The linux ones are suse/redhat specific, and are huge...
Funny you mention selinux, is there an equivalent for windows, and if not why not?
Windows in some circumstances has much worse hardware support than other os's, examples: 64bit windows (lacks drivers for a lot of older but still useful hardware, 64bit linux maintains such support) non x86/ia64, current versions of windows have no support whatsoever for modern ppc or sparc based systems.
x86 dominates precisely because windows cannot be ported to other platforms, x86 is a pretty horrendous kludge that should have died many years ago, all attempts to replace it with something better have failed because people's proprietary apps wouldn't run on them. ports of proprietary applications will only happen if there is sufficient demand, demand depends on sales of the hardware and the hardware wont sell if people cant run the apps they want on it.
i wouldn't say ntfs is a particularly great filesystem, it still gets itself fragmented and has been known to corrupt data when the filesystem is close to full. plus it's a proprietary filesystem without freely available documentation, it would be incredibly foolish to trust my data to it. similarly if i want to write applications to interface with it on a low level, i have to reverse engineer the drivers.
as for porting to new hardware, how long have 64bit cpus been around? when did a 64bit version of windows first become available? compare that to how long it took for linux to be ported to ia64 and amd64 after the hardware became available. also consider the 16/32 bit transition, and how windows held people back even then too.
ok you mention shell extensions instead of replacements, if something needs to be extended so heavily to be useful, why not replace it instead? you may like the explorer interface, i don't, and it's not changeable without third party addons, the replacements suck too and the extensions dont change the basic behaviour of the interface. Note i dont just mean the explorer file manager, the window management sucks too, it's very clunky especially when you have lots of apps running, theres no support for multiple workspaces by default (and the addons are kludgy and tend to suck really badly, most simply try to hide windows which arent on the current workspace)
i also want to see a version of windows where you can stop/start the gui at will, no point having a gui running on a machine with no screen attached...
how do i enable serial console support on windows?
how do i install windows remotely, with only serial console access to the system (and no videocard physically installed)?
how do i do 802.1q vlan tagging?
these are all features i require regularly, and which linux easily provides without even needing modification.
Their "reliability" metric is based on "percentage of time the host was reachable from netcraft's test servers"... Thus, machines on a stable network that is hosted close to netcraft are far more likely to be higher in the rankings. Also, your servers could be horrendously unstable, but if you have enough of them behind a load balancing device they will still appear to be reliable from the outside. Also, netcraft only samples the sites periodically, any downtime between samplings wouldnt be noticed.
It's also interesting to wonder how many security holes those windows boxes have, since most updates require a reboot. Updates to most unixes can be performed without rebooting.
Also, linux resets its uptime to 0 after around 497 days (the uptime is stored as a 32bit integer in increments of 1/100 of a second i believe)... 64bit linuxes don't have this problem, but aside from a few alphas there probably arent many 64bit linux machines which have been around long enough to have entered the top uptime list yet.
No, nor should you use iis... You use something smaller and more lightweight if all your doing is static files. A less complex server means less redundant code running, and thus better performance. Also less code means less chance of there being a security flaw in one of the pieces.
You don't like being forced to use Apache, and yet you advocate using IIS which by extension forces you to use windows? What happens in the future if something makes you to switch os, you'l have to rewrite al the iis dependent parts of your sites. Similarly, if you want to switch OS the depence on iis, and thus cost of migration away from it may outweigh the perceived benefits of the switch and hold you back.
I've never had issues installing apache, the default install on virtually any unix is functional for a single site, and adding virtually hosted sites is easy enough. Some distros come with gui based tools for doing it too (cobalt linux etc).
Apache on any OS with a decent package manager and package repository is easy to update, this includes virtually all linux distributions.
As for narrow minded technology decisions, does this not also apply to iis that only runs on one os etc?
You can always turn mod_rewrite off, thus you have no hassle trying to deal with it... The fact you had hassles with it, shows you were actually trying to use it for something. You'd have had even more hassle if you tried doing the same thing with IIS.
Not at all, Amiga/Commodore, Apple, Atari, Acorn and a whole host of other computers were popular before ms pressured them out of the market. People/businesses who had a need for a computer would have bought one anyway, so we'd have had a far more diverse internet resulting in less potential damage from a single virus/worm.
