I'm certainly no expert on Connectiva (as I've never used it), and my experience with Debian is limited to using apt-get and dselect a lot, but I think the answers to your questions are as follows:
is Synaptic generic enough that I could replace Mandrake Update with it?
In case the Mandrake mirrors provide the correct directory structure for apt-get to work with, yes. Otherwise no. As Mandrake
distribute apt-get in contrib (at least that's what I guess the apt RPM contains), I guess the answer is "yes".
Could I install Connectiva, and then try to get packages from Debian?
No. Connectiva uses RPMs. Debian uses DEBs. They have different dependency databases, so AFAICT that shouldn't be possible.
I fail to see how this is so much worse than the FreeBSD solution. Likewise, I can't see that apt-get would be that much better than the FreeBSD solution either (although I haven't used the FreeBSD one).
The original Slashdot posting was about cost. Bruce Perens' posting said roughly "I can get the latest Debian version for the cost of bandwidth with just two simple commands". You said: "I can upgrade my outdated windows version to a somewhat less outdated windows version for the cost of bandwidth plus lots of time".
My point is that if you are currently running Debian stable, and do the apt-get dance, you will be upgraded to the new Debian stable next time it gets updated (with only those two commands). With Windows you can put a lot of time into patching your old version (i guess it's harder than with apt-get), but if you want the latest version you'll have to shell out again.
So, Debian = install once, update easily, run forever. Windows = buy once, install once, update manually, run until the next version is released, buy that one too, install that one once, etc... So you could say that Windows is only cheap (compared to Debian) if you don't want any updates / upgrades and your time has no value:-).
Was all that hardware on the HCL? Or was it generic crap that you had lying around?
Generic crap. I have no idea whether it was on the HCL or not, but that most of it wasn't isn't such a wild guess. And the hardware wasn't on any compatibility list for Slackware Linux either.
The reason I think it should work either way is that I had only standard components; a 386 from Intel, an IDE hard disk, a standard serial port (for my mouse) etc...
Would you complain if OpenBSD didn't work with your NIC correctly if it weren't on the supported hardware list?
If it didn't work at all, I would call it "insufficient hardware support". If it did work some of the time but not all of the time then yes, I would complain that the drivers that the OS shipped with were broken. In my book, not having drivers for a certain NIC is not the same thing as flaky performance on standard hardware.
Out of the box, the NT series has been rock-solid even since 1.0 (version 3.1).
Nope. Not NT3.51 at least. Back when I tried that on my (at the time rather cool) 386, I had lots of problems:
It refused to even install unless I switched off every non-necessary feature in the BIOS.
Every third time I booted the system it failed to recognize the mouse I had attached.
Every tenth time I attempted to boot the system it just gave me a blue screen saying that "The kernel-something.dll file is missing or broken, can't boot". Press the reset button however, and the file would magically appear again.
On the same computer, Linux was running fine. With Slackware, my problems were in the category "I don't know how to untar a file", "how do I get my modem working" and so on, but once I fixed a problem on Slackware it went away for good. So your statement may be correct as far as other versions go, but NT3.51 was not "rock solid" by any means.
> I do like a system similar to the MSFT update whereby my installed software is audited, and I am notified of any patches available, and then given the options to read, and install the patch - if I chose.
I don't know very much about how Windows Update works, but are you really allowed to "read" the patch before you installed it? I thought they mostly didn't release source code.
In any case, "may the best software win in the marketplace" is a libertarian delusion.
I think that the result of market economy / freedom of choice / libertarianism etc is not so much that the best solutions always prevail, but that the really bad solutions mostly do not prevail. Regardless of the fact that some libertarians may not agree with me;-).
one of my pet peeves is thinking I found a program I really needed but didn't have the time to work on myself, only to find out it hasn't been updated in 18 months
Have a look at the vitality index on Freshmeat. An example is available at the bottom of their stats page.
I don't know whether "giraffit" lives in Sweden or not, but I do and I don't recognize the part about "free [...] health [care], of extremely high quality".
