Linux-Advocacy Digest #227, Volume #28 Fri, 4 Aug 00 16:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linux or Windows 2000 ???? (abraxas)
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Linsux as a desktop platform (void)
Re: Linux or Windows 2000 ???? (Oldayz)
Re: Does Steve Ballmer post here?
Re: C# is a copy of java
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Linux, easy to use? (Nathaniel Jay Lee)
Re: Learn Unix on which Unix Flavour ? (Andrew Gabriel)
Re: Learn Unix on which Unix Flavour ? ("m.hoes")
Re: Tholen digest, volume 2451760.3556iu^-.00000000000000001 ("Joe Malloy")
Re: Linux as embedded OS (Leslie Mikesell)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (abraxas)
Subject: Re: Linux or Windows 2000 ????
Date: 4 Aug 2000 18:38:56 GMT
Pete Goodwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Linux doesn't support as much hardware as Windows 2000 does (I believe)
> but then neither of them support as much as Windows 98 SE (or
> Millenium). There are always exceptions, though.
>
Wrong. It would have been correct if you had said "linux doesnt support
as many sound cards as windows 2000 does" or something along those lines,
but it most certianly supports orders of magnitudes more hardware than
any kind of windows does.
You need to stop posting here, pasty.
=====yttrx
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 13:54:10 -0500
On Fri, 04 Aug 2000 16:05:36 GMT, Chris Wenham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck) writes:
>
>> Does anybody know why AOL is still using IE? I just got an "exclusive
>> offer" (for me and a half-million or so close friends I guess) for AOL
>> 5.0, and one selling point in the brochure was "includes Internet
>> Explorer 5.0".
>
> It's in exchange for placement on the Windows desktop.
Actually, it's because MS agreed to work with AOL to integrate IE deep
into AOL's software (ie better integration), and Netscape refused to
do same.
I'm sure the next version of AOL will use NS.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (void)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linsux as a desktop platform
Date: 4 Aug 2000 18:41:10 GMT
On Fri, 4 Aug 2000 20:16:06 +0200, Lars Träger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
>> It was the Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:58:38 +0200...
>> ...and Lars Träger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >
>> > Well then, Linux doesn't seem to have a modern scheduler. [...]
>>
>What happens is this: as soon as you trigger the bug, the machine
>becomes unresponsive, X takes >70% of the CPU (that would be the
>slowdown), while the app (kpat) takes around 10% CPU and sucks up all
>memory. Probably as a parasite kblankscrn.kss also grabs a couple of
>Megs. In the end (if you don't kill kpat within 2 minutes), when all
>swap-space is used up, the machine locks dead, just thrashing. The first
>time I tried this, it reboted itself after a couple of minutes, but not
>the other 2 times (after > half hour), CTRL-ALT-DEL didn't work, had to
>power down, damaging the filesystem.
In addition to the scheduler, it sounds like that kernel's VM system
could use some work. And surely Linux should have resource limits by
now? But perhaps they weren't enabled.
--
Ben
220 go.ahead.make.my.day ESMTP Postfix
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Oldayz)
Subject: Re: Linux or Windows 2000 ????
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 19:11:19 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Thu, 03 Aug 2000 21:23:56 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I have heard a lot of things about Linux.
>
>I'm running happily W2K and now I'd like to know a valid
>reason for switching from Windows 2000 to Linux? Why?
>What advantage does the person gain running Linux?
>Can some of you qeniuses tell me ???
No, we can't. Nobody can. Consider this: any OS in wide used today
is tremendously complex. But that's just a start. There's consideration
of HW support, app support (tens of thousands of them), of your
personal unique needs, of your preference. But that's not all..
there's also a matter of an OS being a dynamic system - it evolves
over time and something that is inferior today may be a better
choice because of an inherently better design, for an instance.
But you come here and you want someone to tell you why Linux
is better than W2k for you. Don't be so naive.
