Currently, some scientists do think that some events are non-deterministic: high energy, double-pendulum motion and photon transitions are two good examples.
Yeah, the NSA did create the SELinux patches, and TOR was originally developed by the US Naval Research Facility. If you worry about any backdoors in either programs, then study the source code and try to find them.
>> You have got to control that massive resource, it is a source of world control.
So why did U.S. forces not occupy Kuwait at the end of Desert Storm? We were already there, and we had a good excuse: "To ensure that we can rapidly respond to another invasion attempt by Saddam Hussein." If we only cared about Iraq's oil, why did the U.S. forces depart from Iraq instead of conquering it? Why wait over ten years?
>> And the profit from it also matters,
From what I have heard, maintaining a presence in Iraq costs FAR more than the oil revenue earns.
>> and having bases there that allow you to organize the region in your own interests, of course that matters.
The U.S. already had military bases in Saudi Arabia. If the U.S. only wanted more military bases, it could have maintained a presence in Kuwait and/or conquered Iraq during Desert Storm.
The EFF-Bashing article failed to mention that the EFF helped to supplant DES (Data Encryption Standard) by building a hardware-based DES Cracker (codenamed "Deep Crack") that decrypted a DES-encrypted message in only 56 hours. Also, the EFF protested the NSA's push to use SkipJack and the Clipper Chip. I do not know how much influence the EFF had in preventing the use of the Clipper Chip, but at least the Clipper Chip did not butt in to the workings of the soon-to-be-popular Internet.
While I do agree that the EFF has not always been effective (especially in recent years), they have succeeded a FEW times.
If you do not want to mess around with hardware detection, you could buy a PC with Linux pre-installed. There are many online vendors who will do this (some of them even have well-recognized names, although these are typically more expensive 'workstations': IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, etc.). Hey, it works for Apple!
If you do not want to buy a new computer, then check out a Linux Hardware Compatibility List and search for the driver you need and see what is supported. If you want a good sound card, you could use a Sound Blaster Live!, which is only ~$30 nowadays. Can anyone recommend a better value Linux soundcard?
> Ubuntu isn't necessarily going to know you now have a completely different graphics hardware setup unless you tell it so, which means telling it to use different drivers.
If they replace an older graphics card made by Nvidia or ATI with a newer model made by the same company, they graphics should work without any new driver installation, as long as the drivers are relatively recent. Two-and-a-half years ago, I did not have to install anything new drivers in Mandrake Linux 9.1 when I went upgraded my graphics card from an Nvidia Riva TNT2 to a GeForce FX 5200.
> I guess people just don't want to spend the time reading through mailing lists that most probably aren't indexed by a search engine like google,
Uh, yeah. I have better things to do than to dig through a non-searchable mailing list archive. I think that all mailing-list archives should have some kind of search function or allow themselves to be easily indexed by Google.
> and just want an answer immediately so they can go back to playing Freecell.
Your condescending attitude towards people who WANT TO GET SOMETHING DONE is the problem that is being discussed in this thread. Do not feel too bad, though, almost every other 'community' has the same problem (Windows and Mac (Oh God!) forums included).
> UNIX of course was as commercial a product as anything else,
UNIX was, originally, NOT a commercial project. A '50s legal ruling prevented AT&T from entering the computer hardware/software industry, so Ken Thompson & Dennis Ritchie were allowed to give away the Unix source code and binaries to anyone who asked for them. The liberal terms and the support for a popular platform (the PDP-11) were the two greatest reasons for Unix's success at universities and later industries. After the government split it up, AT&T was allowed to enter the software industry, and it began selling Unix as a commercial product, called System III, that did not include the source code. The Unix Time-Share System was certainly a reaction against the mainframe priesthood, though.
> while MULTICS required a ponderous Burroughs mainframe.
Multics was initially developed for the GE (General Electric) 645 mainframe and was later ported to the Honeywell 6180 series. The only OS, that I know of, that ran on the Burroughs machines was the MCP or "Master Control Program."
> UNIX had become the OS of choice for VAXen
Unix was very popular on the VAXen, but I still think that VMS had a larger marketshare on the VAX, since it was actually supported. Unix marketshare might have increased when DEC started to support it, but that was near the end-of-life for the VAX, I think.
