Windows vs. Mac: Which is the better alternative to Linux?

Inspired by this article ive decided to put my short opinion on the topic.

none.

To elaborate: both Windows & Mac apply restrictions, non-disclosure development methods (due to their closed-source nature ofcourse), monopoly and overall dictatorship and abusing their customers – both financially (spend a months’ salary on one OS, and half a year on a new computer so you can own the other OS…) and methodically (“do it our way or else…”(tm)). Unlike Linux, which is to say – do what you like, as you like, when you like, to whatever you like. Freedom. oh yea, and it costs as much as you would care to donate…

So really, theres no comparecement. I couldnt care less for “99% windows users world wide” (bogus percentage intended). you know why? cause even 99% of world population CAN be wrong or simply mis/uninformed. but i trust the day will come, as i believe people will come to their senses eventually and learn THEY can control their system, instead of allowing their system to control THEM. And they will embrace Linux for what it truely is.

no comparecement.

none.

Archie installer, take 2

Although life has been keeping me busy, i worked hard on finishing the Archie installer – basically i recoded it from scratch… i used most of the inner functions, but the layout and gui functions were completely recoded. so, here are some screenshots :

its 99% complete – some minor tweaks here and there are left, but nothing major. i’m pretty much satisfied with it

i also tested it under qemu and except for one problem (setting the appropriate vga=xxx parameter for bootloader) it works flawlessly. so…

im still waiting for iphitus (James) to finish up the squashfs-lzma patch and put it into the ‘beyond’ kernel so we can release Archie 0.6 already… i just hope it won’t take TOO long…

update time

For the ubuntu users, there is a great site to generate sources.list file, but you need to obtain each GPG key manually for every entry in the file. So, here is a quick oneliner to obtain the GPG keys automatically, for all ubuntu lovers out there (copy and paste in 1 line in your terminal):
for KEY in `grep "GPG key:" /etc/apt/sources.list | awk {'print $4'}`; do gpg --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys $KEY; gpg --export --armor $KEY | sudo apt-key add - ; done

and some quick update about Archie – i finished 99% of the gui installer, tested it, and all seems to work. i also redesigned the layout from scratch after hearing some ppl saying it “doesn’t look professional enough”… so i hope the new design does.

Also, our congregation (Messianic Jews) had lost one of our dear members from Cancer. She was an amazing woman, with ALWAYS a smile on her face, regardless of what she’s been up with. She always shown her love to everyone, and we won’t forget her. She left behind a husband and three children.

Universal package managment

I read a disturbing thread about autopackage. It started from an osnews.com article which I then followed to this thread. It goes on about why should or should not be a standard package manager for all Linux distributions out there. I think it should, and in-fact, it’s something i’ve been long thinking about. Why? well, for one, all the men power with all the different distributions going to waste, non of them inventing the wheel, but only rearranging it! Each distro with its own package management system, in todays world, requires package maintainer(s), package tester(s), repository(ies) and so on. Why on earth??? Why can’t we all live together (in peace)? Why do I have to see for every application out there a “SUSE package”, an “UBUNTU package”, etc? and usually non will have a “pacman package” (which is the Arch Linux package format) which means the Arch package maintainer will have to sit down and hack RPM sources or Gentoo ebuilds to create a working (and not always successfully, for example ubuntus’ usplash, suses’ kickoff, just to name a few) package. If there was a standard, which all distributions could adopt, without prejudice, wouldn’t it be beneficial for all of us? 1st, for the package maintainers/testers who would have more time with deal with more important issues than redoing something which already been done 20 times over already, secondly with the actual users, who wouldn’t have to wait (sometimes months) for their package maintainers to package the latest YYY application.
I think it would be amazing if I could download a package, and install it on both my Arch Linux and on my Ubuntu system. No need to learn apt-get/pacman/etc commands, but use _one_ installer for all. Less bandwidth usage, which means better usage of the network. And ofcourse, finally, magazines, software distributors, etc, could send me a cd with applications – ready to be installed, regardless of which Linux distribution im using!! Think about this again – We all could have 1 repository (or a cd) for ALL distributions! But this is just a dream, an utopia.

