I don't think many people are seriously considering VMWare as a replacement for the traditional desktop. Virtualization is typically used to replace multiple physical servers with one larger server.
This is very useful for organizations with hundreds of servers, many of which may be only running a single resource-friendly application. The department that I work in, for example, is moving the contents of several web application servers onto one new, larger server running VMWare.
Somehow it seems that - if I'm going to run music software such as Rosegarden or Ardour - that I shouldn't have to setup a server to do it.
You actually don't need JACK running to use Rosegarden at all (at least in the Ubuntu build it's never required). But from the way your post reads, it seems as though you don't quite understand the benefits of running JACK. The JACK server provides low-latency audio routing between different JACK-enabled applications and sound hardware. This means that every JACK-enabled application plays well with and is able to share audio with every other JACK-enabled application. This is a huge bonus for audio processing on Linux, and its importance shouldn't be underestimated.
Every time some issue like this comes up, someone writes about how they wish Dell sold naked PC's. They have -- for years. Dell's naked PC's are called the n-Series desktops. They're listed as "open source desktops" on the Dell website. They only contain a minimal FreeDOS installation for legal reasons, which is meant to be wiped clean by your favorite OS installer. And from what I've seen, they're the same price or less than the Windows models.
Dell has sold systems practically the same as this for years, as other Slashdotters have noted in previous related stories. The "N" series of desktops comes with only FreeDOS on it, and they're very affordable. FreeDOS is installed as a tiny, minimalist operating system for legal purposes, and it's put on with the full expectation that it will be wiped out by your OS installer of choice.
We should remember that today's kids aren't necessarily listening to Iron Maiden and early Metallica. Today when people mention "metal", kids just think of teen angst nu-metal bands like Slipknot and Mudvayne. Actual heavy metal is an entirely different subculture (and a much more varied and informed one, IMHO), and the music tends to be much more complex. One listen to a band such as Opeth or Emperor serves as a good demonstration of this point.
But the parent is right about heavy metal soothing anger. I can't manage to stay angry after a few minutes of listening to death metal. Ironically, it's often the most calming music I have.
Compilation is also very possible with Python (Freeze, cx_Freeze, py2exe, and PyInstaller) and Perl (Perl2Exe, PerlBin). I'm not sure exactly why they're reinventing the wheel with this scripting language, because compilation is not a unique feature by any stretch of the imagination.
Typical Slashdot response. This computer is not meant for the average Slashdot reader. It's meant for old women who would like to browse the web or send their relatives email, but who don't want to deal with the nuisances of PC's and Windows. These people don't need a 120GB hard drive or the ability to install Ubuntu.
And no, these people will not blame Linux if things don't work right, because they probably won't even know that their computer is running Linux.
Since many universities (including my own) have switched from using C++ as the primary applications programming language over to Java, I don't see this as being the case. The CS department at my university is big on Apple and Unix, and there are actually no programming courses offered that require Windows in any way, shape, or form. When I began an internship where I was expected to do Windows programming, making the transition from Java to C# and.NET was trivially easy.
From what I gathered from the article, it looks like Red Hat is porting their distro to the Xen virtual machines and then packaging that with the natively-compiled OS as a virtual machine manager. It's nice to see a distro pick up Xen officially and package it an easy-to-use way, since Xen has very impressive performance. The article or the summary probably should have included a link to the Xen web site, so if you want to know more: the Xen site.
Not to nitpick, but even Slackware is compiled for i486 rather than i386 these days. You would have to stick with an earlier Slackware version or another distro like Debian. Personally, though, I think that with a 386 you would get such horrible performance out of Slackware or any other full-featured distro that it wouldn't really be worth it. I've run Slackware and Debian on 486's extensively for years, and even for those distributions, you still really need 16MB of RAM. And no, a typical 486 won't run Windows 95 properly. It will be slow as hell, to the point of being nearly useless.
Interestingly, although admittedly a small point, the book seems to be the first O'Reilly animal book to be colored in. I really like the new look, and I hope it continues.
Slackware Linux dropped GNOME last March. According to the changelog, Patrick dropped it because it was becoming too much of a pain to keep up with. As a Slackware user who doesn't use either KDE or GNOME, I'm happy that the change was made. It opens up more time for Patrick to spend working on the Slackware core. As he wrote, "Slackware does not need to ship every choice".
Translated: "Apple has only 3% of the market share, so them sueing like this is fine. After all, I like Apple products, so I wouldn't want to disrupt anything for them."
It's wrong when Microsoft does it, and it's wrong when Apple does it. I don't care how good the products are or aren't, or how much someone likes or dislikes a particular company. Double standards are never a good thing in the long run.
