My question is not should we add pluggable everything, but why NOT?
Because that means more code to maintain. Code that might be broken later.
However, I do think there's sufficient reason to keep it pluggable. We have all kinds of other things pluggable that don't need to be, and plenty of other cruft in the kernel -- think binary formats other than ELF, old filesystems that nobody uses, and completely depricated systems like OSS for sound.
This reeks of politics, something I thought Linus was good at avoiding.
I wasn't aware we'd completely solved problems of responsiveness vs throughput, or of normal vs soft realtime vs hard realtime.
If we don't keep scheduling modular, an artificial limit on the performance of the system will be created. Sure, CFS is a viable option, but why should we think it is the best ?
What's more, "wanking around with your settings" has often been what Linux has always been about. Ubuntu never uses chroot in a normal situation; does that mean it should be taken out? My GUI and hotplug utilities can automount anything I plug in; should/etc/fstab be removed?
We haven't used anything but ELF for probably 5-10 years, yet, last I checked, a.out is still supported.
I'm talking about the lack of basic things like accelerated video drivers.
As an end-user, the reason for buying a Dell with Linux, other than because you want to support Dell selling Linux, is that they're supposed to handle all the scary Linux driver stuff.
(Of course, maybe I'm wrong and all that's missing is the Medibuntu stuff, which makes sense.)
That's exactly what I'm taking about. You know, Joe User and family just came back from vacation in Hawaii. Mr. User has several videos and Mrs. User has her camera and several memory cards full of still pictures. They want to put all that together into a not too boring show with some music. There is no computer you can buy, that will do that better and easier than a Mac.
Out of everyone I know, friends, family, plenty of Joe Users, that was never a use case. You may be right, of course, since I have no experience trying to do this, but it was just never an issue for anyone I know.
Here's how most people do it: Edit photos in Photoshop. Load them into any slideshow app -- could be PowerPoint, could be just a standard Windows picture directory. Load music in a separate program. Play.
I'm not sure Apple has the edge there, because I've never done any of the above on a Mac, except the music. But I can say that both Windows and Linux have very easy ways to do this, although Linux is frequently better than Windows at being able to just plug in the camera and have it recognized.
If they want it to play on a DVD player, that's another story... Then again, plenty of PCs come with TV out nowdays.
Apple is the ONLY hardware maker that builds a COMPLETE computer...
I know. That does not mean they have to lock down their own parts.
They happen to buy chips and other parts for various sources, but build their own software in the same way that Honda or Ford build their own engines from parts, many of which are supplied by others.
You really don't want to play with car analogies...
Yes, Ford sells you a whole car. However, if you want to rebuild the engine, or take the engine out of a Ford and put it in a Chevy, or anything like that, it is possible, though not exactly recommended.
If Ford built cars the way Apple builds computers, and you attempted to move the engine (or even the radio) to another car, it would start screeching "Non-Ford hardware detected!" and self-destruct.
Apple does this now for processors and their associated hardware. They call it a Universal Binary.
And this proves that while you are very good at reading marketspeak, you actually don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about.
A "Universal Binary" is just a bunch of platform-specific binaries mashed together. Basically, it means that when you click the "generate a Universal Binary" button (or whatever it is) in Xcode, it compiles it four times -- once for x86, once for x86_64, once for ppc, and once for ppc64.
Which means that if there ever is another hardware platform -- if, say, OS X is ported to Sparc or something -- your "Universal Binary" means absolutely nothing. More accurately, it means that until the company produces a "Super Universal Binary" (or whatever they'll call it), you'll have to run it under something like Rosetta, which means half the performance, or worse.
Compare this to Java,.NET, Python, Lisp, or any other bytecode-compiled language. Java and.NET, in particular, run close to as fast as native code, under any platform. Port the runtime environment, and all apps are ported, whether or not their authors want them to be.
The only exception is if they call out directly to native code. And they'd have no reason to, with a sufficiently well-developed OS/runtime, unless they were actually writing hardware drivers.
The Windows desktop disappears and the document shows up on the Mac screen like any other Mac document would.
Except Windows still has to be booted, and you still have to allocate some amount of RAM to it, I'd assume.
I can do the same thing under Wine, but without paying for Windows or having a copy of it running -- I can simply double-click on an install EXE and it'll run, and s
When I get asked; "What kind of computer should I buy?" I ask: "What do you want to do with it?" If in the answer there is anything about pictures or video I always recommend a Mac.
Why?
Unless they're talking about editing pictures and video, Linux would do just fine, and would be much cheaper, even if they paid you some $50 or so to do the initial install/tweaking. Given the right hardware choices, I could do that in an hour or so, so $50 would be a great price for me.
Seriously: Ubuntu or Kubuntu, add Medibuntu, maybe install VLC. Give em Gimp and Krita for basic photo editing. Give em Firefox or Konqueror for a web browser, and set up Flash. If they like Outlook, give em Kontact, or Thunderbird will work if you don't like KDE. Remind them to pay attention to the software update button.
For 90% of computer users, there's no real difference between OS X and Linux if you just want browsing, photos, email, etc. Only difference is when you start talking about application support, and even then, both are still dwarfed by Windows.
The Mac is as close to a universal computer we have come so far.
Only because Apple refuses to sell OS X for non-Apple hardware.
After all, I can go to any gas station to fill my Honda and my radio works with all broadcast stations.
Well, you may be right, and maybe not. There have been cross-OS standards -- POSIX, for example, means that you can write an application that you can port to any OS with only a recompile, so long as that OS is not POSIX-compliant (meaning it would need Cygwin on Windows, which makes it slow as hell). There's also things like Qt and wxWindows, which offer source-level compatibility with anything, including the native UI -- so it'll run fast on Windows, and not need X11 on OS X.
