Umm, MS didn't beat anyone to the punch.
1) MS doesn't have REAL alpha blending (and neither will KDE) like OS X does. In these GUIs, the translucency effect only lasts as long as the object the transparant window is over doesn't change. After that it breaks down. Its nothing that cool, BeOS, QNX, and even E has had it for a long time.
2) X still doesn't support anti-aliasing, and its not an easy thing to implement. X has a major problem in that its designers left the door totally wide open for different GUIs, but decided to keep the rendering protocol hard to extend. As such, it thinks that all fonts are monochrome bitmaps. It took a ton of work to get X to do TrueType, and anti-aliasing, which needs to blend the text with the window underneath will also be a ton of work. Its great that it is so far along now, but I can guarentee it wasn't easy.
Its a nifty effect, but it is not easy to implement, (since it changes the rendering model significantly) and everyone except X has had it for a while now.
It appears that your underlying motivation for detracting from linux is that you hate linux's growing popularity
because it overwhelms BeOS' popularity.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Really. That would explain why BeOS never occurs anywhere in my post. I do use BeOS, and no I don't resent Linux for its popularity. I think it could do some things differently, but if it ever becomes better than BeOS (from my POV of course) then I'd have no problems switching.
First of all, FreeBSD is basicly a distribution like Debian is, and like Redhat is. The only difference is that FreeBSD has its own kernel as well.
>>>>>>>>
No. FreeBSD is not a distribution, it is an OS. The FreeBSD guys not only work on the kernel, but in userland as well. This compares to the Linux distro guys (sorry, I haven't tried Debian so I don't know if that applies to them) where the most work they do in userland is to mess up some packages like KDE2 and GNOME to include ugly icons and fake dependencies. Compare this to FreeBSD and its "architectured" design, and you see my point. Examples: FreeBSD has a method for upgrading the system that whoops everything (except maybe Debian) CVSup all the way. And it does it with userland tools too, courtesy of the organized nature of the project. If you take a look at the command line tools, you'll notice that they all work like CVS (or CVS works like the BSD tools) secondary commads don't have a -, there is only one format for commands (not -h and --help) and parameters are much more standardized.
As far as your opinion that FreeBSD feels slick, that is a totally subjective, not to mention unsubstantiated, claim, that I will call it a frivolous comparison made to make linux look bad.
>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Yes, that's my whole purpose in life, to make Linux look bad. Good god are you one of those conspiracy theorists? Yes, JLG has hired me to disparage Linux as much as I can and to open up the way for Be to become the next windows. Slickness is not subjective. FreeBSD has polish. It shows in the config scripts, directory layout, package system, config programs, etc. Hell, even the kernel config file is really clean. Its obvious that Slackware are Debian are just more slick than, say, RedHat. Same thing for FreeBSD.
Nvidia, ReiserFS, etc, although they aren't default in linux distributions, they are none-the-less fully compatable with 99.9999% of things out there, and if there is an incompatability that hole will most surely be paved over momentarily.
>>>>>>>>>>
Huh? I like ReiserFS and the NVIDIA drivers. I never said they were incompatible. The NVIDIA drivers in particular are why I don't plan to keep BSD. The NVIDIA drivers shouldn't be standard (because its not applicable to all systems). When ReiserFS becomes stable (ie a part of Linux 2.4) then it would be wise for the LSB to adopt it as the standard filesystem. It's not a software incompatiblity thing, but a system thing. A book written for the LSB standard should be 100% applicable to any distro out there that supports that standard. I'm not saying that these should be the ONLY types of distros, the Debians and Slackwares of Linux-land will continue to exist, I'm just saying that a standard should exist. If it is a good, strong, standard, then you get lots of benifits. There is a minimum level of quality assurance. You get software and package compatiblity (I don't have a quad Xeon, I don't have time to compile everything from source. RPMS are so tied to their distros its ridiculous) and user interface compatiblity. You see all these people get mad when commerical software only officially supports RedHat, but if you had an LSB standard, then commerical software could support a much larger range of distros without having to worry about distro-specific issues.
Mr BeOS advocate general, I guess we can call you that, your fanaticism is very apparent. I appreciate your interest in Beos, and hope BeOS succeeds in the way you want it to. But I don't appreciate your niggardly, constant detraction from linux. I think you have ulterior motives. I understand that you, yourself may not have come to terms with these motives, as they appear to be rooted in your emotional synapses.
