I've got 5 (soon to be 6) running in a one bedroom apartment. But, I can gladly say, none of them add to the Windows count:)
How can you be so sure ? My guess is that Ballmer counts the desktop/mobile CPUs sold by Intel and AMD. Altogether. Everyone knows that around 95% of the computers run Windows. That is around 5.7 PCs in your case, which is by all means of rounding 6. You own 6 PCs running Windows. Congratulations ! Go to Redmond and pick up a property at Illinois Avenue and go to jail... .
Very simple: billg wants to create his own legacy; something that mankind never forgets. An operating system reflecting his name. 'William H Dot Gates III' isn't very marketable. Beginning and some intermediate letters of his name quite reasonably lend themselves to 'Wi m Do s'. But what to do with the 'III' ? He remembered the good old days in the garage with BASIC and started counting in binary. The result was inevitable. And probably sufficiently disastrous as to enter the history books. Just as HE aspires.
Just amazed about the craze about the latest and greatest. Here I am running 4 terminals, Thunderbird, Firefox with around 20 tabs, a P2P-client, frequently an instance of mplayer, OpenOffice. Just the average user. And this runs on OpenSolaris resp. Debian, and the processor load hoovers between 10 and 65%. On a Sempron 3000. With 0% swap use. Okay, at compiling (e.g. mplayer) the thing sucks. But how many percent of the users are developers ? And how many are die-hard gamers. And then, QX6850 and E6750 surely (still) suck just as much.
as far as i'm concerned, if i'd just spent 200 dollars on the newest and best product from the largest and richest software company in the world i'd expect the thing to fucking well just work and work now.
How can this be 'Interesting' ?? (at this very moment at +4) ? This is about the most boring 'news' ever. The mess started well before an expensive DOS3.0, stretched across DOS4.0 through Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, Windows 95 and Windows ME. As well as NT3, NT4. That is, around 20 years of software that is more (see above) or less (DOS5.0, W2K, XP) crappy. If there was no lock-in with games and file formats, Microsoft would be some rather unknown system integrator, if at all.
If Sun frees up Solaris using the Java timeline, I have a feeling you're going to be using GNU/ Hurd way before then. Sun is going to pussyfoot around for years.
I know. They are dumb nuts. They could have taken a much larger market share long time ago. Though some, especially Jonathan, are changing: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Sun-look s-to-GPL-v3-for-Java-Solaris/0,130061733,339273561 ,00.htm SUN has effectively tried to go GPLv3 for SunOS for quite a time. But now we have the 3l33t OpenSolaris developpers who torpedo any such effort tooth and nail. http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messag eID=84380& is one example. Of many. It is a pity that SUN provided this comfort zone for them; so that instead of doing the dirty work to achieve world domination, they cherish and please themselves in an ivory tower. A place that witnesses the conception of fantastic software (ZFS, Zones, DTrace), but seemingly rather fosters egomaniac arrogance than the notion of sharing and teamwork.
I believe you're correct in that the original copyright holder can relicense their software.
For the umpteeth time: of course can any author relicense her software at any moment. But that does not at all affect the earlier licence ! There is no way of retro-actively changing the licence for those who received the software under the 'old' terms. They may use the software for infinity. Only modifications and patches added after the moment of relicencing fall under the new licence. XFree to Xorg is a good example here: XFree changed their licence; fine. Xorg took the software as it was a split second before the change of licence and fully legally so. The former licence remains valid for that software before the change.
The trouble for any fork: The licenses could be non-compatible, and then you compete with yourself, so to say. Who is installing XFree these days ? See. With quite a few of the applications moving to GPLv3, who is going to use a GPLv2-licensed kernel once a GPLv3 licensed kernel becomes available (whispers: SUN-SUN-SUN), which permits the use of the latest versions of those GPLv3-ed applications ?
And this is pretty much exactly what is happening with GPL3. Versions of projects which have been distributed under GPL2, if you can get your hands on them (from somebody distributing under GPL2), are still under GPL2. But, projects which are moving to GPL3 are basically saying "if you want updates, you have to agree to an updated license".
