Linux-Advocacy Digest #662, Volume #34 Mon, 21 May 01 08:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: The nature of competition ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: The nature of competition ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: EXTRA EXTRA MS ADMITS!!!! ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: The nature of competition (Ketil Z Malde)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (Kim G. S. OEyhus)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("James Turner")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("Edward Rosten")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("Edward Rosten")
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) ("James Turner")
Re: The nature of competition ("Osugi Sakae")
Re: The nature of competition (mlw)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 05:10:16 -0500
"Woofbert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:spam-
> > Actually, "superior" is a subjective claim. I consider the Intel
> > processor supperior because it is so prevalent, which is the same
> > reason I consider VHS to be superior to Betamax.
>
> Thus cockroaches are vastly superior to human beings, and VW Beetles are
> superior to Porsche 911s.
Well, you couldn't carry around a spare engine for your porsche and install
it in about 10 minutes if you blew your primary. That's superior in some
situations.
> > > That you know all this, yet continue to make the same false
> > > arguments, makes you one of Bill's whores. He has lots of them.
> > > :)
> >
> > The 6502 was superior to the 68000 in many ways. For instance,
> > nearly all instructions took only a single clock cycle to execute,
>
> No. The 6502 did not have an instruction pipeline; the
> fetch-decode-execute-store cycle had to be executed for every
> instruction, and in all CPUs of the time took on the order of 4 cycles
> per instruction.
Hahaha... I'll let you read my response below.
> > but the 68000 had more cycles available.
>
> Uh, the 6502 was a 16-bit CPU, 4MHz, IIRC. The 68000 was a 32-bit CPU
> with a 24-bit address space, running at 8MHz. The 68020 and later ones
> had a full 32-bit address space and raneven faster. Oh, but I digress.
> None of those things matter if more 6502 were made than 68000s. ::roll
> eyes::
The 6502 was an 8 bit CPU, not a 16 bit. It typically ran at 1 or 2Mhz.
Given that you have no clue what a 6502 is, I take your comments above with
a grain of salt the size of detroit.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The nature of competition
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 05:22:54 -0500
"mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9eaikh$tr1$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>
> > "mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:9e9eus$c8b$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> I was talking with some guys at work. We were joking that we saved
> > $100,000
> >> on Microsoft licenses on our website. We used Linux, Apache, Postgres,
> > php,
> >> and perl across multiple boxes behind a load balancer.
> >>
> >> I see a lot of talk on this forum about how Linux is marginally better
or
> >> W2K is marginally better, etc. From a price/performance perspective W2K
> > has
> >> to be A LOT better than linux to even tie, and we don't see this
> > happening.
> >
> > Well, so far, the only real tests of price/performance that Linux
machines
> > have participated in is the TPC benchmark, and that showed a
> > price/performance ratio of over twice that of the Win2k box.
>
> The TPC is NOT an OS benchmark. How many times does this have to be
> debated? It is a measure of home many transactions a specific database
> environment can do. It is a heavy test of hardware, SQL environment, and
> configuration. The OS has very little to do with it.
The point is that nobody seems very interested in trumpeting Linux's
superiority in a way that can be proven. Everyone appears to rely on
hearsay only. You would think that if Linux was so superior, people would
be generating reams of documentation to prove it.
> >> Linux is at least as fast, if not faster.
> >
> > Depends on the task. Linux is *NOT* as fast or faster for things like
> > Video editing, for instance.
>
> That is an interesting statement. Why do you say that? Perhaps some
> applications are not as fast as others, but TiVO is based on Linux,
> wouldn't that mean anything?
>
> In fact, with kernel frame buffer support, there is no reason that Linux
> would be any slower than any other OS on the same hardware.
TiVo doesn't do video editing, it only does video capture/playback to/from
mpeg. While, that's not a simple task by any measure, TiVo isn't doing this
through X, it's doing it to a dedicated framebuffer. Video Editing requires
rather complicated GUI's, not to mention that it must do multiple sources at
the same time without skipping frames. Of course this is mostly hardware,
but the GUI must be fast enough to deal with it, and XFree simply isn't up
to the job.
> >> Linux has been proven to be more stable.
> >
> > It has? How? I've seen no verifiable studies that show Linux's uptime
to
> > be greater than anything else.
>
> Define "Verifiable" as it applies here.
Verifiable is not someone saying "My linux box stays up for 3 years without
a reboot". It's a study, perforned in a repeatable manner with evidence.
