Can Linux Do it? 70
Dark Fiber
writes "The AGE newspaper has a
big article (great big
3 page spread) on Linux that is very interesting. Lotta questions,
Lotta answers." One of the better mainstream articles-
it gets distributions right, covers the GNU/Linux connection,
and more.
Chasing taillights is mis-understood (Score:1)
Something wrong with making an app capable of reading an M$ Word document? It's not because they do it better, your partner sends you Word, you need to read it.
Samba tries to make *nix* work in a Windoze environment because that's what is already there not because we concede it's the best way and we only want to clone it. And just sometimes, the clone is better than the real thing. Certainly makes more machines talk, M$ isn't going to do it.
We do need new and different *methods* (hardware and software is faster [software is slower actually] and more feature rich but it is the same old technology, everyone is chasing taillights). But anything really different is slow to adopt and in the end, we only need to get the job done.
We can't be so fanatical as to blind ourselves. I hate M$ too but have to live with it and make the best (sometimes by throwing it out the / but I can't do that everytime) I can with it and can deal with it as I bet many of us do and don't admit it.
And you Canada bashers, lighten up. Who cares where or who does what better. Use what's best and not paint yourself into a corner. No borders, remember?
"an eye for an eye makes both sides blind"
time is on our side-nitpicks. (Score:2)
"Dan Kusnetzky, the operating environment program director of the research firm IDC,boldly predicts that GNU/Linux will be the fastest growing PC environment until 2003."
Why until 2003? What will happen in 2003?
"Debian comes with 2,250 free software packages, many of which are small utilities - things you would expect to be built into a commercial operating system.This is an important point: you have to cobble the environment together yourself."
Depends. Is the default enviroment acceptable?
If it isn't then only a few changes might be needed to be made to make it acceptable.
"To set up GNU/Linux properly you will need expert installers. This is also the case with big Microsoft Windows rollouts too, but after an initial Windows installation, power users or
less experienced IT staff are more likely to be able to set up subsequent machines."
Umm with Linuxes better consistency someone who is doing multiple installations will find it easier.
Anyone who's done windows installation is familiar with its non-determanistic nature.
""They told me: 'No need for powering down the box, Linux is stable enough to run for months and does not need periodic shutdowns like some systems.' They didn't even think people paying the power bills might power down their computers when they are unused.""
The above quote came from the server side of the article. Most servers are kept running in a nearly continuoes bases anyway. besides the cost of keeping them on isn't that great and the reliability is improved by not stressing your system thru thermal cycling.
"But according to project leader Lalo Martins, "Ox" as he calls it, is having difficulty garnering support.
"There was a lot of manifest interest in a 'complete' object model like Ox," he says. "Even Richard Stallman liked the idea and embraced it into the GNU project. But it is a very experimental field, and there weren't enough developers to really get the project off the ground. It's a pity. I'd really like to see free software once more do something that hasn't been done yet, instead of playing catch-up on proprietary software."
Umm, two things Lalo.
One you need to get the word out about your project. I can't begin to tell you the number of projects I've stumbled across in my searches that don't seem to be commonly known.
Two how many in the Linux development community are well versed in Object Oriented technologies?
"The sentiments of Martins lend credibility to the view of Microsoft vice-president Jim Alchin that the rebel OS is just "chasing the tail-lights" of the others. And to deliver a business advantage to its users a platform must offer services which are beyond that of its competitors"
Microsoft isn't noted in the industry for creating innovation (marketing excepted). This until fairly recently was a sore point with Bill Gates.
A lot of MSes so called "taillight technology" has really came from outside the company, not within.
So Jim Alchin and MS really don't have as much bragging rights as they would like to think.
Come up with something that was as great a step as the WIMP interface was from the command line, and then you can start bragging. Otherwise your just another "follow the leader".
He is (Score:1)
Re: Linux can't touch Solaris? (Score:1)
Okay okay... (Score:1)
pronunciation (Score:1)
"Lie-nucks" is an OK translation for English speakers, but "linn-ucks" (with a short "i" as in "pit") is not acceptable, the FAQ says.
