Oh, but "X" is the windowing system for UNIX, you know, "eks eleven", which is much better than "X10", the same as the clunky old protocol for handling devices around your house. Not Windows, but "X Windows"...
For mysterious reasons (or perhaps not-so-mysterious reasons), the X consortium requests that you call it "The X Window System" or just plain "X" rather than "X Windows".
Re:in nead of a book recomendation!
on
Linux Server Hacks
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· Score: 3, Informative
O'Reilly's "Unix Power Tools" is undoubtedly one of the best books for learning how to do powerful things in Linux or any *nix. Unfortunately it's gone up in price in the third edition, but that means that the coveted first edition is easier to aquire via used book sources.:-) This book will teach you to be a scripting guru. If you are more of a beginner, I'd reccomend O'Reilly's "Running Linux" as being the best of this genre.
For learning how to program on Linux there is "Begining Linux Programming" from Wrox. From O'Reilly and from other publishers, get books on scripting languages such as Perl, Python, or Tcl; a scripting language is a very valuable thing in the *nix environment. Don't forget shell scripting for that matter, Kernighan and Pike have the definitive work, "The Unix Programming Environment" on Bourne Shell scripting among other things and you may also want to get a book that covers Bash too. Also if you have deep pockets, anything by W. Richard Stevens is a good reference on Unix and TCP/IP network programming.
I have a house to maintain, kids to raise, a wife to spend time with, a job to work at etc. When I sit down at the computer I expect to click a little button and have things just work. Like magic. I wanna click "download" and in 5-10 minutes be running the program. No compiling. No dependancies etc.
apt-get will give you this, and with synaptic or kpackage even a GUI. Debian has apt-get (with 8,000+ apt-getable programs) and RPM-based distros such as Connectiva, SuSE, and Red Hat offer smaller (in the latter two cases unofficial) apt-get repositories as well. Give it a try, it's actually more of a no-brainer and safer than Microsoft's instalation programs.
I remember thinking that the world wide web was a fad that would die out, because gopher looked so much better in a terminal and links between sites were better organized. This was of course before people started having SLIP and PPP connections with insanely fast modems coupled with graphical browsers that made it possible for www to grow into something more.
KDE 3.1 apparently includes tabbed browsing, the ability to sync with Exchange servers, a new administration tool called "Desktop sharing"..
Oh, you mean just like every other distro that has kde 3.1?
True, but SuSE is the main funder of KDE developers and has contributed the most to KDE; so in a sense these partially are SuSE accomplishments, that wouldn't have happened as quick if SuSE didn't support KDE as much as they have.
What about the guy who's playing MP3's at his desk?
xmms
What about the guy who wants to sync to his Palm Pilot?
jpilot/evolution/and some other tools that I don't know the names of offhand since I don't have a Palm Pilot. (Anyone want to donate one to the cause?;-) )
What about the guy who's using Messenger?
GAIM supports AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, IRC (you're better off with a dedicated IRC client though - but otherwise GAIM's IM support is superb), and probably a couple of other protocols. There are a number of other instant messanger clients such as licq or kit if you prefer.
What about the guy who *NEEDS* a specific piece of software to communicate with his peers?
Thereareseveral places that have more free *nix software than you can even remember. Also of course distros like SuSE and Debian come with over 8,000 free software programs that are installable right from the CD. (Or apt-getting over the network.)
What about the guy who's burning DVD's of classroom presentations?
I remember seeing a DVD burner application offered as part of the Red Hat 8.0 personal distribution, there are other sources for it as well of course. (See above.)
What about the guy who wants to run mid-priced shrink wrapped applications like Mathematica or MATLAB or IDL
I think they are available for Linux, if I recall another response to your message correctly.
What about the guy who runs small simulations -- the kind of thing a reasonable desktop could do in an evening or a weekend? People who run computer centers often complain about 40 hours of computer time on the big boxes.