This is for all the lonely people in this thread who don't seem to understand basic legal principles: Once you license your software v2.4 under licence A, that's a done deal. You can't retroactively change that licence for this software, v2.4. This is why Samba is under GPLv2; until 3.0.X. They can't change that and you may use Samba 'till the end of time under the rules of GPLv2. Now they change to GPLv3, and move the numbering to 3.2.X. Meaning, Samba 3.2.X from now on is governed by GPLv3.
Even the mighty Microsoft is bound by these rules. When you accept the EULA at boot of your latest and greatest PC, that binds both sides. The cheat is now, that Microshit wants you to accept another EULA when you update or install another program. That's not quite fair, but probably legal (it does display a business practice that in itself convinces me to never do business with them). As long as you do without updates (or additional installs), your original EULA governs your use of your PC.
The probably most famous example are the Microsoft TrueType Fonts. They used to be available from the Microsoft site and were governed by a licence that permitted re-distribution as long as they were kept in some original format. That's why they remain available until this day.
It's been since the early 90s the last time I saw a phone whose useful life did outlast its battery
Recently I put the third battery into my Motorola T190. The official service outlet in this country (not US) informed me last year, that there were no more batteries available for this 5-year old (cheapo) phone. It still does very much what I expect a hand phone to do; so I was angry with Motorola. Luckily I found a stockist with an original battery; and that gave it a new 'useful life'.
Good god, it's like a competition on the back of a pack of corn flakes: "Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"
You mean, a trip to Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California ? Isn't that a tad late ? Or a trip with Paris ? Isn't that a tad dangerous ?
On Linux and OSX you can write a script that runs when connected to the Internet accesses a password protected encrypted web page, revealing a copy of a script to run locally, then run that script locally.
Any pointers here ? Or do I hear the usual WYO (Write Your Own) ? If the latter was the case, your contribution doesn't help very much at solving the problem of Adam (John Halamka).
In case you are interested, here we do welcome Final Year Projects and MSc candidates who are keen on joining or starting or writing a FOSS project or thesis. And I am sure there are many other universities out there who do likewise.
I guess this is just another reason why usernames shouldn't be so identicale to the person's name, I personally always thought cryptic usernames (a few letters followed by numbers, not your initials btw) are a good idea
So much about 'Security Through Obfuscation' for you...
If nobody has suggested this until here: What about a plurality of answers being potentially correct ? Let's say 4 alternatives; and 0,1,2,3,4 may be correct. Now we could consider
- the answer correct in case of all ticks being correct (resp. correctly unticked)
- to allocate partial marks: '+' for correct ticks and '-' for incorrect ones At least, in both cases guessing will deliver close to nothing.
... or better: is Kish any electrical engineer ? To me, this whole matter with his formulae of the noise of a resistor is just hocus pocus; as much as the math is correct. But any reasonable electrical engineer knows these... What Kish rather seems to propose, is the injection of noise into a link; noise at two levels, nevermind if they are derived from a resistor, short-circuited or not, or any other noise generator.
Over. What he then says is the following: If Alice sends high noise level ('H'), Bob will send low ('L') noise level; and vice versa. The man-in-the-middle will have tri-state noise: LL,LH/HL,HH. LL and HH are out. The assumption in that paper, hidden behind a lot of barrage, is: LH and HL will appear identical to the eaves-dropper. Alice. however, when sending L, can pass an information quantum (since Bob will switch to H, knowing Alice sends L); while Alice sending H, Bob will switch to L, knowing Alice sends H). The theory of Kish is, that Eve will have no clue if she intercepts HL or LH. Which only works in theory. Because any electrical engineer deserving his title will tell you that those sources won't produce noise of identical spectrum in the first place. Therefore, the spectra will change, giving you a sequence of jumps. The maximum you have to do is toggling... . Furthermore, if Eve1 and Eve2 listen in a distance of only a few meters, they can auto-correlate the signal(s) and find the direction from which it travels. No, that is even simple, because the levels - as we know - are H and L. So the autocorrelation of H can be found out without much ado; either H travels right-to-left or left-to-right. Voilà. L doesn't disturb the autocorrelation function. Along the line, any line, higher spectral components are reduced; another rule all electrical engineers know: any practical system is by default a lowpass. When Eve1 and Eve2 simply record the signal, close to Alice and close to Bob, they can find out where the higher spectral components are to be found. Meaning, the sender of H is known.
