Saying you don't have a TV set is also a good way of getting rid of pesky people trying to sell you Cable TV (door to door or on the phone).
My only TV set right now is a little one with a 2-1/2" Active Matrix LCD display. (there's also a 19" black and white portable wrapped in plastic out in the garage, though) I call it "The TV set built into a remote control." Still, it would be fun to have a cable TV installer come out and plug a set top box into it. The set would sit on top of the box.
When I stated "drop in replacement" I meant at the source level, not that someone with a Debian GNU/Linux CD-ROM distribution could just download a HURD kernel and plug it in.
Actually, if you're willing to spend about $400 you can buy Interix to install on your Windows NT system. Then you can run a real certified POSIX subsystem (not just the crippled POSIX subsystem Microsoft ships with NT). Once you have Interix happy and running on your NT box, you can use GCC to compile Unix, work in the C shell, and build and run (not just display) X Window apps. It isn't just a layer on top of Win32 like Cygnus.
Going by the distinctions being made in this thread:
I consider myself a real programmer, and the only code I've written that is in wide use is some assembly language code I wrote to run on some NEC 4-bit embedded controllers (with 8K of program memory and about 512 bytes of data memory) that operate inside 5 or 6 different medical devices. Your aunt or uncle or even you might be 'experiencing' my software right now, as I know thousands of other people are.
The first generation version of that assembly code was written using Microsoft Word for DOS as the editor, on a 286 'lunchbox' portable with an LCD display. That hardware was a step up from the 8086 machine I had previously used. (I didn't know any better at the time, believe it or not. No way would I EVER do mission critical code again on old junk hardware nobody else wanted.)
No, there were no complex widget sets involved, and I didn't use anything easy like Basic or C.
The proper and respectful term to use is: The X Window System.
People shorten that to X when they are being accurate.
It is always wrong to refer to it as "XWindows" or "X Windows," which I have seen even supposedly clueful individuals and organizations do (in such places as full page ads in Linux Journal).
You are partially right, and partially wrong. When the HURD is ready for the big-time, it will probably be a replacement kernel that people drop into the Debian system (you can almost certainly count on it.) The result will be an OS more closely releated to Debian as it exists now than Debian is to RedHat.
If you think init is just an application, maybe you'd rather replace it with minesweeper?
Maybe we should all lobby our congressmen to mandate that the DoD come out with a clean standardized version of Linux (painted green, of course) that we can ALL rally 'round. Then we can begin systematically eradicating all these other 'distributions.' (I'm kidding, of course.)
I am not involved with Debian in any way or form, but it seems like any time something gets big that it turns into a hierarchy. There will always be creative people 'on the fringe' of any big movement who want to have their say in ways that threaten a hierarchy, or even that just confuse a hierarchy or aren't considered important enough to pay attention to.
All of this seems like the kind of reason to fork a distribution, rather than try to work through the layers of contributing the packages to Debian itself.
The only people who should feel threatened are the people who need to feel threatened, if they even exist.
Debian is "like" Slackware except it's at least ten times as complicated to install. The packaging system may be comprehensive, but it's also monstrously complex.
With a Slackware installation, you just do the install, and then where you want things customized, you use pkgtool to rip out the 'package' and build your stuff from source. That's what "hackers" do BTW.
You never hear anybody doing any dogmatic sloganeering about Slackware. Because it's old (but the new 4.0 release uses the 2.2 kernel), established, and it works.
I also like cool things like the loopback distribution called DOSLinux. You can stick such a beast almost anywhere you need the features of a Linux OS.
You apparently are easily frightened. I also dislike Debian, but not because I am afraid of a command line. I'm just an old school Slackware fiend.
Be careful not to shell down to the Command Prompt on your Windows machine. It will also frighten you. Probably in the same way one of my cats, who has lived indoors her entire life, is frightened when I put her out on the porch and introduce her to the idea of the entire world being open to her.
You're getting all confused again. Not everybody who uses Linux, or wants to give Linux a try, has a pathological hatred of Microsoft and the Microsoft GUI.
Debian, RedHat, Slackware, etc. are all separate operating systems. They are all based on the Linux kernel. They are very close relatives in most ways, but they are not the same operating system. If you think they are, I welcome you to replace the/etc and/var directory from any one of them with any other. Other than the fact that they all use the same kernel and share many libraries, they are no more or less related to one another than they are to Solaris, Irix, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and SCO Unix.