>>>>>>>>>>
Hey, I think you're trolling? I detract from Linux because I have no interest in being one of those "me to" idiots that do nothing but extoll Linux's virtues. Linux has its problems. You can't ignore that fact. It has its good sides, but we already know about those. The problems are where our attention should be focused. The more people that know and complain about the problems, the more likey it is that they are going to get fixed.
Search for it. At least on BeOS, a system wide search for a particular library takes no time at all. I doubt it would be much slower on Linux, and when ReiserFS gets the db addons, it might be faster.
Apparantly the LSB has no scope whatsoever. I seriously think they should grow some balls and create a standard. It's not like everyone has to follow the standard, but as long as one exists and is effectivly promoted, most distros will support it. And those that don't, don't. That's free software. I have been trying out FreeBSD 4.2 lately, and I have to say it is quite slick. Linux, even distros like Slackware, feels cobbled together. However, with FreeBSD, there is so much consistancy, so much thoughtful design, and actual CONVENTIONS, that I weep with happiness. Problematically though, the NVIDIA drivers are a lot faster than the Xfree86 ones (even at 2D they are about 30-50% faster) and ReiserFS is a bit faster than the BSD filesystem. (Though I haven't tried softupdates yet.) If I wasn't obsessed with graphics performance, it would definately become my next *NIX.
BSD license you are allowing others to make their own moral decision about what they will do with your source, but with the GPL you are forcing
them to uphold your moral views.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That's the heart of the matter. By definition, when you force some one to uphold YOUR moral views, then you are restricting freedom. The BSD license gives you freedom, while the GPL license takes away some of that freedom in order to provide something Good(TM). The freest society possible is anarchy. Democracy, however, trades some of that freedom in order to provide the Good thing of keeping people from killing each other. My point is that neither license has a clear advantage, but that each is a personal choice. If you feel that people have every right to use your code without releasing their own, then by all means use the BSD license. If you feel that the overall-good (which is usually CONTRARY to freedom) is best served by other people OSSing their code, then go ahead and use the GPL. Neither person is wrong, they just have different views.
PS> I'm pretty sure, that if you feel that slavery is right, you have every right to sell yourself into it.
You're using circular logic. You say that Linux is more popular with companies because of the GPL, I point out that the BSD license is more favorable to companies, and you say that Linux is better because it is more popular because of the GPL.
Huh?
Why benifits does the GPL have over the BSD license for companies?
Maybe they benchmarked them ?? Seriously, FFS is a really solid file system, different from ext2 or ReiserfFS
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I HAVE benchmarked them. Bonnie, iozone, postmark, be-fan-mark (random file ops;), all say ReiserFS is faster than ext (at the default blocksize at least.)
I just want to know: If the BSD license doesn't qualify as free software, THEN WHAT THE HELL IS FREE SOFTWARE? Aside from Public Domain, BSD is probably the most liberal license out there, much freer than GPL in the true sense of the word? I'm not terribly familiar with the FSF, so I would appreciate it if you would clarify.
I just have a few questions about xMach, it sounds like an interesting project.
1) Could you explain its benifets as compared to other Linux distros?
2) Does it use 2.4, or 2.2?
Seriously though, here are the real questions:
1) How do you justify using Mach as opposed to something like L4? In other words, what do you have to say about xMach that refutes the claims that Mach is slow? (Not, microkernels, Mach specifically.)
2) What versions of the BSD's are you working off of?
3) What are you doing other than merging Mach and 4.4BSD to make the system as fast as you say?
4) What benifets does Mach provide as opposed to traditional BSD's?
5) What does xMach have that something like Darwin doesn't?
I'm ecstatic to see another OS, especially one designed to be light and fast, on the scene, I just want to know some of the details. Thanks in advance.
MacOS X is not UNIX. Why do I have to be the first one to point this out.
A) Ports won't use the BSD API, they will use the MacOS API.
B) New apps won't use the BSD API, they will use the OO API.
C) Cross platform apps will write for the BSD API, and then port it only to Linux.
