"Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules, it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules."
- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
And many people forgets that non-gpl drivers may be very well impossible to write at all (at least some lawyers think this), drivers are not at all like an app is WRT to gtk, drivers are more like "plugins". Plus, a closed driver module makes MUCH HARDER to debug bugs if the driver is doing bad things, and you can't know that (which makes harder to stabilize and/or develop the kernel. Several closed drivers can make it a hell or impossible at all.
Hardware manufacturers are not supporting linux because they are assholes and they don't care about supporting a OS with a 1-2% of the desktop market. It's not the "lack of a stable api" who causes that. Those who want to support it are supporting it.
BTW, the server market is different. 3com, adaptec intel etc. are writing themselves the opensource drivers and merging them in the kernel. See centrino wireless, intel SATA/e1000 drivers, etc. If intel and 3com and adaptec and cia can do it I don't see why nvidia or ati can't. The problem is that those companies SUCK and linux's desktop market is small, nothing else.
Example: Promise SX6000. Old cards work with I20, newer ones use their own interface. An open source driver is available, at least for the 2.4 kernel
Well - linux could provide a stable kernel api and still break compatibility between "big" releases. I'd rather not use that opensource driver: It's clearly unmaintained, it'd have been ported to 2.6 or merged to the main tree if it was maintained.
It's already happening for scanners and cameras (see libusb) and serial/parallel port drivers (you don't need to insert a kernel driver for your parallel port printer, do you?). You don't really need a microkernel to write driver in userspace, just export the neccesary infrastructure in a sane way.
Having a stable binary driver interface would make it easier for hardware manufacturers to embrace Linux
You might aswell read the greg's blog. Linux can't have a stable binary interface unless you: 1) lose performance (WDM-like interfaces come with a cost) or 2) lose freedom to configure your kernel (you don't allow to change some of the current kernel options like ej: regparm)
1995/1996 -- The Ping of Death. A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed "ping" packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called "blue screen of death" when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well.
"according to MS" -> "According to MS when he's interested in not being accused of being a monopoly".
Microsoft could change their software to enable/disable the IE-dependent functions when IE is installed/uninstalled. Some apps use the ie com thingy (desktop background, html help, explore.exe's web view, media player) which is good, but that doesn't means it can't be removed (furthermore, IE design is ugly, someone can explain why they don't have a common "image format" com/ole/whatever object that desktop background can use instead of using IE as "kitchen sink")
When microsoft means "tighly integrate", it means "OMG! If we remove IE people won't be able to use a jpg as background and won't be able to read chm help!", but it doesn't means it can't be removed if they wanted, like if they couldn't move the.chm help to another format. Of course, since lawyers know nothing about computers and money in america's justice matters so much it has not been hard for microsoft to convince lawyers that IE can't be separated from windows.
I'm surprised the geniuses at Google can't seem to get that common tasks should be easily accesible
Again. Gmail was designed for not bothering you with thinking what and what not must be deleted. Don't want to see a message? Just don't search for it - that's the whole point of gmail and it has the same effect than deleting the message, except that it saves you time
Re:I've got news for them...
on
Yahoo's Geek Statue
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You know, the whole point of Gmail is NOT deleting things. A "delete" button is against gmail spirit: You don't want to "delete things", you just want to get the things you want, and you don't need to delete the non-important emails to get them, you just need a way to ignore them (gmail)
How come gnome, which is not *that* much superior to kde (some would argue that it's inferior at the moment) is making all the headway?
Usability. It's that simple.
I mean, it's not the lack of a kparts equivalent, being programmed in a 70's language - c++ is a bad OO language, but C is much worse as "OO language" still gnome went with C (and you have to admit those even if you're a gnome zealot)
Fortunately, KDE 4.0 is focusing in usability. The reasons that keeps many people away from KDE is usability, anything else. KDE is great, in some aspects their technology is ahead of other desktops and not just gnome (I love kparts). Bring usability to kde (ie: wait for kde 4.0) and you'll see lots of users switching to kde
Don't you think it's a bit too optimistic to expect "millions of downloads"?
No - Firefox already surpased 100 million downloads. And that was due to "popular talk". But there're lots of people who doesn't know what firefox is - this will help. And don't forget that windows 9x and 2000 users won't have a IE7 version. I don't think that expecting "millions of downloads" from google's plan is "optimist".
I disagree. Ajax "works", but its FAR from being a decent solution, like the top poster said.
