apt seems pretty cool, but what about major changes in packages. Quite frequently in the linux community a new software package has a new config file (etc) that is not compatible with older versions. If apt updates packages without user input does this not risk the integrity of the system?
Usually you will be warned that the configuration files do not match, and whether or not you want to cancel the installation. At that point, you can put a hold on that application, and apt won't automatically upgrade it for you if you move to a new version of the distribution.
There are sometimes scripts that will convert data over, or there are configuration scripts for the new version, so you can set it up yourself.
For the most part, Debian does its best to let you know what's going on so you don't accidentally upgrade to a package you can't use because the configuration has changed.
If it had a really good teleconference (GCOM style), I'd be interested.
Are there any really good Open Source BBS's with Renegade-style messaging and GCOM teleconference? A combination like that would kick some booty.
I've tried some BBS's for Linux, but they just don't have the same flair those two BBS's had for those tasks.
I used to run a Hacker/Phreaker bulletin board called The Digital Fallout. Had some really cool message bases since I turned away w@r3z d00dz that would post bullshit, and I looked for those people that could carry an intelligent conversation. We talked about all sorts of things, from drugs, to secrets about the telephone company, to spying, to technology, all those neat topics. We were all enthusiasts interested in the technology of the day. Ah well, those were the days.
I remember iCE, ACiD (ANSI Creators in Demand), and some other smaller groups. The internet had to come and kill it all. If anything, we need more of those close-knit groups again somehow.
A lot of people here always have said that the Internet routes around censorship and problems like this. We should try and find some technical way to allow those in Australia that need to access web content a way to do it.
I'm thinking of something along the lines of mailing lists with listings of redirectors for web traffic. Surely the censors couldn't keep up if these change every day.
How about some sort of client that, once connected to an ISP, connects through another protocol to a site abroad, which will somehow reroute their network connection through there and allow web surfing?
Maybe make postings on newsgroups for the Australian folks with redirectors for web traffic.
Are there enough people out there who would try and circumvent the laws somehow? I don't see how any of it could be illegal, at least the way the law stands.
Does anyone have any other ideas on how Australians could circumvent these laws?
Also, another question I have that I couldn't really answer right now is whether or not this would hurt the cause. I certainly would want a way to bypass these draconian laws if the U.S. were to pass laws like that.
What kind of approaches do we have in case governments try to regulate sites like that? Will the Internet just shrivel up and die if enough countries censor content?
I think these are questions we need to start looking at if we want the Internet to remain free. So we can at least have these 'solutions' available as a last resort.
Losing the freedom of the Internet would be one of the worst things that could happen in the information age.
I tried Hotjava under Linux. It looks nice, doesn't crash, even renders slashdot correctly. It's also got the neat java widgets that I like.
However, it is _SLOW_ on my 128MB Pentium II 300 machine. Netscape is much much much faster. Also, if i type a URL in, it's so slow that it will actually mangle the name I type in. I have to type it really slowly so that it can parse it correctly. It's evil.
Hotjava is just too slow to use as an everyday browser, but I suppose if I absolutely need to run a java app from the net, it would work.
Yeah, I had a problem even in this interview, when the girl asked him about KDE, he mentioned that you can program in any language for Gnome, but KDE is only C++.
Aren't there bindings for other languages for KDE as well as Gnome?
Also, merely the fact that there are bindings for other languages doesn't change the fact that Qt is mainly for C++, and GTK is mainly for C. If he was going to mention differences, I think he should just have mentioned that.
Other than that though, this interview was a lot friendlier towards KDE than some of the other stuff I've seen.
In my area, they have coverage of the hearings in Congress regarding the shootings in Littleton and such.
It seems like Congress almost "gets it" as far as this. They're talking mainly about after-school programs for the kids to have a place to go to after school. And, other such things.
It seems like the role of culture and games and such isn't seen as something that should be controlled, at least in these hearings. There was some talk of gun control and other such issues, however.
Hopefully, things won't progress to the point where they start trying to control popular culture due to the misdeeds of a few. Then again, laws like that go along the same lines as drug laws, and we have drug laws in this country which have contributed to the United States having more prisoners per capita than any other country except South Africa, yet our crime rate is sky-high. I think that a figure I saw shows that there are more heroin users per capita in Baltimore than in Amsterdam.
