linuxloop.com — People often justify their thoughts and ideas with something like "it will help attract new users," but why should we care at all if more people use Linux or not? While there is a reason for wanting some growth, too much can be bad.
Mar 1, 2008 View in Crawl 4
satanswetnippleMar 3, 2008
Buu700You have some good points there, but you are very very overoptimistic, and you miss some points.If I locked my extended family in an Iron Maiden for a year and told them I would release them if they just purchased a non Microsoft OS, they would still buy the Microsoft OS. It makes no sense, but even though they know on the surface it is bad for them, at a subconscious level they are terrified of change, so only a box with a "Microsoft" label will do. If WINE does become great at running all Windows apps, and Microsoft fell on it's face with Windows 09 (released in 2015), then they will save themselves and release their own Linux Distro called Windows... they would still secure 50% of the world OS market, and will not need the army of developers they have today. Seriously, if people have the choice between Microsoft Windows Linux, and Ubuntu Linux, they will choose the former.You also do not plan for the possibility of another OS being released in your time frame. I can tell you that I will switch to a fourth option in a heartbeat if it became available... it would need to have an Amiga like ideology of elegance over brute force... I have a quote for you... "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein. Windows, OSX and Linux are bloatware. There is nothing that these Operating Systems do today that cannot be done better in 16MB of RAM. Excluding drivers, no OS should be more than 100MB on disk. If I buy a machine with 4GHz and 8GB RAM, I do not expect the OS to take 50% of the CPU and RAM resources! I do not care how trendy it is, or what it claims to do.
fergyMar 3, 2008
With AppArmor/SELinux you can make rules for almost everything. Even when you sudo a command it could still only do what the rules say it can do. If you couple these rules with a good automatic backupsystem like ZFS/Timevault/Timemachine/etc. It would be almost impossible to either break the system or lose personal data. In the worst case the system could restore the system/data to the last backup. If you could automatically virtualize programs that users download from websites instead of the repositories you would even provide the user with power to download programs they want without compromising the system stability or security.
satanswetnippleMar 3, 2008
FergyIt is OK that you do not understand. Once upon a time some incredible operating systems were created that would run in 256KB to 16MB. Modern programmers have become wasteful and lazy, which is OK to a point, I believe that point was passed a very long time ago, and the programmers now just tell people that a modern OS cannot run in a sensible amount of memory.At one time I ran my full preemptive multitasking WIMP OS from a Double Density Floppy Disk. I could run OS2 from two High Density Floppies. I probably still have a High Density Floppy with a bootable version of QNX installed. I believe that programmers at Microsoft, Apple and the team run by Linus can all be classed as "intelligent fools". They have not made anything better, they have only been making the same basic system bigger.In 15 years, the standard home computer Multitasking WIMP OS has gone from 2MB RAM to 2GB RAM. The 2MB RAM machine only used 25% of the RAM for the OS. The 2GB machine today uses more than 50% of the RAM. In 15 years, the home OS has grown by at least 1024 times the size it was. In 15 years time, at the rate of growth, the general home OS will need a minimum of 2TB of RAM just to boot. Do you think this is an idiotic number? Well in 1993, most people never imagined a home OS using more than 4MB. People were shocked when Windows 98 had a recommended minimum RAM of 96MB.You can add all the extra application software you want, it should never affect the amount of RAM the base OS uses on a clean boot. The base OS requirements have become ridiculous. To run through your list though... The Amiga's Workbench was a preemptive OS, ran in 256KB RAM (and 512KB ROM)... it had the following. Hardware Hotplug (with specific drives and devices), a full WIMP interface (it was the first OS to include virtual screens), and calendar as part of the OS. Most of the other software could be installed and run in less than 100KB RAM. Some of the software had no alternative at the time... like bit torrent program. The Amiga's OS had powerful tools built into the OS that are still not available in Linux. All of this for 256KB RAM. Tell me again how much RAM a full WIMP home OS install of LINUX needs? Is the difference in RAM usage worth desktop search and a photo manager?
zegnMar 3, 2008
I think it's important that more and more users choses linux. I think it's important for developers of software, because they will have more will power for developing best software.
stix213Mar 3, 2008
I agree with respect to viruses, but not with spyware. Spyware typically is installed by uninformed users who always click yes to anything that pops up without reading it. Unfortunately, not even the reinforced walls of Linux security can stop a dumbass's left mouse button. Derrr peee derrrr.... Hmmm I just went to www.scam-a-dumb@$$.com and now it says I need root access to continue... Honey, what's my root password again? I need to give it to this website I think. Yeahhh I don't feel like reading what it says.... Ohhh I entered that in and now it says it needs my mother's maiden name and checking account number.... Do you see my checkbook honey?
mrsteveman1Mar 4, 2008
Again, you shouldn't need to split out an entire distro just to make the system more stable, and at most thats ONE more distro, not 12. Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Freespire, Xandros are all DESKTOP distros, not stable servers or testing platforms for compiler options. They exist solely because different groups developed their own complete system, and they all serve the same purpose in a partially incompatible way.If by compiler options you mean Gentoo and the USE flag crap, most of that is unnecessary and it isn't being used for compiler testing anyway.
corrosionxMar 15, 2008
There's a Linux herd?