Is Linux At the End of Its Life Cycle? 676
Glyn Moody writes "That's what Nikolai Pryanishnikov, president of Microsoft Russia, seems to think. Quoted in the context of continuing questions about Russia's plans to create its own national operating system based on GNU/Linux, Pryanishnikov said [via Google Translate]: 'We must bear in mind that Linux is not a Russian OS and, moreover, is at the end of its life cycle.' An off-the-cuff comment, or something more?"
And Windows is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wadka. (Score:3, Insightful)
"We must bear in mind that Linux is not a Russian OS and, moreover, is at the end of its life cycle." An off-the-cuff comment, or something more?"
Too much vodka?
It's Hindsight (Score:5, Insightful)
As in looking at the world with your head stuck firmly up your ass.
The GNU tool chain isn't going anywhere. The Linux kernel isn't going anywhere. The only thing in flux to any great degree would be the packages contained in the distributions.
If you define "end of life cycle" as the middle of eternity, then sure, GNU/Linux is at the "end" with half-way to go.
How One Might Interpret That (Score:5, Insightful)
is at the end of its life cycle
That's not a bad thing. In a lot of the classic software development models, the "end" state of a software's life cycle was operations and maintenance (O&M). Which is to say you have no new requirements having fulfilled all the basic requirements. It's bad if you constantly need new features but sometimes it can be an indication that the software is mature or near complete. At this point the customer only ever pays you money to put it back into development or fix/improve something small.
I would agree that the 2.6 kernel series is very robust [wikipedia.org] and something we will most likely use for quite sometime. But I would always shy from ever saying that an operating system has all the major features it could ever need. I mean, I know a lot of clients that are committed to some version of the 2.6 kernel in their server rooms and would only ever update if there was a necessary security flaw or performance feature [slashdot.org] that they could not live without. For a lot of them, Linux has provided all the web server or database hosting features they would ever need and the product of "Linux" is indeed in the final phase of its life cycle. The vast majority of their patches are to Apache, Postgres, etc.
Cool Story, Bro (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, water is wet.
Gimme a break (Score:1, Insightful)
That is some really stupid crap right there - if anything the OS wars is what has hit a brick wall - most users can do everything in the browser these days - so run a stripped down rock solid linux distro and they are good - As far as Linux hitting the EOL cycle WTF he is talking about? Last time I checked linux was running on all kinds of gear most people have and aren't even aware of - yes @wadka too much vodka for that dude for sure
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, this is the kind of remark best ignored rather than obsessing or getting upset over. Company execs talk nonsense all the time. I mean what do you expect him to day "Oh dear, this new OS will cut into our sales, as Linux has been doing and will continue doing for the foreseeable future"? Didn't think so.
Let him talk, just nod politely and continue compiling your kernel.
Russian OS.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows is not a Russian OS either... I'm not aware of any OS which has been developed from scratch in Russia.
Linux at least comes with source code allowing the Russians to customise it however they wish. Windows doesn't provide that flexibility.
Re:Google Translate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's Hindsight (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't have to...
GNU is not about dominance, it is about ensuring software freedom. GNU was a plan to replace proprietary tools with open equivalents, the fact that these open equivalents are now being replaced with superior open equivalents is irrelevant.
I doubt RMS's primary goal is that everyone use GNU software, rather that everyone should use open source software regardless of who wrote it or where it came from, providing its users have the freedoms granted by the GPL (or a great level, eg BSD).
Re:Flame Bait (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask the KDE4 guys how's that working out for them.
Meanwhile, it's an interesting point. In the closed source world the justification for keeping ancient shit code is that "we have too much money in it to throw it away"; open source can simply outwait the creators of the ancient code, or fork.
Re:wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point... if you factor in Apple's iOS (UNIX-but-not-Linux based), it's pretty bad news on smartphones if you're not *nix based. iOS is healthy, Android is kicking butt. Everyone but Nokia in the non-Unix SymbianOS world has left, and Nokia is increasingly talking about MeeGo (which is pretty much just a Linux distro) as their future. Windows Mobile has been failing for a few years, to the point where most OEMs lost much interest, and MS had to replace it with their ZunePhone, er, iClone, er, Windows Phone 7... still unsettled success. RIM isn't dead yet, but they're definitely behind, and moving to QNX, rather than Blackberry OS, on their tablets... and eventually, their phones (QNX, while not UNIX-derived, is a POSIX compliant microkernel).