I was under the impression that "linn-ucks" was the preferred pronunciation, with "lie-nucks" as an acceptable substitute. Since the author didn't bother with a link to where he found this information, what the FAQ is he talking about?
--
Jobs gained or jobs lost (Score:1)
I've never understood how people relate the cost of an OS with IT workforce demand. The marketplace has a demand for valuable applications. That demand is what drives job creation, not what is charged for shrinkwrapped software. MS's denial that control of computing environments is being driven to the user's enterprise is a dangerous oversight. The barriers to customized software and OSes have dropped and organizations can now obtain exact solutions for their needs, not just the best guess that a mega-conglomerate can offer. That's where the job market will continue to grow, offsetting the losses we'll see in the shrinkwrap sector.
He isN'T (Score:1)
Jobs gained or jobs lost (Score:2)
"One way is the dumbing down of computing and IT by increasing reliance on monolithic solutions from a single supplier. The other is increasing the knowledge base at every level of computing and choosing from an increasing range of sources."
It goes on to describe how the adoption of Linux would create more jobs for technical people.
This arguments contradict quite nicely the guy at
www.microsoft.com that argued that free-software would cause job losses.
In reality it can change the focus from ant-like programmers working for Microsoft to independent programmers/admins working for the small companies empowered by Linux.
i use slackware, but usually recomend red hat. (Score:1)
myself and recomend it to those who want to learn
directly. i like what red hat does and want to
support them, but their dist is just not my taste.
may go with them or debian for a little while anyway, the whole libc6 / libc5 thing is annoying...
stupid anchordesk (Score:1)
He did! Note that he didn't say anything about suing a commercial vendor if something goes wrong, just about having a salesperson to berate if it did. He's learning. Just a bit, but it *is* progress.
Linux can't touch Solaris? (Score:1)
It's started... (Score:2)
If Red Hat or VAR don't do some serious Linux benchmarking soon, and prove its SMP capabilities, then Linux will simply get this information perpetuated. Hurry up with those benchmarks!!!
(Oh, and someone needs to write some performance tuning docs, including SMP + Large memory info...)
Matt
file system benchmarks (Score:3)
For a bit of fun, the other day, I wrote a simple little Perl script to do some simple benchmarking:
:$!";
:$!";
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Time::HiRes qw(gettimeofday);
my $test_dir = "t/";
my @tests = (\&create_files,\&delete_files);
foreach my $no_files (10, 30, 100, 300, 1000, 3000, 10000) {
foreach my $test (@tests) {
my $start_time = gettimeofday();
my $name = &$test($no_files);
my $end_time = gettimeofday();
printf("%6d %10s: %s\n", $no_files, $name, 1000*($end_time-$start_time) / $no_files);
}
}
exit(0);
sub delete_files {
my ($max) = @_;
my $num;
foreach $num (1..$max) {
my $file = $test_dir.$num;
unlink($file) || die "Failed to delete '$file'
}
return "Delete files";
}
sub create_files {
my ($max) = @_;
my $num;
foreach $num (1..$max) {
my $file = $test_dir.$num;
open(DA_FILE, "> $file") || die "failed to open '$file'
close(DA_FILE);
}
return "Create files";
