Well, I haven't tried it yet, but I'm about to. My biggest hope for this is to be able to run "thin-clients" off a central server. If I could get our Linux-booting thin-clients to connect to an Xserve running Yellow Dog, then our our old pc's and macs would be able to run some of our Mac-Only software. We have many labs out there right now that are too old and slow to be much use. We can't upgrade them to Panther (from OS 8 and 9) without adding a ton of RAM, drive space and buying software.
We currently have all our old PCs (PI's and PII's) net booted to linux using rdesktop to run windows apps. We could just as easily have them net-booted, connected to a Yellow Dog Terminal Server and running both rdesktop and MacOnLinux - the best of both worlds - If it works.
Right now we have hundreds of computers net-booting linux, and it looks like the direction we are headed for upgrade, security and maintenance cost reasons. I'd skip the middle-man in a heart-beat if Apple would come out with a Tiger Terminal Server Edition. In fact, I mentioned that to the Apple guys during a feedback session at WWDC and got quite a lot of applause and reaction. Hell, I'd buy an Xserve for home and TS my family Macs into it if they came out with one.
I'd much rather maintain an Xserve farm running Terminal Services than have to manage software and security on hundreds of workstations. I won't mention the name of the company, but we had a piece of software that was notoriously hard to install and would only work well on windows (in spite of what we were told and demoed when we bought it). Unfortunately, most of the 30 or 40 labs we wanted to run it in are mac labs. Our solution was to buy a Windows Terminal Server and us Remote Desktop from the macs. It worked like a charm. I now have ONE machine to upgrade, patch secure, backup and otherwise manage instead of countless many. I want the same thing with some of our mac software. If this works as advertised it will open new horizons for us and breath life into all those old-but-functioning machines.
Now, if I can only get linux to run on a Color Classic.
We're still battling the WordPerfect -v- MS Office documnt format issue. Most people where I work now use MS Office, but we still have a few hold-outs that claim only WP will do what they want. This issue is exasserbated by the fact that we also have a lot of people still using AppleWorks as well.
I've tried to get peole to realize that in a few years, you won't be able to read many of the documents we are currently archiving because the office formats will have changed or the app that was used to create it might not be available to open it. I've tried to get people to save their read-only documents as PDFs and their "collaberative editing" documents as RTF, but this has proven to be difficult.
If I could go to my supervisors and point to an ISO standard format, I could more strongly argue for any "archivable" documents to be required to be stored in that format. From there it would me much easier to get people to save ALL their document that way.
I use OOo exclusively at work and love it. I am trying to get it installed as the default office suite on ALL new installations, with MS Office only installed on the desktops of those who can demonstrate a need (show me a document that won't work that you can't live without.)
Right now OOo's documnet format is "just another word processing format". If it was an ISO standard, it'd have something strong to stand on for the "buzzword-only", tech-impaired descision-makers at work.
My wife and I used to raise and breed rats - it drove my mother nuts.
After working with them, we found them to be pretty intelligent and very clean. On top of that, they seem to be able to get into amazing places.
We had a pair of rats in particular that we kept as "pets" (the rest were used for breeding and were sold to pet stores). These two rats were large, white and housebroken (easier to do with a rat than a dog). They got along very well with our two cats and one dog. We used to sit, watching TV with them curled up on our laps.
All that being said, although I've never had to be rescued from a collapsed building, I have had to be rescued from a plane crash in the boonies before. Frankly, I wouldn't have cared if they sent a Kodiak Grizzly to find me, I just wanted to be rescued. However, having crashed in a grizzly area, I'd have to admit that it would have been emotionally distressing for me and potentially dangerous for the bear (I don't fly over those areas unarmed - for good reason).
So, (and I can only imagine here) being buried under a pile of rubble, I'm pretty sure I'd be worried about rats in the first place (keep in mind I like rats - but I also know them). This rat-rescuer had better be very well marked as such or it's history. For someone, like my mother, it would be traumatic to be rescued by a rat, but if she were burried, and the rat was marked as a "rescue-rat", even she might come around.
As far as being able to train a rat to do the deed, I have no doubt that it can be done. But there are going to be quite a few perceptual hurdles to overcome. For many, it'd be like training a snake to rescue people. They could get into even tighter spaces, but half your victims would die of fright before you could get them out and you'd be pulling out a badly beaten snake for the other half.
As someone who grew up in a foriegn country and who's parents still live there, I know I am going to stay and do what I can as a citizen to try to improve America. Frankly, we need people like you. We need people like you to get fed up with things and rant and point out what's wrong.
..and then we need you to leave.
You see, pointing out what is wrong is good, and we can use that. But you give few solutions except to leave this great country. I say "good for you", don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out! The more people like you we can export to other countries, the better.
Anyone out there in/. land want to send this gentle[person] a brochure for your beautiful country?
