This PROVES that you are directly related to solaris.
I make my living from it, if that's what you mean. I'm not employed by Sun though.
1. Why is linux unstable
It isn't, and I didn't say it was. I just think Solaris has the edge.
"if you give it decent hardware and know how to manage it
I make this point because a lot of/.ers have trialled Solaris by installing it on some crappy old 486 they have lying around, then deciding it's just a slow OS. It doesn't go as quickly on low end hardware as Linux or the BSDs. It *needs* decent hardware - they don't.
I also feel a lot of/.ers criticise Solaris because they don't know a lot about it. The amount of ill-informed opinion that one sees in Solaris/. threads is astonishing. Many Linux distributions come out of the box tweaked and hardened, with hundreds of apps and tools - Solaris doesn't. You need to know what you're doing with it, and put a bit of effort in to get the best out of it.
It's nowhere near as fussy as people think (I've run it 100% fine on systems with *no* components on the HCL) and it's also a heck of a lot closer to the SPARC version than most people assume.
Sol x86 has never quite shaken off the bad reputation it gained around v2.5.1, when it sucked. So far as stability goes I'd take it over Linux any day, and if you give it decent hardware and know how to manage it, it's at least as quick.
As for GPLing it, as a user, I couldn't care less, as a skeptic, I don't believe it.
Just imagine then trying to follow the dialogue in your favourite DVD movie with the constant din of your computer in the background.
Most of my favourite movies don't have a lot of dialogue.
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me
on
A Silent PC Solution?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I just got one of the new Barracudas (VII I think?) and it's super quiet. I have a feeling the db rating is lower than the IV. I also got a Sonata case, which is nice too - big, slow case fan, very quiet PSU, and it looks pretty good too.
My graphics card is sufficiently old that it doesn't have a fan, and I've found the Sonata's case fan can cool the CPUs (2xPIIIs) sufficiently now I've put some bloody gigantic heatsinks on them. I'd probably underclock them if I knew how - the computer's more than fast enough for what I use it for.
You can hear it if you concentrate, but to all intents and purposes it's silent.
I'm very surprised to read that. I've had nothing but good experiences with Sun's hardware and software support over the seven or eight years I've been using them.
I might jettison SPARC in favour of AMD, but still build big servers. Concentrate the hardware resources on I/O throughtput, reliability, the backplanes etc, but leave the really expensive bit - making the CPUs - to somebody else.
They'd still be offering the complete server/OS/app/support/PS stack, but without being involved in the CPU money drain.
Sun has had so many half-arsed ideas over the last year or two. IMHO they need to focus a bit more on what they do best. Their hardware's usually very good, and I think Solaris is streets ahead of anything else as a server OS. They just need to stop haemorraging money, and CPU fabbing seems like the thing to drop. It's just too expensive these days.
TeX and Vim. Best document writing system ever, for reasons I already explained. And I'm quite happy to be modded down for advocating TeX again.
Re:Microsoft's most valuable soldier in Word Wars
on
The War Of The Word
·
· Score: 1
My explanation for Clippy is that around version 7, Word did everything a word processor could reasonably be required to do. When all the useful features have been implemented, the only way to keep ahead in the feature race is to add useless ones.
Photoshop's going the same way. The majority of new features are useless - it did pretty much everything three years ago. I'm sure you could say the same about many other apps.
I tried Gentoo a while back, all the hype round here made it sound quite exciting. I installed the binary base, set all the build variables and let it do its thing.
The system it built for me wasn't noticably faster than my old Slackware install. It certainly wasn't worth the pain of the build process.
Gentoo worked just fine, but in the end I decided I preferred my old "home grown" Slackware setup because I already knew where everything was and how it all fitted together, so I dug out the tape and went back to that.
I've tried lots of distributions over the years and I really can't see any one with any clear benefits. It's all the same kernel, the same desktop and the same tools. (Pretty much.)
I know a lot of people like gentoo's packaging, but I don't really like any packaging beyond the.tar.gz source../configure --prefix - how hard can it be?
You guys really should get your heads out of your asses over licensing, You carry on like someone being "cavalier with the GPL" is going to end up with us all in forced labour camps. "They mention Linux and the GPL VERY briefly" - this is how Hitler started! Stamp out this evil menace! This article is hilariously rabid.
Thanks, that's a very helpful comment, but please don't just ignore something because it's been around for a while.
There's a lot of technology around that does a great job, without all the hype and cruft. If you aren't up to working without a GUI, there are plenty of front-ends to TeX. Give them a try. You might like them. At least try to keep an open mind.
Why is the world so in love with wysiwyg word processors? They're simply awful. Slow, confusing, labyrinthine beasts which usually produce inconsistent, poorly formatted documents.
I don't want to waste time selecting bolds and font sizes and aligning tabs and battling clippy.
