1 Way That Linux is an Epic Fail

You're not in South Carolina by way of West Virginia, by any chance, Palmetto? :)

But this is the "Win32" flip-side of the Pro-Linux argument posted RIGHT before your post, Phantom.

But somehow, the previous post just seems to lack the authenticity of yours. You're talking real numbers (FPS in 3D gaming)... The pro-linux post before yours was all about subjective things...

To the PREVIOUS poster - the problem is that it isn't just imperfect. It is seriously flawed in some significant ways - and I'm not alone in my frustration or experience. Once again this Linux mentallity of "Perhaps the problem is YOU" - doesn't help the Linux cause. If Microsoft had been doing a lot of "perhaps the problem is YOU" to the end user back around Win 3.11 or 95/98... we probably wouldn't be seeing their dominance via XP, today.

I'm fine with Linux remaining a niche player, "also-ran" contender in the desktop OS arena. I make my living off of supporting Win32 environments professionally, and learning to support a whole new platform in that capacity would be a pain. So if Linux wants to remain a mediocre alternative that appeals primarily to uber-geeks and economically challenged non-domestic users - no hair off my chin.

I'll still maintain that a majority of "users" who prefer Linux are actually "developers" - which is a far different beast than an "end-user".

From a system admin's perspective, end-users are uneducated and generally a PITA. Developers are arrogant, over-confident, bull-headed and often just skilled enough to create serious problems.

D

.. I ever was related too.

(gah.. I'm going to be on this line of jokes all day)

my computer WAS my tv. I have a 24 inch monitor, a remote control for it, and a dvd player built in. I can also browse the internet on it. I lived in a small aprtment and had no need or desire to buy a huge tv for the hour or so of tv I watched a week. And being stretched out in front of the computer monitor was no worse or better then a similar sized tv. Also, a tv tuner in your computer is like having a TiVo(tm), so I could program the shows I wanted to watch to be recorded, and watch them at my convenience.
Now days I have my laptop connected to the lcd tv and my amp. There are legal sources for streaming tv, hulu for example, that I prefer over having to wait until a show is on that week. Not being an avid tv watcher, I really don't care if I'm 3 or 5 episodes behind broadcast.

As someone who is technically adept, a quick look at Hulu and it looks far more legit than some (most) of the links I've been refered to...

"Hey, watch the Dark Knight free here at.."

"Hey, have you seen W. yet? You can watch it online at..."

But to an average user, drawing the distinction between a legitimate site and one that is clearly running afoul of copyright law is a much more difficult challenge. I see a technology trainwreck of litigation, accusation and futile legislation coming in the future in relation to these sites that stream video - that will make the current issues surrounding YouTube and cease and desist requests there seem like nothing worth even noticing.

but over 100mb, havent made the jump to Gbit yet. Copying files to the Nas is indeed slow depending on size, but they play back across the network with no issue at all. Of note to some is the ease that freeNAS has in playing with active directory, if you want to use it for AAA.
Im running it on an old Gen 1 Athalon XP64 (2.2 ghz) with a gig of ram and sata 1 drives. The wire speed is definitely my bottle neck.
Good to know about the gig speed performance before I make the jump. Doesn't sound like it would really hurt me at all, even 400 sustained would be what, a 430% increase? (avg about 75 sustained mb atm I think).
Is the reduction in (advertised) wire speed in the net stack or the driver you think? 450 out of 1 gig is way to low to just be "overhead".
Out of curiosity, is it cat5 or cat6 cable?

Directtv and interrupts the shows with commercials (non-skippable). They even advertise the sight (featuring the fat Baldwin brother) on cable TV.
As best as I can tell, its as legit as you can get with streaming.

"I see a technology trainwreck of litigation, accusation and futile legislation coming in the future in relation to these sites that stream video - that will make the current issues surrounding YouTube and cease and desist requests there seem like nothing worth even noticing."

I fear your right, but if we learned anything from cd's and mp3's, standing in the way of "progress" means loss of revenue.
Our society is becoming used to being catered to by the internet, legally or not. This translates into dissatisfaction with the current model of TV distribution and cable "packages" which have remained unchanged for what, 20 years now?
Winning the war on internet piracy is akin to winning the war on drugs. Nearly impossible to do while maintaining the civil liberties of the innocent.

no, red hat rpm management is such a horrid cludge. Apt is superior in every usability standpoint.
But I share your bias :)

but only a 3 month/year study time requirements after the initial test was passed.

Well, any site with revenue from advertising. I'm on OSNews reading an article about the latest BSD or distro with a nice big Windows add along the right side. The ads are fed from a third party to the website and generate content based on the words in the article and cookie "research" already done against my browser.

I could see a similar result from LinDVD or Hulu pages. They are movie related and selling space on the page. A third party advertiser buys the space and ads are fed based on whatever the content suggests as most applicable. For DVD player software, that could be "watch here free" ads.

Granted, it doesn't help anyone when a legitimate media player is all but sideswiped by ads for illegitimate media sources.

