"Unicenter TNG. Login scripts. Repackaging messy installs with WISE Installer. Smart NT admins know how to do this stuff. You Don't."
Wow you have shot down every argument MS ever made against linux"
Unicenter TNG is not included in the cost of windows so windows is not cheaper then other server operating systems (as a bonus you get to deal with CA what fun!).
Wise is also not included with NT add that to the cost too (might as well add pc-anywhere too).
Windows does not offer a lower TCO because every package must be carefully scrutinized and an install script must be made using wise. This process requires a clued in sysadmin. These sysadmins don't cost less then unix sysadmins.
Your sysadmins must also be able to program in VBscript, jscript, perl or something in order to write complex login scripts once again precluding a cheap easy to find sysadmin.
Unfotunately the only assurance you have that SPs won't add features is the word of Microsoft. I for one would not believe one word of anything coming out of the redmond PR machine or it's executives. They say that now but just wait till a competitors product becomes popular then whammo a SP will add a feature which will break that product. Ms has to prove that their word means something and up to now they are batting zero.
"bonus of reinforcing the perception that NT Admin==Clueless Monkey which we all love to laugh about"
Unfortunately the single most responsible party for advancing this perception is microsoft themselves. Every time somebody at microsoft talks about Linux they mention how you don't need engineers or highly trained sysadmins which cost money to use windows. You reap what you sow I guess.
I ran into exact same problem as you so I switched to debian. Debian did not install sendmail by default but instead installed exim. I really wanted postfix so I did an apt-get install postfix. It took a coule of minutes (dsl) and I was done. I fired up webmin and configured postfix and haven't touched it since. Debian is truly awsome.
" I think you're under the impression that the only way to make something useable is to make it stupid-friendly. That's not actually how it's done."
No what I am saying is that ease of use and ease of learning are different things. Ease of use means getting your task done accurately and quickly as possible. Ease of learning means that you can sit anybody down in front of the system and teach them in a short time. Let's take windows example.
Let's say you had some faxing program that never deleted it's files and spewed the fax files all over your drive and you periodically needed to clean these files up.
An ease of use situation is to type "del *.fax/s" it only takes a second to type and you are done now you go on to your next task.
An ease of learning situation involves clicking on start, dragging you mouse over to find and then over to files and folders, clicking, waiting for the dialog box to come up, clicking in the text box, typing *.fax, clicking on the start button, waiting for the search to complete, clicking on edit, clicking on select all, clicking on file, clicking on delete, clicking on the ok button when the "are you sure" dialog box comes up.
This is just one simple example I could come up with a more comples one like finding all files which have not been touched in last 6 months and moving them into an archive directory.
I hope you see what I mean here. Maybe it's possible to make a tool that is easy to learn and easy to use and powerful but I have not seen one yet. The ones that came closest were lotus magellan and info select before version 4.
Isn't that what I said?
Lusers don't care about productivity and programmers do. Programmers writing an operating system for themselves will place emphasis on productivity (ease of use) not ease of learning.
My debian installed without a hitch and with gnome (which I gather is more difficult to set up). I have no complaints about my debian system it's been rock solid since I installed it in june. Not one glitch not even a quiver. I could not be happier with it.
Let me get this straight. No application can replace any DLL in windows 2000? is that what you are saying? Or are you saying that there are a handful of DLLs that can't be replaced but the rest are OK?
Actually you would be wrong on both accounts because Microsoft applications can replace any DLL in the system. Usually the biggest culprit in breaking existing apps is Microsoft itself. Every iteration of office, IE, or service pack will inevitably break somebodies application sometimes other MS applications. Just recently somebody I know installed VB6 SP4 on his machine and his code stopped working. He had the spend a freaking week at the MS web site and on the telephone with tech support till they found the hotfix which was buried someplace in the KB.
Apparently VB6 SP4 had some problem with IE5 and his code hung up every time it attempted to make a HTTPS connection. See q174836 and q238934.
I will reiterate. Sooner or later you will install something on your machine will will break something. If you are lucky it will break instantly and predictably if you are unlucky you machine will start flaking out and you will tear your hair out trying to figure out exactly what the problem is. MS will be of no help unless you pay even then they will spend two weeks blaming god an satan first. Only after you have escalated your ticket up three or more levels will you speak to a person who is actually listening to you and then you may be able solve your problem. Hopefully the solutions will not involve a complete reinstall or a $300.00 upgrade.
Unfortunately neither you, I, or linus has enough money or power to try and coerce anybody to do anything. Like it or not Linux is a community project. Even we had the power I doubt any of us would sink to the unethical practices of MS to accomplish their goals. Corporations have no morals but humans frequently do that's just the way it is. The best you can do is to use supported hardware and fire off a letter to the manufacturer. You can't threaten them like Bill Gates does.
