You got to be kidding me. Theo's got a serious attitude problem. He told me if he ever met me, he'd kick my ass because I didn't know who he was when I first got into FREEBSD! I had a confrontation with him on freebsd-questions early on. Granted I didn't know what the hell i was talking about at the time, but he went on another bsd's mailing list and insulted their users. Intelligence has nothing to do with knowing about a specific thing. I wasn't up on bsd history then. I've met many smart people doing IT work that couldn't read their email. I don't think they are automatically stupid as a result. (Doctors, lawyers, etc)
If you need further proof of Theo's attitude, look up the history behind him leaving NetBSD. You'll find that he co-founded NetBSD, had a fight with the rest of the core team and ended up fork()ing OpenBSD. I don't think he was completely in the wrong, but he didn't handle it very well either. I'm sure there was more too it than that. I don't blame theo for controlling OpenBSD the way he does. He got burned once and Linus has a firm grip on the Linux kernel as well. Even FreeBSD has a rough track record with developers, look at Matt Dillon's situation and his DragonFly fork.
I think most open source developers can be real dick heads. We are often opinionated and think we are always right. We also love attention.. hell its free software, what else will we get out of it. (except the people who write books to profit...) I'm including myself in this group. It takes arrogance to create/fork an operating system or develop a programming language. (Larry Wall, Theo, Linus, etc)
I think linux has the inverse problem. Kernel releases aren't tested well enough. There are serious regression errors every few releases of the linux kernel. Look at the 2.6 changelog sometime and remember this is just the kernel.
Microsoft should have released anything at this point. Think of it this way, every OS on the planet has been updated between xp and now. (even the debian distro!) Apple's shipped 2 or 3 OSX releases since XP and might even get 10.5 under the radar. Microsoft competes with apple primarily for desktops regardless how many of us feel. They really need a new OS release. Also consider how many people out there don't patch their windows boxes. Simply by offering a new OS, they might buy a new PC which at least is current for awhile. I do remember Windows ME so i'm not advocating a totally retarded release. Also remember Microsoft has put off service packs on XP until after the vista launch. I wouldn't mind a new service pack release with all the patches since XP SP2. In the old days (NT4), they used to release 6 service packs or so per OS version. The 4 year cycle wasn't so bad since we had a service pack to apply instead of a ton of updates. Its not like windows got better since NT4 or has less security holes.
Instead of the BSD is dying cracks, how about we hear Windows is dying cracks from now on. All the BSDs have released a version since XP was out.
Been there, done that... built a freebsd box. For casual unix usage, OSX works. If you want to use X11 apps, you're better off getting a pc for that. Maybe with the new intel macs, it will be possible to dual boot or use that new virtualization software. I'd love to triple boot 10.4, windows and either linux, freebsd or solaris.
What's the US government's solution to terrorism and other national security issues? By definition, you can never stop terrorism. I think a better question to ask is what are they trying to accomplish by their policy on terrorism. In the past our country has considered spying on other americans to be bad. If we don't care about privacy, then fine. If we do as a society, I think we need to insist someone pass laws to protect our rights and get the word out. From my understaing, most terrorists use the internet to transmit messages using things like images with hidden messages. How the hell is spying going to help if they can't figure out which bits have been manipulated?
And if the government is spying on americans, why not tell us? Its not like we control the communications network anyway. Terrorists are going to know they are doing it anyway unless they are total idiots. If they were truely that stupid, we would have caught them already right?
That brings up a good point. This will only effect US based sites. How is that even helpful? All I have to do is visit foreign based sites and make sure the sites use SSL and/or other forms of encryption. I bet there will be a market for such sites. Maybe you should invest in ISPs outside the US too.
I think this legislation is going to help Telco and Cable companies. Small ISPs can't afford this and it will finish them. I worked as a sys admin for a few years at a small ISP (~4000 customers). We only made about 2 dollars a month on unlimited packages and thats assuming the customer didn't call for support. Hosting was more profitable unless the site was popular. I think we'll see the end of 5 dollar hosting too.
And what happens to people like me who have a dedicated or colo'd server? I don't run business sites. Do I have to log my ET server too? There aren't even accounts on all sites. Do I have to write code to log account actions beyond what apache can log?
FreeBSD and DragonflyBSD have decent SMP support. NetBSD and OpenBSD both use kernels with Giant locks still as did FreeBSD 4.x and lower. DragonFlyBSD uses message passing.
As for oracle and DB2, there is no certification. Supposedly you can get Oracle 8 and 9 to run on FreeBSD using linux "emulation" on i386. I've never gotten past the installer. I've never tried DB2, but may with IBM releasing the free low end version this year.
I don't consider BSD to be good at database server hosting unless you like MySQL or Postgresql. MySQL performance is often faster in Linux or Solaris, although there is a lot of work on tuning FreeBSD to fix the problems.
I know FreeBSD has been tested with 6 and 8 way x86 SMP boxes and works with an 11 cpu sun sparc server. Driver support is competative with FreeBSD if you like intel hardware as intel donates code. 6.1 release canidate is much faster than any other release i've tried since I migrated from 4.x.
