No commercial OS that springs to mind (not Mac OS 6 through 10.4, nor Solaris 2.x-10, nor Windows 3.1 through XP) has given me as many problems upgrading the OS as Debian's APT+DPKG's (bar perhaps 'stable', which is obviously too out of date to be usable on it's own due to the time required for the QA process)
So you're complaining that things aren't working properly because you don't use a 'stable' version of a distribution?
Red Hat's RPM's
Red Hat is commercial.
.or FreeBSD's Ports.
Well, of course you've never had these problems with Windows. Windows doesn't come with much beyond IE, notepad, wordpad, mspaint, movie maker. Barely any complex programs. Since you were talking about the OS, I was assuming you were talking about upgrading a base installation (since that's the only way you can compare the setups between windows etc.).
I wasn't taking additional software packages that aren't included with install by default -- I'm using stable versions, not experimental, I'm not using 3rd party repositories that don't comply to the package management standards for the given distribution either. I have very rarely had problems with my upgrades on Linux -- and they weren't as dire as I have experienced on other OSes.
The closest that springs to mind with regard to an OS update from a vendor that's annoyed me is the the last Windows XP service pack
Heh, you have absolutely no idea how much stuff that upgrade broke then, just google on it.
though while that change the functionality of the system (with a built in firewall)
The firewall was already in Windows XP when SP2 came out, it just came with a new interface and different default settings.
it didn't actually hose the system in a way that meant I had to burn a bootable CD to go fix it
But it did for many other Windows users.
Hell, this laptop I am typing on has a "Designed for Windows XP" sticker. But the graphic card drivers don't work on SP2 (BSOD on boot), the wireless drivers don't work SP2 -- They worked fine on SP1 (which is no longer supported) and the manufacturer hasn't released any updated drivers. DEP in SP2 also broke a bunch of video codecs, to the point where if I'd enter a folder that had a.avi file, explorer would crash trying to generate a thumblenail of it.
Did you even investigate exactly how your free systems broke?
Rather than just saying "updates broke my system" that is, I'd like to know what broke.
which is exactly what apt ('someone uploaded a broken basic package and now nothing works'), RH's up2date ('breaks when running for no reason and hoses the system in the process') and ports ('doesn't really track if a new package may conflict with what you have installed already') have done.
To be honest, I have only used Redhat for about fifteen minutes my entire life, so I can't really help you with that. I'm also not going to go out and buy a copy of Redhat Linux just to verify this.
It's not that it doesn't happen in commercial OS's, it's just that it happens an awful lot less frequently than it does with software that isn't commercially supported
I haven't noticed significant amount of breakage happening on Windows vs OS X vs Linux yet.
which makes having a proper build and lab environment all the more important if you are deploying mission critical systems on free (as in beer) OS's.
If you're deploying mission critical systems, even under Windows, you're going to TEST it first before you deploy any updates. This is one of the first things you learn todo in mission critical systems. The other thing you forgot to mention, when updates do break, trying to fix it on a closed source system (mostly common with commercial systems), it is very difficult to fix compared to coming up with at least a
It's true... some servers need to be white-listed because either they resend from a different IP or just never make second attempts. They are few and generally well-known though.
Still, the e-mail is lost. In the few times this has happened I have had problems with getting people to resend things because either they're part of some automated system that they can't seem to control exactly or because they just don't remember what exactly they wrote and sent to me (they don't save e-mails due to quota issues) and don't wish to rewrite it from scratch again.
At least with things like when they fail a SPF check/DNSBL check/aggressive verification etc, they get a permanent failure that gets their message in it's entirety returned to them.
An OS community where all the projects are crowded onto one or two servers (i.e. sourceforge) is one that is easily taken out by big competing entities (i.e. Microsoft)
I've noticed there are often a tonne of Microsoft adverts on Sourceforge.
There are a significant number of people who used pirate software through collage when they're broke, get used to them then when they're financially better off, start to buy the real thing. You'll start losing those sales if they start off with free software right from thr word go.
When I started making money, I started donating to various OSS projects that I use.
