I don't think the Mono folks are rejoicing;)
With this step, SUN has became the largest commercial contributor to the free and open source software pool. OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, now JAVA - well, kudos!
I don't like MS, I think they are evil, etc, etc.. But, this whole whining of hw manufacturers because of high prices is completely ridiculous. Not only because there are alternatives, but because these are the same manufacturers who constantly have to be nagged to provide specs to standard hardware to free software developers (and quite often they don't do it). The linux desktop has became a viable alternative now for 80 % of users - most of problems that still exist are hardware issues. And here comes Acer & Co. whining and cussing at MS, while sucking up to them for years, building windows-only drivers, ignoring requests to provide specs to free software devs. Oh, and fucking up standards for years - ACPI for instance, just a little bit here and there, so standard ACPI implementations doesn't work, but they provided work-arounds in their windows-only drivers.
John Dvorak of PC Magazine figures that Microsoft will develop GPL work-arounds, and eventually begin releasing Linux apps.
Actually this whole deal is a GPL workaround. Not exactly a violation (that's difficult to prove), but certainly a workaround. As Kurt Pfeifle puts it:
Novell's FAQ says, they worked out the details "with the principles and obligations of the GPL in mind". Right...., riiiiiight! Yes, with the "GPL principles in mind" -- but not in order to advance these. Rather in order to work around them. Get this, readers! That's why so many emblematic figures of the FLOSS movement are upset - they didn't expect Novell to be party to this.
That's why so many of the emblematic figures of the FLOSS movement are so upset. Because you don't have to wait for MS to work around the GPL - with some help from Novell, they already did.
I see your point, and in fact developers may be wary of Novell code. But I again think that this is mostly psychological, and not justified. If Novell distribute GPL code, then they are necessarily distributing along with it a license to all relevant patents (and again, if they aren't, then Novell are in violation of the GPL).
I see your point too - I just don't differentiate between psychological problems and... well, what? Even if the problem is merely psychological, and unjustified because of the letter of the GPL (you are absolutely correct there, that's what E.Moglen says as well), it has real world practical effects. In fact, a very large portion of marketing is merely psychological. The way FUD works is entirely psychological, but it has real-world consequences, like slowing down the adoption of linux, more - well, psychological - ammunition for pro-patent legislators in the EU, etc.
One way to fight this is to point out that there are conflicts between the letter - and the spirit - of the GPL and the deal made by Novell. That's what we are doing here, which is good:)
The only FUD I have seen so far is from the community itself.
You must be joking, or completely blind. Since when is Ballmer part of the linux community?
Such talks would be a good idea, Ballmer suggested, since now only Novell's SUSE Linux customers are the only Linux vendors that have any assurance that Microsoft won't sue for patent infringement.... Steve Ballmer
There, now you saw some FUD - actually, do you understand the meaning of that acronym - that doesn't originate from the linux community.
I stated this multiple times in this thread: I DON'T SAY THEY WILL ACTUALLY SUE OTHER LINUX VENDORS. If they would do that, that wouldn't be FUD, would it? It would simply be a fact of life. FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - that's exactly what is introduced in the competition of FLOSS (a competition that so far was based on technical merits and quality of support). They just insinuate all linux distributions and many commercial FLOSS developers (that's a broad category, just to name one project: KDE - many kde developers are employed by a commercial companey, trolltech). If you don't see that a problem, that's fine. Probably you didn't see SCO a problem either, after all, if we talk numbers, 99 linux distributions were not sued by them...
I think that this is a bigger problem than you think, because it affects so many aspects of the FLOSS movement. Just one aspect I didn't even mention : what will happen to Novell's contributions? Patents need not to be disclosed to be effective. The fact that Novell and Microsoft now claims that there are - undisclosed - patents in some of the software that is covered by the agreement (MONO, ooo.org, SAMBA) is enough to view every possible Novell contribution as dangerous. If nothing else, this might remove Novell from the FLOSS pool. Again, I don't say this is going to happen (although I think this is much more likely than MS suing RH) - but the fact that we even have to discuss this is bad enough. How will upstream developers react? Would they merge Novell changes as easily as they have done in the past? Not likely, as long as code developed by Novell is under the MS-Novell patent covenant.
If you take one aspect alone that this agreement affects, it might be a minor issue, but there are lots of minor issues raised by this agreement, and they add up in my opinion. And there are lots of major issues - depending on how you look at these. For me, the competitive-cooperative model of FLOSS development is the most important asset of free software. Now that asset became somewhat tainted. Competition based on technical excellence and quality of service became tainted (I didn't like what Oracle did, but their move still remained inside the cooperative-competitive model). For me, that's a big problem, but I can accept opinions that regard this as a minor one. But if I take all the issues - be they minor or major ones - I'd say this deal is a big problem.