> The people you will have trouble with are the people who cut their teeth on DOS and later Windows, who have memories of what they went through in the VAX days, and any hint of inadvertent condensension from Linux gurus is enough to give them flashbacks of their old tormenters.
Why would Unix users torment PC users? I do not think that microcomputers could access the internet very easily, so PC & Unix users were probably separate communities. It is not that I do not believe you (I know how condescending people can be when they think they have some superior system), but could you give some examples?
Yes, Apple's main product is the "Mac Experience", i.e. the tight integration of hardware and software that increases usability. Without the Apple hardware, Mac OSX would lose much of its appeal. Since Apple open sourced the core of their operating system and began the Darwin project, Macs have increased in popularity; while 'open sourcing' the codebase may not have contributed much to Apple's popularity surge, it did not hinder the surge either.
Apple would not, necessarily lose control of OSX if the open sourced the entire thing; they did not lose control of Darwin if they open sourced it. They are the biggest name behind Darwin, and any other projects would strive to maintain compatibility with their codebase. How many Linux forks, including ones made by big corporations, have posed a threat to Linus Torvald's oversite?
Apple should not fear clone vendors. Apple has a good track record of usability that clone vendors might not be able to match (at least, they have not yet); even with the same operating system, clone vendors would probably not best Apple's hardware innovations before Apple integrates them into the Macintosh, and me-too products rarely sell as well as the original. Also, Apple has the brand recognition that Company X does not, and we all know how much that helps a company (in Redmond).
Although I do not think that Apple would benefit by open sourcing Quartz and the other GUI components (other than the free bugfixes and maybe some minor feature enhancements), I think they erred by not continuing to release the x86 source code to xnu, supposedly from concerns with piracy and the fear that people would not buy a Mac if they could run OSX on beige box PCs. Crackers will not be hindered much by the lack of source code (i.e. they have already proven this), but even though one *CAN* run OSX on a beige box PC with certain hardware, the lack of OSX drivers for the lionshare of PC hardware and the colossal task of writing drivers for all that hardware means that only technologically-oriented tinkerers (who already have a supported hardware configuration or do not mind dropping $400 or so to purchase one), a VERY SMALL percentage of the population and not Apple's target market anyway, will run OSX on the bare iron of their machine.
Emulation and Virtualization software, such as Xen, VMWare, QEMU, etc., could fix the supported hardware problem, but setting up such a system would still be beyond the skills of most users, and in the case of emulators, the system would probably run too slowly to be used comfortably. The only major benefit, that I see, that warez d00ds would find from the darwin source code would be the ability to compile it with support for the Xen VM's paravirtualization to give a speed boost, and I do not think that is enough reason to lock-up the source code.
The company probably has some clause in the contract or the IT Terms of Use that inform the employee that they could be monitored. Since the network belongs to the company and not to the employee, the company has a 'right' to monitor it. A lot of people have been fired from their jobs because they used the company/school network to download pornography. If the employee does not want to be monitored, they should not use the company network for non-work related activities
Uh.. No. Windows does not fuck up the physical hardware. The affected users might have to get out their install dvds and reinstall OSX, though. From setting-up several Windows dual-boot systems over the years, I have learned that I should always install Windows first.
Yes, but you have to drop $600 dollars for a Mac Mini, and possibly an extra $120 for a legal copy of Windows XP: Home, to evaluate OSX. That is a LOT of money to evaluate an operating system. Say what you want about Linux, but Knoppix makes it very easy and cheap to decide if Linux is right for you. If a Mac user wanted to switch to Windows, s/he could spend $120 on a copy of XP Home and install it on her Mac (with BootCamp).
Let's compare the three, shall we?
Windows XP Home: $120 (at least on Amazon.com) + tax
Windows XP Pro: $300 + tax
Linux (Knoppix): $0.50 (price of blank CD-R) + tax (in Canada that would be $72:D)
OSX: $600 + tax
That is a shitload of money to evaluate an OS. I still think that Apple would increase sales by selling a VMWare image of OSX (especially since two VMWare products are free for non-commercial use): it would solve the problems of hardware compatibility, it would be cheaper than the current evaluation solutions for every OS except Linux/BSD/etc., and if the user decided to stick to Windows/Linux/whatever, Apple would still have the $90 or whatever they would charge for the VMWare image.
>> Compare that with setting up a dual boot Linux machine. I did that once, to play with. Never actually did anything with it though since I didn't have the time to get it properly configured.
