IE is a hell of a lot better than netscape. It supports more standards, it has better support for CSS, and DHTML, it has a better JavaVM, it is more stable, it is faster, etc. Push content was a bad idea, it always has been. Admins hated the thing.
Office is a lot better than Staroffice or Wordperfect (Linux version). It is more stable, and despite the bloat, faster. Also, Office tends to have better applications. While Word is a second to Wordperfect, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint blow away Quattro, Presentations, and Paradox (okay Paradox vs. Access is debatable.) Also, Office apps tend to have better "workflow" than Staroffice (which is awefully clunky.) And you can turn of auto-spell checking. How can having auto-checking be a bad thing? You can leave it if you like it, or turn it off if you don't. Lastly, it is standard. Like it or not, no suite provides the sheer compatibility of Word.
As for web-standards, HTML won't cut it. XML might do it, but only when XML authoring tools become much more solid. However the whole thing is moot. You can talk all day long, and it won't change anything. What you need to do is make BETTER applications. What a lot of OSS people miss is this. Not that many people will switch applications just to move to a more Open, feel-good one. They will switch when BETTER applications come out. Make a great application, with tremendous workflow, great context sensitive help, awesome tools, good compatiblilty, and open standards, then people will switch. Otherwise, all the idealistic talk does didly.
While these arguements seem valid when you read them, where are the results in practice? Why is Mozilla so buggy? Why is GNOME so bloated? Why do so many OSS programs feel hacked together and unpolished? Sure there is generally less utter crap in the OSS world but the best commercial software is usually better than the best OSS software. Theoretically OSS should be great, but where are these advantages in practice?
The wall street journal wasn't meant for you. As far as an investor is concerned, GNU+KDE+X+kernel=Linux. All the development that has been going on behind the scenes really doesn't count. What matters is that a new version of the OS (which is a decent simplification of the concept of the kernel, especially in a monolithic system) is forthcoming.
This was actually a very good article, despite what those nitpickers say. The simplifications in the article were necessary to give information about the current situation to the general (non computing public.)
A) When the guy said a new release of the Linux operating system was going to be released, he was correct in not talking about the kernel. People (specifically the target of the magazine, investors) have gotten to understand the term operating system, and while using kernel would be more accurate it would have detracted from the article.
B) When the guy simplified and said that MS tests showed Linux was better than Windows, he also had a point. Instead of talking about how pure TCP/IP throughput was less, he focused on exactly what these tests meant to the average investor. To them, it meant that Windows beat Linux, and was thus better. However, he correctly stated that Linus and the other had taken notice of those problems and fixed them.
C) When they said that Linus only concerned himself with the technical details, not the UI, he was correct, though not accurate. Most people consider the UI just as part of the OS as the kernel. To them, it would really complicate things (especially in an investment journal) if they talked about how X was a seperate library, and GNOME was the GUI and all. They simplified it, and just stated that Linus didn't deal with the GUI, which is in fact true.
Now many of the things stated in this article were inaccurate, but they all seemed to be correct. I would have gotten into more detail about the tests, and not blanketed by saying "Windows was better" but in the end, a lot of people precieved it that way. Though he didn't use the correct terms, or accurate details, the overall impression that he gave satisfied his intenets (to show prospectives for Linux companies to investors in rise of a new release) and gave the right impression about subjects like Linux's involvement with the GUI and the MS tests.
By killing Montery, IBM has dropped a huge bomb on Intel and it's Itanium. With WinNT 64 being nowhere in sight, and other pro UNIXs being quite far off, the death of Montery hits Intel really hard, since that means the only OS that will run on it in the near future will be Linux. Now, while Linux will probably handle the lower-midrange end of the market pretty well, Solaris it ain't. Without an enterprise level OS (or at least one that traditional IT techs PERCIEVE as enterprise level) to go along with it's enterprise level CPU, Intel is going to hit up against quite a barrier with it's already screwy Itanium project.
Sun said pretty much the same thing for Motif/CDE.. and look where that went.
CDE is not free software so the same rules don't apply.