}
# Results - the values are average time per file in mili-seconds.
#
# SPARC Solaris 2.6
# 10 Create files: 17.3946022987366
# 10 Delete files: 8.25690031051636
# 30 Create files: 16.6551351547241
# 30 Delete files: 8.31733147303263
# 100 Create files: 16.6641497612
# 100 Delete files: 8.32810044288635
# 300 Create files: 17.0558432737986
# 300 Delete files: 8.49879026412964
# 1000 Create files: 19.0030739307404
# 1000 Delete files: 8.36658298969269
#
# Linux 2.2 x86
# 10 Create files: 0.0998973846435547
# 10 Delete files: 0.678598880767822
# 30 Create files: 0.0572681427001953
# 30 Delete files: 0.0586668650309245
# 100 Create files: 0.0708794593811035
# 100 Delete files: 0.0524997711181641
# 300 Create files: 0.0964502493540446
# 300 Delete files: 0.0535901387532552
# 1000 Create files: 0.223060011863708
# 1000 Delete files: 0.0744880437850952
# 3000 Create files: 0.529780666033427
# 3000 Delete files: 0.0793236494064331
# 10000 Create files: 1.90500370264053
# 10000 Delete files: 0.145310199260712
The Solaris 2.6 system above is a 270Mhz Ultra 5, with a simple SCSI setup. The Linux 2.2 system is a 400Mhz PII system with striped SCSI - ie it had the better discs as well as processor. I did also benchmark a 3 year old Ultra2 (it had a 200Mhz UltraSparc-II - I didn't even know they went that slow!) but that had Solaris 7, and I put file-journaling on (file-jounaling is a standard option on Solaris 7, even free Solaris 7 for x86) - but I don't have the exact numbers for that. But it was pretty steady at around 2ms per file for create/delete, even up to 10000 files. I've also benchmarked on a Solaris 7 x86 (300 Mhz K6-2) with an IDE drive, which was a bit faster than the Ultra2 system - for file creation, it was faster than the Linux system above, for the 10000 files value. Sorry I don't have the exact numbers - the two Solaris 7 boxes aren't available to me at the moment. (this looks dodgy I know, but I wasn't expecting to be quoting these figures right now)
Incidentaly, on FreeBSD (2.2.8 anyway) it was a bit slower than Solaris 2.6 on a similarly spec'ed machine.
I criticise lmbench above. The same criticism can be equally applied to my program - it's pretty rare you get cases like this.
I certainly don't have much problem accepting that the standard Linux FS is faster than the standard Solaris FS. However, I do know that the Linux FS does cache very agresively. Some would say too much - problems with file-system integrity are much more common on Linux than Solaris or FreeBSD. This also means that if memory useage is heavy, the Linux file-system will slow down much more compared for FreeBSD and Solaris. Basically, with the Linux fs even though the operation has completed, what is on the hard disc is another matter. Because they cache much less for writes, on FreeBSD and Solaris when the tests finish, the hard disk is up to date, ignoring the hard disc's own cache. (I'm only mentioning FreeBSD and Solaris because that's what I've used. It would be pretty similar on other Unix systems)
So, for the file-system, Linux has sacrificed some stability and reliability for performance. For desktop users this probably isn't too bad, but I (most sysadmin I know agree) wouldn't find it acceptable for anything 'mission critical'. Indeed, I have had a Linux installation die on me, and have had to bounce Linux servers, which always makes me kinda nervous. I've also seen Linux run fsck on bootup, even when I did a 'clean' reboot. However, on Solaris 7 (with file journaling on) fsck doesn't even need to be run on bootup because of the way file jounaling works. (incidentally, you can even turn file journalaing on/off under Solaris 7 while the system is running)
On another note, Linux does have a file jounaling file system in the works (I don't know if it is a full log file system) which would make things even faster, and also, more reliable. However, Solaris does have full log file systems available now (there's one from Sun, another from Veritas, and maybe even others), and they have been available for some time. (you just gotta pay for them). Most other commercial Unixes have file logging/journaling.
I have also seen cases where for servers under heavy load, Solaris could cope, but Linux couldn't - this was on indentical x86 hardware. This does reflect that fact that Solaris scales better than Linux. You can actually see this on the values I quote above - as the number of files in increased, the speed under Solaris was pretty constant, but with Linux it started to slow down - basicaly as the limits of Linux's cachine was started to being pushed.
However, this all proves very little because nothing I have shown here is even close to being a proper test. I'm not an expert on these things either... but maybe it'll give you some things to think about.
Using Cron while having the computer powered down (Score:1)
"They told me: 'No need for powering down the box, Linux is stable enough to run for months and does not need periodic shutdowns like some systems.' They didn't even think people paying the power bills might power down their computers when they are unused."
So they want RedHat to write a new version of Cron that will operate when the computer is turned off?
pronunciation ... well........... (Score:1)
and on that
and the sound was Linus
and his sound was (in english)
"Hello, this is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux as Linux"
or by pronounciation...
