Turning off password protection is a bad idea. However, to answer your question, firstly, the best way to do remote access is through ssh , and turn of telnet services. Check your/etc/inetd.conf file and make sure you know what services are running. Turn off any you don't want. If you run sshd , you can edit the sshd config file to deny ssh logins for certain users. If you run ftpd, you need to add the people who aren't permitted remote logins to the ftpusers file. You can also restrict access via/etc/security/access.conf ( if you have PAM installed )
Your G200 is going to work with 3D acceleration before long. And depending on how cooperative Matrox are, and what happens with the g400, this might prove a better buy than the TNT2.
I am not clear why everyone is whining so hard. The FAQ indicates that most of the work will be open source. But the knee-jerk whine-about-everything-that-MS-does slashdot peanut gallery want a good whine about how MS are trying to make perl windows only and blah blah blah. I doubt it will happen soon. And the people who care about portability will not use MS perl anyway. They'll stick to the standard release.
As has been argued quite effectively in a number of places, the key is requiring open standards (API/Networking/etc). But will the Judge appreciate this fact?
What do you mean by "require open standards" ? I don't see why MS shouldn't be allowed to invent their own networking protocols, etc. On the other hand, asking them to document their networking protocols is more reasonable. Forcing them to let other people see their source code is essential. I don't think others should develop "windows clones", but what is more important is that they don't hide their APIs.
Another important issue raised has been discriminatory licensing practices ( such as with IBM ) . The government needs to crack down on this, because it gives MS too much control over the industry.
Requiring open standards would effectively de-claw what, so far as I can tell, is the only weapon Microsoft can use against the open source community: closing or "decomoditizing" (sp?) standards.
Sure, and forcing them to release all their products under the GPL will also make it easier for the open source community to compete. I think a lot of slashdot readers aren't really interested in a fair outcome- they are more interested in propping up open source. Personally, I'd rather see open source win on its merits.
If such a clause is valid under your consumer laws, then they need to be overhauled. Why not enact legislation that entitles the buyer to a refund for nonfunctional products, instead of setting up a "mini government" ? There are two flaws with the proposed remedy:
it is almost as bad as the problem, and
it does not really address the problem ( lack of basic consumer rights )
Then it looks like your consumer protection laws are in serious need of review. A mini-government to deal with the software industry is *NOT* the answer.
But giving consumers the right to a refund when they purchase a POS is essential. If consumers are having difficulty getting refunds on defective products, then this is the problem, and it should be addressed directly , by giving consumers due recourse. A pseudo-government acting on behalf of the consumers is an unnecessary layer between the customer and the seller, annd does little to empower buyers.
An alternative might be to somehow dictate open API, protocols and file formats.
well, this would certainly be great for linux, but I have a very hard time justifying it. Why should a company be forced to disclose all their trade secrets ? If I discover a superb recipe for soft drink, should I be forced to disclose it to my competitors ? Your proposed law would punish innovaters. The problem is that your levelling of the playing field puts innovators on the same level as copycats. rather than on the basis of being locked into compatibility with their own data, other users or certain hardware.
The market can decide whether being locked in is bad or not.
Instead of interfering with the mechanisms of free competition, you remove some of the monopolistic forces that are preventing them from working.
You also remove the basic freedom of innovators to keep trade secrets.
By the way, the article was referring at least in part to games, where "file formats" and "closed APIs" are non issues, but nevertheless, buggy software is released...
If it's true that consumers are unable to take games back for a refund, this would indicate that consumer protection laws are woefully inaqdequte.
IMO, the "right" way to deal with this issue is to allow users a refund for nonfunctional software. This puts the power back into the hands of consumers. Personally, I have been succesful returning nonfunctional software ( and other products ).
If the consumer cannot return a product that is thoroughly useless for a refund, it says that consumer protection laws are woefully inadequate. Rather than using some stupid beaurocracy to take care of this, governments worldwide should enact consumer laws that entitle consumers to return nonfunctional products. Indeed, most countries already have such laws, and at least in Australia and the US, I have never had trouble returning nonfunctional priducts ( INCLUDING software ) for a prompt refund.
