A year and a half ago, the burning question in the Linux community was whether anyone without a CS degree would want to touch Linux.
Now we're getting our undies in a twist because not all of the oldest and most established companies want to immediately abandon the software they only realized 4 years ago they actually needed to buy? Grow up!
Imagine if Linux and the BSDs succeeded in reducing Microsoft's desktop share to 65%, and its server share to 20%. That would be an absolute coup. The best outcome Linux can hope for is to refragment the desktop, embedded, server,etc. markets so that people can choose their OS according to their needs. That would let each OS will become more directed at the smaller and more coherent segment of the market it serves.
Linux should do what it's always done - be a homegrown operating system that serves as a testbed for the ideas of its user-developers. Since some of those are surely interested in a polished, experience, it will get easier and smoother to use, while retaining the technical accessibility that we love it for.
- - - - - - - - -
Better mod this one down: there are no misspelled words and empty rants.
I'd say the go "see a therapist" advice you see here might be premature. Not that that'd hurt, but when you get to midterm time and the dawn of a new day means nothing but more work, that really does suck, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're depressed. And I'd hold off on the Prozac.
I would, however, try to find people who can relate to both your personal take on things, and to your professional prospects. That is, someone who knows how the decisions you make could affect your possibilities as a computer scientist (or anything else!:-} ), but someone who also know what's really important to you yourself, not just a-computer-science-student-in-your-position.
Also, you're not at all alone in feeling worried about knowing what to do. I started grad school 2.5 years ago, realized within 1 year that I don't want to be a scientist, and have struggled a lot with what to do next. Still don't know. Heavy stuff. I try (not always successfully) not to dwell on it.
Finally, just getting out of college and getting some job or other (preferrably not an intense one, so you have time to do other things) is a pretty good way to do some exploring - you just find stuff that you like to do, and often you can figure out how to make a career of that.
Good luck, and don't worry too much. There's plenty of fun things to do in this world, and plenty of time.
This is a huge part of what holds *nix back from being a large-scale desktop OS. Every time someone mentions the complexity and inconsistency of the OS, *nix geeks insist that the problem must be the stupidity of the people trying to do the task.
Your analogy to cars and VCRs is excellent. There's one major advantage to computers, one we geeks love. You can learn your computer in great depth with only minimal resources. If you want to build a new engine, you need a machine shop. If you want to build a new kernel, you need.... a compiler.
To my mind it will be a great day when OSes are designed to work for a progression of users - those who don't know and don't care, those who know a little and want to know more, and those who want to tear every little piece apart, examine it, and rewrite, and reinstall it. Linux has the possibility to be this kind of OS, once its adherents comprehend that ALL of these are good and valid uses for computers.
Couldn't agree more. I really learned computers when I had to build a lab out of 386 parts. I still regularly break various distros of Linux (I'm an intermediate user) and reinstall them, in the service of fooling around. Hot damn if you don't learn fast that way.
It's also worth noting that most people 25 and above gained their substantive experience with computers at work - where the focus is on staying out of time-consuming problems. When I worked a helpdesk, I made a point of getting people involved in solving their problems. Asking people to do something as simple as writing down the error message, rebooting, and seeing if the problem persisted BEFORE calling the helpdesk cut the number of calls by about a third. That scales, too. I left, and two guys now manage twice as many users. And yes, all of this was in Windows.
The upshot that all this bleating about Linux's technical superiority doesn't change the simple fact that people are very intimidated to get involved in Wintel boxes (should they happen to care), and EXTREMELY intimidated by Linux. Until this changes, people will have no incentive to change OSes.
Re:MS doesn't actually turn a profit.
on
Microsoft's Future
·
· Score: 1
Not so sure about that wishful thinking by employees. Most Microsoft employees I know like it there because the company treats them with a lot of respect - independence, perks, a sense of pride in what they work on. I'll betcha a lot of them would hang out through tough times.
I like Linux, too, about as well as Windows. Mostly use Linux at work and Windows at home.
They have their respective advantages and disadvantages, and I'm floored at how fast desktop Linux is developing (KDE and WINE in particular).
I mean to point out that
a)/. is being perceived as an advocacy site for Linux. As such, the current tone is not effective for convincing anyone who's not convinced - in fact, it's so heavy on the I-already-love-Linux feeling that can easily turn outsiders off.
b) Posts on this site often whip people into such and indignant frenzy that they go out and really piss off people who didn't even ask to have anything to do with Linux. That leaves a really bad impression.