I hate to reply to myself, but after posting, others have posted with more information that was not avaiable due to slashdotting:-\
It appears that the code in Mombo was a "reimplemenatation" of the idea and not just a straight transfer of code.
That changes things, because apparently there is no patent on the concept of the changes. Whether, the programmer was right to so blatantly use his prior knowledge of the implementation of the "competing code" he wrote, is another story and begs a whole other set of questions.
But, regardless, the end users have nothing to fear here. If the Mombo team were to be forced to remove the changes or substantially modify them (I don't see how they could be), the customers can still use the old code unless they want to upgrade for other reasons.
The programmer, OTOH, looks like he may be open to a lawsuite and penalties for acting the way he did if he indeed have a contract that covered this sort of thing.
Either way, it looks bad for OSS and that's what I don't like. It looks like it's too easy for someone with "insider knowledge" to "reimplement" an idea they've worked on and "leak" it to the OSS community. If this happens too often or isn't handled very carefully, it could get really sticky, really quickly.
If I understand the facts right, this guy paid a professional programmer to modify GPL code in order to produce (what he thought would be) a competititive advantage for his website. He never said that the programmer was allowed to give those modifications back to the Mombo team (he claims he has a "contract").
He is redistributing Mombo from his website, but theoretically it would only be original Mombo code (without his contracted mods) if the mods hadn't made it back into the main branch.
If I were paid to, say, take The Horde, and make modifications to it for a company in order to make it interact with product X, thereby giving this company a (percieved) advantage over their competitors, I have no right to take the modifications and give them back to the The Horde development team without permission from the company I was contracted by.
Now, If the company I wrote the code for were to go on and sell "their version" of The Horde, it would have to be GPL'd, but they are only using it internally - so it doesn't.
This is one of the advantages of OSS to comercial entities - they can take the code, modify it to their needs and use it without hassle. They can make money with an OSS program, they just can't make money off selling a derivative of a program without sharing the love (GPL'ing it).
Although, I'd like to see this guy do the noble thing and release the changes back to the Mombo team as a show of good will and gratitiude for being able to use the code as a base for his success, he is in no way compelled to do so.
As a Linux SysAdmin who came from the Windows world I'd have to echo many of the earlier senitments:
Take advantage of an off-site "bootcamp". They won't make you a Linux SysAdmin, but they will give you a very good head start and are a good introduction to Linux. Let someone coach you through the first installs in class - you'll get plenty of opportunity to beat your head against the wall on your own later.
Definitely set up systems at home. The best way to learn is getting your hands dirty and using it every day. I'd also recommend using it as your primary workstation right off the bat at work; drink your own champaign, so to speak. With tools like rdesktop, smb4k, webmin and OpenOffice.org your should be able to do everything you need to do while you learn.
Build a good reference library. You've already mentioned O'reilly - they're great, but also build up a library of bookmarks and make friends with google!
Try many different distros. Everyone you ask will tell you difinitively which one is best. Don't take their word for it, find out for yourself. Besides, my recommendation for a desktop distro for my budy isn't the same as the distro I'd use for myself, and that is different still from the distro that I'd run as a web- or file-server, etc.
Personally, I'd not spend my time, initially, on an online course. In my experience, you're better off starting out in an environment where you have someone in meat-space to bounce questions off of and get answers immediately. Once you know your way around Linux a bit, then pick some specific goals or projects (set up a mail server with DNS, set up a webserver with secure areas and cgi scripting, etc.). Just going through the process of downloading the latest apache and compiling it from source (and forgetting to compile in certain functionality or having to go hunting for supporting libraries for a function you're missing) will give you invaluable insight into the whole process of fine-tuning and customizing your Linux boxes to really make them perform as you want.
And if you don't know perl and php, learn them! Windows admins don't naturally think of scripting something right off the bat, at least I didn't. Now, "how can I script this?" is the first thing I ask if I find myself doing the same thing more than once. I've even loaded ActivePerl onto my Windows Servers and have my entire user and group management process scripted. over 18,000 users are created, placed in groups, have their home directories created/moved/archived, etc. based on data gleaned from HR's databases. I used to get lists of hires, fires and transfers and have to manually manage their accounts and data. Not any more. A couple of perl scripts and an Active Directory perl module with a little Win32::OLE thrown in and I spend my valuable time doing more important stuff (like post on/.)
Anyway, this is free advice, which means you get what you pay for;-) Welcome to the club!
This is slightly off-topic but I just found out about this yesterday at our weekly tech meeting and it reminds me how some "descision makers" can be so stupid and base broad-ranging descisions based on ill-informed, knee-jerk reactions.
Our school district provides a local "mirror" of WikiPedia for our students to use since our internet bandwidth is pretty crappy during the school day. The we've also removed the ability for students to "edit" the articles locally after we found most the edits were *ahem* "less than usefull" - they can go to the WikiPedia main site if they really have something usefull to contribute.