I think the biggest problem is that people are not willing to take responsibility for their actions. We need to do things that attack the problem at hand. Parents need to take more responsibility for their children. Parents need to talk to their children.
Feel-good approaches like trying to regulate popular culture, picking kids out that wear trenchcoats, etc., whatever it is, will only backfire.:-(
I'm not the original poster, but I've recently set up a Samba server regularly serving more than 100 users. We've just recently tested and upgraded the machine to use Samba 2.0.4. It acts as a primary domain controller. These are all NT boxes that are connecting.
It's running on a Dell Poweredge 4300, Dual Processor with 512MB RAM. The reason the machine is so hefty is because it's also serving IMAP for these same 100 users, print serving about 20 printers, handling a web E-mail application, apache, DNS, and lots of other miscellaneous duties. This is on a 100 MBit network.
The nice thing is that we can put all of these applications on one server, maintain backups and all, and the reliability stays right up there. We can run as many applications as we want, and we're nowhere near using up the CPU time. Most of the time the load average stays below.10
The server has been solid. We've had a few problems with corruption of the data recently. Hopefully this was just due to the beta MegaRAID driver in some of the 2.2.x kernels. Also, there have been a couple of problems with the u.washington imap daemon and Netscape, but we've been able to work around most of them.
Other than that, the server works flawlessly. There have been no problems with Samba, and we've had 30 day uptimes (would have been lots more, except we needed to do a hardware upgrade), and we've had no reliability problems with Linux.
This isn't a migration, however. This network was an upgrade from Novell, and these NT clients were purchased so that the client would have a managed architecture.
I won the contract since I offered better rates than the NT consultants they talked to and they liked the consulting work I did earlier. One big factor was the fact that they didn't have to pay licensing fees, which easily would have doubled the cost of the project.
The client is happy. They have an NT network that works. I don't get called about the machine in weeks at a time. Their staff has learned to use the utilities under Linux to manage Samba, and had no trouble learning a bit about Unix permissions, the samba configuration file, and smbpasswd, smbstatus, etc. It really isn't that hard to learn this stuff, and once you know it, it becomes easy to manage the network from anywhere.
They have a few remote offices, but those offices each have a Samba server set up. Maybe in the future we'll synchronize passwords across the whole company, but there's no need for it right now. The corporation is large, but is by no means huge, and most of the company is in the office in New York.
There are white characters on that blue background when an NT BSOD strikes. I have personally used the information on the page to troubleshoot and fix problems.
Certainly very user friendly dealing with Hex values.
I don't know how NT users can say that it is easy to use, and yet tell you that you have to edit this registry key to this value after installing this in order to get a machine tuned properly, all in the same breath.
I think it takes the same amount of skill to be a competent NT admin as it does to be competent with Linux. This FUD about NT being easy to use needs to be dispelled.
Then again, the BSOD is largely a bit of folklore to many Linux users, who've never used NT and just talk about it a lot online.
I would have assumed that was sarcastic if I hadn't seen the tone of the rest of the message. The reason most people use Linux is because NT hasn't been able to fulfill some need (i.e. stability, speed, whatever), and Linux has.
This is a good strategy. It would dilute Microsoft's efforts and they would be spreading themselves too thin.
I have a point in addition to yours though:
I think the community needs to stop the infighting. I absolutely hate seeing FreeBSDers harp about how the GPL license is harmful, and how we shouldn't use Linux because of that. I hate seeing Linux people say that Linux is the only solution. We need to present a united front and encourage software diversity, like the original poster said.
Additionally, open software development is not the end-all of everything. There are plenty of areas in which closed software development works better. In the end, every job is different, and no one solution can possibly fulfill the needs of everybody. Linux and the use of other software offers diversity and configurability that is missing if the marketplace is controlled by one company. This is a weakness of Microsoft, with their Windows-only approach. We need to make this point as a counterattack. We need to put them on the defensive.
We need to start looking at weaknesses of Microsoft and play up those weaknesses. I am not talking about just technical weaknesses. What weaknesses are there in their business model that we can target?
BTW: This is probably starting to look like a Microsoft brainstorming session, except, we're brainstorming on counteracting Microsoft.
MS is not concerned with their marketshare on the desktops right now. They're worried about Windows NT. Linux can't compete on the desktop right now due to various reasons that we're working on. But, that's besides the point. I'm sure these people were hired to save their server market just as much as they were to save their desktop market.
