Gee, when I installed Fedora for the first time and installed latex2html I found that it automagically rendered all my titles in Japanese characters. It was simple to correct this by manually editing the config files. Of course, then yum uncorrected this feature several times in the succeeding months.
The user experience, point and click, in Linux (ubuntu) and Windows is practically identical. Linux also has one BIG advantage - it is truly a multi-user system. When I originally set up a server in my home, I chose Linux precisely because I didn't want to have whatever my children did in their login affect my login - nor did I want to hear people complaining about how "he deleted my files" (we have 4 boys). My children all gre up on Linux. They all know more about Windows than I do, too, because they have a couple of Windows machiens they play games on - and have to reinstall everything 5-6 times a year.
If the question is learning how computers operate in the workplace, you could make a case for Windows, since on a system admin level they're different to configure and customize, but then more and more businesses are finding Linux too goo a deal to avoid, too, so that argument may someday be moot (as one will need to know something about both).
However, if the question is teaching them to do school work on a computer: browser works the same, word processor works almost the same, spreadsheet works almost the same, etc etc etc.
Linux is cheaper to keep, breaks down elss often, has better multi-user capabilities.
You'll want to set up a server machine on your LAN that all the ubuntu Linux boxes would need to be pointed at so that you have only one machine to set up logins on, etc. NIS. Ditto for printing.
The nice thing is that once you get it all set up, you'll be essentially done... it should just work until the hardware fails.
Just yesterday, I went looking for an article I had previously read in Wikipedia about the history of England: where the British army was ordered by Winston Churchill to fire into a crowd of strikers and their families, resulting in many dead and wounded. This content is now gone - down the memory hole. Orwellian analogies aside, editing history invalidates it and makes it impossible for us to learn from our own mistakes.
I agree with Torvalds' comments, but I use Gnome for no better reason than I am used to it. I don't want much from my GUI - I'd probably be just as happy with fvwm - but I do use KDE apps in Gnome. It's all just point and click anyway. I don't think most users touch 1/10th of the possible customizability and functionality of whatever window manager they're using. Provided that it does work and it is stable, you use what you've grown accustomed to. All this vs. stuff is just religious quibbling.
I have enjoyed your show, over the years, but it seems to me that recently you (both of you) have lost some of your interest and enthusiam in the concept and execution of the show.
Do you think that this is inevitable? Do you ever feel like Uncle Don? (famous radio kid show host, for his on air gaffe: "Are we off?...Well, that oughta hold the little bastards for a while...")
Do you feel the show is becomming increasingly formulaic, relying on the same gags, jokes, and artificial hilarity? How do you fight this tendancy?
Do you ever feel like you've been Elvised? - (turned from a performer into a product or from an artist into an industry)
Do you ever feel that actually getting your "dream job" was a tremendous let down that let the air out of a big chunk of your life?
We have kids. Those kids are not very careful of each other's things. Having a real mutli-user operating system meant that nobody clobbered anybody else's stuff. Nobody ate anybody else's homework (or could be blamed for same).
We started out in Caldera 1.1 and kept that until it got hacked about six years later (I wasn't very interested in doing patches). We then went to RedHat, which had another 5 year run til it was hacked. Then we tried SuSE for a while, but although I liked a lot of things about it, I hated some others more, so I ended up back in Fedora.
I like little things, like being my own mailserver, so I can create a mail alias that sends mail both to my wife and me from a single email address.
We use ubuntu also, but not for our main server.
If I set up a Linux workstation, I know I can come back in 2 weeks or 6 months and it will work the same. Windows is so changeable - not in any major way (anymore) but quirky litle weirdnesses that make me feel like it's somehow shiftless and untrustworthy. Just today Word wouldn't make PDFs from the icon on the menu bar but made them happily if I pritned the doc to the Adobe PDF "printer" - go figure. Tuesday it will make PDFs from the menubar icon again.
Our kids have games machines - they're windows. Endlessly being reinstalled and reconfigured. They're toys. You play with toys. They know more about breaking and fixing windows that I ever will. This is not a bad thing.
