The article isn't that bad. The Slashdot post sucks. The entire "hack" can be summed up by this quote:
The process was not even that difficult - four screws on the bottom of the laptop removed the keyboard and three more and you were able to get the video card off of the motherboard. Right next to it lies the socketed CPU which can also be changed.
The rest of the article details the performance difference. This isn't a hack - it's a standard upgrade. The article isn't that bad, but the Slashdot editors have SORELY misrepresented it.
(And before you tell me that the Slashdot editors didn't write that blurb, keep in mind that I know that. The writer of the blurb, however, did not post it to the front page. EDITOR. The job of an editor is to proof-read the submisson for accuracy and legibility.)
I'll advocate getting rid of floppy drives when, instead of simply crying for the removal of a standard, they come up with a replacement.
Compact flash is probably the closest thing, but it's very expensive for media.
CDs are out of the question. CD-RW drives are expensive, and you need complex drivers in order to write to it. Writing to it randomly (like it was a hard drive or, hey, a floppy drive) is even worse.
CD-R media is cheap, but CD-RW media is not.
So. Get them to sell compact flash at less of a premium (say, either make 64M cost ten bucks or something), or sell 10M versions for a few bucks.
Whatever media they decide on, the consumer should have no qualms about just giving away some media. If they can't do that, it's not a replacement for a floppy.
Can any of the Debian insiders comment on what the future of Debian looks like?
Well, there are no real "Debian insiders". However, not everybody is an active member of Debian community, so I can explain a few things in that context.
First, before I go into what's being discussed with respect to Debian's very long release cycle, I'd just like to explain a few things.
Debian/stable releases are typically meant for server environments, and as a stable development platform. With that in mind, where tradeoffs are made, stability is favoured over the newest software available. "Stability" doesn't just mean apps that don't crash. It also means things that don't change out from underneath you.
System integrators, OEMs, businesses with a large base of deployed Debian machines, and developers of commercial, closed-source software all appreciate slow release cycles. A distribution which gets only critical updates over a few years is an easy distribution to target. Nothing will break for them, they can get to know the system extremely well.
For the server environment, well-proven applications will almost always be preffered. Where a newer package is required for some feature that they wish, options ARE available.
Debian is split into three trees. There's Debian/stable, Debian/testing, and Debian/unstable. Generally speaking, when a new package is uploaded to Debian, it first goes to "unstable" . After a suitable period of testing, and if there are no more bugs in the new package than the old package, it will be migrated to "testing". Actually, a lot more is considered, but those are probably the two most important aspects of the process.
So, first a package is uploaded to "unstable". If it's good, it's migrated to "testing". At an arbitrary point, when things seem pretty stable, "testing" will be frozen. Developers have ample warning of this; if a version of their package in "testing" is too old for their liking, they have the opportunity to update it before the freeze.
During the freeze, only important updates are made to packages. Security updates, updates which fix release-critical bugs, etc., etc.. When all the release-critical bugs have been fixed, the "testing" tree is made the "stable" tree, and we have a new Debian release. That's what we saw happen today:)
Once a Debian tree has been released, only important updates are made. If Debian/stable has OpenSSH version 3.4, and there's an important security fix made in 3.5, instead of 3.5 being uploaded, the fix will be made to 3.4, and a new update to that package uploaded.
This is all done in the interest of providing a robust, stable, easy-to-target distribution.
The "testing" and "unstable" trees will almost always have newer versions of packages than "stable". If a user using "stable" wishes a newer package, then they can either migrate to "testing" or "unstable", or simply install the newer package and its newer dependencies. Simple as pie.
So, really, a faster release process isn't strictly required. However, there are some very vocal parts of the Debian community which would appreciate a faster release cycle. I'm undecided on my own feelings, but there have been many, many, many suggestions.
Basically, they all revolve around freezing "testing" earlier than has been the norm. For more information, read the list archives at http://lists.debian.org/
For the rest of Debian's future? Package updates:) What else would be in Debian's future? Thanks:)
In a completely selfish vein, what will you give back to the community?
Caldera doesn't have the greatest track record (I can think of a few specific cases but I'll omit them here for brevity) for providing some return to those people who have coded the _VAST_ majority of Linux, GNU, and everything else.
