I am a member of a team that runs several thousand Redhat Enterprise Linux servers ranging from 2.1 through to 4. All the way from single process systems right upto 8+ processors. Now Redhat enterprise suits corporate environments because its a platform that is maintained for ages. However I have had it totally with redhats quality control massive dependancy chains and the over all way that Redhat is. I so often feel that it wants to be the microsoft of open source. I cant really say much good about redhat in general. I do appreciate many of the people that redhat hire and the input they have had to open source in general. But Redhat as a company is running behind the game, Their customer support system sucks. They dont have a good RSS feed system to announce issues to people. they are very closed minded when it comes to customer service. Compared to our Novel (SuSe) experience redhat is so appauling.
That is excellent news for AMD even though there wont be massive volumes compared to home markets it will still be some heavy industry weight backing the AMD opteron processor. Hopefully AMD will adopt some additional features that could make the Opteron even better suited to the super computer market.
Having been working in an Redhat enterprise linux environment for so many years we have recently began to shift all servers over to novel. Since that time we have had less issues and the overall support from novel has been awesome to say the least. PLUS in our case it costs significantly less than the same Redhat licensing fees (redhat network etc).
We have also several slackware and debian boxes doing other things. Go Novel, Say no to redhat.
From my experience Redhat is just becoming another microsoft but with Open source behind it. Really SuSe is a competitor to Redhat, In fact we have been a 100% redhat shop on all 5000+ servers that we run using linux. Until this year when we started to use SuSe, We have now used suse as our primary OS. When any new systems come online its with SuSe, the support is generally better.. I suspect only better things are to come from Novel.
This could have a good plus side for many developers. One of the issues that I have been getting into lately is the open source appliance development. Previously I have been using xbox's and more recently the mac mini. One of the problems that I have had in developing software, tools and libaries is that I am often stuck with a lack of alternatives in hardware and performance. by having open plans for a high performance platform it will potentially give or open entirely new roads in development.
In the last three to four months over my personal web page that gets around 18-20,000 unique visitors per month. This month was the first month where I got more click throughs from Microsofts Search than from google which has been top for the last few years.
It sounds like a big case of paranoia. The reality is nobody ever stays number one for long. The more time you spend trying to defend your number one possition the more people will dislike you for it. In the end you maybe number 1 but with no friends who gives a dam!?.
One of the biggest issues that face the linux community is having a central focus. Many linux supporters have tunnel vision when it comes to their fanatical belief that what they are using is "The Way".
I myself am a systems administrator with over 15 years unix experience. Taking that into account I do use linux, unix (Tru64 and solaris) and bsd. Its not which one is the best because there is no such thing. Each operating system has its srong points and its bad points. Its all about knowing what they are and taking advantage of the good points to offer a reliable and quality service to your employer/customer/mates mum or whatever.
With increased international bandwidth and often faster networks outside the US (less congestion etc) it becomes easier and easier to host in countries that have more relaxed laws.
Did the researchers also look at making operating systems more secure. Most of the spam that I get these days is from exploited/trojaned or other systems. If we can slow the source we can help eliminate the problem.
Up until very recently we have been using Redhat Enterprise linux across the board and having to use a shitty NIS+ setup for authentication. Now we are using Novel Open Enterprise Server with the directory services across the board. Thanks to novel we can finally have a TRUE enterprise solution, one that has directory services, one that has a good QA model and so far we have not had any issues even though the prodocut is still in a "beta" state.
Go novel.
I worked with a person that wrote open source software for serveral projects including some of his own stuff. He left the company as his business writing open source had grown sufficiently to justify him not needing to work for anyone else.. How did he do that?.. He sold support contracts for people that wanted enterprise level support for open source software projects. It worked well. He charged very little and the support time was low but all the contracts added up.
I would love to see how they actually find some of these vulnerabilities. Direct from secunia :
"The vulnerability is caused due to missing URI handler validation when dragging an image with a "javascript:" URL to the address bar. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary HTML and script code in a user's browser session in context of an arbitrary site by tricking a user into dragging an image to the address bar."
Dont think ive ever dragged anything from a web page in my life.. I maybe a newbie though (only been on the net since 1992..
My personal experience is from the perspective of my day to day role as a systems administrator for unix systems and windows systems. I use linux on my desktop primarily because 99% of my work involves unix based systems. The role varies from FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux, Tru64 depending on the systems im working on at the time. With ssh and all the tools used to communicate with those systems out of the box its much easier to use. and the benefit is that I dont have to pirate anything or waste company money on licenses for software that I will never use. The other plus is that every time a new release comes out i purchase the cds to ensure the future of my OS:).
There are def some valid points in what is being said there. I see the biggest issue going against microsoft is interoperability. Exchange is a great product but to really use any of its features you have to use outlook. The License fees for any business are often referred to as extorsion by many small business owners. Open Source Alternatives are few and far between and there are good efforts in that direction BUT its difficult.
