There's more to greatness for a CPU than number of registers. The Z80 had builtin support to interface with external devices/chips (You had to wait for 6510 for that. I think 8080 always had that feature.). Its been a while, but I think you could also relocate the Z80 stack pointer, which meant you could have a virtual sized stack. (6502 choked after 255 PUSHes.) It had such a "clean" instruction set. I loathed x86 CPUs by comparison.
I've seen it mentioned, but no one has really given a reason why 6809 was "superior" or even "preferable" to the Z80. (It sure wasn't cheaper.)
Granted he brings up some good points. Ubergeeks could be Linux's worst enemy in terms of popularizing the OS. Perhaps it may be time well spent if linux geeks took a little time out from their lives to mess with dysfunctional GUIs and cover old ground to be more helpful and newbie friendly. But he misses the central flaw with Linux for the general populace.
Linux is not idiot friendly and is unsuitable as a desktop for the masses. The test for when Linux will be ready is simple. Can you hand over a linux desktop to your windoze-using mother without needing to conduct a seminar for every pedestrian task or "rebuild" the machine every time she has a problem that is beyond the scope of what a commercial distribution provides?
Whining that geeks are not trained technical support personnel is stupid. Its like criticizing politicians because there is poverty. Sure, they can pass laws which conceivably could make a few less people's lives easier. But politicians are not the root of the problem, nor can they legislate a solution to the problem.
"Oh the users need to read the doc", "oh the doc sucks"; the posters miss the point! If Linux was ready for general users, there would be NO
COMPELLING NEED for them to read documentation! If the general consumer needs to read, digest, and then configure their OS, then it means Linux is not ready for the consumer or business markets!
From my POV, the solution needs to come from the distributors of Linux. Its their "job", besides bundling software, to make that distribution work seamlessly for users. They make money by getting users to buy their bundle over Micro$oft. Its in their interest to lobby developers to make changes in their packages to support users. Its in their interest to invest resources to implement improvements to usability.
So far, I think they've failed. Everytime I've done a RH install (and its only a handful), I've never failed to come across a problem getting it to work properly. (Last go around, it was getting framebuffer X to work.) And my computer professional friends have had similar flawed experiences whether its Suse, Mandrake, or Debian.
I want to replace my desktop with Linux and I had to waste months getting ALSA to work with a 2.4 kernel. Sound is an important feature for me, and free-OSS in Slackware did not cut it. Compile is not a word a user should ever need to be exposed to. Why the hell should I be tricking Macromedia to download the flash module so I can kludge it into Mozilla? (This is just a tiny sample of my experiences with Linux) Is this what a user is going to choose for an OS??? Hey guys, newsflash, the user doesn't need to do jack when buying a machine with a Micro$oft OS installed.
Its the distributors that need the lecture. Its the community's non-realization of the problem and the distributors lack of vision that keeps Linux from taking the desktop. It kills me to think I should dedicate the next two years of my life to put out Yet Another Linux Distribution because the people who do this for a living cannot even figure out they need invest effort to make Linux a competitive option for the desktop.
*LOL* Damn, that's brilliant. (TTMTB: Please mod up.)
Unfortunately, I suspect the average poser that lurks on/. are probably unaware of the memory management fiasco that has been going on between RVR and AA. (And if that is the case, hit Kernel Traffic and catch up on the past 6 months of weekly lkml summaries.)
I hate redundancy, but a poll would give you a better consensus from the/. reader base, AND you'll still get "detailed" opinions in the replies. (Besides, I like the poll option after PAN to be "Pimply Assed Cowboy Neal"...
...and totally not worth it.
Except it puts the bread on her table and the roof over her head. And for some people, one's ego and pride in their work is worth it, as well.
Just go take a break, or do something else for a day or two to clear your mind.
Something she has to do, because its currently not working, and sometimes a fresh look is the difference between sucess and failure.
If some fascist management type is breathing down your neck, tell him to go away.
In some cultures, it can mean the same as resigning (Your Asshole May Vary). In some places, it would not be a healthy thing to improperly phrase such a request, in this economy.
Getting angry and upset over a computer is very childish. Don't even go there.