I think the problem with internet ads is they're not "vetted" by anyone. Automatic linking tools are set up, people plug in the ads sites sign up to host the ads, and no one is actually checking content. The answer to your concern, Neon, is simply to have people watching the ads and blocking questionable or inappropriate ones.

But Dumphrey - you're right. Unfortunately, when it comes to making a decision that favors the civil rights of citizens, or one that favors the deep-pocketed corporate interests of their lobbyist groups - it seems that our Government has become highly predictable in what they will pick in the era of the perpetual Steamboat Willie copyright Act.

If winning the war on drugs suited a very major corporation with lots of influence in D.C., how quickly would civil rights be out the door?

Although it is technically illegal under the DMCA, I hear softmodding original Xbox consoles is a very interesting and rewarding for people interested in "mucking around in different OS and hardware platforms"...

:)

Mandriva uses urpmi. My understanding is that it's simply a wrapper for the rpm programs. However it works, it manages .rpm like "rpm" should have originally. Updates, dependencies.. not a problem.

I do remember rpm hell though. With Redhat, it was to the point where I only downloaded .src.rpm so I could compile out the binary .rpm installs. This confirmed that all dependencies where in place else the src.rpm wouldn't rebuild. F'ing painful.

Took like 30 different downloads to get Firefox to work, then I wanted to open jpeg files, more stupid RPM's, want to play MP3? More stupid dependencies.

of said case is Vista. So bad a release not even Microsoft wants to mention the name. They've been rebranding for a year now.

none of my files tend to be bigger then a few hundred megs, and I move them infrequently, so like you said, even 25% of a 1 gig connection is a huge improvement over full use of 100megs.
All my lines are very short, maybe 75 feet for the longest, all cat5. I doubt I will have many problems there.
The nic driver is the interesting part, I will have to see what chip the mobo is using, its gig Ethernet built onto a Gigabyte motherboard.
I actually had purchased a netgear 1TB nas at one point ($750) which was returned in a few days. It was pure junk. Its transfer speeds were less then freenas, and its management interface was painfully slow to load.
the 256 Mb of ram and sub-sub-par processor most likely had something to do with that.

Any idea how debian would do smb/cifs wise? version 5 stable came out on the 14th...

For trying to direct a little of this hate back toward MS - but MS really isn't a factor in this discussion, one way or another. It is really about Linux.

And Vista, failure or not, is very unlikely to have any long term impact on Win32, any more than Win ME had any significant lasting impact on Microsoft or their products.

Vista is an example of how effective snake-oil marketing by an ADVERSARY can ignite, truthful or not, and cause irreparable harm to your product line. To put that in perspective, if Apple and Microsoft were in the AUTOMOBILE industry, Apple ads would have had Microsoft cars bursting into flames and killing entire familes, while they claimed, "Apple automobiles NEVER burst into flames and kill families, that only happens in Microsoft cars".

Of course in the auto industry, such irresponsible advertising would result in huge lawsuits, so it would never happen.

But this is LARGELY what happened in the PC/Mac ads where Apple made outrageous claims, such as that Apple talks better to obscure Japanese USB cameras that a PC has no ability to communicate with.

And large parts of the public, either gullible or anxious to see Microsoft falter or fail, bought into this. The poor driver support for the original RTM release candidate for Vista didn't help things, and it took them awhile to get SP2 out and address significant problems. Finally, Microsoft actively mis-marketed the OS - pushing home features to corporate users. It just turned into the perfect storm. Of course, being at Intel when AMD "beat" them to 1ghz and they got a bunch of anti-trust cases instantly thrown out - sometimes you've got to lose to win, and maybe Microsoft is taking a clue from the Intel play-book.

But Vista is not NEARLY as bad as they press would have you believe. It is actually a lot BETTER than OS X Tiger (I don't have leopard, so I can't comment on that).

my issue with red hat is not the package format, but the software that manages and automates install and dependency meeting. (iirc PCLinux uses apt with rpms). Does it really need to scan all repository package headers every time you download any package? There are some packages to "update" this behavior, but honestly, Fedora offers me nothing I cant get with more familiarity and (perceived?) stability elsewhere.
CentOS (and I presume RHE) have no issues if you stick to the official repositories and avoid trying to turn it into a multimedia box. But, I prefer the Debian feel, so I keep using that

That Jack Wallen is talking about in another post here.

It sounds interesting to me. Anyone have any personal experience with it?

Granted, i was young at the time so a key reasons was RHE, a business distro, dropping simple mp3 support and similar features that I, a home distro install, needed.

The constant hell of Red Hat RPM was a big part of it too though.

Apt and Aptitude are fantastic. I've almost moved to PCLinuxOS just to have Apt-get, RPMS and the draketools in one install. urpmi, great. rpmdrake, great. Fedora, seems to be much improved. Old school Red Hat RPM.. broken.

I don't find any hate in my comments. Just clear observations of what happened. I won't go into love and hate discussion, just point to market share decline. Period.

