I agree with the AC's post that other items could keep you off the plane. But I would expand on it: I've been prevented from taking a simple pair of pliers (NO other goodies) on a plane.
I suspect that gcc on OSX is much less optimized on i386.
Certainly the version they used (3.3.3). I would be interested in seeing gcc 4 on x86 and PowerPC, after all of the (much hyped) improvements IBM+Apple made before Tiger.
The article also takes a look at performance under OSX versus Linux.
They look at PowerPC running Darwin 8.1 and two Xeons and an Opteron running Linux 2.4/2.6. Why not show the PowerPC running Linux?! I want to see how Linux on PPC compares to Linux on x386 these days!
Anyway..here's the article summary:
Mac OS X is incredibly slow, between 2 and 5(!) times slower, in creating new threads, as it doesn't use kernel threads, and has to go through extra layers (wrappers). No need to continue our search: the G5 might not be the fastest integer CPU on earth - its database performance is completely crippled by an asthmatic operating system that needs up to 5 times more time to handle and create threads.
So, forget OS X in the server room, but have fun if you want a desktop OS.
What's even better is that for every new account opened and for every purchase made with the card, MBNA America Bank, N.A., (the issuer of the credit card) will make a contribution to the Linux Fund at no additional cost to you.
How much does the fund see? For most charity cards, you could get more bang for your buck if you get a 1-3% cashback card & just donate that to open source developers you want to support. Even IF the fund were under better management, is this something to be encouraged. I wouldn't mind yet another card (and one with Tux on it to boot) & the signup bonus might be good, but I feel fine donating to projects myself (see my URL).
I would gladly put $5 on a rechargeable card each month for a year in order to protect my anonymity AND to support my local library (I have no problem letting them live off the float on the cash).
I would only think this would work if the deposit was much higher.. but of course then no one would use it.
I don't think the deposit needs to be significantly higher--just high enough to pay for whatever material is actually checked out on the card. However, that ISN'T why it won't be used. People have time-and-time-again shown that they are willing to sacrifice privacy for reduced effort. Even if the system were free or only a few dollars, people wouldn't volunteer for the program. Encrypting email carries near-zero financial costs, but how many do that? Even several popular web services don't use SSL by default.
I'm told by my tech transfer office to release HippoDraw in the public domain. That is no license, you're free to do what you want. I should say that in some file in the distribution, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
It really isn't THAT surprising. A lot of national lab/university-created software isn't careful about licensing. Indeed, a lot of both uncompiled and compiled distributions are packed only with something like DISCLAIMER.rtf, which basically says "we ain't liable."
Feel free to ask the author, though. Given that SOME of the contents in all distro files are explicitly GPLed, I'd follow that without the explicit written permission of the author.
Yes, it is very hard to figure out. I figured it most likely was, as it ships with QT & other GPLed goodies.
But a 'grep -r GPL *' will confirm that they include the GPL (in the vs.net2003/setup directory).
Review of a BUNCH of the available options
on
Unix Graphing Programs?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
DANSE has a great review of a lot of different options. Most are cross-platform and scriptable and many are open source. They are interested in building python-based tools for neutron scattering experiments, so there is that bias to the wiki. But they have good screenshots & good pros/cons that many other projects can relate to.
As others have suggested, Grace is fantastic for 2D. Hippodraw is the most under-rated/unheard of that is also quite amazing. I use them both. I also use Matplotlib with my python work.
If you do LaTeX & script your plots, Gri is a good bet.
I have sometimes used gnuplot & Scigraphica, but they are less useful to me. A lot of other people still use gnuplot, so it is always good to have in the toolkit. It also has decent 3D that is not present in my preferred 2D programs. But it is uglier and clumsier than alternatives. Scigraphica wants to be Microcal Origin, but it isn't there yet. It also dropped out of development for quite a while.
I like open source. But if you are agnostic (and have deep pockets), I always thought tecplotlooked cool.
Fortran's longevity has come because it compiles fast programs & there have already been a ton of subroutine libraries to draw from, that have been built up over time by many coders. It is also an open standard with MANY compilers for most platforms. Will Sun work on all of this? They didn't think it was important enough to do with Java.
I think it will be hard for a single company to generate a successor & sincerely hope Sun will realize that for languages with no VM, early success will depend on openness. I also think a lot of what peopl want to do is already being done with python + modules compiled from C or Fortran.
Actually, I do run both Free and Open BSD on my servers. Hit netcraft on my site if you don't believe me. I like them a lot. I think portinstall/portupgrade improve the interface to ports quite a bit.
I run gentoo on my desktop. Prior to that, I ran FreeBSD and Debian (after fleeing very quickly from Red Hat).
