Yes they work with CodeWeavers extensively and have got Crossover deployed on many desktops - they're learning a lot about Windows appcompat doing this transition and that'll stand them in good stead for future migration consulting.
As far as I'm concerned they have almost no rights - criminals usually don't. If they are really good for society then they'll make money post-opening because they have the best implementation of Win32 and the best OS on which to run Windows apps (as opposed to say Linux+Wine). That would be a free market and that's what they desperately want to avoid.
The main reason they don't is that they're shit scared that they don't have the best product, and won't have the best product in future. Therefore they need to retain control of Win32 and its associated protocols and APIs, because if Linux because fully win32 compatible overnight suddenly there'd be much less need for them.
Totally agree on the SELinux part, what's especially interesting about this is that we finally have an opportunity to start over with Linux and get it right this time. It's brilliant that the NSA are helping out with that.
One thing: my understanding (based on a course I took last term on verifying code) is that code provers are still very much a research topic. In particular they find it very hard to deal with pointers. Also the lecturer implied it was quite hard to prove pre-existing code bases and it was better to "refine" code from a specification into code proving it as you go.
That's exactly what I was wondering. How can you ever be an Apple-only place if you rely on donations. Do you seriously tell people to go away if they donate PC hardware?
That's because Windows 95 was targetted at machines with 4mb of RAM and the people who wrote it aggressively optimised it for that baseline. Ever wondered why the lights in the clock don't blink? That's why - it hurt performance too much on 4mb machines.
If this happened, there would be no Ubuntu. There would be no Mepis. There would be no Knoppix. All the Debian derviatives exist solely because of the monolithic Debian package repository. Sure, Ubuntu has its own repositories but they all come from Debian unstable.
That's not true. The thing that makes Ubuntu great as a desktop and Debian lame is all the work that has gone into the core OS part, not the packages. The Ubuntu universe is riddled with uninstallable software, and main ships with out of date software too (eg, Inkscape).
Furthermore, to me, it doesn't seem like that is what the Debian project is about. Debian provides all the free software that runs on Linux and is worthwhile to package.
It quite clearly does not, at least not by my definition of "worthwhile". What about all the commercial games out there? I guess they're not worthwhile packaging because they aren't free enough. What about up to date Wine packages? I guess it's not worthwhile packaging that, so upstream has to do it instead. Even if you take a massive leap of faith and claim that Debian is able to package everything anybody might ever want, it still has big problems with freshness even in unstable.
They also ensure that it is possible to run a computer on free software. Without the central repository, that goal couldn't be accomplished.
I don't see that logic. Having software pre-filtered means you don't "accidentally" get un-free software, however not everybody shares the same definition of free. See the ridiculous discussion over the Xorg "nv" driver on debian-legal for a good example of that. You can still run a computer using only free software if you want, you just have to not install non-free software. Assuming the core OS is free, that's not hard at all. That has the advantage that for the majority of software you can make up your own mind about what is free or non-free, instead of having Debian choose for you.
These developers would move on to the develop for the third party repositories, but those would be far less useful than Debian's repository and cause massive duplication of effort.
I don't see that logic either. Third party packages (not repositories) would be provided by upstream projects like on Windows or MacOS. Those packages would work for anybody, using a technology like autopackage. Therefore their utility is hugely increased, and duplication is decreased, because the software need only be packaged once for all Linux users.
Plus, you state that Debian's main strength is its packages, but you want to take those away? Sure, there would be quick releases, but the released product it self would be much less useful than Debian is now.
No, Debian would just have to focus on writing a great OS instead of packaging as much stuff as possible. So that means things like, a graphical installer, slick integrated desktop, nice config tools etc etc.
Debian has problems, but the massive overhauls people are proposing are completely unnecessary. Right now, there is a Debian for everyone.
That clearly isn't true otherwise the candidates would not be claiming that Debian users are "leaving for greener pastures" and Ubuntu would not have appeared out of nowhere with a vibrant community almost overnight (guess where they mostly came from...)
I disagree. One of the greatest things about Debian is the scope of the project. I can install almost anything and not have to hunt around the internet for a package. It's all in one place.
Which says everything about the futility of trying to package every program you could possibly want. Debian hasn't released for years because it's far, far too big. If Debian was in fact an OS and not a constantly shifting, usually broken snapshot of a subset of the free software world, it would release far more often.