D) OS X is NOT open source. Any GUI app (ie all Mac apps) immediatly becomes tied to the closed-source sections of the OS.
MacOS X is BSD in name and core only. Everything exposed to the user is unique, and 90% of developers will never get to the BSD layer. As such, BSD won't become any more popular. Take a look at the Linux market. Porting between Linux and BSD essentially takes a recompile and maybe some tweeks, and despite the booming closed-source Linux app market, BSD is getting *NO* extra, native software. Don't get me wrong, I like BSD (FreeBSD) but I really think BSD users are getting their hopes up for what will essentially be another prioriatory OS from Apple.
Good god, does't everyone wish Linus dead? Everytime I hear something about what if he hadn't/wouldn't work on Linux, and all of them involve death. Couldn't he just grow up to not Linux computers, or suddenly one day decide he likes interior design better. Do we have to kill him off everytime?
Re:SICK OF IT! Giving up moderator points to say i
on
BSD to Leapfrog Linux?
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· Score: 2
I know you were probably well-intentioned, but I have to take offense to what you say:
"but there are a LOT of W9x users who simply just hate Microsoft, but don't have the technical fortitude to venture into Linux (or *BSD)."
I prefer Windows NT 4.0 to Linux. I really do. Neither of them crash on me, and NT has more apps and a much faster desktop. It has better OpenGL and multimedia support. It takes less RAM than my Slackware/KDE/GNOME combo, and if I didn't need some of the *NIX tools, I would not have Linux on my system. After finagling a lot with it, I am technically competent enough to use and admin it, but I don't really like too. That's a personal desicion, but I really hate it when everyone assumes that people only use Windows because they aren't smart enough to use *NIX.
Actually, ReiserFS is a good deal faster than ext2, and FreeBSD's FS is inbetween ext2 and ReiserFS in speed. I don't know why people say journeling FSs are slow. In my usage, the journeling FSs (ReiserFS and bfs) I've used tend to be *faster* than the non-journeling ones.
Umm, what interest is the BSD license to closed source drivers? The GPL is not the reason Linux has gained in popularity. In fact, I'm pretty sure that most compaines would prefer to work with the BSD license (ie. the community doesn't raise a farakas for every non-GPL app that uses GPL code.) The reason Linux is popular is not the GPL (commerically, the GPL is more of a hinderence than BSD) but because it insipired a group of hackers, and was at the right place at the right time. Linux started as a project to bring UNIX to some guys desktop machine. It was a new project, and a cool think to hack, so people latched on to it. When OSS BSD was released a few years later, it was already pretty mature, and thus not as fun to develop. As a result of this, you get a determined group of hackers pushing Linux, and a mature group of old-timers pushing BSD. Guess which group has more of an ability to hype and push their software? Also due to the fact that it was hyping at just the right time (Linux pretty much hit the mainstream around the time MS had its problems with the DOJ) it caught on, and thus developers like NVIDIA, Sigma Designs, and Aureal (I don't think those drivers were ever released) have supported Linux. Linux has grown into a good system, but not because of the GPL vs BSD, but because of the type of developers that it brought in. If BSD had been hyped and pushed in the same way, then it would be in the exact same place as Linux.
Well, information theory is all nice and good, but I have a problem with any theory that applies scientific principles to social problems. You simply cannot apply rigid rules to human society. While socity is most likely quite logical in organization, it is orders of magnitude more complex than any known scientific problem, and a more humanistic approach is necessary to understand it best. Thus says one side. There is of course, the other side to that debate, but given that I don't agree with it, I don't care to mention it. Perfect information is surely a solution to the problem socialism faces, but perfectly behaved humans works too. The underlying problem is not a lack of information, but deficits in human character. Given perfect people, allocation issues would work themselves out nicely. Also, I am more partial to the perfect-people arguement, as this seems (to me at least) to be a more realistic, and more basic solution to the problem.
