... when they say "Linux", do they mean any particular distribution, or is it a total generalization about the whole subject?
I think its that latter, which is interesting, because it belies a weakness in one of Linux' primary strengths: poor brand control.
Let me explain: In fact, 'some' distributions of "Linux" are very insecure, and forked, and quite bogus when it comes to Enterprise computing.
However, we all know this doesn't apply to "All if Linux".. I dare say that the NSA's work on Linux has resulted in quite a secure operating system, were one to use their distribution.
It is interesting, however, that the argument is being made on "Enterprise" buttons.. the "insecurity of some distributions of Linux" is being used as a straw-man to divert managers' attention away from the very powerful fact of Linux in the Enterprise: any Enterprise which rolls its own Linux is going to have a superlative installation of the operating system.
As I have stated before, to me "Enterprise Linux" means rolling your own, plain and simple. Dufus admins may complaing "but this is too hard for us poor lowly administrators", but as I cut my teeth in big-iron Unix computing environments in the 70's, 80's, 90's and naughties, I have seen one kind of sysadmin to treasure and one to 'train', and the difference is on whether they can, in fact, assemble their own working installation/build from scratch, on a virgin disk/hardware configuration.
Whether or not a 'roll your own' is even 'thinkable' in a circumstance of computing use is, to me (and every Enterprise I've worked for/in) the standard which defines "enterprise" versus "personal/artistic" computing.
So, attacking Linux on its 'brand reality' and making overly generalized statements on 'the whole Linux scene' is to me a curious tactic, overlooking entirely that the best OS install for Enterprise is one hand-assembled by competent systems administrators.
(No, I do not personally think there is any argument for "competent systems administrator" not to include in its definition 'able to assemble and consequently administer own OS build'.. none whatsoever. No point arguing, it will not change 30 years of experience with reality. Every Sysadmin/Unix Guru/Linux type I've met, who was able to think in terms of "de-tar -> working system", was a guaranteed viable hire, while those who parrot the distro 'truths' are generally junior-qualified, at best, and will probably need to be watched..
Is completely missing the point: Enterprises should fork their own linux.
Tah-duh! New era of productivity for Enterprises' who can handle rolling their own.. of course, this would be 'bad for the distribution economy', but that overlooks the fact it'd be good for the 'teach people to effectively roll and administer their own enterprise systems' economy...
Don't sound too Australian any more. I for one actually enjoy living here.
Nationalism is for Sheep. The New World Order is upon us, there is nothing we can do about it other than think globally as citizens of the planet, not some cardboard-figure nation bent on subduing its citizens with "The Lifestyle Trap".
That includes shedding any nationalist hubris others may care to force upon you...
Sure, I miss the beaches, and I love the time spent with my laid-back and casual family, until they start robo-parroting the party line that "Lifestyle is King" and "Australia has it all", because as a result of my travels, far and wide, I know that not to be as true as they depend..
I'm Australian, lived in the U.S. for almost half my life, and now live in Germany.
All of these countries make crap beer compared to the Japanese micro-breweries I frequented (often) while I lived in Tokyo... yes, I believe that Japanese beer trumps German beer, which trumps American beer, which beats the living crap out of Australian beer...
This is completely irrelevant. If you need $COMMERCIAL_APPLICATION and $COMMERCIAL_APPLICATION is only supported on $COMMERCIAL_DISTRO, then you have to use $COMMERCIAL_DISTRO. If *you* can't learn how to administer $COMMERCIAL_DISTRO, that's *your* failing as a professional.
Show me a commercial distro that i cannot re-build myself from scratch and i'll show you a GPL violation.
This whole "only runs on supported platform A" argument is ludicrous; if RedHat can build a system that will run Oracle, then.. so can any competent system administrator.
America isn't in "deep economic [shit]" because of people trying to *save* money, it's because of your president and various other high-flyers throwing it around amongst themselves like sailors in a brothel.
America is in stagnant economic entropy because its people refuse to take any personal responsibility for the situation, instead finding it fashionable to blame politics at every turn, ignoring the fact completely that those politicians are representative of what the people want.. and if they're not, then the 'system' has failed, then, hasn't it.. and why has it failed? Because the American people fail to take any responsibility, playing blame games when they should be working on themselves, instead...
I'm Australian, but have not lived there in quite a while.
Every time I go back, I'm disgusted by just how corporate-bitch that nation has become. I shouldn't be surprised; Australia has pretty much always been the Gimp Nation of the Western Imperialists, but stories like this just ring the bell even clearer.
