Next Knoppix Release to Feature GPL'd FreeNX 238
linuxtag-reporter writes "The first day of LinuxTag, Europe's biggest Free Software event (expecting 25,000 visitors) already has one big highlight. It seems that Fabian Franz from the Knoppix Project hacked up a 'FreeNX Server' based on NoMachine's NX technology (poor NoMachine might lose business now). Fabian Franz presented a first preview of the 'GPL Edition' in a live demo together with Kurt Pfeifle. The demo showed sessions going from Germany to Italy just based on a slow WLAN connectivity (shared with hundreds of visitors). A connection lost due to bad network conditions was easily re-connected to, and a deliberately suspended session was revitalized too -- it was just like 'screen' with a GUI! A report on the official LinuxTag webpage says FreeNX will be publically released for the first time as part of the upcoming Knoppix-3.6 release. The Kalyxo project is building and hosting Debian packages of FreeNX and NX/GPL for everyone to use."
What do these things do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please assume that some readers (me, others?) don't know what "screen" is.
Maybe I should google for "linux screen knoppix" - that would be useful...
I could click on the nomachine.com link, but why should I have to?
-ac
Kudos to developers (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be great if other distro's developers tried going the same way - be innovative, be creative!. Now it's quite boring to have hundred of Kno* and *pix distros, every one built with philosophy "take Knoppix and replace two apps with your favourite ones".
Is there any way to financially support Knoppix?
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all about -service- and developing code, not re-selling code over and over again without doing any work. That's the difference. They don't have to go out of business, just change their old business model.
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:2, Insightful)
Poor NoMachine ? (Score:3, Insightful)
NoMachine opening the specification of what they do just will have a different market if the use of they technology standarizes enough. That will open doors to they own extensions, support, being anyway as the visible head of that technology, etc. I think that some of the ESR writings explain a bit better the advantages of doing that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Knoppix is implementing a protocol that NX released, they also released a proprietary implementation of it. Obviously they want people to buy theirs, but they published the protocol so that others could use it to. (In turn making their protocol stronger, and their product stronger)
NoMachines (Score:3, Insightful)
The vast majority of companies don't create Linux products, they create Windows products, so any company that creates new software for Linux should be appreciated, even if that software is closed source.
I'm definately not suggesting that any company involved in Linux should be given a free ride, I'm just saying that we shouldn't celebrate having outflanked a company that was contributing something to Linux.
BTW, I don't know anything about NoMachines in particular. Also, generally I think that the necessity of software being open source and free depends on where it fits into your system. Personally I don't mind close source applications, but I like to have my GUI toolkit open and free.
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:4, Insightful)
The next biggest would be that it's an ultra-super rescue disk.
And bit less important, to me at least, but still a virtue, is that you can pop it into any machine, say a friends, one at work, or a clients and run in your prefered enviroment.
KFG
Re:What do these things do? (Score:3, Insightful)
tachin: Maybe because that's the whole point of the web...you know...hyperlinks and all..?
Hah! I was right the whole point of posting an article on Slashdot is to beat nomachine.com into a quivering mass of submission!
Seriously though, simply explaining what "NX" meant might have spared nomachine's server for at least a few more minutes.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
If I understand correctly, (s)he only took their Free work. The core of the NoMachine product is GPL.
and made it available for free
Speaking strictly from a capitalist standpoint, it is good because it reduces the cost to businesses that wish to use this technology. Similarly, the freeness of HTTP software (client and server) has been a great boon to corporations that wish to provide easy access to information about their product lines. This has in turn lead to consumers making more informed decisions, which is one of the keystones of free market capitalism. (that's just the good part, in response to your question, see below for a look at the bad part)
even giving it a similar name.
The similarity in the name is the "NX" part. I believe NX is a Free protocol. This is much like referring to both Sendmail and Postfix as SMTP engines.
If F/OSS developers want to speed up Linux, the corporate environment is where they should be looking. By doing this they have enabled corporations to get something for free
Very well said. This statemtnt (which clearly supports FLOSS) seems to be in contrast to the rest of your post.
which could cause a company (and a lot of potential Linux users) to go out of business.
All competition has this effect, whether from proprietary or Free sources. Are Chevrolet and Ford evil because they caused Yugo to go out of business?
How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed?
