"Let's say that my parents go and buy an HP PSC-series All-in-One printer; it's a color scanner, an inkjet, a fax, and a SD/CF USB drive. Plug the printer in... even if the inkjet portion works immediately, can they use it as a scanner from in Linux? As a fax? If not -- if they have to download various, varied drivers or tweak config files -- then it's not as immediately easy for them to use as it is under Windows."
Yeah actually. My PSC-2210 worked perfectly out of the box for all the mentioned features. It acutally does a lot of stuff much better than running under windows. For instance, I can set a cron to sync the time on the printer with a timeserver so the time is always up to date. It may be that you have to install scanning software, just as you would with windows, but that can't take more than 2 minutes with an RPM or whatever you use.
Most "desktop" distros come with just about everything included as a kernel module, so it is very rare that you actually have to install or download a driver or recompile a kernel. I happen to run Gentoo, and I generally enable as much as I can under USB/firewire/gamepads as a module. This gives me the ability to just buy something and plug it in without having to recompile.
If everyone hasn't checked out samsung lately for printers, take a look. I picked up a new ML-2152W for my office printer and it came with a Linux disk. It was very slick and everything installed at least as fast and smooth as it did under windows.
If you take a step back, you can really see the difference between a good vendor and a not so good one. When it comes to drivers as mentioned in the article, it surely is a vendor issue. MS didn't write all the parts of all those drivers it uses for autodetection itself. This is the work of the vendor. You can't broadly blame "Linux" for this. It just doesn't make sense, for two reasons:
a) The vendor should have but didn't port their driver to linux/BSD. If they didn't make a driver for windows, it wouldn't have one either.
b) The vendors generally block the efforts of open source developers by keeping their specs a secret. Basically you are asking the OS community to reverse engineer the hardware, which may be illegal in some places.
For now, you just have to be conscious about the hardware you buy for a linux desktop. Ultimately it is going to be the vendors that bring the support to linux. Look at the efforts of samsung, nvidia, ibm, high point, etc. It is going to be the vendors! Not SuSE, Redhat or Mandrake, just like it isn't Microsoft that makes Windows driver support so broad.
I haven't had hardware support problems under linux since I was running redhat 5.0 on my desktop and couldn't get my webcam to work. Maybe I am just lucky. More likely, I know what to shop for.
People who write articles like this and make some similar comments I have seen are the ones who just don't get it. Eventually some distribution of linux will get it right for them, but for now, they should probably look elsewhere. Those of us that do get it, are happy now and have little concern for those that don't.
That is why linux isn't for you... Use windows or Mac and stop complaining about how one of the 50 million linux installers sucks.
Why do non GNU/Linux or non *BSD users feel it is so important to constantly bring up why linux or BSD isn't good enough? What they are really saying is that it isn't right for their uses.
I guess the same could be said for the Linux and BSD users. So my question is: Why are people so full of themselves and their OS's?
What are you saying? That because a majority of the people in the world use Windows, Gentoo should have a flashy installer?
If we give all the distros flashy installers and gear them to be simple and not as powerful, I will be in chains with the rest of them, so lets cut the nonsense.
People use Windows/Mac/Fedora/Gentoo/BSD/Amiga/etc because they want to, and that what fits them best. It makes sense, and there is nothing wrong with any of those choices. Stop trying to save those that don't want saving.
personally I think you are silly if you use packages or ebuilds when it comes to Apache + modules. Your best bet is to just do it from source.
I run gentoo, redhat or FreeBSD, and I never use any of their packages/ports/portage for Apache or MySQL anymore, it just rarely works out right if you have complex needs.
I think it was pretty ground breaking. It essentially launched a whole new genre. Now every week there is a new game coming out in this "genre"... "It's the simpsons, but like GTA." "Its Tony Hawk, but like GTA." "If you like GTA, you'll love..."
RT is a web system that recieves request via e-mail. I use it to manage requests from people in my office as well for my small webhosting company.
check it out
I know server beach uses it for their support system, and I believe that Rackspace does as well.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/requesttracker/?to pi c_id=31%2C30%2C130%2C846%2C822
daniel
Re:Sorry to bring it up, but there are options
on
Microsoft News Update
·
· Score: 1
I agree with him... I just made the switch from xine to mplayer, and I must say, it is wonderful. Very light weight, and if you install the windows codecs, you can play anything including divx, asf, mpg, avi, mov, etc.
