I submit to you Galeon needs better documentation. I've been using it exclusively for three months now, and I've had no idea there existed a tool called gconftool (I suppose I should have paid attention during make install:). Any links?
Anyways, it rocks - tabs, xml myportal page, etc. You can't beat it. For all the KDE folk, Konqueror is nice too, I just like this better.
It has a PCMIA card slot, so you could put a laptop ethernet card in the machine
Actually it doesn't. The early Japanese versions (SCPH-10000, IIRC) did, but Sony axed this in favor of a proprietary interface of their own. If they hadn'd done this, someone would have probably already ported Linux to the PS2. Kinna makes ya think, doesn't it?
so you could put a laptop ethernet card in the machine.
Not only can't you, you won't need to, if the Japanese PS2 Linux Kit is any indication. The HDD that comes with the kit includes a built-in 10/100 NIC.
The Japanese version ships with a combo hard-drive/10-100Mbit ethernet connection.
The printer port is/dev/usb.
Why plug in a cdrom drive? It's got a CD/DVD drive.
We won't know what its uses are until we get them, now will we? Depends on how much 'puting power they have. With only 32MB of RAM, don't go expecting a whole lot.
I will be buying one for the following reasons presently:
Sony Playstation 2: $300
Sony PS2 Linux Kit: probably $200
The convenience of not having to get off the couch when I want to get some porn off the net: priceless.
They will. The Japanese site used to have screenshots of gcc compiling something in an X-term.
Even if they don't just download the source to gcc, cross-compile it for MIPS, make an RPM out of it, and then upload it to Freshmeat for everyone:).
I've never cross-compiled anything before (all my stuff is either x86 or PICMicro), but somewhere on my hard drive here I've got the cross-comp tools from runix...
I did actually have a good idea (hard to tell from my posts, but I do have them - its a zero sum game...have some really stupid thoughts, youre bound to have some good ones to even you out...).
It goes like this. (I have no idea how GRUB works, so I'm guessing here). Let's say RH switches over to GRUB completely, and now there's no/etc/lilo.conf on the system. Someone like myself (this is what happened with xinetd) is going to sit down to admin one of these boxes one day, and assuming lilo.conf is there, type vi lilo.conf. As it stands now, when he/she does this on a GRUB only system, the response to discovering there is no lilo.conf might range from curious to semi-non-linear.
But what if, instead of no file existing, a text file (/etc/lilo.conf) existed that explained why its not there, what has replaced it, and how to do everything with the replacement that could be done with its predecessor? This I think would actually be really cool, and it would still be there even if no help documentation was included during the initial install. You could even put some sort of shebang-style string at the beginning of every one of these "evolution" files, so that people who want to get rid of them can issue a simple grep or find command to search and destroy them.
A HA! There is no/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.local! Its/etc/rc.d/rc.local!
See! Not even the RH developers can keep track of RH's changes!:)
It's still the most stable compiler out there - 3.0.1 miscompiles KDE and other C++ code
KDE? People are still using that???:)
When did the C++ language come out of beta???
Seriously, tho, thanks for replying (even line-by-line) to my lil' rant. Since you're here (and acting professional even), lemme ask you: what's the best way to learn the specifics of a particular distro? Take the issue.net prob for example. There's no way in hell I would expect that to be documented anywhere (cuz its such a microscopic configuration variable), but grepping thru/etc to learn how a particular vendor has customized init....well, that sucks.
Enjoy your time off. My minor bitching points are the types of things keeping RH from being _perfect_, but 7.1 (with XFS anyway...looking forward to ext3) is still the closest thing to that. Which explains why I use it, but bitch about it in the first place...
One of the good things of 7.2/grub is that you don't need to know how to edit its config files - kernels install themselves to the boot menu automatically.
This is exactly the problem with RedHat (for the record, I'm running SGI's XFS-hacked-anaconda version of 7.1): they, like another big company, can't keep to simple, industry-standards.
I had to setup a Compaq (eck) box for a customer this weekend. It came preinstalled with 7.1. Here's a laundry list of annoyances:
1. issue and issue.net get clobbered by a file called redhat-release at start-up. No biggie, except for the customer wanted the hostname/tty at the end. The easy way out is to edit redhat-release, and append a \n \l, but this won't work for issue.net, which uses % syntax instead of \'s. This is really screwed up.