"Hello, this is Leenus Torvalds and I pronounce Leenux as Leenux"
These sounds (both swedish and english) are at http://www.[YOUR COUNTRY'S EXTENSION].kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/SillySound
time is on our side (Score:1)
Basicly, Linux may not be for the masses yet, but if a novice can learn it with the help of a "Linux for Dummies" book, then that goal can't be far behind
He isN'T (Score:1)
Saying that he's "a Swede" is like saying that he is ethnically Swedish, which is true. I don't know what it's like where you are, but growing up in NE Wisconsin, USA we used to have "ethnicity competitions" of a sort - the person who was descended from the most different ethnic groups won. I had 4: I'm a quarter German, a quarter Finnish, a quarter mixed British (mostly English, I think) and a quarter French Canadian. I think there was a guy in my class who had 6, although I don't remember what they were.
So anyway, saying that Linus is a Swede is like saying that I'm a quarter German. It doesn't imply Swedish (or German) citizenship or anything like that. Likewise, if RMS is descended from predominantly English people, it can be said that he's English when referring to his ancestry.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGH! (Score:1)
Scandinav! (Score:1)
Desktops (Score:1)
Just my $.02...
---
Not so correct... (Score:1)
As far as I know they can choose between swedish and english in schools, and most of them choose english...
Thomas Berg
pronunciation (Score:1)
Multiple brandings, multiple distributions, multiple pronunciations. I love it. Hail Eris.
Using Cron while having the computer powered down (Score:1)
The idea is that if you turn the box off, the machine should have a way of "catching up" with cron jobs that are skipped when the box is switched off. Since many home users do not have their machines on after midnight,
it is quite probable that the standard vixie cron setup will miss jobs. The point of this is that Redhat really seem to be thinking for people whose machines are connected via the ethernet and are up 24/7.
-- Donovan
Independance? WTF? (Score:1)
Cheers,
-- Donovan
time is on our side (Score:1)
Independance? WTF? (Score:1)
This kind of baffled me, because Debian was the last of the "Big Four" that I heard of, and this is the first I've ever heard of Independence, and I just researched the heck out of distributions about 9 months ago. (When I finally stopped dinking with other people's machines and set up my own.)
I won't guess which one is the most popular, but wonder why the author chose to put these at the front of the article, as if these were the ones that people who are unfamiliar with Linux should choose.
Michael.
(And no, I won't call it GNU/Linux. Circular logic [GNU's not Unix] in the name, even if technically proper, would only create confusion among the pointy-haired and promote an image of dorkiness for Linux and those who recommend it.)
What about Slackware? (Score:1)
Ontology for beginners (was: He isN'T) (Score:1)
This post is so far off topic as to be nearly
back on topic. You have been warned.
/** End Preliminary Warning **/
i've found a number of ontological problems in the discussion up to here...
1) "Saying that he's 'a Swede' is like saying that he is ethnically Swedish, which is true." I'd have to disagree here. Strictly speaking, saying that he's a Swede is actually more like saying he was born in Sweden or made a citizen of Sweden. i'll explore this further... *grin*
2) Language != Ethnicity (at least not a priori)
I am an american (italian-american to be exact) and I speak english, but it is not my "first" language even though i speak little else. Being that both my parents are deaf, the first language I learned was sign-language. This does not make me deaf (as I am not). Moreover, this does not make me (a priori) a member of the deaf culture/ethnicity (as I am not). Knowing sign, being raised by deaf parents, and constantly interacting with deaf people throughout my life have all contributed to a deeper understanding of the deaf culture than most people have, but I am still not a "member" of the deaf culture.