BSD is only useful if you plan to go all open source.
I guess I'm having trouble seeing where linux saves money over solaris or *BSD. Support might be an issue with BSD. Everyone discusses "old UNIX systems". Linux is just a clone of UNIX. I guess I don't get the hype. Its probably the bad experiences I've had with Linux.
From my perspective: A BSD is easier to upgrade, easier to install software on, and has a more friendly community. That would make it better to me than a linux distro. Another thing I like about BSDs is the API doesn't change as much and time doesn't go backwards. (see linux 2.6.16 changelog)
For desktops, Redhat, Fedora, Ubuntu or Suse are probably good choices (well ubuntu has that broken dhcp client...). Gentoo would be good if you wanted something very custom I suppose. Someone in my operating systems class created a project to netboot and drop a customized stage 3 install down to clients.
Again, my original objection was cost of licensing. I'm sure they got a deal though.
You brought up package management. I think that is one of the biggest defining issues of modern unix like systems now. Most people seem to love their os based on how they install software. Sounds silly, but think of the redhat vs gentoo vs debian/ubuntu comments on slashdot all the time. Then you get into bsds with pkgsrc vs portsnap/portupgrade. I hate to say this but I think Windows and FreeBSD are better than most other operating systems on this front. I can mostly remove or add software using one mechanism. (add/remove programs or pkg_delete) apt-get i believe works ok for this as well. Look at other oses like mac os x where you can't remove apps. Sure they may have a proprietary uninstalled as part of the installer which you must find to remove it or you can drag to trash and leave a shit load of shared libraries and pref files all over your disk. Most other software installs leave crap on your drive. No one will ever solve this problem.
I hate to sound like a Microsoft rep, but what about TCO? The FAA better have linux experts working for them if they deployed linux. Considering what they do, I sure as hell don't want any crashes or security problems!
Yes, linux based systems can have security holes like any other OS. My concern is how much redhat charges for a license. Its often more expensive than buying Windows if you don't need a lot of CALs.
And no I'm not a big Microsoft nut, I have 1 machine of 7 in my home with windows. Everything else is some form of BSD or solaris. (OSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, MidnightBSD)
Yeah and some of my consoles overheat after a few hours. Hell my 32x on my genesis makes it about 2. As for my NES it takes me 2 hours to get a cartridge to load without giving me the blinking red frickin' screen. What really stops me is all the damn cat urine in front of the tv. carpet cleaning don't get that all out. I only have access to the two consoles hooked up to my AIW card (xbox and gamecube).
One console with most games I like on it would be great. Even better, I don't have to buy a giant entertainment center and stereo rack to hold my 9 consoles anymore. Some can go in the closet...
Hell I bought an xbox late and i actually use it mostly for megaman games! The new nba jam games suck in comparison and i could have bought lego star wars for my iBook or Windows box.
If Nintendo keeps the price down, I'll be buying a wii instead of a PS3 or xbox 360. Hell I don't own any playstation why start now.:)
Perhaps, but do you really think microsoft tests every possible patch configuration? I'd bet they only test the last service pack plus the patch and maybe current with all updates. You're taking a risk running a "non standard" environment too. Besides, you should always patch a few systems that seem common to your environment before rolling out patches in a large corporate environment anyway.
People are missing the obvious. Just pick a different journal service or download and install one on your own site. There are hundreds of third party blogging sites and several open source products to do it. Don't like ads? Don't use LiveJournal. Its as simple as that.
Obviously most people don't care about ads or their wouldn't use services like myspace which includes a blogging feature.
And yes, I run a free blogging service without any ads. http://www.justjournal.com/ (sorry for the shameless plug, but it is slashdot.)
I still don't see how this is fair in any way. Many lowend dells do not have pciE or agp slots for expansion of video for example. Would you compare a Saturn Ion to a BMW? Thats what you're doing. Sure they are both cars that could be used for families, but they are very different under the hood and on the surface. Both might get you from point a to point b, but the BMW is most certainly going to do it faster. (assuming no cops around)
I'm not trying to imply that Apple is a BMW and Dell is always a Saturn by any means. In my household, there is a PowerMac dual G4 (wife's box) and a Dell Precision 650 (dual xeon) box (mine). My dell is far superior to any POS lowend dell we have at work. There's a 500 dollar difference between what my boss paid and what i paid for my machine. I don't even consider them in the same class. Anyone thats a gamer, programmer or someone who needs to run simulations is going to notice a big difference between a low end box and a highend box.
I haven't had an opportunity to try Dell's new core duo line, but I've used many optiplex and precision workstations. There's a big difference between the two lines. Likewise, I've used mac mini, iMacs, and tons of powermacs. I can tell you there's a big difference between those machines. If you actually USE ONE, you'll see that iMac == optiplex or dimension in terms of speed and performance. The dell XPS series is very similar to the Precision line and even use the same cases on some models. I've played with an intel based iMac at an apple store and its very fast. It seemed faster than the dual g5 2.3ghz i've got at work.
