Ok. John's living in a country that's banned closed-source software for political reasons. John undergoes a battery of tests to evaluate his condition. Unfortunately, the most advanced analysis software at this time is commercial closed-source, and despite their need for this package the doctors have been repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to purchase it. Alas, a vital clue that might have saved John's life is missed. ...
So restricting the use of closed source software is actually enhancing freedom. You're free to do whatever you want, so long as you do what I say.
The entire point of the thing is so that people have a choice in the matter. No one is outlawing closed software. The point of the whole idea is to make the entire concept of closed source obsolete. So that you expect the freedoms in Free software out of every software, the same way you'd expect certain things in other situations. One that you hear a lot is to have a car with the hood that opens. You'd be surprised to find it otherwise, it's just something that's expected, and you wouldn't be happy if you couldn't get it.
Another example, perhaps more trite, is the ability to eat all the food you buy. Suppose you buy a package of cookies, but weren't allowed to eat them all. Or a loaf of bread where you couldn't eat every piece. Perhaps in addition you couldn't toast the bread. This sounds absurd, but that's because you expect these things when you buy your food. It's yours to do what you want with it.
That's how software should be too for a lot of us. The idea of placing the current restrictions on it becomes so absurd that it isn't outlawed so much as it is unheard of. Yes, it's idealistic, but that doesn't mean it's unthinkable, nor does it mean that it's not something worth working towards. One day, maybe the company that sells the cancer-diagnosis software wouldn't even think to consider selling it as a closed product any more than Nabisco wouldn't think to not let you dunk your Nilla Wafers in milk.
This might sound like it's backing up the idea of restricting closed source software, but it's not, and it's a subtle point that's very difficult to grasp and even more difficult for me to impart. Sure, bread companies could try and sell you food that you were only allowed to do limited things with, no one is restricting it or outlawing it. But it's absurd. By that same token, no one is really talking about outlawing closed software, but by the same idea it shouldn't really be considered by anyone.
So ultimately, it really is about broadening freedoms for everyone. It's not to say "You can't use this program". It's to say "Why isn't this program free too? Why shouldn't this program be free?" You, of course, are free to do whatever you want, as am I. I can't stop you, nor would I really care to try. That's what freedom is really all about and you can use it how you will. If it came down to it, of course I'd ask for the closed-source software cancer scan. Simply choosing to use non-free software doesn't negate the ability to choose Free software, nor does it truly compromise the ideal. A good example of this is the GNU tools, which were written and run primarily non-free systems until Linux came along. Choosing to use closed software doesn't mean that you've compromised your ideals, it simply means that the goal of eradicating the idea of closed software hasn't been reached yet. Maybe John's great-great-grandkids will see it, who knows? I say it's better to dream than to scoff and remain stagnant in the name of pragmatism.
John is an accountant. He determines how his company's money adds up. That's what he went to school for, that's why he was hired.
John gets cancer. John goes in for new treatment with new cancer drug. New cancer drug was found because of Free Software written for biological research and improved upon by scientist-programmers all over the world. John's life is extended or even saved because people could all contribute to the software that researchers were able to use to make something valuable to everyone.
Sally is a housewife. She uses a computer to do things for her family. She has no time to write a driver for the new GeForce card, Jimmy's braces are way more important than some piece of software.
Jimmy's orthodontist uses a closed-source OS in the office for everything. This closed-source OS has a security hole. Not only that, but it's a known security hole that the company decided wasn't worth fixing. So even though the computer is regularly auto-updated, this hole remains unpatched because the corporation decided not to. The orthodontist's computer is broken in to and Sally's credit card information is stolen, and all the billing records for the orthodontist is stolen. This causes incredible headache for Sally over the next year or more.
We don't all have to be programmers to benefit from freedoms. We don't all have to be writers to benefit from freedom of speech, because we can all read what others have written and learn from it. We don't all have to be recluses to benefit from a right to privacy. Freedoms benefit you in more ways than you can realize, and it is a sign of enslavement when you're willing to sacrifice them for nothing.
I don't know if you know the tagline, free as in Freedom, not free as in beer.
The reason people are throwing their voices behind Linux is because of the freedom it affords the users. You are very much in control of your machine. It is yours. The software, that's yours. The data you generate, that's yours too. The documentation, that's also yours. But it's not yours alone, it's everyone else's too.
This is a very powerful idea, and it works in this case because of the negligible cost of duplicating software.
People are not involved in this fight (if a fight it truly is, to many it's not) in order to simply hate something. It is to free themselves, to gain some measure of self-control and power in some small, but substantial way. If Microsoft were to completely vanish from the face of the Earth, I think that people would find other things to rail against, and they would very likely line up along the same path. What would be the next target? Whatever restricted freedoms the most.
And should Linux "win" it would be a win for the BSD's, a win for the Hurd, a win for OpenBeOS, a win for ReactOS, and a win for every other Free OS out there, as well as Free software in general. It's not about Linux, it's about freedom and any free OS would win, it just happens that Linux is in the spotlight moreso than the others.
So if you're running Linux just to save a couple of bucks, then I can't fault you, but what you're missing out is the sensation of freedom and power. I personally love the fact that I can contribute to Debian and various programs wherever I see a need. I could never do this with Windows or my old Mac (pre-OSX). I certaintly can't add a program to Windows the way I can incorporate a program that I like in to Debian, no way no how. That's power and that's freedom and it's an amazing thing to take part in. So rather than whine about your $34, why not think about your windows system and all the ways that you're restricted from it, and then maybe you'll see why people are so excited over this whole Free thing.
Do you really think that this is ultimately going to come down to a popularity contest between two figureheads?
Eventually it's going to come down to the same cost vs benefits tradeoff that people debate about endlessly around here. That's the real issue, not whether Gates or Stallman is more 1337.
