I agree that there are a lot of cluebies that run Testing or, god forbid, Unstable. It's oft suggested, albeit jokingly, that Sid should be password protected, but then this would result in the distribution of crackz and the emergence of "Sid kiddies".
Fact is Unstable breaks. It breaks often and it sometimes breaks horribly. If you have no idea what to do when, for instance, pam breaks do not run Unstable. If you must use it install apt-listbugs.
Testing is...less broken but still not recommended if you don't know what you're doing at all. Tracking 'Sarge' since the freeze should be pretty safe, though.
The problem is, I think, that Woody does not support newer hardware. This is why you find many people tracking Testing/Unstable. Hopefully Sarge's release will fix this somewhat.
Having said all that however, I must say that DD's are some of the most pragmatic people I know, and I am very happy tracking Debian on my boxes.
I have great admiration of the Debian project and philosophy, but frankly I think it's a little too ambitious. They basically want to get a huge number of packages all stable across a huge number of platforms for release. The fact that so many users recommend Unstable or even Testing to end-users points out flaws in the development model IMO.
And so what? These are end-users and Stable does not make a great desktop, for much the same reason that OpenBSD doesn't make a great desktop. You can have new and shiny or you can have old and stable. It's a trade-off that comes up often on Slashdot: Easy of use versus security.
But broadband in the UK is still far better than a lot of countries, as far as speed and price is concerned.
And far worse than others, e.g. South Korea, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and the USA. I'm talking 100Mbit for the price that we pay for 2Mbit.
Plus coverage isn't stellar either. My little village has only just had the exchange upgraded for DSL. Of course, I'm only able to get 512/256 due to attenuation (distance)....
I share meringuoid's cynicism not just because of the way things are now but because of the way they were when the net was becoming mainstream in this country. Remember metered access? I do all to well. 1p/min to play Quake against someone in the next village soon added up to ungodly phone bills.
BT were extremely reluctant to allow unmetered internet access because they were obviously making a mint the way things were. I have no idea what forced them into changing since I was living abroad when it happened but I bet they fought it tooth and nail.
The only hope for 'Broadband Britain' that I see is are these pie in the sky wireless airships which are sometimes posted to/.. Otherwise, telecommunications will continue to be controlled by BT and thus second-rate at best.
Linspire runs as root, right? I'm sure loads of other 'user-friendly' but half-baked distros do too.
I have a friend who will remain nameless who switched from Slackware to Debian and wanted me to tell him how to give a user root privileges. I told him to su when necessary and set up sudo. No, he wanted to emulate the Administrator account on Windows. I think he spends most of his time there (unsurprisingly).
Exactly the same thing came up in #debian the other day. New user "didn't care about messing up his computer because there's nothing important on there anyway". Yet it's connected to the Internet.
Well, Debian is still using XFree86 but they aren't switching to X.org at all. Instead they're going with freedesktop.org's modular trees (xlibs/xserver/xapps) sometime in the future.
As for fonts, I personally like Nimbus Sans and Andale Mono -- free Adobe PS look-alike fonts.
Well, 2009 == 3 Moore cycles = $((CURRENTSPEC ** 3)), in theory, but I don't see consumers buying such machines -- even to run Longhorn -- and I don't know if such expotential advancement is still possible in the chip world.
I don't know what I would do with a 40000+ machine (to use AMD's rating system)...
GP's post is clearly just a bid for cheap karma, and you ruined it by that there critical thinking:(
I bought a barton 2500+ over a year ago and it wasn't even approaching the high-end (~$100) at the time, and he's bemoaning a 1.5GHz? Sure, it's not just the cost of the chip but these kind of specs offer great compatibility with old and cheap systems. How much enjoyment one would get out of running Doom 3 with minimum requirements is another matter...
Myself, I almost meet the recommened req. (except gfx card) and so I really don't see the need to upgrade.
I too roll my eyes when I hear Microsoft apologists claim "...Windows and IE as the easiest way to get something done and (somewhat reliably) working." This is flat out wrong.
