http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/what_is_linux_worth/

'Nuff said ;-)

John

-- 
"Eppur si muove" - Galileo Galilei

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On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:41:25 +0100, Doctor John wrote:

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/what_is_linux_worth/
> 
> 'Nuff said ;-)
> 
> John

Cost != Worth. ;-)

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:41:25 +0100, Doctor John wrote:
> 
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/what_is_linux_worth/
>>
>> 'Nuff said ;-)
>>
>> John
> 
> Cost != Worth. ;-)
> 
> Jim

I know that :-)
Just pointing out to those who expect to pay nothing what the actual
value of what they're getting is.
BTW FWIW I invariably recommend SuSE Enterprise to clients who prefer to
install Linux for the first time.

John

-- 
"Eppur si muove" - Galileo Galilei

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John wrote:
> Just pointing out to those who expect to pay nothing what the actual
> value of what they're getting is.

Value and cost are two entirely different things. That's kind of the point.

(Also, his estimates apparently leave out the cost of developing UNIX 
before Linux was started.  But that's just an aside.)

"The important thing is that Linux distributions have a very large 
inherent value"  -- Wrong word. The word there is "cost", not "value."

Put it this way: the "value" of one Fedora is supposedly $10b. Would 
anyone pay $300m today for the source code and exclusive right to 
distribute something new that does exactly what Linux does right now?  I 
doubt it.

Would anyone pay $300m today for the source code and exclusive right to 
distribute something that does exactly what MS Windows and Office do 
right now? I bet you could find a taker for that.

Linux has value, but you can't equate the value with the cost if you're 
not selling it.   It doesn't matter how much it cost if people don't 
want it even when you're giving it away free.  (Indeed, for something 
like software, it's almost impossible to equate cost with value either.)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:

> Value and cost are two entirely different things. That's kind of the point.

Director: What's the matter?

Doctor: Do you know, it's the damnest thing... I can't seem to find my 
sonic screwdriver...

Director: Are you seriously proposing to dismantle a £50,000,000 machine 
with a screwdriver?

Doctor: It's not worth 50,000,000 *peas* if it doesn't *work*, is it?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:11:39 +0100, Doctor John wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:41:25 +0100, Doctor John wrote:
>> 
>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/what_is_linux_worth/
>>>
>>> 'Nuff said ;-)
>>>
>>> John
>> 
>> Cost != Worth. ;-)
>> 
>> Jim
> 
> I know that :-)
> Just pointing out to those who expect to pay nothing what the actual
> value of what they're getting is.

I figured you did realise this, but some lurkers might not make that 
connection. :-)

It is true - and particularly interesting to me as well - that some 
people think if something's free there's no value to it.  That's actually 
why sometimes it makes sense to charge for something you might give 
away.  For example, I have held summits for instructors the last couple 
of years and we've held them as no-cost events.  Attendance was not as 
good as we'd hoped, so this year in our discussions, we're talking about 
it being a no-cost event with a cancellation fee or with a nominal 
registration fee in general.

Even though the information presented would be of a similar nature to 
those past events, the draw and engagement changes if people have to pay, 
even a small fee.

> BTW FWIW I invariably recommend SuSE Enterprise to clients who prefer to
> install Linux for the first time.

My wife and I appreciate that - that helps us pay our bills. ;-)

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> My wife and I appreciate that - that helps us pay our bills. ;-)
> 
> Jim

De nada :-)

John

-- 
"Eppur si muove" - Galileo Galilei

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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Value and cost are two entirely different things. That's kind of the 
>> point.
> 
> Director: What's the matter?
> 
> Doctor: Do you know, it's the damnest thing... I can't seem to find my 
> sonic screwdriver...
> 
> Director: Are you seriously proposing to dismantle a £50,000,000 machine 
> with a screwdriver?
> 
> Doctor: It's not worth 50,000,000 *peas* if it doesn't *work*, is it?

All this talk about things worth shit reminded of "Le Vin de Merde", a 
chep new wine label from France:
http://www.whytraveltofrance.com/2008/09/17/le-vin-de-merde/

Linux works just fine as long as you do not depend on Microsoft 
technologies, in which case you'll be whining to no end about 
incompatibilities, bugs, missing features and whatever...

