You idiot. You do not rewrite a whole networking stack in the time between beta and release. The whole "it's only beta!" excuse only holds up for fixing trivial mistakes, not poor design concepts.
And that's precisely why OSS desktop applications and operating systems are not becoming mainstream anytime soon. It's nice to be different. But it's a pain in the ass when you try too much and end up pleasing a handful of techies.
This is why gimpshop exists. It's not like vanilla gimp caters to techies, either. It just doesn't cater to you, but obviously, when something is Free Software and doesn't cater to you current needs it's obviously "only for techies".
Excuse me if I think the Free Software movement is benefiting directly from not having short sighted thought such as that.
The "binary lottery" would not change for most users. They can't read the source code, so whether they download an executable or a source and compile it won't matter to them. Yes, some people would be able to read the source and discriminate between "good" and "bad" code, maybe even fix a thing or two about it. Most would just do what they do now: Download something and run it. With the only difference being that they complain about having to compile it first.
Yes, it would. At risk of just repeating my self: when was the last time you downloaded spyware from the debian repository? The fact that the average user can't read source code doesn't make any difference whatsoever. It's not the direct affect of the source being available that benefits them. It's the indirect effect. It's not like I personally check every line in the OpenBSD sources. The only languages I where I can read the sourcecode on a level where I am able to debug are common lisp, scheme, python and bash. It's not a binary lottery when it's been throught the peer review required for it to enter the repository.
I tend to distrust systems that limit me artificially.
There's no artifical limit on the root functionality. Removing the root account is nothing akin to removing root functionality. It doesn't even stop you from having a root shell (I think the correct sudo flag is -k). The difference is in the method, not in the result. I personally prefer su, but that's only because I have no need for the sudo functionality. Temporary privelige escalation are a far better choice for users who primarily use GUI tools. It means people still use their normal user account, but after being warned and entering a password, are able to do as they wish.
Security comes at the price of comfort
No, I don't think it does. I'm no less comfortable in Ubuntu than I am in my native distribution. The su --> sudo change has a trivial effect (three extra characters on your normal shell change) and yet is a very useful facility.
I disagree that the situation would be different if the average user used Free Software. (access to source code is not directly responsable, however)
Free Software operating systems, such as Ubuntu, have taken to enforcing basic habits on users that ensure basic levels of security. For example, Ubuntu takes a good deal of configuring before actually making the root user account useable (the sudo complex). There is even more work required before one can "log in" as a root user.
Another facet of the Free Software community is that the repository system used results in more peer review than is present in the normal Windows situation of downloading and running an unchecked binary. Ubuntu (while I think that they could certainly stand to add a longer test period) does have a good system in place. Community consensus primarily dictates what goes into a repository, then a maintainer who checks the program is appointed, then a testing program is begun (normally lasting, in total, and month at least) and finally the program comes into an optional repository that users choose to enable. If it is very well known to be solid and needed for the standard use, it will probably recieve further checks before entering the "main" repository. Users on Free Software systems very, very rarely run the "binary lottery" that Windows users often do. I don't remember the last time I downloaded a binary to run on my system.
This is probably not a monopoly that Free Software has over secure process. It's not something that Microsoft couldn't do if they put their mind to it. In fact, it's probably something the Apple (in particular) could do very easily, seeing as their system contains mainly their own software, plus Free programs. Apple would find this very simple to implement (it's not like the Apple community is too small, or not committed enough). In fact, fink is a Free Software attempt at much of the process that I have stated.
Re:Gimpshop!
on
Beginning GIMP
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
breaks a number of UI design rules
It's not that it breaks design rules - it's that the GIMP team have a different set of design rules they use. I like theirs better.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
If beating viruses was something you could do with a store-bought product like a virus scanner then your arguement would be valid.
Security isn't something you can make - it's something you do. McAfee's magic potion just doesn't work. And it's not because the magic potion is bad (after all, this is a magic potion that's been developed over many years and has taken many skilled hackers to create). It's because magic potions don't work.
