Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 15 Mar 2003 19:48:15 -0700 Collins Richey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Welcome to the dark side! grin Darkness before the dawn. -- ++···+ · Roger Oberholtzer · E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]· · OPQ Systems AB · WWW: http://www.opq.se/ · · Erik Dahlbergsgatan 41-43 ·Phone: Int + 46 8 314223 · · 115 34 Stockholm · Mobile: Int + 46 733 621657 · · Sweden · Fax: Int + 46 8 302602 · ++···+ ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Fri, 07 Mar 2003 17:49:52 -0500 Jerry McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? Well... I've come to the conclusion that gentoo is the next OS for use here at home. It's... self hosting, highly configurable and a ton of fun. What I find most useful of all... nearly 4000 packages are available for it. It'll take a bit of effort to see how it fits into business setting... but it looks very promising. That said, good night all. -- ** Registered Linux User Number 185956 http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=ensafe=offgroup=linux Join me in chat at #linux-users on irc.freenode.net This email account no longers accepts attachments or messages containing html. 9:00pm up 67 days, 2:34, 4 users, load average: 0.20, 0.11, 0.09 ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 15 Mar 2003 21:04:00 -0500 Jerry McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 07 Mar 2003 17:49:52 -0500 Jerry McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? Well... I've come to the conclusion that gentoo is the next OS for use here at home. It's... self hosting, highly configurable and a ton of fun. What I find most useful of all... nearly 4000 packages are available for it. It'll take a bit of effort to see how it fits into business setting... but it looks very promising. That said, good night all. Welcome to the dark side! grin ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 17:08:09 -0700 Collins Richey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 10:29:25 +0100 Roger Oberholtzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 15:20:59 -0700 Collins Richey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm surprised that no one has done it yet. It would not be a matter of rocket science to distribute a gentoo based distribution from one or more (different architecture) base home system. Creating binary update packages and/or complete replacement tarballs for distribution on CD would be a relatively trivial undertaking. Binary update CDs could include a script to tailor anything desired. The complete replacement CDs would only require relatively trivial modifications to the gentoo Livecd. I know that the binary update part of Gentoo would be OK. The problem is the initial install. It is not something one would want to do on a regular basis to many systems. It is this that I think is the major stumbling block for production use. Yes, I was not clear enough. What I was suggesting was to install gentoo once (per machine image, P3, Athlon, etc.) on your base system(s) and then to make a tarball of those systems to distribute to customers on CD. You would then keep the mother system(s) up to date and distribute new CDs at whatever interval you deem appropriate. Alternatively, for updates you could distribute the updates as binary ebuilds. The problem is that, despite our efforts, all systems have different hardware. At one point, we were using Dell, as we thought that was all over the place. Then, when a part broke, Dell should replace it, which they did. However, always with different parts. So systems that started out the same ended up different as a result of work done under warranty. Also, system are bought at different times, and this will contain different components. Granted, it is limited to SCSI, ethernet and graphics (in our systems), but this would require more expertise to deal with in a Gentoo install than in a SuSE/RH/whatever that handles the hardware id rather ok. I have not given up the idea. I just want to be clear on what the hurdles will be before deciding to start out. We have a policy that our developers use our product's OS. So, we are using Caldera 3.1.1. (We still have UnixWare systems and do updates, but it is being retired, so we do not require that anyone use it on a daily basis.) I would be vary happy if I could use a system that is kept up to date. Still, even though I would be able to do so, I could not reasonably do so if I did not update all systems in the field. At least not still keeping with the basic idea for the policy: we know everything about the exact software in our customer's systems. I am sure we could change the policy, but we may loose something. -- ++···+ · Roger Oberholtzer · E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]· · OPQ Systems AB · WWW: http://www.opq.se/ · · Erik Dahlbergsgatan 41-43 ·Phone: Int + 46 8 314223 · · 115 34 Stockholm · Mobile: Int + 46 733 621657 · · Sweden · Fax: Int + 46 8 302602 · ++···+ ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 15:20:59 -0700 Collins Richey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm surprised that no one has done it yet. It would not be a matter of rocket science to distribute a gentoo based distribution from one or more (different architecture) base home system. Creating binary update packages and/or complete replacement tarballs for distribution on CD would be a relatively trivial undertaking. Binary update CDs could include a script to tailor anything desired. The complete replacement CDs would only require