There are plenty of books for that beginners...
on
Linux Troubleshooting
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· Score: 1
...but these are not those books. If you want an absolute beginner's looks at Linux, check out Marcel Gagné's excellent Moving to Linux, Second Edition : Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! (direct link, no paid click-through). Also worth noting is Paul Sheer's LINUX: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition, that while a bit dated covers the basic concepts of Linux quite thoroughly and also makes quite a good reference guide. I would start with the former, but the latter is free online and the paperback inexpensive to purchase.
...EU's rules. If Microsoft was to choose not to follow their stipulations and refuse to supply the documentation or retract their services from Europe altogether, in this tech's opinion the EU would be better off for the decision. Economically speaking, they could spend the money they were spending on Microsoft Licenses on their own internal development, keeping the cash in the area. Technologically, any *nix makes a better server than Windows and requires less administrative staff to accomplish the same tasks. And the greatest biproduct of this would be freedom of direction and innovation, apart from a single vendor's whims (which are rarely in the customer's best interests anyway).
Go ahead, mod me flamebait or overrated. But keep in mind that I administrate and work with both Linux and Windows for a living, and I actually have much more Windows experience and education under my belt. That being said, if I had a choice in the matter the servers I work with would be 100% *nix.
...it's a really bad dupe of a story that doesn't matter. At all. To anyone. Come on, it's like an 8x8 pixel icon for a feature that your average clueless user doesn't even understand. The day IE has less vermin craling through it than a NYC sewer pipe I'll be interested in a story about it. At no time will I be interested in a story about a little orange icon.
I for one would like to see a study involving not just how easy it is to learn an interface, but once learned how productive one can be in said interface. For instance, I am proficient in both KDE and Gnome (and a myriad of other WMs which aren't mentioned here), but I feel I can get the most work done faster in KDE. Of course I do tweak quite a few aspects of KDE, but I digress. I would really like to see a productivity evaluation between already proficient users, confident with their skills on their respective interfaces, performing a series of common tasks and comparing the results.
While I agree with the gist of what you're saying, my firewall logs are constantly filled with hack attempts originating from our Chinese cyber-neighbors. What I'd be interested to know is whether these are concentrated attacks (most do not seem to be) or whether China's tenancy towards software piracy has become a problem for them. Would it surprise anyone if many widely-circulated, Chinese-pirated copies of Windows XP were pre-infected with trojan rootkits? In that case the botnets would be deployed from the moment the OS was installed. That being said, the responsibility ultimately lies with them either way.
Negroponte: "We plan on building $500 cars that will be simple, durable and will allow roural farmers in 3rd world countries to be able to drive to larger cities rather than walking"
Barrett: "Similar schemes in the past elsewhere in the world had failed and farmers would not be satisfied with the new car's limited range of features. We believe that what people really want our luxury sedans, and we're hoping they will buy some from us."
Assuming open-source became the de facto and furthermore Ubuntu for some crazy reason became the monopoly, I don't how that could ever be seen as abuse of monopoly. In the case of Ubuntu or any other GNU/Linux distribution, most if not all code is licensed under the GPL. Not only that, but every distro I've ever used offered you the choice of multiple programs which fill the same niche.
Call me crazy for responding to AC posts in the first place, but I was pointing out the usage of OSS/UNIX by Microsoft for mission-critical purposes, not just to study the competition. In other words, it'd be a bit like going into the executive fridge at a Budweiser plant and finding it stocked with Guiness.
That wasn't the only time that MS has had to eat humble pie about their server capabilities. Remember the whole Hotmail fiasco in late '97 when Microsoft acquired it? The whole thing was running on UNIX and ran just fine. They tried to replace it with NT servers, and it just couldn't stand up under the weight no matter how much hardware they threw at it. As a result, they had to stick with UNIX for quite a while until they could get Windows to the point where they could even pretend to make any real use of it.
