This is a bit of a contrived argument. First of all, billions of users use mixes of closed software that depend on each other without much of a problem -- in fact with much *less* of a problem than Linux users who have to fight with half- or notatall working or not-existing drivers. Second, it is not that hard to isolate components in a well designed system and to make it easy to figure out which component was the one that failed. However, that would mean that there is an explicit way how closed drivers should get included and seperated from the rest of the kernel. That would mean that this is something that is planned and agreed to to work instead the topic of silly eternal relgious fundamentalist quarrels.
If Linux is to become successful as an alternative OS for the desktop that is usable by nearly everyone instead of computer geeks with too much time, there will have to be ways how to make all those hardware components work quickly and effortlessly and with proprietary drivers.
I am an enthusiast myself and I use Linux (for years now) in a way where these issues are not really that relevant. But I simply cannot at the moment use it for my children or many of my friends or recommend it for people who want to do what they usually do under e.g. Windows. Which means, among other things, simply use the driver of the company that sold me my graphics card.
Sorry, but that community must obviously be 1) nuts and 2) not representative of Linux users if it thinks that way.
I am really sick and tired to see a couple of fundamentalist nuts hinder the success of Linux through nonsense like this. Until you can actually use hardware the way you do with other OS, Linux on the desktop for everyone will remain fiction. It is already sad enough to see how much hardware there is were no driver at all (proprietary or not) is available -- to limit Linux even more by not supporting companies to easily include and distribute proprietary drivers is just insane.
I and many others have been using Linux (and before, *NIX) for many many years and I hate to see some fundamentalists declare themselves "the community" and speak for me and many others.
Of course, they are free to finally drive Linux into total irrelevancy with this, but I hate to see it happen.
What is so bad about including the proprietary drivers. For many users, they are the only way to make proper use of their hardware and e.g. run 3D design programs or something like X-Plane under Linux.
Why make it harder for these users?
What is so bad about giving me the proprietary but working NVidia driver for my NVidia hardware right from the start instead of forcing me to read countless HOWTOs and jump through holes first?
Many consumer devices show similar problems. I have a metal rack where I place my VHS recorder, DVD recorder etc. and everytime I touched both the rack and one of the screws of the DVD recorder I got a little electric shock. Maybe the reason is that the rack is grounded but the DVD recorder is connected to mains with a cable that does not include ground (i.e. with a two wire cable not a three wire cable). Maybe the inductive devices in the voltage coverter obviously cause a voltage difference between the "chassis ground" of the DVD player and the true AC mains ground -- I never bothered to measure that, I simply connected the chassis screw to mains ground to avoid the problem. Experience has shown th
Of course it can be worthwhile to start from scratch or branch a successful application.
My point however is that in the concrete case of Netscape 9 it is hard to see what the benefit is. As I said, it seems all of what NS 9 improves could have been made by extensions or themes and a tiny bit of rebranding.
So, I simply cannot see how a separate NS9 browser that is officially based on Firefox either does anything "better", or does it "with more or better features" that could not just as easily have been done by contributing to FF in the first place.
What is the point of making a new, separate browser instead of joining forces with the Firefox development and just distributing a re-branded Firefox with a new theme and a couple of pre-installed extensions? What differences will there be that are not just another theme or preinstalled extension? Is there any coordination going on with the Firefox developer community (since FF this is supposed to be an open community, obviously not). Will Firefox extensions and themes work with NS9? Why won't it run on Solaris?
What will NS9 that Firefox, maybe with one or two extensions installed, cannot do?
Why should I bother to try yet another browser that maybe has a few little improvements and at the same time lacks other things I get in other browsers?
In many countries shrinkwrap licenses or license agreements that you can only agree to after actually buying the product, or that are "implicitly agreed upon" are not legally binding and are contrary to public policy. None of the things included in those "contracts" are legally binding and that includes the exclusion of warranties etc., even if written in all upper case.
History shows unfortunately that idealists, especially fundamentalist idealists, nearly always did much more harm than good, even though their ideals might look quite good, theoretically.
I cannot comment on *SD as an alternative, but I guess there is still a lot that would have to be invested in order for it to become an alternative even to Linux at the moment. Branching Linux itself and changing Licenses afterwards is not possible without the consent of thousands of (partially unknown or antraceable) contributors, so that is unfortunately not an option.