Then there are things like Java and Mono/.NET, where, if the app has been developed properly, you can pick it up without worrying about OS, since it won't even need a recompile. There are a few apps like that -- Eclipse plug-ins, web-based applications, Firefox extensions. At this point, it's essentially building a portable system on top of the non-portable OS.
I would love to see things like that become ubiquitous, but it's probably not happening soon. And if you meant that we'll just pick something up because we'll all have Macs that triple-boot OS X, Windows, and Linux, that seems unnecessarily expensive... Not to mention, unless the industry shapes up a bit, our software is going to have hardware/b> requirements -- even if Bioshock ran on every OS, it's not going to run on your Pentium II.
More relevantly, your analogy is kind of a good one. You can go to any gas station to fill your Honda, and your radio works with all analog (AM/FM) broadcast stations. Which means, for lowest-common-denominator, you don't have to worry about it -- which is like saying Windows is nice because you can just buy most software without even looking at the System Requirements and expect it to run on Windows.
But like many people in the Windows world, you are barely aware of alternatives. Of cars which run on electricity or biodiesel, of radios which run on digital signals from satellites. You've probably heard of these things, but don't consider them to be a real option -- sound familiar? They're toys, only taken seriously by people on the fringe...
TFA suggests that if you want to search actual Chinese sites, you should use google.cn, not google.com.
Erm... no, bad idea. Maybe google.cn won't have the same spam, maybe it will, but it most certainly is censored for other reasons as well. (Unless they've stopped doing this and I've completely missed the news -- there is one tank man on the first page of a google.cn image search for "tiananmen square", compared with almost the entire first page being tank men on google.com.)
And maybe a good suggestion to ignore Chinese sites, for now, but then, why would it work in China, but not here? Seems to me, this tactic would work anywhere, so the only way to be sure you're not infected is to run a secure browser and wait for Googlebot to be updated.
I saw a box sold with Home Basic which had something like an 80 gig drive, 512 megs of RAM, and a 1.7 ghz processor.
It was absolutely unusable.
The processor was not a bottleneck, I'll give you that much. And I didn't stay on it long enough to test if the network was the bottleneck -- that whole sound-drops-you-to-10% bug (a fucking BUG, not a feature) -- but I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't, for this simple reason:
The RAM killed it. Even if it weren't for the network bug, it'd still browse slower than dialup, because it was CONSTANTLY swapping out.
No, not "Often", or even "Most of the time". Not only when I, as a geek, was trying to coerce it to do more than it was designed to, like, say, download some updates, or install Firefox.
It was swapping ALL the fucking time. I popped in a 512 meg USB stick and used it for ReadyBoost, which improved things marginally -- it was then capable of doing some things in maybe 20-30 seconds, instead of 2-3 minutes. And by "some things", I mean opening another tab in a browser -- Firefox or IE7, didn't matter. (And like 5 minutes or so to switch between them...)
I may be getting the times wrong, but let me put it this way: I've used an NT4 machine with some 128 megs of RAM. I've used a Win98 machine with 32 megs of RAM -- also a Linux handheld with 32 megs of RAM, and that had to use a CompactFlash card for swap.
That 512 meg Vista machine was the absolute WORST computing experience I've ever had. Ever, in fifteen years. The only thing that comes close was a videogame on Win3.1, running off a 4x CD-ROM drive, but at least it was fast once it loaded the damned level.
So yes, I realize Vista can be fast. But considering that it sucks so badly, even compared to older versions of Windows, on 512 megs of RAM, you have to ask yourself, are you actually getting to use the rest of your RAM? Say you need to run a memory hog app like Eclipse -- Vista could be the difference between needing 2 gigs of RAM for Eclipse and nothing else, or needing 1 gig of RAM and being able to play music and still have a fast network.
Didn't even touch on disk usage, but there's really no excuse there. After installing Kubuntu, plus a bunch of codecs, plus a bunch of apps not in the main install, including a couple of versions of Wine and some Windows apps, it was maybe 5 or 6 gigs. The above Vista install was 15 gigs, before you go download drivers, VLC, install Office, etc. Consider that there was also a restore partition, not even a hidden one (it was mounted), which used maybe 20-30 gigs (and wasn't even entirely full), and it's an 80 gig hard drive, total. Which means you're giving about half your hard drive up to the fucking OS, before you even install software. Sure, it's inconsequential for your 300 gig drive, but it is a waste, don't you think?
The question is not whether there's hardware that can run Vista well. That's a given. The question is whether you'd be better off with XP, and more and more, the answer is a resounding yes!
First of all, if you want interesting information:
cat/proc/cpuinfo
The speed listed there is, in fact, your currently running speed.
But more relevantly: I've installed Ubuntu Feisty on three machines now which had CPU scaling -- two separate AMD desktops (one dual-core, one single-core) and one Intel laptop (dual-core). On all of them, CPU scaling was automatically detected and enabled, in a reasonably intelligent manner -- most of the time they all run at 1 ghz, but they can and will crank up to 1.8, 2.0, or 2.4 (depending on the machine) when needed.
I would say that there's really not much reason for manually changing the profiles, either, unless you need to force them to be slower. I think it can be done, I've just never cared to try -- if I don't want it to heat my lap, I don't run CPU-intensive stuff.
