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Linux Software

Win2k delay claimed to be helping spread of Linux 237

Posted by Hemos from the keep-on-growing dept.
Threnody writes " Great article about Windows 2000 delay. Apparently Linux has grown from negligible in the '97 poll to 13% today. This is the latest results from IDC, the pre-eminent measuring company. They were measuring business usage. They also talk about the fact that many major organizations are not interested in rolling out Win2k right away, because of being burned before.Update: 08/19 02:08 by H :I've also been informed by a number of people that DevX is currently running a poll along much the same lines.
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Win2k delay claimed to be helping spread of Linux More

Win2k delay claimed to be helping spread of Linux

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  • Seriously, you just buy 100 computers, one with the correct version of one of the distros of Linux preinstalled and configured. Then you mirror it to all the others.

    Gee, that was so hard.

    Oh, and you get StarOffice on it, while popping StarOffice onto all your old Windows PCs, so that everyone has it available.

    ;-)

  • I heartily agree.
  • An unfounded, uneducated, narrow-minded comment based on the fact that Microsoft is currently in quality freefall and is so totally disorganized and fragmented that half the company doesn't know what the other half is doing.

    Yes, it's a stupid comment, but it does reflect how many of us who use NT feel. NT 3.51 was pretty much rock solid, NT 4 started out pretty solid. Nowadays just getting Microsoft software installed can be a nightmare...

    Win2K will probably do OK despite all its problems, the U.S. Government will continue blundering along doing a few things well and a lot of things poorly. Network TV will continue to suck (mostly). Life goes on.

    But many of use who use Microsoft know how things _could_ be and it makes us bitter.

  • oh but computing isn't that static. once it's installed you have new OS updates and new hardware to reconfigure for.
  • Windows 2000 won?t ship by the end of the year.

    While you're eradicating stupidity, why not eradicate your SmartQuotes too?

    Anyway, it's be nice if Windows 2000 actually shipped in 2000, not 1999 or 2001 - it'd mean that, unlike car manufacturers, software companies actually do know what year it is.
    --
  • Perhaps. Still, Linux is a better service pack. ;-)
  • Is koffice and such ready to run VBA?

    VBA is dead. even m$ is jumping over to perl..

    Will my intranet application still be able to integrate with the spreadsheet?

    after a number of inevitable large scale crackes on companys because of the word/excel/vb security problems people will look differently at all this stuff...

    The OSS applications are still stuck in the 1990 timeframe in terms of functionality. :(

    having the source to the applications (and of course some scripting capabilites as well) will ultimatly give companys more power for their office automation then anything from m$..

    believe me 2001 is the year where linux invades the corporate desktops..

    greetings from vienna, austria.

    mond.

  • Re:2001 (Score:2)

    by Eccles ( 932 )
    My favorite newsreader is Agent, but I can't run it on linux w/o a reverse-engineered compatibility layer that doesn't work correctly (WINE)

    Have you tried the 073199 version of Wine? Much improved. My Wine works pretty well, except for displaying images, etc. Not sure if there are any settings I can change to fix that.

    My long-term hope is for Mozilla's news reader to provide the same functionality. Communicator's definitely needs work, joining of binaries in particular.
  • Wow! You actually got to within 9.7 days of the Microsoft Epoch Error! It's too bad you kicked that power cable, you could have told us how spectacularly it crashed on day 49.7.
    Has anyone ever had enough uptime to get to this error? If not: "To boldly crash where no computer has crashed before."
    --
  • I think many (not all) Windows enthusiasts are like sadomasochistic slaves who like being thourougly raped and beaten all day. Microsoft is basically in the business of taking away freedom from the enduser. People hate the idea of divx, and other closed rent only technology, but this is where Microsoft is going (if not there already). Many companies even my school is forced to use MS software because of their enslavement contracts. As IT department managers start learning about the power of free software operating systems like linux, and netbsd (the most secure free OS on earth) they will force out the NT boxes from there LANs. I broke out of my chains last year and freedom is sweeet.

    Slavery is a terrible thing but it is even worst when you don't even know you are in bondage. My advice, take a deep breath and look at your OS, if you have to comprise your standards or sanity to get what you want get done try free software you might be suprised.
  • I remember those days... My friend had Win95 Beta on his computer, and I remember saying "Wow! You can play TWO .avi files at the SAME TIME? Without the computer crashing?! Amazing!"

    I bet this time around (this friend is still a Windows nut) it'll be, "Wow, you can do (thing that crashed Win9x) without the computer crashing? *yawn* So can Linux."
    --
  • you can try out http://www.linuxkb.com/ [linuxkb.com] (not up yet, coming soon) and http://linuxkb.cheek.com/ [cheek.com] which are two Linux Knowledge Base projects.