So really, Microsoft is all alone, going against the greater world of UNIX-derived OSs, Their use is still increasing... hardly the sign of something that's "end of life". One would tend to think of an end-of-life product as maybe failing in some or all of its markets, even when pushed by the world's largest software company, even failing against a free OS mostly promoted by techno-hippies who have trouble coming up with beer money...
Re:And Windows is? (Score:4, Insightful)
By implying that Windows has undergone a ground up rewrite wile Linux has not, you imply that you already know the answer to your own question, which means your question is not at all earnest.
Bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of these Microsoft people believe their own FUD. They'll argue that the sun is the moon to discredit alternatives. One of the best that I've heard from someone I used to think highly of is that "Windows has far more security mechanisms in place than Unix"
I think that part of the driving force for the attitude among Microsoft enthusiasts is that they are scared of change. They are happy in their safe little world (safe, in terms of job security etc.) and it makes them angry that better systems exist and people are taking an interest in them.
Note that I'm an MCSE (Microsoft Certified Solitaire Engineer) but please don't hold that against me :-)
Russians learned that technique from Comrade Lenin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How One Might Interpret That (Score:3, Insightful)
Your interpretation of "life cycle" is entirely reasonable, but it's not what MBA types mean when they use the phrase. Business schools teach all kinds of subtle warping of the language (any language: English, Russian, whatever.) The bizspeak meaning of "at the end of its life cycle" is "this is Old And Busted and we can't make any money off it -- check out our New Hotness!"
Re:Google Translate (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no trouble believing that the translation is accurate, because it sounds exactly like the kind of thing you'd expect an English-speaking Microsoft exec to say. Bizspeak is a universal language: MBAs around the world spout the same meaningless crap no matter what language it sounds like they're speaking.
Re:Google Translate (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but OS X is based largely on the same paradigms. Windows? It's command line structure has been around for nearly 30 years now. It's basic GUI concepts have been around about 20, and it's whole interface (a taskbar with a menu button on the left, open applications in the middle, and a clock + resident apps on the right) has been around for 15 years now.
When you really get down to the nitty gritty, desktop OS's have just be doing slow evolution over time - and that's not really a bad thing. The systems we have - whichever you happen to prefer - actually work pretty well for most modern computing tasks.
Either way though - the comment is absurd. While the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" might be a bit of a pipe dream, it's undeniable that Linux has continued to get better and better over the years, and there's plenty of life left in the product. As a matter of fact, I'd say that so long as we use desktops, the desktop versions of MacOS, Windows, AND Linux have a nearly unlimited amount of life left. And in the mobile space? Linux (via Android) is actually kicking Microsoft's arrogant little ass. To that extent, it may very well be more accurate to say that Windows is a lot closer to end of life than Linux.
Re:And Windows is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:1, Insightful)
Saying "Whoosh" doesn't make it an actual joke, and it certainly doesn't make it any funnier.
It does not follow the meme, first off. Take something in America, reverse it in a funny way, and attribute it to 'Soviet Russia.' c64love's post does not do that. It is nonsensical.
This wasn't a joke, it was an asshole saying "socialism sucks" just because this happens to take place in Russia,and not because it has anything to do with socialism.
Re:Bollocks (Score:4, Insightful)
It is sad, it is pathetic, it is moronic, it is self-destructive, but it is.
Re:Flame Bait (Score:3, Insightful)
Ask the KDE4 guys how's that working out for them.
A better question is if it was really the redesign as such or manpower that killed them. If you kill a huge migration project 80% into the project as many systems are already migrated you always leave a gigantic clusterfuck. Companies will commit resources to finish it, even if it's a depressing job with a result that might suck more than when you started. That was the case with KDE4, a ton of work had been committed on KDE4 ports of the applications, but the core wasn't working. And this is where a company and open source differ, a company would order developers to finish it for the good of the company. In most cases open source projects are entirely dependent on people wanting to do it, so the project slowed to a glacial pace. I think they knew KDE4 wasn't ready for release, but without more people they weren't ever going to get ready. So, they released anyway as the least possible evil.