Take for example one fairly secure operating system - OpenBSD.
What is it that OpenBSD developers do that results in them getting broken into so rarely?
What is it that OpenBSD users do that results in them getting broken into so rarely?
The answer to #1 is "a hell of a lot", and the answer to #2 is "very little". This is the best example of security via best-practice that I know of.
The "Microsoft and McAfee" system of machine security has the answers to these two questions the wrong way around. The jobs that MS and McAfee do should both be under the same roof - stopping viruses through recognising a problem in the system and making a heuristic that recognises exploits and releasing that to the public for them to include in their system is a fundamentally bad system of security.
OpenBSD's method doesn't even involve looking for viruses at all - they pretty much just look for bad methods and change them. A lot of the time, OpenBSD developers fix problems without actually realising it - because part of their practice is that, when they find code they find hard to understand, they rewrite it. This isn't by any means all that they do, but it's a pretty good example of good process.
XP does have a standardized GUI. Every windows development environment utilizes it. There is a set of APIs that you can use to create windows, track mouse movements,etc.
Well, actually, that was a sarcastic comment. I was pointing out how stupid your comment was, but I didn't count on you being so stupid that you didn't understand me.
To quote, you said; "mostly because there are no standardized guis for unix (unless you count KDE/GNOME)". This is somewhat akin to saying something like "excluding George Bush, America doesn't even have a president". I tried to point that out, but obviously do didn't get it, so I have the delicious pleasure of handing your ass back to you a second time.
I want a ferrari...but it requires an "up-front cost". Is this immoral too? They aren't "forcing" anything. They are offering a product for sale. You have a choice to buy it or not.
This is a different issue, and I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I mean. When you buy a Ferrari, you can change the tires. You can repaint. You can swap the seats out. Imagine if someone sold you the Ferrari, and wouldn't let you change the tires, or repaint, or get new seats. Imagine they tried to sue you and put you in jail if you did. Imagine if they had to make their car design really poor and slow and unrepairable if you got certain problems, because they didn't want you to have control over something you own. That's exactly what Microsoft do, and you're so blinded by your own ignorance that you make up stupid car analogies to mis-represent the facts of the case.
Next time you want to compare two things, instead of pulling an deliberately mis-concieved imaginary situation out of your ass, try actually using the facts of the situation itself. That way, what you're saying will have the illusion of relevance, instead of making it look like you need to alter the actual situation by using the cover of an invented, idiotic analogy.
Microsoft and other proprietary application companies have a business to run..with their biggest asset being the source-code. They don't want to give it out because it would basically create direct competition to them (and they would lose money).
Again, you show that you don't actually know shit about the situation. Maybe you might want to google for the "Open Source Business Model". Then, maybe you want to google Red Hat's profits last year.
It is not an issue with morality (why do zealots like you continue to turn software into some kind of religious or political movement).
Because freedom of access to infomation, and the method of accessing infomation is an important political point.
Micrsoft sells a product..some people buy it..others do not. You have a choice to buy it or use one of the countless other alternatives on the market today.
Well done. You very nearly tricked a five year old child into getting sidetracked because you managed to counter a common criticism with a completely irrevelant statement.
Choice between alternatives products isn't the issue at all. The central issue is that people who do buy Microsoft products don't have the freedom they should have.
It doesn't really give you much. 99% of the population do not even utilize these "freedoms"..which is probably why the majority of people don't really get upset when they don't have the source code to a new application.
Another basic mis-understanding. Are you saying that 99% of the users don't install any extra software on their machines? Everyone benefits from source code. While not-everyone reads the source code directly, everyone can make use of the products of the people that do. I don't read the source code for the X.org X11 daemon, but if the programmers of fluxbox hadn't, I wouldn't have the desktop enviroment that I use. While I don't personally check every line of the OpenBSD source code, I can benefit from the public review pr
Intel are the big player in the CPU market at the moment. Even though AMD is quick/cheaper depending on who you talk to, it's still Intel that has around 80% of the market share of CPUs, as well as strong fingers in a couple of other pies. It's also Intel who have all the deals with machine builders, such as Dell.
