Here's the bottom line on your complaint: use the hardware supported by your OS or go with an OS you don't need paid support for.
It's that simple. And little different from Microsoft, IBM, Sun or anybody else in the hardware and/or OS business.
Buying stuff less than six months old and expecting an older server release to support it is not reasonable. Running Fedora Core instead of a server OS to get around this means you get to run new hardware - with no support.
Make up your mind what you want to do. The solution is learn to support your own server OS without paid support. There are plenty of companies doing that. If you're a Linux consultant, this is money in the bank for you.
This is an IT management issue, not a Linux issue (except to the degree that the old problem of lack of hardware vendor supported drivers is raised - which is an issue you have to deal with as a Linux sys admin in every case.)
I'll point out the obvious - you haven't received five years of backports - yet.
Tell us again in five years when Ubuntu has kept their promise.
I'm not saying they won't - but five years is a long time in IT. Right now, you can't guarantee Ubuntu will even exist in five years. Red Hat has a track record - of that long at least.
Also, I find this notion that servers can't be touched for five years because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is reaching for the moon in terms of reliability - and strikes me as more a product of laziness than competent system administration. You're going to have worse problems than that over five years, one way or the other, so it's really an irrelevant issue. All you really want - and need - is not to have the servers crashing every six or twelve months when a new release comes out. That's what test servers are for.
I'm surprised you can get video playing at all on such a machine.
I have an old Compaq Deskpro 4000 as a second backup machine, CPU upgraded to 400MHz, with 256MB of RAM, and I wouldn't even bother trying to run video on it.
However, I recently managed to get Slackware 10 loaded on it, and while it's hardly spry, it's functional.
This machine used to run Red Hat 7.0 and Windows 98 (still runs Windows 98 - which will crash every few days even if NOTHING is being done on the machine except the wallpaper changer!). I couldn't install any other distro on it because I thought there was an issue with the Compaq BIOS not reporting the disk geometry correctly. However, I discovered the real issue was the later distros were trying to force DMA on the drives, which simply didn't work. By adding ide=nodma to the boot command, I was able to get Slackware to install and run. Seems to run fine, although again, not spry enough for continuous use as a primary machine. 15-second startup for things like Kword and Kspread.
Yes, Linux distros are getting bloated. Compared to Kubuntu, Slackware 10 has everything but the kitchen sink thrown in in terms of preloaded apps.
I'd say it's no big deal if FC 2 is no longer supported. Most machines that ran it okay will probably run a later version or some other recent distro which is supported. Your example of running on an old 450MHz K6 is a bit extreme. Such a machine would more likely have run a Red Hat way before Fedora.
Also, old hardware can be converted to other purposes such as a Linux firewall.
There does come a time when old hardware should be pitched. When I upgrade my current desktop to a newer machine, the current desktop will become a file server and my backup machine - and the Compaq will be stripped for parts and pitched. And good riddance.
Most of which is on a par with George Bush pulling out of Iraq...as in, no way, Jose.
I agree, OpenSolaris exceeding Linux in the marketplace is a non-starter from Day One. Never happen. I have no serious complaints about Sun OS's, never having used one, but the idea that an OS released in the last year or so (as OSS, regardless of its past history) is going to overtake the hundreds of thousands of people working on and with Linux in the Linux community is just a stupid concept.
Sun should be prepared to be lucky to stay in business now that Java is mostly OSS. Sun bent to public pressure to open source Java, and they will continue to do what WE in the OSS community say if they want to stay in business at all. They need to spend their time figuring out to back Linux in the "war on Microsoft" if they want any say in anything.
Nice to know, but this client needs a lot more than PhotoShop running. He needs Adobe Premiere, Adobe Encore, and just about everything else Adobe runs, as well as quite a few other AV apps that only run on Windows.
According to CodeWeavers, PhotoShop 7 runs as follows:
Silver This application installs, and runs well enough to be usable. However we find it has enough bugs to prevent it from running flawlessly.
If you can get it working better than that, let the people at CodeWeavers know how you did it.
...the issues are: what ARE your "core applications"? How MANY users are there that NEED them (which translates into license costs)? Can those apps be run in some other way than currently done?
If you have core apps which are PACKAGED third party apps that you need to run and cannot alter yourself, then you'll have to find a way to run them if you want to switch.
OTOH, if your core apps are DEVELOPED third party apps - start planning on how to either get those third parties to port them to Linux, or, better, hire new developers to develop new versions using OSS cross-platform tools like Java - which in many cases might get you altogether better software using newer technologies.
I know, I know, most SMBs can't afford to pay for third party development, let alone in-house development. Nonetheless, there ARE developers out there who are affordable and who can probably do the job at a cost an SMB can afford - IF the SMB PLANS and BUDGETS for this development in a reasonable manner (meaning no "We need it next week" bullcrap - take your time.)
As for the rest, any SMB can be converted to Linux/OSS aside from non-portable core applications. And core applications can frequently be handled by either Terminal Services or conversion. The issues in most cases are training and support - both of which can be solved by hiring a Linux/OSS trainer and/or consultant to deal with those issues. This needn't cost the earth either, again, if you PLAN for it.
I signed a client this week who HAS to run Adobe software - he runs an AV conversion company that relies on Adobe (and other multimedia) Windows-only software. He told me he would switch to Linux in a heartbeat, because he knows Windows is not reliable or secure - but he can't without Adobe software. He has ten terabytes of data he needs backed up - and I'm pitching versions of rsync and rdiff-backup (on Windows under Cygwin or Windows only versions of rsync) to show him how flexible OSS software is compared to commercial Windows backup utilities. Later, I'll see what can be done about his Adobe requirements, if anything.
