As long as the RH certification applies to other distros, what's the big deal? What I'd like to see - for those of us who don't have the buckolas and can't get the company to pay for the air travel, per diem and the ceritication/testing costs - would be some sort of on-line testing from a reputable Linux company. There's still a lot of resistance to the ROI for the "standard" testing model for Linux heads in some - read my - companies. I think, though, that a solid test for setting up and admining a Linux box/boxes would be a big plus for my resume. I mean I've done this stuff - nntp, qmail, dns, networking, users, etc.But a well-backed certificate would be good too. Also, there are some things I won't get to do for real, like samba, that a testing situation would force me into doing - I'm lazy - in order to pass the test on it.
What the hell...I'm just about finished w/ the minimal install to an old 486. I use Trinux on this puppy, so I'll be able to use both. So far, the ftp install - no cdrom is working fine. I kinda like the partitioning scheme. It's remaking all devices now...so I'll see what all I can find to do with it - it's only a little machine w/ 120megs and 16mb RAM. Hope I have fun!
Nice article. I run Linux mostly, and I like the Sys V ish stuff. But I also work with a dog-eared SunOS 4.1.4 box that's just a peach in terms of stability. I am planning to try out FreeBSD as soon as I get my taxes paid off (damn the gov't! What tax reform?) and can actually save some money for a spare box. I'd like to have more than one type of system to play with at home as well.
I enjoyed reading it. Salon seems to cover Linux and OSS pretty cleanly. The writer has a point, but the tiered development model seems to me, IMHO, to be right on the money. This is the type of article that reads well; pointing out a weak area w/o jumping up and down saying "Aha! Linux really isn't for normal people, etc, etc. ad nauseum". My $0.02.
BTW, how "mainstream" is Salon, anyway. Anyone know?
At least it's mainstream press on the tests. This is what was needed to put the mindcraft thing in prepsective. Red Hat or VA Research or Penguin Computing or Linux Hardware Solutions or some group at that level should tune-up a Linux box and then let the NT tuned-up quad go after it w/ the same testing, just to see what all happens. Then the results should be made public. This isn't just some adhoc(sp) type of thing. This should be a concerted effort on the part of some or all of the commercial Linux resellers. After all, guys, this report is aimed right at you.
After losing the arguement vis a vie using NT vs. Linux as an internal mail server. The IS boss said that he wanted an os that he could support internally, and I'm the only one that knows Linux/Unix. Sigh. The thing is, I had Linux/qmail setup and configured - even ran successful email tests on my dual-boot Linux/NT box in a bout 1/2 a day total. Linux works, but the "We would need a Linux/Unix guru to support it and what do we do when you're gone" blues do have an impact. I'm getting depressed again just writing this.
sides of his head. Ok, Linux isn't a threat 'cause it's only for servers in small situations and so doesn't pose a threat to the desktop. BUT Linux also doesn't pose a threat 'cause it's free software and free software is only good for spreadsheets and word processors, which are used on....!?...what....dumb terminals?
Sometimes I just can't stand it. Then again. other times I just reach for the beer.
the y2k thingy is just the start: civ as we know it begins to collapse; people go mad because their computers and toasters and teevees and air conditioning/heating units stop working, but slowly, not all at once - you see the pattern? Banks begin to fail, people get laid off; the UN passes a global non-smoking law; airplanes fall randomly out of the sky; the weather gets worse - more frequent and stronger hurricanes in the atlantic; bigger cyclones in the pacific; monster tornadoes in the great plains, volcanic erruptions all along the pacific rim; California drops into the ocean - oh, well, the news ain't all bad! Bill Gates runs for and wins the U.S. presidency and is re-elected 4 times - after changing all the rules. By this time, the remaining 300-400 million people are in despair, wandering around with Palm Pilots that won't work any more - no more batteries for them. Then the asteroid comes and puts them out of their collective misery.
The new logo just doesn't do it for me. The old cube always stood out and said - SGI, cool hardware. I always wanted one, but now... Anyway, sent them feedback re. the change. Won't do any good, but maybe if they get a ton of email/feedback from/.-ers, they might pause and ponder their corporate foolishness. How about a pool for the coolest workstation? Past and current models included?
Well, maybe not that much off topic, but Rob, I noticed Today's Weather in Hell no longer shows up on my custom page. I looked around the Brunching site and found it here
MS is a big company, but when a target enters the inner zone on its radar, watch the fsck out. This is slowly starting to happen w/ Linux and Open Source.
Soon as they figure out a strategy, the folks at MS will "turn on a dime", as one poster put it, and...... well anyone remember Netscape?