That would be exactly the solution. But: how long do you think that the EU remains patent free? The European Parliament can reject the drafts a few times, but eventually, the European Committee can push it through if it wants to. That's one flaw of the EU - EC has too much power compared to EP.
The problem is, that Novell provided pro-patent legislators some munition. It would be wise for European linux wendors to cooperate on a higher level, and put unprecedented pressure on pro-patent legislations. A joint anti-patent organization sponsored by all linux vendors, with the sole job of raising publicity, countering every single pro-patent claim, organizing awareness-rising events, etc. I know this is happening through FFII right now, but we need much-much more.
No change in what the situation already was for all the others. Absolutely no change there. It says they won't go after Novell. It does not say that it will go after everybody else. To asume that is prety much Bush-thinking.;-)
Let me clarify this - there isn't any need to assume that they will actually go after other linux companies. The fact that we are discussing this possibility is bad enough for the reputation of linux in general. I my opinion, that's what Microsoft will do - it won't actually go after RedHat, but it will imply the possibility of doing that. Thanks to novell, they can now do that with some credibility (even though the actual possibility is remote).
To put it in another, more familiar way:
SCO: buy a licence from us, and you won't get sued
NOVELL: use our own distribution, and you won't get sued by Microsoft
Or in Ballmer's words:
The distributors of other versions of Linux cannot assure their customers that Microsoft won't sue for patent infringement. "If a customer says, 'Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?' Essentially, If you're using non-SUSE Linux, then I'd say the answer is yes," Ballmer said.
"I suspect that [customers] will take that issue up with their distributor," Ballmer said. Or if customers are considering doing a direct download of a non-SUSE Linux version, "they'll think twice about that," he said.
So the damage is already done, but instead of the pitiful attempt of SCO, we now have a linux vendor hand in hand with Microsoft operating the FUD machine. If you haven't realized: that's pretty bad for linux in general (and we will see how good it is for Novell).
So, in the end, nothing has changed, except for the apparent "gentlemans' arrangement" between Microsoft and Novell not to sue each other. This may appeal to some managers and lead them to choose SUSE, but that is all it is, a little good PR.
That's hilariously naive. A little good PR? Well, you forget about the BIG BAD PR for the entire linux community. I will spell out for you what exactly happened: Novell (the holder of Unix copyrights btw, and a linux distributor) acknowledged that Microsoft might have valid patent claims in linux. If you haven't realized: that's pretty bad.
And I will explain it in Ballmer's words as well, if you think I'm crazy or a zealot (btw, I use FreeBSD, not linux, but care for the FLOSS movement):
The distributors of other versions of Linux cannot assure their customers that Microsoft won't sue for patent infringement. "If a customer says, 'Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?' Essentially, If you're using non-SUSE Linux, then I'd say the answer is yes," Ballmer said.
"I suspect that [customers] will take that issue up with their distributor," Ballmer said. Or if customers are considering doing a direct download of a non-SUSE Linux version, "they'll think twice about that," he said.
Novell succeeded in what SCO failed - incriminated linux distributions. SCO was a weak proxy of Microsoft, now Novell is much much stronger - after all, it is the company that has ~20% marketshare in the enterprise linux arena.
Some people think (I'm not referring specifically to your post) that calling others zealots, because they are angry and disappointed is somehow cool. They think that they sound more intelligent if they think only inside the pragmatical/technical box. Here is another angle for those - until now, linux distributions participated in "pure" competition. What I mean is that they competed on two fronts: technical merits of the distribution, and quality of support and services. This was good, even if sometimes it got nasty (like in Oracle case). Novell tainted this with another factor: the MS patent flag. This is very bad on the long run... unless Novell is stopped somehow.
Oh, and fuck Miguel and friends. They only care for pushing their own agenda. Last year Novell leadership was convinced that going GNOME and MONO is a good idea. Then they had to backpedal, not only because existing customers who standardized on KDE, but because there were migration plans in progress that specifically choose KDE on SuSE, and one of them was a 2000 desktop migration plan (in Europe). Then we had Miguel saying for YEARS that there are no patent issues with MONO. And now, he claims that MONO is finally safe, at least if you use Novell's linux offerings. Yes, yes, some people would say that they saw this coming, after all, he has been a Microsoft fan for some time now. And now:
So today we have secured a peace of mind for Novell customers that might have been worried about possible patent infringements open source deployments. This matters in particular for Mono, because for a long time its been the favorite conversation starter for folks that find dates on Slashdot.