In most areas, when the cable television wire was laid, specific vendors were given government sanction to be the only people laying the cable. That was how they "happened to DO IT FIRST" any any other representation of the facts is a fraud.
It sounds like (and this is a growth area for more hardware and OSes) they are talking about embedded server applications. So possibly they will be head-to-head against stuff like Windows CE (does it even have a TCP/IP stack yet?!?) and things like QNX. There's no denying that it's one option for that kind of 'server', i.e. running on the little embedded boards they're putting on cards as small as a SIMM these days. Stick it in the refrigerator and the milkman can hit it once a day to see if you need another half gallon delivered. Put 'em in gas/water/electric meters so the billers can measure peak usage stuff and bill accordingly.
I have Slackware on the drive of a 386DX-25 box that I put together for a friend (so when she is ready to take the plunge and learn how to set up networking on her main machine, she will have a stable machine to stick on the other end of the wire for testing, playing, etc). It is looking like it will still be around in 2003. Wether it will be powered up anytime between now and then is the question, though. . .
Maybe they are trying to create the modern equivalent of the first mainframe computers, which ran on vacuum tubes. Technicians worked full time running around changing tubes as they went out. In this new system, technicians will run around yanking Leading Edge and Packard Bell boxes that have quit working (and are spewing volumes of smoke). It could make for a good short comedy film, but I don't see the value beyond that.
Last time I checked, Goodwill is pretty snitty about what they will even accept, hardware-wise. I can't blame them, as they have to pay by the ton to dispose of junk they can't sell. I remember that they refused a few boxes I had to donate because I couldn't swear it was 100% operational hardware.
There really should be some form of a "People's Computer Recycling Center" in all sizeable communities where people could come to give and get old-but-still-usable computer hardware. Kind of a "Computer Renaissance" store but with no cash registers. It could turn into a hub of Linux and other free OS distribution. (DR-DOS for the really old hardware, and slower-modems and Freenet accounts for all who want them)
Could keep a lot of kids off the street if they had access to some of the hardware sitting idle with capacitors drying out and EPROMs loosing their memory in warehouses around the world.
This whole "issue" seems to be a case of trying to apply the old Racism template to a new venue. The problem I have with this is that there are other limits and barriers to universal net access. Some people, some of them even wealthy people, have no interest whatsoever in sitting on a chair pecking at colored buttons.
There is also a geographical issue. My parents have retired up to Grand Marais, Minnesota. There is only one internet provider in town there, and any of the 'national' services are a long distance call. A friend who lives in Brainerd has the same problem. There isn't a means of reasonable access for many people for reasons such as this.
Also, online discussions like this are inherently slanted, in that the people who have no interest in playing on the internet don't have a voice. I don't buy the notion that they are all luddites or technology haters. Maybe they'd rather be out in the power boat or flying a plane. Maybe they're in the darkroom developing their latest roll of nature photographs. Maybe they're getting more done on their embedded programming project or the home control system they are building because they don't have a bunch of distractions on their computer like a web brower and net connection. We'll never know, of course, because we only talk to ourselves.
The problem with this 'solution' is that if it forces a cutback in the purchase and maintanence of book collections at the library, it is likely to be harmful rather than helpful. It's a serious mistake to try to force internet into the libraries. This puts the two mediums at odds with one another, and in the long run will lead to a decrease in literacy. The flash and dazzle can not replace plain old solid bookshelves.
I don't buy the myth that we live in a 'paperless society' and that 'all information is available on the net.' There are huge areas of human culture that aren't and probably never will be on the 'net. The online and real-world bookstores would not be booming in sales if that were the case.
There is a conflict that occurs anytime a media shift occurs. Books have been with us, and accumulated for centuries now. It is a rich repository of information. Just as not all music was converted from LP to CD when vinyl records were 'replaced' by CDs, much information published in books will never be converted to a digital medium. We can't afford to throw away centuries of culture because it doesn't conveniently fit into a digital medium.
Slashdot Mirror
And that would boost the distraction-value (and the bandwidth consumption) of on-line advertising. No thanks.
Saying you don't have a TV set is also a good way of getting rid of pesky people trying to sell you Cable TV (door to door or on the phone).
My only TV set right now is a little one with a 2-1/2" Active Matrix LCD display. (there's also a 19" black and white portable wrapped in plastic out in the garage, though) I call it "The TV set built into a remote control." Still, it would be fun to have a cable TV installer come out and plug a set top box into it. The set would sit on top of the box.