Anyway, after many of our teachers and students have been successfully using this wonderfull research tool for over a year, our *new* directory of Library Media has dictated that we have to take it down and block the main wikipedia as well "...because anyone can submit information! There's no one who approves the articles! How do we know the information is accurate?!"
Oh, yeah?!? So Ms. know-it-all, what about all the other research that students do on the internet? Do you have to personally approve every web-site? Or are you just afraid students might get some information which doesn't take the same slanted view of the facts that your precious, 20-year-old text-books take?
The fact that this was already approved by the previous administrator doesn't seem to make a difference. God, how I hate ignorant, mis-informed, self-important, beurocrats with power!
It takes me a good 15 - 20 minutes to properly preflight my plane before I take off. This is to make damn sure that it is in perfect running condition. If anything is not right I don't go.
On the other hand, I hop right into my mercedez and take off for work. If something does't feel right or sound right or if I am really low on gas, I figure "hey I'd better do something about that sometime soon", and drive off. I can always pull to the side of the road. I can't do that in my plane. If something goes wrong and I need to "pull to the side of the road" I'm in a bit of a pinch. I have a ballistic parachute installed but I'd really hate to have to use it.
I can't ever imagine what flying would be like if everyone just hopped into their flying cars and took off (after cocktails, in a hurry, low on gas, in a poorly maintained vehicle, without a license, in bad weather, etc). What a nightmare!
Don't get me wrong, I think flying is wonderfull and that everyone should be able to do it, after rigorous training and certification, in a well maintained vehicle, clearly understanding when conditions are right to fly!
No, most user's don't need to be root most of the time. Yet:
I'd agree with this for the most part, but I've run accross a situation on my Fedora box that does require root (or at least sudo) to work properly and I'm not sure what to do about it. I know this is off-topic but I'd appreciate suggestions.
I'm using smb4K to browse our windows network and mount shares easily (awsome package BTW). I'ts great, except I can't mount any shares unless I have root privs. and it won't run with suid on smbmount. The solution I've had to use is to launch smb4k with sudo (I've modified the sudoers file to not prompt for a pw since I use a launcher) and it works fine - as long as I have smb4k open and access it from within there. See, it mounts the share in my home directory with root as the owner so I can't write to it unless I sudo everytime I try - which is a pain with drag-and-drop.
What am I missing? Is there a setting somewhere that will allow me to mount shares as a normal user into my home directory without requiring root privs?
Your are right on! It is so frustrating when people can't seem to uderstand the difference between text editing and page layout. If you need to type up a memo or a book all you need are basic text editing functions. If, on the other hand, if your final product requires positioned graphics, embedded charts, and other content or relies heavily on the presentation of the content, you need a page layout program.
I try to reason with my wife and kids about this on a more fundamental level. I keep telling them "just type what you want to say first, then, after you have the content down, apply what formatting you need." More often than not they simply never get to part of actually putting together a coherent thought because they're constantly inturrupted by figuring out how to get the colors, pictures and margins right.
This happens at work too. I get so many memos typed up by "high-priced executive secretaries" that look like a figgin' ransome notes with word-art scattered through it - just to tell me that there will be a meeting next wednesday with a guest speaker. Sometime I think Word and Powerpoint suck more time and productivity than they are worth because people spend so much time fiddling with it, trying to be "creative", when it has little or no impact of the purpose of the document. It is because of this that there is so much feature-creep and bloat in software.
There's a reason nobody runs client-server. Desktop systems with fast processors are just too cheap.
Actually, we do, and very successfully. I can get an empty Microtel workstation from Walmart for $168.00 with a 17 in monitor for another $120.00 or so. This gives me a great "thin client" for under $300.00. Sure, that's not much more savings over, say a $500.00 stand-alone desktop, but the savings (in a lab environment) comes down the line. With a standalone desktop I have to replace it in 4-5 years and probably at least add RAM in the mean time (think Longhorn will run on 128Mb well?). At, say $500.00 a pop for 30 workstations, you are looking at $15,000 to upgrade the lab (and a $500 standalone workstation won't last very long). I can put a whole new thin-client lab in for under $10,000 or upgrade an existing lab (either monitors or CPUs) for half that (though why I'd ever need to do that I don't know - maybe moving to flat-panel monitors or bigger CRTs?)
The thin clients, once in place, are good indefinitely. If I need more speed or capacity, I just upgrade the server - not a whole lab of 30 workstations. The savings continues from there. With no internal moving parts the energy consumption for the lab goes down, and the lab also stays cooler - requiring less energy again from the H/VAC system. Small savings, but with 30 labs - it adds up. On top of this, I don't ever have to touch the clients. They PXE-boot from a central Tao-tc Linux server which loads a small kernel and rdesktop on the client and then severs the connection. The client connects to a Dell rack-mount Windows 2003 Terminal server or one of our Fedora LTSP Terminal Servers, depending on our needs.