> >> Linux has proven to be more secure.
> >
> > Again, it has? What do you call the 49 security bulletins in the last 6
> > months for Red Hat?
>
> It isn't the number, it is the severity and the number of documented
> exploits prior to a patch being made available. Besides, I think any
notion
> that NT/2K is secure is ridiculous based on the various news items.
I never said it was secure, I'm saying that Linux is no better. Bugs exist
in all software, and the security bugs in Linux are just as bad.
The number of exploits is also meaningless, since a single bug can cause
millions of exploits. Remember the morris internet worm?
> >> Linux is free.
> >
> > More of that ambiguity.
>
> What is ambiguous about free? That is a FUD comment and you know it.
Are we really going to go into this? Hell, the FSF has a complete essay on
the ambiguity of the word.
> >> So, why would anyone choose a Microsoft solution?
> >
> > Software.
> With the exception of games, what software does Windows have that does not
> have an analogy on Linux?
Linux certainly has software that can be considered to be part of a certain
task. For instance, there is video editing software for linux, there simply
isn't anything of the calibre of FAST Purple, or Avid Media Composer, or
even Adobe Premier.
There is any sound design software of the quality of Sonic Foundry's Vegas
and similar titles. There isn't CAD software of the quality of IDEAS or
Autocad.
I know you'll find it humorous, but the quality of the software is the
issue. Quality in this sense does not mean "stability" or "how many bugs"
but rather "what it can do".
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The nature of competition
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 05:25:08 -0500
"Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9eagqr$h65$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> I see a lot of talk on this forum about how Linux is marginally better
> >> or W2K is marginally better, etc. From a price/performance perspective
> >> W2K
> > has
> >> to be A LOT better than linux to even tie, and we don't see this
> > happening.
> >
> > Well, so far, the only real tests of price/performance that Linux
> > machines have participated in is the TPC benchmark, and that showed a
> > price/performance ratio of over twice that of the Win2k box.
>
> TPC is just a benchmark, not a real world measure. In the real world, it
> is Linux, not Win2K that shows up at the top end of acalibility and
> price/performance.
Then why aren't we seeing any real world measurements?
> >> Linux has been proven to be more stable.
> >
> > It has? How? I've seen no verifiable studies that show Linux's uptime
> > to be greater than anything else.
>
> 120 day MTTF, *with* nightly reboots.
Really? There's Linux uptime studies that show this? Or did you forget the
question?
> >> Linux has proven to be more secure.
> >
> > Again, it has? What do you call the 49 security bulletins in the last 6
> > months for Red Hat?
>
> Well that beats IIs by miles. And besifdes, RedHat != Linux. How many
> issues has slackware or debian had?
Actually, the Debian Security mailing list has 68 security bulletins,
compared to Red Hat's 49.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: EXTRA EXTRA MS ADMITS!!!!
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 05:27:03 -0500
"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> >
> > "Charlie Ebert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > >> >Note that current HP 9000's are Itanium *READY*, and have chipsets
> > > >> >compatible with Itanium, but are not shipping Itaniums.
> > > >>
> > > >> Okay, same instruction set and same pin set also.
> > > >>
> > > >> But it's not the same chip then.
> > > >>
> > > >> Well, okay....
> > > >
> > > >I'm not sure if they have the same pinouts or not. Their chipsets
might
> > > >reroute the pins depending on which processor is installed. But,
even if
> > it
> > > >is the same pinout, it doesn't mean much. It's the internal
architecture
> > of
> > > >the CPU that is the difference between EPIC and RISC, not its pinout.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Instruction sets are meaningless unless there's specific hardware
> > > inside the chip to tie the operations to specific hardware
> > > functions. We are not trying to say that one or the other
> > > is an emulation....
> >
> > Certainly Itanium *IS* emulating PA-RISC as well as x86.
> >
> > http://www.hp.com/products1/itanium/advantage/aries.html
> >
> > "With our Aries emulator that will be bundled with all ItaniumT
processor
> > family systems, you can execute PA-RISC applications"
> >
> > > Further, since they have the same chip pins and the 9000's
> > > are therefore compatible with this new chip already, it's
> > > safe to say the only thing this manuever is doing is transfering
> > > the burden and cost from one Intel subsidy to the main body.
> > >
> > > There may be some slight improvement in newer chips, but
> > > the architecture is the same...