Intel doing a little worse is going to increase the amount of competition in the market. Until very recently they were the monopoly. This is akin to saying Microsoft anti-trust lawsuits will reduce the competitiveness of the market - it's totally the wrong conclusion.
mostly because there are no standardized guis for unix (unless you count KDE/GNOME). GUI development with an actual development studio (delphi,cbuilder,Visual Studio) can reduce the time to complete a project considerably.
This statement does not make sense. Unless you count the Windows desktop, Windows XP has no standardised GUI either. We do have standardised "GUIs" (you even mentioned two of them!) Personally, I think that the competition between the desktop enviroments is probably beneficial to the overall standard of desktop enviroments on Free Unix. I don't use anything that could be called a "desktop enviroment", though (neither GNOME or KDE).
GUI development doesn't actually increase the speed of development any more than a GUI increases speed of file management. I can promise you that a skilled vim or emacs user is probably far more productive in their inviroment that you could ever be in theirs. It's not the bitmapped display which makes the difference - it's the design of the software.
Also, what is the point in keeping the compiler, linker, and editor separate?
It is understandable if you disagree with the point, but if you don't actually know the reasons for modularity, then you really need to read up more. It's not like it's a new concept, and it's not like I didn't reference the concept in my previous post. Unix was conceived over 35 years ago, and is still a well used, and high quality family of Operating Systems. A big part of this is due to the design decisions made when it was originally invisaged; modularity is one such rule.
up-front licensing costs are immoral? Redhat, Mysql, and many other companies based on open source projects require up-front licensing costs.
They do require up-front licencing costs, but it's isn't quite the costs themselves are immoral. Due to Red Hat and MySQL's business structure, no one is forced to pay those licencing costs (thought there are good reasons to do so, including high quality support). Red Hat is GPL, and so Free copies of the system are distributed (see CentOS). MySQL only charge licences for non-GPL usage. Microsoft do not provide source code, and they also force people to pay licence fees if they want to use the software. This is the immoral behavior that I refer to (Microsoft should provision source code to their customers, and allow free use, alteration and improvement).
I have no objection to either Red Hat or MySQL charging fees for purchases; Free Software doesn't mean zero cost (though it normally does; and in effect ensures that the software is free beer from someone). When you buy a copy of RHEL, you get source code, ensuring yourself, and your community, Freedom.
Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux.
I think the grandparents point is that though it is technically a multi-user OS, it isn't a very good one. The kernel level schedulers on Windows give a really poor response under multiple sources of medium to heavy load.
I'm not aware of that many "development studios" for Unix. There's a couple, like eclipse and such, but many Unix writers tend to work a different way. In line with the Unix philosophy (rules 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 if you're interested) there's a lot of people who keep the editor, compiler, linker etc all seperate. If you're looking for a "development studio" for Unix, I think you're looking for the wrong thing. We don't have a Start Menu either.:)
So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms.
Well, I'm sure anyone could have pointed out that large companies with large budgets can afford the $400 dollar cost. But that $400 dollars is a cost, and to a lot of companies, it's a big cost. It's an even bigger cost when many difference licences have to be purchased. (Obviously, Unixes have costs of their own, but the costs tend to increase in line with the use being made, or the complexity of the "solution" etc, and up-front licences payments (which are immoral, in my opinion) normally end up being a far less weildy solution than Free Unix is) And in my, and the grandparents opinion, it's an unjustified cost.
Your opinion, there's no fact to that. I replace my linux server at home with SBS 2003 because its easier to manage the network using SBS2003 than it was with Linux + SMB.
