But of the top of your head, you can think of only one complex open source app? This does not bode well:)
Not counting the operating systems themselves or kernels, most of these projects have many many megabytes of source code, and most are quite complex and yet robust and reliable.
I don't remember the last source-code-line-count of Debian, but it's nearing 100 million lines, this is (surely) bigger than W2K + Office2k and yet offers a far richer environment.
EGCS compilers,Perl,Python...
The X Window System
(X)Emacs
Gnome
Enlightenment,WindowMaker...
Mozilla
KDE
KOffice
The Gimp
AbiWord (coming along)
countless frequently used utilities such as fetchmail, x11amp, gdb, shell tools...
Not the kind of thing I need to be reading now...
on
Do Geeks Need College?
·
· Score: 1
I'm struggling to obtain a CS degree... this is NOT the kind of motivational material I needed to read.;-)
It's hard to stay motivated when my friends are already out there earning money. And many of my classes are pure drivel. Even the CS class I'm currently taking is bullshit... assembly programming for Motorola 68k. I couldn't think of a worse platform to be learning. I don't doubt the value of a little ASM, but for god's sake, we might as well be learning how to program PDP-11's.
Ironically, I'm skipping class at this very moment. And my grades have always suffered from the time I devote to hacking my own projects (I'm writing a Slashdot-like clone in Python.) Damn. I need to study for my ASM test this wendsday...
I'm struggling to obtain a CS degree... this is NOT the kind of motivational material I needed to read.;-)
It's hard to stay motivated when my friends are already out there earning money. And many of my classes are pure drivel. Even the CS class I'm currently taking is bullshit... assembly programming for Motorola 68k. I couldn't think of a worse platform to be learning. I don't doubt the value of a little ASM, but for god's sake, we might as well be learning how to program PDP-11's.
Ironically, I'm skipping class at this very moment. And my grades have always suffered from the time I devote to hacking my own projects (I'm writing a Slashdot-like clone in Python.) Damn. I need to study for my ASM test this wendsday...
Netscape is virtually the only non-alpha program I've ever had serious problems with on Linux.
I used to get Bus Errors out the wazoo. Upgrading to 4.5 and then more recently to 4.51 helped, but only some.
Then there was the strange problem of certain sites with complex HTML (cough cough, Slashdot, Freshmeat) also causing bus errors.
This one stumped me for a long time, then eventually I figured out what to do. Save your bookmark and address book files out of.netscape, then rm -r ~/.netscape
Worked for me, at least. I haven't had Netscape crash in a good long while.
Also, switching to XEmacs for my mail / newsreading / HTML composition also gave me some peace of mind. Too often I'd loose important mail / HTML documents I was writing because a browswer window freaked out.
Am I the only one here who not only uses Info files on a daily basis, but relies on them? Sure, Emacs has W3 mode, but nothing beats an Info file for speed and convenience, and besides, W3 is a real ugly pig.
Why, when I was trapped in the non-digital universe of my parents house a few weekends ago, the only thing standing between me and the abyss of insanity was my laptop, XEmacs, and a copy of the Jargon File (in Info format.)
Oh well, farewell, Info, we will not know what we had until it is gone.
This is a spurious argument, that someone would really attempt to reverse engineer an NVida chip. It's really not all that advanced compared to what's out there, and if you've got the resources and fab capabilities, there's better things to reverse engineer. Besides, it is more in NVida's interest in the long term to release full programming information, even on their newest products.
By the time you succesfully reverse engineer a VLSI design based on its programming instructions NVida will have long since come out with something newer and better. In most cases it would be simpler to just design your own chip. Even if you duplicate / emulate NVida's instruction set, that can only entrench NVida as a dominant standard and give them the initiative.
Finally, open specs is definetely a big marketing point, especially if they want to succeed in the emerging Linux market. I will stick to my trusty Matrox and 3dfx cards since both are well supported in Linux and have open specs. It would be in NVida's interest to release the specs. It will sell more cards.
fetchmail / procmail / XEmacs / VM
on
CDE vs Gnome
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· Score: 2
You should investigate the combination of fetchmail / procmail / Emacs / VM. It's what I use, and I especially recommend it for programmers and wannabe programmers.
Fetchmail retrieves your mail as the name implies. It is very powerful. It can handle a wide variety of servers and multiple mail accounts with ease.
