what utter twaddle! "try putting an unpatched win98 machine on the net and see how long it takes to get hacked" is about as sensible a statement as the one you just made.
there are things like iptables that tend to not be like your windoze 'firewall', if you can call it such.
being a sys admin in a place where Solaris/SPARC is the platform, i've seen the quality of the machines go down in the last year or so. with the advent of Linux becoming a viable platform, Sun have felt the pinch of cheap x86 boxes and have responded with their own commodity boxes. you can see some of them (sunfire v240 for e.g.) have ALI chipsets in them, etc and other stuff you'd expect to see in x86 kit. i can't say we've had many, if any, components fail in them but we haven't had them longer than approx 18 months so maybe we'll hit the curve soon:-)
for real Sun engineering, you need to look to the older models, like the sunfire 280R. we run those too and you can see the difference when you open them up. and in the performance.
my point being; if you look at any of Sun's webcasts, you'll see Jon Schwartz go on about 'the era of commodity computing'. cheaper boxes is Sun's response to that trend. dunno 'bout this laptop, though!
yep, we got clamAV, spamasassin and Exim running on Solaris here and it is _the_ shit. like parent says, quick auto-updates, catches everything (pretty much) and doesn't even kill our machines with load. and it's OSS. anyone need anything more??
I actually got off my backside (figuratively, of course) and penned a mail straight away to my MEP, Richard Corbett MEP, of Leeds, UK, voicing my concerns about this.
Here is the bulk of his reply:
"My personal opinion is that this issue is far from settled as there is a considerable difference of views between the European Parliament's first reading position and the position reached in the Council (which has only just been formally adopted, but with growing reticence among some national governments). The text can only become law if it is approved in identical terms by both the Council (national ministers from each country) and the European Parliament, with up to three readings in each institution. My position is as follows:
I am not in favour of patenting of software as in the US.
Europe needs a uniform legal approach to stop the drift towards
extending patentability to areas which would not have been
traditionally allowed, and to stop patentability of pure business
methods, algorithms or mathematical methods.
Software products as such must not be patented.
Opensource software must be allowed to flourish and this Directive
must not have adverse effects on opensource software and small
software developers.
Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an anti-
competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies.
Thank you for writing in on this important matter."
Personally, i think this is a pretty positive viewpoint!
true, it doesn't quite come up to the standard that corporates expect but then again, not many do. as for something that no company would use, the BBC mux their teletext (strange UK info service through your TV) into their broadcast signal with Slack (http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/11 76/1/)
regarding support, yeah, you have a good point, although Pat has taken steps to ensure that, in his absence, Slack will continue. i think his way of doing things is actually infectious and is influencing the way Slack users think about their OS. i would expect the project to continue, even without him.
dunno. if the specs are to be believed as shown (i'm gonna halve them, that's usually how it goes:-)) i'd imagine emulation is possible. 3 x 3.2 Ghz cores, emulating a 700 Mhz x86 chip? does anyone know the (estimated) maths on this?
while i agree with you that Slackware isn't for the average user and does take _some_ configuration, recent versions (10, 10.1) have 'just worked' straight out of the box for me. that includes ACPI wireless, 3D support, etc. the only things i've had trouble with are TVout (radeon mobility) and sleep.
lately, i've stopped compiling software from scratch (due to the wonders of linuxpackages.net; they have loads of stuff) and opt for letting the OS do it, with it's package management) Slack is still in a bit of a niche but it's a lot friendlier nowadays, so i think it does have a place in these kind of roundups.
Slashdot Mirror
what utter twaddle! "try putting an unpatched win98 machine on the net and see how long it takes to get hacked" is about as sensible a statement as the one you just made.
= 1272&q=unpatched+linux+windows+hacked&btnG=Search& meta= if you need any references.
there are things like iptables that tend to not be like your windoze 'firewall', if you can call it such.
by the way, http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&biw
funny, though. well done.
being a sys admin in a place where Solaris/SPARC is the platform, i've seen the quality of the machines go down in the last year or so. with the advent of Linux becoming a viable platform, Sun have felt the pinch of cheap x86 boxes and have responded with their own commodity boxes. you can see some of them (sunfire v240 for e.g.) have ALI chipsets in them, etc and other stuff you'd expect to see in x86 kit. i can't say we've had many, if any, components fail in them but we haven't had them longer than approx 18 months so maybe we'll hit the curve soon :-)
for real Sun engineering, you need to look to the older models, like the sunfire 280R. we run those too and you can see the difference when you open them up. and in the performance.
my point being; if you look at any of Sun's webcasts, you'll see Jon Schwartz go on about 'the era of commodity computing'. cheaper boxes is Sun's response to that trend. dunno 'bout this laptop, though!
yep, we got clamAV, spamasassin and Exim running on Solaris here and it is _the_ shit. like parent says, quick auto-updates, catches everything (pretty much) and doesn't even kill our machines with load. and it's OSS. anyone need anything more??
I actually got off my backside (figuratively, of course) and penned a mail straight away to my MEP, Richard Corbett MEP, of Leeds, UK, voicing my concerns about this.
Here is the bulk of his reply:
"My personal opinion is that this issue is far from settled as there is a
considerable difference of views between the European Parliament's first
reading position and the position reached in the Council (which has only
just been formally adopted, but with growing reticence among some
national governments). The text can only become law if it is approved in
identical terms by both the Council (national ministers from each
country) and the European Parliament, with up to three readings in each
institution. My position is as follows:
I am not in favour of patenting of software as in the US.
Europe needs a uniform legal approach to stop the drift towards
extending patentability to areas which would not have been
traditionally allowed, and to stop patentability of pure business
methods, algorithms or mathematical methods.
Software products as such must not be patented.
Opensource software must be allowed to flourish and this Directive
must not have adverse effects on opensource software and small
software developers.
Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an anti-
competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies.
Thank you for writing in on this important matter."
Personally, i think this is a pretty positive viewpoint!
jeezus, that's a bit masochistic, innit? :-)
true, it doesn't quite come up to the standard that corporates expect but then again, not many do. as for something that no company would use, the BBC mux their teletext (strange UK info service through your TV) into their broadcast signal with Slack (http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/11 76/1/)
regarding support, yeah, you have a good point, although Pat has taken steps to ensure that, in his absence, Slack will continue. i think his way of doing things is actually infectious and is influencing the way Slack users think about their OS. i would expect the project to continue, even without him.
anyone wanting to see how much linux is in Sony's game plan, should check http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/search .html
there's a few interesting tid bits in there, including the source for the PS2 kernel.
dunno. if the specs are to be believed as shown (i'm gonna halve them, that's usually how it goes :-)) i'd imagine emulation is possible. 3 x 3.2 Ghz cores, emulating a 700 Mhz x86 chip? does anyone know the (estimated) maths on this?
while i agree with you that Slackware isn't for the average user and does take _some_ configuration, recent versions (10, 10.1) have 'just worked' straight out of the box for me. that includes ACPI wireless, 3D support, etc. the only things i've had trouble with are TVout (radeon mobility) and sleep. lately, i've stopped compiling software from scratch (due to the wonders of linuxpackages.net; they have loads of stuff) and opt for letting the OS do it, with it's package management) Slack is still in a bit of a niche but it's a lot friendlier nowadays, so i think it does have a place in these kind of roundups.