Goes both ways
on
Why FreeBSD
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
One could also argue that Linux is what FreeBSD should have been, and cite the huge number of supercomputers using Linux, or the success of Linux on the mainframe. However, it would be nice if the poster realized that it's a pissing contest and both operating systems are impressive and have their uses, benefits, and drawbacks. Neither is what one "should have been". They both have their own, very different methodologies, so let's leave it at that.
but if that is not possible, why not fly to the middle of the sahara with a laptop, solar panel and gear, and just do your buisness there. No worry about hackers, or physical attacks.
How is this even relevant to an article about the difficulties the Debian people are having with their security approach? Not only is what you suggest off-topic, but it is ridiculous. Most companies are interested in still having useful computers while keeping a sane security model.
Personally, I have noticed that as distributions get larger, they also get harder to maintain and more difficult to change, as more people are required for the basic maintenance of the software. On the other hand, more compact Linux/BSD distributions are often known for their security and stability (OpenBSD, Slackware, NetBSD). I hope that the Debian people can get the distro back on track and manageable again.
Contrary to what many people seem to think, Slackware does have package management. There is a very clear package format that should be followed when making all Slackware packages, and there are official tools for using them that Patrick wrote (installpkg, upgradepkg, removepkg, pkgtool, makepkg, explodepkg).
Perhaps what the author was getting at is the lack of dependency checking that Slackware default package management software does not implement. Swaret is a popular tool that does support dependency checking and many other features that Debian and the other distros have been using for awhile.
Personally, I find Slackware amazingly unobtrusive. The simplicity of the Slackware model and Patrick tasteful design have really kept it alive all these years as other distros began to get in the way of their users.
Utter nonsense. I too can think back to those days, and no browser was following the specs. "Netscape is the next Microsoft" was a common complaint, as Netscape piled proprietary tag after proprietary tag into their browser.
Pffft... at least I can appreciate <marquee> and <blink> tags.
Mandrake has gone downhill, in terms of quality, ever since version 9.0. Oddly this aligns in time with the whole France/Iraq/WMD problem.
Clearly the french company MandrakeSoft conspires against the Untied States for their actions in Iraq and is shipping them a crippled distro out of vengance.
The the "whole France/Iraq/WMD problem" was not created or propelled by France, but rather the United States, waving shoddy/false intelligence (this is assuming that our fearless leaders were honest). The United States wanted to go in right away, and France simply said "hold on". In retrospect, who was right?
Thinking Americans should feel like they owe the countries that opposed the war for acting correctly on bad information. Instead, many just despise the French more.
Besides the obvious tools, I think that the major differences come from the user interfaces. Extra eye candy and even functionality can become a big distraction to work.
As soon as I'm trapped in a command line, with nothing that I can input except the next line in a shell or file, I seem to become more productive and learn faster without the distractions.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think many people are seriously considering VMWare as a replacement for the traditional desktop. Virtualization is typically used to replace multiple physical servers with one larger server.
This is very useful for organizations with hundreds of servers, many of which may be only running a single resource-friendly application. The department that I work in, for example, is moving the contents of several web application servers onto one new, larger server running VMWare.
Every time some issue like this comes up, someone writes about how they wish Dell sold naked PC's. They have -- for years. Dell's naked PC's are called the n-Series desktops. They're listed as "open source desktops" on the Dell website. They only contain a minimal FreeDOS installation for legal reasons, which is meant to be wiped clean by your favorite OS installer. And from what I've seen, they're the same price or less than the Windows models.
Dell has sold systems practically the same as this for years, as other Slashdotters have noted in previous related stories. The "N" series of desktops comes with only FreeDOS on it, and they're very affordable. FreeDOS is installed as a tiny, minimalist operating system for legal purposes, and it's put on with the full expectation that it will be wiped out by your OS installer of choice.
Dell's Open Source Desktops
We should remember that today's kids aren't necessarily listening to Iron Maiden and early Metallica. Today when people mention "metal", kids just think of teen angst nu-metal bands like Slipknot and Mudvayne. Actual heavy metal is an entirely different subculture (and a much more varied and informed one, IMHO), and the music tends to be much more complex. One listen to a band such as Opeth or Emperor serves as a good demonstration of this point.
But the parent is right about heavy metal soothing anger. I can't manage to stay angry after a few minutes of listening to death metal. Ironically, it's often the most calming music I have.
Compilation is also very possible with Python (Freeze, cx_Freeze, py2exe, and PyInstaller) and Perl (Perl2Exe, PerlBin). I'm not sure exactly why they're reinventing the wheel with this scripting language, because compilation is not a unique feature by any stretch of the imagination.
Typical Slashdot response. This computer is not meant for the average Slashdot reader. It's meant for old women who would like to browse the web or send their relatives email, but who don't want to deal with the nuisances of PC's and Windows. These people don't need a 120GB hard drive or the ability to install Ubuntu.
And no, these people will not blame Linux if things don't work right, because they probably won't even know that their computer is running Linux.
