Noone reads Linux Journal? I like it so much I just got a subscription...along with Wired which I've had for a while.
Other than those two, I sporadically get Linux Format(expensive, but comes with nice DVDs), Linux World(little too focused on enterprise for my tastes), 2600(compact, sometimes useful, often entertaining in its un-usefulness), C/C++ Programming(had a subscription but only read half of them), Men's Fitness(another subscription that rarely got put to much use...), and every now and then its fun to read Heavy Metal(adult-oriented cartoons if you've never read it).
btw, thanks to whoever mentioned free subs. to stuff like Wired...I just extended mine a year for free!
I buy 2600 occasionally too, although i sometimes wonder why.
There was actually an article last month "taking advantage of physical access" which explained that if you had physical access to a machine, it was logged in, and the account looged in had administrator priveleges that in fact, you could plug in a USB flash drive and run malicious code(assuming of course that it has USB ports).
This was a 2-page article even. There are interesting articles, but the more I read of that magazine, the less impressed i am with these so-called "hackers."
i'm a student, and i think this is a great idea. As our labs are primarily MS, CS students at my school are often forced to use the terribly boated ful version of Visual Studio for our homework. We don't need the rights to write commercial apps, and we don't need a 5-disk monster of a programming suite to write a "hellow world" program.
I wonder why they didn't do this sooner. I find that when I'm forced to work under windows I use a host of other free, lightweight editors(such as jedit) to do my assignments...the kind of editors that are plentiful in the *nix world.
I suppose MS just doesn't want anyone developing software for them who isn't willing to make a large enough monetary investment in software that they are unlikely to switch platforms. I shudder to think of the cost of their SDK.
I'm in college right now, and taking a class on Apache. My progessor is teaching a class full of us to run X-Windows in Linux as root. Because "its easier."
These people will be running your servers someday everyone. Clearly a college degree is no guarantee that you'll know what you're doing.
First of all, I will assert that it's an evil, evil store. Second of all I'll agree that this guy is a complete jackass. But you have to realize something too: 99% of the people who come in that store don't run anything other than windows, and for the most part have never heard of Linux. Furthermore, those of us who DO run Linux know a lot more than any electronics salesman, and do our homework ahead of time(which you did).
Honestly, i think if hes claiming to have certifications hes full of shit. Noone with any certs would have any reason to work there. When I was hired, I made $6.75 an hour and I was the highest paid non-manager in the most profitable part of the store(computers/home office). Even a crapy cert would earn me more than that.
I had a similar experience when looking for wireless cards to go with my new(used) laptop. When I asked salesmen things like "does this work under Linux?" or "does it have a PrismII chipset?" they all smiled and politely conceded that i sounded like i knew a hell of a lot more then them, and if I had any questions about anythign else to let them know(which i did, and they were helpful).
Don't get me wrong, after working there I hate the place. But i think you just happened to find one real jackass. Most of the people I know working there are just highschool/college students trying to make a little spending money. Noone there is trying to be a computer guru(except for the guy who helped you of course:)
You realize that Debian Stable is STILL using the 2.2 kernel?
I run it on a small fileserver, and find it is able to do essentially everything my newer machines running 2.4 or 2.6 can...it just takes a little more tinkering sometimes. As far as the basic functionality however, its there.
this is such an obvious troll, its no wonder you chose to remain anonymous.
I'm assuming that since he was referring to something he could use on his Windows box. You'd have to be nuts to try running MSOffice under Linux.
However, if it WAS possible to run Gedit under Windows, that would be great. I've spent many frustrating afternoons in a campus computer lab trying to write a program in notepad, or visual studio if its there(whoch does syntax highlighting at least, but is a pain to work with).
A quick google DOES reveal that Emacs has apparently been ported to windows!
You have a valid point...but just because the two teams may share doesn't make that illegal.
Applying your logic to other platforms, Sun wouldn't be able to sell StarOffice, and Apple wouldn't be allowed to distribute Safari(which incidentally is the EXACT same situation as what MS was sued for concerning IE...Apple just has less market share).
Apple and Sun have built their careers on having intimate knowledge of both the hardware and software that make up their platforms, sharing this knowledge as much as possible to make both better, along with any other products. If you look at anything other than marketshare, they're really much worse than MS in that regard.