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Linux works just fine as long as you do not depend on Microsoft 
> technologies, 

More correctly, it works just fine if it supports all your hardware and 
none of the programs you want to use were written by companies or people 
who depended on Microsoft technologies.  (E.g., if you want to play a 
game and the game author depended on DirectX, you're pretty much SOL.)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Linux works just fine as long as you do not depend on Microsoft 
>> technologies, 
> 
> More correctly, it works just fine if it supports all your hardware and 
> none of the programs you want to use were written by companies or people 
> who depended on Microsoft technologies.  (E.g., if you want to play a 
> game and the game author depended on DirectX, you're pretty much SOL.)
> 

True.  And here's the secret about getting your compatible hardware 
without much ado:
http://www.linux-drivers.org/

Check before you buy new hardware or if you plan to install Linux on 
your current hardware.  Most core stuff work out of the box, but 
new-fangled peripherals are quite often difficult to support because 
they target Windows and the Linux drivers may have to do some reverse 
engineering to support it.  If it is hardware compatible with a 
well-known standard, like USB, it's very much well supported.  Little 
known hardware specific for Windows will most likely never be supported...

If you want games, Unix is not for you, unless it is nethack or conway's 
game of life. ;)

Povray works fine on Linux, though. :)

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> True.  And here's the secret about getting your compatible hardware 
> without much ado:
> http://www.linux-drivers.org/

Actually, I've taken to going into the store with a LiveCD. I get funny 
looks from the sales people, but it's easy to boot up Suse 11 and look 
at the hardware list and see if it lists everything. At least you know 
there's *some* support there.

I've had at least two machines where GRUB wouldn't even load - probably 
the motherboard or something, which is actually something surprisingly 
difficult to find out about a computer you plan to buy already built.

> Check before you buy new hardware or if you plan to install Linux on 
> your current hardware.  

Yeah. Funny enough, people complain about Vista not supporting hardware 
right, but don't think that's a problem for Linux. :-) "Just buy the 
right hardware to start with."  My machines tend to last a number of 
years, so "buy the right hardware" isn't always possible for me.

> Most core stuff work out of the box, but 
> new-fangled peripherals are quite often difficult to support because 
> they target Windows and the Linux drivers may have to do some reverse 
> engineering to support it.

A lot of extra-cheap stuff tends to give me problems, too.

> If you want games, Unix is not for you, unless it is nethack or conway's 
> game of life. ;)

Yep.

> Povray works fine on Linux, though. :)

I'm going to be getting an 8G-ram 4-core x64 machine shortly, so I look 
forward to trying out the new POV beta. :)

Maybe I'll even get around to finishing up the distributed render code 
I've written and getting it working without manual intervention on 
Amazon's stuff. That could be fun, as long as I'm bored anyway.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Yeah. Funny enough, people complain about Vista not supporting hardware 
> right, but don't think that's a problem for Linux. :-) "Just buy the 
> right hardware to start with."

  I think there's a categorical difference here. Windows is *supposed* to
support all PC hardware. Every hardware manufacturer always makes sure that
their hardware will work at least on Windows (and most of them don't give
a rat's a** if it works on other systems or not). So Windows has become
more or less the de-facto OS for hardware compatibility.

  Thus when a new version of Windows is published and it breaks compatibility
with common hardware, the complaints are very justified. Basically you are
not getting what you are paying for: You are paying for an OS which will
allow you to use your computer, and Windows has always "promised" to do that.
When it doesn't, it's a ripoff.

  Nobody promises that linux will work perfectly with every piece of PC
hardware in existence. Thus when it doesn't, it's not a surprise. Tough
luck. If you want to use that piece of hardware, you'll just have to use
Windows, wait for the linux hackers to reverse-engineer the hardware to
make third-party drivers for it (because the hardware manufacturers won't
be of any help here), or buy a compatible version of that hardware. Sure,
this sometimes sucks big time, but nobody has made any promises, and it's
not like it's linux's fault (it's the fault of those hardware manufacturers).

