Time I took another look then. Until now I've had to use some god-awful Motif porting tool whenever a GUI app I've written on Unix needs to run under Windows. Being able to concentrate on the underlying code rather than the GUI would make life a lot easier. And coding in GTK+ rather than Motif would be great...
if a new windowing system was developed, we could just port GTK+ and QT to the new windowing system
Probably easier from the point of view of Qt than GTK+, as the former is already very portable. I haven't downloaded a CVS version of GTK+ lately but I know they are aiming to improve portability so it could soon be true for GTK+ as well as Qt.
One thing I always liked about GTK+ was that it avoided the Xt Intrinsics. Xt always seemed to be a dubious halfway house between a GUI toolkit and Xlib itself - adding little in the way of flexibility (apart from variable argument widget creation routines), and much in the way of bloat.
Perhaps it's just the former XView programmer in me starting to shine through...
True. This was probably a consequence of the Athena team's lack of experience in developing a networked system for windowing. A recent article I read (I regret taht I can't remember where) openly stated that some aspects of X were ill considered with hindsight. At the level of the X protocol it's probably to late in the day to do any major re-engineering. Or maybe not...
in many cases, the GDK calls are simpler than the corresponding X calls. Some rarely used parameters are omitted and the correct values for other parameters are determined automatically
Mmm... but GDK is still heavily tied to the X model. Porting it to some other system is not trivial, as is proved by the flakiness of the Windows port.
Download GDK. Oh, you can't, because although it is a separate library it still forms an essential part of the GTK+ package. The fact that GTK+ hasn't been *successfully* ported to another system is proof of how many X-isms are in the GDK/GTK+ code. So my original comment is still valid, an Xlib emulation layer would still be required below GDK - or else a major rewrite of GDK.
GTK+ and KDE are becoming the new toolkits of choice for Unix GUI programmers. As we have to rely less and less on X-tied programs, we can get closer and closer to dumping this beast.
Ummm... but GTK+ and Qt are built on top of X. You would still need an emulation layer for Xlib in any new windowing system.
If we trimmed it down and got it running direct to an API on the system, we'd blow Win32 GUI stuff away
Xlib is a very lean and fast library, I think it would be hard to improve on it in userland. If the alternative you're suggesting is an in kernel GUI, then think again. This is why stability in Windows NT suffered during the transition from NT 3.51 to 4 - the clean distinction between kernel and GUI was broken in the name of efficiency. This allowed calls direct to the hardware, and buggered NT's stability.
Hmmm... the GUI in MacOS X is a fantastic technical accomplishment, but it wasn't created overnight. It stems from NeXTSTEP, which used a native GUI because X was not ready for the real world when NeXT needed it to be.
The trouble is that the MacOS X GUI relies on technology licensed from a number of sources: OpenGL from SGI and Display PostScript from Adobe. Open sourced alternatives are available, although GNUStep's Display GhostScript is a shadow of what it would need to be to provide a viable alternative to it's commercial brethren.
So the question is, given that Linux and the *BSD's have the basis of a GUI as good as Aqua in the form of X, where should development be expended? Should it go on creating a semi-clone of OpenSTEP/Aqua in the form of GNUStep, or on providing alternatives in X itself. I think we would be better served by XFree86 developers pursuing anti-aliased fonts, etc. in the existing X framework - the game of catch-up is far easier here than in trying to reverse engineer the Aqua GUI to a greater or lesser extent.
(And does anyone know if Aqua is network transparent like X? I've never used NeXTSTEP or OpenSTEP so I'd be keen to know).
Chris
Someone obviously doesn't understand X ...
on
X Windows Must Die!
·
· Score: 2
X does what it was designed to do *very* well. THe lack of conformity in Unix desktops until projects like KDE and GNome came along is an indication of how fragmented the Unix market is/was - not an indication of shortcomings in X. The CDE and Motif suffered from this fragmentation, as adjudged by their designed by committee aspects.
Projects like Gnome and KDE have simply given X the toolkits and desktop environents it always needed - driven by user requirements not vendor factionalism. It should come as no surprise that the successful alernatives to X (NeXTSTEP, Sunview for example) were the products of lone companies. Even OpenLook suffered once it became a 'standard' rather than an implementation - resulting in more than one toolkit...
