standard Linux kernel.
Linux is not perfect, but I'm getting tired of people claiming that Windows is.
1) When you had no choice but editing the config files, you'll learn. Is not bad to have the choice, though.
2) When you edit configuration structure made to be understood by humans, and not by a GUI config tool, you won't refuse so easily to do it. The smaller amount of bell and wistles helps too.
Well, I'd like Slack to be a bit more hackeable few days ago.
Let me explain: I installed Samba 3 to become a domain member server, on Slack 9.1 (while 10 already available, I had a nice Samba 9.1 server image I installed two weeks before, and I wanted to work as little as possible). It worked nice, but wasn't able to authenticate transparently with the PDC because it has no PAM.
Pat didn't like PAM's security issues. I respect that. But because of this I wasn't able to get the thing working. I installed PAM from source, but it still didn't work, and the fact Samba was the only thing PAM-aware didn't help, because I can't check it on a different service.
Affortunately, finally we found the customer needs were trivial and domain auth wasn't necessary at all.
Besides that complaint (and a few forgettable things I'd like to see in Slackware), it still is my distro of choice since 1995.
Some time ago, when installing a Slackware for a customer, my sister using our main computer, and our second one had its HD broken.
/mnt, then configured eth0 and launched lynx to surf a little bit while the installation keeps copying things.
So, I changed vt, chrooted into
I dare Windows to allow me to do that!
Gabber and Ghemical aren't (if the previous post is right, I barely use anything from Gnome beyond Gnumeric)
I went to work one morning, and found there was no Internet access. I was responsible for connectivity and services in the mornings, So I went to the servers room, followed by my two curious fellows who did developing in the same office.
I found the firewall/proxy Linux box off.
The minitower chassis was with the cover off, and placed horizontal, and it has its new, shiny 20GB disk simply put over the MB and peripheral cards. The guy that upgraded the disk was too lazy to set it properly.
I didn't stopped and think that it was off because something was wrong, maybe because the HD board touch something, and the ATM power source saved the day.
I pressed the power button. Boom! It was a spectacular bright spark and a pink cloud of smoke. Goodbye new harddisk.
The only good part was we had the older 4GB disk, so we could get the box up again quickly.
I friend of mine, and coworker by then, had a similar situation.
He deleted a customer's FoxPro based system directory, all DBFs included, when I tried to delete a floppy. And, of course, no good, up to date backups available.
We inspected the HD with Norton Diskedit, but we couldn't recover any data, I didn't recall why.