Isn't that a good reason to run a faster operating system that you can make customly optimized apps for like Linux? (Some scientists use the Gentoo distro for that reason.)
In short, what about all the flexibility that the Personal Computer gives the user? Why ins't that included in their "TCO" at all?
Microsoft with Pallidium wants to take this flexabilty of the PC away, I don't think their vision of signed apps and hardware DRM is exactly what you have in mind when you think of Personal Computer flexability.
There is a pervasive movement in American culture (I am an American, no flames from elsewhere) to avoid responsibility, to have other's do the worrying, to dismiss technical know-how as geeky or somehow dirty. As an engineer, I've noticed an increase in a willfull cluelessness about technology. I think that its the same drive that's pushing some people to want government health care, government schooling, etc. People don't want to "have to worry about it".
I was with you until you got to the point implying Americans, more so than others, have a special drive that makes them want government health care. All 30+ nations classified as industrial by the UN excepting the United States and South Africa have government health care, so if anything it's less of a "drive" in Americans than others; assuming of course the wish for everyone to be able to afford a doctor or free public university educations like the rest of the world is because "[Americans] want "someone else to worry about it".
Freenode, formerly OpenProjects, which is an excellent network, albeit one that focuses on the support and building of free software, has a policy of no "excessive" file sharing and mp3 trading. This policy doesn't seem to affect the network negatively. If anything it improves the quality.
Remember how they arrogantly sued the company they bought MS-DOS from out of existence because they were worried they would add multitasking to it?
I did a web search, and all I could find was that Seattle Computer Products sued Microsoft (in 1986), not the other way around!
Hmm, apparently SCP sued Microsoft over their right, spelled out in their contract with MS, to make their own version of MS-DOS (or rather, QDOS, the ancestor of MS-DOS) so long as it was for their own hobbiest computers. I got who took it to court first wrong, but SCP, the inventor of MS-DOS, being driven into bankruptcy by MS monopoly practices after loosing a lawsuit over rights MS gave them in their contract is an accurate recollection of the situation.
Furthermore, IBM has created a pretty complete Windows clone as part of OS/2, and they didn't get into legal trouble, so there is little reason to believe that ReactOS would have any more problems.
IBM until 2.0 developed OS/2 with with Microsoft, at one time MS even sold OS/2. They had negotiated rights to Windows 3.0 compatability with Microsoft as well, and unlike ReactOS IBM had more than adaquate legal resources to back them up even if they didn't.
React OS isn't written based on Windows NT code so a lawsuit could be hard.
This does not apply to patents.
In addititon Microsoft isn't all that heavy on suing people that tries to make MS stuff cross platform compatible. Wine, WineX, Crossover, Dosemu, Mono, countless.doc loaders/converters have been left pretty much untouched. I guess that's because they're not really seeking to profit/performe on Microsofts R&D rather supply an alternative.
That is precisely what ReactOS seems to aim for, as you say "an alternative", not a mere inefficient emulator or document convertor that helps support MS's dominance, but a clone. Assuming this ever progresses past the toy stage, MS will certainly try to keep people from using it; and if legal means, such as patents they have on NT, are the way to do it, they'll do it.
I wonder if ReactOS, if they become successful, might end up in a bit of legal trouble from Microsoft. I'm sure MS has patents and copyrights up the wazoo on Windows NT, and is not afraid to take advantage of them. Remember how they arrogantly sued the company they bought MS-DOS from out of existence because they were worried they would add multitasking to it? Even though that company had some contractual rights to the IP MS purchased from them, which ReactOS hasn't.
While 14 years might be appropriate for books, as a copyright limit for software it's too long. Nobody except the mainframe world utilizes software that old, so you might as well make it the way it is now, copyrighted practically forever.
At least leaving things the way they are beats giving Congress carte blanche for things like legislating Pallidium or whatever Microsoft calls it now, via the SSSCA or whatever Fritz Hollings calls it now, in exchange for what in the software industry is still a practically worthless limit.