    For more info see the Linux Documentation Project [unc.edu]. I personally like to access the LDP through http://howto.linuxberg.com/ [linuxberg.com] because I find it easier to navigate.
  • VBA is a perfect tool for small office integration. Without it MS Office would be much much worse product ...
  • I just keep thinking back to when Windows 95 was released and all the polls saying "Oh we're not going to upgrade, we're waiting for NT4"

    And then when NT4 was released and all the polls saying "Oh we're not going ot upgrade, we're waiting for NT 5"

    And how OS/2 did so well in the meantime waiting for Win95/NT and then how it died out suddenly after NT was released, and...

    Don't pay too much attention to these polls, they're pretty meaningless. Right now everybody is saying "We're going to wait." But the day Windows 2000 is released things change... RAPIDLY!

    A rollout to a new OS takes about a year for planning and final deployment, so no you aren't going to see many customers upgrading right away. But by 2001 a good chunk of the market will be Win2K with everybody else making plans.


  • There is no such final ship date.

    RC2 is to be released here the end of August.

    There will be an RC3 shipped to Microsoft's primary customers(Compaq et al) and if everything is good to go on that, it is going to be declared Golden and ship to production.

    Otherwise, they have a RC4, and so on.

    The last I've heard... ship date may be late October.
  • Companies who run WinNT networks usually need a whole IS department to keep their computers running. These people carry beepers that go off at 2:00 in the morning because the servers crash.

    Companies who run Linux/UNIX networks will have an outside consulting firm to set it up, and sometimes a sysadmin person to check on it once in a while. He never loses sleep because the servers don't crash.

    This is where the true savings lie. It's not just the fact that Linux is free and WinNT costs a lot. It's that you don't have to hire an entire department to keep the servers online and reboot them at 2:00 in the morning.
  • Otherwise translated:


    "Microsoft realized that the released of Windows 95 and NT 4 were premature, and thus see the need to improved quality control. This is the reason for the delays of Windows 2000. Linux users are scared shitness that Microsoft is maturing as an industry leader."

  • Of course not. Like most Linux zealots he made it up and is passing it around as fact in order to discredit Microsoft.

    Oh, BTW the answer is '3rd quarter 1999'
  • At this point they are even out of the beta stages. There is no way Windows 2000 won?t ship by the end of the year.

    And now, as any follower of Ifni (or the laws of Murphy) knows, because you've said this, Windows 2000 won't be coming out until Jan 2000 at the earliest :)
  • Good luck getting W2K upgrade for $100. Win 98 SE upgrade is selling at $132.98CDN which is about $90USD. That's $90USD for a product that amounted to little more than a few bug fixes, and made an existing Win 95 system even _less_ stable. For what is a major change in a proprietary, closed Operating System, you can expect to pay a lot more than that.
  • Or Win97? Didn't think so.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / WKPT-TV 19
    Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
  • Try ordering a book or two, that helps loads.
    Check out the ones listed on Alan Cox's website
    (http://www.linux.org.uk) he's got a few good recommendations. Especially "Running Linux" is nice.
  • Win 32 API is open. Interface is fully published.
    Turn over ?? And then we all end up with fricking programs that have disclaimer - runs on Windows X, if you install Z runs also on Windows Y, and it doesn't run on Windows S ( and you just happen to have this version of Windows).

    You know what this scenarion remainds me of ??

    You guessed ... Linux
  • Remember Win95? They almost didn't get it out that year... :)

    --Mid
  • Unfortunately .. You can't play two avi files on Linux at the same time. Why not ?? Crappy XFree can't handle this load ... ( and on top of that animplayer does not support this codec .. there is however URL to something that supports that, but it is in source code so you have to compile it yourself, which in turn gives you message that you need library X to compile this stuff which ...
    You know what ?? Fuck that ... this is a joke.
    Until there are commercial apps for Linux forget it.
  • Most of them haven't tried Linux either ...
    Let's see how many of them will be "burned" by that experience ...
    And theh we will talk
  • I just went to wonko.com. I tried to be post a response to a posting from two days ago. (No one had responded yet.) I got some kind of MS jet/asp error.

    Hey Wonk0, Your using the wrong tools for you site.
    you need mysql, or Postgres, BSD or linux.

    Sincerly,
    a wonker

    P.S. Is the term wonker coined yet?
    P.S.S. How come most of the postings on you site had no responses? Must be alot of excitement for w2k.
  • I'm sure MS hasn't learned anything about customer service from their other numerous fiascos so they'll undoubtedly release Win2000 on December 31, 2000 so the name is right and then patch the hell out of it (I'm sorry, Service Pack the hell out of it) until Win2005 or whatever comes out. I just hope the bosses of the world will really get it into their heads that they don't have to always upgrade to the newest gift from the House of Gates.
  • "crash" is from hardware failure. How is linux going to stop that?
    Kernel workarounds I see it all the time. Like the F00F bug workaround.