You could buy a computer with Linux pre-installed. There are many small computer shops that sell Linux PCs, and there are even some big-name companies (IBM/HP/Dell) that sell Linux workstations, that could (relatively easily) be used as a PC. The desktops can be had for less than a similarly-priced Windows desktop, and workstations are sold for the same price as (or a bit less than) a Mac. Linux is not just for tinkerers anymore.
There is a program for Linux called Cedega (formerly known as WineX), which is a proprietary fork of Wine, which is an application to run Windows programs under Linux/BSD by translating parts of the Windows and DirectX API to the Linux API. Transgaming, the company supporting Cedega, added Direct3D support, and some other enhancements specifically for gaming, and tries to support the latest releases of Windows games. With this application, Linux gamers, a good chunk of the Linux population (at least I think it is) can play the latest games without dual-booting into Micro$**t Winblow$; unfortunately, there are some catches.
First, Cedega is NOT open-source (parts of it are released under the Alladin Public License, which is more shared source) and a subscription costs $5 per month (with an initial minimum subscription of 3 months).
The second problem is that Cedega is trying to support resource intensive applications, so they are constantly changing their supported API to 'optimize' their program. As a result, games that worked with older versions of WineX/Cedega might not work with newer versions, so you may have to install multiple copies to run the games you want.
The third, and VERY IRRITATING, flaw is that Cedega uses a voting system to determine which games to support. This means that only the popular games (Half Life, WOW, GTA, Elder Scrolls, etc.) will definitely work, and less popular games (Gothic, Gothic II,*insert many games here*) may NEVER work!!
Anyway, Cedega has some annoying flaws, but its MAIN flaw is that it gives developers a good excuse not to do a native Linux port. They may have heard of Cedega, and they assume that their game will be supported under it, so there is no reason to do a native port.
Some people, initially, liked the idea of Wine/WineX/Cedega because it would provide gamers with a way to switch to a 'superior' operating system and still be able to play their Windows games, and game developers would, eventually, see that a vast chunk of their market runs Linux, and they would start releasing native ports. Cedega has *NOT* encouraged games; one could argue that it has hampered game development under Linux (see above). Since most Linux computers can run Windows, game developers will still release games under Windows and just suggest that Linux gamers dualboot. Since most Linux users are not as fanatically anti-MS as they claim to be, most of them will boot into Windows to play their games (which I, myself, do). I hear many people on Linux forums say that they only use Windows for gaming or video-editing (or synth music creation).
Game developers do not want to do more work than is necessary, so they will not do a port if another choice is given. If a Macintosh can run Windows, then game developers will tailor their games to Windows and will not support OSX, "because you can just run Windows for that stuff." As mentioned previously, the MacIntel's ability to run Windows will not attract enough gamers for most game developers to consider OSX as a viable platform, if they have not considered it already.
In conlusion, Windows is far too entrenched in the desktop market to be displaced by anything; to fight it, one should focus on embedded computers (cell phones/PDAs/etc.) where Windows CE is just one OS among many. If you want to support open gaming, buy a GP2X. http://www.gp2x.com/
Sorry for this verbose (and mostly off-topic) rant.
The drivers from ATI and Nvidia are pretty easy to install. If you have compiled support for dynamically loaded modules into your kernel (which ALL major distributions have done), and if the module author (or the distribution) has written an installation script (most do), you can install any module simply by running the script as root. Linux has come a long way in the last several years. Also there are utilities (that are included by many distributions) that will automatically guess your hardware at installation or boot time and load the corresponding driver. Also, hotplug can handle loading and unloading modules based on certain conditions, such as loading the drivers for your digital camera whenever it detects that the camera has been plugged in.
>> Yes, but new customers who already have a Linux environment running previously had one choice: DB2. Now Oracle has a chance of making sales from these customers
Slashdot Mirror
Currently, some scientists do think that some events are non-deterministic: high energy, double-pendulum motion and photon transitions are two good examples.
Maybe it is too expensive for him?
Dude! The key is SEVEN FUCKING EUROS!! You only have to pay $8.64 for a legal copy. I understand warezing a $50 game, but come on!
Yeah, the NSA did create the SELinux patches, and TOR was originally developed by the US Naval Research Facility. If you worry about any backdoors in either programs, then study the source code and try to find them.
