Just to point out that almost every piece of software can be talked into running from a user's home, or if the default binary will not, it almost always will when recompiled. On Windows what choices you have ? That's right, admin or the highway. With cdroms, usbs, cdburning, one or some users can be let to do it easily while the rest still kept outside. And hell, this is a very good thing. Just imagine a multi-thousand user unix server where all users have access to these stuff. But at home, who cares ? Unless, of course, if you want to keep your little sister or old mum out.
It's really no different.
What it's different though is that on unix/linux you can do these things because you can, that is if needed, they are there. No fuss, just self evident that you have the tools you need (and added to that, yes, for you those who always keep saying acl/linux is a myth, it is not). On Windows ? One just keeps wishing the tools that exist are good enough to keep the darn thing safe and usable for a few months in a row, and even that longs for the Guinness.
Ok, sow most pc users are dumb in the topic so let's downgrade ourselves to express the threats in a more easily understandable form, right ? So now instead of terms like phishing we will write 10 lines of text at the end of which these people will still not understand the subject since 1). they are still not swallow tech stuff easily 2). they still do not care about trojans, viruses, phishing and the like 3). they just simply forget what the first 1-2 lines were about till they get to the end.
So, insted of switching to longish and dumb and dull explanatory descriptions, just fill the text with links to wikipedia terms and it's done. If joe6p want the explanation, can go there and educate himself. For the others, quickly to the subject. In time, the others might just catch up.
I know quite a few female SW fans. Many of them even have kids.
Hell, quite a night when you play Luke for your gal while she playing Leia:] Just hope your kids won't be wookiee rookies, 'cause you'll have to slash the mailman:) Well, tastes, tastes:)
I can't (well, in fact I can, but anyway) believe this guy got modded up the Interesting towertop for his ignorance of any graphics library and api besides MS's DX. Good job.
poses some of the most interesting challenges in computer science and information theory and application, database theory and application and some more. It is quite a nice wide area of possible R&D with great prospects for everyone, be them starters or veterans. And please don't say C.S. includes all that (especially since bashing if I.T. degrees on/. is so fashionable these days), it doesn't.
Research, yeah... not really sure what you're talking about.
Not that it's my businness, but I just thought to suggest you try browsing through the dozens*dozens^2 of wintweaking-related sites with tons of registry setting descriptions, many of which are undiscovered territories for average joe6packs, who can - if they wish, why would they - spend literally hours to even find out that there are some ways to improve whatever.
Then, the guy also said while it has a connection to a remote share, that is either slow or unreachable which is quite an important issue which really _can_ cause what he was talking about.
Re:latterly? & EM64T = AMD's coffin nails?
on
Windows XP X64 Goes Gold
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I can smell it now! Intel talks developers into porting based on EMT63T. These aps will not utilize full capabilities of the AMD product. This is good for Intel because it will get a gigantic breather
That was exactly what I thought when Intel came out with the reworked xeons to handle 64b. Thing is, Intel cpus have a so large market coverage (and will have) that if most people code for em64t then their code will probably not produce significant speed pushes when recompiled on opterons/fx's. And - so that others also get it clearer - em64t is _not_ a total full amd64 re-implementation. I for one would much more gladly see specifically opteron-coded stuff, because I firmly believe the opterons' architecture is a very good one: _very_ speedy and very low power. Even in this thread a few posts above someone posted some performance data where 3.4ghz xeon64 ran a code slower than an opteron 2.4ghz. Well, nothing new here, same good old amd way of doing cpus. Just what many of us like so much.
This is nothing new, we do this for ages. If you want to buy an oem windows version you just need to buy it together with some hardware (hdd, cd/dvd drive, sometimes even a mouse). That usually means getting a legal windows copy for about half the price of the boxed version plus the price of the hardware, which is usually no problem.
1) x86-64 is the same on both Intel and AMD. If they were really different, we would target Intel because Intel is shipping 10x the x86-64 volume AMD does.
As also one of the responses to this point out, you're not entirely right here. As I know it - and I'm not trolling here, just not having too much hands-on experience, so I could be somewhat wrong - they may "seem" equal, that is you can code almost exactly the same on them, but internally Opterons give you a 64bit architecture with all the benefits (and hypetransport being the chocolate on the cake) with 32bit compatibility, while 64bit-extended Xeons seem to be just as the name suggests.
