Why do you think Slackware has to be reinstalled all the time?
Slackware rarely has to be reinstalled. You can upgrade packages for a long time without reinstalling. Occasionally (due to shared library upgrades) you might have to boot a minimal system from boot/rescue floppy to fix up some things, but a complete reinstall is not needed.
FreeBSD, having the same tradition like Slackware in taking a simple but solid approach, is even better. I have gradually upgraded my FreeBSD system since 1994, without a single reinstall (only upgrades via cvsup/ctm and then a 'make world' in/usr/src).
FreeBSD is more conservative, and everyhing in/sbin and/bin (not/usr/bin) is statically linked, greatly diminishing the chance for disasters when playing with your shared libraries.
Btw, the FreeBSD ports collection has precisely what you want: in/usr/ports there is an index file (an overall, plus also one per category of ported software) containing one line descriptions of all 4000 ports, in a fixed format so tools can read it. Example
inn-2.3.0|/usr/ports/news/inn|/usr/local|InterNetN ews -- the Internet meets Netnews|/usr/ports/news/inn/pkg-descr|des@FreeBSD. org|news|gettext-0.10.35 gmake-3.79.1||http://www.isc.org/products/INN/
But that's forcing the linux newbie to skip linux-user status and go straight to linux-admin status.
Indeed, and rightly so. Like it or not, but Linux still isn't far enough to be run by a pure "user" without having an expert at hand.
b.t.w., neither is windows; superficially it may look like it, but the problems simple users get with windows "administration" are even worse.
The only things that come close for non-experts without any external help are (IMO) machines with operating system in ROM (such as the old home computers, gameconsoles, palmpilots) and maybe the Macintosh (closed hardware and strict software certification diminishes the chance for conflicts and driver problems).
With open source software it is very easy to circumvent such schemes and just ignore the pop-ups etc.
If they really want to make sure you see this stuff, they'd have to control your browser, such as through active-X plugins etc. The plugin might use an encryption scheme to ensure to the advertizer that it is really running, of you fail to authenticate (i.e. fake the plugin) then you won't see the page.
If they are serious about this, I envision a WEB where more and more content will only be accessible via Internet Explorer on Windows.
I understand that quality information can't be completely free. I'd rather have pay-for-use sites instead.
Strange. Where is this (region 2 being twice the price)?
In Switzerland, region 2 are somewhat cheaper. A region 2 of a new top movie costs about $25, a region 1 might cost $30 or even more.
Here, the region 2 don't seem to be of less quality than the region 1 (of which there are plenty too, main advantage you have them sooner). Most DVD players are sold with multiregion hacks preinstalled.
On the last summit (deciding which issues in the future will still have the veto right of each state, and which issues shall be in the realm of EU rules and which not) the french pushed very hard (and with success) to keep culture/movie issues outside of EU territory.
They know that its them against the rest (also within the EU) in those matters. Other EU states don't suffer from the cultural paranoia that France has.
I'd rather have moderated this as "funny". I cannot but assume this posting was meant to be a parody on some of those nationalistic and chauvenist french that always feel the need to prove their "natural superiority" to the world.
One could regard a virtual machine as an OS, either running directly on the hardware (such as Inferno OS or JavaOS) or running on some software layers (such as another OS).
Indeed Java and Inferno are similar in concept. You could call the Java VM also an OS.
Any decently written application for a UNIX variant (including Linux here) should run with very little effort on any UNIX variant.
Alas there are more and more bad programs that use Linux peculiarities, making the port unnecessary hard (and thus sinning against the common UNIX philosophy).
The longer a program is isolated on one UNIX variant, the bigger chances are that it will be hard to port afterwards, that it will rely upon non-standard API's i.e. bad design. Thus it is good for the program to be ported ASAP.
VMWare will almost certainly port their stuff to the MacOSX, though probably not Darwin
What good would that be? VMWare also is a virtualization system, thus on MacOSX, which runs only on PowerPC, you would only be able to run other PowerPC systems (Linux, NetBSD, a second instance of MacOSX).
