> I remember similar statements back then on comp.os.linux.advocacy and they've turned out to be just as false when it comes to fortelling Linux's future. I've come to accept Linux will never be anything more than a fringe operating system, but there's nothing wrong with that. Hell, MacOS is a fringe operating system compared to the numbers Windows has yet MacOS X is one of the nicest systems I've ever used.
So the progress Linux is making is slower than it's advocates and fanboys would like, but this does in no way imply no progress has been made, or is unlikely to happen in the future. I believe your use of the word "never" is an equally unfounded exageration. The server market is still growing, the desktop market is growing, and upcoming OSS software like OpenOffice 2.0 and Firefox 1.0 will only help to further our cause.
The 2.6 branch is becomming more production ready, as well. I'm running 2.6.9 on Gentoo and much more satisfied than I was with, say, 2.6.5
As for MacOS X, clearly it will allways be a fringe operating system simply because ppc and ppc64 are fringe architectures. The Linux kernel has no such limitations... quite the opposite, in fact.
> Light travels about 10x faster than electrons in their optimal medium, so the potential processing speed limit is increased.
What?? I thought electrons traveled at the speed of light! AFAIK the advantage of optical over electrical is that the paths of photons can cross w/o interfering with each other, thus potentially allowing for smaller processors.
> Grub understands ext file systems and gives you a console that is pretty flexible, so unless you intentionally deleted all backup bootable kernels (shame on you) you should still be able to boot in some manner.
> All a future President Kerry would really have to do is order his Attorney General NOT TO ENFORCE the DMCA, and it effectively disappears.
But companies themselves are using the DMCA against consumers in all sorts of freaky ways. If the AG stopped doing so it would be great, but that's only half the problem.
> Yes, perhaps the 100s of distro's need to be cut down some, but IMO not as much as your suggesting.
Cutting down the 100s that already exist isn't my main concern, though do I think we could make do with less than half the current number. But we can let time deal with that, as the lesser ones fail and become abandoned.
What I am more concerned about is the number of NEW ones. I think we should give priority to making the current tools better and more flexible.
I am not saying there should be no NEW distros, I just think maybe 60-80% fewer NEW ones every year would be nice.
I for one resent the fact that the amount of linux distros is still growing. Why? There are many answers I could give, but consider that one of the following is usually true:
1) It is based on an existing major distribution, contains little useful innovation, and as such does nothing but add pointless name clutter and minor incompatibilities.
2) It is sufficiently different enough from the current major distributions to be considered innovative, but that innovation would (in the majority of cases) be better spent imporoving existing distros, particularly in the areas of package management, modularity, convenient installation, and general ease-of-use.
Now I understand that having the "right to fork" is an essential part of OSS and I would defend that right to the death (ok so maybe I'm exagerating a wee bit, but less than you would think). Choice is awesome, I like choice. But who has time to try 100's of distros? It is of some consolation that their are review sites to give us the scoop, but reading them is tedious too, and not guaranteed to be helpful or relevant.
Bottom line: New distros have their place, but we need fewer of them. Far fewer. Development time (or should I say "repackaging time"?) would be better spent improving existing deployment tools, e.g. Portage and Catalyst.
Re:Uhm, not the appropriate response, but
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 1
Cheaper than patent lawyers, maybe? Once the rat brains enter mass production, of course.
> I'm currently sticking with NVidia cards simply because they support FreeBSD, Linux, and other OSes. ATI might have a slight performance lead (although things have gotten pretty blurry with the recent batch of cards), but that isn't enough for me to leave a company that I know I can trust.
As soon as you start talking Linux, the performance advantage of the Radeon 9x00 vs it's GeforceFX equivalents vanishes.
As soon as you start talking Radeon X800 vs Geforce 6800, the Geforce is clearly ahead on windows. And there are no X800 Linux drivers yet AFAIK, so that's clearly a wash. But even assuming they were availeable we can extrapolate from both companies' track record and assume the 6800 drivers will still be better.