relatively trivial modifications to the gentoo Livecd. I know that the binary update part of Gentoo would be OK. The problem is the initial install. It is not something one would want to do on a regular basis to many systems. It is this that I think is the major stumbling block for production use. -- ++···+ · Roger Oberholtzer · E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]· · OPQ Systems AB · WWW: http://www.opq.se/ · · Erik Dahlbergsgatan 41-43 ·Phone: Int + 46 8 314223 · · 115 34 Stockholm · Mobile: Int + 46 733 621657 · · Sweden · Fax: Int + 46 8 302602 · ++···+ ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 20:33:28 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 05:11:23PM -0800, Ted Ozolins wrote: Oh I think there are a lot of refugees from the rpm farm on this list:) I left rpm behind a while back, been using mainly Slackware and of course that build_it_yourself_unmentionable_G oops I almost said it distro. What I enjoy with both of these distro's is that if I find a program (xcircuit comes to mind) I would like to evaluate, I wont be chasing all over the internet to satisfy its dependencies, nor will I be (as I was with Caldera) stopped because of way out-dated libs. I've been building RPMS for a variety of systems for several years now, and really like the philosophy of building from pristine sources under control of a SPEC file. We're using RPM on Linux, OS X, and SCO OpenServer, and I can generally write spec files that will build on all the platforms we support. I read about the OpenPKG system in SysAdmin magazine late last year. It's an RPM based system developed by Cable and Wireless in Europe to help them maintain a large number of heterogeneous Unix and Linux systems for their ISP operations. The problem is that RPM limits itself to the package in question. emerge takes the next step and defines the relationship between packages. And, instead of just stopping and saying something is missing so bugger off and sort that out and don't return until you do, as rpm will do, emerge takes action and gets the missing things. It is the admittance that no package is an island that makes emerge work. There are other problems solved by this approach as well. -- ++···+ · Roger Oberholtzer · E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]· · OPQ Systems AB · WWW: http://www.opq.se/ · · Erik Dahlbergsgatan 41-43 ·Phone: Int + 46 8 314223 · · 115 34 Stockholm · Mobile: Int + 46 733 621657 · · Sweden · Fax: Int + 46 8 302602 · ++···+ ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
Roger Oberholtzer wrote: The problem is that RPM limits itself to the package in question. emerge takes the next step and defines the relationship between packages. And, instead of just stopping and saying something is missing so bugger off and sort that out and don't return until you do, as rpm will do, emerge takes action and gets the missing things. It is the admittance that no package is an island that makes emerge work. There are other problems solved by this approach as well. This sounds like debian apt-get and it's various carnations. -- Ken Moffat kmoffat at drizzle.com ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sun, 09 Mar 2003 07:29:39 -0800 Ken Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Roger Oberholtzer wrote: The problem is that RPM limits itself to the package in question. emerge takes the next step and defines the relationship between packages. And, instead of just stopping and saying something is missing so bugger off and sort that out and don't return until you do, as rpm will do, emerge takes action and gets the missing things. It is the admittance that no package is an island that makes emerge work. There are other problems solved by this approach as well. This sounds like debian apt-get and it's various carnations. The system (Portage) is described by Gentoo as being like the BSD ports system, but with many improvements. I have not used BSD's ports to tell. -- ++···+ · Roger Oberholtzer · E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]· · OPQ Systems AB · WWW: http://www.opq.se/ · · Erik Dahlbergsgatan 41-43 ·Phone: Int + 46 8 314223 · · 115 34 Stockholm · Mobile: Int + 46 733 621657 · · Sweden · Fax: Int + 46 8 302602 · ++···+ ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 10:37:52AM +0100, Roger Oberholtzer wrote: .. The problem is that RPM limits itself to the package in question. emerge takes the next step and defines the relationship between packages. And, instead of just stopping and saying something is missing so bugger off and sort that out and don't return until you do, as rpm will do, emerge takes action and gets the missing things. It is the admittance that no package is an island that makes emerge work. RPM maintains dependency information, particularly well implemented in the source RPMS in the openpkg system. They have a script that generates an XML file with dependency information as well as from parsing the package's spec files to gather information on options selected during the build process. This file can then be used to update in much the same manner as the FreeBSD ports and various non-RPM Linux systems as well. The problems are very different when one is maintaining a small number of systems as opposed to supporting a large number of systems which may well not all be on the same base platform. Using a package management system that's totally independent of the distribution's simplifies life considerably. Using openpkg I no longer have to worry about breaking the distribution's update systems or conflicts within their systems. Given the volatility of Linux distributions over the years, I want the things we do to be as independent of the underlying distribution as possible. This is most important when doing servers where we don't want to have to worry about where things are on different systems (ever maintained apache and all its supporting modules on multiple systems?). Using openpkg, it makes little difference whether we're running on SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, or FreeBSD. Moving to a new distribution is usually a matter of rebuilding on the new system from the standard SRPMS. Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX:(206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 URL: http://www.celestial.com/ ``Anyone who thinks Microsoft never does anything truly innovative isn't paying attention to the part of the company that pushes the state of its art: Microsoft's legal department.'' --Ed Foster, InfoWorld Gripe Line columnist ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 10:29:25 +0100 Roger Oberholtzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 15:20:59 -0700 Collins Richey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm surprised that no one has done it yet. It would not be a matter of rocket science to distribute a gentoo based distribution from one or more (different architecture) base home system. Creating binary update packages and/or complete replacement tarballs for distribution on CD would be a relatively trivial undertaking. Binary update CDs could include a script to tailor anything desired. The complete replacement CDs would only require relatively trivial modifications to the gentoo Livecd. I know that the binary update part of Gentoo would be OK. The problem is the initial install. It is not something one would want to do on a regular basis to many systems. It is this that I think is the major stumbling block for production use. Yes, I was not clear enough. What I was suggesting was to install gentoo once (per machine image, P3, Athlon, etc.) on your base system(s) and then to make a tarball of those systems to distribute to customers on CD. You would then keep the mother system(s) up to date and distribute new CDs at whatever interval you deem appropriate. Alternatively, for updates you could distribute the updates as binary ebuilds. -- Collins ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 22:57:43 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 05:49:52PM -0500, Jerry McBride wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? We've moved to SuSE 8.1, and I've been quite happy with it overall. They've moved away from the mongo rc.config file (and we're building all of our stuff using openpkg so don't run afoul of any of their packages). SuSE has a very nice method of dealing with the SYSV startup where dependencies can be specified in the master startup in /etc/init.d, then the ``inssrv'' program will figure out what has to start in order to make sure things are done in the proper order. They've finally caught up with gentoo grin I haven't had any problems with yast2, and it has an ncurses mode that works quite well from non GUI sessions. -- Collins ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
begin Collins Richey's quote: | They've finally caught up with gentoo grin they're a pain in the ass, but they're not *that* bad. -- dep http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within the envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere. ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 10:02:50 -0500 dep [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: begin Collins Richey's quote: | They've finally caught up with gentoo grin they're a pain in the ass, but they're not *that* bad. Filing away in my almost humor folder. -- Collins ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 10:02:50AM -0500, dep wrote: begin Collins Richey's quote: | They've finally caught up with gentoo grin they're a pain in the ass, but they're not *that* bad. I haven't tried gentoo, LFS, or any of the other do-it-yourself forms of Linux, primarily because I would rather spend my time building things on top of a working distribution. It's enough of a problem keeping up with new releases of software, and still have time for development and support of our own stuff. I chose to become a Caldera reseller when they first started their reseller program for the same reason we became SCO resellers in 1987, we need a stable platform for commercial systems. We have always purchased boxed sets for all our our customer installations to support the Linux distributions and kept copies on hand for sale to local people (and I have a pile of unsold Caldera OpenLinux 1.1-2.3 to prove it :-). We don't make any money selling Linux itself so we now buy SuSE from our local CompUSA store rather than go through distribution, and make sure that our business sales rep. at CompUSA is aware of this in hopes that this encourages them to continue to keep it in stock as an alternative to Red Hat. I want to be able to tell people that they can go to the local store to buy stable Linux rather than having to buy it on-line, download ISOs, or built it themselves. At one time CompUSA had Caldera, Mandrake, in addition to SuSE and Red Hat. Mandrake disappeared from their shelves several months ago. Frankly, the only way I can see any commerical Linux distribution company making a living selling Linux will be to market direct through web sites delivering product directly to the final installer eliminating intermediate distributors. Desktop Linux just can't