Uh, if I'm gonna get a vacation outta this thingy, then I wanna relax, play games on the Linux box they provide, read/. and some usenet, sleep late in the mornings, drink beer at all hours, hang out on the porch - which faces the beach, right? Order Chinese and Thai, mmmmmmm spicy Thai food! I wanna be provided with all the latest distros to install and fsck around with. I also wanna get a haircut. I don't wanna work on no stinking website - shit, that's what I do at work.
A bit. That is, I come from a small town in what's referred to as the "North East Rust Belt". The town was, and still is, going to hell in a handbasket on greased rails. The folks I hung out with in high school could fit the types briefly outlined in the article, and while I came to geekhood late in life - after grad school - the marginalism of the two fellas did ring true, and close to home. There was a time when I was working in a bicycle factory, wasting my life, etc. If I didn't get turned on to literature in my last semester of hs by a real geeky English prof, I shudder to think where I'd be right now.
I normally don't read jk's essays, but I rather liked this one. Despite the somewhat rattled organization of the piece, the story itself was pretty good. I come from a small town in Upstate New York, and I can relate to the cramped, nowhere, go-to-get-out-of-here feelings expressed by Eric and Jesse. Maybe if jk's submissions to/. were like this, I'd read him more.
The thing that bothers me about the Al "Open Source" Gore thingy is that this is precisely how definitions get skewed; ie hack/crack. Some bonehead starts using the term incorrectly in public, others follow suit, and pretty soon the original meaning is gone.
It's always nice to see how well democracy really works. Anyone can make a total ass of him/herself in public at any time, using any medium. Open source indeed! Maybe we should all email Al "Father of the Internet" Gore a clue? I wonder if he reads/.?
Not that I care much, since I don't run MS oses at home, but I have another point here that might put this in perspective. I have an old Sun box running 4.1.4. It works. Period. It does, day in and day out, just what I've configed it for, nothing more, nothing less. The only down times have been protracted power-outages or a kernel recompile for a patch. Now, in about 7-8 months, this box will be usless. Why? SunOS 4.1.4 is not y2k compliant w/o a patch. The patch is offered by Sun, for a hefty price. This is the base os I'm talking about, not some apps. I think Sun should offer the patch for free, but that ain't gonna happen. The cost? $1,295.00. The hardware is okay according to Sun's y2k page. Now, I talked to Sun about this, and what I got was a service contract that would put me on a path to Solaris 2.x. All this for $3,060.00 per annum. Thing is, that is overkill.. It's not what I want.
Now, I could slap RH Sparclinux on this puppy, but that is not my decision to make. I can't use the free Solaris 'cause this is for business use. My point is that I should not have to go through an upgrade/replacement because the os is doing just fine as it is. Am I pissed? You bet.
I'm reading the exec summary of the report right now, and I have a question for anyone out there w/ experience in various unixen and nt.
First, the premise of the report is that Linux is not enterprise-scale material, right? Okay, the intro paragraphs from the summary end with this conclusion - after mentioning the oses.
And I quote: They(the two Linux distros) both fall short of the coventional production-grade implementations of proven, non-trivial SMP scalability; high-availability clustering capabilities; journaling file systems; logical volume managers; large files; and many other less significant but useful functions. end quote.
Uh, and NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Ed. has all this? Can someone tell me if this is true, yes/no?
Another question. This summary doesn't seem to make any real judgements about the oses in terms of how well they work, what you need to get all these wonderful goodies in terms of hardware resources, training, administration. I find this rather a large oversight. I mean, MS might be able to offer everything, but how well does it hold up, and what kind of resources do you have to throw at it to get to this scale; what about TCO, ROI, etc.? I agree that enterprise scale needs big iron, and Linux ain't there yet, but I also believe that nt ain't there neither. I think I have a problem with this approach. Also, the clueless journalists who "summarized" the report, or summarized the summary most likely, really should have kept their fingers off the keyboards and on their dicks and just provided a link to the free pdf file.
* Get and install Abacus sentry - sits on ports and automatically dumps bad guys' IP's in hosts.deny
* If you can, scrounge up an old 486 w/ a NIC and install Trinux to monitor, scan your network. Nice tool that runs in RAM from two floppies; this is cool 'cause you don't need to frig w/ the hdd or installed OS.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as the RH certification applies to other distros, what's the big deal? What I'd like to see - for those of us who don't have the buckolas and can't get the company to pay for the air travel, per diem and the ceritication/testing costs - would be some sort of on-line testing from a reputable Linux company. There's still a lot of resistance to the ROI for the "standard" testing model for Linux heads in some - read my - companies. I think, though, that a solid test for setting up and admining a Linux box/boxes would be a big plus for my resume. I mean I've done this stuff - nntp, qmail, dns, networking, users, etc.But a well-backed certificate would be good too. Also, there are some things I won't get to do for real, like samba, that a testing situation would force me into doing - I'm lazy - in order to pass the test on it.