In other words, the average computer is defective because it runs Windows. That makes perfect sense to me, but the argument "don't use that SW or OS" is valid, because to replace the OS you need to replace the hardware, too.
In other words, speak for yourself -- my Mac isn't defective!
Well, I _was_ speaking for myself:) Although I intentionally didn't speak explicitely about Windows (although maybe I probably should've), because many of the things I said are valid not just for Windows. And with the above to which you responded, I meant that for the most of the average people who just buy a pc/laptop to "use" it, won't easily accept that sw or the os itself can easily be replaced (or that it _should_ be replced in some cases). Things change as everyday people become more computer-literate each year, but you probably would have a hard time with the most of the simple users.
I don't think I fully got this one though: because to replace the OS you need to replace the hardware, too. In case you refer yo your Mac, that's perfectly fine. Still, you needn't do that to use a fine breed of Linux. I guess things could be a - tiny - bit easier if there was more often a choice to buy pcs/laptops with preintalled beginner-friendly easy Linux distros. But I also could be perfectly wring with this, who knows ?
Well, credit where it's due, my machine@work also runs winxp and, honestly, I don't remember when I last rebooted it, I think it's more than 3 weeks now (I could check, but it's not the point). Still, if somebody would ask me whether I would trust it not to trash itself in a few minutes, I couldn't. Why ? Hell, I remember a few sudden unexpected crashes caused by IMO minor things, and there were occasions when I wished to hit it:) which is funny, because I've never ever hit a computer in my life. On the other hand, I trust my debian boxes and the other linux servers (home or work) quite a bit more. Why ? Simple psychology: they've caused me much much^2 less disappointment (note: I'm talking about software issues here, not hardware).
who was so upset with his laptop that he threw it into deep fryer
Thing is, some software developer-vendor companies [no, I won't name any] achieved a somewhat outrageous point where sixpackjoes think that when a software error causes a hardware hangup and data loss (and a _huge_ part of hangups is caused by bad software, that including drivers) then the whole stuff (computer, laptop,...) is faulty and no wonder they will let their anger out on it. It's the typical "throw out the baby with the bath water" effect.
But what else can be expected in the world where the blue "e" still means "internet" for the vast majority.
Thing is, IMHO, this is not their fault. In an ideal world the people should not experience any such drawbacks even if they don't know the difference, and don't know that sw and hw are not the same and are not glued together for eternity.
And the argument "don't use that SW or OS, use this another" isn't going to work in such cases, and it shouldn't either, because they don't care about such things: they paid a lot of cash for the damn thing, and they - rightfully- expect it to work at least as flawlessly as other "home appliances". They don't - be the cause HW or SW - and well, that is usually hard to explain to the average grandma next door.
And now, at the end, after trying hardly to be quite impartial, I have to tell: if I don't count hw failures (not so often, I handbuild my machines and I'm good at it), I've been in heaven since I trusted my data to my debian box on xfs for quite a few years.
Yup, not "changed" so what ? GMail is still the best web-based e-mail service/client there is, ever. If they can think out new - and better - ways to extend it, ok, give it to me, but anyways, I don't feel the urging need to see it changed just for the sake of being changed. On the other hand, just int he last year they have come out with quite a few new stuff which they developed, not just bought up (ok, there have been exceptions, think Picasa) some startup and let it rot on the sidewalk. All in all, I don't mind if working and good implementations aren't changed just to keep people like you happy. I'd be more thrilled though if they would come up with even more new cool stuff.
I follow.a progress for a while now, and there always were things that bothered me. First, rpm is mentioned too much, others (apt inclusive) too less. When they reason about existing package systems and package management solutions, almost all the time everything is put into a big huge hat, mixed and at the end they just talk about package management systems as a whole, all of it being a piece of crap and useless to the extremes.
Secondly, I find the type of reasoning absolutely not convincing when they talk about the - only - way.a can become useful and survive: try and convince the library maintainers to produce their own autopackages, you could produce your own... or you could statically link the library... the development of a desktop Linux platform meaning this stuff i absolutle yno good unless everybody else drops everything they have and praise the new overlords of Linux package creation and management. Which is IMO quite a weak position.