Linux is a better desktop OS. The drivers get their first & userland apps get their first. Even the filesystems are better. Gentoo, in particular, makes a nicer frontend to a ports system than even portinstall/portupgrade. It has nicer searching, convenient ability to set USE flags (rather than make arguments) which are more homogenous than FreeBSD, a better ability to see what dependencies you would get before you installed something, and more.
The ports teams for FreeBSD & OpenBSD do a very good job. I'm afraid I can't speak to Net- or DragonFly- or Darwin or others, as I haven't used them as much.
The ~x86 branch of gentoo IS bleeding edge. The x86 branch gets much less testing than the *BSDs, but I'd hardly call it "bleeding edge." Broken ports are also removed from portage & boxes downgraded on the next emerge -uD world.
Amoung nerds isn't it's noteriety due to its unearned reputation for speed?
No--it may be notorious for the ricers who think that they have a faster system by compiling it themselves.
In some benchmarks (such as the one povray uses), gentoo systems are often near the top. In this respect, it isn't unearned. But this doesn't mean every app on the system has been made measurably quicker & that some ricers aren't using ridiculous CFLAGS which do more harm than good.
Didn't/. post a benchmark showing that its optimizations were overagressive, and that net performance suffered?
If anyone can find this article, please post a link.
While I've certainly seen poor benchmarks from some systems, the default CFLAGS are '-O2 -pipe'. This is typical of other distributions & is NOT "overagressive."
Users can certainly choose their own CFLAGS, which can lead to better or worse performance than the default CFLAGS. This kind of makes benchmarking a joke: The particular combination used in a particular article will not be representative of all gentoo installations.
I think most people are "scared off" because they don't have the 4 GHz computer with a gig of RAM required to compile the entire system under a couple days
I hear few complain about grabbing source from ports & compiling for *BSD. For Gentoo Linux it is no different! It doesn't have to take forever to compile & you can install binary packages if you want to. No need for a top-of-the-line system, but those with top-of-the-line systems will be able to compile in processor-specific stuff if they want it. This CAN make programs faster or more featureful (either through GCC optimizations, SMP support, MMX support, etc.). It doesn't always lead to faster systems as the submitter implies, but neither is it always pointless as you seem to think.
and if you want to learn how to put a distro together read the LFS book.
Now you reveal yourself as a recycled troll. LFS-from-scratch is nice. Those of us who like a *BSD-like port distribution without some of the wrinkles like Gentoo just fine.
The processors are not the dual-core variety as has been rumored for weeks now.
Is the PowerPC 970MP even out yet? This will be the basis for a dual-core G5 & IBM has been tight-lipped. Do we really expect the announcement of the chip to wait until the announcement of the dual-core G5?
I deliberately chose that example not because it's Free Software but it was still created in response to the restricted nature of the UNIX source code.
Fair enough (but then why include Linux, when it was made "just for the fun of it?").
I would still propose that a teaching OS would be needed had UNIX been freely available. Minix is less daunting than all of that AT&T code would have been.
Copyright was intended as a way of protecting the rights of a person to their works. That is fine for something like a book etc.
Modern copyright probably starts with the Statute of Anne. It lasted 14 years, with an option to renew for another 14 years. Content consumers were granted freedom from publishers to do with their purchases as they wanted, but content creators were given the right to say who could publish (or republish) their works when, where, and how. This exclusive right was strong incentive to be a content creator. Society likes creation, but creation is costlier and possibly less profitable than copying. So it was a good thing.
Software, particularly OSS, is very different.
No. We also need to promote creation of software & granting creators the right to decide how their works might be copied is a still-used incentive. Granting consumer rights would not be enough.
What is harmful is all of the stuff that has been added onto copyright law. With the DMCA, content consumers no longer can do whatever they want with their purchases! They've taken away explicit consumer rights in favor of the publishers. Also, no longer does a work pass into the public domain after 28 years, but is tied up in a vitually un-ending term which eclipses the conceivable lifetimes of the creators.
I do believe that the economic lifetime of an individual piece of software is shorter than the books, plays, and music which the Statute of Anne protected. The rate of improvement is also much quicker. So an even shorter lifetime would make sense.
However, I wouldn't say that copyrights are "outdated." Rather they are abused by some corporations/lobbyists.
There is no stable release (but it is still under rapid development). So, this would really be for your experimentation only. But you can run X & a few other apps.
Slashdot Mirror
Or , so at least we'll be able to make "compiling...." jokes about it.
I agree with the AC's post that other items could keep you off the plane. But I would expand on it: I've been prevented from taking a simple pair of pliers (NO other goodies) on a plane.
Anyway..here's the article summary:So, forget OS X in the server room, but have fun if you want a desktop OS.
