I don't hold out much hope at all at the federal level, best we can maybe expect is some state gets both a hip constitutional governor and a majority in his legisdlature to go along with it if they see he is serious about it. Then maybe we might see a snowball effect.
You mean, someone like Craig Benson of New Hampshire?
Evidence? When I say "Red Hat" what do you think of first? When I say "Novell" what do you think of first?
They really need to get to the point where people instantly think "Linux company" instead of "failed network company" when they hear the Novell name.
You have a point there, but I'm not really sure it's operative. They still sell their Linux solution under the SuSE brand. It isn't yet clear what branding they'll be selling their Linux networking products under.
Possibly they'll just bundle their Netware product with some server version of SuSE, in which case they avoid the baggage of the Novell name altogether.
I don't quite understand why IBM doesn't want to create something like a G5, only "more serious". I'm sure the pSeries machines are excellent, but if they could just lower the price a bit by dropping some of the enterprise features that drive the price up, they could sell quite a lot of them.
Well, what you're talking about is essentially a consumer version of the PPC. Unfortunately, the consumer market is a business IBM has made it clear they don't want to be in, the enterprise is where they've chosen to compete.
On the bright side, they have been encouraging 3rd party vendors, most notably Genesi, to build consumer products based on PPC. I think there are probably some other 3rd party boards available, but I haven't really kept up with them.
I expect commoditized PPC systems will eventually become an option, but unless the 3rd partys establish it as a lucrative market first, I doubt IBM will jump into the frey.
IBM tends to avoid competing in the consumer market directly, but they're more than happy to sell parts and license technology to companies who want to play there.
Maybe now NASA will stop dilly-dallying around and get some new technology other than the outdated space shuttle. We've really been slacking ever since we stopped going to the moon, and maybe international involvement will help us get back on track.
Why compete? It would be more to the point if one of NASA's contractor's licensed the Energia technologies and simply modified them to NASA's specifications. It would also help Energia fund some of their more ambitious projects.
At any rate, I regardless of the actual model, these sorts of public proclamations are troublesome as there are now going to be thousands upon thousands that will go out and start purchasing choline supplements just like their mass purchasing of melatonin (extracted from bovine pineal gland commonly, prion diseases anyone?), or ephedra (cardiac arrest anyone?), Aristolochia fangchi (kidney damage or cancer anyone?), shark cartilage (simply a lighter wallet anyone?), or any other unproven (not a troll, I am a scientist folks, so I want proof) supplement.
What's disturbing here is that while they've documented the physiological effects on the rat's brains, they didn't do any follow-up studies as to how this actually effected the rat's capacity to learn, or any of the effects on the rat's behavior.
So now we know that chlorine will alter the development of the rat's brains, but we don't know if the effects of the change are good, bad or indifferent.
Social programs have been decimated in the past four years. The Great Society has been destroyed in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Defense spending has been astronomical and does not need to get any bigger. If greater power is given for wiretapping we will be running headlong into a police state. At this point the government already has too much power and needs to cut money out of programs that only serve to arm the government to the teeth, only to attack its own citizens and other nations unilateraly. If we need anything right now it's programs that will get the people of this country back on their feet.
Well, for a start, the federal government has a constitutional mandate to provide for a common defense. It doesn't have any constitutional authority to take money away from Party A to spend on benefits for Party B. But I'd certainly agree that the government's military/intelligence activities are far in excess of anything that could be legitimately called "defense".
Both of them are a symptom of the same problem, namely, that our government has long ago slipped off of the leash the Constitution was intended to be.
Now, we have to figure out how to get the leash back on....
The reason they use such "archaic" hardware, even in brand-new boxes, is because they have to withstand ambient temperatures up to 150 degrees farenheit for long periods of the day. The boxes can't be ventilated very much without exposing them to the elements (and destructive teenagers), and it gets hot as an oven inside when the sun is hitting them all day.
While I can't vouch for this information personally, a friend of mine who does microprocessor design once told me that slower processors are used because the faster the processor, the more random errors it generates. While the errors can be compensated for in software, that, of course, adds complexity to the software. And the more complex the software, the greater the possibility of bugs.
