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Title: Scheduled Server Outage/Upgrade 1:30 AM ET (tonight)
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Published: Jul 29, 2010
Author: Neil
Post Date: 2010-07-29 22:38:03 by Pinguinite
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Views: 448
Comments: 55
I'm going to take care of this this evening. I'll look to begin at 1:30 AM Eastern time. It should take about 45 mins or so. Something like that. This will be the first of 3 upgrades I'll do. I'll space them about 2-4 weeks apart, more or less.
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#16. To: Pinguinite (#15)
(Edited)
[hiccup] dupe post...
I think they could adopt a convention of designating a particular app version as the official standard and giving it a decent name. I also think that Linux will never succeed as long as there is a divide between the Gnome and KDE camps. User interface design really is no longer any kind of rocket science: just pick one and relegate the other to legacy support. It doesn't even matter which one you pick; just pick one. If you had a system like this for Notepads and Terminals, then a new geeky-named competitor (fork or new project) might over time become more popular, then every few years they could choose to go to the new Notepad program. Let's face it, every system has Notepad programs. Some proliferation of names, often for obscure features, isn't that desirable. And just how extensive or subtle can a Notepad or a Terminal really be? This isn't actually a major divide that moves the hearts of men, causes people to kill each other, determines which computer system a person chooses to use (in the case of Linux, which computer system they choose not to use largely because of this endless confusing proliferation of minor versions of almost identical software). You need continuity of sorts to succeed. Then you have more books and magazine articles to tutor and promote the various packages, you have users who become knowledgeable about a standard utility and can help others. As I've said, this is one of the biggest single defects in any plan for Linux to conquer the desktop. If you're satisfied with obscurity (or if you purposely desire it for various reasons) then the current Linux practices are the way to go. Linux needs to finally become a platform, in the same sense we use those terms towards Windows and Mac OSes. Linux needs a way to standardize their APIs and utilities but keep the open-source nature of the Linux system. Linux is weaker as an OS because of the divided effort and duplicated effort of so many teams, especially Gnome vs. KDE. I know some people would fight to the death over the two but that is legacy stuff. Both are more than capable enough and the division in UI development harms Linux far far more than it can ever help it. I'm on Mac instead of Linux largely because I actually like having a standard set of utils that everyone else is using. I also like that OS X, unlike Linux, actually is a UNIX 2003™ certified OS. This is one reason why it was fairly easy to change the Pinguinite install script to produce a working P forum on the Mac. (I should remember to email that script to you just in case anyone else asks for it.) Of course, the very idea of standardization offends many Linux users. So I expect total marketshare/mindshare of Linux to continue to decline because of this tendency in the Linux community. To make my own prejudices clear, I think Linux should standardize on Ubuntu with KDE (Kubuntu). But Ubuntu with Gnome would work too.
User interface design really is no longer any kind of rocket science: just pick one and relegate the other to legacy support. It doesn't even matter which one you pick; just pick one. If you had a system like this for Notepads and Terminals, then a new geeky-named competitor (fork or new project) might over time become more popular, then every few years they could choose to go to the new Notepad program. Let's face it, every system has Notepad programs. Some proliferation of names, often for obscure features, isn't that desirable. And just how extensive or subtle can a Notepad or a Terminal really be? This isn't actually a major divide that moves the hearts of men, causes people to kill each other, determines which computer system a person chooses to use (in the case of Linux, which computer system they choose not to use largely because of this endless confusing proliferation of minor versions of almost identical software). You need continuity of sorts to succeed. Then you have more books and magazine articles to tutor and promote the various packages, you have users who become knowledgeable about a standard utility and can help others. As I've said, this is one of the biggest single defects in any plan for Linux to conquer the desktop. If you're satisfied with obscurity (or if you purposely desire it for various reasons) then the current Linux practices are the way to go. Linux needs to finally become a platform, in the same sense we use those terms towards Windows and Mac OSes. Linux needs a way to standardize their APIs and utilities but keep the open-source nature of the Linux system. Linux is weaker as an OS because of the divided effort and duplicated effort of so many teams, especially Gnome vs. KDE. I know some people would fight to the death over the two but that is legacy stuff. Both are more than capable enough and the division in UI development harms Linux far far more than it can ever help it. I'm on Mac instead of Linux largely because I actually like having a standard set of utils that everyone else is using. I also like that OS X, unlike Linux, actually is a UNIX 2003™ certified OS. This is one reason why it was fairly easy to change the Pinguinite install script to produce a working P forum on the Mac. (I should remember to email that script to you just in case anyone else asks for it.) Of course, the very idea of standardization offends many Linux users. So I expect total marketshare/mindshare of Linux to continue to decline because of this tendency in the Linux community. To make my own prejudices clear, I think Linux should standardize on Ubuntu with KDE (Kubuntu). But Ubuntu with Gnome would work too. It's interesting that you bring this up as a friend of mine and I just had a similar discussion. He is presently pursuing a BS degree in Information Technology Services Management. In this degree program he has to take a Linux System Admin and Linux Advanced System Admin course, at which time he will be qualified to take the LPIC-1, LPIC-2, and CompTIA Network+ certifications. I asked him why the University is focusing on Linux system administration instead of instead of Windows. He claims that research has shown that due to the cost factor, Linux is growing faster than Windows and is expected to continue to do so in the foreseeable future. I have no idea if that is true or if the University is blowing smoke up his ass. I don't know how Linux licensing works, but I bet it's a whole lot cheaper than Windows licensing. Then again, I'm pretty cynical. It is for this reason that the university has focused on java programming instead of Windows development applications as well. I guess Java is a multi-OS language and the department though it would be more useful. Although I guess they have a couple of Windows programming classes you can take, the majority of CIS classes are Java based.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976 Nothing in the State, everything outside the State, everything against the State - Jan Lester, Escape From Leviathan "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone. - Zhuangzi
Point taken, but I think one reason why windows is failing (or at least why it has taken hits in the past) is because it's a one product company. Look at Millinium and Vista. They were flops since they didn't work right, but windows users were stuck with it. Linux, on the other hand, with it's multiple & competing development streams, while redundant, also ensures that there will always be a working solution available, even if it means switching tracks from time to time. I've done that twice from Red Hat to Mandriva to Ubuntu, and perhaps Fedora depending on whether the problems I've seen in Ubuntu 10.04 are a sign of things to come OR is just a temp fluke that will be easily remedied. Also, with virtualization, I think the future will see PC's that are more ready capable of running any OS, even side by side. I can already do that with Windows and Linux, but with more powerful PCs, having multiple Linux versions available along with Windows may be a no-brainer. So users do not need to make a single choice of Windows or one of many Linux flavors. Choose several and use the one that suits you for whatever task is at hand.