    Qmail has a $1000 prize for anyone who can find break it's rock solid security. I would like to see Microsoft do something like that with IIS (it'l never happen).
  • Here is the press release direct from IDC [idc.com].

    --

  • check /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/CS4232.

    It may not be just what you need, but it may help.
  • No. Then companies would just resort to "It'll be out when its out, damnit. Stop asking." I'm not sure which approach is worse.
  • "It's out when it's ready" is the answer of the engineer.

    "It's shipping in x-1 weeks" (x=competitor's ship-date), is the answer of the ignorant marketroid, who then proudly presents his budget to the board, who then comes down on R&D with whips and chains to get them to rush the schedule, which causes them to produce a crappy product, which overburdens support even more. . .

    See what I'm getting at.
    Vapor=bad
    Honesty=good

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • Yeah. And how are you going to work around your net card going south ?
  • When do you think Win2K will be released?

    * Quarter 4 1999 (that's September to December, for the slower people)
    * 1st Half 2000
    * Second Half 2000
    * Never - the world will explode on 1/1/00
    * Never - Microsoft will explode on 1/1/00 or sooner
    * I already have a copy of the gold release, I am eleet.
    * Jar Jar Sucks

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • One quote and one clarification (Score:3)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Wednesday August 18, 1999 @12:32PM (#1738940)
    First, I love this quote: "Past issues with first-release operating systems from Microsoft have caused organizations to rein in their Windows 2000 deployment plans."

    I guess you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

    Now the clarification: Linux didn't go from 0 to 13% since 1997, at least not the way you are probably thinking.

    In 1997 IDC did a survey of business computing users (presumably CTOs and CIOs). 0% of them said they used Linux. At the time this was probably false because they (the CTOs and CIOs) didn't know about it. Furthermore, this only counts business use, clearly there were millions of installations in other settings.

    Now they've done another study and 13% of the respondents said they use Linux. It doesn't say they use it exclusively and this isn't a weighted number. That is, it could be that it was the top 13 companies in the world (ranked by size of IT dept) that said they used Linux 100% each OR it could be the smallest 13% that said they had "one test Linux box".

    My basic point is that this survey tells us nothing about the real marketshare (measured in number of machines weighted by their purpose) of Linux, but a lot about the mindshare among CIOs.
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
    "An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
  • Linux dumped core on you and froze up, huh? More likely an APPLICATION dumped core, and your X SESSION froze up. Neither of which being a fatal error requiring a computer reboot, merely ssh in and fix remotely.

    Linux doesnt die when nothings going on, doesnt even die for the most part when all sorts of shit is going on.

  • Something like a jaw agape Gates with a ton of stuffed penguins on his lawn or his painings in his house replaced with customizable Linux/BSD CD covers.
  • Oh yeah, you're right. Microsoft has not learned anything about QC. That's why Ed Muth pointed out the efforts in QC on SP4 and SP5, as well as the efforts they are making on Windows 2000

    Hmm...
  • What are you doing wrong that you have to reboot every 10 minutes and reinstall every 4 or 5 months?

    My NT4 install at work hasn't been rebuilt in 2 years, and my uptime was 40 days before I accidentally kicked the power cable out the back.

  • quite possibly right but the performance of the www.windows2000test.com server is not exactly a positive advertisment for it when it does ship.
  • It's from a 1996 television ad for Internet Explorer actually.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • Thats ok in another 9 days it would have crashed on you...
  • Yep. I went and bought Win98 ($150!) because I was dissatisfied with Win95, and I had been brainwashed into believing that Win98 actually made things run faster. To my surprise, the only thing that made things "faster" was the new optimised defragmenter; the actual core ran slower than Win95 without IE4. I wiped it from my hard drive a while ago, and I recently sold the package to my local "computer exchange" for $50.

    Bottom line: Microsoft got my money, even though I wasn't satisfied with their products.


    P.S. (Wow! In a post!)
    I am happy to say I am a proud GNU/Linux user, and I will never again buy any crappy Microsoft product. I would rather struggle with a text editor than use MS Word for my documents.

    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."
  • From what I heard a few minutes ago, you are right about the Release Candidates. RC1 aka beta 4 will be available in the next few weeks. There might possibly be several RCs, just to fix embarassing cosmetic bugs or show-stopping fuckups. Only the most trusted people will be getting the RCs to test.

    But the guy from micro~1 swears on the Oct 7 date, and I've got 6 weeks to be ready for it. Bleh.

    the AC
  • I use the Linux 2.3 development line of kernels, which are also considered "not released". And "OF COURSE" they don't exactly "sputter along".
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."

  • It's true that people are happy with the workstation aspects of Win2000, but apparently the server stuff (Intellimirror, Active Directory) is still having some issues in a larger environment.

