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Linux Software

eWeek on Linux 77

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ra-ra-warm-fuzzys dept.
alexhmit01 writes "One of the better articles that I've read covering Linux in real deployments, eWeek has an article entitled, The state of Linux: Live free or die?, gives coverage of where Linux has improved in 2.4 and what it needs. It covers Linux's success as a web server, where it comes up short against other Unices, etc. It's a good read for the non-programmers in the Open Source Movement... for it focuses upon market adoption, not just technical capacity." Nothing exciting and new here, but its a nice little article, especially talking about whats new and wacky in the 2.4 kernel.
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eWeek on Linux

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  • "Do you think a kernel branch could affect negatively"

    "Linux caoul be "

    "It's still lacks of"

    Looks like they have major troubles with grammar/spelling too.

  • Anything that truely is 'mission critical' would be developed in house anyway.
    Finger pointing isn't worth a damn to anyone.

    --
  • Hmmm let's see. If I read this correctly, middle America is idealistic, while people on the east and west coasts are not. And OSS (which was started more or less at MIT, and east coast school) is too heavily influenced, you believe, by idealistic people.

    I was going to flame you for this post. But it's so devoid of sense, and just reeks of someone who likes to hear himself talk that I'm going to consider it a troll.

  • /me is fascinated...

    That is a model I have never considered- the code used by real mission critical people, as in in the government and the firms that provide it.

    I am not prying for classified information, so don't worry about that. I am wondering if you could say anything on the point of "open source culture" and how it would be impacted by a classified military culture?

    You say your code is free as in beer and free as in open. It's also secret code, which means that only a few people can see it.

    Does this mean that folks use the program who don't have the security clearance to see the code? If a user has a problem with the code, will the people with the clearance to respond on it work on it quickly? Or do bug fixes have to go through six months of government red tape?

    Answer here, in email, or not at all as you see fit. Thank you,

    -perdida

  • It seems to me that "mission critical" means that when it does hit the fan, you have some way to account for it. Unfortunately, having Sun or Microsoft to blame is more acceptable from a business standpoint, even if the need for placing such blame becomes more frequent as a result. CEOs, stockholders, etc., are much more comfortable dealing with a huge public company than the open source movement.
  • "no free software will ever be used in mission critical applications because they need someone to point the finger at if/when it doesn't work."

    bzzt. try again. all the code my company provides is free as in beer and free as in anybody with top secret clearance can look at the code. just because its not distributed to every yahoo on slashdot doesn't mean its not free, and doesn't mean there's nobody to point the finger at.
  • Despite what some ACs say, I don't think you've been trolled. Check out his website [geocities.com]. This guy appears to mean every word he says, as much as an existentialist can. His guestbook is a SlashDot microcosm, with Shoeboy signing in and a goatse.cx link

  • RedHat 7 uses it.

    /bluesninja

  • Rough definition... (Score:3)

    by Ami Ganguli ( 921 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:19PM (#469453) Homepage

    My definition of "mission critical" is that the expense of down-time far outways the expense of the technology. Obviously we're thinking more in terms of money, but in some situations we're talking about lives too.

    I once worked on a flight planning system for an airline. It's not the same as air-traffic control, we weren't responsible for preventing accidents, but without their flight plan the planes couldn't take off. The flight plans were prepared about 3 hours in advance. If there was ever an outage of more than three hours any planes currently on the ground would not be able to take off again. Gradually the entire fleet would be grounded and business would stop entirely after 15 hours or so.

    The cost of that downtime was astronomical: salaries, ticket refunds, hotels for passengers, lost goodwill. We're talking millions of dollars per minute.

    Needless to say, they weren't very price-sensitive when building their new flight planning system. A few million extra for added security wasn't considered a bad deal. That pretty much defines "mission critical" for me.