Now this conversation is certainly about Linux. It might not be about Windows as you mention, but it isn't about laser disks either. So the validity and relevance of my comment stands as long as the laser disk comments stand (which you endorsed btw).

Now regarding Microsoft and Apple being in the auto industry. To start off I'd add that we wouldn't have such "use at your own risk" EULAs. If car manufacturers could allow airbags to not deploy, seat belts failing to lock, seat belts that snap, power steering that locks, engines that suddenly turn off, headlights that wont turn on (or off), break lights that sometimes work and sometimes don't, etc etc etc. Well they'd get sued silly.

So before we start comparing software manufacturers with auto manufacturers we have to clean this world of all the bad habits in the computer industry which are unconceivable in other industries.

Regarding the Tiger vs Vista comment. What did you expect? Tiger is older. Like saying Seven is better than Vista. What else would you expect? Are your expectations for Microsoft so low you could even consider an alternative answer?

PS, I also wanted to include a comment I hadn't had time to post to your previous comment. The one regarding administration and all those PCs you manage. Clearly an impressive feat, but we are talking about Joe Average. Not about a corporate IT department.

"If car manufacturers could allow airbags to not deploy, seat belts failing to lock, seat belts that snap, power steering that locks, engines that suddenly turn off, headlights that wont turn on (or off), break lights that sometimes work and sometimes don't, etc etc etc."

still drove a Yugo :)

.

Is in Mexico city. His perception of vehicle safety is probably completely different than what we're used to here in the States, Canada or most of Europe. Don't they still make the ORIGINAL VW Beetle for sale in Mexico? :)

On the rest, Saur, I think you just simply missed my point.

Vista is better than Tiger, but Tiger is better than any *currently* available version of Linux - as far as feature sets.

True, that's why I don't buy American made.

Unless it is Intel, you should disable it and go with an Intel chipset - although this isn't from my direct research, just what I read on review sides like Tom's Hardware. Now, interestingly, the Intel integrated GB chipset is supposed to go through the bus, which should be a bottleneck, but the reviews said it consistently performed better than even PCI-x 1 Intel nics.

Yeah, I bought a WD WorldBook gigabit NAS device, and it was lame. Couldn't support sustained 100mb transfer rates, let alone the gigabit it claimed to. Poorly designed and executed.

I considered this for a brief time, but I don't think the performance gain would be THAT much, and the setup and administration headache would be far greater - not to mention, you wouldn't get the cool FreeNAS custom oriented features. I figured for the loss in SMB throughput, I'd pay the FreeBSD performance tax.

Touche!

Cuando la gente de Mexico no compran coches de los Estados Unidos, porque de la seguridad mal, es un mal tiempo por los Estados Unidos, no?

:)

Por que no solo es en M?xico. Tambi?n mi familia en Georgia compra autos asi?ticos. :(

The *nix community as a whole NEED this fixed so they have a shred of credibility.

What do you mean "worlds poor" I have 2 Vista licenses I don't use and I can afford Windows, but I still don't use it. I have XP in a Virtual Machine I use some times, but Ubuntu is my main OS and I love it.

Must agree with you ... have tried latest versions of both OpenSUSE and Ubuntu, and had different error messages explaining why they won't work on my new system.

Firstly I had to compile a network driver on Ubuntu - how the ^%&&$ do I do that, I'm a windows user for pete's sake - then using OpenSUSE Grub failed. What the hell is Grub?

Yes I used google, linux forums and investigated pinpricks of light from hovels on the mountain, but couldn't understand the answers. And when I asked for help to understand the anwers I got a plethora of long-winded, complicated answers. Oh #@$%, think I'll stay with windows - version 7 looks much better, folks can at least get that to work on new PCs without trouble.

I'm a linux noob, but out of the box both these distros got me into more trouble than I wanted. Like windows I just want it to WORK!!

So no more linux experimentation for me - I'll stick with windows and be very happy thanks.

Linux is the alternative to Windows. Where (as in earlier posts) different cars are made for choice, so Linux is also for choice. Linux is not running for the number one spot (though in the server section it is), but as a good/different Operating system. How many times has a Windows system gone down with you?
Now (if you have a Linux system) how many times has a Linux system gone down with you?
I have Xandros running on my server, set it up once and it is still going after one year (no down time). I have also Windows Vista on my systems (two work stations) that talk to Xandros, i had to twice do a clean install because going through the registry would take too long, though some of it is due to my own doings as well because of testing some software. But Linux i just let it run, no Extra Virus software (already built in), no extra software for word, no IE7 or 8 (internet explorer). Just firefox.
Just like everything else with software you have to learn how it works to really appreciate it, the saying goes for Linux, if you do not have the time it will not run like you want it to, but if you have the time to read up on the DO's and do not's with Linux then you will be very satisfied with how Linux will just keep on running. Also it is down to choice, and i like choices (i do not like just one flavour), there are many different Linux systems out there, so if one is not to your liking then pick another one, the CHOICE is there, it is how you use it that will make the difference to how you work.