One thing Windows likely can't do: Laptop Mode. You may need to Google for help here, and you'll probably want to manually force your hard drive to be able to spin down, but what this means is, you can essentially force your computer to keep the hard drive off as much as possible, delaying reads as long as everything's cached, and delaying writes until the buffer is full. Then, when forced to spin up, it flushes all the writes to ensure that by the time it spins down again, it will last just as long.
GNOME and all of their stuff (GTK+, etc) is all LGPL where it makes sense.
Qt is dual-licensed under either GPL or some proprietary license which you have to pay for. The idea is, if you want to develop a proprietary app, you pay them. Unfortunately, that also means that if you want a GPLv3 app, you have to wait for a GPLv3 version of Qt stuff. (That is, unless you're willing to distribute GPLv3 KDE yourself, assuming, of course, that they kept the "or later" clause.)
Payments from companies for bundling their crapware (AOL intro, Norton/Macafee, Roxio, Google Toolbar, etc, etc) can generate nore revenue for the OEM than the cost of an OEM Windows licence.
Ah, true, but on a $200 laptop, there's not a lot of room for crapware without making the system actually unusable. If you add crapware, you are going to have to pay for it somehow -- in this case, probably some more hardware, probably more than $70 worth.
Think about it: Would you buy an iPhone for, say, $50 or $100 less, if it also took anywhere from 5-30 seconds to do anything? (That's being generous, by the way, compared to a typical Vista Home Basic on a computer with only 512 megs of RAM.)
Apparently, the Dell Ubuntu is a stock Ubuntu, with very few modifications -- some sort of EULA-like clickthrough, for example.
They don't bother to configure things like, oh, video drivers. Thus, people come away with the impression that Linux is slow. When similar things happen with their Windows computers, they think that their computer is slow, because they know other people with fast Windows.
I'd say one would almost always be able to get a Windows PC or laptop *without* the OS or at least make one from exactly the same parts. You may end up paying a little more, but whatever.
But that means you are thus paying even more, just so you don't pay Microsoft. Which makes it a tax.
one may argue exactly the same in retail sector and Walmart. Therefore you pay Walmart tax?
Except that Walmart does offer lower prices, and they also don't have lock-in, even if they are a near-monopoly. I can buy from Walmart sometimes, and from Newegg other times.
And you are somewhat unique in that most people do not directly pay for Windows, either as a subscription or per-product. Most people just find that it came with their computer. That does make a huge difference -- imagine the same people buying a computer with Linux. Would they be willing to pay for Windows? You might, apparently, but you're the exception.
Do you know how easy the timezone updates are for me on, say, Ubuntu?
Neither do I, because I didn't notice. At some point, it was just updated, without me having to think about it.
Debian is actually making this issue worse, by forcing people running stable to either update it themselves, or use the volatile repository, when it could have been as painless as throwing it in security updates. Then again, most people using stable should be using volatile anyway.
Precisely because if something was broken, they would complain about Linux.
In fact, I've had this happen -- was talking to someone who had computer trouble, and I suggested switching to Linux, as they had no Windows install media, and I couldn't save their current install. Turns out, they hate Linux, because they used it once, on a friend's computer, for a few hours -- and said friend had rented the computer with Linux already on it.
So, apparently, shitty installs like this reflect poorly on Linux, and not on the manufacturer. This has long been the case, btw -- anytime something goes wrong with Linux, it's Linux's fault, whereas when something goes wrong with Windows, it's some hardware manufacturer's fault for writing a buggy driver, or the OEM for installing a crappy version, or the user for not maintaining it properly.
I wish this wasn't the case, because I think that, for most purposes, Linux is the best we've got. (It's still crap, and it's the best we've got; what does that say about us?) But in order for someone to stay on Linux, it can't so much as hiccup, or they'll go running back to Windows.
If a company can make a $200 laptop, and Windows is adding another, what, $70 to the cost? Well, I imagine at least one of them would take a chance preinstalling Windows and having a laptop that's some 35% cheaper, and will be used for essentially the same stuff.
And if it's preinstalled by an OEM who actually cares (read: not Dell), it will come with all the hardware support it needs. They'll hand-pick components that are known for good support, and pre-load the more obscure drivers, if any.
Look at the Asus Eee PC, for an example of what this will look like.
The only remaining question is whether people will accept an OS that doesn't necessarily support all of their software, looks and feels a bit different, etc, on a $200 device. No, scratch that, they already do on a $400 device (iPhone), so why not?
Maybe it will come down to ease of use, but either way, it is absolutely a software question. The hardware issue is not a question, it's an answer: When computer prices get that cheap, either the cost of Windows will come down a LOT, or people WILL start to see it as an additional burden, and not something that just comes with their PC.
Oh, and as someone else pointed out, the reason Windows works so well on cheap hardware, or even not-so-cheap hardware, is entirely the pre-install. I spent from 10 AM to like 8 PM on a workday (with breaks for lunch and dinner), doing nothing but installing XP and tracking down drivers on a brand-new, made-for-Vista Toshiba laptop. Apparently, there are XP drivers, but only on the Toshiba UK site -- I downloaded a video driver straight from nVidia (yes, it is an nVidia card) and it wouldn't work, not till I got the same driver from the UK site.
So, yeah, Vista came out of the box and ready to go, but as I've detailed elsewhere, the software needed (MICROSOFT software, btw) required XP.
Oh well. It was paid time, which is kind of nice, considering that on my own, it takes roughly a half hour to get everything working on Linux, video drivers included. Yes, for some reason, the same fucking driver for XP would not recognize my card, but works fine on Linux.
Sorry, but if they really do know Windows that well, they wouldn't have a problem with Linux. The interfaces are similar enough, really.