This means that, for any given lab, I have, at most, one machine to manage, install apps on, patch, secure and otherwise babysit. This saves big bucks on time, OS upgrade licenses, Patchlink licenses, Antivirus licenses, etc. that I would have needed for every computer in the lab (assuming they were Windows desktops). I also have much greater reliability: if one of the servers goes down I just change a setting on the Tao-tc box, have the lab reboot their clients, and presto, they're pointing to one of the other servers in another building and sharing it's power while I re-ghost the dead server.
We also allow our users to disconnect from their sessions instead of logging out. This means they can come back later to any of the thin-clients in the building, log in and be exactly where they left off before. This is a godsend during power outages - the servers are on UPS's, when the power comes back on, the users reconnect to their existing sessions and no work is lost, no data is corrupted.
Granted, the thin-client scenario is doesn't work for every situation - we use high-end workstations for CAD/CAM and Video Production Labs. We also use dedicated workstations for those staff who need to sync Palms or use local USB devices, etc. but for "normal" staff, classroom and lab use - it rocks!
One Dual-processor 3.2GHz server with 4Gb of RAM can serve over 100 clients running Office at blazing speeds. Word and Exel load "instantly". You should see the look on peoples faces when I show them an empty IBM 300PL (P2 133 MHz) system net-booted to windows, and I click on Word. It invariably blows their workstations away. And because people using the Terminal Server can't install every shiny, blinky piece of software that shows up it STAYS fast. And saves me more money and headaches in the process.
The best part is that our our Mac OS X users can use RDP to connect to the terminal servers too - allowing them to use the Windows-only software with ease - instead of forcing them to give up their Macs. In fact we just did a week-long class on some proprietary Windows-only app in our iMac Lab. With the 3-button scroll-mice plugged in, they never even knew the difference; worked, like a charm.
So, yeah, you aren't going to use thin-clients for gaming and surely not at home, but in a controlled corporate or school environment, you can't beat it for ease of management, performance and cost savings.
Really - I cannot understand what is the matter with the moderators this morning - this drivel isn't even factual and rational, let alone insightful.
That's because there aren't enough moderation options. This poster is maybe OVERRATED but only because s/he was rated in the first place. They aren't TROLLing. You want to give them some credit for an opposing view (to keep the discussion "fair/balanced" (yeah, right)).
What we need is a MISINFORMED or IGNORANT moderation option.
It is not 103 legal. I fly under an FAA waiver for instruction. When I said 'I' tow hanggliders, I was refering to our group of 2-seaters that are rigged for towing. Other instructors actually pilot the tow craft.
We are up against this same situation at our school. A "friggin' bean counter" is bought and paid for by Microsoft and wants us to only buy Dells with XP on them district-wide. We have about 18,000 people using about 8,000 computers in 36 different locations. To service this we have 3 network techs, 6 computer techs and me (SysAdmin). There's no way to manage that many computers (especially if they were all windows).
So our optimum solution is this: Each location will have one or more Windows 2K3 Terminal Servers (for Windows-specific apps) and one or more Linux Terminal Services Servers (LTSP and TAO-tc). The building file/print server is an Apple Xserve which can serve AFP/SMB/NFS home directories to all our clients. Those classes which need "special" computers (G5's for Graphics and Video, PCs for AutoCAD, etc.) get high-end standalone computers - everyone else gets a "thin-client".
The thin-clients net-boot off one of the Linux or Xserve boxes and start either an X-session with the LTSP server for a Gnome/KDE desktop (home directories NFS-mounted from the Xserve) or they start a full-screen rdesktop/rdp session to one of the Windows TS serves for Win2K3 desktops. You literally can't tell that it didn't just boot off the hard drive (except it only takes about 20 seconds).
So at each location (barring the few high-end standalones) we have maybe 2 windows servers to manage, secure and patch and maybe 1 or 2 Linux boxes to manage. All the clients have no moving parts and never need to be upgraded or touched - they are literally disposable. They get their configuration from our centralized dhcp server and all accounts are single-signon with kerberos through Active Directory (PeeCees won't play well with OpenLDAP:-\ ).
The only downside is that these workstations can't run the myriad mac software titles the schools have invested in. Our solution to that is to use the new CD-ROM-less eMacs. For $599 we have a bullet-proof all-in-one workstation that we net-boot off an Xserve to OS X. Home directories are auto-mounted on the desktop using Apple's Active Directory Plugin. For those users who want/need to access Linux software they can click an icon in the dock to open an X session to the Linux server and run Gnome full-screen. If they need to use windows apps they can click an icon and instantly have their desktop replaced with a windows RDP session. Same credentials, same home directories, same printers, cross-platform.