So what do you do? I suggest that you either dive in and try it or
wait for half a year, check if it's dead/dying, and consider diving
in again.
The only valid consideration is amount of people switching to it.
For instance, you look at IBM and SGI and I don't know, SCO, Intel,
and other companies and you think.. do I respect these companies'
expertise? Or do I think they are full of shit? If former, trying
Linux may be a good idea.
Why am I personally using Linux? Hundreds of reasons, some of which
I may not even be consciously aware. A few examples: I think vim
is infinitely superior to MS text editors. And vim is based on
UNIX phylosophy, even though it's also ported to Windows. Bash, to me,
is several orders of magnitude better than command.com. I also think
that GUI is mostly useful for graphic apps like Photoshop or GIMP,
and is a needless burden for other apps, like email clients. I am
a bit of an idealist and therefore I prefer FSF to Microsoft. I like
the fact that I can change all shortcuts in WindowMaker (which I
could not in Win). I like to have as many Workspaces as I want in
my window manager.
See, the reason I said all of that is to show that OS preference is
deeply personal. There's probably very few Linux users who like it
for all the same reasons: some might scoff at vi* and swear by
Emacs, others choose Gnome or KDE over plain X/WindowMaker, and
others never use console, cheering for more GUI apps. Hey, pick
your poison, okay?
>
>What software am I going to run on it ??? All the world class software
>is written for Windows. Hardly anything is ported to Linux.
Yeah, but in my not-so humble opinion, world class software sucks ass.
I happen to prefer unix apps that were written a decade or more ago,
like lynx or slrn. It's funny how these programs have an order of
magnitude more useful options than their bloated world-class competi-
tors.
>
>I'm a Windows developer, why should I spend 2 years of my life learning
>how to program a new ssytem, that may eventually die anyway ???
I enjoy learning. If you don't, that's pretty sad.
>
>I can create a great application using Visual Basic or Visual C++ in a
>matter of few days. I'm not sure if that's posible in Linux. I haven't
>heard about any Visual development envir. for Linux ...
It's not possible on linux - that is, using Visual Basic or Visual C++.
Of course, you can use python+tcl/tk or python+GTK or GTK or GTK--
(using C++).
>
>The only way they (companies) can defeat Microsoft is with the help of
>mom - Government. That's the only way they can do it, they can't
>succeed on the merit alone. Sun Microsystems goes even so far as to get
>involved European Union. Now that's real abuse of government power.
>Here is the clear indication who is THE LOSER.
Similarly, if you went to projects and were mugged by a black or his-
pano gang, you would need the help of mom - the police. You can't
beat them on the merit of your muscles alone, if they pull their straps
on you. Not even European Union would help you. Now, ain't you a big
LOSER?
>
>
>I can't wait to see your replies
heh.
>
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
--
Andrei
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Does Steve Ballmer post here?
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 11:41:02 -0700
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Gates: The first time? Hello? Hello? Who was the company that poured tens of
million of dollars into interactive TV ten years ago? Let's see. Who's got a
million clients connected up to TVs. That's WebTV. Ah ha! That's Microsoft.
And who has been talking about handheld devices? And invested more than
anybody? We are the multiple-device company from the beginning. We are a
software company. We're not a device company.
***** What the heck does that double talk mean?
Pontin: Do you think the American press is obsessed with Linux?
Gates: No, they're obsessed, in general, any time some upstart comes along
and takes on a company that's doing well. I mean look at the publicity that
GeoWorks got. Remember? The press said that GeoWorks was going to wipe us
out and throw us over. Linux is much more important than GeoWorks,
admittedly. It's actually out there, selling copies. It's probably, in a
certain sense, our primary competitor. But if you look at the value in an
operating system, Linux just competes with one piece [of Microsoft's Windows
business]. There's no new features in Linux. Linux is just 1960s-era Unix
deployed in a very interesting development model. But when you look at
management, user interface, security -- people have to buy things to make it
do those things. So, it's a competitor. But there's no place in the world
where Linux has been mandated by the government.