A. If a friend offers you a copy of a game or a software package, is it legal to accept it?
Yes, unless it comes under restrictive licensing.
B. When is it legal to download music from the Internet and when is it illegal?
It's legal when you get the consent of the copyright holder.
C. Why do Copyright laws exist?
Well, they were granted by the US constitution originally to inspire artists to continue creating works. But over the many years that have passed, changes which I consider unconstitutional have been granted that work in the opposite direction of this (extending copyrights lengths, preventing people from fair rights usage to create new works etc). Thus allowing a very select few of large businesses to keep a strong monopoly on media. These large companies are the reason why these particular copyright laws exist today.
Can't she get the software free? When I was attending the local universities here, I could get free copies of Windows, Office etc. any Microsoft product I wanted -- It was legitimate.
What a pity you never tried greylisting and DNSBL's together
I have actually used both together, lost e-mails with greylisting.
I still have aggressive verification enabled, SPF and spamhaus's DNSBL list with my automatic whitelisting. If a e-mail address cannot be verified because of a 'temporary failure', the e-mail gets through (how the majority of spam seems to get through aggressive verification).
because your pathetic and noisy autoreply just serves to piss off people whos email addresses have been used as From: in some dickheads spam run.
They are always free to publish SPF records, most free mail providers are doing this already.
1) Nor does windows, we upgrade in real time our systems all the time.
Wrong, usually upgrade patches from Microsoft set a few registry entries to rename a bunch of files on reboot when the files aren't in use anymore.
2) True, but that also leads to the tendancy for the updates to take a heck of a lot longer in the background than they would be normally.
Uh, windows is very similar in the aspect that it actually loads a program that's running into memory.
3) because for most of the linux using populous, it doesnt always work right.
No, updates don't always work right, but they don't always work right from Microsoft either. From updates that don't fix the problem to updates that break other things, I've experienced them on Windows, Linux and OS X. However -- this isn't a common scenario I have at all in any of them.
If you are a Linux guy, you will fall in love with a Mac if you use it for a little while.
Sorry, I've been using OS X since it came out and I've been using Linux for a while too... I find myself getting very irritated at OS X.
Here are a few reasons:
I run a few intensive processes (single core systems) and get the beachball/spindle of death
I can't stand the dumbed down configuration GUIs compared to others.
I find myself copying bad concepts from Windows on OS X, downloading utilities/hacks to customize the OS, to fix stupid things. Like ShadowKiller (to kill shadows), tinkertool (to disable some font smoothing -- I would prefer to disable it all, but I can't).
Lack of the ability to customize -- Yes zoom is fine in some cases, but I want maximize too. I want to be able to use the maximum amount of space on my workspace can provide sometimes not waste a minute trying to resize the window the best I can.
I hate the dock, I like KDE's panels
Finder -- can't use it to file manage most stuff --> sftp, fish, ftp (uploading) etc.
Finder -- Stupid.ds_store files -- Can't disable them fully
The ability to just disable spotlight completely -- I don't want it, if I wanted desktop search, Beagle already surpasses it's functionality.
Widgets -- they seem to carry a heavy memory footprint compared to widgets loaded in say.. SuperKaramba
Lack of ability to change keybindings -- copy/paste etc.
Privative X11 server, doesn't support drag and drop, clipboard sharing
OS X feels SLOW compared to to running Kubuntu on the same hardware -- This could be because I do disable effects, font smoothing and other crap in KDE that I can't do on OS X
Signaling -- It's not working properly under OS X
Huge amounts of how to configure things (in config files, since most of the settings aren't available in the GUI like it is on KDE) just seems to be mostly undocumented.
its the perfect mixture of a powerful GUI with *nix under it.
Far from perfect to me... The GUI is lacking largely in configurability (strange that this is what people tend to complain about that's wrong with Linux though).
Like DirectX 10 for Windows XP (which apparently won't be happening).
I thought directx 10 required a new graphics driver model too?
In my head, that seems a bit more difficult to back port since it's a fundamental thing in the OS and most likely requires changes to Microsoft's driver specs for XP.