What the hell...I'm just about finished w/ the minimal install to an old 486. I use Trinux on this puppy, so I'll be able to use both. So far, the ftp install - no cdrom is working fine. I kinda like the partitioning scheme. It's remaking all devices now...so I'll see what all I can find to do with it - it's only a little machine w/ 120megs and 16mb RAM. Hope I have fun!
Nice article. I run Linux mostly, and I like the Sys V ish stuff. But I also work with a dog-eared SunOS 4.1.4 box that's just a peach in terms of stability. I am planning to try out FreeBSD as soon as I get my taxes paid off (damn the gov't! What tax reform?) and can actually save some money for a spare box. I'd like to have more than one type of system to play with at home as well.
I enjoyed reading it. Salon seems to cover Linux and OSS pretty cleanly. The writer has a point, but the tiered development model seems to me, IMHO, to be right on the money. This is the type of article that reads well; pointing out a weak area w/o jumping up and down saying "Aha! Linux really isn't for normal people, etc, etc. ad nauseum". My $0.02.
BTW, how "mainstream" is Salon, anyway. Anyone know?
At least it's mainstream press on the tests. This is what was needed to put the mindcraft thing in prepsective. Red Hat or VA Research or Penguin Computing or Linux Hardware Solutions or some group at that level should tune-up a Linux box and then let the NT tuned-up quad go after it w/ the same testing, just to see what all happens. Then the results should be made public. This isn't just some adhoc(sp) type of thing. This should be a concerted effort on the part of some or all of the commercial Linux resellers. After all, guys, this report is aimed right at you.
After losing the arguement vis a vie using NT vs. Linux as an internal mail server. The IS boss said that he wanted an os that he could support internally, and I'm the only one that knows Linux/Unix. Sigh. The thing is, I had Linux/qmail setup and configured - even ran successful email tests on my dual-boot Linux/NT box in a bout 1/2 a day total. Linux works, but the "We would need a Linux/Unix guru to support it and what do we do when you're gone" blues do have an impact. I'm getting depressed again just writing this.
sides of his head. Ok, Linux isn't a threat 'cause it's only for servers in small situations and so doesn't pose a threat to the desktop. BUT Linux also doesn't pose a threat 'cause it's free software and free software is only good for spreadsheets and word processors, which are used on....!?...what....dumb terminals?
Sometimes I just can't stand it. Then again. other times I just reach for the beer.
Okay, this is rubbish. Sponsored by MS, eh. Weeelll, then it must be true! Here are some other points of view:
1. This article in InfoWorld about MS's own concern about NT server system crashes, along with a few choice quotes from other consultants.
2. This article by Novell pointing out Mindcraft's lack of, uh, a reality check.
3. This survey by Netcraft showing Apache whopping the sh*t out of NT/IIS.
Preaching to the choir, I know, but I just had to do it. I just wish we had a central, big-name pr channel to counter the MS FUD. Any ideas?
the y2k thingy is just the start: civ as we know it begins to collapse; people go mad because their computers and toasters and teevees and air conditioning/heating units stop working, but slowly, not all at once - you see the pattern? Banks begin to fail, people get laid off; the UN passes a global non-smoking law; airplanes fall randomly out of the sky; the weather gets worse - more frequent and stronger hurricanes in the atlantic; bigger cyclones in the pacific; monster tornadoes in the great plains, volcanic erruptions all along the pacific rim; California drops into the ocean - oh, well, the news ain't all bad! Bill Gates runs for and wins the U.S. presidency and is re-elected 4 times - after changing all the rules. By this time, the remaining 300-400 million people are in despair, wandering around with Palm Pilots that won't work any more - no more batteries for them. Then the asteroid comes and puts them out of their collective misery.
Remember, you heard it here first!
The new logo just doesn't do it for me. The old cube always stood out and said - SGI, cool hardware. I always wanted one, but now... Anyway, sent them feedback re. the change. Won't do any good, but maybe if they get a ton of email/feedback from /.-ers, they might pause and ponder their corporate foolishness. How about a pool for the coolest workstation? Past and current models included?
Well, maybe not that much off topic, but Rob, I noticed Today's Weather in Hell no longer shows up on my custom page. I looked around the Brunching site and found it
here
BTW, Today's WIH is detatched eyeballs.
Yesssss. Let's get Nikita as mascot. She'll take care of ol' Billy boy, heheheheheh.
Hmmmm. Had me a few of those at Ralph & Kuckoo's(sic) in Baton Rouge. Verrrrry good.
MS is a big company, but when a target enters the inner zone on its radar, watch the fsck out. This is slowly starting to happen w/ Linux and Open Source.