Will Australia ever change? I don't think so; I believe it is the model state for what is planned for other formerly-great nations...
As I work for a hardware vendor with an avid interest in operating systems for the embedded sphere, I would like to see more effort on the positive spin of GPL violations, and less on the policing spin.
What do I mean? Why hasn't someone thought to set up a "GPLCertification.org" site, where vendors could get their products certified as GPL compatible?
Police-state tactics, of repairing the damage 'after the fact', don't suit the F/OSS ideology, in my opinion. Far better to put in some up front creative energy into coordinating GPL usage, than to wait for someone to violate it and then butt-rape them in the courtrooms.
1. Commercial software that is only supported in certified environments.
i know of very few truly professional, commercial vendors, whose certification standards are worth more than a properly employed sysadmin, keeping his machines running, because he knows what he's doing with the entire operating system, all the way to the most-use app. worth what they get paid for, and far, far more above..
2. Cost (software is cheap, people time is expensive)... and this, sir, is why america is in deep, deep, economic du-du.. software *is* cheap, and shouldn't *ever* be compared to people as a 'cost line item'. attitudes such as that are cheap!!
a sysadmin maintains a currently running system. the most appropriate metric is uptime, i.e. how much is the system actually being used, measured in time.
a sysadmin familiar with their own hand-rolled OS install, first of all, can have a much higher-tuned awareness of what is occurring on the system, than that of the average RH de-tarball'er..
if i know for sure i've got a/sbin and/bin tree, and very little else but my intended most-use apps, and absolutely zero cruft that i didn't put there myself, then i've got a much easier to maintain system. uptime is wonderful under such circumstances.
if, however, i have no clue whatsoever what some.DLL somewhere is for, let alone if there is a good reason to have 31 different copies of it splattered all over the furniture, then i've got someone elses mess on my hands, which are expected to keep it running and clean. no thanks. uptime under such circumstances is unpleasant.
here's some linux advice i have learned to give as well as heed: take some real time to really learn something complicated, or difficult, do not avoid the things you don't understand; the very fact of its existence is evidence that -someone- understood it, so just be like them, only slower..
and never forget that the true lesson of linux is that sometimes, good things are often worth far more than the effort spent. i firmly believe this applies to a 'roll your own' policy of sysadmin, especially when it comes to running important enterprises, as well as it does any other aspect of the open source movement..
no, it is irresponsibility which is ruining your economy. most people have their heads so far up TV's ass that they just don't want to have anything to do with any kind of responsibility, whatsoever.
this whole thread has been predicated on the responsibilities of a 'good system administrator', and i have attempted to demonstrate that it is the 'fully responsible' kind that is the best, and thus the best distro for enterprise is one that suits this model: roll your own.
but, courtesy of american law, the responsibility for things is being bled out of that once great nation, daily...
its more time consuming and expensive if you haven't already done it, and don't know what you're doing.
but, trust me, do something hard once, and its hard. do something hard a few times, and it becomes easy. do it enough times after that, and you find ways not to do it so hard as you did it the first time.
if you roll your own system, it may be hard once. but you won't roll systems so hard after that... 'good admins', and in my opinion generally good linux users, don't fear this.
"a decent admin" would do it once, properly, in a couple of days, get things online in a week, and from that point on be doing proper clones of the OS partition, when and where needed. a proper enterprise would have a plan to accomodate this. it does not take 6 months to get a working linux system online, it takes working hardware and a competent build engineer. good enterprise has those, whether its a hat worn by one or many..
and i believe it is true that i need to 'get a life'. alas, my life has been spent in far too many computer operating environments, computer rooms, vaults, cellars, etc.
Then they go for a beer, because everything works.
'a decent admin' goes for a beer, because everything works, and also because he knows precisely how everything works.
distro-fed linux newbies seem to think 'redhat'==business, but in fact, good business does roll its own.
There is absolutely no reason for a company wanting to use Linux, to not have its administrators roll their own distro, with their own builds of whatever apps they need.
"Enterprise" means "not being too lazy to do it properly, so that it works" in my book, so before you MSCDE weenies get all GUI, let me just insult you all right now: if you aren't rolling your own, you're a mouse monkey at best..
.. when there are Secret Laws, and Shields of Confidentiality, all over the U.S. Government.
"National Security" [includes] "Anything that might lead to Civil Law"... the Feds have committed some pretty heinous crimes, you know, which the general public are forbidden to know about.