Pontin: But you have raised an interesting question. What if I concede that
Linux is years behind Windows NT in all sorts of ways? How do you explain
the extraordinary interest IT departments have for Linux? It is growing more
than 200 percent a year in sales.
Gates: That's, that's -- When GeoWorks sold its second copy, they grew! It's
unbelievable! And then, when they sold four! It's incredible!
***** Was that responsive?
***** And his comparing .NET to an elephant may become his albatross.
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: C# is a copy of java
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 12:03:36 -0700
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Donal K. Fellows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8mdv0m$rpv$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <8ma0iu$f1o$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Of course. Deallocation isn't free anywhere! But it is cheaper, in
> terms of programmer effort, to have a runtime system that looks after
> that stuff than to do it all by hand.
>
Yes, any deallocation of dynamic memory will consume resources, but you know
perfectly well that we are talking resource consumption above an beyond the
bare minimum that C requires.
You seem to be concerned with providing support for poor programming by
incompetent(?) programming at the the expense of the resources of the end
users' hardware.
Sure memory leaks can happen; avoiding, detecting and correcting them is a
part of the job. Depending on a solution that would consume resources of
the end user is not an option that I would ever select.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 14:34:34 -0500
"Chad Irby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Se?n ? Donnchadha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Netscape didn't go out of business. They lost market share.
>
> They went out of business by losing so much stock value that they got
> bought at fire-sale prices by AOL. A fate worse than death, overall.
Uhh... Netscape was bought for something like 12 *BILLION* dollars. That's
more than companies with many orders of magnitude more employees and massive
assetts sell for. Netscape is a little shop in Silicon Valley with a few
hundred employees, and a pretty impressive web site.
That was not a "fire-sale", nor was it a fate worse than death. All the
Netscape stock holders made a huge amount of money on the deal. Consider
that the company started, just a mere 4 years earlier with 2 employees and
only some free source code.
> Actually at the time Microsoft started to shoehorn IE into Windows, IE
> was still known as a lesser browser, and couldn't compete with Netscape
> on merit alone.
IE3 (which was the first integrated browser) was pretty equivelant to NS3 at
the time.
> And at the time MS started giving away IE, they were fighting a losing
> battle in trying to get people to use IE at all, and were losing what
> little marketshare they had at the time.
MS gave away IE since day one. It's always been a free download from their
web site.
> The gains in quality that IE showed *after* Windows 98 came out have had
> little to do with Netscape.
Nor should it.
------------------------------
From: Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux, easy to use?
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 14:23:16 -0500
Donovan Rebbechi wrote:
>
> On Fri, 04 Aug 2000 12:24:42 -0500, Nathaniel Jay Lee wrote:
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >In short, posting factually incorrect information, no matter how much
> >you may like it, isn't a good way to win an argument, or a good way to
> >represent yourself.
>
> I didn't think his purpose was to win -- but to provide comic relief, as
> well as a resident clown/whipping boy. He reminds me of that "Gerald Holmes"
> guy who has the Microsoft advocacy website.
>
> --
> Donovan
I actually thought Tim was funny at first, but in all honesty, here
lately he's just been annoying as hell.
It's kind of like a clown at the circus. Sure, you think he's funny
while you are there, but if he was living with you and acting that way
all the time you would eventually get to the point where you were ready
to hang the son-of-a-bitch, or at least carry out some serious torture.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Nathaniel Jay Lee
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andrew Gabriel)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,alt.solaris.x86,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Learn Unix on which Unix Flavour ?
Date: 4 Aug 2000 18:36:57 GMT
In article <Pine.LNX.4.21.0008040944200.1204-100000@mik>,
Michal Kaspar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I'm not sure but I thing i read somwhere
>that even Windows NT was compliant with POSIX.
You did. However, it's a tick-list item only, not useful for real work.