"Linux Fund, Inc. exists to advance the state of the art of Free and Open Source Software through its research, education and grant-giving programs."
It seems to me that if the Linux Fund is actually defunct, its board should say so and hand over this money (and any other money they have in other corporate assets) to another group of similar aims.
As a Linux Fund contributor (and a Linux Fund MBNA card holder) I vote for gnu.org
New Scientist had the definitive article about this some years ago.
To summarize:
Making a nulcear power plant requires a huge energy input.
Maintaining a nuclear power plant in production of power requires substantial energey input.
Maintaining a nucelar power plant after its useful life is over requires a modest but indefinite energy input.
If you build five plants a year, the inactive ones end up consuming all the power that the plants on line produce after about 80 years.
It is not possible to have a net energy output from building nucelar powerplants, unless you build them in space (and can toss them away harmlessly when you're done with them). It's not prejudice, it's just math.
Also, you're taking real estate out of use forever and nuclear power plants aren't small. Over time, it adds up to be a significant chunk of your countryside to throw away forever.
I agree Bush is a man of conviction. His convictions boil down to "me first." He is a member of a ruthless group of unprincipled opportunists who want to impose a radical agenda on this country. They are actively hostile to democracy. Their policy on the environment is somewhere between indifference and apathy. Their concept of social responsibility is identical to that of Jacob Marley.
If you believe that this country should exist for the exclusive benefit of a rapacious elite at the expense of the mass of the people, then your beliefs are in line with the current administration. It is a pity that our elders and betters do NOT know what is best. The number of cliffs upon which our species is precariously situated demands that thinking people reject the tyranny of the elites. The real shame of this election is that we are unable to field a better candidate to defeat Bush than Kerry.
Virtual boyfriend ignores you, responds to your questions by changing the subject, whines about how you should do their laundry or fix them food, complains about your relatives and friends, always suggests you do things with their relatives and friends, and uses your cell phone minutes up.
As others have mentioned, user level security is part of usability.
However, there are differences between ground up security and added-on as afterthought security.
Windows' prime security and usability flaw is that every user insists on running as root (with admin privileges). Security Check: Walk up to any computer in your building. Open a command-line interface. Go to filesystem root. Issue command that tells computer to delete everything. If it does it, then it is not being used securely - regardless of whether it could be used securely.
Windows' admins get proud of some pretty strange stuff. For example, they don't like the idea of having computers on all the time and really like people to turn off their computers at night. Why, do you ask? One reason that was explained to me by Windows proponent was that all those switched-off computers were invulnerable to hacking/virus/attack. I responded to this argument by saying that my stapler didn't get viruses, but it didn't do email very well even so.
Best security is simplest security. The more your O/S CAN do, the more it might be persuaded to do. If you want to discuss apples and oranges, we can compare W2K security with Linux router. Both are difficult to hack, but the latter is much more difficult. As Linux gets more and more market share, there are going to be more security hits, viruses, worms, and whatnot. Not doing Linux because this is true is like not doing email because you might get (will get) spam. We're grownups. We can do arithmetic. What gives me the most functionality for the least price, balanced against risk? Linux, period.
If you have some facet of your experience that you feel self-conscious about, you need to find aspects about that experience that turn it from a liability to an advantage. Today's job market is such that it is unreasonable for an employer to expect the same kind of stability as in the past. It is not an instability in you, but in the job market. It shows that you are flexible, you can "roll with the punches" and respond effectively to changing requirements.
Not to say that you ought to brag about it, but don't be ashamed of what isn't your fault. Answer questions frankly, don't prevaricate, don't apologize, don't blame (anyone, including yourself) and cast yourself in the role of someone dealing responsibly and creatively with the cards life has dealt you.
There have been lots of posts on this thread suggesting various software packages and many of these may offer some or all of what your business needs. However, if you find that there is one application that you need to use that is only available for Windows, there is nothing sinful about having a pet Windows box on your LAN just to run that app.
For years I had a pet Windoes box on the LAN just for the scanner and camera interface. Just make sure you're using it as an optional acessory and if it goes down it won't take your business with it. Remove unnecessary applications like Outlook and keep the installation as simple as possible.
