Exactly. The Chinese know their government is large and does not have any notion of civil liberties. We accept the belief that we are free so dogmatically that we refuse to vigilantly guard it, and it slowly erodes...
The phrase "give me liberty or give me death" makes us feel warm inside, but when Dick Chaney says on record that when the next attack comes, Americans should expect to see their civil liberties suspended, no one even notices it.
My father works for British Petrolium and used to work in China. I spent the summers of there for a few years. They block just about any domain that contains any word related to criminal activity. At the time, they blocked sourceforge.net subdomains because a robot found the words "mp3" on several of the hosted project pages.
They take censorship very seriously over there. Frankly, it would surprise me more if they didn't detain him.
I like Gentoo's forums. It gives a chance for eager 14-year old Gentoo users to cry out in zealotous rapture AND be on-topic.
Just keep it to yourselves, please.
On a serious note, I admit that Gentoo is the most well maintained distribution out there, and has the best free support when you consider the forums. However, I find a lot of Gentoo zealots feel like they're more in control of their system because of Gentoo. Control is a function of knowledge, not end user tools.
People that use Gentoo and know Linux are cool. They don't run around the internet telling everyone about Gentoo, either. There is another type of Gentoo user. This user usually starts off with an easy distribution, gets frustrated because he doesn't know what the hell he is doing, hears about Gentoo, manages to get it installed thanks to the forums, and runs around telling everyone that "rpms suck, all I have to do is 'emerge app,'" or "Gentoo is faster because you compile it for your host system." I'm honestly very sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics.
No distro can claim the fact that it has indirectly made thousands of users cringe at hearing the words "compiled for the host system" in any way, shape or form.
I'll believe that when I see it. Shells are nice, but they need a bunch of cool tools like sed, wc, tail, grep, etc. Writing such a complete shell would be essentially rewriting DOS.
Hello!?!? Those are applications that run on top of the shell, and they already exist. There's no need for them to make new versions to go with a new shell.
Mod parent DOWN. Too bad there's not a "-1, Pointy_Haired_Boss" moderation.
CLI tools go hand in hand with the shell. If you think Microsoft is willing to develop a new CLI, and use gnu's cli tools, you're mistaken. I could see them using bsd-licenced tools, but look at what my point was within the context of the parent:
What if this shell actually knocks the socks off *sh?
If it is the case that Microsoft uses existing tools for this next-gen CLI, I sincerely doubt it will "knock the socks off" what I use:)
Anonymous Cowards that try and yell for moderation are like annoying parents at high school football games that try and tell the referees how to call plays.
I agree with your post, from the standpoint of "what do desktop Linux distributions need to do to get corporate customers, and eventually SOHO users?"
However, I was responding to my parent making the assertion that everyone who develops for Linux is on some sort of Manifest Destiny to replace Windows.
That's the attitude that will always make linux lag behind windows on the desktop. Joe sixpack wants smart software, and right now windows and os x are really his only options.
Untrue. There are many distributions out there seeking to make Linux as "smart" as Windows. Read what I was responding to. My argument is not that Linux shouldn't be made easy, just that not ease-of-use is a goal of desktop-oriented distributions, and they should be 100% concerned with making "smart" software. My argument is merely that this is not the goal of everyone who uses Linux, which is what the parent implied.
Please don't take sentences out of context and extrapolate bogus conclusions.
You get rated 'Insightful' for stating what OpenSource zealots hope. What if this shell actually knocks the socks off *sh?
I'll believe that when I see it. Shells are nice, but they need a bunch of cool tools like sed, wc, tail, grep, etc. Writing such a complete shell would be essentially rewriting DOS.
What if Longhorn does indeed provide more security, not only in default settings, but more inherently in the OpenSource?
That's a really generalized statement. More security inherent in the operating system means more separation of access controls. That means forcing the user to create a non-Administrator account, locking down it's priveleges, often preventing even read access to quite a few things by default. I don't think that's going to happen.
Also, no operating system is totally secure. Holes are found every day in both proprietary and open source and free software. All things being equal (the security of the software design), the security, then, is measured more by the response time once a hole is found,
Do you think the average developer/manager at MS is dumber than your average OS participant? (This is not a tric.. Damn, I'm falling in myself..)
No, but there's a lot more people working on the open source and free software that makes up a GNU/Linux distribution.
But really - if "we" are to compete, we will have to steal the ideas that "work" from MS camp, just as they're "stealing" "our" ideas that WORK.
