Open Source for All (Article)

[iago]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ttzd/20050817/tc_techtues_zd/158310&cid=1739&ncid=1729

Never fear, counterculture types. You can still liberate the code, and experience many other perks, by becoming part of the open-source movement.

With the steadily increasing number of open-source applications on the Web, there are more projects than ever to check out, covering nearly every imaginable application: from word processors and e-mail applications to media players and video games.

[GameSnake]

Articles like this always deserve a comment or two.
Yes, I would like, hope and pray that open source and Linux are the way of the future.

[MyndFyre]

Articles like this always deserve a comment or two.
Yes, I would like, hope and pray that open source and Linux are the way of the future.

Right along with communism?

OK, here's the thing:

Completely-open-source, non-commercial products will never be 100% up-to-par with commercial and closed-source products.

Why not?  For the same reason that communism fails:

People are not willing to work indefinitely on something without receiving some kind of compensation for it.  People need to be able to make a living.  For many people, the standard of living within communism is so much lower than that of a capitalist society that it becomes acceptable, even necessary, to screw over your "comrades" and do what is worthwhile.

By the time that Linux has the hardware compatibility and ease-of-use that Windows has now, Windows will be on a great voice-recognition-style UI similar to the one on the USS Enterprise and will only take 5 minutes to install.  Sure, Linux will have something like it, but the AI won't be nearly as sophisticated and the commands that it can accept will be limited, but "expandable if you can program them in."

And by the time that Linux is as easy to install and configure as Windows.....  We'll have been dead for 3 generations. 

Then the argument goes, "Well, there are commercial *nix distributions."  You're right, but guess what -- they're not free anymore.  And for the TCO that goes into *nix commercial products (I think it's like $100 for SuSE Professional, the most competent and full-featured *nix product I've found), teaching it to your employees, handling tech support, having experienced *nix-ers, it is just as cost-effective (or even moreso) to just give them Windows and Office.

[Screenor]

Articles like this always deserve a comment or two.
Yes, I would like, hope and pray that open source and Linux are the way of the future.

Linux will never be able to be "the future", if it stays that difficult to install, and use. Plus the fact alone that you can't game on Linux puts it back a lot, considering the majority of people who own computers, do infact have one or two+ games on their CPU that they'd like to play.

[dx]

Meet wine.

[RoMi]

You can game on Linux.  The driver support is there, and there are a few games for it.

[Screenor]

I don't see anyone playing CS, BF2, WoW, GW, PK, D2, or any other major games out there on Linux.

[RoMi]

Becasue its a pain in the ass.  You made it sound in your post that there we're no games for linux, and I just corrected you.

[Screenor]

Becasue its a pain in the ass.  You made it sound in your post that there we're no games for linux, and I just corrected you.

Exactly, it's a pain in the ass, and everyone in the world is lazy. Therefore, by the majority of the worlds population being lazy, it's not possible to them. Linux wont be the future unless it becomes more simple to use/run on a regular basis by people with average computer knowledge.

[dx]

But it's not a Operating System for people with 'Average computer knowledge'. I can safely say the majority of people who do run *nix don't game anyways. It's just not cut out for a gaming environment, as window is.

[mynameistmp]

Articles like this always deserve a comment or two.
Yes, I would like, hope and pray that open source and Linux are the way of the future.

Right along with communism?

OK, here's the thing:

Completely-open-source, non-commercial products will never be 100% up-to-par with commercial and closed-source products.

www.yahoo.com -- linux
www.google.com -- linux
www.nasa.gov -- linux (ironic the american government uses communist software ;P)
www.democracynow.org -- linux (commies, obviously)
www.cadillac.com -- linux (cts-v, mmmmm)
www.ibm.com -- linux
www.usatoday.com -- linux

So on and so forth. It seems like you are _speaking_ theory. In reality, there are countless open source solutions implemented on commercial levels of operation.

[GameSnake]

MyndFyre, Scr33nor, I wasn't really asking your side of the deal, I know Windows-nerds, you'll bash Linux any chance you get but the thread isn't about that. I simply noticed this thread had no replies and wanted to say "yes - I hope, meaning there wasn't any wrong anwser for you to correct me on. If you wanna throw dirt then we can always ask 80% of the internet what it runs on. It is sad that Linux does so much server work and keeps so many networks running effciently better then Windows yet everyone will bash Linux for no good reason -- IT'S FREE -- you can't complain about that!