    One possiblity is that Win2000 Workstation will be out soon, but the server version will be delayed by a couple months, and the "Datacenter" server (which supposedly supports 32-way SMP), much later.
    --
  • This story was submitted to /. on Tuesday at
    lunchtime. Guess it wasnt deemed worthy until
    Wed. nite
  • Yeah, used to get that fault reported quite a bit where I used to work (large UK construction company). The opinion there was to blame WordPerfect 8, however the solution was quite simple and didn't involve reboots -> simply unplug and then re-plug the keyboard lead!
  • As one of the authors of the report, I'd like to thank you for making the point that when 13.5% of the respondents of a study say that they have Linux installed that this has absolutely no relationship to 13.5% share of the market.

    I also agree with a point made earlier that many of the respondents in the first adoption study were likely to have had Linux in their environment but didn't know it. The respondents to both studies were decision-makers for information technologies in their organization. These folks may not have known what individuals in their organizations were using. They did know, on the other hand, what they were responsble for selecting.

    Dan Kusnetzky, program director for operating environments and serverware research services
  • by 2001 i expect that koffice, gnumeric, abiword etc.. are mature enought that most companys will seriously consider to switch typical desktops.. with the knowledge that the switch might be a little bit painful first but afterwards they will never have to pay the m$ tax again..

    I wouldn't bet money on it. I work for a Fortune 50 company that has been brainwashed by Microsoft. They have standardised on Windows 95/98/NT, Office 97 and MS Mail. They are currently rolling out Exchange to replace MS Mail. The Mac users were shipped off to political reeducation camps several years ago.

    The company appears to be happy to pay inflated prices for Microsoft bugware. I can understand Windows and Office on the desktops, but why use Microsoft's junk on the servers?

  • Just in case anyone is still reading this thread...

    I'm not a windoze type, I normally just work on networks, and anything above layer 4 is ignored.

    The last couple of days I was sitting in a microsoft building listening to marketing droids spew about Active Directory, and announcing as a fact that win2k would have a big kickoff on October 7th. Of course, they were so uncertain as to what was in AD, I doubt these low-level serfs actually know what redmond will do any more than an outsider. Just because they are badge wearing certifiable microserfs doesn't give them any more insight than the press reports they read.

    If you want to know where the next big round of security holes on networks will come from, look to active directory. Closed source bloatware security for micro~1 networks where its own security was added as an afterthought.

    the AC
  • Doubt it. People are really stuck with Windows - documents, Excel tables, many many applications.. Upgrading is so much easier then moving to a complete new system... That's the whole point of MS monopoly..
  • Why cant you just say "It's not for me, it's too technically oriented and too much of a hassle." This is a description of linux that applies to 90% of computer users. And you know what... we dont want you! Use Windows9x and have a fucking blast! Why the fuck are you bitching about something that's free and that you INSTALLED YOURSELF!!

    Nobody is cramming Linux down your throat. If you don't like, DONT USE IT. And, BTW, although MS products are largely crammed down our throats, I think Linux users should take the same approach with them. Accurate discussions of technical problems and limitations are one thing.. but bullshit whining (such as in this post) and moaning does nothing but waste time and bandwidth.
  • Actually, I'm using Linux... I was just quoting the previous poster verbatim.
  • I have never had problems with GTK, at all, ever.

    You can put libraries anywhere all you have to do is edit ld.so.conf. Any problematic binaries you have all you have to do is type in ldd and you will see what libraries they use. You can even see what if any functions you may be missing so you can find a better version of the library. Any glibc problems you may see is a result of bad coding. Libraries are pretty well organized and you can easily see the name and version number of the libraries. (Not that there is no room for improvement though). I run slackware and have no problems with my libraries.

    With the inflated registry problem when I used to run windows the registry grew larger and larger. I actually had to use a registry cleaner because it got so bad. Programming for registries is equally horrid. Please if you program for Windows use INI files. Dot files are sweet in unix and can easy be backed up and compressed. Delete your registry and what happens your system? It dies a complete death. DLLs in windows and DLLs in ELF serve very similar purposes, while I don't question the idea of DLLs I question the placement and management of DLLs. To make a long story short, installing new linux programs does not alter your DLL structure, you must independently get your DLLs your self in most cases. That to me is secure. Why have almost every program you install overwrite your DLLs or have many copies of the same DLLs lying around. That to me is not very secure or very rational.
  • Work arounds aren't perfect ya know!


  • I guess I should clarify: $150 CANADIAN FUNDS
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."
  • I wasn't suggesting not paying for StarOffice licenses. I was saying you could minimize the problems, by doing the usual corporate maneuver of only having one default configuration for workstations/PCs, with a standard PC and standard software. Which is what many places do with MSFT, so it's just a matter of saying goodbye to MS Office and hello to StarOffice.

    And it works for Win95/98, so why not install it onto the old Windows machines you allow to exist?

    Where did you get the idea I was proposing ignoring licensing restrictions?

  • By not crashing the whole system because one card dies. :)

  • Since Windows is going AD, which is compatable with LDAP, Maybe we should be starting to use LDAP more in linux.