In summary:
9x00 > a similarly priced GeforceFX *ON WINDOWS* GeforceFX > a similarly priced 9x00 *ON LINUX* 6800 > X800 *PERIOD*
Now, it is possible to find a benchmark on Windows where the X800 outperformes the 6800, but they are few and far between. And since we're mostly interested in FOSS OS's, who the hell cares anyway?
> If only there was a way to mod "too obvious to be funny":-(
Why sure, it is called Redundant. But depending on whether you want to direct your ire toward the poster or the moderator, you could opt for Overrated.
Also, in metamoderation one can choose Unfunny which amounts to the same thing.
2.6.8 had some problems with tcp connections being broken, I hope they fixed that.
And I need kernel >= 2.6.8 for forcedeth gigabit support...
And tere are always little improvements... as soon as your distro packages 2.6.9 it makes since to upgrade but since there's no hurry just put in in your bootloader and wait till next reboot to load it....
However, we WILL be there in the future. You have to understand, the library is doing this for HISTORICAL purposes.
So basically the plan is to store the emails now, and in twenty or so years have an AI text-to-speech program read Stephen Hawking's get BIGGGGER pen!S and v1agra spam to any of our future children who happen to be born blind.
Slashdot Mirror
You can hot swap SATA. Deffiately the way to go nowdays, seeing as they are only $1-5 more expensive than their IDE counterparts.
> I remember similar statements back then on comp.os.linux.advocacy and they've turned out to be just as false when it comes to fortelling Linux's future. I've come to accept Linux will never be anything more than a fringe operating system, but there's nothing wrong with that. Hell, MacOS is a fringe operating system compared to the numbers Windows has yet MacOS X is one of the nicest systems I've ever used.
So the progress Linux is making is slower than it's advocates and fanboys would like, but this does in no way imply no progress has been made, or is unlikely to happen in the future. I believe your use of the word "never" is an equally unfounded exageration. The server market is still growing, the desktop market is growing, and upcoming OSS software like OpenOffice 2.0 and Firefox 1.0 will only help to further our cause.
The 2.6 branch is becomming more production ready, as well. I'm running 2.6.9 on Gentoo and much more satisfied than I was with, say, 2.6.5
As for MacOS X, clearly it will allways be a fringe operating system simply because ppc and ppc64 are fringe architectures. The Linux kernel has no such limitations... quite the opposite, in fact.
See also Groklaw's coverage of the Ballmer email
Hmm...aparently the answer is it depends on the medium
> Light travels about 10x faster than electrons in their optimal medium, so the potential processing speed limit is increased.
What?? I thought electrons traveled at the speed of light! AFAIK the advantage of optical over electrical is that the paths of photons can cross w/o interfering with each other, thus potentially allowing for smaller processors.
Vim doesn't require the trailing /
Many of use you vim much more often than perl or sed.
> Grub understands ext file systems and gives you a console that is pretty flexible, so unless you intentionally deleted all backup bootable kernels (shame on you) you should still be able to boot in some manner.
:)
Yeah, like... ummm, KNOPPIX?
Been there done that
> All a future President Kerry would really have to do is order his Attorney General NOT TO ENFORCE the DMCA, and it effectively disappears.
But companies themselves are using the DMCA against consumers in all sorts of freaky ways. If the AG stopped doing so it would be great, but that's only half the problem.
> Yes, perhaps the 100s of distro's need to be cut down some, but IMO not as much as your suggesting.
Cutting down the 100s that already exist isn't my main concern, though do I think we could make do with less than half the current number. But we can let time deal with that, as the lesser ones fail and become abandoned.
What I am more concerned about is the number of NEW ones. I think we should give priority to making the current tools better and more flexible.
I am not saying there should be no NEW distros, I just think maybe 60-80% fewer NEW ones every year would be nice.
I for one resent the fact that the amount of linux distros is still growing. Why? There are many answers I could give, but consider that one of the following is usually true:
1) It is based on an existing major distribution, contains little useful innovation, and as such does nothing but add pointless name clutter and minor incompatibilities.