For us to compete at what? To have a desktop that's just as easy to use as Windows? I'm sorry, smart software makes stupid users. I prefer to use stupid software that doesn't get in my way.
Linux is narrowing the gap to MS on the desktop (albeit slowly), and MS is narrowing the gap to Unix on eg. CLI, stability and security. Their software matures too, you know..
Windows is still ass expensive, and requires even more expensive hardware to run. All things being equal, price will determine the winner. I still see no need to think of all af "Linuxdom" under one umbrella of trying to create a desktop operating system as easy to use as Windows.
And then there's Apple. They make fun stuff. The are not afraid to invent, and they have the money to launch stuff that the OpenSource movement cannot. I don't quite know where to place them compared to OpenSource and MS.
Here's a tip: don't be so eager to compare the two in the first place.
Wouldn't a script whose only fuction is to point apt to non-free repositories, hence facilitating the installation of non-free software, preclude Debian from being "100% Free Software?" Is the script any more "free" than free packages that depend on non-free software to run?
Yes, that is pretty wierd. Upgrading glibc fixed things? I find that odd, since glibc is built against/usr/include's kernel headers, not whatever kernel that you're running. Since kernel headers are never symlinked, and instead copied, there shouldn't be any problems; glibc should happily use the old 2.4.x headers with a shiny 2.6.x kernel running.
Look through kernel.org's bugzilla. I am not a kernel developer, so I can't really help you. Any references I made to "we" are made to "we who want 2.6.0 final to come out as quickly as possible."
Basically, don't forget that "testing" in this case does not mean seeing if it works for you, but seeing if it doesn't work for you. Lots of folks have problems with it, and then just revert back to 2.4. We need people that experience problems to a) see if others are having that problem and have reported it, and if not, b) send a report back to Bugzilla. Also, read This document before sending any reports.
So with the above in mind, right now the tentative schedule is to release test10 in another week and let that just simmer for a while. If that looks like it might be 'the thing,' we'll end up calling it 2.6.0 (trying hard to avoid last-minute fixes). If we find any issues that need attention, we'll cut a test11 and so on, but the hope really is that we'll be done by early December.
If y'all want to see 2.6.0 by early December, get out and try it! I've been using 2.6 test kernels for a while, and haven't encountered any troubles.
You clearly don't get what free software is all about.
Careful. Free-as-in-speech doesn't mean the same thing to a BSD advocate as it does to a GPL advocate. If a corporation modifies my code and uses it to build a closed source improvement, I may not necessarily care, so long as I can continue work on my project.
Perhaps by companies using my code, companies can become more successful and hire more employees? Develop more software that helps people? So what if it restricts freedom to the users who don't care about those freedoms?
The original copyright applied to publishers and restricted their freedom to copy works published by others. The reader of the work didn't have a printing press, and gave up a freedom (republication) that he didn't care about. Even RMS admits this.
What if end users don't care about the freedom to modify software?
True, but I don't mind the topic to be broadened to "So for those who have been waiting to ditch Windows but need the apps, we are one big step closer to Getting There, and might even suit your needs already."
The problem comes when a topic moves a step further, and becomes "To all those people who think Linux isn't ready for the desktop, It Is."
> Actually, if I had any mod points left, I'd mod him up.
Ok, let me show you why he's wrong.
> "woohoo, now we emulate Mini-Notepad-Lite v0.01, so Linux is ready for the desktop"
The article is about two very large applications, not one tiny one.
> Incidentally, it's another reason why Linux is still utterly unfit for Joe Average's desktop.
Does that have anything to do with the article? This article is noting the fact that two big applications now work (more ore less) with Crossover's wine that couldn't before. The article doesn't claim anything about "Linux" being "ready" for anything, merely some important progress has been made, and Dreamweaver and Flash MX users who want to switch to a Linux distribution, but previously couldn't, now can.
When an article (or post) comes up claiming that "Linux" is "ready" for "end users," you are more than correct in stating your opinion to the contrary, but that is not the case here, and you (as well as Sir Haxalot) are inserting your own imagined adversary into the equation in order to make a point about Linux.
You'll find that most Linux users are interested in the betterment of their Operating System, not pleasing you and Sir Haxalot. Distributions that aim to please Windows users, however, are all ears as to why you don't like their work.
I'll ditch windows when someone comes up with an OS that supports ALL the applications and games I currently run, and is faster or has some other 'thing' that would be beneficial to me.