Well, what about non-Novell customers, Mr. Miguel? There goes all the warning agains incorporating MONO technology into GNOME btw.
So that's what ruined my archlinux iso burning process. Nero was fixating when suddenly the "windows will restart in x seconds" message popped up, and the burn process failed (even though all sorts of "protections" - burnproof, etc. - were enabled). I guess that message stops all processes when it pops up. I was enraged of course. Screw MS.
Agreed. I don't have a problem with the interface, but I can't imagine how shoddy the coding must be seeing the resources it needs to run. For older machines (I have to maintain a few in a comp lab) FF simply doesn't work, while Opera has no problems on the same machines (this are limited functionality FreeBSD boxes with fluxbox and a simplified menu). You won't notice how heavy Firefox is on relatively modern hardware, but as you go down to a PII (and to 64Mb RAM) - you'll find that Opera works fine, while FF is completely unusable. For kicks, I even installed kdebase, and called konqueror from fluxbox (meaning it had to load all the supporting libraries) - and it started up and ran faster than FF.
I still have to use it though (flash only works well with linux-firefox on FreeBSD, in Konqi I don't have sound with youtube) - and just checked: 109Mb of memory usage, with only one tab open (this one). Basically that's how much memory the entire KDE uses after startup, xorg included. Isn't that ridiculous? I know I can set FF to use smaller memory cache, but that still mean 60-70Mb. There is something fundemantelly wrong with gecko (it must be gecko, because Epiphany and friends suffer from the same flaws), but there is little or no intention to fix that, because all the hype FF gets despite its flaws.
I'm in the close unused windows school. One exception: fullscreen konsole on a dedicated virtual desktop (I even removed window decorations, and it doesn't appear on the taskbar). Virtual desktop 5 is simply konsole for me. Probably it is because I don't like clutter - and application startup is a non-issue. Often used progs sit in the tray anyway (kopete for instance). Firefox would make sense, since I increasingly rely on google's various services (docs & spreadsheets, calendar, gmail, photo) - but they only work in firefox properly, and ff eats ram. I don't understand why they can't fix it - it cannot be that broken. I mean non of the other browsers (well, I speak of Opera and Konqi) have this problem, so using 80Mb with only a few tabs open is not normal operation for a browser (the difference is huge: opera or konqi uses half that much).
Shutdown: it depends. Right now I have an 59 Gb download in ktorrent (Tom Baker's Doctor Who:) - so I leave my computer on for the nights, otherwise I shut it down (powersaving - even thought I don't pay for the bills separately, why put uneccesary strain on the environment?).
!/bin/sh x=1 while [ "$x" -le 600 ]; do wget http://www.e360insight.com/Motion-for-TRO.pdf x=$(expr $x + 1) sleep 2 done
This will download it a few times:)
Re:Both GTK+ and Qt use the same widget themes!
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KOffice 1.6 Released
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· Score: 1
Themes are not the problem. I can use qt themes on gnome apps (like the gimp), but that won't change its crappy open/save file dialogue. That's the main problem. You can skin koffice to blend into your gnome theme, but the open/save dialogue would remain kde, just as the toolbars, menus, etc.
That's more like it:) My current background image is 344K plus I have large icons, background tiles in conqueror (paper), UI effects almost at max. I hate this myth that KDE is resource hungry when you can run it on a PII 266 with 196Mb ram. With UI effects turned down, smaller wallpapers and resolution, I had a smooth desktop experience on a machine similar to yours (PII 233, same amount of ram). Usually it is the distro shipping misconfigured KDE, or running uneccessary services (like kubuntu the HP printer stuff whether you have a printer or not) in the background. My low-end box was freebsd, and unless I started up firefox or similar resource hungry progs, swap space was barely touched, even in actual use like browsing, editing in koffice - except krita perhaps, but that's understandable -, listening to music on xmms or watching something in mplayer. You can configure KDE to run as fast as XFCE while providing the same - if not more - services. Amazing indeed, especially contrasted to the "KDE is bloated, resource hungry, etc." meme that gets repeated here on./
Debian with KDE 3.5.4 on my old box, 32MB of ram used.
That's almost umbelievable - I mean, that's only possible with a stripped down KDE installation, with not a single service running. But actually, I wanted to support your argument, and I agree that KDE's memory usage is ridiculously low. I have a load saved session setting, and after startup, it consumes 130 Mb ram. That includes
Two panels, transparent, with: ktaskbar, ksystray, a clock, kmixapplet, kpager, lots of icons
1280*1024 wallpaper, four desktopts.
