Going To University Leave Linux Home! It's Not Supported! 4561

On Friday 26 August 2005 00:59, flatfish stood up and spoke the following words to the mbuttes...:

That must have been way more than 10 years ago. ;-)

Yeah, the first computer I ever saw - I think it must have been a Commodore 64 or something of that sort - was in my last two years of highschool. It was connected to a number of black & white TV's through a splitter and it was located in a special dedicated clbuttroom, dubbed "The Computer Room".

Only one teacher in the whole school had the key to that room. Whenever one of our own teachers wanted to illustrate something by means of the computer - e.g. a math graph - then he would have to make an appointment with that teacher, who would write up the necessary algorithm in BASIC to show the graph on screen, and who would then schedule a clbutt in that particular clbuttroom.

We weren't allowed anywhere near that machine either. Well, I suppose because they were so darn expensive back in those days (1980-1981).

Ehm, okay, this is where I get off my chair and claim the microphone... If there's any "operating system" that is good for wordprocessing and internet stuff - and little else - then it is Windows.

Anything serious requires a true operating system. Microsoft Windows is gaining some terrain in the scientific sector - due to the exploitation and bribe tactics of Microsoft, of course - but to my knowledge, any serious scientific work has always been conducted on UNIX machines.

UNIX is the operating system of choice for software engineering, tectonic analysis, astrophysics, molecular biology, archeology, quantum mechanics, aeronautics, etc.

FOSS tradition, it exists in a version for Windows as well, but that's just a port from UNIX.

UNIX is much older than Windows. It's older than DOS. Therefore, it has a longer track record, particularly since it runs on mainframe parbreastions and minicomputers, i.e. multi-user, multi-tasking systems.

The so-called multi-user functionality in Windows is nothing but a layer on top of the Windows core, and only works under special conditions. As far as I know, Windows XP Home doesn't even have any "fast user switching" or whatever it's called.

Windows XP is the current generation of Windows NT. Windows NT was a blend of the NT kernel - which was supposed to go into OS-2 - and a 32-bit implementation of the Windows API.

The Windows API largely came from ripping off 16-bit OS-2's Presentation Manager and DeskView - which ran on DOS. Windows itself started out as an MS-DOS program that extended the memory range of MS-DOS, and was later on sold as a "32-bit operating system" under the names Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME, which were nothing more than a fusion between DOS and a brandnew Windows GUI.

For the die-hard believers that Windows 95-98-ME was everything Microsoft promised it would be in the printing on the box and the ads on TV or in magazines: 60% of all processes ran as 16-bit 8086 code in the CPU'sreal-mode- despite the fact that Windows ME was seemingly unable to run DOS applications. This was however a deliberate crippling by Microsoft as a manipulation of the market towards graphically oriented 32-bit applications.

Either way, the statement that Gnu-Linux - which is a UNIX clone - is "good for wordprocessing and internet" is quite an understatement and a total misrepresentation of the facts.

Possibly, yes. The way our society evolves has its repercussions on everyone, including those involved with education.

Yes, even education is starting to suffer from the "time is money" paradigm. But then again, what do you expect from a society that indexes everything on this planet - including lifeforms (and in the Middle Ages and Ancient Times even human life) - as merchandise?

Just because there is little or nothingyoucan do about it - and there is, actually, if you were to want to make a difference - doesn't mean that you shouldn't care.

Free & Open Source Software versus proprietary software is just the tip of the iceberg. You have to see the bigger picture. It's about how the "Free World" - don't you love it when G. W. Bush uses those words? - is everything *but* free.

Microsoft's monopoly - real or virtual - is exactly what's taking away ones freedom. Just *try* and buy a computer without Windows installed - an OEM license that's included in your computer's pricetag, of course - and see whether you can do so without one single remark from the salesman.

Try and get some of the "latest and greatest" extensions to your computer, such as color laserprinters. Just look at winmodems, videocards, wireless routers-modems etc.

Maybe you can easily come by a Linux kernel module to support any of that junk, but we over here in Europe sure can't. Not easily anyway. That's quite frustrating for many of us.

Not so much for myself as I select my hardware for Linux compatibility in advance. Yet not everyone is that savvy.

Mind you, I'm not saying that Windows should disappear and that Gnu-Linux is the answer to every computing need. Not at all!

First of all, Gnu-Linux requires some respect from the user, in that the user has to be savvy enough to be able to handle the power he or she is suddenly given by installing a genuine OS on their computer. This respect can only come from a sense of responsibility, which also comprises of interest and intelligence. And not everyone is interested or intelligent. That's a fact.

