I normally use FreeBSD. But recently I took a Linux device drivers class. The first thing I noticed was the extremely slow booting of Linux. Why?
Under FreeBSD it takes about one second from the boot manager handing off to the root partition to start seeing device probing messages. But under Linux the same thing takes about twenty seconds. From appearances, it seems that the root partition LILO is merely loading the kernel, but there's no way that should take twenty seconds. Can it?
When I was in university (UCSD), two years of calculus were required for computer science degrees. Since I was as CS minor I didn't have to do this. That was a good thing because I never was able to wrap my head around integrals.
Now it's twelve years later and I'm a software engineer. I work for a major ultrasound company. For what I do I have never needed any math more complicated than algebra. But that's because I'm a systems programmer. However, I have several coworkers who routinely use higher math. They have to deal with acoustics and waveforms and signal processing. Matlab is more important to them than G++.
So it depends on what you're programming. For most drivers, systems software, databases, and applications, you won't need much math. But for some stuff it's essential. You don't know what you're going to be doing in twelve years, so take the math now while you can.
If I still had my old OS/2 boxes, I would look it up. As it is I'm going by memory. I'm thinking of the minimum requirements, and OS/2 4.0 had a lot of optional extras, like VoiceType, that required more RAM than the minimal setup. The default install was definitely more with 4.0.
You may be right about me thinking of OS/2 2.0 vs 3.0. You're memory starts to go when you're an old fart like me.
Every time I here that term I want to scream. I am getting fed up with this consumerism that considers anything older than two to five years to be obsolete. My current motherboard calls USB 1.1 devices (keyboards) and parallel ATA drives (DVD burners) to be "legacy".
While I can concieve of filling up a 1TB drive, I can't for the life of my imagine an operating system requiring it! I may want that room once I get Doublewide(tm) broadband so I can start downloading complete movies and not bother with burning them to DVD. But there's no way in hell I'm going to need that kind room for my OS in a mere two years. Currently with FreeBSD, XFree86, Mozilla, KDE, and all their pals, my current system is using only 4GB. The OS itself fits in only 90MB, and I could still pare that down quite a bit.
Longhorn is supposed to come out in two years. That means any computer I buy TODAY will still be perfectly usable when Longhorn is released. That's why these specs are stupid. Microsoft is deliberately making your PC obsolete. For no discernable reason.
In 2006 that will not be the average system. It will merely be the average new system. The average system will be much lower. Not everyone is a gamer who has to buy a new system every month or two.
Re:"Even more open-source than it is already"...
on
Gosling on Opening Java
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If we choose to use the term 'Free Software' instead, there is no confusion.
To someone who hasn't drunk the FSF Koolaid, "free software" means software that is free of cost and/or relatively unencumbered by legal restrictions. Since Java is free of cost, and relatively unencumbered by legal restrictions, most people would consider it to be "free".
"Free Software" is just as confusing as "Open Source". Actually it can be more confusing since "free" has about fifteen more synonyms than "open".
Everyone since the early 1980's agrees with Nicklaus Wirth that GOTO is evil. Apparently your intense hatred of C/C++ and the people who use them caused you to completely miss the humour in the previous post.
To clue you in, NO ONE uses goto in C/C++ anymore, except for some niche areas like kernels.
Enterprises change their systems all the time. Usually they change them to totally different architectures. For examply, my company dumped Windows on us after a fifteen year successful run of SunOS/Solaris. We survived.
Do you really think your enterprise is going to stick with Redhat X.Y for the rest of eternity? Of course it won't! If your admins cannot handle change, then find some that can.
GIMP has the worst interface for any GUI application of its popularity level. I think the reason for this is that GIMP is the GTK/Gnome flagship software.
Many will have very good reasons to need to stick with a Red Hat.
And the reason at the top of the list is "Our $75,000 per year administrators are too stupid to learn something else, even when that something else is 99.97% identical."
If a commerical company in say Silicon Valley attempted to achieve CMM L4 or L5 they'd never ship a product
Deja vu!
When an unnamed German company purchased our US company after our founder decided to retire, one of their first decisions was to make CMM L3 our goal. At the time we weren't CMM certified at any level. The goal was to get to L3 in 18 months. Eighteen months! And our average product took 24 months of development!