Don't want to quarrel with you, despite being on/., SPI isn't what you might think it was. It doesn't perform full Layer7 processing. It doesn't process content.
It is a vulnerability, in the strict sense. It is a self-inflicted misbehaviour as in common sense. It is like those silly Cisco content inspectors on port 25, that try to avoid attacks on flimsy MTAs. It is like someone dying from a jab against measles: the jab protected that person from contracting measles, actually. It is like those stupid anti-virus programs that are more vulnerable than the daemons they profess to protect.
When the attacker uses a codepage different from the one that you think she ought to use, she can circumvent your content filter. Which ought not be an attack vector, in any case.
I could see more exotic equipment like alcatel being untested yet but it seems there should be enough accessibility of d-link and fedora for example
d-link doesn't do content filtering; at least not in your home. Fedora, is probably the same as other Debian/GNU/BSDs; depending on the applications performing the filtering. I fail to see the usefulness of the list of platforms mixed with trade names here.
Could you specify this ? I still agree with parent: couldn't you create a device that reads the input + output of the hard disk, then grab the challenge + response. This is a typical problem of challenge-response authentication. Plus, in this case "a response value using a combination of a lock value and said challenge" remains constant across several read commands. How is this 'man-in-the-middle resistant' ?
I guess, they are after publicity, as many suspect. But also after some small fish, similar to SCO, who never guessed IBM would pay. But some SME did; just scared and wanting to settle. How if an unsuspecting owner of a small enterprise finds a warning letter:
... We have already started legal procdures against Microsoft, Apple, Real, Adobe. We assume that you want to avoid a similar situation. Don't worry, we also rather reach an amicable settlement, and we are willing to help you. Please, call our local representative at...
Could you point out some of them? I used to use Solaris a lot, a long time ago, but that was never as a system administrator. It was rather good then, but over the last 7 years I've moved to linux, OS X and OpenBSD. Last time I used Solaris for work was in 2003. What's better with Solaris these days?
Stability, Scalability. Though more relevant for production machines.
dtrace, if I (mis-)understand correctly, is mainly useful for kernel work and is available on other platforms. What other uses might there be, if any?
If you are a pure end-user, maybe not relevant to you, right.
zfs seems to have some kind of RAID capabilities, but last I heard can't be used as the root file system.
zones seem intriguing, but a cursory examination does make it stand out over other virtualization / paravirtualization methods.
If you stick to Solaris, a zone contains by default around 3 MB of data. There is almost no virtualisation loss.
If Ian Murdock is able to get Sun to adopt apt, that would bring me and a lot of others in again. If they can make the install as easy as Debian or Ubuntu, then that will pull in a lot of the curious: as of a few weeks ago the installation process required a serious time commitment and patience.
[It is getting boring here, but try Nexenta ! It is SunOS with apt...]
Alright. Almost. There are two A7 candidates. You know the good old argument: join, help, and things move faster (or even add $$ for a bounty). Zones are kind of really great virtualisation; though rather on the system itself.
But, uhm, is there any real evidence that the Solaris kernel is actually *better* than the Linux kernel?
What do you mean with 'better' ? I'll be fan-boy-modded down for this, but as a long-time Linux (only) user, I tested both, and SunOS has under no circumstances of load lost its upper hand here, and I could always shut down cleanly. The various versions of the Linux kernel have - from 2.0 to 2.6 - not always left me that choice. The SUN kernel is also better at scaling and dealing with many cores.
For home users, I'd always suggest Linux, for the hardware support.
Sure, you get me here. I have no clue about the layers in the Linux kernel. And still, you and julesh prove me correct, in principle.