I'll concede that Dell makes lowend computers at a lower price. Thats what they are good at. When one wants speed, upgradability or computers that run well out of warrenty, they don't buy dells. And yes, macs are upgradable. The price difference of a PowerMac is in part the ability to upgrade it. Much like you have to drop at least 700 dollars with Dell to get the same ability.
And for the record, apple has raised their prices lately. Macs are more expensive now than before the intel switch. (except iBooks which haven't switched yet) Mac minis and MacBook Pros are much more expensive. I don't think Apple is as competative as they used to be.
Nor is comparing a PowerMac to a 700 dollar dell. You need to at least compare a precision workstation to a G5 PowerMac. Why? Both are WORKSTATIONS. A Mac desktop is an iMac which is $1299. If you go on hardware alone, a Mac Mini is equal to most dells because both use intel graphics and other lowend hardware. You guys are picking a PowerMac because of the form factor. Apple doesn't make a tower desktop, only tower workstations.
As for comparing price, I think laptops are where pcs and macs are in a competition. An iBook has a Radeon graphics card and many other nice features. At the time I priced out a dell vs an iBook, the iBook was much more powerful and cheaper (~2 years ago). Now dell offers a shitty 599 model thats as big and heavy as a physics text book. Its much more fair to compare by form factor in the laptop line. Say a 14 inch ibook or a 15 inch PB or even the new MacBookPro vs dell's 15 inch models. (most) You're going to see apple win in price vs features here. Now if you don't need any features and a 5 year old computer would do, then the dell line is just what you need. I do think that weight and dimensions play in with laptops since they are supposedly portable. Personally i like 12 inch macs the best.
Apple is a hardware company that relies on its software to sell hardware. Sun does the same thing. Sure with the new intel macs and bootcamp, you can run XP. You can run Windows 2003 server on sun Opteron boxes too. It doesn't mean most customers do that.
I bought a Mac to run OS X. I also bought a mac because it was the cheapest laptop with a radeon card at the time.
Apple may ship OS X for regular pcs. Steve Jobs seems to be in NeXT mode now. He switched them to intel and then put the OS on regular pcs and suns too. Then he ported the frameworks to windows. Then he sold to apple. In 5 years we might see cocoa on Vista.
I personally own 4 computers and I did buy 3 of them for the hardware and with a particular OS in mind. The two are fused. My mom doesn't care if she has an HP or Dell, she just wants Windows. The software matters to her. Thats what pcs are all about.
3 of my 4 computers were purchased as whole units. (iBook, Dell Precision 650 ws, Sun Sparc workstation) The 4th is a home built and I didn't care what the hardware was as long as it would run FreeBSD with accelerated video, and could handle routing my home network. The only dual boot machine in the group is the Dell. Its running Windows and Gentoo because I have Operating Systems this semester and had to code kernel modules.
Yes, Java runs fine. There is a port of jdk 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 for FreeBSD. You need the linux version to bootstrap the build process though. Its also 32bit. The native FreeBSD jdk is much faster than the linux version running on binary compatibility. I use it to run a tomcat instance for a few sites on my webserver.
Windows 2000 was available before Windows ME. So is XP faster than ME? If you think so, you can use it as an example. One thing I haven't seen pointed out is that OSX is faster as you go newer, but it takes more ram too! All that caching has to go two places: the hard drive and ram. If your mac has a small hard drive like say an old G3 iBook with a 4gb disk, OS 10.3 installed with take the WHOLE DRIVE. Tiger (10.4) won't even run becuase it requires "firewire" equiped macs. Now it may actually work, but there's not enough disk space for it. I created a compressed mac disk image for installs at work and its about 3.9gb right now with tiger. Remember thats compressed. Its OSX plus MS Office 2004, firefox, acrobat reader, stuffit expander 10 and MSN Messenger 5.
The neat thing is that you can easily do 2 os versions, maybe 3 with apple and each one is faster. My wife's dual 867mhz powermac rocks now with tiger. With her upgrade video card (radeon 9800), it is comparible in framerate to the G5 2.3 dual (radeon 9600) at work. Almost the same frame rate, etc. My last mac was an iMac G3 400mhz, and i went from OS 9.0.4-9.2.1, 10.1.x, 10.2.x, and 10.3.x on it with no problems and noticable improvements (except 10.2 which sucked until 10.2.8) And for those of you who think macs aren't upgradable, I took that thing apart and got an 80gb seagate disk in there to replace the 10gb, and upgraded the ram to 512mb from 64mb.
As for windows, its harder to compare. If you think about it, its only fair to judge NT4 vs windows 2000 vs xp since they have the same basic kernel and underlying technologies. Windows 2000 did run faster on hardware it supported than NT4 in many situations. XP seems a bit slower than Windows 2000, but Windows 2003 server seems faster than Windows 2000 running many services.