  With linux you *are* getting what you are paying for. Thus it's not a
ripoff.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New escreveu:
> I'm going to be getting an 8G-ram 4-core x64 machine shortly, so I look 
> forward to trying out the new POV beta. :)

Damn lucky bastard!

in a gentle sense...

> Maybe I'll even get around to finishing up the distributed render code 
> I've written and getting it working without manual intervention on 
> Amazon's stuff.

huh?  Distributed render code?  For povray?  on Amazon?

Post a reply to this message

Warp escreveu:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Yeah. Funny enough, people complain about Vista not supporting hardware 
>> right, but don't think that's a problem for Linux. :-) "Just buy the 
>> right hardware to start with."
> 
>   I think there's a categorical difference here. Windows is *supposed* to
> support all PC hardware. Every hardware manufacturer always makes sure that
> their hardware will work at least on Windows (and most of them don't give
> a rat's a** if it works on other systems or not). So Windows has become
> more or less the de-facto OS for hardware compatibility.
> 
>   Thus when a new version of Windows is published and it breaks compatibility
> with common hardware, the complaints are very justified. Basically you are
> not getting what you are paying for: You are paying for an OS which will
> allow you to use your computer, and Windows has always "promised" to do that.
> When it doesn't, it's a ripoff.
> 
>   Nobody promises that linux will work perfectly with every piece of PC
> hardware in existence. Thus when it doesn't, it's not a surprise. Tough
> luck. If you want to use that piece of hardware, you'll just have to use
> Windows, wait for the linux hackers to reverse-engineer the hardware to
> make third-party drivers for it (because the hardware manufacturers won't
> be of any help here), or buy a compatible version of that hardware. Sure,
> this sometimes sucks big time, but nobody has made any promises, and it's
> not like it's linux's fault (it's the fault of those hardware manufacturers).
> 
>   With linux you *are* getting what you are paying for. Thus it's not a
> ripoff.

I wouldn't say any better.  Thanks to the hardware compatibility lists, 
though, I've never had any hardware problems with Linux at home.  Then 
again, I don't live on the bleeding edge... I'd really want to get a 
tablet to do some drawings...

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   I think there's a categorical difference here. Windows is *supposed* to
> support all PC hardware. 

Oh, I understand, yeah. On the other hand, when Vista-64 comes out and 
old hardware isn't supported, it shouldn't be all that surprising. :-)

> Windows has always "promised" to do that. When it doesn't, it's a ripoff.

Windows still relies on the third-party manufacturers to support their 
devices. I remember back in the Win98 days that you had to make sure you 
got a printer (for example) with the proper drivers.

One of the nice things about the Matrox video cards is they *do* release 
new drivers for new OSes on cards they don't even make any more, and 
they release drivers for older OSes on new cards.

> not like it's linux's fault (it's the fault of those hardware manufacturers).

Sure, but with a new version of Windows not supporting old hardware, 
that's also the fault of the hardware manufacturers, and Microsoft also 
publishes a list of what hardware works with their systems and what 
doesn't, including software that runs on your old OS and tells you what 
is compatible with your new OS and what you'd have to replace. Most 
people ignore that list, is all, at least after the first few months. :-)

I'm pretty sure MS doesn't guarantee that every piece of hardware will 
work with every version of Windows. People just *expect* that. :-) One 
could take what you've said and read it as "Windows works so well in 
this aspect that people are surprised when it breaks, while Linux works 
so poorly in this aspect that most people already know they'll have to 
work around the brokenness."

I just find it funny how often I see things where when Linux does 
something, it's claimed a benefit, and when Windows does the same thing, 
it's claimed a drawback. Technically, even, not just business-wise.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New escreveu:
>> I'm going to be getting an 8G-ram 4-core x64 machine shortly, so I 
>> look forward to trying out the new POV beta. :)
> 
> Damn lucky bastard!
> in a gentle sense...

Heh.