So in the interest of keeping things simple, and as bug free as possible, the slower processors are the preferred solution.
I'm not really knowledgeable about microprocessor design. Perhaps someone who knows something about it could elaborate/clarify?
Then buy a 3 button mouse and plug it in to your Mac.
Nope, not good enough. This a laptop, and I don't want to have to be dragging around an extra mouse. Also, if I'm trying to use it on a train, or a similar situation, then I have to have a surface to set the mouse on. That kind of inconvenience negates the point of having a laptop.
You can get any platform to meet your needs if you're willing to go through the contortions to make it work, but I don't really see the point. The object of using a computer is to make my life easier. If I have to go through a world of aggrevation to get one to do what I want it to do, then I'm defeating the purpose of having one. I'm not going to make my life any harder than it needs to be for religious or ideological reasons, thanks anyway.
Over the months, I've gotten quite comfortable with the PB, OSX, and the whole package. But when I lean back and compare them critically, I have to admit: Nearly everything is simpler, faster, and easier on the linux box. The Mac is generally prettier. And in a few cases (such as plugging in USB gadgets), it does a better job.
But so far, despite my best intentions, the Mac has turned out to be slow and clumsy compared to linux.
I hate to say it, but that was my experience as well.
Having heard so many wonderful things about OS X, I bought a refurbished iBook just to have a look-see.
I tried hard to like it. I really did. But I found I was just more comfortable with Linux on my Thinkpad, or, horrors!, even with Windows.
I can see where OS X has a lot of potential, and it has a number of cool features I wish were available on other platforms, but, on balance, I just wasn't able to warm up to it. I think part of the problem is that the Mac approaches tasks in a manner that's different, but not necessarily easier. The Mac might be a bit easier to use if Apple would make a few concessions to the fact that most of the world is acclimated to PC's, and adjusted to the lingua franca of computer interfaces - like a 3 button mouse would be a helluva a lot simpler to manage than having to memorize a set of obscure key combinations in conjuction with the mouse clicks to accomplish a task.
Still, as a unix box goes, the Mac is simpler than most. Were it only that admining a Solaris or an AIX box was so simple.
But I'm afraid I found the Mac interface is a long way from as intuitive as it's reputation.
HP believes that it is better positioned than any other company to bridge the gap between Apple and Windows. Fiorina told the Times: "The next big thing isn't the next gizmo or killer app or hot box. Customers want all this to work together and they want a seamless approach. We're very much going to make sure that the Microsoft and Apple worlds work together. That's part of the power we bring to this thing."
This is probably the only remotely interesting initiative HP has embarked on since Carly took over.
Let's hope it's more successful than most of them have been.
Notes runs in some ways better under wine and Linux than under Windows (Notes under wine is the way I've been doing it for well over a year now). Zap-Notes (when Notes misbehaves) is nearly instantaneous when you're on Linux, and at best it's killed the instance of wine when it really screws up -- never my whole computer.
The problem is getting it to connect to the server. We use the Aventail client for VPN connectivity from the customer site. Yes, I know there's a Linux version. No one at our site has yet gotten it to work.
Most everything else is web-based.
Maybe it depends on what you do and what your perceptions are, but honestly Notes and Mozilla is probablly *all* the software that a good chunk of IBMers need to do all of IBM's business.
It would be nice if they'd get their web-based software to work properly under Mozilla.
Try running the TSM administration tool under Mozilla as opposed to IE. Yes, it works. Kind of. Just not very well. Some functionality isn't available at all. Try getting to the text command line under Mozilla.
What about remote administration? Windows still pales to UNIX from decades ago, and is a joke in this department compared to Linux (and people bemoan X's network transparency).
Glad you mentioned that. Remember, I need to get into the customer's network to admin their machines. Frequently I'll be working from home if I get a call in the middle of the night.
To get into the client's network, I need to have access to the VPN they use.
You wouldn't be able to tell me where I can get a Nortel dialer client for Linux, would you?
Also, how about a remote management client for the p-series servers that runs under Linux? Considering the HMC itself is a Linux box, you'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask.
