I'm rather happy to see that Micro$oft is selling more software than (what I'm assuming to mean) Linux developers. Because there are still more Linux servers in use than Windows, that can only mean that people are downloading the bloody operating system for free. Notlikethere'sanyshortageofsites...
Note the difference between selling (distributing in exchange for a fee) and using (making it do useful work).
Professor William Waterman Sherman has returned home after less than a month of traveling around the world in a hot air balloon. For reasons yet to be explained, the Professor returned, not with his original balloon house, but on a broken but otherwise magnificently built wooden platform held up by no less than twenty-one hydrogen balloons. He himself will reveal the complete, long-awaited story tonight at the meeting of the Western American Explorer's Club in San Francisco... ( Read More... )
<German-ish translation of sorts>Also, Herr Kernelmeister Torvalds ist nicht jetzt tot. Das Linux-Community wird es maintainen, ob etwas schlecht zu Linus happent.</German-ish translation of sorts>
"APT/dpkg use is almost brain dead - maybe you should'nt creating your own distro if you can't figure out how to use these tools."
That's the beauty of the thing: It's so 'brain dead' that it's virtually impossible to do anything.
Case in point: Trying to install Frozen Bubble on a friend's Ubuntu system. Simple enough, right? Well, I had to manually edit the configuration files (not a problem for me, but for new users it can be), and then find the right version of SDL-Perl because it wasn't included. Or something like that. I don't remember too much, only that we ended up re-installing Ubuntu, then eventually just installing Ultima after it screwed up big-time.
And then to get any of the "fun" packages like MPEG support and RealPlayer needs lots more manual configuration editing and tweaking. There's an entire page somewhere of nothing but tweaks so that you can get a usable system after installing. My system, on the other hand, I regularly re-install on my machines just to make sure everything works right, and have yet to see any problems with the "out-of-the-box" configuration.
Also, apt-get makes it almost impossible to cancel an installation and then re-install. Slackware's pkgtools on the other hand work very simply: 1. Download package. 2. installpkg packagename.tgz
In fact, with tools like KDE's KPackage, it's even simpler than that.
Maybe I'm just a Slackware user who's used to things that "just work" without much fuss, but I think that a lot of those apt-get and similar systems are just unnecessarily complex and only make matters worse. Simplicity is divine.
Yeah, I know I was replying to more posts than yours. I had responses for all of them and yours was just the first I clicked reply on;-) You do have some very good points there, I will admit.
"heh, you prove the point: since you're the creator and maintainer the distro will only last as long as your interest in it or your life span, anyone else would be kind of silly to use it for production. My guess is slackware and ubuntu would only really last a short time beyond the lifespan of their leaders. For that matter, if Linus T. takes up another hobby or goes to the big happy hackery in the sky, I could see the Linux kernel flying apart in at least four major directions."
Well, as the saying goes, nothing gold can stay, eh? Although then again, the same could easily be said about Bill Gates & Micro$oft, or Steve Jobs & Apple... I have yet to see any of them dead yet, so who knows? Besides, even if I were the only user (not currently the case, I've gotten more e-mails from people using it than I know what to do with now;-) at least it's a system that works for me.
"Ubuntu now has a very clean looking package management, and also synaptic. And AFAIK it does wireless pretty well when it supports your adapter."
Just out of curiosity, have you ever used it? Because if you haven't, I see no reason to listen to you. In my own experience, though, it didn't support any of the adapters I own. Even though none of them had a problem with Slackware, Ultima, or even Damn Small.
"If this post wasn't a blatant advertisement, then I dont know what is."
I congratulate you on your ability to discern acute details. I would have never known. But seriously, yes, it was technically an advertisement, I'll admit, but advertising aside,
#!/usr/bin/python if ( "one man job" == "unreliable and poorly built" ): print "Well, maybe you're right." else: print "I told you so!"
And for the record, I actually do try other distros, and am open to suggestions and stuff. How else do you think I come up with new ideas?;-)
By the way, yes, it is true that Slackware does have a community that is more than willing to take over if anything bad happens to Mr. Volkerding. (Sorry if this is redundant, but it is true.) As for my own distribution, a good number of packages are indeed hand-built, and it may in fact become independent of Slackware if worst comes to worst. Ubuntu, on the other hand, has stated explicitly that they would be nowhere if Debian were to disappear.
