There must be quite some of 'us' (Slashdot readers) who preferred and used OS/2 instead of Windows 3.x/95 one time. I especially liked it (I'm talking OS/2 >= 2.0 now) for Windows apps, way more stable than the 'native' platform. OS/2 applications tended to get more freedom or something, anyway, they crashed quite often. Unfortunately IBM didn't do a great job at marketing it, as we all know, fortunately, there came Linux.
Of course, would it have been Free Software, than it probably _would_ have made a difference. I don't see the special 'before linux' thing, unix was there ages before both.
I agree, 32 MB doesn't cut it. I kind of wonder why the first MP3 players were given so little memory, it isn't as though memory was so very expensive at the time. Maybe back then fear for the great lables was more of an issue?
Anyway, I hope these goodies will be cheap, 64 to 128 MB is nice for an MP3 player.
The announced GPL'ing of SGI's XFS shows 'the big guys' can actually release real content to the public (and thus their old Unix-opponents). If SGI can show it's not afraid to contribute then there's hope for all.
The BBC is really great at things like that, they have some cool people. Top Gear (offtopic) is another of my favorites. Fortunately the BBC can be received in most of Holland...
This (another worthless certification) and the recent Mindcraft Linux vs NT thing, seems to show how vulnerable Microsoft feels. I don't know if that fear is necessary, after all these years I'd say people will still prefer marketing skills over product quality, but it obviously exists.
So, the dealer has to pay for the sticker on the car, because otherwise people wouldn't buy it, hence people have to pay more.
What's the problem here? If people want to pay more because they like to see the sticker, while they still have the choice to buy a car without the sticker, that's just fine. In every market people pay for names, for reputation.
It may or may not be plain stupid but it isn't unfair.
If Intel is giving discount for defined exposure, meanwhile willing to take the risk of outpricing their own products, then what is bad about that?
Manufacturers still have the choice of not going with Intel, or pay the 6 per cent. I really don't see the problem here. Thee _are_ viable alternatives (AMD, Cyrix).
MSnBC screaming about this smells of Microsoft trying hard to find others with their own 'business skills'.
Not that Intel is such an innocent baby, but in this case: no big deal.
It may not always be as detailed as what you describe of Digital UniX, but as a matter of fact, one thing I frequently use Linux for is the 'hardware info goldmine' that/proc is. Combined with boot time and kernel module info, you can often find out a lot of nasty things.
It does of course depend on the driver a bit. But when a win95, nt or novell box gives you hardware suspicions, a linux rescue disk can make your life much easier!
Choice can be bad, yes. The Microsoft monopoly shows that people desperately want One Standard, even if it's a proprietary and really bad standard.
But this phase, with KDE and GNOME competing, is a necessary one in reaching the One Open Standard, which is what is really needed.
I don't doubt that one will eventually remain. When KDE and GNOME will have more or less ripened, then I think development will probably focus on compatibility with each other, and after that they'll merge or something. And all those differently looking WM's will probably become skins on the One Emerging Open GUI Standard. Which will of course never stop evoluting.
There are no reasons whatsoever for changing to 4.0 pre-beta, better wait for the real 4.0, then maybe. It isn't really difficult to upgrade to kernel 2.2 if you want to, besides 3.6 has most 2.2 support tools in it.
I think that must have been the main reason for Patrick to bring out 3.6, other changes were not so important, like you mentioned.
I've made it a good habit to always install twice on any machine that has to do serious duties: one small 'emergency' root and another normal 'production' root. For lilo I make a small third partition with the kernels (old, current and new) and lilo.conf in it. symlink lilo.conf to both/etc dirs, the kernel dir to both root fs's.
Now when you've compiled a new kernel, first time you call it 'new.z' or something, only after a successful boot and some testing you cp it to current.
Whenever your production file system is seriously fsck'd up (power failure maybe), boot from the emergency partition, fsck it or otherwise fix your stuff and reboot into your newly fixed production fs.
Obviously you still need a rescue disk when the boot record is really ill so lilo won't boot, but at that time chances are your disk has crashed.
BTW I always use Slackware - for tinkering and out of habit. I dislike RedHat for the encapsulation of everything, have yet to give Debian a go. On 'production systems' one seldom needs to upgrade libs, and if really necessary one can mostly find a suitable binary tarball (doesn't need to be slack tgz - just do a 'tar -tzf' and see if it's what you want). Thank Linus Torvalds, big distributions and Patrick Volkerding for Choice - Just my $.02
8 MB is no joke, I used to have a 386 SX 16 with 5 MB and a 30 MB hard disk, with Slackware 3.x on it and a 2.0.x kernel, as a router between two ethernet segments. Sure, it would swap something out when you logged in, but that's what virtual memory is for.
Also, Netscape is a memory hog if there ever was one (but that obviously doesn't concern the above machine).