2. I still haven't figured out xinetd. WTF can't you just use inetd.conf? Improve the functionality all you want - just keep it in the same damn file.
3. RH, for some reason, can't be happy with keeping the samba files in/etc - they just had to put them in/etc/samba. It takes nanoseconds to figure this out, but still....WHY can't you people just leave things in their default places?
Now you've got this thing called GRUB. Do any of the other distros have it? What happens when I decide I want to upgrade to kernel 2.4.12 - does it automagically know how to install itself on this new, poorly named bootloader?
This is reminescent(sp) of the config/kconfig of 7.0....do you people have any memory? Speaking of which, why is 2.96-RH STILL the default compiler?
I appreciate that you people wish to improve the functionality of your distro - hell, I use it. But taking industry-standard files and replacing them with something silly has an air of "embrace, extend, and extinguish" that reminds me too much of a company I'd rather not think about.
What you RH people don't seem to understand is that some of us still like to edit config files. Problem is, in your quest to dumb-down linux to the point of "Vim? What's that?", you've forgotten us. It's great that you're MS-izing things by writing GUI configuration tools for everything, but could you _please_ stop mangling the text files they parse in the first place?
And don't whine to me about your extensive test cycles etc - if you guys have got the time to troll on/. as much as you're doing today, 7.2 had better be bug-free.
I'm "using" mine too. I cut the actual 'cat' off the end of it, wired that to a female PS2 port, and made a nice PS2 Y-cable. Considering it was free and Y's cost $35 at Best Buy, this is great. I love my cue cat!
Smart bookmarks in Galeon allow you to search websites by inputting the search text in a text field from within a Galeon toolbar. This is quite cool for sites like Yahoo, but Amazon cannot be searched in this manner because it requires a FORM/POST method to search the Amazon site. Same for my fav website of all time, Digikey.
its based on the uCLinux project - its got 2MB flash, 8MB RAM, and its a Motorola Dragonball, all the same as the uC project.
So when is linux gonna run on PIC's and Atmel AVR's?:) It runs on D-balls, StrongArms, MIPS, I'm sure soon stable ports will exist for the PSX and the PS/2....the only thing really missing on teh embedded front at this point are development tools...that said, the GPASM and Atmel tools for Linux are quite nice.
but it is now. These kids have access to a plethora of open-source browsers, which are all (cough cough ahem) standards compliant. Heaven forbid they learn to write industry standard web pages, when they could easily be using M$ Front page:)
I was thinking the other day about my high school art teacher - I was wondering if he has incorporated computers into the art process. I must admit that if I were still in high school, I'd be spending some time showing off the Gimp to him. Who, eight years ago, would have imagined that a free, Photoshop clone like the Gimp would exist in all the splendor that it does today? In middle school I remember the horrible experience of using M$ Paint to do projects. The fact that these kids in this school have access to a Scheme-scriptable image editor makes me....well, jealous.
If you didn't read Slashdot yesterday, there was an article about the Linux Browser war. You see, on our free platform, we have 5 or so browsers, and they are all competing with each other. The competition is fierce, since all want to be the best, so most of these browsers are quite good and getting stronger by the day; people who are using other, closed platforms are stuck waiting for a single vendor to release something called (I think) IE6. Not much competition there, is there?
Re:You have to take into account...
on
Linux: Browser Wars
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Microsoft has optimized IE with Windows, using closed source binaries and tweaks only they could ever do being as they wrote the bloody operating system. Mozilla, Netscape, Opera haven't had that wonderful advantage..."
This comment would be true if we were compiling mozilla on Windows. But since we are all talking about open-source browsers (mostly) running on an open-source OS, this BS hardly applies. Everyone who has ever written an app has had the same access to the same source code.
Given all the bitching on this site about the bloated nature of M$ products, I would submit to you that given the same hardware, a browser running on Linux should (had better be) faster than whatever browser running on M$. Otherwise, we'd all better shut the f**k up.
that less than a week after the IBM/PC 20th anniversary, celebrating the "open-sourcing" of PC specifications and such, that Intel is pulling such bullshit.