Aside from, of course, providing jobs for developers.
All the reports I've submitted have been dealt with seriously. Sometimes that means, "sorry, we're not going to fix this for a while." That's understandable, they need to prioritise.
Sometimes, the report is closed because it's not a bug - a particular thing behaves in a way I'm unhappy with, but which most people would prefer over the alternative I suggest.
Most times, though, the bugs are just dealt with. I've never submitted a bug report which didn't get a reply of _some_ form within a few days.
This is just in my experience. But I have to read a lot of bug reports myself (for Debian), and I gotta tell you, there is NOTHING more frustrating than somebody filing a bug report, saying "it doesn't work."
WHAT doesn't work? In what way does it not work? How would you expect it to work?
The more serious you are, the more serious you'll be taken.
Not only is Woody (the next Debian/stable release, due Real Soon Now) being released for alpha, arm, m68k, i386, sparc, powerpc, mips, mipsel, hppa, ia64, and s390 (that's 11 architectures, friends), but in order for an architecture to actually be officially released, the massive bulk of all packages have to be compiled and ready on that platform - with _the same version as every other architecture_. You won't be getting XFree 3.3.6 on PPC and XFree 4.2.0 on i386. You'll be getting the same.
Oh, right, "not only":) Most complex packages, which include extensive patches, are organised in a very nice way. 'apt-get source libc6', go into the new directory, and poke around in debian/, there should be a directory there with all the patches that are applied during the build process.
Nice and easy to seperate, pick 'n choose, what have you.
Okay, you *could* use some form of networked file system, but a) your laptop and other machines would need to be connected to use it, and b) I hope you are willing to fight to get a good implementation to work, and c) I hope you aren't playing with big files:)
I use rsync. I have ~/Makefile, 'make sync' works wonders. Here's the contents:
At least you can say appples and oranges are both round, but this 'review' takes the biscuit. Bochs will never "shape up nicely" in the way that the article expects it to because it's a fundamentally different piece of software to VMWare. Plex86 [plex86.org] (formerly FreeMWare), founded by the lead developer of Bochs, would have been the Open Source analogy for VMWare, had its development not died off several months ago due to a terminal lack of developer interest.
Excuse me? The review states *exactly* what you've stated. It's very clear about it. All over the place. Every third paragraph mentions that Bochs is meant for different uses, and is portable.
Man, read the article before you go bashing authors. There are enough really *horrible* reviews out there that you should be expounding on the virtues of a half-decent one, not nit-picking non-existent flaws.
Yes there's the problem of legacy software, but a protocol that's only been around for a few weeks or months can't have that much of a legacy. The only programs that currently support yEnc are the ones whose maintainers react pretty fast to new developments, and those maintainers are likely to also quickly pick up any revisions/fixes to yEnc.
The incompatibility problem isn't with clients. The problem is with the NNTP(newsgroup) servers. Some ancient servers will choke if there are eight-bit characters in the message.
I still feel that moving to an eight-bit encoding system is fine, but let's be clear about what the issues are, okay?:)
So can we lay off for a little bit and recognize that this is really a good thing? Sure, we scoff and say, 'About time!', but they're actually doing it.
Too little, too late as far as I'm concerned... I mean, a *month*? To spend on a code base of how many millions of lines? Written over how many years?
It was a whine and it was insulting to those who run Slashdot.
I'd accept that argument if a) there had been no !. b) they had not said "this is not news", c) has not referred to freshmeat.net, and d) the part about it being trivial.
Really, I still do not understand what the point of patch-release announcements are on/.! This what freshmeat.net is for. This is not major news - this is trivial for everyone except those who are experimenting with the new kernel or developing for it. That's a very tiny subset of the/. population.
No, Slashdot is what Slashdot is. No more, no less. You have some preconceived notion of what Slashdot *should* be. If you want something else, go somewhere else, because SLASHDOT ALWAYS HAS AND ALWAYS WILL(probably) REPORT ON SOFTWARE. Yes, even patchlevel releases. Instead of trying to tell Slashdot what you want, and the rest of the people what you think they *should* want, how about you go and find a site which caters to your tastes and your interests?
I saw an interview with a head honcho from Xybernaut a month or two ago on the Space channel. They showed this thing, and I'm almost positive he said it would run either Windows CE or Linux.