When it comes right down to it, the eMac as a terminal is the BEST choice. It can function as both a Linux and Windows desktop and run Mac apps as well and costs $599. An Intel-based thin-client costs about $200 plus a monitor ($150) = $350. It is about half the price and can "do" both Linux and Windows (and never needs to be replaced) it just can't run Mac Apps. Whereas a low-end Dell workstation with monitor runs about $600 + virus subscription + patchlink license = $630 and can ONLY run windows (I haven't found a good FREE X11 "client" app for windows yet). On top of that, assuming we don't turn it into an expensive thin-client in 4 years, it will have to be upgraded or replaced. Not to mention the headache and overhead administering stand-alone Windows boxes with their ad/spy/virus/warez problems. There's no contest.
My philosophy is you should use the best tool for the job. My primary workstation at work is a low-end Fedora Core 1 box. I don't need much because I always have multiple sessions going to the LTSP/WinTS servers (which are really fast). I also have a G4 TiBook with OS X for my mobile solution, because, again, I can literally open a fullscreen session to Linux or Windows as well as run ARD to admin Xserves.
Our students will graduate knowing how to use Macs, Linux and Windows, and be ready for ANY market. Meanwhile we are able to better manage and can afford to upgrade only a few servers. This will give our students and faculty a much better experience and, who knows, maybe even give them the courage to go home, blow away their windows box and install Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
However, I believe it was written earlier at Carnegie Mellon or some other university before being sourceforged.
We didn't write it, we are just using it.
Hell, we have a perl script http://sourceforge.net/projects/netreg/ that does that on our network - will they be comming after us next?
We currently have all our old PCs (PI's and PII's) net booted to linux using rdesktop to run windows apps. We could just as easily have them net-booted, connected to a Yellow Dog Terminal Server and running both rdesktop and MacOnLinux - the best of both worlds - If it works.
Right now we have hundreds of computers net-booting linux, and it looks like the direction we are headed for upgrade, security and maintenance cost reasons. I'd skip the middle-man in a heart-beat if Apple would come out with a Tiger Terminal Server Edition. In fact, I mentioned that to the Apple guys during a feedback session at WWDC and got quite a lot of applause and reaction. Hell, I'd buy an Xserve for home and TS my family Macs into it if they came out with one.
I'd much rather maintain an Xserve farm running Terminal Services than have to manage software and security on hundreds of workstations. I won't mention the name of the company, but we had a piece of software that was notoriously hard to install and would only work well on windows (in spite of what we were told and demoed when we bought it). Unfortunately, most of the 30 or 40 labs we wanted to run it in are mac labs. Our solution was to buy a Windows Terminal Server and us Remote Desktop from the macs. It worked like a charm. I now have ONE machine to upgrade, patch secure, backup and otherwise manage instead of countless many. I want the same thing with some of our mac software. If this works as advertised it will open new horizons for us and breath life into all those old-but-functioning machines.
Now, if I can only get linux to run on a Color Classic.
I've tried to get peole to realize that in a few years, you won't be able to read many of the documents we are currently archiving because the office formats will have changed or the app that was used to create it might not be available to open it. I've tried to get people to save their read-only documents as PDFs and their "collaberative editing" documents as RTF, but this has proven to be difficult.
If I could go to my supervisors and point to an ISO standard format, I could more strongly argue for any "archivable" documents to be required to be stored in that format. From there it would me much easier to get people to save ALL their document that way.
I use OOo exclusively at work and love it. I am trying to get it installed as the default office suite on ALL new installations, with MS Office only installed on the desktops of those who can demonstrate a need (show me a document that won't work that you can't live without.) Right now OOo's documnet format is "just another word processing format". If it was an ISO standard, it'd have something strong to stand on for the "buzzword-only", tech-impaired descision-makers at work.
Nah, this is in preparation for Duke Nukem Forever.
After working with them, we found them to be pretty intelligent and very clean. On top of that, they seem to be able to get into amazing places.
We had a pair of rats in particular that we kept as "pets" (the rest were used for breeding and were sold to pet stores). These two rats were large, white and housebroken (easier to do with a rat than a dog). They got along very well with our two cats and one dog. We used to sit, watching TV with them curled up on our laps.
All that being said, although I've never had to be rescued from a collapsed building, I have had to be rescued from a plane crash in the boonies before. Frankly, I wouldn't have cared if they sent a Kodiak Grizzly to find me, I just wanted to be rescued. However, having crashed in a grizzly area, I'd have to admit that it would have been emotionally distressing for me and potentially dangerous for the bear (I don't fly over those areas unarmed - for good reason).
So, (and I can only imagine here) being buried under a pile of rubble, I'm pretty sure I'd be worried about rats in the first place (keep in mind I like rats - but I also know them). This rat-rescuer had better be very well marked as such or it's history. For someone, like my mother, it would be traumatic to be rescued by a rat, but if she were burried, and the rat was marked as a "rescue-rat", even she might come around.