I want open source software and hardware. I don't expect them to release the silicon schematics, but I at the very least expect them to give enough information to let me hack away at it (remember IBM's purple book?), free of the sort of "licensing" that they seem to be pushing onto people.
And the "warning to potential buyers of potential legal action" reeks of (take your pick) M$/RIAA/MPAA.
Linus will move all of the source over to Java. It'll be slower, but at least it will run on all platforms (including the PS2).
Carmack and the iD folks will release Doom 3 and re-release Quake3 in Java. It will run a hell of a lot slower, but that's what ATi Radeon 8500's, GeForce3's, and Pentium 4's are for, right?;)
Microsoft will release Internet Explorer 6 in Java, after realizing that scrapping Java support on XP was "a big mistake." The new version of IE will run on Linux.
Lastly, RMS will release the GPL, version 3.0, written in Java. Since it will be readable on all machines everywhere, Microsoft will finally be able to read it, understand it, and issue an official apology for calling it a cancer. They will then embrace the GPL, change the wording slightly, wait until everyone starts using the MS GPL, and then change the wording slightly so that it is incompatible with everyone else's version of the GPL.
Having been "enlightened" by so many polite /. ppl, all I really have left to say is "Nice article" and "Thank you."
<p>I think Roblimo should now be a poll option:)
Agreed. During the course of my posts on this topic, we had the admin come 'round through the school of engineering here, and seeing my laptop (but not the screen), he asked if I needed the Office XP upgrade. My response was a chuckle and a polite "No thank you,sir"
The idea of rebooting==upgrading is actually pretty sweet. You can also consider that even if these were not diskless nodes, an admin could sit at his box and send (sftp, etc) the upgraded software to all of his clients. 1 script, 1 chmod, and 1./whatever. Thats just cool.
And yeah, if the exe fails, youre screwed. At least with galeon I was able to d/l the source and modify some makefiles, and I finally got it working. I would have had no such luck on Windoze.
I should point out that I live in Virginia, the state whose beach city paid the $129,000 to MS for license 'violations.' VA kind of sucks that way. I think were the first to pass UCITA as well. The ironic thing is that our governor is trying to eliminate the car tax, and he had some trouble funding this, so for a while he shut down all construction at state universities (Bastard!). I wonder how much money he could save by issuing a mandate that requires the use of OSS in government - he probably would have eliminated the car tax long ago:)
Thanks for the warning. I agree that floppy is an archaic technology, but I'm paranoid ehough that I don't keep my PGP/GPG keys anywhere but on floppies. Yes, its fragile. That's why I keep ten copies of it and no, I'm not kidding:)
answer me a question: Is there anyway to open Word or other apps in KDE/KOffice? I'd love to nuke Staroffice, and as soon as I find a way to get to all my old.doc's, its gone;)
And what I was getting at with that point is that all these people have to do to get a new app working is talk to the admin, wait a day, and reboot.
This is an ideal case of Linux use; home desktop users will have quite a time getting galeon installed.
My contention here is that apart from the "my apt-get is better than your rpm is better than your new unheard of package management system", getting new apps running on a Linux box would be damn near impossible for people without the creativity to email a file home if they don't have a floppy drive.
I would generally agree that Linux Setup is much easier than Windows. But given an OS is installed, its much easier to double-click on a self-extracting exe and get a program installed, than it is in Linux. Consider RPM. Do an rpm -Uvh, and if you have the dependencies, its all good. But if you don't, it spews and barfs about not having some random ass library. The best thing you can do is googlize the library name it spewed, and hope you can find it.
And if you think you retort was A)ever-so-witty or B) sarcastic or even C)original (look at the number of clone posts), you seriously need to go and watch some Eddie Izzard:)
how much of this is Linux, and how much of this is their work environment?
On the one hand, its absolutely kewl that this is working. But on the other hand...
They never had to set Linux up. Plus, they will never have to compile that new, sexy app that only seasoned veterans can.
So while I think it's great that Linux has gotten this far, and I applaud you for the story, how much of this is simply a "special case" of Linux Deployment?
that if these people can run Linux, so can your granny:
One of the biggest problems Dave and Mike have run into when teaching new employees, most of whom are accustomed to Windows PCs, to use Largo's Linux-based network has nothing to do with the operating system: It is weaning them away from floppies. "How can we take work home without floppies?" is a frequent question they hear. Answer: "Email the file to yourself."