Of course it's opinion! The whole damn subject is opinion! As if a (very very poorly run) test on the speed of a server is the last word on the subject! There's little universal fact to your personal experience either.;)
I've heard quite differently; indeed, some people claim XP64 is the best desktop OS, even better than 32bit XP. I don't think the 64 bit servers are suffering huge problems either.
Have you actually used it? WinXP 64bit really doesn't work very well at all. I wouldn't know about 64 bit servers, but 64 bit WinXP is really not something that works very well.
Go ahead and spend hours and hours tarballing your server; the fact is that it would be faster to just create an image of the HD and burn that to a DVD. There's no praying involved; my former employer had great success doing such restores. And putting down a new image is faster than un-tarring a file to disk again.
It's possible to use either image or tar with Unixes. Tar is useful because it's easy to use diffs and delta compression on backups then. Tar's also useful when you only want to backup a certain area; such as/etc or/var. It's not like you're stuck with tar either - disk imaging still works fine. When you can tarball up only the parts of the machine you need to keep, the idea of disk imaging seems redundant (for most cases).
I do happen to be someone with "computer knowledge", but that didn't actually make a difference at all in the installation of Ubuntu.
A friend get 5 free cds shipped to him, and I got one. I put Ubuntu onto an old machine, and everything was automatic. I made little actual interaction with the install process at all (aside from the "Yes, I am sure" dialogs).
It runs fine. By fine, I mean everything is functional (firefox takes about 5 or 6 seconds to load, but I was sort of expecting that).
The fact of the matter, is that you don't actually know anything about the install procedure. You're too quick to get your "stupid fanboy!" response to actually take the time, and look at the facts. Ubuntu is fine on my Windows 98 era machine. I used the normal install CD. I didn't strip out any services (though, if I'd wanted too, I could have done). I didn't use a "text-installer".
But fuck that, it's more important to ignore all the facts and make a quick judgement based on something you obviously know little to nothing about!!!
Fascism is appealing when people are stupid. They're only gaining popularity because red top newspapers are making out like there's some huge immigration issue.
If you believe that people with a trivial difference such as a skin pigment are damaging "the country" then you're incredibly short sighted.
Important to bear in mind that security isn't always from everyone. People may very well trust the company. They'll want to be encrypted to have safe from malicious parties.
That said, I don't trust Google any more than you do.
I don't think we can seriously say Linux is noticeably more mature now than it was in 2000.
Ugh...I don't like getting into technical details, but you're using the name "Linux" in a way that is _really_ vague. Free Software is probably a better term, or possibly "Open Source" if you're that way inclined. If I called the Microsoft OS "NT" or Mac OS X "XNU" or "Darwin" you'd be similarly confused.
In terms of kernel level stuff - there aren't many changes because the vast majority of work is done. We have a kernel that works, in a productive way, it's pretty much now a case of maintaining it with new features.
In terms of what I would call "userlevel" we've been done a long time. The shell and commandline utilities have been nearly done, or entirely useful for a decade.
However, in terms of graphical user enviroment, we still need high level GUI stuff (the kind of thing that grandma interacts with). Windows is pretty good at this part (though, in my opinion, it isn't nearly good enough). Free Software is mediocre at this. Some things are easy to do, some aren't. We're at a reasonably workable standard nowadays, but we need improvement in order to gain acceptance. This doesn't mean copying a Start Menu; this means figuring out ways to bring out GUI to a level where it is as-good-as Windows and OSX, and then being better.
It's important that we keep a clear head on this issue. Bear in mind that she has since said;
There was no malice intended. They were doing it in a playful way. And when I said very specifically to John, "Don't. No," he didn't do it. He said, "All right, no. She's serious this time. No."
Whether or not a crime has been committed is up to the victim. It's important to remember that.
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You idiot. You do not rewrite a whole networking stack in the time between beta and release. The whole "it's only beta!" excuse only holds up for fixing trivial mistakes, not poor design concepts.
