The point about the repository being limited is valid and informative. But it has nothing to do with RPM.
It's like saying "hardcover books suck" because you went to a library that had only hardcover books and the selection was limited. Then you go to a second library that has only softcover books but carries a good selection. So you say "softcover books rock". It's not the way it's packaged, it's the selection, as you note above.
On the other hand commenting about the repositories available for rpm via Yum and similar programs compared to those available for apt is valid to discuss. There are lots of RPM packages, dependancy issues that still exist have nothing to do with RPM (the way they're packaged) and everything to do with the repositories.
I think that you understand the issue but saying it in the way you did just perpetuates the confusion that seems to still exist about this.
Well, a lot of my rpm use is with Mandrake and urpmi, though I didn't mention it in my comment. So maybe I've missed a lot of the worst problems still occurring.
Yum seemed like a very poor substitute for apt when I first tried it, but it seems much better now. Has been working quite well with FC 3 but I'm just using that for a server distro, and I haven't tried to do more than just update what I've installed from the base install.
But I have no complaint if someone wants to compare yum etc with apt. Just don't confuse the problems from poor repositories or bad yum performance, etc with an RPM problem. They're two different things.
Apparently this has to be repeated continually for some people to get it:
Yum and Apt4RPM are to Apt as RPM is to dpkg.
All the "RPM sucks" comments are stupid. RPM does fine at what it is made for, as does dpkg. RPM does not manage dependancies, that's why Yum, Apt4RPM and the like were developed.
Now one can compare Yum, for example, to Apt, and that is an apples to apples comparison. Such tools are available to do the same things as Apt, and while the quality of the tools and repositories aren't as mature as those for Apt they're improving rapidly.
But it's just ignorant to complain about RPM and compare it to Apt or Portage.
There are some valid points here, and if something just has to get continuing to work well past fatigue may be necessary. However, IIRC, the original story indicated that crunch time at a lot of the game houses had evolved to where all the time was crunch time.
When you're working on your 70th hour you may indeed still accomplish 20 minutes of work that moves you a bit closer toward the goal. But when you do it week after week that may mean that the first hour of the next week you still only get 20 minutes of work done, due to residual fatigue.
So, after a certain point, after a few weeks of mega-overtime, I think you must hit the point of negative returns.
I'm with you. Not for the MS Office stuff, though. I do sometimes have to save an Excel password-protected spreadsheet, but bought Planmaker for that. I can open it with a Gnumeric, but couldn't save it with the password protection. Otherwise I'd have to install Excel with Crossover Office.
What I do use Crossover Office for, though, is running Remedy. That's a must for me. I've heard from an insider that Linux support is planned for Remedy, but AFAIK it's not there yet.
There are gui clients that make it easy, but I just use the python script, like so:
btdownloadcurses.py --max_upload_rate 25 http://bitflood.org:8080/file?info_hash=y%1B/%5D%9 5%A5M%13%81%B8_%27%1BQ%F7%1Es%96A%85 &
The "max_upload..." business keeps your internet connection from being hosed by uploading too fast to others (I usually keep the bittorrent process going for some time after I'm done getting mine in order to return the favor to others).
The "http:..." stuff is the url for the torrent, which is different for any torrent. It's from one of the links given in the story.
No need for root, just the btdownloadcurses.py client and shell access.
What I've seen is that management gets what it wants. As a relatively new sysadmin I've been apalled at some of the outdated security models where I work. For example, passwords on major unix boxes not even shadowed. But as long as management wants to push server consolidation, outsourcing and project after project, even those members of the overworked IT staff who might be concerned have no time to try to push or implement security projects.
I noted that the article mentions negative drivers like the fear of litigation being behind most spending on security. Now we have SOX (Sarbonnes Oxley) and our management is worried. All of a sudden all kinds of security monitoring is high priority.
How stupid that it takes lawsuits and government regulation to get management to decide that it's important to safeguard information assets.
Pretty good points, but I think it may be changing. Last I heard IBM was still working on moving all their desktops to Linux by the end of '95.
Like most Slashdotters I get impatient waiting for a tidal wave of Linux desktop adoption and seeing just ripples of it. But large corporations move slowly on major change. I make such a change in a day, a major corporation can take years. Hopefully we'll start seeing a lot more desktop Linux adoption as a result of some of the large, highly publicized migrations like Novell, IBM, Munich, etc.
Thanks! Very interesting project. I'll definitely check it out as Sametime is the official IM at work, where I'm using Linux and almost everyone else is using Win2k.
It'd be nice to get away from the browser Sametime client.
Just when I could use mod points I'm out, but at least someone modded this up.
That's a good theory and everyone likes it in the corporate world. But I've seen a database upgrade fail and the vendor had no solution but to roll back to the old version.
