I agree that Linux isn't ready for Joe User's home desktop. It's also undeniably manifest that Linux meets a lot of needs out there; the advantages Open Source gives it means it will continue to do so. And as a rabid Linux partisan, I'm glad that MacOS is meeting needs Linux doesn't and I wish it all the best, because from where I'm sitting every sale of a non-Microsoft operating system is a vote for diversity, which is a vote for portability, thus a vote for standards-based computing.
And perhaps that's ultimately a vote for Unix, and thus for Linux's world domination. We don't have to take the desktop today, or tomorrow. We don't need to win the game; we need only make sure it's still possible for people other than Microsoft to play.
I wouldn't go waiting for MacOS X to eat Linux's lunch any time soon, though. People who need a proven stable standard Unix platform won't be looking to MacOS for a while. --
"Intel has a pretty sane way of providing the consumer some protection against buying remarked, overclocked Xeons. Each Xeon has a processor information ROM (PIROM) built into the processor substrate. This PIROM is electrically programmed at the factory to hold details about the chip's core type, core stepping, etc. There are 16 bits at offset 16h in the PIROM that store the processors maximum core frequency (in MHz). So if you want to know what the speed your Xeon was rated at, just check that number.
It seems to me that if Intel is as serious about stopping illegal overclocking as they are about robbing every last shred of privacy from their customers, then they'd just do something like this with the PIII, instead of that ridiculous CPU serial number"
...the "Produkte" section says Alpha release, November '98, Beta release end of December '98, Final 1Q99; it doesn't make it clear which of these are projections and which have been met, but the "order" section only allows you to order the "alpha" release; so they failed to meet their December deadline by some way but didn't update the Web site to reflect it.
So thankfully it looks like we'll never see this disastrous distribution.
I would like to see a distribution with some of those ideas, though. New distributions aren't a bad thing if you can install.rpms on them; I'd like to see a profusion of "sub-distributions" based on RedHat or Debian but with new, experimental front ends and a hand-picked selection of "preferred" packages, and if one of them installed a VGA X server for configuration stuff as an early step that might be a good idea. --
Open source, very easy to configure, quite secure. Big installations would probably prefer Postfix but I like exim and run it at home and so (now) do all my friends - I also hacked up a mailing list manager for it.
Yes, I do think there should be an official, LI sponsored certification program. Otherwise there'll be hundreds of programs, some truly awful, which is certainly worse than none at all. LI's impressive list of members gives it legitimacy and clout that it can lend to a "good" program that has genuinely sprung from the community and is run in an open way, such as http://www.linuxinstitute.org/ . I'd also like to see someone (either LI or Linux Institute) try to maintain an index of all the certs they know about - there already seem to be quite a few...
http://www.redhat.com/ and http://www.caldera.com/ both run certification programs; I think that's fair enough but there's room for some generic Linux cerificates too
http://www.linuxinstitute.org/ sprang from a discussion in Linux Gazette
http://www.linuxcertification.org/ (Tobin Maginnis isn't IIRC one of the bad guys - yes, I've just noticed that he references the Linux Gazette discussion, so it looks like the good guys may be duplicating effort)
http://www.digitalmetrics.com/ (anyone happy to see poor Tux wearing a tie? - they don't reference anyone else's efforts, I've never heard of them, smells like the bad guys to me.)
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/ (who turn out also to be Digital Metrics)
And I expect it's only a matter of time before fuckers like Mike McLagan and Ian Nandhra of the LSA announce their Official Linux Certification Program and start promoting it through linux.org.
Yes, I do think that LI is run by the good guys. --
Hey, why hasn't everyone gone wild about those ARM boards? I want one very much. When it comes out, the price/performance it'll be possible to get for certain problem classes will change very dramatically - one of those problems will be cracking RC5.
(That reminds me: I wonder if I can enlist distributed.net with a useful crypto-related project I'd like to do..?) --
Slashdot makes no pretence of being an impartial news site; it'd be pretty silly to say it shouldn't be so obviously pro-Linux, for example. Slashdot editors posting stories that took their interest and adding comments on what they think isn't being out of line - it's how the site works.