The following is just hearsay, as I've never actually worked for MS. But a couple of engineer buddies I used to work with did some subcontracting for MS, and they said they deployed a whole lot of internal-facing *nix servers during that period. I tend to believe it, because the MS security guys who taught some seminars I attended wouldn't confirm or deny that they used any Linux internally. If they could have denied it in clean conscience, wouldn't they have done so emphatically?
...we could just not use operating systems which have abysmal security. You know, the one that attracts malware in the same way a magnet attracts iron ore. Yeah, you're right, that's crazy talk.
It wasn't the intention of my previous post to come across as a rebuttal, as it was not. In fact my aim was to establish this medium as a pretty healthy starting point for many non-mainstream IT projects or decisions.
In regards to which company it might be, I have no idea which it might be although the candidates you put forth all fit the bill. I do know that GM uses at least some Linux in their backend, as I did some subcontract work deploying Red Hat dervative encrypted mail servers for them. But they're in financial difficulty right now, so I don't know if they'd be the ones. Other than that, I'd like to get my hands on the originating IP address from which this story was posted. That might be a telling clue.:-)
"One important clue is that it seems like they are using Ask Slashdot as a their first tool to investigate a major business decision."
Pop Quiz: Name a place where you can ask a question of a couple hundred thousand UNIX, Linux, Windows, and other IT/IS pros all in one place, many of whom may have experience relevant to your company's situation. In addition, this place cannot charge a fee for their services, and the answers must be diverse and rapid.
...
I don't know about you, but the only place that comes to mind is Slashdot. Vendors and consulting firms often have a bias to whatever products/services they feel they can offer at greatest advantage to themselves, and not necessarily to your best interest. With all that in mind, I think Slashdot is a pretty good place to start, like bouncing an idea off of a skilled friend except on a much larger scale. That's not to say they shouldn't do their own homework from that point onward, but a company doesn't often get to the point of having 40,000 workstations by sheer guesswork.
In both successful Win/Lin environments I've worked in, one of the key ingredients was the presence of Linux on the servers...or at least a majority of them. In each case, the Windows domains were handled by Samba PDCs, which also ran NFS and NIS services for the Linux clients, each running from the same consolidated database. That way it's no harder to manage the Linux clients, as you're not asking them to act as Windows clients, but as UNIX ones. If you already have experienced UNIX pros onboard, it shouldn't be a problem for you at all. That way I've found it's much easier to keep things running optimally while still maintaining a single domain mangement base. In fact, one of the two shops I mentioned found Linux worked well enough for them that they are now at ~90% migration to Linux, with only upper management still running non-*nix OSes (seems they're always the hardest to get up to speed, doesn't it?). Of course, I have seen environments where Linux clients are grafted onto existing Windows networks, and they seemed to do quite well. Things are not as seamless as they could be, but everything works for the most part.
There are much more games for Windows, so if gaming is your number one reason for owning a PC Linux will probably dissapoint you. If you're like me and gaming is secondary, I think you'll get along just fine.;-)
Come on, having a bad experience with one distro establishes no kind of finality on the issue whatsoever. I can't really speak for Ubuntu as I've only really used it on a couple of old Macs, but I've never had update issues on any of the Linux distros I've ever run. Besides this, at this point there's no information suggesting your particular problems weren't entirely operator error.
Just to clarify, this isn't merely theoretical for me as I run Linux full time on all of my systems and administrate many Linux servers professionally. Honestly I'd rather administrate 100 Linux boxen than 1 Windows rig.
"Lets count the differences outlined in the article:
1. apply security and recommended patches on a simulated monthly release basis;Is there anything out there equivalent to windows update? Windows wins this one"
I guess that all depends on what you mean by 'the equivilent [of]'. If you mean 'an ActiveX-based update engine via web browser', than I'd say no, nothing like it that I know of. If you mean an automated means of updating an OS on a regular basis, I'd say Linux is perfectly capable of such a thing. As long as a Linux distro has a managed packaging system, it has the capacity for auto-updates. One word: cron. Except on a Linux distro, you can have every piece of software on your system updated, not just the core OS components, the web browser and the office suite. I fail to see how Windows wins out here. I personally have my machines update nightly, but it wouldn't be any more difficult to have them update monthly if that's what you want for whatever reason.