Let's see what they can't do:
Unless they haven't learned yet, they are not bound to attack Linux by attacking its weaknesses. We don't have a marketing department. We just have a lot of people willing to fix these problems quickly, if they're not FUD.
They can't fight us with FUD very effectively, because the Internet tends to educate the ignorant.
They can't fight us by closing Internet standards because their marketshare with Internet servers isn't high enough to close off standards. That's a big plus for Linux at this point. Their marketshare is dropping, not rising, so this is becoming more and more of an advantage of Linux.
The Internet, Linux's home, is a hard beast to tame. We have a definite advantage, since they have to fight on our turf to win a decisive victory.
So, what to worry about? I think they are already fighting us on all the fronts they can.
Exclusionary deals with hardware manufacturers like Winmodems, Winprinters, etc. It would be a much more expensive proposition to switch to Linux if you have to buy new hardware. They could perhaps make a new plug-and-play standard that works better but only works with special Windows-only devices. There are any number of things they could do on this front. However, the extent that they can do this will diminish as Linux gets more and more acceptance, and with a marketshare of 17% in servers, it will be hard to convince hardware manufacturers to go Windows-only on the PC architecture. Additionally, Windows-only devices won't perform as well as hardware-based controlling devices on the server.
They could continue to threaten OEM's with higher prices for Windows preloads if they offer Linux at all. But, big deal. They're fighting us on the server end, not the desktop.
Does anyone have any other ideas? Litigation is kind of a stretch. Who do they sue? The FSF? Do you realize how much money the FSF could garner for their defense?
Create M$-Linux? I think they have too much pride for that.
I don't think they'd go on either of these routes.
We need a good brainstorming session here to try and have a viable game plan when they make their next move. We were caught by surprise with the Mindcraft study, and while it is helping us now, a different reaction at that point would have been much better.
Our development roadmap is created by the needs of the users of Linux. It's the best roadmap there is. Maybe Microsoft can help guide our development roadmap by talking up the areas that are weak in Linux. If it's FUD, it won't hold up because the Internet tends to expose that. However, if it's valid, then the Linux community will fix it.
Lack of a journalled filesystem? Okay, we'll take care of that, with SGI's help, and also the work of kernel hackers.
Lack of a GUI? Let's get KDE/GNOME more robust and stable.
Lack of a good configuration utility?
Any other perceived weaknesses? Other companies/individuals/groups can come in and fill in and then support that subsystem. There is lots to be made in that. Are you listening? Apparently, SGI is.
Maybe MS can help the Linux development effort after all. Haven't you noticed how the more the weaknesses are talked about by people, the more interest there is in fixing them?
This document shows that in the weeks after the Mindcraft tests, kernel hackers and interested parties have been able to bring Apache and Linux performance to 3 or 4 times what it used to be, and they've identified problems in the kernel that are being fixed as we speak. Sure there are weaknesses, but the biggest advantage of Linux is that there are many eyes to find out where these weaknesses are and how to fix them when they are exposed.
Like someone else here said, this is a guerilla war. The harder MS fights us, the more resources they use to extinguish us, the more people will be turned off to Microsoft and will question their practices. The more desperate Microsoft becomes, the more obvious it is that they are losing.
It's hard to flail at a moving liquid target that cannot be pinned down to one organization or group of people.
Linux grew with the Internet. It grew without any media attention. It grew and still grows because it meets real-world needs. It has nothing to do with hype. It did just fine without media attention. We basically had to force the media into noticing us. As long as it can meet real world needs for the users/developers and has a good chance of providing that in the future, it cannot lose.
I'm sure that's the world we want. No OS choice. Windows NT everywhere?
Don't you NT zealots see that statements like this only help Linux?
It gives those of us that actually enjoy computers for what they are more incentive to make sure things don't get worse than they are.
One company running the computer industry is just as bad as the railroad tycoons, or any monopoly that controls every facet of computers. I'm not sure even you would want to live in a world like that unless you were a Microsoft shareholder.
These benchmarks weren't a complete loss to all of those. Hidden in those benchmarks was a rather interesting admission found in this story on Linux Today (note, I don't work for them, but they do have some good stories sometimes):
This story reveals that Linux with Samba achieved 197Mbps, which was significantly higher than the Mindcraft benchmarks, severely invalidating the original Mindcraft benchmarks. Also, Apache did MUCH better on these benchmarks than on the original Mindcraft tests.