Firstly, I can't agree with your terminology. While 'ecosystem' sounds good, there is an ecosystem, the one that a creator or nature have set up around us. While the stuff that we have created ourselves, to the best of our knowledge, 20 or 30 years ago, to 'talk' to disk drives, ought not be called like that. It is purely man-made. And I have never denied, that ZFS could be written by artificially separating it out into fitting into these layers; but only at great costs and slower performance. There is actually no need, because
Secondly, somehow the article proves to be correct. As much as I like FOSS, here a major weakness creeps up. As well as we can accommodate choice in our projects, when a revolutionary change shows on the horizon, we seem to be unable to make a huge leap forward. The functionalities of ZFS demonstrate that it is the filesystem of our dreams. Inclusive on the desktop: if Linux had it, we'd be in front of Windows: When Aunt Tilly's pr0n collection grows beyond her existing storage, she can buy a new U320, plug it into her PC without opening it or shutting it down, just plug it like that, and a pop-up will say: "Hi, Aunty. You just plugged a new hard drive. Do you want to use it for your data ?" Aunt Tilly will click 'Yes', and that's it. We'd need a small dictator, Steve Jobs, Theo, whatsoever, to declare that ZFS is the filesystem of the future, with sufficient capacity during our life-time, and that 'we leap ahead'. Meaning: Over 3 years it will be the main file system, over 5 years all others will be deprecated, over 10 years (and beyond) we can still read and write, but that's it. No more development on those legacy systems, no extra space in the kernel, no nothing.
Thirdly, still on layers: OSI was such a nice, balanced, idea. We thought it was great. In the end, an unbalanced one showed to be more practical: TCP/IP. How ugly:( ! All those beautifully set up upper layers unified, actually anything above addressing a single box. Somehow, though, it has proven its value: anything above addressing somehow does not lend itself to further layering; there are too many interdependencies. Consequentially, those layers of OSI found themselves unified. IMHO, successful file systems would end up likewise. Anything below the data structures is implemented best, fastest and most reliable as a unified block. The lower end of which addresses storage. Volumes, labels, RAID, striping, error processing, partitioning, pooling, slicing, formating, scrubbing and so forth do have too much in common to be split in order to accommodate legacy ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got 5 (soon to be 6) running in a one bedroom apartment. But, I can gladly say, none of them add to the Windows count :)
... .
How can you be so sure ?
My guess is that Ballmer counts the desktop/mobile CPUs sold by Intel and AMD. Altogether. Everyone knows that around 95% of the computers run Windows. That is around 5.7 PCs in your case, which is by all means of rounding 6. You own 6 PCs running Windows. Congratulations ! Go to Redmond and pick up a property at Illinois Avenue and go to jail
Why Windows 7 ?
Very simple: billg wants to create his own legacy; something that mankind never forgets. An operating system reflecting his name.
'William H Dot Gates III' isn't very marketable. Beginning and some intermediate letters of his name quite reasonably lend themselves to 'Wi m Do s'. But what to do with the 'III' ? He remembered the good old days in the garage with BASIC and started counting in binary. The result was inevitable.
And probably sufficiently disastrous as to enter the history books. Just as HE aspires.
Just amazed about the craze about the latest and greatest.
...
Here I am running 4 terminals, Thunderbird, Firefox with around 20 tabs, a P2P-client, frequently an instance of mplayer, OpenOffice. Just the average user.
And this runs on OpenSolaris resp. Debian, and the processor load hoovers between 10 and 65%. On a Sempron 3000. With 0% swap use. Okay, at compiling (e.g. mplayer) the thing sucks. But how many percent of the users are developers ? And how many are die-hard gamers. And then, QX6850 and E6750 surely (still) suck just as much.
For me: Nothing to be seen here
as far as i'm concerned, if i'd just spent 200 dollars on the newest and best product from the largest and richest software company in the world i'd expect the thing to fucking well just work and work now.
How can this be 'Interesting' ?? (at this very moment at +4) ?
This is about the most boring 'news' ever. The mess started well before an expensive DOS3.0, stretched across DOS4.0 through Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, Windows 95 and Windows ME. As well as NT3, NT4. That is, around 20 years of software that is more (see above) or less (DOS5.0, W2K, XP) crappy.
If there was no lock-in with games and file formats, Microsoft would be some rather unknown system integrator, if at all.
If Sun frees up Solaris using the Java timeline, I have a feeling you're going to be using GNU/ Hurd way before then. Sun is going to pussyfoot around for years.
k s-to-GPL-v3-for-Java-Solaris/0,130061733,339273561 ,00.htmg eID=84380&
I know. They are dumb nuts. They could have taken a much larger market share long time ago.