I downloaded them from Linuxiso.org with no problems a few months back.
i would consider waiting for the release of 10.0 though, if you're going to purchase slack. KDE 3.2 is nice, theres also newer versions of Gnome, GCC, better Wireless and Alsa support, and the 2.6 kernel is there if you want it.
Ironic that you are a BSD user clinging to Linux for the games while many Linux users are stil clinging to a windows partition for games.
Seems to me sometimes that a lot of Linux users are cross-overs from the Windows world, whereas BSD users are more likely to have been using Unix all along.
Perhaps I don't understand.net and Mono well enough. My understanding was that both were different implementations of an open specification? If that is the case, then I don't see where MS would have any legal ground whatsoever to stop the Mono project, and further, if they did they almost certainly would have attempted to stop development sooner, as Mono aims to be everything the MS.net is and more(as it will run on more hardware, and more OS's.)
So where exactly does MS's legal ground lie?
I still don't get the documentation thing. I had a registered version of SuSE, and I was still able to find a lot more help with free distros like Slackware than on SuSE's support site.
More frustrating is that SuSE doesn't participate or endorse forums like Linuxquestions.com, so there is an incredible lack of SuSE help in other places as well.
Its a very nice looking distro in a lot of ways, but i am still amazed by the lack of help for a registered user of their software. I think improving this, and participating more in rest of the community should be a high priority for them.
you make some very good points. I thought i was pretty specific in saying that Slackware was good "for me" and that Suse and Red Hat were not good "for me." If i was in charge of a large environment like that, i would certainly feel more pressure towards an RPM based distro, and honestly if it was a large school or business picking up the tab i'd probably even be inclined towards RH Enterprise.
For my own personal workstation I find Slackware to be much more flexible AND usable than these others. For that matter, I also find support for Slackware to be BETTER than SuSE. I found precious little in SuSE's knowledge base for registered customers, and they have refused to endorse a forum on LinuxQuestions.com, citing their own as the reason why. I've found it much easier to find help with Slackware on IRC and places like LinuxQuestions then in scouring the net for help with SuSE.
It has some nice tools. YaST certianly one of them. And Red Hat certainly has some great advantages in an enterprise environment, not the least of which is that if you're forking over a large amount of $$$, i'm sure support is much better. But for my personal use, I keep coming back to Slack. Its cheaper, easier, and the support for a single-user is quite frankly, better.
Thats pretty much my story as well. I got a new laptop 2 weeks ago, and decided to be open about trying something other than slack...ultimately i found everything else frustrating, and more time-consuming. Maybe part of that is my having used slack enough to be familiar with it. The only other Linux distro I can say a lot positive about is Debian. I run it on my file-server...apt-get is a great tool. Perhaps if i'd ever gotten apt4rpm up and running under SuSE i'd have used it enough to have different feelings.
i didn't say i was smart, i just said that explained my problem:)
I'm not sure about the apt4rpm myself, i read up on all its required dependencies, and downloaded and installed each thing in proper order. At a certain point each one i started getting conflicting dependencies...ugh.
I was only trying SuSE because i'd gotten a free version of SuSE 8.2 complete with registration, and figured it was worth a shot. Some of my problems are undoubtedly due my not being a regular user of the distro. Generally speaking however, I've found Slackware much easier to work with then SuSE or Red Hat...and I am very much a newbie, crossing over from a lifetime of Windows use.
Some of these tools just seem to be the antithesis of what i switched to Linux for in the first place: choice. If all i wanted was a system to make decisions for me...well i've got a windows box for that:)
That would explain why last week i downloaded their FTP install boot disk and was unable to get it to work.
In the meantime I've installed Slackware instead...and much more atisfied with that then I was with SuSE 8.2.
My experience so far has been that RPM-based distros like SuSE and Red Hat that attempt to simplify dependency problems with propreitary upgrade tools inevitably just end up causing me much more frustration. SuSE had NO provision for getting software other than what was in the version I'd installed(8.2) and wouldn't even install apt4rpm due to dependency hell. I've found installing and upgrading new software in Slackware a 1000x simpler than any RPM.
I will attest to Yast being a nice tool, that was easy to use, and did a pretty good job of detecting my hardware. But the complications in upgrading individual packages in a registered copy of their distro proved too frustrating to justify sticking with it.