It's a question of considering this as a public place, and not saying everything you think without thinking about what it sounds like.
Reading through these discussion comments, I'm saddened to see how well the many of the article's points are borne out.
Most of the reactions here have fallen into either repeating that Linux "DOES TOO" have good desktop tools, or that if someone is too lazy and dumb to figure out vi, why then they ought not be *allowed* to work with something as advanced as Linux.
The problem reminds me of working with someone who's both young and inexperienced at a job. Their words and actions are intended to convince you of their total maturity and readiness for the task, but often just leave you exactly the opposite impression.
How the hell can anyone take Linux seriously when the Linux community's visible response to every point raised sounds like someone took the its allowance away?
If KDE integrates Kaim and Kmerlin and KreateCD and KOtherCommonUserTasks, does this make them anticompetitive?
(note - I actually think are effectively anticompetitive, but since KDE's not in business, the analogies break down).
Point is, Microsoft can integrate and incorporate all they like. What makes the behavior legally suspect is using their status as the only provider of the opportunity for a sale to force companies to do their bidding. All businesses do this to some extent - they leverage their position to improve sales. Microsoft just plain goes too far.
Hardware:
What about things like flash ROM, like they use in BIOSes? How many times can they be flashed? How long does the data last?
OS:
Shouldn't the entire OS and several apps be able to fit in to 512MB of RAM? Sounds like this is a question of transparent preloading, or optimizing paging for the application use that/.ers do... So my computer takes 1.3 more min to boot, that' just a little more time savoring the cup of coffee I bummed from the guy down the hall.
There are no neutral parties. The best thing the author could do is a brief summary of his likes and dislikes, and those of his company.
The test is certainly interesting, but it could use some context by the author:
Where do Windows and Linux use pipes, and how does this affect the tasks they do well at, or poorly at?
What does Microsoft recommend for solving a problem where you'd use pipes in Linux?
Probably knows way more than your mom or dad about ripping and music sharing. And if "nobody likes that crap", why is so much of it copied on Nappheus?
I think this is a pretty damn smart test.
a) It's targeted at BIG tech-savvy audience, but one that's not explicitly techy.
b) If there's anything a 16-year-old loves to be, it's against the man. Then again if there's anything a/.er loves to be...
c) 16 year-olds may get furious, but they're not nearly as likely to write letters.
I think this team is missing a couple key points - for example data security. One of the principal developments in computing in the past 3 years has been the level of damage cause by viruses and worms. It's not just that I don't want a system delivered only by Microsoft - I don't want a system that I can't see into.
Privacy is a great example. As I see it, there's a polemic approach to privacy right now - either computers can track everything you do, or they can track none. I don't really want either - I want a balance between different concerns.
While I would love distributed filesystem now,
I don't think the social, legal and technical frameworks could support this in a way that balanced technical concerns with the many other concerns that go with entrusting your life to a computer.
What he's talking about is COM/DCOP/CORBA/ORBIT, implemented with true modularity.
Integration responds to people's desires to do things in different ways at different times - more integration= more choices for using each component. In theory, integration and modularity are supposed to REDUCE resource use, but they rarely do.
Modularity frequently takes more overhead than embedding a little bit of each module into each app (or provider of functionality) - all that IPC and underused functionality bit. But unless you're looking to break the cycle of constantly greater need for computer power, there's plenty for the OS these days.
I think *nix is on a pretty good path these days. From what I can tell, it's not forging new ground in HCI paradigms, but it's getting better and better and producing preconfigured but still configurable, modular, desktop parts. In modern *nix it's pretty darn easy to remove what you don't want. Ignore Microsoft. Is this really about taking down "Goliath"? Let's work for ourselves, for the OS we individually and collectively want.
>Where would the press go to ask about Linux?
Unfortunately, they'd go to Richard fucking Stallman, who would unleash a rant about how every piece of software that's not as free as Emacs is a violation of their freedom to be confused and freely share their confusion. They conclude we're all blithering idiots, go home, and have a been without checking their email first.