By the way, I will admit that while Shuttleworth does raise a few good points about binary compatibility, I would rather have a distribution that is compatible down to the very last bit with its "parent" – that way, if a package is available for the one system but not the other, one can simply download and install the package that's already available.
For example (correct me if I'm wrong), let's have a package pika which is in Debian but not Ubuntu or Libranet. If Libranet is indeed binary-compatible with Debian like I've heard, I could just download pika from Debian and install it on Libranet. Ubuntu, on the other hand, I'd have to either Google it, or if no one else had the package, build it from source, which can be a mess – especially with my favorite example of wireless drivers, which involve a lot of low-level stuff that can fail pretty easily if done by someone with little experience.
The same thing holds true with Ultima/Slackware, by the way – may as well just put in a quick shameless plug here while I'm at it. Let's say that someone wants FVWM2 on Ultima Linux, which doesn't have it in the default install [because I don't use it much, and Ultima's based mostly on what I use]. Rather than being forced to build it from source or Google it, the user could go to Slackware's site and download the package from there, because FVWM2 is included in Slackware proper. Because I try to develop Ultima to be as close to Slackware as possible, including using the same compiler and glibc versions and all that fun junk, it should work without a hitch.
OK, now to try and get back on topic, the point I'm trying to make is that if I were to choose a Debian derivative, Ubuntu or Libranet, I'd go for Libra. Really is too bad that they're closing...:-(
"That is why you should never rely on one-man-wonder distros like libranet or slackware for anything beyond hobby machines."
Excuse me??
Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I happen to be the sole creator/maintainer of my own distribution, Ultima Linux, which is a one-man distro based on Slackware (yes, another one-man distro). Every single machine I own runs Ultima exclusively, including a full-time Web server which also hosts the project. Hmm, anything beyond hobby machines?
And for the record, last time I checked Slackware was still the oldest maintained distribution, whereas entirecompanies with more people than you can count have gone down after only a couple years.
As for Libranet, I'll admit that I never really looked into it much before, but it sounds like it is/was a really neat distribution. It's really too bad that it's going down, some of the features (especially the adminmenu and P2P system) must have been very unique and it would have been kind of cool to maybe tweak them to work with another system such as my own. Maybe that's what I'll use the free 10GB on my hard disk for.
By the way, Ubuntu is overrated. I've used it before; apt-get/dpkg was an absolute nightmare even for an advanced user like me, and I still have yet to find Ubuntu-compatible packages for stuff like wireless networking that I've come to take for granted with my Linux system. Just my 2 cents.
The last thing that I want to see on any operating system is unnecessary advertising while I'm working. It wastes valuable memory and CPU cycles, distracts attention away from more important work, sounds way too much like Big Brother – and besides, considering all that we have already, do we really need any more ads in our lives?
Billboards block the skyline and distract drivers on the roads.
Stores and restaurants have huge ugly signs as well that work just like billboards.
Spyware and adware are infecting enough machines as it is, we don't need it integrated into the OS.
Television now consists of five-minute programs and about twenty-five minutes of commercials.
Movie theatres play half-hour-long previews before the film starts.
Even on VHS/DVD, there's ads. I especially hate Agent Cody Banks, which advertises its own sequel. Fucking Hollywood.
Spam messages are prevalant everywhere. Although some of them are sorta funny. But still, they're evil anyway.
And that's not even including the Web...
Personally, I'm just hoping that this will be the final step to convincing people to see the light and get rid of all this unnecessary advertising once and for all. Oh, and maybe an ad-supported Windows could help Linux developers like me. If everything else has turned into an ad I may as well plug one for myself while I'm ranting against that very thing:-)
While all these other guys seem to have good ideas for how to make a real mess of things, if you really want to blow stuff up may I suggest that you just load your equipment up with C4. Never failed once. Although you might want to run away really really fast and preferrably change your name & move to another state.
Delete/etc/inittab. First remove all forms of removable media (eg, floppy, CD-ROM) from the system. Glue the case shut. In fact, weld it shut for best results. Then, as root, run: rm/etc/inittab. Works every time.
The "Old Machine" Problem. Move everything to a really really old box. For best results no more than 32MB RAM. Have the thing running the absolute latest available software, preferrably optimized for the absolute latest available hardware, and then pull up all the big-ass programs – Firefox, OpenOffice.org...