This is what I wrote (not the original poster)
on
Linux on CNN
·
· Score: 1
I guess he now has a whole pile of mail in his box, but this is what I just sent him:
-- Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 20:27:44 +0100 (CET) From: Bert Lindner To: Frank Hayes of ComputerWorld/CNN Subject: Source: the recipe
Hi Frank,
I strongly diagree on your 'no-big-deal' opinion of Linux and Open Source, I think it's one of the most interesting phenomena in the history of computing, comparable only with things like the Internet. But then I would probably qualify as a 'techie' so I'm in the wrong camp, I would 'obviously' think so. I don't think the hype (there _is_ hype) is necessary, but that doesn't make it less important.
A good way to explain computer source code I think is as
a recipe
for making a computer program. Just that. I didn't make that up myself, I recently saw that on a web site.
Regards,
-Bert Lindner, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
PS Linux _is_ free even for corporate IT shops, but they may _choose_ to pay somebody to provide support for them. Anyone may download and use Linux, for personal _and_ business use.
From the bouty-offerer's point of view it seems a smart thing to do: they hopefully get a lot of people to code on it for a quick implementation. But one of the advantages of open source software over proprietary software has been that there is no real pressure on the author, therefore he/she has all the opportunity to set stability/performance/elegance before fancy looks and speed-of-delivery. These bounties might endanger that.
You have a point about the 'kernel uptime', although when both kernel and tools come from the same manufacturer, MS in this case, and uptimes aren't good, questions arise about implementation of both tools _and_ kernel. But other people have said more knowledgeable things about design, which is said to be good, and implementation, which is said to be not so good, regarding the NT kernel.
In the paragraph where he discusses the portability of various Unix variants, there is no mentioning of Linux. In the spec-ratings, not either.
Also, he tries very much to keep things theoretical. Nowhere anything about uptimes or reboot issues (for quite a lot of NT setting changes you need to reboot). Practical things count!
Furthermore, most of those 'hobbyists' happen to be IT students who are very very likely to become 'a new generation of IT professionals' in a few months/years.
And indeed Linux machines _are_ being used in commercial production environments. I for one get paid for installing Linux for companies, as file/mail/dial-in servers. Not ready for the environment? Ever so ready!
A lot of people designing weapons are really interested in their technical corner, you see the same with gun people and even those who make or work with mines. I think they somehow 'forget' what their product does to people. Other than that, they are just nerds in another area.
Maybe we should try and show them that there is plenty of 'nerdable stuff' outside weaponry...
Slashdot Mirror
There must be quite some of 'us' (Slashdot readers) who preferred and used OS/2 instead of Windows 3.x/95 one time. I especially liked it (I'm talking OS/2 >= 2.0 now) for Windows apps, way more stable than the 'native' platform. OS/2 applications tended to get more freedom or something, anyway, they crashed quite often. Unfortunately IBM didn't do a great job at marketing it, as we all know, fortunately, there came Linux.
Of course, would it have been Free Software, than it probably _would_ have made a difference. I don't see the special 'before linux' thing, unix was there ages before both.
I agree, 32 MB doesn't cut it. I kind of wonder why the first MP3 players were given so little memory, it isn't as though memory was so very expensive at the time. Maybe back then fear for the great lables was more of an issue?
Anyway, I hope these goodies will be cheap, 64 to 128 MB is nice for an MP3 player.
The announced GPL'ing of SGI's XFS shows 'the big guys' can actually release real content to the public (and thus their old Unix-opponents). If SGI can show it's not afraid to contribute then there's hope for all.
The BBC is really great at things like that, they have some cool people. Top Gear (offtopic) is another of my favorites. Fortunately the BBC can be received in most of Holland...
This (another worthless certification) and the recent Mindcraft Linux vs NT thing, seems to show how vulnerable Microsoft feels. I don't know if that fear is necessary, after all these years I'd say people will still prefer marketing skills over product quality, but it obviously exists.
Clumsy indeed. I'm all for the two ear keyboard! Twice the speed and hands free.
So, the dealer has to pay for the sticker on the car, because otherwise people wouldn't buy it, hence people have to pay more.
What's the problem here? If people want to pay more because they like to see the sticker, while they still have the choice to buy a car without the sticker, that's just fine. In every market people pay for names, for reputation.
It may or may not be plain stupid but it isn't unfair.
If Intel is giving discount for defined exposure, meanwhile willing to take the risk of outpricing their own products, then what is bad about that?
Manufacturers still have the choice of not going with Intel, or pay the 6 per cent. I really don't see the problem here. Thee _are_ viable alternatives (AMD, Cyrix).
MSnBC screaming about this smells of Microsoft trying hard to find others with their own 'business skills'.
Not that Intel is such an innocent baby, but in this case: no big deal.
It may not always be as detailed as what you describe of Digital UniX, but as a matter of fact, one thing I frequently use Linux for is the 'hardware info goldmine' that /proc is. Combined with boot time and kernel module info, you can often find out a lot of nasty things.
It does of course depend on the driver a bit. But when a win95, nt or novell box gives you hardware suspicions, a linux rescue disk can make your life much easier!
Choice can be bad, yes. The Microsoft monopoly shows that people desperately want One Standard, even if it's a proprietary and really bad standard.