I want to type words in to a computer, using the editor I want to use and a typeface and colour scheme suited for a computer screen, then have those words come out of the printer properly formatted in a professional, readable, predictable way.
I don't want to either spend an hour tidying a document up after I've written it, or distribute documents in the horrible, amateurish jumble of spacings, fonts, weights and sizes that most people seem happy to turn out.
So, I use TeX, and my docs get written more quickly and look better than your OOo/Word/KWrite ones. As I only have to think about what I'm writing, not how to lay it out, the content of my document is quite possibly better as well.
And don't give me the "it's too hard" argument. You could train someone to use a simple text editor and TeX just as quickly as you could train them to use Word for most purposes. I'm no kind of TeX guru at all, but for 95% of what I write there's a ten line preamble and a few \section tags. Then I have a copy of OOo around for the 5% of stuff TeX isn't suited to.
What has shocked me about the ID card scheme isn't that new labour have introduced it - they seem hell bent on removing as many civil rights as possible - but the unquestioning way in which so much of the public has accepted it.
When the subject comes up and I express my feelings against it, the two responses I always seem to get are "Well, why not have it?" and "I've got nothing to hide".
Firstly, the question isn't "why not", it's "why". It will cost a fortune, make a whole new layer of beaurocracy, upset a lot of people etc etc and no one has yet given a good example of what we really gain, so, why bother?
Secondly, *everyone* has something to hide. Everyone. It may not be something criminal, it may not be something wrong, it may even be something you have no logical reason you want to keep to yourself, but you still have a whole raft of things you don't want the policeman who has just randomly stopped you to know.
I could (and previously have) go on and on, but I'll spare the gentle reader and leave it at that. If you are a halfway intelligent person who bothers to think for yourself you'll be able to come up with a dozen more reasons against introducing ID cards in no time. You don't need me (or anyone else) to tell you what to think.
Slashdot Mirror
This PROVES that you are directly related to solaris.
/.ers have trialled Solaris by installing it on some crappy old 486 they have lying around, then deciding it's just a slow OS. It doesn't go as quickly on low end hardware as Linux or the BSDs. It *needs* decent hardware - they don't.
/.ers criticise Solaris because they don't know a lot about it. The amount of ill-informed opinion that one sees in Solaris /. threads is astonishing. Many Linux distributions come out of the box tweaked and hardened, with hundreds of apps and tools - Solaris doesn't. You need to know what you're doing with it, and put a bit of effort in to get the best out of it.
I make my living from it, if that's what you mean. I'm not employed by Sun though.
1. Why is linux unstable
It isn't, and I didn't say it was. I just think Solaris has the edge.
"if you give it decent hardware and know how to manage it
I make this point because a lot of
I also feel a lot of
It's nowhere near as fussy as people think (I've run it 100% fine on systems with *no* components on the HCL) and it's also a heck of a lot closer to the SPARC version than most people assume.
Sol x86 has never quite shaken off the bad reputation it gained around v2.5.1, when it sucked. So far as stability goes I'd take it over Linux any day, and if you give it decent hardware and know how to manage it, it's at least as quick.
As for GPLing it, as a user, I couldn't care less, as a skeptic, I don't believe it.
Just imagine then trying to follow the dialogue in your favourite DVD movie with the constant din of your computer in the background.
Most of my favourite movies don't have a lot of dialogue.
I just got one of the new Barracudas (VII I think?) and it's super quiet. I have a feeling the db rating is lower than the IV. I also got a Sonata case, which is nice too - big, slow case fan, very quiet PSU, and it looks pretty good too.
My graphics card is sufficiently old that it doesn't have a fan, and I've found the Sonata's case fan can cool the CPUs (2xPIIIs) sufficiently now I've put some bloody gigantic heatsinks on them. I'd probably underclock them if I knew how - the computer's more than fast enough for what I use it for.
You can hear it if you concentrate, but to all intents and purposes it's silent.
I'm very surprised to read that. I've had nothing but good experiences with Sun's hardware and software support over the seven or eight years I've been using them.
They've found Atlantis, and Linux is set to overtake Windows within three years?
I might jettison SPARC in favour of AMD, but still build big servers. Concentrate the hardware resources on I/O throughtput, reliability, the backplanes etc, but leave the really expensive bit - making the CPUs - to somebody else.
They'd still be offering the complete server/OS/app/support/PS stack, but without being involved in the CPU money drain.
Sun has had so many half-arsed ideas over the last year or two. IMHO they need to focus a bit more on what they do best. Their hardware's usually very good, and I think Solaris is streets ahead of anything else as a server OS. They just need to stop haemorraging money, and CPU fabbing seems like the thing to drop. It's just too expensive these days.
TeX and Vim. Best document writing system ever, for reasons I already explained. And I'm quite happy to be modded down for advocating TeX again.