101 Uses for Jolt Cola. Dump some of that stuff on your router and it's guaranteed to screw the thing up big-time. Don't waste too much though, that stuff's expensive.
Enjoy! And don't sue me if you actually had the nerve to take my advice!
I'm sorry to say that doesn't happen. It's the way open source works.
Yeah, I think that I should probably know. Again, I said that it would be nice to have a more reliable OOo or else an alternative. If the codebase wasn't such an ungodly mess, I'd fork it... oh well.
Besides, most other 15-year-olds probably wouldn't see a problem anyway:-)
Well, I happen to like having the Java stuff, just because it's such a Java-intensive program. May just have to do that on my laptop though, since the thing is about eight years old and tends to run just a little bit slower than my 2.4GHz Celeron desktop...
I still think it's horribly unstable though. The only reason it's even on my machine / in my Linux distro that I maintain is because it really doesn't have any decently acceptable (free) competition.
If the training videos are so great, why can't they put as much time into the application itself? It's a good program, and has way more features than any other – I'll be the first to tell you – but the stability is miserable with the latest 2.0 version, it kept crashing every couple minutes last night, and the program is a bit bloated.
I remember when comics and animation in general was all about well-drawn, more or less realistic, and actually decent quality work. Now it's all poorly animated, horrendously drawn, and flat-out ugly bullshit whose creators deserve to be shot.
And when it gets to the point where the newspapers are carrying this garbage, you know your once perfect country's gone for good.
2084. Google will rule the government. Wherever you look, everything you see will be tailored to what you want to see. Screw normal advertising, you'll be seeing "Google AdSense billboards" which display roadside alerts and stuff based on whatever you're thinking. Google is the new thought police...
Just out of curiosity, what kind of stuff is in your distro & what is it for?
(My own started originally because I just needed a quick and dirty pre-configured Slackware with all my favorite apps, and kind of gradually evolved since...)
Despite what this guy says, I have good reason to seriously doubt his claim. There should not be a single "Linux" – first of all, that would be presenting yet another monoculture, and besides, I happen to like maintaining my own distribution. I'm not giving up Ultima just so I can be another mindless Red Hat or Mandrake developer.
Also, in case the guy didn't notice, not all distributions are even about providing a pretty GUI; while my system is somewhat graphically oriented I quite frequently run it in text mode, and have been known to leave X off some of my systems altogether depending on what I use them for.
Now that Pluto's been confirmed to have more than one moon, what will than mean for the old debate over whether Pluto or Charon's the actual planet? Ought to be fun to watch...
Damn the military. Screwing things up again.
(No offense to the men and women stuck doing all the dirty work, all hatred is directed exclusively towards the people in charge back in D.C. Land.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yay, a platform-independent way of senselessly killing innocent people! What's next, "Grand Theft Auto: Firefox <canvas>"?
Yeah, I know. It was there originally, but it got deleted by the
I'm rather happy to see that Micro$oft is selling more software than (what I'm assuming to mean) Linux developers. Because there are still more Linux servers in use than Windows, that can only mean that people are downloading the bloody operating system for free. Not like there's any shortage of sites...
Note the difference between selling (distributing in exchange for a fee) and using (making it do useful work).
Yay, misleading statistics!!
Professor William Waterman Sherman has returned home after less than a month of traveling around the world in a hot air balloon. For reasons yet to be explained, the Professor returned, not with his original balloon house, but on a broken but otherwise magnificently built wooden platform held up by no less than twenty-one hydrogen balloons. He himself will reveal the complete, long-awaited story tonight at the meeting of the Western American Explorer's Club in San Francisco... ( Read More... )
<German-ish translation of sorts>Also, Herr Kernelmeister Torvalds ist nicht jetzt tot. Das Linux-Community wird es maintainen, ob etwas schlecht zu Linus happent.</German-ish translation of sorts>
:-)
THIS COMMENT IS NOT VALID XHTML 1.1 STRICT!
"APT/dpkg use is almost brain dead - maybe you should'nt creating your own distro if you can't figure out how to use these tools."
That's the beauty of the thing: It's so 'brain dead' that it's virtually impossible to do anything.
Case in point: Trying to install Frozen Bubble on a friend's Ubuntu system. Simple enough, right? Well, I had to manually edit the configuration files (not a problem for me, but for new users it can be), and then find the right version of SDL-Perl because it wasn't included. Or something like that. I don't remember too much, only that we ended up re-installing Ubuntu, then eventually just installing Ultima after it screwed up big-time.