Soon as they figure out a strategy, the folks at MS will "turn on a dime", as one poster put it, and...... well anyone remember Netscape?
Uh, if I'm gonna get a vacation outta this thingy, then I wanna relax, play games on the Linux box they provide, read /. and some usenet, sleep late in the mornings, drink beer at all hours, hang out on the porch - which faces the beach, right? Order Chinese and Thai, mmmmmmm spicy Thai food! I wanna be provided with all the latest distros to install and fsck around with. I also wanna get a haircut. I don't wanna work on no stinking website - shit, that's what I do at work.
A bit. That is, I come from a small town in what's referred to as the "North East Rust Belt". The town was, and still is, going to hell in a handbasket on greased rails. The folks I hung out with in high school could fit the types briefly outlined in the article, and while I came to geekhood late in life - after grad school - the marginalism of the two fellas did ring true, and close to home. There was a time when I was working in a bicycle factory, wasting my life, etc. If I didn't get turned on to literature in my last semester of hs by a real geeky English prof, I shudder to think where I'd be right now.
Uh, no. Why do you ask?
I normally don't read jk's essays, but I rather liked this one. Despite the somewhat rattled organization of the piece, the story itself was pretty good. I come from a small town in Upstate New York, and I can relate to the cramped, nowhere, go-to-get-out-of-here feelings expressed by Eric and Jesse. Maybe if jk's submissions to /. were like this, I'd read him more.
That was a very good article. Thanks for the link!
I love the Jargon File. Have the current pb at home, and it is well-thumbed. Definitely will purchase the new version. Good work, esr!
The thing that bothers me about the Al "Open Source" Gore thingy is that this is precisely how definitions get skewed; ie hack/crack. Some bonehead starts using the term incorrectly in public, others follow suit, and pretty soon the original meaning is gone.
It's always nice to see how well democracy really works. Anyone can make a total ass of him/herself in public at any time, using any medium. Open source indeed! Maybe we should all email Al "Father of the Internet" Gore a clue? I wonder if he reads /.?
Not that I care much, since I don't run MS oses at home, but I have another point here that might put this in perspective. I have an old Sun box running 4.1.4. It works. Period. It does, day in and day out, just what I've configed it for, nothing more, nothing less. The only down times have been protracted power-outages or a kernel recompile for a patch. Now, in about 7-8 months, this box will be usless. Why? SunOS 4.1.4 is not y2k compliant w/o a patch. The patch is offered by Sun, for a hefty price. This is the base os I'm talking about, not some apps. I think Sun should offer the patch for free, but that ain't gonna happen. The cost? $1,295.00. The hardware is okay according to Sun's y2k page. Now, I talked to Sun about this, and what I got was a service contract that would put me on a path to Solaris 2.x. All this for $3,060.00 per annum. Thing is, that is overkill.. It's not what I want.
Now, I could slap RH Sparclinux on this puppy, but that is not my decision to make. I can't use the free Solaris 'cause this is for business use. My point is that I should not have to go through an upgrade/replacement because the os is doing just fine as it is. Am I pissed? You bet.
I'm reading the exec summary of the report right now, and I have a question for anyone out there w/ experience in various unixen and nt.
First, the premise of the report is that Linux is not enterprise-scale material, right? Okay, the intro paragraphs from the summary end with this conclusion - after mentioning the oses.
And I quote:
They(the two Linux distros) both fall short of the coventional production-grade implementations of proven, non-trivial SMP scalability; high-availability clustering capabilities; journaling file systems; logical volume managers; large files; and many other less significant but useful functions. end quote.
Uh, and NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Ed. has all this? Can someone tell me if this is true, yes/no?
Another question. This summary doesn't seem to make any real judgements about the oses in terms of how well they work, what you need to get all these wonderful goodies in terms of hardware resources, training, administration. I find this rather a large oversight. I mean, MS might be able to offer everything, but how well does it hold up, and what kind of resources do you have to throw at it to get to this scale; what about TCO, ROI, etc.? I agree that enterprise scale needs big iron, and Linux ain't there yet, but I also believe that nt ain't there neither. I think I have a problem with this approach. Also, the clueless journalists who "summarized" the report, or summarized the summary most likely, really should have kept their fingers off the keyboards and on their dicks and just provided a link to the free pdf file.
Added to the above good advice:
* Get and install Abacus sentry - sits on ports and automatically dumps bad guys' IP's in hosts.deny
* If you can, scrounge up an old 486 w/ a NIC and install Trinux to monitor, scan your network. Nice tool that runs in RAM from two floppies; this is cool 'cause you don't need to frig w/ the hdd or installed OS.
* Subscribe to the bugtraq mailing list.
* Read the comp.security.unix newsgroup
* Install and run COPS
HTH