You're wrong. VMS and UNIX appeared at about the same time, but are very different beasts. Arguably, VMS was better than UNIX, but UNIX became dominant as a result of BSD.
This is so bizzare that I don't know where to start. VMS appeared near the end of the 70s, when the DEC VAX was introduced. Unix began in 1969, and was first written in C in 1973, though it wasn't widespread until 1976; when the 6th edition of Unix was released. The 7th edition is probably what cemented it as an operating system for accademia. It orignally ran on the PDP-11, which was the most popular mini DEC made before the VAX.
When the VAX was introduced, BSD had already existed for a couple of years, basically as a collection of utilities that required an AT&T source code license to install, (which later versions up to Net/2 required as well) but BSD really took off when they made a BSD (3BSD) for the VAX that included virtual memory, a feature AT&T was not yet offering and a key feature of the VAX hardware. (V=virtual in both "VAX" and "VMS") 4BSD, thanks to ARPA asking Berkeley to add a networking stack for ARPAnet protocols (TCP/IP) to Unix, was the first version to include TCP/IP. This version of BSD did indeed take off, but later on AT&T's System V became more popular.
I don't know what's in your Wallmart, but I had the impression that they were only selling Mandrake pre-installed at their online store, not in the bricks-and-mortar stores where "Aunt Tillie" shops.
Not so
Hmm, perhaps one of the models is sold offline, except when I clicked on it's details
section it indicated it also was only sold online, and on top of that was not sold with Mandrake as standard, but with the "Lindows" distribution.
At any rate, I sincerely doubt that "we all need to thank Mandrake for the Wall Street Journal taking Linux seriously" because "Mandrake is sold on computers at WalMart", as the message I replied to claimed.
They brought Linux out from the dusty closets of computer hackers and to the front lines -- of the American economy, that is.
Mandrake is now sold pre-loaded on millions of inexpensive, high-quality computers at Wal-Mart stores country-wide.
I don't know what's in your Wallmart, but I had the impression that they were only selling Mandrake pre-installed at their online store, not in the bricks-and-mortar stores where "Aunt Tillie" shops.
Business Week, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal all write about Linux based largely in part on the inclusion of Mandrake on many popular-selling computers.
I suspect business publications talk about Red Hat because that's what's on the vast majority of corporate servers or workstations in North America. The Wall Street Journal and Business Week could care less about what kind of Linux is sold in the Walmart online store.
NetBSD has SMP support available or in development for i386, Sparc, Sparc64 VAX, and Alpha. I'm not sure if these are all in the stable branch, some may be in development. I haven't really kept track of this issue much lately.
Commercial vendor support. Oracle, IBM, Sun, etc support Linux. BSD support is IMPROVING, but not near the support Linux recieves.
Apache's own website runs under FreeBSD, and most Linux binaries run fine under *BSD at normal speed, not to mention source.
Let's face it, Linux IS easier. I use Slackware and so I'm in the configs (as opposed to wizards), but Linux still is easier for me. Do I just need to get off my @ss and learn BSD? Probably
BSD is very close to Linux, especially Slackware. The installers are more bare-bones than most Linux installers are nowadays (though I found the Debian installer worse) but running BSD is actually easier than running Linux in many ways. The pkgsrc/ports system of installing 3rd party software is excellent, the distribution getting the most buzz now, Gentoo, copied it and this is largely the reason for it's success. Recompiling kernels and upgrading to new versions are far smoother than Linux usually is as well.
Better java support in Linux. I know the "j" word is dirty around here. Even so...
Yeah, the Java support is lousy.
FreeBSD supports jdk1.3, but only after a complicated installation process thanks to the fact that Sun et. al. haven't given them permission to distribute Java2 native binaries yet. Java 2 support for NetBSD of course is non-existent, though there are people who are working on getting it into pkgsrc...
This is going to sound TOTALLY dumb - Commercial vendor support. If my company can't buy support, the world will certianly end due to lack of it. Whatever...