You're not that special. Many thousands of volunteer developers don't write an operating system to suit you, they write to suit them. Companies that try and win Windows users over only really target the ones that are tired of Windows. Besides, your reserved position works the other way. I'll ditch Linux and use Windows when:
I can open it up and see what's inside.
I don't have to rely on MS for patches to come
Windows gets rid of product activation keys
Is affordable
It can run Gnome
It eliminates spyware (you wouldn't see spyware on Linux, even IF it traded marketshare with Windows)
It eliminates viruses (same deal).
When it gets some form of package management
Has a decent CLI
Ditches the registry
Stops mixing actual configuration with advertisements (just try and connect to the internet with their wizard).
Supports all the hardware I have (I've got a lot of old stuff I run Linux on).
What, specifically, does one 'hack' in Windows, anyways?:P
The linux users had no idea they were infringing! SCO had no idea they were violating the GPL! It's a great big ignorance party. But you can't have it both ways, can you?
SCO thinks they can, since SCO is not charging folks for having used Linux all this time (although I'd imaging the damages they are suing for have something to do with income they missed out on), merely if they want to use it in the future.
SCO get try and get away with saying "no one knew about the code in question, but now we do, so people who want to use Linux must pay us money, since it has our code in it." In which case, the GPL yet again breaks, since it knowingly is coexisting with copyrighted code in the same source tree.
So suppose the GPL is found to be invalid. SCO now claims that the entire contract is void, in which case the code had no right to be in the kernel in the first place, except that's where we...
Segmentation fault. I see you're point, and it sent me into an infinite loop...
This means that SCO is in massive trouble, since they violated the licenses of all the Linux contributors _themselves_, by distributing Linux with their proprietary code incorporated into it. This is forbidden by the GPL (Linux's license), which (basically) forces participants to contribute their work for free or not at all. (That's the whole point of the affair, really.) And as we just established, ignorance is not an excuse. The fact that SCO might not have known they were breaking this rule wouldn't save them.
Not entirely true. The above could happen, but it's equally likely that IBM will be in violation of the GPL for putting the code in Linux, not SCO. Be careful when you decide there's only a few possible solutions, then discuss the ramifications of each one as if that were the entire set of possible outcomes.
Companies that don't want their "IP" infringed should take care not to let people see it, and if they do, keep a close eye on what they do with it. If anything this shows that open source software is better at protecting IP than closed source software, on the grounds that one can actually see if said code is infringing on someones copyrights or patents.
Good point. The whole being part of the "Games" section of Slashdot threw me off...
It would be a scary future where people interact from their computers and not in "reality." Maybe that's just coming from someone who doesn't really understand the subject well, and judges a priori.
We all know what Gentoo has to offer. This is a Vector Linux article. We should discuss the technical merits and faults of Vector Linux, not use it as a soap-box for Gentoo zealots to blow their wad over how great they think their distro is.
What is cooler than the local building about Gentoo is that I find portage personally easier to use than apt, and Gentoo's init & rc setup is IMO just awesome.
You don't have to stick to your distros init & rc setup. You could even make "init" a bash script containing functions for every runlevel, and have it call the appropriate one, based on the parameters passed.
Personally, I use just 3 bootscripts, one to start, one to stop, and one to enter multi user mode. For me, the best distro is the one that has the least amount of bloat to whine about me changing things around.
I use Crux, a much more user-managed distribution than Gentoo, and have taken out devfs, hacked the init scripts, hacked the ports tree to my liking, etc. Using Gentoo from Crux is honestly like moving from a manual transmission to an automatic (something I'll never, ever do.
I like ports trees that are easy to hack, not done for you (there are always times when you really want ports to behave differently than the official tree).
Slashdot Mirror
The phrase "give me liberty or give me death" makes us feel warm inside, but when Dick Chaney says on record that when the next attack comes, Americans should expect to see their civil liberties suspended, no one even notices it.
They take censorship very seriously over there. Frankly, it would surprise me more if they didn't detain him.
Just keep it to yourselves, please.
On a serious note, I admit that Gentoo is the most well maintained distribution out there, and has the best free support when you consider the forums. However, I find a lot of Gentoo zealots feel like they're more in control of their system because of Gentoo. Control is a function of knowledge, not end user tools.