Though some, especially Jonathan, are changing:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Sun-loo
SUN has effectively tried to go GPLv3 for SunOS for quite a time. But now we have the 3l33t OpenSolaris developpers who torpedo any such effort tooth and nail.
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messa
is one example. Of many.
It is a pity that SUN provided this comfort zone for them; so that instead of doing the dirty work to achieve world domination, they cherish and please themselves in an ivory tower. A place that witnesses the conception of fantastic software (ZFS, Zones, DTrace), but seemingly rather fosters egomaniac arrogance than the notion of sharing and teamwork.
I believe you're correct in that the original copyright holder can relicense their software.
For the umpteeth time: of course can any author relicense her software at any moment. But that does not at all affect the earlier licence !
There is no way of retro-actively changing the licence for those who received the software under the 'old' terms. They may use the software for infinity. Only modifications and patches added after the moment of relicencing fall under the new licence. XFree to Xorg is a good example here: XFree changed their licence; fine. Xorg took the software as it was a split second before the change of licence and fully legally so. The former licence remains valid for that software before the change.
The trouble for any fork: The licenses could be non-compatible, and then you compete with yourself, so to say. Who is installing XFree these days ? See. With quite a few of the applications moving to GPLv3, who is going to use a GPLv2-licensed kernel once a GPLv3 licensed kernel becomes available (whispers: SUN-SUN-SUN), which permits the use of the latest versions of those GPLv3-ed applications ?
Funny how hard it seems to analyse seriously how often and in which context I used that term. And it wasn't supposed to be witty, look at the context.
And this is pretty much exactly what is happening with GPL3. Versions of projects which have been distributed under GPL2, if you can get your hands on them (from somebody distributing under GPL2), are still under GPL2. But, projects which are moving to GPL3 are basically saying "if you want updates, you have to agree to an updated license".
This is for all the lonely people in this thread who don't seem to understand basic legal principles:
Once you license your software v2.4 under licence A, that's a done deal. You can't retroactively change that licence for this software, v2.4. This is why Samba is under GPLv2; until 3.0.X. They can't change that and you may use Samba 'till the end of time under the rules of GPLv2. Now they change to GPLv3, and move the numbering to 3.2.X. Meaning, Samba 3.2.X from now on is governed by GPLv3.
Even the mighty Microsoft is bound by these rules. When you accept the EULA at boot of your latest and greatest PC, that binds both sides. The cheat is now, that Microshit wants you to accept another EULA when you update or install another program. That's not quite fair, but probably legal (it does display a business practice that in itself convinces me to never do business with them). As long as you do without updates (or additional installs), your original EULA governs your use of your PC.
The probably most famous example are the Microsoft TrueType Fonts. They used to be available from the Microsoft site and were governed by a licence that permitted re-distribution as long as they were kept in some original format. That's why they remain available until this day.
It's been since the early 90s the last time I saw a phone whose useful life did outlast its battery
Recently I put the third battery into my Motorola T190. The official service outlet in this country (not US) informed me last year, that there were no more batteries available for this 5-year old (cheapo) phone. It still does very much what I expect a hand phone to do; so I was angry with Motorola.
Luckily I found a stockist with an original battery; and that gave it a new 'useful life'.
Good god, it's like a competition on the back of a pack of corn flakes: "Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"
...
You mean, a trip to Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California ? Isn't that a tad late ?
Or a trip with Paris ? Isn't that a tad dangerous ?
Oh, I agree, a tad lame this is. Still
On Linux and OSX you can write a script that runs when connected to the Internet accesses a password protected encrypted web page, revealing a copy of a script to run locally, then run that script locally.
Any pointers here ? Or do I hear the usual WYO (Write Your Own) ? If the latter was the case, your contribution doesn't help very much at solving the problem of Adam (John Halamka).
In case you are interested, here we do welcome Final Year Projects and MSc candidates who are keen on joining or starting or writing a FOSS project or thesis.
And I am sure there are many other universities out there who do likewise.
I guess this is just another reason why usernames shouldn't be so identicale to the person's name, I personally always thought cryptic usernames (a few letters followed by numbers, not your initials btw) are a good idea
...
So much about 'Security Through Obfuscation' for you
If nobody has suggested this until here:
What about a plurality of answers being potentially correct ?