Windows does have a place in this world. There is a "market share" for it. Honesty should however compell it to stick to the market share that it's good for, and to stay out of the implementations where it truly and genuinely sucks.

However, the above would be rectifying itself, if it weren't for the fact that Microsoft uses whatever predatory means possible to enforce its platforms onto *everyone,* by which I mean: bribes, deceitful "special student offers", political lobbying, slander on account of anything non-Microsoft-affiliated and cartel tactics with hardware vendors.

I don't know if you've ever attended a Microsoft Licensing audit of a company. Well, neither have I but one of my friends has, and he told me the following story. Mind you that this took place in Belgium, Europe, so things may vary according to the geographical location.

The Microsoft inspectors show up with a magistrate and a number of policemen at 8h00 AM. They enter the company, introduce themselves and order an immediate sealing of all entries and exits to the building.

They summon the head of IT - or just "the person responsible for the computers" and tell him or her that they require to see all computers in the company, no matter what OS they run. The policemen spread out and guard each computer, so that no personnel member can even touch one. For those of you who are economy-minded: this means that all corporate activity comes to a halt that morning.

The Microsoft inspectors demand that all software licenses are being handed over to them, even those pertaining to non-Microsoft software. Then, they will examine each and every computer for what's installed on there and examine each and every license they have been handed for a match. All is written down and marked, even possible violations against licenses for non-Microsoft software.

Once everything is indexed, the police and the magistrates sign off, and the Microsoft inspectors start talking to the head of the company. Or rather... negotiating... "We have found 3 violations of Windows licenses, 1 violation of Microsoft Office and your Novell server runs an operating system of a later release than the license you have. Thisis the amount of money it's going to cost you if we prosecute. However... if you give usthismuch, we'll keep our mouths shut, and then we'll come and check again next year, so you've got a whole year to get your stuff in agreement with the law."

That is Microsoft. And you think you've got nothing to worry about?

That's what most people will do. Because Open Source generally also means "free of charge".

The philosophy of Free & Open Source Software is - as I stated way earlier - just the tip of the iceberg. It has nothing to do with zeolotry, it has to do with a real threat.

And even if you don't see it that way, that still doesn't mean that there aren't any people in the world - like myself - who are tired of being discriminated or not taken seriously just because we run Gnu-Linux on our machines.

Trust me, I've had to fight for my right to use Gnu-Linux, and I was not taken seriously when I had purchased a machine that I had custom-built for use with Gnu-Linux and that turned out flawed when I received it.

Then I got the explanation that "it was tested with Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro and it ran flawlessly". Duh, Windows doesn't even check the hardware until it actually tries to access something. And that's when it goes BSOD on you. The Linux kernel checks and indexes all hardware on boot and simply discards non-functional hardware from further use.

It took me a flamewar via e-mail before they took the machine back and took it apart. And they had to admit that I was right and that there was something seriously wrong with the machine.

It was a Tyan S2462 K7 Thunder motherboard with two CPU sockets, of which Tyan said that it had to be installed with either one Athlon XP or two Athlon MP's. The machine was installed with two Athlon MP's, and it crashed all the time.

Thedmesgoutput showed that although both CPU's were identical, the first one was recognized as an Athlon MP and the second one as just an "AMD Athlon processor".

It took them several calls and e-mails and about a year of trial and error, with several new sets of CPU's, new ECC memory modules, new motherboards, etc. Eventually, the machine didn't even boot anymore as of the new BIOS versions. It did however boot with a single *Athlon* *XP* in place.

All this time, I got to hear that this machine - which had cost me the equivalent of US $5,000 - had gotten damaged because I had run Gnu-Linux on it, as "it ran perfectly fine with Windows". And this was a machine I had explicitly ordered for use with Gnu-Linux, and that I had to pay for in advance. Speaking of discrimination!

The story did end well, though. Eventually they decided that they couldn't get that machine to work properly either way, and that they owed me something worthy of the money I paid them.

One of the company managers was using Gnu-Linux himself at the time - he's using Solaris now on a Sun machine - and so he decided to build me an entirely new configuration, based upon an Intel server motherboard and a dual Xeon with HyperThreading. He even got me a different computer case with a more powerful PSU and 2 GB extra of ECC DDR.

And that's the machine I'm typing this on right now. It's my main workstation and it is the server of my LAN. I had an uptime of 150 days once (with a vanilla kernel).

It has never crashed on me - again, with a vanilla kernel; it did crash about 2 or 3 times with the Mandrake stockEnterprisekernel when I was using an OpenGL screensaver, but the fact that it doesn't crash with a vanilla kernel says it all. ;-)

-- With kind regards,

*Aragorn* (Registered Gnu-Linux user #223157)