Click on the "hp Compaq Business Desktop d500 series"
Read the blurb that says "Compaq Evo D500 Series PCs continue to redefine industry-leading value with the latest technologies and updated processor speeds. Other D500 Series features include:"
This just makes Linux that much more attractive to the corporate market. And the corporate market spends more on software than the home market does (not counting games).
Now, because we don't have a smallest unit of distance or a smallest unit of time, our graphs of #1 show an curve with the asymptote being #2.
This is a "paradox" only because we can conceive of time divisions of hundreds of thousanths of millionths of billionths of a second and fractions of an inch that are just as small.
It wasn't possible to tell when, exactly, he passes the turtle because it assumed that time could be divided small enough and that objects were discrete enough.
If it wasn't an attempt to take over the US, then why would they need Mouseketeers, recruited as children and subjected to hours every Monday through Friday of Disney indoctrination?
Why do you think they call me "Mouseketeers"?
They're going to recruit your children through cuddly, artifically intelligent cartoon characters.
"Computers have become so popular with normal people because the average person can just figure it out because it has been designed to be easy to use."
No they have not. You believe they are easy to use because you have spent years using them. I've had to teach people who have never used a computer how to use one. There was one woman who needed two hands to work the mouse. One to hold it steady while she clicked with here other hand.
The reason your computer works so well with Windows is that you are installing hardware that the manufacturer wrote drivers for Windows for. Is this a difficult concept?
Now, try installing Windows on a PowerPC.
How about trying to put one of these old PCI video cards I have in a Windows XP machine? No luck. They don't have Windows2000 or XP drivers. But they were top-of-the-line when they came out. Too bad the manufacturer stopped supporting them back in 1998.
What was that you said? I shouldn't be using old cards? I should buy new stuff that works with XP?
Well now. It seems that your XP installation has the same problems your Linux installation had.
It doesn't work without supported hardware.
I am aware that such has been your experience. But don't blame Linux for your experience. You chose the hardware to use. If you had chosen supported hardware, your experience would have been completely different.
And don't complain that the hardware you chose worked with Windows so it should work with Linux. If you want to play that game, then why don't you get XP running on a PowerPC? The reason the hardware works with Windows is that you are specifically selecting hardware that works with Windows.
Buy a PC pre-loaded with Linux and you'll see 99% of your problems vanish.
Wal-Mart has increased its line of Linux based PC's.
Originally they had Lindows.
They have added Lycoris desktops.
They have added SUSE desktops.
There is a rumor that they will also be introducing Mandrake systems.
When Linux comes pre-installed, it is just as easy for the average person to use as Windows is. Wal-Mart would not be selling them and expanding their line if they were not profitable.
At that point, it makes more economic sense for all manufacturers to come out with Linux support first.
When you can hit 50%+ of the market, you go with that.
Right now, the biggest market is 90%+ Windows. It makes more economic sense for the manufacturer to support Windows.
Fortunately, we are not restricted to simple statistics.
If you're buying new hardware, make sure the manufacturer supports Linux. Reward the manufacturers that support Linux and other manufacturers will start supporting Linux. Spend your money wisely.
I based my statement on statistics. When Linux has 50%+ of the market, then, more often than not, the reviewer will be putting the new Linux test box in an existing Linux network.
As it is right now, 90%+ of the time, the new Linux test box will be dropped into an existing Windows network and any differences will be reported as "problems".
The problems you encountered (sound card, nVidia) are 100% installation issues.
They have nothing to do with Linux being ready for the desktop. I can install brand new hardware in an XP box and Windows will not know how to handle it. That is, until I install the drivers from the manufacturer. But that doesn't mean XP isn't ready for the desktop, does it?
If you had purchased a computer with Linux pre-installed, you would not have had those problems. If you had only purchased components with good Linux support, you would not have had those problems.
Those driver issues will only be solved when Linux has 50%+ of the desktop market. That's plain economics. The vidoe card manufacturers don't all support Linux to the same degree.
And claiming something should work with Linux because it is "from the most popular manufacturer out there" shows your lack of understanding. It doesn't matter how popular a manufacturer is. It matters how well that manufacturer works with the Linux community.
Linux will be judged by how well it works in the situations it is placed in.
When deployed as a server (web, database, whatever) it works very well. That is because those protocols and connections are pretty much standardized and well documented.