The point is that Ring0 gives access to hardware that you'd otherwise not have. And yes, ASM will ALWAYS be needed. Think about it, the hardware platform won't change for several years. (upgrades have proved to be complete and utter failures on consoles. Nintendo couldn't sell the $40 RAM upgrade, and MS sure as hell won't be able to seel a new GPU.) In order to keep each generation of game looking better, you have to bypass standard APis and write to the metal. The first games will use OS features, but I can bet you that by the second or third generation games come out, people will have built up custom ASM libraries and will use as little of the OS as possible. Look at the Saturn, for example. The first few games used DirectX, then all games afterwords used custom routines and the to-the-metal Sega OS. Windows 2K doesn't work EXACTLY like the underlying hardware. Given that the hardware is constant, why bother to write to the OS when you can get a nice 10-15% speedup by writing to the hardware. DirectX doesn't work like the NVIDIA chip does, so why bother with an API? Its not that much harder to code, so why not do it? PSX developers still use a large amount of ASM, and only recently has there been a trend towards C-only games. However, even those access hardware directly. Unless DirectX8 is a hell of a lot thinner than it was when I was using it (yesterday) I can guarentee you that most of the good games will be XBox-only. Also remember than console and PC gamers are totally different demographics, and there is little incentive for many console manufaturers to jump the fence.
Actually, Dell ships RedHat 7.0 for all machines. I haven't heard any complaints about it, though I think a lot of Dell's customers also think a 1.5GHz P4 is 50% faster than a 1GHz PIII.
Umm, C++ shared libraries break too. That's one reason BeOS is still using egcs, because the system is implemented as a bunch of shared libraries exporting C++ classes. (I'm pretty sure that C shared libs are still compatible though)
I'm pretty sure that if you don't trust for-profit companies you are by DEFINITION communist. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Communism, just like capitalism is totally innocent in its motives. Both systems have the ultimate goal of making the world a good place to live. They just go about it in different ways. The fact that capitalism happens to work well in practice, while communism doesn't, is just the small issue of human nature. To make an analogy, OpenGL is a great standard, its only when a 2bit company like ATI tries to implement it that it seems flakey. (To be fair, the Radeon has decent GL drivers, much better than the POS Rage PRO)
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Umm, MS didn't beat anyone to the punch. 1) MS doesn't have REAL alpha blending (and neither will KDE) like OS X does. In these GUIs, the translucency effect only lasts as long as the object the transparant window is over doesn't change. After that it breaks down. Its nothing that cool, BeOS, QNX, and even E has had it for a long time. 2) X still doesn't support anti-aliasing, and its not an easy thing to implement. X has a major problem in that its designers left the door totally wide open for different GUIs, but decided to keep the rendering protocol hard to extend. As such, it thinks that all fonts are monochrome bitmaps. It took a ton of work to get X to do TrueType, and anti-aliasing, which needs to blend the text with the window underneath will also be a ton of work. Its great that it is so far along now, but I can guarentee it wasn't easy. Its a nifty effect, but it is not easy to implement, (since it changes the rendering model significantly) and everyone except X has had it for a while now.
Your comments sound uninformed and rash.
It appears that your underlying motivation for detracting from linux is that you hate linux's growing popularity
because it overwhelms BeOS' popularity.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Really. That would explain why BeOS never occurs anywhere in my post. I do use BeOS, and no I don't resent Linux for its popularity. I think it could do some things differently, but if it ever becomes better than BeOS (from my POV of course) then I'd have no problems switching.
First of all, FreeBSD is basicly a distribution like Debian is, and like Redhat is. The only difference is that FreeBSD has its own kernel as well.
>>>>>>>>
No. FreeBSD is not a distribution, it is an OS. The FreeBSD guys not only work on the kernel, but in userland as well. This compares to the Linux distro guys (sorry, I haven't tried Debian so I don't know if that applies to them) where the most work they do in userland is to mess up some packages like KDE2 and GNOME to include ugly icons and fake dependencies. Compare this to FreeBSD and its "architectured" design, and you see my point. Examples: FreeBSD has a method for upgrading the system that whoops everything (except maybe Debian) CVSup all the way. And it does it with userland tools too, courtesy of the organized nature of the project. If you take a look at the command line tools, you'll notice that they all work like CVS (or CVS works like the BSD tools) secondary commads don't have a -, there is only one format for commands (not -h and --help) and parameters are much more standardized.
As far as your opinion that FreeBSD feels slick, that is a totally subjective, not to mention unsubstantiated, claim, that I will call it a frivolous comparison made to make linux look bad.
