[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] KLUG Meeting Notes for 04/15/2003

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> PRESENTATION SUMMARY:
> ************************
> KLUG meeting attendees were operating their laptops along with
> Andrew as he did his presentation.  You could see the delight on
> their faces as they experienced "AH HA!" after "AH HA!" with their
> own GIMP application and Andrew's experienced guidance and patient
> directions.  After a two hour frenzy of attendees expressing a 
> voracious appetite for learning the GIMP... Andrew was awash in
> spontaneous applause from his grateful students.  Many are well
> on their way to learning the basics and understanding the power
> that The GIMP can impart to a Linux user with a creative mind.

A fabulous presentation, thanks!  It is all about layers!  I get it now.  I
always struggle with image manipluation because I think like a programmer,  but
now I see the light.  And I do have a program that can open those wierd .xcf
files after all.

> A REVIEW OF RED HAT V 9
> "First, I will list a few things of what you can actually find in 
> the new release: you will find a good choice of apps on Red Hat 
> Linux 9, from office to fax apps, some entertaining games, a fully 
> featured web suite and more. The NPTL library offers better 
> responsiveness of the system taking care of how the Linux kernel is 
> dealing with threads, there is a cleaned up start menu, a bug fixed
> Nautilus (however it still has disabled the ability to edit Gnome's 
> menus), Mozilla's good looking AA font rendering and more. KDE 3.1 
> and Gnome 2.2 are included, in addition to a number of servers like 
> Apache, Postgresql, mysql etc..." 
> http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2003041200226RVRHSW

Not bad except for

"visual partition mounting"

So what exactly is disk druid?

"a way for a user to easily install applications in its own space without the
need for a root password and without the almost always accompanied dependency hell"

Eh?

"a way to add new services easily"

Um... Applications -> System Settings -> Server Settings -> Services

" I would like to see GConf used more, and not just for Gnome stuff, but also
for things like "enable/disable DMA""

Please, No!  PUse Gconf for what it is for.  There should be no clicky way to
change DMA settings - 98% of users never will, and probably don't know enough to
do so correctly.

"eeded to change the MIME type of a nautilus script file, which won't get
recognized if it doesn't get changed to text/x-sh. However, I found no easy way 
to do this simple change via the GUI"

He is on the money here!  MIME association is just way to hard.

"I was also able to hard crash this installation when running a configure script
(crashed when dealing with libjpeg). This seems to be a rare condition for Linux
in general, as I have also crashed SuSE on the same machine doing a configuration. "

Hmmm, strangely slow and spurious crashes?  And with an AMD chipset.... Wow,
NEVER seen that before. :O

"but if you look closely to the desktop or other context menu items on *all*
GTK+ apps, you will see the same behavior too"

I do see this a bit on slow machines,  but on new machines I can't see it at
all.  But study has revelead that GTK isn't caching atoms like Qt does,  once
they fix that latency will greatly decline.  This is not an X issue, it is a
toolkit one.

> =====================================================================
> OPEN-SOURCE BATTLE RAGES IN OREGON  [submitted by TAZ]
> A group of open-source advocates and critics will meet behind closed 
> doors Wednesday afternoon, in the first of at least two meetings in 
> search of a compromise on what could be the first bill in the United 
> States to encourage the use of open-source software by a state 
> government.
> http://news.com.com/2100-1012-996210.html
> =====================================================================

The "Initiative for Software Choice"?  Is that like the "Ministry of Truth"? 
Come on.  The ISC is aligned with the BSA?  Gee, I wonder who butters their
bread....  Johnny Cochran probably has too high an ethical standard to align
himself with the BSA.

"Although the bill-bashing ISC includes tech giants Intel and Cisco among its
more than 220 members, some software bigwigs are noticeably absent from the
list, including Oracle and IBM. Both companies are in a tricky political
position in this case, because they have embraced both open-source and
proprietary software"

Do these reporters still not get the fact that no one makes money selling
software?  Support, consulting, and iron,  smart companies don't care what the
package is, so long as the consumer is willing to pay to run it.


> MYSQL V4.X REVIEWED
> MySQL powers countless databases and data-driven Web sites. MySQL 4, 
> the latest release of the Open Source database, includes features 
> that put it on par with products from database stalwarts Oracle and 
> Microsoft. Unbelievable? Believe it. 
> http://www.linux-mag.com/2003-01/mysql_01.html

Please!  Have these people ever used Oracle, Informix, or DB2?  Even PostgreSQL
has a long way to go.  Replication? Point in time restores? Seperate DB spaces?
Extent sizing? Detached indexes?  JVM in the engine for use in stored procedure?
 Virtual table interface? . . . . I love my open source databases, but lets me
something resembling realistic.

> OPERA V7.10 FOR LINUX BETA RELEASED  [submitted by TAZ]
> Opera Software today released Opera 7.10 for Windows and Opera 7.10 
> for Linux Beta with features that are not only new to Opera, but 
> also completely new to the world of browsing.
> http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/04/11/
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/12/2248223&mode=thread

What there not bankrupt yet?

> THE ECONOMIST ON THE RISE OF LINUX  [submitted by TAZ]
> "The Economist is telling the business world that Linux is a worthy 
> adversary to Windows and Unix. It is free, runs on almost any hardware, 
> and generally more secure than Windows As result it is dividing the 
> industry into winners that offer Linux and losers that don't, 
> (e.g. Microsoft). Sun is probably doomed."  
> http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1699434
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/13/1455205&mode=thread&tid=163

How much money does Sun make selling Solaris?  How much would it cost to port
the Linux kernel to the Sparc?  Oh, right, it already runs there.  Who owns
Java?  What is the biggest platform for Java developement and deployment?

Sun may be doomed, but it doesn't have anything to do with Linux.

And Linux still can't touch AIX or Solaris.  WE DON'T EVEN HAVE WORKING ACL
SUPPORT IN THE MOST COMMON FILESYSTEM.  NOT TO MENTION THAT THE MOST COMMON
FILESYSTEM (ext2/3) SUCKS COMPARED TO XFS OR JFS.

> IBM DIVES DEEPER INTO LINUX
> IBM next month will extend the reach of its Directory Server and 
> Directory Integrator across additional Linux hardware platforms 
> when it adds versions for the IBM i-Series and p-Series servers.
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1022818,00.asp

To bad there directory server is a wierd non-standards compliant hack.


> OPEN SOURCE HELPS KEEP PROGRAMMING JOBS IN AMERICA
> Open source can help U.S.companies retain American programmers.
> http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/04/14osource_1.html

I thought I read just the opposite about a week ago.  What am I supposed to believe?