NetBSD has Wasabi, which has hired many of the top developers of NetBSD.
He also said: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." David wrote this down as Absolom was literally gathering a group of soldiers and men who had formerly been loyal to David to follow David into the mountains and to kill him.
He called, according to the commentators, the fact that Absolom was the one rebelling 'merciful' because a son is more merciful than a stranger.
...it can be summed up in this phrase: "I have learned to be satisfied with the things I have and with everything that happens. I know how to live when I am poor, and I know how to live when I have plenty. I have learned the secret of being happy at any time in everything that happens..."
David knew this secret, so did Paul, the guy who wrote that phrase, and to me, THAT is success...the only success that matters.
It says in Pirkei Avos ("Chapters of Avos" Mishnah tractate Avos, plus an additional chapter of baraisas; a very popular Jewish work from the same era often printed in the siddur), "Which person is rich? He who is happy with his portion."
For example, Solomon's father (from whom Solomon inherited his wealth and kingdon) was quite happy with the things that he had. When Solomon recieved them they only intensified his misery.
Solomon's father was David, who did not lead a tranquil life - he is the author of most of the Psalms and his life had many crisises such as Absalom's rebellion, etc.
I defy Microsoft to be able to prove that a developer with "... Windows NT or Windows 2000 system programming experience,... as well as with scripting and shell languages like PERL, Python and Bash." and "2-5 years experience in high technology, preferably delivering products for both Windows and non-Windows operating systems." to be able to PROVE that any similarity to bash arose in a "cleanroom reverse engineering environment."
Bash is not so original (bash = bourne again shell - i.e. it is a superset of yet another shell) that it can't be cloned, there are plenty of other shells available in *nix that have some of the same command line completion or better, and much of Bash's command language is a superset of the POSIX shell, an open standard that M$ can clone with impunity. That having been said, their intention to meld it with.Net says that it probably won't be a Bash clone but rather something more propritary; and they'll probably mix it with some monstrosity like VB or C#.
Imagine Stahlman winning a copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and Windows getting "infected" by the GPL... it's be Microsoft's worst dream come true...
Don't be rediculous, considering the GNU (now ended) boycott of Apple platforms when Apple were suing about look and feel, they are unlikely to do the same. Besides, if you were familiar with the similarities of bash with other shells such as tcsh, the korn shell, zsh, and POSIX sh, you wouldn't be so confident that it's look and feel is protected by law.
The problem with Linux, especially as packaged by commercial vendors is not simply that it's too much like Windows, it's more that it's not enough like Unix. Linux was meant to be a *Unix* clone, not a Windows clone. That is what excited the hacker community, not overcoming the hated Microsoft, but having free Unix on the PC.
A good feature of Unix, and clones like Linux, is the powerful command line, simple yet powerful modular tools, and easy to use and parse text files. Even the GUI should be this way, such as a simple GUI like pwm that gives you simple menus, configurable from a very easy to read text file, and stays out of your way. Of course, pwm is probably not for everyone; so you can pick another window manager - another feature of Unix, customization, that commercial Linux distros are trying to reduce with controversial and often buggy results.
I can't think of anything I can do with a Bourne shell (admittedly a limited example) that I can't do with M$.
You obviously haven't learned much about scripting in Unix. Read a book like O'Reilly's "UNIX Power Tools" ("the Drill book") and find out some of what *can* be done in the Unix command line that cannot be done in most operating systems, let alone a clone of an 8 bit operating system like the DOS window.
4.x to 5.0 may not be however. This from the 5.0-DP2 release notes "Warning: Binary upgrades to FreeBSD 5.0-DP2 from FreeBSD 4-STABLE are not supported at this time. This may change by the time 5.0 is released."