Please THINK before you post.
And that's precisely why OSS desktop applications and operating systems are not becoming mainstream anytime soon. It's nice to be different. But it's a pain in the ass when you try too much and end up pleasing a handful of techies.
This is why gimpshop exists. It's not like vanilla gimp caters to techies, either. It just doesn't cater to you, but obviously, when something is Free Software and doesn't cater to you current needs it's obviously "only for techies".
Excuse me if I think the Free Software movement is benefiting directly from not having short sighted thought such as that.
The "binary lottery" would not change for most users. They can't read the source code, so whether they download an executable or a source and compile it won't matter to them. Yes, some people would be able to read the source and discriminate between "good" and "bad" code, maybe even fix a thing or two about it. Most would just do what they do now: Download something and run it. With the only difference being that they complain about having to compile it first.
Yes, it would. At risk of just repeating my self: when was the last time you downloaded spyware from the debian repository? The fact that the average user can't read source code doesn't make any difference whatsoever. It's not the direct affect of the source being available that benefits them. It's the indirect effect. It's not like I personally check every line in the OpenBSD sources. The only languages I where I can read the sourcecode on a level where I am able to debug are common lisp, scheme, python and bash. It's not a binary lottery when it's been throught the peer review required for it to enter the repository.
I tend to distrust systems that limit me artificially.
There's no artifical limit on the root functionality. Removing the root account is nothing akin to removing root functionality. It doesn't even stop you from having a root shell (I think the correct sudo flag is -k). The difference is in the method, not in the result. I personally prefer su, but that's only because I have no need for the sudo functionality. Temporary privelige escalation are a far better choice for users who primarily use GUI tools. It means people still use their normal user account, but after being warned and entering a password, are able to do as they wish.
Security comes at the price of comfort
No, I don't think it does. I'm no less comfortable in Ubuntu than I am in my native distribution. The su --> sudo change has a trivial effect (three extra characters on your normal shell change) and yet is a very useful facility.
I could only see an .asx in TFA. Anyone have something the non-robot linux user can view?
I disagree that the situation would be different if the average user used Free Software. (access to source code is not directly responsable, however)
Free Software operating systems, such as Ubuntu, have taken to enforcing basic habits on users that ensure basic levels of security. For example, Ubuntu takes a good deal of configuring before actually making the root user account useable (the sudo complex). There is even more work required before one can "log in" as a root user.
Another facet of the Free Software community is that the repository system used results in more peer review than is present in the normal Windows situation of downloading and running an unchecked binary. Ubuntu (while I think that they could certainly stand to add a longer test period) does have a good system in place. Community consensus primarily dictates what goes into a repository, then a maintainer who checks the program is appointed, then a testing program is begun (normally lasting, in total, and month at least) and finally the program comes into an optional repository that users choose to enable. If it is very well known to be solid and needed for the standard use, it will probably recieve further checks before entering the "main" repository. Users on Free Software systems very, very rarely run the "binary lottery" that Windows users often do. I don't remember the last time I downloaded a binary to run on my system.
This is probably not a monopoly that Free Software has over secure process. It's not something that Microsoft couldn't do if they put their mind to it. In fact, it's probably something the Apple (in particular) could do very easily, seeing as their system contains mainly their own software, plus Free programs. Apple would find this very simple to implement (it's not like the Apple community is too small, or not committed enough). In fact, fink is a Free Software attempt at much of the process that I have stated.
breaks a number of UI design rules
It's not that it breaks design rules - it's that the GIMP team have a different set of design rules they use. I like theirs better.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Security isn't something you can make - it's something you do. McAfee's magic potion just doesn't work. And it's not because the magic potion is bad (after all, this is a magic potion that's been developed over many years and has taken many skilled hackers to create). It's because magic potions don't work.
Take for example one fairly secure operating system - OpenBSD.
- What is it that OpenBSD developers do that results in them getting broken into so rarely?