Face it, America, you have lost control of your government, and it is running amok. PATRIOT Act was among the last 'acts' of a grand tragic play that may as well be called "The Death of America".
The reason 'its stupid' is because nobody else speaks it, as you point out. But, you know, it would be cool if you could speak another language, generally, in any country in the world, and people would understand.
The world citizen needs to be multi-lingual. Thus, encouraging other languages, in other languages, is worth the effort.
So it cheeses you off? It cheeses me off, daily, das den Deutschen sprichst viel besser English als ich kann in Deutsch.. so it'd be nice to hear Americans encouraging each other to use other language...
whatever. the hubble is useless junk. i'd rather NASA stop spending million$ on 'missions' and spent it all - every single bit of it - on sustainable human living, space research and development.
we do not need to know more about some place we, the starving human species, have no chance yet whatsoever of going to, living at, or exploiting in some way to solve the problems of our species.
sure, lots of 'hard science' can be learned from gazing off into the distant universe, but even more can be learned from spending 20 million bucks on human survival.
send man to space, work out better ways to improve a humans life under adverse conditions, and turn that technology back into the human back yard.. astrophysics rarely solves hunger, starvation, or thirst...
yet again, microsoft take a major failing in their operating system, and use it as a reason to market yet 'more innovation'.
how about you *FIX* your godamn broken binary system, microsoft? hello, its the 21st century, whats wrong with App Bundles? we don't need no new 'autorun CD' fix, we need a way to administer your horrid little operating system without wandering into.DLL hell. FIX THAT PROBLEM!
we don't need more 'wonder-solutions' from this company. we need to stop being trapped by their awful technology.
this is like saying, to start a fire, you need a big huge can of gasoline.
you do not need money to get a startup going. you need motivation, good people to work with, paying customers, and cunning thriftiness.
give some moron who thinks the only way to start fires, a big can of gasoline, and you'll have a disaster on your hands, probably a crispy moron.
paying customers is the hard part, but then, software is a wonderful tool.. you can 'squidgy' it in many different cracks, it'll fix pretty much any borked 'system', whatever form...
Slashdot Mirror
... when they say "Linux", do they mean any particular distribution, or is it a total generalization about the whole subject?
.. I dare say that the NSA's work on Linux has resulted in quite a secure operating system, were one to use their distribution.
.. none whatsoever. No point arguing, it will not change 30 years of experience with reality. Every Sysadmin/Unix Guru/Linux type I've met, who was able to think in terms of "de-tar -> working system", was a guaranteed viable hire, while those who parrot the distro 'truths' are generally junior-qualified, at best, and will probably need to be watched..
I think its that latter, which is interesting, because it belies a weakness in one of Linux' primary strengths: poor brand control.
Let me explain: In fact, 'some' distributions of "Linux" are very insecure, and forked, and quite bogus when it comes to Enterprise computing.
However, we all know this doesn't apply to "All if Linux"
It is interesting, however, that the argument is being made on "Enterprise" buttons.. the "insecurity of some distributions of Linux" is being used as a straw-man to divert managers' attention away from the very powerful fact of Linux in the Enterprise: any Enterprise which rolls its own Linux is going to have a superlative installation of the operating system.
As I have stated before, to me "Enterprise Linux" means rolling your own, plain and simple. Dufus admins may complaing "but this is too hard for us poor lowly administrators", but as I cut my teeth in big-iron Unix computing environments in the 70's, 80's, 90's and naughties, I have seen one kind of sysadmin to treasure and one to 'train', and the difference is on whether they can, in fact, assemble their own working installation/build from scratch, on a virgin disk/hardware configuration.
Whether or not a 'roll your own' is even 'thinkable' in a circumstance of computing use is, to me (and every Enterprise I've worked for/in) the standard which defines "enterprise" versus "personal/artistic" computing.
So, attacking Linux on its 'brand reality' and making overly generalized statements on 'the whole Linux scene' is to me a curious tactic, overlooking entirely that the best OS install for Enterprise is one hand-assembled by competent systems administrators.
(No, I do not personally think there is any argument for "competent systems administrator" not to include in its definition 'able to assemble and consequently administer own OS build'
Is completely missing the point: Enterprises should fork their own linux.
.. of course, this would be 'bad for the distribution economy', but that overlooks the fact it'd be good for the 'teach people to effectively roll and administer their own enterprise systems' economy ...
Tah-duh! New era of productivity for Enterprises' who can handle rolling their own
Heh heh .. right on. Good point.
Don't sound too Australian any more. I for one actually enjoy living here.
..