As far as being able to train a rat to do the deed, I have no doubt that it can be done. But there are going to be quite a few perceptual hurdles to overcome. For many, it'd be like training a snake to rescue people. They could get into even tighter spaces, but half your victims would die of fright before you could get them out and you'd be pulling out a badly beaten snake for the other half.
You see, pointing out what is wrong is good, and we can use that. But you give few solutions except to leave this great country. I say "good for you", don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out! The more people like you we can export to other countries, the better.
Anyone out there in /. land want to send this gentle[person] a brochure for your beautiful country?
Crap! You're right! That's what I get fer typing before having my frist cup of caffee!
It appears that the code in Mombo was a "reimplemenatation" of the idea and not just a straight transfer of code.
That changes things, because apparently there is no patent on the concept of the changes. Whether, the programmer was right to so blatantly use his prior knowledge of the implementation of the "competing code" he wrote, is another story and begs a whole other set of questions.
But, regardless, the end users have nothing to fear here. If the Mombo team were to be forced to remove the changes or substantially modify them (I don't see how they could be), the customers can still use the old code unless they want to upgrade for other reasons.
The programmer, OTOH, looks like he may be open to a lawsuite and penalties for acting the way he did if he indeed have a contract that covered this sort of thing.
Either way, it looks bad for OSS and that's what I don't like. It looks like it's too easy for someone with "insider knowledge" to "reimplement" an idea they've worked on and "leak" it to the OSS community. If this happens too often or isn't handled very carefully, it could get really sticky, really quickly.
He is redistributing Mombo from his website, but theoretically it would only be original Mombo code (without his contracted mods) if the mods hadn't made it back into the main branch.
If I were paid to, say, take The Horde, and make modifications to it for a company in order to make it interact with product X, thereby giving this company a (percieved) advantage over their competitors, I have no right to take the modifications and give them back to the The Horde development team without permission from the company I was contracted by.
Now, If the company I wrote the code for were to go on and sell "their version" of The Horde, it would have to be GPL'd, but they are only using it internally - so it doesn't.
This is one of the advantages of OSS to comercial entities - they can take the code, modify it to their needs and use it without hassle. They can make money with an OSS program, they just can't make money off selling a derivative of a program without sharing the love (GPL'ing it).
Although, I'd like to see this guy do the noble thing and release the changes back to the Mombo team as a show of good will and gratitiude for being able to use the code as a base for his success, he is in no way compelled to do so.
- Take advantage of an off-site "bootcamp". They won't make you a Linux SysAdmin, but they will give you a very good head start and are a good introduction to Linux. Let someone coach you through the first installs in class - you'll get plenty of opportunity to beat your head against the wall on your own later.
- Definitely set up systems at home. The best way to learn is getting your hands dirty and using it every day. I'd also recommend using it as your primary workstation right off the bat at work; drink your own champaign, so to speak. With tools like rdesktop, smb4k, webmin and OpenOffice.org your should be able to do everything you need to do while you learn.
- Build a good reference library. You've already mentioned O'reilly - they're great, but also build up a library of bookmarks and make friends with google!
- Try many different distros. Everyone you ask will tell you difinitively which one is best. Don't take their word for it, find out for yourself. Besides, my recommendation for a desktop distro for my budy isn't the same as the distro I'd use for myself, and that is different still from the distro that I'd run as a web- or file-server, etc.
Personally, I'd not spend my time, initially, on an online course. In my experience, you're better off starting out in an environment where you have someone in meat-space to bounce questions off of and get answers immediately. Once you know your way around Linux a bit, then pick some specific goals or projects (set up a mail server with DNS, set up a webserver with secure areas and cgi scripting, etc.). Just going through the process of downloading the latest apache and compiling it from source (and forgetting to compile in certain functionality or having to go hunting for supporting libraries for a function you're missing) will give you invaluable insight into the whole process of fine-tuning and customizing your Linux boxes to really make them perform as you want.And if you don't know perl and php, learn them! Windows admins don't naturally think of scripting something right off the bat, at least I didn't. Now, "how can I script this?" is the first thing I ask if I find myself doing the same thing more than once. I've even loaded ActivePerl onto my Windows Servers and have my entire user and group management process scripted. over 18,000 users are created, placed in groups, have their home directories created/moved/archived, etc. based on data gleaned from HR's databases. I used to get lists of hires, fires and transfers and have to manually manage their accounts and data. Not any more. A couple of perl scripts and an Active Directory perl module with a little Win32::OLE thrown in and I spend my valuable time doing more important stuff (like post on /.)
Anyway, this is free advice, which means you get what you pay for ;-) Welcome to the club!
What about Firewire?
What about optical audio out?
What about Gigabit Ethernet?
What about an 80 Gig Hard Drive
What about no anual virus license?
What about the iLife Software Suite?
What about the free printer (through October)?