>> You have got to control that massive resource, it is a source of world control.
So why did U.S. forces not occupy Kuwait at the end of Desert Storm? We were already there, and we had a good excuse: "To ensure that we can rapidly respond to another invasion attempt by Saddam Hussein." If we only cared about Iraq's oil, why did the U.S. forces depart from Iraq instead of conquering it? Why wait over ten years?
>> And the profit from it also matters,
From what I have heard, maintaining a presence in Iraq costs FAR more than the oil revenue earns.
>> and having bases there that allow you to organize the region in your own interests, of course that matters.
The U.S. already had military bases in Saudi Arabia. If the U.S. only wanted more military bases, it could have maintained a presence in Kuwait and/or conquered Iraq during Desert Storm.
The EFF-Bashing article failed to mention that the EFF helped to supplant DES (Data Encryption Standard) by building a hardware-based DES Cracker (codenamed "Deep Crack") that decrypted a DES-encrypted message in only 56 hours. Also, the EFF protested the NSA's push to use SkipJack and the Clipper Chip. I do not know how much influence the EFF had in preventing the use of the Clipper Chip, but at least the Clipper Chip did not butt in to the workings of the soon-to-be-popular Internet.
While I do agree that the EFF has not always been effective (especially in recent years), they have succeeded a FEW times.
I am pretty sure that XEmacs does not launch at boot-time. Give it a try.
If you do not want to mess around with hardware detection, you could buy a PC with Linux pre-installed. There are many online vendors who will do this (some of them even have well-recognized names, although these are typically more expensive 'workstations': IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, etc.). Hey, it works for Apple!
If you do not want to buy a new computer, then check out a Linux Hardware Compatibility List and search for the driver you need and see what is supported. If you want a good sound card, you could use a Sound Blaster Live!, which is only ~$30 nowadays. Can anyone recommend a better value Linux soundcard?
> Ubuntu isn't necessarily going to know you now have a completely different graphics hardware setup unless you tell it so, which means telling it to use different drivers.
If they replace an older graphics card made by Nvidia or ATI with a newer model made by the same company, they graphics should work without any new driver installation, as long as the drivers are relatively recent. Two-and-a-half years ago, I did not have to install anything new drivers in Mandrake Linux 9.1 when I went upgraded my graphics card from an Nvidia Riva TNT2 to a GeForce FX 5200.
> I guess people just don't want to spend the time reading through mailing lists that most probably aren't indexed by a search engine like google,
Uh, yeah. I have better things to do than to dig through a non-searchable mailing list archive. I think that all mailing-list archives should have some kind of search function or allow themselves to be easily indexed by Google.
> and just want an answer immediately so they can go back to playing Freecell.
Your condescending attitude towards people who WANT TO GET SOMETHING DONE is the problem that is being discussed in this thread. Do not feel too bad, though, almost every other 'community' has the same problem (Windows and Mac (Oh God!) forums included).
> UNIX of course was as commercial a product as anything else,
UNIX was, originally, NOT a commercial project. A '50s legal ruling prevented AT&T from entering the computer hardware/software industry, so Ken Thompson & Dennis Ritchie were allowed to give away the Unix source code and binaries to anyone who asked for them. The liberal terms and the support for a popular platform (the PDP-11) were the two greatest reasons for Unix's success at universities and later industries. After the government split it up, AT&T was allowed to enter the software industry, and it began selling Unix as a commercial product, called System III, that did not include the source code. The Unix Time-Share System was certainly a reaction against the mainframe priesthood, though.
> while MULTICS required a ponderous Burroughs mainframe.
Multics was initially developed for the GE (General Electric) 645 mainframe and was later ported to the Honeywell 6180 series. The only OS, that I know of, that ran on the Burroughs machines was the MCP or "Master Control Program."
> UNIX had become the OS of choice for VAXen
Unix was very popular on the VAXen, but I still think that VMS had a larger marketshare on the VAX, since it was actually supported. Unix marketshare might have increased when DEC started to support it, but that was near the end-of-life for the VAX, I think.
> The people you will have trouble with are the people who cut their teeth on DOS and later Windows, who have memories of what they went through in the VAX days, and any hint of inadvertent condensension from Linux gurus is enough to give them flashbacks of their old tormenters.