Are you using the RPMs available internally (there's *tons* of more software available than what the screenshots show in these articles, BTW -- including office and Notes pre-wrapped in Wine, ready for the C4EB Linux internal, totally unofficial but tolerated, linux distro).
Yes, I'm aware of that. The Notes and the C4EB client are now bundled with the internal distro.
Still can't get it to connect to the server from the client site. Nor can I get it to connect using the AT&T dialer over my broadband connection from home (can get to W3 just fine, though, so I know it isn't an issue with the dialer).
I added the Ximian desktop to the RH7.3 (I'm pretty sure it's RH7.3 based -- maybe you tried it a really long time ago?) I run, and even based on aesthetics and usability Linux has left Windows behind.
You could be right about 7.3. I tried it several months ago right after they came out with a new version of the desktop.
I also upgaded to the Ximian desktop. Personally, I liked the native RedHat desktop better.
I'll agree that it's come a long way since the last release (which I only managed to get installed at all with great pain). But it's still not there yet.
Yes, sharing documents with the outside world is important, but is this really an issue anymore?
YES, emphaticly. As I mentioned before, our client likes Microsoft Project. And more than that, they use specialized software specific to their industry and internally developed apps that are Windows only. Perhaps I could get some of them to run under Wine if I took the time to fight with them. Truthfully, that's time I just don't have.
And that's a major rub - even if IBM converts all of their internal apps to run on Linux, that doesn't necessarily mean our clients and third party vendors whose software we rely on are going to.
Until that happens, I'm still seeing Windows in my immediate future.
I think it's great news. I like that they're playing it cool too; seems like maybe they're positioning themselves to represent "levelheaded business people" who are making the move away from MS.
The reason they're playing it cool is because it's ridiculous. I hate to rain on the parade, but I can assure you, Lotus Notes hasn't been dumped, and it isn't available on Linux except as an internal skunk works project running on WINE (and it doesn't run any too good, either).
Notes isn't the only problem. There's all sorts of applications we use internally that aren't (yet) available on Linux. The panel they showed listing the internal apps available doesn't even begin to compare to the necessary apps that are available on Windows. There are something like a hundred apps available on Windows that are frequently used by employees, and dead few of them are can be replaced by anything available on Linux.
Additionally, as services is now our largest business, many, if not most of us, work on customer sites. And that means we have to be able to exchange documents and file formats with our clients, and I sure don't know of anything in Linux world that's compatible with applications such as Microsoft project.
The only Linux desktop available internally is an (unsupported) hack of RedHat 7.2, and my experience with it was that it isn't even close to an acceptable replacement for the Windows desktop.
In short, this is a wildly exagerated claim. While it's entirely possible that IBM will eventually support internal use of Linux, it's highly unlikely it's going to be anywhere near to replacing windows by 2005.
I love Linux as much as the next./er, and I use it at home all the time (I'm using it now!). But as much as I'd like to use it as a work desktop, the required functionality just isn't there.
Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development.
Can we assume this translates to, "KDE will be de-emphisized and eventually phased out"?
They should also resurrect SuSE's previous efforts in supporting the Power architecture, which more and more appears to be what will be competing with AMD64 (or vice versa.)
I don't think you'll have to worry about that. Remember, IBM helped subsidize part of the SuSE/Novell deal. You can be pretty sure they didn't put up $50 million just out of the kindness of their heart. I'd expect SuSE will be available all across IBM's product line.
More importantly, I think RedHat is pretty much FUCKED now. Novell controls the number two enterprise distro (SuSE), and some of the best enterprise products (Evolution)
Indeed they are. It wouldn't surprise me to see RedHat take a sudden interest in KDE.
ow many XFree86 users are using Cygwin port? 1 percent?
Well, in my shop, all of the sysadmins and quite a few of the developers are using it. About 20 people that I know of, and there's probably quite a few that I don't know about. Especially when we found the version of Exceed that our company purchased for Win2K wouldn't run on XP.
While it still has a few rough edges, it's still a damned useful tool. I sure hope it this doesn't jepordize the project. I was looking forward to the efforts to the completion of the efforts to get KDE and Gnome running on it.
