> the unix GUI's are still less intuitive, consistent, and useful than either Windows or the Mac OS.
Because of the lack of consistency, I don't think the other two are valid generalizations to make. Because it's customizable, I can (and do) set X up to whatever configuration I feel is most intuitive and useful for me. It's also quite easy to set it up to be an unmanagable bear, if that's what you're into.
And, while the Mac's UI is nice, though not entirely to my tastes, I find even the worst X setups to be more intuitive, consistent, and useful than Windows has ever been.
I'll have to disagree with you there. Normally I prefer brunettes, but Miss Mac has that wide-eyed, innocent, helpless look to her. I prefer a woman who can take care of herself... and I'm sure Ms. Linux knows how to use that gun... she's certainly capable of SIGKILLing any process that messes with her...
> a GNU/Linux system will not boot without bash
There's no reason that I know of that a Linux system (or, more accurately, init) can't start anything else in the world as its command interpreter. My/etc/rc.S explicitly calls/bin/sh in the #! line. If I were to change that to/bin/tcsh or/usr/bin/perl or whatever, init should be perfectly happy using those to interpret my startup scripts. I could even replace/bin/bash and/or the/bin/sh link to it with a different Bourne derivative and not even have to rewrite my startup scripts. You said it yourself... boot floppies do it.
For that matter, I could easily imagine a dedicated-purpose Linux machine that had no shell available at all, and replaced init with one that didn't run initscripts, just directly launched its one-and-only application.
I don't intend to do this, because I think bash rocks, but my point remains - bash is not a vital part of the OS any more than any other shell, graphical or otherwise, is.
I've seen quite a few arguments for and against calling Linux GNU/Linux. The arguments for seem to be based on five major points:
1) The kernel doesn't form the entire operating system. Other programs make up the OS as well, and the name of the OS should reflect these.
This is really two points, the second being dependent on the first. If you assume for the sake of debate that the kernel is not the entire operating system, does it follow that every program that is part of the OS should be reflected in the name? I think it doesn't.... after all, we don't call it IE/Progman/Windows/DOS. And if you assume that it does, that's where ridiculous names like "GNU/X/BSD/Apache/Mozilla/Troll/Linux" come from...
And I'm not sure this is relevant, anyway, because I have trouble accepting large amounts of userland stuff as being an integral part of the operating system. First off, it seems to me that there's pretty obviously a line between the OS and just plain old apps. The kernel is definitely part of the OS; the program I whipped up the other day to emulate dice for Shadowrun pretty definitely isn't.
Further, it seems to me that the only sensible place to draw this line is between the kernel and everything else. Anywhere else creates grey areas of significant size. If ls/mv/cp/etc. are part of the OS, what about kfm? If bash is part of the OS, what about fvwm? If gcc is part of the OS, what about perl? If emacs is part of the OS, what about Wordperfect? (And I don't even install emacs on my systems... I'm a joe user. Does that mean my OS is incomplete?)
2) RMS and the FSF should be given credit for their huge contributions to free source.
Certainly. That's why it's GNU cc, GNU bash, GNU emacs, GNU binutils, GNU shutils, GNU libc, and so on. These are the GNU project's contributions, and vitally important ones they are. (Well, except for emacs:) ) However, Linux is _Linus's_ contribution, so _he_ gets to name it.
3) Linux is part of the GNU project, and should therefore carry the GNU name.
Well, dismissing for the moment the fact that not even all of the FSF's stuff that's indisputably a part of the GNU project has "GNU" tacked on the front of its name (bash?)...
How would you feel if you built something (using, admittedly, borrowed tools - but see 4, below), named it after yourself, spent a while using it, then your neighbor caught sight of it, and came over and said, "I've been trying to build something similar to that for years. Since I started building mine first, you have to credit me every time you refer to your creation."
That's what RMS is trying to do to Linux. If not actually wrong, it's still, at the very least, rude.
4) It wouldn't have been possible to make Linux without gcc, and other GNU tools.
Probably true, but is there a rule now that the product has to be named after the tools used to create it? As someone else said, if I build a house with Craftsman tools, does that mean I have to put Sears/Campbell on my mailbox? Is this new rule going to apply to all software? If so, do I have to call my Shadowrun dice program GNU/shadowdice from now on? Is the DOS version Borland/shadowdice? Or is it still GNU/shadowdice, because I did all the development on Linux with gcc, then copied the (99-44/100% pure portable ANSI C) code to a DOS box and just did the final compile, from identical source, with Borland?