The tech reporters don't know shit about what Microsoft's products do either. I've compiled marketing literature for a so-called journal, and you realize really quickly that you don't have the faintest idea whether what someone's marketing literature says is true - and no way to find out. But you want to go home yourself, so you boil it down and publish it. It's even worse in software, where nobody knows for sure what something is supposed to do.
The difficult part is getting all the components to run at high enough frequency/bandwidth and low enough latency that they don't bottleneck the other components. As I undestand it, this is Sun and other *NIX vendors' value proposition - carefully engineered hardware that avoid bottlenecks.
As far as the average consumer goes, I don't think they even care that much about numbers. They just want to know that it'll run they apps they want okay, and from there it's about $$$.
I hate to agree with Microsoft's FUD, which at this point in time IS FUD, but I do think in the long run there ought to be harmony between lots of different models of software development. People bring lots of different motivations to the table when they go to produce software, and allowing them to make and distribute their products in the way they like give the consumers the widest possible range of options. So laws forbidding governments to investing in a particular product development model seem excessive to me - in the long run. They may be reasonable now to break Microsoft's monopoly.
That said, these countries' reactions make perfect sense to me - the hegemony of the US over the internet and the hegemony of Microsoft over software arose at the same time. And since both countries behave themselves as obnoxious bullies in public fora (although I know firsthand that both have citizens who are neither obnoxious nor bullies), this backlash is a pretty reasonable reaction.
At some point you are buying a set of services from somebody, or you are using a public good, or both. In this example, you are buying lines from the telco (which according to the article is doing its damndest too make them unavailable), and you are buying Internet services through a chain of resellers, right up to the backbone providers. This gives them some sayso over what you send.
Imagine a totally wireless community network with a range of 20 miles - more than enough for the community network of which you speak. You may be using all private hardware, but somewhere along the line you are using a public commodity - bandwidth. (Not to mention we STILL really don't know what all that RF does to our bodies).
To me this is a regulatory question - we want the existence of a public medium. That by definition involves some application of the laws of common spaces. It's just that they're being poorly applied right now.
Unless you're a monopoly, in which case your standard is the standard.
Think of Verizon making phone jacks that were incompatible with everyone's phones. Why should they have to go along with someone else's standard?
This is why we have antitrust laws.
But what the hell do you people want?
on
Taming the Web
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I thought the article did a great job of getting around the deterministic remarks that this subject always get snared in. But everyone's response here on./ seems to go right back to the we'll find a way to beat "Big Brother" camp. But let me ask you all this:
What do you really want to be able to do on the Net? Do you really want your mail server DDoSed all the time because hackers really do rule the earth? Should nobody make any money on intellectual property? The answers are probably mostly no. So why do people immediately go to 54-40 or fight mentality?
I think part of the reason is we're mourning the loss of Internet as a place of exploration, where you can be a commando, a spy, Robin Hood, the President, and an accomplished student of the arts of net all at once. If this is really true, then we should be trying to preserve the feeling of the place, without trying to disobey laws just because they're there.
I couldn't agree more with the author - we should be proactive instead of whiny. Time join EFF, join someone, anyone, rather than just posting 30000 insipid comments to bulletin board.
In my experience, Linux has quite a few little impasses that are incredibly difficult and time-consuming to figure out, but can by easily bypassed by someone who knows what they're doing.
FAQs, HOWTOs, man pages and bulletin boards usually have the steps to do what you're trying to do, but in my experience you can't understand the answer until someone explains the source of your confusion.
If you really want to save yourself some grief, find yourself someone who knows Linux reasonably well, invite them over for dinner regularly, and then get them to help you figure out the problems you've been stumped by.
You're right that Microsoft has many enemies who are pushing to unseat them. History won't ever tell us whether Sun would have done the same thing. I still think it's good thing to do some agitating about all this power over technology being consolidated into one set of hands.
I'm still struggling to reconcile the personality of the considerable number of Microsoft employees I call friends with the substantially more unpleasant corporate personality of the organization as a whole.
I actually considered using OpenBSD, but I felt more comfortable wrestling with getting two old NIC cards in the box under Linux than BSD - especially as OpenBSD has only vi as a default editor (and by design), and I have anger management problems with vi.
I also like to follow the strategy of learning packet filtering and ipchains by using a GUI and then figuring out what it did, and that seems easier under Linux. OpenBSD is a longer term goal.