This letter highlights a lot of the key issues going. I think it's interesting to note that the major tech boom of the last twenty or so years came out of the US, where university students had full access to the UNIX source code, where they learned what some of the best developers in the world could put together. Students today who just learn Visual Basic or some such crap aren't going to be the ones changing the tech world in the next twenty years. Countries that realize this and gear their educational programs accordingly will reap the benefits.
I'd just like to confirm that I do, in fact own a GBA (and the aforementioned Castlevania game), and while I don't play it emulated I wouldn't feel the least bit of guilt if I did.
As a side note, one can also use emulation to try out new games for yourself before you buy them. I played dodge ball on my friend's GBA emulator, and am planning to get it soon. Just one of those little things.
I just don't get it: There are many reasons to bash Windows, be it weird errors, spy apps, dialers or company policies. But if some people put the same effort in finding suitable apps for Windows as they do with finding and configuring them for Linux, there would be a lot less stupid posts like this. My WINDOWS runs completely on free software, except for the OS which I bought. I have found freeware replacements (which even mostly come with source code, for the OpenSource purists - although, beware! it sometimes is the "non-free" BSD license!) for all of them.
I could put a lot of work in to making Windows work as well as Linux, but that'd be the same problem in reverse, trying to treat Windows as a bad copy of Linux.
I pretty much use all free software when I'm in Windows now too (Mozilla, Vim, Nethack, Ruby, etc.) but that's a strange thing when almost all the software that I use is either available for Linux or is an actual port to Windows.
On top of that, there's the instability of Win98 (I'm not going to pirate 2k and I can't afford a copy), the security holes, the constant vigilance against spyware, and general uselessness of all documentation. Why should I bother if I can do the same stuff in Linux?
That's not to say that I never have to boot in to Windows ever. I never said that, nor did I imply it. I don't think Linux is for everyone yet, so most people still do need Windows. But why should I have to pander to it if Linux can do anything I ask it to quite easily? Why should I have to bother with Cygwin (which never feels comfortable to me, no matter how I try) when I've got a native grep sitting just over yonder? Why should I have to bother with something freeware program that will very likely crash my system when I've got my virtual desktops set up by default already?
People complain about how much time it takes to set up Linux, I say it takes a lot longer to set things up in Windows. That's just my personal experience, but it's mine. The parent to my original comment said there was nothing he felt he could do in Linux that he couldn't do in Windows, I say it's generally the other way around, but that's only if you're using Linux as Linux rather than Windows. If you're a 6 year Linux user, I'm sure you know what I mean. So rather than try my best to build a Windows system that will act like my Linux system, I'd rather just use Linux.
I don't know why you bothered to write that, given that I posted about 15 comments saying the same things. Yes, linux is amazing. Yes you can do a lot with it. But regular people don't care about hacking the kernel and things like that.
First of all, I'm not tracking all your comments. Second of all, what defines "regular people"? The point of my example is that the line is thin. Dad may buy the computer for work, but Johnny might be interested and ask Dad to buy him a copy of Linux for Christmas so he can try it out. Dad might not be interested in a kernel, but Johnny would be, does that make him any less "regular"? Does that mean that Dad isn't the one buying it for him? It's not a far-fetched example.
The context of this story suggests that we're talking about trying to SELL (as in: you pay for it, as in beer) Linux Desktop Distros to people who don't want to recompile the kernel or read the HOWTOs. And my position is that, as great as Linux is (and I was more than eager to give Linux praise where due, in my posts in this thread) it will NOT appeal to these people.
How about another hypothetical one? Skip works in a small office that has been slowly moving over to Linux on the desktop for various reasons (cost, geeky well-trained admins, security, whatever). He wants to be able to take his work home with him, and he decides that he wants to run the same thing at home that he does in the office. So he goes and buys a desktop Linux distro because the guy at the office told him that it would be easier than the one he uses there, but still compatible.
I am not ignorant of the fact that you can do much on Linux that you can't on Windows, and I don't ignore this fact to attack Linux. What I am saying is that people to whom Desktop Distros are targeted are probably not interested in doing those things - which makes me doubt they'd be able to appreciate Linux. In fact, I have a feeling that these people will overlook stability and security and will be eager to home down on the shortcommings in the GUI and intuitivity areas. As such, I doubt they will pay money for Linux.
In all honesty, I don't think there's anything wrong with the GUI or with intuitivity on Linux. Programs are no worse in these areas than they are in Windows. I've decided that all most people want is the ability to download lots of copyrighted material, to browse the web, and to get email on their browsers. Occasionally they type something up. Since Windows gives them this, they're not going to switch to anything, especially when they already have Windows.
So, without incentive, like having Linux on the desktop at work, they're not going to make the switch. But if you think Linux has a shot at the business desktop, and I do, then I think these Desktop distros also have a shot at the home user. I agree that the market is small right now, but never say never.
1: You can have them in XP. Install powertoys, and turn them on.
I don't have XP. I can't afford XP. I don't want to run XP. I don't want to agree to XP's EULA. And I don't want a buggy add-on that'll just add more instability to my already unstable 98 install. I refuse to pirate XP or 2k or any other piece of software anymore simply because I've learned that I don't have to in order to have a fully functional system.
2: Use one of the many spam filters for Windows (mozilla has a new Bayesian one).
Fair enough, but then that doesn't solve the problem of having duplicate local copies of my email, one on the Linux partition and one on the Windows partition. I don't want to keep two copies and I don't want my server space to be overloaded by keeping the mail there. Then it just becomes a question of choice, and I'd rather keep my email on the Linux partition because that's where I spend my time.
3: Install mozilla for windows, or better yet Phoenix. You'll have the SAME FUCKING TABS as in Linux.
You misunderstood me. Here, take a look at pwm. Imagine having tabs on all your windows, and then things might start to be clearer for you.
You hear what you want to hear. You said that the true test is whether or not you ever say "I am in Windows and I have to boot to Linux to do something." I gave you multiple things that I can not do in Windows that I can do in Linux. Right now, I have one thing that I have had to boot to windows for in the last half year, and that's to run test prep software that I probably could have run through wine with enough effort. Yes, I "had" to boot to Windows, but I had to boot back to Linux to get work done.