5) We need to get GNU and the free source philosophy into the public eye.
That's a worthwhile objective. I'm sure there are better ways to accomplish it, though, then by starting a massive public flamewar that can only damage both GNU and Linux in the public eye... You think the FUD about Linux not being unified is bad now, wait 'til the MS PR guys get hold of this one...
It's not even the Pentium that's the problem, AFAIK, it's the chipset... most (all?) Intel Socket 7 chipsets are unable to cache more than 64M. A Pentium in, say, a VIA VP3 board shouldn't have any such problems...
And yeah... the 286 was limited, too - something like 12M - I forget exactly, and it's not as straightforward to calculate as the [3456]86's 2^32, because of the 286's weird memory segmentation model...
Using free software is not, of course, going to legalize things that are currently illegal. "Yeah, I posted kiddie porn on the 'net, but I processed the pictures with the GIMP, and its license says I can do whatever I want," isn't going to cut it with the FBI, obviously...
On the flip side, though, things that are legal should not become illegal because of the software you used to do it. For example, if you're normally allowed to create an image or document and sell it, it should not become illegal because the graphics editor or word processor you used doesn't allow commercial use...
The box was for my sister... she's only marginally networked, so she still needs floppy disks for things like taking files in to class and transferring things between her computer and her friends'. I don't use floppies much anymore, myself... with a LAN in the house and a 24x7 dialup, I don't need 'em. I don't even use my CD drives for much more than playing music/MP3 CDs... all my software comes off the 'net. Her needs are different, though.
That's where I think Apple missed its target with the iMac, actually... people like me don't need floppies and can put that integrated ethernet to good use, but we won't be happy with the lack of RAM, the underpowered CPU (yes, I know the G3's a good chip... the iMac's is the runt of the litter, though), or the lack of expandability. People like my sister don't need a screaming CPU or a lot of RAM, but they need that floppy drive, and don't have a use for the ethernet card (but have to pay for it anyway) - and the monitor is too small any way you figure it.
The one place I can think of that they're really suited for is schools, which tend to be short on competent computer help and for whom LANs are practical, and which have always been one of Apple's strongholds (though, unfortunately for Apple, brainwashing 'em early hasn't worked on most kids;) ). Even there, they're running into problems because of that lack of floppy drive (according to my mother the school librarian)... the kids can't take files home with them.
I type one-handed on QWERTY quite often, and with either hand... generally I'm running a mouse with the other hand, or holding the keyboard with it because I'm standing in front of a server that's got no place to set the keyboard down. It's not as fast as using both hands, obviously, but it hardly falls into the "Yah. Right" category. Ctrl-Alt-Del is the only one I have trouble typing, and then only when required to use the left Ctrl and Alt (and I doubt that that combination is much easier with Dvorak). But then, I've got relatively large hands and 20+ years of experience typing QWERTY...
I built a machine just about that good for my sister for around $500, including a larger (and seperately upgradable) monitor. The CPU's not quite up to spec, but another $50 would've fixed that.
Weren't the original moderators selected because their postings were consistently high quality? I see that that's still a requirement for the new system...
It seems to me that placing restrictions on posting for a set of people who were chosen originally because their postings were high quality would defeat the entire purpose of having moderators, which would be to get high-quality postings...
Oh, c'mon... all the links on the MS Linux page are just pointers back to the page itself. You've gotta put some _effort_ into these things... They could've at least made up some system requirements and stuff for the appropriate pages.
...Though it could hardly have been funnier than Win2000's actual system requirements...:)
Yeah, I know how the client part of it works... but I've already got cddb-formatted info for all of my CDs, and I'm not sure how to submit it... Do I just email my.cdtooldb to them?
> Sadly, the title is enough to sum up what most of this article is going to promote...
Yeah, tell me about it... Even the most well-thought-out, reasonable posts on this topic don't rise much above the level of flame-bait. I couldn't resist trying to make a point or two, though...
> Ah, but it's the same kernel as Redhat/debian/SuSe/whatever linux (or at least from the same source tree). You are actually contradicting yourself here! What makes slackware is the collection of tools bundled with the kernel including the installation tool(s).