What I enjoy about Linux is that I don't have to "just pick one". If I want I can install all the window managers and switch between them at will. Windowmaker is elegant and suits my needs most of the time, Gnome sometimes, KDE if I'm feeling like pretending I'm using Windows for that day. It allows me choice, to suit my whims of the moment. It's an OS geared completely towards individualism, there is no "one size fits all package". As to "platform", lots of companies use Linux. IBM has even offered an entire Linux "platform" suite of servers that were well received. Meant to type : Penguinite
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
The only thing I like about Guake (and I couldn't care less about app names, as long as they suit my purpose) is that f12 is easier to hit than alt-tab. As Larry Wall said, laziness is a trait of a potentially good coder. I'm a crummy coder but a fairly decent situational hacker so I like the plethora of solutions that Linux offers. Windows leaves one limited and OS X has more options but still leaves one stuck in Jobsland when push comes to shove. Grandma and Cousin Jed are never ever going to run a program with a name like Guake. If Grandma and Jed ever got on the command line, I'd be shocked and stoked. Linux will never go anywhere until it adopts common descriptive names for its basic utilities. Linux is already going somewhere. Plus, you're free to change one line of code in a package, or none, and repackage it with another name and no one will sue you.
The idea of top-down enforcement of standardization is what offends, not standardization itself. Standardizing based on merit, utility and efficiency appears to be the goal. Remember when we had a bazillion proprietary network protocols to contend with while TCP/IP was chugging along silently in the background? Then BOOM! TCP/IP is now the standard (even with its high overhead) that even IBM and Microsoft had to defer to. I think that Linux (and other *nix variants) are going through a similar process. I'm willing to go through the BS of the occasional frustration dealing with irregularities in the OS if it leads to freedom on the desktop and the server. Hell, Linux and FreeBSD already own the internet.
" The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things. To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights. We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software. Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations. Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all. The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow. "
Don't forget Enlightenment. A pain to install but it looks good.
If that's true then the Linux elite have failed miserably with their apartheid repository system. One repository for the "pure" free stuff, and at least one more for the good stuff that has something they don't like about the license. Gotta segregate the pure stuff from the tainted, doncha know. In most distros this ends up as a real pain in the ass for the end user, who has to enable repos, and find the missing magic codecs, etc. to make stuff actually work. END THE HATE, integrate the repos! I love Linux and am on openSUSE now, but the purist "free" fanatics tick me off!
Oh, well, that is certainly a major feature. This kind of pettiness is exactly what I was talking about. It doesn't justify endless duplication of effort. There are times when forking projects makes sense and works well. There are at least as many other (or more) times where it is counterproductive and redundant and that doesn't help Linux adoption at all. That is a bug not a feature, no mater what the Richard Stallman purists say about it. Or Gimp, a name no one can really love. Labels are very important, branding is important. To deny this is to deny the nature of the human thought process where recognition/labeling is the basis of what we flatteringly call intelligence in the human race. One of the reasons I lean toward KDE is that the KDE team seems to grasp this concept of standardization and how to succeed on the desktop. I also like their suite of educational software and I'm still waiting to see if they can finally make the KDE 4 libarries work for OSX and Windows so that Linux's best programs can run transparently without recompiling on all three major platforms; this would be terrific and avoid the need for virtualization. Virtualizing is fine but is too much trouble for a lot of users; you need something that works more easily. Yet, very few of the Linux tribe ever actually do it. Probably less than 10% ever compile anything and the other 90% just glom onto the work of the 10% who are programmers. They spend much more of their time figuring out endless package dependencies and such. And Linux is declining already, both in the server space and on the desktop. I think they missed their real opportunity to become players in the desktop market around the time the Mac switcher campaign was going full steam. Lots of people like me were looking to escape the wilderness of Windows. We looked and ended up picking Mac very overwhelmingly. For most, I would bet that, like me, they had already run Linux and realized they didn't want to spend all their time updating packages. I know the reason I left Windows was that I found most days when I fired up my computer, I'd spend as much time updating the OS and the antivirus/antispyware stuff as actually doing anything I enjoyed. No fun. And Linux just looked like more of the same endless updating crap I wanted to get away from. And I have been pretty happy with the choice. Also, the Mac Pro was (and still is) the cheapest workstation around, about 50% cheaper than any comparable Dell Xeon. And my Mac Pro is as beautifully constructed a computer as I've ever seen. The solid aluminum frame, the hard drive sleds, the tool-less access, it is all very slick, a machine you're proud to own because the build quality is so readily evident. Even the circuit boards looks higher quality, such a serene and royal blue. Before the Mac Pro, I had a Mac Mini and was a "switcher". It did win me over to the Mac which I'd avoided like the plague since I got rid of my Apple II back in 1986, going to the Amiga and then to Windows for Win95/98/XP. I still don't mind XP that much except for the fact that it is so insecure I don't trust it at all. I hated the old Mac (OS 6/7/8/9) with a passion and would never touch one but OS X has been a delight. I like that it comes with a standard Ruby on Rails install, a nice modern Perl (Python, etc.), a standard Apache config, and even the new Wiki stuff, all built-in and standard on every Mac. There are still some annoyances in Mac, like how they keep "improving" their command-line utilities and how some of them are a bit non-standard to the Unix/Linux world but they aren't any more non-standard than any other proprietary manufacturer has made; we often forget the wilderness that Linux was before Redhat and the others made a few things pretty standard.