I can't believe you people. I thought I made it clear that I had 8 years of tech experience and 18 of PC experience overall. My point was that I've been around PCs since I was a kid; it's always been something that interests me. Damn, if you're going to flame somebody at least read WTF they're saying first.
Honestly, I never thought about the appearance of padding before. I actually have 18 years of experience in computing but only 8 professionally, which is what I list. I suppose I could shave off a few years to make it look less like a padded resume, but I am also looking for a reasonable employer who will understand such things. What a pity, I really love IT too.
I am a 24-year-old IT/IS pro with 8 years of field experience under my belt, NT, UNIX, Linux, AIX and AS400 administration experience, built hundereds of workstations, worked with JPL, government, trained tech students and more. That being said, I cannot find a job to save my life right now. I'm actually thinking about falling back on my education in clinical counseling; there may not be many good tech jobs available, but there's always people with psycho-emotional problems.;-)
I still maintain that the best way to defeat Sony's DRM is by simply not buying their music. All the fuss and legal backlash is nothing if we are two-faced in our dealings with them, and indeed all big industry. If we're chiding them on the one side for their vicious tactics and financially supporting them on the other, they hear the message loud and clear: we're pushovers. I think that's the answer they were prodding for when they first decided to include XCP on their CDs in the first place.
Polo and/or T-shirts may be standard attire across board at certain offices, but the article is right that they are typically reserved for only the geeky IT types. Somebody once told me "At work, dress like you're successful, maintain a humble attitude, and you'll go far". I've always tried to do that but in IT I've found it to be tricky, especially with on-site tech support type positions. The trouble is that often dressing nicely in the traditional sense doesn't work well when you often have to visit dusty server rooms, crawl under desks (not in the Monica Lewinsky sense... hopefully), and especially when you're on-call 24/7. That's the kind of situation I'd rather be in much more casual attire. Of course, none of this really applies to IT/MIS management types or to strictly phone-based helpdesk techs who do no on-site work. Personally I've found that wearing Dickies and a nice button-up shirt (maybe a tie if appropriate to position and the dress climate of the rest of the office) with plain old B&W Chuck Taylors works fine for most situations. YMMV and all that, but dressed in such a manner I've never had anything but compliments on my attire. Conversely people often doubt the validity of your technical background if the way you dress gives them the impression that you might really be living in your mother's basement.
Slashdot Mirror
...but these are not those books. If you want an absolute beginner's looks at Linux, check out Marcel Gagné's excellent Moving to Linux, Second Edition : Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! (direct link, no paid click-through). Also worth noting is Paul Sheer's LINUX: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition, that while a bit dated covers the basic concepts of Linux quite thoroughly and also makes quite a good reference guide. I would start with the former, but the latter is free online and the paperback inexpensive to purchase.
Go ahead, mod me flamebait or overrated. But keep in mind that I administrate and work with both Linux and Windows for a living, and I actually have much more Windows experience and education under my belt. That being said, if I had a choice in the matter the servers I work with would be 100% *nix.
...it's a really bad dupe of a story that doesn't matter. At all. To anyone. Come on, it's like an 8x8 pixel icon for a feature that your average clueless user doesn't even understand. The day IE has less vermin craling through it than a NYC sewer pipe I'll be interested in a story about it. At no time will I be interested in a story about a little orange icon.
I for one would like to see a study involving not just how easy it is to learn an interface, but once learned how productive one can be in said interface. For instance, I am proficient in both KDE and Gnome (and a myriad of other WMs which aren't mentioned here), but I feel I can get the most work done faster in KDE. Of course I do tweak quite a few aspects of KDE, but I digress. I would really like to see a productivity evaluation between already proficient users, confident with their skills on their respective interfaces, performing a series of common tasks and comparing the results.