>>>>>
The rules do apply. It is extremely arrogant to think that the GPL is such a magic bullet that it frees software of all the traditional bounderies. The GPL has two beniftes
A) It's free. It keeps the software from being tied to the trails and tribulations of a given company.
B) It allows more people to hack on it, giving a project almost infinate programmer resources.
However, it does nothing for the following.
A) Market factors. If a standardized *NIX DE just wasn't meant to be, it wasn't meant to be. The GPL, the BSD license, or RMS himself can't change that. If a certain type of program just isn't wanted, it just isn't wanted, OSS or not.
B) Product quality. It hasn't been proven that OSS leads to better quality applications. The average major OSS project probably has about as many bugs as the average major commercial product. Although I think the quality of OSS software is more even, with fewer utter crap software, the best commercial software is often better. In terms of polish, OSS software tends to have less of that.
OSS might actually HURT the following.
A) Code bloat. Probably due to the sheer number of contributers (each with delusions of grandeur) large OSS projects tend to have more bloat. Very well managed projects (the Linux kernel) or smaller projects (Mesa) seem to overcome that problem. However, it can't be argued that some of the big OSS applications (GNOME, KDE, Mozilla) need to lose a few pounds in comparison with their commerical counterparts.
B) Innovation. It seems that the great majority of high-profile OSS applications have been done before. Sure the OSS apps tend to build on that foundation, and often make the product better, but one rarely sees a segment buster come out of an OSS project.
OSS is not a magic bullet. It doesn't automatically fix all the realities of software development. Those that don't realize this are deluding themselves.
Will KDE ever have a corporate-backed "foundation" deciding it's future?
It has had one from the start: Troll Tech pays developers to work on KDE so that it's propietary GUI tool can become a standard.
Commercial entities may sponsor development on various aspects of KDE, but they will never be allowed to decide what KDE will become
Try to ask the KDE project founder to consider changing GUI toolkits to a Free one. since he's a paid Troll Tech employee, I don't expect anything more than a
niased excuse to come out of his mouth.
>>>>
"Niased?" I seriously think you are putting on your "all commercial software is crap" hat. Qt is a high quality toolkit. When the KDE project was founded, there was no OSS alternative. Now, KDE is too far advanced for them to change now. Even if some idiot DID decided to rewrite KDE for GTK+, it would require either a nearly from-scratch rewrite, or the resulting product would be a hacked together mess. Qt works well. It is nice to program. Most people have no problem with it. To switch away from it just to please some crazed fundementalists (there is one TRUE go... I mean OSS license!) is a idea so silly it doesn't deserve a second thought.
PS> Qt is not necessarily in the wrong here. They believe that you should be able to charge for commercial uses of your software. They believe that the GPL doesn't satisfy that. If you disagree that they have a right to charge for commercial software, then fine. However it is just that, a disaggreement between beliefs. They have a right to license their software how they want, and you have no right to tell them what license to use.
PS 2.0> If, however, it turns out the Qt is trying to cement it's position as the standard widget set, then of course it would make sense to use an alternative. However, it this point, your judging them on what they have the power to do, not on their actions. So far they've been open and helpfull to the OSS community. Until they actually DO something against the OSS community, condemming them is highly unfair.
Nice equation. Unfortuneately, true. GNOME is still chunkier than KDE. The sad part is, the GNOME at 1.2 is chunkier than KDE at 2.x. While GNOME's size will increase quite a bit in 2.0 (like KDE's did from 1.2x ->2.x) KDE's won't increase from 2.x->2.x. Meaning that when GNOME and KDE are on the same level in terms of features, GNOME is be a lot more heafty than KDE. Of course, that brings us to Solaris. Quite a nice OS, and indispensible on those quad-proc SPARC boxes. However, there is a warning to all newbie Solaris users, never run it on a single proc box. Solaris IS quite heftier than Linux. Interestingly, Sun is targetting this combination at DESKTOP users. Will your computer be able to hold up under the burden?
PS> With the coming of GNOME, KDE, and Mozilla, have you noticed how many Linux zealots have removed "bloated" from NT's list of transgressions?