Good luck with all that. I got tired of hunting and integrating codec packages years back, part of the Windows world I left behind.
I installed it again on a VM a year or so back, thinking I'd finally see why people rant about it. I still don't get it. It isn't that pretty. And is the goal to try to create your very own Vista desktop? I don't get the proliferation of window managers. Again, window managers really are not rocket science. And there is no reason to pretend that there is any scarcity of system ram or video card power any more; those are inconsequential on any hardware from the last five years. So again, why does anyone really need a variety of heavyweight and lightweight window managers? Why is anyone supposed to care about them? It's about as relevant as debating which flavor of BASIC you have in ROM, namely, none. These kinds of inconsequentials that fascinate a certain segment of Linux users (maybe the majority) are something that harms Linux as a platform. Pick a window manager, stick with it. Dump the others, stop wasting time on them. If people want a lightweight WM, then offer options to disable the more advanced features of the WM.
Sounds tiresome. Exactly what is so compelling about installing and maintaining all of those anyway? This is like some of the old icon sets and menu utilities we used to have on the Amiga. Just how many icon sets and weird menu/dock utilities does anyone need? That isn't a strength of the platform, it's refusal to make a sound choice based on ergonomics and engineering. Catering to whimsy has no real future. That's what Twitter and Facebook are for.
Sez who? Microsoft? Apple? IBM? That's like saying, "Just get one car and stick with it" to someone that LIKES to tinker with engines. Open source is about tinkering and the best tinkered things end being called stable in some cases. Far from harming Linux, the hobbyist/hacker ethic will improve it, much as that same attitude improved radio, computing and other endeavors in the last century. Found on the net: "Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘I can’t configure Debian’"
Can you say Android? I knew you could.
I'll have to try OpenSuse as I never have. Why do you like it?
BTW, I had no idea that F4 was hiding so many nerds. This comes from a 3-digit UID member of Slashdot. ; ) (below 500)
It's very polished and full featured. The installer is a gem, does LVM and lots of other stuff. The Yast2 control center is also loaded with apps to configure just about anything. 11.3 works better with my old hardware, than the previous version.
Ever tried PCLinuxOS? I like it a lot.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. Mac is FreeBSD. And it is the only UNIX 2003™ certified UNIX distro. The argument can be made that Apple is the last standing UNIX platform. And it is the only BSD that is actually a certified UNIX. Darwin was the Mac version descended from FreeBSD 4.4, a major and stable version of FreeBSD. They combined this with the Mach microkernel to make a UNIX system, then built the Mac desktop functionality on top of all of it. The Mac APIs are elegant and straightforward. All the 32-bit stuff is almost gone now though they have some optional 32-bit compatibility remaining. They have eliminated the old Quicktime and are building a new 64-bit Quicktime from scratch around H.264. I would prefer that Apple had retained more of the flavor and utilities from FreeBSD. For their own convenience, they replaced some of the standard FreeBSD config files and utilities with their own. To me, this has weakened the Mac offering overall. To me, this is unnecessarily proprietary and reduces interoperability. I am also disappointed they didn't fully implement ZFS in Leopard yet; I felt that was promised and they failed to deliver it. Not entirely but we were led to believe that it would be a consumer filesystem by now. Apple dropped the ball there despite Sun's generosity in making it available to them. It's just time for Apple's HFS to die off entirely. Apple offers some geeky freaky stuff for developers, stuff you just don't find on other platforms. OpenCL to allow you to harness all your CPUs and GPUs at once (including multiple machines on a network), this is a budding Apple standard. Stuff like Quartz Composer, a graphics effects engine that is so cool you just have to play with it; it's like building electronics but you produce graphics (which can then be embedded in websites, in Dashboard widgets, in screensavers, etc.). And it is easy, something you don't have to be a programmer to do (though it helps). Offering the Instruments profiler and other Xcode tools has made Xcode a real competitor to Visual Studio in productivity terms. VS is still ahead in its sheer size and capabilities but so much of that is crufty legacy features they have to support for their old crappy stuff that they foolishly sold years back. Apple cuts that old crap off entirely and orphans it so you don't get tied to bad ideas someone had 5-10 years ago that never worked out but which during their heyday acquired a certain number of users. Microsoft is badly hobbled by having done so much of this over the years. Apple is using OpenCL to harness multicore CPUs and to allow transparent effortless use of GPU power in a system that readily and transparently adapts to whatever system you run it on without recompiling. They offer live kernel debugging using a dialect of D. They have GCC in XCode but have moved to LLVM and will complete the move to Clang, all very advanced compiler technologies. They offer Grand Central Dispatch to control tasks and threads, a very sensible approach to the proliferation of hardware we all have but which is often completely unused by the system because there are so few rational APIs to make use of them, largely because parallelism is such a difficult topic. I don't see Linux positioned in any way to make use of these new technologies. Technically, there is very little rocket science in Linux these days. It is essentially a moribund platform, dying a slow death. Torvalds is not a computer scientist and his tight control over the Linux kernel may have contributed stability but it has stagnated, even in comparison to Windows. And it isn't even in the same ballpark with OS X.