People that use Gentoo and know Linux are cool. They don't run around the internet telling everyone about Gentoo, either. There is another type of Gentoo user. This user usually starts off with an easy distribution, gets frustrated because he doesn't know what the hell he is doing, hears about Gentoo, manages to get it installed thanks to the forums, and runs around telling everyone that "rpms suck, all I have to do is 'emerge app,'" or "Gentoo is faster because you compile it for your host system." I'm honestly very sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics.
No distro can claim the fact that it has indirectly made thousands of users cringe at hearing the words "compiled for the host system" in any way, shape or form.
CLI tools go hand in hand with the shell. If you think Microsoft is willing to develop a new CLI, and use gnu's cli tools, you're mistaken. I could see them using bsd-licenced tools, but look at what my point was within the context of the parent:
If it is the case that Microsoft uses existing tools for this next-gen CLI, I sincerely doubt it will "knock the socks off" what I use :)
Anonymous Cowards that try and yell for moderation are like annoying parents at high school football games that try and tell the referees how to call plays.
However, I was responding to my parent making the assertion that everyone who develops for Linux is on some sort of Manifest Destiny to replace Windows.
However, those are all free software tools. Windows would never use them for a new cli.
Untrue. There are many distributions out there seeking to make Linux as "smart" as Windows. Read what I was responding to. My argument is not that Linux shouldn't be made easy, just that not ease-of-use is a goal of desktop-oriented distributions, and they should be 100% concerned with making "smart" software. My argument is merely that this is not the goal of everyone who uses Linux, which is what the parent implied.
Please don't take sentences out of context and extrapolate bogus conclusions.
I'll believe that when I see it. Shells are nice, but they need a bunch of cool tools like sed, wc, tail, grep, etc. Writing such a complete shell would be essentially rewriting DOS.
What if Longhorn does indeed provide more security, not only in default settings, but more inherently in the OpenSource?
That's a really generalized statement. More security inherent in the operating system means more separation of access controls. That means forcing the user to create a non-Administrator account, locking down it's priveleges, often preventing even read access to quite a few things by default. I don't think that's going to happen.
Also, no operating system is totally secure. Holes are found every day in both proprietary and open source and free software. All things being equal (the security of the software design), the security, then, is measured more by the response time once a hole is found,
Do you think the average developer/manager at MS is dumber than your average OS participant? (This is not a tric.. Damn, I'm falling in myself..)
No, but there's a lot more people working on the open source and free software that makes up a GNU/Linux distribution.
But really - if "we" are to compete, we will have to steal the ideas that "work" from MS camp, just as they're "stealing" "our" ideas that WORK.
For us to compete at what? To have a desktop that's just as easy to use as Windows? I'm sorry, smart software makes stupid users. I prefer to use stupid software that doesn't get in my way.
Linux is narrowing the gap to MS on the desktop (albeit slowly), and MS is narrowing the gap to Unix on eg. CLI, stability and security. Their software matures too, you know..
Windows is still ass expensive, and requires even more expensive hardware to run. All things being equal, price will determine the winner. I still see no need to think of all af "Linuxdom" under one umbrella of trying to create a desktop operating system as easy to use as Windows.
And then there's Apple. They make fun stuff. The are not afraid to invent, and they have the money to launch stuff that the OpenSource movement cannot. I don't quite know where to place them compared to OpenSource and MS.
Here's a tip: don't be so eager to compare the two in the first place.
Wouldn't a script whose only fuction is to point apt to non-free repositories, hence facilitating the installation of non-free software, preclude Debian from being "100% Free Software?" Is the script any more "free" than free packages that depend on non-free software to run?
Look through kernel.org's bugzilla. I am not a kernel developer, so I can't really help you. Any references I made to "we" are made to "we who want 2.6.0 final to come out as quickly as possible."
Basically, don't forget that "testing" in this case does not mean seeing if it works for you, but seeing if it doesn't work for you. Lots of folks have problems with it, and then just revert back to 2.4. We need people that experience problems to a) see if others are having that problem and have reported it, and if not, b) send a report back to Bugzilla. Also, read This document before sending any reports.
If y'all want to see 2.6.0 by early December, get out and try it! I've been using 2.6 test kernels for a while, and haven't encountered any troubles.
Careful. Free-as-in-speech doesn't mean the same thing to a BSD advocate as it does to a GPL advocate. If a corporation modifies my code and uses it to build a closed source improvement, I may not necessarily care, so long as I can continue work on my project.
Perhaps by companies using my code, companies can become more successful and hire more employees? Develop more software that helps people? So what if it restricts freedom to the users who don't care about those freedoms?