It all depends on what the SMB is DOING and HOW they are doing it. Many SMBs could easily convert to Linux/OSS - others need to wait and PLAN for such a conversion when the necessary solutions appear - as they inevitably will over time.
Maybe these researchers have seen too many Star Wars movies where the "midichlorians" (or however that's spelled) control everything through "The Force". When that concept first came out in Star Wars, I thought Lucas had totally lost it - it was brain dead.
OTOH, I've thought about Drexler's notion of embedding nanotech computers and robots into every cell of the human body. What would happen if you had trillions of human cells loaded up with distributed nanotech - or even femtotech or picotech - hardware that could monitor and totally control the human body and brain in realtime?
That would pretty much solve the God question.
So who says some advanced technocracy didn't do this to humans a hundred thousand years ago?
The Matrix could be real and you'd never know it. That was the point.
The real question this article raises: How can I can rid of this parasite in me - and load up the next HB I see with it? Can I spike her drink?
Microsoft is following the "same old, same old" policy begun by Gates back in the 1980's - promise potential customers "the next one will be AWESOME! You'll See!" (quoting Jake Blues)...
Bullshit.
Microsoft has shot its wad. There's nothing left to pull out of a hat.
They've peaked with this crap.
They're done.
All that remains is slowly sinking into the West...
My only fear is that Linux will follow suit...ruined by crappy, poorly tested distros and the lack of focused, critical enterprise applications infrastructure software because open source developers would rather work on 3D eye candy for end users like themselves...
If you want Linux on the desktop in corporate America, we need enterprise infrastructure software FIRST - the "killer app" for corporations who will then switch their desktops to match their infrastructure - just as they did with Windows. (Yeah, I know, UNIX was on the servers - but mainframes OSs more so and nothing was going to match the mainframe anyway. Corporations switched to Windows when the OEMs put it on corporate bulk purchase machines - and they also switched to "Microsoft Back Office" when the mainframe went down to defeat against the PC. UNIX servers hung on because they were cheaper than mainframes - but if Linux hadn't arisen, Windows Server would be running the enterprise now - crappy as it is.)
If we don't take over the corporate infrastructure, Linux will stay a niche for geeks. Which is fine by me in most respects - I'll still use it - except that I'd prefer to make money working with corporations and end users to develop IT operations on Linux, rather than having to continue futzing with Microsoft crap. I'm not just a user, I'm IN the IT industry, so it would be better for me if Linux did well in the corporate space.
Linux fanatics who WANT Linux to fail in the corporate and end user market do so because they want to feel superior to those users - they want to be "elite". They want to be big fish in a small pond. I'd rather be a big fish in a big pond, thank you. I could use the money better than Gates does.
Rate this "flamebait"! Rate this "troll"! Is that all you've got? Are you nuts? Come at me!
If the Kubuntu people can't even test their installs, the whole thing obviously isn't going to fly.
Their Live CD install doesn't work, because you can't get past the Change Mount Points Screen.
This means obviously that the ENTIRE INSTALL PROCEDURE WAS NEVER TESTED.
Corporations are going to put THIS on their desktops.
No way.
No to mention that every time I stress my Kubuntu system, I get a "Server overload" message popping up. Mostly harmless, apparently, but REALLY STUPID. FIX THIS, PEOPLE!
Also, for Linux admins used to doing su to root and/or their own sudo, and still be able to log on as root when they really want to, the default Ubuntu/Kubuntu approach of disabling root everywhere - including being able to su to root - and requiring every simply command to be run as "sudo blah" gets old fast. Yes, you can clean that out and go back to the old way, but it's an annoyance with no real benefits for the ordinary end user who isn't going to log on as root anyway.
When the Ubuntu/Kubuntu people get their act together and concentrate on making sure the install, software update, and desktops are rock solid, THEN they can consider being an Enterprise desktop.
The same applies to all the OTHER distros, by the way, each of which have their issues in this regard.
The Linux kernel is fine. And most of the time, the Linux desktop is fine for end users. The issue lies with the distros not doing enough testing due to manpower lacks and the emphasis on new "features" a la Windows eye candy.
Stop worrying about "wobbly windows" and "desktop search" and concentrate on making sure your desktop WORKS.
And in retaliation Santa will open source his nanotech and put them ALL out of business...
Or maybe become the Pied Piper and use his nanotech to lure away all the "good little boys and girls" to the North Pole and teach them to become nanotech anarchists.
Santa needs to prove his nanotech is for "peaceful purposes only". That's it! Have the UN Security Council pass a resolution imposing sanctions on him and preventing his Christmas sleigh ride until he proves his nanotech does not have a "uranium enrichment" component or is capable of being converted into a WMD! Send warships to the North Pole to put pressure on Santa! Have a renegade group of dissident elves spy on his facilities and pass information directly to Dick Cheney's office (bypassing the weak-kneed CIA) PROVING that Santa is a radical with anti-Western ideas! (And by the way, check for oil and gas reserves under the North Pole...)
Have AIPAC lobby against Santa on the grounds that by delivering toys to Palestinians children, he is a support of terrorism and anti-Israel and therefore anti-Semitic as well! Olmert has already announced that Israel will bulldoze any sleighs or reindeer found in the West Bank as a means of preventing the importation of illegal weapons!