Puh-leeze. If you count 2-fer-1 pricing, you can get to some interesting sales numbers. As many non-Apple sites like PCWorld have pointed out, these numbers aren't all that meaningful for several reasons. First, Windows Mobile is dying out and the WinMobile folk are buying Android in their current upgrade cycle. 90% of iPad buyers are new to the Apple platform and nearly all of them are expected to buy iPhones in their next phone upgrade. And Symbian phones are still very strong in Asia, giving Android limited potential there until Symbian's market power is finally crushed, probably 3 years out. And iPhone still holds a strong lead in total apps, having a two year headstart on everyone else. Add in the entire iTunes ecology of music/movies/apps and Android isn't any threat to Apple. They're just the also-rans. Many people misunderstand Jobs and his vision for Apple. Jobs doesn't want to be Gates, doesn't want to put a Mac on every desktop in the world. He wants the high-end profitable segment of the market. For instance, Apple sells 90% of the laptops that retail over $1000. And that is where the real profits are, not in the Dells selling for $500 at WallyCommieMart. So Microsoft and friends may sell a lot more computers but Apple is far more profitable, having passed Microsoft in total market capitalization earlier this year. Jobs doesn't want to make a Chevy or a Ford, he wants to be Jaguar or BMW. We had the same Android-vs-iPhone debate at TOS today. Over there, Goldie was the big Android fan. So there. LOL. If Jobs ever finds a way to crush M$ Office (the way Gates crushed WordPerfect), then Windows is a goner. It is Office that is Microsoft's real product; Windows is just the vehicle for it.
Yes, a couple of years ago. It's a Mandrake/Mandriva spin-off. I'm a big Mandriva fan, so I liked it a lot. The only con I had at the time was that the repos were a bit thin on apps, and I couldn't find something or the other that I wanted back then. I'll have to give it another try now. I'm a distro hopper with about 13+ distros each, on two computers.
I may be a nerd but not a computer nerd. I'm rather clueless to be honest with you. What little I do know (how to replace hardware and install/deinstall software) I only know because I have been using computers since the mid 80's. As far as programming or Linux or sys admin stuff or any type of computer science or CIS knowledge, I am dumb as a stump. I have no knowledge whatsoever. I was only relating something that someone who is into all of that CIS stuff related to me because it contradicted what was being said about Linux dying. I have no idea who is right. At face value it makes sense that in the poor economic climate we have today that businesses would turn to an OS that is much cheaper and can do the exact same thing as Windows does. Having started up, expanded and sold two separate business ventures, I would have used a cheaper platform had I known one was was available. But as I said, it could be that the university doesn't want to fork out the bucks needed to teach Windows sys admin and advanced sys admin courses and is making shit up about Linux growing faster than Widows in the business world. They seemed to be more focused upon building frigging new stadiums and student sports centers than academics.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976 Nothing in the State, everything outside the State, everything against the State - Jan Lester, Escape From Leviathan "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone. - Zhuangzi
Oddly, I agree and disagree with you. My main issue with Apple, Microsoft, etc: computing, internetworking and all of the tools involved are far too important to be left to proprietary platforms and protocols alone. Imagine if Gutenberg had tried to sue anyone else that used movable type? One could easily make the argument that without free, open source software we might not be talking at this second (heartbreaking for you, I know). This website, though small, runs like a champ even with all of the hot air we blow through it. For enterprise computing, the Gates/Jobs model is utterly appropriate. A company having its fortunes riding on networked machines generally wants a butt in a sling if something craps the bed. But for all aspects of personal computing, separation from the corporate/governmental combine is vital on the platform level. Imagine having to trust encryption to a closed-source, proprietary model such as Microsoft or Apple would impose, were it that kind of world?
Most of the world just wants a Subaru or something. I like a 57 Chevy truck myself. Goldie was the big Android fan. Ouch! To be honest, I effed around for the first time (I'm not bleeding edge, obviously) with a friend's Android for about an hour the other night. It's the only phone that I've ever used that I wanted instantly while using it. IPhone/Ipad...cool toys, but still not actual portable, configurable, easily hackable computing/communication devices. Linux based phones are still in their infancy. The idea of a phone running an open source OS is a slow, long burning fuse. I assume you use an IPhone? If so, have you seen this? http://openappmkt.com
Nope. I use a plain Verizon phone, no AT&T service here. It has an MP3 player, web and GPS, don't use those either. I have a plain-jane GPS and I do have an iPod touch. I do expect my next phone probably will be an Android model. The site you listed is one for jailbroken iPhones/iPods. Once you jailbreak your iPhone/iPod, then you can install those apps, some of which are quite nice. One interesting app they offered but Apple rejected was a tethering app to make your iPhone a wireless hotspot for other computers. I don't see how you can possibly say that. We've had Linux PDAs for ten years. There is an entire industry of these Linux gadgets. Also Linux settop boxen for things like Tivo. It is most certainly not "in its infancy".