The article also shows that NT achieved only 150Mbps against NT clients, 31% slower than Linux. In tests with 60 clients, Windows NT managed only 110Mbbps throughput, compared with 183Mbps for Samba.
So, we got something out of these benchmarks. Linux serves Samba to NT clients 31% faster than NT on high end hardware!
Now, if we only tested IIS against Zeus to make a more fair benchmark for static tests, Linux wouldn't look so bad after all overall.
I don't see how these new benchmarks validate Mindcraft at all.
Given that I usually get my url's from references from people I know, from a search engine, or from postings on newsgroups/slashdot, I don't see how this would stop any anti-Bush sentiment from showing up on the Internet.
Looks like it's time to start looking for an original domain name that attacks Bush.
Linux will be folding in features of Irix. This is good news for Linux.
This also means more seats for Linux, since it's a direct option against NT.
I guess we'll have to wait till we see how sales of the Linux machines compare against sales with NT installed.. Obviously, they think they'll make more money using Linux versus Irix.
Are you talking about performance of an application on hardware you'd never actually use for those things? Who uses a quad xeon to serve static pages? Why didn't they test Linux using a web server that's optimized for static pages?
Also, there was an article in http://www.linuxtoday.com that exposes the fact that Samba under Linux actually performed better than Windows NT on the PCWeek tests when using NT clients than NT did. This is something that everyone should know.
The PCWeek numbers were also much higher than the Mindcraft numbers, attacking the credibility of Mindcraft even more.
Another funny thing, if anyone follows http://lwn.net, they had a story that mentioned why Apache may have done so badly, and how we can modify the scheduler to make the problem go away.
If anything, we should thank MS for the Mindcraft tests. It may end up making Linux better in the end.
I don't think Linux did as bad as people think, and I'm sure that static web serving performance or Samba performance is irrelevant in a router.
The second half of your post refers to "information" and "information" being kept secret.
What exactly are you referring to?
The way I see it, companies don't like Linux because they have to be reactive against it, since they have no way of controlling it. Well, they can control it to some extent, but only if they make contributions to improve it and are sincere.
Could you clarify what you're referring to as control of information? What information?
Some people here posted about not trusting the Java app to be secure. Apparently, they've already thought of that. They seem to "get it" as far as security. Here's an excerpt from the FAQ page:
How can it be proved that the HushMail system is actually secure?
Simply put, the most important aspect of any computer security system is the ability for lots people to test it as well as possible. The Java Source Code of HushMail is available to everyone, free. Security experts worldwide have the unrestricted ability to try and find any security holes. We are completely open to this form of peer review, as we believe this makes for the strongest systems available today. Our source code is open to you. Please view it at your leisure. It can be found at http://www.cypherpunks.ai/~hush/hush-src.102.zip. In addition, a description of the functionality of the system is available here.
I have at least one reason I would use something like this: If I want an anonymous account that can't be traced back to me in case I don't want my job or people I know knowing it's me. This is an easy way of doing it without needing an anonymous remailer.
Why learn a standard that is pushed by one company versus a standard that's been in use for a long time and is something that will stay around for a while? I.E. C/C++ versus VB.
Greed? All the money made by VB developers? Don't C/C++ coders make more? Oh yeah, I forgot. VB is supposed to be the easy way to make a buck in programming. Everyone is looking for the easy way out. I suppose if you're only interested in coding a quick and dirty Windows app, you'll use VB. But I don't think that's what programming is about.
Maybe it's just me. I care more about enjoying my job and making something that I can be proud of, than about the money. And I cringe every time I'm forced to think about VB.
Then again, I've coded in VB just because I'm going to school now and I will take any job I can get that can deal with my schedule.:-) So I should shut up. Practicality does come into play here too, I suppose.
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NT has greater file security than Linux so I don't quite get your point.
Do explain.. How does NT have better file security?
apt seems pretty cool, but what about major changes in packages. Quite frequently in the linux community a new software package has a new config file (etc) that is not compatible with older versions. If apt updates packages without user input does this not risk the integrity of the system?
Usually you will be warned that the configuration files do not match, and whether or not you want to cancel the installation. At that point, you can put a hold on that application, and apt won't automatically upgrade it for you if you move to a new version of the distribution.
There are sometimes scripts that will convert data over, or there are configuration scripts for the new version, so you can set it up yourself.
