Reminds me of that joke where this patient goes to a doctor and says something like:
"It hurts when I do this"
"Well, then don't do that!", the doctor replies.
I think NT's reliability has been rehashed over and over, and I hear more complaints about NT crashes than about Linux crashing. I hear more glowing reports about replacing NT with Linux than the other way around.
Does this mean that people will be able to build other encoders (albeit possibly illegally) using the information contained in the Bladeenc source? Was this information available before this?
The reason I'm asking is because I don't know of any other GPL/LGPL encoders out there. Are there?
A German Computer magazine c't did benchmarks with Linux against Windows NT and found that Linux trounced NT in every case except when Linux had multiple ethernet cards.
If you're using Linux as a workgroup or departmental server, there's no point in having multiple ethernet cards in it. In those cases, Linux is still faster.
The smart reseller benchmarks show just how much faster Linux is when you're dealing with situations that most businesses will have to deal with.
How many different servers can you put onto one machine with NT? With Linux? What kind of performance do you get when you have a mail server, DNS server, Web server, etc. all on one machine on NT versus Linux?
These are all things to consider before dismissing Linux because of one benchmark.
Linux has many advantages over NT, including increased configurability, open source, GNU utilities, etc.
A few skewed benchmarks don't mean anything. There are benchmarks out there that show Linux beating Windows NT. Benchmarks don't mean that much when there are a lot of other benefits to a platform. It's kind of bad to base your decisions on one benchmark, when you have to consider everything else that you get with the system..
Well, you have to remember just how fast Linux is progressing. It's a much different beast than it even was a few months ago. There is far more support from game companies and 3d card vendors, there is far more multimedia support than before.
As a matter of fact, the pieces are coming together more and more for Linux on the desktop. Sure, it's not here today for a lot of uses, but who's to say that the momentum behind Linux isn't still building? I don't think we're anywhere near the point of inflection.
As far as fragmentation, I don't think users really see it as a problem. As long as something is branded Linux and will run all the neat and nifty software, users appreciate not being told what's best, and getting to decide for themselves. A lot of people coming from the Microsoft camp have exactly this problem with MS products.
Linux may not be there on the desktop today, but the Linux of today is not the Linux of tomorrow.
Okay, that's understandable. I never really had trouble with Debian once I got past the install headaches. Reconfiguration and installation of new applications is a snap. Debian is very sane in how it configures things by default, and I can get a new package working relatively quickly.
The best thing about Linux is diversity. If there was a distribution that did things better than mine, I'd try it. It's still Linux. I'm sorry for offending you.:-)
It only forces redistribution if you're distributing the application at all. For example, if you are working on an in-house app that won't be distributed outside of your company, you don't have to do anything.
The letter of the law allows you to keep your changes private (i.e. within the company). Now, on the other hand, if you're distributing your application outside of your company and someone asks for source code, you have to provide it to them.
Personally, I have started using FreeBSD as of late, I got sick of trying to find the "right" package out of 100 diffrent packages for the same application, or tracking libraries to insure the new verson of X will run, but not break the old version of Y. I have less and less time to do that stuff anymore (approching graduation), maybe some day when I have more time, I'll go back towards Linux installs.
Hate to push another distribution yet again, but this is why I use Debian. I admit dselect is a pain in the ass, but apt-get is a godsend.
I don't need to track down library X from package Y to install package Z 75 times just to install an application. Debian Potato (the current development release) is a little bit behind the absolute latest and greatest apps (from a few days to a few weeks), but it has thousands of applications (just about everything I was interested in). Doing an apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade keeps me completely up to date. If I don't want to be bleeding edge, I can edit the sources file to switch it to whatever CD I have or to the stable distribution on the net.
If I just want to install an application, all I need to do is apt-get install package, and it automatically fetches any dependencies, upgrades any packages that depend on it, installs them, and lets me go on my way. Once you've used it once, you'll never want to go back. Heck, you can use it to install packages that are part of potato even if you're using the older releases. It works like a charm.
I _like_ the FreeBSD ports system, but the Debian system completely fits the bill and it cuts down on the amount of time I waste administering and setting up servers.
Those people that think Debian is for those that are completely paranoid about using GPL and completely Free software, it's not. Packages are just labeled non-free if they do not meet the DFSG.
Admittedly, Debian is a little harder to install than Red Hat and dselect is a pain. Maybe Corel's Linux distribution will make it easier for the average user.
GPL permits free redistribution. Perhaps you're referring to something like the BSD license, which allows companies to make their work proprietary and not release the changes back to the community.
This model is much more suspceptible to code forks, since companies don't have to redistribute changes and they can build proprietary additions and resell those.