I've also seen an HP-UX O/S upgrade fail for a known issue that HP knew about but hadn't publicized. Had to do a total restore from backup--no way to make the upgrade work.
Yeah it's nice to have someone to call and theoretically be responsible, but in practice it may or may not buy you much. Depending on the software in question you can often get pretty good help and bug fixes with OSS.
It seems to vary on a case by case basis, but in practice I don't think that you can necessarily count on better support or products because someone is "on the hook" with proprietary software.
Texstar also created a new distro, based on Mandrake, which is here.I'm not sure how different from straight Mandrake it is, I've only played briefly with one of their live CDs. Might be worth a look for anyone who likes Mandrake, but isn't 100% satisfied with it. Personally, I've found Mandrake 10 good enough to stop installing new distros for now.
SCO is likely to produce more evidence to support its claims, said Blake Stowell, an SCO spokesman...."Our lawyers are still going through much of the evidence IBM turned over as part of the discovery process. I'm confident that there is still other evidence that will come forward in order for us to be able to prove those claims," Stowell said.
So you're saying that there's something wrong with a system where the plaintiff says "I have no evidence that I've been harmed, but I'd like the court to help me go on endless fishing expeditions to try and find some evidence that I've been wronged"?
Better KDE integration would be nice, particularly if it means better printing support. One of the main advantages of KDE apps at my office is the choice of printers and printer options, instead of the default printer with generic options being the only choice.
I'm inclined to agree, especially with the statement that most users just won't care.
What they do care about is why their computer won't play that music, display that web site properly, let them do online banking with their financial software, just use that modem or other hardware, etc. If Sun's Linux distro (that's what it is, no matter what they call it) gains traction it will just add to the the market share of Linux.
It's market share that will cause vendors to address the sort of problems that I mentioned. No, I don't trust Sun. Yes, I wish they'd be more upfront about what the Java Desktop System really is.
But overall I think that anything that increases the use of Linux under whatever name will result in the elimination of barriers to Linux adoption, and that's a good thing.
Believe me, shipping broken packages happens with commercial software as well.
We just upgraded a proprietary database package to a newer service pack. First on a test server, then on production. However, the developer testing didn't do a very good job. Turns out the new SP broke another application from the same vendor.
Did the vendor have a fix? Nope. We had to do an emergency restore of the old SP.
I sure am glad we're relying on a closed source, commercial solution where we have someone to call and be told that there's no fix available.
I think that the general rule for gui config tools is to either use the tool or config things manually, but don't do both. Or, use the tool, then add your manual tweaks, saving a copy of the config before using the gui tool again.
Aggravating, but I've seen the case made for this typical behaviour elsewhere. The justification is that if joe user invokes the gui tool you want predictable results, not results subtly sabotaged by a previous botched hand edit of config files.
I was an accountant, mid-level management in a moderate size company ($50-60 million sales, several hundred employees). I didn't want to get to the end of my life and think "why the heck did I spend my whole life doing something that I don't enjoy".
I've always enjoyed technical things, but had a business degree. I went back to school for a while and was planning to get an EE or maybe MS in computer engineering. However, with a house and family that would be a very long hard road. Wound up getting a couple of certs, taking what I could find on a help desk.
Soon I got a job in a datacenter, tending backups, monitoring systems, etc. Gradually, I got to do more interesting stuff. After about a year and a half I got a better offer elsewhere. I actually left, but my previous employer countered with a better offer to be a Sys Admin/DBA on several large Unix boxes running Enterprise Apps.
I'm making almost what I made in accounting after 2-1/2 years in the field. Yes, I know that it's no longer the hot field. Sure, I wish it was--but I was in the Oil Industry when it went in the tank, so I already knew that industries have ups and downs.
I got in this because I love it--not every aspect of my job, but I love computers and technology. My house always has 4-5 computers in it, I run servers at home, play with programming, etc. I didn't get into this field because "it's a hot field, you'll make a lot", but rather because it was a field where they would pay me to do what I would do for free.
So, my vote is with the "find something you love to do" school.
I not a lawyer, but you're exactly right in that the rules are different when you're a monopoly. IIRC you can't sell something for less than your cost to drive your competitor out of business, subsidizing those sales with profits from other products or sales in other localities.
That's exactly what Microsoft did to Netscape by bundling IE. Netscape may well have helped them with its own stupidity but that does nothing to make Microsoft's actions either moral or legal.
Oh, I forgot, a browser is an integral part of an OS. What if SQL Server had been made an inextricable part of the OS--just long enough to put Oracle on the ropes. Perhaps could/would never have happened, but would that have been ok too?
I'm all for free as in beer when I can get it, but not at the expense of solidifying one company's proprietary monopoly to our long-term detriment.
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The point about the repository being limited is valid and informative. But it has nothing to do with RPM.