IIRC, though, it was still priced pretty high(several thousand dollars).
(With respect to the Globally Unique Identifier in MS Media Player to allow tracking a user):
It's not a security problem. It's a privacy problem.
Well, three things. Firstly, I more or less agree with you. At least, that's just my opinion. However, the statement you made is highly subjective.
Secondly, I bet you ask "Why?":) Well, for many people, having their photo ID card lost or stolen is considered a "security" issue. Heck, look at it this way. Somebody identifies you by name and address. Now they can sell that information and flood your mail box with spam and leaflets. An attack of sorts, really. So it *can* be considered a security issue, and will be by some.
Thirdly, we really have no idea what somebody could do with this. What if they can associate one of these UIDs with a hotmail account? There are obviously a number of holes in hotmail that have yet to be reported... etc., etc..
Okay, I'm a bit sleepy.. if what I said didn't make much sense, then ignore it;)
I would agree with you, if the review was actually a comparison of technologies.
Of course, if that were the case, then it wouldn't be a review - it would be a comparison of technologies:)
However, since it *is* a consumer-oriented review, the focus is obviously on performance vs. price and a number of other factors; all easily summed up in the term "value".
Since both the Duron and the Celeron have similar prices and are both targetted at the same market(at least in retail), then it's totally fair to compare them, despite the fact that they have some relatively different technologies.
Now, I would say it's unfair to compare, say, an Athlon XP 2000+ to a 386 used in "embedded" markets. This review, however, is more than fair:) Saying it's otherwise would be like saying it's unfair to compair the first- and second-place winners in the Olympic men's triathlon; yes, obviously one is faster than the other. Maybe they've got more endurance(greater memory bandwidth), maybe their muscles are bigger(stronger FP units), but if you're not going to compare those two, what else are you going to compare? The winning triathlon athlete vs. the winning 100m swimmer?:)
Okay. So, yeah, we might finally have a reasonable technology to solve the "last mile" problem.
But where the *hell* is all this bandwidth going to come from? I mean, server bandwidth is expensive. I know a few people who donate Debian mirrors, and it costs them a pretty penny, that's for sure.
I mean, I'd still want to have this; if for nothing more than great community networks. (Community as in physical locality)
But this won't solve all our problems, it will probably bring us new ones.
My bet would be that they're not listening to you because you come off sounding like an arse.
I'm not saying you're a prick, but you come off as one. Considering that's all people can go by(they can't, actually, read your mind), it is kind of important:)
I won't comment on the "usability" of the desktops other than to say that almost all desktops under *nix that I've used(KDE, GNOME, plain 'ol Sawfish or IceWM) are extraordinarily easy to use. They're hard to learn(well, maybe not KDE and to a lesser extent GNOME), but they're absolutely amazing to use.
Be sure to seperate "ease of use" from "ease of learning":) Windows is easy for almost everyone to learn, because almost everyone has had exposure. But it's a bitch to use.
I *will*, however, comment about installations. You're on drugs. It's that simple:) Mandrake is *easier* to install than Windows. Go ahead and try it. The installation is smoother, all hardware is autodetected, everything is just EASY. Windows installation isn't nearly so nice. I'm not saying it's their fault - after all, Windows is almost always preinstalled. They really havn't had much motivation to make a really kickass installer.
Really, I do hope they do well. It's always nice to see new technologies. I don't think this is particularily *new*, so to speak, but you get the idea.
Now, the question is, will general consumers have any interest in these? I wouldn't want my motherboard's BIOS to be on one of these things. Even Intel and IBM make mistakes; if I had to buy a new chip with the new BIOS revision on it, I'd be irritated.
Likewise, for PDAs and the like, it's even more doubtful. Sure, if they're cheap, it might be useful for *some* things. But do you want your OS on there? Really? Understand that you can't upgrade it, you can't change anything that's on there... you're stuck with what they give you.
Slashdot Mirror
The rest of the article details the performance difference. This isn't a hack - it's a standard upgrade. The article isn't that bad, but the Slashdot editors have SORELY misrepresented it.
(And before you tell me that the Slashdot editors didn't write that blurb, keep in mind that I know that. The writer of the blurb, however, did not post it to the front page. EDITOR. The job of an editor is to proof-read the submisson for accuracy and legibility.)