To be honest, the best way that Debian could ensure rapid, predictable releases would be to jettison their package repository entirely. Crazy idea, yes?
Well, think about it. What is Debian the "OS" famous for? It's pretty, easy to use installer? No. Its slick, integrated desktop? No. Its power as a server - not even that, really, if you compare Windows 2003 as an OS to Debian as an OS (ie, excluding the random programs that come with it) you'll probably find that W2K3 makes things that require Guru level knowledge in Debian much easier.
In fact the only thing Debian is famous for is having lots of packages. To get decent versions, you need to use unstable which means that often things won't actually be installable, and occasionally an apt-get dist-upgrade will break your system, but hey it's better than no packages at all.
The solution seems obvious - abandon the unproductive and unscalable centralised repository system and release Debian as a core OS that provides the essentials, with the rest of the software provided by third party binary packages.
You almost certainly have a virus or bot that's either installed a rootkit and is therefore hiding from process listers, or is hacking the task manager view to hide itself. I would run a rootkit scan, or use an alternative process listing tool.
IIRC the major problem people have with this is the "remote attestation" part, which means that a remote computer can verify your system is trusted, where "trusted" means "conforms to some arbitrary set of rules". Sure the hardware itself does not force you to run anything in particular, however if parts of the internet start requiring you to run Windows (or MacOS!) in order to connect - which this technology absolutely allows - then we have problems. Especially if ISPs start requiring it.
Actually my experience is that the opposite is true. I have an actual Java program here that brute forces the Travelling Salesman Problem and with GCJ 3.4 compiled using -O2 -ffast-math it can reliably complete a simple set of cities in a couple of seconds less than the JVM can (where the JVM takes about 7 seconds).
Now, it may be that the JVM simply takes 2 seconds to start up and the GCJ version doesn't. I do not know. However, I have no complaints about the performance of GCJ. The biggest problem with it is simply compatibility: quite a lot of Java APIs don't run on it.
The clear trend lately has been more integration not less. You can copy and paste rich text between AbiWord, Gaim and the Gimp. "Foreign" applications like Firefox and OpenOffice have been integrated with the GTK+ theming system so they look native, and they become more accurate with every passing month.
Meanwhile, did you ever notice that Office, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio and Encarta all use their own widgets? In fact, writing your own widget toolkit is a recommended technique according to some engineers working on Windows at Microsoft.
Really, I'm afraid your information is about 6-12 months out of date, and in Linux-years that's an awful long time.
It's actually because all the (good) MP3 codecs are GPLd, and distributing them is technically a violation of the terms of the GPL. If there was a good X11/BSD licensed codec for Linux it'd be distributed. At least, this is what I've been told.
WTF? Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that so many of these bots are under the GPL - as if the criminals who use them will care about the finer points of copyright law. What idiots.
You're not the only one - I haven't been cracked like that but I know other people who have. Always, it's via a guest or "test" account.
Moral of the story? Don't run SSH unless you really really know what you're doing! Linux distros - don't let people create accounts with stupid passwords, and especially do not run SSH by default!
Actually it's not nearly that bad, though given that binary distribution on Linux is basically undocumented I can see why you might think that. Come talk to us on #autopackage sometime and we'll sort you out. Hint: we're succesfully distributing binaries of complex apps like Inkscape, AbiWord (both written in C++) and Gaim with no issues. We have written various tools to help work around glibc/gcc compatibility brain damages.
The guy didn't ask what Dave Schroeder finds the most productive platform, he asked for a comparison of two enterprise Linux distros.
Seriously. What part of the question is so hard to understand? If he wanted to know about Apple, he'd have mentioned it.
You're totally right in your subject: that was a -1 Offtopic post, so in future don't post them please. Doing so is just an abuse of the system - Apple is quite capable of doing its own marketing thanks without you shilling for them.
Theoretically GNOME already has this, go to the Run window, open up and focus the list of known applications then start typing. However on Fedora Core 3 the typeahead find seems to be buggy: I believe this is much improved in GTK 2.6 (no distros are shipping with that yet AFAIK).
That's not sexism, that's statistics. I mean, seriously, gender issues aside if somebody walks into a cyber-cafe and asks what sort of computers you have are you going to assume they want to write C, or are just new to technology?
That wasn't what TFA identified as the problem. They had some whacked out theories about stress and repeated claims about how women are just different from men and that's why it's harder for them to succeed.