You can choose to ignore it, but there are tons of things you simply can't do in Windows that you can do on Linux. I'll give you another easy one: hacking the kernel. Yeah, it might not be for the guy down the block, but his precocious son or daughter might just be interested in how such a thing would work. Try letting him learn about that in windows.
The simple test is this: I never have a moment like "I am in Windows, and I have the need to boot to Linux to do something." But I often have the "Ah shit I am in Linux, now I need to reboot to windows before I can do this" moment.
Then you must use your dual-boot setup very differently than I do.
When I'm in Windows, I consistently think about the things I could rather be doing in Linux. "Man, if I only had a bunch of virtual desktops so I could have an uncluttered screen." "Wow, what I wouldn't give for grep right now."
"Hell, why is it that the registry is so incomprehensible? I wish I had a manpage or a README describing this crap."
"Stupid spam. I'd love to have procmail running here. Ah well, I guess I'll wait until I reboot to Linux to read my non-web email."
"It's so great that I've got tabs in Mozilla. Why can't I have them on my windows too like I do in Linux?"
The list goes on. I only boot to Windows now when I absolutely have to. I don't even use the "oh, I need to play games" excuse any more because I've simply stopped playing windows games. I'll play nethack or Q3 or an emulated SNES game instead.
Sure, it's a choice in the way that I choose to use Linux, but it still means that it passes your test. And yeah, I could run programs like Cygwin in Windows, but that's like saying you can run Windows programs in Linux via Wine, which doesn't cut it.
Once I started learning how to use Linux as Linux, rather than as a bad version of Windows, I became much more reliant on its features. Now I feel frustrated by anything without a bash shell and a copy of vi. It's all in what you learn to accept from your interface, as well how you're willing to work with it.
I don't understand this all that well myself, but I did just read the whitepaper linked to in the article written by Ingo Molnar and Ulrich Drepper. From the looks of things, NGPT's M:N model will cause a lot more problems because of the difficulty of getting the two schedulers (userspace and kernelspace) to dance well together.
By sticking with the 1:1 solution that's currently used in the kernel and the NPTL model, there's really only the kernel scheduler to worry about, making things run a lot more smoothly generally. I'd imagine latency being a big issue with M:N (I'm pretty sure that it was mentioned in the whitepaper). I haven't read the other side of the issue, but I think that pretty graph in the O'Reilly article says it all performance-wise.
There are other issues though, like getting full POSIX compliance with signal handling. The 1:1 model apparently makes signal handling much more difficult (I don't know anything about the POSIX signaling model, but there's a paper about it on Drepper's homepage that could probably shed some light on the subject if you were so inclined. There are other issues in the current thread model that have to be dealt with in a new 1:1 model (and are) such as a messy/proc directory when a process has tons of threads.
From the whitepaper, it seems that the development of the O(1) scheduler was meant to facilitate the new thread model they've developed, which I hadn't thought about before even though it makes sense. There's still some issues to work through, but both models look promising. If the signal handling issues can be resolved it looks like from the article that NPTL's model will win on sheer performance.
As for making them both come with the kernel, that's really really difficult, since this stuff touches on some major pieces of the kernel like signal handling. The same way you're only going to get one scheduler and VM subsystem, you're only going to get one threading model. You're able to patch your own tree to your heart's content, but as per a default install, there can be only one.
Making a good installer is hard work. OpenBSD just doesn't have its priorities there, and rightly so. If someone really felt strongly enough about the issue to write a nice graphical installer, or port one of the Linux ones over, there's nothing stopping them from doing so. It's just obviously not that important right now.
That said, if you want an easy install, there are plenty of alternatives for you. You've already mentioned Redhat and Mandrake, and there's also the very notable OSX. These might not be products focused primarily on security, but if you're really concerned about security then you're going to have to be willing to do some work of your own. Even OpenBSD doesn't guarantee security in the absence of knowledge. So if you're willing to put in the work to learn to be effectively secure (and thus actually use the system properly) then you're certaintly willing to learn how to install the thing.
Well, I don't see it in the userspace program list in aptitude anywhere, not that I expected it, since in the interview with the pf creator he says that it is hooked in to the OpenBSD kernel directly. Your best hope of getting it with Debian soon was the project to port Debian to OpenBSD, but since that was just abandoned you'll have to wait a while or do the work yourself.
You're being very selective with your "everything" description.
Does Windows have a net-based install that only requires a couple of floppies to get going? Does Windows have a unified scheme where you can pull down whole libraries of software from either a command line, text-based, or full GUI interface? Does Windows have the ability to customize its kernel? Does Windows have tab-based, minimal, and even mouseless GUIs?
Linux offers choice. People are choosing to make programs that are similarly functional to those offered by Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that Windows is setting the standard for everything.
Besides that, there's a lot of crossover. A lot of programs run on both Windows and Linux. Emacs. Vim. Mozilla. Perl. Python. Ruby. Nethack. Windows doesn't set these standards either.
If you still don't believe that Linux is different than Windows, try doing a LFS or Gentoo install. Then come back here and tell me that Windows is setting the standards for everything.
That's a fun thing to think about, especially because that's how BSD started. People just started rewriting UNIX in bits and pieces until there was nothing left but BSD code. ReactOS anyone?
Maybe it's not that there aren't any girl gamers, maybe it's just that Tomb Raider sucks and they don't want to play the next piece of trash they're putting out on that franchise.
I mean, if the games didn't teach them, then certainly the movie would have!
And thats because it was a movie that that tried to capture a story the size of the Bible in just two hours.
This is just picking nits, but there's no way in hell you can honestly compare Akira to the bible in terms of complexity. Yes, I've read the manga (I was just able to finally get volume 6 this month) and despite it's mass, it can't touch the bible in terms of plot volume, let alone dialog volume, character count, or anything else.