These people seem to sort of be the poster children for why linux can be used on the desktop.
This next bit was just downright funny:
There is also the problem of teaching new employees not to worry about backups . Many are so used to system crashes and network failures in Windows environments that they have trouble realizing, at first, that all their files are stored on reliable servers -- with backups -- instead of on a desktop PC where a crash can wipe out hours or days of work. But these doubts are typically overcome after an employee has used Largo's network for a little while. "I was skeptical at first," one receptionist confides, "because [the place I worked before] had a Windows network that was always having problems. Now I'm comfortable with the network here. It's very easy to use once you get used to it."
The only problem they seem to have is with OpenOffice still being in its early beta stages. Any suggestions for them?
The PS2 can do 6.2 GFLOPS. The GeForce3 can 76 GFLOPS.
I agree with you tho about it being the best possibility for the price. 300 for the PS2, 200 for the kit, and then pick your price for a monitor. That makes a fully complete PS2 WORKSTATION.
Now then about the porting. Sony released the Japanese version after around 8,000 people registered in an internet poll. So far the US poll has near 16,000. So I suspect that they will be releasing it sometime in the near future.
Even if they don't, we now have an X server for it, which was going to be the hardest part anyways. Its a MIPS proc, so we can always cross compile for that, but there was no way anyone was going to get the video specs from Sony to write an X Server for it (it'd still be nice to have it in XFree tho).
The next steps are as follows:
1. Hack (eg, solder) together some hardware for it. This is a difficult step, since Sony replaced the Type III PCMCIA Slot found in early Japanese models with some sort of proprietary interface the likes of which I've never before seen. Since we can't very well do anything with that, we should probably pursue Firewire and USB solutions for everything.
2. "Everything" includes hard drive, ethernet, mouse, keyboard, and joystick, among others. At some point the BIOS will have to be flashed in order make the box boot these things at start up.
3. An interesting idea would be to have the BIOS check the memory cards for kernels, and if not present, boot in regular fashion. The idea of having my favorite kernels on a memory card is just neat (carry your kernel in your pocket...).
4. We need device drivers for firewire hard drive, etc. Not an easy task.
5. Cross-compile gcc and install it on the box. Once this is done, we can install things like RPM etc, and then build distros.
Slashdot Mirror
I submit to you Galeon needs better documentation. I've been using it exclusively for three months now, and I've had no idea there existed a tool called gconftool (I suppose I should have paid attention during make install :). Any links?
Anyways, it rocks - tabs, xml myportal page, etc. You can't beat it. For all the KDE folk, Konqueror is nice too, I just like this better.
It has a PCMIA card slot, so you could put a laptop ethernet card in the machine
Actually it doesn't. The early Japanese versions (SCPH-10000, IIRC) did, but Sony axed this in favor of a proprietary interface of their own. If they hadn'd done this, someone would have probably already ported Linux to the PS2. Kinna makes ya think, doesn't it?
so you could put a laptop ethernet card in the machine.
Not only can't you, you won't need to, if the Japanese PS2 Linux Kit is any indication. The HDD that comes with the kit includes a built-in 10/100 NIC.
The Japanese version ships with a combo hard-drive/10-100Mbit ethernet connection.
/dev/usb.
The printer port is
Why plug in a cdrom drive? It's got a CD/DVD drive.
We won't know what its uses are until we get them, now will we? Depends on how much 'puting power they have. With only 32MB of RAM, don't go expecting a whole lot.
I will be buying one for the following reasons presently:
Sony Playstation 2: $300
Sony PS2 Linux Kit: probably $200
The convenience of not having to get off the couch when I want to get some porn off the net: priceless.
They will. The Japanese site used to have screenshots of gcc compiling something in an X-term.
:).
Even if they don't just download the source to gcc, cross-compile it for MIPS, make an RPM out of it, and then upload it to Freshmeat for everyone
I've never cross-compiled anything before (all my stuff is either x86 or PICMicro), but somewhere on my hard drive here I've got the cross-comp tools from runix...