>> Maybe I'll even get around to finishing up the distributed render code 
>> I've written and getting it working without manual intervention on 
>> Amazon's stuff.
> 
> huh?  Distributed render code?  For povray?  on Amazon?


You're familiar with Amazon's ECC, their "elastic compute cloud"? You 
can rent their machines by the hour, fairly cheaply. (Like, $72/month 
for a one CPU machine.)

I wrote code that lets you put together a bunch of "jobs" to run in a 
local directory (which could be shell scripts that invoke POV-Ray), and 
a GUI that will push it up to Amazon's S3. You can run the "backend" 
scripts wherever you want, but it was intended you run them on Amazon's 
compute cloud. (For testing, I just use multiple processes/machines at 
home.) The back ends will pick up jobs that haven't been run, run them, 
and put the results back out in S3 for you. When it's done, all the 
machines shut down, and you have your renders.

I finished the S3 code, and the code that actually does the file 
manipulations and such, but I never wrote the code that lets you start 
it up automatically on a rented computer. You'd have to start the 
processes yourself, log in, and manually fire off the "go look for jobs 
to run" script. For one thing, while I was working on it, Amazon added a 
vital capability, which was the ability to pass something to the machine 
you just fired up without intervention, so you could launch the machine 
and as you launch it provide the login and location information it needs 
to find the jobs.

I've been testing it with a few of the scripts from the short-code 
contest from a while back.

If you want to do an animation, tho, you have to precalculate the stuff. 
It's going to parallelize everything, so it doesn't really help if 
you're doing something like simulation in POV-Ray script. Myself, I 
write code that outputs POV-Ray source, so that doesn't bother me.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New escreveu:
> I'm pretty sure MS doesn't guarantee that every piece of hardware will 
> work with every version of Windows. People just *expect* that. :-) One 
> could take what you've said and read it as "Windows works so well in 
> this aspect that people are surprised when it breaks, while Linux works 
> so poorly in this aspect that most people already know they'll have to 
> work around the brokenness."

Linux doesn't work poorly, its developers simply don't have the 
resources to support all hardware by themselves.

Windows should support, because such hardware is made for them and come 
with Windows drivers and even a seal of Windows compatibility... yeah, 
the hardware manufacturers are to blame.

That's the difference between Windows and Linux:  one has to beg 
manufacturers do their job right, the other actively works hard to make 
unsupported hardware eventually working.

On the plus side, my Olympus digital camera connects just fine to Linux 
without requiring the CD with the Windows driver...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
> You're familiar with Amazon's ECC, their "elastic compute cloud"? You 
> can rent their machines by the hour, fairly cheaply. (Like, $72/month 
> for a one CPU machine.)
> 
> I wrote code that lets you put together a bunch of "jobs" to run in a 
> local directory (which could be shell scripts that invoke POV-Ray), and 
> a GUI that will push it up to Amazon's S3. You can run the "backend" 
> scripts wherever you want, but it was intended you run them on Amazon's 
> compute cloud. (For testing, I just use multiple processes/machines at 
> home.) The back ends will pick up jobs that haven't been run, run them, 
> and put the results back out in S3 for you. When it's done, all the 
> machines shut down, and you have your renders.
> 
> I finished the S3 code, and the code that actually does the file 
> manipulations and such, but I never wrote the code that lets you start 
> it up automatically on a rented computer. You'd have to start the 
> processes yourself, log in, and manually fire off the "go look for jobs 
> to run" script. For one thing, while I was working on it, Amazon added a 
> vital capability, which was the ability to pass something to the machine 
> you just fired up without intervention, so you could launch the machine 
> and as you launch it provide the login and location information it needs 
> to find the jobs.
> 
> I've been testing it with a few of the scripts from the short-code 
> contest from a while back.
> 
> If you want to do an animation, tho, you have to precalculate the stuff. 
> It's going to parallelize everything, so it doesn't really help if 
> you're doing something like simulation in POV-Ray script. Myself, I 
> write code that outputs POV-Ray source, so that doesn't bother me.

Interesting.

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Linux doesn't work poorly, its developers simply don't have the 
> resources to support all hardware by themselves.