This guy doesn't know what he's talking about, he's just trying to sound smart.
Please ignore him.
If you don't remember it, never mind.
/ for the current SDL port.
It's actually a pretty addictive game. My personal best is level four, 8225 points.
http://fraggle.despayre.org:81/stuffage/sopwith
I'll advocate getting rid of floppy drives when, instead of simply crying for the removal of a standard, they come up with a replacement.
Compact flash is probably the closest thing, but it's very expensive for media.
CDs are out of the question. CD-RW drives are expensive, and you need complex drivers in order to write to it. Writing to it randomly (like it was a hard drive or, hey, a floppy drive) is even worse.
CD-R media is cheap, but CD-RW media is not.
So. Get them to sell compact flash at less of a premium (say, either make 64M cost ten bucks or something), or sell 10M versions for a few bucks.
Whatever media they decide on, the consumer should have no qualms about just giving away some media. If they can't do that, it's not a replacement for a floppy.
Can any of the Debian insiders comment on what the future of Debian looks like?
:)
:) What else would be in Debian's future? :)
Well, there are no real "Debian insiders". However, not everybody is an active member of Debian community, so I can explain a few things in that context.
First, before I go into what's being discussed with respect to Debian's very long release cycle, I'd just like to explain a few things.
Debian/stable releases are typically meant for server environments, and as a stable development platform. With that in mind, where tradeoffs are made, stability is favoured over the newest software available. "Stability" doesn't just mean apps that don't crash. It also means things that don't change out from underneath you.
System integrators, OEMs, businesses with a large base of deployed Debian machines, and developers of commercial, closed-source software all appreciate slow release cycles. A distribution which gets only critical updates over a few years is an easy distribution to target. Nothing will break for them, they can get to know the system extremely well.
For the server environment, well-proven applications will almost always be preffered. Where a newer package is required for some feature that they wish, options ARE available.
Debian is split into three trees. There's Debian/stable, Debian/testing, and Debian/unstable. Generally speaking, when a new package is uploaded to Debian, it first goes to "unstable" . After a suitable period of testing, and if there are no more bugs in the new package than the old package, it will be migrated to "testing". Actually, a lot more is considered, but those are probably the two most important aspects of the process.
So, first a package is uploaded to "unstable". If it's good, it's migrated to "testing". At an arbitrary point, when things seem pretty stable, "testing" will be frozen. Developers have ample warning of this; if a version of their package in "testing" is too old for their liking, they have the opportunity to update it before the freeze.
During the freeze, only important updates are made to packages. Security updates, updates which fix release-critical bugs, etc., etc.. When all the release-critical bugs have been fixed, the "testing" tree is made the "stable" tree, and we have a new Debian release. That's what we saw happen today
Once a Debian tree has been released, only important updates are made. If Debian/stable has OpenSSH version 3.4, and there's an important security fix made in 3.5, instead of 3.5 being uploaded, the fix will be made to 3.4, and a new update to that package uploaded.
This is all done in the interest of providing a robust, stable, easy-to-target distribution.
The "testing" and "unstable" trees will almost always have newer versions of packages than "stable". If a user using "stable" wishes a newer package, then they can either migrate to "testing" or "unstable", or simply install the newer package and its newer dependencies. Simple as pie.
So, really, a faster release process isn't strictly required. However, there are some very vocal parts of the Debian community which would appreciate a faster release cycle. I'm undecided on my own feelings, but there have been many, many, many suggestions.
Basically, they all revolve around freezing "testing" earlier than has been the norm. For more information, read the list archives at http://lists.debian.org/
For the rest of Debian's future? Package updates
Thanks
No offense, but the vast majority of the stuff there (in lines of code, say, or compiled size) isn't Free. It's not ever free-as-in-beer.
What is Free seems to generally be things they've had partners with (like RPM and Red Hat), or things which have to be Free (kernel patches).
In a completely selfish vein, what will you give back to the community?
Caldera doesn't have the greatest track record (I can think of a few specific cases but I'll omit them here for brevity) for providing some return to those people who have coded the _VAST_ majority of Linux, GNU, and everything else.
Aside from, of course, providing jobs for developers.
Woody is not yet released.