For the most part, Debian does its best to let you know what's going on so you don't accidentally upgrade to a package you can't use because the configuration has changed.
If it had a really good teleconference (GCOM style), I'd be interested.
Are there any really good Open Source BBS's with Renegade-style messaging and GCOM teleconference? A combination like that would kick some booty.
I've tried some BBS's for Linux, but they just don't have the same flair those two BBS's had for those tasks.
I used to run a Hacker/Phreaker bulletin board called The Digital Fallout. Had some really cool message bases since I turned away w@r3z d00dz that would post bullshit, and I looked for those people that could carry an intelligent conversation. We talked about all sorts of things, from drugs, to secrets about the telephone company, to spying, to technology, all those neat topics. We were all enthusiasts interested in the technology of the day. Ah well, those were the days.
I remember iCE, ACiD (ANSI Creators in Demand), and some other smaller groups. The internet had to come and kill it all. If anything, we need more of those close-knit groups again somehow.
A lot of people here always have said that the Internet routes around censorship and problems like this. We should try and find some technical way to allow those in Australia that need to access web content a way to do it.
I'm thinking of something along the lines of mailing lists with listings of redirectors for web traffic. Surely the censors couldn't keep up if these change every day.
How about some sort of client that, once connected to an ISP, connects through another protocol to a site abroad, which will somehow reroute their network connection through there and allow web surfing?
Maybe make postings on newsgroups for the Australian folks with redirectors for web traffic.
Are there enough people out there who would try and circumvent the laws somehow? I don't see how any of it could be illegal, at least the way the law stands.
Does anyone have any other ideas on how Australians could circumvent these laws?
Also, another question I have that I couldn't really answer right now is whether or not this would hurt the cause. I certainly would want a way to bypass these draconian laws if the U.S. were to pass laws like that.
What kind of approaches do we have in case governments try to regulate sites like that? Will the Internet just shrivel up and die if enough countries censor content?
I think these are questions we need to start looking at if we want the Internet to remain free. So we can at least have these 'solutions' available as a last resort.
Losing the freedom of the Internet would be one of the worst things that could happen in the information age.
I tried Hotjava under Linux. It looks nice, doesn't crash, even renders slashdot correctly. It's also got the neat java widgets that I like.
However, it is _SLOW_ on my 128MB Pentium II 300 machine. Netscape is much much much faster. Also, if i type a URL in, it's so slow that it will actually mangle the name I type in. I have to type it really slowly so that it can parse it correctly. It's evil.
Hotjava is just too slow to use as an everyday browser, but I suppose if I absolutely need to run a java app from the net, it would work.
Yeah, I had a problem even in this interview, when the girl asked him about KDE, he mentioned that you can program in any language for Gnome, but KDE is only C++.
Aren't there bindings for other languages for KDE as well as Gnome?
Also, merely the fact that there are bindings for other languages doesn't change the fact that Qt is mainly for C++, and GTK is mainly for C. If he was going to mention differences, I think he should just have mentioned that.
Other than that though, this interview was a lot friendlier towards KDE than some of the other stuff I've seen.
In my area, they have coverage of the hearings in Congress regarding the shootings in Littleton and such.
:-(
It seems like Congress almost "gets it" as far as this. They're talking mainly about after-school programs for the kids to have a place to go to after school. And, other such things.
It seems like the role of culture and games and such isn't seen as something that should be controlled, at least in these hearings. There was some talk of gun control and other such issues, however.
Hopefully, things won't progress to the point where they start trying to control popular culture due to the misdeeds of a few. Then again, laws like that go along the same lines as drug laws, and we have drug laws in this country which have contributed to the United States having more prisoners per capita than any other country except South Africa, yet our crime rate is sky-high. I think that a figure I saw shows that there are more heroin users per capita in Baltimore than in Amsterdam.
I think the biggest problem is that people are not willing to take responsibility for their actions. We need to do things that attack the problem at hand. Parents need to take more responsibility for their children. Parents need to talk to their children.
Feel-good approaches like trying to regulate popular culture, picking kids out that wear trenchcoats, etc., whatever it is, will only backfire.
I'm not the original poster, but I've recently set up a Samba server regularly serving more than 100 users. We've just recently tested and upgraded the machine to use Samba 2.0.4. It acts as a primary domain controller. These are all NT boxes that are connecting.
