First of all I am very greatful for everything he did. I know he contributed a lot. Hope the handover will be more than this emotional message: "Please talk to the new tty maintainer whoever that ends up. I no longer care."
You'll be pleased to hear that not only is Alan helping with the handover, he's been providing some constructive criticism about the way the bug is being fixed now Linus and a few other people have turned their full attention to it.
you may read the appellate court's decision here (PDF) or on scribd.
Or if scribd is insufficiently annoying, we can print it out with an old 40 chars-per-line dot matrix, onto toasted wholemeal bread. We can then supply a strong lamp, a pen, and some blank bread for use as notepaper whilst you attempt to decipher it.
I don't know why this is moderated "Funny" -- it's one of the most "Insightful" posts I've read on/. today.
Scribd is complete slow, buggy, poorly-thought-out garbage.
Perhaps because universities would like to prevent people from auditing courses that they didn't pay for.
Are you kidding me? It's called a "university" for a reason.
As a datum: at the university I attended (which, coincidentally, has produced several of the greatest polymaths in history), once you are at the university, you are permitted -- encouraged, even -- to attend any lecture courses that interest you or may assist you in your studies. (Of course, that doesn't apply to lab experiments or experimental coursework).
If you suggested to someone there that the university should start excluding students from courses which they haven't "paid for", you'd get funny looks. The fact that there are institutions with quite such a mercenary approach to their students doesn't say much for their academic credentials, frankly.
Awww... a cute environment angle. All science stores have to have them now I guess.
You jest, but I work in satellite remote sensing -- and all the research funding is for environmental monitoring and geoscience (and it always has been, since the 1970s or thereabouts). The primary mission for these sorts of payloads is, in fact, environmental monitoring. Nothing cute about it.
Agreed. Take note, KDE4 developers. When you're baffled at the negative feedback you're getting, keep this in mind.
I've provided no feedback, positive or negative, to the KDE 4 developers. Nevertheless, you may attempt to prise my KDE 4 desktop from my cold, dead fingers.
Take note, KDE 4 developers, that the vast and silent majority of the KDE 4 userbase likes what you're doing and doesn't want you to kowtow to the whinging minority.
Now, here's a pop quiz. If the RIAA and MPAA sued Microsoft and Oracle over breaching the copyright of their DRM, Richard Stallman testified on behalf of the RIAA and Theo de Raadt spoke in favour of Microsoft... Who would you cheer for?
the KDE devs had perfectly good reasons to release it as 4.0
Name one.
Binary API stability. Applications compiled against the KDE 4.0 libs are guaranteed to work without recompiling through to KDE 5.0. That's a very, very good reason for the KDE 4.0 release being called KDE 4.0. It's a flag to developers that, yes, this really is the target to develop your apps against, and it is definitely not going to change underneath you.
As far as I can tell, that's the reason that KDE 4.0 was called KDE 4.0 -- because it was the true start of the KDE 4 lifecycle.
I'm talking 2D and 3D video, sound, music, input and so on.
It already exists: it's SDL (input and infrastructure) + OpenAL (3D audio) + OpenGL (3D graphics). Completely portable -- in fact, OpenAL is extremely widely used on Windows already.
None of this "Edit text files and compile with GCC," crap.
This comment is risible. (Obviously, they should edit text files and compile with G++).
Yes: don't forget that X is a client-server architecture, and that the protocol has been stabilised & standardised for years. You don't have to be using a client library which matches the server version, although that might affect what X extensions you can use.
The client-server stuff is what makes X so interesting (and powerful) IMHO.
However, if you are running a recent version of Fedora, there's fuck all chance you or anyone else will actually be able to use the computer, since the developers go out of their way to break everything, and don't bother to fix it. They are too busy ramming kernel mode setting or "plymouth" or hideous lion wallpaper down everyone's throats.
One anecdote against another, I suppose. I can't speak for your experiences, but in general Fedora has "just worked" for me. Don't let that get in the way of your making snarky sarcastic comments!