It's like saying "hardcover books suck" because you went to a library that had only hardcover books and the selection was limited. Then you go to a second library that has only softcover books but carries a good selection. So you say "softcover books rock". It's not the way it's packaged, it's the selection, as you note above.
On the other hand commenting about the repositories available for rpm via Yum and similar programs compared to those available for apt is valid to discuss. There are lots of RPM packages, dependancy issues that still exist have nothing to do with RPM (the way they're packaged) and everything to do with the repositories.
I think that you understand the issue but saying it in the way you did just perpetuates the confusion that seems to still exist about this.
Well, a lot of my rpm use is with Mandrake and urpmi, though I didn't mention it in my comment. So maybe I've missed a lot of the worst problems still occurring. Yum seemed like a very poor substitute for apt when I first tried it, but it seems much better now. Has been working quite well with FC 3 but I'm just using that for a server distro, and I haven't tried to do more than just update what I've installed from the base install. But I have no complaint if someone wants to compare yum etc with apt. Just don't confuse the problems from poor repositories or bad yum performance, etc with an RPM problem. They're two different things.
Apparently this has to be repeated continually for some people to get it:
Yum and Apt4RPM are to Apt as RPM is to dpkg.
All the "RPM sucks" comments are stupid. RPM does fine at what it is made for, as does dpkg. RPM does not manage dependancies, that's why Yum, Apt4RPM and the like were developed.
Now one can compare Yum, for example, to Apt, and that is an apples to apples comparison. Such tools are available to do the same things as Apt, and while the quality of the tools and repositories aren't as mature as those for Apt they're improving rapidly.
But it's just ignorant to complain about RPM and compare it to Apt or Portage.
There are some valid points here, and if something just has to get continuing to work well past fatigue may be necessary. However, IIRC, the original story indicated that crunch time at a lot of the game houses had evolved to where all the time was crunch time.
When you're working on your 70th hour you may indeed still accomplish 20 minutes of work that moves you a bit closer toward the goal. But when you do it week after week that may mean that the first hour of the next week you still only get 20 minutes of work done, due to residual fatigue.
So, after a certain point, after a few weeks of mega-overtime, I think you must hit the point of negative returns.
I'm with you. Not for the MS Office stuff, though. I do sometimes have to save an Excel password-protected spreadsheet, but bought Planmaker for that. I can open it with a Gnumeric, but couldn't save it with the password protection. Otherwise I'd have to install Excel with Crossover Office. What I do use Crossover Office for, though, is running Remedy. That's a must for me. I've heard from an insider that Linux support is planned for Remedy, but AFAIK it's not there yet.
There are gui clients that make it easy, but I just use the python script, like so: btdownloadcurses.py --max_upload_rate 25 http://bitflood.org:8080/file?info_hash=y%1B/%5D%9 5%A5M%13%81%B8_%27%1BQ%F7%1Es%96A%85 &
The "max_upload..." business keeps your internet connection from being hosed by uploading too fast to others (I usually keep the bittorrent process going for some time after I'm done getting mine in order to return the favor to others).
The "http:..." stuff is the url for the torrent, which is different for any torrent. It's from one of the links given in the story.
No need for root, just the btdownloadcurses.py client and shell access.
What I've seen is that management gets what it wants. As a relatively new sysadmin I've been apalled at some of the outdated security models where I work. For example, passwords on major unix boxes not even shadowed. But as long as management wants to push server consolidation, outsourcing and project after project, even those members of the overworked IT staff who might be concerned have no time to try to push or implement security projects.
I noted that the article mentions negative drivers like the fear of litigation being behind most spending on security. Now we have SOX (Sarbonnes Oxley) and our management is worried. All of a sudden all kinds of security monitoring is high priority.
How stupid that it takes lawsuits and government regulation to get management to decide that it's important to safeguard information assets.
Pretty good points, but I think it may be changing. Last I heard IBM was still working on moving all their desktops to Linux by the end of '95.
Like most Slashdotters I get impatient waiting for a tidal wave of Linux desktop adoption and seeing just ripples of it. But large corporations move slowly on major change. I make such a change in a day, a major corporation can take years. Hopefully we'll start seeing a lot more desktop Linux adoption as a result of some of the large, highly publicized migrations like Novell, IBM, Munich, etc.
Thanks! Very interesting project. I'll definitely check it out as Sametime is the official IM at work, where I'm using Linux and almost everyone else is using Win2k. It'd be nice to get away from the browser Sametime client. Just when I could use mod points I'm out, but at least someone modded this up.