I did actually have a good idea (hard to tell from my posts, but I do have them - its a zero sum game...have some really stupid thoughts, youre bound to have some good ones to even you out...).
/etc/lilo.conf on the system. Someone like myself (this is what happened with xinetd) is going to sit down to admin one of these boxes one day, and assuming lilo.conf is there, type vi lilo.conf. As it stands now, when he/she does this on a GRUB only system, the response to discovering there is no lilo.conf might range from curious to semi-non-linear.
It goes like this. (I have no idea how GRUB works, so I'm guessing here). Let's say RH switches over to GRUB completely, and now there's no
But what if, instead of no file existing, a text file (/etc/lilo.conf) existed that explained why its not there, what has replaced it, and how to do everything with the replacement that could be done with its predecessor? This I think would actually be really cool, and it would still be there even if no help documentation was included during the initial install. You could even put some sort of shebang-style string at the beginning of every one of these "evolution" files, so that people who want to get rid of them can issue a simple grep or find command to search and destroy them.
A HA! There is no /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.local! Its /etc/rc.d/rc.local!
:)
:)
/etc to learn how a particular vendor has customized init....well, that sucks.
See! Not even the RH developers can keep track of RH's changes!
It's still the most stable compiler out there - 3.0.1 miscompiles KDE and other C++ code
KDE? People are still using that???
When did the C++ language come out of beta???
Seriously, tho, thanks for replying (even line-by-line) to my lil' rant. Since you're here (and acting professional even), lemme ask you: what's the best way to learn the specifics of a particular distro? Take the issue.net prob for example. There's no way in hell I would expect that to be documented anywhere (cuz its such a microscopic configuration variable), but grepping thru
Enjoy your time off. My minor bitching points are the types of things keeping RH from being _perfect_, but 7.1 (with XFS anyway...looking forward to ext3) is still the closest thing to that. Which explains why I use it, but bitch about it in the first place...
Thanks again.
David
This is exactly the problem with RedHat (for the record, I'm running SGI's XFS-hacked-anaconda version of 7.1): they, like another big company, can't keep to simple, industry-standards.
I had to setup a Compaq (eck) box for a customer this weekend. It came preinstalled with 7.1. Here's a laundry list of annoyances:
1. issue and issue.net get clobbered by a file called redhat-release at start-up. No biggie, except for the customer wanted the hostname/tty at the end. The easy way out is to edit redhat-release, and append a \n \l, but this won't work for issue.net, which uses % syntax instead of \'s. This is really screwed up.
2. I still haven't figured out xinetd. WTF can't you just use inetd.conf? Improve the functionality all you want - just keep it in the same damn file.
3. RH, for some reason, can't be happy with keeping the samba files in
Now you've got this thing called GRUB. Do any of the other distros have it? What happens when I decide I want to upgrade to kernel 2.4.12 - does it automagically know how to install itself on this new, poorly named bootloader?
This is reminescent(sp) of the config/kconfig of 7.0....do you people have any memory? Speaking of which, why is 2.96-RH STILL the default compiler?
I appreciate that you people wish to improve the functionality of your distro - hell, I use it. But taking industry-standard files and replacing them with something silly has an air of "embrace, extend, and extinguish" that reminds me too much of a company I'd rather not think about.
What you RH people don't seem to understand is that some of us still like to edit config files. Problem is, in your quest to dumb-down linux to the point of "Vim? What's that?", you've forgotten us. It's great that you're MS-izing things by writing GUI configuration tools for everything, but could you _please_ stop mangling the text files they parse in the first place?
And don't whine to me about your extensive test cycles etc - if you guys have got the time to troll on
I'm "using" mine too. I cut the actual 'cat' off the end of it, wired that to a female PS2 port, and made a nice PS2 Y-cable. Considering it was free and Y's cost $35 at Best Buy, this is great. I love my cue cat!
that is well, offtopic, but here goes.
Smart bookmarks in Galeon allow you to search websites by inputting the search text in a text field from within a Galeon toolbar. This is quite cool for sites like Yahoo, but Amazon cannot be searched in this manner because it requires a FORM/POST method to search the Amazon site. Same for my fav website of all time, Digikey.