I agree - and have said so here before - that Microsoft is going to go down "eventually".
That doesn't mean Linux will win. If ESR's analysis is correct, and I suspect it is, Linux will lose.
Some OTHER IT development years in the future will win. (This, by the way, is one place where ESR's analysis falls down. It's unlikely that "64-bit computers" will be relevant in 2050 - not when nanotech is right around the corner. That is a major disruptive technology which will probably obsolete 64-bit computers before 2020 or 2030.)
If you want to wait for that, in the name of OSS purity, be my guest. I'd prefer to suck it up and pay a (low) price for a download of complete multimedia codecs I can install automatically - especially since that disk will be pirated in five minutes and available to me illegally for free like everything else.
If you REALLY believe in "free" software, you can't believe in intellectual property at all. And that means it's irrelevant how you get that disk of codecs or the media that runs them.
The goal here is winning - not some "moral purity" - and winning NOW - not twenty years from now.
As Timothy Leary once pointed out, SPECTRE and the rest of the Bond supervillains all had brilliant (if coercive) ideas on how to solve the world's problems, while James Bond was little more than a statist, misogynist thug.
Like Bruce Lee, the problem is one of "fighting without fighting". Or as William Burroughs put it, whoever fights evil becomes evil. (Nietsche had a similar insight with his "abyss" comment.) His solution: fight, then abandon the fight for a while, then return to the fight, then abandon it again. Don't allow fighting to become your HABIT and your defining characteristic, I guess.
This fits in with ESR's suggestion that we suck it up and accept binary-only licenses on multimedia content - until the patents run out and we can dispose of same.
I think their analysis is spot on in most respects.
The first post here to/. demonstrates how they hit the "geek" attitude on the nose, as well. The OSS "religious freaks" will sink their concept. The only way around this will be to entice the NON-religious freaks who are only interested in winning and money to outmaneuver the religious freaks. This ought to work well, since this is the way it's gone in every other human endeavor.
Humans ALWAYS make the wrong decision. They will ALWAYS choose the path that GUARANTEES they won't achieve the goals they've explicitly said they want to attain. The knee-jerk OSS religious freaks will sink Linux before they see their "morality" infringed upon. The non-religious freaks will sink Linux in order to make money from it.
In this case, however, the only way to get truly OSS is to suck it up and accept non-OSS binaries for a few years. Since everybody except the OSS religious freaks are doing that NOW, this seems to be an acceptable solution.
However, I suggest another approach, which they glossed over - the "killer app" approach.
TFA considers the "killer app" to be a PROBLEM from the Linux side - one Linux has to "survive" - not a SOLUTION.
What if, however, somebody develops a "killer app" that only runs on Linux - or is licensed under an OSS license that prohibits Apple or Microsoft from appropriating it on their platforms? If enough people decided to switch to Linux to run this app, that might provide the upsurge in Linux adoption necessary to give the hardware vendors incentive to ship Linux preinstalled.
And if the app had something to do with media content, and was agnostic as to media content, perhaps even the media vendors who want per-copy royalties could be enticed to start supporting Linux. (Microsoft and Apple might be a problem still here, though, unless they thought they could make enough money out of it and not threaten their main lines to go along.)
The only problem with this scenario is: predicting the "killer app". What would qualify? And of course, it has to be developed to at least 1.0 status and shippable within the next two years.
Lobo - "Hit Man to the Stars" - was contracted by the Easter Bunny to hit Santa. Lobo killed Santa after invading Santa's heavily defended compound along with his bulldog.
Lobo and the bulldog slaughtered the heavily armed (with pop guns) ELF (Elf Lethal Force) militia, then Lobo called Santa out. Santa, appearing as a burly, cigar-smoking, tattooed biker, whipped out a kukri, whereupon Lobo followed suit, and it was on. Both sides got in a few licks until Lobo chopped off Santa's head.
Afterwards, Lobo took over the advanced manufacturing facility and converted it to making nuclear and chemical weapons.
So anything you get from "Santa" tonight is likely to make you - and the rest of your town - glow in the dark.
George Bush, informed of the nuclear capability of the North Pole, has dismissed the threat, saying "Lobo is not a Shiite - or a Sunni - or whatever that religion is."
I've been following this and other OSS ILS projects like Koha on and off for a while. I was working at City College of San Francisco on the student ID barcode project. That was mostly being driven by the CCSF Library. They hated the long lines every semester when students lined up to get their barcodes manually affixed to their ID cards so they could use the PCs in the library to check email and the like. My boss and I developed a way for the SCT Banner system to produce barcodes directly on student IDs.
In the process, my boss and I were made aware that the Library was planning to dump their ancient Dynix ILS and switch to a new one. I tried making a case that they would be better off spending the $100,000 budgeted for the new system on developing an OSS one (paying me to do it, of course!) which would give them more control over the result. So I researched a lot of the OSS ILS projects going on. Evergreen seemed very promising.
The CCSF Library ended up going with a proprietary system - and guess what? They got screwed at least partially. The company promised to integrate the library checkout counter portion of the system with the SCT Banner student database that CCSF uses. This was a requirement and the library put it in the contract. And sure enough, as soon as the money changed hands, the company reneged on the requirement (because integrating anything with Banner is not a trivial task). Some personnel from the CCSF ITS department had to devote considerable time to providing a work-around.