Well, limited with regard to what these people might want to do: play DVDs, play and encode MP3s, receive, edit and send back Word documents, play games that are not totally anachronistic, use children's programs, buy all kinds of multimedia software for the computer, file your tax returns, manage your doctor's practice, do some artistic painting and print it out in decent quality on a cheap ink printer, use your FAX/printer/scanner combo without limitations etc. etc.
Some of these things are possible by severe hacking and ignoring laws. More things are not possible at all.
And by the way -- if you really want to recommend a Linux that is easy to install, runs on modern hardware and that makes it easy for the user to configure their monitors, graphic tablets etc. recommend OpenSuse10.2 rather than the current Ubuntu... I have tried both and unfortunately, Ubuntu still does not live up to its perpetually repeated myth of "user friendliness and easiness for first-time users".
Do not get me wrong... there are many things that Linux does much better than other OS -- I have been using *NIX systems for this reason for more than 10 years now. Unfortunately, many things non-geek users, children or other family members want to do are not among the things that Linux does better:(
An overraction of fundamentalists who will ultimately harm the success of Linux with this and similar actions.
Similar to the fundamentalist idiots here on/. who, for instance, totally suppressed any news about the release of OpenSuse 10.2.
In any case, it is amazing to watch the stupidity being at work here. And it is sad, because, as somebody who has been using *NIX for more than 10 years now, I would like to see a usable alternative to Windows and Mac continue to be available in the coming decades.
I am afraid, the fundamentalists of "everything must be free in all senses of free" and "we change the capitalist world by not letting them do anything a user could need under Linux" religion will spoil it.
I'd really hate to see Linux disappear in the outer spaces of irrelevancy, but at the moment, the "community" is fighting hard to make some real bad strategic decisions.
US patent laws will not disappear by doing this. The need of users for licensed and legal software like encoders/decoders or certain drivers will not disappear by doing this. The need of content providers to protect their investment on Linux will not disappear by doing this. The forseeable need of users to play back HD or Blueray discs, or any HDTV content will not disappear by doing this.
I'd like to hear that something constructive is finally happen to strategically make these and other things possible on Linux so that it really can become a usable alternative to Windows.
I am curious who long I will actually be able to avoid Windows on my computer in the future. Seeing how "divide et impera" is working to weaken the Linux camp, I am quite pessimistic about that.
I like to see that businesses are popping up around Linux and that licensed, legal software is becoming available for media playback. However, one of the major issues is still not resolved: there is no legal way to play back CSS protected DVDs. It seems the same company is planning to provide a player, but the original plan to publish it in the second half of 2006 did not seem to hold:) There are similar issues with mp3-encoding and many video encoders.
Re:Sorry, but this is nonsense.
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 1
OK -- I was referring to the "Ruby already is an acceptable LISP" article here, not the idea of running LISP on top of an Ruby interpreter. I have not the slightest idea how the interpreter is designed, so I cannot say anything about this.
You are right about not confusing the language with the interpreter, but what I was trying to say is that language can help to make performance optimizations easier or possible at all: the LISP declare mechanism makes this quite explicit and gives the details in the hands of the programmer -- in the case of OCAML the type system and the strict typing make this possible under the hood. I must confess that I do not know the design of Ruby enought to really make a judgement, but my feeling is that some of the nice features make it hard to find a way to do performance optimization well (I'll be happy to be proven wrong here!).
I already have looked at JRuby and I am really looking forward to how JRuby will develop, especially on top of the Java 6 VM and successors. I'd love to use the benefits of the Java libraries and VM with a nice language like Ruby and without the ugly, anachronistic and verbose language that Java really is.
Sorry, but this is nonsense.
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 1
Maybe what is meant is that Ruby's usefulness in many situations is acceptable when compared to LISP. I'd even disagree with that because Ruby lacks what good LISP implementations have: a way to declare types and thus make it easy for the compiler to optimize crucial code and avoid the slowness of dynamic typing. Also its approach to objects is entirely totally different from Ruby's. LISP's option to declare variables and hint the compiler, together with its extensive support for macros is second best when compared to static typing with inference as in OCAML, but still better than nothing of that sort, as in Ruby.
But while Ruby might be comparably useful for some, it certainly and definitely IS not LISP in nearly any practical meaning of the word "is". The main distinction is the basic feature of LISP: that its main datastructure is at the same time the representation of code. That is probably what is most typical for LISP and totally, utterly absent in Ruby. I am not saying anything here about the usefulness of this property, just that it is this property of the language that makes a LISP a LISP and therefore prevents Ruby from being a LISP.