I'm not sure how much credit McNealy deserves for Sun's earlier successes, anyway. I think he was mostly a marketing mouth that was in the right place at the right time.
Sun was once a company that housed a lot of heavy talent. But now the Bill Joy and Ed Zander types have all moved on to other things, and while McNealy remains the public face of Sun, he no longer has the powerhouse of talented inovators to back him up.
Sun still has a lot of valuble IP, and they'd probably be an attractive acquisition target for someone at the right price. Maybe someone like IBM will eventually snap them up for their Java technology.
SPARC is still a viable processor, but it needs work. Solaris is still a viable operating system, but it needs work. But if doing this won't work in business, then SUN just needs to be bought out, perhaps by IBM (then SPARC will probably become the "s-Series").
The most likely outcome of IBM buying Sun would be the migration of Sun's product line (and Solaris) over to the Power architecture, and then slowly being absorbed into the P-series.
Which, actually, would be an interesting development.
In 5 years Apple will be primarily a music sales company anyway, with their mildly successful niche computer/OS sales department just kind of chugging along as it always has in the background..
Well, make that a music, software (Final Cut) and consumer electronics (iPod) company.
And since they'll be less dependent on Mac hardware to generate a revenue stream, they may be more amenable to opening up the Mac platform than they have been in the past. Allowing cloning wouldn't have the potential to do them the damage it did the last time.
And if that happens, you might very well see the Mac platform grow exponentially.
What about all those people who have already signed their soul over to the devil? I'm sure if it were as simple as "switching" from one record label to another, many bands would. The choices today are getting better, but the contracts those people have to sign just to get their music on a cd is insane. The record company basically owns their ass for years before they can choose to go somewhere else, and even then in many cases the new record label they go to still has to pay a cut to the previos label.
Well, yeah, there are a few pitfalls here. It's not just a matter of recording your stuff and throwing it out on the net. The Big Evil companies also do things like pay for promotion and help underwrite the cost of touring, exercise influence with the radio stations and MTV and whatnot to get the music played and brought to the attention of consumers. I'm not sure these guys have all the resources at their disposal to perform these functions. It wouldn't hurt to have an already highly successful artist or two sign on to this to help push it along. A stable of competent but unknown artists is fine, but is unlikely to generate the kind of revenues necessary to be able to afford to provide the kind of services the Big Evil companies provide.
And if his Y takes off, it can replace X withoutht causing you any problems at all at all.
Even if it doesn't replace X, it's still a project worth persuing. Y is, if nothing else, an opportunity to try a different approach to a UNIX windowing system. There's no reason it's best ideas couldn't be re-absorbed back into X, if they're successful at solving real problems. For example, Linux, KDE and Gnome have been influenced by ideas from such sources as Windows, Plan 9, Mac OS and UNIX. It's unlikely Linux would have come as far as it has if it had merely been a straight re-implementation of Minix.
If Y is a significant enough improvement over X to make it worthwhile replacing X, then it will replace X. Even if it isn't, it's still an opportunity to test new approaches, and the most successful ideas can be integrated back into X.
Sounds like a lot to be gained, and nothing to be lost by persuing this.
I'm sorry, but IBM (the company that has made billions in revenue off GNU/Linux) should be floating the bill. Red Hat is too poor to be getting into a legal slug fest with a company that has literally transformed themselves into a litigation firm. IBM has the money to fight, while Red Hat might end up getting dragged through the proverbial legal-mud, and never really get anywhere.
Red Hat is a preferred Linux provider to IBM, in fact they support all of 4 of IBM's platforms. They have a pretty tight partnership.
What's good for IBM's bottom line is good for Red Hat's bottom line. Ultimately, IBM will be footing the bill. One way or the other.
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I don't hold out much hope at all at the federal level, best we can maybe expect is some state gets both a hip constitutional governor and a majority in his legisdlature to go along with it if they see he is serious about it. Then maybe we might see a snowball effect.
You mean, someone like Craig Benson of New Hampshire?
I think you need to check out these guys:
Evidence? When I say "Red Hat" what do you think of first? When I say "Novell" what do you think of first?