I'd say, the biggest problems are the intermediate users, who know all kinds of things about a system by rote, but not really. These are the kind who look at Linux and ask questions like "Where's my C drive? How do I defrag? This thing says my RAM is 100% full?!"
If they're smart enough to ask those questions, it will be a long and difficult learning curve. Many don't bother to ask, they just go back to Windows, and provide a brand new batch of FUD.
Of course, some people have to use Windows anyway. But not all of these use it because they're afraid of Linux.
There was a time when building your own computer was much cheaper, because Dell was basically making their profit by assembling your computer for you.
Not so much the case, anymore. Last time I looked, Dell was able to get much better deals on components than I was. They do sell Linux now, but apparently, they and other manufacturers actually make the money they spent on Windows back by being paid to put trial/crapware on the machine.
But if you consider that you're paying for Windows, then yes, it is a "tax" on most prebuilt machines. Dell is one of the few who offer machines without Windows, let alone with Linux, and it's not their whole product line.
Now, you are unique here -- you do use it in a virtual environment, which means you pay for every license independently, and you pay for them with the intent to use them.
KDE seemed to be adopting Xine, and is now planning something called "Phonon" or something. GNOME uses Gstreamer. VLC and Mplayer use ffmpeg.
There are some one-way connections between these, so that most codecs are well supported somewhere. But it's far from perfect, far from just being able to buy a single WMV codec (say) and expecting it to automatically work everywhere.
That said, the few that you actually need are available, semi-legally, through Medibuntu. It's all well documented, because there are people using it legally -- that is, they live in countries with saner IP laws. And it has the added benefit of being mostly open source, working very well, and having an actual repository, such that you can get updates through apt, and in turn, through Ubuntu's GUI for software updates.
I doubt that would apply to a proprietary solution, even ignoring the part about it being open or proprietary.
I produce media for a living (audio/music and video).
As long as it's not 3D, you might be able to get away with an Intel video card.
Trust me, I know it sucks that ATI isn't supported. But also, trust me when I say: nVidia has closed drivers that mostly work. ATI has somewhat more open drivers, and now open specs, so there will eventually be better and completely open drivers, but not now.
Intel has open drivers that are also fairly mature. They'll pretty much work, pretty much all the time.
So, you said you'd pay a little bit... Hardware is a bit much, I know, but even if it doesn't work for you now, at least in the future, you'll know what to look for. Not that you should have to, just good to know...
From what I remember, there was at one point a "Mobile Athlon" that was like a desktop athlon, but designed for better power efficiency, etc.
What really isn't clear here is, they've taken the Core 2 Duo out of a desktop, made a version for laptops, but they now just call it Centrino, or maybe Centrino Duo. Which is confusing as hell -- when my new job gave me a laptop, it had a "Centrino Duo", and I had to go online to check if it could run a 64-bit OS -- because the main difference between "Core Duo" and "Core2 Duo", I thought, was that Core Duo was dual-core, and Core2 Duo was dual-core 64-bit.
This is even less obvious. My next Intel laptop, if I get an Intel laptop, might have a straight "Centrino", and I'll have to take some obscure model number online, or just boot Linux on it, to find out if it has dual-core, 64-bit, or even what the clock speed is.
Stupid marketing like this won't stop me from buying whichever is the better deal, but if it's close, I might just buy that clearly-labeled AMD Turion64 X2.
It's not a perpetual motion machine, as far as I can tell, unless you necessarily need more electricity to make the water bridge as you'd gain from the water falling, but as long as it's going downhill, there's at least the possibility of a net power gain, right?
At least with your example, it is complete and utter bullshit.
Who buys Photoshop?
There was a Slashdot article awhile back about how casual piracy has gotten, even among non-technical people. Photoshop included, Windows included... In general, your copy-protection scheme is probably already zero-dayed, and will almost certainly be broken within the year.
You know why?
Because while it's not as easy, it's still very possible to comment out those bits in the assembly. It's a lot easier than most other modifications you'd try to make. And you don't usually have to go that far -- for awhile, the simplest solution to Windows was to download the Corporate edition and use the same serial as everyone else.
The copy protection bullshit is mostly illegal -- really only enforced at the corporate level, where source code availability doesn't matter, because the BSA will track you down. At the corporate level, they make sure to have licenses for everything.
All this is assuming a model of selling/licensing the software anyway, which isn't always the case.
Any IT dept who pushes this is stupid, because they are leaking internal employee activities to an external site.
Better leaking to google.com than 67.43.208.13. And some users really are so completely untrainable that the choice really is that simple.
Until and unless companies start forcing a basic level of computer competence, well, your only third option is to kiosk-ify their workstations until they physically can't do anything to them, or maybe to firewall so aggressively that they can't touch the outside world except to explicitly approved sites.
Then you are part of the problem, and given your level of knowledge implied by your presence here, you share in the responsibility for that failure.
Sorry, no.
(Warning, extended car analogy...)
I'm just the mechanic. I can tell you as many times as I like how often you have to change the oil on your car, or not to turn left into cross traffic, or any of the stupid little things every driver should know. But in the end, I'm just the mechanic, I can't do shit.
The current solution is to have the government deal with it. But back in the IT world, the "government" is management, and they're often just as clueless as the users.
I'd wager you like to push fancy, dramatic-sounding 'technologies' to people, instead of teaching fundamentals that save tons of resources (and freedom) down the line.
I teach fundamentals to anyone who will listen.
Unfortunately, it's not many. And if they won't let me teach them, it comes back to that choice: Do I do nothing, so that Google doesn't get their personal information, but 67.43.208.13 does? Or do I push a "fancy, dramatic-sounding 'technology'" that sends personal information to Google, but keeps them safe from 67.43.208.13?