4 instances of konqueror preloads
one fullscreen konsole (also with background wallpaper)
kopete
kgpg
kget
ktorrent
korganizer reminder daemon
amarok (uses a lot, but there is a huge difference between SIZE and RES in top: 73828K and 26288K - I use RES values here)
kmail
kmixapplet
keyboard switcher
kcpuload
klipper
oh, and almost forgot: 130Mb includes xorg as well (didn't bother substracting it after startx)
Considering all this, KDE memory usage is indeed, ridiculously low. Usually those complaining work either from memory (they used KDE 5 years ago, and assume its still the same and has the same problems) or have something misconfigured.
You don't learn more by using Gentoo. I'm a FreeBSD user, and got a friend of mine interested in unix. Being a pragmatist, I recommended gentoo (pragmatist as in being curious on one hand, and wanting him to help me with linux if I ever needed it on the other).
I watched him struggle building up his system from scratch, even though he began with stage 3. Than I had a good chance to compare portage with ports, and I was amazed at the primitive way it handles dependencies during package removal, and the miriad options you have to set to have a sane system (midnight-commander pulling in xorg by default??). A month later, he had everything up and running, by following the FAQs, wikies, howtos, etc. And he had still no idea what filesystem permissions are.
You don't learn anything by using gentoo. You basically follow - badly written - documentation, and you might think that oh, I'm sooo cool, I built something from scratch, I must be learning something, but in reality, you were blindly typing in commands without learning the basics behind those commands. My friend was clever enough to realize that despite "doing everything by hand" he didn't learn much about unix in general. Because the documentation sucks, and the whole concept of gentoo sucks, because it is misleading. It misleads people to think that the point of building from source is "optimization". On modern hardware, there is absolutely no reason to spend hours, days, weeks for "optimizing". There are very few packages that benefit from optimizations, and I expect a modern package/ports management system to take care of those packages, ie. I don't want to spend hours setting compiler flags, I want ports maintainers doing that for me. That's how it works in FreeBSD. You set -O (or -O2) in make.conf, and those packages that might benefit from further optimizations, automatically override these defaults, because the good folks at freebsd-ports tested them, and deemed them safe (example: mplayer/mencoder will be built with -O3 -ffast-math, etc... without you having to muck around config files).
Anyhow, the point is, you only learn if you want to learn, and if there is helpful documentation. Any distribution is good enough if you are motivated, and if it is properly documented. FreeBSD beats every single linux distro on the documentation front, but if you want to stick with linux, slackware is a much better choice than gentoo. Another good choice, probably even a better one for the Ubuntu user grand-grand parent is probably Archlinux, which comes as close as any distro to the simplicity of slackware (or FreeBSD for that matter) with nice package management, good documentation, and an opportunity to learn about unix like systems in general. FreeBSD is another good choice for noobs, because it is one of the easiest to learn unix like systems. Even if you want to learn linux, I still would recommend the FreeBSD handbook, because it is not just a howto, but it explains the concepts of unix in great detail. The unix basics chapter is a good introduction to anyone who wants to actually learn something (not just blindly following howtos and spend time on useless "optimizations" in gentoo).
However it will most likely not be truly cross platform. I will be waiting for the Windows versions very eagerly. When you start talking about heterogenous environments, there will be Windows servers around. You can't get around that no matter how zealot and OSS fundamentalist you are.
Mostly likely it will portable - like most of OpenBSD's code. Just don't expect them to port it for you. With some effort, probably it would work on unix services for windows (which is based on openbsd btw).
FreeBSD also has details in their security notification. Those guys are fast - if you want to have up to date info on security vulns., FreeBSD has them (usually with patches) way before the news hits slashdot;) For those who are asking for line numbers, just take a look at the patches included. Or better, here is a kompare screenshot.
Well if you thought Wifi support was bad for Linux, you should see the level of Wifi support in OSX
Strange, considering that FreeBSD has good support for wireless either via ndiswrapper or native drivers. If author's wlan card is based on Belkin F5D7050 v2000 chipset (it would have been useful if he posted more details, it is not that difficult find out which chipset it is based upon), it is supported by the ural driver. On FreeBSD, that is. But then, one of the goals of 6.0 release was to add and improve wireless support - both the native drivers and ndiswrapper.
Really? I should get in touch with you. I'm also working on a book about property, but won't be about its elimination, but the possible changes in the way we relate to property, which in turn, might have an impact on the way our future unfolds. I examine the concept of gift exchange specifically - from early writings of Marcel Mauss and other sociologists/anthropologists, their findigs about the role (economic, political, social) of gift exchange in archaic societies. Then how this circulation of a fairly large portion of the economic wealth gave way to capitalism. How the gift exchange model survived in arts (true art always have something beyond it's market value, as Margaret Atwood aptly put it "What is Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' worth in dollar terms? In fact, my premise is that art can survive without the market, but it cannot survive without its gift aspect). How today the concept of gift exchange is brought is back into play with linux and the Open Source movement. Google's role. How the "internet revolution" can change our life in profound ways (beyond accelerated communication and technology) - and all these topics are closely tied to the problem of property, and how we treat it, how we think about it.