This guy is right. The popularity of a given genre rises and falls like the tide. For example, RTS games were huge just a short while ago. Before then narrative adventure games were big. FPS games are just what happens to be big right now, it doesn't mean that genres are dying. Soon, the focus will shift to some other gaming arena, and pundits will start saying that FPS games are dying. For an interesting perspective on this, read some of the articles in MaximumPC, the gaming column (can't remember the name though.)
It's incredible. Here everybody hailing the introduction of new Linux handhelds, yet just a few months ago, they flambayed WindowsCE for being to bulky and cumbersome. As far as I can see, there is no difference in terms of interface between the Linux handhelds and the WinCE ones. These things have to be judged on their merits, not the fact that they use Linux. The fact remains that these things will not be usefull until they figure out a decent interface. The current interfaces simply don't work on a handheld. This is evidanced by limp sales of WinCE. Even MS realizes this and is taking steps to changes it. Whether or not a name-change constitutes acceptable changes is irrelevant. At least they realize there is a problem. (That was a joke, laugh) If these new handhelds don't get clever, intuitive interfaces (just rip of Palm, it's so much easier then designing your own!) then they will have limp sales, whether or not they use Linux.
The chip IBM demoed was VERY limited. It only implemented a subset of the PPC instructions, didn't do FP, and instructions had to be "injected" into the chip via a special probe that manipulated leads on the chip. There was a joke about that. It went, "MS may make you go through hell to install software, be even THEY wouldn't go that far!"
Interesting thing about the POWER series. Apple will never be able to ship one. As I remember, the POWER2s were the size of Polaroid prints. 4096mm^2. It wouldn't fit in that cute little cube.
I didn't mean that, FreeBSD and MacOS X aren't competing. However, even though MacOS X is based on FreeBSD, and the changes they put in are OSS, the two are incompatible. That's what would happen if MS decided to "embrace and extend" Linux. Linux wouldn't be taken over, it would just lose relevance. People would program for the new MS-Linux, MS would have a super-stable new platform, and outside the free-software/dedicated OSS people community, Linux would lose relevance. Any apps written for this new MS-Linux wouldn't run on regular Linux, thus MS will have taken a challenger (Linux), embraced it, extended it, and killed (effectivly, imagine Linux's position 3 or 4 years ago) it.
A) Why can't the RISC chips keep up? I thought RISC was supposed to help INCREASE clock speeds. Is it really that Intel and AMD have that much better manufacturing technology? Or is it some other part of the architecture that's holding it back. I mean the Alpha used to be the king of clock-speed, they hit 500MHz at the.35 micron process, and I think the newest ones are still.25. However, I don't think they have 1GHz Alphas in production. What's the holdup?
B) Why the hell would Apple ditch Altivec? It's a GOOD idea. It's not just x86 that dabbles in these instruction extensions, the Alpha has something similar to Altivec and SSE. Given the fact that 3D is going to be so big, why ditch Altivec. It's perfect for multiplying matricies, which is basically what bottles 3D at the CPU end. Not to mention all the physics stuff that uses this. Seeing as SSE boosts performance by 70% in some cases, I don't think it is a good idea to dump SSE in favor of more clock speed. Also, Altivec shouldn't really affect clock-speed, should it? I mean the Alpha got to 700+MHz with it's vector instruction set, so why not the PPC.
C) Wouldn't an Alpha using IBM process technology be cool? Imagine a 1.5+GHz Alpha running on a.18 micron process. Given what Digital did with the.35process, would it surpise anyone if they hit 1.5GHz with a.18? However, what I want to see is an Alpha on IBM.01 micron process. Drool...
No, AGP is limited to two slots. However, (under Win98 at least) you should be able to just get a PCI (there is no Gxxx in PCI though) card and run dual monitors that way.
I'm not a Linux zealot. A BeOS and Windows zealot maybe, but definately not a Linux zealot.
My point is that MS Linux and regular Linux would be INCOMPATIBLE. Thus, one would HAVE to use one or the other. Furthermore, regular Linux would not be able to incorporate the changes, because the major things (like DirectX, COM and OLE) would be in closed-source modules sitting above the kernel. Sure any changes that DirectX makes to the kernel would be OSS, but they would do Linux no good without the actual DirectX libraries.