But this phase, with KDE and GNOME competing, is a necessary one in reaching the One Open Standard, which is what is really needed.
I don't doubt that one will eventually remain. When KDE and GNOME will have more or less ripened, then I think development will probably focus on compatibility with each other, and after that they'll merge or something. And all those differently looking WM's will probably become skins on the One Emerging Open GUI Standard. Which will of course never stop evoluting.
Hope so, anyway.
The McPinball Special?
(Eight Ball Deluxe used to be this great Pinball game -- for PC's)
Surely Apple will give away those slightly water damaged iMacs to poor cs students to install Linux on?
There are no reasons whatsoever for changing to 4.0 pre-beta, better wait for the real 4.0, then maybe. It isn't really difficult to upgrade to kernel 2.2 if you want to, besides 3.6 has most 2.2 support tools in it.
I think that must have been the main reason for Patrick to bring out 3.6, other changes were not so important, like you mentioned.
I've made it a good habit to always install twice on any machine that has to do serious duties: one small 'emergency' root and another normal 'production' root. For lilo I make a small third partition with the kernels (old, current and new) and lilo.conf in it. symlink lilo.conf to both /etc dirs, the kernel dir to both root fs's.
Now when you've compiled a new kernel, first time you call it 'new.z' or something, only after a successful boot and some testing you cp it to current.
Whenever your production file system is seriously fsck'd up (power failure maybe), boot from the emergency partition, fsck it or otherwise fix your stuff and reboot into your newly fixed production fs.
Obviously you still need a rescue disk when the boot record is really ill so lilo won't boot, but at that time chances are your disk has crashed.
BTW I always use Slackware - for tinkering and out of habit. I dislike RedHat for the encapsulation of everything, have yet to give Debian a go. On 'production systems' one seldom needs to upgrade libs, and if really necessary one can mostly find a suitable binary tarball (doesn't need to be slack tgz - just do a 'tar -tzf' and see if it's what you want). Thank Linus Torvalds, big distributions and Patrick Volkerding for Choice - Just my $.02
8 MB is no joke, I used to have a 386 SX 16 with 5 MB and a 30 MB hard disk, with Slackware 3.x on it and a 2.0.x kernel, as a router between two ethernet segments. Sure, it would swap something out when you logged in, but that's what virtual memory is for.
Also, Netscape is a memory hog if there ever was one (but that obviously doesn't concern the above machine).
I guess he now has a whole pile of mail in his box, but this is what I just sent him:
--
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 20:27:44 +0100 (CET)
From: Bert Lindner
To: Frank Hayes of ComputerWorld/CNN
Subject: Source: the recipe
Hi Frank,
I strongly diagree on your 'no-big-deal' opinion of Linux and Open Source,
I think it's one of the most interesting phenomena in the history of
computing, comparable only with things like the Internet. But then I would
probably qualify as a 'techie' so I'm in the wrong camp, I would
'obviously' think so. I don't think the hype (there _is_ hype) is
necessary, but that doesn't make it less important.
A good way to explain computer source code I think is as
a recipe
for making a computer program. Just that. I didn't make that up myself, I
recently saw that on a web site.
Regards,
-Bert Lindner, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
PS Linux _is_ free even for corporate IT shops, but they may _choose_ to
pay somebody to provide support for them. Anyone may download and use
Linux, for personal _and_ business use.
From the bouty-offerer's point of view it seems a smart thing to do: they hopefully get a lot of people to code on it for a quick implementation. But one of the advantages of open source software over proprietary software has been that there is no real pressure on the author, therefore he/she has all the opportunity to set stability/performance/elegance before fancy looks and speed-of-delivery. These bounties might endanger that.
You have a point about the 'kernel uptime', although when both kernel and tools come from the same manufacturer, MS in this case, and uptimes aren't good, questions arise about implementation of both tools _and_ kernel. But other people have said more knowledgeable things about design, which is said to be good, and implementation, which is said to be not so good, regarding the NT kernel.
Furthermore, I don't remember flaming anyone.
if I remember correctly that 'C2' NT 3.51 had to be stand-alone. Why didn't they just require it to be turned off?!
In the paragraph where he discusses the portability of various Unix variants, there is no mentioning of Linux. In the spec-ratings, not either.
Also, he tries very much to keep things theoretical. Nowhere anything about uptimes or reboot issues (for quite a lot of NT setting changes you need to reboot). Practical things count!
Furthermore, most of those 'hobbyists' happen to be IT students who are very very likely to become 'a new generation of IT professionals' in a few months/years.
And indeed Linux machines _are_ being used in commercial production environments. I for one get paid for installing Linux for companies, as file/mail/dial-in servers. Not ready for the environment? Ever so ready!
A lot of people designing weapons are really interested in their technical corner, you see the same with gun people and even those who make or work with mines. I think they somehow 'forget' what their product does to people. Other than that, they are just nerds in another area.
Maybe we should try and show them that there is plenty of 'nerdable stuff' outside weaponry...