As for criticising X because it works over slow modems, well I'm thankful that it does. BEing able to ssh to a remote system on another continent and have X forwarding work is fantastic. Especially when I can do this from a dial-up at home rather than the T1 at work.
To paraphrase:
Those who don't understand X are destined to reinvent it poorly
That is highly doubtful since they were copied by another Monk just 200 years earlier
The views of the Papacy changed over time just like the views of any other political institution. It just happens that by the Middle Ages the Papacy had started to view it's pagan heritage as a bit of a liability - especially so when their arch-enemies the Muslims were keen on the writings of Greek philosphers, etc.
Motif is a clone of Windows... Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985
Yup, but Windows 1.0 looked like DOS with a bitmapped display. No resizable windows, no drag and drop, no GUI toolkit. The look and feel of Windows 3.x was a long way off in 1985. Have a quick look around the web for sites hosting pictures of Windows 1.0 - 2.0 to see what I mean when I say that Motif owes little to early incarnations of Windows.
And don't forget that Microsoft were a co-sponsor of Motif. They treated it as a testbed for what became the Windows 95 UI, hence the curious mish-mash of Windows / HP interface design in Motif.
Well if I was a Greek monk and my choices were hang on to an old Math book or write a prayer book, I'm sure my priority would be the prayer book
It's more likely that the text was wiped because writings by Archimedes and others were considered unacceptable at the time. They were either viewed as naive attempts to understand the world (which contemporary thinking claimed was all God's doing), or dangerous sources of heresy.
For a fictional, but highly thought provoking account of what ideas were prevalent at the time check out 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco. For a more fact based but drier account see any books on the treatment of 'heresy' by the churches of the Middle Ages. I'm a particular fan of books on the Baltic crusades - although it's not very well documented.
Wow! A Killing Miranda aware Slashdotter. I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise given the amount of people at the Slimelight that have programming jobs...
As for playing up to the "most hated band" tag, it wasn't something we actively sought, although it obviously works for people like Marilyn Manson, etc. Other people painted us into a corner simply because we put our faith in a record label with a handful of vocal detractors. The amount of people who then projected their own grudges and fantasies onto the tedious affair is remarkable.
The very nature of things like Usenet and Slashdot make it appear like an enormous school playground. People take sides, bandy about ludicrous opinions, make dubious allegations...
A good example of how this can then spill over into everyday life is the rift between Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. Perens appears to have been serious when he suggested getting a court order against Raymond (although given ESR's interest in firearms it isn't that suprising).
The sad thing is that people like to gossip, and take sides in other peoples arguments. But if that's what they need to enliven their lives than what can be done to bring about some form of closure?
Having experienced what it's like to have defamatory stuff published about me and several friends on newsgroups, I'm not too sure where I stand on this one. It's very easy to hide behind the 'freedom of speech' banner and allow anyone to write what they like on the web - but that disregards the anguish that those comments can cause. When the virtual slanging matches spill over into real life, things can take an even nastier turn. The problem is that it is much too easy for people of a 'legally responsible age' (whatever that should mean) to hide behind their computer and spout off about someone else. The anonymity that the Internet affords, along with the fact that the malcontents may be hundreds or thousands of miles from each other exacerbates this. As someone with a strong sense of right and wrong, along with a healthy disrespect for authority, this leaves me with a moral dillema. The only reasonably satisfactory answer I can come up with, is that people should be able to write what they like only if they are prepared for the possible conequences... a sort of modern day civil disobedience I suppose. Chris Wareham
We have large numbers of both FreeBSD and Linux (and Solaris) boxes in production.
I assume you mean Yahoo... but when I worked there last year not a single Linux box was in production use. In fact the only machine I saw running it was a Sparc sitting unused at the Santa Clara offices.
The European server farm was running nothing but FreeBSD (version 2.2.7 as I recall), altough I assume stuff like the personalisation database was running on Solaris.
So where have Yahoo started using Linux (if you're allowed to say)? I was always told David Filo considered Linux to be crap, based on his brief encounter with it - and FreeBSD was now too entrenched to be replaced.
Actually Postgres has been around for quite a while
In one form or another it actually dates back to the late 1970's. Have a look at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html for some background information.