OSX is the easiest way for 'average users' to perform any 'average' task. Period.
If these 'average users' want a superior solution then they must pay for it either with cash (Apple) or their time (GNU/Linux). Neither of these alternatives have a real incentive to compete with Microsoft on price. Apple aren't going to be selling budget $200 Macs anytime soon; FOSS developers won't be making hand holding wizards instead of man pages.
However, other parties (SuSE, Mandrake, Lin(dows|spire|dash), etc.) are trying to compete with Microsoft on price and ease of use. Whether or not they are ultimately successful remains to be seen but any competition to Microsoft's monopoly is a good thing for the consumer.
Oh nos, you were both modded up! Does that mean that there isn't a/. hivemind? Do people have different opinions here?!
Legitimate support for a DVD playback
DeCSS has been deemed legitimate in the eyes of the law.
games
True, true. Windows has the bears share of the gaming market. I can't wait for Doom3 myself:)
MS Office
A Word Processor is a Word Processor. At the end of the day you're simply printing a formatted document. As to compatability, MS Office doesn't import older.docs either so...
painless firewalling
iptables is unrivaled by anything in the Microsoft world and there are plenty of scripts/programs provided for your convinence.
free, automatic updates
Yeah, 'cos there ain't nothing like that for that there Loonix.
Hmm, I do see your point. I guess that's why RH has 50% market share to Debian's 15% (however accurate these numbers are...): Most people prefer regular snapshots to tracking active distributions.
Most people wouldn't use unstable in a production environment (other than as a test platform) and I do agree that tracking testing can be 'fun' when some nasties slip through. Security fixes in testing also present a problem because, even though they're fast tracked through unstable (2 days instead of 10, iirc) there's still no 'vendor' fix available as soon as some people might like. And while stable enjoys the attention of the Debian security team and fixes turn up in Sid pretty fast, testing is left out in the open, comparatively.
As for "won't even install", are you talking SATA here? Otherwise, I found Woody's 2.4 kernel to generally have adequate hardware support.
But I am glad that Sarge hasn't been delayed. For one it will stop people backporting 2.6 kernels to Woody...
There is nothing stagnant about Debian. If you're talking about Debian/stable being ancient you're only showing that you know nothing of the three different Debian distributions. HAND.
Hi, like the grandparent poster, I tried freenet but discarded it as unusable without a permanent connection. Is it still pretty much unusable as a transient node?
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
It's not kind of like driving a car. Other drivers don't crash into you just because you're driving a Punto. No one releases huge robots on to the highways that are programmed to crush Fords, then make new Ford crushing robots out of the scrap.
This was an attack by mounted by an actual blackhat...who initally sniffed a password. The operating system is irrelevant if your password is stolen.
So, yeah, that was a human error exploited by an unscrupulous individual but do you leave your house unlocked because only theives would break in anyway? It's best not to tempt people.
And, again, that analogy sucks too.
It's more like innoculization. You're protecting yourself against the most common diseases (0-day Windows exploits). Yeah, it's not much good if someone decides to break your legs with a baseball bat or you have unprotected sex -- and the shot can be painful -- but, on balance, it's better for you.
Or something. What do I care for your 'health' anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
Heh
:)
That was my first thought when I saw the story
The second was "how long until Linux binaries are available?"
I had to clean up a friends Toshiba laptop a few months ago and experienced 6 BSOD's in 3-4 hours.
Isn't anecdotal evidence swell?
I agree that there are a lot of cluebies that run Testing or, god forbid, Unstable. It's oft suggested, albeit jokingly, that Sid should be password protected, but then this would result in the distribution of crackz and the emergence of "Sid kiddies".
Fact is Unstable breaks. It breaks often and it sometimes breaks horribly. If you have no idea what to do when, for instance, pam breaks do not run Unstable. If you must use it install apt-listbugs.
Testing is...less broken but still not recommended if you don't know what you're doing at all. Tracking 'Sarge' since the freeze should be pretty safe, though.
The problem is, I think, that Woody does not support newer hardware. This is why you find many people tracking Testing/Unstable. Hopefully Sarge's release will fix this somewhat.