That's really why I like the GPL. It makes it impossible to stop sharing the code once you've started doing it. If a license is GPL, I know that I'm not inadvertedly helping some company in the future that doesn't share the code with everyone in return. At the very least, if they use my code for free, then I expect them to contribute code that I can use for free in my projects.
I don't care if they make money, but I hate the idea of taking and never giving back.
As long as we don't have RedHat-only software, different distributions can be catered to different people. Certainly a distribution tailored for a server might not be suitable for your average joe user or vice versa.
Differing distributions, as long as softwware is Linux compatible and not just Red Hat compatible shouldn't hurt Linux.
Differing distributions of Linux are certainly more compatible than Windows 95/98 versus Windows NT or Windows CE.
Well, considering something like 55-60% of the web runs on Apache, and only 26% or so run on IIS, the web would most probably still be kicking if something like these were to plague IIS.
This might look like flamebait, but this is exactly the reason that people should be weary of Microsoft products.
In Unix's long history, there have been many vulnerabilities and problems that have popped up. We've had problems with sendmail, ssh, etc., and all of these utilities went through a lot of modifications and change, but they're becoming quite secure. I see less and less security problems with these utilities.
There was a saying that said that if you don't learn unix, you're are bound to reimplement it.. badly.
Microsoft's tools are not proven. They do not have the years of maturation that proven UNIX servers and utilities do. Sure, Unix is 30 years old, but that makes for a far mature and proven operating system.
Microsoft's servers are closed source, so we cannot verify the quality of the security of the code, and we cannot fix them quickly if there are problems.
Is it any wonder that Apache has such a huge marketshare? What is there to give us confidence in the code in IIS? Marketing and Public Relations? Isn't technical merit far more important?
One thing in particular that makes me like this device is the Next-like scrollbars and such. It's a really nice clean-cut design that kicks the pants out of Windows CE in my opinion.
I don't have much of a need for these devices except to play around, especially since I'm still a student. Somehow the stigma of being caught dead playing with a device as bulky as this and typing stuff in it is too much for me. Even the palm pilot is too much, although it would be neat to be able to put assignments into that and/or schedule my days a little bit better since I tend to get lazy.
All of these things cost quite a bit for a student, are they worth it? I've only gotten to use a palm pilot for a small period of time. Are there any students out there using palm-size devices with any luck?
Ben
Re:When will they learn?
on
Linux 2.2.10
·
· Score: 2
I don't know. There's no way you can compare 2.2.x to Windows 95 in all honesty and say that Windows is better.
I have 2.2.x running on servers for over 2 weeks and counting and it's been very stable.
Sure, it's not as good as 2.0.x, but it took 2.0.x years to get the same stability.
All I know is that I was about to buy some Qwest stock, and I'm glad I didn't buy it just yet. After that takeover bid, the stock dropped over 10 points today from 45 to about 34!
At any rate, in a purely financial sense, is it worth putting some money into Qwest at this point?
Re:When will they learn?
on
Linux 2.2.10
·
· Score: 1
What are you talking about? This security hole has been around since 2.2.x. The kernels are quite well tested with the pre-patches and the ac patches.
How long does it take to get a bug fix into Windows once its been found? You just better hope you're not the only one affeted. There's certainly no shortage of bugs.
Re: BSOD crap is getting old
on
Digital VCRs
·
· Score: 2
Huh? What does Linux have to do with open source? No one ever said the hardware manufacturers are going to release their specs or drivers as open source.
If hardware manufacturers want their hardware to be available to the most users, they will make it part of the Linux kernel.
If they don't, and they provide online module drivers, people will not want to buy their hardware as much. Those companies that release specs will do better than those that don't.
Linux's Open Source nature certainly makes a big different in driver quality. Drivers for Linux tend to get better much faster than if we were forced to deal with the hardware manufacturer alone. Hardware manufacturers are selling hardware, not software. What should they care if their release specs or not? The ones with a clue don't care.
But the latency is going to be higher than with ISDN or ADSL or cable or anything like that. I.E., your telnets won't feel any faster using EQL or anything like that.
Slashdot Mirror
That's funny, QWin2k beta 1 hasn't been around for 666 days.
Reminds me of that joke where this patient goes to a doctor and says something like:
"It hurts when I do this"
"Well, then don't do that!", the doctor replies.
I think NT's reliability has been rehashed over and over, and I hear more complaints about NT crashes than about Linux crashing. I hear more glowing reports about replacing NT with Linux than the other way around.
Then again, YMMV.
Does this mean that people will be able to build other encoders (albeit possibly illegally) using the information contained in the Bladeenc source? Was this information available before this?