Apart from those who explicitly agree with me, I am likewise joined in my assessment by those who only managed to say "we have to endure some bloat to have a good GUI"... these folk implicitly acknowledge that there is bloat
"Bloat" as I understand it means either inefficient code or useless features. If you are saying that the code is inefficient, you need to show that it uses considerably more memory than something with comparable functionality. Your example (fvwm) does not use much less memory ( about 8MB diff at most) and doesn't have comparable functionality. On the other hand, if the features are useless for you, don't use them. But it's worth mentioning that to the mainstream desktop user, the features *are* useful.
The respondents aren't conceding that there is bloat ; they are conceding that KDE needs more memory *because* it does more . a kde session runs several processes, *including* a window manager. They are conceding that you will need more memory to run KDE because the extra processes need some memory to run in. They do not concede that KDE is woefully inefficient.
I haven't used NT so much, so I'm willing to assume you're right on this point (which is somewhat peripheral to the discussion). However, this doesn't alter the fact that you *still* haven't substantiated your claims about KDE/GNOME's alleged "bloat".
Re:MS aren't so "bloated"
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
All of MS's OSs run just fine on 32MB of RAM. Even NT. MS's problem is that they can't write reliable software. MS's (and others) "bloated" apps such as Office are actually quite lean if you do a custom install with only the comps you want, and then delete all the docs. For the people who want to keep using their 486's , the features will bring the machine to a halt. Fortunately, in linux land, you can choose to disable features that you don't want. But you can't have it both ways. The features come at a price, and the price is "bloat". And when you find the bloat more annoying than useful , use something less bloated ( I sometimes use the console because its faster ). Everything has its place, even bloat. It fulfills a need, though maybe not yours.
Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
From cold boot to Gnome, do a "free" and 60MB+ is "used". From cold boot to KDE, and ~55-57MB is "used". With NO reboot -- just drop out of X -- to an un-Gnomified Window Maker: 41MB. Do the math: 20MB difference between Gnome/non-Gnome.
I neglected to respond more directly : this method is flawed, because you are assuming that the extra memory is swallowed by GNOME ( it could be swallowed by X ) , and you're not taking into account that the second desktop you run could cache processes from the first. You also haven't considered that you could have more memory cached during a gnome session than a twm session, or that the gnome session could have several fairly idle jobs that are inactive 99% of the time ( so can be paged out without hurting performance ) .
You really need to run "top" and look carefully at the output to draw any meaningful conclusions.
Re:Your 64MB figure is way off
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
I've given you the numbers elsewhere. My numbers aren't off.
your numbers are misleading because they say more about how much memory your running processes use ( and cache ) than anything else.
No one can reasonably say that Gnome or KDE is as fast as a non-Gnomified window manager. It just ain't so.
KDE is slower to load, but kwm hasn't been terribly slow for me *once it's running*. The CPU usage is negligeable, and the memory usage shouldn't cause any real swapping on a machine with 32MB or more ( remember not to count "cached" memory, or idle processes... )
You may find that Netscape or X with high res/colour depth plus KDE is too much. ie it can be the straw that breaks the camels back on a machine that is running some pigs to begin with. But IMO Netscape/X are the pigs, not KDE. Currently, top shows that Netscape is using 18MB and X is using 32MB here... KDE is using 16MB. Some of the KDE components can swap out without hurting performance, the same isn't true for Netscape or X. I'm not saying there's no bloat, but you're pointing your finger at the wrong guy^H^H^Hprocess
Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
It seems to me that my minimal comparison is sufficient for my point
no, it is not. X can use more or less depending on what you have going on within your desktop. If you run the pixmap themes, X will probably take up much more space. Also, KDE and GNOME do a fair bit of caching (ie the root windows). The caching will have an impact on your "free" report, but no impact on performance.
Also, idle processes (eg audio servers, dormant file managers ) impact the output of "free" , but not performance. The kind of thing that will hurt performance is active processes swapping. But this will not happen with KDE/GNOME if you have 32MB or more ( yes, I've run KDE on 32MB, and it runs fine though it takes a while to start )
I take your point that KDE and GNOME use up some space, but you are making it sound a lot worse than it really is.
Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
Your numbers don't mean anything, because you don't say how much GNOME/KDE are using. Saying that "57MB is used" is meaningless. You could have 57 Apache servers running for all I know and use 57MB running twm. Or you could run X at 1600x1200 at 32BPP and use 57MB running fvwm (half of that would be X)
Spout your nonsense all you like, but I have some hard facts : Output from "top" SIZE (shared) in MB:
kwm : 4.6 (2.8)
kfm: 4.5 (3.1)
kpanel 4.5 (2.9)
kbgndwm 3.7(2.5)
krootwm 3.6 (2.4)
In other words, KDE is sitting inside 16MB on my system, *not* 64MB.