  • Those of us who are looking for jobs and use/love Linux care about market penetration. I personally find working with Linux much more fun and rewarding than aimlessly clicking boxes in Microsoft's server software. I personally am a Java developer, and with more market penetration comes more software offerings from the likes of IBM that make it easier for me to do get the job done using Linux and other open source products and not have to rely on Microsoft.

    josh at shenknet dot com

  • At least it is what I need. About the only thing that I think Win2K is superior to Linux, is its support for unicode, right from the beginning.<p>

    I know Qt can handle unicode and Gtk+ somehow also supports it via <a href="http://www.pango.org">Pango</a>.&lt ;p>

    Question: when is it going to be standard for desktop distributions?
  • Oops, here's the correct link:

    Pango [pango.org]
  • Mission Critical is summed up quite well in the article:
    Linux is clearly enterprise-ready at the server level for certain applications like e-mail, e-commerce and Web servers, but he said it lags with regard to running other mission-critical applications like financials and CRM.
    I'd much more happily run a Linux webserver than a Linux Oracle Financials server, for example. Especially when it comes to justifying it to management.
    Linux really isn't at that stage yet - it's a fantastic *nix, but at that kind of level, where customers demand 99.99x% uptime, full, paid for and guaranteed support - whatever happens - from the guys who wrote the code, I'm not even sure that's Linux's niche.
    However, I'd still argue that Windows NT is far behind Linux on all these issues - 64CPU WinNT? I think not.... I've not had experience of Win2K, but it seems to be a huge improvement in terms of stability and uptime - purely from what I've read. I can see my karma flying out the window here, but let's just tell the truth...
    Steve.
  • Does this mean that folks use the program who don't have the security clearance to see the code?

    Actually, that's quite common. Do you think that the DoD vets *every* soldier in the field for SECRET/TOPSECRET clearance? Yet many of the systems they use have classified algorithms in them.

  • I've used linux for years now. Mainly at home and a little at work. The question I want to ask is.... Can Linux be Everything for Everybody?

    Some people want to use it for the desktop. Others want it as a Web-server. Some more want Supercomputers using linux. Someone put linux in a watch. And still people complain about linux not doing this or not doing that.

    We, the linux community have to clear about what we want linux to do. Do we want a General Purpose OS? Do we want eye-candy? Do we want it to be the first choice for Business? Do we want it to work on a PDA? Do we want "Mission Critical" apps? What do we want?

    As the proverb goes, Jack of all, master of none

    Is this what we want?

  • It's FREE, anyone can do anything they want with it! It doesn't matter what WE want, it's what YOU want that counts. Get it?
  • ...like the fall of communism in Russia. Poor blighter !!
  • Why is it that many people want Linux in order to control a starship ? OK, I can see many advantages over the competition, but first you have to have a starship to run Linux on.
  • So don't compile everything in. This is why modules are a *very* good thing. IMHO modules give you the best of both worlds. As to why a monolithic kerenl see what Linux says on the matter here [oreilly.com].
  • It is neither....its a kernel.
  • Uh... uh.... maybe you should recompile your kernel???

    Seriously though, Linux is what Linux is. If you want to give a micro kernel a whack try Hurd. From what I understand it's coming along nicely and they could probably use all the help they can get.

    It always amazes me when people say things like "I like my Ford, but why can't it be more like a Toyota?" Linux isn't (and shouldn't be) a one size fits all OS.

  • Nope, they are Adobe Distiller OCR mistakes. You know, a Spanish version...

    But it's unbelievable how good it's in Spanish.

    --ricardo

  • What are the advantages of having a monolithic kernel rather than a microkernel?

    In the case of Linux vs. Hurd, it's a matter of what works in practice, rather than theory. (And Torvalds said it gave Linux The Edge [oreilly.com]).

    - Derwen

  • Yes, of course.
    Communism is all about millitantly defending personal freedoms... or not.

    --

  • Well, it seems pretty evident that Open Source as an ideology has been affected by libertarian/free market thinking... just look at ESR. And it's true that this particular kind of political philosophy is stronger on the American side of the pond, though I wouldn't call Europe "non-ideological".

    I think that since hackers generally tend to be different or separate from mainstram culture, they're more susceptible to radical ideologies. Your definition of "radical" will vary depending on your cultural environment, American or European... though it's hard to draw a sharp line between them, or indeed to sum up the full range of "European" or "American" political and social thought.

    Some American hackers do seem to have (at least judging by posts here on Slashdot) a definite tendency towards libertarianism or anarchism, since there's a strong US tradition of opposition to the government and respect for individual freedoms. I think where the previous poster went wrong was in taking "British" ideals to be representative of "European" ones: there certainly is a British philosophy of ad-hoc governance, distrust of radicalism, and so on, but I don't think that this is true for (say) the French. They favour strong administrative structures directly inspired by ideology: the present French governmental model is rationalistic and Cartesian.

    There is, I think, a difference in outlook between hackers of different nationalities and politics, but not in the same kind of way as suggested.