Thirdly, arguing that.a is all over better than anything else out there, and again too much rpm-talk coming in waves (Why do the RPMs I find on the net today only work on one distro? then rpm features rpm can't do this, rpm won't work there,... wait, since when has rpm stepped out of some-of-us's nightmares and became "the" package management system everybody compares everything else against ? I can't even count the people I heard - including myself - swearing loud over rpm's "features" along the years.
Does it do automatic dependency resolution like apt and emerge?
Now, the only question I'm interested about. Given this, the (l)user-joe-6pack world would finally get to know some what package management really means.
At this point, you all probably just hate me all over and can hardly wait with that troll and flamebait clicks. To you, I have to tell, that.a is one of my dreams coming true. Ever since my first encounter with apt. So please, believe me I'm not against.a in any ways. I just find most of the reasonings behind it very weak. There are bad ways t do package management out there, plenty. Those that use them probably will feel in heaven when.a comes down to them. As for the other, well done and very good working package management systems, I just don't feel justified the bashing that goes towards them, trating them as they were just as lame and useless as the junky ones.
I also thought about this topic while having been a student. But, fortunately, we never had to sign anything regarding our future developments. Still, later, when I became phd student (still nothing signed) I came to know that it doesn't matter that we didn't sign anything, everything we make belongs to the university (you know, you sneeze here your life is ours). It probably is part of the regulations of the university, or I don't know how this can be true. But still, it is.
All I can do about this is that I don't do anything related to my own little projects during working hours. This is probably no real protection, but it is the only thing I can do as of now.
I think most Slashdotters are too young to remember
Ehh, no, I really don't know how old I was, but I remember my mother watching Dallas and in my memory there seems to be a period of time which I remember as the continuously-watched-dallas era, when my Mom was "dallasing" all the time. And I also remember (hell, why this, so much more better stuff would have fit in that place) the Bobby-coming-back story:) Hell, good ol' times:)
it's almost impossible to run it without using backports or handmade packages.
The problem is 1). you assume nobody else makes backports of the needed stuff or doesn't compile whatever is needed from sources if _necessary_ 2). I also didn't explicitely state that the default packages/install (which for some of us means a plain base install then the rest by apt&hand) can be tailored to your specific needs, which I felt evident.
- hardware support (2.4.18 linux kernel is very very very old in that aspect)
Where did I say you are not allowed to run newer kernels ? I never run debian kernels, currently 2.4.27 and 2.6.10 are the defaults here.
lacking... that HAVE to be there
Well, for you, and everyone has to specfify his _own_ needs, or is that not that self-evident as it should be. Woody and some hand-installed&maintained applications completely fill our needs.
ex. faulty FTP client in woody's PHP
That would be a problem only when I'd use it:P
apache2+subversion and so on)
There are some of us who constantly get bashed for using 1.3 series apache, but we do. We also happen to use cvs and not svn (yet). But these are _not_ valid excuses, I know, still they are good to prove my point: if it's too old for _you_ use something else. Until then, Debian stable is fine.
Thing is, for every problem there is a solution. One is to make your way with the existing setup. Another is to change it for something else. I'm not against any of these, but if I _can_ choose, then I stick with Debian.
Well, agreeable, newest Oracle or DB2 [just the quickest two examples that came] could cause severe trauma for every inexperienced who wanted to install them on Woodyr4. And well, Samba is also not the latest. That's true. But than again, who told to always need to use Debian [Woody] ? For general purpose server services [dns,gw,route,@,80,svn/cvs,my/psql,.......] it is just fine. (BTW, no serious trouble should occur with the above two on SID).
Well, fresh blood can mean speedup. Fresh people wanting to prove they're right can lead to overall improvement. And in one year they can't have enough time to settle in and slow that much down. And maybe one year is just enough for people being able to keep up the pace they have at the beginning.
All this is just hypothetic, but seems enough to justify.
So you think "arguments" like hey, we know the truth: the stuff can be either bad or good and calling himself the "chance of the reverse" don't deserve to be made fun of ? Gee, if this means I'm on drugs, then I plan to stay:P [/offtopic]
This is a "once more" new iteration of the same old idea of Debian updating their stable branch not often enough. And as always, I have to respectfully but totally disagree.
For one, people should really understand and see, that not all Linux distributions are just there to suit the newbie (l)users' desktop needs. This is just the attitude people gather while being full-blown Windows users and then fiddling around with some Linux, thinking it's cool and if he can't find his way around, then at least that';s another reason to bash.
