Of course the geek has decided upon his target audience - it's him!
Now, the folks working for companies like RH, Novell, Ubuntu etc. they'll have more formal research, design and requirement analysis done. But the lone geek? He's scratching an itch.
And what about things like debian, where there are multiple architectures to think of, some of which the original developers may not even have access to the supported machine types, let alone care enough to release binaries.
No, for me the distro model works far, far better.
What is seen as control to you is seen by debian users like me as a guarantee that the system is going to work.
There is nothing at all stopping you from putting software on from other sources. You can add apt sources, you can dump binaries on, you can buidl from source, do what the hell you like.
But the official distro repositories exist to provide distro-approved, working, stable software. Feel free to start your own repo if that's not good enough.
Debian has more available packages than any other system in existance, if I want something else I go elsewhere and change my expectations of stability accordingly. I'd say the system works absolutely perfectly.
And you actually *want* to have to go hunting all over the web for badly written, unstable and incompatible software?
This one that talks about extreme cases not being controllable by humans at all. The Mosquito comment was a reply to that, intimating that there was no such thing as a plane that was too complicated for a human to fly without computer aid, and that it just took more skill.
I wanted to point out the eurofighter because it wouldn't even fly in a straight line without constant computer intervention. I'm sure it's not the only example.
Linus supports (other than Lexmark, I hear, but I've never even seen one of their printers here in the UK) more printers than windows these days, and without the need to download 10s of megabytes of extra driver and add-on crap from the manufacturer.
There exist whole classes of software that have been doing parallel execution, be it through threads, processes or messaging, for decades.
Look at any/all server software, for god's sake, look at apache, or any database, or any transaction engine.
If you're talking about desktop apps then make it clear. The thing with most of those is that the machines far exceed their requirements with a single core, most of the time. But stuff like video encoding has been threaded for a while too.
Whilst I appreciate the reasoning behind your comment, I don't agree.
1. I don't like the idea of relying on a third party keeping that data available in perpetuity
2. There are always things these services don't have, either because of contract/copyright issues or just because they're really obscure annd 99.9% of folks don't care about them. I care!
So I'll be keeping my collection. FYI, I'm also the old-fashioned type that buys all my music on CD and likes albums rather than just tracks, which I guess makes me out of touch with today's fashions.
Component cables sure can, the other consoles can do it through them. And the Wii component leads can do 576p, which is a little better, but still not great.
Oh sure. But I'm not advocating photo-realistic Wii Tennis here! Just a few more pixels would be nice, some more anti-aliasing, that sort of stuff. At the moment quite a few of the games look blocky on a 1080p capable screen, even when using the component/576 mode.
However, was there not research showing that the attach rate (i.e. frequency of game buying) was very much lower for casual/Wii gamers? Making the Wii continue to pay might be difficult.
Sorry, it's a hell of a lot more than macho posturing.
The GFX on the Wii look pretty poor on a decent sized 1080p capable panel. The Wii is sorely underpowered for today's display tech.
Now, it's still good fun, but I really don't buy into this horrible fanboyish meme that seems to hae taken hold, that the two are somehow exclusive. You CAN have both. There is no reason that bad graphics make good games. A Wii or other machine with Wii-like controllers and Wii-like games but with and updated GFX hardware would be great.
Specs were more of a point of interest - wondered if it was an ARM processor as they are good for power consumption and battery life. I mean, does it even have a battery or does it need to be plugged in all the time?
I looked at another of the prototype pages and it was using an Atom chip. I guess that's not bad for power consumption and processing power.
Also yes, my immediate thoughts were "I wonder if I could get that to run debian?". You can't blame me for that surely?
Connectivity, yes, would be useful to know what's there in terms of network interfaces. I presume wireless, but any 3G? A wired port?
I have 2.6 running on several ARM devices - 2 NSLU2's, a sheevaplug and a neo freerunner. Seems fine, especially with the new EABI.
I also have a router that runs 2.6 on MIPS, and a PS3 that runs it on Power (Cell), though I haven't messed with the router much and the PS3 I just installed it on to play with.
I have a mail and web server (NSLU2) under my bed and use it for pictures, my mail domain and ssh into my home so I can access my music on another machine.
Of course you need a static IP for this, but that's ok with my ISP.
And if you really want to get technical, it's got a fsck of a lot better hardware support than any version of windows - AMR, MIPS, Sparc, Power, it runs on all of these.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, yes and yes.
Next please.
Of course the geek has decided upon his target audience - it's him!
Now, the folks working for companies like RH, Novell, Ubuntu etc. they'll have more formal research, design and requirement analysis done. But the lone geek? He's scratching an itch.
But where do you draw that line?
And what about things like debian, where there are multiple architectures to think of, some of which the original developers may not even have access to the supported machine types, let alone care enough to release binaries.
No, for me the distro model works far, far better.
And my point is that the people making the software are not always familiar with every distribution, whereas the packagers are.
Both approaches have flaws, but I'd far rather use the version from my distro's repository than I would one I just download from the web.
What is seen as control to you is seen by debian users like me as a guarantee that the system is going to work.