Having said all that however, I must say that DD's are some of the most pragmatic people I know, and I am very happy tracking Debian on my boxes.
I have great admiration of the Debian project and philosophy, but frankly I think it's a little too ambitious. They basically want to get a huge number of packages all stable across a huge number of platforms for release. The fact that so many users recommend Unstable or even Testing to end-users points out flaws in the development model IMO.
And so what? These are end-users and Stable does not make a great desktop, for much the same reason that OpenBSD doesn't make a great desktop. You can have new and shiny or you can have old and stable. It's a trade-off that comes up often on Slashdot: Easy of use versus security.
Have you tried fluxbox? I seriously doubt that litestep comes close. Sorry.
:P
Besides there's always ion and rapoison...
Could you tell me where do you find good 250g SATA drives for $100 each, please?
But broadband in the UK is still far better than a lot of countries, as far as speed and price is concerned.
/.. Otherwise, telecommunications will continue to be controlled by BT and thus second-rate at best.
And far worse than others, e.g. South Korea, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and the USA. I'm talking 100Mbit for the price that we pay for 2Mbit.
Plus coverage isn't stellar either. My little village has only just had the exchange upgraded for DSL. Of course, I'm only able to get 512/256 due to attenuation (distance)....
I share meringuoid's cynicism not just because of the way things are now but because of the way they were when the net was becoming mainstream in this country. Remember metered access? I do all to well. 1p/min to play Quake against someone in the next village soon added up to ungodly phone bills.
BT were extremely reluctant to allow unmetered internet access because they were obviously making a mint the way things were. I have no idea what forced them into changing since I was living abroad when it happened but I bet they fought it tooth and nail.
The only hope for 'Broadband Britain' that I see is are these pie in the sky wireless airships which are sometimes posted to
Heh, yes.
Linspire runs as root, right? I'm sure loads of other 'user-friendly' but half-baked distros do too.
I have a friend who will remain nameless who switched from Slackware to Debian and wanted me to tell him how to give a user root privileges. I told him to su when necessary and set up sudo. No, he wanted to emulate the Administrator account on Windows. I think he spends most of his time there (unsurprisingly).
Exactly the same thing came up in #debian the other day. New user "didn't care about messing up his computer because there's nothing important on there anyway". Yet it's connected to the Internet.
Life lessons? People are lazy and selfish.
Meanwhile in Broadband Britain[sic(k)]...
:/
I believe the fastest DSL one can get is 4096/512 (in inner London only, iirc).
What's your buddy's upload, 25Mbits? Can he bond several lines to give himself 400Mbits?(!) Is 100Mbits only available in Tokyo?
Not that I follow the mailinglists but FD.O is supposedly fully compatible with X.Org:
. html
. html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/03/msg03540
And, ah, on further digging it seems 1) it's all up in the air and 2) they'll use X.Org until FD.O is ready.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/07/msg00427
Well, Debian is still using XFree86 but they aren't switching to X.org at all. Instead they're going with freedesktop.org's modular trees (xlibs/xserver/xapps) sometime in the future.
As for fonts, I personally like Nimbus Sans and Andale Mono -- free Adobe PS look-alike fonts.
Nevermind, I'm just retarded.
Comes of posting whilst being a moron.
** is expotentiation in C (and zsh, not sure of other shells).
:/
I was inconsistant, however, in saying 40000+ -- 4^(4/1.5), 'cause of a 4 year term -- instead of 60000+. Comes of posting when tired. Um, yeah
Well, 2009 == 3 Moore cycles = $((CURRENTSPEC ** 3)), in theory, but I don't see consumers buying such machines -- even to run Longhorn -- and I don't know if such expotential advancement is still possible in the chip world.
I don't know what I would do with a 40000+ machine (to use AMD's rating system)...
GP's post is clearly just a bid for cheap karma, and you ruined it by that there critical thinking :(
I bought a barton 2500+ over a year ago and it wasn't even approaching the high-end (~$100) at the time, and he's bemoaning a 1.5GHz? Sure, it's not just the cost of the chip but these kind of specs offer great compatibility with old and cheap systems. How much enjoyment one would get out of running Doom 3 with minimum requirements is another matter...