Since many universities (including my own) have switched from using C++ as the primary applications programming language over to Java, I don't see this as being the case. The CS department at my university is big on Apple and Unix, and there are actually no programming courses offered that require Windows in any way, shape, or form. When I began an internship where I was expected to do Windows programming, making the transition from Java to C# and .NET was trivially easy.
Happy belated zeroeth birthday, Trustix!
The first full release of Trustix was over five years ago. It isn't a new, untested Linux distribution by any stretch of imagination.
From what I gathered from the article, it looks like Red Hat is porting their distro to the Xen virtual machines and then packaging that with the natively-compiled OS as a virtual machine manager. It's nice to see a distro pick up Xen officially and package it an easy-to-use way, since Xen has very impressive performance. The article or the summary probably should have included a link to the Xen web site, so if you want to know more: the Xen site.
Not to nitpick, but even Slackware is compiled for i486 rather than i386 these days. You would have to stick with an earlier Slackware version or another distro like Debian. Personally, though, I think that with a 386 you would get such horrible performance out of Slackware or any other full-featured distro that it wouldn't really be worth it. I've run Slackware and Debian on 486's extensively for years, and even for those distributions, you still really need 16MB of RAM. And no, a typical 486 won't run Windows 95 properly. It will be slow as hell, to the point of being nearly useless.
Interestingly, although admittedly a small point, the book seems to be the first O'Reilly animal book to be colored in. I really like the new look, and I hope it continues.
Slackware Linux dropped GNOME last March. According to the changelog, Patrick dropped it because it was becoming too much of a pain to keep up with. As a Slackware user who doesn't use either KDE or GNOME, I'm happy that the change was made. It opens up more time for Patrick to spend working on the Slackware core. As he wrote, "Slackware does not need to ship every choice".
Translated: "Apple has only 3% of the market share, so them sueing like this is fine. After all, I like Apple products, so I wouldn't want to disrupt anything for them."
It's wrong when Microsoft does it, and it's wrong when Apple does it. I don't care how good the products are or aren't, or how much someone likes or dislikes a particular company. Double standards are never a good thing in the long run.
One could also argue that Linux is what FreeBSD should have been, and cite the huge number of supercomputers using Linux, or the success of Linux on the mainframe. However, it would be nice if the poster realized that it's a pissing contest and both operating systems are impressive and have their uses, benefits, and drawbacks. Neither is what one "should have been". They both have their own, very different methodologies, so let's leave it at that.
Not that it's news anyways...
but if that is not possible, why not fly to the middle of the sahara with a laptop, solar panel and gear, and just do your buisness there. No worry about hackers, or physical attacks.
How is this even relevant to an article about the difficulties the Debian people are having with their security approach? Not only is what you suggest off-topic, but it is ridiculous. Most companies are interested in still having useful computers while keeping a sane security model.
Personally, I have noticed that as distributions get larger, they also get harder to maintain and more difficult to change, as more people are required for the basic maintenance of the software. On the other hand, more compact Linux/BSD distributions are often known for their security and stability (OpenBSD, Slackware, NetBSD). I hope that the Debian people can get the distro back on track and manageable again.Might I suggest a new Bill Gates thumbnail based on this sexy pic?
Contrary to what many people seem to think, Slackware does have package management. There is a very clear package format that should be followed when making all Slackware packages, and there are official tools for using them that Patrick wrote (installpkg, upgradepkg, removepkg, pkgtool, makepkg, explodepkg).
Perhaps what the author was getting at is the lack of dependency checking that Slackware default package management software does not implement. Swaret is a popular tool that does support dependency checking and many other features that Debian and the other distros have been using for awhile.
Personally, I find Slackware amazingly unobtrusive. The simplicity of the Slackware model and Patrick tasteful design have really kept it alive all these years as other distros began to get in the way of their users.Pffft... at least I can appreciate <marquee> and <blink> tags.
Recursive wget's are soooo much easier.
Mandrake has gone downhill, in terms of quality, ever since version 9.0. Oddly this aligns in time with the whole France/Iraq/WMD problem.
Clearly the french company MandrakeSoft conspires against the Untied States for their actions in Iraq and is shipping them a crippled distro out of vengance.
The the "whole France/Iraq/WMD problem" was not created or propelled by France, but rather the United States, waving shoddy/false intelligence (this is assuming that our fearless leaders were honest). The United States wanted to go in right away, and France simply said "hold on". In retrospect, who was right?
Thinking Americans should feel like they owe the countries that opposed the war for acting correctly on bad information. Instead, many just despise the French more.
Phil Hartman is dead, you insensitive clod!
the "strap-on" logo kinda creeps me out.
Complement is the spelling for the mathematical term. A compliment, on the other hand, is an expression of admiration.
Besides the obvious tools, I think that the major differences come from the user interfaces. Extra eye candy and even functionality can become a big distraction to work.
As soon as I'm trapped in a command line, with nothing that I can input except the next line in a shell or file, I seem to become more productive and learn faster without the distractions.