Most distros come with everything you might need compiled as a module, and a number of packages that require their own kernel modules will build against the existing kernel automagically, eg. freeswan.
He already mentioned that he was slightly off, but just FYI, DSL has been available in some areas for quite a long time. An ISP where I live offered DSL for business clients around 96 or 97.
I for one think that it's a horrible to "unite" behind one distro. One thing that makes Linux great is the diversity that allows people to experiment, and everyone benefits.
OTOH, it would be nice if there was a single specification vendors could support, eg. the LSB.
Why do they bother with this? Do people really listen to audio tracks while sitting in front of their computer? My stereo plays mp3 and ogg, therefore any digital audio that is not mp3 or ogg is completely worthless to me.
Did you misunderstand me? I was laughing at him, Boies.
That would be really excellent if it's true and he gets disbarred:)
What a worthless bag of crap...
Seriously, I agree with the original poster about Boies. Why does anyone think he's a respectable lawyer? He "won" the anti-trust suit against MS, but frankly, he did a piss poor job IMO. There were so many things he didn't go into that would have helped make his case. Any anti-MS/.er could have made that case better.
Also, you are forgetting about the disbarment threat he's under in Miami as a result of legal shennanigans over litigation involving his girlfriend's landscaping company.
Oh sweet Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick! That is just too much! Sides. Splitting. Help!
300,000 lines of code in 500 files, the infringing lines being contained in those, meaning it's not 300,000 lines of infringing code, rather, it's far less.
What's the penalty under the law for putting a backdoor in an open-sourced software project?
Plenty, probably, but that's irrelevent anyway. This person wasn't authorized to put anything in, and there are plenty of laws against unauthorized "hacking."
I would imagine putting a backdoor in an OS project is legally quite the same as in a proprietary one.
Re: fonts - most important apps support the new font systems, but the point it still moot. Old Windows and Mac apps have similar problems. X/Linux has had excellent font support for ~2 years or so, there's no excuse for important apps to not have been updated in that time.
I'm a full-time Linux user since 1998, ie. I have used Linux full-time as my workstation OS, and I have used a number of proprietary apps, written a good amount of code, etc., and the library problems described are preposterously overblown.
The last serious issue was when all the distros switched to glibc, which was quite some time ago. I'm still using binaries from right after that switch.
In that time, Mac OS has been a much more unstable target, but vendors don't bitch nearly as much about that.
The fonts issue has been fixed for... well, quite some time now. All distributions ship with good font support these days.
Every "modern" app, ie. KDE 3 and GNOME 2, supports the new font system.
Number of Linux distributions: There's no way to
make a good installer that will install a commercial app on Linux and have everything work. There are too many dependencies for specific versions of libraries and things that would make this sort of thing worse than any kind of Windows DLL hell.
Complete horsedung. Proprietary apps can ship with all the lib versions they require, just like many do with Windows. This is often an excuse given by vendors, but vendors that support Linux properly don't have many such problems. Eg. Loki always shipped the versions of SDL, OpenAl, etc. their games depended on, and none of their games had library problems.
OTOH, glibc sometimes breaks some apps, usually when said apps are doing something wrong.
The only problem with Linux these days is hardware installation, due to lack of support.
The difference is simply that NVIDIA has competent driver writers. NVIDIA has a binary driver, with a very small source-based wrapper, and they wrote a simple installer that handles building it.
Their Linux driver is based on their Windows driver, and shares 90%+ of the same code.
OTOH, that's not to say that you don't have a valid point, distributing binary drivers for Linux could definately be easier. I think that "problem" has been ignored so far because a lot of kernel developers don't want to encourage distribution of binary drivers, which is understandable, IMO.
BTW, you don't have to patch your kernel to add new drivers, there are plenty of drivers distributed as source that will build against the existing kernel.
I agree with you about JuK, I don't see how they claim it is anything like iTunes - I just don't see how it is. That interface does not look anything like iTunes.