It's not really that difficult a choice.
Yes, if I ran the company, I would give IT lots of power. I would prevent people, as much as possible, from making stupid choices, often by not even letting them run on Windows. I'd require them to take basic computer training -- not "Video Professor" bullshit, but actual fundamentals that almost no one bothers to learn. I would make them competent admins, yet not give actual admin rights except where necessary...
And I'd be dreaming, because I don't run the company, and it's not up to me.
Even on a user-by-user basis, it's not up to me, because I'm not their boss, so I can't mandate training. And if I could show you some of the people I occasionally try to help here, well... They're almost proud of how inept they are.
Slashdot Mirror
Because that means more code to maintain. Code that might be broken later.
However, I do think there's sufficient reason to keep it pluggable. We have all kinds of other things pluggable that don't need to be, and plenty of other cruft in the kernel -- think binary formats other than ELF, old filesystems that nobody uses, and completely depricated systems like OSS for sound.
This reeks of politics, something I thought Linus was good at avoiding.
I wasn't aware we'd completely solved problems of responsiveness vs throughput, or of normal vs soft realtime vs hard realtime.
/etc/fstab be removed?
If we don't keep scheduling modular, an artificial limit on the performance of the system will be created. Sure, CFS is a viable option, but why should we think it is the best ?
What's more, "wanking around with your settings" has often been what Linux has always been about. Ubuntu never uses chroot in a normal situation; does that mean it should be taken out? My GUI and hotplug utilities can automount anything I plug in; should
We haven't used anything but ELF for probably 5-10 years, yet, last I checked, a.out is still supported.
Why should the system be made non-modular?
I'm talking about the lack of basic things like accelerated video drivers.
As an end-user, the reason for buying a Dell with Linux, other than because you want to support Dell selling Linux, is that they're supposed to handle all the scary Linux driver stuff.
(Of course, maybe I'm wrong and all that's missing is the Medibuntu stuff, which makes sense.)
Out of everyone I know, friends, family, plenty of Joe Users, that was never a use case. You may be right, of course, since I have no experience trying to do this, but it was just never an issue for anyone I know.
Here's how most people do it: Edit photos in Photoshop. Load them into any slideshow app -- could be PowerPoint, could be just a standard Windows picture directory. Load music in a separate program. Play.
I'm not sure Apple has the edge there, because I've never done any of the above on a Mac, except the music. But I can say that both Windows and Linux have very easy ways to do this, although Linux is frequently better than Windows at being able to just plug in the camera and have it recognized.
If they want it to play on a DVD player, that's another story... Then again, plenty of PCs come with TV out nowdays.
I know. That does not mean they have to lock down their own parts.
You really don't want to play with car analogies...
Yes, Ford sells you a whole car. However, if you want to rebuild the engine, or take the engine out of a Ford and put it in a Chevy, or anything like that, it is possible, though not exactly recommended.
If Ford built cars the way Apple builds computers, and you attempted to move the engine (or even the radio) to another car, it would start screeching "Non-Ford hardware detected!" and self-destruct.
And this proves that while you are very good at reading marketspeak, you actually don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about.
A "Universal Binary" is just a bunch of platform-specific binaries mashed together. Basically, it means that when you click the "generate a Universal Binary" button (or whatever it is) in Xcode, it compiles it four times -- once for x86, once for x86_64, once for ppc, and once for ppc64.
Which means that if there ever is another hardware platform -- if, say, OS X is ported to Sparc or something -- your "Universal Binary" means absolutely nothing. More accurately, it means that until the company produces a "Super Universal Binary" (or whatever they'll call it), you'll have to run it under something like Rosetta, which means half the performance, or worse.
Compare this to Java, .NET, Python, Lisp, or any other bytecode-compiled language. Java and .NET, in particular, run close to as fast as native code, under any platform. Port the runtime environment, and all apps are ported, whether or not their authors want them to be.
The only exception is if they call out directly to native code. And they'd have no reason to, with a sufficiently well-developed OS/runtime, unless they were actually writing hardware drivers.
Except Windows still has to be booted, and you still have to allocate some amount of RAM to it, I'd assume.
I can do the same thing under Wine, but without paying for Windows or having a copy of it running -- I can simply double-click on an install EXE and it'll run, and s
Why?
Unless they're talking about editing pictures and video, Linux would do just fine, and would be much cheaper, even if they paid you some $50 or so to do the initial install/tweaking. Given the right hardware choices, I could do that in an hour or so, so $50 would be a great price for me.
Seriously: Ubuntu or Kubuntu, add Medibuntu, maybe install VLC. Give em Gimp and Krita for basic photo editing. Give em Firefox or Konqueror for a web browser, and set up Flash. If they like Outlook, give em Kontact, or Thunderbird will work if you don't like KDE. Remind them to pay attention to the software update button.
For 90% of computer users, there's no real difference between OS X and Linux if you just want browsing, photos, email, etc. Only difference is when you start talking about application support, and even then, both are still dwarfed by Windows.
Only because Apple refuses to sell OS X for non-Apple hardware.
Well, you may be right, and maybe not. There have been cross-OS standards -- POSIX, for example, means that you can write an application that you can port to any OS with only a recompile, so long as that OS is not POSIX-compliant (meaning it would need Cygwin on Windows, which makes it slow as hell). There's also things like Qt and wxWindows, which offer source-level compatibility with anything, including the native UI -- so it'll run fast on Windows, and not need X11 on OS X.