It is run from the command line (unless you compile the beta gui interface), and nothing I've seen runs smoother or lighter.
oh... all of adequacy is satire... I couldn't believe it when I read their mission statement... they all hate my guts over there. I think it is halarious though....
I am not saying he is going to find a good article, but that is the only place I have really seen anti open source stuff before... unless you look at the few articles posted by M$.
I personally think what they say is crap, and I have gotten into many discussions on the topic over there, but they may make some points that would be useful to you... The url is www.adequacy.org... They are extremely anti opensource and slashdot... Specifically look at the post "That's it, let's ban programming."
I disagree. I think a good desktop os should have a lot of server tools, and let me explain why:
a) it aids in development if you can test stuff out locally. It is good to run a webserver and such.
b) makes it easier to connect remotely and do work when not at your perfect workstation.
Anyway, you can take all the server stuff out if you don't like it. If you are kernel savy, you can take it a step further and optimize it for your needs.
"Yes, competition is a good thing, but the mainstream public doesn't view this as competition, they view it as fragmentation."
"That's the part of the equation that tends to get
glossed over by the open source techy types, they tend to focus on the technical merits and they can't understand the need to align towards common goals and reduce any collaborative filtering which quite frankly ends up confusing John. Q. Consumer."
I guess that is probably because that isn't what they care about. I personally don't care if linux ever makes it to "John's" desktop. Since money isn't what drives open source, open source people don't care about "selling it" to the general public.
I guess the bottom line is, linux is linux. All the separate distros are just linux with a bunch of software installed on top of them. It is very possible to take two totally different distros, and make them look, feel, and act exactly the same. I think the different distros are good. Not for competition, but because they cover so many areas. There are a lot of distros with specific purposes in mind. You just have to choose the best for your needs.
"Several of my clients have told me point blank that they refuse to even look at Linux because they feel the environment is too unstable for a long term commitment."
I think that it is probably unwise for them to jump to this conclusion. What knowledge do they really have of linux? The CTO for a company I used to work for felt the same way, but after I was done with him he was quite the linux advocate.
What did you set your security setting to? I think it it is too restricted, it won't allow users to run su. You should also check to make sure your user has execute perms on/bin/su. Does it spit out any error?
Yeah, I had the same problem. I ended up just getting a boot floppy, and installing via ftp to one of the sites that _DON'T_ offer the isos. There is a lot less traffic on them, and it only takes about 2-3 hours to install over 1.4 mb dsl. It is better than waiting for days to get the isos.
I am actually really enjoying GNOME 1.4. I have heard of eazel bugs, but have not seen any myself. Eazel is the first file manager I have actually used under linux, and I am loving it! It is really nice to get away from the command line a little to try something new. I am happy with the choice that Mandrake made.
daneil
I am really dissapointed with Redhat 7.x period. I have been using redhat on my desktop since version 5.0 (before that slackware).
When I went to upgrade my 7.0 box at home, the installer locked up. It does it everytime. Any one else have this problem? I am running a dual proc box with 1 GIG ram. It installed on my dell piece of crap at work no problem.
Last week I spent the time to install mandrake 8.0 via ftp (took about 3 hours). I have to say, I am way impressed, and extremely glad I went out on a limb to try a new distro. Mandrake 8.0 is the BEST desktop OS I have ever used. Font support is better, didn't have to upgrade a million software packages right after install, and it has support for reiser fs. I can't really explain why I like it better. I guess I just like the stuff Mandrake does by default. Usually it would take me days of configuring to get my Redhat box where I wanted it.
So, anyway, Mandrake is where it is at on the desktop. I still run a custom redhat 6.1/6.2 on all my servers, because that was a damn good release in my opinion. I must say that I am absolutely looking forward to what redhat 8.x will be like. Who knows, maybe I'll be back.
ok... I guess there was just a misunderstanding... I agree with you that if the isp looks like the bad guy, then yes, they will be pushing away business. cool...
"Would it make sense to go after every spammer who spams you? Probably not."
I think you are probably correct...
I get about 20-50 spams a day. I go after a small percentage of them by going through mail headers, and tracing it back to the isp. Sometimes with social engineering, I can get a lot of nifty info about the people behind the spam and have some fun. Sometimes there is actually enough info in the mail to identify people down to their home address (if you use the very useful tools/databases available to you on the www). You just have to get creative on how to track them down with the little info you have. I have found that social engineering is absolutely the best tool.