  • ...being able to run the custom applications that ISVs as well as inhouse shops develop.

    For example, many mid size shops use Borland RAD products to handle things that are specific to their site.

    Kylix will help with porting Delphi/Object pascal apps over, and when C++ Builder gets released in Q2 (or thereabouts) even more shops will be able to offload tasks onto Linux.

    The "big iron" enterprise apps need a stable platform if they are going to port. Stuff like CA and Peoplesoft makes needs a stable high availability, high resource platform to do their ports.

    Hopefully, 2.4 is a solid step to providing a platform for that type of thing.

  • thats odd. i downloaded the ISO from their site and installed it a few weeks ago, and it had the 2.4 kernel.

    maybe what they let you purchase and what they let you download is different? I know when you purchase you get support, so maybe they just don't want to give support to 2.4 yet?

    didn't mean to spread misinformation.

    /bluesninja

  • military expression meaning "If it fails, people will die."

    "And if it works, people will die too -- just not our people."

  • SuSE are putting it in their Linux 7.1, which is due to ship on Feb 12. (Original press release [suse.com])
  • actually i don't have clearance so i can't see it either. and i don't know why its free, i think its stupid and they should be making money selling licences. but apparently thats not how it works. anyway when you sell to the government you don't say here you go, we're selling these for $1 million each, how many would you like? instead they come to you and say heres $5 million, make us 100 of these things for 10 years and if it costs you more money than that, tough shit. but that doesn't really affect hardware designers like me anyway. as far as the distribution of the code. i don't know how they do it. there's no way anybody without clearance is seeing it. its not Free like open source. its Free like people in the government with clearance can see the source if they want. not the people driving the tank or shooting the missle. i am pretty sure all changes are incorporated solely by the builder of the hardware. bug fixes don't go through government red tape, they go through corporate red tape. which means really anal retentive testing, which is probably good. again users don't see the code. but the people who pay for it could.
  • Yeah, linux will always live on. It is the geek toy to end all geek toys. It's like giving a car nut a formula one racer complete with all the spares, tools, and even the staff needed to maintain it. People are still tinkering with Amigas purely for fun - Linux will clearly never "die".
    However, the reason for the interest in its business prospects is not to see whether our beloved linux will live or die but to see how much it can change the software industry. The current OS situation is deeply unsatisfactory. There is an OS monopoly held by the same company which manufactures a huge chunk of the software which runs on it. This means that the decisions made in designing the piece of software most programmers have to deal with day in day out are not made in order to make their lives easier but to further the interests of a particular company, which is probably competing with them in some area. Linux offers an alternative and thus, regardless of its survival as a piece of software I want to know how it fares as a business model.
  • Just while you're talking about Solaris - I'm probably being dumb here, not knowing much about Solaris, but I have to deal with Solaris at work a lot - not v. complicated stuff just installing and using 1 app. What irritates me is that when these machines arrive the Backspace key gives ^H in the command and shell tools. I know how to fix this with stty and I guess the blame is with whoever installed the OS. What gets my goat though is that these are UltraSPARCs. One company built the keyboard, the box, the OS, the terminal emulator AND THE SHELL. Why doesn't the FUCKING BACKSPACE KEY WORK FIRST TIME!!!!!!
  • databases, webservers, and OSs come to mind as common COTS products. But, yes, for most embedded, real mission stuff, they do it by hand. Finger pointing is a great way to get new versions (we had serious problems with our mapping software so we screamed at the provider until they fixed it - or it was fixed)

    I had a feeling you were going to say that.
  • I think these guys [ece.ubc.ca] have a better E-Week.

    ERTW, Baby!

    --

  • this kind of talk from linus has me concerned:

    "I don't worry about the performance issues. Linux already holds the world record SPECweb numbers. The thing that continues to be much more important than high-end Unix systems is really more of the user interface issues"..."

    frankly, many of us could care less about linux on the desktop (bill gates' country), and would like to see scarce resources better focused on making linux the ultimate server platform.

  • With such a clearly demonstrated lack of understanding, listening to them on a technology issue would be like listening to Clinton on honesty
    Or George W. Bush on just about any topic under the sun...
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
  • Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this month publicly said that Linux was his company's greatest threat going forward.

    Is that a head fake or a road map?

    Should the Linux community even care? If everyone is so focused on bringing this OS to the masses, will the hobbyists support its ascent?