When dropped into a practically 100% Microsoft environment, with lots of undocumented, non-standard and just plain secretive protocols in use, Linux will not perform tasks based upon those protocols as well as the latest Windows box.
And people will consider Linux "not yet ready" because of this.
Despite how well Linux handles documents and email and web browsing and whatever else is thrown at it.
That's the way it will always be. Until Linux has 50%+ of the desktop, Linux will have to be as good or better than Windows in all aspects.
The items I'm taking away from this article are:
#1. A configuration issue with Samba needs to be solved in SUSE. This review would have been great if that had not been a factor.
#2. apt-get functionality needs to be the default for whatever package manager is used by default.
#3. Outlook compatibility would be very, very, very nice to have. But please don't include the feature to spread viruses.
#4. Everything else is a minor bug or feature issue.
Linux is now ready for the desktop. But it takes a skilled administrator to deploy it.
I don't see it as the Arthurian theme. If anything, it was more of the Robin Hood theme.
The problem with either of those comparisions is that Blake is not in a lot of the episodes.
I guess you could make a "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" comparision. But that has problems because there isn't an original story for the characters to be from. Just a theme.
I liked it because it was different. In Star Trek, the crew is always right and good and more enlightened than everyone else in the universe.
In Blake's 7..... AVON: Only seventy kilos... Vila, strip off the insulation material in the cargo hold. [Vila turns.] Vila! [Avon takes some small object from a panel and hands it to him.]
VILA: But that's plastic. It weighs nothing.
AVON: Get rid of it anyway.
VILA: A kilo and a half if we're lucky.
AVON: Do it! We've got five minutes. [Vila turns and heads out.] Not enough! Not nearly enough! Dammit, what weighs seventy kilos?
[The door can be heard opening.]
ORAC: Vila weighs seventy-three kilos, Avon.
[The door closes.]
[ Avon fetches his gun and gets a determined look on his face]
Never try anything new on your production machines.
Have a test server configured exactly (or as close as you can get) like your production server.
Always test new software on the test machine before putting it on the production machine.
This is important whether you're running Linux or Windows or whatever. Even when you're testing new versions or updates of apache or PHP or perl or postgresql or whatever.
Running untested (by you) code on production servers is guaranteed to bite you eventually.
Just save yourself the lost time and headaches and get a test box.
Your time and data are worth far more than the cost on a test box.
Your forged headers are noted and factored in when determining whether you are spam or not. But by themselves they are not sufficient to mark you as spam.
Your e-zine will tend to have the same format and similar content from issue to issue. The Bayesian filter can detect this and let it through.
I'm running this setup at work for our offices and it works very well. The only real problems we've had is monster.com's resumes. But even that seems to be working now.
Microsoft has a utility called "sysdiff" that you might have a bit of trouble finding. Being an OEM, I do not have that same problem.
Do a clean install of XP. Run sysdiff.
Install Office. Run sysdiff.
Compare the output. Look at all the files that have been added or "upgraded" in the system directories.
If you want instructions on how to use sysdiff, please consult the resource kit for your version of Windows. Sysdiff was introduced back in the NT day.
It seems that we've identified the moron in this discussion. Feel free to read up on the available literature next time.
#1. The core OS was not sufficiently protected from being "upgraded" by any application that was installed. Microsoft was the biggest offender with Office.
#2. The binary registry has all of the information for everything, users, applications, hardware, security, etc stored in it. If something goes wrong it is a major pain to fix it.
#3. The uninstall feature of Windows does not clear out everything. If I do install a buggy driver for a scanner and I want to remove it so it doesn't affect my system anymore, uninstalling does NOT always clean it out.
That is why, over time, Windows installations become less stable. Crap gets stuck in the registry and drivers get stuck in the OS directories and bad things start happening.
And don't give me any crap about that being the fault of the user. The OS should be able to control itself. Look at Debian's uninstall feature. Debian even has multiple levels of uninstall.
The problems with Windows are because of decisions Microsoft made. Not because of end-users.
No, you wouldn't see a "huge increase in the number of 'security breaches'" because the majority of viruses spread on Windows are spread by exploiting flaws in Outlook to automatically run code or that hides the real extension of the attachment.
That is one of the biggest problems with a mono-culture like Windows.