People here don't die from hunger or in concentration camps like they do in communist or national socialist states, but they do suffer (and some probably die) while standing in the "bread" lines awaiting an operation. Unless, of course they have money of their own and can pay for a private hospital to help them without having to stand in line.
Here, just like in any other state, socialist or not, people with money do well. Those without don't. You don't have to like it but that's the way it is.
Using the GPL would have caused major problems for the project that would have meant handing over many of our rights over to the Free Software Foundation.
You seem to be saying that you are using code from FSF, but are currently hiding it from view. If you would show your code, people would see that half of it came from the FSF, and they would obviously have copyright for the code they wrote. I don't think this was what you intended to say, but this was how it came across (to me). It's really quite simple:
If you are using code from FSF, then you mostly have to use the GPL for all of your code. Not doing so is stealing from the FSF.
If you are not using FSF code, you don't have to hand over anything, whether you choose to go with the GPL or not.
Countrary to what you seem to believe, the GPL doesn't force you to hand over your copyright to anyone. Hence, copyright-assignment should be a non-issue in choosing your license. You are of course free to dislike the GPL for any reason you like, but it does not force you to give away your copyright, so please don't use that as the single reason for not choosing the GPL.
You should check out Mozilla's bug reporting system, and ether go vote for the bugs you like among these (or others) or check out how close they are to getting resolved:
LBX is a standard X extension for solving exactly this kind of problem. If you run XFree86 at home you already have LBX support on your end. On the server end, you should run the program 'lbxproxy' and modify your $DISPLAY variable.
LyX fits all of your requirements but the last. AFAIK it runs on Unix, some of the umpteen Windows variants (don't know about MacOS), it is definitely "semi WYSIWYG", and at least the current development version exports to (most of?) the file formats you mentioned.
It fails your non-TeX requirement though:-(. Anyway, if you haven't tried it yet I suggest you do.
Also, I should point out that I'm in no way connected to the LyX project other than that I have used it a couple of times and think their WYSIWYM idea is *excellent*. So some of this information may very well be wrong, although of course I think it is correct.
Mandrake is derived from Redhat, so in my opinion there is no technical reason to go for Redhat instead (although there may or may not be issues like support pointing you either way).
I've tried to install SuSe (6.4) once, and my impression was that it was a mess. OK to install, but their YAST administration program was really weird and finding packages (GNOME packages in my case) was real tricky.
Suse does have a good reputation though, so maybe I'm just Suse impaired. Personally I moved from RH62 to Debian 2.2 a month ago and I'll never go back. Once you get Debian installed (if you manage to go through the installation which can be tricky regardless of what people say), you are hooked.
Together, this tells me that Windows boxes are more likely to get cracked than Unix boxes. Of course, the numbers may be different for home systems, but as these are the only numbers I have I'll believe them until something better shows up.
Cheers//Johan
Re:Why does it need to write to the program dir? :
on
Send Some Mo' Zilla
·
· Score: 2
If you are as annoyed by this as I am, go
vote for
bug 41057 on
Bugzilla. I have, and I feel a bit better now...
For an example of the opposite, check out Flightgear. Flight sims can be complex (and fun!) enough without having to worry about being shot down by SAMs.
photocopying your own books for the hell of it (what DeCSS does)
I thought the whole point in the DeCSS argument was that DeCSS is not needed for copying DVDs, but it is for viewing them. So, I think a better example would have been i you had said "reading your own books for the hell of it (what DeCSS does)".
I don't know whether this would actually work, but I'm sure someone else on this forum is rather likely tell me once i present the idea:-).
Anyway, the article says that "there cannot be liability for linking to a site containing unlawful circumvention technology unless those responsible for the link know that the offending material is on the linked-to site".
With this in mind, would it be possible to set up a CGI script, that (randomly) sometimes returned the DeCSS source, and sometimes returned something else? In that case, the one who performs the linking can't "know that the offending material is on the linked-to-site", can they? And the link should be OK by the judge's standards?
If I understand the GPL correctly (which I realize is not in any way certain), shouldn't its "viral" nature make the whole driver GPL:ed? If anybody starts re-distributing NVidia's driver under the GPL, aren't they just exercising the rights that the GPL gives them? Could NVidia possibly sue for copyright infringements and stand a chance to win?