- What is it that OpenBSD users do that results in them getting broken into so rarely?
The answer to #1 is "a hell of a lot", and the answer to #2 is "very little". This is the best example of security via best-practice that I know of.The "Microsoft and McAfee" system of machine security has the answers to these two questions the wrong way around. The jobs that MS and McAfee do should both be under the same roof - stopping viruses through recognising a problem in the system and making a heuristic that recognises exploits and releasing that to the public for them to include in their system is a fundamentally bad system of security.
OpenBSD's method doesn't even involve looking for viruses at all - they pretty much just look for bad methods and change them. A lot of the time, OpenBSD developers fix problems without actually realising it - because part of their practice is that, when they find code they find hard to understand, they rewrite it. This isn't by any means all that they do, but it's a pretty good example of good process.
XP does have a standardized GUI. Every windows development environment utilizes it. There is a set of APIs that you can use to create windows, track mouse movements,etc.
Well, actually, that was a sarcastic comment. I was pointing out how stupid your comment was, but I didn't count on you being so stupid that you didn't understand me.
To quote, you said; "mostly because there are no standardized guis for unix (unless you count KDE/GNOME)". This is somewhat akin to saying something like "excluding George Bush, America doesn't even have a president". I tried to point that out, but obviously do didn't get it, so I have the delicious pleasure of handing your ass back to you a second time.
I want a ferrari...but it requires an "up-front cost". Is this immoral too? They aren't "forcing" anything. They are offering a product for sale. You have a choice to buy it or not.
This is a different issue, and I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I mean. When you buy a Ferrari, you can change the tires. You can repaint. You can swap the seats out. Imagine if someone sold you the Ferrari, and wouldn't let you change the tires, or repaint, or get new seats. Imagine they tried to sue you and put you in jail if you did. Imagine if they had to make their car design really poor and slow and unrepairable if you got certain problems, because they didn't want you to have control over something you own. That's exactly what Microsoft do, and you're so blinded by your own ignorance that you make up stupid car analogies to mis-represent the facts of the case.
Next time you want to compare two things, instead of pulling an deliberately mis-concieved imaginary situation out of your ass, try actually using the facts of the situation itself. That way, what you're saying will have the illusion of relevance, instead of making it look like you need to alter the actual situation by using the cover of an invented, idiotic analogy.
Microsoft and other proprietary application companies have a business to run..with their biggest asset being the source-code. They don't want to give it out because it would basically create direct competition to them (and they would lose money).
Again, you show that you don't actually know shit about the situation. Maybe you might want to google for the "Open Source Business Model". Then, maybe you want to google Red Hat's profits last year.
It is not an issue with morality (why do zealots like you continue to turn software into some kind of religious or political movement).
Because freedom of access to infomation, and the method of accessing infomation is an important political point.
Micrsoft sells a product..some people buy it..others do not. You have a choice to buy it or use one of the countless other alternatives on the market today.
Well done. You very nearly tricked a five year old child into getting sidetracked because you managed to counter a common criticism with a completely irrevelant statement.
Choice between alternatives products isn't the issue at all. The central issue is that people who do buy Microsoft products don't have the freedom they should have.
It doesn't really give you much. 99% of the population do not even utilize these "freedoms"..which is probably why the majority of people don't really get upset when they don't have the source code to a new application.
Another basic mis-understanding. Are you saying that 99% of the users don't install any extra software on their machines? Everyone benefits from source code. While not-everyone reads the source code directly, everyone can make use of the products of the people that do. I don't read the source code for the X.org X11 daemon, but if the programmers of fluxbox hadn't, I wouldn't have the desktop enviroment that I use. While I don't personally check every line of the OpenBSD source code, I can benefit from the public review pr
-You mean like how they have been playing catch-up with Firefox? You mean like he mentioned in his post?
You've got this all wrong.