They really need to get to the point where people instantly think "Linux company" instead of "failed network company" when they hear the Novell name.
You have a point there, but I'm not really sure it's operative. They still sell their Linux solution under the SuSE brand. It isn't yet clear what branding they'll be selling their Linux networking products under.
Possibly they'll just bundle their Netware product with some server version of SuSE, in which case they avoid the baggage of the Novell name altogether.
It should not take too many more quarters like this to put an end to this nonsense.
That's probably true.
Of course, then you have another problem. Who's going to wind up with the Unix IP rights after SCO's demise?
Depending on how their assets are liquidated, someone even worse than Darl and Co. could get hold of them.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
I don't quite understand why IBM doesn't want to create something like a G5, only "more serious". I'm sure the pSeries machines are excellent, but if they could just lower the price a bit by dropping some of the enterprise features that drive the price up, they could sell quite a lot of them.
Well, what you're talking about is essentially a consumer version of the PPC. Unfortunately, the consumer market is a business IBM has made it clear they don't want to be in, the enterprise is where they've chosen to compete.
On the bright side, they have been encouraging 3rd party vendors, most notably Genesi, to build consumer products based on PPC. I think there are probably some other 3rd party boards available, but I haven't really kept up with them.
I expect commoditized PPC systems will eventually become an option, but unless the 3rd partys establish it as a lucrative market first, I doubt IBM will jump into the frey.
IBM tends to avoid competing in the consumer market directly, but they're more than happy to sell parts and license technology to companies who want to play there.
Maybe now NASA will stop dilly-dallying around and get some new technology other than the outdated space shuttle. We've really been slacking ever since we stopped going to the moon, and maybe international involvement will help us get back on track.
Why compete? It would be more to the point if one of NASA's contractor's licensed the Energia technologies and simply modified them to NASA's specifications. It would also help Energia fund some of their more ambitious projects.
What's the point in reinventing the wheel?
At any rate, I regardless of the actual model, these sorts of public proclamations are troublesome as there are now going to be thousands upon thousands that will go out and start purchasing choline supplements just like their mass purchasing of melatonin (extracted from bovine pineal gland commonly, prion diseases anyone?), or ephedra (cardiac arrest anyone?), Aristolochia fangchi (kidney damage or cancer anyone?), shark cartilage (simply a lighter wallet anyone?), or any other unproven (not a troll, I am a scientist folks, so I want proof) supplement.
What's disturbing here is that while they've documented the physiological effects on the rat's brains, they didn't do any follow-up studies as to how this actually effected the rat's capacity to learn, or any of the effects on the rat's behavior.
So now we know that chlorine will alter the development of the rat's brains, but we don't know if the effects of the change are good, bad or indifferent.
Social programs have been decimated in the past four years. The Great Society has been destroyed in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Defense spending has been astronomical and does not need to get any bigger. If greater power is given for wiretapping we will be running headlong into a police state. At this point the government already has too much power and needs to cut money out of programs that only serve to arm the government to the teeth, only to attack its own citizens and other nations unilateraly. If we need anything right now it's programs that will get the people of this country back on their feet.
Well, for a start, the federal government has a constitutional mandate to provide for a common defense. It doesn't have any constitutional authority to take money away from Party A to spend on benefits for Party B. But I'd certainly agree that the government's military/intelligence activities are far in excess of anything that could be legitimately called "defense".
Both of them are a symptom of the same problem, namely, that our government has long ago slipped off of the leash the Constitution was intended to be.
Now, we have to figure out how to get the leash back on....
For example, your name, race, date of birth, income, etc. are protected where your address and telephone number are not
What I want is not to be pestered salesmen and junk mail.
I don't care if total strangers send me birthday cards.
The reason they use such "archaic" hardware, even in brand-new boxes, is because they have to withstand ambient temperatures up to 150 degrees farenheit for long periods of the day. The boxes can't be ventilated very much without exposing them to the elements (and destructive teenagers), and it gets hot as an oven inside when the sun is hitting them all day.