I can think of another OS thats gotten faster and thats FreeBSD. 5.x to 6.x was a big improvement and at each minor step in between. 6.1 beta is notically faster that 6.0 with hdd access and some of the network carddrivers are much better as well. (intel fxp and em) There are several benchmarks from 4.x to 5.x that suck though. One thing i'm convinced of is that all machines need at least 2 processors. SMP makes a big difference in windows, freebsd, OSX and linux 2.6.x. If for no other reason, when a stupid process locks up the cpu in windows, you have another cpu to let you kill it with.:)
Yes, but desktops don't run sendmail and windows.:)
In fact, who the hell uses sendmail on windows? Everyone i know uses something like imail or exchange. Windows doesn't even have a monopoly on the server market. There are more *nix machines. In this case, your example of the sassier worm plays in... windows is mac os x and *nix is windows in terms of popularity.
Windows 95 was the start of the tree.. many of you put down 98 gold but it was better than 95 was. 98 SE was better sometimes, but the "support" for IRQ's managing themselves caused me a lot of headaches with soundblaster 64 cards, via chipsets and ati rage graphics! Aside from Windows ME, every Windows release since 95 got better in my opinion. 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Windows 2000, Windows ME (sucked), Windows XP...
Of course Vista will suck, they are messing with the kernel. XP was not a huge difference from Windows 2000 and so we're use to a "stable" release of windows (for windows anyway). I'll probably adopt Vista anyway when its released on my Windows machine with a dual boot or legacy install of XP so I can still game. Most likely everyone else will adopt vista as well. Which means we are stuck with it anyway. As much as most of us wish for Linux, OSX or something else to replace windows, its not happening on the desktop. Even keeping an old version of windows, helps keep windows strong. Why? Software will still be written for XP and Vista anyway..NET 2 runs on both so you can imagine that an app may run on both. Thats how microsoft keeps going. If you hate it so much, start running another os exclusively, write software to replace everything windows has and maybe you'll get lucky. Lets face it, Linux is missing some key software areas like Tax Preperation software (finance in general), games, Itunes compatible players (even if its illegal in US), etc. End users need to migrate what they use over to a new os and if they can't, they won't switch. The Windows to Mac transition is easier but has its own problems. You can get quicken, and WoW runs fine, but if you use rhapsody, ms access,.NET apps, etc you're in for a rough ride. I'm also a mac user and I'm never able to ditch windows because I like to game, write software and websites. I need to test websites in IE, I actually like to code in.NET, and games like Half life, DODS, CSS, most star trek games, and many old games only run in windows. As long as we need windows, consumers will want it.
In terms of stable, you need to define a baseline. I'm sure Vista will run better than Mac OS 9 ever did. It will run better than Windows 3.1 did and certainly better than 95 ever did. The standard is at least what people can remember and right now that means XP, 2000, ME, Linux 2.2-2.6, Mac OS 10.0-10.4. My opinion is that all operating systems suck right now. Read the changelog for the latest linux kernel.. time went backwards for christ sake! FreeBSD 6.1 beta's todo list is scary and most of those terrible bugs go back to at least 5.3. Mac OS 10.4 is a piece of shit even release. (all even releases of OS X are less stable than odd releases and often introduce more features) I've had to reinstall OS X several times on my laptop since it came out and on machines at work that I have to administer. People expect bugs. They don't expect blue screens anymore, but serious bugs are ok. Lets all raise our standards and then we can expect more!
How about they just use a working kernel like say linux, something from a bsd, etc. It worked for apple with NEXTSTEP's mach like kernel + userland. In microsoft's case, they'd have to build up the window manager environment or get Windows to run on it like the dos days, but then again hearing about how vista works its a lot like NT 3.51. I got an idea, they could buy SCO. I mean SCO was based on Microsoft XENIX to begin with.. Microsoft has past experience with legacy system V code!
Microsoft's track record is not all that great. The xbox did quite well and in my opinion the jury is still out on the xbox 360. Sony and Nintendo haven't even entered the market yet on this generation. Many thought the Sega Dreamcast would do well because it beat its competition to market. Look how that turned out! If you compare the Dreamcast and the xbox 360 there are a lot of similarities.
As for the *killer notition, I'd like to see ANY company come out with a decent PDA/Phone/MP3 Player that can actually store at least 1000 songs at decent quality, run for over 10 hours doing music/pda tasks and still have at least 3 hours of talk time. When I say decent PDA, I mean it must have 802.11b/g, a color display, web browser that views REAL HTML/XHTML based websites, calendar, address book, todo list, and can actually sync with more than one operating system. Right now, I lug around a cell phone, iPod and PDA (until my cat ruined it). The PDA and iPod overlap except i like a digital todo list. I don't care what OS this device would run, but it must sync with one of my computers properly. As a bonus, if it weren't my windows pc i'd be extra happy. Of course the device shouldn't be huge either.
I don't see why people want to watch video on tiny screens regardless if its a psp, ipod, or whatever. Playing games on my gba gives me headaches after 30 minutes, i can't image watching a tv show or movie on one.