You miss the point. Say MS retools the kernel to support DirectX. The regular Linux kernel would have not point incorporating those changes, since they require DirectX, which (hypothetically of course) kept under closed source. They could do this, since the changes to the kernel would simply give DX hardware access, and DX would still be an independant library.
A proprietary desktop needn't be integrated with the kernel to be dependant on a specific version. If MS retools the kernel, and the desktop is an independant entity, but requires those changes, then MS has essentially tied the non-free desktop and the free kernel together. Think of it like Aqua. The changes that Apple made to FreeBSD aren't really significant in itself, but simply enable stuff higher up in Quartz and Cocoa. If MS had done the same thing, except with Linux, then effectivly they would have gained control of the OS without violating the GPL.
As for desktop antogonism, that's not possible. If you're going to write an application that supports all the features of a DE, it is nearly impossible to be destkop antagonistic without a whole lot of problems. If MS bases it's desktop on Win32 and Win32 only, a developer would be force to choose between that, and programming for GNOME or KDE.
I never said MS has won. In the case that this hypothetical scenario happens, it will have won. And if you look at it pragmatically, Linux winning DOES require MS losing. By definition there is one winner. In terms of OSs, there is only one winner. Windows beat OS/2. NT largely supplanted Netware and UNIX. There has to be a winner. (Especially in consumer space where the number of apps a particular person needs is greater and much more diverse than in say server space.)
However, these boxes have a LONG shelf life. Developers quickly learn. In the case of the Saturn, some really killer games came out towards the end that really showed of its power. However
A) Sega didn't market it correctly.
B) The dual proc design was inherently hard to code for.
The difference is that dual procs are always hard to code for, while a change in architecture requires re-learning it, but once you get the new paradim, it's easy.
However, it seems that the Ultra will perform close to or better than the Voodoo5 6000. In the benchmarks the Ultra is performing almost twice as fast as a V5 5000. Given the fact that SLI only gives about an average performance boost of around 50-70% at the highest resolutions, it would mean that in most cases the Ultra was faster AND cheaper.
The thing is that I'm pretty sure they didn't MEAN to steal your code. The GPL code used in the driver was some really simple stuff. I'm guessing that some of the speculations were right (that they were so crunched for time, somebody had just used the GPL-code internally and forgotten to take it out.) The same thing happened to Be to, and I'm pretty sure they didn't mean to either. The thing is the GPL allows you to keep the code for internal versions, and sometimes people forget that the code is in there and release it anyway. I'm sure a lot of people have taken GPL code and forgotten about it. does it make it right? No. But the GPL community brought such cases upon itself by being Open Source, and thus have to be willing to put up with such things. They should bring such cases to the attention of the companies that do it, and should push hard to get rid of the problem. However, it is silly to totally boycott a company because some engineer screwed up.
I meant 128. The competitors to the Voodoo2 were the Riva128, the Intel i740, and the Rendition Verite. In the sense that the GeForce2GTS totally wipes the floor with everything else (including Voodoo5) then the Riva128 and i740 were about the same compared to Voodoo2 as the Matrox Gxxx and Voodoo5 are to the GeForce2GTS. (Although the Radeon is good competiton the the GeForce, I haven't seen very many of them around.)
You know how people joke that MS-linux isn't far off? Well, is it? Consider this..,
MS makes a Linux distro. They make a closed-source, propriotary DE that supports most of the Win32 API. They include support for DirectX, COM, and OLE. Now, all these changes require major changes to the kernel. While these changes are GPL'ed, MS has now effectivly forked the kernel.
People start writing apps for this new MS/Linux. Because these apps rely on the modified kernel, and propriotary DE, they will not run on regular Linux.
Everybody switches to this new distro, because it has more apps and better technology.
Slashdot Mirror
IE is a hell of a lot better than netscape. It supports more standards, it has better support for CSS, and DHTML, it has a better JavaVM, it is more stable, it is faster, etc. Push content was a bad idea, it always has been. Admins hated the thing.