Debian's stable branch is just _the_ perfect distro for servers. You can argue with this statement, but I will _not_ listen to home users' hysterical crap about the newest kde/gnome being necessary. There are places where that simply doesn't matter.
Where I spend my working hours very few people use Linux distros on their desktops, really very few, but almost all our servers are Linux based. The two of them where I hve root access are Debians. One is a current stable Woody, being web&mail&db&cvs&related server which I installed last year because the previous machine had a major blowup. The other is a Debian Potato (!) which is the previous [i.e. before Woody] stable branch, which is our dns server, up and working for... well, since about the Potato release.
No desktop environments, no x, just good stable and reliable code which I trust and - most importantly - _very_ _easy_ to maintain.
At home I use Debian SID for about 4 years now. Updated about weekly, _very_ stable and usable. It has all the desktop fun I need. Most important: it hasn't been reinstalled since the first install just always copied over to the changed machine (about once in a year, I always hand-build my machines ever since I became acquainted with the screw driver), updated the necessary stuff and keep it always apt-get dist-pgrade-ed.
For me, and for many others out there, Debian - and now the quite many Debian-based distros, hey, there are even Debian SID-based distros now (!) - represent _the_ _GNU/Linux_ _distro_. For the others, there are plenty of others you can use and that is exactly why Lnux distro forking is a Good Thing, try not to forget that.
Because 70 versions of something that work 70 different ways mean that it is more difficult to support for network staff and software vendors.
Where is it carved into stone that only the open source community people are always required to change their ways to suit the big bucks' desires ? The software businness is not a never-changing one, it's one in constant flow, following the constantly changing demands of the users. Oh wait, that's what FOSS is about. In my utopia the FOSS software development model is _the_ model. In big bucks' world, their way is the "golden path" (respect@dune) and FOSS developers [and Linux] are just people standing in the way.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to be root to install almost anything.
Just to point out that almost every piece of software can be talked into running from a user's home, or if the default binary will not, it almost always will when recompiled. On Windows what choices you have ? That's right, admin or the highway. With cdroms, usbs, cdburning, one or some users can be let to do it easily while the rest still kept outside. And hell, this is a very good thing. Just imagine a multi-thousand user unix server where all users have access to these stuff. But at home, who cares ? Unless, of course, if you want to keep your little sister or old mum out.
It's really no different.
What it's different though is that on unix/linux you can do these things because you can, that is if needed, they are there. No fuss, just self evident that you have the tools you need (and added to that, yes, for you those who always keep saying acl/linux is a myth, it is not). On Windows ? One just keeps wishing the tools that exist are good enough to keep the darn thing safe and usable for a few months in a row, and even that longs for the Guinness.
One good way to prove the older's point is e.g. to show a conference publication of the stuff in their bloody faces.
Ok, sow most pc users are dumb in the topic so let's downgrade ourselves to express the threats in a more easily understandable form, right ? So now instead of terms like phishing we will write 10 lines of text at the end of which these people will still not understand the subject since 1). they are still not swallow tech stuff easily 2). they still do not care about trojans, viruses, phishing and the like 3). they just simply forget what the first 1-2 lines were about till they get to the end.
So, insted of switching to longish and dumb and dull explanatory descriptions, just fill the text with links to wikipedia terms and it's done. If joe6p want the explanation, can go there and educate himself. For the others, quickly to the subject. In time, the others might just catch up.
I know quite a few female SW fans. Many of them even have kids.
:] Just hope your kids won't be wookiee rookies, 'cause you'll have to slash the mailman :) Well, tastes, tastes :)
Hell, quite a night when you play Luke for your gal while she playing Leia
I can't (well, in fact I can, but anyway) believe this guy got modded up the Interesting towertop for his ignorance of any graphics library and api besides MS's DX. Good job.
poses some of the most interesting challenges in computer science and information theory and application, database theory and application and some more. It is quite a nice wide area of possible R&D with great prospects for everyone, be them starters or veterans. And please don't say C.S. includes all that (especially since bashing if I.T. degrees on /. is so fashionable these days), it doesn't.
Research, yeah... not really sure what you're talking about.
