J j.e.taylor@uea.ac.uk wrote:
Erm, Linus dosnt sit down and write X does he? or fix patches on Gaim?
Coo, you're getting good at this, you do actually know something... *applauds the J*.
Whats your point about who writes it? My point about Windows was that the Operating system provider (Microsoft) also provide a development kit that allows a range of languages and a range of efficiencies for the development of applications for their operating system.
They do?! You mean that commercial get in your face, Pile Of Wank, get in the way IDE called Visual Studio? I wasn't aware that this was Free Software? or even available/accessable to the hundreds and thousands of programmers out there? I wasn't aware that the range of languages MS supports was actually very vast, or, even, very nice. And, above all, the Windows API is evil.
Whilst some distributions do similar things, I dont get the same sort of feel for their compatable systems (by this I mean debian have a package which lets you make debian packages dont they?
Hang on, now you've switched to package management?! Now, lets think about this, Windows is one distribution of one god damned awful operating system, *VERY* easy to get people to use a very very similar install mechanism, because everyone has to use the same set of libraries, and the same mechanisms to display windows. InstallShield ended up being one of the most popular installers for windows software, because it was easy... You'll notice the growing trend on linux to be apt-get, weird that, seens as it works. There are only really 2 schools now, the apt-get crew, and the ports crew (in effect), and both have their respective advantages and disadvantages, and mostly, they both work damned well. Now, if you have windows, where's the choice? it's going to be an executable, it's going to be run to install, wow. You know that there's going to be a GUI, because windows won't let you not have a GUI, so, there's one less concern. Now, take linux, doesn't matter what distro, someone, somewhere, is running it in the most minimal state possible while someone else has KDE/GNOME/FreeDesktop/all the graphical funkyness in the world... *YET* both of those systems should be able to upgrade cleanly, and with out requiring any more software.
and similar tools are availible, but none of these tools seem to be like the Microsoft equivilant (which whilst dont allow you to be... adaptable ie everyone has the same toolsets, they do interface with each other on a very basic level).
Just *WHAT* do you mean by this, you appear to be jumping between controlling interfaces, installers, IDEs, and, well, all the tools that for a good development environment you have to find some that suit you. It's a personal thing. Personally, I'd rather hack on code in vim, by hand, and write a quick makefile to generate the binaries, I don't like IDEs though, they tend to reduce my productivity by generally having backwards design ideas and trying to tell me what I mean when it's not at all what I mean. ISTR Mr Ray likes wily, because it sits well with how he develops, now, if you're saying that Visual Studio fits with how you develop, and you're very happy with the APIs of Microsoft Windows, then why waste your time telling us how great it all is, when we're not particularly interested, and go out and work for them?
But wouldnt it be better to create one program which did take all those mindsets and goals, all that experience and made a brillant adaptable progam? Sure there are *some* open source programs which do allow that level of genericiy (usually through the use of some core system and a bunch of plug-in modules such as Apache and Gaim.
Not everyone *NEEDS* the power of apache, many people run thttpd and other small webservers, some run apache2, some run not a lot more than a listener on the http port. THE CHOICE IS WHAT'S IMPORTANT. A *lot* of the systems would end up being slow, and unfit for purpose if you gave them all a "core system", a lot of them don't *need* plugins, don't want plugins, and would rather shoot you dead than use plugins. Think about what you're asking, you're asking a bunch of geeks, with differing goals, to colloborate on a messy mix of the projects. So, you end up compromising on speed, or security, or both. You end up with one project, that after a while is going to fork due to politics, or die with a lot of other projects out there. Stay with the variety, the more developers with ideas, the more projects, the more projects, the more competition, the more competetion, the more development, ergo - s'all good. Fair enough, you get 7 billion packages providing you with a webserver, but every single one of them has different goals.
The original link was to posters for Microsoft's security concerns. The actual posters are to promote users ideas about security and suggest that you visit http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/ which I presume will try to make sure that your computer has both recent patch updates and suggests using Anti-Virus software.
The final thing I would like to ask is do people using Linux take note of Linux virus's OR the potential that their servers might be transfering Windows virus's to other computers? If you have Windows users who are uploading files, might you have virus infected files on your webservers or email servers?
*YAWN* I know my work mailserver is passing on windows viruses to our customers, but that's because there's no virus scanner in the chain, and I tend to prefer *NOT* fucking with customers e-mail midstream, TYVM. As for Linux virii, weirdly, you get these 'ere security alerts etc etc, most of us do keep an eye on what's going on.
Get better. Got the cold eveyones got? Im currently hiding from foul mood headchy kaz whilst passing her tea & rugs on the end of a long stick.
Hrm, well, woke up this morning, coughed guts up for half hour, head still fuzzy, sneezing is not nice, and generally feeling quite lethargic, about covers it. Now off to put the kettle on and have some tea while watching some snooker.
Brett.