Procmail processes your mail in virtually any way you can imagine. At the most simple level, this is sorting it into different folders. You can have it run scrips or play sounds or virtually anything else on specific conditions.
Emacs / XEmacs is the programmer's editor. If you already know Emacs, you will find composing and editing mail with Emacs a godsend.
VM is XEmacs' major mode for reading mail. It is quite powerful. I only use XEmacs so I don't even know if it is availible for regular Emacs, but that apparently doesn't matter to you. VM in Xemacs is fully graphical. You can even view image attachements inline. There is a toolbar and everything.
Reviewing your requirments: Graphical interface. (No Pine!)
Like I said, Xemacs is graphical and quite functional and reasonably attractive. VM is also fairly nice to look at. Everything can be keyboard driven if you like, but there are also menus and such.
Powerful filtering capabilities
Procmail is about as powerful as you can get. It uses regular expressions and can perform just about any action based on your regex's.
Stability
All of these programs are well-known for their stability. Certainly I've never had a problem with fetchmail or procmail. Xemacs has crashed on me once or twice, but never in VM, and it was always because I was messing around with stuff that I didn't know about. And obviously, if one component crashes, your Linux box will be quite unaffected!
(Optional)Capability of importing Eudora mailbox-setup and filters
Can't really help you here. VM uses the standard Unix mailbox format. If you can export your Eudora messages to this standard format, you're set.
Don't get me wrong... there is a relatively steep learning curve with all of this. Fetchmail isn't hard to set up. Procmail isn't hard at all to do some very basic things if you follow the examples given. If you want to do more powerful things, you will have to learn about Procmail. Xemacs / VM is well, Emacs. If you don't know basic Emacs editing commands you will have some learning ahead of you. I think you will find that it was well worth it. I can't think of a more powerful mail agent than these programs. Emacs is the kitchen-sink editor. If you are going to do any programming on Unix, you really need to learn Emacs.
It took me about a day of dedicated fiddling (and FAQ reading) to get fetchmail / procmail / VM configured just like I like, and I am a relatively experienced Unix user. Like I said, the learning curve is fairly steep compared to Eudora, but you are investing in learning a really first-class system.
I was in Desert Storm. Putting all the crap about oil a side. We were there to release Kuwait from the control of Iraq.
Sir, I have never been a soldier, and I salute your service and what you have done, but I must say that your view that we were there to liberate Kuwait is a bit naive. Perhaps that was your personal motivation on the battlefield, but bringing democracy and liberation to the people of Kuwait was not forefront in the minds of Allied strategic planners. Sure, they paid plenty of lip service to that idea, but that's all it was.
It was about oil. It was about containing Hussein. The people of Kuwait then and now live under an authoritarian regime. Sure, it is relatively "free" when compared to Iraq, but that's not saying much.
If the US is so noble in its intentions, why didn't we send in the Marines to Rwanda? Cambodia? Chechnya? East Timor? There is no appreciable amount of oil or other major resources in any of those places. yes, the invasion of Kuwait was blatantly illegal and wrong, but the reason we chose to become involved is because our national interests were at stake, not because we are the protectors of freedom the world over. We were afraid that it might happen to Saudi Arabia next.
This machine will be utterly uninteresting to me unless you are able to hack it, a la Lego Mindstorms. I don't mean teach it a few little tricks with Sony-supplied software, I want to run a Unix on it and teach it new tricks with Python or something.
Really an incredible essay. Far more deserving of a full slashdot article than that juvenile GNU essay earler....
In fact, this evening, I went to the main library of the University of Texas (doh!) to look for Snow Crash I was so impressed. The online catalog showed it as checked in, but I could not find it on the shelf!
please correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't looked at the source for these commands, but doesn't mv essentially do as you describe... first it copies the file, and then verifies that the copy was successful, then it deletes the original?
Sorry, I couldn't let his comment about "Windows greatest feature is that it can run DOS apps and Linux never will" slip by unmolested. Here is the letter I sent him. I think I took it pretty easy on him, what do you think?
begin-quote
you wrote:
Perhaps the greatest technological feature that Windows possesses is that it can handle programs as old as the first DOS applications. Linux will never do that.
Hi there. Sorry to disappoint you, but check out the DOSEmu. It runs virtualy all old DOS applications in Linux, including many DPMI protected mode apps. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but NT doesn't do that. Besides, who wants to run old DOS applications if not for a nostalgic round of Commander Keen? If that is Windows' greatest feature, well...