Not that it's my businness, but I just thought to suggest you try browsing through the dozens*dozens^2 of wintweaking-related sites with tons of registry setting descriptions, many of which are undiscovered territories for average joe6packs, who can - if they wish, why would they - spend literally hours to even find out that there are some ways to improve whatever.
Then, the guy also said while it has a connection to a remote share, that is either slow or unreachable which is quite an important issue which really _can_ cause what he was talking about.
I can smell it now! Intel talks developers into porting based on EMT63T. These aps will not utilize full capabilities of the AMD product. This is good for Intel because it will get a gigantic breather
That was exactly what I thought when Intel came out with the reworked xeons to handle 64b. Thing is, Intel cpus have a so large market coverage (and will have) that if most people code for em64t then their code will probably not produce significant speed pushes when recompiled on opterons/fx's. And - so that others also get it clearer - em64t is _not_ a total full amd64 re-implementation. I for one would much more gladly see specifically opteron-coded stuff, because I firmly believe the opterons' architecture is a very good one: _very_ speedy and very low power. Even in this thread a few posts above someone posted some performance data where 3.4ghz xeon64 ran a code slower than an opteron 2.4ghz. Well, nothing new here, same good old amd way of doing cpus. Just what many of us like so much.
This is nothing new, we do this for ages. If you want to buy an oem windows version you just need to buy it together with some hardware (hdd, cd/dvd drive, sometimes even a mouse). That usually means getting a legal windows copy for about half the price of the boxed version plus the price of the hardware, which is usually no problem.
1) x86-64 is the same on both Intel and AMD. If they were really different, we would target Intel because Intel is shipping 10x the x86-64 volume AMD does.
As also one of the responses to this point out, you're not entirely right here. As I know it - and I'm not trolling here, just not having too much hands-on experience, so I could be somewhat wrong - they may "seem" equal, that is you can code almost exactly the same on them, but internally Opterons give you a 64bit architecture with all the benefits (and hypetransport being the chocolate on the cake) with 32bit compatibility, while 64bit-extended Xeons seem to be just as the name suggests.
In other words, the average computer is defective because it runs Windows. That makes perfect sense to me, but the argument "don't use that SW or OS" is valid, because to replace the OS you need to replace the hardware, too.
:) Although I intentionally didn't speak explicitely about Windows (although maybe I probably should've), because many of the things I said are valid not just for Windows. And with the above to which you responded, I meant that for the most of the average people who just buy a pc/laptop to "use" it, won't easily accept that sw or the os itself can easily be replaced (or that it _should_ be replced in some cases). Things change as everyday people become more computer-literate each year, but you probably would have a hard time with the most of the simple users.
In other words, speak for yourself -- my Mac isn't defective!
Well, I _was_ speaking for myself
I don't think I fully got this one though: because to replace the OS you need to replace the hardware, too. In case you refer yo your Mac, that's perfectly fine. Still, you needn't do that to use a fine breed of Linux. I guess things could be a - tiny - bit easier if there was more often a choice to buy pcs/laptops with preintalled beginner-friendly easy Linux distros. But I also could be perfectly wring with this, who knows ?
Well, credit where it's due, my machine@work also runs winxp and, honestly, I don't remember when I last rebooted it, I think it's more than 3 weeks now (I could check, but it's not the point). Still, if somebody would ask me whether I would trust it not to trash itself in a few minutes, I couldn't. Why ? Hell, I remember a few sudden unexpected crashes caused by IMO minor things, and there were occasions when I wished to hit it :) which is funny, because I've never ever hit a computer in my life. On the other hand, I trust my debian boxes and the other linux servers (home or work) quite a bit more. Why ? Simple psychology: they've caused me much much^2 less disappointment (note: I'm talking about software issues here, not hardware).
who was so upset with his laptop that he threw it into deep fryer
...) is faulty and no wonder they will let their anger out on it. It's the typical "throw out the baby with the bath water" effect.
Thing is, some software developer-vendor companies [no, I won't name any] achieved a somewhat outrageous point where sixpackjoes think that when a software error causes a hardware hangup and data loss (and a _huge_ part of hangups is caused by bad software, that including drivers) then the whole stuff (computer, laptop,
But what else can be expected in the world where the blue "e" still means "internet" for the vast majority.
Thing is, IMHO, this is not their fault. In an ideal world the people should not experience any such drawbacks even if they don't know the difference, and don't know that sw and hw are not the same and are not glued together for eternity.