be sold for enough to cover the costs of the traditional distribution channels (as a rule of thumb, the manufacturing cost of any product sold through these channels is about 20% of the final sale price). As someone who has made my living by providing IT solutions to commercial customers since 1966, and mission-critical Linux solutions since 1997, my main contribution to supporting Linux has been to provide bug reports, and fixes back to the source where possible (Caldera was pretty good at ignore my reports and patches though :-). The first time I can remember fixing a program for a vendor was about 1972 when I rewrote a major chunk of the RJE handler for Burroughs Medium Systems, and patched MCP giving the changes back to Burroughs. At the time I did this because the company I worked for needed to get RJE working, and it wasn't a priority for Burroughs. One of the primary reasons I like Linux and FreeBSD is that this type of thing is a lot easier to do than to convince a proprietary vendor to make their source code available to outsiders to fix. Open Source works because there are thousands of knowledgeable people working on problems that they need to have work, feeding their results back into the system. Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX:(206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 URL: http://www.celestial.com/ ``Guns are no more responsible for killing people than the spoon is responsible for making Rosie O'Donnell fat.'' ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 07:54:24 -0700 Collins Richey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 22:57:43 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 05:49:52PM -0500, Jerry McBride wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? We've moved to SuSE 8.1, and I've been quite happy with it overall. They've moved away from the mongo rc.config file (and we're building all of our stuff using openpkg so don't run afoul of any of their packages). SuSE has a very nice method of dealing with the SYSV startup where dependencies can be specified in the master startup in /etc/init.d, then the ``inssrv'' program will figure out what has to start in order to make sure things are done in the proper order. They've finally caught up with gentoo grin Same here, at home. I am now itching to contribute ebuild scripts for various packages. I am, happily, a convert. The problem is that it simply is not a system you can realistically install on production systems scattered around the globe - especially if they are in vans roving the highways and byways. A stable CD-based install is needed. I suspect we will be SuSE or RedHat in due time. But be warned. Our company seems to be the kiss of death. Every OS we embrace seems to go awry sometime after we adopt it. Sticking to the Unix line, we did ATT SVR4, which went away. We followed it to 4.2 (Univel). Which went away (as in, the company emphasis left the desktop). Next to Novell, who gave up to SCO. After a few years of SCO we began to tire of the direction UnixWare was taking. Slowly wising up, we left commercial Unix for Linux. Caldera. Soon became SCO. And here we sit. OpenLinux gone. UnitedLinux an uncomfortable proposition. Caldera up to questionable tactics (Project Monterey aside). People in my company ask me: Roger, why didn't you let us go with MS? All the OS hopping is just too confusing. Of course, I kind of like it as I never get a chance to get bored. But, in some aspects, it keeps our product from stabilizing as much as some may like. I am afraid to break the news to all in my company that OpenLinux is over. -- ++···+ · Roger Oberholtzer · E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]· · OPQ Systems AB · WWW: http://www.opq.se/ · · Erik Dahlbergsgatan 41-43 ·Phone: Int + 46 8 314223 · · 115 34 Stockholm · Mobile: Int + 46 733 621657 · · Sweden · Fax: Int + 46 8 302602 · ++···+ ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 10:09:12 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 10:02:50AM -0500, dep wrote: begin Collins Richey's quote: | They've finally caught up with gentoo grin they're a pain in the ass, but they're not *that* bad. I haven't tried gentoo, LFS, or any of the other do-it-yourself forms of Linux, primarily because I would rather spend my time building things on top of a working distribution. It's enough of a problem keeping up with new releases of software, and still have time for development and support of our own stuff. But that is exactly what gentoo is! It is very stable. Packages are deemed stable or experimental by the package author, the person who makes the ebuild for gentoo, and the gentoo user community. If I want to know what the new releases of software for gentoo are, I simple run (internet connection required for all this): ebuild rsync I now have all the package definitions on my system. Nothing is installed, but I can easily identify what I could install or update. Either via a character interface or a KDE GUI. If I want to know if there are new versions of the packages I already have installed, I run: ebuild -up world 'world' refers to the packages I have installed. If there is something new, this tells me. If I want to update something, I would run: ebuild -u package Where package is something, like cdrtools. Or kde. Or a linux kernel. All dependencies are checked by ebuild so that the package's configure script can be run to the best possible effect. And this is important. Gentoo dos not replace a package's configure script. It just helps ensure you have the best things in place and identified so the