[MyndFyre]

MyndFyre, Scr33nor, I wasn't really asking your side of the deal, I know Windows-nerds, you'll bash Linux any chance you get but the thread isn't about that. I simply noticed this thread had no replies and wanted to say "yes - I hope, meaning there wasn't any wrong anwser for you to correct me on. If you wanna throw dirt then we can always ask 80% of the internet what it runs on. It is sad that Linux does so much server work and keeps so many networks running effciently better then Windows yet everyone will bash Linux for no good reason -- IT'S FREE -- you can't complain about that!

Both GameSnake and tmp are guilty of misinterpreting what I say.  I know tmp is actually intelligent about the topic, but I assume that he thinks I am not.  As for GameSnake...  well, I just have to assume that he's like 95% of the worlds 13-y/o nerds who proclaims to love *nix but runs Windows 95% of the time.

To address tmp first -- I was NOT saying that Linux is communist.  What I was saying is that the two are in analogous positions: communism fails to function because people don't want to work endlessly for everyone else.  People are willing to be altruistic (evidenced by the fact that there is open-source software at all), but it isn't practical or possible to do this for a long time without some kind of monetary compensation.

Websites -- sure.  Apache has been around for a long time, and has been time-tested.  NASA -- sure.

What it boils down to, though, is that I don't need or want to calculate multidimensional vector physics at home.  I don't want to index the entire internet.  I don't want to publish a newspaper, or build international business service machines.

I want to play games, have some fun, do some work, and get it done as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I've tried several *nix builds.  They all have something in common: nothing supports the full set of my hardware out of the box.

Slackware was the worst: that required me to manually set it up for use with my video card and network card.  It worked with my old sound card after a LOT of tweaking, but I recently upgraded to the Audigy II, and despite many claims to, none of the builds (except SuSE) have worked with it thus far.

SuSE was great -- I even bought a commercial distro of it a couple years ago (I think it was 8.2).  However, that one didn't work with my network card (wireless USB), and SuSE 9.x doesn't work with my network card or my video card.  The free version doesn't come with a compiler, so I can't make the drivers for it without jumping through hoops.

Ubuntu -- That lasted long enough for me to know I didn't want to use it.

The latest I've worked with is Fedora Core.  That one seems just about as competent as SuSE, it autodetects most of my hardware, doesn't give me any problems when I set up my network card (I am a pro at it now), but it still doesn't work my audio card.  I've tried several of the walkthroughs that talk about ALSA and OSS.  And you're right, it's probably an ID10T error, but frankly, if it takes me that much work to get on Linux, it's not worth my time.

WINE has been a part of most, if not all, of the distros I've installed (I normally read through the packages that are being installed), but I've never had success getting a Windows app to run.  There's no apparent place to configure it, and if it has to be done through the command line, why?  I know how to get to a command line, and I'm fairly good at using it.  But I'm not as young as I used to be.  I was a DOS power user; I could configure DOS memory management by hand, and damn I was good at it.  But I don't have the time to learn all of the Linux commands anymore, and it's not worth my time.

I guarantee you, I'm a lot more forgiving to Linux than most people my age or higher would be who haven't used it extensively before.

And tmp, out of curiousity (because I never have a *nix box up long enough to want to host a web server on it), does Apache have an X configuration system?  A command line is not intuitive (beyond "help me you piece of shit!!!").

GameSnake, before you go making assumptions about me being a "Windows-nerd" and bashing "Linux for no good reason," I suggest you actually take time to read people's posts and respond to their issues.  You're right, it wasn't something for me to correct.  I wasn't trying to correct anything.  I was trying to give you a dose of reality as I see it.

I'm certainly not complaining that Linux is free.  I'm complaining that I can't use Linux on my computer in a way that utilizes my computer's full potential in what I want to use it for.

[Quik]

Articles like this always deserve a comment or two.
Yes, I would like, hope and pray that open source and Linux are the way of the future.

Right along with communism?

OK, here's the thing:

Completely-open-source, non-commercial products will never be 100% up-to-par with commercial and closed-source products.

Why not?  For the same reason that communism fails:

People are not willing to work indefinitely on something without receiving some kind of compensation for it.  People need to be able to make a living.  For many people, the standard of living within communism is so much lower than that of a capitalist society that it becomes acceptable, even necessary, to screw over your "comrades" and do what is worthwhile.