So I'm glad Georgia managed to get Evergreen out and it seems to be working well, at least from the initial reports. They also managed to get it working fairly quickly as large OSS projects go. I think they were only at it for a couple years. And ILS's are not trivial projects. There are library industry technical standards that have to be adhered to and the end user usability issues are enormous. The acquisitions side tends to be complex (especially on the magazine subscription side), and the MARC record standard is not a simple thing to translate into a relational database schema.
"First off, the customer will know whether you fixed a problem or not."
But not WHY you didn't - they rely on your tech babble to explain things.
Compare the situation to car mechanics. The bad ones still manage to stay in business - and how many good ones do you know?
I had a client who had problems with her newly installed Dell and a router she bought from Best Buy. Geek Squad came out and looked at it after another tech suggested it was bad. Geek Squad decided the NIC card had gone bad as we stood there. I doubted that, but when Dell demanded we reinstall Windows XP, guess what? Problem fixed. As usual, Windows had screwed up its TCPIP stack somehow (probably as a result of my uninstalling the McAfee AV Dell had put on the machine which she didn't want.)
The point is there really was no way to prove the first tech or the Geek Squad guy was wrong until the problem was solved another way. The fact is in the industry today when something goes bad it's damn hard to prove it's bad or why it went bad. That allows for all sorts of unscrupulous behavior that the customer can't detect. It's true for complicated new car hardward and it's true for PCs.
You're right about everything you said - but I'm right that this Microsoft crap is going to work to the advantage of unscrupulous PC techs. A minor matter compared to the rest of the effects, but still possible.
I agree that Microsoft COULD have been stopped. But that would have required intelligence on the part of the consumer and the IT industry companies who allowed it to happen.
Now - what are the odds that would have happened? I submit - zero.
The other issue you gloss over is the fact that the fact that the Bush administration was soft on the antitrust conviction allowed Microsoft to keep its de facto monopoly and thus allow Microsoft to now use the LAW (the DMCA) to achieve a REAL monopoly.
Compared to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, this could hardly be considered the biggest disaster in the last ten years, but it demonstrates that chimpanzees can't really control themselves at all.
You also gloss over the fact that it isn't that Microsoft HAS a given technology - but rather HOW they got it and WHAT they DO with it.
"Sooner or later you start to figure out that the only thing all your failures have in common is you."
This is absolutely true. It applies to me and you - and considerably more so to George Bush. At least as an anarchist, I can say I was opposed to HIS disasters from the get-go. And when it comes to Microsoft, I was opposed to them the minute I heard about Linux and OSS.
The only problem with Linux on the desktop at this time is the distros doing a LOUSY job of testing their releases and wasting time and manpower adding on 3D "eye candy" to compete with Apple and Vista instead of making sure their instsllation and update mechanisms are rock-solid dependable, not to mention things like KDE and GNOME services that actually run the desktop.
I've had trouble with installing, updating and KDE services on THREE distros - and not some lame one-man distros, either, but Mandriva 2007, SUSE 10.1, and Kubuntu 6.06 - in the last month or so. This made Linux on the desktop for me as bad as Windows - maybe more so. This is NOT what I switched to Linux FOR. I switched to Linux for security, reliability and freedom. Currently I'm getting the first and the last, but NOT the second. The Linux kernel doesn't appear to be a problem - it's the desktop, installation and update software that is the problem. Applications, of course, vary as to quality - but if a distro is including an app as its main app for an application class, such as media, that app needs to WORK RELIABLY.
There needs to be a "feature freeze" on ALL the major distros and a system software cleanup and tweaking period. I suggest ALL of 2007 be devoted to this, since Vista isn't going anywhere for a long time anyway.
"The fdisk utility included can't make FAT32 partitions above 32 GB"
Does anybody still use fdisk? When there are a gazillion partition managers around, free and otherwise, for both Windows and Linux?
If Microsoft really wanted to get rid of FAT32, they'd just cut off support for it entirely. But as long as they don't support booting from external USB storage, and as long as USB storage devices need FAT file systems, Microsoft is stuck with FAT32.
Also, as you correctly noted, FAT32 does support large volumes. I have 40GB and 60GB FAT32 partitions on my system. I use FAT32 for my data solely to allow both Linux and Windows to access my data, without worrying about half-baked Linux NTFS drivers (even the latest apparently will refuse to write to NTFS up top 50% of the time - it won't damage your NTFS but why the hell would I use a driver that refuses to work half the time?).
I really should look into the Windows EXT2/3 Installable File System mentioned above. If it's TRULY reliable, I could dispense with FAT32 and use EXT3 for all my data. I already have a couple utilities that can be used to examine EXT file systems from Windows, but having a full EXT2/3 file system installed would be much better - IF it is TRULY reliable.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the bottom line on your complaint: use the hardware supported by your OS or go with an OS you don't need paid support for.
It's that simple. And little different from Microsoft, IBM, Sun or anybody else in the hardware and/or OS business.
Buying stuff less than six months old and expecting an older server release to support it is not reasonable. Running Fedora Core instead of a server OS to get around this means you get to run new hardware - with no support.
Make up your mind what you want to do. The solution is learn to support your own server OS without paid support. There are plenty of companies doing that. If you're a Linux consultant, this is money in the bank for you.
This is an IT management issue, not a Linux issue (except to the degree that the old problem of lack of hardware vendor supported drivers is raised - which is an issue you have to deal with as a Linux sys admin in every case.)