It works poorly relative to Windows when it comes to supporting 
different hardware. That it isn't the Linux developers' fault doesn't 
make it less true. My honda works poorly compared to a pick-up truck 
when I buy cinderblocks, too. :-)

In other words, reasons and excuses are two different things. True in 
all walks of life.

> Windows should support, because such hardware is made for them and come 
> with Windows drivers and even a seal of Windows compatibility... yeah,
> the hardware manufacturers are to blame.

Yes, in both cases. :-)  Altho I'll admit making the same driver work 
for 32-bit and 64-bit kernels is probably rather a PITA for a 
manufacturer, and I don't imagine it works too well under Windows 
either. I'll have to see when I get my 64-bit machine.

> That's the difference between Windows and Linux:  one has to beg 
> manufacturers do their job right, the other actively works hard to make 
> unsupported hardware eventually working.

I'm sure MS goes through a lot of pain to make popular hardware continue 
to work on new OSes too. They just can't always manage it for 
everything, just like Linux developers can't. Of course, the HW 
manufacturers are more eager to support their hardware under Windows, 
for all the reasons we both know.

> On the plus side, my Olympus digital camera connects just fine to Linux 
> without requiring the CD with the Windows driver...

I've never needed a driver CD for anything that worked like a HD, 
including my cameras. Usually those disks are closer to ad-ware than 
drivers. :-) Some of them come with cool software, tho, but you know, I 
already have a photo editor and a photo organizer on my machine. I don't 
need a new one with each camera.  Printers, yeah, but even there, the 
generic printer driver that comes with Windows usually manages at least 
the basics.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:33:34 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> I've had at least two machines where GRUB wouldn't even load - probably
> the motherboard or something, which is actually something surprisingly
> difficult to find out about a computer you plan to buy already built.

I've seen this a couple of times myself - it's always (in my case 
anyways) been a problem with the way Windows uses the MBR.  Some Linux 
distros install GRUB to the partition rather than the MBR and that'll 
cause problems if Windows is on the machine already - or if it's wiped 
off but the MBR isn't touched.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:27:26 -0200, nemesis wrote:

> Linux doesn't work poorly, its developers simply don't have the
> resources to support all hardware by themselves.

It's not always a question of resources, but also a question of publicly 
available specs for the hardware so drivers can be written.  Some 
hardware manufacturers don't want their hardware supported by OSS 
platforms, so they explicitly require an NDA to get access to programming 
information about the hardware.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson escreveu:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:27:26 -0200, nemesis wrote:
> 
>> Linux doesn't work poorly, its developers simply don't have the
>> resources to support all hardware by themselves.
> 
> It's not always a question of resources, but also a question of publicly 
> available specs for the hardware so drivers can be written.  Some 
> hardware manufacturers don't want their hardware supported by OSS 
> platforms, so they explicitly require an NDA to get access to programming 
> information about the hardware.

Hmm, playing dirty, huh?  Is it just the case of the 3D video cards or 
also other kinds of hardware?...

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Hmm, playing dirty, huh? 

No, playing for real money. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:33:34 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> 
>> I've had at least two machines where GRUB wouldn't even load - probably
>> the motherboard or something, which is actually something surprisingly
>> difficult to find out about a computer you plan to buy already built.
> 
> I've seen this a couple of times myself 

Well, I was speaking of booting the installation disk or the live cd. 
Didn't even get as far as actually installing it.

>- it's always (in my case 
> anyways) been a problem with the way Windows uses the MBR.  Some Linux 
> distros install GRUB to the partition rather than the MBR and that'll 
> cause problems if Windows is on the machine already - or if it's wiped 
> off but the MBR isn't touched.

Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load GRUB. 
You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:15:04 -0200, nemesis wrote:

> Hmm, playing dirty, huh?  Is it just the case of the 3D video cards or
> also other kinds of hardware?...

Divio is one that I've had to deal with; they manufacture (or 
manufactured) the CCD chip in some of the older Logitech Quickcams.  I 
happen to own one of those.