The reason I'm asking is because I don't know of any other GPL/LGPL encoders out there. Are there?
This is a very important issue.
A German Computer magazine c't did benchmarks with Linux against Windows NT and found that Linux trounced NT in every case except when Linux had multiple ethernet cards.
If you're using Linux as a workgroup or departmental server, there's no point in having multiple ethernet cards in it. In those cases, Linux is still faster.
The smart reseller benchmarks show just how much faster Linux is when you're dealing with situations that most businesses will have to deal with.
How many servers do you have that have multiple ethernet cards in them?
According to a German magazine benchmark, Linux smokes NT except when you are dealing with multiple ethernet cards.
All the benchmarks I've seen before the Mindcraft/PcWeek ones (in Smart Reseller), etc., Linux beat NT.
When we fix the TCP/IP threading issues, we'll get over that problem too.
How many people actually have 4 ethernet cards in their servers?
I don't. And you probably don't. Linux beats NT except when you've got multiple ethernet cards.
How many different servers can you put onto one machine with NT? With Linux? What kind of performance do you get when you have a mail server, DNS server, Web server, etc. all on one machine on NT versus Linux?
These are all things to consider before dismissing Linux because of one benchmark.
Isn't that kind of shortsighted?
Linux has many advantages over NT, including increased configurability, open source, GNU utilities, etc.
A few skewed benchmarks don't mean anything. There are benchmarks out there that show Linux beating Windows NT. Benchmarks don't mean that much when there are a lot of other benefits to a platform. It's kind of bad to base your decisions on one benchmark, when you have to consider everything else that you get with the system..
That's a desktop share on a specific web site. Is it a Windows web site? Are they specifically made for Internet explorer?
Web browser hits mean crap. If it were true, we could say that Linux has a huge market share by the number of browser hits from Linux on slashdot.
Well, you have to remember just how fast Linux is progressing. It's a much different beast than it even was a few months ago. There is far more support from game companies and 3d card vendors, there is far more multimedia support than before.
As a matter of fact, the pieces are coming together more and more for Linux on the desktop. Sure, it's not here today for a lot of uses, but who's to say that the momentum behind Linux isn't still building? I don't think we're anywhere near the point of inflection.
As far as fragmentation, I don't think users really see it as a problem. As long as something is branded Linux and will run all the neat and nifty software, users appreciate not being told what's best, and getting to decide for themselves. A lot of people coming from the Microsoft camp have exactly this problem with MS products.
Linux may not be there on the desktop today, but the Linux of today is not the Linux of tomorrow.
Okay, that's understandable. I never really had trouble with Debian once I got past the install headaches. Reconfiguration and installation of new applications is a snap. Debian is very sane in how it configures things by default, and I can get a new package working relatively quickly.
The best thing about Linux is diversity. If there was a distribution that did things better than mine, I'd try it. It's still Linux. I'm sorry for offending you.
It only forces redistribution if you're distributing the application at all. For example, if you are working on an in-house app that won't be distributed outside of your company, you don't have to do anything.
The letter of the law allows you to keep your changes private (i.e. within the company). Now, on the other hand, if you're distributing your application outside of your company and someone asks for source code, you have to provide it to them.
Personally, I have started using FreeBSD as of late, I got sick of trying to find the "right" package out of 100 diffrent packages for the same application, or tracking libraries to insure the new verson of X will run, but not break the old version of Y. I have less and less time to do that stuff anymore (approching graduation), maybe some day when I have more time, I'll go back towards Linux installs.
Hate to push another distribution yet again, but this is why I use Debian. I admit dselect is a pain in the ass, but apt-get is a godsend.
I don't need to track down library X from package Y to install package Z 75 times just to install an application. Debian Potato (the current development release) is a little bit behind the absolute latest and greatest apps (from a few days to a few weeks), but it has thousands of applications (just about everything I was interested in). Doing an apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade keeps me completely up to date. If I don't want to be bleeding edge, I can edit the sources file to switch it to whatever CD I have or to the stable distribution on the net.
If I just want to install an application, all I need to do is apt-get install package, and it automatically fetches any dependencies, upgrades any packages that depend on it, installs them, and lets me go on my way. Once you've used it once, you'll never want to go back. Heck, you can use it to install packages that are part of potato even if you're using the older releases. It works like a charm.
I _like_ the FreeBSD ports system, but the Debian system completely fits the bill and it cuts down on the amount of time I waste administering and setting up servers.
Those people that think Debian is for those that are completely paranoid about using GPL and completely Free software, it's not. Packages are just labeled non-free if they do not meet the DFSG.