And the argument "don't use that SW or OS, use this another" isn't going to work in such cases, and it shouldn't either, because they don't care about such things: they paid a lot of cash for the damn thing, and they - rightfully- expect it to work at least as flawlessly as other "home appliances". They don't - be the cause HW or SW - and well, that is usually hard to explain to the average grandma next door.
And now, at the end, after trying hardly to be quite impartial, I have to tell: if I don't count hw failures (not so often, I handbuild my machines and I'm good at it), I've been in heaven since I trusted my data to my debian box on xfs for quite a few years.
Yup, not "changed" so what ? GMail is still the best web-based e-mail service/client there is, ever. If they can think out new - and better - ways to extend it, ok, give it to me, but anyways, I don't feel the urging need to see it changed just for the sake of being changed. On the other hand, just int he last year they have come out with quite a few new stuff which they developed, not just bought up (ok, there have been exceptions, think Picasa) some startup and let it rot on the sidewalk. All in all, I don't mind if working and good implementations aren't changed just to keep people like you happy. I'd be more thrilled though if they would come up with even more new cool stuff.
I follow .a progress for a while now, and there always were things that bothered me. First, rpm is mentioned too much, others (apt inclusive) too less. When they reason about existing package systems and package management solutions, almost all the time everything is put into a big huge hat, mixed and at the end they just talk about package management systems as a whole, all of it being a piece of crap and useless to the extremes.
.a can become useful and survive: try and convince the library maintainers to produce their own autopackages, you could produce your own ... or you could statically link the library ... the development of a desktop Linux platform meaning this stuff i absolutle yno good unless everybody else drops everything they have and praise the new overlords of Linux package creation and management. Which is IMO quite a weak position.
.a is all over better than anything else out there, and again too much rpm-talk coming in waves (Why do the RPMs I find on the net today only work on one distro? then rpm features rpm can't do this, rpm won't work there, ... wait, since when has rpm stepped out of some-of-us's nightmares and became "the" package management system everybody compares everything else against ? I can't even count the people I heard - including myself - swearing loud over rpm's "features" along the years.
.a is one of my dreams coming true. Ever since my first encounter with apt. So please, believe me I'm not against .a in any ways. I just find most of the reasonings behind it very weak. There are bad ways t do package management out there, plenty. Those that use them probably will feel in heaven when .a comes down to them. As for the other, well done and very good working package management systems, I just don't feel justified the bashing that goes towards them, trating them as they were just as lame and useless as the junky ones.
.a .
Secondly, I find the type of reasoning absolutely not convincing when they talk about the - only - way
Thirdly, arguing that
Does it do automatic dependency resolution like apt and emerge?
Now, the only question I'm interested about. Given this, the (l)user-joe-6pack world would finally get to know some what package management really means.
At this point, you all probably just hate me all over and can hardly wait with that troll and flamebait clicks. To you, I have to tell, that
Okay, I blattered 'nuff. Go
I also thought about this topic while having been a student. But, fortunately, we never had to sign anything regarding our future developments. Still, later, when I became phd student (still nothing signed) I came to know that it doesn't matter that we didn't sign anything, everything we make belongs to the university (you know, you sneeze here your life is ours). It probably is part of the regulations of the university, or I don't know how this can be true. But still, it is.
All I can do about this is that I don't do anything related to my own little projects during working hours. This is probably no real protection, but it is the only thing I can do as of now.
I think most Slashdotters are too young to remember
:) Hell, good ol' times :)
Ehh, no, I really don't know how old I was, but I remember my mother watching Dallas and in my memory there seems to be a period of time which I remember as the continuously-watched-dallas era, when my Mom was "dallasing" all the time. And I also remember (hell, why this, so much more better stuff would have fit in that place) the Bobby-coming-back story
This comment is totally insane.
:]
... that HAVE to be there
:P
I love you too
it's almost impossible to run it without using backports or handmade packages.
The problem is 1). you assume nobody else makes backports of the needed stuff or doesn't compile whatever is needed from sources if _necessary_ 2). I also didn't explicitely state that the default packages/install (which for some of us means a plain base install then the rest by apt&hand) can be tailored to your specific needs, which I felt evident.