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You got to be kidding me. Theo's got a serious attitude problem. He told me if he ever met me, he'd kick my ass because I didn't know who he was when I first got into FREEBSD! I had a confrontation with him on freebsd-questions early on. Granted I didn't know what the hell i was talking about at the time, but he went on another bsd's mailing list and insulted their users. Intelligence has nothing to do with knowing about a specific thing. I wasn't up on bsd history then. I've met many smart people doing IT work that couldn't read their email. I don't think they are automatically stupid as a result. (Doctors, lawyers, etc)
If you need further proof of Theo's attitude, look up the history behind him leaving NetBSD. You'll find that he co-founded NetBSD, had a fight with the rest of the core team and ended up fork()ing OpenBSD. I don't think he was completely in the wrong, but he didn't handle it very well either. I'm sure there was more too it than that. I don't blame theo for controlling OpenBSD the way he does. He got burned once and Linus has a firm grip on the Linux kernel as well. Even FreeBSD has a rough track record with developers, look at Matt Dillon's situation and his DragonFly fork.
I think most open source developers can be real dick heads. We are often opinionated and think we are always right. We also love attention.. hell its free software, what else will we get out of it. (except the people who write books to profit...) I'm including myself in this group. It takes arrogance to create/fork an operating system or develop a programming language. (Larry Wall, Theo, Linus, etc)
I think linux has the inverse problem. Kernel releases aren't tested well enough. There are serious regression errors every few releases of the linux kernel. Look at the 2.6 changelog sometime and remember this is just the kernel.
Microsoft should have released anything at this point. Think of it this way, every OS on the planet has been updated between xp and now. (even the debian distro!) Apple's shipped 2 or 3 OSX releases since XP and might even get 10.5 under the radar. Microsoft competes with apple primarily for desktops regardless how many of us feel. They really need a new OS release. Also consider how many people out there don't patch their windows boxes. Simply by offering a new OS, they might buy a new PC which at least is current for awhile. I do remember Windows ME so i'm not advocating a totally retarded release. Also remember Microsoft has put off service packs on XP until after the vista launch. I wouldn't mind a new service pack release with all the patches since XP SP2. In the old days (NT4), they used to release 6 service packs or so per OS version. The 4 year cycle wasn't so bad since we had a service pack to apply instead of a ton of updates. Its not like windows got better since NT4 or has less security holes.
Instead of the BSD is dying cracks, how about we hear Windows is dying cracks from now on. All the BSDs have released a version since XP was out.
Been there, done that... built a freebsd box. For casual unix usage, OSX works. If you want to use X11 apps, you're better off getting a pc for that. Maybe with the new intel macs, it will be possible to dual boot or use that new virtualization software. I'd love to triple boot 10.4, windows and either linux, freebsd or solaris.
What's the US government's solution to terrorism and other national security issues? By definition, you can never stop terrorism. I think a better question to ask is what are they trying to accomplish by their policy on terrorism. In the past our country has considered spying on other americans to be bad. If we don't care about privacy, then fine. If we do as a society, I think we need to insist someone pass laws to protect our rights and get the word out. From my understaing, most terrorists use the internet to transmit messages using things like images with hidden messages. How the hell is spying going to help if they can't figure out which bits have been manipulated?
And if the government is spying on americans, why not tell us? Its not like we control the communications network anyway. Terrorists are going to know they are doing it anyway unless they are total idiots. If they were truely that stupid, we would have caught them already right?
That brings up a good point. This will only effect US based sites. How is that even helpful? All I have to do is visit foreign based sites and make sure the sites use SSL and/or other forms of encryption. I bet there will be a market for such sites. Maybe you should invest in ISPs outside the US too.
I think this legislation is going to help Telco and Cable companies. Small ISPs can't afford this and it will finish them. I worked as a sys admin for a few years at a small ISP (~4000 customers). We only made about 2 dollars a month on unlimited packages and thats assuming the customer didn't call for support. Hosting was more profitable unless the site was popular. I think we'll see the end of 5 dollar hosting too.
And what happens to people like me who have a dedicated or colo'd server? I don't run business sites. Do I have to log my ET server too? There aren't even accounts on all sites. Do I have to write code to log account actions beyond what apache can log?
FreeBSD and DragonflyBSD have decent SMP support. NetBSD and OpenBSD both use kernels with Giant locks still as did FreeBSD 4.x and lower. DragonFlyBSD uses message passing.
As for oracle and DB2, there is no certification. Supposedly you can get Oracle 8 and 9 to run on FreeBSD using linux "emulation" on i386. I've never gotten past the installer. I've never tried DB2, but may with IBM releasing the free low end version this year.
I don't consider BSD to be good at database server hosting unless you like MySQL or Postgresql. MySQL performance is often faster in Linux or Solaris, although there is a lot of work on tuning FreeBSD to fix the problems.
I know FreeBSD has been tested with 6 and 8 way x86 SMP boxes and works with an 11 cpu sun sparc server. Driver support is competative with FreeBSD if you like intel hardware as intel donates code. 6.1 release canidate is much faster than any other release i've tried since I migrated from 4.x.
BSD is only useful if you plan to go all open source.
I guess I'm having trouble seeing where linux saves money over solaris or *BSD. Support might be an issue with BSD. Everyone discusses "old UNIX systems". Linux is just a clone of UNIX. I guess I don't get the hype. Its probably the bad experiences I've had with Linux.