I read some people on that thread saying things like “if you can’t compile & make, you’re not a man”. (EDIT: it was actually “Real men use plain .deb and .rpm and resolve their own dependencies themselves!”) what a BS. My dad shouldn’t not know howto compile&make, does this makes him less of a man? Or is he simply banned from using Linux because of that? I believe in making Linux usable for the masses, regardless of age, gender, occupation, etc. This is what I call FREE. FREE FOR ALL. And universal package management is one step further in that direction. Too bad there are too many boolies in the Linux world preventing that from actually happening…

Why do i prefer Linux over Windows

Although there is a hype right now about Vista, where you can find at least a dozen articles on every news site about the new and latest Microsoft OS, I am not going to be part of that, but instead explain why i don’t take part of this celebration and calmly continue using my good old Linux OS.

1. FREEDOM!
   A lot has been said about “free as in speech not beer”. Well, The freedom I’m enjoying on Linux is the freedom to install only programs _I_ choose, and not some manufacture who doesn’t care about my own (free) will. The freedom to play any media files i want, without even the slightest concern about DRM or equivalent. The freedom to do WHAT I want, WHEN I want, to EVERYTHING I want in the OS.
   Linux is free in many ways, and it also includes cost – most Linux distributions doesn’t cost a penny, and some only require payment for customer service which you can get for free if you’re not technically-challenged. I do believe getting paid for service and support is totally valid, and that’s the proper way to handle software. I once said, that charging money for bytes and bits is ridiculous, as this is nothing your can hold, nor pass on to your child when your day comes. I know it’s a bit too extreme, but that’s my point of view – this is why i usually code for free, but charge money for my consulting.
2. Window Manager (Desktop Environment)
   I do think KDE is superior over any other WM/DE out there. Allowing me to customize everything on it, the suit my habits and mood in any particular time. There is nothing I can’t do with KDE, and although Windows allows much customization too, much of it is hidden and requires me using 3rd party tools (TweakUI, etc) or registry hacking – which brings me to the next point.
3. Registry horror
   After years of using Windows, I kinda grew up on the registry – it seems natural for me to hack it when things got crazy or when i needed to change some non-standard settings (I still remember my last month on Windows when i played with network settings to change some dhcp settings i needed for testing my network). No one knows exactly what is going on in the registry, not even many of Microsoft employees. And Linux? well, nothing is hidden in an obscure way – everything is in textual configuration files, most with comments explaining you what is what, and if not – google will.
4. Portability
   Ever tried installing Windows on one machine, and then moving the harddisk to another machine? Well, I have, and of-course, many times windows won’t even boot up, and on other times it will boot only into safe-mode, leaving me with a crippled OS. And Linux? I can move the hard-disk to any machine I want, and Linux won’t know the difference (well, it would, but I won’t feel it). This is because Windows binary drivers are so tight with the hardware it runs on, while Linux loads dynamically the drivers it needs upon startup, depending on the machine it runs on. This is the way to go, and Windows with it’s “driver database” simply can’t do it (well, it might, but it will take longer then reinstalling the OS on the new machine).
5. Old hardware
   I have many pc’s in my house, some are as 10 years old. Old I say? I’m sorry, but 10 years SHOULDN’T be considered old! I know now-days everyone thinks a good pc should be less than 6 months old, but I disagree. I don’t know where this idea of “must buy a new pc” came from (well, I believe its “thanks” to the Microsoft/Intel relationship) but it shouldn’t be this way! A 4-5 years computer should be perfectly fine for a desktop, and older ones can be used as terminals, firewalls, or very simple desktops (XFCE, OpenBox, etc). Windows, while cutting off Windows 95/98 out of the support line, won’t let me enjoy latest gimmicks and tools for those old OS’s, and many 3rd party tools won’t even consider compiling their software for such “old” computers. And Linux? As long as I am willing to execute the program on my computer, the program will be willing to be executed on my computer. Simple as that.
6. Beryl
   Yes, beryl. I enjoy showing off my friends the neat graphics effects while their mouth is opened wide and with a short breath they ask (unbelievably) “This is Linux?”. I don’t use beryl daily, but i like having it sometimes. I mostly enjoy comparing the amazing graphic effects of beryl with it’s standard hardware requirements to Aero and its crazy/non-realistic (in my book) requirements. As most Vista articles described, in order to enjoy the new Aero look, you will most likely need to buy a new machine with a brand-new-top-of-the-line graphics card. Beryl runs smoothly on my 4 years desktop testing machine, on my 2 years main desktop, and on my good ol’ 3 years laptop. Smoothly. without a hitch.