By the way, if you really want to find out what the value of Linux and Free Software is, I suggest you stick with it for a long time and with an open mind. Installing RedHat and tinkering with it for a couple weeks is not going to teach you anything other than how to configure RedHat. Try to do all of your development on it. I realize there are real world constraints, such as your employer demanding you continue to work with VisualActiveBasicXScript99Pro, but you really are missing the point of Free Software if you think it's about being Anti-Microsoft or "Hey I got an OS really cheap!" It's about giving real working developers like you and me complete empowerment to get the job done.
I mean, why do computers even exist? Do they exist in order to sell software? From Microsoft's point of view, perhaps. But most people think they exist to help people solve real-world problems. Free Software gives us more power to do that, assuming you invest the time to learn its ways. (And please don't assume Windows is completely intuitive and has no learning curve, just because you are personally quite used to it. I find my Linux system quite easy to use.)
I think Microsoft will always have a large market selling friendly shells to Dummies, but something as important as an operating system used by millions worldwide needs to be Open, and Free (libre, not gratis.) I think the point that most outsiders don't get, and maybe never will get (and that's okay) is illustrated by the fact that most hackers I know wouldn't run Windows NT or MS Office even if it were free (gratis.) A smaller subset wouldn't run it even it were Free (libre) because they feel that Unix is a time-tested, proven, reliable, and useful design philosophy.
Your article had good points, but I hope you stick with Linux for a while before making up your mind. Oh, one other thing; I don't know if you are simply trying to simplify things for morons (always a bad idea) but the X window system most certainly does *not* have a Start menu! X is a client/server protocol that specifies the framework for displaying graphical windows on screens. X is the foundation for the GUI, it is not the GUI. Most people run a window manager, which actually as the name implies, manages the windows on the screen and provides things like the "Start Menu" (which is certainly not common to all window managers.) The funny thing is, this arrangement gives you incredible power. You can switch window managers without restarting the X system! All of your client program remain running! Also, X allows you to (for instance) run a program on one computer while viewing its interface on another. It's actually quite useful in practice.
One last thing to be said, the default window manager that ships with RedHat is probably one of the crappiest availible, Fvwm95. There are many other better and more feature-rich ones, such as Enlightenment, Window Maker, and Ice. Some of them can lay on the GUI candy quite thick. And surely you are aware of the GNOME and KDE desktop projects.
Anyway as I'm rambling on here, I'll sign off.
respectfully yours,
Anonymous Coed (I sent the letter on under my real name.)
This Louis Mettler person (who wrote the post mentioning slashdot) is surprisingly clue-free in regards to security. You should read his site if only to discover how not to structure a security analysis. Actually I wrote him a brief note explaining that he presented no logic or evidence explaning why open source was less secure than closed source.
The essence of his argument runs like this: the bad evil hackers can change system binaries because they have the source! ph34r them! Closed source systems such as NT are perfectly safe, because the evil bad hackers will never be able to install any malicious software.
I got news for you: your gate is only as secure as your gate-keeper. If you're afraid of your admin and how he might be corrupted by having all that source code lying around, you need to find a new admin. Here is the letter I sent him.
I must say respectfully, sir, that you have only a dim illumination of what you are talking about. As far as I can tell, the crux of your arguement against open source is that a person can recompile and install software with hidden trap doors. Please correct me if I am wrong.
To be able to install software (especially system software such as a kernel) on any normal Unix-like system, one must already have root access. How did one get that access? One is either already a trusted administrator (most likely) or one has "hacked" into the system by whatever method.
Let's look at the first scenario, and the one you seem to address most directly in your article. A person is able to modify critical system binaries because he or she already "legal" root access (they are the designated administrator of the system.) It is no big surprise that the administrator is able to easy do a wide variety of damage, both overt and subtle, on *any* machine, including closed source systems such as Windows NT. They do not need source code for this. They can just walk over to the machine hit it with a hammer, or simply rm -rf/. Or they could install their own version of sendmail that cc's everything to their inbox. Why? They are root. They can already do *anything* they want, read every users' files, and so on. Sure, having source code availible greatly simplifies some of the more subtle tricks. But not having it availible certainly doesn't mean the system is now secure even against a malicious administrator.