One could dive deeper to see a couple of other significant differences in the language design to further argue that Ruby is definitely NOT LISP.
Personally, when it comes to usefulness, I have nearly totally given up on LISP. Ruby is a nice language, but has serious performance and a couple of other issues. When I want to use a well-designed language that is at the same time practical I use Ocaml (which also has a couple of practical shortcomings). Unfortunately, in most cases, one has to choose a language entirely for pragmatic reasons so one will end with something like *shudder* Java.
I have never ever experienced a problem with the NVidia drivers. I have had countless problems or severe limitations (when compared with what closed source drivers on Windows can do) with printers, wireless lan, scanners etc. and many devices (e.g. label printers, certain wireless lan cards and many other devices) do not work at all under Linux.
I'd rather have working closed source drivers for all this hardware than nothing or badly working drivers. But the insane policy of making it hard or even forbidding closed drivers will eventually make the situation worse and harm Linux badly.
Do not get me wrong -- of course I would be happy to see open source drivers for every conceivable piece of hardware, but I think some Linux advocates are just totally unrealistic when they think they can force companies to do that instead of thinking about ways how to at least now allow closed source components so that Linux can continue to gain momentum and popularity.
That is more than can be said for a lot of open source drivers for things like printers or wireless cards. And for many hardware devices no driver exists at all.
I'd rather have closed drivers that work for these devices under Linux than some crappy open source drivers.
If you are really concerned about this, do not just calm yourself by quickly signing the petition.
Send a protest by email, or better yet, written letter to them: streaming.helpline@consilium.europa.eu (technical) or Public.info@consilium.europa.eu (organizational),
Council of the European Union
Rue de la Loi, 175 B-1048 Bruxelles
Telephone (32-2) 281 61 11
Fax (32-2) 281 69 99
Contact your local/national members of the european parliament or even better, members of the council directly.
Microsoft and related industries has a lot of well paid lobbyists at the EU, open source advocates and private people who just want to use Linux as an alternative have nothing.
I do not know how diverse the idea what is "safe for work" is within the US, but we here outside the US think that people should know what they click on and bosses should be able to communicate what sort of browsing behavior is not wanted, and for what reason.
Bad enough how stuff similar to this is used to stop children and parents from thinking. Now an utterly idiotic attempt to stop employees from thinking.
Apart from this, who really believes that somebody who wants to lure to goatse will honestly label the link?
You will get 100 different answers here, and most of them will be mere fanboyism.
Ask people who do tasks similar to what you want to do on Linux about their experiences. Depending on what your background is you will probably know people or web forums where you can ask this sort of stuff.
My personal opinion is that it nearly does not matter. Use any of the "big" Linux distros -- the differences are much overrated, especially on/. The differences about "ease of use" are even more over-hyped. LaTeX & co can be used on all distros easily.
One difference that might be significant for you is whether you want choice or whether you want a distro to make the decisions which program to use for which task for you.
Ubuntu is leaning more towards the one task - one program philosphy while e.g. OpenSuse is more about giving you all the options. Ubuntu makes basic things very easy for beginners but does not provide a GUI for more advanced configuration options. OpenSuse has one configuration GUI for everything from installation to keyboard, network card configuration to configuration of your firewall or an Apache web server.
So, it is basically a question of details and for those it would be essential to know a bit more of what you want to do or what your preferences are.
A similar situation exists for many printers, printer-fax-copier devices, graphic tables and many other hardware devices.
In all cases the usual reason given by the companies for not providing a drivers is that they do not want to make the drivers open source and thus expose the inner workings and maybe trade secrets to the general public.
With wireless drivers there is the additional issue of legal requirements: a driver must not allow, for example, to drive the radio with more than the allowed power.
Unless LINUX finds a way for companies to provide closed drivers, I do not see too bright a future when it comes to support common hardware devices.
A similar problem exists when it comes to handling media, but thats a different topic.
I have written to all major vendors and to several local shops, asking for a WLAN card that would be guaranteed to work with LINUX. Not all answered, but all those that did said essentially the same: no we cannot offer this, we do not even know exactly what works, we do not provide support for Linux, ask your favorite Linux distro.
"Asking your favorite Linux distro" usually results in recommendations for what is *likely* to work, but there is no guarantee, because vendors might use different chips in products, so you never know *for sure*, let alone get a guarantee or support.