Office is a lot better than Staroffice or Wordperfect (Linux version). It is more stable, and despite the bloat, faster. Also, Office tends to have better applications. While Word is a second to Wordperfect, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint blow away Quattro, Presentations, and Paradox (okay Paradox vs. Access is debatable.) Also, Office apps tend to have better "workflow" than Staroffice (which is awefully clunky.) And you can turn of auto-spell checking. How can having auto-checking be a bad thing? You can leave it if you like it, or turn it off if you don't. Lastly, it is standard. Like it or not, no suite provides the sheer compatibility of Word.
As for web-standards, HTML won't cut it. XML might do it, but only when XML authoring tools become much more solid. However the whole thing is moot. You can talk all day long, and it won't change anything. What you need to do is make BETTER applications. What a lot of OSS people miss is this. Not that many people will switch applications just to move to a more Open, feel-good one. They will switch when BETTER applications come out. Make a great application, with tremendous workflow, great context sensitive help, awesome tools, good compatiblilty, and open standards, then people will switch. Otherwise, all the idealistic talk does didly.
While these arguements seem valid when you read them, where are the results in practice? Why is Mozilla so buggy? Why is GNOME so bloated? Why do so many OSS programs feel hacked together and unpolished? Sure there is generally less utter crap in the OSS world but the best commercial software is usually better than the best OSS software. Theoretically OSS should be great, but where are these advantages in practice?
The wall street journal wasn't meant for you. As far as an investor is concerned, GNU+KDE+X+kernel=Linux. All the development that has been going on behind the scenes really doesn't count. What matters is that a new version of the OS (which is a decent simplification of the concept of the kernel, especially in a monolithic system) is forthcoming.
This was actually a very good article, despite what those nitpickers say. The simplifications in the article were necessary to give information about the current situation to the general (non computing public.)
A) When the guy said a new release of the Linux operating system was going to be released, he was correct in not talking about the kernel. People (specifically the target of the magazine, investors) have gotten to understand the term operating system, and while using kernel would be more accurate it would have detracted from the article.
B) When the guy simplified and said that MS tests showed Linux was better than Windows, he also had a point. Instead of talking about how pure TCP/IP throughput was less, he focused on exactly what these tests meant to the average investor. To them, it meant that Windows beat Linux, and was thus better. However, he correctly stated that Linus and the other had taken notice of those problems and fixed them.
C) When they said that Linus only concerned himself with the technical details, not the UI, he was correct, though not accurate. Most people consider the UI just as part of the OS as the kernel. To them, it would really complicate things (especially in an investment journal) if they talked about how X was a seperate library, and GNOME was the GUI and all. They simplified it, and just stated that Linus didn't deal with the GUI, which is in fact true.
Now many of the things stated in this article were inaccurate, but they all seemed to be correct. I would have gotten into more detail about the tests, and not blanketed by saying "Windows was better" but in the end, a lot of people precieved it that way. Though he didn't use the correct terms, or accurate details, the overall impression that he gave satisfied his intenets (to show prospectives for Linux companies to investors in rise of a new release) and gave the right impression about subjects like Linux's involvement with the GUI and the MS tests.
By killing Montery, IBM has dropped a huge bomb on Intel and it's Itanium. With WinNT 64 being nowhere in sight, and other pro UNIXs being quite far off, the death of Montery hits Intel really hard, since that means the only OS that will run on it in the near future will be Linux. Now, while Linux will probably handle the lower-midrange end of the market pretty well, Solaris it ain't. Without an enterprise level OS (or at least one that traditional IT techs PERCIEVE as enterprise level) to go along with it's enterprise level CPU, Intel is going to hit up against quite a barrier with it's already screwy Itanium project.
Sun said pretty much the same thing for Motif/CDE.. and look where that went.
CDE is not free software so the same rules don't apply.
>>>>>
The rules do apply. It is extremely arrogant to think that the GPL is such a magic bullet that it frees software of all the traditional bounderies. The GPL has two beniftes
A) It's free. It keeps the software from being tied to the trails and tribulations of a given company.
B) It allows more people to hack on it, giving a project almost infinate programmer resources.