Regular users cannot do any of this kind of damage unless the particular system is hopelessly buggy or malconfigured. In which case they deserve to be hacked, as it will teach them a lesson. So, besides administrators and regular users, that only leaves outsiders who gain root access to worry about. Never mind how he got access... maybe your sysadmin talks in his sleep, or maybe he just guessed passwords, or maybe he exploited a hole in network software. All systems, closed and open source, are vulnerable to "social engineering" hacks. And it has been well demonstrated that open-source systems are much more likely to get security holes patched in a timely and efficient manner. No matter what kind of system you have, if it is mission-critical, it pays to keep up with security announcements and updates.
Do you think not having source code availible will prevent a stranger who has root access from being able to do harm? Let's say I gain root access on a closed source system such as Windows NT. I then proceed to install my replacement login program that I wrote & compiled on my own system to *appear* to be the NT login manager. I now have everyone's passwords forwarded to my hotmail account. How is a closed source system more secure because the kernel source isn't availible?
You say: How do you attack an open source OS? Find the rule that gets into your way and change it. Compile the program. And, install the new build. Simple and unlimited. And, possibly not detectable.
If someone can "install the new build" of system software, or install a hacked Windows explorer.exe they can F*CK you over no matter what. And if you don't trust your own system adminstrator, who can you trust? Find someone trustworthy or do it yourself.
You present no convincing arguements whatsoever. I wonder if you have ever administered a real system in a production environment. Your lack of insight into the way security works in the real world is astounding.
Thank you for your time, Anonymous Coed (I sent him the email under my real name.)
To get/. back to saneness, you have to reduce the number of posters by about 60%.
Coincidentally enough, setting your moderation threshold to about 3 or 4 will have the same effect. Why don't you just do that, and we can all keep our $29, okay?
I agree with what some other people have said here... charging a fee is a good way to lose most of the comments, including the interesting ones.
Part of the value of slashdot is the diversity of opinion. If you don't like your ideas challenged (even by drooling 12 year old h4x0rZ) then please go sit quietly in the corner and leave us alone. We like Slashdot how it is.
What is this Darwin thing? Apple's page claims that it is an "operating system." I thought they were only opening the source to the drivers, not a complete kernel or OS. Can anyone shed some light?
I also played WC and WC2 for endless hours. I was fortunate enough to have (an original) SoundBlaster when WC2 came out, thus I enjoyed the "Speech Pack" that was sold separately.
Only years later did I start reading some of Larry Niven's science fiction (the Ringworld series, great books!) Now Ringworld was written in the late 60s and early 70s I believe and the Kilrathi aliens of Wing Commander bear a striking resemblence to the Kzinti race in Niven's universe.
Both are a race of large, fercious, tiger-like creatures whose society is militaristic in nature. The physical descriptions of Kzinti given in Ringworld are very, very close to that of the Kilrathi. Does anyone know if Chris Roberts was directly influenced by Niven?
By the way, Ringworld is great and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys quality science fiction, not the crap that is put out by hack authors these days. The Kziniti are a very believeable race, and Speaker-To-Animals is far cooler than Hobbes ever will be.
Any previous slack converts to debian have something to say about this? I'd really like some feedback.
I used to use Slack (last release I used was 3.4). I had a lot of fun with it, and it was a great way to learn Linux. But eventually it was time to move on to a truly powerful distribution and Debian was really the only way to go.
I downloaded the Hamm (Debian 2.0) base packages onto my Slack disk and installed it onto a new partition. Then I got PPP up in debian and an ftp client, and manually downloaded & installed each package I wanted, never touching Dselect. It was quite a chore, really, but it was also nice in the sense that I knew exactly what was on my system because I put it there myself.
The wonderful thing about Debian is that it gives you as much or as little control as you want. There is the Dselect/apt-get combo, which I finally took the time to learn and was well satisfied by its power. Or you can still install everything manually, compiling from sources (I compiled a lot of my Hamm packages with optimizations, including Xfree86.).deb packages themselves are great, and most of the important ones have excellent setup scripts that automatically install a nearly optimal configuration. But of course, it's still Linux, and you can tweak.conf files to your heart's content.
Just last month, I upgraded to slink (Debian 2.1) automagically via my 56k modem and Dselect / apt-get. I had some problems at first that were easily solved by installing the newest apt-get out of unstable. Everything was totally automatic, and I didn't even have to reboot (!!!! try that with NT) to totally upgrade my distribution. Now I'm going back through and compiling from debian source packages (also very easy: dpkg-source -x packagename.dsc ; cd packagename ; dpkg-buildpackage) for some of the critical packages.