Akira was written by one guy, Katsuhiro Otomo. The Bible was written by committee. Which do you think is going to be more complex?;-)
I think it's interesting that you mention the manga though, because the anime was made before the manga had ended. Otomo himself didn't know all the turns it was going to make to get to the end, but he obviously had some idea or else the manga and the anime wouldn't have ended in such a similar fasion. The anime unfortunately skipped out on all the post-apocalyptic style stuff in the latter half of the manga, but the basic themes remained intact. It's not like the anime was Starship Troopers or something.
If this guy wants to copy the anime, he won't be starting far from the mark of the manga. He'll leave out Akira's Empire and whatnot, but he could still capture the essence of the story without it.
That's true, the KDE project isn't too big on making individual components that separate well from the rest of the project. But the entire point of the project is to have some kind of unity within the system. Say what you will about CORBA, it's hideously complex and overkill for the desktop. The KDE solution is lighter weight (not crippled-by-design any more than XML is crippled in relation to SGML) solution to their particular problem.
The KDE team didn't need something like a standalone signals/slots library because it's built in to the Qt toolkit which the whole project is based on. Why reinvent the wheel?
As for "a powerful C portability/utility library", I don't know what you mean besides libc, which isn't a part of gnome any more than libstdc++ is a part of KDE.
Pango is great, no doubt about it, but on the other hand KDE doesn't have shabby international support. They also didn't have someone from Redhat who was paid to write Pango for them.
On the other hand, why doesn't Gnome give us a complete development environment on the scale of KDevelop? A unified office suite (no, Open Office doesn't count because it's not really part of Gnome).
KDE doesn't focus on providing standalone libraries for uses outside the project, but they provide a hell of a toolset for use inside the project. DCOP is simple and powerful. Kparts was ready and in extensive use well before Bonobo. The C++ object model is inherently easier to work with than the hacked on gtk C pseudo-object model for UI programming. The KDevelop environment is the best GUI development environment on Linux. And that's just for developers. The whole system is very well unified, which is the benefit of the project's focus. Whether or not you like it is a whole other issue. They have done a great job at making a unified system for both developers and users on *NIX. You can't say this as well about Gnome, with its shifting window managers (Metacity is the third standard one in the project's lifetime?)and multiple Office programs.
Perhaps that's why so many of the KDE people are mad about the whole Bluecurve thing. They had already done a great job at making a unified desktop system, and to see it merged with Gnome in the name of unity was perhaps a bit insulting.
I think this is somewhat true, but not really. If you look at KDE, there are plenty of examples (at least on my system) of the desktop trying to integrate with the OS.
The control center contains an incredibly useful "Information" section that unifies a lot of the info that can only be found on the console with a bunch of different utilities or cat'ing parts of/proc.
The incredible integration of konqueror with manpages and infopages (if you haven't tried this, you really ought to, the manpages are much easier to read in a konq window.)
I haven't tried the gnome-terminal from gnome2, but the kde2 terminal allows multiple terminals from one window, which allows very easy access to those console utils.
KDE can import gtk+ themes quite handily if you like.
There's a wealth of basic KDE utilities to do OS specific functions like changing password, managing users, and runlevels.
The power of Konqueror as a file browser. Easy Samba browsing. Automated CD ripping and ogg encoding with drag and drop. Multiple window configurations. Embedded terminals. FTP and web browsing.
The KPackage program for use with RPM or dpkg/apt.
These are just some of the basic things that KDE2 does to integrate in to the OS (I haven't even tried KDE3 yet). The KDE project just focuses on integrating with itself because they want to have a very well integrated environment. And they've obviously succeeded in that (just look at the programming model for evidence). Sure, they don't go out of their way to integrate with the Gnome folks, but then Gnome isn't doing any better. I think Redhat has a bias towards Gnome (there's a lot of historical evidence of this), and it's on display here. KDE does a good job of integrating with itself, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't integrate with the underlying OS as well.
Funny... the big thing about Free Software is that it generally forces a software company in to a service business model. The reason IBM can make so much money while throwing all their clients towards Linux is that they have an insanely large services division.
Perhaps Microsoft is trying to copy this. They know windows is already a commodity, as is Office. This is not only a possible new revenue stream, but a potential salvation should they have to start giving Windows and Office away for free (this is a very distant possibility, but a possibility nonetheless).
This also fits with other moves on their part, like.net's emphasis on web services and the entire passport/hailstorm project, which doesn't rely on selling software but providing transaction services. This just seems like another piece of their overall scheme.
That said, I don't think by charging for security they mean charging for updates. More likely providing extra software outside the core OS functionality or a consulting division to deal directly with customers.
Debian is really not trying to do the same thing as Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake. They're really in a class of their own in the Linux world, closest to the BSD's if anything.
Debian is not known for newest and flashiest. Generally, unstable can have the newest stuff well before any of the other distros should you choose to run it, but the focus is not there. It's also not on having GUI config tools. Instead it's on having a really well thought out and technically adept system. You simply don't get a better package upgrade system out of an RPM based distro. Yes, there is apt for RPM, but that's the not the same thing as having a well defined policy that all packages in the system must adhere to. You get an excellent open bug tracking system and individual package maintainers who are responsible for their own packages.
Everything official is be done via the various mailing lists making the entire development an open process from start to finish. And, of course, there's the fact that it's entirely community based. You and anyone else who wants to put in the time and energy can become a Debian Developer. This is incredibly powerful, and it allows a sense of community that I find lacking in most other Linux camps. Of course, it leads to the incredibly vocal minority of Debian users who think it's the be-all, end-all of computing, but that doesn't make it any less a compelling work.
A lot of what Debian emphasizes is under the hood type things. People rave on and on about apt-get, but they tend to ignore things like the fantastic menu system (consistent menus in all window managers) and the various subprojects like Debian Jr. and Debian-Med. Plus the ability to choose which version of Debian to track (stable, testing, unstable) is a wonderful feature.