configure goes well. What I really like about gentoo is that, once installed, the procedure described above keeps my system up-to-date. I do NOT reinstall gentoo to get the latest release. My system just stays current via the ebuild mechanism. As to the rest of your e-mail, gentoo is not a business proposition. It is simply a way to break the reinstall cycle into small increments that can easily be managed over time. And it does this well. I chose to become a Caldera reseller when they first started their reseller program for the same reason we became SCO resellers in 1987, we need a stable platform for commercial systems. We have always purchased boxed sets for all our our customer installations to support the Linux distributions and kept copies on hand for sale to local people (and I have a pile of unsold Caldera OpenLinux 1.1-2.3 to prove it :-). We don't make any money selling Linux itself so we now buy SuSE from our local CompUSA store rather than go through distribution, and make sure that our business sales rep. at CompUSA is aware of this in hopes that this encourages them to continue to keep it in stock as an alternative to Red Hat. I want to be able to tell people that they can go to the local store to buy stable Linux rather than having to buy it on-line, download ISOs, or built it themselves. At one time CompUSA had Caldera, Mandrake, in addition to SuSE and Red Hat. Mandrake disappeared from their shelves several months ago. Frankly, the only way I can see any commerical Linux distribution company making a living selling Linux will be to market direct through web sites delivering product directly to the final installer eliminating intermediate distributors. Desktop Linux just can't be sold for enough to cover the costs of the traditional distribution channels (as a rule of thumb, the manufacturing cost of any product sold through these channels is about 20% of the final sale price). This is how I have bought OpenLinux. Caldera's web site. I fear this did not help them. As someone who has made my living by providing IT solutions to commercial customers since 1966, and mission-critical Linux solutions since 1997, my main contribution to supporting Linux has been to provide bug reports, and fixes back to the source where possible (Caldera was pretty good at ignore my reports and patches though :-). The first time I can remember fixing a program for a vendor was about 1972 when I rewrote a major chunk of the RJE handler for Burroughs Medium Systems, and patched MCP giving the changes back to Burroughs. At the time I did this because the company I worked for needed to get RJE working, and it wasn't a priority for Burroughs. One of the primary reasons I like Linux and FreeBSD is that this type of thing is a lot easier to do than to convince a proprietary vendor to make their source code available to outsiders to fix. Open Source works because there are thousands of knowledgeable people working on problems that they need to have work, feeding their results back into the system. Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX:
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 10:09:12 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 10:02:50AM -0500, dep wrote: begin Collins Richey's quote: | They've finally caught up with gentoo grin they're a pain in the ass, but they're not *that* bad. I haven't tried gentoo, LFS, or any of the other do-it-yourself forms of Linux, primarily because I would rather spend my time building things on top of a working distribution. It's enough of a problem keeping up with new releases of software, and still have time for development and support of our own stuff. And there is no pressing reason for you to consider the DIY distros, since you have a commercial enterprise and since the package costs of any of any commercial distro is moderate in comparison to M$. Interestingly enough, even Dan Robbins (gentoo) does not recommend his distro for a server environment (although quite a few folks are running rock solid gentoo servers.) In my case (desktop user and tinkerer and occaisonal curmudgeon) I don't spend much time getting a working distro (gentoo) because it's done once (well twice in 3 years), and then I can spend my time building things on top of a working distribution. When I do get the urge to tinker, I usually try something new (for me) in a spare partition, but I always wind up back at gentoo. With the possible exception of SuSE, none of the commercial vendors seem to be interested in making available a very large, current software inventory. Rather than waiting for RH, SuSE, Mandrake, et al to cobble up a new distro to sell me, I rely on the small army of DIY developers at gentoo to keep me supplied with more software than I can possibly find time to experiment with. Obviously, my approach is not going to help commercial vendors sell their wares! We don't make any money selling Linux itself so we now buy SuSE from our local CompUSA store rather than go through distribution, and make sure that our business sales rep. at CompUSA is aware of this in hopes that this encourages them to continue to keep it in stock as an alternative to Red Hat. That's a good approach. For the same reason, I like to buy from local computer sellers rather than mail order unless there is a really significant price differential. I did order my scanner from Dell, however, because only the local big box stors carried it, and they wanted an arm and a leg. One of the primary reasons I like Linux and FreeBSD is that this type of thing is a lot easier to do than to convince a proprietary vendor to make their source code available to outsiders to fix. Open Source works because there are thousands of knowledgeable people working on problems that they need to have work, feeding their results back into the system. Ayup! Seldom do I encounter a problem (gentoo specific or package specific) that the gentoo-user list cannot answer hundreds of times faster than a commercial help desk. The same can be said of other smaller distro specific user groups. -- Collins ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