Unfortunately, the academic roots of PostgreSQL meant that the codebase was very complex and unstable for years. Apart from commercial offerings based on the codebase, it was mainly a platform for academic research with emphasis on features rather than stabililty.
The release of PostgreSQL 7.0 will see it finally come of age in comparison to it's commercial alternatives.
Some people who use BSD are delighted by Linuxes success
An interesting point of view is the one I came across in a book on building firewalls with Linux and OpenBSD. Some in the BSD community look upon Linux with its bigger install base as an ideal testing ground for new software. This camp positively encourages development targeted at Linux at first, with the possibility of porting across to the BSD systems at a later date.
There is a certain amount of the snobbery evident in this view. They see the Linux userbase as more tolerant of buggy software, with the obvious implication that the whole system is buggier. This is redolent of the complacency in the BSD community with regard to how their operating systems are perceived. Many potential users are put off by the condescending attitude that is more prevalent in BSD circles than in Linux ones.
This attitude certainly put me off of using FreeBSD, especially as I found it a poor desktop system in comparison to the typical Linux distro. Thankfully, this seems to be changing as a number of people migrate to dual booting a BSD operating system alongside Linux, or switching altogether.
Hmmm, you obviously misread the intention of my post. You also used a rather poor analogy.
Racecars don't have CD players. I can't make my car into a racecar by yanking out my CD player
Bad analogy because I can strip down Linux and make a secure server. It may not be as reassuringly secure as OpenBSD, but given the disproportionate number of security holes in applications (as opposed to the kernel) then I'm content. The real analogy is to compare a rally car to a roadgoing version of the same model. The rally car has been finely honed for performance in much the same way OpenBSD is tweaked for security. The roadgoing version offers more features, but you may not need that added functionality. To carry the analogy to an extreme, OpenBSD is like making the rally car available to me - but I have to accept the possible limitations in functionality.
By stating that a Linux user should strip down their install if they wish to be security conscious, I wasn't implying that they should give OpenBSD a miss. In fact, the main reason I stick with Linux is because I have considerably more experience with it than with OpenBSD. As I came from a SVR4 rather than BSD background that may be the reason why, (I find I have to 'relearn' things occasionally on BSD systems, while most Linux distros strike me as more SysV-ish).
THe install base of Linux compared to OpenBSD does offer up the possibility that bugs are more quickly found in the former. However I find greater reassurance in OpenBSD's code audit than the possibility that bugs are reporte more readily for Linux systems. In this I assume you are in agreement.
because he is ignorant to the facts his post should be moderated down and ignored right?
When it comes across as flamebait, then yes.
He or she obviously didn't even take the time to read the article which Slashdot was linking too, or else the nature of OpenBSD would have been apparent.
It all comes down to whether you want Slashdot to descend into a morass of 'Frequently Asked Questions' (or frequently stated misconceptions as is more often the case). Personally I'd like a slightly more informed level of discourse on Slashdot - not the inane drivel I have to contend with on Usenet.
At the same time the balance has to be right. I'd hate to see the level of pedantry and nit-picking that permeates comp.lang.c... but this moderation struck me as spot on. The original poster didn't couch their message in terms of a question, but more like a blunt statement.
1) It's very simple to install 2) It's very fast 3) PostgreSQL only really came of age recently
The lack of features in MySQL are only now biting them, but rather than switch to PostgreSQL they're funding the MySQL guys to add those features. Rather a nice way of rewarding them for producing the software at the heart of Slashdot, and one that will benefit others who may find themselves in a similar position one day.
But you've got to admit that the majority of Slashdot posters come across as clueless teenagers looking for a flamefest. I applaud the moderators for moderating that particular post down, as its author was clearly in the dark when it comes to the development of BSD and operating systems in general.
As noted on the OpenBSD pages, there are a similar number of developers working on the core of OpenBSD as there are for Linux. Put simply, there just aren't that many coders out there who have the skills to work on a task like operating system development. Likewise, there is a threshold to how much of a large piece of software an individual can understand in its entirety. The Alan Cox's and Theo's of this world are pretty few and far between, but contrarily there are enough to sustain the development of Linux and the free BSD's.