Getting angry and upset is human, not childish.
She needs to get help to fix her problem. There's her coworkers, Sun Support, and Sun Mananger's mailing list.
ALSA v0.9.0.beta9 works great on kernel 2.4.14. I can't imagine it breaking in the next kernel. I don't think anyone, other than a packages maintainer, would really care that they had ALSA 0.5.12 working on a kernel version.
When did this become a MICROSOFT support line?
on
Old NEC Printer on Win2k?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Most of what I've been seeing here lately, though, is what amounts to tech support requests.
I don't like the implications this statement makes. I find there are many valuable things that are learned in "best hardware/software/approach" for application questions or for solutions for not-so-common or easily solved problems. They don't get covered in the other sections because either its a question, or its subjective opinion, or just does not fall into a category. Also,/. lacks a hardware/tech section, and "Ask Slashdot" seems to be a good place to catch some of these pearls.
But I would not want "Ask Slashdot" to be a "Duh, how do I do this" section.
It is EGREGIOUS to be using this section to give tech support for WINDOZE questions! You shouldn't be using the/. audience to solve your Win2K problems, Cliff! (Ravagin, yeah right..)
The problem is not bad on Slackware. It includes an/opt directory, where it puts gnome and KDE. There still may be lots of programs in/usr/bin, but I would not want a subdirectory for every executable either. It would be nice if it separated gcc in/usr &/lib (and separate/lib directory for apache), but that would be the only gripe concerning this. Solaris is even more disciplined than Slackware in this regard.
I thought the article was lame, but I think its worse to erroneously criticize UNIX distributions that do a better job of segregating software packages than Red Hat.
I live in NYC with no car. I had pretty much written off seeing a good shower because of the light pollution. But I was up, so what the heck, I walked outside my apartment. I could see those meteors streaking in every couple of minutes! Too bad my friends are too civilization bound to want to freeze in Central Park tomorrow night. I hope there's something left by Thanksgiving morning. I'll probably hit the state park near where my folks live for a better view.
Does anyone know what that abnormally bright star star shining in the (NYC) sky? Quite distinctive; it was so bright, I'm guessing it was either Venus or the ISS. I'd appreciate it if anyone could give an informed identification. Thanks.
Emacs users don't just edit ascii files. They also compile code, read news and get therapy from Eliza.:-)
No, EMACS is a shell that calls other programs to compile code, read news, and get therapy...
Linux is a HELL lot more capable as an operating system than Hurd, in stability, efficiency, and capability.
I dunno about "capability". I'll agree with the other two, though. The stability and efficiency are mostly because of its longevity, of course. "Get it working then get it fast."
There are hundreds of software packages which you can pop into a Linux system and it will run. You can't say the same thing for HURD. Linux is more capable (of running useful software). Longevity!?!? HURD is OLDER than Linux.
I think vi vs emacs is way too generous an analogy. With either way, you're capable of doing the same task (editing ascii files). Linux is a HELL lot more capable as an operating system than Hurd, in stability, efficiency, and capability.
I like the ideas in Hurd, but the bottom line is that it is an experimental OS for theory geeks. Its going nowhere until it moves to the L4 kernel, and starts to look more pragmatically at its execution time, stability, and application environment.
Granted he's been a cornerstone for GNOME. But what one needs to realize is that his priorities may be elsewhere. He works for Ximian, and his new crusade is Mono. Is it possible that those interests could clash with GNOME's priorities? Already one can see problems with GNOME following through on its original gameplan, and its losing mindshare & desktops to KDE. Perhaps there is a deserving candidate that may better serve GNOME's interests than Miguel?
Don't take this as a condemnation of Miguel. I don't follow any of this stuff closely. I do see possibilities for a conflict of interest. Perhaps someone more familiar with the GNOME politics and history might want to risk some karma and give a more detailed analysis.
Hell, its looks like RMS will be swept in, and he's a lot more controversial candidate. I'd suggest not to vote candidates only on their past accomplishments, but on what course they would steer GNOME in the future.