I have only briefly used RedHat so I can't directly compare it to Debian. FWIW, I've heard that Debian's package system especially is superior to RedHat's. I don't know all the techincal details but working with dpkg / dselect / apt has been nothing but pleasure for me.
I'm also looking forward to the GNOME front end to apt. Now if only I could locate GNOME 1.0.x.deb's, I would be a very happy person.
... that's the best way to stamp out annoying bugs.
I have signed up to beta test... I hope I am one of the lucky 2000;-).
I have been a Civ junkie for a long time and I can't wait to play a native Linux version. That is oh so cool.
I would prefer to wait on a longer beta cycle to ultimately have a better quality product... one that will stay on my hard drive for years.
There's no use chasing the chimera of "First Major Linux Game" because if it's rushed and crappy, it will be quickly forgotten as the first major Linux game (not counter err, Quake II and Angband I guess...;-))
Slashdot Mirror
Not counting the operating systems themselves or kernels, most of these projects have many many megabytes of source code, and most are quite complex and yet robust and reliable.
I don't remember the last source-code-line-count of Debian, but it's nearing 100 million lines, this is (surely) bigger than W2K + Office2k and yet offers a far richer environment.
It's hard to stay motivated when my friends are already out there earning money. And many of my classes are pure drivel. Even the CS class I'm currently taking is bullshit ... assembly programming for Motorola 68k. I couldn't think of a worse platform to be learning. I don't doubt the value of a little ASM, but for god's sake, we might as well be learning how to program PDP-11's.
Ironically, I'm skipping class at this very moment. And my grades have always suffered from the time I devote to hacking my own projects (I'm writing a Slashdot-like clone in Python.) Damn. I need to study for my ASM test this wendsday...
It's hard to stay motivated when my friends are already out there earning money. And many of my classes are pure drivel. Even the CS class I'm currently taking is bullshit ... assembly programming for Motorola 68k. I couldn't think of a worse platform to be learning. I don't doubt the value of a little ASM, but for god's sake, we might as well be learning how to program PDP-11's.
Ironically, I'm skipping class at this very moment. And my grades have always suffered from the time I devote to hacking my own projects (I'm writing a Slashdot-like clone in Python.) Damn. I need to study for my ASM test this wendsday...
--- Film at Eleven.
Netscape is virtually the only non-alpha program I've ever had serious problems with on Linux.
I used to get Bus Errors out the wazoo. Upgrading to 4.5 and then more recently to 4.51 helped, but only some.
Then there was the strange problem of certain sites with complex HTML (cough cough, Slashdot, Freshmeat) also causing bus errors.
This one stumped me for a long time, then eventually I figured out what to do. Save your bookmark and address book files out of .netscape, then rm -r ~/.netscape
Worked for me, at least. I haven't had Netscape crash in a good long while.
Also, switching to XEmacs for my mail / newsreading / HTML composition also gave me some peace of mind. Too often I'd loose important mail / HTML documents I was writing because a browswer window freaked out.
Why, when I was trapped in the non-digital universe of my parents house a few weekends ago, the only thing standing between me and the abyss of insanity was my laptop, XEmacs, and a copy of the Jargon File (in Info format.)
Oh well, farewell, Info, we will not know what we had until it is gone.
By the time you succesfully reverse engineer a VLSI design based on its programming instructions NVida will have long since come out with something newer and better. In most cases it would be simpler to just design your own chip. Even if you duplicate / emulate NVida's instruction set, that can only entrench NVida as a dominant standard and give them the initiative.
Finally, open specs is definetely a big marketing point, especially if they want to succeed in the emerging Linux market. I will stick to my trusty Matrox and 3dfx cards since both are well supported in Linux and have open specs. It would be in NVida's interest to release the specs. It will sell more cards.
Fetchmail retrieves your mail as the name implies. It is very powerful. It can handle a wide variety of servers and multiple mail accounts with ease.
Procmail processes your mail in virtually any way you can imagine. At the most simple level, this is sorting it into different folders. You can have it run scrips or play sounds or virtually anything else on specific conditions.
Emacs / XEmacs is the programmer's editor. If you already know Emacs, you will find composing and editing mail with Emacs a godsend.
VM is XEmacs' major mode for reading mail. It is quite powerful. I only use XEmacs so I don't even know if it is availible for regular Emacs, but that apparently doesn't matter to you. VM in Xemacs is fully graphical. You can even view image attachements inline. There is a toolbar and everything.