Now, I have never taken legal action before, but I have gotten quite a few booted off their isp, or added a significant amount of difficulty to their lives. I don't think it would be worth it or even possible to take legal action against all of them, because of the volume (in my case). My current technique takes up about 1-3 hours of my day, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. My sysadmin job is so boring, that spam fighting actually lightens up my day. =)
Anyway... the point is, we might not be able to sue them all, but I think if a few of us put some effort into it, we might be able to make it not worth it for the spammers.
Why would that get rid of their customers? If the mpaa/riaa rid the earth of file sharing, I really doubt that anyone would take it out on the isps?
I understand the bandwidth is there to be used, and and I understand that they are laying new fiberoptics all the time. The point is, that they wouldn't have to lay so much fiber optics if people weren't clogging it all up with file sharing.
The only way your comment even makes sense is if the only reason for getting bandwidth is to share files. That is just not the case. I do use file sharing apps, but if they went away, I wouldn't cancel my dsl line. Would some people? probably.
I was just giving some insight as to why the isps might be willing to go along with this. You want another? Maybe the RIAA lined excite@home's pockets. I don't see why you would get all worked up over my comment. I probably agree with you on the whole file sharing business. I think this is a big mess, and we really need to start fighting back. How? Better technology.
"But, I don't guess your in the telcom industry are you?"
I don't see why I would have to be in the telcom industry to make a comment on the ethics of isps and the riaa. There was really nothing technical about my post.
Slashdot Mirror
In reality this drives moble devices to have better screens and faster connections.
My treo650 (320x320) on sprint works out very well for what I need to do with it (network monitor pages, news, weather, wikis, following email links).
It would be silly to take current design backwards for the short term while PDAs and phones catch up.
daniel
"Let's say that my parents go and buy an HP PSC-series All-in-One printer; it's a color scanner, an inkjet, a fax, and a SD/CF USB drive. Plug the printer in... even if the inkjet portion works immediately, can they use it as a scanner from in Linux? As a fax? If not -- if they have to download various, varied drivers or tweak config files -- then it's not as immediately easy for them to use as it is under Windows."
Yeah actually. My PSC-2210 worked perfectly out of the box for all the mentioned features. It acutally does a lot of stuff much better than running under windows. For instance, I can set a cron to sync the time on the printer with a timeserver so the time is always up to date. It may be that you have to install scanning software, just as you would with windows, but that can't take more than 2 minutes with an RPM or whatever you use.
Most "desktop" distros come with just about everything included as a kernel module, so it is very rare that you actually have to install or download a driver or recompile a kernel. I happen to run Gentoo, and I generally enable as much as I can under USB/firewire/gamepads as a module. This gives me the ability to just buy something and plug it in without having to recompile.
If everyone hasn't checked out samsung lately for printers, take a look. I picked up a new ML-2152W for my office printer and it came with a Linux disk. It was very slick and everything installed at least as fast and smooth as it did under windows.
If you take a step back, you can really see the difference between a good vendor and a not so good one. When it comes to drivers as mentioned in the article, it surely is a vendor issue. MS didn't write all the parts of all those drivers it uses for autodetection itself. This is the work of the vendor. You can't broadly blame "Linux" for this. It just doesn't make sense, for two reasons:
a) The vendor should have but didn't port their driver to linux/BSD. If they didn't make a driver for windows, it wouldn't have one either.
b) The vendors generally block the efforts of open source developers by keeping their specs a secret. Basically you are asking the OS community to reverse engineer the hardware, which may be illegal in some places.
For now, you just have to be conscious about the hardware you buy for a linux desktop. Ultimately it is going to be the vendors that bring the support to linux. Look at the efforts of samsung, nvidia, ibm, high point, etc. It is going to be the vendors! Not SuSE, Redhat or Mandrake, just like it isn't Microsoft that makes Windows driver support so broad.
I haven't had hardware support problems under linux since I was running redhat 5.0 on my desktop and couldn't get my webcam to work. Maybe I am just lucky. More likely, I know what to shop for.
People who write articles like this and make some similar comments I have seen are the ones who just don't get it. Eventually some distribution of linux will get it right for them, but for now, they should probably look elsewhere. Those of us that do get it, are happy now and have little concern for those that don't.
daniel
That is why linux isn't for you... Use windows or Mac and stop complaining about how one of the 50 million linux installers sucks.