    I've used LDAP in the past, but it was pretty lame but promising then.

    What about Samba? And news on it's compatibility with Win2000?

  • I hope either Queen ("One Vision") or the Nazi party got royalties.
    --
  • You haven't uninstalled any software, nor have you installed and major non-Microsoft software, nor do you have a high-traffic site with databases, e-commerce, and the like (I don't actually know about the last one, but the first 2 are true in my experience.)
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."
  • That's what keeps us all honest, eh?

    So why doesn't someone do a web page, that lists all the products out there, and their original announced ship dates, then all the amendments to that ship date.

    I think an unsettling pattern would emerge on such a page. Such a page would probably by word of mouth, end up being a hit magnet of some sort. And perhaps, over the span of a year or three, folks in the cathedral would be less likely to spew vapor.

    Just a thought.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • RC3 is due by Oct 7, I doubt that the release code will be ready on Oct 7 timeline. RC2 is Aug 25. I'm feeling for a November RTM, meaning in the shops for Christmas. We'll know more once RC2 is out and happening. I have a number of bugs I need chased up before I'd personally be happy with the release.
  • heh.
    in my experience, the Win2k DNS server still has some issues.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • "Microsoft realized that the released of Windows 95 and NT 4 were premature, and thus see the need to improved quality control."

    Um, okay....

    "If our customers say, 'ship it,' then this is the one," he said. "But if we still have work to do,
    we'll work on the product until we get it right."
    -Craig Beilinson, Microsoft's lead product manager for Windows 2000

    Does this sound like quality control?


    "Shucks! Nun of our bayta tasters komplained real loud. And that 'crak our box' went good - only krashin haf da time. It must be dun! Put away the pointed sticks boys!"

    I think what people are "afraid" of of is that M$ will continue to rule the world with horrible products. NT was their one product that didn't suck so bad and if they could build an empire on Win3.1 and 95 people are "afraid" that with one decent product and an ad budget bigger that the money generated from Redhat's IPO M$ will continue to rule unjustly.

    Take from Apple - building a better system isn't enough against M$ you also have to fight the hard fight.
    If Linux, Apple and other Unixii (and maybe BeOS) can get together and carve the overall percentage of M$'s market/mind share down and make M$ compete on the quality of code issues rather than brand names then we'll be getting somewhere near a more level playing field.

    My $.02,

    =tkk

  • fwiw, IDC tends to be a hair more reliable than Gartner Group.
    I trust neither, but IDC doesn't deserve to be put quite on the level of GG.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • If Micros~1 paid everyone from whom they ripped something off, they would have no money left.
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."
  • I'm not sure that the delay of w2k has anything to do with the increased number of Linux users. I have to believe that with the media circus Linux seems to be mired in we would be seeing that number grow regardless. OTOH I think that Linux might cause some people from making the jump to w2k because they have had a chance to see how well Linux works and they have to love the $$$ they are gonna save.

    I think MS would be hard pressed to ship that monster this year anyways, with beta ... er uh..I mean release cadidate number 2 coming out they will have to test it pretty well and you can be confident that changes will have to be made. They would be insane to rush it any more than they aleady are.

    I'll bet my right foot that they area still introducing new "features" into the latest beta..er uh..I mean RC. There is no way that's gonna be bug free.
  • no way! the borg kicks ass
  • Okay.

    I've been trying to get into *nix for a while now. First tried FreeBSD, didn't get it, dabbling with RH 6 now... still don't get it.

    Maybe if it was easier to get into *nix it would spread much farther. And I'm not some clueless newbie, just brainwashed by Micros~1. I do tech support for Windows (hell) and I know how much it sucks, but I'm still completely lost in Linux. About the only commands I know are ls, cd, and pwd...

    Anyone have any pointers to some good Linux newbie sites?

    Jonathan Wang
  • A whole IS department? What does that mean? It could be 2 people.

    Where I work, it means dozens.

    And the pagers go off at 2 in the morning because the users forgot their password or some other such nonsense.

    Bzzzt! Nope :) Again, at my workplace, that's what the 24/7 phone monkeys are for (password resets, etc.). It's a pathetic place -- people get paged to come in at 2:30am when parts of the network go down. One NT box must be rebooted *nightly* to keep it running, and it keeps all the garbage helpdesk software going.

    The servers die on a consistent basis. It brings a bit of stability to my day knowing I don't have to deal with them (my dumb little P120 notebook running Linux keeps on chugging (yes, it's attached to the network and using it) while all the 'doze boxes around it panic and die because suddenly they can't spot their precious domain controller :)

    (a) zealous linux users that have never actually used NT

    Count me out of this group. I'm a zealous Linux user forced to deal with NT every day of my working life lately. I hate it. It's buggy, slow, can't multitask worth a damn, *STILL* dies when explorer.exe bites it (which happens often), and that's just on the client side! Nevermind the annoyances I experience when trying to do seemingly simple things like check my mail (Outlook -- ick) or grab the latest antivirus updates (another 'doze affliction). The only thing that ever works right is our damned firewall, because *it's* running Unix (along with everything else of any importance at the company).