Myself, I almost meet the recommened req. (except gfx card) and so I really don't see the need to upgrade.
I too roll my eyes when I hear Microsoft apologists claim "...Windows and IE as the easiest way to get something done and (somewhat reliably) working." This is flat out wrong.
OSX is the easiest way for 'average users' to perform any 'average' task. Period.
If these 'average users' want a superior solution then they must pay for it either with cash (Apple) or their time (GNU/Linux). Neither of these alternatives have a real incentive to compete with Microsoft on price. Apple aren't going to be selling budget $200 Macs anytime soon; FOSS developers won't be making hand holding wizards instead of man pages.
However, other parties (SuSE, Mandrake, Lin(dows|spire|dash), etc.) are trying to compete with Microsoft on price and ease of use. Whether or not they are ultimately successful remains to be seen but any competition to Microsoft's monopoly is a good thing for the consumer.
Oh nos, you were both modded up! Does that mean that there isn't a /. hivemind? Do people have different opinions here?!
:)
.docs either so...
Legitimate support for a DVD playback
DeCSS has been deemed legitimate in the eyes of the law.
games
True, true. Windows has the bears share of the gaming market. I can't wait for Doom3 myself
MS Office
A Word Processor is a Word Processor. At the end of the day you're simply printing a formatted document. As to compatability, MS Office doesn't import older
painless firewalling
iptables is unrivaled by anything in the Microsoft world and there are plenty of scripts/programs provided for your convinence.
free, automatic updates
Yeah, 'cos there ain't nothing like that for that there Loonix.
FS: You've just described Apple's new Spotlight feature. It'll be copied by both Microsoft and the FOSS community given time.
"Delete all files older than 2 weeks"
heh...genius.
B-b-but, amazon.co.uk shows:So what, no Linux binaries on the CD? August 13th?
Damnitalltoheck.
Hmm, I do see your point. I guess that's why RH has 50% market share to Debian's 15% (however accurate these numbers are...): Most people prefer regular snapshots to tracking active distributions.
Most people wouldn't use unstable in a production environment (other than as a test platform) and I do agree that tracking testing can be 'fun' when some nasties slip through. Security fixes in testing also present a problem because, even though they're fast tracked through unstable (2 days instead of 10, iirc) there's still no 'vendor' fix available as soon as some people might like. And while stable enjoys the attention of the Debian security team and fixes turn up in Sid pretty fast, testing is left out in the open, comparatively.
As for "won't even install", are you talking SATA here? Otherwise, I found Woody's 2.4 kernel to generally have adequate hardware support.
But I am glad that Sarge hasn't been delayed. For one it will stop people backporting 2.6 kernels to Woody...
There is nothing stagnant about Debian. If you're talking about Debian/stable being ancient you're only showing that you know nothing of the three different Debian distributions. HAND.
Hi, like the grandparent poster, I tried freenet but discarded it as unusable without a permanent connection. Is it still pretty much unusable as a transient node?
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
Uh huh.
It's not kind of like driving a car. Other drivers don't crash into you just because you're driving a Punto. No one releases huge robots on to the highways that are programmed to crush Fords, then make new Ford crushing robots out of the scrap.
Car analogies suck.
Debian Investigation Report
This was an attack by mounted by an actual blackhat...who initally sniffed a password. The operating system is irrelevant if your password is stolen.
So, yeah, that was a human error exploited by an unscrupulous individual but do you leave your house unlocked because only theives would break in anyway? It's best not to tempt people.
And, again, that analogy sucks too.
It's more like innoculization. You're protecting yourself against the most common diseases (0-day Windows exploits). Yeah, it's not much good if someone decides to break your legs with a baseball bat or you have unprotected sex -- and the shot can be painful -- but, on balance, it's better for you.
Or something. What do I care for your 'health' anyway?
Looks good, I'll remember it if I get any takers :)