On Linux, there are too many different mailers. At work, we run GroupWise and we are NOT subject to all the Outlook problems.
Now, someone could write a virus/worm/whatever that exploited GroupWise code, but it would have to be sent directly to us.
Unless it also exploited Outlook code.
Which makes it that much harder to write.
Now, add in a third mail client and the problem with getting the virus/worm/whatever to someone becomes that much more difficult.
The only way Linux will ever have the same problems you see on Windows (in regard to worms, viruses, trojans, whatever) is for a single mail client to be deployed on 80%+ of the desktops and for that mail client to have at least one easily exploitable security flaw.
AND for Linux to have 50%+ of the desktop market.
We'll make a deal. When Linux gets to 50%+ (shouldn't be that much longer now), you post again and we'll see what the virus/worm/trojan/whatever situation is like.
Slashdot Mirror
Supposed I backed up the original hard drive and put in a bigger on. Do I own SCO for two copies of Linux?
Compaq Evo's
Go to www.compaq.com
This will redirect you to h18000.www1.hp.com
Click on the Business Desktops link
Click on the "hp Compaq Business Desktop d500 series"
Read the blurb that says "Compaq Evo D500 Series PCs continue to redefine industry-leading value with the latest technologies and updated processor speeds. Other D500 Series features include:"
Sucks to be you.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but we've just deployed 100+ brand new Compaq Evo's and NONE of them had Realplayer on them.
Perhaps you could clarify which computers do come with Realplayer?
So most games won't run on Linux.
This just makes Linux that much more attractive to the corporate market. And the corporate market spends more on software than the home market does (not counting games).
All the ones I know of at work are pre-configured by the IT department.
All the ones not owned by average people at home are pre-configured.
Really, go to Dell or HP and try to get them to ship you a box with a blank hard drive.
Windows is always considered so much easier because all the hardware that was shipped with the box had Windows drivers for it.
This study just shows that the vast majority of "problems" in Linux are installation issues.
Which means Linux is ready for the workplace.
NDS is the best directory service out there.
Combine the best directory service with mono and you've got a great e-commerce system.
There are actually 3 states.
#1. Runner gaining on turtle.
#2. Runner and turtle at the same point.
#3. Runner ahead of turtle.
Now, because we don't have a smallest unit of distance or a smallest unit of time, our graphs of #1 show an curve with the asymptote being #2.
This is a "paradox" only because we can conceive of time divisions of hundreds of thousanths of millionths of billionths of a second and fractions of an inch that are just as small.
It wasn't possible to tell when, exactly, he passes the turtle because it assumed that time could be divided small enough and that objects were discrete enough.
It's the One World Order, man!
If it wasn't an attempt to take over the US, then why would they need Mouseketeers, recruited as children and subjected to hours every Monday through Friday of Disney indoctrination?
Why do you think they call me "Mouseketeers"?
They're going to recruit your children through cuddly, artifically intelligent cartoon characters.
That sounds like a very realistic scenario.
What is the plan for preventing this "Denial of Service" attack?
Typical Microsoft. The functionality goes in before the security is considered.
Be untraceable. You intend on losing these bets.
Put lots of big bets on something that isn't your target.
That will get the security forces watching that target.
You proceed with your plan knowing that you'll have fewer security forces to deal with around the real target.
There isn't any "science" in that article. Just unsubstantiated claims.
They ignore the most basic factor in this equation.
The people with the most knowledge may have an interest in hiding that knowledge.
The easiest way for them to do so would be to artificially inflate a completely different scenario to focus attention on that item.
Like bidding up an attack on Egypt on a certain day. When the actual event will be the assassination of an Israeli government official.
"Computers have become so popular with normal people because the average person can just figure it out because it has been designed to be easy to use."
No they have not. You believe they are easy to use because you have spent years using them. I've had to teach people who have never used a computer how to use one. There was one woman who needed two hands to work the mouse. One to hold it steady while she clicked with here other hand.
The reason your computer works so well with Windows is that you are installing hardware that the manufacturer wrote drivers for Windows for. Is this a difficult concept?
Now, try installing Windows on a PowerPC.
How about trying to put one of these old PCI video cards I have in a Windows XP machine? No luck. They don't have Windows2000 or XP drivers. But they were top-of-the-line when they came out. Too bad the manufacturer stopped supporting them back in 1998.