However, it does nothing for the following.
A) Market factors. If a standardized *NIX DE just wasn't meant to be, it wasn't meant to be. The GPL, the BSD license, or RMS himself can't change that. If a certain type of program just isn't wanted, it just isn't wanted, OSS or not.
B) Product quality. It hasn't been proven that OSS leads to better quality applications. The average major OSS project probably has about as many bugs as the average major commercial product. Although I think the quality of OSS software is more even, with fewer utter crap software, the best commercial software is often better. In terms of polish, OSS software tends to have less of that.
OSS might actually HURT the following.
A) Code bloat. Probably due to the sheer number of contributers (each with delusions of grandeur) large OSS projects tend to have more bloat. Very well managed projects (the Linux kernel) or smaller projects (Mesa) seem to overcome that problem. However, it can't be argued that some of the big OSS applications (GNOME, KDE, Mozilla) need to lose a few pounds in comparison with their commerical counterparts.
B) Innovation. It seems that the great majority of high-profile OSS applications have been done before. Sure the OSS apps tend to build on that foundation, and often make the product better, but one rarely sees a segment buster come out of an OSS project.
OSS is not a magic bullet. It doesn't automatically fix all the realities of software development. Those that don't realize this are deluding themselves.
Will KDE ever have a corporate-backed "foundation" deciding it's future?
It has had one from the start: Troll Tech pays developers to work on KDE so that it's propietary GUI tool can become a standard.
Commercial entities may sponsor development on various aspects of KDE, but they will never be allowed to decide what KDE will become
Try to ask the KDE project founder to consider changing GUI toolkits to a Free one. since he's a paid Troll Tech employee, I don't expect anything more than a
niased excuse to come out of his mouth.
>>>>
"Niased?" I seriously think you are putting on your "all commercial software is crap" hat. Qt is a high quality toolkit. When the KDE project was founded, there was no OSS alternative. Now, KDE is too far advanced for them to change now. Even if some idiot DID decided to rewrite KDE for GTK+, it would require either a nearly from-scratch rewrite, or the resulting product would be a hacked together mess. Qt works well. It is nice to program. Most people have no problem with it. To switch away from it just to please some crazed fundementalists (there is one TRUE go... I mean OSS license!) is a idea so silly it doesn't deserve a second thought.
PS> Qt is not necessarily in the wrong here. They believe that you should be able to charge for commercial uses of your software. They believe that the GPL doesn't satisfy that. If you disagree that they have a right to charge for commercial software, then fine. However it is just that, a disaggreement between beliefs. They have a right to license their software how they want, and you have no right to tell them what license to use.
PS 2.0> If, however, it turns out the Qt is trying to cement it's position as the standard widget set, then of course it would make sense to use an alternative. However, it this point, your judging them on what they have the power to do, not on their actions. So far they've been open and helpfull to the OSS community. Until they actually DO something against the OSS community, condemming them is highly unfair.
Not to mention the fact that KDE (once out of beta of course) is faster, more stable, and more colorful. (Always a plus!)
Nice equation. Unfortuneately, true. GNOME is still chunkier than KDE. The sad part is, the GNOME at 1.2 is chunkier than KDE at 2.x. While GNOME's size will increase quite a bit in 2.0 (like KDE's did from 1.2x ->2.x) KDE's won't increase from 2.x->2.x. Meaning that when GNOME and KDE are on the same level in terms of features, GNOME is be a lot more heafty than KDE. Of course, that brings us to Solaris. Quite a nice OS, and indispensible on those quad-proc SPARC boxes. However, there is a warning to all newbie Solaris users, never run it on a single proc box. Solaris IS quite heftier than Linux. Interestingly, Sun is targetting this combination at DESKTOP users. Will your computer be able to hold up under the burden?
PS> With the coming of GNOME, KDE, and Mozilla, have you noticed how many Linux zealots have removed "bloated" from NT's list of transgressions?
This guy is right. The popularity of a given genre rises and falls like the tide. For example, RTS games were huge just a short while ago. Before then narrative adventure games were big. FPS games are just what happens to be big right now, it doesn't mean that genres are dying. Soon, the focus will shift to some other gaming arena, and pundits will start saying that FPS games are dying. For an interesting perspective on this, read some of the articles in MaximumPC, the gaming column (can't remember the name though.)