Intel are the big player in the CPU market at the moment. Even though AMD is quick/cheaper depending on who you talk to, it's still Intel that has around 80% of the market share of CPUs, as well as strong fingers in a couple of other pies. It's also Intel who have all the deals with machine builders, such as Dell.
Intel doing a little worse is going to increase the amount of competition in the market. Until very recently they were the monopoly. This is akin to saying Microsoft anti-trust lawsuits will reduce the competitiveness of the market - it's totally the wrong conclusion.
mostly because there are no standardized guis for unix (unless you count KDE/GNOME). GUI development with an actual development studio (delphi,cbuilder,Visual Studio) can reduce the time to complete a project considerably.
This statement does not make sense. Unless you count the Windows desktop, Windows XP has no standardised GUI either. We do have standardised "GUIs" (you even mentioned two of them!) Personally, I think that the competition between the desktop enviroments is probably beneficial to the overall standard of desktop enviroments on Free Unix. I don't use anything that could be called a "desktop enviroment", though (neither GNOME or KDE).
GUI development doesn't actually increase the speed of development any more than a GUI increases speed of file management. I can promise you that a skilled vim or emacs user is probably far more productive in their inviroment that you could ever be in theirs. It's not the bitmapped display which makes the difference - it's the design of the software.
Also, what is the point in keeping the compiler, linker, and editor separate?
It is understandable if you disagree with the point, but if you don't actually know the reasons for modularity, then you really need to read up more. It's not like it's a new concept, and it's not like I didn't reference the concept in my previous post. Unix was conceived over 35 years ago, and is still a well used, and high quality family of Operating Systems. A big part of this is due to the design decisions made when it was originally invisaged; modularity is one such rule.
up-front licensing costs are immoral? Redhat, Mysql, and many other companies based on open source projects require up-front licensing costs.
They do require up-front licencing costs, but it's isn't quite the costs themselves are immoral. Due to Red Hat and MySQL's business structure, no one is forced to pay those licencing costs (thought there are good reasons to do so, including high quality support). Red Hat is GPL, and so Free copies of the system are distributed (see CentOS). MySQL only charge licences for non-GPL usage. Microsoft do not provide source code, and they also force people to pay licence fees if they want to use the software. This is the immoral behavior that I refer to (Microsoft should provision source code to their customers, and allow free use, alteration and improvement).
I have no objection to either Red Hat or MySQL charging fees for purchases; Free Software doesn't mean zero cost (though it normally does; and in effect ensures that the software is free beer from someone). When you buy a copy of RHEL, you get source code, ensuring yourself, and your community, Freedom.
Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux.
:)
;)
/etc or /var. It's not like you're stuck with tar either - disk imaging still works fine. When you can tarball up only the parts of the machine you need to keep, the idea of disk imaging seems redundant (for most cases).
I think the grandparents point is that though it is technically a multi-user OS, it isn't a very good one. The kernel level schedulers on Windows give a really poor response under multiple sources of medium to heavy load.
I'm not aware of that many "development studios" for Unix. There's a couple, like eclipse and such, but many Unix writers tend to work a different way. In line with the Unix philosophy (rules 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 if you're interested) there's a lot of people who keep the editor, compiler, linker etc all seperate. If you're looking for a "development studio" for Unix, I think you're looking for the wrong thing. We don't have a Start Menu either.
So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms.
Well, I'm sure anyone could have pointed out that large companies with large budgets can afford the $400 dollar cost. But that $400 dollars is a cost, and to a lot of companies, it's a big cost. It's an even bigger cost when many difference licences have to be purchased. (Obviously, Unixes have costs of their own, but the costs tend to increase in line with the use being made, or the complexity of the "solution" etc, and up-front licences payments (which are immoral, in my opinion) normally end up being a far less weildy solution than Free Unix is) And in my, and the grandparents opinion, it's an unjustified cost.
Your opinion, there's no fact to that. I replace my linux server at home with SBS 2003 because its easier to manage the network using SBS2003 than it was with Linux + SMB.