I would only reccomend SuSE to a newbie who has no desire for messing around with things once its installed, and just wants it to work reasonably well from the beginning.
you know, the one without wireless was listed at $379
I just bought a p3 laptop on e-bay for $300
seems like a bad deal...but i suppose if texting is all you need, and it runs on AA's, it would be convenient. And i'm sure the $379 was nothing compared to the cost of law school...probably worth it in that situation.
I've been buying MS products at my university for years. They have all been full, working, non-upgrade versions. I probably am paying for them out of my tuition...but I have no choice in that. They're also spending $12 million on a "student wellness center" this year...i don't get to take my share of that and spend it on a gym membership instead, do i?
For a college student on a budget, those cheap MS offers can be a godsend. Linux works great for me, but I'm a programmer. Its far superior for virtually everything I have to do for school. I'm sure an English major feels differently...and loves the $15 Windows they can get, even if its got no manual, or support. and that $10 Office is important when they are using Word in every class.
Hasn't it been proven enough times that Linux is only more cost effective than Windows when its support cost(i mean cost in time as well as money) is less than for Windows? Most college students don't have the time to spend learning a whole new OS when the one they've got works fine. For CompSci majors, Linux is essential. For everyone else...I don't blame them for wanting their Windows. It is going to cost them a great deal more to try to use Linux. And that goes for anyone else isn't a computer guru, or have easy access to one.
I think TurboLinux DOES have a good idea here as well. Eventually, if Linux has OpenOffice, and can play WM, and all the other things Windows does, along with being more stable, and not inflicting DRM on you, Linux may be able to make some serious inroads into the desktop market. I can say without a doubt that if they managed to build Windows so that you absolutely could not burn protected files(which they are attempting), then a LOT of college students would be switching to Linux overnight:)
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Noone reads Linux Journal? I like it so much I just got a subscription...along with Wired which I've had for a while.
Other than those two, I sporadically get Linux Format(expensive, but comes with nice DVDs), Linux World(little too focused on enterprise for my tastes), 2600(compact, sometimes useful, often entertaining in its un-usefulness), C/C++ Programming(had a subscription but only read half of them), Men's Fitness(another subscription that rarely got put to much use...), and every now and then its fun to read Heavy Metal(adult-oriented cartoons if you've never read it).
btw, thanks to whoever mentioned free subs. to stuff like Wired...I just extended mine a year for free!
I buy 2600 occasionally too, although i sometimes wonder why. There was actually an article last month "taking advantage of physical access" which explained that if you had physical access to a machine, it was logged in, and the account looged in had administrator priveleges that in fact, you could plug in a USB flash drive and run malicious code(assuming of course that it has USB ports). This was a 2-page article even. There are interesting articles, but the more I read of that magazine, the less impressed i am with these so-called "hackers."
i'm a student, and i think this is a great idea. As our labs are primarily MS, CS students at my school are often forced to use the terribly boated ful version of Visual Studio for our homework. We don't need the rights to write commercial apps, and we don't need a 5-disk monster of a programming suite to write a "hellow world" program.
I wonder why they didn't do this sooner. I find that when I'm forced to work under windows I use a host of other free, lightweight editors(such as jedit) to do my assignments...the kind of editors that are plentiful in the *nix world.
I suppose MS just doesn't want anyone developing software for them who isn't willing to make a large enough monetary investment in software that they are unlikely to switch platforms. I shudder to think of the cost of their SDK.
I agree with the "foot in the door" thing.
I'm in college right now, and taking a class on Apache. My progessor is teaching a class full of us to run X-Windows in Linux as root. Because "its easier."
These people will be running your servers someday everyone. Clearly a college degree is no guarantee that you'll know what you're doing.
Once upon a time, I worked in Best Buy.
:)
First of all, I will assert that it's an evil, evil store. Second of all I'll agree that this guy is a complete jackass. But you have to realize something too: 99% of the people who come in that store don't run anything other than windows, and for the most part have never heard of Linux. Furthermore, those of us who DO run Linux know a lot more than any electronics salesman, and do our homework ahead of time(which you did).
Honestly, i think if hes claiming to have certifications hes full of shit. Noone with any certs would have any reason to work there. When I was hired, I made $6.75 an hour and I was the highest paid non-manager in the most profitable part of the store(computers/home office). Even a crapy cert would earn me more than that.