Since MacOSX itself already is based on UNIX (FreeBSD) there isn't too much need for that I guess. The main use for VMWare is to run Windows in Linux/FreeBSD (the linux VMWare runs in FreeBSD too), or to run non-Windows inside of Windows.
For years and years the FSF (GNU) boycotted Apple (note they never boycotted Microsoft) exactly because of this despicable claim that they own the look and feel of a GUI. You can say much about Microsoft, but they never did anything like that.
Apple, who copied the GUI themselves, for years sued others e.g. for using a trashcan, or even for using a WIMP GUI at all!
Now it seems to start all over again.
Time for a new GNU boycott? That might hit Darwin hard, and thus indirectly Apple and their OS-X. Would be well deserved.
For example, I use w2k usually for web browsing, but for most other things I use FreeBSD (and if I use netscape on FreeBSD, it is the Linux version that also identifies itself as such).
It is not possible to make accurate usage statistics in general, and I don't care either. Whether there are 200 or 20.000.000 million users of my favourite OS, as long as it does what I want I'm happy.
Software developers just should (occasionally) port their software to various OSses (if you've done one UNIX port, you've almost done them all) and check from sales/downloads if it is worthwhile for them to maintain the port.
The illusion of multiple distributions having a future. Even when the differences are only small, for commercial software (binary, off the shelf software) the slightest difference mean a support nightmare. It is unacceptable for mainstream software (not for niche software meant only for power users).
As some people on quake3world already commented: It really is a shame that FreeBSD (the *BSD with by far the largest user base; though OS X might change that in the future; luckily, the OS X core *is* FreeBSD) doesn't get more attention.
Obviously, at the moment FreeBSD sales would be even less, given the fact that Linux has 10x more users.
But at least there is only 1 "distribution", development is very orderly, one consistent operating system (not only a kernel) is produced. Also great care for backwards compatability is taken (5 year old binaries still run on FreeBSD-current), and progress was slower, but is so steady and well structured that FreeBSD's speed of progress has surpassed Linux's some time ago.
Linux userland and kernel must be united, that is only 1 distribution can remain. Only, I wonder how to reconcile that with todays (chaotic) development model. Other alternative is all Linux users switching to FreeBSD of course:)
Trinitron is old technology, indeed with those annoying lines. Nowadays there are lots of other spendid tubes that have aperture grille, and that look at least as good as Trinitron (but without the lines).
Philips is the biggest maker of tubes in the world (including television tubes), and many of them are excellent. An example is the 109P20 monitor.
Trinitrons aren't bad, (though Sony itself sucks because of bad customer service) but the're certainly not the only, or even the best choice if you want an excellent monitor.
ReiserFS is a bit faster than the BSD filesystem. (Though I haven't tried softupdates yet.)
You should try softupdates. It makes an enormous difference (since without it, FreeBSD's conservative default is write all metadata synchronously, whereas for Linux it is asynchronously). Being a benchmark fanatic, I benchmarked Linux and FreeBSD filesystems on all kinds of harddisks for years. FreeBSD's FFS has nevre been surpassed by any other filesystem I've seen on PC's; this includes all Linux filesystems such as ReiserFS.
I'm talking about all kinds of FS performance:
bare sequential read/write
parallel reads/writes
random access
operations on metadata such as creating/removing directories or large amounts of files
I am not a FreeBSD bigot but when it comes to filesystem reliability/performance there is no better option at all than FreeBSD. Which is why the worlds largest sites that are mainly dependant on filesystem performance, such as ftp.cdrom.com and other "download" sites run FreeBSD.
Re:The problem is in the dependency database
on
An RPM Port Of APT
·
· Score: 1
Until then, based on my past experiences with Redhat's RPM, I won't at all be interested in a fancy packaging system
Then don't use a fancy packaging system, but a simple one. Indeed all this fancy stuff is a waste since it'll break sooner or later anyway.
Simple no-nonsense packaging systems such as those from Slackware of *BSD.
Still, European wages in high tech are lower than they are in the US.
Really? I doubt that, but there are huge differences within Europe of course.