While I agree with the gist of what you're saying, my firewall logs are constantly filled with hack attempts originating from our Chinese cyber-neighbors. What I'd be interested to know is whether these are concentrated attacks (most do not seem to be) or whether China's tenancy towards software piracy has become a problem for them. Would it surprise anyone if many widely-circulated, Chinese-pirated copies of Windows XP were pre-infected with trojan rootkits? In that case the botnets would be deployed from the moment the OS was installed. That being said, the responsibility ultimately lies with them either way.
-AT
Barrett: "Similar schemes in the past elsewhere in the world had failed and farmers would not be satisfied with the new car's limited range of features. We believe that what people really want our luxury sedans, and we're hoping they will buy some from us."
Assuming open-source became the de facto and furthermore Ubuntu for some crazy reason became the monopoly, I don't how that could ever be seen as abuse of monopoly. In the case of Ubuntu or any other GNU/Linux distribution, most if not all code is licensed under the GPL. Not only that, but every distro I've ever used offered you the choice of multiple programs which fill the same niche.
Call me crazy for responding to AC posts in the first place, but I was pointing out the usage of OSS/UNIX by Microsoft for mission-critical purposes, not just to study the competition. In other words, it'd be a bit like going into the executive fridge at a Budweiser plant and finding it stocked with Guiness.
The following is just hearsay, as I've never actually worked for MS. But a couple of engineer buddies I used to work with did some subcontracting for MS, and they said they deployed a whole lot of internal-facing *nix servers during that period. I tend to believe it, because the MS security guys who taught some seminars I attended wouldn't confirm or deny that they used any Linux internally. If they could have denied it in clean conscience, wouldn't they have done so emphatically?
...we could just not use operating systems which have abysmal security. You know, the one that attracts malware in the same way a magnet attracts iron ore. Yeah, you're right, that's crazy talk.
In regards to which company it might be, I have no idea which it might be although the candidates you put forth all fit the bill. I do know that GM uses at least some Linux in their backend, as I did some subcontract work deploying Red Hat dervative encrypted mail servers for them. But they're in financial difficulty right now, so I don't know if they'd be the ones. Other than that, I'd like to get my hands on the originating IP address from which this story was posted. That might be a telling clue. :-)
Pop Quiz: Name a place where you can ask a question of a couple hundred thousand UNIX, Linux, Windows, and other IT/IS pros all in one place, many of whom may have experience relevant to your company's situation. In addition, this place cannot charge a fee for their services, and the answers must be diverse and rapid.
...
I don't know about you, but the only place that comes to mind is Slashdot. Vendors and consulting firms often have a bias to whatever products/services they feel they can offer at greatest advantage to themselves, and not necessarily to your best interest. With all that in mind, I think Slashdot is a pretty good place to start, like bouncing an idea off of a skilled friend except on a much larger scale. That's not to say they shouldn't do their own homework from that point onward, but a company doesn't often get to the point of having 40,000 workstations by sheer guesswork.
-AT
-AT
Costs $15, but well worth it. Also, there are more native Linux games than you might think. Check out http://www.icculus.org/ , http://www.linuxgames.com/ http://www.happypenguin.org/ , http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ , http://www.tuxgames.com/ , http://games.linux.sk/ , http://games.linux.sk/ , http://www.linux-games.com/ , http://www.linux-gamers.net/ ... Of course for me gaming is just gravy, Linux is my ideal OS for actually getting work done. But I find that games run much more consistently in Linux than in Windows, which makes my gaming flings that much more enjoyable when I do have time for the occasional LAN.
There are much more games for Windows, so if gaming is your number one reason for owning a PC Linux will probably dissapoint you. If you're like me and gaming is secondary, I think you'll get along just fine. ;-)
-AT
Just to clarify, this isn't merely theoretical for me as I run Linux full time on all of my systems and administrate many Linux servers professionally. Honestly I'd rather administrate 100 Linux boxen than 1 Windows rig.
