1. This feature was in other distributions for years if not decades -- if kernel or libraries used by everything are updated, the updater asks the user to reboot, otherwise only affected programs are restarted. 2. It's Brian Proffitt, an anti-Linux attack dog again.
"Free speech" only applies to one thing: government can't stop a private entity from speaking to the public (like, spammer sending millions of ads for penis pills). Everything else it's perfectly OK to oppress.
But "free speech" is only applicable to the published speech. A person who can't pay to distribute his speech to the public has no protection for his right to do so.
No sane commercial software developer should or will every give up control of distribution of their software to a bunch of F/OSS zealots.
Microsoft Core Fonts and all proprietary graphics drivers, among other things. Every piece of Microsoft software that is installed by winetricks.
Software vendors now produce installers for Windows -- those installers are given to the users, and run on whatever insane installation of Windows those users have. Following your logic, that could not possibly happen because vendors would not want users to run their installers.
In reality, unless vendor specifically disallows any external installers from touching his binaries, someone writes an automated procedure for it and, if anyone cares, wraps it into a package.
You seem to be a very stupid person. In case you didn't notice, this discussion is about proprietary software. By definition, proprietary software is NOT included in a Linux distribution, which consists of only Free (freely-distributable) software.
There is plenty of proprietary software with packages maintained by distributions -- the package is a wrapper over whatever the software vendor distributed. If possible, package downloads the file automatically, or (thanks, Oracle, for your idiotic policy) it asks the user to get and supply the file. Most proprietary software requires separate license configuration after binaries are installed, or software has to "call home" to download associated data -- those operations have nothing to do with packaging, as they are distribution-independent and often OS-independent.
The issue brought up 6 levels up by "oakgrove" is that proprietary software has to be usable on a Linux system to make it viable as a desktop system, like it or not. Since distros have zero control over third-party proprietary software, a Linux system would need to be easy for an end user to install that proprietary software on, just like end users today can fairly easily install proprietary software onto a Windows system.
Linux: "Select the package in package manager, press Install, open a web site in the browser, pay for the license, then click on the icon and enter the license code".
Windows: "Open a web site in the browser, download giant setup package for your particular flavor of Windows, run it, answer idiotic questions about options and destination directory, choose licensing in the browser, pay for the license, then click on the icon and enter the license code".
From the end-user viewpoint Linux procedure is shorter and safer.
Asking end users to run an.rpm package through alien (which doesn't always work that well, esp. when distros can have markedly different ways of doing things, where to put things, etc.) is ridiculous.
I have just told you that it's not users who are supposed to run those utilities, and yet you are still "discussing" your own fantasy. You are spewing bullshit in hope that someone will take it for a valid argument -- a clear indication of a paid shill.
I have looked at the problem with plants that was given to kids, and the part about fertilizer is bogus as far as experiments are concerned.
There is an implied assumption that the plant flowers and leaves growth per the amount of fertilizer graph has a single, wide and approximately symmetric peak, so 6 samples will be always sufficient. However no such information is provided, and nothing in the experiment tests those assumptions. If one considers the hypothesis of a single peak to be "obvious", it's still impossible to predict the sufficient number of measurements. It happens to be six, but it may not be. For example, a perfectly valid sharp asymmetric peak:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 3 9 7 7 7 7 7 4 3
Now how would one justify any six measurements to get the correct result only based on the values from already performed measurements?
The kid may decide that the task is to perform the measurements with "obvious" assumption that there is one peak and in the hope that six measurements will be sufficient, however none of this is a valid approach to the experiment, and single-peak assumption is a common mistake to begin with.
Those of us in the FOSS communities might want to ponder whether we actually want to give the "serious tablet" market to Microsoft, and the "Toy tablet" market to Apple.
As long as something consistent is released, it will be repackaged with a simple wrapper (if existing conversion process implimented in "alien" utility won't do it already).
Actually no, there isn't. It's only compiled for kernels intended to run under Microsoft virtualization. No one but Microsoft and its best friends is stupid enough to do that.
And by "few" you mean everyone of us on Slashdot who run a server based on customer hardware with no graphics card or onboard graphics controller on it. It's nothing special, most of us do not even have to modify BIOS to do it.
Look closer. All that hardware has onboard graphics controller.