- hardware support (2.4.18 linux kernel is very very very old in that aspect)
Where did I say you are not allowed to run newer kernels ? I never run debian kernels, currently 2.4.27 and 2.6.10 are the defaults here.
lacking
Well, for you, and everyone has to specfify his _own_ needs, or is that not that self-evident as it should be. Woody and some hand-installed&maintained applications completely fill our needs.
ex. faulty FTP client in woody's PHP
That would be a problem only when I'd use it
apache2+subversion and so on)
There are some of us who constantly get bashed for using 1.3 series apache, but we do. We also happen to use cvs and not svn (yet). But these are _not_ valid excuses, I know, still they are good to prove my point: if it's too old for _you_ use something else. Until then, Debian stable is fine.
Thing is, for every problem there is a solution. One is to make your way with the existing setup. Another is to change it for something else. I'm not against any of these, but if I _can_ choose, then I stick with Debian.
Believe it or not
Believe it or not, I also live on this planet.
Well, agreeable, newest Oracle or DB2 [just the quickest two examples that came] could cause severe trauma for every inexperienced who wanted to install them on Woodyr4. And well, Samba is also not the latest. That's true. But than again, who told to always need to use Debian [Woody] ? For general purpose server services [dns,gw,route,@,80,svn/cvs,my/psql,.......] it is just fine. (BTW, no serious trouble should occur with the above two on SID).
And that's why there are Sarge and SID, these can very well serve as your so new application's testing ground.
Well, fresh blood can mean speedup. Fresh people wanting to prove they're right can lead to overall improvement. And in one year they can't have enough time to settle in and slow that much down. And maybe one year is just enough for people being able to keep up the pace they have at the beginning.
All this is just hypothetic, but seems enough to justify.
[offtopic]
:P
Get nursie to increase the dose!
So you think "arguments" like hey, we know the truth: the stuff can be either bad or good and calling himself the "chance of the reverse" don't deserve to be made fun of ? Gee, if this means I'm on drugs, then I plan to stay
[/offtopic]
This is a "once more" new iteration of the same old idea of Debian updating their stable branch not often enough. And as always, I have to respectfully but totally disagree.
... well, since about the Potato release.
For one, people should really understand and see, that not all Linux distributions are just there to suit the newbie (l)users' desktop needs. This is just the attitude people gather while being full-blown Windows users and then fiddling around with some Linux, thinking it's cool and if he can't find his way around, then at least that';s another reason to bash.
Debian's stable branch is just _the_ perfect distro for servers. You can argue with this statement, but I will _not_ listen to home users' hysterical crap about the newest kde/gnome being necessary. There are places where that simply doesn't matter.
Where I spend my working hours very few people use Linux distros on their desktops, really very few, but almost all our servers are Linux based. The two of them where I hve root access are Debians. One is a current stable Woody, being web&mail&db&cvs&related server which I installed last year because the previous machine had a major blowup. The other is a Debian Potato (!) which is the previous [i.e. before Woody] stable branch, which is our dns server, up and working for
No desktop environments, no x, just good stable and reliable code which I trust and - most importantly - _very_ _easy_ to maintain.
At home I use Debian SID for about 4 years now. Updated about weekly, _very_ stable and usable. It has all the desktop fun I need. Most important: it hasn't been reinstalled since the first install just always copied over to the changed machine (about once in a year, I always hand-build my machines ever since I became acquainted with the screw driver), updated the necessary stuff and keep it always apt-get dist-pgrade-ed.
For me, and for many others out there, Debian - and now the quite many Debian-based distros, hey, there are even Debian SID-based distros now (!) - represent _the_ _GNU/Linux_ _distro_. For the others, there are plenty of others you can use and that is exactly why Lnux distro forking is a Good Thing, try not to forget that.
Is Windows more scalable?
:D Such great laugh is good for the heart :D More scalable than what ? Chipmunk dirt ?
ROTFLMAO
Because 70 versions of something that work 70 different ways mean that it is more difficult to support for network staff and software vendors.
Where is it carved into stone that only the open source community people are always required to change their ways to suit the big bucks' desires ? The software businness is not a never-changing one, it's one in constant flow, following the constantly changing demands of the users. Oh wait, that's what FOSS is about. In my utopia the FOSS software development model is _the_ model. In big bucks' world, their way is the "golden path" (respect@dune) and FOSS developers [and Linux] are just people standing in the way.