Alternatively, you may very well find commercial software for Solaris that will do more than everything you want better than the equivalent Windows-ware - and have you seen how cheap Solaris boxes are on ebay? It is also possible to include a Mac on your LAN, since many companies offer a Mac variant of Windows-ware.
I would also suggest checking out a company called Celestial Systems (hhtp://www.celestial.com) which offers some very interesting solutions for business issues.
Typical Saphire piece - look at what we can do when we "get it right" and "no casualties reported." I wonder how many old people died of exposure because their gas heat failed. Espionage when successful has human costs that are never discussed. Where else were the chips used? Chernobyl perhaps?
My first objection to this concept was to wonder what would happen to all this automation when it gets things shot through it. But then I recalled that modern ships are not designed to withstand attack and still be effective. With so many kinds of modern weapons, if you're hit, game over.
Our existing naval ships were designed like this so much that they could beat off an attacking air squadron, but could not get a shot off at four men attacking the ship from a rowboat.
Modern ships are a curious mix of outmoded ideas, window dressing, high technology and ludicrous "cost cutting" measures. It is a wonder they function in their missions at all. Replacing the expensive human element with more weird hardware by the lowest bidder will not make them perform their missions any better. We all know how hard it is to get complex distributed systems to work 24/7 - and that is when they're sitting in some purpose built office block. The only thing comparable to naval service for those systems would be a +7 earthquake. Anyone like to take bets on being able to print out a document on the 7th floor East printer 20 minutes after a nice big earthquake?
But this is not about making capable, survivable, robust ships. It is about trying to fight better and cheaper wars. It's a numbers game. If you "need" 25 ships to accomplish your mission objectives worldwide and you can only get them to work 50% of the time, then you need to buy 50 of the things. How much money do you save by eliminating sailors vs. how much do twice as many ships cost?
By turning over the world to bookkeepers we've done away with style, service, elegance, and quality. Maybe, if we turn war over to them they will succeed in making it so efficient that it also ceases to exist.
The relevant naval saying here is: "Ships don't fight, men do."...even if they don't use Windows.
Linux was only offered on business accounts. I tried to get them to sell me a computer with Linux on it as a consumer and was told "No, we do not sell Linux computers to consumers."
Microsoft changed the meaning of the word clustering. Much cheaper to do this than to actually offer a competitive product. Gates he speak with forked tongue.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, when I installed Fedora for the first time and installed latex2html I found that it automagically rendered all my titles in Japanese characters. It was simple to correct this by manually editing the config files. Of course, then yum uncorrected this feature several times in the succeeding months.
The user experience, point and click, in Linux (ubuntu) and Windows is practically identical. Linux also has one BIG advantage - it is truly a multi-user system. When I originally set up a server in my home, I chose Linux precisely because I didn't want to have whatever my children did in their login affect my login - nor did I want to hear people complaining about how "he deleted my files" (we have 4 boys). My children all gre up on Linux. They all know more about Windows than I do, too, because they have a couple of Windows machiens they play games on - and have to reinstall everything 5-6 times a year.
If the question is learning how computers operate in the workplace, you could make a case for Windows, since on a system admin level they're different to configure and customize, but then more and more businesses are finding Linux too goo a deal to avoid, too, so that argument may someday be moot (as one will need to know something about both).
However, if the question is teaching them to do school work on a computer: browser works the same, word processor works almost the same, spreadsheet works almost the same, etc etc etc.
Linux is cheaper to keep, breaks down elss often, has better multi-user capabilities.
You'll want to set up a server machine on your LAN that all the ubuntu Linux boxes would need to be pointed at so that you have only one machine to set up logins on, etc. NIS. Ditto for printing.
The nice thing is that once you get it all set up, you'll be essentially done... it should just work until the hardware fails.
Best of luck!
Just yesterday, I went looking for an article I had previously read in Wikipedia about the history of England: where the British army was ordered by Winston Churchill to fire into a crowd of strikers and their families, resulting in many dead and wounded. This content is now gone - down the memory hole. Orwellian analogies aside, editing history invalidates it and makes it impossible for us to learn from our own mistakes.