Actually, I thought this point through before making my post... just wasn't going to muddle issues by bringing it up if no one called me on it. Slackware is the vendor in this case - it's equivalent to Microsoft or Apple in my examples, not to Corel or Adobe. Linux is a little odd because the vendor isn't necessarily the organization that wrote the code, but I think the analogy holds (MS and Apple buy, beg, borrow, and steal code from other organizations, too). If the FSF were to release a Linux distribution of their own, I'd be happy to call it GNU Linux or FSF Linux or whatever-they-want Linux... but GNU would be the vendor... the OS is still Linux.
As for code weight... even discounting the 10%/90% split - we've got an Enterprise 5500 in the server room here that (after I got done with it;) ) has almost as much GNU software on it as my Linux boxen do... but I've never heard anyone suggest that it be called GNU/Solaris, and I suspect that most people would dismiss the idea out of hand. Is it installing things in/opt or/usr/local rather than / and/usr that makes the difference? Or is it that the proprietary kernel can't be "adopted" by the FSF? And if it's the proprietary kernel, doesn't that mean that it's the kernel that's the defining portion?
> However, how would you feel if you got NTOSKRNL.EXE on its own and got told that was your operating system?
Pretty disappointed. I'd much prefer to have vmlinuz, thankyouverymuch.;)
Seriously, though... I'm not saying that the kernel is enough to make a computer useful. What I'm saying is that it's the kernel that defines what the computer is. It seems to me that there's a line between the OS and the apps. The only place it makes sense to me to draw that line is between the kernel and everything else. Anywhere else creates grey areas. (If we include gcc, do we include perl? If we include bash, do we include X? If we include ls, do we include xfm? et cetera, ad nauseum...)
I won't touch the economic issues around free software (I'm not an economist, nor do I play one on Slashdot), except to say that, in my current job, I don't get paid for programs, I get paid for programming...
My two bits on RMS and GNU/Linux (not that anyone cares):
RMS is an extremist - I don't think anyone could deny that. Extremists, by definition, look weird to more moderate folks... but we need extremists to show us where we can go. We don't necessarily want to follow them blindly, though. And most people, if they decide they want to go where he's leading, can't make it in one leap... that's where people like Linus and ESR come in, to show us how to get there the slow, easy way.
As for "GNU/Linux"... as I see it, it's the kernel that defines the OS. If I'm using Win95 exclusively to run Corel Office, it's still Microsoft Windows (or MS-DOS;) ), not Corel/Windows. If I'm using a Mac exclusively to run Photoshop, it's still Apple MacOS, not Adobe/MacOS. And if I'm using my Linux box exclusively to run GNU utilities, it's still Slackware Linux, not GNU/Linux.
And, those of you who think that saying "GNU/Linux" is appropriate... think about this one: what's wrong with "Linux/GNU"?
Something's seriously borken here... the reply counters on the main page and the comments page have been stuck in one place since yesterday, despite the fact that people have been posting comments. The new comments don't show up normally, either. If I drop my threshold to -1, they appear, and the comment counter jumps to the proper value... but the vanishing comments aren't ones that have been moderated down... most of them are Score:1 comments...
There was a pendulum scene, a few chapters after she makes the original challenge. Joss calls her on it and she does test her faith with the Focault in the Smithsonian. He never does test his, though, oddly.;)
It's in Chapter 14, "Harmonic Oscillator". Page 284, in my paperback copy of the book.
Having just reread the book, I've come to the conclusion (or reaffirmed my original conclusion, rather) that it was never a story about making contact with aliens. It was a story about faith. That scene with the pendulum, along with a few others, was the key to the entire theme of the book. The movie took that out, which made it into a story about religion, which is something subtlely different, and, IMAO, much less involving, especially when treated with typical Hollywood shallowness. And they didn't even enhance the making contact with aliens bit (which Sagan really only skimmed over) to compensate.
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> the unix GUI's are still less intuitive, consistent, and useful than either Windows or the Mac OS.
Because of the lack of consistency, I don't think the other two are valid generalizations to make. Because it's customizable, I can (and do) set X up to whatever configuration I feel is most intuitive and useful for me. It's also quite easy to set it up to be an unmanagable bear, if that's what you're into.