Divio refuses to open the spec, so the only Linux driver effort (which is 
now dead, AFAIK) is a development of the 'nw802' and 'nw8xx' drivers done 
entirely through reverse engineering using a USB sniffer.

I've also heard that some of the newer HP laserjet printers don't have 
open specs so there aren't drivers yet for them.  That one I haven't 
confirmed, just have heard about.

And don't get me started on BroadCom's idea of open source support....

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:09:51 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> nemesis wrote:
>> Hmm, playing dirty, huh?
> 
> No, playing for real money. :-)

Real money comes from hardware sales, though; supporting (or allowing 
others to write support for) more platforms = more product sales.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:11:03 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Well, I was speaking of booting the installation disk or the live cd.
> Didn't even get as far as actually installing it.

Oh, that's not Grub, that's SYSLINUX - Grub is hard-disk only to the best 
of my knowledge.

> Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load GRUB.
> You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.

Yup.  But it's not something that I've ever seen automated by the Linux 
installers.  Of course, I also tend to install to bare metal, not a 
system with Windows pre-installed.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:15:04 -0200, nemesis wrote:
> 
>> Hmm, playing dirty, huh?  Is it just the case of the 3D video cards or
>> also other kinds of hardware?...
> 
> Divio is one that I've had to deal with; they manufacture (or
> manufactured) the CCD chip in some of the older Logitech Quickcams.  I
> happen to own one of those.
> 
> Divio refuses to open the spec, so the only Linux driver effort (which is
> now dead, AFAIK) is a development of the 'nw802' and 'nw8xx' drivers done
> entirely through reverse engineering using a USB sniffer.

I read a blog about someone trying to reverse engineer the iPhone USB
protocol with a USB sniffer. They figured out a few basic things, then
noticed most of the interesting stuff was ENCRYPTED, and the project got
into a halt.

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Real money comes from hardware sales, though; supporting (or allowing 
> others to write support for) more platforms = more product sales.

Yes. That's why (for example) Sun gives away Java.

However, that doesn't hold true when the device drivers include much of 
the innovation in the hardware. As soon as you explain exactly how it 
works, someone else can rip off your design.  See, for example, "PC Clone".

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Oh, that's not Grub, that's SYSLINUX - Grub is hard-disk only to the best 
> of my knowledge.

OK. Whatever. Obviously it would have been a PITA to install Linux there 
even if I could get it to boot.

>> Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load GRUB.
>> You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.
> 
> Yup.  But it's not something that I've ever seen automated by the Linux 
> installers. 

No, because they can't write to NTFS partitions. So they can't modify 
the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows 
boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be all 
*that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for booting,which is 
to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they did that, you could 
boot back and forth between Windows and Linux without being at the console.


-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:34:55 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:15:04 -0200, nemesis wrote:
>> 
>>> Hmm, playing dirty, huh?  Is it just the case of the 3D video cards or
>>> also other kinds of hardware?...
>> 
>> Divio is one that I've had to deal with; they manufacture (or
>> manufactured) the CCD chip in some of the older Logitech Quickcams.  I
>> happen to own one of those.
>> 
>> Divio refuses to open the spec, so the only Linux driver effort (which
>> is now dead, AFAIK) is a development of the 'nw802' and 'nw8xx' drivers
>> done entirely through reverse engineering using a USB sniffer.
> 
> I read a blog about someone trying to reverse engineer the iPhone USB
> protocol with a USB sniffer. They figured out a few basic things, then
> noticed most of the interesting stuff was ENCRYPTED, and the project got
> into a halt.

Yeah, that's another one.  I also have limited ability to connect my 
Blackberry to my Linux system - I can charge the battery, but that's 
about it.  I know there are some apps that should let me back it up (like 
with the BB desktop on Windows), but I've not worked through setting that 
up yet.

The Divio chip reverse-engineering effort was nearly complete, I really 
don't understand why the project ground to a halt.  The biggest issue I 
had was the brightness control didn't work well - but I was actually able 
to get a picture from it (and video).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:21:23 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Real money comes from hardware sales, though; supporting (or allowing
>> others to write support for) more platforms = more product sales.
> 
> Yes. That's why (for example) Sun gives away Java.