I would be surprised if they didn't have whatever you're looking for in the repository. It has something OVER 12,000 software packages. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. If clicking three or four check-boxes at install is tiresome, might I recommend a more vigorous exercise regime for you to embark on? :) You don't have to "maintain" them, really. What maintenance you do, is normally handled auto-magically now anyway (just like Windows automatic updates feature). As to what is compelling, well, it allows me to select the window manager based on my whim and mood at the time. Really, it's a very libertarian, individualistic type of notion. Today I might feel like something that has all the useless bells and whistles of Windows, tomorrow I might feel lean mean and ready for some serious computing (non-gaming), the next day I'm just in the mood for...a few widgets. It's up to me, daily, hourly, by the minute even, and I get what I want. I'm guessing that your conception of Linux is based off of Linux as it existed in 1999? Well then, we might as well flush individual liberty down the toilet as a political philosophy then eh? Individual choice, catering to unique personalities and "one size does not fit all" are, after all, some of the root concepts of free markets and free choice. :) Many desktop arrangements used in Linux have counterparts/compilations in the "professional" UNIX/POSIX world actually. "Whimsy" does have a future, because we're all individuals. And it's not "whimsy" many times, it's having a toolbox filled with the tools you want for the job at hand, with the option of opening up other toolboxes later if you have more and different jobs to do. So, for example, for the system administrator, a simple BASH prompt against a traditional bare bones X-Windows interface is all that's desired. The desktop user, on the other hand, is equipped with KDE. The graphics professionals use GNOME (just an example, not saying they would). The power users (programmers) may find Windowmaker more suited to their style. All in one shop, yet the underlying OS is exactly the same (kernel, mods, etc) so there are no cross platform compatibility issues at all. I have no problem with folks that want cookie cutter choices made for them in regards to OS choices/wrappers/desktops. Many people are quite content to be given something and adapt to it. Some of us, IT professions more often than not, tend to like to customize and trim our tools for maximum efficiency. That's why I like Linux (and POSIX/UNIX in general).
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
I'm a Mac guy. So it only has to be brushed aluminum (or shiny white) to make me happy. I don't even trust the Mac to do it any more. So I suppose I make a chore of updates. I still run WinXP under VMware too but I don't trust it unsupervised to connect to this interweb thing. Linux folk like to make this accusation toward critics. It's a variety of the old but-everything-is-different-now. It's not really an argument more a way of trying to invalidate criticism. What I said about Linux is as true today as it was then. Not universally. There's the problem. The "graphics professional" uses Photoshop or Maya and Linux is important only for creating cheap render farms. Which is a terrific niche for Linux BTW. Still too many package dependencies. Too much division and duplication of effort in GUI development which does not create a stronger end user experience and confuses newbs. At some point, you need to settle on a single platform because your developer resources are and will remain finite. The drawing of GUI gadgets is not rocket science and hasn't been for thirty years.
Would that be the system that uses Mac OSX, which is a platform built against the POSIX BSD OS? :) That didn't answer my question though. When was the last time you actually *installed* a modern Linux package? Even Windows, from 1995, was much more complex, unstable and crappy than Windows 7. It is a very valid argument to make, though in truth it was kind of a question more than anything (from me I mean). Not at all. I boot my micro-laptop (one of those Atom processor types) off of a USB drive, using EasyPeasy Linux, which is a scaled down and user friendly(-er, if it's possible) version of Ubuntu. My family had their first experience with it this last week. With no instructions, they turned on the lap top and were all able to immediately start web browsing, checking whatever they wanted, and then shutting it down. Completely intuitive, almost Mac-esque (I have an iMac btw, love it) in its simplicity and "turn on and use" capabilities. And the problem is what precisely? Not everybody is bound to monolithic conformity? I don't get it. Can't recall the last time I had to manually go through all the dependency installations. I use OpenSUSE 11.1 on one of my "main" boxes, and it simply installs. You say you want to install, say for example, GIMP, and it picks out the dependencies and auto installs them. All you do is say "hey, install GIMP" through the control panel (YAST), and badda bing, there it is. I Most liberals I know say this about the free market. "We have far too much duplication of effort in the market, why, we should have one car company and eliminate waste!". :) Since it's not a "company", you will have "duplication of effort". That said, you can go the monolithic route and install company supported Red Hat and get fully directed effort if you want, you don't have to even pretend other distros of Linux exist, and you'll be just as "in the box" as any Windows/Mac platform choice. Funny, because my 10 year old daughter and 13 year old son, and 63 year old mother (not a computer literate type) had no problems immediately grasping the interface they were using, without a word of instruction from me. You don't seem to be making a distinction between desktop shell, and underlying OS. If the Kernel version and underlying framework is the same (and it is, if you're using OpenSUSE 11.1, you're using OpenSUSE 11.1 whether you install KDE, GNOME or Bob's Custom Shell), then you're golden. C++ code is C++ code, and if it is compiled to run native on the OS you're using, it runs native, period, shell notwithstanding. There is no one flavor of a POSIX environment. Nobody stood up and said "Only SUNOS, and nothing else!" for the entire POSIX community. Linux is no different. Thank goodness. Great. So if you're happy with Mac, why bother criticizing people who like more customization capabilities? Or with companies that like to offer good (great really) internet servers at low cost (no licensing, cost reduced)? Or small shops that want to provide graphical kiosks for their clerks to use across the company at low cost (I believe Dominoes may use a fully Linux corporate network architecture, but may be mistaken and confusing them with another major brand pizza company). I'm not saying that as a diss, please don't take my tone as sarcastic, it's an honest question. End of the day, Linux fills a decent niche, lots of companies use it in some capacity, and it's a great example of undirected chaos resulting in order. I'm hip with that.