As I said, we have different ideas of "reliability". And it seems I have somewhat less shorter memory.
As I said, your accusations are baseless.
Bla bla. The fact is, that passing by register on i386 not only is stupid (there is a thing called "call gate" on the cpu that handles all the cruft), but deliberatly broke compatibility with other unix systems (that used by stack convention). Not everything is available from source and/or easy to recompile.
There never was binary compatibility requirement between operating systems to begin with. Systems have compilers for a reason.
But it's funny how linux had so much problems with it, but other systems didn't.
This is FUCKING INSANE. Linux has the least problems of all systems on headless x86 hardware (along with all other x86-supporting Unix-like OS, as they use exactly the same mechanism). x86 hardware has its own, completely OS-independent problem of being stuffed with BIOS, the ugliest firmware in the history of computing, and it affects all operating systems equally. Except Windows because Windows is just as insanely dependent on graphics adapter as BIOS. The audacity of Windows fan criticizing Linux for supposedly poor support of headless x86 hardware is astounding.
Non-x86 hardware, of course, has no problem running without a local graphics adapter because it does not have BIOS. Again, Linux works just fine on those devices.
The only purpose of Windows Phone is to stuff Microsoft software into the only kind of consumer device that Microsoft did not take over yet. It has no advantages, no good ideas, no directions of development that can, even potentially, produce anything worthwhile. Only old Microsoft model with stupid ideas at the core and thousands of tiny special instances of everything that supposedly eventually will duplicate functionality of the few components of a simple, elegant system.
Funny -- yes. Unrealistic -- no. The prices of products made of each other, are usually closely related, and all most national currencies are tied to US dollar in some way.
So, I guess you haven't seen much, and we do have different ideas of "reliability". Since 2.6 Linux is quite stable (on par with BSDs and Solaris), but that wasn't the case before.
That's completely false.
And compatibility? Are you talking about that unix clone that used DOS-style syscalls (by register) on i386?
All system calls on all processors on all operating systems are issued by a form of a call -- interrupt or direct. No two systems have (or should) have identical binary interface because then they would be the same system. All Unix-like systems share the same set of system calls/library functions that are mostly based on BSD and SysV interface, and included in POSIX standards. As long as software written for one system is portable to another through a trivial recompile, no one cares about trivial implementation details.
Can I use the stock kernel on a headless system (no graphics card), or it still is a requirement?
I am among those few people who has a system that has no graphics card, no onboard graphics controller, and still can boot with PC BIOS (because I have modified BIOS to work in this configuration). It boots Debian stock kernel just fine.
Headless systems are crippled by BIOS, not kernel.
The only in-kernel interface that anyone uses is ALSA, however there are many specialized interfaces that do things specifically for professional audio. In userspace, Pulseaudio is always top of ALSA, and provides ALSA-compatible (and legacy ESD) interface by itself, JACK also is mostly used on ALSA. Original OSS (inherited from other Unix-like systems) is obsolete, however its emulation works on top of either ALSA or Pulseaudio.
Users are completely uninvolved in any of this, because applications work using whatever interface they were written for. Unless users are trying to be "smart" and try to use configuration methods that are only supposed to be used by developers.
What intents of modularity? Linux is a monolithic kernel. Just because it can load modules, it doesn't mean it's "modular". Modularity in Linux is on par with other monolithic kernels - you edit a makefile or an options file, and discard what you don't want to be built. Does that seem to you a genuine effort for modularity?
Modularity has nothing to do with either Linux modules or microkernel (the only kind of kernel that is not "monolithic"). Modularity means that a piece of software consists of modules with clearly defined interfaces and functionality. In other words, shut up, moron.
Slashdot Mirror
but as much it occurs in the US, for them the distinction is still clear
Just the opposite. Seeing how damaging it in US, they want none of it at home.
1. This feature was in other distributions for years if not decades -- if kernel or libraries used by everything are updated, the updater asks the user to reboot, otherwise only affected programs are restarted.
2. It's Brian Proffitt, an anti-Linux attack dog again.
"Free speech" only applies to one thing: government can't stop a private entity from speaking to the public (like, spammer sending millions of ads for penis pills). Everything else it's perfectly OK to oppress.