> >
> > You don't appear to understand what a processor architecture is. It's
> > architecture includes such things as pipelining, branch prediction and
> > speculation, loop unrolling, etc... these are all wildly different from
the
> > PA-RISC chip, and despite what you want to believe, they're not
> > pin-compatible, since these processors are installed in "packages" and
not
> > plugged directly into the motherboard.
> >
>
> But these are for the processing efficiencies... not the actual
> instruction set.
> Hp did say on their web site that the PA series can execute the IA-64
> instruction set.
> What Hp didn't say was if an emulator was needed or not. But emulating
> another processor would only be slow, so I don't think that this is what
> Hp is doing.
Perhaps you misread something. Everything I have read, including the link
above state that the Itanium will execute PA-RISC in emulation, not the
other way around.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: The nature of competition
From: Ketil Z Malde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 10:48:38 GMT
"Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> In fact, with kernel frame buffer support, there is no reason that Linux
>> would be any slower than any other OS on the same hardware.
> TiVo doesn't do video editing, it only does video capture/playback to/from
> mpeg. While, that's not a simple task by any measure, TiVo isn't doing this
> through X, it's doing it to a dedicated framebuffer.
What, you mean displaying a video stream? I agree X isn't a good
choice for this, since you simply do not nead any of its features.
> Video Editing [...] Of course this is mostly hardware, but the GUI
> must be fast enough to deal with it, and XFree simply isn't up to
> the job.
Why not? Certainly my aging computer can display video streams using
only software YUV decoding, with a modern card supporting this in
hardware, I don't perceive any problem.
-kzm
--
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kim G. S. OEyhus)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 10:56:11 +0000 (UTC)
As you said, it is garbage. It does not make sense at all.
It is just physicsbabble, physics words put together somewhat
randomly, without meaning.
Kim0
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Roy Culley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Would one of you physicists like to comment garbage below.
>
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>
>> Radio waves are not light! Radio waves have been measured by the NBS at
>> 88%.
>> The speed of light has never been measured in a vacuum!
>> It has been measured, tho, in space that light without quantum packets
>> travels instantaneously. Otherwise, the appearance of distant galaxies
>> would be totally distorted beyond recognition.
>>
>> But this is all irrelavant. Even if the speed of light were 1000 faster
>> than what we know... the million light years of distance and time of a
>> signal, let alone the attenuation of the inverse square of the distance
>> would render any signal unreadable, let alone detectable.
>>
>> Interstellar space is full of energies... and full of unseen
>> gravitational disturbances.
>>
>
>--
>Over 100 security bugs in Microsoft SW last year. An infamous
>record. The worst offending piece of SW, by far, IIS. 2001 isn't
>looking any better.
------------------------------
From: "James Turner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:04:40 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Pete
Goodwin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I question your use of *real* world. How is it the *real* world when it
> is a very small market?
> In the real real world, everywhere.
Um...
You too seem to be considering a narrow view of what the 'real world' is.
Sure, most people satisfy their pointedy-clickety world by using MS
products. They check their email, chat with friends. Perhaps some even
balance their checkbook or do business work. Wow.
Others play games.
But is MS in their automobiles? Does it run the ATMs they bank with?
The planes they fly in? (God forbid...) Most of the *truly* critical
'real world' things don't use MS. And yes, our mothers and non-tech
friends use them everyday.
They just don't display a logo on startup. :c)
Even from an infrastructure level--do the routers that allow their
pointedy-clicketies to do all that fun stuff use MS software? (cisco) Not
often. How about most of the websites then enjoy? (apache) How about
most of the mail servers they send mail with? (sendmail)
Would these people even use their MS pointedy-clicketies if they didn't
have these other technologies to <buzzword>empower</buzzword> them?
*NO*
All this aside from the fact that you are justifying the merit of an
Operating System by citing it's popularity.
Yeah right. All these these users tried different OSes and said, "Yep.
MS works best for me."
OEM leverage and marketing savvy be damned. ha!
--James
------------------------------
From: "Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 13:15:11 +0100
>> It doesn't: it is not a computer. There are huge differences between
>> SETI and ASIC White (et al.) SETI is not controlled from a single node
>> and is useful for only a tiny range of problems due to very loose
>> copuling.
>>
>> For the *vast* majority of supercomputer problems, SETI is useless.
>
> Like I said, it's a loosely coupled supercomputer. Anything that
> requires massive numbers of machines working on a small part of the
> whole is suitable for this type of processing. Like raytracing for
> instance. Like CGI in a film for instance. Like the film Titanic!