    Dancin Santa

  • Two years (Score:3)

    by yamla ( 136560 ) <chris@@@hypocrite...org> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @10:41AM (#469482)
    I find it quite interesting that many people claim something has to prove itself for two years before you can consider it.

    I'm sure they have a good point -- I wouldn't want to be putting Linux 2.4.x on a mission-critical system at the moment, though I wouldn't wait two years.

    But do people really follow this? I mean, that stops you deploying Windows 2000 now. You could only just deploy Windows 98. It seems to me that it is silly to wait quite that long.

    I mean, come on. Point-zero releases may not be stable enough for you but after a few bug fixes, why not evaluate the software for yourself? See if you find it stable enough. Chances are, there's a lot more useful technology integrated over the last two years.

  • Ohhh, I see now... (Score:3)

    by CraigoFL ( 201165 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMkanook.net> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @10:41AM (#469483)
    It covers Linux's success as a web server...

    And here I thought it was an operating system!

  • I'd agree with your argument if you put NT 4.0 instead of Windows 98.

    Windows 98 and Windows 2000 are not even in the same class of operating systems.
  • It's always made me laugh that project leaders over on SourceForge actually have timelines worked out for their projects.

    X workitem will take Y days...etc.

    I don't see how they can begin to think that they have any control over the volunteers.

    Dancin Santa
  • You could take that list and write a program that generates linux articles. Set it up as a CGI script, have slashdot link to it once, then never cover another Zdnet article on Linux again.

    You could do one for the Gartner group too. They're about as predictable.

  • A couple months ago, I would have said you made all that up using big words...

    But having just moved to Europe.. it's totally true!
  • Don't worry. If you don't know what mission critical really means, it probably doesn't apply to you. It is usually used as a government/military expression meaning "If it fails, people will die." As in, it is critical for the mission to continue. And besides, as I learned at a contractor [lmco.com], no free software will ever be used in mission critical applications because they need someone to point the finger at if/when it doesn't work.

    I did like the summary of every review of x.x kernel, though.

    I had a feeling you were going to say that.
  • AFAIK, AC3 passthru is not available as a patch.
  • "[Linux] still falls short when it comes to supporting workloads required by applications like ERP (enterprise resource planning), business intelligence, CRM (customer relationship management) and supply chain planning"

    WTF are these things?
    "business intelligence"? What the hell is that (besides an oxymoron)?
  • The real point, and this has nothing really to do with technical issues...

    When you are rolling out an application worth, say, a million dollars, and you have a multi-million dollar budget.. you don't fuck around. If Sun tells you 'we can spec teh equipment, install it, and it WILL work, adn our company will stand behind that 100%, and they have a PROVEN track record of such things.. THAT is a safe decision for a CTO guy.

    If someone says 'Linux is reliable, lots of people use it.. blah-blah.. ' it's not the same thing.

    If redhat were the size of sun, and was backing their distro, and their own hardware, then *maybe* it would be that way.

  • Try IBM if you need someone big and expensive to hold your hand as you go to the Linux side of the street.
  • Funny that you included the link to what I'm assuming is the official Corp. of the Seven Wardens site on the Iron Ring. So much for the "you won't find a listing of us, there is no web page for us - we're a private organization" part of the spew that they do during the Calling.

    However, it's past my time to argue which school's Engineering is more world-ruling - after all, I'm gradumutated and all.

    --

  • Beyond the 2.4 kernel, Linux developers are asking for the incorporation of a journaling file system,
    No comment.
    more work on Linux clusters and on the scheduler,
    "I asked the engineers I manage what Linux needed, and this is what they told me. I don't know what it means."
    additional scalability, high availability, internationalization,
    "This is what I think Linux should have. I don't know what it means, either."
    printing, and systems management.
    "I tried to do these under Linux and I couldn't, so I guess it doesn't have them."

    It seems like most of the article was about making an artificial distinction between "lowly consumer-level stuff" and Enterprise Level Computing, with the strong implication that Powerful Businessmen (the people interviewed: a vice president, a CTO, a chairman, a Data Center Manager, and, for some reason, an analyst) need Enterprise Level Computing, which Linux still doesn't do.

    Shit, man, it works or it doesn't. Maybe (as the analyst lucidly pointed out near the end) the OEMs and ISVs need to put out ERP and CRM with the SMP and raw I/O that the 2.4 kernels can provide. Or you could just write me a check right now, sir, and I'll see that it gets done.