While I can't vouch for this information personally, a friend of mine who does microprocessor design once told me that slower processors are used because the faster the processor, the more random errors it generates. While the errors can be compensated for in software, that, of course, adds complexity to the software. And the more complex the software, the greater the possibility of bugs.
So in the interest of keeping things simple, and as bug free as possible, the slower processors are the preferred solution.
I'm not really knowledgeable about microprocessor design. Perhaps someone who knows something about it could elaborate/clarify?
Then buy a 3 button mouse and plug it in to your Mac.
Nope, not good enough. This a laptop, and I don't want to have to be dragging around an extra mouse. Also, if I'm trying to use it on a train, or a similar situation, then I have to have a surface to set the mouse on. That kind of inconvenience negates the point of having a laptop.
You can get any platform to meet your needs if you're willing to go through the contortions to make it work, but I don't really see the point. The object of using a computer is to make my life easier. If I have to go through a world of aggrevation to get one to do what I want it to do, then I'm defeating the purpose of having one. I'm not going to make my life any harder than it needs to be for religious or ideological reasons, thanks anyway.
Over the months, I've gotten quite comfortable with the PB, OSX, and the whole package. But when I lean back and compare them critically, I have to admit: Nearly everything is simpler, faster, and easier on the linux box. The Mac is generally prettier. And in a few cases (such as plugging in USB gadgets), it does a better job.
But so far, despite my best intentions, the Mac has turned out to be slow and clumsy compared to linux.
I hate to say it, but that was my experience as well.
Having heard so many wonderful things about OS X, I bought a refurbished iBook just to have a look-see.
I tried hard to like it. I really did. But I found I was just more comfortable with Linux on my Thinkpad, or, horrors!, even with Windows.
I can see where OS X has a lot of potential, and it has a number of cool features I wish were available on other platforms, but, on balance, I just wasn't able to warm up to it. I think part of the problem is that the Mac approaches tasks in a manner that's different, but not necessarily easier. The Mac might be a bit easier to use if Apple would make a few concessions to the fact that most of the world is acclimated to PC's, and adjusted to the lingua franca of computer interfaces - like a 3 button mouse would be a helluva a lot simpler to manage than having to memorize a set of obscure key combinations in conjuction with the mouse clicks to accomplish a task.
Still, as a unix box goes, the Mac is simpler than most. Were it only that admining a Solaris or an AIX box was so simple.
But I'm afraid I found the Mac interface is a long way from as intuitive as it's reputation.
But hey, that's just me.
HP believes that it is better positioned than any other company to bridge the gap between Apple and Windows. Fiorina told the Times: "The next big thing isn't the next gizmo or killer app or hot box. Customers want all this to work together and they want a seamless approach. We're very much going to make sure that the Microsoft and Apple worlds work together. That's part of the power we bring to this thing."
This is probably the only remotely interesting initiative HP has embarked on since Carly took over.
Let's hope it's more successful than most of them have been.
Notes runs in some ways better under wine and Linux than under Windows (Notes under wine is the way I've been doing it for well over a year now). Zap-Notes (when Notes misbehaves) is nearly instantaneous when you're on Linux, and at best it's killed the instance of wine when it really screws up -- never my whole computer.
The problem is getting it to connect to the server. We use the Aventail client for VPN connectivity from the customer site. Yes, I know there's a Linux version. No one at our site has yet gotten it to work.
Most everything else is web-based.
Maybe it depends on what you do and what your perceptions are, but honestly Notes and Mozilla is probablly *all* the software that a good chunk of IBMers need to do all of IBM's business.
It would be nice if they'd get their web-based software to work properly under Mozilla.
Try running the TSM administration tool under Mozilla as opposed to IE. Yes, it works. Kind of. Just not very well. Some functionality isn't available at all. Try getting to the text command line under Mozilla.
What about remote administration? Windows still pales to UNIX from decades ago, and is a joke in this department compared to Linux (and people bemoan X's network transparency).
Glad you mentioned that. Remember, I need to get into the customer's network to admin their machines. Frequently I'll be working from home if I get a call in the middle of the night.
To get into the client's network, I need to have access to the VPN they use.
You wouldn't be able to tell me where I can get a Nortel dialer client for Linux, would you?