I’m sure others has their reasons for using this or the other. Well, that’s great! But since I know that in my country most people doesn’t even know Windows costs money (many people I know has non legit copy of Windows, which the neighbours’ son or similar had installed it for them after downloading it from amule) and think Windows “is free”, I am compelled to say that there is an alternative, which IS free, and which _I_ believe this alternative is superior.

Hello world!

I’ve finally decided to join the club. if you can’t beat them, join them… So, here’s my blog.

Since i do lots of different computing tasks, although mainly involved around linux, you can assume most of the blogging will be computer related – ie, geeks stuff. Also, since i’m lazy with capital L, most chances i wont update the blog too often, but who knows, maybe i will… miracles DO happen.

Well, the first post im putting down is related to Samba – i’ve spent last 4 days on 1 problem – couple of months ago i’ve installed ipcop+samba in the congregation offices. it was 3.0.22 version, everything went smoothly. this week i thought of upgrading to latest 3.0.24d – and the problems began. no user could login – windows gave a “can’t authenticate” error and went back to the login screen. so i reverted back to 3.0.22, and installed samba under qemu while trying to login into the qemu server (with “net join”) from my box. took me 4 days, tons of readings material (which none proved useful… but at least i learned a lot about samba options…) and finally one command as a solution… “net user add nobody”. 4 damn words in 4 days. thats 1 word per day! anyway, as always, i enjoyed it, although im not sure this “fix” is 100% “security smart”, but at least all works, so the congregation people are happy, and so am i. Thing is, i didn’t find anywhere someone having same problem as me, and nothing even related to this “add nobody” fix. maybe it’s all one big plot against me… iono. but again – my dad taught me, not to complain if everything works, so i won’t. hear me dad?

On another note, i have this project i got from some company (sorry, can’t reveal too much info…) which involved linux station, as/400 (my pet computer…) server, and uclibc. sounds fantastic, ea? the thing is, this company is a “money driven” company (capitalist world, ea?) which everytime i get a project from them (i have a long “romance” with them ,dated a few years back, but this is only the 2nd project im doing specifically for them) they drive me nuts. After having a meeting with them concluding the basic stuff, and who-does-what, i started working on the project although they asked me not to start yet (since they wanted to have a technical draft 1st) since a) it was very interesting, b) they had a very short deadline. anyway, after i finish like 70% of the project, they tell me they not gonna pay for anything i did till now, since i did it on my own will, and “not been asked to” start yet. well, no problem, i told them, don’t pay me at all – im gonna give the project for free then. obviously their hair jumped, and now they want to talk royalties. so, we’ll see how that goes, since i REALLY need the money…

Another open-source project i’ve been working on is Archie – the live Arch Linux project. it’s something i started a long time ago, did everything from scratch (init scripts, hw recognition, etc) and lately started getting bored by it. The last version (0.6) was supposed to be released couple of months ago, but im just too lazy and bored to actually package and release it, although tons of work had been put into it, and not by me only – some other members had joined to help out, but i just don’t see whats the point – theres so many “live” distributions right now, so one less won’t change a thing…

well, thats it for now, i think thats more than enough. On sunday im on an evangelizing seminar (every sunday for 5 weeks) but except for that i think my week will be more comfortable than the last… so i might actually blog again!

ta ta.