Re:And Windows is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nonstory, sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but ms only does this when they already have a competing product that has already proven itself vastly more successful.
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/09/11/1920205/Microsoft-Holds-iPhone-Funeral-Event [slashdot.org]
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/09/22/1416246/Xbox-Head-Proclaims-Blu-ray-Dead [slashdot.org]
It's not like they're trying to create popular doubt in superior products or anything.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
Trolled? Is that his excuse for being an idiot? c64_love wasn't doing this to troll anyone. He's not that clever. This was, I am quite sure, a funny joke in his mind.
Re:might be true for both Linux and Windows. (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux already scales to such systems.
Linux is already being used in such systems.
Being more of a "server OS", it has been exposed to those sorts of features for a rather long time.
When people act excited over "the cloud", I think about 20+ year old Unix deployments and wonder what took everyone else so long to catch up.
Re:And Windows is? (Score:3, Insightful)
It stands for (or stood for) Windows on Windows.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And Windows is? (Score:2, Insightful)
Old legends never die. They just get repeated over and over until people treat them like fact...
Windows used DOS as a bootloader; once Windows was booted, if there were no DOS TSRs or 16-bit drivers it needed for compatibility purposes, it killed-off DOS entirely. Which is... something about 99% of systems from about 1998 on. (Windows 95 systems usually still had DOS CD drivers.)
Think about the alternative if they hadn't implemented it that way: nobody can run Windows 95 without buying brand new hardware with 32-bit drivers. They wouldn't have sold a single copy.
I mean, I guess if you see "ran on top of" meaning "bootloader", then your statement is technically correct, although really misleading. Not that you'd care about that, since you're only here to bash Microsoft.
Re:Google Translate (Score:3, Insightful)
Your girlfriend should know better than to evaluate a translation system based on a series of repeated translations.
Translation, whether it is done by a human or a machine, always involves trade-offs. One of the most important trade-offs is between fluency and faithfulness. Fluency refers to how well the translation matches the conventions (syntactic and stylistic) of the destination language, whereas faithfulness refers to how precisely the translation matches the meaning of the original text. Because languages have idioms, and because often there are words in the source language that simply do not have a counterpart in the destination language, it is often necessary to simplify or modify the meaning to create a translation that is not awkward.
There is a constant balancing act - change too much and you end up with a translation that is misleading, change too little and you end up with a translation that's awkward and hard to understand. But the bottom line is that in ANY non-trivial translation, information is lost in the process. If you did the same experiment with human translators - and did it in a real sense, with different translators for each step in the cycle, you would end up with text that is perfectly readable but had very little in common with the source text.
I'm not saying that the translation in the article is 100% faithful to the original Russian. It's not. No real translation is. If the precise nature of the words is important, it's necessary to examine the implications of the Russian. You can't do that with a simple translation.
Re:How to test if a OS is dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
All societies force you to share the products of your labor. It is the cost of membership. You are paying for the benefit of being a part of society. Libertarians want the benefits, but they don't want to pay for it.
If you don't pay, you don't get to be a member. If you don't like the deal offered by one society, do what you do in the free market: shop around. No one I know goes into a McDonald's, asks for a Whopper, offers to pay $0 for it, then gets incensed and starts whining about their rights being infringed when everyone laughs at them. Yet that is exactly analogous to what libertarians do. You do not like the deal society offers you, you do not want to pay, therefore, your rights are being infringed.
Most libertarians, like Rand Paul, would argue that a store owner should have the right not to serve a black man if they don't want to. Well, our mutual benefit society doesn't want to serve freeloaders. You do NOT have the right to demand free services. You do NOT have the right to demand that other people do things your way, and whining about your rights does not disguise the fact that simply you want other people to change to suit you.
Re:And Windows is? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about all the other socialist services you enjoy, such as roads and highways, food inspections, parks, etc.? Should those be eliminated too? Good luck inspecting your own food before buying it. I guess you can just have your family sue the grocery store after you die of food poisoning, or maybe we'll just rely on word-of-mouth getting around and the grocery store selling tainted meat going out of business after a few hundred people die.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:0, Insightful)
That's a pretty long post. You could have just said "I have no idea what's going on in this thread".