With Ajax, you're basically using 100% of what a web browser can do. Ajax is too crappy. html + css + javascript + xmlhttprequest +.... Too many complexity to build a FUCKING GUI (god damn, just thing about that horrid javascript language, why it was added as a "patch" on top of html instead of redefining html and doing it right). And it can't scale. Ajax is the maximum you can get from today's technology, and it's there just by CHANCE (Microsoft added the not-standard xmlhttprequest AND then mozilla based browsers AND opera implemented it too)
The *REAL* ajax will not be ajax, it will be either microsoft's xaml or w3c's "xforms" or whatever name it has. That technology will allow you to what ajax does but with a DECENT TECHNOLOGY NOT THE CRAP THAT AJAX IS. If we've waiting 5 years to get a fucking email interface out of the xmlhttprequest thingy then it's clear the technology is BROKEN by design
They made the OSS world a better place, at least. SGI is putting lots of resources in OSS software. They gave us things like XFS. Their engineers are part of the group of programmers who made (and are still making right now with patches being merged in each release) possible to make linux scalable in big SMP boxes (ie: their 512-CPU boxes). They gave us things like GLX (the opengl xservers glue)
Linux users owe SGI a lot. They're still not dead though, I hope they find a way to make SGI profitable again...
Indeed. And I'd like to know why it's "well designed", "and powerful object-oriented", too. I mean, just because mac os x managed to write the best desktop platform from openstep doesn't means qt and GTK aren't capable of the same.
There's no need of debian for using GNU software. You can use pretty much any GNU utility (including gnome etc) in solaris right now, without wasting time in developing a new distro. Which is exactly my point. Why such waste of time?
Anyone who disagrees is a retarded Linux fan-boy who has never even touched Solaris box
Hmm. I could say the contrary and not be wrong either: Anyone who thinks that all linux users are fan boys and that Solaris is the "one true way" have never touched a box with a linux kernel.
Don't get me wrong, but I don't think this is worthwhile. This is almost as stupid as the debian/freebsd thing. If you want to get the full power from freebsd, use freebsd. If you want to get the full power from solaris, use solaris. If you want to get the full power from linux, use....well....ubuntu? redhat? suse?:P
Indeed - every article pointing out that firefox is not having lots of vulnerabilities lately (it's false! false! Secunia is lying dammit!) and that openoffice is bloated (how they dare! Everybody I know says openoffice is lean and fast!) is manipulated.
No, IIS isn't "growing faster than apache", it has grow faster than apache this month. If you look at other web server surveys (or at that graphic) you'll find different numbers
Slashdot Mirror
"Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules, it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules."
- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
And many people forgets that non-gpl drivers may be very well impossible to write at all (at least some lawyers think this), drivers are not at all like an app is WRT to gtk, drivers are more like "plugins". Plus, a closed driver module makes MUCH HARDER to debug bugs if the driver is doing bad things, and you can't know that (which makes harder to stabilize and/or develop the kernel. Several closed drivers can make it a hell or impossible at all.
Hardware manufacturers are not supporting linux because they are assholes and they don't care about supporting a OS with a 1-2% of the desktop market. It's not the "lack of a stable api" who causes that. Those who want to support it are supporting it.
BTW, the server market is different. 3com, adaptec intel etc. are writing themselves the opensource drivers and merging them in the kernel. See centrino wireless, intel SATA/e1000 drivers, etc. If intel and 3com and adaptec and cia can do it I don't see why nvidia or ati can't. The problem is that those companies SUCK and linux's desktop market is small, nothing else.
Example: Promise SX6000. Old cards work with I20, newer ones use their own interface. An open source driver is available, at least for the 2.4 kernel
Well - linux could provide a stable kernel api and still break compatibility between "big" releases. I'd rather not use that opensource driver: It's clearly unmaintained, it'd have been ported to 2.6 or merged to the main tree if it was maintained.
It's already happening for scanners and cameras (see libusb) and serial/parallel port drivers (you don't need to insert a kernel driver for your parallel port printer, do you?). You don't really need a microkernel to write driver in userspace, just export the neccesary infrastructure in a sane way.
Having a stable binary driver interface would make it easier for hardware manufacturers to embrace Linux
You might aswell read the greg's blog. Linux can't have a stable binary interface unless you: 1) lose performance (WDM-like interfaces come with a cost) or 2) lose freedom to configure your kernel (you don't allow to change some of the current kernel options like ej: regparm)
1995/1996 -- The Ping of Death. A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed "ping" packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called "blue screen of death" when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well.
"according to MS" -> "According to MS when he's interested in not being accused of being a monopoly".
.chm help to another format. Of course, since lawyers know nothing about computers and money in america's justice matters so much it has not been hard for microsoft to convince lawyers that IE can't be separated from windows.
Microsoft could change their software to enable/disable the IE-dependent functions when IE is installed/uninstalled. Some apps use the ie com thingy (desktop background, html help, explore.exe's web view, media player) which is good, but that doesn't means it can't be removed (furthermore, IE design is ugly, someone can explain why they don't have a common "image format" com/ole/whatever object that desktop background can use instead of using IE as "kitchen sink")
When microsoft means "tighly integrate", it means "OMG! If we remove IE people won't be able to use a jpg as background and won't be able to read chm help!", but it doesn't means it can't be removed if they wanted, like if they couldn't move the
I'm surprised the geniuses at Google can't seem to get that common tasks should be easily accesible
Again. Gmail was designed for not bothering you with thinking what and what not must be deleted. Don't want to see a message? Just don't search for it - that's the whole point of gmail and it has the same effect than deleting the message, except that it saves you time
You know, the whole point of Gmail is NOT deleting things. A "delete" button is against gmail spirit: You don't want to "delete things", you just want to get the things you want, and you don't need to delete the non-important emails to get them, you just need a way to ignore them (gmail)
How come gnome, which is not *that* much superior to kde (some would argue that it's inferior at the moment) is making all the headway?