Reviewing your requirments: Graphical interface. (No Pine!)
Like I said, Xemacs is graphical and quite functional and reasonably attractive. VM is also fairly nice to look at. Everything can be keyboard driven if you like, but there are also menus and such.
Powerful filtering capabilities
Procmail is about as powerful as you can get. It uses regular expressions and can perform just about any action based on your regex's.
Stability
All of these programs are well-known for their stability. Certainly I've never had a problem with fetchmail or procmail. Xemacs has crashed on me once or twice, but never in VM, and it was always because I was messing around with stuff that I didn't know about. And obviously, if one component crashes, your Linux box will be quite unaffected!
(Optional)Capability of importing Eudora mailbox-setup and filters
Can't really help you here. VM uses the standard Unix mailbox format. If you can export your Eudora messages to this standard format, you're set.
Don't get me wrong... there is a relatively steep learning curve with all of this. Fetchmail isn't hard to set up. Procmail isn't hard at all to do some very basic things if you follow the examples given. If you want to do more powerful things, you will have to learn about Procmail. Xemacs / VM is well, Emacs. If you don't know basic Emacs editing commands you will have some learning ahead of you. I think you will find that it was well worth it. I can't think of a more powerful mail agent than these programs. Emacs is the kitchen-sink editor. If you are going to do any programming on Unix, you really need to learn Emacs.
It took me about a day of dedicated fiddling (and FAQ reading) to get fetchmail / procmail / VM configured just like I like, and I am a relatively experienced Unix user. Like I said, the learning curve is fairly steep compared to Eudora, but you are investing in learning a really first-class system.
Good luck!
Huh? We bombed China in 1945? I don't remember that one. Citation?
And if I recall, we didn't drop one single bomb north of the Yalu river in 1951-1953 either...
Sir, I have never been a soldier, and I salute your service and what you have done, but I must say that your view that we were there to liberate Kuwait is a bit naive. Perhaps that was your personal motivation on the battlefield, but bringing democracy and liberation to the people of Kuwait was not forefront in the minds of Allied strategic planners. Sure, they paid plenty of lip service to that idea, but that's all it was.
It was about oil. It was about containing Hussein. The people of Kuwait then and now live under an authoritarian regime. Sure, it is relatively "free" when compared to Iraq, but that's not saying much.
If the US is so noble in its intentions, why didn't we send in the Marines to Rwanda? Cambodia? Chechnya? East Timor? There is no appreciable amount of oil or other major resources in any of those places. yes, the invasion of Kuwait was blatantly illegal and wrong, but the reason we chose to become involved is because our national interests were at stake, not because we are the protectors of freedom the world over. We were afraid that it might happen to Saudi Arabia next.
This machine will be utterly uninteresting to me unless you are able to hack it, a la Lego Mindstorms. I don't mean teach it a few little tricks with Sony-supplied software, I want to run a Unix on it and teach it new tricks with Python or something.
In fact, this evening, I went to the main library of the University of Texas (doh!) to look for Snow Crash I was so impressed. The online catalog showed it as checked in, but I could not find it on the shelf!
could it be a Redmond conspiracy?
please correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't looked at the source for these commands, but doesn't mv essentially do as you describe... first it copies the file, and then verifies that the copy was successful, then it deletes the original?
begin-quote
you wrote:
Perhaps the greatest technological feature that Windows possesses is that it can handle programs as old as the first DOS applications. Linux will never do that.
Hi there. Sorry to disappoint you, but check out the DOSEmu. It runs virtualy all old DOS applications in Linux, including many DPMI protected mode apps. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but NT doesn't do that. Besides, who wants to run old DOS applications if not for a nostalgic round of Commander Keen? If that is Windows' greatest feature, well...
http://www.dosemu.org
By the way, if you really want to find out what the value of Linux and Free Software is, I suggest you stick with it for a long time and with an open mind. Installing RedHat and tinkering with it for a couple weeks is not going to teach you anything other than how to configure RedHat. Try to do all of your development on it. I realize there are real world constraints, such as your employer demanding you continue to work with VisualActiveBasicXScript99Pro, but you really are missing the point of Free Software if you think it's about being Anti-Microsoft or "Hey I got an OS really cheap!" It's about giving real working developers like you and me complete empowerment to get the job done.