(To the culturally deprived, its an emulator for arcade machine ROMS. You can play thousands of games from Donkey Kong to Bubble Bobble to Mortal Kombat. And you're not even limited to x86 platforms.)
Can't install games onto your work PC? Just run/boot off of your portable game cdrom.
I really need to cook up one for myself. I like the idea of booting Linux and going straight to MAME, but it would eat CD-R space that could be used for more ROMs. Then again, booting Linux would let me setup a RAMdisk, which may help MAME deal with disk write issues. (There may be a M$ Windows utility that will create a RAMdisk without rebooting the OS.)
Last of all, a tip. Do your configuring on a CD-RW disk, get the written size under 50MB, and then burn the final ISO onto the business card CD-R.
The features of the first link is that it uses a 2.4 kernel and Xfree 4.1 (and more).
The selling feature of the second is that you can rsync/cvs its development tree, and thus insert your own tweaks into the card.
I'm not screamingly familiar with these versions, but the older BBC they gave away at LinuxWorld really rocks. Not just you're booting the Linux OS from CDROM, but it will handle networking, windowing, and webbrowsing. (And it has repair tools that I thankfully haven't had the need to demonstrate.)
Oh Lord, another reason to keep RMS off the board. GNU/Gnome, GNU/Linux, GNU/OpenOffice, GNU/GCC, GNU/nethack, GNU/emacs, GNU/vi, GNU/rsync, GNU/SAMBA, GNU/Perl...
Its enough to drive me to KDE and Java. At least the owners don't demand them to be referred as TrollTech/KDE or SUN/Java...
It isn't all Microsoft's fault, though. Netscape rolled over and obediently died after the first shot was fired. Does anyone even *use* Netscape anymore? What about WordPerfect? Lotus 1-2-3? Yeah, they all *exist*, but who the hell cares
What was Netscape supposed to do once M$ used its financial resources to wipe out any profit they could have made from their products? The irony is that M$ used its monopolistic clout to force Netscape from being installed on new machines, and M$ did not even need to do that to crush Netscape. Similar cases could be made for WordPerfect and Lotus as well.
What's the last "innovative", or even the last remotely interesting thing Netscape's done though?
What was the last innovative thing ANYONE has done with webbrowsers? Mozilla and its children do not have anything special over IE. Netscape killed itself because it couldn't serve fries over the internet with its browser?
Sure, Microsoft's done plenty of bad shit, but, with the exception of the tiny companies, they've had an awful lot of help from their competitors. I don't see this changing any time soon.
The only company that you could make a credible argument to support your theory is Novell. Its not going to change soon because M$ will use its monopoly position on desktop O/S to leverage itself into e-commerce internet services and their platforms. And because they will buy out the executive and legislative branches. And finally they count on people like you to blame the squashed small competitor for not competing hard enough.
1) Most managers do not have a clue about the VM issues. I'm sure many journalists are itching to write about 2.4, except the technicalspeak would probably turn off any suit reading it.
2) Linux is not a "professional" product. No "professional" busts their butts to meet a release date for free.
3) Any business who cares about professionalism would not be running any
(web)server on a 2.4 kernel in a production environment. It has nothing to do with the 2.4 release; one almost never put into production something that was implemented weeks ago without extensive testing.
Linux is always going to be a "cult" of Torvalds (though "church heirarchy" would probably a better metaphor). Its going to stay that way until Linux quits, dies, or something like Red Hat or IBM decides to introduce a "schism". If you really feel the need to express your concerns about professionalism, I suggest you email your concerns to Linus. Slashdot readers do not enforce professional standards in Linux kernel releases.
2.4.10 uses the new Andrea Arcangeli VM. In 2.4.12-ac5, Alan Cox kept the Rik van Riel VM. RVM has been having problems with Out-Of-Memory situations, where RAM needed exceeded physical RAM available, so that may explain your situation.
Try getting a non-AC 2.4.13 kernel, perhaps add a patch or two, and see what happens. You also may need more RAM in your machine.