This is just an unacceptable sitation for an average computer user. The major argument of companies is that they do not want to open source their drivers.
I have used Linux for years now, but I find it idiotic to be that fundamentalistic when the result is that certain things (and WLAN cards is not the only kind of hardware) are simply not usable or extremely limited in their usefulness.
Bottom line: I agree with Linus, because a Linux that can't do many of the things other OS can do will never be really be competitive. I want Linux to be a realistic alternative. When we follow the fundamentalist nonsense of some guys, this will never happen.
I never intended to question that this article sparks interest. I wondered whether the geeks are fine with the/. editors to tell them they are not interested at all in the OpenSuse 10.2 story. Which is quite hard to imagine. Do those geeks care at all how stories get and do not get published here?
Well, no media is really fair and balanced, but I would have expected/. not to be that obviously and extremely unfair and unbalanced. Don't ask me why:)
In any case, I guess what I want to say is that I would expect to see the OpenSUSE news even though maybe the majority of readers here don't agree with the Novell deal or even decided to boykott Novell. But even so, it is news that could interest people, news that could get discussed etc.
I respect your personal view that the Firefox 3 alpha news is more important to you, but I'd still say that the release of a major distro (#2 on distrowatch) is a tad more important in the bigger scheme of things.
That/. editors simply refuse to let those news through is quite pathetic, in my view. Simply suppressing the news you do not like is not really a sign of an intelligent way how to deal with reality.
I wonder... are nerds really interested to get informed about every alpha release of firefox, but at the same time find it OK if a major final release of a major Linux distro, OpenSUSE 10.2 is not even mentioned on slashdot?
Is this actually reflecting the interests of the readers here or is the fact that all news submissions about OpenSuse 10.2 were ignored while the alpha 3.0 submission about Firefox was immediately published just a pathetic attempt of the editors here to influence the opinion of the readers?
Do readers actually want this kind of opinionated news-shaping or are they just not aware of it?
PS: please note that I am not questioning the relevance of the alpha release news -- I am just really, really annoyed about how news that is certainly even more relvant gets suppressed on Slashdot and I wonder if readers really find that OK.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a bit of a contrived argument. First of all, billions of users use mixes of closed software that depend on each other without much of a problem -- in fact with much *less* of a problem than Linux users who have to fight with half- or notatall working or not-existing drivers. Second, it is not that hard to isolate components in a well designed system and to make it easy to figure out which component was the one that failed.
However, that would mean that there is an explicit way how closed drivers should get included and seperated from the rest of the kernel. That would mean that this is something that is planned and agreed to to work instead the topic of silly eternal relgious fundamentalist quarrels.
If Linux is to become successful as an alternative OS for the desktop that is usable by nearly everyone instead of computer geeks with too much time, there will have to be ways how to make all those hardware components work quickly and effortlessly and with proprietary drivers.
I am an enthusiast myself and I use Linux (for years now) in a way where these issues are not really that relevant. But I simply cannot at the moment use it for my children or many of my friends or recommend it for people who want to do what they usually do under e.g. Windows. Which means, among other things, simply use the driver of the company that sold me my graphics card.
Sorry, but that community must obviously be 1) nuts and 2) not representative of Linux users if it thinks that way.
I am really sick and tired to see a couple of fundamentalist nuts hinder the success of Linux through nonsense like this. Until you can actually use hardware the way you do with other OS, Linux on the desktop for everyone will remain fiction.
It is already sad enough to see how much hardware there is were no driver at all (proprietary or not) is available -- to limit Linux even more by not supporting companies to easily include and distribute proprietary drivers is just insane.
I and many others have been using Linux (and before, *NIX) for many many years and I hate to see some fundamentalists declare themselves "the community" and speak for me and many others.
Of course, they are free to finally drive Linux into total irrelevancy with this, but I hate to see it happen.
What is so bad about including the proprietary drivers. For many users, they are the only way to make proper use of their hardware and e.g. run 3D design programs or something like X-Plane under Linux.
Why make it harder for these users?
What is so bad about giving me the proprietary but working NVidia driver for my NVidia hardware right from the start instead of forcing me to read countless HOWTOs and jump through holes first?