In switzerland hourly rates (for contractors, after deductions of intermediate bureau etc.) are between $50 and $150, with an average of $80 I'd say. Total tax in Switzerland is about 25% (including social security). How does that compare to the US?
OTOH in most European countries tax is higher (say 40-50%) and rates are lower (Holland: I'd guess $70 on average at 50% tax). But for that, housing may cost only half of Switzerland, and general other costs are maybe 30% lower.
Since I've heard that within the US there are huge differences in cost-of-living and hourly rates too, it is very hard to compare such things.
I moved from Holland to Switzerland a year ago. I make about 50% here per hour, at half the tax. Still I don't know in which country I had more to spend in the end, since it is so hard to compare all the pros and cons, cost of living etc.
Many Java GUI's are slow indeed, but I wonder whether the fault is Java or it's programmers.
Most C++ programmers, for instance, use C++ because they value performance. They are obsessed with efficiency and finding optimal solutions.
Many Java programmers don't seem to value performance, and they're lazy (one of the reasons for using Java, no memory management to worry about), just interested in getting something done quickly (and dirty).
This lazyness also makes them use stupid algorithms and methods, which IMO is the main reason that many Java programs are slow.
The project I'm working on at the moment is a nice example. Our main "architect" is a very typical lazy programmer. He keeps saying "we'll worry about performance later". Of course, later there is no time, and later there is too many dependencies to do any optimizations at all.
The application is full of linear searches, even bubble sort! With a little more effert they would have been hash lookups and quicksort. All kinds of data are fetched each time over again, instead of using some cache to prevent this. Threads used in stupid ways (like synchronizing very large parts instead of giving some thought to what the minimum safe area is that must be synchronized).
The performance of this (GUI) app is awful. First function than optimizations is the message, but I'm sure those will never come. The (internal) users may get disgusted and turn away from our app, and Java will be blamed for having such bad performance.
As you might guess, I am actually a C++ programmer (obsessed with efficiency and performance) but I value Java too. Just a pity there are so many programmers giving Java a bad name.
Yes, but CreateProcess() also has the executable image as a parameter, that is it spawns (like the VMS spawn system call, ugh) a completely separate process which has nothing in common with the parent process.
Thus, if Netscape would use CreateProcess(), you would see a second netscape.exe in the taskmanager, and not see multiple threads listed under netscape.exe.
CreateThread() comes closer to fork, but shares all memory, whereas fork() has seperate data/stack segments; text is shared. The data/stack segments start out being the same physical page, but they use copy-on-write, i.e. once you modify a page a private copy will be created.
AFAIK the Win32 API doesn't have such a thing, which makes emulating fork() in WIN32 rather hard.
It can be done with CreateProcess(), but therefore is endlessly more inefficient than Unix's fork().
FreeBSD has all that you suggest (planning, CVS, the coregroup is elected, steady release cycle).
Some years ago I switched to FreeBSD for this reason, even though it was lagging behind Linux in those times (nowadays it has clearly overtaken when looking to its technical merits).
All of this is not Linux fault of course. He again and again makes it clear that Linux is his child, he does it for fun and he can do what he likes. Yes, he's right. Those who don't like that should not whine but should switch to something better.
Considering future replacement of the phone system by Voice over IP, it would be better to replace phone numbers by IP addresses instead (and then use IP addresses instead of domain names and just abolish DNS). Maybe I should patent that idea.
Seriously, using numbers instead of names is backwards and has been made outdated when DNS was invented long ago.
But has no source code available. Source code availability is a huge advantage, both from a practical POV (native versions for other versions such as *BSD, which is good for interoperability) and from a moral POV.
I'm glad to see failures of commercial closed source software for Linux. It means that the threat that Linux could have been for OSS goes away: If Linux would attract too many closed source commercial software, this would be negative for open source initiatives (the incentive to create them would fade) and be very disadvantageous for both other UNICES and also for the open source movement in general.
This only shows the strength of open source, apparently it creates applications that are good enough or better, not making it worthwhile to spend much money on programs.
Btw for europeans $100 nowadays is quite a lot with the strong dollar. A year ago that would have been only $70 or less.