And, while the Mac's UI is nice, though not entirely to my tastes, I find even the worst X setups to be more intuitive, consistent, and useful than Windows has ever been.
I'll have to disagree with you there. Normally I prefer brunettes, but Miss Mac has that wide-eyed, innocent, helpless look to her. I prefer a woman who can take care of herself... and I'm sure Ms. Linux knows how to use that gun... she's certainly capable of SIGKILLing any process that messes with her...
> a GNU/Linux system will not boot without bash
There's no reason that I know of that a Linux system (or, more accurately, init) can't start anything else in the world as its command interpreter. My /etc/rc.S explicitly calls /bin/sh in the #! line. If I were to change that to /bin/tcsh or /usr/bin/perl or whatever, init should be perfectly happy using those to interpret my startup scripts. I could even replace /bin/bash and/or the /bin/sh link to it with a different Bourne derivative and not even have to rewrite my startup scripts. You said it yourself... boot floppies do it.
For that matter, I could easily imagine a dedicated-purpose Linux machine that had no shell available at all, and replaced init with one that didn't run initscripts, just directly launched its one-and-only application.
I don't intend to do this, because I think bash rocks, but my point remains - bash is not a vital part of the OS any more than any other shell, graphical or otherwise, is.
I've seen quite a few arguments for and against calling Linux GNU/Linux. The arguments for seem to be based on five major points:
:) ) However, Linux is _Linus's_ contribution, so _he_ gets to name it.
1) The kernel doesn't form the entire operating system. Other programs make up the OS as well, and the name of the OS should reflect these.
This is really two points, the second being dependent on the first. If you assume for the sake of debate that the kernel is not the entire operating system, does it follow that every program that is part of the OS should be reflected in the name? I think it doesn't.... after all, we don't call it IE/Progman/Windows/DOS. And if you assume that it does, that's where ridiculous names like "GNU/X/BSD/Apache/Mozilla/Troll/Linux" come from...
And I'm not sure this is relevant, anyway, because I have trouble accepting large amounts of userland stuff as being an integral part of the operating system. First off, it seems to me that there's pretty obviously a line between the OS and just plain old apps. The kernel is definitely part
of the OS; the program I whipped up the other day to emulate dice for Shadowrun pretty definitely isn't.
Further, it seems to me that the only sensible place to draw this line is between the kernel and everything else. Anywhere else creates grey areas of significant size. If ls/mv/cp/etc. are part of the OS, what about kfm? If bash is part of the OS, what about fvwm? If gcc is part of the OS, what about perl? If emacs is part of the OS, what about Wordperfect? (And I don't even install emacs on my systems... I'm a joe user. Does that mean my OS is incomplete?)
2) RMS and the FSF should be given credit for their huge contributions to free source.
Certainly. That's why it's GNU cc, GNU bash, GNU emacs, GNU binutils, GNU shutils, GNU libc, and so on. These are the GNU project's contributions, and vitally important ones they are. (Well, except for emacs
3) Linux is part of the GNU project, and should therefore carry the GNU name.
Well, dismissing for the moment the fact that not even all of the FSF's stuff that's indisputably a part of the GNU project has "GNU" tacked on the front of its name (bash?)...
How would you feel if you built something (using, admittedly, borrowed tools - but see 4, below), named it after yourself, spent a while using it, then your neighbor caught sight of it, and came over and said, "I've been trying to build something similar to that for years. Since I started building mine first, you have to credit me every time you refer to your creation."
That's what RMS is trying to do to Linux. If not actually wrong, it's still, at the very least, rude.
4) It wouldn't have been possible to make Linux without gcc, and other GNU tools.
Probably true, but is there a rule now that the product has to be named after the tools used to create it? As someone else said, if I build a house with Craftsman tools, does that mean I have to put Sears/Campbell on my mailbox? Is this new rule going to apply to all software? If so, do I have to call my Shadowrun dice program GNU/shadowdice from now on? Is the DOS version Borland/shadowdice? Or is it still GNU/shadowdice, because I did all the development on Linux with gcc, then copied the (99-44/100% pure portable ANSI C) code to a DOS box and just did the final compile, from identical source, with Borland?
5) We need to get GNU and the free source philosophy into the public eye.