Debian doesn't have GUI configuration tools, this is true, but it does have very powerful debian-specific tools like dpkg-reconfigure that no one seems to talk about outside of debian-specific channels (IRC, mailing lists). They require reading some docs, but that's the price you pay right now for being able to use them. There's nothing stopping anyone from writing a GUI tool for these or appending the functionality to dselect or one of the other apt frontends, so there's no reason to suppose they won't go in later. Plus Debian has a real feel to it that goes beyond the skin-deep level of having unified themes for KDE and Gnome. There's the wealth of information in/usr/share/doc, where you always know a lot of answers are to be found. There's the kernel-package tools which put even customized kernel in to the dpkg database (and make kernel compiles a little easier to boot). There's the complete lack of items in/usr/local until you put them there yourself. There's the wonderful alternates system. All these things give Debian a coherency that other distros don't seem to have. It all comes down to what you want in a distro. I always know where to go in debian because it's so coherent. I never felt that way in Redhat or Mandrake. It's just a question of priorities. If you really want GUI tools, Debian isn't the right place (yet) but if you want one of the best systems and collections of developers on the planet, Debian is a good bet.
I'm not, nor have I ever really been, a Redhat user but I agree with the idea that Redhat should act like a company. Still, I wonder if you don't understate the importance of the community.
Red Hat could really care less if Slashdot readers think that BlueCurve sucks, or that the new licensing scheme sucks, or that the mirrors suck, or whatever. They're in the business of selling copies and support of their Operating System, which is the Red Hat Operating System based on the Linux Kernel and the GNU tools and the X Windows GUI and the Gnome and KDE toolkits / environments.
I'd imagine that Redhat cares very much about what Slashdot readers think of these things. We are their target market. Who do you think are the sysadmins who will be the biggest supporters of Redhat in the actual workplace? Those who are familiar with it and a large number of those people are on Slashdot. Having the Slashdot readership say good things about Redhat translates directly in to the workplace. This applies to other websites as well. It's called marketing.
Personally I think Red Hat should abandon the idea of giving away copies entirely. Sell the damn things. That's what companies DO. The support idea is hogwash. Support is good cash but it won't replace copies sold. Red Hat needed to win acceptance and dominance, and so it gave away binary copies of their OS.
Redhat does sell the damn things, if you want them. And as for not allowing downloads at all, a big reason Redhat is so popular is because it can be downloaded on to someone's home machine for nothing. This is the best way for someone to learn on their own time in their own way. If Redhat cut out free downloads all together they would lose a large number of their users, which in turn would lead to less support for them in the workplace. Remember, people can always go to IBM or whoever instead of Redhat for support and to SuSE for a boxed product.
Redhat has stated over and over that they're not trying to be the next Microsoft. Hopefully that'll continue, because the second they do try it they'll be dead. They are looking to make a profit, yes, and they seem to be doing a good job at it right now. But one of the most important forces in making a profit is in how a product is marketed. By providing things like free downloads and structuring the OS the way users like Redhat is simply marketing their product.
Slashdot Mirror
Another example, perhaps more trite, is the ability to eat all the food you buy. Suppose you buy a package of cookies, but weren't allowed to eat them all. Or a loaf of bread where you couldn't eat every piece. Perhaps in addition you couldn't toast the bread. This sounds absurd, but that's because you expect these things when you buy your food. It's yours to do what you want with it.
That's how software should be too for a lot of us. The idea of placing the current restrictions on it becomes so absurd that it isn't outlawed so much as it is unheard of. Yes, it's idealistic, but that doesn't mean it's unthinkable, nor does it mean that it's not something worth working towards. One day, maybe the company that sells the cancer-diagnosis software wouldn't even think to consider selling it as a closed product any more than Nabisco wouldn't think to not let you dunk your Nilla Wafers in milk.
This might sound like it's backing up the idea of restricting closed source software, but it's not, and it's a subtle point that's very difficult to grasp and even more difficult for me to impart. Sure, bread companies could try and sell you food that you were only allowed to do limited things with, no one is restricting it or outlawing it. But it's absurd. By that same token, no one is really talking about outlawing closed software, but by the same idea it shouldn't really be considered by anyone.
So ultimately, it really is about broadening freedoms for everyone. It's not to say "You can't use this program". It's to say "Why isn't this program free too? Why shouldn't this program be free?" You, of course, are free to do whatever you want, as am I. I can't stop you, nor would I really care to try. That's what freedom is really all about and you can use it how you will. If it came down to it, of course I'd ask for the closed-source software cancer scan. Simply choosing to use non-free software doesn't negate the ability to choose Free software, nor does it truly compromise the ideal. A good example of this is the GNU tools, which were written and run primarily non-free systems until Linux came along. Choosing to use closed software doesn't mean that you've compromised your ideals, it simply means that the goal of eradicating the idea of closed software hasn't been reached yet. Maybe John's great-great-grandkids will see it, who knows? I say it's better to dream than to scoff and remain stagnant in the name of pragmatism.
Jimmy's orthodontist uses a closed-source OS in the office for everything. This closed-source OS has a security hole. Not only that, but it's a known security hole that the company decided wasn't worth fixing. So even though the computer is regularly auto-updated, this hole remains unpatched because the corporation decided not to. The orthodontist's computer is broken in to and Sally's credit card information is stolen, and all the billing records for the orthodontist is stolen. This causes incredible headache for Sally over the next year or more.
We don't all have to be programmers to benefit from freedoms. We don't all have to be writers to benefit from freedom of speech, because we can all read what others have written and learn from it. We don't all have to be recluses to benefit from a right to privacy. Freedoms benefit you in more ways than you can realize, and it is a sign of enslavement when you're willing to sacrifice them for nothing.
I don't know if you know the tagline, free as in Freedom, not free as in beer.
The reason people are throwing their voices behind Linux is because of the freedom it affords the users. You are very much in control of your machine. It is yours. The software, that's yours. The data you generate, that's yours too. The documentation, that's also yours. But it's not yours alone, it's everyone else's too.
This is a very powerful idea, and it works in this case because of the negligible cost of duplicating software.