Nope. Be has what they sold the stock for. That was $6 a share. The profit from the price rise is taken by the investors.
They already abandoned (officially) my S3-Trio64 video card. So feel lucky that a SB16 kinda sorta works.
When I stated "drop in replacement" I meant at the source level, not that someone with a Debian GNU/Linux CD-ROM distribution could just download a HURD kernel and plug it in.
I guess I assumed too much.
Actually, if you're willing to spend about $400 you can buy Interix to install on your Windows NT system. Then you can run a real certified POSIX subsystem (not just the crippled POSIX subsystem Microsoft ships with NT). Once you have Interix happy and running on your NT box, you can use GCC to compile Unix, work in the C shell, and build and run (not just display) X Window apps. It isn't just a layer on top of Win32 like Cygnus.
Going by the distinctions being made in this thread:
Linux is UNIX.
Windows NT/Interix is UNIX.
etc. etc.
I consider myself a real programmer, and the only code I've written that is in wide use is some assembly language code I wrote to run on some NEC 4-bit embedded controllers (with 8K of program memory and about 512 bytes of data memory) that operate inside 5 or 6 different medical devices. Your aunt or uncle or even you might be 'experiencing' my software right now, as I know thousands of other people are.
The first generation version of that assembly code was written using Microsoft Word for DOS as the editor, on a 286 'lunchbox' portable with an LCD display. That hardware was a step up from the 8086 machine I had previously used. (I didn't know any better at the time, believe it or not. No way would I EVER do mission critical code again on old junk hardware nobody else wanted.)
No, there were no complex widget sets involved, and I didn't use anything easy like Basic or C.
The proper and respectful term to use is:
The X Window System.
People shorten that to X when they are being accurate.
It is always wrong to refer to it as "XWindows" or "X Windows," which I have seen even supposedly clueful individuals and organizations do (in such places as full page ads in Linux Journal).
You are partially right, and partially wrong. When the HURD is ready for the big-time, it will probably be a replacement kernel that people drop into the Debian system (you can almost certainly count on it.) The result will be an OS more closely releated to Debian as it exists now than Debian is to RedHat.
If you think init is just an application, maybe you'd rather replace it with minesweeper?
When did any of us start carrying on about virtue?
Oh, you just did. Oh, oops, you're just talking about not-Virtue.
My mistake.
You aren't Microsoft, however, so your fantasies of what you would do if you were are irrelevant.
Maybe we should all lobby our congressmen to mandate that the DoD come out with a clean standardized version of Linux (painted green, of course) that we can ALL rally 'round. Then we can begin systematically eradicating all these other 'distributions.' (I'm kidding, of course.)
It's all kinda-sorta POSIX, anyhow, isn't it?
I am not involved with Debian in any way or form, but it seems like any time something gets big that it turns into a hierarchy. There will always be creative people 'on the fringe' of any big movement who want to have their say in ways that threaten a hierarchy, or even that just confuse a hierarchy or aren't considered important enough to pay attention to.
All of this seems like the kind of reason to fork a distribution, rather than try to work through the layers of contributing the packages to Debian itself.
The only people who should feel threatened are the people who need to feel threatened, if they even exist.
Debian is "like" Slackware except it's at least ten times as complicated to install. The packaging system may be comprehensive, but it's also monstrously complex.
With a Slackware installation, you just do the install, and then where you want things customized, you use pkgtool to rip out the 'package' and build your stuff from source. That's what "hackers" do BTW.
You never hear anybody doing any dogmatic sloganeering about Slackware. Because it's old (but the new 4.0 release uses the 2.2 kernel), established, and it works.
I also like cool things like the loopback distribution called DOSLinux. You can stick such a beast almost anywhere you need the features of a Linux OS.
You apparently are easily frightened. I also dislike Debian, but not because I am afraid of a command line. I'm just an old school Slackware fiend.
Be careful not to shell down to the Command Prompt on your Windows machine. It will also frighten you. Probably in the same way one of my cats, who has lived indoors her entire life, is frightened when I put her out on the porch and introduce her to the idea of the entire world being open to her.
You're getting all confused again. Not everybody who uses Linux, or wants to give Linux a try, has a pathological hatred of Microsoft and the Microsoft GUI.