Rhythmbox, OTOH, is an iTunes clone, and it works very much like iTunes does. Unfortuneately, Rhythmbox development has been extremely slow, but it is starting to pick up now, probably because gstreamer is finally starting to become usable.
Where I work, we have a guy who has done some simple "programming" with MS Access. Sure, it works pretty darn well, but at the first sign of trouble, it falls all over itself with undebuggable garbage.
Not only that, but it is entirely unmaintainable, even by him.
Real programming is a whole lot more than just pushing some buttons around.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I don't have enough time to play all the games on Linux I want to play, so...
Great time to be a Linux user if you ask me :)
You don't mean to tell me that Microsoft was only saying what was in their best interest, are you?
Hehe, sorry :)
I for one think that it's a horrible to "unite" behind one distro. One thing that makes Linux great is the diversity that allows people to experiment, and everyone benefits.
OTOH, it would be nice if there was a single specification vendors could support, eg. the LSB.
That would be really excellent if it's true and he gets disbarred :)
What a worthless bag of crap...
Seriously, I agree with the original poster about Boies. Why does anyone think he's a respectable lawyer? He "won" the anti-trust suit against MS, but frankly, he did a piss poor job IMO. There were so many things he didn't go into that would have helped make his case. Any anti-MS /.er could have made that case better.
Oh sweet Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick! That is just too much! Sides. Splitting. Help!
I agree, especially considering the absolutely hilarious bs about the GPL being against the constitution...
Especially considering that there is already precedent that the GPL is perfectly valid.
Hopefully that's what the original post meant :)
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/34553.htm
Specifically, In the process, a federal judge deemed the GPL enforceable and binding.
Plenty, probably, but that's irrelevent anyway. This person wasn't authorized to put anything in, and there are plenty of laws against unauthorized "hacking."
I would imagine putting a backdoor in an OS project is legally quite the same as in a proprietary one.
I'm a full-time Linux user since 1998, ie. I have used Linux full-time as my workstation OS, and I have used a number of proprietary apps, written a good amount of code, etc., and the library problems described are preposterously overblown.
The last serious issue was when all the distros switched to glibc, which was quite some time ago. I'm still using binaries from right after that switch.
In that time, Mac OS has been a much more unstable target, but vendors don't bitch nearly as much about that.
Piss off.
Every "modern" app, ie. KDE 3 and GNOME 2, supports the new font system.
Number of Linux distributions: There's no way to make a good installer that will install a commercial app on Linux and have everything work. There are too many dependencies for specific versions of libraries and things that would make this sort of thing worse than any kind of Windows DLL hell.
Complete horsedung. Proprietary apps can ship with all the lib versions they require, just like many do with Windows. This is often an excuse given by vendors, but vendors that support Linux properly don't have many such problems. Eg. Loki always shipped the versions of SDL, OpenAl, etc. their games depended on, and none of their games had library problems.
OTOH, glibc sometimes breaks some apps, usually when said apps are doing something wrong.
The only problem with Linux these days is hardware installation, due to lack of support.
Their Linux driver is based on their Windows driver, and shares 90%+ of the same code.
OTOH, that's not to say that you don't have a valid point, distributing binary drivers for Linux could definately be easier. I think that "problem" has been ignored so far because a lot of kernel developers don't want to encourage distribution of binary drivers, which is understandable, IMO.
BTW, you don't have to patch your kernel to add new drivers, there are plenty of drivers distributed as source that will build against the existing kernel.
Rhythmbox, OTOH, is an iTunes clone, and it works very much like iTunes does. Unfortuneately, Rhythmbox development has been extremely slow, but it is starting to pick up now, probably because gstreamer is finally starting to become usable.
My point was that programming isn't something that just anyone is ever going to be able to do, IMO.
Why would it? All their large clients get support anyway.
Anyone know who's left that offers support for Linux users?
Not only that, but it is entirely unmaintainable, even by him.
Real programming is a whole lot more than just pushing some buttons around.