Also note that you can also do it on the CLI. Open up term and do a: //user@SERVER/folder ./mntpoint
$ mount_smbfs -W workgroup
Easy workaround:
Command-K to bring up the connect menu and type in the full address INCLUDING THE SHARE NAME:
smb://SERVER/folder
It really isn't THAT surprising. A lot of national lab/university-created software isn't careful about licensing. Indeed, a lot of both uncompiled and compiled distributions are packed only with something like DISCLAIMER.rtf, which basically says "we ain't liable."
Feel free to ask the author, though. Given that SOME of the contents in all distro files are explicitly GPLed, I'd follow that without the explicit written permission of the author.
It is under the GPL-2.0.
Yes, it is very hard to figure out. I figured it most likely was, as it ships with QT & other GPLed goodies.
But a 'grep -r GPL *' will confirm that they include the GPL (in the vs.net2003/setup directory).
DANSE has a great review of a lot of different options. Most are cross-platform and scriptable and many are open source. They are interested in building python-based tools for neutron scattering experiments, so there is that bias to the wiki. But they have good screenshots & good pros/cons that many other projects can relate to.
As others have suggested, Grace is fantastic for 2D. Hippodraw is the most under-rated/unheard of that is also quite amazing. I use them both. I also use Matplotlib with my python work.
If you do LaTeX & script your plots, Gri is a good bet.
I have sometimes used gnuplot & Scigraphica, but they are less useful to me. A lot of other people still use gnuplot, so it is always good to have in the toolkit. It also has decent 3D that is not present in my preferred 2D programs. But it is uglier and clumsier than alternatives. Scigraphica wants to be Microcal Origin, but it isn't there yet. It also dropped out of development for quite a while.
I like open source. But if you are agnostic (and have deep pockets), I always thought tecplot looked cool.
Fortran's longevity has come because it compiles fast programs & there have already been a ton of subroutine libraries to draw from, that have been built up over time by many coders. It is also an open standard with MANY compilers for most platforms. Will Sun work on all of this? They didn't think it was important enough to do with Java.
I think it will be hard for a single company to generate a successor & sincerely hope Sun will realize that for languages with no VM, early success will depend on openness. I also think a lot of what peopl want to do is already being done with python + modules compiled from C or Fortran.
The National Business review reported the sea recue on the 26th.
Actually, I do run both Free and Open BSD on my servers. Hit netcraft on my site if you don't believe me. I like them a lot. I think portinstall/portupgrade improve the interface to ports quite a bit.
I run gentoo on my desktop. Prior to that, I ran FreeBSD and Debian (after fleeing very quickly from Red Hat).
Linux is a better desktop OS. The drivers get their first & userland apps get their first. Even the filesystems are better. Gentoo, in particular, makes a nicer frontend to a ports system than even portinstall/portupgrade. It has nicer searching, convenient ability to set USE flags (rather than make arguments) which are more homogenous than FreeBSD, a better ability to see what dependencies you would get before you installed something, and more.
The ports teams for FreeBSD & OpenBSD do a very good job. I'm afraid I can't speak to Net- or DragonFly- or Darwin or others, as I haven't used them as much.
The ~x86 branch of gentoo IS bleeding edge. The x86 branch gets much less testing than the *BSDs, but I'd hardly call it "bleeding edge." Broken ports are also removed from portage & boxes downgraded on the next emerge -uD world.
In some benchmarks (such as the one povray uses), gentoo systems are often near the top. In this respect, it isn't unearned. But this doesn't mean every app on the system has been made measurably quicker & that some ricers aren't using ridiculous CFLAGS which do more harm than good.If anyone can find this article, please post a link.
While I've certainly seen poor benchmarks from some systems, the default CFLAGS are '-O2 -pipe'. This is typical of other distributions & is NOT "overagressive."
Users can certainly choose their own CFLAGS, which can lead to better or worse performance than the default CFLAGS. This kind of makes benchmarking a joke: The particular combination used in a particular article will not be representative of all gentoo installations.
I would still propose that a teaching OS would be needed had UNIX been freely available. Minix is less daunting than all of that AT&T code would have been.
What is harmful is all of the stuff that has been added onto copyright law. With the DMCA, content consumers no longer can do whatever they want with their purchases! They've taken away explicit consumer rights in favor of the publishers. Also, no longer does a work pass into the public domain after 28 years, but is tied up in a vitually un-ending term which eclipses the conceivable lifetimes of the creators.
I do believe that the economic lifetime of an individual piece of software is shorter than the books, plays, and music which the Statute of Anne protected. The rate of improvement is also much quicker. So an even shorter lifetime would make sense.
However, I wouldn't say that copyrights are "outdated." Rather they are abused by some corporations/lobbyists.
Not-from-scratch installation
There is no stable release (but it is still under rapid development). So, this would really be for your experimentation only. But you can run X & a few other apps.