>
> How many Alpha workstations were doing that one? Half running NT, the
> other half Linux.
I still wouldn't class seti as supercomputer.
The other problem is you're comapring apples with oranges. Seti (etc)
have to use whatever is avaliable, since they have no choice. When people
have a choice with what to use, Linux is sometimes used. Win2K is never
used (with regards to supercomputers).
-Ed
--
(You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.) (u98ejr)(@)(ecs.ox)(.ac.uk)
/d{def}def/f{/Times-Roman findfont s scalefont setfont}d/s{10}d/r{roll}d f 5 -1
r 230 350 moveto 0 1 179{2 1 r dup show 2 1 r 88 rotate 4 mul 0 rmoveto}for/s{15
}d f/t{240 420 moveto 0 1 3 {4 2 1 r sub -1 r show}for showpage}d pop t
------------------------------
From: "Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 13:17:16 +0100
>> > The speed of light has never been measured in a vacuum!
>>
>> It has. You can also calculate the speed of light without measuring it
>> directly.
>
> Ah, but there is the rub... All light speed measurements have so far
> been done in AIR!
It's quite easy to withdraw all air from something. People have been able
to make almost perfect vacuums for a while now.
>> > It has been measured, tho, in space that light without quantum
>> > packets travels instantaneously.
>>
>> er...? Light consists entirely of quantum packets, ie photons.
>
> In air or media like glass or water, yes ... contains photons. But in a
> vacuum???
The same.
-Ed
--
(You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.) (u98ejr)(@)(ecs.ox)(.ac.uk)
/d{def}def/f{/Times-Roman findfont s scalefont setfont}d/s{10}d/r{roll}d f 5 -1
r 230 350 moveto 0 1 179{2 1 r dup show 2 1 r 88 rotate 4 mul 0 rmoveto}for/s{15
}d f/t{240 420 moveto 0 1 3 {4 2 1 r sub -1 r show}for showpage}d pop t
------------------------------
From: "James Turner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:26:06 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "James
Turner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Even from an infrastructure level--do the routers that allow their
> pointedy-clicketies to do all that fun stuff use MS software? (cisco)
> Not often. How about most of the websites then enjoy? (apache) How
> about most of the mail servers they send mail with? (sendmail)
For example: :c)
mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
bash# nslookup
> set query=mx
> sensaura.com
Server: vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.net
Address: 4.2.2.1
sensaura.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = spitfire.sensaura.com
[snipped for brevity]
bash# telnet spitfire.sensaura.com 25
Trying 193.114.56.237...
Connected to spitfire.sensaura.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 spitfire.crl.co.uk ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.5/8.8.5; Mon, 21 May 2001
12:18:06 +0100
-- --
Sendmail... Hmmm...
--James
------------------------------
From: "Osugi Sakae" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The nature of competition
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 20:38:56 +0900
In article <126O6.2564$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Erik Funkenbusch"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Actually, the Debian Security mailing list has 68 security bulletins,
> compared to Red Hat's 49.
Keep in mind that most linux distros issue security alerts / bulletins /
whatever for every security hole for any piece of software that they
include with the distro. AFAIK, MS does not issue an alert if the company
that makes WinZip (for example) finds a security problem. MS only deals
with MS security problems. So if joe (a text editor) is found to have an
exploitable temp file problem, Red Hat and Debian issue advisories and
provide the fixed packages.
So it really surprises me that the linux distros don't have a lot more
advisories and that MS doesn't have a lot fewer.
With the way that MS builds everything into the kernel, i would guess
that a higher percentage of their advisories are of a more serious
nature. But that is just a guess.
--
Osugi Sakae
====== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ======
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
======= Over 80,000 Newsgroups = 16 Different Servers! ======
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The nature of competition
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 07:42:44 -0400
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> "mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:9eaikh$tr1$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>>
>> > "mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> > news:9e9eus$c8b$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> >> I was talking with some guys at work. We were joking that we saved
>> > $100,000
>> >> on Microsoft licenses on our website. We used Linux, Apache, Postgres,
>> > php,
>> >> and perl across multiple boxes behind a load balancer.
>> >>
>> >> I see a lot of talk on this forum about how Linux is marginally better
> or
>> >> W2K is marginally better, etc. From a price/performance perspective
>> >> W2K
>> > has
>> >> to be A LOT better than linux to even tie, and we don't see this
>> > happening.
>> >
>> > Well, so far, the only real tests of price/performance that Linux
> machines
>> > have participated in is the TPC benchmark, and that showed a
>> > price/performance ratio of over twice that of the Win2k box.