And then to get any of the "fun" packages like MPEG support and RealPlayer needs lots more manual configuration editing and tweaking. There's an entire page somewhere of nothing but tweaks so that you can get a usable system after installing. My system, on the other hand, I regularly re-install on my machines just to make sure everything works right, and have yet to see any problems with the "out-of-the-box" configuration.
Also, apt-get makes it almost impossible to cancel an installation and then re-install. Slackware's pkgtools on the other hand work very simply:
1. Download package.
2. installpkg packagename.tgz
In fact, with tools like KDE's KPackage, it's even simpler than that.
Maybe I'm just a Slackware user who's used to things that "just work" without much fuss, but I think that a lot of those apt-get and similar systems are just unnecessarily complex and only make matters worse. Simplicity is divine.
Yeah, I know I was replying to more posts than yours. I had responses for all of them and yours was just the first I clicked reply on ;-) You do have some very good points there, I will admit.
"heh, you prove the point: since you're the creator and maintainer the distro will only last as long as your interest in it or your life span, anyone else would be kind of silly to use it for production. My guess is slackware and ubuntu would only really last a short time beyond the lifespan of their leaders. For that matter, if Linus T. takes up another hobby or goes to the big happy hackery in the sky, I could see the Linux kernel flying apart in at least four major directions."
;-) at least it's a system that works for me.
/usr/bin/python
;-)
Well, as the saying goes, nothing gold can stay, eh? Although then again, the same could easily be said about Bill Gates & Micro$oft, or Steve Jobs & Apple... I have yet to see any of them dead yet, so who knows? Besides, even if I were the only user (not currently the case, I've gotten more e-mails from people using it than I know what to do with now
"Ubuntu now has a very clean looking package management, and also synaptic. And AFAIK it does wireless pretty well when it supports your adapter."
Just out of curiosity, have you ever used it? Because if you haven't, I see no reason to listen to you. In my own experience, though, it didn't support any of the adapters I own. Even though none of them had a problem with Slackware, Ultima, or even Damn Small.
"If this post wasn't a blatant advertisement, then I dont know what is."
I congratulate you on your ability to discern acute details. I would have never known. But seriously, yes, it was technically an advertisement, I'll admit, but advertising aside,
#!
if ( "one man job" == "unreliable and poorly built" ):
print "Well, maybe you're right."
else:
print "I told you so!"
And for the record, I actually do try other distros, and am open to suggestions and stuff. How else do you think I come up with new ideas?
By the way, yes, it is true that Slackware does have a community that is more than willing to take over if anything bad happens to Mr. Volkerding. (Sorry if this is redundant, but it is true.) As for my own distribution, a good number of packages are indeed hand-built, and it may in fact become independent of Slackware if worst comes to worst. Ubuntu, on the other hand, has stated explicitly that they would be nowhere if Debian were to disappear.
:-(
By the way, I will admit that while Shuttleworth does raise a few good points about binary compatibility, I would rather have a distribution that is compatible down to the very last bit with its "parent" – that way, if a package is available for the one system but not the other, one can simply download and install the package that's already available.
For example (correct me if I'm wrong), let's have a package pika which is in Debian but not Ubuntu or Libranet. If Libranet is indeed binary-compatible with Debian like I've heard, I could just download pika from Debian and install it on Libranet. Ubuntu, on the other hand, I'd have to either Google it, or if no one else had the package, build it from source, which can be a mess – especially with my favorite example of wireless drivers, which involve a lot of low-level stuff that can fail pretty easily if done by someone with little experience.
The same thing holds true with Ultima/Slackware, by the way – may as well just put in a quick shameless plug here while I'm at it. Let's say that someone wants FVWM2 on Ultima Linux, which doesn't have it in the default install [because I don't use it much, and Ultima's based mostly on what I use]. Rather than being forced to build it from source or Google it, the user could go to Slackware's site and download the package from there, because FVWM2 is included in Slackware proper. Because I try to develop Ultima to be as close to Slackware as possible, including using the same compiler and glibc versions and all that fun junk, it should work without a hitch.
OK, now to try and get back on topic, the point I'm trying to make is that if I were to choose a Debian derivative, Ubuntu or Libranet, I'd go for Libra. Really is too bad that they're closing...