Sure you can alter windows with a disassembler, but is it legal to do so? And is it legal to distribute the changes? You may still be able to change things, but it's harder, slower and possibly illegal. Linux is free for you to change it however you want, and contribute the changes to others.
As for third party addons, shell replacements may exist but they always seemed very clunky compared to changing your window manager on unix. As for changing the filesystems, can you actually boot the OS from a new filesystem? Can you access a CD thats formatted with anything other than ISO9660/UDF?
Linux exposes it's flexibility from the get go, and encourages people to make full use of it. windows tries to hide the possibility of changing anything major.
Can you port windows to run on a new, previously unsupported piece of hardware? Can you take drivers which only exist for 32bit versions of windows, and port them to 64bit?
The partition problem is one he would have if he tried to install windows himself, he doesnt have it because it came preinstalled. If you want to try Ubuntu on a level playing field with windows here, i hear Dell have a nice line of machines with Ubuntu preinstalled.
Windows does the partitioning thing during install too, only it's implementation is much worse than Ubuntu's... (it was in XP, vista might be better) Try instaling windows dual boot on a system which already has linux installed, windows will always render the existing os unbootable, and will not let you resize partitions without losing all the data on them. Infact, it's geared up to make a single huge partition on the drive, which defeats the point of partitions completely.
Excel is also known for getting fairly simple calculations wrong... Openoffice also has the same flaws, probably implemented intentionally to be compatible... Gnumeric on the other hand seems fairly accurate Is it not a sarbanes-oxley rule that anyone signing off on accounts they know were created using a known flawed process (incorrect calculations in excel apply) they are held liable?
For many technically minded people, Linux does what they want and windows doesnt. Remember, the more skilled you are at programming, the more linux will suit you because you can modify it to suit your needs. Similarly, the entire working environment is far more easily customised. So you see, most linux advocates are technically minded people, who use linux for the above reasons, which fulfills the same basic requirements that you have. Oh, and OSX is nice too but if the frontend doesnt suit you (and it cant possibly, one size never fits all) then your screwed unless you replace aqua with X11, and then you may as well be running linux.
Aside from that, no "standard" should be developed and pushed by only one company... Any proposal to create a standard should be formed by a committee, to which relevant parties are explicitely invited (adobe, camera makers etc) but from which noone is excluded.
I believe older versions of firefox did support MNG, but then that code was removed for some reason (and noone noticed because there arent any sites out there using MNG animations)
It's more to do with the fact that IE was very late to supporting PNG, and much later to supporting it properly (only IE7 supports png translucency i believe).
How did they try to exclude microsoft? The ODF standard is free for anyone to implement without limitations, if microsoft chose to implement it they would have complied with the requirements and been able to bid. The fact they worked so hard against ODF shows how scared they are of it, and it also shows that OOXML is not truly an open standard, or else there would be no value in pushing it rather than improving ODF.
It doesnt matter how inferior the microsoft format is, they will pressure/bribe companies into supporting it and slowly but surely people will start using it anyway... That's why we need to campaign against it now before it gets too strong, or ensure that it truly is an open standard that anyone can implement freely.
Well, none of the printers i have access to are capable of stapling or hole-punching... Duplex printing is an option within cups (remember the cups server has the drivers) and it exports the available printer options to the clients. Faxing I assume can be done, OSX seems to manage it by printing to the "internal modem" pseudo-printer and entering a phone number. Scanning, again i've never used a remote scanner but i imagine that would be handled seperately anyway, since cups is for printing. There is however SANE for scanners, which supports connection to a networked device, i've never used it in this method tho.
Raid is now fairly commonplace on desktop motherboards, admittedly it's usually not great but it gives you a basic raid1 setup... Computers are now cheap enough that you can quite easily junk and replace them in the event of failure, it's only the data that's of any importance.
Slashdot Mirror
Softgrid? Is it little more than a chroot?
Now that java is released under the GPL, how long before someone releases a java plugin to block popups such as these?
The linux ones are suse/redhat specific, and are huge...