As for the original posters claim that developers should focus on Linux because it has a wider installed base than say FreeBSD, is to misunderstand the design goals of Linux. While OpenBSD concentrates on being stable and secure, while perhaps not state of the art, Linux aims to support as many peripherals as possible. This leads to experimental code in the kernel source tree, but a bigger chance that it will work on the latest hardware.
Linux and OpenBSD have greatly differing design goals, and the original posters ignorance of them rightly deserved his post's critical moderation.
RedHat Linux has more security advisories, but that's a consequence of including so much software as part of the standard distribution. They also include lots of beta and recently developed code. OpenBSD in comparison only uses carefully audited code and older, well tried applications. The downside to the OpenBSD approach is that you only get a small set of tools with the standard disribution.
So you should pick what you need from your Linux distribution, and don't install anything else. Or install OpenBSD if you want to. Just remember that a lot of free software is currently written with Linux as its primary target, so you may need to tweak it to get it going on OpenBSD.
Comparing RedHat Linux to OpenBSD simply on the basis of how often security flaws are found in the entire distribution is misleading.
(disclaimer: I happily use both RedHat Linux and OpenBSD, so I know the strengths and weaknesses of both)
I also wondered whether this book would give me anything above and beyond Advanced Perl Programming.
And for those who are berating Perl for not being a 'true' OO language, take a look at Objective C, which welds Smalltalk like OO features onto a base language in much the same way that bless() does in Perl. And before you knock Objective C simply because the behemoth that is C++ is currently more popular, take a look at Mac OS X and OpenSTEP whose API's a largely Objective C based.
Slashdot Mirror
the Win32 port is almost there
...
Time I took another look then. Until now I've had to use some god-awful Motif porting tool whenever a GUI app I've written on Unix needs to run under Windows. Being able to concentrate on the underlying code rather than the GUI would make life a lot easier. And coding in GTK+ rather than Motif would be great
Chris
if a new windowing system was developed, we could just port GTK+ and QT to the new windowing system
...
Probably easier from the point of view of Qt than GTK+, as the former is already very portable. I haven't downloaded a CVS version of GTK+ lately but I know they are aiming to improve portability so it could soon be true for GTK+ as well as Qt.
One thing I always liked about GTK+ was that it avoided the Xt Intrinsics. Xt always seemed to be a dubious halfway house between a GUI toolkit and Xlib itself - adding little in the way of flexibility (apart from variable argument widget creation routines), and much in the way of bloat.
Perhaps it's just the former XView programmer in me starting to shine through
Chris
the X protocol is a rather heavy-weight one
...
True. This was probably a consequence of the Athena team's lack of experience in developing a networked system for windowing. A recent article I read (I regret taht I can't remember where) openly stated that some aspects of X were ill considered with hindsight. At the level of the X protocol it's probably to late in the day to do any major re-engineering. Or maybe not
Chris
in many cases, the GDK calls are simpler than the corresponding X calls. Some rarely used parameters are omitted and the correct values for other parameters are determined automatically
... but GDK is still heavily tied to the X model. Porting it to some other system is not trivial, as is proved by the flakiness of the Windows port.
Mmm
Chris
Semantics, semantics.
Download GDK. Oh, you can't, because although it is a separate library it still forms an essential part of the GTK+ package. The fact that GTK+ hasn't been *successfully* ported to another system is proof of how many X-isms are in the GDK/GTK+ code. So my original comment is still valid, an Xlib emulation layer would still be required below GDK - or else a major rewrite of GDK.
Chris
GTK+ and KDE are becoming the new toolkits of choice for Unix GUI programmers. As we have to rely less and less on X-tied programs, we can get closer and closer to dumping this beast.
... but GTK+ and Qt are built on top of X. You would still need an emulation layer for Xlib in any new windowing system.
Ummm
If we trimmed it down and got it running direct to an API on the system, we'd blow Win32 GUI stuff away
Xlib is a very lean and fast library, I think it would be hard to improve on it in userland. If the alternative you're suggesting is an in kernel GUI, then think again. This is why stability in Windows NT suffered during the transition from NT 3.51 to 4 - the clean distinction between kernel and GUI was broken in the name of efficiency. This allowed calls direct to the hardware, and buggered NT's stability.