I try to be legal when I can. I do have some emulators for my dreamcast. Its just not the same. I think nintendo could get the play control right.
Define better.
From my perspective: A BSD is easier to upgrade, easier to install software on, and has a more friendly community. That would make it better to me than a linux distro. Another thing I like about BSDs is the API doesn't change as much and time doesn't go backwards. (see linux 2.6.16 changelog)
For desktops, Redhat, Fedora, Ubuntu or Suse are probably good choices (well ubuntu has that broken dhcp client...). Gentoo would be good if you wanted something very custom I suppose. Someone in my operating systems class created a project to netboot and drop a customized stage 3 install down to clients.
Again, my original objection was cost of licensing. I'm sure they got a deal though.
You brought up package management. I think that is one of the biggest defining issues of modern unix like systems now. Most people seem to love their os based on how they install software. Sounds silly, but think of the redhat vs gentoo vs debian/ubuntu comments on slashdot all the time. Then you get into bsds with pkgsrc vs portsnap/portupgrade. I hate to say this but I think Windows and FreeBSD are better than most other operating systems on this front. I can mostly remove or add software using one mechanism. (add/remove programs or pkg_delete) apt-get i believe works ok for this as well. Look at other oses like mac os x where you can't remove apps. Sure they may have a proprietary uninstalled as part of the installer which you must find to remove it or you can drag to trash and leave a shit load of shared libraries and pref files all over your disk. Most other software installs leave crap on your drive. No one will ever solve this problem.
I hate to sound like a Microsoft rep, but what about TCO? The FAA better have linux experts working for them if they deployed linux. Considering what they do, I sure as hell don't want any crashes or security problems!
Yes, linux based systems can have security holes like any other OS. My concern is how much redhat charges for a license. Its often more expensive than buying Windows if you don't need a lot of CALs.
And no I'm not a big Microsoft nut, I have 1 machine of 7 in my home with windows. Everything else is some form of BSD or solaris. (OSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, MidnightBSD)
Did they? If they used fedora core they could have saved a lot more money. (or any FREE linux distro)
How much did redhat charge them in licensing cost?
Yeah and some of my consoles overheat after a few hours. Hell my 32x on my genesis makes it about 2. As for my NES it takes me 2 hours to get a cartridge to load without giving me the blinking red frickin' screen. What really stops me is all the damn cat urine in front of the tv. carpet cleaning don't get that all out. I only have access to the two consoles hooked up to my AIW card (xbox and gamecube).
:)
One console with most games I like on it would be great. Even better, I don't have to buy a giant entertainment center and stereo rack to hold my 9 consoles anymore. Some can go in the closet...
Hell I bought an xbox late and i actually use it mostly for megaman games! The new nba jam games suck in comparison and i could have bought lego star wars for my iBook or Windows box.
If Nintendo keeps the price down, I'll be buying a wii instead of a PS3 or xbox 360. Hell I don't own any playstation why start now.
It depends on what you use a blog for. I don't expect a lot of my friends to read it, but it allows me to vent from time to time.
LiveJournal's only feature is the community at this point. MySpace is a great replacement for that.
Perhaps, but do you really think microsoft tests every possible patch configuration? I'd bet they only test the last service pack plus the patch and maybe current with all updates. You're taking a risk running a "non standard" environment too. Besides, you should always patch a few systems that seem common to your environment before rolling out patches in a large corporate environment anyway.
People are missing the obvious. Just pick a different journal service or download and install one on your own site. There are hundreds of third party blogging sites and several open source products to do it. Don't like ads? Don't use LiveJournal. Its as simple as that.
Obviously most people don't care about ads or their wouldn't use services like myspace which includes a blogging feature.
And yes, I run a free blogging service without any ads. http://www.justjournal.com/ (sorry for the shameless plug, but it is slashdot.)
I still don't see how this is fair in any way. Many lowend dells do not have pciE or agp slots for expansion of video for example. Would you compare a Saturn Ion to a BMW? Thats what you're doing. Sure they are both cars that could be used for families, but they are very different under the hood and on the surface. Both might get you from point a to point b, but the BMW is most certainly going to do it faster. (assuming no cops around)
I'm not trying to imply that Apple is a BMW and Dell is always a Saturn by any means. In my household, there is a PowerMac dual G4 (wife's box) and a Dell Precision 650 (dual xeon) box (mine). My dell is far superior to any POS lowend dell we have at work. There's a 500 dollar difference between what my boss paid and what i paid for my machine. I don't even consider them in the same class. Anyone thats a gamer, programmer or someone who needs to run simulations is going to notice a big difference between a low end box and a highend box.
I haven't had an opportunity to try Dell's new core duo line, but I've used many optiplex and precision workstations. There's a big difference between the two lines. Likewise, I've used mac mini, iMacs, and tons of powermacs. I can tell you there's a big difference between those machines. If you actually USE ONE, you'll see that iMac == optiplex or dimension in terms of speed and performance. The dell XPS series is very similar to the Precision line and even use the same cases on some models. I've played with an intel based iMac at an apple store and its very fast. It seemed faster than the dual g5 2.3ghz i've got at work.