Yes, and I'm happier now that the JDK is mostly ported to openJDK - that 
means 64-bit Java plugin for FF on Linux now.

> However, that doesn't hold true when the device drivers include much of
> the innovation in the hardware. As soon as you explain exactly how it
> works, someone else can rip off your design.  See, for example, "PC
> Clone".

True, but at the same time, that information being reverse-engineered by 
Compaq really opened up the PC market; it also commoditized (or helped 
commoditize) PC hardware and reduced the costs so most people could 
afford one.  Or two.  Or ten. ;-)

Which in turn has moved PC sales from a low-volume high-margin sales 
model to a low-margin high-volume sales model.  Seems to have worked out 
fairly well for most PC manufacturers.

Eventually, clean room reverse-engineering would expose those internals 
anyways, and arguably the type of process Compaq followed isn't something 
IBM could have sued over - the guys developing the Compaq BIOS were 
working entirely from specs drawn up by the guys who were looking at how 
the BIOS worked.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:24:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Oh, that's not Grub, that's SYSLINUX - Grub is hard-disk only to the
>> best of my knowledge.
> 
> OK. Whatever. Obviously it would have been a PITA to install Linux there
> even if I could get it to boot.

Well, yeah - I was just confused because you were saying GRUB, but 
because that doesn't work on removable media (and isn't designed for 
that).  I was hoping I hadn't missed something with GRUB development. ;-)

> 
>>> Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load
>>> GRUB. You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.
>> 
>> Yup.  But it's not something that I've ever seen automated by the Linux
>> installers.
> 
> No, because they can't write to NTFS partitions. 

ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.  I almost said it didn't 
matter, but forgot that with Windows you do have to modify boot.ini for 
that purpose.

> So they can't modify
> the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows
> boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be all
> *that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for booting,which is
> to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they did that, you could
> boot back and forth between Windows and Linux without being at the
> console.

Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS there, so 
they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, maybe they 
will with Windows 7?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson escreveu:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:24:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> So they can't modify
>> the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows
>> boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be all
>> *that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for booting,which is
>> to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they did that, you could
>> boot back and forth between Windows and Linux without being at the
>> console.
> 
> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
> way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS there, so 
> they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, maybe they 
> will with Windows 7?

I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> True, but at the same time, that information being reverse-engineered by 
> Compaq really opened up the PC market;

I think the pheonix bios did more than Compaq did. The hardware was all 
very well documented by IBM before the clones started coming out, as was 
the BIOS. People didn't used to try to hide that sort of thing. :-) IBM 
wanted people building cards for it, just like Apple did for the
Apple ][.

> it also commoditized (or helped 
> commoditize) PC hardware and reduced the costs so most people could 
> afford one.  Or two.  Or ten. ;-)

Yep yep.

> Which in turn has moved PC sales from a low-volume high-margin sales 
> model to a low-margin high-volume sales model.  Seems to have worked out 
> fairly well for most PC manufacturers.

I dunno about that. Worked well for, say, manufacturing plants in China. 
I don't know that it worked well for people actually selling the end 
product.

> Eventually, clean room reverse-engineering would expose those internals 
> anyways, and arguably the type of process Compaq followed isn't something 
> IBM could have sued over - the guys developing the Compaq BIOS were 
> working entirely from specs drawn up by the guys who were looking at how 
> the BIOS worked.

Yeah. Except I think you're confusing Phoenix with Compaq. Compaq made 
the hardware. Phoenix cloned the BIOS first.  (Unless I'm misremembering 
something.)

And yes, IBM *did* sue over it. That's why Phoenix followed the 
clean-room approach to start with. The original IBMs came with a 
complete commented source listing of the BIOS when you bought them. 
(Well, maybe it was an extra packet, part of the assembler or something, 
but it was an off-the-shelf purchase.)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> I was hoping I hadn't missed something with GRUB development. ;-)

In matters Linux, always assume I don't know more than you do. :-)

>>>> Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load
>>>> GRUB. You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.
>>> Yup.  But it's not something that I've ever seen automated by the Linux
>>> installers.
>> No, because they can't write to NTFS partitions. 
> 
> ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.  