Slashdot Mirror
No, alas no such law exists (not all of them are sold with the hack), but it isn't illegal either.
Slackware rarely has to be reinstalled. You can upgrade packages for a long time without reinstalling. Occasionally (due to shared library upgrades) you might have to boot a minimal system from boot/rescue floppy to fix up some things, but a complete reinstall is not needed.
FreeBSD, having the same tradition like Slackware in taking a simple but solid approach, is even better. I have gradually upgraded my FreeBSD system since 1994, without a single reinstall (only upgrades via cvsup/ctm and then a 'make world' in /usr/src).
FreeBSD is more conservative, and everyhing in /sbin and /bin (not /usr/bin) is statically linked, greatly diminishing the chance for disasters when playing with your shared libraries.
Btw, the FreeBSD ports collection has precisely what you want: in /usr/ports there is an index file (an overall, plus also one per category of ported software) containing one line descriptions of all 4000 ports, in a fixed format so tools can read it. Example
inn-2.3.0|/usr/ports/news/inn|/usr/local|InterNetN ews -- the Internet meets Netnews|/usr/ports/news/inn/pkg-descr|des@FreeBSD. org|news|gettext-0.10.35 gmake-3.79.1||http://www.isc.org/products/INN/
Indeed, and rightly so. Like it or not, but Linux still isn't far enough to be run by a pure "user" without having an expert at hand.
b.t.w., neither is windows; superficially it may look like it, but the problems simple users get with windows "administration" are even worse.
The only things that come close for non-experts without any external help are (IMO) machines with operating system in ROM (such as the old home computers, gameconsoles, palmpilots) and maybe the Macintosh (closed hardware and strict software certification diminishes the chance for conflicts and driver problems).
With open source software it is very easy to circumvent such schemes and just ignore the pop-ups etc.
If they really want to make sure you see this stuff, they'd have to control your browser, such as through active-X plugins etc. The plugin might use an encryption scheme to ensure to the advertizer that it is really running, of you fail to authenticate (i.e. fake the plugin) then you won't see the page.
If they are serious about this, I envision a WEB where more and more content will only be accessible via Internet Explorer on Windows.
I understand that quality information can't be completely free. I'd rather have pay-for-use sites instead.
Strange. Where is this (region 2 being twice the price)?
In Switzerland, region 2 are somewhat cheaper. A region 2 of a new top movie costs about $25, a region 1 might cost $30 or even more.
Here, the region 2 don't seem to be of less quality than the region 1 (of which there are plenty too, main advantage you have them sooner). Most DVD players are sold with multiregion hacks preinstalled.
I fear it is not.
On the last summit (deciding which issues in the future will still have the veto right of each state, and which issues shall be in the realm of EU rules and which not) the french pushed very hard (and with success) to keep culture/movie issues outside of EU territory.
They know that its them against the rest (also within the EU) in those matters. Other EU states don't suffer from the cultural paranoia that France has.
I'd rather have moderated this as "funny". I cannot but assume this posting was meant to be a parody on some of those nationalistic and chauvenist french that always feel the need to prove their "natural superiority" to the world.
One could regard a virtual machine as an OS, either running directly on the hardware (such as Inferno OS or JavaOS) or running on some software layers (such as another OS).
Indeed Java and Inferno are similar in concept. You could call the Java VM also an OS.
Any decently written application for a UNIX variant (including Linux here) should run with very little effort on any UNIX variant.
Alas there are more and more bad programs that use Linux peculiarities, making the port unnecessary hard (and thus sinning against the common UNIX philosophy).
The longer a program is isolated on one UNIX variant, the bigger chances are that it will be hard to port afterwards, that it will rely upon non-standard API's i.e. bad design. Thus it is good for the program to be ported ASAP.
What good would that be? VMWare also is a virtualization system, thus on MacOSX, which runs only on PowerPC, you would only be able to run other PowerPC systems (Linux, NetBSD, a second instance of MacOSX).
Since MacOSX itself already is based on UNIX (FreeBSD) there isn't too much need for that I guess. The main use for VMWare is to run Windows in Linux/FreeBSD (the linux VMWare runs in FreeBSD too), or to run non-Windows inside of Windows.