  • ok, your company can beat up my ex-company. I was just reiterating the company line. I heard it from the sysadmins who wanted to install Linux but couldn't. I did manage to hack off CDE and put fvwm on my solaris box, but I had to compile it. The company was really paranoid about binaries. So I brought in all these text files.

    I had a feeling you were going to say that.
  • I like this article because it has hard facts and doesn't seem to have the standard media hype tone about how Linux will revolutionze the desktop, topple MS, take over the world, and declare world peace. (MS, on the other hand, would declare world FUD.)

    Linux is a mighty fine OS, but there are others out there that people will still want to use. So may all *nix*es unite and take over the world *together*! Can we say... Beowulf? Or... MOSIX [mosix.org]?

    (just kidding...)
  • This was debated by Linus Torvalds (Linux and the Monolithic Kernel) and Andrew Tannenbaum (Minix and the Microkernel) back in 1992. You can read their debate here [oreilly.com].

    ---

  • Another ridiculous article (Score:3)

    by Adam Wiggins ( 349 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:09PM (#469498) Homepage
    Funny, my company [trustcommerce.com] has been using Linux (and other free software) for mission-critical application in the enterprise for years. That includes all the stuff they mentioned - database, financial, CRM, and more. Linux does have a journaling filesystem as of 2.4.1, and it's actually had them for quite a while if you don't mind doing some kernel patching.

    In fact, I would say that the only other platform that is as capable (and probably more so) that Linux in this regard is Solaris on Sparc hardware. Solaris has its own set of problems (mostly that it feels like an "old" UNIX to me, making it hard to develop on), but certainly is quite capable.

    I guess these journalists (and the people they interview) just insist on handing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars over to Sun and Oracle. That's fine, since the products they sell are good. But for young companies with a limited cashflow (as we were just a few short years ago), that's not an option.

    In that case, Linux (or one of the free *BSDs) is your only choice.

  • yep (Score:2)

    by twitter ( 104583 )
    What do you expect? It's the new media where paid content and editorial content are merged more strongly than ever.

    A sysadmin in the article says,"I want wholehearted vendor endorsement and a couple of years of solid quality assurance testing by companies like Oracle [Corp.] before I allow Linux to take over my database server."

    How you read this depends on your perspective. The sysadmin who said this thinks, "I want it in a box." Your experience is unimportant to him. The ZDNet reporter hears "vendor endorsment" and thinks of advert payments to ZDNet trumpeting some package.

    It's all give and take. ZDNet convinces yet another group to sit contentedly, and their revenue continues to flow. Why would they advocate or even believe in anything else? It will go on until something else takes over. Insects do not believe in winter.

    Sitting here on Slashdot, I wonder what that might be? Could it be peer reviewed, moderated, and modified content?

  • Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this month publicly said that Linux was his company's greatest threat going forward.

    And Joachim Kempin recently said [microsoft.com] "Linux is simply a fad that has been generated by the media and is destined to fall by the wayside in time. Windows 2000 will gradually overtake the Linux share in the server market." So who knows? I don't think MS is in the business of disclosing their real strategy to reporters.

    My guess is that they're viewing Linux as a genuine challenger on the server front and laughing at all the "Dell is going to be shipping Red Hat systems! No, now Dell is going to be preinstalling the Gnome desktop! No, now Dell is going to support the Eazel desktop!" posturing that passes for desktop market share in the Linux world. Especially now that Corel has utterly failed to sell Linux apps, Applixware is being sold off, iD will stop selling boxed Linux versions...

  • Let me live free or you die, corporate scum!
  • Oh yeah, forgot to mention...

    It's 8:30am. Do you know where [dyndns.org] your VW Bug [vw.com] is?
    --

  • Yup, Linus has too many of those damn middle America ideals...... Oh wait sorry. I forgot. Given that if anything OSS has a bigger market share and the fact that *many* of the best developers are in Europe the above is clearly just silly.
    Did I just get trolled?

  • It says what every single article about linux says every time, say, a new kernel comes out?

    1) Linux is much more stable than comparable Windows solution for insert something you want a computer(s) to do.

    2) However, it still doesn't have all of the security features that Sun or *BSD has.

    3)There are assorted problems with kernel x.x, which will be fixed soon with the release of the next kernel.