It's incredible. Here everybody hailing the introduction of new Linux handhelds, yet just a few months ago, they flambayed WindowsCE for being to bulky and cumbersome. As far as I can see, there is no difference in terms of interface between the Linux handhelds and the WinCE ones. These things have to be judged on their merits, not the fact that they use Linux. The fact remains that these things will not be usefull until they figure out a decent interface. The current interfaces simply don't work on a handheld. This is evidanced by limp sales of WinCE. Even MS realizes this and is taking steps to changes it. Whether or not a name-change constitutes acceptable changes is irrelevant. At least they realize there is a problem. (That was a joke, laugh) If these new handhelds don't get clever, intuitive interfaces (just rip of Palm, it's so much easier then designing your own!) then they will have limp sales, whether or not they use Linux.
The chip IBM demoed was VERY limited. It only implemented a subset of the PPC instructions, didn't do FP, and instructions had to be "injected" into the chip via a special probe that manipulated leads on the chip. There was a joke about that. It went, "MS may make you go through hell to install software, be even THEY wouldn't go that far!"
Interesting thing about the POWER series. Apple will never be able to ship one. As I remember, the POWER2s were the size of Polaroid prints. 4096mm^2. It wouldn't fit in that cute little cube.
What's the point? The Crusoe is a low-performance low-power part. It would be quite a step down from the G4's.
I didn't mean that, FreeBSD and MacOS X aren't competing. However, even though MacOS X is based on FreeBSD, and the changes they put in are OSS, the two are incompatible. That's what would happen if MS decided to "embrace and extend" Linux. Linux wouldn't be taken over, it would just lose relevance. People would program for the new MS-Linux, MS would have a super-stable new platform, and outside the free-software/dedicated OSS people community, Linux would lose relevance. Any apps written for this new MS-Linux wouldn't run on regular Linux, thus MS will have taken a challenger (Linux), embraced it, extended it, and killed (effectivly, imagine Linux's position 3 or 4 years ago) it.
I'll keep this succinct.
.35 micron process, and I think the newest ones are still .25. However, I don't think they have 1GHz Alphas in production. What's the holdup?
.18 micron process. Given what Digital did with the .35process, would it surpise anyone if they hit 1.5GHz with a .18? However, what I want to see is an Alpha on IBM .01 micron process. Drool...
A) Why can't the RISC chips keep up? I thought RISC was supposed to help INCREASE clock speeds. Is it really that Intel and AMD have that much better manufacturing technology? Or is it some other part of the architecture that's holding it back. I mean the Alpha used to be the king of clock-speed, they hit 500MHz at the
B) Why the hell would Apple ditch Altivec? It's a GOOD idea. It's not just x86 that dabbles in these instruction extensions, the Alpha has something similar to Altivec and SSE. Given the fact that 3D is going to be so big, why ditch Altivec. It's perfect for multiplying matricies, which is basically what bottles 3D at the CPU end. Not to mention all the physics stuff that uses this. Seeing as SSE boosts performance by 70% in some cases, I don't think it is a good idea to dump SSE in favor of more clock speed. Also, Altivec shouldn't really affect clock-speed, should it? I mean the Alpha got to 700+MHz with it's vector instruction set, so why not the PPC.
C) Wouldn't an Alpha using IBM process technology be cool? Imagine a 1.5+GHz Alpha running on a
Meanwhile, PPC can trash 1.1GHz x86s in some tests... So can 600MHz Alphas. Clock speed isn't everything.
Isn't that ironic, that the DRI driver only does 16bpp when a major attraction of the Gxxx series is the great 32bit color quality?
No, AGP is limited to two slots. However, (under Win98 at least) you should be able to just get a PCI (there is no Gxxx in PCI though) card and run dual monitors that way.
I'm not a Linux zealot. A BeOS and Windows zealot maybe, but definately not a Linux zealot.