Slashdot Mirror
A year and a half ago, the burning question in the Linux community was whether anyone without a CS degree would want to touch Linux. Now we're getting our undies in a twist because not all of the oldest and most established companies want to immediately abandon the software they only realized 4 years ago they actually needed to buy? Grow up!
Imagine if Linux and the BSDs succeeded in reducing Microsoft's desktop share to 65%, and its server share to 20%. That would be an absolute coup. The best outcome Linux can hope for is to refragment the desktop, embedded, server,etc. markets so that people can choose their OS according to their needs. That would let each OS will become more directed at the smaller and more coherent segment of the market it serves.
Linux should do what it's always done - be a homegrown operating system that serves as a testbed for the ideas of its user-developers. Since some of those are surely interested in a polished, experience, it will get easier and smoother to use, while retaining the technical accessibility that we love it for.
- - - - - - - - -
Better mod this one down: there are no misspelled words and empty rants.
I'd say the go "see a therapist" advice you see here might be premature. Not that that'd hurt, but when you get to midterm time and the dawn of a new day means nothing but more work, that really does suck, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're depressed. And I'd hold off on the Prozac.
:-} ), but someone who also know what's really important to you yourself, not just a-computer-science-student-in-your-position.
I would, however, try to find people who can relate to both your personal take on things, and to your professional prospects. That is, someone who knows how the decisions you make could affect your possibilities as a computer scientist (or anything else!
Also, you're not at all alone in feeling worried about knowing what to do. I started grad school 2.5 years ago, realized within 1 year that I don't want to be a scientist, and have struggled a lot with what to do next. Still don't know. Heavy stuff. I try (not always successfully) not to dwell on it.
Finally, just getting out of college and getting some job or other (preferrably not an intense one, so you have time to do other things) is a pretty good way to do some exploring - you just find stuff that you like to do, and often you can figure out how to make a career of that.
Good luck, and don't worry too much. There's plenty of fun things to do in this world, and plenty of time.
Are you kidding?
This:
Linux is a whole lot easier to use than Windows. At least in this case.
followed by this:
A recursive grep, a look at the man page, and it's taken care of.
adds up to a total oxymoron.
Come on, man, you said "recursive grep", in trying to explain how easy something is!
Couldn't agree more.
.... a compiler.
This is a huge part of what holds *nix back from being a large-scale desktop OS. Every time someone mentions the complexity and inconsistency of the OS, *nix geeks insist that the problem must be the stupidity of the people trying to do the task.
Your analogy to cars and VCRs is excellent. There's one major advantage to computers, one we geeks love. You can learn your computer in great depth with only minimal resources. If you want to build a new engine, you need a machine shop. If you want to build a new kernel, you need
To my mind it will be a great day when OSes are designed to work for a progression of users - those who don't know and don't care, those who know a little and want to know more, and those who want to tear every little piece apart, examine it, and rewrite, and reinstall it. Linux has the possibility to be this kind of OS, once its adherents comprehend that ALL of these are good and valid uses for computers.
Couldn't agree more. I really learned computers when I had to build a lab out of 386 parts. I still regularly break various distros of Linux (I'm an intermediate user) and reinstall them, in the service of fooling around. Hot damn if you don't learn fast that way.
It's also worth noting that most people 25 and above gained their substantive experience with computers at work - where the focus is on staying out of time-consuming problems. When I worked a helpdesk, I made a point of getting people involved in solving their problems. Asking people to do something as simple as writing down the error message, rebooting, and seeing if the problem persisted BEFORE calling the helpdesk cut the number of calls by about a third. That scales, too. I left, and two guys now manage twice as many users. And yes, all of this was in Windows.
The upshot that all this bleating about Linux's technical superiority doesn't change the simple fact that people are very intimidated to get involved in Wintel boxes (should they happen to care), and EXTREMELY intimidated by Linux. Until this changes, people will have no incentive to change OSes.
Not so sure about that wishful thinking by employees. Most Microsoft employees I know like it there because the company treats them with a lot of respect - independence, perks, a sense of pride in what they work on. I'll betcha a lot of them would hang out through tough times.
I like Linux, too, about as well as Windows. Mostly use Linux at work and Windows at home.
/. is being perceived as an advocacy site for Linux. As such, the current tone is not effective for convincing anyone who's not convinced - in fact, it's so heavy on the I-already-love-Linux feeling that can easily turn outsiders off.