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
Not merely POSIX but also certfied UNIX 2003™ as well. The only BSD that is a real UNIX. The Linux folk could do the same for themselves. It is yet another reason why Linux cannot fully penetrate the Big Iron world or make headway on the corporate desktop. These things do matter but your average Linux folk seem to have no idea. 2-3 months back, the current Kubuntu. Naturally, I run it under VMware for convenience. I generally have a half-dozen of so different Linux installs on hand on my workstation in case I want to fire one up or compare features. I think the portable Linux installs are somewhat in a class by themselves, more comparable to appliances than to a full OS install. And many issues simply don't arise in that scenario. That argument is too shabby for me to volunteer to be your strawman. You might want to read up a bit on emerging technologies to meet the modern glut of CPU/GPU hardware. Only Apple has made substantial inroads to solve these issues at the OS level and they have enlisted partners like Nvidia, ATI, Intel to work with them on these standards. The key technologies are: LLVM/LLDB, Clang, OpenCL/OpenGL and these technologies work together and across the Mac platform, right down to the iPhone. (OpenCL is an Apple industry initiative. They are big into LLVM and Clang and just contributed the LLDB debugger back to the community. Strangely, even though this is computer rocket science and, for once, readily available to the Linux community, they no longer seem to have the interest, the numbers, or the resources to exploit it for the Linux platform. This spells again the niche role for Linux that it has always had (though it is declining further in the last few years in market share and developer share). Linux simply does not have this kind of development happening. In part, it is because Linux coders spend way too much time re-inventing wheels instead of moving the platform forward. Personally, I think Torvalds is out of his element on this stuff. Even if he adopts a good strategy, imposing it on the Linux community is much easier said than done. This failure-to-thrive parallels the ongoing failures of the various Linux office productivity suites, why Gimp is still so lame, why there isn't any video editing software on the Linux platform worthy of the name. You act as though there is some unlimited number of Linux developers out there and that there is some unlimited time frame to modernize and standardize the OS. Well, there isn't. Unless the Linux community modernizes and standardizes, they will continue to decline in users and developers. This could lead to a situation where Linux exists but is nothing more than a legacy platform in as little as five years from now, perhaps retaining legacy presence as render farms, cheap network file/print servers, or web servers. Unless things change radically, Linux will never be ready for prime time.
Well, it seems to be being adopted at the corporate level, for items like web/internet servers, as well as file servers and database servers (MySQL being particularly popular). Desktop use, I could care about. It's fine as it is, and frankly, there is not "Linux people" to direct this. There is no organization, no hierarchy, no people you can point to and say "make one monolithic version!". Might as well command the tides not to come in for all the good it can do ya'. Ya' already did, by starting down that rhetorical path, heh. :) Well, no, not this one (EasyPeasy). Full Linux kernel, full array of modules, full array of applications, and you can download/install as many more as you want, if you want. You can choose, if you wish, to make it a full install from the USB. It's not Ubuntu proper, but what I consider a better version of Ubuntu (which I'm not particularly fond of). It's a full OS suite, not a PDA version of Linux. LOL, yeah, nobody uses OpenOffice! Except most people I know I mean. :) Tovalds doesn't own "Linux", he was just the guy who wrote the first kernel. There is no Director In Chief of Linux. If you want centralized power/control over OS, then stick with out of the box stuff, which is fine (again, I like Mac and Windows). I like Linux because it is NOT centrally controlled, because I can review the source, and because it displays to me the most interesting takes on ideas out there. Whether Bob Averageman adopts it as his preferred OS is irrelevent, really, it will continue to exist as a server-esque OS without ol' Bob, with plenty of gui stuff for the geeks that like that kind of thing. That's enough for me to ask for.
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
Your point eludes me. Having read Amit Singh's OS X Internals reference (~1700 pages), I think I know the difference between a kernel and a shell. Great book, I felt it was overpriced when I bought it for $60 and I see it's gone up to $75. Well, it is a truly excellent book if you like OS discussions. Singh is one smart cookie. You seem stuck in the world of minor differences between window managers and widget sets. This is common among Linux users and they seem to think these pointless distinctions actually make Linux more attractive. In a world of cheap and massive RAM, of i5 and i7 and Xeon CPUs and massively parallel GPUs and Intel's Larrabee, that really doesn't quite add up. It hasn't for at least five years. And even more important, where is the coding framework and kernel support for this explosion of hardware (which mostly sits idle)? Where is the rocket science in Linux these days? GCC is so dated. Where is anything in the Linux world that has, to name just a single item, the sheer coolness of Quartz Composer (let alone its ability to exploit all your CPU cores and GPU cores simultaneously and provide drop-in programmable graphics components in Xcode or even in Dashcode (for Dashboard widgets)? Where is the robustness in Linux to match Webkit? Or even Dashcode, much as it needs more fixes? Where were the Linux folk when it came to making HTML 5 a reality? The world is passing Linux by. A key part of that is the fractures within the Linux communities. Linux is breaking no new ground. And Android is likely a dead end, largely retracing the same ground that the embedded Linux community already pioneered. I don't see Google really mustering the resources and focus to make it more than another also-ran even if it manages to kill Blackberry and Windows Mobile (who were going to die anyway). I do have a pronounced prejudice for very future-oriented operating systems. Right now, no one comes close to the purity of Apple's efforts in this realm. The biggest disappointments from Apple have been their failure to deliver ZFS file system and that their resolution-independent graphics standard seems stalled right now. Those are two key pieces of Apple's technology map that need to be fixed and put on the market now, not in a future OS release. The Finder is still really awful (despite now being 64-bit and 100% Cocoa with no Carbon left), not even in the running against Windows Explorer or some of the Linux file managers. And Cocoa's user interface badly needs an update; a major facelift is overdue.