Also, how about a remote management client for the p-series servers that runs under Linux? Considering the HMC itself is a Linux box, you'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask.
Are you using the RPMs available internally (there's *tons* of more software available than what the screenshots show in these articles, BTW -- including office and Notes pre-wrapped in Wine, ready for the C4EB Linux internal, totally unofficial but tolerated, linux distro).
Yes, I'm aware of that. The Notes and the C4EB client are now bundled with the internal distro.
Still can't get it to connect to the server from the client site. Nor can I get it to connect using the AT&T dialer over my broadband connection from home (can get to W3 just fine, though, so I know it isn't an issue with the dialer).
I added the Ximian desktop to the RH7.3 (I'm pretty sure it's RH7.3 based -- maybe you tried it a really long time ago?) I run, and even based on aesthetics and usability Linux has left Windows behind.
You could be right about 7.3. I tried it several months ago right after they came out with a new version of the desktop.
I also upgaded to the Ximian desktop. Personally, I liked the native RedHat desktop better.
I'll agree that it's come a long way since the last release (which I only managed to get installed at all with great pain). But it's still not there yet.
Yes, sharing documents with the outside world is important, but is this really an issue anymore?
YES, emphaticly. As I mentioned before, our client likes Microsoft Project. And more than that, they use specialized software specific to their industry and internally developed apps that are Windows only. Perhaps I could get some of them to run under Wine if I took the time to fight with them. Truthfully, that's time I just don't have.
And that's a major rub - even if IBM converts all of their internal apps to run on Linux, that doesn't necessarily mean our clients and third party vendors whose software we rely on are going to.
Until that happens, I'm still seeing Windows in my immediate future.
I think it's great news. I like that they're playing it cool too; seems like maybe they're positioning themselves to represent "levelheaded business people" who are making the move away from MS.
./er, and I use it at home all the time (I'm using it now!). But as much as I'd like to use it as a work desktop, the required functionality just isn't there.
The reason they're playing it cool is because it's ridiculous. I hate to rain on the parade, but I can assure you, Lotus Notes hasn't been dumped, and it isn't available on Linux except as an internal skunk works project running on WINE (and it doesn't run any too good, either).
Notes isn't the only problem. There's all sorts of applications we use internally that aren't (yet) available on Linux. The panel they showed listing the internal apps available doesn't even begin to compare to the necessary apps that are available on Windows. There are something like a hundred apps available on Windows that are frequently used by employees, and dead few of them are can be replaced by anything available on Linux.
Additionally, as services is now our largest business, many, if not most of us, work on customer sites. And that means we have to be able to exchange documents and file formats with our clients, and I sure don't know of anything in Linux world that's compatible with applications such as Microsoft project.
The only Linux desktop available internally is an (unsupported) hack of RedHat 7.2, and my experience with it was that it isn't even close to an acceptable replacement for the Windows desktop.
In short, this is a wildly exagerated claim. While it's entirely possible that IBM will eventually support internal use of Linux, it's highly unlikely it's going to be anywhere near to replacing windows by 2005.
I love Linux as much as the next
It's just not gonna happen anytime soon.
Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development.
Can we assume this translates to, "KDE will be de-emphisized and eventually phased out"?
They should also resurrect SuSE's previous efforts in supporting the Power architecture, which more and more appears to be what will be competing with AMD64 (or vice versa.)
I don't think you'll have to worry about that. Remember, IBM helped subsidize part of the SuSE/Novell deal. You can be pretty sure they didn't put up $50 million just out of the kindness of their heart. I'd expect SuSE will be available all across IBM's product line.
More importantly, I think RedHat is pretty much FUCKED now. Novell controls the number two enterprise distro (SuSE), and some of the best enterprise products (Evolution) Indeed they are. It wouldn't surprise me to see RedHat take a sudden interest in KDE.
ow many XFree86 users are using Cygwin port? 1 percent?
Well, in my shop, all of the sysadmins and quite a few of the developers are using it. About 20 people that I know of, and there's probably quite a few that I don't know about. Especially when we found the version of Exceed that our company purchased for Win2K wouldn't run on XP.