I would be interested to see what you have in mind when you speak about "elimination." Frederic Jameson once wrote (in the Seeds of Time) that it has now become easier to imagine the end of the earth and of nature than the end of capitalism. I don't think that capitalism can and in a sudden bang - but it can change profoundly, just as our way of thinking about property may change profoundly - so property as we know it today (including every connotation of the word) might be indeed "eliminated" as in changed into something different (but preserving some aspects of property of course).
I wonder if your research and mine has anything in common... This is a tentative biography (I didn't include novels that I'm going to analyise to show traces of gift exchange, neither did I include online material):
Sahlins, Marshall. Stone Age Economics (1972)
Derrida, Jacques. Given Time : I. Counterfeit Money
Titmuss, Richard. "The Gift Relationship" (this is about human blood donation)
Jameson, Fredric (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Jameson, Fredric (1994). The Seeds of Time. The Wellek Library lectures at the University of California, Irvine, New York: Columbia University Press.
The Logic of the Gift; Toward an Ethic of Generosity (Paperback) by Alan D. Schrift (Editor)
Kostas Axelos. Alienation and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx
Maurice Godelier, Nora Scott (trans.) The Enigma of the Gift. Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 2Rev Ed edition (February 3, 1999)
And Marcel Mauss of course - he introduced the term in The Gift (1925).
I have always been suspect of Symantec.
Me too. That's why I wrote this recently. Just a few weeks ago I removed yet another NAV install from a puter. This time it went well - uninstall worked fine it seems, needed just one reboot. But previously, with certain NAV releases, it was impossible to remove - or at least harder than removing spyware. Even after "uninstalling" it NAV left a lot of cruft on the system, that not only was "just there" but it loaded code at boot time. It was only possible to remove by switching to safe mode, cleaning up the registry, and removing some files manually. Symantic is EVIL!
Add to this their track record: failure to detect SONY's malware, (and now they seem to have one of their own) and they are always the last to provide adequate means to remove fresh exploits (no data here, but I distinctly remember that whenever something crops up, f-prot, free-av, etc. works, and NAV comes trailing behind other antivir solutions.). Plus it is a serious resource hog - more than any antivir progs.
The first serious breach of "Do no evil" of Google was their inclusion of a Symantec product in google pack:)))
Yeah, I realize that. But there is another difference besides the memory card size: the quality of the earphones. Buying the earphones of w800i + new memory card costs more than selling my k750i + ipod and buying a new w800i:) There is also a small difference between the quality of the case - the w800 is more sturdy (and both are sturdier than the ipod btw.).
Slashdot Mirror
And patent-wise? I mean for non-Novell customers, obviously.
I don't think the Mono folks are rejoicing ;)
With this step, SUN has became the largest commercial contributor to the free and open source software pool. OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, now JAVA - well, kudos!
I don't like MS, I think they are evil, etc, etc.. But, this whole whining of hw manufacturers because of high prices is completely ridiculous. Not only because there are alternatives, but because these are the same manufacturers who constantly have to be nagged to provide specs to standard hardware to free software developers (and quite often they don't do it). The linux desktop has became a viable alternative now for 80 % of users - most of problems that still exist are hardware issues. And here comes Acer & Co. whining and cussing at MS, while sucking up to them for years, building windows-only drivers, ignoring requests to provide specs to free software devs. Oh, and fucking up standards for years - ACPI for instance, just a little bit here and there, so standard ACPI implementations doesn't work, but they provided work-arounds in their windows-only drivers.
Actually this whole deal is a GPL workaround. Not exactly a violation (that's difficult to prove), but certainly a workaround. As Kurt Pfeifle puts it:
Novell's FAQ says, they worked out the details "with the principles and obligations of the GPL in mind". Right...., riiiiiight! Yes, with the "GPL principles in mind" -- but not in order to advance these. Rather in order to work around them. Get this, readers!
That's why so many emblematic figures of the FLOSS movement are upset - they didn't expect Novell to be party to this.
That's why so many of the emblematic figures of the FLOSS movement are so upset. Because you don't have to wait for MS to work around the GPL - with some help from Novell, they already did.