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It's running on a Dell Poweredge 4300, Dual Processor with 512MB RAM. The reason the machine is so hefty is because it's also serving IMAP for these same 100 users, print serving about 20 printers, handling a web E-mail application, apache, DNS, and lots of other miscellaneous duties. This is on a 100 MBit network.
The nice thing is that we can put all of these applications on one server, maintain backups and all, and the reliability stays right up there. We can run as many applications as we want, and we're nowhere near using up the CPU time. Most of the time the load average stays below
The server has been solid. We've had a few problems with corruption of the data recently. Hopefully this was just due to the beta MegaRAID driver in some of the 2.2.x kernels. Also, there have been a couple of problems with the u.washington imap daemon and Netscape, but we've been able to work around most of them.
Other than that, the server works flawlessly. There have been no problems with Samba, and we've had 30 day uptimes (would have been lots more, except we needed to do a hardware upgrade), and we've had no reliability problems with Linux.
This isn't a migration, however. This network was an upgrade from Novell, and these NT clients were purchased so that the client would have a managed architecture.
I won the contract since I offered better rates than the NT consultants they talked to and they liked the consulting work I did earlier. One big factor was the fact that they didn't have to pay licensing fees, which easily would have doubled the cost of the project.
The client is happy. They have an NT network that works. I don't get called about the machine in weeks at a time. Their staff has learned to use the utilities under Linux to manage Samba, and had no trouble learning a bit about Unix permissions, the samba configuration file, and smbpasswd, smbstatus, etc. It really isn't that hard to learn this stuff, and once you know it, it becomes easy to manage the network from anywhere.
They have a few remote offices, but those offices each have a Samba server set up. Maybe in the future we'll synchronize passwords across the whole company, but there's no need for it right now. The corporation is large, but is by no means huge, and most of the company is in the office in New York.
There are white characters on that blue background when an NT BSOD strikes. I have personally used the information on the page to troubleshoot and fix problems.
Certainly very user friendly dealing with Hex values.
I don't know how NT users can say that it is easy to use, and yet tell you that you have to edit this registry key to this value after installing this in order to get a machine tuned properly, all in the same breath.
I think it takes the same amount of skill to be a competent NT admin as it does to be competent with Linux. This FUD about NT being easy to use needs to be dispelled.
Then again, the BSOD is largely a bit of folklore to many Linux users, who've never used NT and just talk about it a lot online.
I would have assumed that was sarcastic if I hadn't seen the tone of the rest of the message. The reason most people use Linux is because NT hasn't been able to fulfill some need (i.e. stability, speed, whatever), and Linux has.
This is a good strategy. It would dilute Microsoft's efforts and they would be spreading themselves too thin.
I have a point in addition to yours though:
I think the community needs to stop the infighting. I absolutely hate seeing FreeBSDers harp about how the GPL license is harmful, and how we shouldn't use Linux because of that. I hate seeing Linux people say that Linux is the only solution. We need to present a united front and encourage software diversity, like the original poster said.
Additionally, open software development is not the end-all of everything. There are plenty of areas in which closed software development works better.
In the end, every job is different, and no one solution can possibly fulfill the needs of everybody. Linux and the use of other software offers diversity and configurability that is missing if the marketplace is controlled by one company. This is a weakness of Microsoft, with their Windows-only approach. We need to make this point as a counterattack. We need to put them on the defensive.
We need to start looking at weaknesses of Microsoft and play up those weaknesses. I am not talking about just technical weaknesses. What weaknesses are there in their business model that we can target?
BTW: This is probably starting to look like a Microsoft brainstorming session, except, we're brainstorming on counteracting Microsoft.
At any rate, my post was a digression.
Your post was definitely worth the 5.
Admittedly, you have a point.
MS is not concerned with their marketshare on the desktops right now. They're worried about Windows NT. Linux can't compete on the desktop right now due to various reasons that we're working on. But, that's besides the point. I'm sure these people were hired to save their server market just as much as they were to save their desktop market.
Let's see what they can't do:
Unless they haven't learned yet, they are not bound to attack Linux by attacking its weaknesses. We don't have a marketing department. We just have a lot of people willing to fix these problems quickly, if they're not FUD.
They can't fight us with FUD very effectively, because the Internet tends to educate the ignorant.
They can't fight us by closing Internet standards because their marketshare with Internet servers isn't high enough to close off standards. That's a big plus for Linux at this point. Their marketshare is dropping, not rising, so this is becoming more and more of an advantage of Linux.