I'll concede that Dell makes lowend computers at a lower price. Thats what they are good at. When one wants speed, upgradability or computers that run well out of warrenty, they don't buy dells. And yes, macs are upgradable. The price difference of a PowerMac is in part the ability to upgrade it. Much like you have to drop at least 700 dollars with Dell to get the same ability.
And for the record, apple has raised their prices lately. Macs are more expensive now than before the intel switch. (except iBooks which haven't switched yet) Mac minis and MacBook Pros are much more expensive. I don't think Apple is as competative as they used to be.
Nor is comparing a PowerMac to a 700 dollar dell. You need to at least compare a precision workstation to a G5 PowerMac. Why? Both are WORKSTATIONS. A Mac desktop is an iMac which is $1299. If you go on hardware alone, a Mac Mini is equal to most dells because both use intel graphics and other lowend hardware. You guys are picking a PowerMac because of the form factor. Apple doesn't make a tower desktop, only tower workstations.
As for comparing price, I think laptops are where pcs and macs are in a competition. An iBook has a Radeon graphics card and many other nice features. At the time I priced out a dell vs an iBook, the iBook was much more powerful and cheaper (~2 years ago). Now dell offers a shitty 599 model thats as big and heavy as a physics text book. Its much more fair to compare by form factor in the laptop line. Say a 14 inch ibook or a 15 inch PB or even the new MacBookPro vs dell's 15 inch models. (most) You're going to see apple win in price vs features here. Now if you don't need any features and a 5 year old computer would do, then the dell line is just what you need. I do think that weight and dimensions play in with laptops since they are supposedly portable. Personally i like 12 inch macs the best.
Apple is a hardware company that relies on its software to sell hardware. Sun does the same thing. Sure with the new intel macs and bootcamp, you can run XP. You can run Windows 2003 server on sun Opteron boxes too. It doesn't mean most customers do that.
I bought a Mac to run OS X. I also bought a mac because it was the cheapest laptop with a radeon card at the time.
Apple may ship OS X for regular pcs. Steve Jobs seems to be in NeXT mode now. He switched them to intel and then put the OS on regular pcs and suns too. Then he ported the frameworks to windows. Then he sold to apple. In 5 years we might see cocoa on Vista.
I personally own 4 computers and I did buy 3 of them for the hardware and with a particular OS in mind. The two are fused. My mom doesn't care if she has an HP or Dell, she just wants Windows. The software matters to her. Thats what pcs are all about.
3 of my 4 computers were purchased as whole units. (iBook, Dell Precision 650 ws, Sun Sparc workstation) The 4th is a home built and I didn't care what the hardware was as long as it would run FreeBSD with accelerated video, and could handle routing my home network. The only dual boot machine in the group is the Dell. Its running Windows and Gentoo because I have Operating Systems this semester and had to code kernel modules.
Yes, Java runs fine. There is a port of jdk 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 for FreeBSD. You need the linux version to bootstrap the build process though. Its also 32bit. The native FreeBSD jdk is much faster than the linux version running on binary compatibility. I use it to run a tomcat instance for a few sites on my webserver.
Even their stickers don't stay on!
Windows 2000 was available before Windows ME. So is XP faster than ME? If you think so, you can use it as an example. One thing I haven't seen pointed out is that OSX is faster as you go newer, but it takes more ram too! All that caching has to go two places: the hard drive and ram. If your mac has a small hard drive like say an old G3 iBook with a 4gb disk, OS 10.3 installed with take the WHOLE DRIVE. Tiger (10.4) won't even run becuase it requires "firewire" equiped macs. Now it may actually work, but there's not enough disk space for it. I created a compressed mac disk image for installs at work and its about 3.9gb right now with tiger. Remember thats compressed. Its OSX plus MS Office 2004, firefox, acrobat reader, stuffit expander 10 and MSN Messenger 5.
:)
The neat thing is that you can easily do 2 os versions, maybe 3 with apple and each one is faster. My wife's dual 867mhz powermac rocks now with tiger. With her upgrade video card (radeon 9800), it is comparible in framerate to the G5 2.3 dual (radeon 9600) at work. Almost the same frame rate, etc. My last mac was an iMac G3 400mhz, and i went from OS 9.0.4-9.2.1, 10.1.x, 10.2.x, and 10.3.x on it with no problems and noticable improvements (except 10.2 which sucked until 10.2.8) And for those of you who think macs aren't upgradable, I took that thing apart and got an 80gb seagate disk in there to replace the 10gb, and upgraded the ram to 512mb from 64mb.
As for windows, its harder to compare. If you think about it, its only fair to judge NT4 vs windows 2000 vs xp since they have the same basic kernel and underlying technologies. Windows 2000 did run faster on hardware it supported than NT4 in many situations. XP seems a bit slower than Windows 2000, but Windows 2003 server seems faster than Windows 2000 running many services.