That's a worthwhile objective. I'm sure there are better ways to accomplish it, though, then by starting a massive public flamewar that can only damage both GNU and Linux in the public eye... You think the FUD about Linux not being unified is bad now, wait 'til the MS PR guys get hold of this one...
No, the big draw to Linux is that it'll run on fscking anything.
Yes, he is. He said so. Or weren't you at last year's Linux Expo? :)
It's not even the Pentium that's the problem, AFAIK, it's the chipset... most (all?) Intel Socket 7 chipsets are unable to cache more than 64M. A Pentium in, say, a VIA VP3 board shouldn't have any such problems...
And yeah... the 286 was limited, too - something like 12M - I forget exactly, and it's not as straightforward to calculate as the [3456]86's 2^32, because of the 286's weird memory segmentation model...
Using free software is not, of course, going to legalize things that are currently illegal. "Yeah, I posted kiddie porn on the 'net, but I processed the pictures with the GIMP, and its license says I can do whatever I want," isn't going to cut it with the FBI, obviously...
On the flip side, though, things that are legal should not become illegal because of the software you used to do it. For example, if you're normally allowed to create an image or document and sell it, it should not become illegal because the graphics editor or word processor you used doesn't allow commercial use...
Oh, come on... everyone knows Unix hackers don't shave... ;)
Thought recognition. Obviously the necessary prelude to their ultimate goal:
THOUGHT CONTROL
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
:)
The box was for my sister... she's only marginally networked, so she still needs floppy disks for things like taking files in to class and transferring things between her computer and her friends'. I don't use floppies much anymore, myself... with a LAN in the house and a 24x7 dialup, I don't need 'em. I don't even use my CD drives for much more than playing music/MP3 CDs... all my software comes off the 'net. Her needs are different, though.
;) ). Even there, they're running into problems because of that lack of floppy drive (according to my mother the school librarian)... the kids can't take files home with them.
That's where I think Apple missed its target with the iMac, actually... people like me don't need floppies and can put that integrated ethernet to good use, but we won't be happy with the lack of RAM, the underpowered CPU (yes, I know the G3's a good chip... the iMac's is the runt of the litter, though), or the lack of expandability. People like my sister don't need a screaming CPU or a lot of RAM, but they need that floppy drive, and don't have a use for the ethernet card (but have to pay for it anyway) - and the monitor is too small any way you figure it.
The one place I can think of that they're really suited for is schools, which tend to be short on competent computer help and for whom LANs are practical, and which have always been one of Apple's strongholds (though, unfortunately for Apple, brainwashing 'em early hasn't worked on most kids
I type one-handed on QWERTY quite often, and with either hand... generally I'm running a mouse with the other hand, or holding the keyboard with it because I'm standing in front of a server that's got no place to set the keyboard down. It's not as fast as using both hands, obviously, but it hardly falls into the "Yah. Right" category. Ctrl-Alt-Del is the only one I have trouble typing, and then only when required to use the left Ctrl and Alt (and I doubt that that combination is much easier with Dvorak). But then, I've got relatively large hands and 20+ years of experience typing QWERTY...
I built a machine just about that good for my sister for around $500, including a larger (and seperately upgradable) monitor. The CPU's not quite up to spec, but another $50 would've fixed that.
And it has a floppy drive.
Weren't the original moderators selected because their postings were consistently high quality? I see that that's still a requirement for the new system...
It seems to me that placing restrictions on posting for a set of people who were chosen originally because their postings were high quality would defeat the entire purpose of having moderators, which would be to get high-quality postings...
Wow... and I've got a three-digit UID...
Oh, c'mon... all the links on the MS Linux page are just pointers back to the page itself. You've gotta put some _effort_ into these things... They could've at least made up some system requirements and stuff for the appropriate pages.
:)
...Though it could hardly have been funnier than Win2000's actual system requirements...
Eh? By my watch, it's 16:11 Thursday 01 Apr 1999, GMT, as I type this... Does your April Fool's day end at noon or something?
Mmmm... nothing like a good grilled head-burger.
Yeah, I know how the client part of it works... but I've already got cddb-formatted info for all of my CDs, and I'm not sure how to submit it... Do I just email my .cdtooldb to them?
> Sadly, the title is enough to sum up what most of this article is going to promote...
Yeah, tell me about it... Even the most well-thought-out, reasonable posts on this topic don't rise much above the level of flame-bait. I couldn't resist trying to make a point or two, though...