2) It is sufficiently different enough from the current major distributions to be considered innovative, but that innovation would (in the majority of cases) be better spent imporoving existing distros, particularly in the areas of package management, modularity, convenient installation, and general ease-of-use.
Now I understand that having the "right to fork" is an essential part of OSS and I would defend that right to the death (ok so maybe I'm exagerating a wee bit, but less than you would think). Choice is awesome, I like choice. But who has time to try 100's of distros? It is of some consolation that their are review sites to give us the scoop, but reading them is tedious too, and not guaranteed to be helpful or relevant.
Bottom line: New distros have their place, but we need fewer of them. Far fewer. Development time (or should I say "repackaging time"?) would be better spent improving existing deployment tools, e.g. Portage and Catalyst.
Cheaper than patent lawyers, maybe? Once the rat brains enter mass production, of course.
> or get a different antenna. :-)
> The router/nic will listen to whatever is loudest. Go pick up a bigger antenna. 7dbi should do it.
Yes, because if everyone got a bigger antenna that would go a long way towards solving wifi interference problems... genius man, pure genius.
> The first thing I thought was: I want one. Wonder if it could learn to play GTA?
GTA? pfft... I'm planning to use my first rat brain to make money with Everquest and Diablo.
> Oh come on, everyone knows there's no weight in space :P
Me thinks the OP meant mass. F = m * a, remember? So 2x the weight -> 2x the mass -> 2x the fuel -> 2x the cost.
Well that's an anomaly, and you sure aren't getting the most out of your 9800 PRO because I know mine works better on windows.
Maybe you should try XP...
> So now /. wants us to actually... read?
Yeah, I mean since when have we stopped catering to the illiterate geek community? People who can't read have rights too!
If you only have a single slot, the 6800 GT will suffice.
> but we have this other non-sony sony store
:)
I get your meaning, it still sounds funny
> I'm currently sticking with NVidia cards simply because they support FreeBSD, Linux, and other OSes. ATI might have a slight performance lead (although things have gotten pretty blurry with the recent batch of cards), but that isn't enough for me to leave a company that I know I can trust.
As soon as you start talking Linux, the performance advantage of the Radeon 9x00 vs it's GeforceFX equivalents vanishes.
As soon as you start talking Radeon X800 vs Geforce 6800, the Geforce is clearly ahead on windows. And there are no X800 Linux drivers yet AFAIK, so that's clearly a wash. But even assuming they were availeable we can extrapolate from both companies' track record and assume the 6800 drivers will still be better.
In summary:
9x00 > a similarly priced GeforceFX *ON WINDOWS*
GeforceFX > a similarly priced 9x00 *ON LINUX*
6800 > X800 *PERIOD*
Now, it is possible to find a benchmark on Windows where the X800 outperformes the 6800, but they are few and far between. And since we're mostly interested in FOSS OS's, who the hell cares anyway?
> If only there was a way to mod "too obvious to be funny" :-(
Why sure, it is called Redundant. But depending on whether you want to direct your ire toward the poster or the moderator, you could opt for Overrated.
Also, in metamoderation one can choose Unfunny which amounts to the same thing.
> I like the idea of having a parachute. It'll make running from the cops more interesting.
Yeah, I can see it now...
"Suspect is on the roof of the Heinz building, running fast."
"He jumped! Wait.. there's a parachute! He's headed down into the mall on 5th street."
Well here's a start:
I'm not too knowlegeable about it, I just know it exists and can be irritating.
2.6.8 had some problems with tcp connections being broken, I hope they fixed that.
And I need kernel >= 2.6.8 for forcedeth gigabit support...
And tere are always little improvements... as soon as your distro packages 2.6.9 it makes since to upgrade but since there's no hurry just put in in your bootloader and wait till next reboot to load it....
Granted, we aren't there yet.
However, we WILL be there in the future. You have to understand, the library is doing this for HISTORICAL purposes.
So basically the plan is to store the emails now, and in twenty or so years have an AI text-to-speech program read Stephen Hawking's get BIGGGGER pen!S and v1agra spam to any of our future children who happen to be born blind.
ty