>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Yes, that's my whole purpose in life, to make Linux look bad. Good god are you one of those conspiracy theorists? Yes, JLG has hired me to disparage Linux as much as I can and to open up the way for Be to become the next windows. Slickness is not subjective. FreeBSD has polish. It shows in the config scripts, directory layout, package system, config programs, etc. Hell, even the kernel config file is really clean. Its obvious that Slackware are Debian are just more slick than, say, RedHat. Same thing for FreeBSD.
Nvidia, ReiserFS, etc, although they aren't default in linux distributions, they are none-the-less fully compatable with 99.9999% of things out there, and if there is an incompatability that hole will most surely be paved over momentarily.
>>>>>>>>>>
Huh? I like ReiserFS and the NVIDIA drivers. I never said they were incompatible. The NVIDIA drivers in particular are why I don't plan to keep BSD. The NVIDIA drivers shouldn't be standard (because its not applicable to all systems). When ReiserFS becomes stable (ie a part of Linux 2.4) then it would be wise for the LSB to adopt it as the standard filesystem. It's not a software incompatiblity thing, but a system thing. A book written for the LSB standard should be 100% applicable to any distro out there that supports that standard. I'm not saying that these should be the ONLY types of distros, the Debians and Slackwares of Linux-land will continue to exist, I'm just saying that a standard should exist. If it is a good, strong, standard, then you get lots of benifits. There is a minimum level of quality assurance. You get software and package compatiblity (I don't have a quad Xeon, I don't have time to compile everything from source. RPMS are so tied to their distros its ridiculous) and user interface compatiblity. You see all these people get mad when commerical software only officially supports RedHat, but if you had an LSB standard, then commerical software could support a much larger range of distros without having to worry about distro-specific issues.
Mr BeOS advocate general, I guess we can call you that, your fanaticism is very apparent. I appreciate your interest in Beos, and hope BeOS succeeds in the way you want it to. But I don't appreciate your niggardly, constant detraction from linux. I think you have ulterior motives. I understand that you, yourself may not have come to terms with these motives, as they appear to be rooted in your emotional synapses.
>>>>>>>>>>
Hey, I think you're trolling? I detract from Linux because I have no interest in being one of those "me to" idiots that do nothing but extoll Linux's virtues. Linux has its problems. You can't ignore that fact. It has its good sides, but we already know about those. The problems are where our attention should be focused. The more people that know and complain about the problems, the more likey it is that they are going to get fixed.
Search for it. At least on BeOS, a system wide search for a particular library takes no time at all. I doubt it would be much slower on Linux, and when ReiserFS gets the db addons, it might be faster.
Apparantly the LSB has no scope whatsoever. I seriously think they should grow some balls and create a standard. It's not like everyone has to follow the standard, but as long as one exists and is effectivly promoted, most distros will support it. And those that don't, don't. That's free software. I have been trying out FreeBSD 4.2 lately, and I have to say it is quite slick. Linux, even distros like Slackware, feels cobbled together. However, with FreeBSD, there is so much consistancy, so much thoughtful design, and actual CONVENTIONS, that I weep with happiness. Problematically though, the NVIDIA drivers are a lot faster than the Xfree86 ones (even at 2D they are about 30-50% faster) and ReiserFS is a bit faster than the BSD filesystem. (Though I haven't tried softupdates yet.) If I wasn't obsessed with graphics performance, it would definately become my next *NIX.
BSD license you are allowing others to make their own moral decision about what they will do with your source, but with the GPL you are forcing
them to uphold your moral views.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That's the heart of the matter. By definition, when you force some one to uphold YOUR moral views, then you are restricting freedom. The BSD license gives you freedom, while the GPL license takes away some of that freedom in order to provide something Good(TM). The freest society possible is anarchy. Democracy, however, trades some of that freedom in order to provide the Good thing of keeping people from killing each other. My point is that neither license has a clear advantage, but that each is a personal choice. If you feel that people have every right to use your code without releasing their own, then by all means use the BSD license. If you feel that the overall-good (which is usually CONTRARY to freedom) is best served by other people OSSing their code, then go ahead and use the GPL. Neither person is wrong, they just have different views.
PS> I'm pretty sure, that if you feel that slavery is right, you have every right to sell yourself into it.