Sometimes I disagree with what sengan writes, but to say that he shouldn't say it is to miss the point of the way that Slashdot works. --
Proprietary, closed source software mongers may have to disparage each others software, but we're not in competition and we're providing alternative implementations of the same standard. It's good for both sets of developers, all users of free operating systems, and Unix and standards based computing in general. If I had a spare machine knocking about I'd probably give all the Open Source OSses a try.
...people are switching to NT not because of belief in Microsoft, or a need to run win32 apps, but because of cost. Now that they can get Linux for cheaper, and now that (with Dell, HP preinstalling) they will be seen to do so by the statistics collectors, we can expect to see a huge swing our way.
Poll: how long before Linux/FreeBSD preinstall sales overtake sales of whatever Microsoft's server end product is? Go on Rob, let's test our crystal balls. --
I for one hadn't read this before and was glad to have my attention drawn to it. It's interesting to see LPD advocating that Netscape release their browser as free software... --
Ships at sea currently pay big money for differential GPS corrections, to get around the artificial error ("SA" = selective availability) introduced for civilians by the US Military. These corrections are currently sent by radio but could quite plausibly be transmitted over the Internet. Anyone with a high-spec GPS receiver and a full-time Internet connection could then start transmitting corrections; you wouldn't need to pay extra for a radio transmitter. Of course, you need to be physically within around a hundred kilometers of the corrections station for the corrections to be at their best accuracy. --
This may be true where you're from; I did my CS degree in Edinburgh, UK, and I have certainly found the degree to be a good grounding in CS principles and useful for doing real work. I think this is true of many CS degrees in this country. --
Slashdot Mirror
They of course think this mistakenly. I know you know this, so I thought the first to say it anyway should be non-flamy.
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Try "I'll tell you what I kneejerk".
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MacOS has, what, fifteen million users worldwide? Linux passed that a while ago.
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OR "...and this is bad because?"
I agree that Linux isn't ready for Joe User's home desktop. It's also undeniably manifest that Linux meets a lot of needs out there; the advantages Open Source gives it means it will continue to do so. And as a rabid Linux partisan, I'm glad that MacOS is meeting needs Linux doesn't and I wish it all the best, because from where I'm sitting every sale of a non-Microsoft operating system is a vote for diversity, which is a vote for portability, thus a vote for standards-based computing.
And perhaps that's ultimately a vote for Unix, and thus for Linux's world domination. We don't have to take the desktop today, or tomorrow. We don't need to win the game; we need only make sure it's still possible for people other than Microsoft to play.
I wouldn't go waiting for MacOS X to eat Linux's lunch any time soon, though. People who need a proven stable standard Unix platform won't be looking to MacOS for a while.
--
Several people have tried to write comments like yours in response to this article, but I think yours is by far the most realistic.
Did you know that the word "gullible" doesn't appear in the US edition of Websters? It seems they removed "irony" too, a long time ago...
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"Intel has a pretty sane way of providing the consumer some protection against buying remarked, overclocked Xeons. Each Xeon has a processor information ROM (PIROM) built into the processor substrate. This PIROM is electrically programmed at the factory to hold details about the chip's core type, core stepping, etc. There are 16 bits at offset 16h in the PIROM that store the processors maximum core frequency (in MHz). So if you want to know what the speed your Xeon was rated at, just check that number.
It seems to me that if Intel is as serious about stopping illegal overclocking as they are about robbing every last shred of privacy from their customers, then they'd just do something like this
with the PIII, instead of that ridiculous CPU serial number"
--
...the "Produkte" section says Alpha release, November '98, Beta release end of December '98, Final 1Q99; it doesn't make it clear which of these are projections and which have been met, but the "order" section only allows you to order the "alpha" release; so they failed to meet their December deadline by some way but didn't update the Web site to reflect it.
.rpms on them; I'd like to see a profusion of "sub-distributions" based on RedHat or Debian but with new, experimental front ends and a hand-picked selection of "preferred" packages, and if one of them installed a VGA X server for configuration stuff as an early step that might be a good idea.