I see your point too - I just don't differentiate between psychological problems and ... well, what? Even if the problem is merely psychological, and unjustified because of the letter of the GPL (you are absolutely correct there, that's what E.Moglen says as well), it has real world practical effects. In fact, a very large portion of marketing is merely psychological. The way FUD works is entirely psychological, but it has real-world consequences, like slowing down the adoption of linux, more - well, psychological - ammunition for pro-patent legislators in the EU, etc.
One way to fight this is to point out that there are conflicts between the letter - and the spirit - of the GPL and the deal made by Novell. That's what we are doing here, which is good :)
I stated this multiple times in this thread: I DON'T SAY THEY WILL ACTUALLY SUE OTHER LINUX VENDORS. If they would do that, that wouldn't be FUD, would it? It would simply be a fact of life. FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - that's exactly what is introduced in the competition of FLOSS (a competition that so far was based on technical merits and quality of support). They just insinuate all linux distributions and many commercial FLOSS developers (that's a broad category, just to name one project: KDE - many kde developers are employed by a commercial companey, trolltech). If you don't see that a problem, that's fine. Probably you didn't see SCO a problem either, after all, if we talk numbers, 99 linux distributions were not sued by them...
If you take one aspect alone that this agreement affects, it might be a minor issue, but there are lots of minor issues raised by this agreement, and they add up in my opinion. And there are lots of major issues - depending on how you look at these. For me, the competitive-cooperative model of FLOSS development is the most important asset of free software. Now that asset became somewhat tainted. Competition based on technical excellence and quality of service became tainted (I didn't like what Oracle did, but their move still remained inside the cooperative-competitive model). For me, that's a big problem, but I can accept opinions that regard this as a minor one. But if I take all the issues - be they minor or major ones - I'd say this deal is a big problem.
The problem is, that Novell provided pro-patent legislators some munition. It would be wise for European linux wendors to cooperate on a higher level, and put unprecedented pressure on pro-patent legislations. A joint anti-patent organization sponsored by all linux vendors, with the sole job of raising publicity, countering every single pro-patent claim, organizing awareness-rising events, etc. I know this is happening through FFII right now, but we need much-much more.
Let me clarify this - there isn't any need to assume that they will actually go after other linux companies. The fact that we are discussing this possibility is bad enough for the reputation of linux in general. I my opinion, that's what Microsoft will do - it won't actually go after RedHat, but it will imply the possibility of doing that. Thanks to novell, they can now do that with some credibility (even though the actual possibility is remote).
To put it in another, more familiar way:
SCO: buy a licence from us, and you won't get sued NOVELL: use our own distribution, and you won't get sued by Microsoft
Or in Ballmer's words:
So the damage is already done, but instead of the pitiful attempt of SCO, we now have a linux vendor hand in hand with Microsoft operating the FUD machine. If you haven't realized: that's pretty bad for linux in general (and we will see how good it is for Novell).That's hilariously naive. A little good PR? Well, you forget about the BIG BAD PR for the entire linux community. I will spell out for you what exactly happened: Novell (the holder of Unix copyrights btw, and a linux distributor) acknowledged that Microsoft might have valid patent claims in linux. If you haven't realized: that's pretty bad.
And I will explain it in Ballmer's words as well, if you think I'm crazy or a zealot (btw, I use FreeBSD, not linux, but care for the FLOSS movement):
Novell succeeded in what SCO failed - incriminated linux distributions. SCO was a weak proxy of Microsoft, now Novell is much much stronger - after all, it is the company that has ~20% marketshare in the enterprise linux arena.Some people think (I'm not referring specifically to your post) that calling others zealots, because they are angry and disappointed is somehow cool. They think that they sound more intelligent if they think only inside the pragmatical/technical box. Here is another angle for those - until now, linux distributions participated in "pure" competition. What I mean is that they competed on two fronts: technical merits of the distribution, and quality of support and services. This was good, even if sometimes it got nasty (like in Oracle case). Novell tainted this with another factor: the MS patent flag. This is very bad on the long run ... unless Novell is stopped somehow.
Oh, and fuck Miguel and friends. They only care for pushing their own agenda. Last year Novell leadership was convinced that going GNOME and MONO is a good idea. Then they had to backpedal, not only because existing customers who standardized on KDE, but because there were migration plans in progress that specifically choose KDE on SuSE, and one of them was a 2000 desktop migration plan (in Europe). Then we had Miguel saying for YEARS that there are no patent issues with MONO. And now, he claims that MONO is finally safe, at least if you use Novell's linux offerings. Yes, yes, some people would say that they saw this coming, after all, he has been a Microsoft fan for some time now. And now:
Well, what about non-Novell customers, Mr. Miguel? There goes all the warning agains incorporating MONO technology into GNOME btw.So that's what ruined my archlinux iso burning process. Nero was fixating when suddenly the "windows will restart in x seconds" message popped up, and the burn process failed (even though all sorts of "protections" - burnproof, etc. - were enabled). I guess that message stops all processes when it pops up. I was enraged of course. Screw MS.