I'll point out the obvious - you haven't received five years of backports - yet.
Tell us again in five years when Ubuntu has kept their promise.
I'm not saying they won't - but five years is a long time in IT. Right now, you can't guarantee Ubuntu will even exist in five years. Red Hat has a track record - of that long at least.
Also, I find this notion that servers can't be touched for five years because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is reaching for the moon in terms of reliability - and strikes me as more a product of laziness than competent system administration. You're going to have worse problems than that over five years, one way or the other, so it's really an irrelevant issue. All you really want - and need - is not to have the servers crashing every six or twelve months when a new release comes out. That's what test servers are for.
I'm surprised you can get video playing at all on such a machine.
I have an old Compaq Deskpro 4000 as a second backup machine, CPU upgraded to 400MHz, with 256MB of RAM, and I wouldn't even bother trying to run video on it.
However, I recently managed to get Slackware 10 loaded on it, and while it's hardly spry, it's functional.
This machine used to run Red Hat 7.0 and Windows 98 (still runs Windows 98 - which will crash every few days even if NOTHING is being done on the machine except the wallpaper changer!). I couldn't install any other distro on it because I thought there was an issue with the Compaq BIOS not reporting the disk geometry correctly. However, I discovered the real issue was the later distros were trying to force DMA on the drives, which simply didn't work. By adding ide=nodma to the boot command, I was able to get Slackware to install and run. Seems to run fine, although again, not spry enough for continuous use as a primary machine. 15-second startup for things like Kword and Kspread.
Yes, Linux distros are getting bloated. Compared to Kubuntu, Slackware 10 has everything but the kitchen sink thrown in in terms of preloaded apps.
I'd say it's no big deal if FC 2 is no longer supported. Most machines that ran it okay will probably run a later version or some other recent distro which is supported. Your example of running on an old 450MHz K6 is a bit extreme. Such a machine would more likely have run a Red Hat way before Fedora.
Also, old hardware can be converted to other purposes such as a Linux firewall.
There does come a time when old hardware should be pitched. When I upgrade my current desktop to a newer machine, the current desktop will become a file server and my backup machine - and the Compaq will be stripped for parts and pitched. And good riddance.
Most of which is on a par with George Bush pulling out of Iraq...as in, no way, Jose.
I agree, OpenSolaris exceeding Linux in the marketplace is a non-starter from Day One. Never happen. I have no serious complaints about Sun OS's, never having used one, but the idea that an OS released in the last year or so (as OSS, regardless of its past history) is going to overtake the hundreds of thousands of people working on and with Linux in the Linux community is just a stupid concept.
Sun should be prepared to be lucky to stay in business now that Java is mostly OSS. Sun bent to public pressure to open source Java, and they will continue to do what WE in the OSS community say if they want to stay in business at all. They need to spend their time figuring out to back Linux in the "war on Microsoft" if they want any say in anything.
"Try giving a Linux disk to my grandmother and see how "user friendly" she thinks it is."
Not to refer to your grandmother in particular, but this has already been done - and it worked fine for quite a few older people.
Thank you for playing.
Score: 0
Nice to know, but this client needs a lot more than PhotoShop running. He needs Adobe Premiere, Adobe Encore, and just about everything else Adobe runs, as well as quite a few other AV apps that only run on Windows.
According to CodeWeavers, PhotoShop 7 runs as follows:
Silver
This application installs, and runs well enough to be usable. However we find it has enough bugs to prevent it from running flawlessly.
If you can get it working better than that, let the people at CodeWeavers know how you did it.
...the issues are: what ARE your "core applications"? How MANY users are there that NEED them (which translates into license costs)? Can those apps be run in some other way than currently done?
If you have core apps which are PACKAGED third party apps that you need to run and cannot alter yourself, then you'll have to find a way to run them if you want to switch.
OTOH, if your core apps are DEVELOPED third party apps - start planning on how to either get those third parties to port them to Linux, or, better, hire new developers to develop new versions using OSS cross-platform tools like Java - which in many cases might get you altogether better software using newer technologies.
I know, I know, most SMBs can't afford to pay for third party development, let alone in-house development. Nonetheless, there ARE developers out there who are affordable and who can probably do the job at a cost an SMB can afford - IF the SMB PLANS and BUDGETS for this development in a reasonable manner (meaning no "We need it next week" bullcrap - take your time.)
As for the rest, any SMB can be converted to Linux/OSS aside from non-portable core applications. And core applications can frequently be handled by either Terminal Services or conversion. The issues in most cases are training and support - both of which can be solved by hiring a Linux/OSS trainer and/or consultant to deal with those issues. This needn't cost the earth either, again, if you PLAN for it.
I signed a client this week who HAS to run Adobe software - he runs an AV conversion company that relies on Adobe (and other multimedia) Windows-only software. He told me he would switch to Linux in a heartbeat, because he knows Windows is not reliable or secure - but he can't without Adobe software. He has ten terabytes of data he needs backed up - and I'm pitching versions of rsync and rdiff-backup (on Windows under Cygwin or Windows only versions of rsync) to show him how flexible OSS software is compared to commercial Windows backup utilities. Later, I'll see what can be done about his Adobe requirements, if anything.
It all depends on what the SMB is DOING and HOW they are doing it. Many SMBs could easily convert to Linux/OSS - others need to wait and PLAN for such a conversion when the necessary solutions appear - as they inevitably will over time.