Why do non GNU/Linux or non *BSD users feel it is so important to constantly bring up why linux or BSD isn't good enough? What they are really saying is that it isn't right for their uses.
I guess the same could be said for the Linux and BSD users. So my question is: Why are people so full of themselves and their OS's?
peez
Seriously dude, you are being ridiculous.
What are you saying? That because a majority of the people in the world use Windows, Gentoo should have a flashy installer?
If we give all the distros flashy installers and gear them to be simple and not as powerful, I will be in chains with the rest of them, so lets cut the nonsense.
People use Windows/Mac/Fedora/Gentoo/BSD/Amiga/etc because they want to, and that what fits them best. It makes sense, and there is nothing wrong with any of those choices. Stop trying to save those that don't want saving.
daniel
personally I think you are silly if you use packages or ebuilds when it comes to Apache + modules. Your best bet is to just do it from source.
I run gentoo, redhat or FreeBSD, and I never use any of their packages/ports/portage for Apache or MySQL anymore, it just rarely works out right if you have complex needs.
well... maybe the product itself isn't extremely innovative (haven't used it myself), but the way it came to be surely is.
How many other software companies ask that their engineers to spend one day a week working on a "personal" project?
This stradegy brought us google news and now orkut.
daniel
I think it was pretty ground breaking. It essentially launched a whole new genre. Now every week there is a new game coming out in this "genre"... "It's the simpsons, but like GTA." "Its Tony Hawk, but like GTA." "If you like GTA, you'll love..."
-mozilla (mozplugger)
-evolution (best guid email client ever)
-xmms
-mplayer (mozilla plugin)
-blackbox or xfce4 for window managment
-gaim
-openoffice 1.1
-xcdroast (cd burning)
-gv (pdf and postscript)
-zip/unzip/rar/unrar/unace/par for non standard archiving
-xterm
RT is a web system that recieves request via e-mail. I use it to manage requests from people in my office as well for my small webhosting company.
check it out
I know server beach uses it for their support system, and I believe that Rackspace does as well.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/requesttracker/?t
daniel
I agree with him... I just made the switch from xine to mplayer, and I must say, it is wonderful. Very light weight, and if you install the windows codecs, you can play anything including divx, asf, mpg, avi, mov, etc.
It is run from the command line (unless you compile the beta gui interface), and nothing I've seen runs smoother or lighter.
oh... all of adequacy is satire... I couldn't believe it when I read their mission statement... they all hate my guts over there. I think it is halarious though....
I am not saying he is going to find a good article, but that is the only place I have really seen anti open source stuff before... unless you look at the few articles posted by M$.
I personally think what they say is crap, and I have gotten into many discussions on the topic over there, but they may make some points that would be useful to you... The url is www.adequacy.org... They are extremely anti opensource and slashdot... Specifically look at the post "That's it, let's ban programming."
hope it helps
peace
I disagree. I think a good desktop os should have a lot of server tools, and let me explain why:
a) it aids in development if you can test stuff out locally. It is good to run a webserver and such.
b) makes it easier to connect remotely and do work when not at your perfect workstation.
Anyway, you can take all the server stuff out if you don't like it. If you are kernel savy, you can take it a step further and optimize it for your needs.
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
"Yes, competition is a good thing, but the mainstream public doesn't view this as competition, they view it as fragmentation."
"That's the part of the equation that tends to get
glossed over by the open source techy types, they tend to focus on the technical merits and they can't understand the need to align towards common goals and reduce any collaborative filtering which quite frankly ends up confusing John. Q. Consumer."
I guess that is probably because that isn't what they care about. I personally don't care if linux ever makes it to "John's" desktop. Since money isn't what drives open source, open source people don't care about "selling it" to the general public.
I guess the bottom line is, linux is linux. All the separate distros are just linux with a bunch of software installed on top of them. It is very possible to take two totally different distros, and make them look, feel, and act exactly the same. I think the different distros are good. Not for competition, but because they cover so many areas. There are a lot of distros with specific purposes in mind. You just have to choose the best for your needs.
"Several of my clients have told me point blank that they refuse to even look at Linux because they feel the environment is too unstable for a long term commitment."