    (b) clueless NT admins who are clueless, not through any fault of their own, but because NT 4 has the Win95 interface, and is advertised as being supereasy to run and config.

    Agreed. Although I wouldn't say this is an overemphasis. Clueless NT admins abound, and anyone with enough experience with NT to make it even *pretend* to behave like an OS instead of a toddler is either busy earning M$ certifications or learning about that funky Unix thing their friends use to make double their income.

  • The one that immediately springs to mind is The Linux Documentation project at http://www.linuxdoc.org/ [linuxdoc.org] - the Installation and Getting Started Guide is excellent and once you're comfortable with what you've learned there, the other guides such as the User Guide and the System Administrator guide introduce you to more.

    Another good one is http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ [linuxnewbie.org] - It has what they call "NHF's", which stands for Newbie Help Files.

    You may also want to have a look at Linux.Com [linux.com] which is working to provide articles and links to help newbies get established.

    Once you understand the basics, learning how to do new things or handle new situations becomes much easier. Then your tools can become mailing list archives for particular things you may be looking for information on, and deja.com & google.com for that hard-to-find tidbit.

    Good luck. :)

  • I remember those days... My friend had Win95 Beta on his computer, and I remember saying "Wow! You can play TWO .avi files at the SAME TIME? Without the computer crashing?! Amazing!"

    I could play 3 AVI's simultanously on a 486-66 before win95 was even released. I used os/2 at the time. And that was 320x200 AVI's, not those stamp-sized things windows had. Crashing the machine was never an issue. The reason for not playing 4 avi's was merely skipping.
  • Uhmm Core Dumps don't happen for no reason. Why don't you try running the program through a debugger and see why the program core dumps if your so good. And you could tell the coder what he/she did wrong. Sure you can do that in Windows, but it is unlikely that they would respond to you.

    And uh if you have to tell us you don't suck you probably do suck.

  • Today my keyboard stopped working. I think it was because I left top on for too long.

    I was barely using the keyboard, just watching network monitoring stuff.

    Everything else was working fine except the keyboard would not work.

    I had to log in via ssh from my laptop and reboot. That's not the first time that has happened either.

    I love using linux much more than I ever enjoyed using Windows. Windows 9x was always a lot more unstable. All kinds of things went wrong all the time.

    However, that is not to say that linux is impervious. It isn't. I have had freezes and crashes. It' not my hardware either. I have a very solid and high quality system.

    ./ers tend to treat linux like some kind of holy grail. It's just a tool, and it's not a perfect one either. It's just the best one for the money as far as I'm concerned.

    I'm still waiting for my Crystal sound chip to work on my laptop, and for my Hauppauge TV card to start working. It will at some point. At some point I will want a new computer too.

  • The problem with Win2000 - fear among NT users (Score:3)

    by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Wednesday August 18, 1999 @02:58PM (#1738993) Journal
    Despite it's problems, NT4 is the "NetWare 3" of the late 90s LAN - the entrenched market leader. (Before anyone makes any comparison, NetWare 3 wins in many respects, but I remember quite a few abends and configuration nightmares.)

    Windows 2000 probably will be a compelling workstation for shops struggling with crappy Win9x, but the server version includes a number of complex and difficult to understand network services aimed at the enterprise market.

    This poses a big problem: Larger shops won't want to move to Active Directory (etc) for a while until they've tested the hell out of it. Upgrading is no longer a tactical decision (like NT3.51 to NT4 or NT4 to Linux/Samba), and more of a strategic one which will involve considerable planning and budget and the typical interminable big-IS project BS.

    (I don't see much good information from MS about how an Domain to AD transition is really supposed to work. They probably don't know themselves. Furthermore, they've magnified the problem by unifying the Exchange and NOS directories, which makes the prominence of fucking up an order of magnitude greater. Maybe I'm missing something, but I also don't see a way to run Win2000 server in 'Domain-emulation' mode.)

    Smaller shops (which by-in-large are running NT with loosely pieced together WINS systems and broadcasts) don't want or need Active Directory, et al, and will have considerable fear and uncertainty over an upgrade. Everything is kinda-sorta working -- why break it.

    All of this adds up to a lot of fear and confusion for NT shops. Add in an economic downturn, and IT budget cuts will probably stagante any new project or make cheaper alternatives (ahem) look more appealing.

    So, NT5/Win2000 has a big chance at being the "NetWare 4" of the early 00s LAN -- A good portion of the installed base might just skip the upgrade or switch to a less complex and cheaper alternative.
    --

  • It really depends what you run (or don't run). It's not uncommon for (non-MS) Lotus Domino to be up forever on NT, while (MS) Exchange certainly has it's difficulties.