I agree. Note that if you're running a recent version of Fedora, there's a built-in 'xguest' SELinux profile which is completely locked down -- that might interest you, along with the fast user switching.
I know that RedHat is putting a lot of weight behind Java technology as one of the first and foremost distros for the OpenJDK. I can attest that the QT Java bindings are way better than the GNOME bindings. It would make sense for RedHat to toss weight behind QT. Google already uses QT for Google Earth. And KHTML is, sorta, WebKit which is Chrome. It all makes more sense to put our weight in QT.
Qt now includes a Webkit-based HTML renderer directly.
Want to download software you need? Better hope it supports your package system, and better hope it was made for Gnome or GTK or whatever you're using.
Usually, when I download software I need, it comes with some clever bash scripts that detect my compiler and what versions of libraries I have, and configures a custom build of the software for my specific needs. It's quite remarkable!
Snarkiness aside, I happily run KDE apps on a GNOME desktop & GNOME apps on my KDE desktop. What's the big deal?
Yes, when distributing binaries one must target not only a specific distribution, but a specific release and a specific CPU architecture as well.
This is not true. If you make a binary installer with your own link libraries for all of the dependencies you need, you can successfully make a closed-source release which works on just about any kernel since 2.6 with the correct architecture. The Linux userspace ABI is very stable.
If you want to use open-source libraries that would make such a binary blob legally difficult, that's your choice.
I love me some Linux, all my server boxes run it and I do do app and gui work on it, but the last time I tried to port a game to it I just gave up in disgust after hitting the sound stuff. And it wasn't just the sound, it was getting the mouse input, getting gamepad input, and a bunch of other things you don't even think about normally but have to work right to get a game running.
You were probably looking for SDL and OpenAL. They Just Work for all of the stuff you mention (and make it easy to use the same code between Linux & Windows builds), and there have been lots of games successfully based on them, such as OpenTTD.
I mean if I am a hardware manufacturer it takes just three drivers if I want to support Windows past, present, and future with a binary driver. Four if I want to cover the niches. I just have my developers write a Win98/ME, A win2k/XP, and a Vista/Win7. I add a WinXP64/Vista64 and since Win7 can use Vista drivers I have everything from 1998-2014 completely covered with just four binary drivers and no more out of pocket. There just ain't a way to do that in Linux.
There's a much easier way. Send a message to the kernel list saying, "I am a hardware manufacturer. Here are the docs for my hardware under NDA, and here's some samples." Ta-da! You get drivers written for free (or significantly reduced), and every subsequent distro release will support your hardware by default.
IMHO, this is the biggest barrier that keeps commercial development out of Linux. Basically, the Linux philosophy assumes that all applications are open source, so it doesn't matter if the ABI changes with every point release of the kernel, since the distros can just recompile all their binaries when packaging. This philosophy is incompatible with the commercial software method of distributing apps as binary blobs.
You're an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Applications run in userspace. The Linux userspace ABI has been stable since 2.6.0 IIRC. Lots of vendors (such as id Software) release completely closed source binary blobs which run on any 2.6.x Linux kernel. There are many examples of vendors who release binary blob applications for Linux and successfully run them on a variety of distributions and kernel builds.
What changes between versions is the kernel's internal ABI, which is totally hidden from userspace. This prevents closed source hardware drivers in the kernel from working between different kernel releases. Userspace drivers (e.g. USB devices) aren't affected by this.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>"Iceland" == "Ireland"
False
First of all I am very greatful for everything he did. I know he contributed a lot. Hope the handover will be more than this emotional message: "Please talk to the new tty maintainer whoever that ends up. I no longer care."
You'll be pleased to hear that not only is Alan helping with the handover, he's been providing some constructive criticism about the way the bug is being fixed now Linus and a few other people have turned their full attention to it.
Or if scribd is insufficiently annoying, we can print it out with an old 40 chars-per-line dot matrix, onto toasted wholemeal bread. We can then supply a strong lamp, a pen, and some blank bread for use as notepaper whilst you attempt to decipher it.