Not at all the right decision.
For years and years the FSF (GNU) boycotted Apple (note they never boycotted Microsoft) exactly because of this despicable claim that they own the look and feel of a GUI. You can say much about Microsoft, but they never did anything like that.
Apple, who copied the GUI themselves, for years sued others e.g. for using a trashcan, or even for using a WIMP GUI at all!
Now it seems to start all over again.
Time for a new GNU boycott? That might hit Darwin hard, and thus indirectly Apple and their OS-X. Would be well deserved.
That would not be fair.
For example, I use w2k usually for web browsing, but for most other things I use FreeBSD (and if I use netscape on FreeBSD, it is the Linux version that also identifies itself as such).
It is not possible to make accurate usage statistics in general, and I don't care either. Whether there are 200 or 20.000.000 million users of my favourite OS, as long as it does what I want I'm happy.
Software developers just should (occasionally) port their software to various OSses (if you've done one UNIX port, you've almost done them all) and check from sales/downloads if it is worthwhile for them to maintain the port.
The illusion of multiple distributions having a future. Even when the differences are only small, for commercial software (binary, off the shelf software) the slightest difference mean a support nightmare. It is unacceptable for mainstream software (not for niche software meant only for power users).
:)
As some people on quake3world already commented: It really is a shame that FreeBSD (the *BSD with by far the largest user base; though OS X might change that in the future; luckily, the OS X core *is* FreeBSD) doesn't get more attention.
Obviously, at the moment FreeBSD sales would be even less, given the fact that Linux has 10x more users.
But at least there is only 1 "distribution", development is very orderly, one consistent operating system (not only a kernel) is produced. Also great care for backwards compatability is taken (5 year old binaries still run on FreeBSD-current), and progress was slower, but is so steady and well structured that FreeBSD's speed of progress has surpassed Linux's some time ago.
Linux userland and kernel must be united, that is only 1 distribution can remain. Only, I wonder how to reconcile that with todays (chaotic) development model. Other alternative is all Linux users switching to FreeBSD of course
Trinitron is old technology, indeed with those annoying lines. Nowadays there are lots of other spendid tubes that have aperture grille, and that look at least as good as Trinitron (but without the lines).
Philips is the biggest maker of tubes in the world (including television tubes), and many of them are excellent. An example is the 109P20 monitor.
Trinitrons aren't bad, (though Sony itself sucks because of bad customer service) but the're certainly not the only, or even the best choice if you want an excellent monitor.
Also, the shown add simply is too big.
A small add I could accept, but this one is taking away too much screen estate.
I might buy it, because apart from that opera is a nice browser, but I won't use the free version with adds.
You should try softupdates. It makes an enormous difference (since without it, FreeBSD's conservative default is write all metadata synchronously, whereas for Linux it is asynchronously). Being a benchmark fanatic, I benchmarked Linux and FreeBSD filesystems on all kinds of harddisks for years. FreeBSD's FFS has nevre been surpassed by any other filesystem I've seen on PC's; this includes all Linux filesystems such as ReiserFS.
I'm talking about all kinds of FS performance:
I am not a FreeBSD bigot but when it comes to filesystem reliability/performance there is no better option at all than FreeBSD. Which is why the worlds largest sites that are mainly dependant on filesystem performance, such as ftp.cdrom.com and other "download" sites run FreeBSD.
Then don't use a fancy packaging system, but a simple one. Indeed all this fancy stuff is a waste since it'll break sooner or later anyway.
Simple no-nonsense packaging systems such as those from Slackware of *BSD.
Really? I doubt that, but there are huge differences within Europe of course.
In switzerland hourly rates (for contractors, after deductions of intermediate bureau etc.) are between $50 and $150, with an average of $80 I'd say. Total tax in Switzerland is about 25% (including social security). How does that compare to the US?
OTOH in most European countries tax is higher (say 40-50%) and rates are lower (Holland: I'd guess $70 on average at 50% tax). But for that, housing may cost only half of Switzerland, and general other costs are maybe 30% lower.