    --

  • Actually, Windows 95 (which was delayed over a year) was suprisingly non-buggy, considering it was built on top of the horrific Windows 3.1. It was no NT/OS2/Unix, but it wasn't intended to be either.

    Of course, 4 years of accumulated crap has pretty much got Windows 9x back to the stability level of Win3.1. Time to start over again!
    --

  • 2001 (Score:1)

    by dermond ( 33903 )
    But by 2001 a good chunk of the market will be Win2K with everybody else making plans.

    by 2001 i expect that koffice, gnumeric, abiword
    etc.. are mature enought that most companys will seriously consider to switch typical desktops.. with the knowledge that the switch might be a little bit painful first but afterwards they will never have to pay the m$ tax again..

    when planed right, the transition on the desktop could be rather smooth.. those people who still need legacy m$ apps would run X on windoze (e.g. exceed) slowly more and more dektops will be pure linux..

    greetings from vienna, austria

    mond.
  • Did you use gimp scripts for the title images?
  • Perhaps he bought the full version, not the upgrade. The upgrade cost $89, the full version cost ~$180 retail AFAIR.

    Hmm...Why do windows users insist on defending their crap?

    As for tall tales, I will give you my stock answer as to my reasons for deciding that MS products are crap -- I've used them, and found them lacking.

    For example:
    I received a free copy of NT 4.0 with some other piece of MS shovelware I had to purchase. I thought "what the hell, I'll install it and use it for a while". I installed it on a Tuesday onto a machine that previously ran win95 and linux, but after getting a new machine was relegated to a test box. I am a firm believer in getting quality parts, so at the time the machine was built, it was a quality machine that I built myself (Tyan Tomcat, good RAM, Matrox Millenium video, Intel P133, etc...), and only about 18 months old. I say this was a quality machine because I don't want any "it was prolly your crappy hardware or something" posts. This machine is now a linux fileserver and has run great for years now (with various OS and part combos, but the mobo, RAM, and CPU are all still there).

    After the installation I went to bed, just turning off the monitor and letting the machine run. I made absolutely no configuration changes. I didn't have a chance to get to it again until Thursday. Getting home and turning on the monitor, I was surprised to see...The Blue Screen of Death!!! This was MS's flagship product? The one where, with only a few registry settings difference (as NT Server), was supposed to take the Unix world by storm and blow it out of the water?? A fresh install on known good hardware running in a climate controlled room with no network services running (not even plugged in to the network, BTW) under ABSOLUTELY NO LOAD caused this OS to crash!?!?!

    This is my "tall tale" as you call it, and every word is true. I now have to support some NT machines at work and hate every minute of it.
    My boss is subcontracted out to a large corporation as a Unix admin, and he and the 2 other Unix guys sit back and babysit their machines from their desks, while the NT LAN admins run themselves to death fixing problems.


    hahahaha....
  • What if we (consumers) say "Shove it!", will they?
    When, oh when will they? That day will not come soon enough....
  • I upgrade my OS on my server when I need to -- not just to keep it "up to date". I built a new one this spring and brought it up on the new hardware 77 days ago. I don't intend to bring it down until I either upgrade the hardware or a security vulnerability that affects my services is found. And, it's hardly business oriented -- it's a game server. ;)

    Uh, that is, unless my 3 year old UPS can't ride out one of our many summer storm-caused power outages. I think I'd better be ready to replace that too...

  • I thought W2K was a Service Pack...

  • ... as soon as they release it, even MORE people will turn to linux.

    ---------------------------
  • Did I mention that the Unix admins (not my boss, since he is a contractor) make a lot more money than the NT drones??
  • MS is in for some trouble if too many of their beta testers have this "it works on my single installation, it should work everywhere" attitude.
  • Companies who run WinNT networks usually need a whole IS department to keep their computers running. These people carry beepers that go off at 2:00 in the morning because the servers crash.

    A whole IS department? What does that mean? It could be 2 people.

    And the pagers go off at 2 in the morning because the users forgot their password or some other such nonsense. There's as much anti-Microsoft FUD on here as there ever was Microsoft originating FUD. Which is not to say I'm a Microsoft apologist (I don't even spell it a funny way, like Micros~1 or Micro$oft), but the shortcomings of MS' products are overemphasized by (a) zealous linux users that have never actually used NT and (b) clueless NT admins who are clueless, not through any fault of their own, but because NT 4 has the Win95 interface, and is advertised as being supereasy to run and config.

    I mean, come on, comparing sendmail/qmail/etc against Exchange? How about comparing it to IIS' SMTP service? [I've never used it so I don't know how well it does, but if you're gonna compare Exchange, compare it to Notes and Groupwise, not totally different products...]

    Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft's business practices, I hate them for forcing Windows on me and away from my beloved PC-DOS / QEMM / Desqview.