People are not involved in this fight (if a fight it truly is, to many it's not) in order to simply hate something. It is to free themselves, to gain some measure of self-control and power in some small, but substantial way. If Microsoft were to completely vanish from the face of the Earth, I think that people would find other things to rail against, and they would very likely line up along the same path. What would be the next target? Whatever restricted freedoms the most.
And should Linux "win" it would be a win for the BSD's, a win for the Hurd, a win for OpenBeOS, a win for ReactOS, and a win for every other Free OS out there, as well as Free software in general. It's not about Linux, it's about freedom and any free OS would win, it just happens that Linux is in the spotlight moreso than the others.
So if you're running Linux just to save a couple of bucks, then I can't fault you, but what you're missing out is the sensation of freedom and power. I personally love the fact that I can contribute to Debian and various programs wherever I see a need. I could never do this with Windows or my old Mac (pre-OSX). I certaintly can't add a program to Windows the way I can incorporate a program that I like in to Debian, no way no how. That's power and that's freedom and it's an amazing thing to take part in. So rather than whine about your $34, why not think about your windows system and all the ways that you're restricted from it, and then maybe you'll see why people are so excited over this whole Free thing.
Do you really think that this is ultimately going to come down to a popularity contest between two figureheads?
Eventually it's going to come down to the same cost vs benefits tradeoff that people debate about endlessly around here. That's the real issue, not whether Gates or Stallman is more 1337.
This letter highlights a lot of the key issues going. I think it's interesting to note that the major tech boom of the last twenty or so years came out of the US, where university students had full access to the UNIX source code, where they learned what some of the best developers in the world could put together. Students today who just learn Visual Basic or some such crap aren't going to be the ones changing the tech world in the next twenty years. Countries that realize this and gear their educational programs accordingly will reap the benefits.
I'd just like to confirm that I do, in fact own a GBA (and the aforementioned Castlevania game), and while I don't play it emulated I wouldn't feel the least bit of guilt if I did.
As a side note, one can also use emulation to try out new games for yourself before you buy them. I played dodge ball on my friend's GBA emulator, and am planning to get it soon. Just one of those little things.
I pretty much use all free software when I'm in Windows now too (Mozilla, Vim, Nethack, Ruby, etc.) but that's a strange thing when almost all the software that I use is either available for Linux or is an actual port to Windows.
On top of that, there's the instability of Win98 (I'm not going to pirate 2k and I can't afford a copy), the security holes, the constant vigilance against spyware, and general uselessness of all documentation. Why should I bother if I can do the same stuff in Linux?
That's not to say that I never have to boot in to Windows ever. I never said that, nor did I imply it. I don't think Linux is for everyone yet, so most people still do need Windows. But why should I have to pander to it if Linux can do anything I ask it to quite easily? Why should I have to bother with Cygwin (which never feels comfortable to me, no matter how I try) when I've got a native grep sitting just over yonder? Why should I have to bother with something freeware program that will very likely crash my system when I've got my virtual desktops set up by default already?
People complain about how much time it takes to set up Linux, I say it takes a lot longer to set things up in Windows. That's just my personal experience, but it's mine. The parent to my original comment said there was nothing he felt he could do in Linux that he couldn't do in Windows, I say it's generally the other way around, but that's only if you're using Linux as Linux rather than Windows. If you're a 6 year Linux user, I'm sure you know what I mean. So rather than try my best to build a Windows system that will act like my Linux system, I'd rather just use Linux.
So, without incentive, like having Linux on the desktop at work, they're not going to make the switch. But if you think Linux has a shot at the business desktop, and I do, then I think these Desktop distros also have a shot at the home user. I agree that the market is small right now, but never say never.
Fair enough, but then that doesn't solve the problem of having duplicate local copies of my email, one on the Linux partition and one on the Windows partition. I don't want to keep two copies and I don't want my server space to be overloaded by keeping the mail there. Then it just becomes a question of choice, and I'd rather keep my email on the Linux partition because that's where I spend my time.
You misunderstood me. Here, take a look at pwm. Imagine having tabs on all your windows, and then things might start to be clearer for you.
You hear what you want to hear. You said that the true test is whether or not you ever say "I am in Windows and I have to boot to Linux to do something." I gave you multiple things that I can not do in Windows that I can do in Linux. Right now, I have one thing that I have had to boot to windows for in the last half year, and that's to run test prep software that I probably could have run through wine with enough effort. Yes, I "had" to boot to Windows, but I had to boot back to Linux to get work done.
You can choose to ignore it, but there are tons of things you simply can't do in Windows that you can do on Linux. I'll give you another easy one: hacking the kernel. Yeah, it might not be for the guy down the block, but his precocious son or daughter might just be interested in how such a thing would work. Try letting him learn about that in windows.
When I'm in Windows, I consistently think about the things I could rather be doing in Linux.
"Man, if I only had a bunch of virtual desktops so I could have an uncluttered screen."
"Wow, what I wouldn't give for grep right now."
"Hell, why is it that the registry is so incomprehensible? I wish I had a manpage or a README describing this crap."
"Stupid spam. I'd love to have procmail running here. Ah well, I guess I'll wait until I reboot to Linux to read my non-web email."
"It's so great that I've got tabs in Mozilla. Why can't I have them on my windows too like I do in Linux?"
The list goes on. I only boot to Windows now when I absolutely have to. I don't even use the "oh, I need to play games" excuse any more because I've simply stopped playing windows games. I'll play nethack or Q3 or an emulated SNES game instead.
Sure, it's a choice in the way that I choose to use Linux, but it still means that it passes your test. And yeah, I could run programs like Cygwin in Windows, but that's like saying you can run Windows programs in Linux via Wine, which doesn't cut it.
Once I started learning how to use Linux as Linux, rather than as a bad version of Windows, I became much more reliant on its features. Now I feel frustrated by anything without a bash shell and a copy of vi. It's all in what you learn to accept from your interface, as well how you're willing to work with it.