The Internet, Linux's home, is a hard beast to tame. We have a definite advantage, since they have to fight on our turf to win a decisive victory.
So, what to worry about? I think they are already fighting us on all the fronts they can.
Exclusionary deals with hardware manufacturers like Winmodems, Winprinters, etc. It would be a much more expensive proposition to switch to Linux if you have to buy new hardware. They could perhaps make a new plug-and-play standard that works better but only works with special Windows-only devices. There are any number of things they could do on this front. However, the extent that they can do this will diminish as Linux gets more and more acceptance, and with a marketshare of 17% in servers, it will be hard to convince hardware manufacturers to go Windows-only on the PC architecture. Additionally, Windows-only devices won't perform as well as hardware-based controlling devices on the server.
They could continue to threaten OEM's with higher prices for Windows preloads if they offer Linux at all. But, big deal. They're fighting us on the server end, not the desktop.
Does anyone have any other ideas? Litigation is kind of a stretch. Who do they sue? The FSF? Do you realize how much money the FSF could garner for their defense?
Create M$-Linux? I think they have too much pride for that.
I don't think they'd go on either of these routes.
We need a good brainstorming session here to try and have a viable game plan when they make their next move. We were caught by surprise with the Mindcraft study, and while it is helping us now, a different reaction at that point would have been much better.
Our development roadmap is created by the needs of the users of Linux. It's the best roadmap there is. Maybe Microsoft can help guide our development roadmap by talking up the areas that are weak in Linux. If it's FUD, it won't hold up because the Internet tends to expose that. However, if it's valid, then the Linux community will fix it.
Lack of a journalled filesystem? Okay, we'll take care of that, with SGI's help, and also the work of kernel hackers.
Lack of a GUI? Let's get KDE/GNOME more robust and stable.
Lack of a good configuration utility?
Any other perceived weaknesses? Other companies/individuals/groups can come in and fill in and then support that subsystem. There is lots to be made in that. Are you listening? Apparently, SGI is.
Maybe MS can help the Linux development effort after all. Haven't you noticed how the more the weaknesses are talked about by people, the more interest there is in fixing them?
This document shows that in the weeks after the Mindcraft tests, kernel hackers and interested parties have been able to bring Apache and Linux performance to 3 or 4 times what it used to be, and they've identified problems in the kernel that are being fixed as we speak. Sure there are weaknesses, but the biggest advantage of Linux is that there are many eyes to find out where these weaknesses are and how to fix them when they are exposed.
Like someone else here said, this is a guerilla war. The harder MS fights us, the more resources they use to extinguish us, the more people will be turned off to Microsoft and will question their practices. The more desperate Microsoft becomes, the more obvious it is that they are losing.
It's hard to flail at a moving liquid target that cannot be pinned down to one organization or group of people.
Linux grew with the Internet. It grew without any media attention. It grew and still grows because it meets real-world needs. It has nothing to do with hype. It did just fine without media attention. We basically had to force the media into noticing us. As long as it can meet real world needs for the users/developers and has a good chance of providing that in the future, it cannot lose.
I'm sure that's the world we want. No OS choice. Windows NT everywhere?
Don't you NT zealots see that statements like this only help Linux?
It gives those of us that actually enjoy computers for what they are more incentive to make sure things don't get worse than they are.
One company running the computer industry is just as bad as the railroad tycoons, or any monopoly that controls every facet of computers. I'm not sure even you would want to live in a world like that unless you were a Microsoft shareholder.
These benchmarks weren't a complete loss to all of those. Hidden in those benchmarks was a rather interesting admission found in this story on Linux Today (note, I don't work for them, but they do have some good stories sometimes):
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/5906.html
This story reveals that Linux with Samba achieved 197Mbps, which was significantly higher than the Mindcraft benchmarks, severely invalidating the original Mindcraft benchmarks. Also, Apache did MUCH better on these benchmarks than on the original Mindcraft tests.
The article also shows that NT achieved only 150Mbps against NT clients, 31% slower than Linux. In tests with 60 clients, Windows NT managed only 110Mbbps throughput, compared with 183Mbps for Samba.
So, we got something out of these benchmarks. Linux serves Samba to NT clients 31% faster than NT on high end hardware!