What was that you said? I shouldn't be using old cards? I should buy new stuff that works with XP?
Well now. It seems that your XP installation has the same problems your Linux installation had.
It doesn't work without supported hardware.
I am aware that such has been your experience. But don't blame Linux for your experience. You chose the hardware to use. If you had chosen supported hardware, your experience would have been completely different.
And don't complain that the hardware you chose worked with Windows so it should work with Linux. If you want to play that game, then why don't you get XP running on a PowerPC? The reason the hardware works with Windows is that you are specifically selecting hardware that works with Windows.
Buy a PC pre-loaded with Linux and you'll see 99% of your problems vanish.
Wal-Mart has increased its line of Linux based PC's.
Originally they had Lindows.
They have added Lycoris desktops.
They have added SUSE desktops.
There is a rumor that they will also be introducing Mandrake systems.
When Linux comes pre-installed, it is just as easy for the average person to use as Windows is. Wal-Mart would not be selling them and expanding their line if they were not profitable.
At that point, it makes more economic sense for all manufacturers to come out with Linux support first.
When you can hit 50%+ of the market, you go with that.
Right now, the biggest market is 90%+ Windows. It makes more economic sense for the manufacturer to support Windows.
Fortunately, we are not restricted to simple statistics.
If you're buying new hardware, make sure the manufacturer supports Linux. Reward the manufacturers that support Linux and other manufacturers will start supporting Linux. Spend your money wisely.
I based my statement on statistics. When Linux has 50%+ of the market, then, more often than not, the reviewer will be putting the new Linux test box in an existing Linux network.
As it is right now, 90%+ of the time, the new Linux test box will be dropped into an existing Windows network and any differences will be reported as "problems".
The problems you encountered (sound card, nVidia) are 100% installation issues.
They have nothing to do with Linux being ready for the desktop. I can install brand new hardware in an XP box and Windows will not know how to handle it. That is, until I install the drivers from the manufacturer. But that doesn't mean XP isn't ready for the desktop, does it?
If you had purchased a computer with Linux pre-installed, you would not have had those problems. If you had only purchased components with good Linux support, you would not have had those problems.
Those driver issues will only be solved when Linux has 50%+ of the desktop market. That's plain economics. The vidoe card manufacturers don't all support Linux to the same degree.
And claiming something should work with Linux because it is "from the most popular manufacturer out there" shows your lack of understanding. It doesn't matter how popular a manufacturer is. It matters how well that manufacturer works with the Linux community.
Linux will be judged by how well it works in the situations it is placed in.
When deployed as a server (web, database, whatever) it works very well. That is because those protocols and connections are pretty much standardized and well documented.
When dropped into a practically 100% Microsoft environment, with lots of undocumented, non-standard and just plain secretive protocols in use, Linux will not perform tasks based upon those protocols as well as the latest Windows box.
And people will consider Linux "not yet ready" because of this.
Despite how well Linux handles documents and email and web browsing and whatever else is thrown at it.
That's the way it will always be. Until Linux has 50%+ of the desktop, Linux will have to be as good or better than Windows in all aspects.
The items I'm taking away from this article are:
#1. A configuration issue with Samba needs to be solved in SUSE. This review would have been great if that had not been a factor.
#2. apt-get functionality needs to be the default for whatever package manager is used by default.
#3. Outlook compatibility would be very, very, very nice to have. But please don't include the feature to spread viruses.
#4. Everything else is a minor bug or feature issue.
Linux is now ready for the desktop. But it takes a skilled administrator to deploy it.
It depends upon the configuration of Samba and which options you choose.
Given the lack of detail and lack of specifics regarding how the problem was fixed, we are left to speculate as to what the cause was.
Perhaps it was the old encrypted/non-encrypted password issue? Perhaps it was AD security? Perhaps it was something else.
I wonder what the default configuration on OS X is. They said that OS X worked fine.
I wish they had included more info on that complaint. If nothing else, SUSE would have been able to change their configuration in the next release.
I don't see it as the Arthurian theme. If anything, it was more of the Robin Hood theme.
The problem with either of those comparisions is that Blake is not in a lot of the episodes.
I guess you could make a "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" comparision. But that has problems because there isn't an original story for the characters to be from. Just a theme.
I liked it because it was different. In Star Trek, the crew is always right and good and more enlightened than everyone else in the universe.