Slashdot Mirror
There's more to greatness for a CPU than number of registers. The Z80 had builtin support to interface with external devices/chips (You had to wait for 6510 for that. I think 8080 always had that feature.). Its been a while, but I think you could also relocate the Z80 stack pointer, which meant you could have a virtual sized stack. (6502 choked after 255 PUSHes.) It had such a "clean" instruction set. I loathed x86 CPUs by comparison.
I've seen it mentioned, but no one has really given a reason why 6809 was "superior" or even "preferable" to the Z80. (It sure wasn't cheaper.)
Granted he brings up some good points. Ubergeeks could be Linux's worst enemy in terms of popularizing the OS. Perhaps it may be time well spent if linux geeks took a little time out from their lives to mess with dysfunctional GUIs and cover old ground to be more helpful and newbie friendly. But he misses the central flaw with Linux for the general populace.
Linux is not idiot friendly and is unsuitable as a desktop for the masses. The test for when Linux will be ready is simple. Can you hand over a linux desktop to your windoze-using mother without needing to conduct a seminar for every pedestrian task or "rebuild" the machine every time she has a problem that is beyond the scope of what a commercial distribution provides?
Whining that geeks are not trained technical support personnel is stupid. Its like criticizing politicians because there is poverty. Sure, they can pass laws which conceivably could make a few less people's lives easier. But politicians are not the root of the problem, nor can they legislate a solution to the problem.
"Oh the users need to read the doc", "oh the doc sucks"; the posters miss the point! If Linux was ready for general users, there would be NO COMPELLING NEED for them to read documentation! If the general consumer needs to read, digest, and then configure their OS, then it means Linux is not ready for the consumer or business markets!
From my POV, the solution needs to come from the distributors of Linux. Its their "job", besides bundling software, to make that distribution work seamlessly for users. They make money by getting users to buy their bundle over Micro$oft. Its in their interest to lobby developers to make changes in their packages to support users. Its in their interest to invest resources to implement improvements to usability.
So far, I think they've failed. Everytime I've done a RH install (and its only a handful), I've never failed to come across a problem getting it to work properly. (Last go around, it was getting framebuffer X to work.) And my computer professional friends have had similar flawed experiences whether its Suse, Mandrake, or Debian.
I want to replace my desktop with Linux and I had to waste months getting ALSA to work with a 2.4 kernel. Sound is an important feature for me, and free-OSS in Slackware did not cut it. Compile is not a word a user should ever need to be exposed to. Why the hell should I be tricking Macromedia to download the flash module so I can kludge it into Mozilla? (This is just a tiny sample of my experiences with Linux) Is this what a user is going to choose for an OS??? Hey guys, newsflash, the user doesn't need to do jack when buying a machine with a Micro$oft OS installed.
Its the distributors that need the lecture. Its the community's non-realization of the problem and the distributors lack of vision that keeps Linux from taking the desktop. It kills me to think I should dedicate the next two years of my life to put out Yet Another Linux Distribution because the people who do this for a living cannot even figure out they need invest effort to make Linux a competitive option for the desktop.
We wouldn't see catgirls, we'd see the sort of deformed, unrecognizable things I'm sure a few of the trolls are going to link to.
If they look like Jessica Alba, I am totally down with GE. (I guess you'd have to be a Dark Angel fan to understand that reference...)
So which came first, the population or the mutation?
*LOL* Damn, that's brilliant. (TTMTB: Please mod up.)
Unfortunately, I suspect the average poser that lurks on
I hate redundancy, but a poll would give you a better consensus from the
Except it puts the bread on her table and the roof over her head. And for some people, one's ego and pride in their work is worth it, as well.
Just go take a break, or do something else for a day or two to clear your mind.
Something she has to do, because its currently not working, and sometimes a fresh look is the difference between sucess and failure.
If some fascist management type is breathing down your neck, tell him to go away.
In some cultures, it can mean the same as resigning (Your Asshole May Vary). In some places, it would not be a healthy thing to improperly phrase such a request, in this economy.
Getting angry and upset over a computer is very childish. Don't even go there.
Getting angry and upset is human, not childish. She needs to get help to fix her problem. There's her coworkers, Sun Support, and Sun Mananger's mailing list.