Yeah, GNOME and KDE don't even exist as organizations and those little widgets just pop onto the screen magically. Hardly anyone uses it. M$ Office is the standard and someone should try to gear up to beat it. This is the Holy Grail. Until someone can kill M$, software development will remain under their black thumb. M$ Windows has never been much more than the trojan horse for M$ Office. Linus Torvalds has always retained control of the Linux kernel. Sure, it looks like he has a rather democratic small group of core developers but the Linux kernel is his baby. Always was. I see via Wiki that as of 2006 Linus had written 2% of the kernel code. But it all passed muster with him or it didn't make it into the kernel. Then you could care less about software platforms, the success of Linux and open-source, etc. That kind of attitude among Linux users explains a lot of why it has not achieved the success it could have enjoyed. Sad really. I think Linux missed its window of opportunity in the 2005-2007 period and I doubt they'll get another chance.
He owns it. He's got a death grip on the kernel, and that's enough to control the rest. It's bloated to around 50mb+ now, and has everything but the kitchen sink in it. A handful of communist "free" fanatics run the show. Politics dictate development.
Uh-oh. My complaint was what's still missing from Torvald's kernel. LOL. Well, Linus isn't like Stallman. He is a more practical fellow, being Finnish and all. But were it not for Linux, Stallman would be too obscure to even mention outside a small circle of UNIX software purists.
The source to the kernel is distributed, you can modify it at will, recompile and have your very own kernel. Nobody owns the kernel, nor the OS.
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
You knew precisely what I meant with each statement I made, so playing semantics is futile at this point. Apparently this is an emotion driven topic for you. There's really no need to go further as far as I can see.
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
#17. To: Pinguinite (#15)
(Edited)
As far as the geeky names go, the problem is that Linux with it's vast open source development base, has a dozen different software packages available for any single application need, and simple names like "notepad" just aren't available.
#18. To: TooConservative, Pinguinite (#17)
I think they could adopt a convention of designating a particular app version as the official standard and giving it a decent name. I also think that Linux will never succeed as long as there is a divide between the Gnome and KDE camps.
#19. To: TooConservative (#17)
#20. To: TooConservative, Pinguinet (#17)
(Edited)
#21. To: TooConservative (#14)
#22. To: TooConservative (#17)
the very idea of standardization offends many Linux users.
#23. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#18)
I don't know how Linux licensing works, but I bet it's a whole lot cheaper than Windows licensing.
#24. To: SonOfLiberty (#20)
#25. To: bluegrass (#22)
Standardizing based on merit, utility and efficiency appears to be the goal.
My joy over McCain's defeat, is offset by my disappointment over hObama's victory.
#26. To: bluegrass (#21)
The only thing I like about Guake (and I couldn't care less about app names, as long as they suit my purpose) is that f12 is easier to hit than alt-tab.
If Grandma and Jed ever got on the command line, I'd be shocked and stoked.
Linux is already going somewhere. Plus, you're free to change one line of code in a package, or none, and repackage it with another name and no one will sue you.
#27. To: hondo68 (#25)
In most distros this ends up as a real pain in the ass for the end user, who has to enable repos, and find the missing magic codecs, etc. to make stuff actually work.
#28. To: bluegrass (#24)
Don't forget Enlightenment. A pain to install but it looks good.
#29. To: SonOfLiberty (#20)
What I enjoy about Linux is that I don't have to "just pick one". If I want I can install all the window managers and switch between them at will. Windowmaker is elegant and suits my needs most of the time, Gnome sometimes, KDE if I'm feeling like pretending I'm using Windows for that day. It allows me choice, to suit my whims of the moment. It's an OS geared completely towards individualism, there is no "one size fits all package".
#30. To: TooConservative (#28)
Pick a window manager, stick with it.
#31. To: TooConservative (#26)
Linux is declining already
#32. To: hondo68 (#25)
I love Linux and am on openSUSE now, but the purist "free" fanatics tick me off!
#33. To: Pinguinite, TooConservative, F.A. Hayek Fan, SonOfLiberty, hondo68 (#0)
#34. To: bluegrass (#32)
Why do you like it?
My joy over McCain's defeat, is offset by my disappointment over hObama's victory.
#35. To: hondo68 (#34)
Lord Acton
OsamaBinGoldstein posted on 2010-05-25 9:39:59 ET (2 images) Reply Trace
#36. To: bluegrass, Pinguinite, SonOfLiberty (#22)
Hell, Linux and FreeBSD already own the internet.
#37. To: bluegrass (#31)
Can you say Android? I knew you could.
#38. To: James Deffenbach (#35)
Ever tried PCLinuxOS?
My joy over McCain's defeat, is offset by my disappointment over hObama's victory.
#39. To: bluegrass (#33)
BTW, I had no idea that F4 was hiding so many nerds. This comes from a 3-digit UID member of Slashdot. ; ) (below 500)
#40. To: TooConservative (#36)
#41. To: TooConservative (#37)
Jobs doesn't want to make a Chevy or a Ford, he wants to be Jaguar or BMW.