Yes, but the best way to upgrade if the computer is on the internet and is already running FreeBSD is to CVSup/usr/src, which, with changes documented in the early adopter's guide, and in/usr/src/UPDATE after the CVSup, should work fine. (Disclaimer, I haven't tried this myself - but since it's not the "binary upgrade" that is warned against it should work, as long as you *read* the UPDATE file and follow it step by step.)
BSD sucks its not "buzzword" compatible. I didn't hear one word about OOP, Linux, or.NET
Actually, Microsoft themselves released a bare-bones edition of.Net for FreeBSD with a restrictive "shared source" license. C++ and many other OOP languages both well known and obscure run on it as well, many (though not M$'s offering) are in the ports tree.
Of course, if you really want to avoid the hype, do like me and run NetBSD - we don't have (though NetBSD folks are working on it) Java2 yet in pkgsrc:-(, though we do have a wide variety of other languages with less restrictive licensing and more readily portable code than Sun's.:-)
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For learning how to program on Linux there is "Begining Linux Programming" from Wrox. From O'Reilly and from other publishers, get books on scripting languages such as Perl, Python, or Tcl; a scripting language is a very valuable thing in the *nix environment. Don't forget shell scripting for that matter, Kernighan and Pike have the definitive work, "The Unix Programming Environment" on Bourne Shell scripting among other things and you may also want to get a book that covers Bash too. Also if you have deep pockets, anything by W. Richard Stevens is a good reference on Unix and TCP/IP network programming.
I remember thinking that the world wide web was a fad that would die out, because gopher looked so much better in a terminal and links between sites were better organized. This was of course before people started having SLIP and PPP connections with insanely fast modems coupled with graphical browsers that made it possible for www to grow into something more.
Freenode, formerly OpenProjects, which is an excellent network, albeit one that focuses on the support and building of free software, has a policy of no "excessive" file sharing and mp3 trading. This policy doesn't seem to affect the network negatively. If anything it improves the quality.
I wonder if ReactOS, if they become successful, might end up in a bit of legal trouble from Microsoft. I'm sure MS has patents and copyrights up the wazoo on Windows NT, and is not afraid to take advantage of them. Remember how they arrogantly sued the company they bought MS-DOS from out of existence because they were worried they would add multitasking to it? Even though that company had some contractual rights to the IP MS purchased from them, which ReactOS hasn't.
At least leaving things the way they are beats giving Congress carte blanche for things like legislating Pallidium or whatever Microsoft calls it now, via the SSSCA or whatever Fritz Hollings calls it now, in exchange for what in the software industry is still a practically worthless limit.
When the VAX was introduced, BSD had already existed for a couple of years, basically as a collection of utilities that required an AT&T source code license to install, (which later versions up to Net/2 required as well) but BSD really took off when they made a BSD (3BSD) for the VAX that included virtual memory, a feature AT&T was not yet offering and a key feature of the VAX hardware. (V=virtual in both "VAX" and "VMS") 4BSD, thanks to ARPA asking Berkeley to add a networking stack for ARPAnet protocols (TCP/IP) to Unix, was the first version to include TCP/IP. This version of BSD did indeed take off, but later on AT&T's System V became more popular.
At any rate, I sincerely doubt that "we all need to thank Mandrake for the Wall Street Journal taking Linux seriously" because "Mandrake is sold on computers at WalMart", as the message I replied to claimed.
A good feature of Unix, and clones like Linux, is the powerful command line, simple yet powerful modular tools, and easy to use and parse text files. Even the GUI should be this way, such as a simple GUI like pwm that gives you simple menus, configurable from a very easy to read text file, and stays out of your way. Of course, pwm is probably not for everyone; so you can pick another window manager - another feature of Unix, customization, that commercial Linux distros are trying to reduce with controversial and often buggy results.
Of course, if you really want to avoid the hype, do like me and run NetBSD - we don't have (though NetBSD folks are working on it) Java2 yet in pkgsrc :-(, though we do have a wide variety of other languages with less restrictive licensing and more readily portable code than Sun's. :-)