I still have to use it though (flash only works well with linux-firefox on FreeBSD, in Konqi I don't have sound with youtube) - and just checked: 109Mb of memory usage, with only one tab open (this one). Basically that's how much memory the entire KDE uses after startup, xorg included. Isn't that ridiculous? I know I can set FF to use smaller memory cache, but that still mean 60-70Mb. There is something fundemantelly wrong with gecko (it must be gecko, because Epiphany and friends suffer from the same flaws), but there is little or no intention to fix that, because all the hype FF gets despite its flaws.
Shutdown: it depends. Right now I have an 59 Gb download in ktorrent (Tom Baker's Doctor Who :) - so I leave my computer on for the nights, otherwise I shut it down (powersaving - even thought I don't pay for the bills separately, why put uneccesary strain on the environment?).
Themes are not the problem. I can use qt themes on gnome apps (like the gimp), but that won't change its crappy open/save file dialogue. That's the main problem. You can skin koffice to blend into your gnome theme, but the open/save dialogue would remain kde, just as the toolbars, menus, etc.
That's more like it :) My current background image is 344K plus I have large icons, background tiles in conqueror (paper), UI effects almost at max. I hate this myth that KDE is resource hungry when you can run it on a PII 266 with 196Mb ram. With UI effects turned down, smaller wallpapers and resolution, I had a smooth desktop experience on a machine similar to yours (PII 233, same amount of ram). Usually it is the distro shipping misconfigured KDE, or running uneccessary services (like kubuntu the HP printer stuff whether you have a printer or not) in the background. My low-end box was freebsd, and unless I started up firefox or similar resource hungry progs, swap space was barely touched, even in actual use like browsing, editing in koffice - except krita perhaps, but that's understandable -, listening to music on xmms or watching something in mplayer. You can configure KDE to run as fast as XFCE while providing the same - if not more - services. Amazing indeed, especially contrasted to the "KDE is bloated, resource hungry, etc." meme that gets repeated here on ./
- Two panels, transparent, with: ktaskbar, ksystray, a clock, kmixapplet, kpager, lots of icons
- 1280*1024 wallpaper, four desktopts.
- 4 instances of konqueror preloads
- one fullscreen konsole (also with background wallpaper)
- kopete
- kgpg
- kget
- ktorrent
- korganizer reminder daemon
- amarok (uses a lot, but there is a huge difference between SIZE and RES in top: 73828K and 26288K - I use RES values here)
- kmail
- kmixapplet
- keyboard switcher
- kcpuload
- klipper
- oh, and almost forgot: 130Mb includes xorg as well (didn't bother substracting it after startx)
Considering all this, KDE memory usage is indeed, ridiculously low. Usually those complaining work either from memory (they used KDE 5 years ago, and assume its still the same and has the same problems) or have something misconfigured.I see some gentoo zealots use moderation instead of arguments if they don't agree with my opinion. Congrats.
I watched him struggle building up his system from scratch, even though he began with stage 3. Than I had a good chance to compare portage with ports, and I was amazed at the primitive way it handles dependencies during package removal, and the miriad options you have to set to have a sane system (midnight-commander pulling in xorg by default??). A month later, he had everything up and running, by following the FAQs, wikies, howtos, etc. And he had still no idea what filesystem permissions are.
You don't learn anything by using gentoo. You basically follow - badly written - documentation, and you might think that oh, I'm sooo cool, I built something from scratch, I must be learning something, but in reality, you were blindly typing in commands without learning the basics behind those commands. My friend was clever enough to realize that despite "doing everything by hand" he didn't learn much about unix in general. Because the documentation sucks, and the whole concept of gentoo sucks, because it is misleading. It misleads people to think that the point of building from source is "optimization". On modern hardware, there is absolutely no reason to spend hours, days, weeks for "optimizing". There are very few packages that benefit from optimizations, and I expect a modern package/ports management system to take care of those packages, ie. I don't want to spend hours setting compiler flags, I want ports maintainers doing that for me. That's how it works in FreeBSD. You set -O (or -O2) in make.conf, and those packages that might benefit from further optimizations, automatically override these defaults, because the good folks at freebsd-ports tested them, and deemed them safe (example: mplayer/mencoder will be built with -O3 -ffast-math, etc... without you having to muck around config files).