Then there are things like Java and Mono/.NET, where, if the app has been developed properly, you can pick it up without worrying about OS, since it won't even need a recompile. There are a few apps like that -- Eclipse plug-ins, web-based applications, Firefox extensions. At this point, it's essentially building a portable system on top of the non-portable OS.
I would love to see things like that become ubiquitous, but it's probably not happening soon. And if you meant that we'll just pick something up because we'll all have Macs that triple-boot OS X, Windows, and Linux, that seems unnecessarily expensive... Not to mention, unless the industry shapes up a bit, our software is going to have hardware/b> requirements -- even if Bioshock ran on every OS, it's not going to run on your Pentium II.
More relevantly, your analogy is kind of a good one. You can go to any gas station to fill your Honda, and your radio works with all analog (AM/FM) broadcast stations. Which means, for lowest-common-denominator, you don't have to worry about it -- which is like saying Windows is nice because you can just buy most software without even looking at the System Requirements and expect it to run on Windows.
But like many people in the Windows world, you are barely aware of alternatives. Of cars which run on electricity or biodiesel, of radios which run on digital signals from satellites. You've probably heard of these things, but don't consider them to be a real option -- sound familiar? They're toys, only taken seriously by people on the fringe...
The writer of the article doesn't seem to have English as a first language. Or maybe even as a second language. It's almost "All Your Base" bad.
TFA suggests that if you want to search actual Chinese sites, you should use google.cn, not google.com.
Erm... no, bad idea. Maybe google.cn won't have the same spam, maybe it will, but it most certainly is censored for other reasons as well. (Unless they've stopped doing this and I've completely missed the news -- there is one tank man on the first page of a google.cn image search for "tiananmen square", compared with almost the entire first page being tank men on google.com.)
And maybe a good suggestion to ignore Chinese sites, for now, but then, why would it work in China, but not here? Seems to me, this tactic would work anywhere, so the only way to be sure you're not infected is to run a secure browser and wait for Googlebot to be updated.
I saw a box sold with Home Basic which had something like an 80 gig drive, 512 megs of RAM, and a 1.7 ghz processor.
It was absolutely unusable.
The processor was not a bottleneck, I'll give you that much. And I didn't stay on it long enough to test if the network was the bottleneck -- that whole sound-drops-you-to-10% bug (a fucking BUG, not a feature) -- but I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't, for this simple reason:
The RAM killed it. Even if it weren't for the network bug, it'd still browse slower than dialup, because it was CONSTANTLY swapping out.
No, not "Often", or even "Most of the time". Not only when I, as a geek, was trying to coerce it to do more than it was designed to, like, say, download some updates, or install Firefox.
It was swapping ALL the fucking time. I popped in a 512 meg USB stick and used it for ReadyBoost, which improved things marginally -- it was then capable of doing some things in maybe 20-30 seconds, instead of 2-3 minutes. And by "some things", I mean opening another tab in a browser -- Firefox or IE7, didn't matter. (And like 5 minutes or so to switch between them...)
I may be getting the times wrong, but let me put it this way: I've used an NT4 machine with some 128 megs of RAM. I've used a Win98 machine with 32 megs of RAM -- also a Linux handheld with 32 megs of RAM, and that had to use a CompactFlash card for swap.
That 512 meg Vista machine was the absolute WORST computing experience I've ever had. Ever, in fifteen years. The only thing that comes close was a videogame on Win3.1, running off a 4x CD-ROM drive, but at least it was fast once it loaded the damned level.
So yes, I realize Vista can be fast. But considering that it sucks so badly, even compared to older versions of Windows, on 512 megs of RAM, you have to ask yourself, are you actually getting to use the rest of your RAM? Say you need to run a memory hog app like Eclipse -- Vista could be the difference between needing 2 gigs of RAM for Eclipse and nothing else, or needing 1 gig of RAM and being able to play music and still have a fast network.
Didn't even touch on disk usage, but there's really no excuse there. After installing Kubuntu, plus a bunch of codecs, plus a bunch of apps not in the main install, including a couple of versions of Wine and some Windows apps, it was maybe 5 or 6 gigs. The above Vista install was 15 gigs, before you go download drivers, VLC, install Office, etc. Consider that there was also a restore partition, not even a hidden one (it was mounted), which used maybe 20-30 gigs (and wasn't even entirely full), and it's an 80 gig hard drive, total. Which means you're giving about half your hard drive up to the fucking OS, before you even install software. Sure, it's inconsequential for your 300 gig drive, but it is a waste, don't you think?
The question is not whether there's hardware that can run Vista well. That's a given. The question is whether you'd be better off with XP, and more and more, the answer is a resounding yes!
First of all, if you want interesting information:
/proc/cpuinfo
cat
The speed listed there is, in fact, your currently running speed.
But more relevantly: I've installed Ubuntu Feisty on three machines now which had CPU scaling -- two separate AMD desktops (one dual-core, one single-core) and one Intel laptop (dual-core). On all of them, CPU scaling was automatically detected and enabled, in a reasonably intelligent manner -- most of the time they all run at 1 ghz, but they can and will crank up to 1.8, 2.0, or 2.4 (depending on the machine) when needed.
I would say that there's really not much reason for manually changing the profiles, either, unless you need to force them to be slower. I think it can be done, I've just never cared to try -- if I don't want it to heat my lap, I don't run CPU-intensive stuff.
One thing Windows likely can't do: Laptop Mode. You may need to Google for help here, and you'll probably want to manually force your hard drive to be able to spin down, but what this means is, you can essentially force your computer to keep the hard drive off as much as possible, delaying reads as long as everything's cached, and delaying writes until the buffer is full. Then, when forced to spin up, it flushes all the writes to ensure that by the time it spins down again, it will last just as long.