#42. To: bluegrass (#41)
(Edited)
I assume you use an IPhone? If so, have you seen this?
Linux based phones are still in their infancy. The idea of a phone running an open source OS is a slow, long burning fuse.
#43. To: hondo68 (#38)
(Edited)
Yes, a couple of years ago. It's a Mandrake/Mandriva spin-off. I'm a big Mandriva fan, so I liked it a lot. The only con I had at the time was that the repos were a bit thin on apps, and I couldn't find something or the other that I wanted back then. I'll have to give it another try now. I'm a distro hopper with about 13+ distros each, on two computers.
Lord Acton
OsamaBinGoldstein posted on 2010-05-25 9:39:59 ET (2 images) Reply Trace
#44. To: hondo68 (#38)
Lord Acton
OsamaBinGoldstein posted on 2010-05-25 9:39:59 ET (2 images) Reply Trace
#45. To: TooConservative (#29)
Sounds tiresome.
Exactly what is so compelling about installing and maintaining all of those anyway?
Catering to whimsy has no real future.
#46. To: SonOfLiberty (#45)
If clicking three or four check-boxes at install is tiresome, might I recommend a more vigorous exercise regime for you to embark on? :)
You don't have to "maintain" them, really. What maintenance you do, is normally handled auto-magically now anyway (just like Windows automatic updates feature).
I'm guessing that your conception of Linux is based off of Linux as it existed in 1999?
So, for example, for the system administrator, a simple BASH prompt against a traditional bare bones X-Windows interface is all that's desired.
The desktop user, on the other hand, is equipped with KDE.
The graphics professionals use GNOME (just an example, not saying they would).
The power users (programmers) may find Windowmaker more suited to their style. All in one shop, yet the underlying OS is exactly the same (kernel, mods, etc) so there are no cross platform compatibility issues at all.
#47. To: TooConservative (#46)
I'm a Mac guy. So it only has to be brushed aluminum (or shiny white) to make me happy.
Linux folk like to make this accusation toward critics. It's a variety of the old but-everything-is-different-now. It's not really an argument more a way of trying to invalidate criticism.
What I said about Linux is as true today as it was then.
Not universally. There's the problem.
Still too many package dependencies.
Too much division and duplication of effort in GUI development
does not create a stronger end user experience and confuses newbs.
At some point, you need to settle on a single platform because your developer resources are and will remain finite.
The drawing of GUI gadgets is not rocket science and hasn't been for thirty years.
#48. To: SonOfLiberty (#47)
Would that be the system that uses Mac OSX, which is a platform built against the POSIX BSD OS? :)
That didn't answer my question though. When was the last time you actually *installed* a modern Linux package?
I boot my micro-laptop (one of those Atom processor types) off of a USB drive, using EasyPeasy Linux, which is a scaled down and user friendly(-er, if it's possible) version of Ubuntu. My family had their first experience with it this last week. With no instructions, they turned on the lap top and were all able to immediately start web browsing, checking whatever they wanted, and then shutting it down. Completely intuitive, almost Mac-esque (I have an iMac btw, love it) in its simplicity and "turn on and use" capabilities.
Most liberals I know say this about the free market. "We have far too much duplication of effort in the market, why, we should have one car company and eliminate waste!". :)
You don't seem to be making a distinction between desktop shell, and underlying OS. If the Kernel version and underlying framework is the same (and it is, if you're using OpenSUSE 11.1, you're using OpenSUSE 11.1 whether you install KDE, GNOME or Bob's Custom Shell), then you're golden. C++ code is C++ code, and if it is compiled to run native on the OS you're using, it runs native, period, shell notwithstanding.
#49. To: TooConservative (#48)
That argument is too shabby for me to volunteer to be your strawman.
I think the portable Linux installs are somewhat in a class by themselves, more comparable to appliances than to a full OS install. And many issues simply don't arise in that scenario.
This failure-to-thrive parallels the ongoing failures of the various Linux office productivity suites,
Even if he adopts..
#50. To: SonOfLiberty (#47)
You don't seem to be making a distinction between desktop shell, and underlying OS. If the Kernel version and underlying framework is the same (and it is, if you're using OpenSUSE 11.1, you're using OpenSUSE 11.1 whether you install KDE, GNOME or Bob's Custom Shell), then you're golden. C++ code is C++ code, and if it is compiled to run native on the OS you're using, it runs native, period, shell notwithstanding.
#51. To: SonOfLiberty (#49)
Desktop use, I could care about.
It's fine as it is, and frankly, there is not "Linux people" to direct this. There is no organization, no hierarchy, no people you can point to and say "make one monolithic version!". Might as well command the tides not to come in for all the good it can do ya'.
LOL, yeah, nobody uses OpenOffice! Except most people I know I mean. :)
Tovalds doesn't own "Linux", he was just the guy who wrote the first kernel. There is no Director In Chief of Linux.
Whether Bob Averageman adopts it as his preferred OS is irrelevent, really, it will continue to exist as a server-esque OS without ol' Bob, with plenty of gui stuff for the geeks that like that kind of thing. That's enough for me to ask for.
#52. To: SonOfLiberty (#49)
Tovalds doesn't own "Linux"
My joy over McCain's defeat, is offset by my disappointment over hObama's victory.
#53. To: hondo68 (#52)
It's bloated to around 50mb+ now, and has everything but the kitchen sink in it.
A handful of communist "free" fanatics run the show. Politics dictate development.
#54. To: hondo68 (#52)
#55. To: TooConservative (#51)
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