Roger Oberholtzer wrote: On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 10:09:12 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 10:02:50AM -0500, dep wrote: begin Collins Richey's quote: But that is exactly what gentoo is! It is very stable. Packages are deemed stable or experimental by the package author, the person who makes the ebuild for gentoo, and the gentoo user community. Yes! I am so glad never to see RPM - I just emerge sync, emerge -up world and I see what I need to do. I've been using Gentoo for a couple of months but still have a Caldera WS 3.1 box which will go away shortly. Recently I needed to update something on the Caldera box so I downloaded the RPM - whoops need something else from Gnome. Rpmfind has a bazillion copies of that library. Stuff it, I don't have time to learn Gnome or try a few of the bazillion copies to see which one works. -- Brett I. Holcomb [EMAIL PROTECTED] AKA Grunt Registered Linux User #188143 Remove R777 to email ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
[ snips ] On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 21:13:25 +0100 Roger Oberholtzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 07:54:24 -0700 Collins Richey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 22:57:43 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 05:49:52PM -0500, Jerry McBride wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... SuSE has a very nice method of dealing with the SYSV startup where dependencies can be specified in the master startup in /etc/init.d, then the ``inssrv'' program will figure out what has to start in order to make sure things are done in the proper order. They've finally caught up with gentoo grin Same here, at home. I am now itching to contribute ebuild scripts for various packages. I am, happily, a convert. The problem is that it simply is not a system you can realistically install on production systems scattered around the globe - especially if they are in vans roving the highways and byways. A stable CD-based install is needed. I suspect we will be SuSE or RedHat in due time. I'm surprised that no one has done it yet. It would not be a matter of rocket science to distribute a gentoo based distribution from one or more (different architecture) base home system. Creating binary update packages and/or complete replacement tarballs for distribution on CD would be a relatively trivial undertaking. Binary update CDs could include a script to tailor anything desired. The complete replacement CDs would only require relatively trivial modifications to the gentoo Livecd. You could do updates and quality control on the home base (seed) systems. You could charge for 3-6 month update cycles. If you setup the client's systems to have /home and at least two partitions big enough for the root file system, you could install complete replacements and be confident that the customer would always have a backup available. If the customer has a reliable communications path, you could even supply them with a script to download everything from your base site. If you were to publish a recommend set of hardware for the clients, you could keep the permutations and combinations down to an acceptable number. Ah well, that's the difference between the dreamers and the RedHats of this world! But be warned. Our company seems to be the kiss of death. Every OS we embrace seems to go awry ... I am afraid to break the news to all in my company that OpenLinux is over. OpenLinux was over before it ever started. Even when Caldera was running the show, before the SCO merger, the handwriting was on the wall. Caldera never understood the power of its user group. Rejecting input from its loyal users and grudgingly excepting any recommendations from same were just signs of the basic rot. I've said before that Caldera was basically a very closed source, closed minded, unsharing company that just coincidentally happened to market open systems. My only sympathy is for the hundreds of employees and thousands of users they've screwed over. ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, 08 Mar 2003 16:14:22 -0500 Brett I. Holcomb [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Roger Oberholtzer wrote: On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 10:09:12 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 10:02:50AM -0500, dep wrote: begin Collins Richey's quote: But that is exactly what gentoo is! It is very stable. Packages are deemed stable or experimental by the package author, the person who makes the ebuild for gentoo, and the gentoo user community. Yes! I am so glad never to see RPM - I just emerge sync, emerge -up world and I see what I need to do. I've been using Gentoo for a couple of months God, I wish I'd said that! Wait a minute, I did say that. You better watch it, Brett. They'll put you in the same plonk file with me! grin -- Collins -- Collins ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