Anyone know of a way around this?
its based on the uCLinux project - its got 2MB flash, 8MB RAM, and its a Motorola Dragonball, all the same as the uC project.
:) It runs on D-balls, StrongArms, MIPS, I'm sure soon stable ports will exist for the PSX and the PS/2....the only thing really missing on teh embedded front at this point are development tools...that said, the GPASM and Atmel tools for Linux are quite nice.
So when is linux gonna run on PIC's and Atmel AVR's?
I mean, after all, they did develop the PC, and look at all the control they *don't* have over it ;)
I was thinking the other day about my high school art teacher - I was wondering if he has incorporated computers into the art process. I must admit that if I were still in high school, I'd be spending some time showing off the Gimp to him. Who, eight years ago, would have imagined that a free, Photoshop clone like the Gimp would exist in all the splendor that it does today? In middle school I remember the horrible experience of using M$ Paint to do projects. The fact that these kids in this school have access to a Scheme-scriptable image editor makes me....well, jealous.
If you didn't read Slashdot yesterday, there was an article about the Linux Browser war. You see, on our free platform, we have 5 or so browsers, and they are all competing with each other. The competition is fierce, since all want to be the best, so most of these browsers are quite good and getting stronger by the day; people who are using other, closed platforms are stuck waiting for a single vendor to release something called (I think) IE6. Not much competition there, is there?
"Microsoft has optimized IE with Windows, using closed source binaries and tweaks only they could ever do being as they wrote the bloody operating system. Mozilla, Netscape, Opera haven't had that wonderful advantage..."
This comment would be true if we were compiling mozilla on Windows. But since we are all talking about open-source browsers (mostly) running on an open-source OS, this BS hardly applies. Everyone who has ever written an app has had the same access to the same source code.
Given all the bitching on this site about the bloated nature of M$ products, I would submit to you that given the same hardware, a browser running on Linux should (had better be) faster than whatever browser running on M$. Otherwise, we'd all better shut the f**k up.
This comment submitted from Galeon.
I want open source software and hardware. I don't expect them to release the silicon schematics, but I at the very least expect them to give enough information to let me hack away at it (remember IBM's purple book?), free of the sort of "licensing" that they seem to be pushing onto people.
And the "warning to potential buyers of potential legal action" reeks of (take your pick) M$/RIAA/MPAA.
Time to boycott Intel.
Linus will move all of the source over to Java. It'll be slower, but at least it will run on all platforms (including the PS2).
Carmack and the iD folks will release Doom 3 and re-release Quake3 in Java. It will run a hell of a lot slower, but that's what ATi Radeon 8500's, GeForce3's, and Pentium 4's are for, right? ;)
Microsoft will release Internet Explorer 6 in Java, after realizing that scrapping Java support on XP was "a big mistake." The new version of IE will run on Linux.
Lastly, RMS will release the GPL, version 3.0, written in Java. Since it will be readable on all machines everywhere, Microsoft will finally be able to read it, understand it, and issue an official apology for calling it a cancer. They will then embrace the GPL, change the wording slightly, wait until everyone starts using the MS GPL, and then change the wording slightly so that it is incompatible with everyone else's version of the GPL.
And all this time the doctors told me an SPF of at least 15 was the best ;)
Having been "enlightened" by so many polite /. ppl, all I really have left to say is "Nice article" and "Thank you."
:)
<p>I think Roblimo should now be a poll option
The idea of rebooting==upgrading is actually pretty sweet. You can also consider that even if these were not diskless nodes, an admin could sit at his box and send (sftp, etc) the upgraded software to all of his clients. 1 script, 1 chmod, and 1 ./whatever. Thats just cool.
And yeah, if the exe fails, youre screwed. At least with galeon I was able to d/l the source and modify some makefiles, and I finally got it working. I would have had no such luck on Windoze.
I should point out that I live in Virginia, the state whose beach city paid the $129,000 to MS for license 'violations.' VA kind of sucks that way. I think were the first to pass UCITA as well. The ironic thing is that our governor is trying to eliminate the car tax, and he had some trouble funding this, so for a while he shut down all construction at state universities (Bastard!). I wonder how much money he could save by issuing a mandate that requires the use of OSS in government - he probably would have eliminated the car tax long ago :)
If only I had mod points. Do you have a flag? Whats that behind your back? These are the rules that I've just made up.