You make an excellant point. Journalists are not hackers but they are writers. Their skills are sorely needed by the open source community. But I guess like most groups of people most of them are shits and would rather bitch then get off their ass and do something.
Linux should not be reviewed because it's not a product.
If you want to review a product you should review a distribution. It's perfectly OK to review RedHat, caldera, mandrake etc and point out their flaws or praise their strengths.
It's "more stable" and "stable compared to windows 98" It's not "stable" compared to linux, freebsd, solaris, as/400, os390, or VMS. You are still buying a pinto.
Most distros are either apt or RPM based. Apt works great for RPM there is rpmfind. Rpmfind will magically locate the latest version of whatever you are looking for, download it, and install it.
So you are wrong there are centralized locations for downloading programs even aside from the ones provided by the distros themlselves.
Apparently not everyone can get their facts straight either. This author is talking about downloading patches via gopher for chrissake. I would say she can't even be a journalist.
It's a useless, cluless rant and nothing more. It does not deserve to be called journalism or even criticism.
" Another thing, and the last thing I'll talk about, is the fact that good human factors design (I'm talking about useability here, not happy dancing stuff, or eye candy) makes applications more useable for all humans, including hard-core coders. It shortens learning curves by allowing us to see and fiddle with just as many features as we want to at any time. We aren't all experts in every area of computing, or at least nobody that I know is, even those people whom I would consider computing gods. A little useability goes a long way there. Don't tell me you don't need that stuff unless you toggle in boot code on the front panel every time you boot!"
You seem to be confusing ease of use with ease of learning. Programmers care about productivity and are willing to put up with steep learning curves. Lusers care nothing about productivity and just want to learn the thing enough to do a couple things.
As an example consider VI or Emacs or ZOPE. All of these products are notoriously hard to learn but once you know them you fly!. You become so productive you feel like superman. Would any serious programmer be using word to write a program? I don't think so.
Sometimes ease of learning and ease of use conflict with other. Productivity often means not using the mouse and memorizing complex keyboard commands. Your average luser would never put up with that.
I don't know what ENOUGH kernel hackers means. Linux started with one and now they have a bunch. Why should the kernel hackers care about the desktop users turning their backs on them? Maybe the GNOME or the KDE hackers might care but even then they are doing it for themselves.
I honestly don't think much of the hacker crowd gives a hoot about stock prices, marketroids or IT penetration. That stuff is for REdHat or MS.
There are a lot of complex dependencies in windows. Sure a fresh copy of w2k probably installed in an "approved" box that does not mean anything. How will your system run a year from now when some program or another overwrote some DLL that something else needs? By then some programs will needs service pack something and the service pack will break other programs.
For the time being windows enjoys great support from hardware manufacturers (although my video card manufacturer did not provide w2k drivers for six months after I had installed w2k) but sooner or later linux will catch up. It's not the fault of linux if hardware manufacturers are not providing drivers. I also suspect that some of them would be on the receiving end of some serious ass kicking from MS if they dared to write linux drivers but that's another thread.
BTW: Try KDE again it improves at a breakneck pace. Gnome sucked a year ago it rocks now. Amazing what both KDE and GNOME have achieved in one year. Imagine what it's going be like next year this time.
Linux *is* a gift.
Linux is also many experiments. For example it's an experiment to see if people from differing races, colors, creeds, languages, and religions can get together and do one thing without killing each other. It's also a bunch of other experiments but I won't go into them here.
What linux is NOT is a product. Some people have tried to make it a product and some have even been somewhat succesfull but if all these companies died tommorow the experiment and the gift would continue.
The mistake the author made was to review linux as a product. Linux may be a failure as a product (not something I believe) but it's a success as a gift and an experiment. Remember Linus never intended to make a product and neither did RMS. The product-ness of linux is an happy accident.
I have two different critisims.
One is that the review is godawful wrong (when was the last time you downloaded a patch via gopher?), the author is confused about what linux is and lumps a bunch of things into her article that have nothing to do with linux. For example she does not seem to understand that Open Office is not Linux. Linux is actually a kernel with some stuff on top as a kernel it's also very very good.
Two I am critising the author for even attempting to make a review.
Products are reviwed, gifts OTOH are politely accepted and cherished, politely accepted and given to other people, or politely accepted and stored in the attic. It's rude to publicly critize the giver of the gift or the gift itself.
When I was growing up I was told that when somebody gives you a gift you say "thank you very much". I guess in her family when somebody got a gift they promptly and publicly began critising this gift and telling the person what a piece of shit it was compared to the item she bought yesterday.
Slashdot Mirror
"Unicenter TNG. Login scripts. Repackaging messy installs with WISE Installer. Smart NT admins know how to do this stuff. You Don't."