The article discusses how to handle lots of bug reports, a subject to which I've given some thought.
My conclusion is that a way of doing this is using the voting feature of bugzilla, and start by fixing the bugs with the most votes. Thus, people are encouraged to see if anyone else is having the same problems they have themselves, and the time developers have to spend on finding duplicates decreases. Those who have uncommon bugs will of course be run over by this scheme:-(, but my opinion is that it is more important to help lots of people than help only a few.
AFAIK the only thing Netcraft says is that Apache rules the web with 60% market share. Could you please provide a link to where they say that "thousands of... companies have switched their Web sites from Sun platforms to Windows"?
Slashdot Mirror
is Synaptic generic enough that I could replace Mandrake Update with it?
In case the Mandrake mirrors provide the correct directory structure for apt-get to work with, yes. Otherwise no. As Mandrake distribute apt-get in contrib (at least that's what I guess the apt RPM contains), I guess the answer is "yes".
Could I install Connectiva, and then try to get packages from Debian?
No. Connectiva uses RPMs. Debian uses DEBs. They have different dependency databases, so AFAICT that shouldn't be possible.
Cheers //Johan
# apt-get dist-upgrade
I fail to see how this is so much worse than the FreeBSD solution. Likewise, I can't see that apt-get would be that much better than the FreeBSD solution either (although I haven't used the FreeBSD one).
Cheers //Johan
My point is that if you are currently running Debian stable, and do the apt-get dance, you will be upgraded to the new Debian stable next time it gets updated (with only those two commands). With Windows you can put a lot of time into patching your old version (i guess it's harder than with apt-get), but if you want the latest version you'll have to shell out again.
So, Debian = install once, update easily, run forever. Windows = buy once, install once, update manually, run until the next version is released, buy that one too, install that one once, etc... So you could say that Windows is only cheap (compared to Debian) if you don't want any updates / upgrades and your time has no value :-).
Cheers //Johan
"It's not art until you manage to sell it."
Whether you agree or not it's at least an easily verifiable criterion ;-).
Cheers //Johan (and good luck selling some art ;-)
Generic crap. I have no idea whether it was on the HCL or not, but that most of it wasn't isn't such a wild guess. And the hardware wasn't on any compatibility list for Slackware Linux either.
The reason I think it should work either way is that I had only standard components; a 386 from Intel, an IDE hard disk, a standard serial port (for my mouse) etc...
Would you complain if OpenBSD didn't work with your NIC correctly if it weren't on the supported hardware list?
If it didn't work at all, I would call it "insufficient hardware support". If it did work some of the time but not all of the time then yes, I would complain that the drivers that the OS shipped with were broken. In my book, not having drivers for a certain NIC is not the same thing as flaky performance on standard hardware.
Hope this clears things up!
Cheers //Johan
Nope. Not NT3.51 at least. Back when I tried that on my (at the time rather cool) 386, I had lots of problems:
- It refused to even install unless I switched off every non-necessary feature in the BIOS.
- Every third time I booted the system it failed to recognize the mouse I had attached.
- Every tenth time I attempted to boot the system it just gave me a blue screen saying that "The kernel-something.dll file is missing or broken, can't boot". Press the reset button however, and the file would magically appear again.
On the same computer, Linux was running fine. With Slackware, my problems were in the category "I don't know how to untar a file", "how do I get my modem working" and so on, but once I fixed a problem on Slackware it went away for good. So your statement may be correct as far as other versions go, but NT3.51 was not "rock solid" by any means.Cheers //Johan
I don't know very much about how Windows Update works, but are you really allowed to "read" the patch before you installed it? I thought they mostly didn't release source code.
Cheers //Johan
I think that the result of market economy / freedom of choice / libertarianism etc is not so much that the best solutions always prevail, but that the really bad solutions mostly do not prevail. Regardless of the fact that some libertarians may not agree with me ;-).
Cheers //Johan
Have a look at the vitality index on Freshmeat. An example is available at the bottom of their stats page.