ALSA v0.9.0.beta9 works great on kernel 2.4.14. I can't imagine it breaking in the next kernel. I don't think anyone, other than a packages maintainer, would really care that they had ALSA 0.5.12 working on a kernel version.
Most of what I've been seeing here lately, though, is what amounts to tech support requests.
/. lacks a hardware/tech section, and "Ask Slashdot" seems to be a good place to catch some of these pearls.
/. audience to solve your Win2K problems, Cliff! (Ravagin, yeah right..)
I don't like the implications this statement makes. I find there are many valuable things that are learned in "best hardware/software/approach" for application questions or for solutions for not-so-common or easily solved problems. They don't get covered in the other sections because either its a question, or its subjective opinion, or just does not fall into a category. Also,
But I would not want "Ask Slashdot" to be a "Duh, how do I do this" section.
It is EGREGIOUS to be using this section to give tech support for WINDOZE questions! You shouldn't be using the
The problem is not bad on Slackware. It includes an
I thought the article was lame, but I think its worse to erroneously criticize UNIX distributions that do a better job of segregating software packages than Red Hat.
I live in NYC with no car. I had pretty much written off seeing a good shower because of the light pollution. But I was up, so what the heck, I walked outside my apartment. I could see those meteors streaking in every couple of minutes! Too bad my friends are too civilization bound to want to freeze in Central Park tomorrow night. I hope there's something left by Thanksgiving morning. I'll probably hit the state park near where my folks live for a better view.
Does anyone know what that abnormally bright star star shining in the (NYC) sky? Quite distinctive; it was so bright, I'm guessing it was either Venus or the ISS. I'd appreciate it if anyone could give an informed identification. Thanks.
Emacs users don't just edit ascii files. They also compile code, read news and get therapy from Eliza. :-)
No, EMACS is a shell that calls other programs to compile code, read news, and get therapy...
Linux is a HELL lot more capable as an operating system than Hurd, in stability, efficiency, and capability.
I dunno about "capability". I'll agree with the other two, though. The stability and efficiency are mostly because of its longevity, of course. "Get it working then get it fast."
There are hundreds of software packages which you can pop into a Linux system and it will run. You can't say the same thing for HURD. Linux is more capable (of running useful software). Longevity!?!? HURD is OLDER than Linux.
I think vi vs emacs is way too generous an analogy. With either way, you're capable of doing the same task (editing ascii files). Linux is a HELL lot more capable as an operating system than Hurd, in stability, efficiency, and capability.
I like the ideas in Hurd, but the bottom line is that it is an experimental OS for theory geeks. Its going nowhere until it moves to the L4 kernel, and starts to look more pragmatically at its execution time, stability, and application environment.
Granted he's been a cornerstone for GNOME. But what one needs to realize is that his priorities may be elsewhere. He works for Ximian, and his new crusade is Mono. Is it possible that those interests could clash with GNOME's priorities? Already one can see problems with GNOME following through on its original gameplan, and its losing mindshare & desktops to KDE. Perhaps there is a deserving candidate that may better serve GNOME's interests than Miguel?
Don't take this as a condemnation of Miguel. I don't follow any of this stuff closely. I do see possibilities for a conflict of interest. Perhaps someone more familiar with the GNOME politics and history might want to risk some karma and give a more detailed analysis.
Hell, its looks like RMS will be swept in, and he's a lot more controversial candidate. I'd suggest not to vote candidates only on their past accomplishments, but on what course they would steer GNOME in the future.
MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)
(To the culturally deprived, its an emulator for arcade machine ROMS. You can play thousands of games from Donkey Kong to Bubble Bobble to Mortal Kombat. And you're not even limited to x86 platforms.)
Can't install games onto your work PC? Just run/boot off of your portable game cdrom.
Try these links:
MAME Homepage
MAME32 Homepage (MAME with a GUI menu)
An Arcade ROM Repository
Use Google to get you more ROM websites.
I really need to cook up one for myself. I like the idea of booting Linux and going straight to MAME, but it would eat CD-R space that could be used for more ROMs. Then again, booting Linux would let me setup a RAMdisk, which may help MAME deal with disk write issues. (There may be a M$ Windows utility that will create a RAMdisk without rebooting the OS.)