By the time that Linux has the hardware compatibility and ease-of-use that Windows has now, Windows will be on a great voice-recognition-style UI similar to the one on the USS Enterprise and will only take 5 minutes to install.  Sure, Linux will have something like it, but the AI won't be nearly as sophisticated and the commands that it can accept will be limited, but "expandable if you can program them in."

And by the time that Linux is as easy to install and configure as Windows.....  We'll have been dead for 3 generations. 

Then the argument goes, "Well, there are commercial *nix distributions." You're right, but guess what -- they're not free anymore. And for the TCO that goes into *nix commercial products (I think it's like $100 for SuSE Professional, the most competent and full-featured *nix product I've found), teaching it to your employees, handling tech support, having experienced *nix-ers, it is just as cost-effective (or even moreso) to just give them Windows and Office.

Watch Revolution OS. Open-source and profit CAN and DOES exist.

I don't see anyone playing CS, BF2, WoW, GW, PK, D2, or any other major games out there on Linux.

I have.

[iago]

Well, to tackle the easiest first, you open your apache configuration file (httpd.conf) on either a commandline or a gui tool.  How exactly is:

#
# Port: The port to which the standalone server listens. For
# ports < 1023, you will need httpd to be run as root initially.
#
Port 80

#
# If you wish httpd to run as a different user or group, you must run
# httpd as root initially and it will switch.
#
# User/Group: The name (or #number) of the user/group to run httpd as.
#  . On SCO (ODT 3) use "User nouser" and "Group nogroup".
#  . On HPUX you may not be able to use shared memory as nobody, and the
#    suggested workaround is to create a user www and use that user.
#  NOTE that some kernels refuse to setgid(Group) or semctl(IPC_SET)
#  when the value of (unsigned)Group is above 60000;
#  don't use Group "#-1" on these systems!
#

User nobody
Group nobody

#
# ServerAdmin: Your address, where problems with the server should be
# e-mailed.  This address appears on some server-generated pages, such
# as error documents.
#
ServerAdmin iago@valhallalegends.com

etc.  How complicated is that?  I'm sure people have written a graphical front-end for managing it, but I don't really care.  I'm perfectly comfortable editing that file. 

People are not willing to work indefinitely on something without receiving some kind of compensation for it.  People need to be able to make a living.  For many people, the standard of living within communism is so much lower than that of a capitalist society that it becomes acceptable, even necessary, to screw over your "comrades" and do what is worthwhile.

By the time that Linux has the hardware compatibility and ease-of-use that Windows has now, Windows will be on a great voice-recognition-style UI similar to the one on the USS Enterprise and will only take 5 minutes to install.  Sure, Linux will have something like it, but the AI won't be nearly as sophisticated and the commands that it can accept will be limited, but "expandable if you can program them in."

There's a couple problems there.  First, how do you define "compensation"?  Do you not think that admiration and respect is worthy compensation?  People program opensource for a similar reason to why people do volunteer work: if you can have fun and help people at the same time, then why not?

What makes you think that the AI won't be as sophisticated? Don't forget that most AI software is developed at Universities.  That puts Windows and Linux on even ground.  I do agree with you, however: Windows would probably add it in a way that bogged down the system and created new vulnerabilities (like somebody saying "computer, delete all"), whereas Linux would have a package made by some normal person that Windows users would whine about having to download/install. 

BSD has made many advances in securing systems.  Many features that Microsoft added in SP2 (like stack canaries) were originally from BSD.  The encrypted file system that Windows Vista plans to use is very similar to BSD's.  Packet capture/filter?  pcap is a layer over BPF (Berkeley Packet Filters) and is used for many commercial projects. 

BSD has made the most advances in the real world because it's not only open-source, but it's license allows their code to be used in commercial products.  So a lot of opensource research in that area are funded (often by the NSA or other scientific-grant organizations). 

Incidentally, Tmp, iirc, Yahoo is run on FreeBSD.  So does the NSA (I believe it's a variation of FreeBSD, TrustedBSD or something).

Oh, also, I don't see Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds complaining about how they're starving because they don't write commercial software. 


<edit> Neat little fact, there's a mod or feature or something for FreeBSD that adds software access controls at the kernel level.  Every program has a SHA1 checksum, which is listed in the progarm's inode.  Whenever a program runs, if this mode is enabled, it checks the checksum, and checks if that user is allowed to use that program (default deny).  If they aren't, it's killed.  If the program was modified in any way, it's killed, no matter who the owner is.  That'll be the next type of feature to be added to Windows