"with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?" You mean, like making Linux vulnerable to all the Windows viruses, worms, and whatnot?
I agree with Torvalds' comments, but I use Gnome for no better reason than I am used to it. I don't want much from my GUI - I'd probably be just as happy with fvwm - but I do use KDE apps in Gnome. It's all just point and click anyway. I don't think most users touch 1/10th of the possible customizability and functionality of whatever window manager they're using. Provided that it does work and it is stable, you use what you've grown accustomed to. All this vs. stuff is just religious quibbling.
I have enjoyed your show, over the years, but it seems to me that recently you (both of you) have lost some of your interest and enthusiam in the concept and execution of the show.
Best wishes
We have kids. Those kids are not very careful of each other's things. Having a real mutli-user operating system meant that nobody clobbered anybody else's stuff. Nobody ate anybody else's homework (or could be blamed for same).
We started out in Caldera 1.1 and kept that until it got hacked about six years later (I wasn't very interested in doing patches). We then went to RedHat, which had another 5 year run til it was hacked. Then we tried SuSE for a while, but although I liked a lot of things about it, I hated some others more, so I ended up back in Fedora.
I like little things, like being my own mailserver, so I can create a mail alias that sends mail both to my wife and me from a single email address.
We use ubuntu also, but not for our main server.
If I set up a Linux workstation, I know I can come back in 2 weeks or 6 months and it will work the same. Windows is so changeable - not in any major way (anymore) but quirky litle weirdnesses that make me feel like it's somehow shiftless and untrustworthy. Just today Word wouldn't make PDFs from the icon on the menu bar but made them happily if I pritned the doc to the Adobe PDF "printer" - go figure. Tuesday it will make PDFs from the menubar icon again.
Our kids have games machines - they're windows. Endlessly being reinstalled and reconfigured. They're toys. You play with toys. They know more about breaking and fixing windows that I ever will. This is not a bad thing.
Seems pretty simple to me.
It seems to me that if the Linux Fund is actually defunct, its board should say so and hand over this money (and any other money they have in other corporate assets) to another group of similar aims.
As a Linux Fund contributor (and a Linux Fund MBNA card holder) I vote for gnu.org
New Scientist had the definitive article about this some years ago.
To summarize:
If you build five plants a year, the inactive ones end up consuming all the power that the plants on line produce after about 80 years.
It is not possible to have a net energy output from building nucelar powerplants, unless you build them in space (and can toss them away harmlessly when you're done with them).
It's not prejudice, it's just math.
Also, you're taking real estate out of use forever and nuclear power plants aren't small. Over time, it adds up to be a significant chunk of your countryside to throw away forever.
I agree Bush is a man of conviction. His convictions boil down to "me first." He is a member of a ruthless group of unprincipled opportunists who want to impose a radical agenda on this country. They are actively hostile to democracy. Their policy on the environment is somewhere between indifference and apathy. Their concept of social responsibility is identical to that of Jacob Marley.
If you believe that this country should exist for the exclusive benefit of a rapacious elite at the expense of the mass of the people, then your beliefs are in line with the current administration. It is a pity that our elders and betters do NOT know what is best. The number of cliffs upon which our species is precariously situated demands that thinking people reject the tyranny of the elites. The real shame of this election is that we are unable to field a better candidate to defeat Bush than Kerry.
Virtual boyfriend ignores you, responds to your questions by changing the subject, whines about how you should do their laundry or fix them food, complains about your relatives and friends, always suggests you do things with their relatives and friends, and uses your cell phone minutes up.
As others have mentioned, user level security is part of usability.
However, there are differences between ground up security and added-on as afterthought security.
Windows' prime security and usability flaw is that every user insists on running as root (with admin privileges). Security Check: Walk up to any computer in your building. Open a command-line interface. Go to filesystem root. Issue command that tells computer to delete everything. If it does it, then it is not being used securely - regardless of whether it could be used securely.