While it still has a few rough edges, it's still a damned useful tool. I sure hope it this doesn't jepordize the project. I was looking forward to the efforts to the completion of the efforts to get KDE and Gnome running on it.
I'm not sure how much credit McNealy deserves for Sun's earlier successes, anyway. I think he was mostly a marketing mouth that was in the right place at the right time.
Sun was once a company that housed a lot of heavy talent. But now the Bill Joy and Ed Zander types have all moved on to other things, and while McNealy remains the public face of Sun, he no longer has the powerhouse of talented inovators to back him up.
Sun still has a lot of valuble IP, and they'd probably be an attractive acquisition target for someone at the right price. Maybe someone like IBM will eventually snap them up for their Java technology.
SPARC is still a viable processor, but it needs work. Solaris is still a viable operating system, but it needs work. But if doing this won't work in business, then SUN just needs to be bought out, perhaps by IBM (then SPARC will probably become the "s-Series").
The most likely outcome of IBM buying Sun would be the migration of Sun's product line (and Solaris) over to the Power architecture, and then slowly being absorbed into the P-series.
Which, actually, would be an interesting development.
In 5 years Apple will be primarily a music sales company anyway, with their mildly successful niche computer/OS sales department just kind of chugging along as it always has in the background..
Well, make that a music, software (Final Cut) and consumer electronics (iPod) company.
And since they'll be less dependent on Mac hardware to generate a revenue stream, they may be more amenable to opening up the Mac platform than they have been in the past. Allowing cloning wouldn't have the potential to do them the damage it did the last time.
And if that happens, you might very well see the Mac platform grow exponentially.
What about all those people who have already signed their soul over to the devil? I'm sure if it were as simple as "switching" from one record label to another, many bands would. The choices today are getting better, but the contracts those people have to sign just to get their music on a cd is insane. The record company basically owns their ass for years before they can choose to go somewhere else, and even then in many cases the new record label they go to still has to pay a cut to the previos label.
Well, yeah, there are a few pitfalls here. It's not just a matter of recording your stuff and throwing it out on the net. The Big Evil companies also do things like pay for promotion and help underwrite the cost of touring, exercise influence with the radio stations and MTV and whatnot to get the music played and brought to the attention of consumers. I'm not sure these guys have all the resources at their disposal to perform these functions. It wouldn't hurt to have an already highly successful artist or two sign on to this to help push it along. A stable of competent but unknown artists is fine, but is unlikely to generate the kind of revenues necessary to be able to afford to provide the kind of services the Big Evil companies provide.
And if his Y takes off, it can replace X withoutht causing you any problems at all at all.
Even if it doesn't replace X, it's still a project worth persuing. Y is, if nothing else, an opportunity to try a different approach to a UNIX windowing system. There's no reason it's best ideas couldn't be re-absorbed back into X, if they're successful at solving real problems. For example, Linux, KDE and Gnome have been influenced by ideas from such sources as Windows, Plan 9, Mac OS and UNIX. It's unlikely Linux would have come as far as it has if it had merely been a straight re-implementation of Minix.
If Y is a significant enough improvement over X to make it worthwhile replacing X, then it will replace X. Even if it isn't, it's still an opportunity to test new approaches, and the most successful ideas can be integrated back into X.
Sounds like a lot to be gained, and nothing to be lost by persuing this.
So why not?
Part of the claim demands that SCO stop shipping all of the software infringing on IBM's patents, which is essentially all of SCO's software.
Probably a redundant request on IBM's part. Does anyone really believe SCO is still shipping any software, anyway?
I'm sorry, but IBM (the company that has made billions in revenue off GNU/Linux) should be floating the bill. Red Hat is too poor to be getting into a legal slug fest with a company that has literally transformed themselves into a litigation firm. IBM has the money to fight, while Red Hat might end up getting dragged through the proverbial legal-mud, and never really get anywhere.
Red Hat is a preferred Linux provider to IBM, in fact they support all of 4 of IBM's platforms. They have a pretty tight partnership.
What's good for IBM's bottom line is good for Red Hat's bottom line. Ultimately, IBM will be footing the bill. One way or the other.