Last of all, a tip. Do your configuring on a CD-RW disk, get the written size under 50MB, and then burn the final ISO onto the business card CD-R.
Have fun.
Linuxcare Bootable Toolbox
LNX-BBC - Linux Bootable Business Card
The features of the first link is that it uses a 2.4 kernel and Xfree 4.1 (and more).
The selling feature of the second is that you can rsync/cvs its development tree, and thus insert your own tweaks into the card.
I'm not screamingly familiar with these versions, but the older BBC they gave away at LinuxWorld really rocks. Not just you're booting the Linux OS from CDROM, but it will handle networking, windowing, and webbrowsing. (And it has repair tools that I thankfully haven't had the need to demonstrate.)
Doesn't Trolltech own Qt, from which KDE is based on? (Granted its some GPLish license...)
> GNU/Gnome
Oh Lord, another reason to keep RMS off the board. GNU/Gnome, GNU/Linux, GNU/OpenOffice, GNU/GCC, GNU/nethack, GNU/emacs, GNU/vi, GNU/rsync, GNU/SAMBA, GNU/Perl...
Its enough to drive me to KDE and Java. At least the owners don't demand them to be referred as TrollTech/KDE or SUN/Java...
less time fretting about organisational issues and more time developing Gnome, maybe it would not be 2 years behind KDE now.
And you think making RMS a Gnome board member will fix this??? The father of HURD...?
i really don't see how the musical is a sign of the show jumping the shark
It means you don't get the premise of the expression "jumped the shark".
www.jumptheshark.com
It's tragic, but nobody forced them to make a musical...
...that Fox is paying you enough money to advertise its programming.
It isn't all Microsoft's fault, though. Netscape rolled over and obediently died after the first shot was fired. Does anyone even *use* Netscape anymore? What about WordPerfect? Lotus 1-2-3? Yeah, they all *exist*, but who the hell cares
What was Netscape supposed to do once M$ used its financial resources to wipe out any profit they could have made from their products? The irony is that M$ used its monopolistic clout to force Netscape from being installed on new machines, and M$ did not even need to do that to crush Netscape. Similar cases could be made for WordPerfect and Lotus as well.
What's the last "innovative", or even the last remotely interesting thing Netscape's done though?
What was the last innovative thing ANYONE has done with webbrowsers? Mozilla and its children do not have anything special over IE. Netscape killed itself because it couldn't serve fries over the internet with its browser?
Sure, Microsoft's done plenty of bad shit, but, with the exception of the tiny companies, they've had an awful lot of help from their competitors. I don't see this changing any time soon.
The only company that you could make a credible argument to support your theory is Novell. Its not going to change soon because M$ will use its monopoly position on desktop O/S to leverage itself into e-commerce internet services and their platforms. And because they will buy out the executive and legislative branches. And finally they count on people like you to blame the squashed small competitor for not competing hard enough.
You can count on the following truths:
1) Most managers do not have a clue about the VM issues. I'm sure many journalists are itching to write about 2.4, except the technicalspeak would probably turn off any suit reading it.
2) Linux is not a "professional" product. No "professional" busts their butts to meet a release date for free.
3) Any business who cares about professionalism would not be running any
(web)server on a 2.4 kernel in a production environment. It has nothing to do with the 2.4 release; one almost never put into production something that was implemented weeks ago without extensive testing.
Linux is always going to be a "cult" of Torvalds (though "church heirarchy" would probably a better metaphor). Its going to stay that way until Linux quits, dies, or something like Red Hat or IBM decides to introduce a "schism". If you really feel the need to express your concerns about professionalism, I suggest you email your concerns to Linus. Slashdot readers do not enforce professional standards in Linux kernel releases.
2.4.10 uses the new Andrea Arcangeli VM. In 2.4.12-ac5, Alan Cox kept the Rik van Riel VM. RVM has been having problems with Out-Of-Memory situations, where RAM needed exceeded physical RAM available, so that may explain your situation.
Try getting a non-AC 2.4.13 kernel, perhaps add a patch or two, and see what happens. You also may need more RAM in your machine.