The original copyright applied to publishers and restricted their freedom to copy works published by others. The reader of the work didn't have a printing press, and gave up a freedom (republication) that he didn't care about. Even RMS admits this.
What if end users don't care about the freedom to modify software?
The problem comes when a topic moves a step further, and becomes "To all those people who think Linux isn't ready for the desktop, It Is."
Does that have anything to do with the article? This article is noting the fact that two big applications now work (more ore less) with Crossover's wine that couldn't before. The article doesn't claim anything about "Linux" being "ready" for anything, merely some important progress has been made, and Dreamweaver and Flash MX users who want to switch to a Linux distribution, but previously couldn't, now can.
When an article (or post) comes up claiming that "Linux" is "ready" for "end users," you are more than correct in stating your opinion to the contrary, but that is not the case here, and you (as well as Sir Haxalot) are inserting your own imagined adversary into the equation in order to make a point about Linux.
You'll find that most Linux users are interested in the betterment of their Operating System, not pleasing you and Sir Haxalot. Distributions that aim to please Windows users, however, are all ears as to why you don't like their work.
You're not that special. Many thousands of volunteer developers don't write an operating system to suit you, they write to suit them. Companies that try and win Windows users over only really target the ones that are tired of Windows. Besides, your reserved position works the other way. I'll ditch Linux and use Windows when:
What, specifically, does one 'hack' in Windows, anyways? :P
SCO thinks they can, since SCO is not charging folks for having used Linux all this time (although I'd imaging the damages they are suing for have something to do with income they missed out on), merely if they want to use it in the future.
SCO get try and get away with saying "no one knew about the code in question, but now we do, so people who want to use Linux must pay us money, since it has our code in it." In which case, the GPL yet again breaks, since it knowingly is coexisting with copyrighted code in the same source tree.
So suppose the GPL is found to be invalid. SCO now claims that the entire contract is void, in which case the code had no right to be in the kernel in the first place, except that's where we...
Segmentation fault. I see you're point, and it sent me into an infinite loop...
This means that SCO is in massive trouble, since they violated the licenses of all the Linux contributors _themselves_, by distributing Linux with their proprietary code incorporated into it. This is forbidden by the GPL (Linux's license), which (basically) forces participants to contribute their work for free or not at all. (That's the whole point of the affair, really.) And as we just established, ignorance is not an excuse. The fact that SCO might not have known they were breaking this rule wouldn't save them.
Not entirely true. The above could happen, but it's equally likely that IBM will be in violation of the GPL for putting the code in Linux, not SCO. Be careful when you decide there's only a few possible solutions, then discuss the ramifications of each one as if that were the entire set of possible outcomes.
Companies that don't want their "IP" infringed should take care not to let people see it, and if they do, keep a close eye on what they do with it. If anything this shows that open source software is better at protecting IP than closed source software, on the grounds that one can actually see if said code is infringing on someones copyrights or patents.
Agreed. In that vein you have Arch Linux, based off Crux, but comes with way more packages on the cd, and simplifies things for newcomers a lot.
Actually, no offense to Pearl Jam. They're pretty good.
Still, I am comfortable driving my manual, and see no reason to change. There is no perturbation to solve.
I know...I was more making the coment about him. It's never offtopic if it makes sense wrt the parent post :)
It would be a scary future where people interact from their computers and not in "reality." Maybe that's just coming from someone who doesn't really understand the subject well, and judges a priori.
We all know what Gentoo has to offer. This is a Vector Linux article. We should discuss the technical merits and faults of Vector Linux, not use it as a soap-box for Gentoo zealots to blow their wad over how great they think their distro is.
What is cooler than the local building about Gentoo is that I find portage personally easier to use than apt, and Gentoo's init & rc setup is IMO just awesome.
You don't have to stick to your distros init & rc setup. You could even make "init" a bash script containing functions for every runlevel, and have it call the appropriate one, based on the parameters passed.
Personally, I use just 3 bootscripts, one to start, one to stop, and one to enter multi user mode. For me, the best distro is the one that has the least amount of bloat to whine about me changing things around.
I use Crux, a much more user-managed distribution than Gentoo, and have taken out devfs, hacked the init scripts, hacked the ports tree to my liking, etc. Using Gentoo from Crux is honestly like moving from a manual transmission to an automatic (something I'll never, ever do.
I like ports trees that are easy to hack, not done for you (there are always times when you really want ports to behave differently than the official tree).