Nationalism is for Sheep. The New World Order is upon us, there is nothing we can do about it other than think globally as citizens of the planet, not some cardboard-figure nation bent on subduing its citizens with "The Lifestyle Trap".
That includes shedding any nationalist hubris others may care to force upon you...
Sure, I miss the beaches, and I love the time spent with my laid-back and casual family, until they start robo-parroting the party line that "Lifestyle is King" and "Australia has it all", because as a result of my travels, far and wide, I know that not to be as true as they depend
I'm Australian, lived in the U.S. for almost half my life, and now live in Germany.
... yes, I believe that Japanese beer trumps German beer, which trumps American beer, which beats the living crap out of Australian beer ...
All of these countries make crap beer compared to the Japanese micro-breweries I frequented (often) while I lived in Tokyo
This is completely irrelevant. If you need $COMMERCIAL_APPLICATION and $COMMERCIAL_APPLICATION is only supported on $COMMERCIAL_DISTRO, then you have to use $COMMERCIAL_DISTRO. If *you* can't learn how to administer $COMMERCIAL_DISTRO, that's *your* failing as a professional.
.. so can any competent system administrator.
.. and why has it failed? Because the American people fail to take any responsibility, playing blame games when they should be working on themselves, instead ...
Show me a commercial distro that i cannot re-build myself from scratch and i'll show you a GPL violation.
This whole "only runs on supported platform A" argument is ludicrous; if RedHat can build a system that will run Oracle, then
America isn't in "deep economic [shit]" because of people trying to *save* money, it's because of your president and various other high-flyers throwing it around amongst themselves like sailors in a brothel.
America is in stagnant economic entropy because its people refuse to take any personal responsibility for the situation, instead finding it fashionable to blame politics at every turn, ignoring the fact completely that those politicians are representative of what the people want.. and if they're not, then the 'system' has failed, then, hasn't it
I'm Australian, but have not lived there in quite a while.
Every time I go back, I'm disgusted by just how corporate-bitch that nation has become. I shouldn't be surprised; Australia has pretty much always been the Gimp Nation of the Western Imperialists, but stories like this just ring the bell even clearer.
Will Australia ever change? I don't think so; I believe it is the model state for what is planned for other formerly-great nations
As I work for a hardware vendor with an avid interest in operating systems for the embedded sphere, I would like to see more effort on the positive spin of GPL violations, and less on the policing spin.
What do I mean? Why hasn't someone thought to set up a "GPLCertification.org" site, where vendors could get their products certified as GPL compatible?
Police-state tactics, of repairing the damage 'after the fact', don't suit the F/OSS ideology, in my opinion. Far better to put in some up front creative energy into coordinating GPL usage, than to wait for someone to violate it and then butt-rape them in the courtrooms.
1. Commercial software that is only supported in certified environments.
..
.. and this, sir, is why america is in deep, deep, economic du-du .. software *is* cheap, and shouldn't *ever* be compared to people as a 'cost line item'. attitudes such as that are cheap!!
i know of very few truly professional, commercial vendors, whose certification standards are worth more than a properly employed sysadmin, keeping his machines running, because he knows what he's doing with the entire operating system, all the way to the most-use app. worth what they get paid for, and far, far more above
2. Cost (software is cheap, people time is expensive).
a sysadmin maintains a currently running system. the most appropriate metric is uptime, i.e. how much is the system actually being used, measured in time.
/sbin and /bin tree, and very little else but my intended most-use apps, and absolutely zero cruft that i didn't put there myself, then i've got a much easier to maintain system. uptime is wonderful under such circumstances.
.DLL somewhere is for, let alone if there is a good reason to have 31 different copies of it splattered all over the furniture, then i've got someone elses mess on my hands, which are expected to keep it running and clean. no thanks. uptime under such circumstances is unpleasant.
..
a sysadmin familiar with their own hand-rolled OS install, first of all, can have a much higher-tuned awareness of what is occurring on the system, than that of the average RH de-tarball'er..
if i know for sure i've got a
if, however, i have no clue whatsoever what some
here's some linux advice i have learned to give as well as heed: take some real time to really learn something complicated, or difficult, do not avoid the things you don't understand; the very fact of its existence is evidence that -someone- understood it, so just be like them, only slower..
and never forget that the true lesson of linux is that sometimes, good things are often worth far more than the effort spent. i firmly believe this applies to a 'roll your own' policy of sysadmin, especially when it comes to running important enterprises, as well as it does any other aspect of the open source movement
no, it is irresponsibility which is ruining your economy. most people have their heads so far up TV's ass that they just don't want to have anything to do with any kind of responsibility, whatsoever.