So thankfully it looks like we'll never see this disastrous distribution.
I would like to see a distribution with some of those ideas, though. New distributions aren't a bad thing if you can install
--
Open source, very easy to configure, quite secure. Big installations would probably prefer Postfix but I like exim and run it at home and so (now) do all my friends - I also hacked up a mailing list manager for it.
http://www.exim.org/
--
You're free to modify and redistribute sources but not binaries.
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Yes, I do think there should be an official, LI sponsored certification program. Otherwise there'll be hundreds of programs, some truly awful, which is certainly worse than none at all. LI's impressive list of members gives it legitimacy and clout that it can lend to a "good" program that has genuinely sprung from the community and is run in an open way, such as http://www.linuxinstitute.org/ . I'd also like to see someone (either LI or Linux Institute) try to maintain an index of all the certs they know about - there already seem to be quite a few...
http://www.redhat.com/ and http://www.caldera.com/ both run certification programs; I think that's fair enough but there's room for some generic Linux cerificates too
http://www.linuxinstitute.org/ sprang from a discussion in Linux Gazette
http://www.linuxcertification.org/ (Tobin Maginnis isn't IIRC one of the bad guys - yes, I've just noticed that he references the Linux Gazette discussion, so it looks like the good guys may be duplicating effort)
http://www.digitalmetrics.com/ (anyone happy to see poor Tux wearing a tie? - they don't reference anyone else's efforts, I've never heard of them, smells like the bad guys to me.)
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/ (who turn out also to be Digital Metrics)
And I expect it's only a matter of time before fuckers like Mike McLagan and Ian Nandhra of the LSA announce their Official Linux Certification Program and start promoting it through linux.org.
Yes, I do think that LI is run by the good guys.
--
Hey, why hasn't everyone gone wild about those ARM boards? I want one very much. When it comes out, the price/performance it'll be possible to get for certain problem classes will change very dramatically - one of those problems will be cracking RC5.
(That reminds me: I wonder if I can enlist distributed.net with a useful crypto-related project I'd like to do..?)
--
Slashdot makes no pretence of being an impartial news site; it'd be pretty silly to say it shouldn't be so obviously pro-Linux, for example. Slashdot editors posting stories that took their interest and adding comments on what they think isn't being out of line - it's how the site works.
Sometimes I disagree with what sengan writes, but to say that he shouldn't say it is to miss the point of the way that Slashdot works.
--
Proprietary, closed source software mongers may have to disparage each others software, but we're not in competition and we're providing alternative implementations of the same standard. It's good for both sets of developers, all users of free operating systems, and Unix and standards based computing in general. If I had a spare machine knocking about I'd probably give all the Open Source OSses a try.
Hooray for NetBSD!
--
...people are switching to NT not because of belief in Microsoft, or a need to run win32 apps, but because of cost. Now that they can get Linux for cheaper, and now that (with Dell, HP preinstalling) they will be seen to do so by the statistics collectors, we can expect to see a huge swing our way.
Poll: how long before Linux/FreeBSD preinstall sales overtake sales of whatever Microsoft's server end product is? Go on Rob, let's test our crystal balls.
--
I for one hadn't read this before and was glad to have my attention drawn to it. It's interesting to see LPD advocating that Netscape release their browser as free software...
--
Ships at sea currently pay big money for differential GPS corrections, to get around the artificial error ("SA" = selective availability) introduced for civilians by the US Military. These corrections are currently sent by radio but could quite plausibly be transmitted over the Internet. Anyone with a high-spec GPS receiver and a full-time Internet connection could then start transmitting corrections; you wouldn't need to pay extra for a radio transmitter. Of course, you need to be physically within around a hundred kilometers of the corrections station for the corrections to be at their best accuracy.
--
This may be true where you're from; I did my CS degree in Edinburgh, UK, and I have certainly found the degree to be a good grounding in CS principles and useful for doing real work. I think this is true of many CS degrees in this country.
--