I think that it is probably unwise for them to jump to this conclusion. What knowledge do they really have of linux? The CTO for a company I used to work for felt the same way, but after I was done with him he was quite the linux advocate.
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
DAMN!! I don't know if I would do that. Hey, if you are in the NYC area, you are welcome to a copy of mine. =) daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
What did you set your security setting to? I think it it is too restricted, it won't allow users to run su. You should also check to make sure your user has execute perms on /bin/su. Does it spit out any error?
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
Yeah, I had the same problem. I ended up just getting a boot floppy, and installing via ftp to one of the sites that _DON'T_ offer the isos. There is a lot less traffic on them, and it only takes about 2-3 hours to install over 1.4 mb dsl. It is better than waiting for days to get the isos.
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
I am actually really enjoying GNOME 1.4. I have heard of eazel bugs, but have not seen any myself. Eazel is the first file manager I have actually used under linux, and I am loving it! It is really nice to get away from the command line a little to try something new. I am happy with the choice that Mandrake made. daneil
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
I am really dissapointed with Redhat 7.x period. I have been using redhat on my desktop since version 5.0 (before that slackware).
When I went to upgrade my 7.0 box at home, the installer locked up. It does it everytime. Any one else have this problem? I am running a dual proc box with 1 GIG ram. It installed on my dell piece of crap at work no problem.
Last week I spent the time to install mandrake 8.0 via ftp (took about 3 hours). I have to say, I am way impressed, and extremely glad I went out on a limb to try a new distro. Mandrake 8.0 is the BEST desktop OS I have ever used. Font support is better, didn't have to upgrade a million software packages right after install, and it has support for reiser fs. I can't really explain why I like it better. I guess I just like the stuff Mandrake does by default. Usually it would take me days of configuring to get my Redhat box where I wanted it.
So, anyway, Mandrake is where it is at on the desktop. I still run a custom redhat 6.1/6.2 on all my servers, because that was a damn good release in my opinion. I must say that I am absolutely looking forward to what redhat 8.x will be like. Who knows, maybe I'll be back.
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
ok... I guess there was just a misunderstanding... I agree with you that if the isp looks like the bad guy, then yes, they will be pushing away business. cool...
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
"Would it make sense to go after every spammer who spams you? Probably not."
I think you are probably correct...
I get about 20-50 spams a day. I go after a small percentage of them by going through mail headers, and tracing it back to the isp. Sometimes with social engineering, I can get a lot of nifty info about the people behind the spam and have some fun. Sometimes there is actually enough info in the mail to identify people down to their home address (if you use the very useful tools/databases available to you on the www). You just have to get creative on how to track them down with the little info you have. I have found that social engineering is absolutely the best tool.
Now, I have never taken legal action before, but I have gotten quite a few booted off their isp, or added a significant amount of difficulty to their lives. I don't think it would be worth it or even possible to take legal action against all of them, because of the volume (in my case). My current technique takes up about 1-3 hours of my day, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. My sysadmin job is so boring, that spam fighting actually lightens up my day. =)
Anyway... the point is, we might not be able to sue them all, but I think if a few of us put some effort into it, we might be able to make it not worth it for the spammers.
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
yeah I know... I'm dumb... =)
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
This is the same guy by the way (rigged).
"they love to get rid of thier customers"
Why would that get rid of their customers? If the mpaa/riaa rid the earth of file sharing, I really doubt that anyone would take it out on the isps?
I understand the bandwidth is there to be used, and and I understand that they are laying new fiberoptics all the time. The point is, that they wouldn't have to lay so much fiber optics if people weren't clogging it all up with file sharing.
The only way your comment even makes sense is if the only reason for getting bandwidth is to share files. That is just not the case. I do use file sharing apps, but if they went away, I wouldn't cancel my dsl line. Would some people? probably.
I was just giving some insight as to why the isps might be willing to go along with this. You want another? Maybe the RIAA lined excite@home's pockets. I don't see why you would get all worked up over my comment. I probably agree with you on the whole file sharing business. I think this is a big mess, and we really need to start fighting back. How? Better technology.
"But, I don't guess your in the telcom industry are you?"
I don't see why I would have to be in the telcom industry to make a comment on the ethics of isps and the riaa. There was really nothing technical about my post.
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
I think all that flamingcow is trying to say is that it isn't the same as stealing a car. He isn't necessarily saying it is ok.
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org