    And as far as 'linux/unix servers never crash' -- the only times MY NT servers (I didn't have a choice or they wouldn't be, but I make do) "crash" is from hardware failure. How is linux going to stop that?
  • I wonder if it will be debugged by 1901.
  • Could this possibly be because the details of making Windows-based apps are a tightly held secret of a certain company??

    Why should the users care what operating system they are running?? If the windows API was truly open, then anyone would be free to implement a way to run windows apps on another OS (IBM tried in OS/2, but couldn't get "real" win32 due to licensing). MS dominance is not the OS, as some people believe, it is in the apps. My favorite newsreader is Agent, but I can't run it on linux w/o a reverse-engineered compatibility layer that doesn't work correctly (WINE) or a $200 commercial VM (VMWare, which still requires you to pay the MS tax by buying a copy of Win9x or NT).

    I would love to see the Win32 API turned over to a standards body and fully disclosed, so that anyone could make a "better Windows than Windows" and end the dependence on win32. Let MS still make bloated office suites filled with features no one uses. See if they can still ramrod it down people's throats without "free" bundles added on to hardware purchases.
  • I forgot to mention that by tying VBA into Office and outlook is a major security hole (as has been seen in the last couple of months. Oh, that's right, MS has no interest in security (BO2k anyone?).

  • Where do you think the press gets these dates? Not Microsoft, certainly.

    I recall reading some MS marketing material (aka for press consumption) about "Cairo", aka NT 5, aka Windows 2000 in *1994*. This isn't the press speculating about a release 5 years into the future - this is Microsoft speculating.
    --
  • You forgot "3rd quarter 1900"

  • ... and don't jump to over-optimistic conclusions.

    1) There was a companion article in which IDC stated that corporate W2K rollouts will probably be delayed 6 - 18 months due to customers' wariness about MS' "bad record with the stability of initial releases" (paraphrased).
    - This is not a pro-Linux statement, it's just a realistic statement about MS' track record. Good, people are starting to see.

    2) Linux has gained a visible installed base. This means people are using it where it's useful. It may (or may not) have anything to do about W2K. It's far more likely that Unix literate IS staff and other techies have managed to use Linux is areas where "big Unix" is overkill and MS is acknowledged crap.
    - This is not anti-MS. It's just a statement that people are using Linux and, by extension, OSS. This is a good thing.

    3) Even if W2K wary and NT4 weary sites move to Linux as the only viable alternative, the larger process of migration away from MS server platforms, let alone desktops, will take some time. It took years for Unix to muscle upwards from 70's & 80's geek OS into its current midrange stronghold. It will take time for its 90's offspring to push downward into PC land.

    This may not be a victory. It's just a confirmation that things are moving the way many of us suspect it is (and want it to).

    We can see "open" win. We just have to be patient. Let's also not overly gloat when we do make headway.

    -M
  • Any certified developer who has submitted a bug for beta 3...

    So, MS really is opening up their code base now. Beta testers can submit bugs of their choice... they aren't limited to the bugs provided by MS alone.

    (Yes, I know AC meant "bug REPORTS", but it was *SO* much fun to take the statement literally.)
  • To me what we are seeing is the maturation of the relationship between the software industry and business world. In the past, computer usage (and dependency) was limited to ppl and groups that were technically savy and technically cynical. Software bugs, downtime, bug patches were all part of the business of using computers. Ask any computer tech, would you really trust version X.0 of any software package?

    Now companies are getting more and more dependent on computers. Any downtime is not tolerated and is in fact reason for sensational press reporting(e.g., eBay). The tolerance level for any type of computer failure has shrunk. For instance, I remember a time when the central mainframe computer would fry it's core memory (literally). No computer, no problem. We would do other things.

    Now? Failure is not an option. CIO's know this. CIO's who make big bucks and cannot screw up know this. The "old" way of instantly upgrading then fighting the bugs is becoming ancient history. Upper management who decide upgrading decisions are very cognizant of when one of their bretheren gets burned by an unproven upgrade. Before, the mode of operation was keeping up with the Jones. Perhaps, now the stakes are much higher; this leads to more caution.

    It is important for linux to maintains "stable" kernel version. Relatively incremental improvements in an OS usually leads to stability.

  • ...this survey tells us nothing about the real marketshare (measured in number of machines weighted by their purpose) of Linux, but a lot about the mindshare...

    So true, but as Microsoft has shown us so effectively in the past, in the business world mindshare is the real battle. Whether that's a battle we need to concern ourselves with is left as an exercise for the reader.

  • Was just told today the ship date has been fixed for Oct 7th, and the media machines are to be unleashed immediately.

    Any certified developer who has submitted a bug for beta 3 will be allowed to order a CD with beta 4, which is the final candidate. Beta 4 is timebombed, and won't be DLable from micr~1.com.

    This was from a M$ drone, so I'll believe it on Oct 7th, not a day before :-)

    the AC

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