    And before you say, "It's moving up to mission critical!" Tell me what the heck does mission critical mean, anyway? I for one think that the artificially imposed heirarchy over what is "mission critical" or not causes the problems that both the producers of computer services and the consumers of those services feel. For instance, it is very mission critical to keep the cookies rolling in, so you can incessantly market to a new stream of hapless email addresses, but it is NOT mission critical to respond to the angry email from these same addresses when a user encounters a compatibility problem or has damaged equipment, etc.

    The mission is profit, or at least survival, keeping that cash flowing. THAT is what is mission critical.

    I would think that some journalism which steps outside the boilerplate model mentioned above, something that would actually relate these firms' ACTUAL priorities to their choice of operating systems, software, hardware, etc., all of these debates we have here at /. about such things would be far more fruitful.

  • I was wondering what distros have 2.4?
    Did any of the *bsd's adapt any of it for use with their flavors?
    How is it fairing as compaired to the other kernels?



    Fight censors!
  • I do like Linux, but there is one thing that really bothers me about it. The problem I have with Linux is the monolithic-kernel mindset people have with it. The more you compile into the kernel, the more native support you have, true, but the slower the boot time becomes and the more difficult it becomes to upgrade a specific piece of your operating system. What are the advantages of having a monolithic kernel rather than a microkernel?

  • Hobbyists... (Score:3)

    by Marnhinn ( 310256 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @11:02AM (#469507) Homepage Journal
    Linux comming to the masses is something that the community has yet to address, currently the community (excluding companies) develops Linux kind of on its own time frame and for its own purposes. Like someone once said in a post - Programmer A releases a program that works for him. Programmer B tries it out and adds 50%, Programmer C uses it and C patches it another 10%.

    People so far or at least hobbyists usually do things for their own reasons. (i.e. rarely go the extra mile)

    However much more is starting to be expected. The article states: "Beyond the 2.4 kernel, Linux developers are asking for the incorporation of a journaling file system, more work on Linux clusters and on the scheduler, additional scalability, high availability, internationalization, and printing and systems management." - Linux developers want more... and they may not be willing to work for it.

    Given that the Linux community is well organized and making significant progress, currently I think that their be no problem meeting demands of users and the masses, more people will simply join in and help out. One thing to watch though is what the opposition does... generally the more dangerous a threat is to a company the tougher the resistance.

    If Mr. Ballmer was serious about his statement perhaps the coders/linux hobbyists of the kenrel and whatnot should sit back and examine if they're in it for themselves or the masses and a long haul...
  • Maybe so but his point was that the ideals of OSS are (apparently midwest) American. At least as far as it's inception goes. These movements were started here, not to ignore the numerous contributions from around the world. Linus did not start Open Source or Free Software (though of course he contributed, but according to him it had nothing to do with the ethics of open software), so is not even a factor.

  • Who really cares about market penetration? (Score:3)

    by AugstWest ( 79042 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @11:37AM (#469509)
    Sure, Redhat and the other commercial distros...

    But this is an operating system, not a popularity contest.

  • Re:Ohhh, I see now... (Score:3)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @11:41AM (#469510) Homepage Journal
    It covers Linux's success as a web server...

    And here I thought it was an operating system!

    With khttpd, it's both. Now if only it were an axle lubricant and a dessert topping...

  • I must say, you succeeded in totally confusing this American. It seems you are speaking to a discussion I have never heard.

    Are you saying that the European standpoint is pragmatism, while the Americans are too idealistic? Like pre-Stalin and Lenin socialists? That American open source displays the idealism that will fade into cynicism and pragmatism as time marches on?

    If all this is true, how is it affecting the open source movement? Is code being negatively affected by only using variable names from the Red Book? Is the code being made inefficient because the party leaders forbid the use of GOTOs? Is there code being supressed because the ideas are too dangerous?

    Are you just saying that the leadership should start thinking about making money and listening to businesses? Or that they should wear suits and ties? Or get business cards and official titles?

    I agree that the European view of today may be the American view of tommorrow, but I'm not sure how American ideals (whatever you see them as) is holding back Linux progress, or the European ideals will propel Linux forward. I'm interested in this discussion, but I need a little more than "Americans are different than Europeans, perhaps more youthfully idealistic. This might be a bad thing."

  • Most apps don't support it's multi user features

    Yes, I've noticed that and it drives me crazy too. Some apps add themselves to the "All Users" Start Menu. Some due not. Winamp stores your settings in the same dir as the executable - meaning the same playlist and skin for everyone (unless you go crazy changing working directories). On and on.