Have fun //Johan
People here don't die from hunger or in concentration camps like they do in communist or national socialist states, but they do suffer (and some probably die) while standing in the "bread" lines awaiting an operation. Unless, of course they have money of their own and can pay for a private hospital to help them without having to stand in line.
Here, just like in any other state, socialist or not, people with money do well. Those without don't. You don't have to like it but that's the way it is.
You seem to be saying that you are using code from FSF, but are currently hiding it from view. If you would show your code, people would see that half of it came from the FSF, and they would obviously have copyright for the code they wrote. I don't think this was what you intended to say, but this was how it came across (to me). It's really quite simple:
- If you are using code from FSF, then you mostly have to use the GPL for all of your code. Not doing so is stealing from the FSF.
- If you are not using FSF code, you don't have to hand over anything, whether you choose to go with the GPL or not.
Countrary to what you seem to believe, the GPL doesn't force you to hand over your copyright to anyone. Hence, copyright-assignment should be a non-issue in choosing your license. You are of course free to dislike the GPL for any reason you like, but it does not force you to give away your copyright, so please don't use that as the single reason for not choosing the GPL.Thanks //Johan
- [RFE] Backend support for all page prefs on a URL by URL basis
- [Feature] JavaScript auto-disable per-domain RFE
- Prevent repeating pop-up windows
Have fun!Cheers //Johan
For more info, check out The LBX Mini-Howto.
As some other posts have pointed out, the problem isn't entirely solveable (sp?), but LBX is at least one step in the right direction.
Have fun! //Johan
However it can be worked around; Debian for example have done this.
Cheers //Johan
It fails your non-TeX requirement though :-(. Anyway, if you haven't tried it yet I suggest you do.
Also, I should point out that I'm in no way connected to the LyX project other than that I have used it a couple of times and think their WYSIWYM idea is *excellent*. So some of this information may very well be wrong, although of course I think it is correct.
Cheers //Johan
- Mandrake is very easy to install. Most hardware is auto detected, partitioning is automatic, etc.
- Debian is a dream to maintain (run dselec t once when you've installed it and you'll never want to run another distro again) but can be tricky to get installed (for example is has almost no hardware detection during installation).
Mandrake is derived from Redhat, so in my opinion there is no technical reason to go for Redhat instead (although there may or may not be issues like support pointing you either way).I've tried to install SuSe (6.4) once, and my impression was that it was a mess. OK to install, but their YAST administration program was really weird and finding packages (GNOME packages in my case) was real tricky.
Suse does have a good reputation though, so maybe I'm just Suse impaired. Personally I moved from RH62 to Debian 2.2 a month ago and I'll never go back. Once you get Debian installed (if you manage to go through the installation which can be tricky regardless of what people say), you are hooked.
Have fun!
//Johan
Compare this to Linux's web server market share according to Netcraft.
Together, this tells me that Windows boxes are more likely to get cracked than Unix boxes. Of course, the numbers may be different for home systems, but as these are the only numbers I have I'll believe them until something better shows up.
Cheers //Johan
Cheers //Johan
Cheers //Johan
I thought the whole point in the DeCSS argument was that DeCSS is not needed for copying DVDs, but it is for viewing them. So, I think a better example would have been i you had said "reading your own books for the hell of it (what DeCSS does)".
Cheers //Johan
Anyway, the article says that "there cannot be liability for linking to a site containing unlawful circumvention technology unless those responsible for the link know that the offending material is on the linked-to site".
With this in mind, would it be possible to set up a CGI script, that (randomly) sometimes returned the DeCSS source, and sometimes returned something else? In that case, the one who performs the linking can't "know that the offending material is on the linked-to-site", can they? And the link should be OK by the judge's standards?
Have fun! //Johan
My conclusion is that a way of doing this is using the voting feature of bugzilla, and start by fixing the bugs with the most votes. Thus, people are encouraged to see if anyone else is having the same problems they have themselves, and the time developers have to spend on finding duplicates decreases. Those who have uncommon bugs will of course be run over by this scheme :-(, but my opinion is that it is more important to help lots of people than help only a few.
Comments anyone?
Cheers
//Johan
Thank you