Many consumer devices show similar problems. I have a metal rack where I place my VHS recorder, DVD recorder etc. and everytime I touched both the rack and one of the screws of the DVD recorder I got a little electric shock. Maybe the reason is that the rack is grounded but the DVD recorder is connected to mains with a cable that does not include ground (i.e. with a two wire cable not a three wire cable). Maybe the inductive devices in the voltage coverter obviously cause a voltage difference between the "chassis ground" of the DVD player and the true AC mains ground -- I never bothered to measure that, I simply connected the chassis screw to mains ground to avoid the problem.
Experience has shown th
Of course it can be worthwhile to start from scratch or branch a successful application.
My point however is that in the concrete case of Netscape 9 it is hard to see what the benefit is. As I said, it seems all of what NS 9 improves could have been made by extensions or themes and a tiny bit of rebranding.
So, I simply cannot see how a separate NS9 browser that is officially based on Firefox either does anything "better", or does it "with more or better features" that could not just as easily have been done by contributing to FF in the first place.
What is the point of making a new, separate browser instead of joining forces with the Firefox development and just distributing a re-branded Firefox with a new theme and a couple of pre-installed extensions?
What differences will there be that are not just another theme or preinstalled extension? Is there any coordination going on with the Firefox developer community (since FF this is supposed to be an open community, obviously not).
Will Firefox extensions and themes work with NS9? Why won't it run on Solaris?
What will NS9 that Firefox, maybe with one or two extensions installed, cannot do?
Why should I bother to try yet another browser that maybe has a few little improvements and at the same time lacks other things I get in other browsers?
In many countries shrinkwrap licenses or license agreements that you can only agree to after actually buying the product, or that are "implicitly agreed upon" are not legally binding and are contrary to public policy. None of the things included in those "contracts" are legally binding and that includes the exclusion of warranties etc., even if written in all upper case.
History shows unfortunately that idealists, especially fundamentalist idealists, nearly always did much more harm than good, even though their ideals might look quite good, theoretically.
I cannot comment on *SD as an alternative, but I guess there is still a lot that would have to be invested in order for it to become an alternative even to Linux at the moment.
Branching Linux itself and changing Licenses afterwards is not possible without the consent of thousands of (partially unknown or antraceable) contributors, so that is unfortunately not an option.
Well, limited with regard to what these people might want to do: play DVDs, play and encode MP3s, receive, edit and send back Word documents, play games that are not totally anachronistic, use children's programs, buy all kinds of multimedia software for the computer, file your tax returns, manage your doctor's practice, do some artistic painting and print it out in decent quality on a cheap ink printer, use your FAX/printer/scanner combo without limitations etc. etc.
... I have tried both and unfortunately, Ubuntu still does not live up to its perpetually repeated myth of "user friendliness and easiness for first-time users".
... there are many things that Linux does much better than other OS -- I have been using *NIX systems for this reason for more than 10 years now. Unfortunately, many things non-geek users, children or other family members want to do are not among the things that Linux does better :(
Some of these things are possible by severe hacking and ignoring laws. More things are not possible at all.
And by the way -- if you really want to recommend a Linux that is easy to install, runs on modern hardware and that makes it easy for the user to configure their monitors, graphic tablets etc. recommend OpenSuse10.2 rather than the current Ubuntu
Do not get me wrong
An overraction of fundamentalists who will ultimately harm the success of Linux with this and similar actions.
/. who, for instance, totally suppressed any news about the release of OpenSuse 10.2.
Similar to the fundamentalist idiots here on
In any case, it is amazing to watch the stupidity being at work here. And it is sad, because, as somebody who has been using *NIX for more than 10 years now, I would like to see a usable alternative to Windows and Mac continue to be available in the coming decades.
I am afraid, the fundamentalists of "everything must be free in all senses of free" and "we change the capitalist world by not letting them do anything a user could need under Linux" religion will spoil it.
I'd really hate to see Linux disappear in the outer spaces of irrelevancy, but at the moment, the "community" is fighting hard to make some real bad strategic decisions.
US patent laws will not disappear by doing this. The need of users for licensed and legal software like encoders/decoders or certain drivers will not disappear by doing this. The need of content providers to protect their investment on Linux will not disappear by doing this. The forseeable need of users to play back HD or Blueray discs, or any HDTV content will not disappear by doing this.
I'd like to hear that something constructive is finally happen to strategically make these and other things possible on Linux so that it really can become a usable alternative to Windows.
I am curious who long I will actually be able to avoid Windows on my computer in the future. Seeing how "divide et impera" is working to weaken the Linux camp, I am quite pessimistic about that.