Chris
Hmmm ... the GUI in MacOS X is a fantastic technical accomplishment, but it wasn't created overnight. It stems from NeXTSTEP, which used a native GUI because X was not ready for the real world when NeXT needed it to be.
The trouble is that the MacOS X GUI relies on technology licensed from a number of sources: OpenGL from SGI and Display PostScript from Adobe. Open sourced alternatives are available, although GNUStep's Display GhostScript is a shadow of what it would need to be to provide a viable alternative to it's commercial brethren.
So the question is, given that Linux and the *BSD's have the basis of a GUI as good as Aqua in the form of X, where should development be expended? Should it go on creating a semi-clone of OpenSTEP/Aqua in the form of GNUStep, or on providing alternatives in X itself. I think we would be better served by XFree86 developers pursuing anti-aliased fonts, etc. in the existing X framework - the game of catch-up is far easier here than in trying to reverse engineer the Aqua GUI to a greater or lesser extent.
(And does anyone know if Aqua is network transparent like X? I've never used NeXTSTEP or OpenSTEP so I'd be keen to know).
Chris
X does what it was designed to do *very* well. THe lack of conformity in Unix desktops until projects like KDE and GNome came along is an indication of how fragmented the Unix market is/was - not an indication of shortcomings in X. The CDE and Motif suffered from this fragmentation, as adjudged by their designed by committee aspects.
...
Projects like Gnome and KDE have simply given X the toolkits and desktop environents it always needed - driven by user requirements not vendor factionalism. It should come as no surprise that the successful alernatives to X (NeXTSTEP, Sunview for example) were the products of lone companies. Even OpenLook suffered once it became a 'standard' rather than an implementation - resulting in more than one toolkit
As for criticising X because it works over slow modems, well I'm thankful that it does. BEing able to ssh to a remote system on another continent and have X forwarding work is fantastic. Especially when I can do this from a dial-up at home rather than the T1 at work.
To paraphrase:
Those who don't understand X are destined to reinvent it poorly
Chris
If it was considered unacceptable, then why did they make the manuscript in the first place
The lists of authors censured by the Papacy weren't fixed, so the teachings of Archimedes just fell out of favour over time.
Chris
That is highly doubtful since they were copied by another Monk just 200 years earlier
The views of the Papacy changed over time just like the views of any other political institution. It just happens that by the Middle Ages the Papacy had started to view it's pagan heritage as a bit of a liability - especially so when their arch-enemies the Muslims were keen on the writings of Greek philosphers, etc.
Chris
Motif is a clone of Windows ... Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985
Yup, but Windows 1.0 looked like DOS with a bitmapped display. No resizable windows, no drag and drop, no GUI toolkit. The look and feel of Windows 3.x was a long way off in 1985. Have a quick look around the web for sites hosting pictures of Windows 1.0 - 2.0 to see what I mean when I say that Motif owes little to early incarnations of Windows.
And don't forget that Microsoft were a co-sponsor of Motif. They treated it as a testbed for what became the Windows 95 UI, hence the curious mish-mash of Windows / HP interface design in Motif.
Chris
There is a theory that the casing stones from the Great Pyramid were used to build buildings in Cairo
The more likely explanation is that the limestone casing simply eroded away. That's certainly the reason I remember from Egyptology books I've read.
Chris
Well if I was a Greek monk and my choices were hang on to an old Math book or write a prayer book, I'm sure my priority would be the prayer book
It's more likely that the text was wiped because writings by Archimedes and others were considered unacceptable at the time. They were either viewed as naive attempts to understand the world (which contemporary thinking claimed was all God's doing), or dangerous sources of heresy.
For a fictional, but highly thought provoking account of what ideas were prevalent at the time check out 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco. For a more fact based but drier account see any books on the treatment of 'heresy' by the churches of the Middle Ages. I'm a particular fan of books on the Baltic crusades - although it's not very well documented.
Chris
Wow! A Killing Miranda aware Slashdotter. I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise given the amount of people at the Slimelight that have programming jobs ...
...
As for playing up to the "most hated band" tag, it wasn't something we actively sought, although it obviously works for people like Marilyn Manson, etc. Other people painted us into a corner simply because we put our faith in a record label with a handful of vocal detractors. The amount of people who then projected their own grudges and fantasies onto the tedious affair is remarkable.