Anyhow, the point is, you only learn if you want to learn, and if there is helpful documentation. Any distribution is good enough if you are motivated, and if it is properly documented. FreeBSD beats every single linux distro on the documentation front, but if you want to stick with linux, slackware is a much better choice than gentoo. Another good choice, probably even a better one for the Ubuntu user grand-grand parent is probably Archlinux, which comes as close as any distro to the simplicity of slackware (or FreeBSD for that matter) with nice package management, good documentation, and an opportunity to learn about unix like systems in general. FreeBSD is another good choice for noobs, because it is one of the easiest to learn unix like systems. Even if you want to learn linux, I still would recommend the FreeBSD handbook, because it is not just a howto, but it explains the concepts of unix in great detail. The unix basics chapter is a good introduction to anyone who wants to actually learn something (not just blindly following howtos and spend time on useless "optimizations" in gentoo).
However it will most likely not be truly cross platform. I will be waiting for the Windows versions very eagerly. When you start talking about heterogenous environments, there will be Windows servers around. You can't get around that no matter how zealot and OSS fundamentalist you are. Mostly likely it will portable - like most of OpenBSD's code. Just don't expect them to port it for you. With some effort, probably it would work on unix services for windows (which is based on openbsd btw).
FreeBSD also has details in their security notification. Those guys are fast - if you want to have up to date info on security vulns., FreeBSD has them (usually with patches) way before the news hits slashdot ;) For those who are asking for line numbers, just take a look at the patches included. Or better, here is a kompare screenshot.
Strange, considering that FreeBSD has good support for wireless either via ndiswrapper or native drivers. If author's wlan card is based on Belkin F5D7050 v2000 chipset (it would have been useful if he posted more details, it is not that difficult find out which chipset it is based upon), it is supported by the ural driver. On FreeBSD, that is. But then, one of the goals of 6.0 release was to add and improve wireless support - both the native drivers and ndiswrapper.
Really? I should get in touch with you. I'm also working on a book about property, but won't be about its elimination, but the possible changes in the way we relate to property, which in turn, might have an impact on the way our future unfolds. I examine the concept of gift exchange specifically - from early writings of Marcel Mauss and other sociologists/anthropologists, their findigs about the role (economic, political, social) of gift exchange in archaic societies. Then how this circulation of a fairly large portion of the economic wealth gave way to capitalism. How the gift exchange model survived in arts (true art always have something beyond it's market value, as Margaret Atwood aptly put it "What is Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' worth in dollar terms? In fact, my premise is that art can survive without the market, but it cannot survive without its gift aspect). How today the concept of gift exchange is brought is back into play with linux and the Open Source movement. Google's role. How the "internet revolution" can change our life in profound ways (beyond accelerated communication and technology) - and all these topics are closely tied to the problem of property, and how we treat it, how we think about it.
I would be interested to see what you have in mind when you speak about "elimination." Frederic Jameson once wrote (in the Seeds of Time) that it has now become easier to imagine the end of the earth and of nature than the end of capitalism. I don't think that capitalism can and in a sudden bang - but it can change profoundly, just as our way of thinking about property may change profoundly - so property as we know it today (including every connotation of the word) might be indeed "eliminated" as in changed into something different (but preserving some aspects of property of course).
I wonder if your research and mine has anything in common... This is a tentative biography (I didn't include novels that I'm going to analyise to show traces of gift exchange, neither did I include online material):
Sahlins, Marshall. Stone Age Economics (1972)
Derrida, Jacques. Given Time : I. Counterfeit Money
Titmuss, Richard. "The Gift Relationship" (this is about human blood donation)
Jameson, Fredric (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Jameson, Fredric (1994). The Seeds of Time. The Wellek Library lectures at the University of California, Irvine, New York: Columbia University Press.
The Logic of the Gift; Toward an Ethic of Generosity (Paperback) by Alan D. Schrift (Editor)
Kostas Axelos. Alienation and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx
Maurice Godelier, Nora Scott (trans.) The Enigma of the Gift. Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 2Rev Ed edition (February 3, 1999)
And Marcel Mauss of course - he introduced the term in The Gift (1925).
Add to this their track record: failure to detect SONY's malware, (and now they seem to have one of their own) and they are always the last to provide adequate means to remove fresh exploits (no data here, but I distinctly remember that whenever something crops up, f-prot, free-av, etc. works, and NAV comes trailing behind other antivir solutions.). Plus it is a serious resource hog - more than any antivir progs.
The first serious breach of "Do no evil" of Google was their inclusion of a Symantec product in google pack :)))
Yeah, I realize that. But there is another difference besides the memory card size: the quality of the earphones. Buying the earphones of w800i + new memory card costs more than selling my k750i + ipod and buying a new w800i :) There is also a small difference between the quality of the case - the w800 is more sturdy (and both are sturdier than the ipod btw.).