His post made sense, you just are not able to understand it.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
In a pure Capitalist state, anyone with property dominates, controls, and enslaves anyone without income producing property. Libertarians define aggression as a poor man stealing an apple from a rich man, but when the rich man offers the poor man an apple in exchange for a life of slavery, that is a fair deal.
When your life is on the line, any deal is a fair deal. Libertarians don't want people to band together to protect themselves from oppression, they want the powerful to be free to oppress the weak. Libertarians are almost all social Darwinists who think the weak should just die to make more room for the rest of us, or at best roll over and do whatever their betters tell them to.
The State is just the weak banding together to protect themselves from oppression by the strong. The idea that some individual should have control over natural resources, property, the means of production, while other people should do what the owners tell them, is tyranny.
You still want a state. You just want the state to be nothing more than your hired guns, to keep the poor from taking back what you stole from them.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Insightful)
We do want socialism in the US. Look at medicare, medicaid, the military, police, fire departments, public schools, public libraries, public roads, social security, the list of popular socialist endeavors is quite long.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not what the previous poster was talking about, or else he's an idiot. There is no choice to not pay taxes in any industrialized country I've ever heard of, unless you're on the dole or similar (but even then, you're still "playing" and a part of the system).
No, you can't live as a hermit, not legally any way. Living as a hermit implies moving to some rural area and living on the land there. That's only legal if you own the land, and if you own the land, you have to pay property taxes to continue owning it. Otherwise, you're a trespasser (whether you're on someone else's private land or on government-owned land). Of course, there are homeless people who either wander around and live on city benches until they're told to move by the cops, or who live under a bridge somewhere, but these actions really aren't legal either, the cops just don't bother enforcing vagrancy laws against them since it's rather pointless.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
The previous poster was talking about the common criticism of Marxism which is that everyone seems to receive the same income (or at least some guaranteed minimum income), whether or not they feel like working, and that this system is unsustainable. What is your response to that charge?
I'll just offer a short answer to this question.
The premise is that people fundamentally want to work, that most of what people do when they're not sleeping is a form of work, and people dislike their jobs because of poor conditions and their lack of real influence over the results of their labor (i.e., alienation).
Secondarily, people respond to social norms; ever feel uncomfortable taking a break around people who are working?
If there were some minimum income, there would doubtless be freeloaders, despite the foregoing; there are freeloaders now, but it's not that big a problem, given how productive the majority are.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no choice to not pay taxes in any industrialized country I've ever heard of
Hence his point about an exchange for living in society.
No, you can't live as a hermit, not legally any way
If you're truly wanting to live as a hermit, why would you care about social constructs such as laws?
why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Linux kernel architecture is creaky, but so is everybody else's. And it doesn't matter. The kernel's job is to shuffle bytes between devices and processes and manage memory. The Linux kernel does that pretty efficiently, people seem to be able to write good drivers for it, and that's pretty much all there's to it. It's the same with window systems: X11 gets the job done as efficiently and well as anybody, and even though there's some legacy stuff in there, there is no point in rewriting it.
And it's not like anybody else has something better. The NT kernel is full of complicated functionality that nobody actually uses. The OS X kernel is a microkernel that has been turned into a monolithic kernel and has had a BSD brain transplant. The one recent OS that really tried to shake things up a bit is Plan 9, but it crashed and burned.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I'm an American, and you can't fucking tell me what to do. Hypocrite.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Insightful)
So when you go to a restaurant, are you going to demand to inspect their kitchen and make sure that all the food they use has these nice logos on it?
Remember, if you screw up, you (or your children) gets food poisoning and dies.
I guess you think we should also eliminate the FAA and its aircraft inspections, and just rely on people to fly on airlines that are certified by a private foundation?
Just because "the government" isn't doing something as well as it possibly could doesn't mean we should throw the whole thing out.
Re:And Windows is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly, even if you are right, I will worry about that when it is a imminent threat. In the meantime I think I have a good few years of not worrying about security.
Secondly, MS has a pretty poor security track record even where it is not dominant - e.g. server software, so it is not unreasonable to assume that someone else could do better.
Thirdly, even if Linux was the dominant desktop OS, we would have a choice of distros and would not suffer from an easily targeted monoculture.
Just three flaws in your reasoning,