Have fun playing with twm.
Re:I still don`t like QPL
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
The problem with the QT license is that you have to pay about 2K USD to develop a commercial app. Sorry, but that is way to much.
Firstly, a GPL'd shared library can not be used for commercial projects end of story, so for a commercial developer, the QT license is more generous than the GPL.
Secondly, what is your "too much" assesment based on ? The QT license costs less than a week of a programmer's time (btw, it's $1300). So buying a QT license for each developer on the project is cheaper than paying each developer for an extra week. Moreover, there's nothing to stop you using it to write 101 commercial apps once you buy the license. And ( unlike motif ) your users don't need licenses, just your developers.
Whether or not the price is "too much" is a question of accounting/management that could go either way, but it's certainly true that if QT is, for your purposes, substantially better than any other toolkits, it is not "too much". I'd pay developers for an extra week of work to put polish on a commercial app. And I'd pay a week's (it's less than a weeks but I'm feeling generous ) worth of man hours to use a polished toolkit.
Re:I still don`t like QPL
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 1
And BTW if KDE become the only Linux Desktop, we`ll get a Linux Tax
This is mor or less impossible the way QT is currently licensed.
So IMHO a core component (User Interface) of an open-source operating system like GNU/Linux should be 100% free (GPL).
(a) QT is 100% free ( even RMS said so... ) (b) who said that anything has to be GPL'd to be free ? are you trying to say that NetBSD and FreeBSD are not free either ? Don't be so narrow minded.
Tell us what is using the memory. The fact that X amount of memory is "used" ( and what does "used" mean anyway ? does cached count as "used" ? ) does not mean that KDE is using it ( probably X is swallowing a lot while KDE is running, you have a bunch cached aand your server processes are eating more ).
I have yet to see anyone back up the bloat claims with hard numbers ( ie what are the KDE processes and how much memory are they using ? )
Either get some real numbers for us or quit whining and play with twm. And leave us alone.
Your 64MB figure is way off
on
The KDE Future
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· Score: 2
Try running top, and look how much memory you have "cached". You need to subtract that from the memory usage. What happens is if you start an app ( say NS ) and exit it, it is still cached even though it is not actively used. This way, it loads very quickly if you restart it.
Secondly, check to see if you have 101 server processes swallowing your memory. Apache on the default config can eat about 6MB ( since it starts several servers )
FYI, the whole KDE thing runs in less than 16MB (about 8MB), excluding X. kwm takes about 2MB the other components take a few MB each.
You were doing well, but your assumption that KFM is always a time saver is pretty silly. As an experienced linux user, I don't need to do any work memorizing commands, and I only read the manpages when I code. ( will KFM code for me... ? ). You also discounbt the fact that moving a mouse is really pretty slow ( I can type a short command twice over faster than I can select and click once )
Moreover, there are a whole bunch of things that kfm simply can't do ( create a tarball of all files modified today, for example ) . So even with my "upgraded" computer , which has a SCSI HD, PII , and 128MB RAM, I prefer the zsh prompt...
I am having a really hard time getting perlQT to work. Actually, the only GUI perl binding that I have been able to get working is perlTK ( which works very nicely btw... )
Anyway, how do you get perlQT working ? what distro/compiler/shared-libs/qt-version/perl-versio n do you have ?
When you go to a civil court, the goal is to ultimately make as much money as possible. This considered, going after the parents seems a relatively fruitless exercies compared to going after several companies that have millions of dollars there for the taking...
I'm sure that you are aware that most people that buy those kind of games are country music listening, pickup truck driving hicks that can't afford games like Half-Life or Quake 2,
Slashdot Mirror
However, to answer your question,
firstly, the best way to do remote access is through ssh , and turn of telnet services. Check your
If you run sshd , you can edit the sshd config file to deny ssh logins for certain users.
If you run ftpd, you need to add the people who aren't permitted remote logins to the ftpusers file.
You can also restrict access via
cheers,
You can set up autofs so that removable media is
automatically mounted. See my homepage for an autofs tutorial if you're
interested.