They can't. But this makes a leap from "FreeNX removed or reduced the ability to charge twice for solving a problem once" to "developers will be unemployed." That is a spurious leap. The ideal situation, from an economic standpoint, would be for each solution to each problem to be developed once, and the development effort compensated once, freeing the development resource to move on to the next problem. The increased pool of available software labour resources would reduce the time delay businesses incur in solving their information problems, but does not necessarily reduce the time value of solving any given problem the first time. If we begin to approach software development as a temporally-oriented problem solving service, one cannot accurately predict the effect on the wages paid - the economic shift is too great to predict the result on the supply side - but the demand side will be very happy indeed.
We have not yet developed the economic models to make this a practical reality yet, but with FLOSS operating in tension with proprietary software, the economic stage has been set. This is the typical first stage in every major economic advancement - new technology, in this case zero cost reproduction of information, makes new economic models possible. The shift to the implementation of those new economic models must necessarily occur after the technological advancement, and so a period of market inefficiency occurs. It's not a bad thing, any more than Ford's assembly line was bad for Daimler Benz.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe what what the poster meant was that a news posting should at least have a basic overview of what the heck it's about.
I know what Knoppix is, I know what screen is, but I don't have a clue what NX is. Even descriptive adjectives would help.
I'm interested in finding out what NX is. Since the link is Sashdotted I can't at the moment. I've gotten side tracked by your anonymous flame. I will probably have forgotten about it by later today. So I'm left wondering.
The editors here signed million dollar contracts, revenue is coming in from ads and subscriptions, they've been at it for years.... you'd think they'd have learned at least a few basic journalism techniques.
I see a lot of wrong information posted as news. The most descriptive news items are typically when they lucked out and copied a good paragraph from the story link. Heck, they aren't even good at checking to see if they've already posted the story on their own site.
It's just laziness. I'd expect such from volunteers... but as I pointed out, they're getting paid well.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Not every economy and market will live. I'm actually someone who writes code professionally, but I can acknowledge that it's more like mathematics - very few "mathematicians" are hired to do things that they used to, because now computers and calculators can do those simple tasks. It may well be that in the future, people are unwilling to pay for applications software without source code and the right to modify it and sell it themselves, and that the price they're willing to pay is $0. It could be.
Saying something is "not possible" just because you don't like the outcome, is kinda silly.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The vast majority of programming jobs have been, and always will be, doing custom work for a specific clients' needs (whether working in-house or as a contractor).
Free Software doesn't affect that much.
Re:I, for one, feel sorry for them (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, they did get exactly what they deserved: widespread adoption of their own technology that will boost their credibility and sales. sheesh.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Astro-Man: Yeah, that Windows product will never catch on!
Actually, this is a pretty good test-case of the limits of openness and closedness. The parent poster's example was http. One might also cite X vs. its closed competitors. The counter-example is Windows, to which one might add the entire Office suite.
Now, it strikes me that under present circumstances drop-in, single-machine solutions like desktop Windows and Office can support closedness and still be ubiquitous. Whereas things that require customization and intercommuncation between machines have to be open to really take off. Thus Flash is in a lot of places but hardly everywhere; web ActiveX content is for the moment practically forgotten.
RIght now the primary nexus between the desktop and the network is the browser. And basically this means IE these days. It's interesting to note that MS has had a lot of success in blocking new web standards, but only limited success in imposing its own non-standard functionality through IE.
As we all know MS's strategy is to fuck up the web and make it closed. The little analysis above leads me to conclude that they will have limited success, but their success will be really fucking annoying.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, but it has. It changed from being a hobby to being a business. A business based in part on ad revenue. And I, as a consumer, for whom those ads are targetted, certainly have every right to comment on the quality of the service.
One thing that has remained pretty much the same is the quality of the service. I expect more from professionals than I do from hobbyists. And don't kid yourself into thinking they haven't entered the realm of paid professionals.
Don't get me wrong, the Slashdot crew broke ground. I respect them for that. They were among the first to do what they do. They created something wonderful. Then they got paid and have done little more than add a couple of features to the website since then. Moderating and meta-moderating and karma may help weed some of the nonsense out of the user responses, but unless they pay attention to people like me the nonsense will continue in the articles themselves.
I intend this as constructive criticism, not a troll or a flame. I want Slashdot to stay around. I just want it to be better.
Slashdot shouldn't rest on its laurels.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:3, Insightful)
True. What we really need to do is eliminate the editors entirely. Make it so that users with high karma get to see the submissions, and moderate the news posts just like user responses (Interesting, Redundant, Innaccurate, etc). When they hit +5, they go on the front page.
The whole point of slashdot is a community driven site. The news is already submitted by the users, why not go all the way?