I don't understand this all that well myself, but I did just read the whitepaper linked to in the article written by Ingo Molnar and Ulrich Drepper. From the looks of things, NGPT's M:N model will cause a lot more problems because of the difficulty of getting the two schedulers (userspace and kernelspace) to dance well together.
/proc directory when a process has tons of threads.
By sticking with the 1:1 solution that's currently used in the kernel and the NPTL model, there's really only the kernel scheduler to worry about, making things run a lot more smoothly generally. I'd imagine latency being a big issue with M:N (I'm pretty sure that it was mentioned in the whitepaper). I haven't read the other side of the issue, but I think that pretty graph in the O'Reilly article says it all performance-wise.
There are other issues though, like getting full POSIX compliance with signal handling. The 1:1 model apparently makes signal handling much more difficult (I don't know anything about the POSIX signaling model, but there's a paper about it on Drepper's homepage that could probably shed some light on the subject if you were so inclined. There are other issues in the current thread model that have to be dealt with in a new 1:1 model (and are) such as a messy
From the whitepaper, it seems that the development of the O(1) scheduler was meant to facilitate the new thread model they've developed, which I hadn't thought about before even though it makes sense. There's still some issues to work through, but both models look promising. If the signal handling issues can be resolved it looks like from the article that NPTL's model will win on sheer performance.
As for making them both come with the kernel, that's really really difficult, since this stuff touches on some major pieces of the kernel like signal handling. The same way you're only going to get one scheduler and VM subsystem, you're only going to get one threading model. You're able to patch your own tree to your heart's content, but as per a default install, there can be only one.
Making a good installer is hard work. OpenBSD just doesn't have its priorities there, and rightly so. If someone really felt strongly enough about the issue to write a nice graphical installer, or port one of the Linux ones over, there's nothing stopping them from doing so. It's just obviously not that important right now.
That said, if you want an easy install, there are plenty of alternatives for you. You've already mentioned Redhat and Mandrake, and there's also the very notable OSX. These might not be products focused primarily on security, but if you're really concerned about security then you're going to have to be willing to do some work of your own. Even OpenBSD doesn't guarantee security in the absence of knowledge. So if you're willing to put in the work to learn to be effectively secure (and thus actually use the system properly) then you're certaintly willing to learn how to install the thing.
Well, I don't see it in the userspace program list in aptitude anywhere, not that I expected it, since in the interview with the pf creator he says that it is hooked in to the OpenBSD kernel directly. Your best hope of getting it with Debian soon was the project to port Debian to OpenBSD, but since that was just abandoned you'll have to wait a while or do the work yourself.
will people buy it?
You're being very selective with your "everything" description.
Does Windows have a net-based install that only requires a couple of floppies to get going? Does Windows have a unified scheme where you can pull down whole libraries of software from either a command line, text-based, or full GUI interface? Does Windows have the ability to customize its kernel? Does Windows have tab-based, minimal, and even mouseless GUIs?
Linux offers choice. People are choosing to make programs that are similarly functional to those offered by Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that Windows is setting the standard for everything.
Besides that, there's a lot of crossover. A lot of programs run on both Windows and Linux. Emacs. Vim. Mozilla. Perl. Python. Ruby. Nethack. Windows doesn't set these standards either.
If you still don't believe that Linux is different than Windows, try doing a LFS or Gentoo install. Then come back here and tell me that Windows is setting the standards for everything.
That's a fun thing to think about, especially because that's how BSD started. People just started rewriting UNIX in bits and pieces until there was nothing left but BSD code. ReactOS anyone?
Maybe it's not that there aren't any girl gamers, maybe it's just that Tomb Raider sucks and they don't want to play the next piece of trash they're putting out on that franchise.
I mean, if the games didn't teach them, then certainly the movie would have!
Akira was written by one guy, Katsuhiro Otomo. The Bible was written by committee. Which do you think is going to be more complex?
I think it's interesting that you mention the manga though, because the anime was made before the manga had ended. Otomo himself didn't know all the turns it was going to make to get to the end, but he obviously had some idea or else the manga and the anime wouldn't have ended in such a similar fasion. The anime unfortunately skipped out on all the post-apocalyptic style stuff in the latter half of the manga, but the basic themes remained intact. It's not like the anime was Starship Troopers or something.
If this guy wants to copy the anime, he won't be starting far from the mark of the manga. He'll leave out Akira's Empire and whatnot, but he could still capture the essence of the story without it.
That's true, the KDE project isn't too big on making individual components that separate well from the rest of the project. But the entire point of the project is to have some kind of unity within the system. Say what you will about CORBA, it's hideously complex and overkill for the desktop. The KDE solution is lighter weight (not crippled-by-design any more than XML is crippled in relation to SGML) solution to their particular problem.
The KDE team didn't need something like a standalone signals/slots library because it's built in to the Qt toolkit which the whole project is based on. Why reinvent the wheel?
As for "a powerful C portability/utility library", I don't know what you mean besides libc, which isn't a part of gnome any more than libstdc++ is a part of KDE.
Pango is great, no doubt about it, but on the other hand KDE doesn't have shabby international support. They also didn't have someone from Redhat who was paid to write Pango for them.
On the other hand, why doesn't Gnome give us a complete development environment on the scale of KDevelop? A unified office suite (no, Open Office doesn't count because it's not really part of Gnome).
KDE doesn't focus on providing standalone libraries for uses outside the project, but they provide a hell of a toolset for use inside the project. DCOP is simple and powerful. Kparts was ready and in extensive use well before Bonobo. The C++ object model is inherently easier to work with than the hacked on gtk C pseudo-object model for UI programming. The KDevelop environment is the best GUI development environment on Linux. And that's just for developers. The whole system is very well unified, which is the benefit of the project's focus. Whether or not you like it is a whole other issue. They have done a great job at making a unified system for both developers and users on *NIX. You can't say this as well about Gnome, with its shifting window managers (Metacity is the third standard one in the project's lifetime?)and multiple Office programs.