I am not clear why everyone is whining so hard. The FAQ indicates that most of the work will be open source. But the knee-jerk whine-about-everything-that-MS-does slashdot peanut gallery want a good whine about how MS are trying to make perl windows only and blah blah blah. I doubt it will happen soon. And the people who care about portability will not use MS perl anyway. They'll stick to the standard release.
What do you mean by "require open standards" ? I don't see why MS shouldn't be allowed to invent their own networking protocols, etc. On the other hand, asking them to document their networking protocols is more reasonable. Forcing them to let other people see their source code is essential. I don't think others should develop "windows clones", but what is more important is that they don't hide their APIs.
Another important issue raised has been discriminatory licensing practices ( such as with IBM ) . The government needs to crack down on this, because it gives MS too much control over the industry.
Requiring open standards would effectively de-claw what, so far as I can tell, is the only weapon Microsoft can use against the open source community: closing or "decomoditizing" (sp?) standards.
Sure, and forcing them to release all their products under the GPL will also make it easier for the open source community to compete. I think a lot of slashdot readers aren't really interested in a fair outcome- they are more interested in propping up open source. Personally, I'd rather see open source win on its merits.
But giving consumers the right to a refund when they purchase a POS is essential. If consumers are having difficulty getting refunds on defective products, then this is the problem, and it should be addressed directly , by giving consumers due recourse. A pseudo-government acting on behalf of the consumers is an unnecessary layer between the customer and the seller, annd does little to empower buyers.
well, this would certainly be great for linux, but I have a very hard time justifying it. Why should a company be forced to disclose all their trade secrets ? If I discover a superb recipe for soft drink, should I be forced to disclose it to my competitors ? Your proposed law would punish innovaters. The problem is that your levelling of the playing field puts innovators on the same level as copycats. rather than on the basis of being locked into compatibility with their own data, other users or certain hardware.
The market can decide whether being locked in is bad or not.
Instead of interfering with the mechanisms of free competition, you remove some of the monopolistic forces that are preventing them from working.
You also remove the basic freedom of innovators to keep trade secrets.
By the way, the article was referring at least in part to games, where "file formats" and "closed APIs" are non issues, but nevertheless, buggy software is released ...
IMO, the "right" way to deal with this issue is to allow users a refund for nonfunctional software. This puts the power back into the hands of consumers. Personally, I have been succesful returning nonfunctional software ( and other products ).
If the consumer cannot return a product that is thoroughly useless for a refund, it says that consumer protection laws are woefully inadequate. Rather than using some stupid beaurocracy to take care of this, governments worldwide should enact consumer laws that entitle consumers to return nonfunctional products. Indeed, most countries already have such laws, and at least in Australia and the US, I have never had trouble returning nonfunctional priducts ( INCLUDING software ) for a prompt refund.
"Bloat" as I understand it means either inefficient code or useless features. If you are saying that the code is inefficient, you need to show that it uses considerably more memory than something with comparable functionality. Your example (fvwm) does not use much less memory ( about 8MB diff at most) and doesn't have comparable functionality. On the other hand, if the features are useless for you, don't use them. But it's worth mentioning that to the mainstream desktop user, the features *are* useful.
The respondents aren't conceding that there is bloat ; they are conceding that KDE needs more memory *because* it does more . a kde session runs several processes, *including* a window manager. They are conceding that you will need more memory to run KDE because the extra processes need some memory to run in. They do not concede that KDE is woefully inefficient.
I haven't used NT so much, so I'm willing to assume you're right on this point (which is somewhat peripheral to the discussion). However, this doesn't alter the fact that you *still* haven't substantiated your claims about KDE/GNOME's alleged "bloat".
All of MS's OSs run just fine on 32MB of RAM. Even NT. MS's problem is that they can't write reliable software. MS's (and others) "bloated" apps such as Office are actually quite lean if you do a custom install with only the comps you want, and then delete all the docs. For the people who want to keep using their 486's , the features will bring the machine to a halt. Fortunately, in linux land, you can choose to disable features that you don't want. But you can't have it both ways. The features come at a price, and the price is "bloat". And when you find the bloat more annoying than useful , use something less bloated ( I sometimes use the console because its faster ). Everything has its place, even bloat. It fulfills a need, though maybe not yours.