My point is that MS Linux and regular Linux would be INCOMPATIBLE. Thus, one would HAVE to use one or the other. Furthermore, regular Linux would not be able to incorporate the changes, because the major things (like DirectX, COM and OLE) would be in closed-source modules sitting above the kernel. Sure any changes that DirectX makes to the kernel would be OSS, but they would do Linux no good without the actual DirectX libraries.
You miss the point. Say MS retools the kernel to support DirectX. The regular Linux kernel would have not point incorporating those changes, since they require DirectX, which (hypothetically of course) kept under closed source. They could do this, since the changes to the kernel would simply give DX hardware access, and DX would still be an independant library.
A proprietary desktop needn't be integrated with the kernel to be dependant on a specific version. If MS retools the kernel, and the desktop is an independant entity, but requires those changes, then MS has essentially tied the non-free desktop and the free kernel together. Think of it like Aqua. The changes that Apple made to FreeBSD aren't really significant in itself, but simply enable stuff higher up in Quartz and Cocoa. If MS had done the same thing, except with Linux, then effectivly they would have gained control of the OS without violating the GPL.
As for desktop antogonism, that's not possible. If you're going to write an application that supports all the features of a DE, it is nearly impossible to be destkop antagonistic without a whole lot of problems. If MS bases it's desktop on Win32 and Win32 only, a developer would be force to choose between that, and programming for GNOME or KDE.
I never said MS has won. In the case that this hypothetical scenario happens, it will have won. And if you look at it pragmatically, Linux winning DOES require MS losing. By definition there is one winner. In terms of OSs, there is only one winner. Windows beat OS/2. NT largely supplanted Netware and UNIX. There has to be a winner. (Especially in consumer space where the number of apps a particular person needs is greater and much more diverse than in say server space.)
However, these boxes have a LONG shelf life. Developers quickly learn. In the case of the Saturn, some really killer games came out towards the end that really showed of its power. However
A) Sega didn't market it correctly.
B) The dual proc design was inherently hard to code for.
The difference is that dual procs are always hard to code for, while a change in architecture requires re-learning it, but once you get the new paradim, it's easy.
However, it seems that the Ultra will perform close to or better than the Voodoo5 6000. In the benchmarks the Ultra is performing almost twice as fast as a V5 5000. Given the fact that SLI only gives about an average performance boost of around 50-70% at the highest resolutions, it would mean that in most cases the Ultra was faster AND cheaper.
The thing is that I'm pretty sure they didn't MEAN to steal your code. The GPL code used in the driver was some really simple stuff. I'm guessing that some of the speculations were right (that they were so crunched for time, somebody had just used the GPL-code internally and forgotten to take it out.) The same thing happened to Be to, and I'm pretty sure they didn't mean to either. The thing is the GPL allows you to keep the code for internal versions, and sometimes people forget that the code is in there and release it anyway. I'm sure a lot of people have taken GPL code and forgotten about it. does it make it right? No. But the GPL community brought such cases upon itself by being Open Source, and thus have to be willing to put up with such things. They should bring such cases to the attention of the companies that do it, and should push hard to get rid of the problem. However, it is silly to totally boycott a company because some engineer screwed up.
I meant 128. The competitors to the Voodoo2 were the Riva128, the Intel i740, and the Rendition Verite. In the sense that the GeForce2GTS totally wipes the floor with everything else (including Voodoo5) then the Riva128 and i740 were about the same compared to Voodoo2 as the Matrox Gxxx and Voodoo5 are to the GeForce2GTS. (Although the Radeon is good competiton the the GeForce, I haven't seen very many of them around.)
You know how people joke that MS-linux isn't far off? Well, is it? Consider this..,
MS makes a Linux distro. They make a closed-source, propriotary DE that supports most of the Win32 API. They include support for DirectX, COM, and OLE. Now, all these changes require major changes to the kernel. While these changes are GPL'ed, MS has now effectivly forked the kernel.
People start writing apps for this new MS/Linux. Because these apps rely on the modified kernel, and propriotary DE, they will not run on regular Linux.
Everybody switches to this new distro, because it has more apps and better technology.
MS has won, despite the GPL.