3) heritage != ethnicity != cultural/national membership
strictly speaking, heritage claims are normally expressed as a prefix to one's cultural/national membership (ie. italian-american, african-american, german-irish-chinese-french, etc.) and for any such hyphenated string of national/cultural labels, all but the last label point out ethnic/racial/heritage-based components of a person whereas the last label (and none but) points out that person's nationality. as a corrolary to this, one's heritage need have no effect on one's ethnicity nor one's personality...i know a lot of italian-americans (myself included) who couldn't pass for italian at midnight in a heavy fog irregardless of the situation. going further, one's main/first/natural language (when included, since it's usually implied that someone of, say, american nationality speaks english by default...although this is not always the case and, as such, it should be seen as a connotation only and not a denotation) is usually communicated as a prefix to the above string, delimited by the word "speaking" (ie. swedish-speaking-finn, cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian, etc.) and, again, has absolutely no reflection on anything except the language that person uses/has learned as their main/first/natural language. one last bit, just to be complete...unless naturalized, a person living in a country other than their native country is normally expressed (in our lovely hyphenated string) as a suffix, delimited by the string "living-in" (ie. swedish-speaking-finn-living-in-america, cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian-
so what, you ask? well, if my argument stands up, that would make Linus a Swedish-speaking-Finn-living-in-America. In an attempt to truncate this to a one-word label of what Linus' nationality is we would first lop off everything after (and including) the words "living-in" which gives us Swedish-speaking-Finn, and then rid ourselves of everything up to and including the word "speaking" which leaves us with Finn, _not_ Swede. Just for clarity if we were to truncate cantonese-speaking-irish-french-canadian-martian-
Thus, by my reasoning, Linus is a Finn.
Using Cron while having the computer powered down (Score:1)
No, they were probably asking for another package such as anacron [debian.org] to be a more visible option. anacron gives you most of the goodies of cron without having to keep the system powered up at all times.
The same thing came up earlier on debian-devel.
Linux can't touch Solaris? (Score:1)
Linux is missing some really important software. Industrial strength RDBM, system- and network administration tools (i.e. CA's TNG, Tivoli TME, HP's OV), ERP, good office suite. All these have been announced, but you don't make get anything done on announced software.
And no, Applixware and StarOffice won't cut it until they get bigger. The risk of them disappearing (ever heard of Describe?) are too big, and there are compatible issues with MS Office (no matter how much everybody else seems to hate the idea, the latest MS docs are the standard).
Not so correct... (Score:1)
Linus Torvalds is one of them.
(The unfortunate bit about this is that all Finnish students are requried to learn to speak Swedish in schools and can be quite aggressive against Swedish speaking people du to that
// Cthu
One up for the Linux side... (Score:1)
Cheers,
(aside) nifty 3D screen saver (Score:1)
Try www.jwz.org/xscreensaver [jwz.org]. It's a much better collection of screen savers than you would get with Windows, and (of course) it's free software. The 3D ones require Mesa, however. libXpm is also required or recommended for a few others.
Open source documentation anyone? (Score:1)
Just out of interest are there any sites trying to build online searchable help for linux.
I guess a good model might be along the lines of slashdot - a main howto with a discussion group associated with it.
Provided that comments could be scored (perhaps by allowing votes to be submitted) newbies could then be presented with the main howto and then a sequence of inteligent comments on them.
These howto's could then be examined on a semi-regular basis by any trusted site admin and the best comments worked into the main body.
Would probably turn into a very heavy load server (its primary feature being searches) but its disk usage would probably be quite modest (not more than several Gigs even including posts - after all I am only expecting plain text - on second thoughts some diagrams would be good but I would imagine that these would only be localy stored if they where part of the Howto so I would expect space usage to grow slowly and be quite controlable).
I don't see any reason why documentation can not be treated the same as code - I hate the idea of writting an entire manual - but reworking a paragraph thats not very helpful is entirely different.
Better still compressed versions of the sites Howtos (and perhaps the 10 best associated articals) could be mirrored in distributions. I do incidently mean mirror the site - if you are going to ship a web server you might as well make use of that fact
Is there currently a project like this?
anyone know where we could get the server space for it?
Perhaps some of the big companies would like to provide a home for this?
Anyone interested in moderating - could this become an offshoot of slashdot (I'd guess not but it don't hurt to ask).
just some thoughts
Tom
ufs (Score:1)
Because I believe that the journaling filesystem and logical volume support for Solaris is an extra cost 3rd party add-on.
Pay RedHat? (Score:1)
Do you know about ftp and image etc...?
Heck buy one CD for 1.85$
I don't do it, but cheapos like you could I think do it from Linux central!
Linux can't touch Solaris? (Score:2)
This article -seems- to be reasonably okay, but I see a great deal of off the cuff remarks that are unsubstantiated. Yes, I realize they are obtusely referring to non-technical issues, however that is not entirely made clear here.