They have their respective advantages and disadvantages, and I'm floored at how fast desktop Linux is developing (KDE and WINE in particular).
I mean to point out that
a)
b) Posts on this site often whip people into such and indignant frenzy that they go out and really piss off people who didn't even ask to have anything to do with Linux. That leaves a really bad impression.
It's a question of considering this as a public place, and not saying everything you think without thinking about what it sounds like.
Reading through these discussion comments, I'm saddened to see how well the many of the article's points are borne out.
Most of the reactions here have fallen into either repeating that Linux "DOES TOO" have good desktop tools, or that if someone is too lazy and dumb to figure out vi, why then they ought not be *allowed* to work with something as advanced as Linux.
The problem reminds me of working with someone who's both young and inexperienced at a job. Their words and actions are intended to convince you of their total maturity and readiness for the task, but often just leave you exactly the opposite impression.
How the hell can anyone take Linux seriously when the Linux community's visible response to every point raised sounds like someone took the its allowance away?
I think you're missing the point.
If KDE integrates Kaim and Kmerlin and KreateCD and KOtherCommonUserTasks, does this make them anticompetitive?
(note - I actually think are effectively anticompetitive, but since KDE's not in business, the analogies break down).
Point is, Microsoft can integrate and incorporate all they like. What makes the behavior legally suspect is using their status as the only provider of the opportunity for a sale to force companies to do their bidding. All businesses do this to some extent - they leverage their position to improve sales. Microsoft just plain goes too far.
Hardware:
/.ers do... So my computer takes 1.3 more min to boot, that' just a little more time savoring the cup of coffee I bummed from the guy down the hall.
What about things like flash ROM, like they use in BIOSes? How many times can they be flashed? How long does the data last?
OS:
Shouldn't the entire OS and several apps be able to fit in to 512MB of RAM? Sounds like this is a question of transparent preloading, or optimizing paging for the application use that
The test is certainly interesting, but it could use some context by the author:
Where do Windows and Linux use pipes, and how does this affect the tasks they do well at, or poorly at?
What does Microsoft recommend for solving a problem where you'd use pipes in Linux?
Probably knows way more than your mom or dad about ripping and music sharing. And if "nobody likes that crap", why is so much of it copied on Nappheus?
/.er loves to be...
I think this is a pretty damn smart test.
a) It's targeted at BIG tech-savvy audience, but one that's not explicitly techy.
b) If there's anything a 16-year-old loves to be, it's against the man. Then again if there's anything a
c) 16 year-olds may get furious, but they're not nearly as likely to write letters.
Smart move by the reccos.
I think this team is missing a couple key points - for example data security. One of the principal developments in computing in the past 3 years has been the level of damage cause by viruses and worms. It's not just that I don't want a system delivered only by Microsoft - I don't want a system that I can't see into.
Privacy is a great example. As I see it, there's a polemic approach to privacy right now - either computers can track everything you do, or they can track none. I don't really want either - I want a balance between different concerns.
While I would love distributed filesystem now,
I don't think the social, legal and technical frameworks could support this in a way that balanced technical concerns with the many other concerns that go with entrusting your life to a computer.
What he's talking about is COM/DCOP/CORBA/ORBIT, implemented with true modularity.
Integration responds to people's desires to do things in different ways at different times - more integration= more choices for using each component. In theory, integration and modularity are supposed to REDUCE resource use, but they rarely do.
Modularity frequently takes more overhead than embedding a little bit of each module into each app (or provider of functionality) - all that IPC and underused functionality bit. But unless you're looking to break the cycle of constantly greater need for computer power, there's plenty for the OS these days.
I think *nix is on a pretty good path these days. From what I can tell, it's not forging new ground in HCI paradigms, but it's getting better and better and producing preconfigured but still configurable, modular, desktop parts. In modern *nix it's pretty darn easy to remove what you don't want. Ignore Microsoft. Is this really about taking down "Goliath"? Let's work for ourselves, for the OS we individually and collectively want.
Call me simpleminded, but I don't get it.
What does putting the fresh fruit by the door have to do with shoplifting?
>Where would the press go to ask about Linux?
Unfortunately, they'd go to Richard fucking Stallman, who would unleash a rant about how every piece of software that's not as free as Emacs is a violation of their freedom to be confused and freely share their confusion. They conclude we're all blithering idiots, go home, and have a been without checking their email first.