Funny you mention selinux, is there an equivalent for windows, and if not why not?
Windows in some circumstances has much worse hardware support than other os's, examples:
64bit windows (lacks drivers for a lot of older but still useful hardware, 64bit linux maintains such support)
non x86/ia64, current versions of windows have no support whatsoever for modern ppc or sparc based systems.
x86 dominates precisely because windows cannot be ported to other platforms, x86 is a pretty horrendous kludge that should have died many years ago, all attempts to replace it with something better have failed because people's proprietary apps wouldn't run on them. ports of proprietary applications will only happen if there is sufficient demand, demand depends on sales of the hardware and the hardware wont sell if people cant run the apps they want on it.
i wouldn't say ntfs is a particularly great filesystem, it still gets itself fragmented and has been known to corrupt data when the filesystem is close to full. plus it's a proprietary filesystem without freely available documentation, it would be incredibly foolish to trust my data to it. similarly if i want to write applications to interface with it on a low level, i have to reverse engineer the drivers.
as for porting to new hardware, how long have 64bit cpus been around? when did a 64bit version of windows first become available? compare that to how long it took for linux to be ported to ia64 and amd64 after the hardware became available. also consider the 16/32 bit transition, and how windows held people back even then too.
ok you mention shell extensions instead of replacements, if something needs to be extended so heavily to be useful, why not replace it instead? you may like the explorer interface, i don't, and it's not changeable without third party addons, the replacements suck too and the extensions dont change the basic behaviour of the interface.
Note i dont just mean the explorer file manager, the window management sucks too, it's very clunky especially when you have lots of apps running, theres no support for multiple workspaces by default (and the addons are kludgy and tend to suck really badly, most simply try to hide windows which arent on the current workspace)
i also want to see a version of windows where you can stop/start the gui at will, no point having a gui running on a machine with no screen attached...
how do i enable serial console support on windows?
how do i install windows remotely, with only serial console access to the system (and no videocard physically installed)?
how do i do 802.1q vlan tagging?
these are all features i require regularly, and which linux easily provides without even needing modification.
How exactly?
And relative to what?
Their "reliability" metric is based on "percentage of time the host was reachable from netcraft's test servers"...
Thus, machines on a stable network that is hosted close to netcraft are far more likely to be higher in the rankings. Also, your servers could be horrendously unstable, but if you have enough of them behind a load balancing device they will still appear to be reliable from the outside. Also, netcraft only samples the sites periodically, any downtime between samplings wouldnt be noticed.
It's also interesting to wonder how many security holes those windows boxes have, since most updates require a reboot.
Updates to most unixes can be performed without rebooting.
Also, linux resets its uptime to 0 after around 497 days (the uptime is stored as a 32bit integer in increments of 1/100 of a second i believe)... 64bit linuxes don't have this problem, but aside from a few alphas there probably arent many 64bit linux machines which have been around long enough to have entered the top uptime list yet.
No, nor should you use iis...
You use something smaller and more lightweight if all your doing is static files. A less complex server means less redundant code running, and thus better performance. Also less code means less chance of there being a security flaw in one of the pieces.
You don't like being forced to use Apache, and yet you advocate using IIS which by extension forces you to use windows? What happens in the future if something makes you to switch os, you'l have to rewrite al the iis dependent parts of your sites. Similarly, if you want to switch OS the depence on iis, and thus cost of migration away from it may outweigh the perceived benefits of the switch and hold you back.
I've never had issues installing apache, the default install on virtually any unix is functional for a single site, and adding virtually hosted sites is easy enough. Some distros come with gui based tools for doing it too (cobalt linux etc).
Apache on any OS with a decent package manager and package repository is easy to update, this includes virtually all linux distributions.
As for narrow minded technology decisions, does this not also apply to iis that only runs on one os etc?
You can always turn mod_rewrite off, thus you have no hassle trying to deal with it...
The fact you had hassles with it, shows you were actually trying to use it for something. You'd have had even more hassle if you tried doing the same thing with IIS.
Not at all, Amiga/Commodore, Apple, Atari, Acorn and a whole host of other computers were popular before ms pressured them out of the market. People/businesses who had a need for a computer would have bought one anyway, so we'd have had a far more diverse internet resulting in less potential damage from a single virus/worm.