But "free speech" is only applicable to the published speech. A person who can't pay to distribute his speech to the public has no protection for his right to do so.
and the whole democratic system will collapse
"Collapsed" is the only condition in which any "democratic system" was ever allowed to exist.
Why there is a logo of that famous HP-owned company in this article?
Each microcamera runs autofocus and exposure algorithms independently
Translation: we just duct-taped together a bunch of standard camera modules, and did not bother figuring out how they work.
Because they work for CIA, the good guys!
What package ? In what package manager?
Don't pretend to be stupid.
No sane commercial software developer should or will every give up control of distribution of their software to a bunch of F/OSS zealots.
Microsoft Core Fonts and all proprietary graphics drivers, among other things. Every piece of Microsoft software that is installed by winetricks.
Software vendors now produce installers for Windows -- those installers are given to the users, and run on whatever insane installation of Windows those users have. Following your logic, that could not possibly happen because vendors would not want users to run their installers.
In reality, unless vendor specifically disallows any external installers from touching his binaries, someone writes an automated procedure for it and, if anyone cares, wraps it into a package.
To think that they will, makes you a retard.
No, it makes you a failed astroturfer.
You seem to be a very stupid person. In case you didn't notice, this discussion is about proprietary software. By definition, proprietary software is NOT included in a Linux distribution, which consists of only Free (freely-distributable) software.
There is plenty of proprietary software with packages maintained by distributions -- the package is a wrapper over whatever the software vendor distributed. If possible, package downloads the file automatically, or (thanks, Oracle, for your idiotic policy) it asks the user to get and supply the file. Most proprietary software requires separate license configuration after binaries are installed, or software has to "call home" to download associated data -- those operations have nothing to do with packaging, as they are distribution-independent and often OS-independent.
The issue brought up 6 levels up by "oakgrove" is that proprietary software has to be usable on a Linux system to make it viable as a desktop system, like it or not. Since distros have zero control over third-party proprietary software, a Linux system would need to be easy for an end user to install that proprietary software on, just like end users today can fairly easily install proprietary software onto a Windows system.
Linux:
"Select the package in package manager, press Install, open a web site in the browser, pay for the license, then click on the icon and enter the license code".
Windows:
"Open a web site in the browser, download giant setup package for your particular flavor of Windows, run it, answer idiotic questions about options and destination directory, choose licensing in the browser, pay for the license, then click on the icon and enter the license code".
From the end-user viewpoint Linux procedure is shorter and safer.
Asking end users to run an .rpm package through alien (which doesn't always work that well, esp. when distros can have markedly different ways of doing things, where to put things, etc.) is ridiculous.
I have just told you that it's not users who are supposed to run those utilities, and yet you are still "discussing" your own fantasy. You are spewing bullshit in hope that someone will take it for a valid argument -- a clear indication of a paid shill.
The experiment is at http://nationsreportcard.gov/science2009ict/mysteryplants/mysteryplants.aspx , and it's completely bogus, revealing that it's not just kids who are stupid in US.
That's what distribution maintainers do, not users.
Are you really that stupid, or is it your job?
I have looked at the problem with plants that was given to kids, and the part about fertilizer is bogus as far as experiments are concerned.
There is an implied assumption that the plant flowers and leaves growth per the amount of fertilizer graph has a single, wide and approximately symmetric peak, so 6 samples will be always sufficient. However no such information is provided, and nothing in the experiment tests those assumptions. If one considers the hypothesis of a single peak to be "obvious", it's still impossible to predict the sufficient number of measurements. It happens to be six, but it may not be. For example, a perfectly valid sharp asymmetric peak:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
3 9 7 7 7 7 7 4 3
Now how would one justify any six measurements to get the correct result only based on the values from already performed measurements?
The kid may decide that the task is to perform the measurements with "obvious" assumption that there is one peak and in the hope that six measurements will be sufficient, however none of this is a valid approach to the experiment, and single-peak assumption is a common mistake to begin with.
Those of us in the FOSS communities might want to ponder whether we actually want to give the "serious tablet" market to Microsoft, and the "Toy tablet" market to Apple.
lol wut
As long as something consistent is released, it will be repackaged with a simple wrapper (if existing conversion process implimented in "alien" utility won't do it already).
The issue with packaging is completely bogus.
Black slaves wearing cotton shirts were hypocrites by your definition, too.