The tech reporters don't know shit about what Microsoft's products do either. I've compiled marketing literature for a so-called journal, and you realize really quickly that you don't have the faintest idea whether what someone's marketing literature says is true - and no way to find out. But you want to go home yourself, so you boil it down and publish it. It's even worse in software, where nobody knows for sure what something is supposed to do.
It's still fundamentally a serial system.
The difficult part is getting all the components to run at high enough frequency/bandwidth and low enough latency that they don't bottleneck the other components. As I undestand it, this is Sun and other *NIX vendors' value proposition - carefully engineered hardware that avoid bottlenecks.
As far as the average consumer goes, I don't think they even care that much about numbers. They just want to know that it'll run they apps they want okay, and from there it's about $$$.
I hate to agree with Microsoft's FUD, which at this point in time IS FUD, but I do think in the long run there ought to be harmony between lots of different models of software development. People bring lots of different motivations to the table when they go to produce software, and allowing them to make and distribute their products in the way they like give the consumers the widest possible range of options. So laws forbidding governments to investing in a particular product development model seem excessive to me - in the long run. They may be reasonable now to break Microsoft's monopoly.
That said, these countries' reactions make perfect sense to me - the hegemony of the US over the internet and the hegemony of Microsoft over software arose at the same time. And since both countries behave themselves as obnoxious bullies in public fora (although I know firsthand that both have citizens who are neither obnoxious nor bullies), this backlash is a pretty reasonable reaction.
Out of mere curiosity I can find out what STD's my neighbor got tested for in less than 100 keystrokes.
Yet we can't manage to do background checks on someone who wants to buy a GUN?
Our country has a lot of great things, but we definitely have some priorities out of whack.
At some point you are buying a set of services from somebody, or you are using a public good, or both. In this example, you are buying lines from the telco (which according to the article is doing its damndest too make them unavailable), and you are buying Internet services through a chain of resellers, right up to the backbone providers. This gives them some sayso over what you send.
Imagine a totally wireless community network with a range of 20 miles - more than enough for the community network of which you speak. You may be using all private hardware, but somewhere along the line you are using a public commodity - bandwidth. (Not to mention we STILL really don't know what all that RF does to our bodies).
To me this is a regulatory question - we want the existence of a public medium. That by definition involves some application of the laws of common spaces. It's just that they're being poorly applied right now.
Unless you're a monopoly, in which case your standard is the standard.
Think of Verizon making phone jacks that were incompatible with everyone's phones. Why should they have to go along with someone else's standard?
This is why we have antitrust laws.
I think part of the reason is we're mourning the loss of Internet as a place of exploration, where you can be a commando, a spy, Robin Hood, the President, and an accomplished student of the arts of net all at once. If this is really true, then we should be trying to preserve the feeling of the place, without trying to disobey laws just because they're there.
I couldn't agree more with the author - we should be proactive instead of whiny. Time join EFF, join someone, anyone, rather than just posting 30000 insipid comments to bulletin board.
In my experience, Linux has quite a few little impasses that are incredibly difficult and time-consuming to figure out, but can by easily bypassed by someone who knows what they're doing.
FAQs, HOWTOs, man pages and bulletin boards usually have the steps to do what you're trying to do, but in my experience you can't understand the answer until someone explains the source of your confusion.
If you really want to save yourself some grief, find yourself someone who knows Linux reasonably well, invite them over for dinner regularly, and then get them to help you figure out the problems you've been stumped by.
Very well put.
You're right that Microsoft has many enemies who are pushing to unseat them. History won't ever tell us whether Sun would have done the same thing. I still think it's good thing to do some agitating about all this power over technology being consolidated into one set of hands.
I'm still struggling to reconcile the personality of the considerable number of Microsoft employees I call friends with the substantially more unpleasant corporate personality of the organization as a whole.
Thanks again for the perspective.
I actually considered using OpenBSD, but I felt more comfortable wrestling with getting two old NIC cards in the box under Linux than BSD - especially as OpenBSD has only vi as a default editor (and by design), and I have anger management problems with vi.
I also like to follow the strategy of learning packet filtering and ipchains by using a GUI and then figuring out what it did, and that seems easier under Linux. OpenBSD is a longer term goal.
Good idea tho. Thanx.