I neglected to respond more directly : this method is flawed, because you are assuming that the extra memory is swallowed by GNOME ( it could be swallowed by X ) , and you're not taking into account that the second desktop you run could cache processes from the first. You also haven't considered that you could have more memory cached during a gnome session than a twm session, or that the gnome session could have several fairly idle jobs that are inactive 99% of the time ( so can be paged out without hurting performance ) .
You really need to run "top" and look carefully at the output to draw any meaningful conclusions.
your numbers are misleading because they say more about how much memory your running processes use ( and cache ) than anything else.
No one can reasonably say that Gnome or KDE is as fast as a non-Gnomified window manager. It just ain't so.
KDE is slower to load, but kwm hasn't been terribly slow for me *once it's running*. The CPU usage is negligeable, and the memory usage shouldn't cause any real swapping on a machine with 32MB or more ( remember not to count "cached" memory, or idle processes ... )
You may find that Netscape or X with high res/colour depth plus KDE is too much. ie it can be the straw that breaks the camels back on a machine that is running some pigs to begin with. But IMO Netscape/X are the pigs, not KDE. Currently, top shows that Netscape is using 18MB and X is using 32MB here ... KDE is using 16MB. Some of the KDE components can swap out without hurting performance, the same isn't true for Netscape or X. I'm not saying there's no bloat, but you're pointing your finger at the wrong guy^H^H^Hprocess
no, it is not. X can use more or less depending on what you have going on within your desktop. If you run the pixmap themes, X will probably take up much more space. Also, KDE and GNOME do a fair bit of caching (ie the root windows). The caching will have an impact on your "free" report, but no impact on performance.
Also, idle processes (eg audio servers, dormant file managers ) impact the output of "free" , but not performance. The kind of thing that will hurt performance is active processes swapping. But this will not happen with KDE/GNOME if you have 32MB or more ( yes, I've run KDE on 32MB, and it runs fine though it takes a while to start )
I take your point that KDE and GNOME use up some space, but you are making it sound a lot worse than it really is.
Spout your nonsense all you like, but I have some hard facts :
Output from "top" SIZE (shared) in MB:
In other words, KDE is sitting inside 16MB on my system, *not* 64MB.
Have fun playing with twm.
Firstly, a GPL'd shared library can not be used for commercial projects end of story, so for a commercial developer, the QT license is more generous than the GPL.
Secondly, what is your "too much" assesment based on ? The QT license costs less than a week of a programmer's time (btw, it's $1300). So buying a QT license for each developer on the project is cheaper than paying each developer for an extra week. Moreover, there's nothing to stop you using it to write 101 commercial apps once you buy the license. And ( unlike motif ) your users don't need licenses, just your developers.
Whether or not the price is "too much" is a question of accounting/management that could go either way, but it's certainly true that if QT is, for your purposes, substantially better than any other toolkits, it is not "too much". I'd pay developers for an extra week of work to put polish on a commercial app. And I'd pay a week's (it's less than a weeks but I'm feeling generous ) worth of man hours to use a polished toolkit.
This is mor or less impossible the way QT is currently licensed.
So IMHO a core component (User Interface) of an open-source operating system like GNU/Linux should be 100% free (GPL).
(a) QT is 100% free ( even RMS said so ... )
(b) who said that anything has to be GPL'd to be free ? are you trying to say that NetBSD and FreeBSD are not free either ? Don't be so narrow minded.
I have yet to see anyone back up the bloat claims with hard numbers ( ie what are the KDE processes and how much memory are they using ? )
Either get some real numbers for us or quit whining and play with twm. And leave us alone.
Secondly, check to see if you have 101 server processes swallowing your memory. Apache on the default config can eat about 6MB ( since it starts several servers )
FYI, the whole KDE thing runs in less than 16MB (about 8MB), excluding X. kwm takes about 2MB the other components take a few MB each.
Moreover, there are a whole bunch of things that kfm simply can't do ( create a tarball of all files modified today, for example ) . So even with my "upgraded" computer , which has a SCSI HD, PII , and 128MB RAM, I prefer the zsh prompt ...
Anyway, how do you get perlQT working ? what distro/compiler/shared-libs/qt-version/perl-versi
When you go to a civil court, the goal is to ultimately make as much money as possible. This considered, going after the parents seems a relatively fruitless exercies compared to going after several companies that have millions of dollars there for the taking ...
or Redneck Rampage (-;