I mean, why do computers even exist? Do they exist in order to sell software? From Microsoft's point of view, perhaps. But most people think they exist to help people solve real-world problems. Free Software gives us more power to do that, assuming you invest the time to learn its ways. (And please don't assume Windows is completely intuitive and has no learning curve, just because you are personally quite used to it. I find my Linux system quite easy to use.)
I think Microsoft will always have a large market selling friendly shells to Dummies, but something as important as an operating system used by millions worldwide needs to be Open, and Free (libre, not gratis.) I think the point that most outsiders don't get, and maybe never will get (and that's okay) is illustrated by the fact that most hackers I know wouldn't run Windows NT or MS Office even if it were free (gratis.) A smaller subset wouldn't run it even it were Free (libre) because they feel that Unix is a time-tested, proven, reliable, and useful design philosophy.
Your article had good points, but I hope you stick with Linux for a while before making up your mind. Oh, one other thing; I don't know if you are simply trying to simplify things for morons (always a bad idea) but the X window system most certainly does *not* have a Start menu! X is a client/server protocol that specifies the framework for displaying graphical windows on screens. X is the foundation for the GUI, it is not the GUI. Most people run a window manager, which actually as the name implies, manages the windows on the screen and provides things like the "Start Menu" (which is certainly not common to all window managers.) The funny thing is, this arrangement gives you incredible power. You can switch window managers without restarting the X system! All of your client program remain running! Also, X allows you to (for instance) run a program on one computer while viewing its interface on another. It's actually quite useful in practice.
One last thing to be said, the default window manager that ships with RedHat is probably one of the crappiest availible, Fvwm95. There are many other better and more feature-rich ones, such as Enlightenment, Window Maker, and Ice. Some of them can lay on the GUI candy quite thick. And surely you are aware of the GNOME and KDE desktop projects.
Anyway as I'm rambling on here, I'll sign off.
respectfully yours,
Anonymous Coed (I sent the letter on under my real name.)
The essence of his argument runs like this: the bad evil hackers can change system binaries because they have the source! ph34r them! Closed source systems such as NT are perfectly safe, because the evil bad hackers will never be able to install any malicious software.
I got news for you: your gate is only as secure as your gate-keeper. If you're afraid of your admin and how he might be corrupted by having all that source code lying around, you need to find a new admin. Here is the letter I sent him.
I must say respectfully, sir, that you have only a dim illumination of what you are talking about. As far as I can tell, the crux of your arguement against open source is that a person can recompile and install software with hidden trap doors. Please correct me if I am wrong.
To be able to install software (especially system software such as a kernel) on any normal Unix-like system, one must already have root access. How did one get that access? One is either already a trusted administrator (most likely) or one has "hacked" into the system by whatever method.
Let's look at the first scenario, and the one you seem to address most directly in your article. A person is able to modify critical system binaries because he or she already "legal" root access (they are the designated administrator of the system.) It is no big surprise that the administrator is able to easy do a wide variety of damage, both overt and subtle, on *any* machine, including closed source systems such as Windows NT. They do not need source code for this. They can just walk over to the machine hit it with a hammer, or simply rm -rf /. Or they could install their own version of sendmail that cc's everything to their inbox. Why? They are root. They can already do *anything* they want, read every users' files, and so on. Sure, having source code availible greatly simplifies some of the more subtle tricks. But not having it availible certainly doesn't mean the system is now secure even against a malicious administrator.
Regular users cannot do any of this kind of damage unless the particular system is hopelessly buggy or malconfigured. In which case they deserve to be hacked, as it will teach them a lesson. So, besides administrators and regular users, that only leaves outsiders who gain root access to worry about. Never mind how he got access ... maybe your sysadmin talks in his sleep, or maybe he just guessed passwords, or maybe he exploited a hole in network software. All systems, closed and open source, are vulnerable to "social engineering" hacks. And it has been well demonstrated that open-source systems are much more likely to get security holes patched in a timely and efficient manner. No matter what kind of system you have, if it is mission-critical, it pays to keep up with security announcements and updates.
Do you think not having source code availible will prevent a stranger who has root access from being able to do harm? Let's say I gain root access on a closed source system such as Windows NT. I then proceed to install my replacement login program that I wrote & compiled on my own system to *appear* to be the NT login manager. I now have everyone's passwords forwarded to my hotmail account. How is a closed source system more secure because the kernel source isn't availible?