What about not having to use XP home edition?
How price-competitive is your IBM now?
OTOH, you could remove the windows license cost by having them ship without an OS or ship with RedHat
Seems pretty price-competitive to me. I'm thinking it's time to upgrade my old dual G4/500, my daughter's G4/450 and replace my son's G3 iMac/500
Our school district provides a local "mirror" of WikiPedia for our students to use since our internet bandwidth is pretty crappy during the school day. The we've also removed the ability for students to "edit" the articles locally after we found most the edits were *ahem* "less than usefull" - they can go to the WikiPedia main site if they really have something usefull to contribute.
Anyway, after many of our teachers and students have been successfully using this wonderfull research tool for over a year, our *new* directory of Library Media has dictated that we have to take it down and block the main wikipedia as well "...because anyone can submit information! There's no one who approves the articles! How do we know the information is accurate?!"
Oh, yeah?!? So Ms. know-it-all, what about all the other research that students do on the internet? Do you have to personally approve every web-site? Or are you just afraid students might get some information which doesn't take the same slanted view of the facts that your precious, 20-year-old text-books take?
The fact that this was already approved by the previous administrator doesn't seem to make a difference. God, how I hate ignorant, mis-informed, self-important, beurocrats with power!
How about "not likely in my lifetime"?
Aftermarket
smb4k will refuse to run when smbmount is suid root
On the other hand, I hop right into my mercedez and take off for work. If something does't feel right or sound right or if I am really low on gas, I figure "hey I'd better do something about that sometime soon", and drive off. I can always pull to the side of the road. I can't do that in my plane. If something goes wrong and I need to "pull to the side of the road" I'm in a bit of a pinch. I have a ballistic parachute installed but I'd really hate to have to use it.
I can't ever imagine what flying would be like if everyone just hopped into their flying cars and took off (after cocktails, in a hurry, low on gas, in a poorly maintained vehicle, without a license, in bad weather, etc). What a nightmare!
Don't get me wrong, I think flying is wonderfull and that everyone should be able to do it, after rigorous training and certification, in a well maintained vehicle, clearly understanding when conditions are right to fly!
I'm using smb4K to browse our windows network and mount shares easily (awsome package BTW). I'ts great, except I can't mount any shares unless I have root privs. and it won't run with suid on smbmount. The solution I've had to use is to launch smb4k with sudo (I've modified the sudoers file to not prompt for a pw since I use a launcher) and it works fine - as long as I have smb4k open and access it from within there. See, it mounts the share in my home directory with root as the owner so I can't write to it unless I sudo everytime I try - which is a pain with drag-and-drop.
What am I missing? Is there a setting somewhere that will allow me to mount shares as a normal user into my home directory without requiring root privs?
Thanks.
I guess I'll have to switch back to IE.
I try to reason with my wife and kids about this on a more fundamental level. I keep telling them "just type what you want to say first, then, after you have the content down, apply what formatting you need." More often than not they simply never get to part of actually putting together a coherent thought because they're constantly inturrupted by figuring out how to get the colors, pictures and margins right.
This happens at work too. I get so many memos typed up by "high-priced executive secretaries" that look like a figgin' ransome notes with word-art scattered through it - just to tell me that there will be a meeting next wednesday with a guest speaker. Sometime I think Word and Powerpoint suck more time and productivity than they are worth because people spend so much time fiddling with it, trying to be "creative", when it has little or no impact of the purpose of the document. It is because of this that there is so much feature-creep and bloat in software.
The thin clients, once in place, are good indefinitely. If I need more speed or capacity, I just upgrade the server - not a whole lab of 30 workstations. The savings continues from there. With no internal moving parts the energy consumption for the lab goes down, and the lab also stays cooler - requiring less energy again from the H/VAC system. Small savings, but with 30 labs - it adds up. On top of this, I don't ever have to touch the clients. They PXE-boot from a central Tao-tc Linux server which loads a small kernel and rdesktop on the client and then severs the connection. The client connects to a Dell rack-mount Windows 2003 Terminal server or one of our Fedora LTSP Terminal Servers, depending on our needs.
This means that, for any given lab, I have, at most, one machine to manage, install apps on, patch, secure and otherwise babysit. This saves big bucks on time, OS upgrade licenses, Patchlink licenses, Antivirus licenses, etc. that I would have needed for every computer in the lab (assuming they were Windows desktops). I also have much greater reliability: if one of the servers goes down I just change a setting on the Tao-tc box, have the lab reboot their clients, and presto, they're pointing to one of the other servers in another building and sharing it's power while I re-ghost the dead server.
We also allow our users to disconnect from their sessions instead of logging out. This means they can come back later to any of the thin-clients in the building, log in and be exactly where they left off before. This is a godsend during power outages - the servers are on UPS's, when the power comes back on, the users reconnect to their existing sessions and no work is lost, no data is corrupted.