For example, I don't think you can mix the POSIX interface with any of
the normally used Windows APIs. This makes it completely useless.
--
Andrew Gabriel
Consultant Software Engineer
------------------------------
From: "m.hoes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,alt.solaris.x86,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Learn Unix on which Unix Flavour ?
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 21:43:46 +0200
Yes, NT is POSIX 1 compliant.
[ But arent we losing the subject of this thread in here somewhere ? ]
Anyways, thanks for all the responses ...
m.hoes
--
================================
| You can't Fall off the Floor |
================================
Michal Kaspar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.21.0008040944200.1204-100000@mik...
> On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, Grant Edwards wrote:
> > So, is OS/390 (or MVS?) a flavor of Unix(tm), or just Posix-<something>
> > compliant?
> >
>
> OS/390 is compliant with Unix 95. I'm not sure but I thing i read somwhere
> that even Windows NT was compliant with POSIX.
>
> --
> Michal Kaspar
>
> VSE Praha
>
------------------------------
From: "Joe Malloy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Tholen digest, volume 2451760.3556iu^-.00000000000000001
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 15:52:36 -0400
I take it Tholen has attempted to digest me, but since no message to that
effect appears on my newserver today, I present an oldie:
Tholen tholes a whole lot, but gains nothing from doing so, as is usual for
his rantings and once again he ignores all the unresolved issues. He claims
not to be "very reserved and quiet, and not very outgoing" but proceeds,
among other things, to claim that bit parts in rinky-dink theatrical
exploits "prove" he's not. Well, as most of us know, community theater is
one of the very symptoms of "very reserved and quiet, and not very outgoing"
people. But Tholen hopes to "dazzle" us with his theatrical talents.
Funny, I've never heard of him except through this newsgroup. Typical
bluster, typical ego, typical Tholen.
--
"USB, idiot, stands for Universal Serial Bus. There is no power on the
output socket of any USB port I have ever seen" - Bob Germer
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Subject: Re: Linux as embedded OS
Date: 4 Aug 2000 14:56:39 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Tim Magnussen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> If you're going to build a system on top of them that uses them, it'll
>> go a little bit hairier--the GPL modification clause applies whenever
>> you do link something to a GPLed library but if you have scripts
>> interacting with the engine, you should be safe. With Apache it's
>> easy--the only exception would be new modules I guess. PostgreSQL
>> seems to be under a very unristrictive license, so the problem won't
>> even arise.
>
><Sigh> - things are getting complicated again. I knew i weren't that simple.
>
>We /are/ planning to build a system on top of them that uses them.
>
>Can you say that:
>If you link statically to a GPL'ed product (say a database) with your own module
>(developed in C++) that would be a problem (even though you use the standard
>database C/C++ API for communication). But if you use an already existing module
>that is LGPL'ed it wouldn't. Also if you link dynamically to a GPL'ed package and
>only uses existing means of communicating (built-in scripting
>facility/user-interface etc) it wouldn't either.
>Now if you make your own module for communicating with the database and use this as
>a proxy between your proprietary software and the database will this allow you to
>LGPL only the module (and keep your proprietary software proprietary)?
The FSF position appears to be that dynamic linking is no different
than static in terms of creating a derived work if no library
other than the GPL version exists. If other libraries exist,
then your work is not derived even if the user chooses to run
it with the GPL'd version. Personally I think this is a very
strange interpretation of the copyright laws, but...
So far I have not seen any 'derived work' claims over anything
but linking code into the same address space so communication
through pipes/sockets or other IPC would be OK.
>> Which parts?
>
>Eg. the parts that is used to interpret the sensory input from the measuring
>modules.
If they are device drivers you can supply binary modules for
Linux without releasing source. This is a Linux interface
definition, not a normal GPL concept. If they aren't drivers,
perhaps they could couple via named pipes or sockets with
the main part of the code. If you don't need real-time response
the buffering action of a FIFO might even improve things.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Advocacy Digest
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