:)
:) It's one, or the other.
:)
Don't install Woody.
Install Potato. Or know what you're doing
If you're not inredibly familiar with Debian ingeneral, you really shouldn't even consider installing something other than the RELEASED Debian...
You were installing the equivalent of an early Red Hat beta release
It depends.
All the reports I've submitted have been dealt with seriously. Sometimes that means, "sorry, we're not going to fix this for a while." That's understandable, they need to prioritise.
Sometimes, the report is closed because it's not a bug - a particular thing behaves in a way I'm unhappy with, but which most people would prefer over the alternative I suggest.
Most times, though, the bugs are just dealt with. I've never submitted a bug report which didn't get a reply of _some_ form within a few days.
This is just in my experience. But I have to read a lot of bug reports myself (for Debian), and I gotta tell you, there is NOTHING more frustrating than somebody filing a bug report, saying "it doesn't work."
WHAT doesn't work? In what way does it not work? How would you expect it to work?
The more serious you are, the more serious you'll be taken.
Use Debian.
:) Most complex packages, which include extensive patches, are organised in a very nice way. 'apt-get source libc6', go into the new directory, and poke around in debian/, there should be a directory there with all the patches that are applied during the build process.
Not only is Woody (the next Debian/stable release, due Real Soon Now) being released for alpha, arm, m68k, i386, sparc, powerpc, mips, mipsel, hppa, ia64, and s390 (that's 11 architectures, friends), but in order for an architecture to actually be officially released, the massive bulk of all packages have to be compiled and ready on that platform - with _the same version as every other architecture_. You won't be getting XFree 3.3.6 on PPC and XFree 4.2.0 on i386. You'll be getting the same.
Oh, right, "not only"
Nice and easy to seperate, pick 'n choose, what have you.
Okay, you *could* use some form of networked file system, but a) your laptop and other machines would need to be connected to use it, and b) I hope you are willing to fight to get a good implementation to work, and c) I hope you aren't playing with big files
I use rsync. I have ~/Makefile, 'make sync' works wonders. Here's the contents:
On the laptop:
Works like a charm
At least you can say appples and oranges are both round, but this 'review' takes the biscuit. Bochs will never "shape up nicely" in the way that the article expects it to because it's a fundamentally different piece of software to VMWare. Plex86 [plex86.org] (formerly FreeMWare), founded by the lead developer of Bochs, would have been the Open Source analogy for VMWare, had its development not died off several months ago due to a terminal lack of developer interest.
Excuse me? The review states *exactly* what you've stated. It's very clear about it. All over the place. Every third paragraph mentions that Bochs is meant for different uses, and is portable.
Man, read the article before you go bashing authors. There are enough really *horrible* reviews out there that you should be expounding on the virtues of a half-decent one, not nit-picking non-existent flaws.
I still feel that moving to an eight-bit encoding system is fine, but let's be clear about what the issues are, okay?
You know, I actually see that most spam I receive(easily 90% of ~2 dozen spams every 24 hours) is from Asian servers. Why? They're Asian-language.
Are you telling me that those spams actually originate in the West?
Riiiiiight. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
So can we lay off for a little bit and recognize that this is really a good thing? Sure, we scoff and say, 'About time!', but they're actually doing it.
... I mean, a *month*? To spend on a code base of how many millions of lines? Written over how many years?
:)
Too little, too late as far as I'm concerned
Riiiight.
It was a whine and it was insulting to those who run Slashdot.
I'd accept that argument if a) there had been no !. b) they had not said "this is not news", c) has not referred to freshmeat.net, and d) the part about it being trivial.
Really, I still do not understand what the point of patch-release announcements are on /.! This what freshmeat.net is for. This is not major news - this is trivial for everyone except those who are experimenting with the new kernel or developing for it. That's a very tiny subset of the /. population.
No, Slashdot is what Slashdot is. No more, no less. You have some preconceived notion of what Slashdot *should* be. If you want something else, go somewhere else, because SLASHDOT ALWAYS HAS AND ALWAYS WILL(probably) REPORT ON SOFTWARE. Yes, even patchlevel releases. Instead of trying to tell Slashdot what you want, and the rest of the people what you think they *should* want, how about you go and find a site which caters to your tastes and your interests?