Let's say 4 alternatives; and 0,1,2,3,4 may be correct.
Now we could consider
- the answer correct in case of all ticks being correct (resp. correctly unticked)
- to allocate partial marks: '+' for correct ticks and '-' for incorrect ones
At least, in both cases guessing will deliver close to nothing.
... or better: is Kish any electrical engineer ? ...
... . Furthermore, if Eve1 and Eve2 listen in a distance of only a few meters, they can auto-correlate the signal(s) and find the direction from which it travels. No, that is even simple, because the levels - as we know - are H and L. So the autocorrelation of H can be found out without much ado; either H travels right-to-left or left-to-right. Voilà. L doesn't disturb the autocorrelation function. Along the line, any line, higher spectral components are reduced; another rule all electrical engineers know: any practical system is by default a lowpass. When Eve1 and Eve2 simply record the signal, close to Alice and close to Bob, they can find out where the higher spectral components are to be found. Meaning, the sender of H is known.
...
To me, this whole matter with his formulae of the noise of a resistor is just hocus pocus; as much as the math is correct. But any reasonable electrical engineer knows these
What Kish rather seems to propose, is the injection of noise into a link; noise at two levels, nevermind if they are derived from a resistor, short-circuited or not, or any other noise generator.
Over. What he then says is the following:
If Alice sends high noise level ('H'), Bob will send low ('L') noise level; and vice versa.
The man-in-the-middle will have tri-state noise: LL,LH/HL,HH. LL and HH are out. The assumption in that paper, hidden behind a lot of barrage, is: LH and HL will appear identical to the eaves-dropper. Alice. however, when sending L, can pass an information quantum (since Bob will switch to H, knowing Alice sends L); while Alice sending H, Bob will switch to L, knowing Alice sends H).
The theory of Kish is, that Eve will have no clue if she intercepts HL or LH. Which only works in theory.
Because any electrical engineer deserving his title will tell you that those sources won't produce noise of identical spectrum in the first place. Therefore, the spectra will change, giving you a sequence of jumps. The maximum you have to do is toggling
Much ado about nothing, me thinks
the firewall in my dlink router does SPI
/., SPI isn't what you might think it was. It doesn't perform full Layer7 processing. It doesn't process content.
Don't want to quarrel with you, despite being on
It is a vulnerability, in the strict sense.
...
It is a self-inflicted misbehaviour as in common sense.
It is like those silly Cisco content inspectors on port 25, that try to avoid attacks on flimsy MTAs.
It is like someone dying from a jab against measles: the jab protected that person from contracting measles, actually.
It is like those stupid anti-virus programs that are more vulnerable than the daemons they profess to protect.
When the attacker uses a codepage different from the one that you think she ought to use, she can circumvent your content filter. Which ought not be an attack vector, in any case.
As I said: nothing to see, move along
I could see more exotic equipment like alcatel being untested yet but it seems there should be enough accessibility of d-link and fedora for example
d-link doesn't do content filtering; at least not in your home.
Fedora, is probably the same as other Debian/GNU/BSDs; depending on the applications performing the filtering.
I fail to see the usefulness of the list of platforms mixed with trade names here.
Am I the only one ?
Could you specify this ? I still agree with parent: couldn't you create a device that reads the input + output of the hard disk, then grab the challenge + response.
This is a typical problem of challenge-response authentication. Plus, in this case "a response value using a combination of a lock value and said challenge" remains constant across several read commands.
How is this 'man-in-the-middle resistant' ?
But also after some small fish, similar to SCO, who never guessed IBM would pay. But some SME did; just scared and wanting to settle.
How if an unsuspecting owner of a small enterprise finds a warning letter:
We assume that you want to avoid a similar situation. Don't worry, we also rather reach an amicable settlement, and we are willing to help you.
Please, call our local representative at
Could you point out some of them? I used to use Solaris a lot, a long time ago, but that was never as a system administrator. It was rather good then, but over the last 7 years I've moved to linux, OS X and OpenBSD. Last time I used Solaris for work was in 2003. What's better with Solaris these days?
...]
Stability, Scalability. Though more relevant for production machines.
dtrace, if I (mis-)understand correctly, is mainly useful for kernel work and is available on other platforms. What other uses might there be, if any?