Now, if we only tested IIS against Zeus to make a more fair benchmark for static tests, Linux wouldn't look so bad after all overall.
I don't see how these new benchmarks validate Mindcraft at all.
Given that I usually get my url's from references from people I know, from a search engine, or from postings on newsgroups/slashdot, I don't see how this would stop any anti-Bush sentiment from showing up on the Internet.
Looks like it's time to start looking for an original domain name that attacks Bush.
Ben
I like this idea.. but how do we prove that a spammer sent out more than 10 copies of the E-mail?
Ben
Linux will be folding in features of Irix. This is good news for Linux.
This also means more seats for Linux, since it's a direct option against NT.
I guess we'll have to wait till we see how sales of the Linux machines compare against sales with NT installed.. Obviously, they think they'll make more money using Linux versus Irix.
Ben
Is that why companies like Oracle, Informix, even game companies like Loki have made Linux versions of their software?
I'm sure plenty of people pay for games and software for corporate use, otherwise these companies wouldn't be making products for Linux.
Ben
Are you talking about performance of an application on hardware you'd never actually use for those things? Who uses a quad xeon to serve static pages? Why didn't they test Linux using a web server that's optimized for static pages?
Also, there was an article in http://www.linuxtoday.com that exposes the fact that Samba under Linux actually performed better than Windows NT on the PCWeek tests when using NT clients than NT did. This is something that everyone should know.
The PCWeek numbers were also much higher than the Mindcraft numbers, attacking the credibility of Mindcraft even more.
Another funny thing, if anyone follows http://lwn.net, they had a story that mentioned why Apache may have done so badly, and how we can modify the scheduler to make the problem go away.
If anything, we should thank MS for the Mindcraft tests. It may end up making Linux better in the end.
I don't think Linux did as bad as people think, and I'm sure that static web serving performance or Samba performance is irrelevant in a router.
The second half of your post refers to "information" and "information" being kept secret.
What exactly are you referring to?
The way I see it, companies don't like Linux because they have to be reactive against it, since they have no way of controlling it. Well, they can control it to some extent, but only if they make contributions to improve it and are sincere.
Could you clarify what you're referring to as control of information? What information?
Some people here posted about not trusting the Java app to be secure. Apparently, they've already thought of that. They seem to "get it" as far as security. Here's an excerpt from the FAQ page:
How can it be proved that the HushMail system is actually secure?
Simply put, the most important aspect of any computer security system is the ability for lots people to test it as well as possible. The Java Source Code of HushMail is available to everyone, free. Security experts worldwide have the unrestricted ability to try and find any security holes. We are completely open to this form of peer review, as we believe this makes for the strongest systems available today. Our source code is open to you. Please view it at your leisure. It can be found at http://www.cypherpunks.ai/~hush/hush-src.102.zip. In addition, a description of the functionality of the system is available here.
I have at least one reason I would use something like this: If I want an anonymous account that can't be traced back to me in case I don't want my job or people I know knowing it's me. This is an easy way of doing it without needing an anonymous remailer.
They May 1999 Netcraft survey came out. Funny, Apache and Zeus are the only web servers gaining market share.
Microsoft's been consistently losing market share for the past few months. Maybe there's something Microsoft knows that no one else does...?
http://netcraft.co.uk/survey
I gave up on OS/2 a long time ago due to gross mismarketing and mismanagement by IBM.
I just don't see it gaining much mindshare unless IBM dramatically changes the way it sells and presents OS/2.
OS/2 users got the short end of the stick and they got shafted by IBM, and it's hard to forget that.
Ben
I think someone mentioned that the job description mentioned putting this into the Open Source community.
Besides, if it's getting rolled into the kernel, it has to be free for use by others, doesn't it?
Why learn a standard that is pushed by one company versus a standard that's been in use for a long time and is something that will stay around for a while? I.E. C/C++ versus VB.
Greed? All the money made by VB developers? Don't C/C++ coders make more? Oh yeah, I forgot. VB is supposed to be the easy way to make a buck in programming. Everyone is looking for the easy way out. I suppose if you're only interested in coding a quick and dirty Windows app, you'll use VB. But I don't think that's what programming is about.
Maybe it's just me. I care more about enjoying my job and making something that I can be proud of, than about the money. And I cringe every time I'm forced to think about VB.
Then again, I've coded in VB just because I'm going to school now and I will take any job I can get that can deal with my schedule.
Ben