I had a similar experience when looking for wireless cards to go with my new(used) laptop. When I asked salesmen things like "does this work under Linux?" or "does it have a PrismII chipset?" they all smiled and politely conceded that i sounded like i knew a hell of a lot more then them, and if I had any questions about anythign else to let them know(which i did, and they were helpful).
Don't get me wrong, after working there I hate the place. But i think you just happened to find one real jackass. Most of the people I know working there are just highschool/college students trying to make a little spending money. Noone there is trying to be a computer guru(except for the guy who helped you of course
You realize that Debian Stable is STILL using the 2.2 kernel? I run it on a small fileserver, and find it is able to do essentially everything my newer machines running 2.4 or 2.6 can...it just takes a little more tinkering sometimes. As far as the basic functionality however, its there.
this is such an obvious troll, its no wonder you chose to remain anonymous.
using that same logic, i should get solaris with Staroffice and MacOS with Quark.
DRM can be an evil thing, but i think you're really stretching it with that analogy.
I'm assuming that since he was referring to something he could use on his Windows box. You'd have to be nuts to try running MSOffice under Linux.
However, if it WAS possible to run Gedit under Windows, that would be great. I've spent many frustrating afternoons in a campus computer lab trying to write a program in notepad, or visual studio if its there(whoch does syntax highlighting at least, but is a pain to work with).
A quick google DOES reveal that Emacs has apparently been ported to windows!
You have a valid point...but just because the two teams may share doesn't make that illegal.
Applying your logic to other platforms, Sun wouldn't be able to sell StarOffice, and Apple wouldn't be allowed to distribute Safari(which incidentally is the EXACT same situation as what MS was sued for concerning IE...Apple just has less market share).
Apple and Sun have built their careers on having intimate knowledge of both the hardware and software that make up their platforms, sharing this knowledge as much as possible to make both better, along with any other products. If you look at anything other than marketshare, they're really much worse than MS in that regard.
I downloaded them from Linuxiso.org with no problems a few months back.
i would consider waiting for the release of 10.0 though, if you're going to purchase slack. KDE 3.2 is nice, theres also newer versions of Gnome, GCC, better Wireless and Alsa support, and the 2.6 kernel is there if you want it.
Agreed. I run KDE on mine, which is pretty much the epitomy of GUI eyecandy.
thank you thank you. I've been using 0.9 for a week, and have been quite annoyed by the new theme.
0.8 has actually run pretty stable for me. The main difference I've seen when upgrading to 0.9 is the ugly new theme.
Firefox is a great browser, I hope they rethink the big gian aqua-looking theme for 1.0
Ironic that you are a BSD user clinging to Linux for the games while many Linux users are stil clinging to a windows partition for games.
Seems to me sometimes that a lot of Linux users are cross-overs from the Windows world, whereas BSD users are more likely to have been using Unix all along.
Which is exactly why i run Firefox instead. It is much, much lighter and faster.
Perhaps I don't understand .net and Mono well enough. My understanding was that both were different implementations of an open specification? If that is the case, then I don't see where MS would have any legal ground whatsoever to stop the Mono project, and further, if they did they almost certainly would have attempted to stop development sooner, as Mono aims to be everything the MS .net is and more(as it will run on more hardware, and more OS's.)
So where exactly does MS's legal ground lie?
they are exiting the markt, but MS actually made pretty decent network hardware. Enen works under Linux :)
I still don't get the documentation thing. I had a registered version of SuSE, and I was still able to find a lot more help with free distros like Slackware than on SuSE's support site.
More frustrating is that SuSE doesn't participate or endorse forums like Linuxquestions.com, so there is an incredible lack of SuSE help in other places as well.
Its a very nice looking distro in a lot of ways, but i am still amazed by the lack of help for a registered user of their software. I think improving this, and participating more in rest of the community should be a high priority for them.
you make some very good points. I thought i was pretty specific in saying that Slackware was good "for me" and that Suse and Red Hat were not good "for me." If i was in charge of a large environment like that, i would certainly feel more pressure towards an RPM based distro, and honestly if it was a large school or business picking up the tab i'd probably even be inclined towards RH Enterprise. For my own personal workstation I find Slackware to be much more flexible AND usable than these others. For that matter, I also find support for Slackware to be BETTER than SuSE. I found precious little in SuSE's knowledge base for registered customers, and they have refused to endorse a forum on LinuxQuestions.com, citing their own as the reason why. I've found it much easier to find help with Slackware on IRC and places like LinuxQuestions then in scouring the net for help with SuSE. It has some nice tools. YaST certianly one of them. And Red Hat certainly has some great advantages in an enterprise environment, not the least of which is that if you're forking over a large amount of $$$, i'm sure support is much better. But for my personal use, I keep coming back to Slack. Its cheaper, easier, and the support for a single-user is quite frankly, better.