I don't know why this is moderated "Funny" -- it's one of the most "Insightful" posts I've read on /. today.
Scribd is complete slow, buggy, poorly-thought-out garbage.
Perhaps because universities would like to prevent people from auditing courses that they didn't pay for.
Are you kidding me? It's called a "university" for a reason.
As a datum: at the university I attended (which, coincidentally, has produced several of the greatest polymaths in history), once you are at the university, you are permitted -- encouraged, even -- to attend any lecture courses that interest you or may assist you in your studies. (Of course, that doesn't apply to lab experiments or experimental coursework).
If you suggested to someone there that the university should start excluding students from courses which they haven't "paid for", you'd get funny looks. The fact that there are institutions with quite such a mercenary approach to their students doesn't say much for their academic credentials, frankly.
Sakai and Moodle are options, but if your business plan involves volunteer labor or grant money, I think you might not have much of a market.
You know, I think you might be surprised how much more active Moodle gets if you send the money you were planning to spend on BB their way... ;)
Awww... a cute environment angle. All science stores have to have them now I guess.
You jest, but I work in satellite remote sensing -- and all the research funding is for environmental monitoring and geoscience (and it always has been, since the 1970s or thereabouts). The primary mission for these sorts of payloads is, in fact, environmental monitoring. Nothing cute about it.
Even Linux users can "legitimately" use WMV if they want.
How?
So, i take it you haven't "upgraded" to KDE 4.x yet. :)
I take it that you haven't upgraded to KDE 4 either, or you'd know that the functionality described by the GP works just fine in KDE 4.
Oh, wait, that would mean that you couldn't make a snarky comment about KDE 4. Never mind, then.
Agreed. Take note, KDE4 developers. When you're baffled at the negative feedback you're getting, keep this in mind.
I've provided no feedback, positive or negative, to the KDE 4 developers. Nevertheless, you may attempt to prise my KDE 4 desktop from my cold, dead fingers.
Take note, KDE 4 developers, that the vast and silent majority of the KDE 4 userbase likes what you're doing and doesn't want you to kowtow to the whinging minority.
Oh, and there's no such thing as an "exact" measurement. Not even in engineering.
Especially not in engineering.
Now, here's a pop quiz. If the RIAA and MPAA sued Microsoft and Oracle over breaching the copyright of their DRM, Richard Stallman testified on behalf of the RIAA and Theo de Raadt spoke in favour of Microsoft... Who would you cheer for?
Your momma, obviously!
the KDE devs had perfectly good reasons to release it as 4.0
Name one.
Binary API stability. Applications compiled against the KDE 4.0 libs are guaranteed to work without recompiling through to KDE 5.0. That's a very, very good reason for the KDE 4.0 release being called KDE 4.0. It's a flag to developers that, yes, this really is the target to develop your apps against, and it is definitely not going to change underneath you.
As far as I can tell, that's the reason that KDE 4.0 was called KDE 4.0 -- because it was the true start of the KDE 4 lifecycle.
I'm talking 2D and 3D video, sound, music, input and so on.
It already exists: it's SDL (input and infrastructure) + OpenAL (3D audio) + OpenGL (3D graphics). Completely portable -- in fact, OpenAL is extremely widely used on Windows already.
None of this "Edit text files and compile with GCC," crap.
This comment is risible. (Obviously, they should edit text files and compile with G++).
Soloution? Pour more money into NASA!
Um, the GPS constellation belongs to the USAF.
A serious question, and not an attempt to troll: has anyone actually done it that way, successfully?
Bay 12 Games uses this business model for Dwarf Fortress.
Yes: don't forget that X is a client-server architecture, and that the protocol has been stabilised & standardised for years. You don't have to be using a client library which matches the server version, although that might affect what X extensions you can use.
The client-server stuff is what makes X so interesting (and powerful) IMHO.
However, if you are running a recent version of Fedora, there's fuck all chance you or anyone else will actually be able to use the computer, since the developers go out of their way to break everything, and don't bother to fix it. They are too busy ramming kernel mode setting or "plymouth" or hideous lion wallpaper down everyone's throats.