The very nature of things like Usenet and Slashdot make it appear like an enormous school playground. People take sides, bandy about ludicrous opinions, make dubious allegations
A good example of how this can then spill over into everyday life is the rift between Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. Perens appears to have been serious when he suggested getting a court order against Raymond (although given ESR's interest in firearms it isn't that suprising).
The sad thing is that people like to gossip, and take sides in other peoples arguments. But if that's what they need to enliven their lives than what can be done to bring about some form of closure?
Chris Wareham
On the web, anyone can publish anything. They only need to know how to write. People are much less likely to take it seriously.
... the average Slashdot user may take anything they read on the web with a pinch of salt, but it's still legally admissable in most courts.
Hmmm
The other way to look at it is this:
Libel can occur in everyday speech. If the libelled party can get witnesses to support their claim, a case can still be made.
So simply because web publishing doesn't involve a third party (newspaper publisher, etc.) doesn't set a precedent in libel law.
Chris Wareham
Having experienced what it's like to have defamatory stuff published about me and several friends on newsgroups, I'm not too sure where I stand on this one. It's very easy to hide behind the 'freedom of speech' banner and allow anyone to write what they like on the web - but that disregards the anguish that those comments can cause. When the virtual slanging matches spill over into real life, things can take an even nastier turn. The problem is that it is much too easy for people of a 'legally responsible age' (whatever that should mean) to hide behind their computer and spout off about someone else. The anonymity that the Internet affords, along with the fact that the malcontents may be hundreds or thousands of miles from each other exacerbates this. As someone with a strong sense of right and wrong, along with a healthy disrespect for authority, this leaves me with a moral dillema. The only reasonably satisfactory answer I can come up with, is that people should be able to write what they like only if they are prepared for the possible conequences ... a sort of modern day civil disobedience I suppose.
Chris Wareham
We have large numbers of both FreeBSD and Linux (and Solaris) boxes in production.
... but when I worked there last year not a single Linux box was in production use. In fact the only machine I saw running it was a Sparc sitting unused at the Santa Clara offices.
I assume you mean Yahoo
The European server farm was running nothing but FreeBSD (version 2.2.7 as I recall), altough I assume stuff like the personalisation database was running on Solaris.
So where have Yahoo started using Linux (if you're allowed to say)? I was always told David Filo considered Linux to be crap, based on his brief encounter with it - and FreeBSD was now too entrenched to be replaced.
Chris Wareham
Actually Postgres has been around for quite a while
In one form or another it actually dates back to the late 1970's. Have a look at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html for some background information.
Unfortunately, the academic roots of PostgreSQL meant that the codebase was very complex and unstable for years. Apart from commercial offerings based on the codebase, it was mainly a platform for academic research with emphasis on features rather than stabililty.
The release of PostgreSQL 7.0 will see it finally come of age in comparison to it's commercial alternatives.
Chris Wareham
Some people who use BSD are delighted by Linuxes success
An interesting point of view is the one I came across in a book on building firewalls with Linux and OpenBSD. Some in the BSD community look upon Linux with its bigger install base as an ideal testing ground for new software. This camp positively encourages development targeted at Linux at first, with the possibility of porting across to the BSD systems at a later date.
There is a certain amount of the snobbery evident in this view. They see the Linux userbase as more tolerant of buggy software, with the obvious implication that the whole system is buggier. This is redolent of the complacency in the BSD community with regard to how their operating systems are perceived. Many potential users are put off by the condescending attitude that is more prevalent in BSD circles than in Linux ones.
This attitude certainly put me off of using FreeBSD, especially as I found it a poor desktop system in comparison to the typical Linux distro. Thankfully, this seems to be changing as a number of people migrate to dual booting a BSD operating system alongside Linux, or switching altogether.
Chris Wareham
Hmmm, you obviously misread the intention of my post. You also used a rather poor analogy.
Racecars don't have CD players. I can't make my car into a racecar by yanking out my CD player
Bad analogy because I can strip down Linux and make a secure server. It may not be as reassuringly secure as OpenBSD, but given the disproportionate number of security holes in applications (as opposed to the kernel) then I'm content. The real analogy is to compare a rally car to a roadgoing version of the same model. The rally car has been finely honed for performance in much the same way OpenBSD is tweaked for security. The roadgoing version offers more features, but you may not need that added functionality. To carry the analogy to an extreme, OpenBSD is like making the rally car available to me - but I have to accept the possible limitations in functionality.