That's a good theory and everyone likes it in the corporate world. But I've seen a database upgrade fail and the vendor had no solution but to roll back to the old version. I've also seen an HP-UX O/S upgrade fail for a known issue that HP knew about but hadn't publicized. Had to do a total restore from backup--no way to make the upgrade work. Yeah it's nice to have someone to call and theoretically be responsible, but in practice it may or may not buy you much. Depending on the software in question you can often get pretty good help and bug fixes with OSS. It seems to vary on a case by case basis, but in practice I don't think that you can necessarily count on better support or products because someone is "on the hook" with proprietary software.
Sorry, my link is the same as mrscorpio's. Should've reloaded before submitting comment. Probably worth checking out the link one time, though.
Texstar also created a new distro, based on Mandrake, which is here.I'm not sure how different from straight Mandrake it is, I've only played briefly with one of their live CDs. Might be worth a look for anyone who likes Mandrake, but isn't 100% satisfied with it. Personally, I've found Mandrake 10 good enough to stop installing new distros for now.
So you're saying that there's something wrong with a system where the plaintiff says "I have no evidence that I've been harmed, but I'd like the court to help me go on endless fishing expeditions to try and find some evidence that I've been wronged"?
Better KDE integration would be nice, particularly if it means better printing support. One of the main advantages of KDE apps at my office is the choice of printers and printer options, instead of the default printer with generic options being the only choice.
I'm inclined to agree, especially with the statement that most users just won't care.
What they do care about is why their computer won't play that music, display that web site properly, let them do online banking with their financial software, just use that modem or other hardware, etc. If Sun's Linux distro (that's what it is, no matter what they call it) gains traction it will just add to the the market share of Linux.
It's market share that will cause vendors to address the sort of problems that I mentioned. No, I don't trust Sun. Yes, I wish they'd be more upfront about what the Java Desktop System really is.
But overall I think that anything that increases the use of Linux under whatever name will result in the elimination of barriers to Linux adoption, and that's a good thing.
Yep, as the post by codepunk comments, Fedora is easy.
So is Mandrake 10, at least based on the Commnunity download that I've been running for a few days.
Right click the clock -> Adjust Date and Time, enter root passwd.
Check "Enable Network Time Protocol" and pick a timeserver, then save the changes.
Believe me, shipping broken packages happens with commercial software as well. We just upgraded a proprietary database package to a newer service pack. First on a test server, then on production. However, the developer testing didn't do a very good job. Turns out the new SP broke another application from the same vendor. Did the vendor have a fix? Nope. We had to do an emergency restore of the old SP. I sure am glad we're relying on a closed source, commercial solution where we have someone to call and be told that there's no fix available.
That's why it must really be a Microsoft spy plane. What scares MS more than the thought of open Windows?
I think that the general rule for gui config tools is to either use the tool or config things manually, but don't do both. Or, use the tool, then add your manual tweaks, saving a copy of the config before using the gui tool again.
Aggravating, but I've seen the case made for this typical behaviour elsewhere. The justification is that if joe user invokes the gui tool you want predictable results, not results subtly sabotaged by a previous botched hand edit of config files.
I was an accountant, mid-level management in a moderate size company ($50-60 million sales, several hundred employees). I didn't want to get to the end of my life and think "why the heck did I spend my whole life doing something that I don't enjoy".
I've always enjoyed technical things, but had a business degree. I went back to school for a while and was planning to get an EE or maybe MS in computer engineering. However, with a house and family that would be a very long hard road. Wound up getting a couple of certs, taking what I could find on a help desk.
Soon I got a job in a datacenter, tending backups, monitoring systems, etc. Gradually, I got to do more interesting stuff. After about a year and a half I got a better offer elsewhere. I actually left, but my previous employer countered with a better offer to be a Sys Admin/DBA on several large Unix boxes running Enterprise Apps.
I'm making almost what I made in accounting after 2-1/2 years in the field. Yes, I know that it's no longer the hot field. Sure, I wish it was--but I was in the Oil Industry when it went in the tank, so I already knew that industries have ups and downs.
I got in this because I love it--not every aspect of my job, but I love computers and technology. My house always has 4-5 computers in it, I run servers at home, play with programming, etc. I didn't get into this field because "it's a hot field, you'll make a lot", but rather because it was a field where they would pay me to do what I would do for free.
So, my vote is with the "find something you love to do" school.
I not a lawyer, but you're exactly right in that the rules are different when you're a monopoly. IIRC you can't sell something for less than your cost to drive your competitor out of business, subsidizing those sales with profits from other products or sales in other localities.
That's exactly what Microsoft did to Netscape by bundling IE. Netscape may well have helped them with its own stupidity but that does nothing to make Microsoft's actions either moral or legal.
Oh, I forgot, a browser is an integral part of an OS. What if SQL Server had been made an inextricable part of the OS--just long enough to put Oracle on the ropes. Perhaps could/would never have happened, but would that have been ok too?
I'm all for free as in beer when I can get it, but not at the expense of solidifying one company's proprietary monopoly to our long-term detriment.