I like to see that businesses are popping up around Linux and that licensed, legal software is becoming available for media playback. However, one of the major issues is still not resolved: there is no legal way to play back CSS protected DVDs. It seems the same company is planning to provide a player, but the original plan to publish it in the second half of 2006 did not seem to hold :)
There are similar issues with mp3-encoding and many video encoders.
OK -- I was referring to the "Ruby already is an acceptable LISP" article here, not the idea of running LISP on top of an Ruby interpreter. I have not the slightest idea how the interpreter is designed, so I cannot say anything about this.
You are right about not confusing the language with the interpreter, but what I was trying to say is that language can help to make performance optimizations easier or possible at all: the LISP declare mechanism makes this quite explicit and gives the details in the hands of the programmer -- in the case of OCAML the type system and the strict typing make this possible under the hood. I must confess that I do not know the design of Ruby enought to really make a judgement, but my feeling is that some of the nice features make it hard to find a way to do performance optimization well (I'll be happy to be proven wrong here!).
I already have looked at JRuby and I am really looking forward to how JRuby will develop, especially on top of the Java 6 VM and successors. I'd love to use the benefits of the Java libraries and VM with a nice language like Ruby and without the ugly, anachronistic and verbose language that Java really is.
Maybe what is meant is that Ruby's usefulness in many situations is acceptable when compared to LISP. I'd even disagree with that because Ruby lacks what good LISP implementations have: a way to declare types and thus make it easy for the compiler to optimize crucial code and avoid the slowness of dynamic typing. Also its approach to objects is entirely totally different from Ruby's. LISP's option to declare variables and hint the compiler, together with its extensive support for macros is second best when compared to static typing with inference as in OCAML, but still better than nothing of that sort, as in Ruby.
But while Ruby might be comparably useful for some, it certainly and definitely IS not LISP in nearly any practical meaning of the word "is". The main distinction is the basic feature of LISP: that its main datastructure is at the same time the representation of code. That is probably what is most typical for LISP and totally, utterly absent in Ruby. I am not saying anything here about the usefulness of this property, just that it is this property of the language that makes a LISP a LISP and therefore prevents Ruby from being a LISP.
One could dive deeper to see a couple of other significant differences in the language design to further argue that Ruby is definitely NOT LISP.
Personally, when it comes to usefulness, I have nearly totally given up on LISP. Ruby is a nice language, but has serious performance and a couple of other issues. When I want to use a well-designed language that is at the same time practical I use Ocaml (which also has a couple of practical shortcomings). Unfortunately, in most cases, one has to choose a language entirely for pragmatic reasons so one will end with something like *shudder* Java.
I have never ever experienced a problem with the NVidia drivers. I have had countless problems or severe limitations (when compared with what closed source drivers on Windows can do) with printers, wireless lan, scanners etc. and many devices (e.g. label printers, certain wireless lan cards and many other devices) do not work at all under Linux.
I'd rather have working closed source drivers for all this hardware than nothing or badly working drivers. But the insane policy of making it hard or even forbidding closed drivers will eventually make the situation worse and harm Linux badly.
Do not get me wrong -- of course I would be happy to see open source drivers for every conceivable piece of hardware, but I think some Linux advocates are just totally unrealistic when they think they can force companies to do that instead of thinking about ways how to at least now allow closed source components so that Linux can continue to gain momentum and popularity.
That is more than can be said for a lot of open source drivers for things like printers or wireless cards. And for many hardware devices no driver exists at all.
I'd rather have closed drivers that work for these devices under Linux than some crappy open source drivers.
What is wrong with that?
A: you can't.
http://slashdot.org/faq/accounts.shtml#ac200
Send a protest by email, or better yet, written letter to them: streaming.helpline@consilium.europa.eu (technical) or Public.info@consilium.europa.eu (organizational),
Council of the European Union
Rue de la Loi, 175 B-1048 Bruxelles
Telephone (32-2) 281 61 11
Fax (32-2) 281 69 99
Contact your local/national members of the european parliament or even better, members of the council directly.
Microsoft and related industries has a lot of well paid lobbyists at the EU, open source advocates and private people who just want to use Linux as an alternative have nothing.
Make some pressure.
I do not know how diverse the idea what is "safe for work" is within the US, but we here outside the US think that people should know what they click on and bosses should be able to communicate what sort of browsing behavior is not wanted, and for what reason.