> Ah, but it's the same kernel as Redhat/debian/SuSe/whatever linux (or at least from the same source tree). You are actually contradicting yourself here! What makes slackware is the collection of tools bundled with the kernel including the installation tool(s).
Actually, I thought this point through before making my post... just wasn't going to muddle issues by bringing it up if no one called me on it. Slackware is the vendor in this case - it's equivalent to Microsoft or Apple in my examples, not to Corel or Adobe. Linux is a little odd because the vendor isn't necessarily the organization that wrote the code, but I think the analogy holds (MS and Apple buy, beg, borrow, and steal code from other organizations, too). If the FSF were to release a Linux distribution of their own, I'd be happy to call it GNU Linux or FSF Linux or whatever-they-want Linux... but GNU would be the vendor... the OS is still Linux.
As for code weight... even discounting the 10%/90% split - we've got an Enterprise 5500 in the server room here that (after I got done with it ;) ) has almost as much GNU software on it as my Linux boxen do... but I've never heard anyone suggest that it be called GNU/Solaris, and I suspect that most people would dismiss the idea out of hand. Is it installing things in /opt or /usr/local rather than / and /usr that makes the difference? Or is it that the proprietary kernel can't be "adopted" by the FSF? And if it's the proprietary kernel, doesn't that mean that it's the kernel that's the defining portion?
> However, how would you feel if you got NTOSKRNL.EXE on its own and got told that was your operating system?
Pretty disappointed. I'd much prefer to have vmlinuz, thankyouverymuch. ;)
Seriously, though... I'm not saying that the kernel is enough to make a computer useful. What I'm saying is that it's the kernel that defines what the computer is. It seems to me that there's a line between the OS and the apps. The only place it makes sense to me to draw that line is between the kernel and everything else. Anywhere else creates grey areas. (If we include gcc, do we include perl? If we include bash, do we include X? If we include ls, do we include xfm? et cetera, ad nauseum...)
I won't touch the economic issues around free software (I'm not an economist, nor do I play one on Slashdot), except to say that, in my current job, I don't get paid for programs, I get paid for programming...
My two bits on RMS and GNU/Linux (not that anyone cares):
;) ), not Corel/Windows. If I'm using a Mac exclusively to run Photoshop, it's still Apple MacOS, not Adobe/MacOS. And if I'm using my Linux box exclusively to run GNU utilities, it's still Slackware Linux, not GNU/Linux.
RMS is an extremist - I don't think anyone could deny that. Extremists, by definition, look weird to more moderate folks... but we need extremists to show us where we can go. We don't necessarily want to follow them blindly, though. And most people, if they decide they want to go where he's leading, can't make it in one leap... that's where people like Linus and ESR come in, to show us how to get there the slow, easy way.
As for "GNU/Linux"... as I see it, it's the kernel that defines the OS. If I'm using Win95 exclusively to run Corel Office, it's still Microsoft Windows (or MS-DOS
And, those of you who think that saying "GNU/Linux" is appropriate... think about this one: what's wrong with "Linux/GNU"?
How does this thing work? The site's a little short on documentation...
Something's seriously borken here... the reply counters on the main page and the comments page have been stuck in one place since yesterday, despite the fact that people have been posting comments. The new comments don't show up normally, either. If I drop my threshold to -1, they appear, and the comment counter jumps to the proper value... but the vanishing comments aren't ones that have been moderated down... most of them are Score:1 comments...
There was a pendulum scene, a few chapters after she makes the original challenge. Joss calls her on it and she does test her faith with the Focault in the Smithsonian. He never does test his, though, oddly. ;)
It's in Chapter 14, "Harmonic Oscillator". Page 284, in my paperback copy of the book.
Having just reread the book, I've come to the conclusion (or reaffirmed my original conclusion, rather) that it was never a story about making contact with aliens. It was a story about faith. That scene with the pendulum, along with a few others, was the key to the entire theme of the book. The movie took that out, which made it into a story about religion, which is something subtlely different, and, IMAO, much less involving, especially when treated with typical Hollywood shallowness. And they didn't even enhance the making contact with aliens bit (which Sagan really only skimmed over) to compensate.
I think that was Mark Twain, in... Tom Sawyer? Huck Finn? One of 'em.