By stating that a Linux user should strip down their install if they wish to be security conscious, I wasn't implying that they should give OpenBSD a miss. In fact, the main reason I stick with Linux is because I have considerably more experience with it than with OpenBSD. As I came from a SVR4 rather than BSD background that may be the reason why, (I find I have to 'relearn' things occasionally on BSD systems, while most Linux distros strike me as more SysV-ish).
THe install base of Linux compared to OpenBSD does offer up the possibility that bugs are more quickly found in the former. However I find greater reassurance in OpenBSD's code audit than the possibility that bugs are reporte more readily for Linux systems. In this I assume you are in agreement.
Chris Wareham
because he is ignorant to the facts his post should be moderated down and ignored right?
... but this moderation struck me as spot on. The original poster didn't couch their message in terms of a question, but more like a blunt statement.
When it comes across as flamebait, then yes.
He or she obviously didn't even take the time to read the article which Slashdot was linking too, or else the nature of OpenBSD would have been apparent.
It all comes down to whether you want Slashdot to descend into a morass of 'Frequently Asked Questions' (or frequently stated misconceptions as is more often the case). Personally I'd like a slightly more informed level of discourse on Slashdot - not the inane drivel I have to contend with on Usenet.
At the same time the balance has to be right. I'd hate to see the level of pedantry and nit-picking that permeates comp.lang.c
Chris Wareham
I imagine they chose MySQL because:
1) It's very simple to install
2) It's very fast
3) PostgreSQL only really came of age recently
The lack of features in MySQL are only now biting them, but rather than switch to PostgreSQL they're funding the MySQL guys to add those features. Rather a nice way of rewarding them for producing the software at the heart of Slashdot, and one that will benefit others who may find themselves in a similar position one day.
Chris Wareham
But you've got to admit that the majority of Slashdot posters come across as clueless teenagers looking for a flamefest. I applaud the moderators for moderating that particular post down, as its author was clearly in the dark when it comes to the development of BSD and operating systems in general.
As noted on the OpenBSD pages, there are a similar number of developers working on the core of OpenBSD as there are for Linux. Put simply, there just aren't that many coders out there who have the skills to work on a task like operating system development. Likewise, there is a threshold to how much of a large piece of software an individual can understand in its entirety. The Alan Cox's and Theo's of this world are pretty few and far between, but contrarily there are enough to sustain the development of Linux and the free BSD's.
As for the original posters claim that developers should focus on Linux because it has a wider installed base than say FreeBSD, is to misunderstand the design goals of Linux. While OpenBSD concentrates on being stable and secure, while perhaps not state of the art, Linux aims to support as many peripherals as possible. This leads to experimental code in the kernel source tree, but a bigger chance that it will work on the latest hardware.
Linux and OpenBSD have greatly differing design goals, and the original posters ignorance of them rightly deserved his post's critical moderation.
Chris Wareham
RedHat Linux has more security advisories, but that's a consequence of including so much software as part of the standard distribution. They also include lots of beta and recently developed code. OpenBSD in comparison only uses carefully audited code and older, well tried applications. The downside to the OpenBSD approach is that you only get a small set of tools with the standard disribution.
So you should pick what you need from your Linux distribution, and don't install anything else. Or install OpenBSD if you want to. Just remember that a lot of free software is currently written with Linux as its primary target, so you may need to tweak it to get it going on OpenBSD.
Comparing RedHat Linux to OpenBSD simply on the basis of how often security flaws are found in the entire distribution is misleading.
(disclaimer: I happily use both RedHat Linux and OpenBSD, so I know the strengths and weaknesses of both)
Chris Wareham
I also wondered whether this book would give me anything above and beyond Advanced Perl Programming.
And for those who are berating Perl for not being a 'true' OO language, take a look at Objective C, which welds Smalltalk like OO features onto a base language in much the same way that bless() does in Perl. And before you knock Objective C simply because the behemoth that is C++ is currently more
popular, take a look at Mac OS X and OpenSTEP whose API's a largely Objective C based.
Chris Wareham