Debian, RedHat, Slackware, etc. are all separate operating systems. They are all based on the Linux kernel. They are very close relatives in most ways, but they are not the same operating system. If you think they are, I welcome you to replace the /etc and /var directory from any one of them with any other. Other than the fact that they all use the same kernel and share many libraries, they are no more or less related to one another than they are to Solaris, Irix, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and SCO Unix.
In most areas, when the cable television wire was laid, specific vendors were given government sanction to be the only people laying the cable. That was how they "happened to DO IT FIRST" any any other representation of the facts is a fraud.
In ten years the technology will be so widespread and known that a Linux admin will be making 7 bucks an hour. That won't be much in 2009, by the way.
It sounds like (and this is a growth area for more hardware and OSes) they are talking about embedded server applications. So possibly they will be head-to-head against stuff like Windows CE (does it even have a TCP/IP stack yet?!?) and things like QNX. There's no denying that it's one option for that kind of 'server', i.e. running on the little embedded boards they're putting on cards as small as a SIMM these days. Stick it in the refrigerator and the milkman can hit it once a day to see if you need another half gallon delivered. Put 'em in gas/water/electric meters so the billers can measure peak usage stuff and bill accordingly.
I have Slackware on the drive of a 386DX-25 box that I put together for a friend (so when she is ready to take the plunge and learn how to set up networking on her main machine, she will have a stable machine to stick on the other end of the wire for testing, playing, etc). It is looking like it will still be around in 2003. Wether it will be powered up anytime between now and then is the question, though. . .
Maybe they are trying to create the modern equivalent of the first mainframe computers, which ran on vacuum tubes. Technicians worked full time running around changing tubes as they went out. In this new system, technicians will run around yanking Leading Edge and Packard Bell boxes that have quit working (and are spewing volumes of smoke). It could make for a good short comedy film, but I don't see the value beyond that.
Donate that box to Goodwill
Last time I checked, Goodwill is pretty snitty about what they will even accept, hardware-wise. I can't blame them, as they have to pay by the ton to dispose of junk they can't sell. I remember that they refused a few boxes I had to donate because I couldn't swear it was 100% operational hardware.
There really should be some form of a "People's Computer Recycling Center" in all sizeable communities where people could come to give and get old-but-still-usable computer hardware. Kind of a "Computer Renaissance" store but with no cash registers. It could turn into a hub of Linux and other free OS distribution. (DR-DOS for the really old hardware, and slower-modems and Freenet accounts for all who want them)
Could keep a lot of kids off the street if they had access to some of the hardware sitting idle with capacitors drying out and EPROMs loosing their memory in warehouses around the world.
This whole "issue" seems to be a case of trying to apply the old Racism template to a new venue. The problem I have with this is that there are other limits and barriers to universal net access. Some people, some of them even wealthy people, have no interest whatsoever in sitting on a chair pecking at colored buttons.
There is also a geographical issue. My parents have retired up to Grand Marais, Minnesota. There is only one internet provider in town there, and any of the 'national' services are a long distance call. A friend who lives in Brainerd has the same problem. There isn't a means of reasonable access for many people for reasons such as this.
Also, online discussions like this are inherently slanted, in that the people who have no interest in playing on the internet don't have a voice. I don't buy the notion that they are all luddites or technology haters. Maybe they'd rather be out in the power boat or flying a plane. Maybe they're in the darkroom developing their latest roll of nature photographs. Maybe they're getting more done on their embedded programming project or the home control system they are building because they don't have a bunch of distractions on their computer like a web brower and net connection. We'll never know, of course, because we only talk to ourselves.
The problem with this 'solution' is that if it forces a cutback in the purchase and maintanence of book collections at the library, it is likely to be harmful rather than helpful. It's a serious mistake to try to force internet into the libraries. This puts the two mediums at odds with one another, and in the long run will lead to a decrease in literacy. The flash and dazzle can not replace plain old solid bookshelves.
I don't buy the myth that we live in a 'paperless society' and that 'all information is available on the net.' There are huge areas of human culture that aren't and probably never will be on the 'net. The online and real-world bookstores would not be booming in sales if that were the case.
There is a conflict that occurs anytime a media shift occurs. Books have been with us, and accumulated for centuries now. It is a rich repository of information. Just as not all music was converted from LP to CD when vinyl records were 'replaced' by CDs, much information published in books will never be converted to a digital medium. We can't afford to throw away centuries of culture because it doesn't conveniently fit into a digital medium.