You say:
How do you attack an open source OS? Find the rule that gets into your way and change it. Compile the program. And, install the new build. Simple and unlimited. And, possibly not detectable.
If someone can "install the new build" of system software, or install a hacked Windows explorer.exe they can F*CK you over no matter what. And if you don't trust your own system adminstrator, who can you trust? Find someone trustworthy or do it yourself.
You present no convincing arguements whatsoever. I wonder if you have ever administered a real system in a production environment. Your lack of insight into the way security works in the real world is astounding.
Thank you for your time,
Anonymous Coed (I sent him the email under my real name.)
Coincidentally enough, setting your moderation threshold to about 3 or 4 will have the same effect. Why don't you just do that, and we can all keep our $29, okay?
I agree with what some other people have said here... charging a fee is a good way to lose most of the comments, including the interesting ones.
Part of the value of slashdot is the diversity of opinion. If you don't like your ideas challenged (even by drooling 12 year old h4x0rZ) then please go sit quietly in the corner and leave us alone. We like Slashdot how it is.
What is this Darwin thing? Apple's page claims that it is an "operating system." I thought they were only opening the source to the drivers, not a complete kernel or OS. Can anyone shed some light?
I also played WC and WC2 for endless hours. I was fortunate enough to have (an original) SoundBlaster when WC2 came out, thus I enjoyed the "Speech Pack" that was sold separately.
Only years later did I start reading some of Larry Niven's science fiction (the Ringworld series, great books!) Now Ringworld was written in the late 60s and early 70s I believe and the Kilrathi aliens of Wing Commander bear a striking resemblence to the Kzinti race in Niven's universe.
Both are a race of large, fercious, tiger-like creatures whose society is militaristic in nature. The physical descriptions of Kzinti given in Ringworld are very, very close to that of the Kilrathi. Does anyone know if Chris Roberts was directly influenced by Niven?
By the way, Ringworld is great and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys quality science fiction, not the crap that is put out by hack authors these days. The Kziniti are a very believeable race, and Speaker-To-Animals is far cooler than Hobbes ever will be.
Rishathra anyone?
I used to use Slack (last release I used was 3.4). I had a lot of fun with it, and it was a great way to learn Linux. But eventually it was time to move on to a truly powerful distribution and Debian was really the only way to go.
I downloaded the Hamm (Debian 2.0) base packages onto my Slack disk and installed it onto a new partition. Then I got PPP up in debian and an ftp client, and manually downloaded & installed each package I wanted, never touching Dselect. It was quite a chore, really, but it was also nice in the sense that I knew exactly what was on my system because I put it there myself.
The wonderful thing about Debian is that it gives you as much or as little control as you want. There is the Dselect/apt-get combo, which I finally took the time to learn and was well satisfied by its power. Or you can still install everything manually, compiling from sources (I compiled a lot of my Hamm packages with optimizations, including Xfree86.) .deb packages themselves are great, and most of the important ones have excellent setup scripts that automatically install a nearly optimal configuration. But of course, it's still Linux, and you can tweak .conf files to your heart's content.
Just last month, I upgraded to slink (Debian 2.1) automagically via my 56k modem and Dselect / apt-get. I had some problems at first that were easily solved by installing the newest apt-get out of unstable. Everything was totally automatic, and I didn't even have to reboot (!!!! try that with NT) to totally upgrade my distribution. Now I'm going back through and compiling from debian source packages (also very easy: dpkg-source -x packagename.dsc ; cd packagename ; dpkg-buildpackage) for some of the critical packages.
I have only briefly used RedHat so I can't directly compare it to Debian. FWIW, I've heard that Debian's package system especially is superior to RedHat's. I don't know all the techincal details but working with dpkg / dselect / apt has been nothing but pleasure for me.
I'm also looking forward to the GNOME front end to apt. Now if only I could locate GNOME 1.0.x .deb's, I would be a very happy person.
I have signed up to beta test ... I hope I am one of the lucky 2000 ;-).
I have been a Civ junkie for a long time and I can't wait to play a native Linux version. That is oh so cool.
I would prefer to wait on a longer beta cycle to ultimately have a better quality product... one that will stay on my hard drive for years.
There's no use chasing the chimera of "First Major Linux Game" because if it's rushed and crappy, it will be quickly forgotten as the first major Linux game (not counter err, Quake II and Angband I guess... ;-))