It's now three years later, we haven't shipped a new product, our competitors are running rings around us, and they've finally realized that maybe we should aim for CMM L1 first...
As an employee of a US division in a German corporation, I think I can shed some light on why US developers skimp on specifications:
We're too busy coding.
The truth is that commercial development schedules are unrealistic. If it would take two years to do a project correctly, only eighteen months will be allocated. This leaves the developer in a quandary over which part of the process to skimp on. US developers choose to skimp on specifications, while German developers choose to skimp on implementation.
That's my experience anyway. I've seen specs from Germany that are so padded I think the author must have stock in a paper mill. And I've seen the incomplete software that arose from it. In one instance a product was shipped that was completely unusable, whose only sales the first year were to the sales department as demos, but which won a corporate award for adherence to the process.
It's simply a different way of working. To the US developer, if you can't do it right, at least make it work. To the German developer, if you can't do it right, at least go through each step of the waterfall model thoroughly and methodically until your time is up.
Just about every corporation views the process as more important than the product. But their individualistic and rebellious nature means that US developers will work on the product anyway. But German developers will just do what they're paid to do.
WTF? FreeBSD does support SATA cards. My workstation does not have any IDE harddrives, yet I've had FreeBSD on it for a year. This machine does not have Linux on it because at the time I purchased the system Linux only had SATA support as a patch. At the last time I tried to install Linux on it, none of the shipping distros included SATA support on the install media.
Slashdot Mirror
I normally use FreeBSD. But recently I took a Linux device drivers class. The first thing I noticed was the extremely slow booting of Linux. Why?
Under FreeBSD it takes about one second from the boot manager handing off to the root partition to start seeing device probing messages. But under Linux the same thing takes about twenty seconds. From appearances, it seems that the root partition LILO is merely loading the kernel, but there's no way that should take twenty seconds. Can it?
When I was in university (UCSD), two years of calculus were required for computer science degrees. Since I was as CS minor I didn't have to do this. That was a good thing because I never was able to wrap my head around integrals.
Now it's twelve years later and I'm a software engineer. I work for a major ultrasound company. For what I do I have never needed any math more complicated than algebra. But that's because I'm a systems programmer. However, I have several coworkers who routinely use higher math. They have to deal with acoustics and waveforms and signal processing. Matlab is more important to them than G++.
So it depends on what you're programming. For most drivers, systems software, databases, and applications, you won't need much math. But for some stuff it's essential. You don't know what you're going to be doing in twelve years, so take the math now while you can.
If I still had my old OS/2 boxes, I would look it up. As it is I'm going by memory. I'm thinking of the minimum requirements, and OS/2 4.0 had a lot of optional extras, like VoiceType, that required more RAM than the minimal setup. The default install was definitely more with 4.0.
You may be right about me thinking of OS/2 2.0 vs 3.0. You're memory starts to go when you're an old fart like me.
Remember when OS/2 Warp 4.0 came out? It had fewer requirements than the 3.0 version! Without sacrificing any features or performance!
legacy hardware
Every time I here that term I want to scream. I am getting fed up with this consumerism that considers anything older than two to five years to be obsolete. My current motherboard calls USB 1.1 devices (keyboards) and parallel ATA drives (DVD burners) to be "legacy".
While I can concieve of filling up a 1TB drive, I can't for the life of my imagine an operating system requiring it! I may want that room once I get Doublewide(tm) broadband so I can start downloading complete movies and not bother with burning them to DVD. But there's no way in hell I'm going to need that kind room for my OS in a mere two years. Currently with FreeBSD, XFree86, Mozilla, KDE, and all their pals, my current system is using only 4GB. The OS itself fits in only 90MB, and I could still pare that down quite a bit.
Except that you don't need a G5 to run OSX. But you're going to need the equivalent of a G7 to run longhorn.
I don't see anything wrong with these specs.
Longhorn is supposed to come out in two years. That means any computer I buy TODAY will still be perfectly usable when Longhorn is released. That's why these specs are stupid. Microsoft is deliberately making your PC obsolete. For no discernable reason.
In 2006 that will not be the average system. It will merely be the average new system. The average system will be much lower. Not everyone is a gamer who has to buy a new system every month or two.
It's not on my install list, because the packages were made for some OS called "Windows".