I am about 95% confident that microsofts "rot" will not be really show its head in any big form for at least another 5-10 years maybe less if there are any bad business choices. However Microsoft is diversifying more and more so that software is not theier only business.
British Rail : Lets Get GPS..
Commuter : Will that make more than 1 in 10 trains come on time?
British Rail : No
Commuter : Why Bother!!
British Rail : Saftey.
Commuter : So your planning on having more accidents?
British Rail : No
Commuter : Well?
British Rail : We are a bunch of idiots that wear cardigans and have no clue what the commuter wants!
Commuter : Finally You got something right!
lets all screw up our environment.. we may as well speed it up.. start using more coal and gas based turn off all clean nuclear power stations (yes they are clean until the end product is required). and then we can go and increase the capacity of our engines 10 fold.. no worries.. lets all be selfish and not give a shit!!!..
The RIAA would have increased its profits if it wasnt spending so much money on its legal battles all over the place. Fair enough that they attempt to bust people that pirate music but more often than not its a witch hunt.
With many telcos offering this type of service the set top boxes often have very much more limited features than the ones that you can buy after market. This is where TiVo still have their strengths and I would be more than suprised if there would be any change with SBC.
Telcos buy thousands of boxes at a cheap price to make it attractive for them to use that service. Buying it at a cheaper price will normally make the feature set drop. This can give all those sbc set top box hackers build some more/new software;)
that is very true. I have recently been doing work for a large engineering firm. In that role we had to evaluate linux in a 16 processor configuration for a particular application. In the end we continued to use Solaris based on stability under high load (and still serve requests) with 16 processors. Taking into account that between 2.4 and 2.6 the system had improved it was still not as mature as the Solaris 6, 7 8 and 9 builds that we had used for testing.
We also compared that against other True UNIX systems and found the stability on large systems to be fantastic for OS's like Tru64 and HPUX.
That is where linux needs to improve more before it moves forward. and Yes both OS's have benefits. Especially for linux in the desktop x86 hardware environment.
Walmart are probably only making around $200 on the system. But it still could be very good as a media centre plug it into the tv/use it to store music whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a member of a team that runs several thousand Redhat Enterprise Linux servers ranging from 2.1 through to 4. All the way from single process systems right upto 8+ processors. Now Redhat enterprise suits corporate environments because its a platform that is maintained for ages. However I have had it totally with redhats quality control massive dependancy chains and the over all way that Redhat is. I so often feel that it wants to be the microsoft of open source. I cant really say much good about redhat in general. I do appreciate many of the people that redhat hire and the input they have had to open source in general. But Redhat as a company is running behind the game, Their customer support system sucks. They dont have a good RSS feed system to announce issues to people. they are very closed minded when it comes to customer service. Compared to our Novel (SuSe) experience redhat is so appauling.
That is excellent news for AMD even though there wont be massive volumes compared to home markets it will still be some heavy industry weight backing the AMD opteron processor. Hopefully AMD will adopt some additional features that could make the Opteron even better suited to the super computer market.
Having been working in an Redhat enterprise linux environment for so many years we have recently began to shift all servers over to novel. Since that time we have had less issues and the overall support from novel has been awesome to say the least. PLUS in our case it costs significantly less than the same Redhat licensing fees (redhat network etc). We have also several slackware and debian boxes doing other things. Go Novel, Say no to redhat.
How stupid. Because a distribution is focused on one platform does not take it from being the best at what its DESIGNED to do.
From my experience Redhat is just becoming another microsoft but with Open source behind it. Really SuSe is a competitor to Redhat, In fact we have been a 100% redhat shop on all 5000+ servers that we run using linux. Until this year when we started to use SuSe, We have now used suse as our primary OS. When any new systems come online its with SuSe, the support is generally better.. I suspect only better things are to come from Novel.
This could have a good plus side for many developers. One of the issues that I have been getting into lately is the open source appliance development. Previously I have been using xbox's and more recently the mac mini. One of the problems that I have had in developing software, tools and libaries is that I am often stuck with a lack of alternatives in hardware and performance. by having open plans for a high performance platform it will potentially give or open entirely new roads in development.
In the last three to four months over my personal web page that gets around 18-20,000 unique visitors per month. This month was the first month where I got more click throughs from Microsofts Search than from google which has been top for the last few years.
It sounds like a big case of paranoia. The reality is nobody ever stays number one for long. The more time you spend trying to defend your number one possition the more people will dislike you for it. In the end you maybe number 1 but with no friends who gives a dam!?.