My explanation for Clippy is that around version 7, Word did everything a word processor could reasonably be required to do. When all the useful features have been implemented, the only way to keep ahead in the feature race is to add useless ones.
Photoshop's going the same way. The majority of new features are useless - it did pretty much everything three years ago. I'm sure you could say the same about many other apps.
> "...my Gentoo Linux workstation..."
it's "Gentoo Athlon boxen" ffs!
I tried Gentoo a while back, all the hype round here made it sound quite exciting. I installed the binary base, set all the build variables and let it do its thing.
.tar.gz source. ./configure --prefix - how hard can it be?
The system it built for me wasn't noticably faster than my old Slackware install. It certainly wasn't worth the pain of the build process.
Gentoo worked just fine, but in the end I decided I preferred my old "home grown" Slackware setup because I already knew where everything was and how it all fitted together, so I dug out the tape and went back to that.
I've tried lots of distributions over the years and I really can't see any one with any clear benefits. It's all the same kernel, the same desktop and the same tools. (Pretty much.)
I know a lot of people like gentoo's packaging, but I don't really like any packaging beyond the
Now I make a lame gag about how long it takes to compile!
Or maybe I should loudly proclaim my leetness by posting my CFLAGS and condemning binary distributions as teh ghey.
> there is a finite limit to the amount of pr0n in the universe.
Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
This must be an example of the friendly Linux community I've been hearing so much about.
Say what you like about commercial support, but it's not often Sun or Microsoft will call you a retard. Not until after you've hung up at least.
You guys really should get your heads out of your asses over licensing, You carry on like someone being "cavalier with the GPL" is going to end up with us all in forced labour camps. "They mention Linux and the GPL VERY briefly" - this is how Hitler started! Stamp out this evil menace! This article is hilariously rabid.
Get off the crusade. Relax.
1. a shitload of porn
2-10. whatever
They use it for refrigeration you fool!
> Would you write a book review based on the dust jacket?
Or form an opinion on a piece of software without even using it? Oh, sorry, forgot where I was for a moment.
Absolutely. It's not PHP's fault it has a lot of clueless and/or lazy users.
And it isn't PERL's fault that people use it to write utterly incomprehensible code. Or is it...?
Thanks, that's a very helpful comment, but please don't just ignore something because it's been around for a while.
There's a lot of technology around that does a great job, without all the hype and cruft. If you aren't up to working without a GUI, there are plenty of front-ends to TeX. Give them a try. You might like them. At least try to keep an open mind.
Give me CygnusEd or give me death! Now there was a text editor.
BTW, had to smile at the end of the editorial - as if anything could be more arcane than vi and/or more cumbersome than EMACS!
Why is the world so in love with wysiwyg word processors? They're simply awful. Slow, confusing, labyrinthine beasts which usually produce inconsistent, poorly formatted documents.
I don't want to waste time selecting bolds and font sizes and aligning tabs and battling clippy.
I want to type words in to a computer, using the editor I want to use and a typeface and colour scheme suited for a computer screen, then have those words come out of the printer properly formatted in a professional, readable, predictable way.
I don't want to either spend an hour tidying a document up after I've written it, or distribute documents in the horrible, amateurish jumble of spacings, fonts, weights and sizes that most people seem happy to turn out.
So, I use TeX, and my docs get written more quickly and look better than your OOo/Word/KWrite ones. As I only have to think about what I'm writing, not how to lay it out, the content of my document is quite possibly better as well.
And don't give me the "it's too hard" argument. You could train someone to use a simple text editor and TeX just as quickly as you could train them to use Word for most purposes. I'm no kind of TeX guru at all, but for 95% of what I write there's a ten line preamble and a few \section tags. Then I have a copy of OOo around for the 5% of stuff TeX isn't suited to.
I hate those guys.
looking forward to lots of *hilarious* posts pointing out the typo on the front page. OMG! LOL!!!!!
What has shocked me about the ID card scheme isn't that new labour have introduced it - they seem hell bent on removing as many civil rights as possible - but the unquestioning way in which so much of the public has accepted it.
When the subject comes up and I express my feelings against it, the two responses I always seem to get are "Well, why not have it?" and "I've got nothing to hide".
Firstly, the question isn't "why not", it's "why". It will cost a fortune, make a whole new layer of beaurocracy, upset a lot of people etc etc and no one has yet given a good example of what we really gain, so, why bother?
Secondly, *everyone* has something to hide. Everyone. It may not be something criminal, it may not be something wrong, it may even be something you have no logical reason you want to keep to yourself, but you still have a whole raft of things you don't want the policeman who has just randomly stopped you to know.
I could (and previously have) go on and on, but I'll spare the gentle reader and leave it at that. If you are a halfway intelligent person who bothers to think for yourself you'll be able to come up with a dozen more reasons against introducing ID cards in no time. You don't need me (or anyone else) to tell you what to think.