If you are a pure end-user, maybe not relevant to you, right.
zfs seems to have some kind of RAID capabilities, but last I heard can't be used as the root file system.
The latest can. Wait a few more months.
Read http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/ for plenty of advantages !
zones seem intriguing, but a cursory examination does make it stand out over other virtualization / paravirtualization methods.
If you stick to Solaris, a zone contains by default around 3 MB of data. There is almost no virtualisation loss.
If Ian Murdock is able to get Sun to adopt apt, that would bring me and a lot of others in again. If they can make the install as easy as Debian or Ubuntu, then that will pull in a lot of the curious: as of a few weeks ago the installation process required a serious time commitment and patience.
[It is getting boring here, but try Nexenta ! It is SunOS with apt
Alright. Almost. There are two A7 candidates.
You know the good old argument: join, help, and things move faster (or even add $$ for a bounty).
Zones are kind of really great virtualisation; though rather on the system itself.
A more frustrating case is tar GNU tar has support for long pathnames whereas Posix/Solaris tar only supports 99 chars
You say it, boy. Solaris implements POSIX, GNU tar circumvents it with an ugly hack.
Your call.
My personal choice is GNU tar; since I need it for longer path/filenames.
But I am not really happy with neither.
Oh, it is Nexenta. Nevermind.
But, uhm, is there any real evidence that the Solaris kernel is actually *better* than the Linux kernel?
What do you mean with 'better' ?
I'll be fan-boy-modded down for this, but as a long-time Linux (only) user, I tested both, and SunOS has under no circumstances of load lost its upper hand here, and I could always shut down cleanly.
The various versions of the Linux kernel have - from 2.0 to 2.6 - not always left me that choice.
The SUN kernel is also better at scaling and dealing with many cores.
For home users, I'd always suggest Linux, for the hardware support.
I guess, no answer !?
Sure, you get me here. I have no clue about the layers in the Linux kernel.
:( ! All those beautifully set up upper layers unified, actually anything above addressing a single box. Somehow, though, it has proven its value: anything above addressing somehow does not lend itself to further layering; there are too many interdependencies. Consequentially, those layers of OSI found themselves unified.
And still, you and julesh prove me correct, in principle.
Firstly, I can't agree with your terminology. While 'ecosystem' sounds good, there is an ecosystem, the one that a creator or nature have set up around us. While the stuff that we have created ourselves, to the best of our knowledge, 20 or 30 years ago, to 'talk' to disk drives, ought not be called like that. It is purely man-made.
And I have never denied, that ZFS could be written by artificially separating it out into fitting into these layers; but only at great costs and slower performance. There is actually no need, because
Secondly, somehow the article proves to be correct. As much as I like FOSS, here a major weakness creeps up. As well as we can accommodate choice in our projects, when a revolutionary change shows on the horizon, we seem to be unable to make a huge leap forward. The functionalities of ZFS demonstrate that it is the filesystem of our dreams. Inclusive on the desktop: if Linux had it, we'd be in front of Windows: When Aunt Tilly's pr0n collection grows beyond her existing storage, she can buy a new U320, plug it into her PC without opening it or shutting it down, just plug it like that, and a pop-up will say: "Hi, Aunty. You just plugged a new hard drive. Do you want to use it for your data ?" Aunt Tilly will click 'Yes', and that's it.
We'd need a small dictator, Steve Jobs, Theo, whatsoever, to declare that ZFS is the filesystem of the future, with sufficient capacity during our life-time, and that 'we leap ahead'. Meaning: Over 3 years it will be the main file system, over 5 years all others will be deprecated, over 10 years (and beyond) we can still read and write, but that's it. No more development on those legacy systems, no extra space in the kernel, no nothing.
Thirdly, still on layers: OSI was such a nice, balanced, idea. We thought it was great. In the end, an unbalanced one showed to be more practical: TCP/IP. How ugly
IMHO, successful file systems would end up likewise. Anything below the data structures is implemented best, fastest and most reliable as a unified block. The lower end of which addresses storage.
Volumes, labels, RAID, striping, error processing, partitioning, pooling, slicing, formating, scrubbing and so forth do have too much in common to be split in order to accommodate legacy ideas.