You're using circular logic. You say that Linux is more popular with companies because of the GPL, I point out that the BSD license is more favorable to companies, and you say that Linux is better because it is more popular because of the GPL.
Huh?
Why benifits does the GPL have over the BSD license for companies?
Maybe they benchmarked them ?? Seriously, FFS is a really solid file system, different from ext2 or ReiserfFS
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I HAVE benchmarked them. Bonnie, iozone, postmark, be-fan-mark (random file ops;), all say ReiserFS is faster than ext (at the default blocksize at least.)
I just want to know: If the BSD license doesn't qualify as free software, THEN WHAT THE HELL IS FREE SOFTWARE? Aside from Public Domain, BSD is probably the most liberal license out there, much freer than GPL in the true sense of the word? I'm not terribly familiar with the FSF, so I would appreciate it if you would clarify.
I just have a few questions about xMach, it sounds like an interesting project.
1) Could you explain its benifets as compared to other Linux distros?
2) Does it use 2.4, or 2.2?
Seriously though, here are the real questions:
1) How do you justify using Mach as opposed to something like L4? In other words, what do you have to say about xMach that refutes the claims that Mach is slow? (Not, microkernels, Mach specifically.)
2) What versions of the BSD's are you working off of?
3) What are you doing other than merging Mach and 4.4BSD to make the system as fast as you say?
4) What benifets does Mach provide as opposed to traditional BSD's?
5) What does xMach have that something like Darwin doesn't?
I'm ecstatic to see another OS, especially one designed to be light and fast, on the scene, I just want to know some of the details. Thanks in advance.
Like I said, I've used bfs, FFS, QNX-FS, ReiserFS, ext2, NTFS, and VFAT. (As my main file system)
MacOS X is not UNIX. Why do I have to be the first one to point this out.
A) Ports won't use the BSD API, they will use the MacOS API.
B) New apps won't use the BSD API, they will use the OO API.
C) Cross platform apps will write for the BSD API, and then port it only to Linux.
D) OS X is NOT open source. Any GUI app (ie all Mac apps) immediatly becomes tied to the closed-source sections of the OS.
MacOS X is BSD in name and core only. Everything exposed to the user is unique, and 90% of developers will never get to the BSD layer. As such, BSD won't become any more popular. Take a look at the Linux market. Porting between Linux and BSD essentially takes a recompile and maybe some tweeks, and despite the booming closed-source Linux app market, BSD is getting *NO* extra, native software. Don't get me wrong, I like BSD (FreeBSD) but I really think BSD users are getting their hopes up for what will essentially be another prioriatory OS from Apple.
Good god, does't everyone wish Linus dead? Everytime I hear something about what if he hadn't/wouldn't work on Linux, and all of them involve death. Couldn't he just grow up to not Linux computers, or suddenly one day decide he likes interior design better. Do we have to kill him off everytime?
I know you were probably well-intentioned, but I have to take offense to what you say:
"but there are a LOT of W9x users who simply just hate Microsoft, but don't have the technical fortitude to venture into Linux (or *BSD)."
I prefer Windows NT 4.0 to Linux. I really do. Neither of them crash on me, and NT has more apps and a much faster desktop. It has better OpenGL and multimedia support. It takes less RAM than my Slackware/KDE/GNOME combo, and if I didn't need some of the *NIX tools, I would not have Linux on my system. After finagling a lot with it, I am technically competent enough to use and admin it, but I don't really like too. That's a personal desicion, but I really hate it when everyone assumes that people only use Windows because they aren't smart enough to use *NIX.
Actually, ReiserFS is a good deal faster than ext2, and FreeBSD's FS is inbetween ext2 and ReiserFS in speed. I don't know why people say journeling FSs are slow. In my usage, the journeling FSs (ReiserFS and bfs) I've used tend to be *faster* than the non-journeling ones.