Bootcamp on the other-hand comes with a firmware update (for older Macintels), contains a few windows drivers and a GUI application that uses other applications that come with the OS. I'm very skeptical that it would take so much effort to make it compatible with Tiger (since the beta came out for Tiger originally in the first place).
The past few years, I have been using various anti-spam systems.
SPF
Bayesian filtering
Aggressive verification (Where the mail server connects to said domain and tries to relay a e-mail to the e-mail used in the FROM addy -- It quits before relaying any e-mail)
DNSBL
Country blacklists
Within the last few months in 2006, I started getting spam that would get past most of my filters. This is when I finally did it and setup automatic white listing on my e-mail address. Someone I don't know (not in my address book on the server -- addresses automatically added when I send e-mails to them) sends me a e-mail, they get a response asking to click a link to verify.
This has been the best spam fighting tool I've ever had. It also works for website registrations, as I can signup on a website, then look in my whitelist queue folder (I'll never do it otherwise -- as most of it is spam), add the e-mail to the whitelist manually and move the e-mail to the appropriate folder. I have yet to lose any legitimate e-mail with this system, it keeps the spam 100% out.
What I want is a google browser sync that works across all browsers.
Agreed, I wouldn't mind such a thing either.
a plugin for each that syncs up their bookmarks with your master list would be a cool addon.
If it were just bookmarks, it wouldn't be so hard (infact a few applications exist for doing this already -- but require a bit of manual labor to use), the thing is, Google browser sync also synchronizes cookies (I hate being logged out of sites), saved passwords (unique one for each site? A bit hard to remember). It's also capable of synchronizing your history and windows.
This is what really makes it the 'killer' extension for me, a almost complete synchronization (doesn't copy the prefs.js settings, extensions etc -- which I wouldn't want anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
So you're complaining that things aren't working properly because you don't use a 'stable' version of a distribution?
Red Hat is commercial.
Well, of course you've never had these problems with Windows. Windows doesn't come with much beyond IE, notepad, wordpad, mspaint, movie maker. Barely any complex programs. Since you were talking about the OS, I was assuming you were talking about upgrading a base installation (since that's the only way you can compare the setups between windows etc.).
I wasn't taking additional software packages that aren't included with install by default -- I'm using stable versions, not experimental, I'm not using 3rd party repositories that don't comply to the package management standards for the given distribution either. I have very rarely had problems with my upgrades on Linux -- and they weren't as dire as I have experienced on other OSes.
Heh, you have absolutely no idea how much stuff that upgrade broke then, just google on it.
The firewall was already in Windows XP when SP2 came out, it just came with a new interface and different default settings.
But it did for many other Windows users.
.avi file, explorer would crash trying to generate a thumblenail of it.
Hell, this laptop I am typing on has a "Designed for Windows XP" sticker. But the graphic card drivers don't work on SP2 (BSOD on boot), the wireless drivers don't work SP2 -- They worked fine on SP1 (which is no longer supported) and the manufacturer hasn't released any updated drivers. DEP in SP2 also broke a bunch of video codecs, to the point where if I'd enter a folder that had a
Did you even investigate exactly how your free systems broke?
Rather than just saying "updates broke my system" that is, I'd like to know what broke.
To be honest, I have only used Redhat for about fifteen minutes my entire life, so I can't really help you with that. I'm also not going to go out and buy a copy of Redhat Linux just to verify this.
I haven't noticed significant amount of breakage happening on Windows vs OS X vs Linux yet.
If you're deploying mission critical systems, even under Windows, you're going to TEST it first before you deploy any updates. This is one of the first things you learn todo in mission critical systems. The other thing you forgot to mention, when updates do break, trying to fix it on a closed source system (mostly common with commercial systems), it is very difficult to fix compared to coming up with at least a
On a Macintel? I don't believe you.
No, they come with and run FreeDOS.
At least with things like when they fail a SPF check/DNSBL check/aggressive verification etc, they get a permanent failure that gets their message in it's entirety returned to them.