In Blake's 7.....
AVON: Only seventy kilos... Vila, strip off the insulation material in the cargo hold. [Vila turns.] Vila! [Avon takes some small object from a panel and hands it to him.]
VILA: But that's plastic. It weighs nothing.
AVON: Get rid of it anyway.
VILA: A kilo and a half if we're lucky.
AVON: Do it! We've got five minutes. [Vila turns and heads out.] Not enough! Not nearly enough! Dammit, what weighs seventy kilos?
[The door can be heard opening.]
ORAC: Vila weighs seventy-three kilos, Avon.
[The door closes.]
[ Avon fetches his gun and gets a determined look on his face]
AVON: [Whispering] Vila!... Vila?
http://www.dtra.mil/news/fact/nw_hnforce.html
They were "airburst" nukes. That means that there isn't as much contaminated material as there would be if the fireball contacted the earth.
With an airburst, the contamination can be washed away. Even though this only moves the residual contamination to another area.
If this had been a groundburst, there would have been a lot more radiation contamination to clean up.
Never try anything new on your production machines.
Have a test server configured exactly (or as close as you can get) like your production server.
Always test new software on the test machine before putting it on the production machine.
This is important whether you're running Linux or Windows or whatever. Even when you're testing new versions or updates of apache or PHP or perl or postgresql or whatever.
Running untested (by you) code on production servers is guaranteed to bite you eventually.
Just save yourself the lost time and headaches and get a test box.
Your time and data are worth far more than the cost on a test box.
I use SpamAssassin with Bayesian filtering.
Your forged headers are noted and factored in when determining whether you are spam or not. But by themselves they are not sufficient to mark you as spam.
Your e-zine will tend to have the same format and similar content from issue to issue. The Bayesian filter can detect this and let it through.
I'm running this setup at work for our offices and it works very well. The only real problems we've had is monster.com's resumes. But even that seems to be working now.
Microsoft has a utility called "sysdiff" that you might have a bit of trouble finding. Being an OEM, I do not have that same problem.
Do a clean install of XP. Run sysdiff.
Install Office. Run sysdiff.
Compare the output. Look at all the files that have been added or "upgraded" in the system directories.
If you want instructions on how to use sysdiff, please consult the resource kit for your version of Windows. Sysdiff was introduced back in the NT day.
It seems that we've identified the moron in this discussion. Feel free to read up on the available literature next time.
The problems with Windows are as follows:
#1. The core OS was not sufficiently protected from being "upgraded" by any application that was installed. Microsoft was the biggest offender with Office.
#2. The binary registry has all of the information for everything, users, applications, hardware, security, etc stored in it. If something goes wrong it is a major pain to fix it.
#3. The uninstall feature of Windows does not clear out everything. If I do install a buggy driver for a scanner and I want to remove it so it doesn't affect my system anymore, uninstalling does NOT always clean it out.
That is why, over time, Windows installations become less stable. Crap gets stuck in the registry and drivers get stuck in the OS directories and bad things start happening.
And don't give me any crap about that being the fault of the user. The OS should be able to control itself. Look at Debian's uninstall feature. Debian even has multiple levels of uninstall.
The problems with Windows are because of decisions Microsoft made. Not because of end-users.
No, you wouldn't see a "huge increase in the number of 'security breaches'" because the majority of viruses spread on Windows are spread by exploiting flaws in Outlook to automatically run code or that hides the real extension of the attachment.
:)
That is one of the biggest problems with a mono-culture like Windows.
On Linux, there are too many different mailers. At work, we run GroupWise and we are NOT subject to all the Outlook problems.
Now, someone could write a virus/worm/whatever that exploited GroupWise code, but it would have to be sent directly to us.
Unless it also exploited Outlook code.
Which makes it that much harder to write.
Now, add in a third mail client and the problem with getting the virus/worm/whatever to someone becomes that much more difficult.
The only way Linux will ever have the same problems you see on Windows (in regard to worms, viruses, trojans, whatever) is for a single mail client to be deployed on 80%+ of the desktops and for that mail client to have at least one easily exploitable security flaw.
AND for Linux to have 50%+ of the desktop market.
We'll make a deal. When Linux gets to 50%+ (shouldn't be that much longer now), you post again and we'll see what the virus/worm/trojan/whatever situation is like.
Deal?