...to explain stupid human pet tricks.
Human nature is quite adequate.
Maybe these researchers have seen too many Star Wars movies where the "midichlorians" (or however that's spelled) control everything through "The Force". When that concept first came out in Star Wars, I thought Lucas had totally lost it - it was brain dead.
OTOH, I've thought about Drexler's notion of embedding nanotech computers and robots into every cell of the human body. What would happen if you had trillions of human cells loaded up with distributed nanotech - or even femtotech or picotech - hardware that could monitor and totally control the human body and brain in realtime?
That would pretty much solve the God question.
So who says some advanced technocracy didn't do this to humans a hundred thousand years ago?
The Matrix could be real and you'd never know it. That was the point.
The real question this article raises: How can I can rid of this parasite in me - and load up the next HB I see with it? Can I spike her drink?
Microsoft is following the "same old, same old" policy begun by Gates back in the 1980's - promise potential customers "the next one will be AWESOME! You'll See!" (quoting Jake Blues)...
Bullshit.
Microsoft has shot its wad. There's nothing left to pull out of a hat.
They've peaked with this crap.
They're done.
All that remains is slowly sinking into the West...
My only fear is that Linux will follow suit...ruined by crappy, poorly tested distros and the lack of focused, critical enterprise applications infrastructure software because open source developers would rather work on 3D eye candy for end users like themselves...
If you want Linux on the desktop in corporate America, we need enterprise infrastructure software FIRST - the "killer app" for corporations who will then switch their desktops to match their infrastructure - just as they did with Windows. (Yeah, I know, UNIX was on the servers - but mainframes OSs more so and nothing was going to match the mainframe anyway. Corporations switched to Windows when the OEMs put it on corporate bulk purchase machines - and they also switched to "Microsoft Back Office" when the mainframe went down to defeat against the PC. UNIX servers hung on because they were cheaper than mainframes - but if Linux hadn't arisen, Windows Server would be running the enterprise now - crappy as it is.)
If we don't take over the corporate infrastructure, Linux will stay a niche for geeks. Which is fine by me in most respects - I'll still use it - except that I'd prefer to make money working with corporations and end users to develop IT operations on Linux, rather than having to continue futzing with Microsoft crap. I'm not just a user, I'm IN the IT industry, so it would be better for me if Linux did well in the corporate space.
Linux fanatics who WANT Linux to fail in the corporate and end user market do so because they want to feel superior to those users - they want to be "elite". They want to be big fish in a small pond. I'd rather be a big fish in a big pond, thank you. I could use the money better than Gates does.
Rate this "flamebait"! Rate this "troll"! Is that all you've got? Are you nuts? Come at me!
If the Kubuntu people can't even test their installs, the whole thing obviously isn't going to fly.
Their Live CD install doesn't work, because you can't get past the Change Mount Points Screen.
This means obviously that the ENTIRE INSTALL PROCEDURE WAS NEVER TESTED.
Corporations are going to put THIS on their desktops.
No way.
No to mention that every time I stress my Kubuntu system, I get a "Server overload" message popping up. Mostly harmless, apparently, but REALLY STUPID. FIX THIS, PEOPLE!
Also, for Linux admins used to doing su to root and/or their own sudo, and still be able to log on as root when they really want to, the default Ubuntu/Kubuntu approach of disabling root everywhere - including being able to su to root - and requiring every simply command to be run as "sudo blah" gets old fast. Yes, you can clean that out and go back to the old way, but it's an annoyance with no real benefits for the ordinary end user who isn't going to log on as root anyway.
When the Ubuntu/Kubuntu people get their act together and concentrate on making sure the install, software update, and desktops are rock solid, THEN they can consider being an Enterprise desktop.
The same applies to all the OTHER distros, by the way, each of which have their issues in this regard.
The Linux kernel is fine. And most of the time, the Linux desktop is fine for end users. The issue lies with the distros not doing enough testing due to manpower lacks and the emphasis on new "features" a la Windows eye candy.
Stop worrying about "wobbly windows" and "desktop search" and concentrate on making sure your desktop WORKS.
This is the guy who brought Rumsfeld and Cheney into the business of f**king up the world...not to mention one George H.W. Bush at the CIA...
Any time a statist dies, it's PIZZA TIME!
And we've just noticed that Santa is dressed all in RED! This means Putin and his KGB thugs are involved!
All toys recieved by children tomorrow should be checked for Polonium-210 contamination!
And in retaliation Santa will open source his nanotech and put them ALL out of business...
Or maybe become the Pied Piper and use his nanotech to lure away all the "good little boys and girls" to the North Pole and teach them to become nanotech anarchists.
Santa needs to prove his nanotech is for "peaceful purposes only". That's it! Have the UN Security Council pass a resolution imposing sanctions on him and preventing his Christmas sleigh ride until he proves his nanotech does not have a "uranium enrichment" component or is capable of being converted into a WMD! Send warships to the North Pole to put pressure on Santa! Have a renegade group of dissident elves spy on his facilities and pass information directly to Dick Cheney's office (bypassing the weak-kneed CIA) PROVING that Santa is a radical with anti-Western ideas! (And by the way, check for oil and gas reserves under the North Pole...)
Have AIPAC lobby against Santa on the grounds that by delivering toys to Palestinians children, he is a support of terrorism and anti-Israel and therefore anti-Semitic as well! Olmert has already announced that Israel will bulldoze any sleighs or reindeer found in the West Bank as a means of preventing the importation of illegal weapons!