Umm, what interest is the BSD license to closed source drivers? The GPL is not the reason Linux has gained in popularity. In fact, I'm pretty sure that most compaines would prefer to work with the BSD license (ie. the community doesn't raise a farakas for every non-GPL app that uses GPL code.) The reason Linux is popular is not the GPL (commerically, the GPL is more of a hinderence than BSD) but because it insipired a group of hackers, and was at the right place at the right time. Linux started as a project to bring UNIX to some guys desktop machine. It was a new project, and a cool think to hack, so people latched on to it. When OSS BSD was released a few years later, it was already pretty mature, and thus not as fun to develop. As a result of this, you get a determined group of hackers pushing Linux, and a mature group of old-timers pushing BSD. Guess which group has more of an ability to hype and push their software? Also due to the fact that it was hyping at just the right time (Linux pretty much hit the mainstream around the time MS had its problems with the DOJ) it caught on, and thus developers like NVIDIA, Sigma Designs, and Aureal (I don't think those drivers were ever released) have supported Linux. Linux has grown into a good system, but not because of the GPL vs BSD, but because of the type of developers that it brought in. If BSD had been hyped and pushed in the same way, then it would be in the exact same place as Linux.
Well, information theory is all nice and good, but I have a problem with any theory that applies scientific principles to social problems. You simply cannot apply rigid rules to human society. While socity is most likely quite logical in organization, it is orders of magnitude more complex than any known scientific problem, and a more humanistic approach is necessary to understand it best. Thus says one side. There is of course, the other side to that debate, but given that I don't agree with it, I don't care to mention it. Perfect information is surely a solution to the problem socialism faces, but perfectly behaved humans works too. The underlying problem is not a lack of information, but deficits in human character. Given perfect people, allocation issues would work themselves out nicely. Also, I am more partial to the perfect-people arguement, as this seems (to me at least) to be a more realistic, and more basic solution to the problem.
The point is that Ring0 gives access to hardware that you'd otherwise not have. And yes, ASM will ALWAYS be needed. Think about it, the hardware platform won't change for several years. (upgrades have proved to be complete and utter failures on consoles. Nintendo couldn't sell the $40 RAM upgrade, and MS sure as hell won't be able to seel a new GPU.) In order to keep each generation of game looking better, you have to bypass standard APis and write to the metal. The first games will use OS features, but I can bet you that by the second or third generation games come out, people will have built up custom ASM libraries and will use as little of the OS as possible. Look at the Saturn, for example. The first few games used DirectX, then all games afterwords used custom routines and the to-the-metal Sega OS. Windows 2K doesn't work EXACTLY like the underlying hardware. Given that the hardware is constant, why bother to write to the OS when you can get a nice 10-15% speedup by writing to the hardware. DirectX doesn't work like the NVIDIA chip does, so why bother with an API? Its not that much harder to code, so why not do it? PSX developers still use a large amount of ASM, and only recently has there been a trend towards C-only games. However, even those access hardware directly. Unless DirectX8 is a hell of a lot thinner than it was when I was using it (yesterday) I can guarentee you that most of the good games will be XBox-only. Also remember than console and PC gamers are totally different demographics, and there is little incentive for many console manufaturers to jump the fence.
That's why they bundle egcs.
I hate to say this... but try BeOS. Nice fast 64bit FS, and depending on your needs, it might suit you ;)
I'm pretty sure that Suse 6.4 was the first one to have most of those features.
Yea, unless you use C++.
What do you mean? www.warez.com is just a click away! Or do you actually BUY Windows?
.... damn ...
I do not advocate the use of pirated software.
I do not condone its use.
Any information you may have gotten from this post cannot be used against me.
HELP! MS has sent its elite product-control unit after me. They're trying to raid my house. Oh my god, they have light artillery
Actually, Dell ships RedHat 7.0 for all machines. I haven't heard any complaints about it, though I think a lot of Dell's customers also think a 1.5GHz P4 is 50% faster than a 1GHz PIII.
Umm, C++ shared libraries break too. That's one reason BeOS is still using egcs, because the system is implemented as a bunch of shared libraries exporting C++ classes. (I'm pretty sure that C shared libs are still compatible though)
I'm pretty sure that if you don't trust for-profit companies you are by DEFINITION communist. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Communism, just like capitalism is totally innocent in its motives. Both systems have the ultimate goal of making the world a good place to live. They just go about it in different ways. The fact that capitalism happens to work well in practice, while communism doesn't, is just the small issue of human nature. To make an analogy, OpenGL is a great standard, its only when a 2bit company like ATI tries to implement it that it seems flakey. (To be fair, the Radeon has decent GL drivers, much better than the POS Rage PRO)