GNOME and all of their stuff (GTK+, etc) is all LGPL where it makes sense.
Qt is dual-licensed under either GPL or some proprietary license which you have to pay for. The idea is, if you want to develop a proprietary app, you pay them. Unfortunately, that also means that if you want a GPLv3 app, you have to wait for a GPLv3 version of Qt stuff. (That is, unless you're willing to distribute GPLv3 KDE yourself, assuming, of course, that they kept the "or later" clause.)
Ah, true, but on a $200 laptop, there's not a lot of room for crapware without making the system actually unusable. If you add crapware, you are going to have to pay for it somehow -- in this case, probably some more hardware, probably more than $70 worth.
Think about it: Would you buy an iPhone for, say, $50 or $100 less, if it also took anywhere from 5-30 seconds to do anything? (That's being generous, by the way, compared to a typical Vista Home Basic on a computer with only 512 megs of RAM.)
Apparently, the Dell Ubuntu is a stock Ubuntu, with very few modifications -- some sort of EULA-like clickthrough, for example.
They don't bother to configure things like, oh, video drivers. Thus, people come away with the impression that Linux is slow. When similar things happen with their Windows computers, they think that their computer is slow, because they know other people with fast Windows.
I do agree with you there.
But that means you are thus paying even more, just so you don't pay Microsoft. Which makes it a tax.
Except that Walmart does offer lower prices, and they also don't have lock-in, even if they are a near-monopoly. I can buy from Walmart sometimes, and from Newegg other times.
And you are somewhat unique in that most people do not directly pay for Windows, either as a subscription or per-product. Most people just find that it came with their computer. That does make a huge difference -- imagine the same people buying a computer with Linux. Would they be willing to pay for Windows? You might, apparently, but you're the exception.
Do you know how easy the timezone updates are for me on, say, Ubuntu?
Neither do I, because I didn't notice. At some point, it was just updated, without me having to think about it.
Debian is actually making this issue worse, by forcing people running stable to either update it themselves, or use the volatile repository, when it could have been as painless as throwing it in security updates. Then again, most people using stable should be using volatile anyway.
Precisely because if something was broken, they would complain about Linux.
In fact, I've had this happen -- was talking to someone who had computer trouble, and I suggested switching to Linux, as they had no Windows install media, and I couldn't save their current install. Turns out, they hate Linux, because they used it once, on a friend's computer, for a few hours -- and said friend had rented the computer with Linux already on it.
So, apparently, shitty installs like this reflect poorly on Linux, and not on the manufacturer. This has long been the case, btw -- anytime something goes wrong with Linux, it's Linux's fault, whereas when something goes wrong with Windows, it's some hardware manufacturer's fault for writing a buggy driver, or the OEM for installing a crappy version, or the user for not maintaining it properly.
I wish this wasn't the case, because I think that, for most purposes, Linux is the best we've got. (It's still crap, and it's the best we've got; what does that say about us?) But in order for someone to stay on Linux, it can't so much as hiccup, or they'll go running back to Windows.
If a company can make a $200 laptop, and Windows is adding another, what, $70 to the cost? Well, I imagine at least one of them would take a chance preinstalling Windows and having a laptop that's some 35% cheaper, and will be used for essentially the same stuff.
And if it's preinstalled by an OEM who actually cares (read: not Dell), it will come with all the hardware support it needs. They'll hand-pick components that are known for good support, and pre-load the more obscure drivers, if any.
Look at the Asus Eee PC, for an example of what this will look like.
The only remaining question is whether people will accept an OS that doesn't necessarily support all of their software, looks and feels a bit different, etc, on a $200 device. No, scratch that, they already do on a $400 device (iPhone), so why not?
Maybe it will come down to ease of use, but either way, it is absolutely a software question. The hardware issue is not a question, it's an answer: When computer prices get that cheap, either the cost of Windows will come down a LOT, or people WILL start to see it as an additional burden, and not something that just comes with their PC.
Oh, and as someone else pointed out, the reason Windows works so well on cheap hardware, or even not-so-cheap hardware, is entirely the pre-install. I spent from 10 AM to like 8 PM on a workday (with breaks for lunch and dinner), doing nothing but installing XP and tracking down drivers on a brand-new, made-for-Vista Toshiba laptop. Apparently, there are XP drivers, but only on the Toshiba UK site -- I downloaded a video driver straight from nVidia (yes, it is an nVidia card) and it wouldn't work, not till I got the same driver from the UK site.
So, yeah, Vista came out of the box and ready to go, but as I've detailed elsewhere, the software needed (MICROSOFT software, btw) required XP.
Oh well. It was paid time, which is kind of nice, considering that on my own, it takes roughly a half hour to get everything working on Linux, video drivers included. Yes, for some reason, the same fucking driver for XP would not recognize my card, but works fine on Linux.
Sorry, but if they really do know Windows that well, they wouldn't have a problem with Linux. The interfaces are similar enough, really.
I'd say, the biggest problems are the intermediate users, who know all kinds of things about a system by rote, but not really. These are the kind who look at Linux and ask questions like "Where's my C drive? How do I defrag? This thing says my RAM is 100% full?!"
If they're smart enough to ask those questions, it will be a long and difficult learning curve. Many don't bother to ask, they just go back to Windows, and provide a brand new batch of FUD.
Of course, some people have to use Windows anyway. But not all of these use it because they're afraid of Linux.
There was a time when building your own computer was much cheaper, because Dell was basically making their profit by assembling your computer for you.