Try FreeBSD. It doesn't prevent you from doing anything. NTFS, MP3s, cats lying with dogs, it's all there.
Why do we let a convicted monopolist obtain patents?
Why do we let anyone obtain patents? Particularly software patents?
"billgatescanbitemyshinymetalass"
It's eery how close that is to my own password!
why doesn't Linux just adopt it?
NIHS (not invented here syndrome)
It sounds like you need LiveBSD's KDE 3.2 Live Desktop!
If we choose to use the term 'Free Software' instead, there is no confusion.
To someone who hasn't drunk the FSF Koolaid, "free software" means software that is free of cost and/or relatively unencumbered by legal restrictions. Since Java is free of cost, and relatively unencumbered by legal restrictions, most people would consider it to be "free".
"Free Software" is just as confusing as "Open Source". Actually it can be more confusing since
"free" has about fifteen more synonyms than "open".
Everyone since the early 1980's agrees with Nicklaus Wirth that GOTO is evil. Apparently your intense hatred of C/C++ and the people who use them caused you to completely miss the humour in the previous post.
To clue you in, NO ONE uses goto in C/C++ anymore, except for some niche areas like kernels.
I am not a Java developer. I prefer old fashioned old fart languages like C and C++. Unfortunately .NET is being shoved down my throat.
It might not be enough to check the Microsoft/Ximian Hegemony that is coming, but an Open Source Java might slow it down a bit.
Enterprises change their systems all the time. Usually they change them to totally different architectures. For examply, my company dumped Windows on us after a fifteen year successful run of SunOS/Solaris. We survived.
Do you really think your enterprise is going to stick with Redhat X.Y for the rest of eternity? Of course it won't! If your admins cannot handle change, then find some that can.
So you're basing your opinion on software that is 3 years old running
Please ground yourself in reality. Gimp 2 was released like a couple of weeks ago. Gimp 1 is not three years old, it's ONE MONTH old. Geez...
I didn't say anything about Photoshop. Go read my post again. I don't even use Photoshop, so I have no idea how good or bad its inteface is.
GIMP is a very good program. It's can stand up to a bit of constructive criticism. Apparently its users cannot, however.
GIMP has the worst interface for any GUI application of its popularity level. I think the reason for this is that GIMP is the GTK/Gnome flagship software.
Many will have very good reasons to need to stick with a Red Hat.
And the reason at the top of the list is "Our $75,000 per year administrators are too stupid to learn something else, even when that something else is 99.97% identical."
If a commerical company in say Silicon Valley attempted to achieve CMM L4 or L5 they'd never ship a product
Deja vu!
When an unnamed German company purchased our US company after our founder decided to retire, one of their first decisions was to make CMM L3 our goal. At the time we weren't CMM certified at any level. The goal was to get to L3 in 18 months. Eighteen months! And our average product took 24 months of development!
It's now three years later, we haven't shipped a new product, our competitors are running rings around us, and they've finally realized that maybe we should aim for CMM L1 first...
As an employee of a US division in a German corporation, I think I can shed some light on why US developers skimp on specifications:
We're too busy coding.
The truth is that commercial development schedules are unrealistic. If it would take two years to do a project correctly, only eighteen months will be allocated. This leaves the developer in a quandary over which part of the process to skimp on. US developers choose to skimp on specifications, while German developers choose to skimp on implementation.
That's my experience anyway. I've seen specs from Germany that are so padded I think the author must have stock in a paper mill. And I've seen the incomplete software that arose from it. In one instance a product was shipped that was completely unusable, whose only sales the first year were to the sales department as demos, but which won a corporate award for adherence to the process.
It's simply a different way of working. To the US developer, if you can't do it right, at least make it work. To the German developer, if you can't do it right, at least go through each step of the waterfall model thoroughly and methodically until your time is up.
Just about every corporation views the process as more important than the product. But their individualistic and rebellious nature means that US developers will work on the product anyway. But German developers will just do what they're paid to do.
I'd love to see FreeBSD support SATA cards
WTF? FreeBSD does support SATA cards. My workstation does not have any IDE harddrives, yet I've had FreeBSD on it for a year. This machine does not have Linux on it because at the time I purchased the system Linux only had SATA support as a patch. At the last time I tried to install Linux on it, none of the shipping distros included SATA support on the install media.