-AT
I guess that all depends on what you mean by 'the equivilent [of]'. If you mean 'an ActiveX-based update engine via web browser', than I'd say no, nothing like it that I know of. If you mean an automated means of updating an OS on a regular basis, I'd say Linux is perfectly capable of such a thing. As long as a Linux distro has a managed packaging system, it has the capacity for auto-updates. One word: cron. Except on a Linux distro, you can have every piece of software on your system updated, not just the core OS components, the web browser and the office suite. I fail to see how Windows wins out here. I personally have my machines update nightly, but it wouldn't be any more difficult to have them update monthly if that's what you want for whatever reason.
-AT
I can't believe you people. I thought I made it clear that I had 8 years of tech experience and 18 of PC experience overall. My point was that I've been around PCs since I was a kid; it's always been something that interests me. Damn, if you're going to flame somebody at least read WTF they're saying first.
Nope, I'm serious. My first PC was an 8086. Not that I'm broken hearted that you don't believe me. ;)
Honestly, I never thought about the appearance of padding before. I actually have 18 years of experience in computing but only 8 professionally, which is what I list. I suppose I could shave off a few years to make it look less like a padded resume, but I am also looking for a reasonable employer who will understand such things. What a pity, I really love IT too.
I am a 24-year-old IT/IS pro with 8 years of field experience under my belt, NT, UNIX, Linux, AIX and AS400 administration experience, built hundereds of workstations, worked with JPL, government, trained tech students and more. That being said, I cannot find a job to save my life right now. I'm actually thinking about falling back on my education in clinical counseling; there may not be many good tech jobs available, but there's always people with psycho-emotional problems. ;-)
I still maintain that the best way to defeat Sony's DRM is by simply not buying their music. All the fuss and legal backlash is nothing if we are two-faced in our dealings with them, and indeed all big industry. If we're chiding them on the one side for their vicious tactics and financially supporting them on the other, they hear the message loud and clear: we're pushovers. I think that's the answer they were prodding for when they first decided to include XCP on their CDs in the first place.
-AT
* Fixed: 314241 - "Report broken web site" toolbar button is broken when using "small icons".
* Fixed: 313490 - Enable IDN for .org.
* Fixed: 313894 - Reporter chrome is registered twice.
* Fixed: 313360 - Profile locking doesn't work if the profile is located on a FAT partition.
* Fixed: 314754 - "Extension compatibility updates" check never completes.
* Fixed: 314684 - Endless update loop from firefox 1.5 beta2 to 1.5 rc1 if 1.0.x was ever installed
* Fixed: 312777 - Negative margins cause floated elements to be placed to the right of incorrect earlier boxes (since March 2005).
* Fixed: 312363 - document.write into iframe results in broken-lock icon
* WFM: 314484 - Firefox 1.5 RC1 topcrash [@ 0xffffff4d] [@ js_GC]
* Fixed: 309044 - Flashplayer 8 "Bad NPObject as private data!"
* Fixed: 314258 - ExtensionItemUpdater:checkForDone: Failure in listener's onAddonUpdateEnded.
* Fixed: 315017 - [Linux] Undetermined progressmeter doesn't work.
* Fixed: A few potential security holes.
* Fixed: 313414 - Add a way to do "sandboxed" http connections that don't modify the cookie list.
* Fixed: 314465 - Implement a non-copyingCompareUTF8toUTF16.
* Fixed: 263042 - Ship both autocomplete impls with the new-toolkit
* Fixed: 264308 - Implement DOM Level 3 UserData API.
* Fixed: 314218 - New version of JEP (0.9.5+a), please land on trunk and branch.
* Fixed: 147670 - Wrong (last or empty) tooltip text displayed for dropdown list menu items.
* Fixed: 226094 - Support JavaScript Core for WinXP AMD64.
* Fixed: 314549 - Various bugs involving containers not actually fixed for subframes.
* Fixed: 312036 - History.dat contains entries deleted from the "date and site" view.
* Fixed: Several fixes for specific DHTML performance tests.
* Fixed: 312804 - No longer shows loading-image.gif when loading images
* Fixed: 309706 - Stack overflow crash [@ jpinscp.dll + 0xaa87] (since Sept 22).
...When an audio CD roots your box. Never fear though, Vista comes pre-rooted with DRM goodness!