Perhaps that's why so many of the KDE people are mad about the whole Bluecurve thing. They had already done a great job at making a unified desktop system, and to see it merged with Gnome in the name of unity was perhaps a bit insulting.
- The control center contains an incredibly useful "Information" section that unifies a lot of the info that can only be found on the console with a bunch of different utilities or cat'ing parts of
/proc.
- The incredible integration of konqueror with manpages and infopages (if you haven't tried this, you really ought to, the manpages are much easier to read in a konq window.)
- I haven't tried the gnome-terminal from gnome2, but the kde2 terminal allows multiple terminals from one window, which allows very easy access to those console utils.
KDE can import gtk+ themes quite handily if you like.
- There's a wealth of basic KDE utilities to do OS specific functions like changing password, managing users, and runlevels.
- The power of Konqueror as a file browser. Easy Samba browsing. Automated CD ripping and ogg encoding with drag and drop. Multiple window configurations. Embedded terminals. FTP and web browsing.
- The KPackage program for use with RPM or dpkg/apt.
These are just some of the basic things that KDE2 does to integrate in to the OS (I haven't even tried KDE3 yet). The KDE project just focuses on integrating with itself because they want to have a very well integrated environment. And they've obviously succeeded in that (just look at the programming model for evidence). Sure, they don't go out of their way to integrate with the Gnome folks, but then Gnome isn't doing any better. I think Redhat has a bias towards Gnome (there's a lot of historical evidence of this), and it's on display here. KDE does a good job of integrating with itself, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't integrate with the underlying OS as well.Funny... the big thing about Free Software is that it generally forces a software company in to a service business model. The reason IBM can make so much money while throwing all their clients towards Linux is that they have an insanely large services division.
.net's emphasis on web services and the entire passport/hailstorm project, which doesn't rely on selling software but providing transaction services. This just seems like another piece of their overall scheme.
Perhaps Microsoft is trying to copy this. They know windows is already a commodity, as is Office. This is not only a possible new revenue stream, but a potential salvation should they have to start giving Windows and Office away for free (this is a very distant possibility, but a possibility nonetheless).
This also fits with other moves on their part, like
That said, I don't think by charging for security they mean charging for updates. More likely providing extra software outside the core OS functionality or a consulting division to deal directly with customers.
Most people pronounce it that way, but it's wrong. It's actually pronounced "ape-oh-toe-sis". The second p is silent and both o's are long.
Debian is really not trying to do the same thing as Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake. They're really in a class of their own in the Linux world, closest to the BSD's if anything.
/usr/share/doc, where you always know a lot of answers are to be found. There's the kernel-package tools which put even customized kernel in to the dpkg database (and make kernel compiles a little easier to boot). There's the complete lack of items in /usr/local until you put them there yourself. There's the wonderful alternates system. All these things give Debian a coherency that other distros don't seem to have. It all comes down to what you want in a distro. I always know where to go in debian because it's so coherent. I never felt that way in Redhat or Mandrake. It's just a question of priorities. If you really want GUI tools, Debian isn't the right place (yet) but if you want one of the best systems and collections of developers on the planet, Debian is a good bet.
Debian is not known for newest and flashiest. Generally, unstable can have the newest stuff well before any of the other distros should you choose to run it, but the focus is not there. It's also not on having GUI config tools. Instead it's on having a really well thought out and technically adept system. You simply don't get a better package upgrade system out of an RPM based distro. Yes, there is apt for RPM, but that's the not the same thing as having a well defined policy that all packages in the system must adhere to. You get an excellent open bug tracking system and individual package maintainers who are responsible for their own packages.
Everything official is be done via the various mailing lists making the entire development an open process from start to finish. And, of course, there's the fact that it's entirely community based. You and anyone else who wants to put in the time and energy can become a Debian Developer. This is incredibly powerful, and it allows a sense of community that I find lacking in most other Linux camps. Of course, it leads to the incredibly vocal minority of Debian users who think it's the be-all, end-all of computing, but that doesn't make it any less a compelling work.
A lot of what Debian emphasizes is under the hood type things. People rave on and on about apt-get, but they tend to ignore things like the fantastic menu system (consistent menus in all window managers) and the various subprojects like Debian Jr. and Debian-Med. Plus the ability to choose which version of Debian to track (stable, testing, unstable) is a wonderful feature.
Debian doesn't have GUI configuration tools, this is true, but it does have very powerful debian-specific tools like dpkg-reconfigure that no one seems to talk about outside of debian-specific channels (IRC, mailing lists). They require reading some docs, but that's the price you pay right now for being able to use them. There's nothing stopping anyone from writing a GUI tool for these or appending the functionality to dselect or one of the other apt frontends, so there's no reason to suppose they won't go in later. Plus Debian has a real feel to it that goes beyond the skin-deep level of having unified themes for KDE and Gnome. There's the wealth of information in
I'd imagine that Redhat cares very much about what Slashdot readers think of these things. We are their target market. Who do you think are the sysadmins who will be the biggest supporters of Redhat in the actual workplace? Those who are familiar with it and a large number of those people are on Slashdot. Having the Slashdot readership say good things about Redhat translates directly in to the workplace. This applies to other websites as well. It's called marketing.
Redhat does sell the damn things, if you want them. And as for not allowing downloads at all, a big reason Redhat is so popular is because it can be downloaded on to someone's home machine for nothing. This is the best way for someone to learn on their own time in their own way. If Redhat cut out free downloads all together they would lose a large number of their users, which in turn would lead to less support for them in the workplace. Remember, people can always go to IBM or whoever instead of Redhat for support and to SuSE for a boxed product.
Redhat has stated over and over that they're not trying to be the next Microsoft. Hopefully that'll continue, because the second they do try it they'll be dead. They are looking to make a profit, yes, and they seem to be doing a good job at it right now. But one of the most important forces in making a profit is in how a product is marketed. By providing things like free downloads and structuring the OS the way users like Redhat is simply marketing their product.