    Remember all the commotion when Win2k came out about certified apps or something like that? Only a handfull of apps were actually certified by Microsoft. I suspect part of the reason so few apps are certified is that very few have adapted to all the Good Changes Microsoft has been making - such as the multi-user settings in the registry, the new standardized installation engine they have, etc. They can get away with it, I think, because most Windows machines are still only used by one person. When they start doing making the apps conform to Microsoft's standards, it'll be better, I think.

    As for Linux on the desktop, I agree it's fine for lots of everyday stuff - exlcuding fancy games and windows-only programs. It's especially useful here at school for access to my AFS home directory and for remote sessions on all the UNIX machines they've got around here (and vice versa).

  • I feel the need to post in support of the original poster (or is that posterchild?). We are a Unix/Linux shop here. We have a rather nice server farm. Most of the stuff is Sun running either Solaris 2.6 or 8. We use Linux, but not as extensively as we'd like. Linux represents a cost savings for us for most things.

    Reasons for this policy:

    1. Support - Linux TS STINKS! For Linux, most of what you sell, when you get that green stuff called money, is tech support. I've been so annoyed by some of the reps, I've been ready to drive over and slap 'em. I know I'm not the only one either.
    2. Documentation - I secretly suspect that the whole IT industry exists because NOTHING seems to be documented very well. What is documented is beyond the average end user
    3. Standardization - Files are where you expect them to be. I know which things in I need to edit to configure (fill in the blank). Every distro puts stuff in different places. Even the same distro moves stuff between versions. I get tired of trying to remember where x is in SuSE, RH6, RH7, Debian, etc.
    4. Less Frustration - I don't get passed back and forth beween Dell and RedHat when something doesn't work. Sun makes the OS. I don't call tech support unless I need them, but when I do call, it's because I have a problem I can't resolve. None of the other Unix geeks on my team can resolve it. I need help not a brush off - "Ummm....can't you call RedHat about that?"
    5. GUI that works - If I use the GUI to configure a service in Solaris 8, the service is configured and working. If I use the GUI in the Linuxes, it may or may not work. The GUI doesn't always edit all the necessary files in order get a given service running. This is frustrating to those of us who have to support end users who are trying to run Linux. No GUI at all would be preferable than one that lies. It would be less phone calls for me.

    That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure that there's more.

  • It's interesting to speclate what a process, for example software design, looks in different environments- open and closed environments.

    Like the stuff about budgets. It's not like trotting out to a venture capitalist and raising funds.

    You also rightly point out that one thing about something "classified" is you can't make a profit out of it the same way as if you are a private company designing some software for word processing, or something. I don't think you can put a dollar value on some forms of extreme security.

    I am a big fan of rigorous testing, but that might bring in a different time table than ordinary software design and development would.

    One could compare it to, say, a closed source company, who is keeping stuff secret for reasons of pure profit. They have an interest in licensing their code, on their terms, to as many sub-developers as possible so they can cover the market damn fast. which they did.

    A government, designing classified software, mayhaps for the same thing. A word processor, perhaps. The thing might be designed to work on as few computers on earth as possible. But there is always a question about whether it is best to use ordinary commercial software, and protect information with encryption, or to produce "unique" software that can itself be enumerated and controlled.

    well I am rambling.. amateur sociology. :)

  • Wow, the most freaky thing about this is linux is not being compared to windows. It's being challenged to equal the features of Solaris or Aix. That's quite a promotion in itself.

    That said, while I expect linux to keep making progress in the enterprise arena, I don't think it should be a focus. It's all apart minimal changes, accountability and testing. This sort of stuff is better done by a specialized, paid because it's dull, company like sun or IBM. I'd much rather linux kept advancing and improving so we can be better at putting the boot into windows. More fun, more exciting, and more programmers can get involved.