I can think of another OS thats gotten faster and thats FreeBSD. 5.x to 6.x was a big improvement and at each minor step in between. 6.1 beta is notically faster that 6.0 with hdd access and some of the network carddrivers are much better as well. (intel fxp and em) There are several benchmarks from 4.x to 5.x that suck though. One thing i'm convinced of is that all machines need at least 2 processors. SMP makes a big difference in windows, freebsd, OSX and linux 2.6.x. If for no other reason, when a stupid process locks up the cpu in windows, you have another cpu to let you kill it with.
Yes, but desktops don't run sendmail and windows. :)
In fact, who the hell uses sendmail on windows? Everyone i know uses something like imail or exchange. Windows doesn't even have a monopoly on the server market. There are more *nix machines. In this case, your example of the sassier worm plays in... windows is mac os x and *nix is windows in terms of popularity.
Windows 95 was the start of the tree.. many of you put down 98 gold but it was better than 95 was. 98 SE was better sometimes, but the "support" for IRQ's managing themselves caused me a lot of headaches with soundblaster 64 cards, via chipsets and ati rage graphics! Aside from Windows ME, every Windows release since 95 got better in my opinion. 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Windows 2000, Windows ME (sucked), Windows XP...
.NET 2 runs on both so you can imagine that an app may run on both. Thats how microsoft keeps going. If you hate it so much, start running another os exclusively, write software to replace everything windows has and maybe you'll get lucky. Lets face it, Linux is missing some key software areas like Tax Preperation software (finance in general), games, Itunes compatible players (even if its illegal in US), etc. End users need to migrate what they use over to a new os and if they can't, they won't switch. The Windows to Mac transition is easier but has its own problems. You can get quicken, and WoW runs fine, but if you use rhapsody, ms access, .NET apps, etc you're in for a rough ride. I'm also a mac user and I'm never able to ditch windows because I like to game, write software and websites. I need to test websites in IE, I actually like to code in .NET, and games like Half life, DODS, CSS, most star trek games, and many old games only run in windows. As long as we need windows, consumers will want it.
Of course Vista will suck, they are messing with the kernel. XP was not a huge difference from Windows 2000 and so we're use to a "stable" release of windows (for windows anyway). I'll probably adopt Vista anyway when its released on my Windows machine with a dual boot or legacy install of XP so I can still game. Most likely everyone else will adopt vista as well. Which means we are stuck with it anyway. As much as most of us wish for Linux, OSX or something else to replace windows, its not happening on the desktop. Even keeping an old version of windows, helps keep windows strong. Why? Software will still be written for XP and Vista anyway.
In terms of stable, you need to define a baseline. I'm sure Vista will run better than Mac OS 9 ever did. It will run better than Windows 3.1 did and certainly better than 95 ever did. The standard is at least what people can remember and right now that means XP, 2000, ME, Linux 2.2-2.6, Mac OS 10.0-10.4. My opinion is that all operating systems suck right now. Read the changelog for the latest linux kernel.. time went backwards for christ sake! FreeBSD 6.1 beta's todo list is scary and most of those terrible bugs go back to at least 5.3. Mac OS 10.4 is a piece of shit even release. (all even releases of OS X are less stable than odd releases and often introduce more features) I've had to reinstall OS X several times on my laptop since it came out and on machines at work that I have to administer. People expect bugs. They don't expect blue screens anymore, but serious bugs are ok. Lets all raise our standards and then we can expect more!
How about they just use a working kernel like say linux, something from a bsd, etc. It worked for apple with NEXTSTEP's mach like kernel + userland. In microsoft's case, they'd have to build up the window manager environment or get Windows to run on it like the dos days, but then again hearing about how vista works its a lot like NT 3.51. I got an idea, they could buy SCO. I mean SCO was based on Microsoft XENIX to begin with.. Microsoft has past experience with legacy system V code!
Microsoft's track record is not all that great. The xbox did quite well and in my opinion the jury is still out on the xbox 360. Sony and Nintendo haven't even entered the market yet on this generation. Many thought the Sega Dreamcast would do well because it beat its competition to market. Look how that turned out! If you compare the Dreamcast and the xbox 360 there are a lot of similarities.
As for the *killer notition, I'd like to see ANY company come out with a decent PDA/Phone/MP3 Player that can actually store at least 1000 songs at decent quality, run for over 10 hours doing music/pda tasks and still have at least 3 hours of talk time. When I say decent PDA, I mean it must have 802.11b/g, a color display, web browser that views REAL HTML/XHTML based websites, calendar, address book, todo list, and can actually sync with more than one operating system. Right now, I lug around a cell phone, iPod and PDA (until my cat ruined it). The PDA and iPod overlap except i like a digital todo list. I don't care what OS this device would run, but it must sync with one of my computers properly. As a bonus, if it weren't my windows pc i'd be extra happy. Of course the device shouldn't be huge either.
I don't see why people want to watch video on tiny screens regardless if its a psp, ipod, or whatever. Playing games on my gba gives me headaches after 30 minutes, i can't image watching a tv show or movie on one.