Since I've heard that within the US there are huge differences in cost-of-living and hourly rates too, it is very hard to compare such things.
I moved from Holland to Switzerland a year ago. I make about 50% here per hour, at half the tax. Still I don't know in which country I had more to spend in the end, since it is so hard to compare all the pros and cons, cost of living etc.
Many Java GUI's are slow indeed, but I wonder whether the fault is Java or it's programmers.
Most C++ programmers, for instance, use C++ because they value performance. They are obsessed with efficiency and finding optimal solutions.
Many Java programmers don't seem to value performance, and they're lazy (one of the reasons for using Java, no memory management to worry about), just interested in getting something done quickly (and dirty).
This lazyness also makes them use stupid algorithms and methods, which IMO is the main reason that many Java programs are slow.
The project I'm working on at the moment is a nice example. Our main "architect" is a very typical lazy programmer. He keeps saying "we'll worry about performance later". Of course, later there is no time, and later there is too many dependencies to do any optimizations at all.
The application is full of linear searches, even bubble sort! With a little more effert they would have been hash lookups and quicksort. All kinds of data are fetched each time over again, instead of using some cache to prevent this. Threads used in stupid ways (like synchronizing very large parts instead of giving some thought to what the minimum safe area is that must be synchronized).
The performance of this (GUI) app is awful. First function than optimizations is the message, but I'm sure those will never come. The (internal) users may get disgusted and turn away from our app, and Java will be blamed for having such bad performance.
As you might guess, I am actually a C++ programmer (obsessed with efficiency and performance) but I value Java too. Just a pity there are so many programmers giving Java a bad name.
Yes, but CreateProcess() also has the executable image as a parameter, that is it spawns (like the VMS spawn system call, ugh) a completely separate process which has nothing in common with the parent process.
Thus, if Netscape would use CreateProcess(), you would see a second netscape.exe in the taskmanager, and not see multiple threads listed under netscape.exe.
CreateThread() comes closer to fork, but shares all memory, whereas fork() has seperate data/stack segments; text is shared. The data/stack segments start out being the same physical page, but they use copy-on-write, i.e. once you modify a page a private copy will be created.
AFAIK the Win32 API doesn't have such a thing, which makes emulating fork() in WIN32 rather hard.
It can be done with CreateProcess(), but therefore is endlessly more inefficient than Unix's fork().
I feel with you.
FreeBSD has all that you suggest (planning, CVS, the coregroup is elected, steady release cycle).
Some years ago I switched to FreeBSD for this reason, even though it was lagging behind Linux in those times (nowadays it has clearly overtaken when looking to its technical merits).
All of this is not Linux fault of course. He again and again makes it clear that Linux is his child, he does it for fun and he can do what he likes. Yes, he's right. Those who don't like that should not whine but should switch to something better.
Which doesn't help if you get a binary (only) compiled for RH7, using its unreleased beta version of gcc.
/etc layout.
And which doesn't help if you're a user without knowledge of shellscripting, and get some package that assumes RH7 weird
And another fact is that the stocks dropped suddenly by 20% shortly after 2pm:
http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=TMTA&d=1d
They haven't recovered significantly, as usually is the case if it's only a rumour.
Considering future replacement of the phone system by Voice over IP, it would be better to replace phone numbers by IP addresses instead (and then use IP addresses instead of domain names and just abolish DNS). Maybe I should patent that idea.
Seriously, using numbers instead of names is backwards and has been made outdated when DNS was invented long ago.
But has no source code available. Source code availability is a huge advantage, both from a practical POV (native versions for other versions such as *BSD, which is good for interoperability) and from a moral POV.
I'm glad to see failures of commercial closed source software for Linux. It means that the threat that Linux could have been for OSS goes away: If Linux would attract too many closed source commercial software, this would be negative for open source initiatives (the incentive to create them would fade) and be very disadvantageous for both other UNICES and also for the open source movement in general.
This only shows the strength of open source, apparently it creates applications that are good enough or better, not making it worthwhile to spend much money on programs.
Btw for europeans $100 nowadays is quite a lot with the strong dollar. A year ago that would have been only $70 or less.