Thanks for the warning. I agree that floppy is an archaic technology, but I'm paranoid ehough that I don't keep my PGP/GPG keys anywhere but on floppies. Yes, its fragile. That's why I keep ten copies of it and no, I'm not kidding :)
answer me a question: Is there anyway to open Word or other apps in KDE/KOffice? I'd love to nuke Staroffice, and as soon as I find a way to get to all my old .doc's, its gone ;)
And what I was getting at with that point is that all these people have to do to get a new app working is talk to the admin, wait a day, and reboot.
This is an ideal case of Linux use; home desktop users will have quite a time getting galeon installed.
My contention here is that apart from the "my apt-get is better than your rpm is better than your new unheard of package management system", getting new apps running on a Linux box would be damn near impossible for people without the creativity to email a file home if they don't have a floppy drive.
I would generally agree that Linux Setup is much easier than Windows. But given an OS is installed, its much easier to double-click on a self-extracting exe and get a program installed, than it is in Linux. Consider RPM. Do an rpm -Uvh, and if you have the dependencies, its all good. But if you don't, it spews and barfs about not having some random ass library. The best thing you can do is googlize the library name it spewed, and hope you can find it.
And if you think you retort was A)ever-so-witty or B) sarcastic or even C)original (look at the number of clone posts), you seriously need to go and watch some Eddie Izzard :)
On the one hand, its absolutely kewl that this is working. But on the other hand...
They never had to set Linux up. Plus, they will never have to compile that new, sexy app that only seasoned veterans can.
So while I think it's great that Linux has gotten this far, and I applaud you for the story, how much of this is simply a "special case" of Linux Deployment?
One of the biggest problems Dave and Mike have run into when teaching new employees, most of whom are accustomed to Windows PCs, to use Largo's Linux-based network has nothing to do with the operating system: It is weaning them away from floppies. "How can we take work home without floppies?" is a frequent question they hear. Answer: "Email the file to yourself."
These people seem to sort of be the poster children for why linux can be used on the desktop.
This next bit was just downright funny:
There is also the problem of teaching new employees not to worry about backups . Many are so used to system crashes and network failures in Windows environments that they have trouble realizing, at first, that all their files are stored on reliable servers -- with backups -- instead of on a desktop PC where a crash can wipe out hours or days of work. But these doubts are typically overcome after an employee has used Largo's network for a little while. "I was skeptical at first," one receptionist confides, "because [the place I worked before] had a Windows network that was always having problems. Now I'm comfortable with the network here. It's very easy to use once you get used to it."
The only problem they seem to have is with OpenOffice still being in its early beta stages. Any suggestions for them?
I agree with you tho about it being the best possibility for the price. 300 for the PS2, 200 for the kit, and then pick your price for a monitor. That makes a fully complete PS2 WORKSTATION.
Now then about the porting. Sony released the Japanese version after around 8,000 people registered in an internet poll. So far the US poll has near 16,000. So I suspect that they will be releasing it sometime in the near future.
Even if they don't, we now have an X server for it, which was going to be the hardest part anyways. Its a MIPS proc, so we can always cross compile for that, but there was no way anyone was going to get the video specs from Sony to write an X Server for it (it'd still be nice to have it in XFree tho).
The next steps are as follows:
1. Hack (eg, solder) together some hardware for it. This is a difficult step, since Sony replaced the Type III PCMCIA Slot found in early Japanese models with some sort of proprietary interface the likes of which I've never before seen. Since we can't very well do anything with that, we should probably pursue Firewire and USB solutions for everything.
2. "Everything" includes hard drive, ethernet, mouse, keyboard, and joystick, among others. At some point the BIOS will have to be flashed in order make the box boot these things at start up.
3. An interesting idea would be to have the BIOS check the memory cards for kernels, and if not present, boot in regular fashion. The idea of having my favorite kernels on a memory card is just neat (carry your kernel in your pocket...).
4. We need device drivers for firewire hard drive, etc. Not an easy task.
5. Cross-compile gcc and install it on the box. Once this is done, we can install things like RPM etc, and then build distros.