There is nothing at all stopping you from putting software on from other sources. You can add apt sources, you can dump binaries on, you can buidl from source, do what the hell you like.
But the official distro repositories exist to provide distro-approved, working, stable software. Feel free to start your own repo if that's not good enough.
Debian has more available packages than any other system in existance, if I want something else I go elsewhere and change my expectations of stability accordingly. I'd say the system works absolutely perfectly.
And you actually *want* to have to go hunting all over the web for badly written, unstable and incompatible software?
No thanks.
The one above that.
This one that talks about extreme cases not being controllable by humans at all. The Mosquito comment was a reply to that, intimating that there was no such thing as a plane that was too complicated for a human to fly without computer aid, and that it just took more skill.
I wanted to point out the eurofighter because it wouldn't even fly in a straight line without constant computer intervention. I'm sure it's not the only example.
I have the entire transcript (except film 4) as a set of fortune databases, and an email-random-quote-autoresponder :)
Well, there was that article the other day about cola sapping potassium from the body and leaving people weak and sickly.
I'd be wary of drinking that much soda on a regular basis.
(but yeah, tap water is fine, even better with a bit of ice)
I think the plane being referred to is the Eurofighter Typhoon, which needs a hell of a lot of computing power just to stay in the sky.
Ah, "Shaky" Jim was off his meds again.
I mean really, I'm pretty sure I could write a program with a couple of buttons and a counter for each.
What's going on here?
I stopped reading after the printer lie.
Linus supports (other than Lexmark, I hear, but I've never even seen one of their printers here in the UK) more printers than windows these days, and without the need to download 10s of megabytes of extra driver and add-on crap from the manufacturer.
You're an idiot.
Bullshit.
Tell that to apache, and oracle, and basically anything that runs in a server room.
How blinkered are you?
There exist whole classes of software that have been doing parallel execution, be it through threads, processes or messaging, for decades.
Look at any/all server software, for god's sake, look at apache, or any database, or any transaction engine.
If you're talking about desktop apps then make it clear. The thing with most of those is that the machines far exceed their requirements with a single core, most of the time. But stuff like video encoding has been threaded for a while too.
Whilst I appreciate the reasoning behind your comment, I don't agree.
1. I don't like the idea of relying on a third party keeping that data available in perpetuity
2. There are always things these services don't have, either because of contract/copyright issues or just because they're really obscure annd 99.9% of folks don't care about them. I care!
So I'll be keeping my collection. FYI, I'm also the old-fashioned type that buys all my music on CD and likes albums rather than just tracks, which I guess makes me out of touch with today's fashions.
Component cables sure can, the other consoles can do it through them. And the Wii component leads can do 576p, which is a little better, but still not great.
Oh sure. But I'm not advocating photo-realistic Wii Tennis here! Just a few more pixels would be nice, some more anti-aliasing, that sort of stuff. At the moment quite a few of the games look blocky on a 1080p capable screen, even when using the component/576 mode.
Yes they did.
However, was there not research showing that the attach rate (i.e. frequency of game buying) was very much lower for casual/Wii gamers? Making the Wii continue to pay might be difficult.
Sorry, it's a hell of a lot more than macho posturing.
The GFX on the Wii look pretty poor on a decent sized 1080p capable panel. The Wii is sorely underpowered for today's display tech.
Now, it's still good fun, but I really don't buy into this horrible fanboyish meme that seems to hae taken hold, that the two are somehow exclusive. You CAN have both. There is no reason that bad graphics make good games. A Wii or other machine with Wii-like controllers and Wii-like games but with and updated GFX hardware would be great.
Right, and for the same money you could get one of these with a screen about 10 times the size.
This is not the same niche as an iPod touch, just because it has a touchscreen.
Specs were more of a point of interest - wondered if it was an ARM processor as they are good for power consumption and battery life. I mean, does it even have a battery or does it need to be plugged in all the time?
I looked at another of the prototype pages and it was using an Atom chip. I guess that's not bad for power consumption and processing power.
Also yes, my immediate thoughts were "I wonder if I could get that to run debian?". You can't blame me for that surely?
Connectivity, yes, would be useful to know what's there in terms of network interfaces. I presume wireless, but any 3G? A wired port?
A cursory glance through TFA and the main post it links to do not reveal the specs of the device.
What's the platform? What sort of connectivity does it have?
I have 2.6 running on several ARM devices - 2 NSLU2's, a sheevaplug and a neo freerunner. Seems fine, especially with the new EABI.
I also have a router that runs 2.6 on MIPS, and a PS3 that runs it on Power (Cell), though I haven't messed with the router much and the PS3 I just installed it on to play with.
Likewise
I have a mail and web server (NSLU2) under my bed and use it for pictures, my mail domain and ssh into my home so I can access my music on another machine.
Of course you need a static IP for this, but that's ok with my ISP.
Linux has far better hardware support than Vista.
And if you really want to get technical, it's got a fsck of a lot better hardware support than any version of windows - AMR, MIPS, Sparc, Power, it runs on all of these.