...
this whole thread has been predicated on the responsibilities of a 'good system administrator', and i have attempted to demonstrate that it is the 'fully responsible' kind that is the best, and thus the best distro for enterprise is one that suits this model: roll your own.
but, courtesy of american law, the responsibility for things is being bled out of that once great nation, daily
its more time consuming and expensive if you haven't already done it, and don't know what you're doing.
but, trust me, do something hard once, and its hard. do something hard a few times, and it becomes easy. do it enough times after that, and you find ways not to do it so hard as you did it the first time.
if you roll your own system, it may be hard once. but you won't roll systems so hard after that... 'good admins', and in my opinion generally good linux users, don't fear this.
"a decent admin" would do it once, properly, in a couple of days, get things online in a week, and from that point on be doing proper clones of the OS partition, when and where needed. a proper enterprise would have a plan to accomodate this. it does not take 6 months to get a working linux system online, it takes working hardware and a competent build engineer. good enterprise has those, whether its a hat worn by one or many ..
and i believe it is true that i need to 'get a life'. alas, my life has been spent in far too many computer operating environments, computer rooms, vaults, cellars, etc.
Then they go for a beer, because everything works.
'a decent admin' goes for a beer, because everything works, and also because he knows precisely how everything works.
distro-fed linux newbies seem to think 'redhat'==business, but in fact, good business does roll its own.
There is absolutely no reason for a company wanting to use Linux, to not have its administrators roll their own distro, with their own builds of whatever apps they need.
"Enterprise" means "not being too lazy to do it properly, so that it works" in my book, so before you MSCDE weenies get all GUI, let me just insult you all right now: if you aren't rolling your own, you're a mouse monkey at best..
"National Security" [includes] "Anything that might lead to Civil Law"
Face it, America, you have lost control of your government, and it is running amok. PATRIOT Act was among the last 'acts' of a grand tragic play that may as well be called "The Death of America".
.. just gives geeks a reason to get all 'gun-like' in their poses.
there's no reason this project couldn't have been done in the shape of a Happy Fun Ball.
I lived in LA for 15 years, and I think I cooked for myself maybe .. 6 .. times.
..
Thats life in the Borg for you. Sorry, but I'll never be able to cook a burrito like the lower classes do
Movie-making will never be a real religion until it has its own rituals, and the re-make is one...
The reason 'its stupid' is because nobody else speaks it, as you point out. But, you know, it would be cool if you could speak another language, generally, in any country in the world, and people would understand.
.. so it'd be nice to hear Americans encouraging each other to use other language...
The world citizen needs to be multi-lingual. Thus, encouraging other languages, in other languages, is worth the effort.
So it cheeses you off? It cheeses me off, daily, das den Deutschen sprichst viel besser English als ich kann in Deutsch
next thing you know, they'll merge and form intelija, inc. or some shit like that.
wake me up when they're shipping a product, not dedicating their lives to service.
i'd be willing to wait for a g5 powerbook, if i could get a dual-proc one ..
whatever. the hubble is useless junk. i'd rather NASA stop spending million$ on 'missions' and spent it all - every single bit of it - on sustainable human living, space research and development.
we do not need to know more about some place we, the starving human species, have no chance yet whatsoever of going to, living at, or exploiting in some way to solve the problems of our species.
sure, lots of 'hard science' can be learned from gazing off into the distant universe, but even more can be learned from spending 20 million bucks on human survival.
send man to space, work out better ways to improve a humans life under adverse conditions, and turn that technology back into the human back yard
yet again, microsoft take a major failing in their operating system, and use it as a reason to market yet 'more innovation'.
how about you *FIX* your godamn broken binary system, microsoft? hello, its the 21st century, whats wrong with App Bundles? we don't need no new 'autorun CD' fix, we need a way to administer your horrid little operating system without wandering into
we don't need more 'wonder-solutions' from this company. we need to stop being trapped by their awful technology.
this is like saying, to start a fire, you need a big huge can of gasoline.
you do not need money to get a startup going. you need motivation, good people to work with, paying customers, and cunning thriftiness.
give some moron who thinks the only way to start fires, a big can of gasoline, and you'll have a disaster on your hands, probably a crispy moron.
paying customers is the hard part, but then, software is a wonderful tool
"greater", not "larger".
stars cannot be any [something] sum greater than 150 times the same [something] sum of our sun.