Sure you can alter windows with a disassembler, but is it legal to do so? And is it legal to distribute the changes? You may still be able to change things, but it's harder, slower and possibly illegal. Linux is free for you to change it however you want, and contribute the changes to others.
As for third party addons, shell replacements may exist but they always seemed very clunky compared to changing your window manager on unix. As for changing the filesystems, can you actually boot the OS from a new filesystem? Can you access a CD thats formatted with anything other than ISO9660/UDF?
Linux exposes it's flexibility from the get go, and encourages people to make full use of it. windows tries to hide the possibility of changing anything major.
Can you port windows to run on a new, previously unsupported piece of hardware? Can you take drivers which only exist for 32bit versions of windows, and port them to 64bit?
The partition problem is one he would have if he tried to install windows himself, he doesnt have it because it came preinstalled.
If you want to try Ubuntu on a level playing field with windows here, i hear Dell have a nice line of machines with Ubuntu preinstalled.
Windows does the partitioning thing during install too, only it's implementation is much worse than Ubuntu's... (it was in XP, vista might be better)
Try instaling windows dual boot on a system which already has linux installed, windows will always render the existing os unbootable, and will not let you resize partitions without losing all the data on them. Infact, it's geared up to make a single huge partition on the drive, which defeats the point of partitions completely.
Excel is also known for getting fairly simple calculations wrong...
Openoffice also has the same flaws, probably implemented intentionally to be compatible...
Gnumeric on the other hand seems fairly accurate
Is it not a sarbanes-oxley rule that anyone signing off on accounts they know were created using a known flawed process (incorrect calculations in excel apply) they are held liable?
For many technically minded people, Linux does what they want and windows doesnt.
Remember, the more skilled you are at programming, the more linux will suit you because you can modify it to suit your needs. Similarly, the entire working environment is far more easily customised.
So you see, most linux advocates are technically minded people, who use linux for the above reasons, which fulfills the same basic requirements that you have.
Oh, and OSX is nice too but if the frontend doesnt suit you (and it cant possibly, one size never fits all) then your screwed unless you replace aqua with X11, and then you may as well be running linux.
Aside from that, no "standard" should be developed and pushed by only one company...
Any proposal to create a standard should be formed by a committee, to which relevant parties are explicitely invited (adobe, camera makers etc) but from which noone is excluded.
I believe older versions of firefox did support MNG, but then that code was removed for some reason (and noone noticed because there arent any sites out there using MNG animations)
It's more to do with the fact that IE was very late to supporting PNG, and much later to supporting it properly (only IE7 supports png translucency i believe).
How did they try to exclude microsoft? The ODF standard is free for anyone to implement without limitations, if microsoft chose to implement it they would have complied with the requirements and been able to bid.
The fact they worked so hard against ODF shows how scared they are of it, and it also shows that OOXML is not truly an open standard, or else there would be no value in pushing it rather than improving ODF.
And do you want to archive a stack of old computers capable of running these old programs too?
Or rely on a bunch of emulators?
I have tunneled ipv6 on my mail server, it already receives quite a lot of spam over ipv6.
It doesnt matter how inferior the microsoft format is, they will pressure/bribe companies into supporting it and slowly but surely people will start using it anyway...
That's why we need to campaign against it now before it gets too strong, or ensure that it truly is an open standard that anyone can implement freely.
Dual layer DVD drives? they should all work...
Well, none of the printers i have access to are capable of stapling or hole-punching...
Duplex printing is an option within cups (remember the cups server has the drivers) and it exports the available printer options to the clients.
Faxing I assume can be done, OSX seems to manage it by printing to the "internal modem" pseudo-printer and entering a phone number.
Scanning, again i've never used a remote scanner but i imagine that would be handled seperately anyway, since cups is for printing. There is however SANE for scanners, which supports connection to a networked device, i've never used it in this method tho.
Raid is now fairly commonplace on desktop motherboards, admittedly it's usually not great but it gives you a basic raid1 setup...
Computers are now cheap enough that you can quite easily junk and replace them in the event of failure, it's only the data that's of any importance.