The closest I could find to an actual example in the article was this gem:
For example, women tend to take maternity leaves when their children are born. Even if that leave is only a couple of months long, much could have changed by the time the woman returns to her desk. Imagine the increased stress for her if an enterprise software update occurs in her absence, for instance.
Where "enterprise software" is a link to a company selling something (ie it's an advert). What little credibility the author may have had vanished with that line. Ooooh! Enterprise software! That's some scary stuff you got right there.
I mean it's not like men ever get hit by a car and have to take a few months out (or lose their jobs!), is it? This article is a total fluff piece pandering to those who actually care about the imbalance, ie managers and not (by and large) the techs who just want to work with the best people possible.
Yeah, exactly. I read the summary and was like, "What new direction?". Groove has to be one of the most Win32 dependent apps I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot). It uses a mangled form of HTML fed to IE to render its entire GUI. It's entirely based on COM. It even has/had a "Redmond" theme which is 120% uglier than the default, but gives those who are desperate the battleship-grey theme
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Yes they work with CodeWeavers extensively and have got Crossover deployed on many desktops - they're learning a lot about Windows appcompat doing this transition and that'll stand them in good stead for future migration consulting.
The main reason they don't is that they're shit scared that they don't have the best product, and won't have the best product in future. Therefore they need to retain control of Win32 and its associated protocols and APIs, because if Linux because fully win32 compatible overnight suddenly there'd be much less need for them.
One thing: my understanding (based on a course I took last term on verifying code) is that code provers are still very much a research topic. In particular they find it very hard to deal with pointers. Also the lecturer implied it was quite hard to prove pre-existing code bases and it was better to "refine" code from a specification into code proving it as you go.
That's exactly what I was wondering. How can you ever be an Apple-only place if you rely on donations. Do you seriously tell people to go away if they donate PC hardware?
That's because Windows 95 was targetted at machines with 4mb of RAM and the people who wrote it aggressively optimised it for that baseline. Ever wondered why the lights in the clock don't blink? That's why - it hurt performance too much on 4mb machines.
That sort of concurrency can always lead to deadlock, so I fail to see your point.
That's not true. The thing that makes Ubuntu great as a desktop and Debian lame is all the work that has gone into the core OS part, not the packages. The Ubuntu universe is riddled with uninstallable software, and main ships with out of date software too (eg, Inkscape).
It quite clearly does not, at least not by my definition of "worthwhile". What about all the commercial games out there? I guess they're not worthwhile packaging because they aren't free enough. What about up to date Wine packages? I guess it's not worthwhile packaging that, so upstream has to do it instead. Even if you take a massive leap of faith and claim that Debian is able to package everything anybody might ever want, it still has big problems with freshness even in unstable.
I don't see that logic. Having software pre-filtered means you don't "accidentally" get un-free software, however not everybody shares the same definition of free. See the ridiculous discussion over the Xorg "nv" driver on debian-legal for a good example of that. You can still run a computer using only free software if you want, you just have to not install non-free software. Assuming the core OS is free, that's not hard at all. That has the advantage that for the majority of software you can make up your own mind about what is free or non-free, instead of having Debian choose for you.
I don't see that logic either. Third party packages (not repositories) would be provided by upstream projects like on Windows or MacOS. Those packages would work for anybody, using a technology like autopackage. Therefore their utility is hugely increased, and duplication is decreased, because the software need only be packaged once for all Linux users.
No, Debian would just have to focus on writing a great OS instead of packaging as much stuff as possible. So that means things like, a graphical installer, slick integrated desktop, nice config tools etc etc.
That clearly isn't true otherwise the candidates would not be claiming that Debian users are "leaving for greener pastures" and Ubuntu would not have appeared out of nowhere with a vibrant community almost overnight (guess where they mostly came from ...)
Which says everything about the futility of trying to package every program you could possibly want. Debian hasn't released for years because it's far, far too big. If Debian was in fact an OS and not a constantly shifting, usually broken snapshot of a subset of the free software world, it would release far more often.
To be honest, the best way that Debian could ensure rapid, predictable releases would be to jettison their package repository entirely. Crazy idea, yes?
Well, think about it. What is Debian the "OS" famous for? It's pretty, easy to use installer? No. Its slick, integrated desktop? No. Its power as a server - not even that, really, if you compare Windows 2003 as an OS to Debian as an OS (ie, excluding the random programs that come with it) you'll probably find that W2K3 makes things that require Guru level knowledge in Debian much easier.