Wow you have shot down every argument MS ever made against linux"
Unicenter TNG is not included in the cost of windows so windows is not cheaper then other server operating systems (as a bonus you get to deal with CA what fun!).
Wise is also not included with NT add that to the cost too (might as well add pc-anywhere too).
Windows does not offer a lower TCO because every package must be carefully scrutinized and an install script must be made using wise. This process requires a clued in sysadmin. These sysadmins don't cost less then unix sysadmins.
Your sysadmins must also be able to program in VBscript, jscript, perl or something in order to write complex login scripts once again precluding a cheap easy to find sysadmin.
Unfotunately the only assurance you have that SPs won't add features is the word of Microsoft. I for one would not believe one word of anything coming out of the redmond PR machine or it's executives. They say that now but just wait till a competitors product becomes popular then whammo a SP will add a feature which will break that product. Ms has to prove that their word means something and up to now they are batting zero.
"bonus of reinforcing the perception that NT Admin==Clueless Monkey which we all love to laugh about"
Unfortunately the single most responsible party for advancing this perception is microsoft themselves. Every time somebody at microsoft talks about Linux they mention how you don't need engineers or highly trained sysadmins which cost money to use windows. You reap what you sow I guess.
Apt does MD5 checksums before downloading anything.
I ran into exact same problem as you so I switched to debian. Debian did not install sendmail by default but instead installed exim. I really wanted postfix so I did an apt-get install postfix. It took a coule of minutes (dsl) and I was done. I fired up webmin and configured postfix and haven't touched it since. Debian is truly awsome.
" I think you're under the impression that the only way to make something useable is to make it stupid-friendly. That's not actually how it's done."
/s" it only takes a second to type and you are done now you go on to your next task.
No what I am saying is that ease of use and ease of learning are different things. Ease of use means getting your task done accurately and quickly as possible. Ease of learning means that you can sit anybody down in front of the system and teach them in a short time. Let's take windows example.
Let's say you had some faxing program that never deleted it's files and spewed the fax files all over your drive and you periodically needed to clean these files up.
An ease of use situation is to type "del *.fax
An ease of learning situation involves clicking on start, dragging you mouse over to find and then over to files and folders, clicking, waiting for the dialog box to come up, clicking in the text box, typing *.fax, clicking on the start button, waiting for the search to complete, clicking on edit, clicking on select all, clicking on file, clicking on delete, clicking on the ok button when the "are you sure" dialog box comes up.
This is just one simple example I could come up with a more comples one like finding all files which have not been touched in last 6 months and moving them into an archive directory.
I hope you see what I mean here. Maybe it's possible to make a tool that is easy to learn and easy to use and powerful but I have not seen one yet. The ones that came closest were lotus magellan and info select before version 4.
Isn't that what I said?
Lusers don't care about productivity and programmers do. Programmers writing an operating system for themselves will place emphasis on productivity (ease of use) not ease of learning.
My debian installed without a hitch and with gnome (which I gather is more difficult to set up). I have no complaints about my debian system it's been rock solid since I installed it in june. Not one glitch not even a quiver. I could not be happier with it.
Let me get this straight. No application can replace any DLL in windows 2000? is that what you are saying? Or are you saying that there are a handful of DLLs that can't be replaced but the rest are OK?
Actually you would be wrong on both accounts because Microsoft applications can replace any DLL in the system. Usually the biggest culprit in breaking existing apps is Microsoft itself. Every iteration of office, IE, or service pack will inevitably break somebodies application sometimes other MS applications. Just recently somebody I know installed VB6 SP4 on his machine and his code stopped working. He had the spend a freaking week at the MS web site and on the telephone with tech support till they found the hotfix which was buried someplace in the KB.
Apparently VB6 SP4 had some problem with IE5 and his code hung up every time it attempted to make a HTTPS connection. See q174836 and q238934.
I will reiterate. Sooner or later you will install something on your machine will will break something. If you are lucky it will break instantly and predictably if you are unlucky you machine will start flaking out and you will tear your hair out trying to figure out exactly what the problem is. MS will be of no help unless you pay even then they will spend two weeks blaming god an satan first. Only after you have escalated your ticket up three or more levels will you speak to a person who is actually listening to you and then you may be able solve your problem. Hopefully the solutions will not involve a complete reinstall or a $300.00 upgrade.
Unfortunately neither you, I, or linus has enough money or power to try and coerce anybody to do anything. Like it or not Linux is a community project. Even we had the power I doubt any of us would sink to the unethical practices of MS to accomplish their goals. Corporations have no morals but humans frequently do that's just the way it is. The best you can do is to use supported hardware and fire off a letter to the manufacturer. You can't threaten them like Bill Gates does.
You make an excellant point. Journalists are not hackers but they are writers. Their skills are sorely needed by the open source community. But I guess like most groups of people most of them are shits and would rather bitch then get off their ass and do something.