Windows' admins get proud of some pretty strange stuff. For example, they don't like the idea of having computers on all the time and really like people to turn off their computers at night. Why, do you ask? One reason that was explained to me by Windows proponent was that all those switched-off computers were invulnerable to hacking/virus/attack. I responded to this argument by saying that my stapler didn't get viruses, but it didn't do email very well even so.
Best security is simplest security. The more your O/S CAN do, the more it might be persuaded to do. If you want to discuss apples and oranges, we can compare W2K security with Linux router. Both are difficult to hack, but the latter is much more difficult. As Linux gets more and more market share, there are going to be more security hits, viruses, worms, and whatnot. Not doing Linux because this is true is like not doing email because you might get (will get) spam. We're grownups. We can do arithmetic. What gives me the most functionality for the least price, balanced against risk? Linux, period.
If you have some facet of your experience that you feel self-conscious about, you need to find aspects about that experience that turn it from a liability to an advantage. Today's job market is such that it is unreasonable for an employer to expect the same kind of stability as in the past. It is not an instability in you, but in the job market. It shows that you are flexible, you can "roll with the punches" and respond effectively to changing requirements.
Not to say that you ought to brag about it, but don't be ashamed of what isn't your fault. Answer questions frankly, don't prevaricate, don't apologize, don't blame (anyone, including yourself) and cast yourself in the role of someone dealing responsibly and creatively with the cards life has dealt you.
aliud est calare, aluid tacere
There have been lots of posts on this thread suggesting various software packages and many of these may offer some or all of what your business needs. However, if you find that there is one application that you need to use that is only available for Windows, there is nothing sinful about having a pet Windows box on your LAN just to run that app.
For years I had a pet Windoes box on the LAN just for the scanner and camera interface. Just make sure you're using it as an optional acessory and if it goes down it won't take your business with it. Remove unnecessary applications like Outlook and keep the installation as simple as possible.
Alternatively, you may very well find commercial software for Solaris that will do more than everything you want better than the equivalent Windows-ware - and have you seen how cheap Solaris boxes are on ebay? It is also possible to include a Mac on your LAN, since many companies offer a Mac variant of Windows-ware.
I would also suggest checking out a company called Celestial Systems (hhtp://www.celestial.com) which offers some very interesting solutions for business issues.
Typical Saphire piece - look at what we can do when we "get it right" and "no casualties reported." I wonder how many old people died of exposure because their gas heat failed. Espionage when successful has human costs that are never discussed. Where else were the chips used? Chernobyl perhaps?
My first objection to this concept was to wonder what would happen to all this automation when it gets things shot through it. But then I recalled that modern ships are not designed to withstand attack and still be effective. With so many kinds of modern weapons, if you're hit, game over.
Our existing naval ships were designed like this so much that they could beat off an attacking air squadron, but could not get a shot off at four men attacking the ship from a rowboat.
Modern ships are a curious mix of outmoded ideas, window dressing, high technology and ludicrous "cost cutting" measures. It is a wonder they function in their missions at all. Replacing the expensive human element with more weird hardware by the lowest bidder will not make them perform their missions any better. We all know how hard it is to get complex distributed systems to work 24/7 - and that is when they're sitting in some purpose built office block. The only thing comparable to naval service for those systems would be a +7 earthquake. Anyone like to take bets on being able to print out a document on the 7th floor East printer 20 minutes after a nice big earthquake?
But this is not about making capable, survivable, robust ships. It is about trying to fight better and cheaper wars. It's a numbers game. If you "need" 25 ships to accomplish your mission objectives worldwide and you can only get them to work 50% of the time, then you need to buy 50 of the things. How much money do you save by eliminating sailors vs. how much do twice as many ships cost?
By turning over the world to bookkeepers we've done away with style, service, elegance, and quality. Maybe, if we turn war over to them they will succeed in making it so efficient that it also ceases to exist.
The relevant naval saying here is: "Ships don't fight, men do." ...even if they don't use Windows.
Linux was only offered on business accounts. I tried to get them to sell me a computer with Linux on it as a consumer and was told "No, we do not sell Linux computers to consumers."
Microsoft changed the meaning of the word clustering. Much cheaper to do this than to actually offer a competitive product. Gates he speak with forked tongue.