Thats pretty much my story as well. I got a new laptop 2 weeks ago, and decided to be open about trying something other than slack...ultimately i found everything else frustrating, and more time-consuming. Maybe part of that is my having used slack enough to be familiar with it. The only other Linux distro I can say a lot positive about is Debian. I run it on my file-server...apt-get is a great tool. Perhaps if i'd ever gotten apt4rpm up and running under SuSE i'd have used it enough to have different feelings.
i didn't say i was smart, i just said that explained my problem :)
:)
I'm not sure about the apt4rpm myself, i read up on all its required dependencies, and downloaded and installed each thing in proper order. At a certain point each one i started getting conflicting dependencies...ugh.
I was only trying SuSE because i'd gotten a free version of SuSE 8.2 complete with registration, and figured it was worth a shot. Some of my problems are undoubtedly due my not being a regular user of the distro. Generally speaking however, I've found Slackware much easier to work with then SuSE or Red Hat...and I am very much a newbie, crossing over from a lifetime of Windows use.
Some of these tools just seem to be the antithesis of what i switched to Linux for in the first place: choice. If all i wanted was a system to make decisions for me...well i've got a windows box for that
That would explain why last week i downloaded their FTP install boot disk and was unable to get it to work.
In the meantime I've installed Slackware instead...and much more atisfied with that then I was with SuSE 8.2.
My experience so far has been that RPM-based distros like SuSE and Red Hat that attempt to simplify dependency problems with propreitary upgrade tools inevitably just end up causing me much more frustration. SuSE had NO provision for getting software other than what was in the version I'd installed(8.2) and wouldn't even install apt4rpm due to dependency hell. I've found installing and upgrading new software in Slackware a 1000x simpler than any RPM.
I will attest to Yast being a nice tool, that was easy to use, and did a pretty good job of detecting my hardware. But the complications in upgrading individual packages in a registered copy of their distro proved too frustrating to justify sticking with it.
I would only reccomend SuSE to a newbie who has no desire for messing around with things once its installed, and just wants it to work reasonably well from the beginning.
This is the best response anyone has had to this question.
you know, the one without wireless was listed at $379
I just bought a p3 laptop on e-bay for $300
seems like a bad deal...but i suppose if texting is all you need, and it runs on AA's, it would be convenient. And i'm sure the $379 was nothing compared to the cost of law school...probably worth it in that situation.
but me...i'd rather have a cheap laptop.
I've been buying MS products at my university for years. They have all been full, working, non-upgrade versions. I probably am paying for them out of my tuition...but I have no choice in that. They're also spending $12 million on a "student wellness center" this year...i don't get to take my share of that and spend it on a gym membership instead, do i?
For a college student on a budget, those cheap MS offers can be a godsend. Linux works great for me, but I'm a programmer. Its far superior for virtually everything I have to do for school. I'm sure an English major feels differently...and loves the $15 Windows they can get, even if its got no manual, or support. and that $10 Office is important when they are using Word in every class.
Hasn't it been proven enough times that Linux is only more cost effective than Windows when its support cost(i mean cost in time as well as money) is less than for Windows? Most college students don't have the time to spend learning a whole new OS when the one they've got works fine. For CompSci majors, Linux is essential. For everyone else...I don't blame them for wanting their Windows. It is going to cost them a great deal more to try to use Linux. And that goes for anyone else isn't a computer guru, or have easy access to one.
I think TurboLinux DOES have a good idea here as well. Eventually, if Linux has OpenOffice, and can play WM, and all the other things Windows does, along with being more stable, and not inflicting DRM on you, Linux may be able to make some serious inroads into the desktop market. I can say without a doubt that if they managed to build Windows so that you absolutely could not burn protected files(which they are attempting), then a LOT of college students would be switching to Linux overnight :)