Linux should not be reviewed because it's not a product.
If you want to review a product you should review a distribution. It's perfectly OK to review RedHat, caldera, mandrake etc and point out their flaws or praise their strengths.
It's "more stable" and "stable compared to windows 98" It's not "stable" compared to linux, freebsd, solaris, as/400, os390, or VMS. You are still buying a pinto.
Most distros are either apt or RPM based. Apt works great for RPM there is rpmfind. Rpmfind will magically locate the latest version of whatever you are looking for, download it, and install it.
So you are wrong there are centralized locations for downloading programs even aside from the ones provided by the distros themlselves.
Apparently not everyone can get their facts straight either. This author is talking about downloading patches via gopher for chrissake. I would say she can't even be a journalist.
It's a useless, cluless rant and nothing more. It does not deserve to be called journalism or even criticism.
" Another thing, and the last thing I'll talk about, is the fact that good human factors design (I'm talking about useability here, not happy dancing stuff, or eye candy) makes applications more useable for all humans, including hard-core coders. It shortens learning curves by allowing us to see and fiddle with just as many features as we want to at any time. We aren't all experts in every area of computing, or at least nobody that I know is, even those people whom I would consider computing gods. A little useability goes a long way there. Don't tell me you don't need that stuff unless you toggle in boot code on the front panel every time you boot!"
You seem to be confusing ease of use with ease of learning. Programmers care about productivity and are willing to put up with steep learning curves. Lusers care nothing about productivity and just want to learn the thing enough to do a couple things.
As an example consider VI or Emacs or ZOPE. All of these products are notoriously hard to learn but once you know them you fly!. You become so productive you feel like superman. Would any serious programmer be using word to write a program? I don't think so.
Sometimes ease of learning and ease of use conflict with other. Productivity often means not using the mouse and memorizing complex keyboard commands. Your average luser would never put up with that.
I don't know what ENOUGH kernel hackers means. Linux started with one and now they have a bunch. Why should the kernel hackers care about the desktop users turning their backs on them? Maybe the GNOME or the KDE hackers might care but even then they are doing it for themselves.
I honestly don't think much of the hacker crowd gives a hoot about stock prices, marketroids or IT penetration. That stuff is for REdHat or MS.
W2k is better then windows 98 like a 74 pinto is better then a 72 pinto.
What I wouldn't give to have all the time I wasted waiting for windows to reboot back.
Nice changing of the subject there.
There are a lot of complex dependencies in windows. Sure a fresh copy of w2k probably installed in an "approved" box that does not mean anything. How will your system run a year from now when some program or another overwrote some DLL that something else needs? By then some programs will needs service pack something and the service pack will break other programs.
For the time being windows enjoys great support from hardware manufacturers (although my video card manufacturer did not provide w2k drivers for six months after I had installed w2k) but sooner or later linux will catch up. It's not the fault of linux if hardware manufacturers are not providing drivers. I also suspect that some of them would be on the receiving end of some serious ass kicking from MS if they dared to write linux drivers but that's another thread.
BTW: Try KDE again it improves at a breakneck pace. Gnome sucked a year ago it rocks now. Amazing what both KDE and GNOME have achieved in one year. Imagine what it's going be like next year this time.
Now that's hiding the command line from the user!
Linux *is* a gift.
Linux is also many experiments. For example it's an experiment to see if people from differing races, colors, creeds, languages, and religions can get together and do one thing without killing each other. It's also a bunch of other experiments but I won't go into them here.
What linux is NOT is a product. Some people have tried to make it a product and some have even been somewhat succesfull but if all these companies died tommorow the experiment and the gift would continue.
The mistake the author made was to review linux as a product. Linux may be a failure as a product (not something I believe) but it's a success as a gift and an experiment. Remember Linus never intended to make a product and neither did RMS. The product-ness of linux is an happy accident.
I have two different critisims.
One is that the review is godawful wrong (when was the last time you downloaded a patch via gopher?), the author is confused about what linux is and lumps a bunch of things into her article that have nothing to do with linux. For example she does not seem to understand that Open Office is not Linux. Linux is actually a kernel with some stuff on top as a kernel it's also very very good.
Two I am critising the author for even attempting to make a review.
Products are reviwed, gifts OTOH are politely accepted and cherished, politely accepted and given to other people, or politely accepted and stored in the attic. It's rude to publicly critize the giver of the gift or the gift itself.
When I was growing up I was told that when somebody gives you a gift you say "thank you very much". I guess in her family when somebody got a gift they promptly and publicly began critising this gift and telling the person what a piece of shit it was compared to the item she bought yesterday.
Joe sixpack can't install windows either. Joe sixpack needs to get a mac anything else will lead to infinate frustration for joe sixpac.