When I used it, spam still got through, some legitimate mail didn't.
Google will index them, but they won't won't 'grade' them for being on that site.
Google will find the links, it just won't 'grade' it by it being on that website.
Yes, unless it comes under restrictive licensing.It's legal when you get the consent of the copyright holder.Well, they were granted by the US constitution originally to inspire artists to continue creating works. But over the many years that have passed, changes which I consider unconstitutional have been granted that work in the opposite direction of this (extending copyrights lengths, preventing people from fair rights usage to create new works etc). Thus allowing a very select few of large businesses to keep a strong monopoly on media. These large companies are the reason why these particular copyright laws exist today.
I'm curious, would I be graded badly?
Can't she get the software free? When I was attending the local universities here, I could get free copies of Windows, Office etc. any Microsoft product I wanted -- It was legitimate.
I still have aggressive verification enabled, SPF and spamhaus's DNSBL list with my automatic whitelisting. If a e-mail address cannot be verified because of a 'temporary failure', the e-mail gets through (how the majority of spam seems to get through aggressive verification).
They are always free to publish SPF records, most free mail providers are doing this already.
Here are a few reasons:
- I run a few intensive processes (single core systems) and get the beachball/spindle of death
- I can't stand the dumbed down configuration GUIs compared to others.
- I find myself copying bad concepts from Windows on OS X, downloading utilities/hacks to customize the OS, to fix stupid things. Like ShadowKiller (to kill shadows), tinkertool (to disable some font smoothing -- I would prefer to disable it all, but I can't).
- Lack of the ability to customize -- Yes zoom is fine in some cases, but I want maximize too. I want to be able to use the maximum amount of space on my workspace can provide sometimes not waste a minute trying to resize the window the best I can.
- I hate the dock, I like KDE's panels
- Finder -- can't use it to file manage most stuff --> sftp, fish, ftp (uploading) etc.
- Finder -- Stupid
.ds_store files -- Can't disable them fully - The ability to just disable spotlight completely -- I don't want it, if I wanted desktop search, Beagle already surpasses it's functionality.
- Widgets -- they seem to carry a heavy memory footprint compared to widgets loaded in say.. SuperKaramba
- Lack of ability to change keybindings -- copy/paste etc.
- Privative X11 server, doesn't support drag and drop, clipboard sharing
- OS X feels SLOW compared to to running Kubuntu on the same hardware -- This could be because I do disable effects, font smoothing and other crap in KDE that I can't do on OS X
- Signaling -- It's not working properly under OS X
- Huge amounts of how to configure things (in config files, since most of the settings aren't available in the GUI like it is on KDE) just seems to be mostly undocumented.
Far from perfect to me... The GUI is lacking largely in configurability (strange that this is what people tend to complain about that's wrong with Linux though).In my head, that seems a bit more difficult to back port since it's a fundamental thing in the OS and most likely requires changes to Microsoft's driver specs for XP.
Bootcamp on the other-hand comes with a firmware update (for older Macintels), contains a few windows drivers and a GUI application that uses other applications that come with the OS. I'm very skeptical that it would take so much effort to make it compatible with Tiger (since the beta came out for Tiger originally in the first place).
Within the last few months in 2006, I started getting spam that would get past most of my filters. This is when I finally did it and setup automatic white listing on my e-mail address. Someone I don't know (not in my address book on the server -- addresses automatically added when I send e-mails to them) sends me a e-mail, they get a response asking to click a link to verify.
This has been the best spam fighting tool I've ever had. It also works for website registrations, as I can signup on a website, then look in my whitelist queue folder (I'll never do it otherwise -- as most of it is spam), add the e-mail to the whitelist manually and move the e-mail to the appropriate folder. I have yet to lose any legitimate e-mail with this system, it keeps the spam 100% out.
This is what really makes it the 'killer' extension for me, a almost complete synchronization (doesn't copy the prefs.js settings, extensions etc -- which I wouldn't want anyway).
Since these people do actually use Macs and OS X, I have to conclude they're "real" Mac users.