I agree - and have said so here before - that Microsoft is going to go down "eventually".
That doesn't mean Linux will win. If ESR's analysis is correct, and I suspect it is, Linux will lose.
Some OTHER IT development years in the future will win. (This, by the way, is one place where ESR's analysis falls down. It's unlikely that "64-bit computers" will be relevant in 2050 - not when nanotech is right around the corner. That is a major disruptive technology which will probably obsolete 64-bit computers before 2020 or 2030.)
If you want to wait for that, in the name of OSS purity, be my guest. I'd prefer to suck it up and pay a (low) price for a download of complete multimedia codecs I can install automatically - especially since that disk will be pirated in five minutes and available to me illegally for free like everything else.
If you REALLY believe in "free" software, you can't believe in intellectual property at all. And that means it's irrelevant how you get that disk of codecs or the media that runs them.
The goal here is winning - not some "moral purity" - and winning NOW - not twenty years from now.
As Timothy Leary once pointed out, SPECTRE and the rest of the Bond supervillains all had brilliant (if coercive) ideas on how to solve the world's problems, while James Bond was little more than a statist, misogynist thug.
Like Bruce Lee, the problem is one of "fighting without fighting". Or as William Burroughs put it, whoever fights evil becomes evil. (Nietsche had a similar insight with his "abyss" comment.) His solution: fight, then abandon the fight for a while, then return to the fight, then abandon it again. Don't allow fighting to become your HABIT and your defining characteristic, I guess.
This fits in with ESR's suggestion that we suck it up and accept binary-only licenses on multimedia content - until the patents run out and we can dispose of same.
I think their analysis is spot on in most respects.
/. demonstrates how they hit the "geek" attitude on the nose, as well. The OSS "religious freaks" will sink their concept. The only way around this will be to entice the NON-religious freaks who are only interested in winning and money to outmaneuver the religious freaks. This ought to work well, since this is the way it's gone in every other human endeavor.
The first post here to
Humans ALWAYS make the wrong decision. They will ALWAYS choose the path that GUARANTEES they won't achieve the goals they've explicitly said they want to attain. The knee-jerk OSS religious freaks will sink Linux before they see their "morality" infringed upon. The non-religious freaks will sink Linux in order to make money from it.
In this case, however, the only way to get truly OSS is to suck it up and accept non-OSS binaries for a few years. Since everybody except the OSS religious freaks are doing that NOW, this seems to be an acceptable solution.
However, I suggest another approach, which they glossed over - the "killer app" approach.
TFA considers the "killer app" to be a PROBLEM from the Linux side - one Linux has to "survive" - not a SOLUTION.
What if, however, somebody develops a "killer app" that only runs on Linux - or is licensed under an OSS license that prohibits Apple or Microsoft from appropriating it on their platforms? If enough people decided to switch to Linux to run this app, that might provide the upsurge in Linux adoption necessary to give the hardware vendors incentive to ship Linux preinstalled.
And if the app had something to do with media content, and was agnostic as to media content, perhaps even the media vendors who want per-copy royalties could be enticed to start supporting Linux. (Microsoft and Apple might be a problem still here, though, unless they thought they could make enough money out of it and not threaten their main lines to go along.)
The only problem with this scenario is: predicting the "killer app". What would qualify? And of course, it has to be developed to at least 1.0 status and shippable within the next two years.
Any ideas?
Lobo - "Hit Man to the Stars" - was contracted by the Easter Bunny to hit Santa. Lobo killed Santa after invading Santa's heavily defended compound along with his bulldog.
Lobo and the bulldog slaughtered the heavily armed (with pop guns) ELF (Elf Lethal Force) militia, then Lobo called Santa out. Santa, appearing as a burly, cigar-smoking, tattooed biker, whipped out a kukri, whereupon Lobo followed suit, and it was on. Both sides got in a few licks until Lobo chopped off Santa's head.
Afterwards, Lobo took over the advanced manufacturing facility and converted it to making nuclear and chemical weapons.
So anything you get from "Santa" tonight is likely to make you - and the rest of your town - glow in the dark.
George Bush, informed of the nuclear capability of the North Pole, has dismissed the threat, saying "Lobo is not a Shiite - or a Sunni - or whatever that religion is."
I've been following this and other OSS ILS projects like Koha on and off for a while. I was working at City College of San Francisco on the student ID barcode project. That was mostly being driven by the CCSF Library. They hated the long lines every semester when students lined up to get their barcodes manually affixed to their ID cards so they could use the PCs in the library to check email and the like. My boss and I developed a way for the SCT Banner system to produce barcodes directly on student IDs.
In the process, my boss and I were made aware that the Library was planning to dump their ancient Dynix ILS and switch to a new one. I tried making a case that they would be better off spending the $100,000 budgeted for the new system on developing an OSS one (paying me to do it, of course!) which would give them more control over the result. So I researched a lot of the OSS ILS projects going on. Evergreen seemed very promising.
The CCSF Library ended up going with a proprietary system - and guess what? They got screwed at least partially. The company promised to integrate the library checkout counter portion of the system with the SCT Banner student database that CCSF uses. This was a requirement and the library put it in the contract. And sure enough, as soon as the money changed hands, the company reneged on the requirement (because integrating anything with Banner is not a trivial task). Some personnel from the CCSF ITS department had to devote considerable time to providing a work-around.