Of course it's opinion! The whole damn subject is opinion! As if a (very very poorly run) test on the speed of a server is the last word on the subject! There's little universal fact to your personal experience either.
I've heard quite differently; indeed, some people claim XP64 is the best desktop OS, even better than 32bit XP. I don't think the 64 bit servers are suffering huge problems either.
Have you actually used it? WinXP 64bit really doesn't work very well at all. I wouldn't know about 64 bit servers, but 64 bit WinXP is really not something that works very well.
Go ahead and spend hours and hours tarballing your server; the fact is that it would be faster to just create an image of the HD and burn that to a DVD. There's no praying involved; my former employer had great success doing such restores. And putting down a new image is faster than un-tarring a file to disk again.
It's possible to use either image or tar with Unixes. Tar is useful because it's easy to use diffs and delta compression on backups then. Tar's also useful when you only want to backup a certain area; such as
I do happen to be someone with "computer knowledge", but that didn't actually make a difference at all in the installation of Ubuntu.
A friend get 5 free cds shipped to him, and I got one. I put Ubuntu onto an old machine, and everything was automatic. I made little actual interaction with the install process at all (aside from the "Yes, I am sure" dialogs).
It runs fine. By fine, I mean everything is functional (firefox takes about 5 or 6 seconds to load, but I was sort of expecting that).
The fact of the matter, is that you don't actually know anything about the install procedure. You're too quick to get your "stupid fanboy!" response to actually take the time, and look at the facts. Ubuntu is fine on my Windows 98 era machine. I used the normal install CD. I didn't strip out any services (though, if I'd wanted too, I could have done). I didn't use a "text-installer".
But fuck that, it's more important to ignore all the facts and make a quick judgement based on something you obviously know little to nothing about!!!
Look at distros based on XFCE or fluxbox. XFCE especiallly.
When you are told the same thing twice, the probability that they are correct increases.
If there are a number of people telling you you're wrong, chances are, that you are wrong. Not that they're both wrong.
And for the record, you are wrong. I'm running Ubuntu off a 800mhz machine as I write this. It's got 128mb of RAM, and runs fine. You're an idiot.
Yeah, it's funny, Red Hat, Novell, MySQL and Mozilla are all totally unprofitable as a result of releasing their source code to the public.
Oh wait. They are profitable, and you're talking shit.
The article asked for input, and that's what I gave.
Release the source under the GPL.
I, and a load of other people, won't use it until then.
I do agree; the possibilities with computers are much greater than those of a television.
What I really wanted to point out was that the statistic was stupid.
If you believe that people with a trivial difference such as a skin pigment are damaging "the country" then you're incredibly short sighted.
Yeah, if only 40% of kids see television as a "must-have" then the end is surely near for all television companies.
I mean, 40% of 70 million people is only 28 million children in the USA!!! TV is clearly about to become a minority market!!!
Important to bear in mind that security isn't always from everyone. People may very well trust the company. They'll want to be encrypted to have safe from malicious parties.
That said, I don't trust Google any more than you do.
In terms of kernel level stuff - there aren't many changes because the vast majority of work is done. We have a kernel that works, in a productive way, it's pretty much now a case of maintaining it with new features.
In terms of what I would call "userlevel" we've been done a long time. The shell and commandline utilities have been nearly done, or entirely useful for a decade.
However, in terms of graphical user enviroment, we still need high level GUI stuff (the kind of thing that grandma interacts with). Windows is pretty good at this part (though, in my opinion, it isn't nearly good enough). Free Software is mediocre at this. Some things are easy to do, some aren't. We're at a reasonably workable standard nowadays, but we need improvement in order to gain acceptance. This doesn't mean copying a Start Menu; this means figuring out ways to bring out GUI to a level where it is as-good-as Windows and OSX, and then being better.
Whether or not a crime has been committed is up to the victim. It's important to remember that.