Archive for Linux
Re: Windows vs. Linux
July 25th, 2005 • 3 comments Linux
This might be a little late, given the original article’s date. I don’t really remember where I found this link, but that shouldn’t matter anyway.
Let me cut this short. Turns out that Windows is better than Linux because you need to buy software to “ensure” its security! This is stupidity at its finest.
An Anti-Linux Strategy for Microsoft
July 23rd, 2005 • Linux
Have Ballmer give a speech in Asia, or any place that is switching hogwild for Linux, and warn them that Linux has legal issues that can bite them, and have your salesmen mention that in their sales pitch. Use the phony baloney lawsuit as evidence. Next announce indemnification for your own products and make a pleasant contrast. Have the lawyers delay and delay and delay any litigation outcome to maximize PR benefits. Cross your fingers behind your back and say Microsoft is cheaper to run than Linux. Play with numbers until it can be “proven” in your paid-for “studies”. A mainframe computer might help out there.
This must be the perfect strategy to destroy Linux.
Honestly, I don’t know how people think that Linux can be destroyed. Corporates might be able to stop Linux from growing in the desktop market, or cut its (tiny) share from mobile devices, but trust me, Linux is here to stay.
There are many things that can change Linux’s fate, especially without proper corporate backing. Think Apple’s switch to Intel, Intel’s “plans” to cut off Linux of the media, DRM, the RIAA, the MPAA, extraterrestrials, and god-knows-what-else. Everyone seems to try their best they can to stop Linux from growing, and for some reason, they’re failing.
Intel thinks that if they start on the hardware level they’ll be able to stop Linux from playing legitimate content, or force Linux vendors to buy licenses for “special” software that can play such protected content. The fact is, Linux is made by a huge list of extremely talented developers who aren’t going to let this go, and I’m pretty sure that if Intel does utilize a hardware-level media protection layer, developers are still going to deconstruct, dissect and disassemble it, find a work around, write a kernel module and distribute it anyway. Nobody likes having his rights taken off, and that’s precisely what Intel’s trying to do.
A free operating system is particularly difficult to stop, since it’s commoditizing an essential part of computers, a part that we usually pay for; Linux is making that available to everyone for close-to-nothing cost. The only problem is that Linux isn’t represented by a single entity, and without proper commercial backing Linux is going to have a hard time dealing with licensing, IP, and legal trouble.
Essentially, it’s all about the money. Why would Apple, Intel or Microsoft want to hurt Linux unless it’s going to get them more money? Isn’t it a business strategy? If any of these companies finds a way to make Linux work for them rather than against, don’t you think they’d start evangelizing Linux as an “alternative” solution? I bet they would.
It’s still possible to stop Linux, only it’s not very easy. As long as its generating revenues for a few companies, you’re still going to see it around.
Useful Cron Header
April 18th, 2005 • 2 comments Linux
Here’s a nice cron header for your collection:
MAILTO="" #################################################################### #minute (0-59), # #| hour (0-23), # #| | day of the month (1-31), # #| | | month of the year (1-12), # #| | | | day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday)# #| | | | | commands # #################################################################### 30 01 * * * /home/jim/bin/cleartmp
Thanks Jim
Running X.org under VMWare 4.5
February 19th, 2005 • 4 comments Linux
What makes VMWare so great is that they officially support many Linux distributions, at least the most known ones, like RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake and some others. But it’s impossible to support all distirbutions, especially custom or source-based ones, say LFS or Gentoo.
Don’t get this wrong, you can by all means install and run Gentoo on VMWare, since most of the hardware VMWare emulates is known to Linux, like LSI Logic SCSI interface, or AMD’s PCNet32 network interface. Only when it comes to graphics, VMWare uses its own device and doesn’t emulate any known one, that’s why you need to install VMWare tools before running X, otherwise, you’ll just end up with crappy colors and resolutions.
On Gentoo, the installation was fairly easy, I only had to look around the VMWare Tools package a little and figured it out. Here’s what you have to do:
- In VMWare, click on VM -> Install VMWare Tools…
mount /mnt/cdrom- Extract
/mnt/cdrom/vmware-linux-tools.tar.gzsomewhere. cp /path/to/vmware-tools-distrib/lib/configurator/XFree86-4/4.3.x/vmware_drv.o\
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/- Now use
/path/to/vmware-tools-distrib/lib/configurator/XF86Config-4as a reference to setup your/etc/X11/xorg.conf. The only two things that really matter are the “Monitor” sectionXF86Config-4, and that you make sure you’re usingvmwareas a drive in the “Device” section. Tip:Xorg -configuremight do a decent job in figuring out most of the details, it only leaves the monitor undetected, so just copy it from the sample configuration. startx, and everything should work fine.
I’m still not sure about the rest of VMWare tools, haven’t compiled them yet, but I’ll try working on them later on, maybe even end up with an ebuild. Personally, I only needed to get X.org to run at a 1600×1200 resolution, I don’t need the rest of the tools much, but then again, why not get the rest?
A Fedora Rant
February 9th, 2005 • 4 comments Linux
I know that this blog is taking a little divert, I’m starting to talk more about various Linux distributions. The quest started when I failed to install Gentoo on an AMD64. That time, everything worked, except that X.org kept failing and crashing whenever I used nVidia’s GLX. As it turned out, my GeForce 6800 was the problem, it had nothing to do with Gentoo, or my abilities to install Gentoo (but I’ll get back to the hardware story later).
Well, at that time I didn’t know I had defect hardware, I thought that Gentoo had too many problems on my architecture to deal with. So I decided to install Ubuntu, and like I said before, it’s a great distribution, it got everything up and and running in no time. Ubuntu’s Warty was a little bit outdated for my tastes, so I got Hoary Array-4 and installed it. The installer’s been improved a lot, at least it now asks whether to install Grub or not. However, my personal advice is not to use it on AMD64, since although it has bleeding-edge software, right now it’s very unstable.