One of the biggest issues that face the linux community is having a central focus. Many linux supporters have tunnel vision when it comes to their fanatical belief that what they are using is "The Way". I myself am a systems administrator with over 15 years unix experience. Taking that into account I do use linux, unix (Tru64 and solaris) and bsd. Its not which one is the best because there is no such thing. Each operating system has its srong points and its bad points. Its all about knowing what they are and taking advantage of the good points to offer a reliable and quality service to your employer/customer/mates mum or whatever.
With increased international bandwidth and often faster networks outside the US (less congestion etc) it becomes easier and easier to host in countries that have more relaxed laws.
Did the researchers also look at making operating systems more secure. Most of the spam that I get these days is from exploited/trojaned or other systems. If we can slow the source we can help eliminate the problem.
Up until very recently we have been using Redhat Enterprise linux across the board and having to use a shitty NIS+ setup for authentication. Now we are using Novel Open Enterprise Server with the directory services across the board. Thanks to novel we can finally have a TRUE enterprise solution, one that has directory services, one that has a good QA model and so far we have not had any issues even though the prodocut is still in a "beta" state. Go novel.
I worked with a person that wrote open source software for serveral projects including some of his own stuff. He left the company as his business writing open source had grown sufficiently to justify him not needing to work for anyone else.. How did he do that?.. He sold support contracts for people that wanted enterprise level support for open source software projects. It worked well. He charged very little and the support time was low but all the contracts added up.
For more information : Interesting Perspective But maybe highly inacurate but worth the look!
I would love to see how they actually find some of these vulnerabilities. Direct from secunia : "The vulnerability is caused due to missing URI handler validation when dragging an image with a "javascript:" URL to the address bar. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary HTML and script code in a user's browser session in context of an arbitrary site by tricking a user into dragging an image to the address bar." Dont think ive ever dragged anything from a web page in my life.. I maybe a newbie though (only been on the net since 1992..
My personal experience is from the perspective of my day to day role as a systems administrator for unix systems and windows systems. I use linux on my desktop primarily because 99% of my work involves unix based systems. The role varies from FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux, Tru64 depending on the systems im working on at the time. With ssh and all the tools used to communicate with those systems out of the box its much easier to use. and the benefit is that I dont have to pirate anything or waste company money on licenses for software that I will never use. The other plus is that every time a new release comes out i purchase the cds to ensure the future of my OS :).
I wonder when the US will start to feel even more threatened as other countries start to grow. with cheaper labor forces etc..
An Interesting URL for those that have time to read it : http://www.foe.co.uk/pubsinfo/briefings/html/19971 215150013.html
There are def some valid points in what is being said there. I see the biggest issue going against microsoft is interoperability. Exchange is a great product but to really use any of its features you have to use outlook. The License fees for any business are often referred to as extorsion by many small business owners. Open Source Alternatives are few and far between and there are good efforts in that direction BUT its difficult. I am about 95% confident that microsofts "rot" will not be really show its head in any big form for at least another 5-10 years maybe less if there are any bad business choices. However Microsoft is diversifying more and more so that software is not theier only business.
British Rail : Lets Get GPS.. Commuter : Will that make more than 1 in 10 trains come on time? British Rail : No Commuter : Why Bother!! British Rail : Saftey. Commuter : So your planning on having more accidents? British Rail : No Commuter : Well? British Rail : We are a bunch of idiots that wear cardigans and have no clue what the commuter wants! Commuter : Finally You got something right!
lets all screw up our environment.. we may as well speed it up .. start using more coal and gas based turn off all clean nuclear power stations (yes they are clean until the end product is required). and then we can go and increase the capacity of our engines 10 fold.. no worries.. lets all be selfish and not give a shit!!!..
The RIAA would have increased its profits if it wasnt spending so much money on its legal battles all over the place. Fair enough that they attempt to bust people that pirate music but more often than not its a witch hunt.
With many telcos offering this type of service the set top boxes often have very much more limited features than the ones that you can buy after market. This is where TiVo still have their strengths and I would be more than suprised if there would be any change with SBC. Telcos buy thousands of boxes at a cheap price to make it attractive for them to use that service. Buying it at a cheaper price will normally make the feature set drop. This can give all those sbc set top box hackers build some more/new software ;)
that is very true. I have recently been doing work for a large engineering firm. In that role we had to evaluate linux in a 16 processor configuration for a particular application. In the end we continued to use Solaris based on stability under high load (and still serve requests) with 16 processors. Taking into account that between 2.4 and 2.6 the system had improved it was still not as mature as the Solaris 6, 7 8 and 9 builds that we had used for testing. We also compared that against other True UNIX systems and found the stability on large systems to be fantastic for OS's like Tru64 and HPUX. That is where linux needs to improve more before it moves forward. and Yes both OS's have benefits. Especially for linux in the desktop x86 hardware environment.
Walmart are probably only making around $200 on the system. But it still could be very good as a media centre plug it into the tv/use it to store music whatever.