    While I don't love sun or ibm that much, it's currently Ms that seems determined to own the computing market.
  • Oh, that's just another one of those headlines to catch your eye. Why must "they" always try to apply standard biz concepts to Linux, it just don't work that way.
    Somehow they seem to forget the massive amount of support is has from people everywhere and that a lot of those people do it because it is their idea of fun.
    Of course it will change, you might say that the Linux we know today might die, but it would then just evolve/change/mutate to something else because of these people who just loves to play with it.
    Where else would you find people sitting down with analyzers thingies, crewdrivers and lots of coffee just to reverse ingeneer a bit of hardware where the manufacturer won't make drivers for Linux, OR supply the information needed to write ones. Their reward are a pat on the back and the nice warm feeling you get when you have made a good hack.
    Not everything you do are related to making money, and as long these people exsist, Linux will exist too

    On another note, take a look at the WAP standard for mobile phones. If you take away the fact that it sucks, it is painfully clear that that puppy won't fly. Everywhere you go to gather information and tools, you see greedy people wanting money for every bit of information needed for you to create a proper site. So innovation is driven by the wish for a quick buck rather than working with it because you want to make it good.
    --------
  • I still don't know where they got my email address; I assume it was from an old free macweek subscription. They sent a message claiming to be honoring my "request", and have steadfastly refused to remove me. I've complained several times, and I've complained to their upstream.

    Today, I took another stab at their abuse@ and postmaster@ accounts--only to find that *both* bounce as nonexistant addresses.

    I'm not sure what's left but ORBS and RBL.

    With such a clearly demonstrated lack of understanding, listening to them on a technology issue would be like listening to Clinton on honesty, or Monica on chastity . . .
  • It's not Linux, it's GNU/Linux. Linux is only the kernel and all of these journalists like to pretend Linux is the entire operating system. There are many other pieces of software that come into play to make GNU/Linux a fully functioning OS. These have been in development since the mid-1980's, which allowed for the "rapid ascension" of GNU/Linux that has "surprised" many industry analysts.
  • One of the things that hit me as soon as I read this was the question of whether or not trying to make an enterprise class operating system would conflict with attempts to also make it "ready for the desktop". It struck me that while these aren't necessary directly contradictory aims, the need for a different type of administrativeship for each application meant there are great dangers if programmers focus on one aim rather than the bigger picture.

    Linux is remarkable in part because for those of us who understand enough of it to make it productive, it has extraordinary powers in both areas. Assertions that it's not a desktop operating system usually mean actually that it's not a desktop operating system for everyone. The thing is, if the Linux programming community continues to move it towards being user-friendly for everyone, idiot to kernel hacker, will that necessarily result in a loss of performance/features/etc that Linux has inhereted from it's Unix roots?

    I'd be interested to know what others think.
    --
    Keep attacking good things as "communist"

  • I feel the same way. Fsck the 2 years. What makes Win2k SP1 anymore stable than Linux 2.4? I have a bug that is killing me, and I'm at the mercy of M$'s release schedule for SP2.

    At least w/ Linux you can dive into the source code (kernel or suppl package) and fix a critical problem if it is holding you back from deploying a successful app.

    To me, that is much more important than other people's opinions of what is constitutes stability.

  • ZDNet boring recipes for Linux articles (Score:5)

    by gallir ( 171727 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @11:09AM (#469521) Homepage
    These are excerpts from ZDNet Linux Report Style Book that was stolen by a ZDNet worker. It's very interesting that, according to reliable sources, it looks quite similar to C|Net Style Book.

    Unavoidable questions - questions for Linus and gang:

    • Do you think Linux is ready for the enterprise?
    • When are you going to start the new development branch?
    • Do you think a kernel branch could affect negatively?
    • Do you agree in that Linux is still not ready for supporting workloads required by applications like ERP...?
    • What are your goals going forward?
    • Do you think that those performance issues have been/will be resolved?
    • Do you think Linux caoul be a Windows competitor in the desktop war?
    • What do you mean with "World Domination"?
    • ...
    Unavoidable Expert/Journalist Comments in a Linux article.
    • Linux 2.4 in big leap in the field of a enterprise class OS.
    • It's still lacks of security featurs as entreprise class Unices.
    • It's still lacks, but improvements can be seen in every release, of the performance figures as enterprise class OSes for loaded web servers and multiples interfaces.
    • There is still a way to go before it becomes a true mission-critical, enterprise-class...
    • It's enterprise ready for certain applications.
    • We welcome the developers efforts to make Linux more robust and scalable.
    • It's still needed the support for journaling file system
    • While a few IT managers are beginning to move critical applications... other don't dude...
    • Linux, in its last reincarnation, has got a better support for SMP, storage and huge RAM demanded by enterprise class databases.
    • With the open-source kernel, you can make changes to it so that it fit your needs.
    • ...
    --ricardo

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