Usability. It's that simple.
I mean, it's not the lack of a kparts equivalent, being programmed in a 70's language - c++ is a bad OO language, but C is much worse as "OO language" still gnome went with C (and you have to admit those even if you're a gnome zealot)
Fortunately, KDE 4.0 is focusing in usability. The reasons that keeps many people away from KDE is usability, anything else. KDE is great, in some aspects their technology is ahead of other desktops and not just gnome (I love kparts). Bring usability to kde (ie: wait for kde 4.0) and you'll see lots of users switching to kde
Don't you think it's a bit too optimistic to expect "millions of downloads"?
No - Firefox already surpased 100 million downloads. And that was due to "popular talk". But there're lots of people who doesn't know what firefox is - this will help. And don't forget that windows 9x and 2000 users won't have a IE7 version. I don't think that expecting "millions of downloads" from google's plan is "optimist".
I disagree. Ajax "works", but its FAR from being a decent solution, like the top poster said.
.... Too many complexity to build a FUCKING GUI (god damn, just thing about that horrid javascript language, why it was added as a "patch" on top of html instead of redefining html and doing it right). And it can't scale. Ajax is the maximum you can get from today's technology, and it's there just by CHANCE (Microsoft added the not-standard xmlhttprequest AND then mozilla based browsers AND opera implemented it too)
With Ajax, you're basically using 100% of what a web browser can do. Ajax is too crappy. html + css + javascript + xmlhttprequest +
The *REAL* ajax will not be ajax, it will be either microsoft's xaml or w3c's "xforms" or whatever name it has. That technology will allow you to what ajax does but with a DECENT TECHNOLOGY NOT THE CRAP THAT AJAX IS. If we've waiting 5 years to get a fucking email interface out of the xmlhttprequest thingy then it's clear the technology is BROKEN by design
Those are true, except the super-h one.
They made the world a better place though, IMHO.
They made the OSS world a better place, at least. SGI is putting lots of resources in OSS software. They gave us things like XFS. Their engineers are part of the group of programmers who made (and are still making right now with patches being merged in each release) possible to make linux scalable in big SMP boxes (ie: their 512-CPU boxes). They gave us things like GLX (the opengl xservers glue)
Linux users owe SGI a lot. They're still not dead though, I hope they find a way to make SGI profitable again...
Indeed. And I'd like to know why it's "well designed", "and powerful object-oriented", too. I mean, just because mac os x managed to write the best desktop platform from openstep doesn't means qt and GTK aren't capable of the same.
You know, solaris has packaging tools (solves dependencies, etc) and there're packages for lots of software. http://www.blastwave.org/
There's no need of debian for using GNU software. You can use pretty much any GNU utility (including gnome etc) in solaris right now, without wasting time in developing a new distro. Which is exactly my point. Why such waste of time?
Anyone who disagrees is a retarded Linux fan-boy who has never even touched Solaris box
Hmm. I could say the contrary and not be wrong either: Anyone who thinks that all linux users are fan boys and that Solaris is the "one true way" have never touched a box with a linux kernel.
Don't get me wrong, but I don't think this is worthwhile. This is almost as stupid as the debian/freebsd thing. If you want to get the full power from freebsd, use freebsd. If you want to get the full power from solaris, use solaris. If you want to get the full power from linux, use....well....ubuntu? redhat? suse? :P
Well, may be you, but it's certainly not smarter than me - I can write code, for instance.
You mean, like that small "search" box placed in messenger's main window pointing to the msn search engine?
Indeed - every article pointing out that firefox is not having lots of vulnerabilities lately (it's false! false! Secunia is lying dammit!) and that openoffice is bloated (how they dare! Everybody I know says openoffice is lean and fast!) is manipulated.
What files were loaded, what conditions were they loaded ..except that they provide you links to them (did you _read_ the article)
;)
Was it the same machine
Yes
What distro
No distro - it was openoffice for windows
Sounds like another MS shill to me.
And you sound like a FOSS shill to me..
Openoffice is bloated. Anyone who has used it should realize. We know it, but we have no OSS alternative to it, so...
10 emails per day? Jesus, I've sent 1721 since 27-02-2002 (1 per day), and I spent way too many hours at my computer...
No, IIS isn't "growing faster than apache", it has grow faster than apache this month. If you look at other web server surveys (or at that graphic) you'll find different numbers