Why would Unix users torment PC users? I do not think that microcomputers could access the internet very easily, so PC & Unix users were probably separate communities. It is not that I do not believe you (I know how condescending people can be when they think they have some superior system), but could you give some examples?
Yes, Apple's main product is the "Mac Experience", i.e. the tight integration of hardware and software that increases usability. Without the Apple hardware, Mac OSX would lose much of its appeal. Since Apple open sourced the core of their operating system and began the Darwin project, Macs have increased in popularity; while 'open sourcing' the codebase may not have contributed much to Apple's popularity surge, it did not hinder the surge either.
Apple would not, necessarily lose control of OSX if the open sourced the entire thing; they did not lose control of Darwin if they open sourced it. They are the biggest name behind Darwin, and any other projects would strive to maintain compatibility with their codebase. How many Linux forks, including ones made by big corporations, have posed a threat to Linus Torvald's oversite?
Apple should not fear clone vendors. Apple has a good track record of usability that clone vendors might not be able to match (at least, they have not yet); even with the same operating system, clone vendors would probably not best Apple's hardware innovations before Apple integrates them into the Macintosh, and me-too products rarely sell as well as the original. Also, Apple has the brand recognition that Company X does not, and we all know how much that helps a company (in Redmond). Although I do not think that Apple would benefit by open sourcing Quartz and the other GUI components (other than the free bugfixes and maybe some minor feature enhancements), I think they erred by not continuing to release the x86 source code to xnu, supposedly from concerns with piracy and the fear that people would not buy a Mac if they could run OSX on beige box PCs. Crackers will not be hindered much by the lack of source code (i.e. they have already proven this), but even though one *CAN* run OSX on a beige box PC with certain hardware, the lack of OSX drivers for the lionshare of PC hardware and the colossal task of writing drivers for all that hardware means that only technologically-oriented tinkerers (who already have a supported hardware configuration or do not mind dropping $400 or so to purchase one), a VERY SMALL percentage of the population and not Apple's target market anyway, will run OSX on the bare iron of their machine.
Emulation and Virtualization software, such as Xen, VMWare, QEMU, etc., could fix the supported hardware problem, but setting up such a system would still be beyond the skills of most users, and in the case of emulators, the system would probably run too slowly to be used comfortably. The only major benefit, that I see, that warez d00ds would find from the darwin source code would be the ability to compile it with support for the Xen VM's paravirtualization to give a speed boost, and I do not think that is enough reason to lock-up the source code.
The company probably has some clause in the contract or the IT Terms of Use that inform the employee that they could be monitored. Since the network belongs to the company and not to the employee, the company has a 'right' to monitor it. A lot of people have been fired from their jobs because they used the company/school network to download pornography. If the employee does not want to be monitored, they should not use the company network for non-work related activities
Uh.. No. Windows does not fuck up the physical hardware. The affected users might have to get out their install dvds and reinstall OSX, though. From setting-up several Windows dual-boot systems over the years, I have learned that I should always install Windows first.
Maybe they are trying to reduce the spread of bird flu?
Better than that: there is a microphone.
I believe that booting Linux is already supported without BootCamp. I know Linux supports EFI, and it should support the hardware (Core Duo/ATI/etc).
Yes, but you have to drop $600 dollars for a Mac Mini, and possibly an extra $120 for a legal copy of Windows XP: Home, to evaluate OSX. That is a LOT of money to evaluate an operating system. Say what you want about Linux, but Knoppix makes it very easy and cheap to decide if Linux is right for you. If a Mac user wanted to switch to Windows, s/he could spend $120 on a copy of XP Home and install it on her Mac (with BootCamp).
:D)
Let's compare the three, shall we?
Windows XP Home: $120 (at least on Amazon.com) + tax
Windows XP Pro: $300 + tax
Linux (Knoppix): $0.50 (price of blank CD-R) + tax (in Canada that would be $72
OSX: $600 + tax
That is a shitload of money to evaluate an OS. I still think that Apple would increase sales by selling a VMWare image of OSX (especially since two VMWare products are free for non-commercial use): it would solve the problems of hardware compatibility, it would be cheaper than the current evaluation solutions for every OS except Linux/BSD/etc., and if the user decided to stick to Windows/Linux/whatever, Apple would still have the $90 or whatever they would charge for the VMWare image.
>> Compare that with setting up a dual boot Linux machine. I did that once, to play with. Never actually did anything with it though since I didn't have the time to get it properly configured.