They make a couple of good points, I think, about the difficulty of migrating to Linux from Windows, but then that's not a Linux issue, is it? It's a culture issue.
And the statement about how there are a 'miniscule' amount of apps on Linux compared to Windows.. umm.. I think that's a bit harsh. It's true that you can't just go to EggHead and buy a paperclip energized office suite, or a nifty 3D screen saver, but Linux has a fair amount of apps. And more to come in the next year.
So overall, I think the article was a good read, but was biased a bit, and lacking vision. Heh. Grade: C.
----
M$ has multiple dists too (Score:1)
This article reminds me of a posting someone made a week or two back criticizing the fact that Linux comes in many distributions. MS doesn't only ship their OS in 2 flavours, they ship 2 completely different OSs!
Okay, so they are similar in terms of their interface, but no-one would seriously use a Win9x box as a file server or web server would they? NT for servers, WIn9x for clients. So we have Debian, Slackware, maybe RH for serious serving and Caldera, and others for serious click-here-dummy client machines. And they are a heck-of-a-lot more compatable with each other than NT and Win9x!
Using Cron while having the computer powered down (Score:1)
What about Slackware? (Score:1)
I don't believe that setting up a linux box is any harder than setting up a Winblows box. I still have problems getting Win98 to see our whole network at home, but our Linux systems (mine is Slack and my roomie uses SUSE... *sheesh* foreigners
The real problem seems to be in people's perception of Linux. "Oh no!!! They said Linux, a Unix clone. That's supposed to be real hard to setup so I won't even try." Install-fests are a good idea to let people who want to try Linux see how easy it actually is to set up.
Not so correct... (Score:1)
He is (Score:1)
Not so correct... (Score:1)
(although he belongs to the Swedish minority: se_FI)
Not so correct... (Score:1)
Nononooo... all of them. We have to study swedish in schools, it's obligatory.
finnjävel
The Windows 2000 point is valid (Score:1)
Not so correct... (Score:1)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGH! (Score:1)
Not so correct... (Score:1)
/ I knew some people spoke swedish in findland but didn'y know linus did, nor that some schools requested that
Chasing taillights (Score:1)
Last time I checked, Standard Operating Procedure for MS is to let someone else innovate, then copy the innovation while adding their own proprietary enhancements.
Examples:
MP3 audio
Web browsers
PDAs
Java
And let's face it -- before NT, Windows was strictly a desktop OS. Microsoft got jilted by AT&T when they tried to move into the Unix market, so they decided to create something to compete with Unix. In that respect, NT is chasing the taillights of Unix.
I use Slackware (Score:1)
And they run so well, I have time to goof off and post silly messages to
So I guess no, you're not the only one..
(oh, my desktop system is Mandrake
What I find interesting... (Score:1)
My guess is that this guy does nothing but read press reports, and doesn't actually do any form of research...
ufs (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure that Solaris can use a journalized
filesystem, as well as logical volume etc...
The only question is why the standard install configure a machine using ufs
file system benchmarks : BSD performance (Score:1)
Rant (Score:1)
- while he gets kudos for giving a brief, straightforward explanation of GNU, Linux, and the GNU/Linux moniker, he then uses them interchangeably - consistency is key
- his sequencing needs work - the focus of his business-use analysis is on server-side, so why does he start with looking at the desktop?
- he includes many URLs, including some for distros, so why doesn't he include the main URL for RedHat?
- don't even get me started about the copy editing
This rant against style and formatting might seem odd, but the net effect is significant; the very text of the story, regardless of content, causes Linux and the GNU toolset to look fragmented, and RedHat's distro, IMHO a better business distro than Debian's, isn't even validated in context. in short, I think the author's amateurish writing, and his editor's failure to bring this piece to publication-level quality, causes Linux and the free software movement to seem unsophisticated and perhaps even childish. The implication is that this is not a serious subject, and thereforce not treated as such.What about Slackware? (Score:1)
Am I the only person who uses Slackware? I've got five machines running Slackware Linux and they all run fine -- never have to reboot them. Why would I pay for Redhat when I can download the install files for free?
You too you're not so correct... (Score:1)