Feigning erudition, Collins Richey wrote: % On Sat, 08 Mar 2003 16:14:22 -0500 % Brett I. Holcomb [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: % % Yes! I am so glad never to see RPM - I just emerge sync, emerge -up world % and I see what I need to do. I've been using Gentoo for a couple of months % % God, I wish I'd said that! Wait a minute, I did say that. % % You better watch it, Brett. They'll put you in the same plonk file with me! grin Nah, Collins. You have your very own special plonk file here at KurtWerks. ;-) Kurt -- .. My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!! ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
At least we'll be running Gentoo G. And I'm not sure it can't be setup for distribution as you pointed out. Collins Richey wrote: On Sat, 08 Mar 2003 16:14:22 -0500 Brett I. Holcomb [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Roger Oberholtzer wrote: On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 10:09:12 -0800 Bill Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 10:02:50AM -0500, dep wrote: begin Collins Richey's quote: But that is exactly what gentoo is! It is very stable. Packages are deemed stable or experimental by the package author, the person who makes the ebuild for gentoo, and the gentoo user community. Yes! I am so glad never to see RPM - I just emerge sync, emerge -up world and I see what I need to do. I've been using Gentoo for a couple of months God, I wish I'd said that! Wait a minute, I did say that. You better watch it, Brett. They'll put you in the same plonk file with me! grin -- Collins -- Collins -- Brett I. Holcomb [EMAIL PROTECTED] AKA Grunt Registered Linux User #188143 Remove R777 to email ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Saturday 08 March 2003 17:29 pm, Collins Richey wrote: Yes! I am so glad never to see RPM - I just emerge sync, emerge -up world and I see what I need to do. I've been using Gentoo for a couple of months God, I wish I'd said that! Wait a minute, I did say that. You better watch it, Brett. They'll put you in the same plonk file with me! grin Watch it fella!! You're getting close to the line. (finger on the plonk button):-) -- ++ + Bruce S. Marshall [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bellaire, MI 03/08/03 19:52 + ++ Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is? - Frank Scully ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
Plonk away! I'm happy with Gentoo - finally a distro I don't have to spend more time updating and searching for dependencies than using it G. Bruce Marshall wrote: On Saturday 08 March 2003 17:29 pm, Collins Richey wrote: Yes! I am so glad never to see RPM - I just emerge sync, emerge -up world and I see what I need to do. I've been using Gentoo for a couple of months God, I wish I'd said that! Wait a minute, I did say that. You better watch it, Brett. They'll put you in the same plonk file with me! grin Watch it fella!! You're getting close to the line. (finger on the plonk button):-) -- Brett I. Holcomb [EMAIL PROTECTED] AKA Grunt Registered Linux User #188143 Remove R777 to email ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
Collins Richey wrote: Yes! I am so glad never to see RPM - I just emerge sync, emerge -up world and I see what I need to do. I've been using Gentoo for a couple of months God, I wish I'd said that! Wait a minute, I did say that. You better watch it, Brett. They'll put you in the same plonk file with me! grin -- Collins Oh I think there are a lot of refugees from the rpm farm on this list:) I left rpm behind a while back, been using mainly Slackware and of course that build_it_yourself_unmentionable_G oops I almost said it distro. What I enjoy with both of these distro's is that if I find a program (xcircuit comes to mind) I would like to evaluate, I wont be chasing all over the internet to satisfy its dependencies, nor will I be (as I was with Caldera) stopped because of way out-dated libs. -- Ted Ozolins (VE7TVO) Westbank, B. C. Powered by Slackware 8.1, sent with Mozilla ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 05:11:23PM -0800, Ted Ozolins wrote: Oh I think there are a lot of refugees from the rpm farm on this list:) I left rpm behind a while back, been using mainly Slackware and of course that build_it_yourself_unmentionable_G oops I almost said it distro. What I enjoy with both of these distro's is that if I find a program (xcircuit comes to mind) I would like to evaluate, I wont be chasing all over the internet to satisfy its dependencies, nor will I be (as I was with Caldera) stopped because of way out-dated libs. I've been building RPMS for a variety of systems for several years now, and really like the philosophy of building from pristine sources under control of a SPEC file. We're using RPM on Linux, OS X, and SCO OpenServer, and I can generally write spec files that will build on all the platforms we support. I read about the OpenPKG system in SysAdmin magazine late last year. It's an RPM based system developed by Cable and Wireless in Europe to help them maintain a large number of heterogeneous Unix and Linux systems for their ISP operations. Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX:(206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 URL: http://www.celestial.com/ ``Nobody wants to be called common people, especially common people.'' Will Rogers ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On 03/08/03 20:33, Bill Campbell wrote: I read about the OpenPKG system in SysAdmin magazine late last year. It's an RPM based system developed by Cable and Wireless in Europe to help them maintain a large number of heterogeneous Unix and Linux systems for their ISP operations. Isn't CW the same group that is forcing much of Latin America to tax the hell out of VoIP, so that they can maintain their monopoly? -- ~ L. Friedman[EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux Step-by-step TyGeMo:http://netllama.ipfox.com 10:10pm up 54 days, 5:34, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 10:15:33PM -0800, Net Llama! wrote: On 03/08/03 20:33, Bill Campbell wrote: I read about the OpenPKG system in SysAdmin magazine late last year. It's an RPM based system developed by Cable and Wireless in Europe to help them maintain a large number of heterogeneous Unix and Linux systems for their ISP operations. Isn't CW the same group that is forcing much of Latin America to tax the hell out of VoIP, so that they can maintain their monopoly? I wouldn't know about that (I posted the above incomplete when I got busy and didn't have time to get into more detail about openpkg). I've had a considerable number of exchanges with the people in the openpkg development group, most of whom are with CW, and have nothing but good experiences with them. Perhaps this is because they've liked my input, and have taken several of my suggestions to improve things in openpkg, incorporating them in the code very quickly. Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX:(206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 URL: http://www.celestial.com/ ``Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity'' -- Dennis Ritchie ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, 07 Mar 2003 17:49:52 -0500, Jerry McBride wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? Lycoris (derived from Caldera's LTP). Last time I checked it wasn't as stable as Caldera, but it was getting better pretty fast. The bad news: Maybe not the best distro for the (linux) power user. It's tailored for the Windoze user migrating to a real OS :) I haven't tryed the latests builds, I'd recommend that you give it a try. Federico Voges Socio gerente Intrasoft Malabia 2137 14 A (1425) Buenos Aires Argentina Te/Fax: 54-11-4833-5182 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.intrasoft.com.ar -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP SDK 3.0 iQA/AwUBPmkwcRRcJRaVKt4XEQLj9gCghn94UAPrIe7ugzRSW2xu8OVIZRwAoJFB 2tVY2jGkdHv+4HnH0bXj7dm+ =GC5b -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
Jerry McBride wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? I found TurboLinux to be the closest. None of the Red Hat crap like chkconfig, and the placement of files is very similar. It seems to be faster than OpenLinux too (very subjective), but upgrades are very spotty and inconsistent. If you want newer versions of anything - libraries, apps, etc. - you'll want to compile from source, and there may be considerable tweaking required. Don't try to upgrade KDE on it, it'll break a hundred things. The only other problem is that it is under the UnitedLinux consortium, though it seems to be sticking to its own distro. I'm not sure what their position on pricing and licensing is. They're big in Asia, which is a very price-sensitive market. I don't use it now because I'm not too sure where they're headed. Regards, pascal chong ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
Feigning erudition, Jerry McBride wrote: % % Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux % boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... % % Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux % in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? I'm not sure that there are any beyond Lycoris. Caldera knock-offs never gained any steam. The SysV init-based distros all have enough differences that you'd be tripped up if you didn't scan the scripts first. In terms of directory layouts, I'd venture a guess that any LSB/FHS-compliant distro would be close enough, with the possible exception of SuSE. Kurt -- Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Fri, 07 Mar 2003 17:49:52 -0500 Jerry McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] professed: Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? Jerry, I went to Slackware from Open Linux and haven't looked back. A little bit of a transition but well well worth it stayler ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: What's after OpenLinux?
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 05:49:52PM -0500, Jerry McBride wrote: Well, it looks like I'll be spending some effort to swap out some OpenLinux boxes pretty soon. Principles you know... Can someone tell me, which of the various distributions are closest to OpenLinux in as far as directory locations and system V startup scripts? We've moved to SuSE 8.1, and I've been quite happy with it overall. They've moved away from the mongo rc.config file (and we're building all of our stuff using openpkg so don't run afoul of any of their packages). SuSE has a very nice method of dealing with the SYSV startup where dependencies can be specified in the master startup in /etc/init.d, then the ``inssrv'' program will figure out what has to start in order to make sure things are done in the proper order. I haven't had any problems with yast2, and it has an ncurses mode that works quite well from non GUI sessions. Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX:(206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 URL: http://www.celestial.com/ ``Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?'' -- Patrick Henry June 9, 1788, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution. ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