I saw an interview with a head honcho from Xybernaut a month or two ago on the Space channel. They showed this thing, and I'm almost positive he said it would run either Windows CE or Linux.
IIRC, though, it was still priced pretty high(several thousand dollars).
(With respect to the Globally Unique Identifier in MS Media Player to allow tracking a user):
:) Well, for many people, having their photo ID card lost or stolen is considered a "security" issue. Heck, look at it this way. Somebody identifies you by name and address. Now they can sell that information and flood your mail box with spam and leaflets. An attack of sorts, really. So it *can* be considered a security issue, and will be by some.
... etc., etc..
.. if what I said didn't make much sense, then ignore it ;)
It's not a security problem. It's a privacy problem.
Well, three things. Firstly, I more or less agree with you. At least, that's just my opinion. However, the statement you made is highly subjective.
Secondly, I bet you ask "Why?"
Thirdly, we really have no idea what somebody could do with this. What if they can associate one of these UIDs with a hotmail account? There are obviously a number of holes in hotmail that have yet to be reported
Okay, I'm a bit sleepy
I would agree with you, if the review was actually a comparison of technologies.
:)
:) Saying it's otherwise would be like saying it's unfair to compair the first- and second-place winners in the Olympic men's triathlon; yes, obviously one is faster than the other. Maybe they've got more endurance(greater memory bandwidth), maybe their muscles are bigger(stronger FP units), but if you're not going to compare those two, what else are you going to compare? The winning triathlon athlete vs. the winning 100m swimmer? :)
;)
Of course, if that were the case, then it wouldn't be a review - it would be a comparison of technologies
However, since it *is* a consumer-oriented review, the focus is obviously on performance vs. price and a number of other factors; all easily summed up in the term "value".
Since both the Duron and the Celeron have similar prices and are both targetted at the same market(at least in retail), then it's totally fair to compare them, despite the fact that they have some relatively different technologies.
Now, I would say it's unfair to compare, say, an Athlon XP 2000+ to a 386 used in "embedded" markets. This review, however, is more than fair
Thought so
Okay. So, yeah, we might finally have a reasonable technology to solve the "last mile" problem.
:)
But where the *hell* is all this bandwidth going to come from? I mean, server bandwidth is expensive. I know a few people who donate Debian mirrors, and it costs them a pretty penny, that's for sure.
I mean, I'd still want to have this; if for nothing more than great community networks. (Community as in physical locality)
But this won't solve all our problems, it will probably bring us new ones.
Not that we still shouldn't do it
Well, everything that Moz does, Galeon does. More or less, anyways.
Try loading up chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul in Galeon some day.
My bet would be that they're not listening to you because you come off sounding like an arse.
:)
I'm not saying you're a prick, but you come off as one. Considering that's all people can go by(they can't, actually, read your mind), it is kind of important
I would suggest an attitude adjustment.
I won't comment on the "usability" of the desktops other than to say that almost all desktops under *nix that I've used(KDE, GNOME, plain 'ol Sawfish or IceWM) are extraordinarily easy to use. They're hard to learn(well, maybe not KDE and to a lesser extent GNOME), but they're absolutely amazing to use.
:) Windows is easy for almost everyone to learn, because almost everyone has had exposure. But it's a bitch to use.
:) Mandrake is *easier* to install than Windows. Go ahead and try it. The installation is smoother, all hardware is autodetected, everything is just EASY. Windows installation isn't nearly so nice. I'm not saying it's their fault - after all, Windows is almost always preinstalled. They really havn't had much motivation to make a really kickass installer.
Be sure to seperate "ease of use" from "ease of learning"
I *will*, however, comment about installations. You're on drugs. It's that simple
Really, I do hope they do well. It's always nice to see new technologies. I don't think this is particularily *new*, so to speak, but you get the idea.
... you're stuck with what they give you.
Now, the question is, will general consumers have any interest in these? I wouldn't want my motherboard's BIOS to be on one of these things. Even Intel and IBM make mistakes; if I had to buy a new chip with the new BIOS revision on it, I'd be irritated.
Likewise, for PDAs and the like, it's even more doubtful. Sure, if they're cheap, it might be useful for *some* things. But do you want your OS on there? Really? Understand that you can't upgrade it, you can't change anything that's on there