So I'm glad Georgia managed to get Evergreen out and it seems to be working well, at least from the initial reports. They also managed to get it working fairly quickly as large OSS projects go. I think they were only at it for a couple years. And ILS's are not trivial projects. There are library industry technical standards that have to be adhered to and the end user usability issues are enormous. The acquisitions side tends to be complex (especially on the magazine subscription side), and the MARC record standard is not a simple thing to translate into a relational database schema.
Thanks for pointing that out. Good call.
Makes me even more nervous about all the 3D eye candy the distros want to put in these days.
"First off, the customer will know whether you fixed a problem or not."
But not WHY you didn't - they rely on your tech babble to explain things.
Compare the situation to car mechanics. The bad ones still manage to stay in business - and how many good ones do you know?
I had a client who had problems with her newly installed Dell and a router she bought from Best Buy. Geek Squad came out and looked at it after another tech suggested it was bad. Geek Squad decided the NIC card had gone bad as we stood there. I doubted that, but when Dell demanded we reinstall Windows XP, guess what? Problem fixed. As usual, Windows had screwed up its TCPIP stack somehow (probably as a result of my uninstalling the McAfee AV Dell had put on the machine which she didn't want.)
The point is there really was no way to prove the first tech or the Geek Squad guy was wrong until the problem was solved another way. The fact is in the industry today when something goes bad it's damn hard to prove it's bad or why it went bad. That allows for all sorts of unscrupulous behavior that the customer can't detect. It's true for complicated new car hardward and it's true for PCs.
You're right about everything you said - but I'm right that this Microsoft crap is going to work to the advantage of unscrupulous PC techs. A minor matter compared to the rest of the effects, but still possible.
I agree that Microsoft COULD have been stopped. But that would have required intelligence on the part of the consumer and the IT industry companies who allowed it to happen.
Now - what are the odds that would have happened? I submit - zero.
The other issue you gloss over is the fact that the fact that the Bush administration was soft on the antitrust conviction allowed Microsoft to keep its de facto monopoly and thus allow Microsoft to now use the LAW (the DMCA) to achieve a REAL monopoly.
Compared to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, this could hardly be considered the biggest disaster in the last ten years, but it demonstrates that chimpanzees can't really control themselves at all.
You also gloss over the fact that it isn't that Microsoft HAS a given technology - but rather HOW they got it and WHAT they DO with it.
"Sooner or later you start to figure out that the only thing all your failures have in common is you."
This is absolutely true. It applies to me and you - and considerably more so to George Bush. At least as an anarchist, I can say I was opposed to HIS disasters from the get-go. And when it comes to Microsoft, I was opposed to them the minute I heard about Linux and OSS.
The only problem with Linux on the desktop at this time is the distros doing a LOUSY job of testing their releases and wasting time and manpower adding on 3D "eye candy" to compete with Apple and Vista instead of making sure their instsllation and update mechanisms are rock-solid dependable, not to mention things like KDE and GNOME services that actually run the desktop.
I've had trouble with installing, updating and KDE services on THREE distros - and not some lame one-man distros, either, but Mandriva 2007, SUSE 10.1, and Kubuntu 6.06 - in the last month or so. This made Linux on the desktop for me as bad as Windows - maybe more so. This is NOT what I switched to Linux FOR. I switched to Linux for security, reliability and freedom. Currently I'm getting the first and the last, but NOT the second. The Linux kernel doesn't appear to be a problem - it's the desktop, installation and update software that is the problem. Applications, of course, vary as to quality - but if a distro is including an app as its main app for an application class, such as media, that app needs to WORK RELIABLY.
There needs to be a "feature freeze" on ALL the major distros and a system software cleanup and tweaking period. I suggest ALL of 2007 be devoted to this, since Vista isn't going anywhere for a long time anyway.
I think that's the first "Score: 0, Insightful" I've seen here...correctly, I might add.
"Demopublicans", I think, is the usual.
Just to emphasize the lack of distinction between them - along with "Republicrats."
I don't think "Democratic" lends itself to a slur as easily as "Republican" does, linguistically.
Actually, come to think of it, "Demo" isn't a bad term - sort of like, "Demonstration Statesmen" or something - or maybe "Demolition of Civil Rights".
Fuck it, just call them "an asshole", like Blade did in the movie "Blade Trinity" when asked if he knew who was President.
"The fdisk utility included can't make FAT32 partitions above 32 GB"
Does anybody still use fdisk? When there are a gazillion partition managers around, free and otherwise, for both Windows and Linux?
If Microsoft really wanted to get rid of FAT32, they'd just cut off support for it entirely. But as long as they don't support booting from external USB storage, and as long as USB storage devices need FAT file systems, Microsoft is stuck with FAT32.
Also, as you correctly noted, FAT32 does support large volumes. I have 40GB and 60GB FAT32 partitions on my system. I use FAT32 for my data solely to allow both Linux and Windows to access my data, without worrying about half-baked Linux NTFS drivers (even the latest apparently will refuse to write to NTFS up top 50% of the time - it won't damage your NTFS but why the hell would I use a driver that refuses to work half the time?).
I really should look into the Windows EXT2/3 Installable File System mentioned above. If it's TRULY reliable, I could dispense with FAT32 and use EXT3 for all my data. I already have a couple utilities that can be used to examine EXT file systems from Windows, but having a full EXT2/3 file system installed would be much better - IF it is TRULY reliable.