Admittedly, Debian is a little harder to install than Red Hat and dselect is a pain. Maybe Corel's Linux distribution will make it easier for the average user.
GPL permits free redistribution. Perhaps you're referring to something like the BSD license, which allows companies to make their work proprietary and not release the changes back to the community.
This model is much more suspceptible to code forks, since companies don't have to redistribute changes and they can build proprietary additions and resell those.
That's really why I like the GPL. It makes it impossible to stop sharing the code once you've started doing it. If a license is GPL, I know that I'm not inadvertedly helping some company in the future that doesn't share the code with everyone in return. At the very least, if they use my code for free, then I expect them to contribute code that I can use for free in my projects.
I don't care if they make money, but I hate the idea of taking and never giving back.
As long as we don't have RedHat-only software, different distributions can be catered to different people. Certainly a distribution tailored for a server might not be suitable for your average joe user or vice versa.
Differing distributions, as long as softwware is Linux compatible and not just Red Hat compatible shouldn't hurt Linux.
Differing distributions of Linux are certainly more compatible than Windows 95/98 versus Windows NT or Windows CE.
Well, considering something like 55-60% of the web runs on Apache, and only 26% or so run on IIS, the web would most probably still be kicking if something like these were to plague IIS.
This might look like flamebait, but this is exactly the reason that people should be weary of Microsoft products.
In Unix's long history, there have been many vulnerabilities and problems that have popped up. We've had problems with sendmail, ssh, etc., and all of these utilities went through a lot of modifications and change, but they're becoming quite secure. I see less and less security problems with these utilities.
There was a saying that said that if you don't learn unix, you're are bound to reimplement it.. badly.
Microsoft's tools are not proven. They do not have the years of maturation that proven UNIX servers and utilities do. Sure, Unix is 30 years old, but that makes for a far mature and proven operating system.
Microsoft's servers are closed source, so we cannot verify the quality of the security of the code, and we cannot fix them quickly if there are problems.
Is it any wonder that Apache has such a huge marketshare? What is there to give us confidence in the code in IIS? Marketing and Public Relations? Isn't technical merit far more important?
It seems like the company that makes Psions is actually providing hardware information and helping to port Linux to these beasts.
Linux already runs on these machines.
Take a look here. They have screenshots of the machines running Linux, too.
Very very cool!
One thing in particular that makes me like this device is the Next-like scrollbars and such. It's a really nice clean-cut design that kicks the pants out of Windows CE in my opinion.
I don't have much of a need for these devices except to play around, especially since I'm still a student. Somehow the stigma of being caught dead playing with a device as bulky as this and typing stuff in it is too much for me. Even the palm pilot is too much, although it would be neat to be able to put assignments into that and/or schedule my days a little bit better since I tend to get lazy.
All of these things cost quite a bit for a student, are they worth it? I've only gotten to use a palm pilot for a small period of time. Are there any students out there using palm-size devices with any luck?
Ben
I don't know. There's no way you can compare 2.2.x to Windows 95 in all honesty and say that Windows is better.
I have 2.2.x running on servers for over 2 weeks and counting and it's been very stable.
Sure, it's not as good as 2.0.x, but it took 2.0.x years to get the same stability.
All I know is that I was about to buy some Qwest stock, and I'm glad I didn't buy it just yet. After that takeover bid, the stock dropped over 10 points today from 45 to about 34!
At any rate, in a purely financial sense, is it worth putting some money into Qwest at this point?
What are you talking about? This security hole has been around since 2.2.x. The kernels are quite well tested with the pre-patches and the ac patches.
How long does it take to get a bug fix into Windows once its been found? You just better hope you're not the only one affeted. There's certainly no shortage of bugs.
Huh? What does Linux have to do with open source? No one ever said the hardware manufacturers are going to release their specs or drivers as open source.
If hardware manufacturers want their hardware to be available to the most users, they will make it part of the Linux kernel.
If they don't, and they provide online module drivers, people will not want to buy their hardware as much. Those companies that release specs will do better than those that don't.
Linux's Open Source nature certainly makes a big different in driver quality. Drivers for Linux tend to get better much faster than if we were forced to deal with the hardware manufacturer alone. Hardware manufacturers are selling hardware, not software. What should they care if their release specs or not? The ones with a clue don't care.
But the latency is going to be higher than with ISDN or ADSL or cable or anything like that. I.E., your telnets won't feel any faster using EQL or anything like that.
Okay, let's try this then:
24*365.25*10000*.001=87660 lost due to downtime.
Let's look at a Sun system, at 99.97% uptime:
24*365.25*10000*.0003=26298 lost due to downtime
So, that's a $60000 savings in one year.