Granted, the thin-client scenario is doesn't work for every situation - we use high-end workstations for CAD/CAM and Video Production Labs. We also use dedicated workstations for those staff who need to sync Palms or use local USB devices, etc. but for "normal" staff, classroom and lab use - it rocks!
One Dual-processor 3.2GHz server with 4Gb of RAM can serve over 100 clients running Office at blazing speeds. Word and Exel load "instantly". You should see the look on peoples faces when I show them an empty IBM 300PL (P2 133 MHz) system net-booted to windows, and I click on Word. It invariably blows their workstations away. And because people using the Terminal Server can't install every shiny, blinky piece of software that shows up it STAYS fast. And saves me more money and headaches in the process.
The best part is that our our Mac OS X users can use RDP to connect to the terminal servers too - allowing them to use the Windows-only software with ease - instead of forcing them to give up their Macs. In fact we just did a week-long class on some proprietary Windows-only app in our iMac Lab. With the 3-button scroll-mice plugged in, they never even knew the difference; worked, like a charm.
So, yeah, you aren't going to use thin-clients for gaming and surely not at home, but in a controlled corporate or school environment, you can't beat it for ease of management, performance and cost savings.
That's because there aren't enough moderation options. This poster is maybe OVERRATED but only because s/he was rated in the first place. They aren't TROLLing. You want to give them some credit for an opposing view (to keep the discussion "fair/balanced" (yeah, right)).
What we need is a MISINFORMED or IGNORANT moderation option.
It is not 103 legal. I fly under an FAA waiver for instruction. When I said 'I' tow hanggliders, I was refering to our group of 2-seaters that are rigged for towing. Other instructors actually pilot the tow craft.
So our optimum solution is this: Each location will have one or more Windows 2K3 Terminal Servers (for Windows-specific apps) and one or more Linux Terminal Services Servers (LTSP and TAO-tc). The building file/print server is an Apple Xserve which can serve AFP/SMB/NFS home directories to all our clients. Those classes which need "special" computers (G5's for Graphics and Video, PCs for AutoCAD, etc.) get high-end standalone computers - everyone else gets a "thin-client".
The thin-clients net-boot off one of the Linux or Xserve boxes and start either an X-session with the LTSP server for a Gnome/KDE desktop (home directories NFS-mounted from the Xserve) or they start a full-screen rdesktop/rdp session to one of the Windows TS serves for Win2K3 desktops. You literally can't tell that it didn't just boot off the hard drive (except it only takes about 20 seconds).
So at each location (barring the few high-end standalones) we have maybe 2 windows servers to manage, secure and patch and maybe 1 or 2 Linux boxes to manage. All the clients have no moving parts and never need to be upgraded or touched - they are literally disposable. They get their configuration from our centralized dhcp server and all accounts are single-signon with kerberos through Active Directory (PeeCees won't play well with OpenLDAP :-\ ).
The only downside is that these workstations can't run the myriad mac software titles the schools have invested in. Our solution to that is to use the new CD-ROM-less eMacs. For $599 we have a bullet-proof all-in-one workstation that we net-boot off an Xserve to OS X. Home directories are auto-mounted on the desktop using Apple's Active Directory Plugin. For those users who want/need to access Linux software they can click an icon in the dock to open an X session to the Linux server and run Gnome full-screen. If they need to use windows apps they can click an icon and instantly have their desktop replaced with a windows RDP session. Same credentials, same home directories, same printers, cross-platform.
When it comes right down to it, the eMac as a terminal is the BEST choice. It can function as both a Linux and Windows desktop and run Mac apps as well and costs $599. An Intel-based thin-client costs about $200 plus a monitor ($150) = $350. It is about half the price and can "do" both Linux and Windows (and never needs to be replaced) it just can't run Mac Apps. Whereas a low-end Dell workstation with monitor runs about $600 + virus subscription + patchlink license = $630 and can ONLY run windows (I haven't found a good FREE X11 "client" app for windows yet). On top of that, assuming we don't turn it into an expensive thin-client in 4 years, it will have to be upgraded or replaced. Not to mention the headache and overhead administering stand-alone Windows boxes with their ad/spy/virus/warez problems. There's no contest.
My philosophy is you should use the best tool for the job. My primary workstation at work is a low-end Fedora Core 1 box. I don't need much because I always have multiple sessions going to the LTSP/WinTS servers (which are really fast). I also have a G4 TiBook with OS X for my mobile solution, because, again, I can literally open a fullscreen session to Linux or Windows as well as run ARD to admin Xserves.
Our students will graduate knowing how to use Macs, Linux and Windows, and be ready for ANY market. Meanwhile we are able to better manage and can afford to upgrade only a few servers. This will give our students and faculty a much better experience and, who knows, maybe even give them the courage to go home, blow away their windows box and install Linux.
Hey, it COULD happen :-)