Not so much the case, anymore. Last time I looked, Dell was able to get much better deals on components than I was. They do sell Linux now, but apparently, they and other manufacturers actually make the money they spent on Windows back by being paid to put trial/crapware on the machine.
But if you consider that you're paying for Windows, then yes, it is a "tax" on most prebuilt machines. Dell is one of the few who offer machines without Windows, let alone with Linux, and it's not their whole product line.
Now, you are unique here -- you do use it in a virtual environment, which means you pay for every license independently, and you pay for them with the intent to use them.
KDE seemed to be adopting Xine, and is now planning something called "Phonon" or something. GNOME uses Gstreamer. VLC and Mplayer use ffmpeg.
There are some one-way connections between these, so that most codecs are well supported somewhere. But it's far from perfect, far from just being able to buy a single WMV codec (say) and expecting it to automatically work everywhere.
That said, the few that you actually need are available, semi-legally, through Medibuntu. It's all well documented, because there are people using it legally -- that is, they live in countries with saner IP laws. And it has the added benefit of being mostly open source, working very well, and having an actual repository, such that you can get updates through apt, and in turn, through Ubuntu's GUI for software updates.
I doubt that would apply to a proprietary solution, even ignoring the part about it being open or proprietary.
As long as it's not 3D, you might be able to get away with an Intel video card.
Trust me, I know it sucks that ATI isn't supported. But also, trust me when I say: nVidia has closed drivers that mostly work. ATI has somewhat more open drivers, and now open specs, so there will eventually be better and completely open drivers, but not now.Intel has open drivers that are also fairly mature. They'll pretty much work, pretty much all the time.
So, you said you'd pay a little bit... Hardware is a bit much, I know, but even if it doesn't work for you now, at least in the future, you'll know what to look for. Not that you should have to, just good to know...
From what I remember, there was at one point a "Mobile Athlon" that was like a desktop athlon, but designed for better power efficiency, etc.
What really isn't clear here is, they've taken the Core 2 Duo out of a desktop, made a version for laptops, but they now just call it Centrino, or maybe Centrino Duo. Which is confusing as hell -- when my new job gave me a laptop, it had a "Centrino Duo", and I had to go online to check if it could run a 64-bit OS -- because the main difference between "Core Duo" and "Core2 Duo", I thought, was that Core Duo was dual-core, and Core2 Duo was dual-core 64-bit.
This is even less obvious. My next Intel laptop, if I get an Intel laptop, might have a straight "Centrino", and I'll have to take some obscure model number online, or just boot Linux on it, to find out if it has dual-core, 64-bit, or even what the clock speed is.
Stupid marketing like this won't stop me from buying whichever is the better deal, but if it's close, I might just buy that clearly-labeled AMD Turion64 X2.
Specifically, can you patent a business practice, or a business model?
I can understand patenting technologies that lead up to it, but patenting the whole thing? I have no idea if that's within the scope of a patent...
It's not a perpetual motion machine, as far as I can tell, unless you necessarily need more electricity to make the water bridge as you'd gain from the water falling, but as long as it's going downhill, there's at least the possibility of a net power gain, right?
At least with your example, it is complete and utter bullshit.
Who buys Photoshop?
There was a Slashdot article awhile back about how casual piracy has gotten, even among non-technical people. Photoshop included, Windows included... In general, your copy-protection scheme is probably already zero-dayed, and will almost certainly be broken within the year.
You know why?
Because while it's not as easy, it's still very possible to comment out those bits in the assembly. It's a lot easier than most other modifications you'd try to make. And you don't usually have to go that far -- for awhile, the simplest solution to Windows was to download the Corporate edition and use the same serial as everyone else.
The copy protection bullshit is mostly illegal -- really only enforced at the corporate level, where source code availability doesn't matter, because the BSA will track you down. At the corporate level, they make sure to have licenses for everything.
All this is assuming a model of selling/licensing the software anyway, which isn't always the case.
Better leaking to google.com than 67.43.208.13. And some users really are so completely untrainable that the choice really is that simple.
Until and unless companies start forcing a basic level of computer competence, well, your only third option is to kiosk-ify their workstations until they physically can't do anything to them, or maybe to firewall so aggressively that they can't touch the outside world except to explicitly approved sites.
Sorry, no.
(Warning, extended car analogy...)
I'm just the mechanic. I can tell you as many times as I like how often you have to change the oil on your car, or not to turn left into cross traffic, or any of the stupid little things every driver should know. But in the end, I'm just the mechanic, I can't do shit.
The current solution is to have the government deal with it. But back in the IT world, the "government" is management, and they're often just as clueless as the users.
I teach fundamentals to anyone who will listen.
Unfortunately, it's not many. And if they won't let me teach them, it comes back to that choice: Do I do nothing, so that Google doesn't get their personal information, but 67.43.208.13 does? Or do I push a "fancy, dramatic-sounding 'technology'" that sends personal information to Google, but keeps them safe from 67.43.208.13?
It's not really that difficult a choice.
Yes, if I ran the company, I would give IT lots of power. I would prevent people, as much as possible, from making stupid choices, often by not even letting them run on Windows. I'd require them to take basic computer training -- not "Video Professor" bullshit, but actual fundamentals that almost no one bothers to learn. I would make them competent admins, yet not give actual admin rights except where necessary...
And I'd be dreaming, because I don't run the company, and it's not up to me.
Even on a user-by-user basis, it's not up to me, because I'm not their boss, so I can't mandate training. And if I could show you some of the people I occasionally try to help here, well... They're almost proud of how inept they are.