One anecdote against another, I suppose. I can't speak for your experiences, but in general Fedora has "just worked" for me. Don't let that get in the way of your making snarky sarcastic comments!
create a guest account.
I agree. Note that if you're running a recent version of Fedora, there's a built-in 'xguest' SELinux profile which is completely locked down -- that might interest you, along with the fast user switching.
You get drivers written for free (or significantly reduced), and every subsequent distro release will support your hardware by default.
I forgot to add that if your hardware is popular enough, people will even volunteer to backport the drivers to older versions of Linux!
I know that RedHat is putting a lot of weight behind Java technology as one of the first and foremost distros for the OpenJDK. I can attest that the QT Java bindings are way better than the GNOME bindings. It would make sense for RedHat to toss weight behind QT. Google already uses QT for Google Earth. And KHTML is, sorta, WebKit which is Chrome. It all makes more sense to put our weight in QT.
Qt now includes a Webkit-based HTML renderer directly.
QtWebKit
Also, yes, WebKit grew out of the KHTML sourcecode, and Chrome is based on WebKit. Isn't Free software great?
Want to download software you need? Better hope it supports your package system, and better hope it was made for Gnome or GTK or whatever you're using.
Usually, when I download software I need, it comes with some clever bash scripts that detect my compiler and what versions of libraries I have, and configures a custom build of the software for my specific needs. It's quite remarkable!
Snarkiness aside, I happily run KDE apps on a GNOME desktop & GNOME apps on my KDE desktop. What's the big deal?
Yes, when distributing binaries one must target not only a specific distribution, but a specific release and a specific CPU architecture as well.
This is not true. If you make a binary installer with your own link libraries for all of the dependencies you need, you can successfully make a closed-source release which works on just about any kernel since 2.6 with the correct architecture. The Linux userspace ABI is very stable.
If you want to use open-source libraries that would make such a binary blob legally difficult, that's your choice.
I love me some Linux, all my server boxes run it and I do do app and gui work on it, but the last time I tried to port a game to it I just gave up in disgust after hitting the sound stuff. And it wasn't just the sound, it was getting the mouse input, getting gamepad input, and a bunch of other things you don't even think about normally but have to work right to get a game running.
You were probably looking for SDL and OpenAL. They Just Work for all of the stuff you mention (and make it easy to use the same code between Linux & Windows builds), and there have been lots of games successfully based on them, such as OpenTTD.
Hope that helps!
I mean if I am a hardware manufacturer it takes just three drivers if I want to support Windows past, present, and future with a binary driver. Four if I want to cover the niches. I just have my developers write a Win98/ME, A win2k/XP, and a Vista/Win7. I add a WinXP64/Vista64 and since Win7 can use Vista drivers I have everything from 1998-2014 completely covered with just four binary drivers and no more out of pocket. There just ain't a way to do that in Linux.
There's a much easier way. Send a message to the kernel list saying, "I am a hardware manufacturer. Here are the docs for my hardware under NDA, and here's some samples." Ta-da! You get drivers written for free (or significantly reduced), and every subsequent distro release will support your hardware by default.
IMHO, this is the biggest barrier that keeps commercial development out of Linux. Basically, the Linux philosophy assumes that all applications are open source, so it doesn't matter if the ABI changes with every point release of the kernel, since the distros can just recompile all their binaries when packaging. This philosophy is incompatible with the commercial software method of distributing apps as binary blobs.
You're an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Applications run in userspace. The Linux userspace ABI has been stable since 2.6.0 IIRC. Lots of vendors (such as id Software) release completely closed source binary blobs which run on any 2.6.x Linux kernel. There are many examples of vendors who release binary blob applications for Linux and successfully run them on a variety of distributions and kernel builds.
What changes between versions is the kernel's internal ABI, which is totally hidden from userspace. This prevents closed source hardware drivers in the kernel from working between different kernel releases. Userspace drivers (e.g. USB devices) aren't affected by this.
Take your FUD elsewhere, sir.