In fact the only thing Debian is famous for is having lots of packages. To get decent versions, you need to use unstable which means that often things won't actually be installable, and occasionally an apt-get dist-upgrade will break your system, but hey it's better than no packages at all.
The solution seems obvious - abandon the unproductive and unscalable centralised repository system and release Debian as a core OS that provides the essentials, with the rest of the software provided by third party binary packages.
You almost certainly have a virus or bot that's either installed a rootkit and is therefore hiding from process listers, or is hacking the task manager view to hide itself. I would run a rootkit scan, or use an alternative process listing tool.
The web used to be easy to implement readers for, back when it was first created. Then it got interesting and useful.
IIRC the major problem people have with this is the "remote attestation" part, which means that a remote computer can verify your system is trusted, where "trusted" means "conforms to some arbitrary set of rules". Sure the hardware itself does not force you to run anything in particular, however if parts of the internet start requiring you to run Windows (or MacOS!) in order to connect - which this technology absolutely allows - then we have problems. Especially if ISPs start requiring it.
Do you seriously think Apple would behave any differently in Microsofts position?
Now, it may be that the JVM simply takes 2 seconds to start up and the GCJ version doesn't. I do not know. However, I have no complaints about the performance of GCJ. The biggest problem with it is simply compatibility: quite a lot of Java APIs don't run on it.
The clear trend lately has been more integration not less. You can copy and paste rich text between AbiWord, Gaim and the Gimp. "Foreign" applications like Firefox and OpenOffice have been integrated with the GTK+ theming system so they look native, and they become more accurate with every passing month.
Meanwhile, did you ever notice that Office, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio and Encarta all use their own widgets? In fact, writing your own widget toolkit is a recommended technique according to some engineers working on Windows at Microsoft.
Really, I'm afraid your information is about 6-12 months out of date, and in Linux-years that's an awful long time.
It's actually because all the (good) MP3 codecs are GPLd, and distributing them is technically a violation of the terms of the GPL. If there was a good X11/BSD licensed codec for Linux it'd be distributed. At least, this is what I've been told.
WTF? Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that so many of these bots are under the GPL - as if the criminals who use them will care about the finer points of copyright law. What idiots.
Moral of the story? Don't run SSH unless you really really know what you're doing! Linux distros - don't let people create accounts with stupid passwords, and especially do not run SSH by default!
He can't, but he can probably judge the user cost better than a GCC developer can. And it's a huge cost.
Actually it's not nearly that bad, though given that binary distribution on Linux is basically undocumented I can see why you might think that. Come talk to us on #autopackage sometime and we'll sort you out. Hint: we're succesfully distributing binaries of complex apps like Inkscape, AbiWord (both written in C++) and Gaim with no issues. We have written various tools to help work around glibc/gcc compatibility brain damages.
Seriously. What part of the question is so hard to understand? If he wanted to know about Apple, he'd have mentioned it.
You're totally right in your subject: that was a -1 Offtopic post, so in future don't post them please. Doing so is just an abuse of the system - Apple is quite capable of doing its own marketing thanks without you shilling for them.
Theoretically GNOME already has this, go to the Run window, open up and focus the list of known applications then start typing. However on Fedora Core 3 the typeahead find seems to be buggy: I believe this is much improved in GTK 2.6 (no distros are shipping with that yet AFAIK).
That's not sexism, that's statistics. I mean, seriously, gender issues aside if somebody walks into a cyber-cafe and asks what sort of computers you have are you going to assume they want to write C, or are just new to technology?
The closest I could find to an actual example in the article was this gem:
Where "enterprise software" is a link to a company selling something (ie it's an advert). What little credibility the author may have had vanished with that line. Ooooh! Enterprise software! That's some scary stuff you got right there.
I mean it's not like men ever get hit by a car and have to take a few months out (or lose their jobs!), is it? This article is a total fluff piece pandering to those who actually care about the imbalance, ie managers and not (by and large) the techs who just want to work with the best people possible.
Yeah, exactly. I read the summary and was like, "What new direction?". Groove has to be one of the most Win32 dependent apps I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot). It uses a mangled form of HTML fed to IE to render its entire GUI. It's entirely based on COM. It even has/had a "Redmond" theme which is 120% uglier than the default, but gives those who are desperate the battleship-grey theme
So what are your actual issues?