You are an idiot. Shut up.
Actually no, there isn't. It's only compiled for kernels intended to run under Microsoft virtualization. No one but Microsoft and its best friends is stupid enough to do that.
And by "few" you mean everyone of us on Slashdot who run a server based on customer hardware with no graphics card or onboard graphics controller on it. It's nothing special, most of us do not even have to modify BIOS to do it.
Look closer. All that hardware has onboard graphics controller.
As I said, we have different ideas of "reliability". And it seems I have somewhat less shorter memory.
As I said, your accusations are baseless.
Bla bla. The fact is, that passing by register on i386 not only is stupid (there is a thing called "call gate" on the cpu that handles all the cruft), but deliberatly broke compatibility with other unix systems (that used by stack convention). Not everything is available from source and/or easy to recompile.
There never was binary compatibility requirement between operating systems to begin with. Systems have compilers for a reason.
But it's funny how linux had so much problems with it, but other systems didn't.
This is FUCKING INSANE. Linux has the least problems of all systems on headless x86 hardware (along with all other x86-supporting Unix-like OS, as they use exactly the same mechanism). x86 hardware has its own, completely OS-independent problem of being stuffed with BIOS, the ugliest firmware in the history of computing, and it affects all operating systems equally. Except Windows because Windows is just as insanely dependent on graphics adapter as BIOS. The audacity of Windows fan criticizing Linux for supposedly poor support of headless x86 hardware is astounding.
Non-x86 hardware, of course, has no problem running without a local graphics adapter because it does not have BIOS. Again, Linux works just fine on those devices.
The only purpose of Windows Phone is to stuff Microsoft software into the only kind of consumer device that Microsoft did not take over yet. It has no advantages, no good ideas, no directions of development that can, even potentially, produce anything worthwhile. Only old Microsoft model with stupid ideas at the core and thousands of tiny special instances of everything that supposedly eventually will duplicate functionality of the few components of a simple, elegant system.
Funny -- yes. Unrealistic -- no. The prices of products made of each other, are usually closely related, and all most national currencies are tied to US dollar in some way.
How do you know that it's commodities prices that are unstable relative to currency or currency prices are unstable relative to commodities?
So, I guess you haven't seen much, and we do have different ideas of "reliability". Since 2.6 Linux is quite stable (on par with BSDs and Solaris), but that wasn't the case before.
That's completely false.
And compatibility? Are you talking about that unix clone that used DOS-style syscalls (by register) on i386?
All system calls on all processors on all operating systems are issued by a form of a call -- interrupt or direct. No two systems have (or should) have identical binary interface because then they would be the same system. All Unix-like systems share the same set of system calls/library functions that are mostly based on BSD and SysV interface, and included in POSIX standards. As long as software written for one system is portable to another through a trivial recompile, no one cares about trivial implementation details.
Can I use the stock kernel on a headless system (no graphics card), or it still is a requirement?
I am among those few people who has a system that has no graphics card, no onboard graphics controller, and still can boot with PC BIOS (because I have modified BIOS to work in this configuration). It boots Debian stock kernel just fine.
Headless systems are crippled by BIOS, not kernel.
How many USB stacks Linux had until today
Two, the first one was very short-lived.
And how about audio?
The only in-kernel interface that anyone uses is ALSA, however there are many specialized interfaces that do things specifically for professional audio.
In userspace, Pulseaudio is always top of ALSA, and provides ALSA-compatible (and legacy ESD) interface by itself, JACK also is mostly used on ALSA.
Original OSS (inherited from other Unix-like systems) is obsolete, however its emulation works on top of either ALSA or Pulseaudio.
Users are completely uninvolved in any of this, because applications work using whatever interface they were written for. Unless users are trying to be "smart" and try to use configuration methods that are only supposed to be used by developers.
What intents of modularity? Linux is a monolithic kernel. Just because it can load modules, it doesn't mean it's "modular". Modularity in Linux is on par with other monolithic kernels - you edit a makefile or an options file, and discard what you don't want to be built. Does that seem to you a genuine effort for modularity?
Modularity has nothing to do with either Linux modules or microkernel (the only kind of kernel that is not "monolithic"). Modularity means that a piece of software consists of modules with clearly defined interfaces and functionality. In other words, shut up, moron.