>>
>> The TPC is NOT an OS benchmark. How many times does this have to be
>> debated? It is a measure of home many transactions a specific database
>> environment can do. It is a heavy test of hardware, SQL environment, and
>> configuration. The OS has very little to do with it.
>
> The point is that nobody seems very interested in trumpeting Linux's
> superiority in a way that can be proven. Everyone appears to rely on
> hearsay only. You would think that if Linux was so superior, people would
> be generating reams of documentation to prove it.
The above paragraph does not refute my statements about TPC. So, I'll
assume you agree that only an idiot with no understanding of computers
would attempt to apply TPC as an OS benchmark.
There are other benchmarks, some have to do with web, some with file
servers, etc. The point is that NONE of these benchmarks show any real
advantage of W2K over Linux. The may bounce back and forth, but that's it.
With the cost of W2K so high, it is clear that it provides no value for its
cost, and that is the point of this thread.
>
>> >> Linux is at least as fast, if not faster.
>> >
>> > Depends on the task. Linux is *NOT* as fast or faster for things like
>> > Video editing, for instance.
>>
>> That is an interesting statement. Why do you say that? Perhaps some
>> applications are not as fast as others, but TiVO is based on Linux,
>> wouldn't that mean anything?
>>
>> In fact, with kernel frame buffer support, there is no reason that Linux
>> would be any slower than any other OS on the same hardware.
>
> TiVo doesn't do video editing, it only does video capture/playback to/from
> mpeg. While, that's not a simple task by any measure, TiVo isn't doing
> this
> through X, it's doing it to a dedicated framebuffer. Video Editing
> requires rather complicated GUI's, not to mention that it must do multiple
> sources at
> the same time without skipping frames. Of course this is mostly hardware,
> but the GUI must be fast enough to deal with it, and XFree simply isn't up
> to the job.
I don't have any experience with video editing software, but technically,
with framebuffer support, there is NO reason why Linux would be any slower
than Windows or NT on the same hardware.
Once you have a pointer to the frame buffer, it's just bits across the bus.
If you have a specialized video card with multiple viewports, it is an
IOCTL call to have it move the memory from one to the other.
I have written video drivers for Windows and NT, and I don't see any reason
why Linux (with frame buffer support) would be any slower. If you know
something about the technology involved that would make Linux slower,
please explain. Otherwise you are making it up.
>
>> >> Linux has been proven to be more stable.
>> >
>> > It has? How? I've seen no verifiable studies that show Linux's uptime
> to
>> > be greater than anything else.
>>
>> Define "Verifiable" as it applies here.
>
> Verifiable is not someone saying "My linux box stays up for 3 years
> without
> a reboot". It's a study, perforned in a repeatable manner with evidence.
You mean like the Microsoft funded MTTF study of Windows W2K? lol.
>
>> >> Linux has proven to be more secure.
>> >
>> > Again, it has? What do you call the 49 security bulletins in the last
>> > 6 months for Red Hat?
>>
>> It isn't the number, it is the severity and the number of documented
>> exploits prior to a patch being made available. Besides, I think any
> notion
>> that NT/2K is secure is ridiculous based on the various news items.
>
> I never said it was secure, I'm saying that Linux is no better. Bugs
> exist in all software, and the security bugs in Linux are just as bad.
>
> The number of exploits is also meaningless, since a single bug can cause
> millions of exploits. Remember the morris internet worm?
I state that Linux is secure because people can see the code and bugs get
found, and fixed faster. I also state that W2K is less secure because it is
closed source and no one can double check for secret back doors or stupid
errors.
That is the logical argument. Do you refute it? If so what is the argument
to the contrary?
>
>> >> Linux is free.
>> >
>> > More of that ambiguity.
>>
>> What is ambiguous about free? That is a FUD comment and you know it.
>
> Are we really going to go into this? Hell, the FSF has a complete essay
> on the ambiguity of the word.
I don't know how you define free, but I am working on a computer for which
I have never had to pay anything for any of the software on it. Not one
penny, I pay nothing and I am fully licensed to use the software on it.
That is what I mean by free.
>
> I know you'll find it humorous, but the quality of the software is the
> issue. Quality in this sense does not mean "stability" or "how many bugs"
> but rather "what it can do".
What does Star Office *not* do?
I have yet to find something I want to do on Linux for which I can't find a
program.
>
>
>
>
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Advocacy Digest
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