Bad enough how stuff similar to this is used to stop children and parents from thinking. Now an utterly idiotic attempt to stop employees from thinking.
Apart from this, who really believes that somebody who wants to lure to goatse will honestly label the link?
This all sounds like a April 1st post to me.
You will get 100 different answers here, and most of them will be mere fanboyism.
/.
Ask people who do tasks similar to what you want to do on Linux about their experiences. Depending on what your background is you will probably know people or web forums where you can ask this sort of stuff.
My personal opinion is that it nearly does not matter. Use any of the "big" Linux distros -- the differences are much overrated, especially on
The differences about "ease of use" are even more over-hyped.
LaTeX & co can be used on all distros easily.
One difference that might be significant for you is whether you want choice or whether you want a distro to make the decisions which program to use for which task for you.
Ubuntu is leaning more towards the one task - one program philosphy while e.g. OpenSuse is more about giving you all the options.
Ubuntu makes basic things very easy for beginners but does not provide a GUI for more advanced configuration options. OpenSuse has one configuration GUI for everything from installation to keyboard, network card configuration to configuration of your firewall or an Apache web server.
So, it is basically a question of details and for those it would be essential to know a bit more of what you want to do or what your preferences are.
I was unable to find any PCI card of that name. Any (European) sources for this?
A similar situation exists for many printers, printer-fax-copier devices, graphic tables and many other hardware devices.
In all cases the usual reason given by the companies for not providing a drivers is that they do not want to make the drivers open source and thus expose the inner workings and maybe trade secrets to the general public.
With wireless drivers there is the additional issue of legal requirements: a driver must not allow, for example, to drive the radio with more than the allowed power.
Unless LINUX finds a way for companies to provide closed drivers, I do not see too bright a future when it comes to support common hardware devices.
A similar problem exists when it comes to handling media, but thats a different topic.
I have written to all major vendors and to several local shops, asking for a WLAN card that would be guaranteed to work with LINUX. Not all answered, but all those that did said essentially the same: no we cannot offer this, we do not even know exactly what works, we do not provide support for Linux, ask your favorite Linux distro.
"Asking your favorite Linux distro" usually results in recommendations for what is *likely* to work, but there is no guarantee, because vendors might use different chips in products, so you never know *for sure*, let alone get a guarantee or support.
This is just an unacceptable sitation for an average computer user. The major argument of companies is that they do not want to open source their drivers.
I have used Linux for years now, but I find it idiotic to be that fundamentalistic when the result is that certain things (and WLAN cards is not the only kind of hardware) are simply not usable or extremely limited in their usefulness.
Bottom line: I agree with Linus, because a Linux that can't do many of the things other OS can do will never be really be competitive. I want Linux to be a realistic alternative. When we follow the fundamentalist nonsense of some guys, this will never happen.
I never intended to question that this article sparks interest. I wondered whether the geeks are fine with the /. editors to tell them they are not interested at all in the OpenSuse 10.2 story. Which is quite hard to imagine. Do those geeks care at all how stories get and do not get published here?
Well, no media is really fair and balanced, but I would have expected /. not to be that obviously and extremely unfair and unbalanced. Don't ask me why :)
/. editors simply refuse to let those news through is quite pathetic, in my view. Simply suppressing the news you do not like is not really a sign of an intelligent way how to deal with reality.
In any case, I guess what I want to say is that I would expect to see the OpenSUSE news even though maybe the majority of readers here don't agree with the Novell deal or even decided to boykott Novell. But even so, it is news that could interest people, news that could get discussed etc.
I respect your personal view that the Firefox 3 alpha news is more important to you, but I'd still say that the release of a major distro (#2 on distrowatch) is a tad more important in the bigger scheme of things.
That
"Slashdot - News for nerds, stuff that matters"
... are nerds really interested to get informed about every alpha release of firefox, but at the same time find it OK if a major final release of a major Linux distro, OpenSUSE 10.2 is not even mentioned on slashdot?
I wonder
Is this actually reflecting the interests of the readers here or is the fact that all news submissions about OpenSuse 10.2 were ignored while the alpha 3.0 submission about Firefox was immediately published just a pathetic attempt of the editors here to influence the opinion of the readers?
Do readers actually want this kind of opinionated news-shaping or are they just not aware of it?
PS: please note that I am not questioning the relevance of the alpha release news -- I am just really, really annoyed about how news that is certainly even more relvant gets suppressed on Slashdot and I wonder if readers really find that OK.