Posted on 06/19/2005 6:41:20 AM PDT by Willie Green
NEW YORK - Theo de Raadt is a pioneer of the open source software movement and a huge proponent of free software. But he is no fan of the open source Linux operating system.
"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Well when communist countries and democratic political parties start naming something besides Linux as their official operating system, maybe I'll start complaining about them instead.
I finally had to put my Dell XP300 down. Used it as a Nat machine for years. Ran Red Hat. Miss it. My HP 3 gig bogs down while converting AVI to DVD files. Need a replacement to cleanly surf the web.
Beta was licensed. I have an old Sanyo beta VCR that still works.
The real reason was that VHS offered 2 hour tapes while Beta was still only 90 minutes. When tapes cost $20 each, that was a huge difference.
Criticizing Linux is like criticizing a minority group - if you do that, you'll have the NAA(L)CP, ADL, etc. all over you.
This guy will have the Linux geeks all over him (although they probably don't read Forbes, since many of them think money = bad). Just like the woman journalist who wrote something bad about Linux a few months ago, and the Linux geeks got hold of her home phone number and started harassing her there.
"These companies used to have to pay to develop Unix. They had in-house engineers who wrote new features when customers wanted them. Now they just allow the user community to do their own little hacks and features, trying to get to the same functionality level, and they're just putting pennies into it," De Raadt says.
I've been saying this for years. These kids spend their college years writing and developing software and giving it away, then after they graduate they cry because no one will pay them to do it! Why? The kids behind you are still doing it for free, so why pay you?
Sounds like a democRAT spouting off about S'Kerry
What do you think of the Suse distro? Was it easy to install, did it detect your hardware?
-----
It is one of the best, in my opinion. I have tried several over the past couple of years. The BEST install package, and I always get the Pro package so that I have both 32 and 64 versions available depending on what machine I want to work with. The most recent versions, 9.2 and 9.3 do a good job of updating during install process, and any time later on.
Yes, Novell bought SuSE. Good move on their part I think. Try: http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/
I think you can get eval downloads there.
Cheers --- :-)
There as always losses when you've been developing a new product, but haven't actually sold it yet, and other losses incurred when acquiring a new company. It remains to be seen how the Linux deal with Novell will work out.
Novell is only now getting their Linux products to market. Sure, they've had some to sell, but they've only been rebranded Suse products.
Novell has had eDirectory and Identity Manager for Linux for some time now. Novell is now selling OES (Open Enterprise Server), which is the NetWare network services, which can be installed either on Suse Linux Enterprise Server, or on NetWare (technically, NetWare 6.5 SP3). They've also released GroupWise for Linux, Novell Linux Desktop, and Novell Linux Small Business Server, which is OES, GroupWise for Linux, and NLD, bundled for small businesses. And Novell is about to release Zenworks for Linux, a network management package.
Novell has also ramped up their education divisions in Linux, and hopefully that will help bring people up to speed on Linux. Novell has a reputation for having some of the best courses in the industry. They've also poured a lot of money into training their support staff in Linux, so if you're having a problem, they should be able to resolve it.
Who knows where Novell's future will be... I spoke with a Novell insider not too long ago, who said that Novell could come up with a NetWare OS server that prints $100 bills 24/7, and they still wouldn't be able to sell it. It's because many who make decisions in the IT departments bought into the idea that if it's not Microsoft, then it's not worth doing. It's a shame too, when you consider the technology and software quality behind Novell's products. In a few more years, Active Directory might be a trouble free, extensible, and scalable as eDirectory. And Zenworks just blows away SMS for managing workstations on the network, while integrating with group policies seamlessly. It all boils down to bad marketing and not being interested in being price competative, knowing that they had the better product, they didn't feel they needed to compete. They were wrong.
Mark
Actually, it depends on the product. But most companies are outsourcing a lot of their development...
What problems are you talking about with Zenworks? Zen 6.5 is HUGH, with "pieces" that do everything from managing handhelds to patching windows, novell, and linux servers, to desktop management, to personality migration to imaging, etc... It's an awesome product. So, which piece is broken?
Mark
Great post.
Sounds like an apt description of MS's products as well!!
Nice defense of Novell, but I'm one of the guys that replaced Netware with Windows since it was easier to use and handled memory and multiple procoessors better back in the mid 90's, marketing had nothing to do with it. As for whether Linux will ever replace their Netware revenue, maybe, but as it stands they bring in more from non-Linux products per quarter ($289 million) than market leading Red Hat Linux brought in all of last year ($196 million). Yes, that's all Red Hat brought in last year, despite being far and away the top Linux vendor (Novell only brought in $8 million from Linux) and all the hype surrounding it. Bottom line - not much money to be made in free software, especially if you're used to bringing in over a billion a year.
Unless of course, you happen to be a victim of this (or numerous other similar) bug:
How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting
This problem has been in existance since Windows 2000 and there is NO fix available.
This happens about every third or fourth boot on my home PC. MS, whose support was very timely!!, sent me a "hot fix", but nogo - SP2 (already installed) already contained the fix, but the problem occurs anyway.....
So, while I will agree that XP is far more user friendly than both it's predecessors/most of the competition, it is only so when everything works. When a problem occurs, the user is generally "SOL".
That's too bad you somehow contracted that problem, but it is quite rare, at least in my experience. I provide oversight of a network consisting of thousands of XP clients and I've only heard of that problem once before. You're of course welcome to load some other operating system, but I'd either reload Windows from scratch or buy a Mac. Switching to Linux is certainly not going to make anything easier, keep in mind the only way the Linux companies can make a profit is by charging for service, so it's certainly in their interest that you will need it.
That's because most software IS garbage.
And that includes mine, BTW (EE/software engineer 32 years).
The pressures of budget and schedule often preclude requisite testing to insure rock solid software reliability. Yet, hardware testing is often beyond that required (stringent FCC RF radiation tests).
Why is hardware reliability tested in while software reliability is often left to 'a wing and a prayer' ?
Could it be the 'out of sight, out of mind' approach of most software project managers ?
BUMP
MacOSX's kernel? you mean darwin? described by apple as follows
"This foundation is a core operating system commonly known as Darwin. Darwin integrates a number of technologies, most importantly Mach 3.0, operating-system services based on 4.4BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution)"
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
I admit it is "rare", but it IS known and has been plagueing various users since at least Windows 2000.
Reloading the OS does NOT resolve the problem!!!
AND, switching is not an option for me . . .
That said, my post was simply trying to show that, although User Friendly, XP Still has a lot of areas which require significant command line/OS Knowledge - searching of the Internet for solutions etc....
I played with Linux for a while (I work in IT) and it's "fun". But, I'm not ready to move there. I'm much more comfortable with an iSeries . . . (just wish there was a windows free way of using it other than dumb terminals...)
Well software is free(at least the marginal cost), isn't it?
With the presence of flash memory (or eproms in the old days), it can always be fixed later at minimal cost?
BTW, my code is usually fairly lousy, but then I was trained in Materials Science, but went on to design embeded real time control systems (with someone else doing the actual coding).
"This foundation is a core operating system commonly known as Darwin. Darwin integrates a number of technologies, most importantly Mach 3.0, operating-system services based on 4.4BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution)"
----
The operative words there are *based on*. Mach is driven by a microkernel whereas BSD's core is monolithic.
They are very different in that respect.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.