"That is why you should never rely on one-man-wonder distros like libranet or slackware for anything beyond hobby machines."
Excuse me??
Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I happen to be the sole creator/maintainer of my own distribution, Ultima Linux, which is a one-man distro based on Slackware (yes, another one-man distro). Every single machine I own runs Ultima exclusively, including a full-time Web server which also hosts the project. Hmm, anything beyond hobby machines?
And for the record, last time I checked Slackware was still the oldest maintained distribution, whereas entire companies with more people than you can count have gone down after only a couple years.
As for Libranet, I'll admit that I never really looked into it much before, but it sounds like it is/was a really neat distribution. It's really too bad that it's going down, some of the features (especially the adminmenu and P2P system) must have been very unique and it would have been kind of cool to maybe tweak them to work with another system such as my own. Maybe that's what I'll use the free 10GB on my hard disk for.
By the way, Ubuntu is overrated. I've used it before; apt-get/dpkg was an absolute nightmare even for an advanced user like me, and I still have yet to find Ubuntu-compatible packages for stuff like wireless networking that I've come to take for granted with my Linux system. Just my 2 cents.
Intellectual property stuff is purely evil. Don't quote me on this or I'll sue.
Personally, I'm just hoping that this will be the final step to convincing people to see the light and get rid of all this unnecessary advertising once and for all. Oh, and maybe an ad-supported Windows could help Linux developers like me. If everything else has turned into an ad I may as well plug one for myself while I'm ranting against that very thing :-)
While all these other guys seem to have good ideas for how to make a real mess of things, if you really want to blow stuff up may I suggest that you just load your equipment up with C4. Never failed once. Although you might want to run away really really fast and preferrably change your name & move to another state.
Delete /etc/inittab. First remove all forms of removable media (eg, floppy, CD-ROM) from the system. Glue the case shut. In fact, weld it shut for best results. Then, as root, run: rm /etc/inittab. Works every time.
The "Old Machine" Problem. Move everything to a really really old box. For best results no more than 32MB RAM. Have the thing running the absolute latest available software, preferrably optimized for the absolute latest available hardware, and then pull up all the big-ass programs – Firefox, OpenOffice.org...
101 Uses for Jolt Cola. Dump some of that stuff on your router and it's guaranteed to screw the thing up big-time. Don't waste too much though, that stuff's expensive.
Enjoy! And don't sue me if you actually had the nerve to take my advice!
Yeah, I think that I should probably know. Again, I said that it would be nice to have a more reliable OOo or else an alternative. If the codebase wasn't such an ungodly mess, I'd fork it... oh well.
Besides, most other 15-year-olds probably wouldn't see a problem anyway :-)
Well, I happen to like having the Java stuff, just because it's such a Java-intensive program. May just have to do that on my laptop though, since the thing is about eight years old and tends to run just a little bit slower than my 2.4GHz Celeron desktop... I still think it's horribly unstable though. The only reason it's even on my machine / in my Linux distro that I maintain is because it really doesn't have any decently acceptable (free) competition.
If the training videos are so great, why can't they put as much time into the application itself? It's a good program, and has way more features than any other – I'll be the first to tell you – but the stability is miserable with the latest 2.0 version, it kept crashing every couple minutes last night, and the program is a bit bloated.
Put on a second tinfoil hat to protect the one you're already wearing from... Them!
And when it gets to the point where the newspapers are carrying this garbage, you know your once perfect country's gone for good.
2084. Google will rule the government. Wherever you look, everything you see will be tailored to what you want to see. Screw normal advertising, you'll be seeing "Google AdSense billboards" which display roadside alerts and stuff based on whatever you're thinking. Google is the new thought police...
(My own started originally because I just needed a quick and dirty pre-configured Slackware with all my favorite apps, and kind of gradually evolved since...)
Also, in case the guy didn't notice, not all distributions are even about providing a pretty GUI; while my system is somewhat graphically oriented I quite frequently run it in text mode, and have been known to leave X off some of my systems altogether depending on what I use them for.
Someday more people will understand.
In Soviet Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, mice dissect YOU!
Now that Pluto's been confirmed to have more than one moon, what will than mean for the old debate over whether Pluto or Charon's the actual planet? Ought to be fun to watch...
Damn the military. Screwing things up again. (No offense to the men and women stuck doing all the dirty work, all hatred is directed exclusively towards the people in charge back in D.C. Land.)