You could buy a computer with Linux pre-installed. There are many small computer shops that sell Linux PCs, and there are even some big-name companies (IBM/HP/Dell) that sell Linux workstations, that could (relatively easily) be used as a PC. The desktops can be had for less than a similarly-priced Windows desktop, and workstations are sold for the same price as (or a bit less than) a Mac. Linux is not just for tinkerers anymore.
There is a program for Linux called Cedega (formerly known as WineX), which is a proprietary fork of Wine, which is an application to run Windows programs under Linux/BSD by translating parts of the Windows and DirectX API to the Linux API. Transgaming, the company supporting Cedega, added Direct3D support, and some other enhancements specifically for gaming, and tries to support the latest releases of Windows games. With this application, Linux gamers, a good chunk of the Linux population (at least I think it is) can play the latest games without dual-booting into Micro$**t Winblow$; unfortunately, there are some catches.
First, Cedega is NOT open-source (parts of it are released under the Alladin Public License, which is more shared source) and a subscription costs $5 per month (with an initial minimum subscription of 3 months).
The second problem is that Cedega is trying to support resource intensive applications, so they are constantly changing their supported API to 'optimize' their program. As a result, games that worked with older versions of WineX/Cedega might not work with newer versions, so you may have to install multiple copies to run the games you want.
The third, and VERY IRRITATING, flaw is that Cedega uses a voting system to determine which games to support. This means that only the popular games (Half Life, WOW, GTA, Elder Scrolls, etc.) will definitely work, and less popular games (Gothic, Gothic II,*insert many games here*) may NEVER work!!
Anyway, Cedega has some annoying flaws, but its MAIN flaw is that it gives developers a good excuse not to do a native Linux port. They may have heard of Cedega, and they assume that their game will be supported under it, so there is no reason to do a native port.
Some people, initially, liked the idea of Wine/WineX/Cedega because it would provide gamers with a way to switch to a 'superior' operating system and still be able to play their Windows games, and game developers would, eventually, see that a vast chunk of their market runs Linux, and they would start releasing native ports. Cedega has *NOT* encouraged games; one could argue that it has hampered game development under Linux (see above). Since most Linux computers can run Windows, game developers will still release games under Windows and just suggest that Linux gamers dualboot. Since most Linux users are not as fanatically anti-MS as they claim to be, most of them will boot into Windows to play their games (which I, myself, do). I hear many people on Linux forums say that they only use Windows for gaming or video-editing (or synth music creation).
Game developers do not want to do more work than is necessary, so they will not do a port if another choice is given. If a Macintosh can run Windows, then game developers will tailor their games to Windows and will not support OSX, "because you can just run Windows for that stuff." As mentioned previously, the MacIntel's ability to run Windows will not attract enough gamers for most game developers to consider OSX as a viable platform, if they have not considered it already.
In conlusion, Windows is far too entrenched in the desktop market to be displaced by anything; to fight it, one should focus on embedded computers (cell phones/PDAs/etc.) where Windows CE is just one OS among many. If you want to support open gaming, buy a GP2X. http://www.gp2x.com/
Sorry for this verbose (and mostly off-topic) rant.
The drivers from ATI and Nvidia are pretty easy to install. If you have compiled support for dynamically loaded modules into your kernel (which ALL major distributions have done), and if the module author (or the distribution) has written an installation script (most do), you can install any module simply by running the script as root. Linux has come a long way in the last several years. Also there are utilities (that are included by many distributions) that will automatically guess your hardware at installation or boot time and load the corresponding driver. Also, hotplug can handle loading and unloading modules based on certain conditions, such as loading the drivers for your digital camera whenever it detects that the camera has been plugged in.
Dell DOES sell Linux workstations.a spx/precn_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.
This comment seems interesting to me. At least, it does not deserve a 0. I wonder if this startup has addressed the demand for pr0n?
>> Yes, but new customers who already have a Linux environment running previously had one choice: DB2. Now Oracle has a chance of making sales from these customers
i on_numbering_conventionsWikipedia, Oracle was the first commercial RDMBS with a Linux port. So DB2 was the latecomer.
The Oracle Corporation released the first Linux port of their database to in August 1999, and, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_database#Vers
> rd . /s /q
And people think Unix commands are cryptic.