Yes, but since (as I understand it) you need a copy of ntfs.sys on your 
Linux partition to make that work, Linux first has to already be booted 
and capable of mounting the right drive and finding ntfs.sys to copy it. 
I guess you could do it, but it certainly sounds ... messy. :-)

> I almost said it didn't 
> matter, but forgot that with Windows you do have to modify boot.ini for 
> that purpose.

That's the rub.

> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
> way about how the system boots.

Dude, it's been that was since the IBM XT came out.  The very first hard 
drive, before you could have more than 4 partitions, had a boot sector 
that would boot off the "active partition". That's what it's *for*.

Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a 
decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is 
doing wrong here?

> They want to be the only OS there, so 
> they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, maybe they 
> will with Windows 7?

Doing what? I have no problem at all telling Windows to boot Linux on 
the next go, simply by changing the active partition to be partition 2 
instead of partition 1.  Once I get into Linux, I can reconfigure GRUB 
to default to booting Windows. But after that, I can never get back into 
Linux again, because Windows can't change GRUB's configuration, so if I 
set the active partition to the GRUB partition, it'll still boot Windows.

Now who is the only OS that'll boot?

If GRUB's boot sector actually loaded the boot sector off the active 
partition, just like ever other boot sector written in the history of 
hard drives on IBM computers and their clones, you could remotely switch 
back and forth by using the same procedure that's worked since day 0 on 
the IBM AT. Sadly, the Linux developers want to be the only OS that can 
be booted, so they didn't bother to follow the standard. ;-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson escreveu:
>> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:24:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>>> So they can't modify
>>> the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows
>>> boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be all
>>> *that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for booting,which is
>>> to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they did that, you could
>>> boot back and forth between Windows and Linux without being at the
>>> console.
>>
>> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves 
>> that way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS 
>> there, so they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that, 
>> maybe they will with Windows 7?
> 
> I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D

If they do what? Fix their MBR code so it boots the active partition, so 
you don't have to boot Windows to change what operating system boots if 
it by default already boots Windows?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.  I almost said it didn't 
> matter, but forgot that with Windows you do have to modify boot.ini for 
> that purpose.

To be clear, you have to modify boot.ini to add a new option to the 
Windows boot menu choice. But you do *NOT* have to modify boot.ini to 
boot something instead of Windows. You just change the active partition. 
You can boot off a MS-DOS floppy and change yourself from booting 
Windows to booting Linux or Solaris or whatever else you might have there.

Unfortunately, since GRUB doesn't follow the rules that have been in 
place for 25+ years, this doesn't work with GRUB. Used to work with 
LILO, but apparently GRUB's per-partition boot loader requires GRUB's 
MBR to work right, according to some informal tests I just did.

> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves that 
> way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS there, 

Um, no. They behave exactly the opposite. MS's boot sector will boot 
whatever partition is marked "active".  Remember that MS has been making 
multiple OSes for a long time. You've always been able to multi-boot off 
MS operating systems.

Solaris was the OS that wiped out your partition table, on the grounds 
that you couldn't possibly want Windows *and* Solaris both. And GRUB is 
apparently incapable of booting from its own partition without the help 
of its own MBR, which doesn't pay any attention to the active flag.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> They want to be the only OS there, so they just play like they are.  
>> They should stop doing that, maybe they will with Windows 7?
> 
> Doing what? I have no problem at all telling Windows to boot Linux on 
> the next go, simply by changing the active partition to be partition 2 
> instead of partition 1.

How do a layman do that?  But then again, a layman won't install Linux 
anyway...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
> Unfortunately, since GRUB doesn't follow the rules that have been in 
> place for 25+ years

We're all about to have SSDs default on PCs and you're talking about 25+ 
years ancient tech and standards?  How about using tapes to install 
Microsoft DOS right now? ;)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Um, no. They behave exactly the opposite. MS's boot sector will boot 
> whatever partition is marked "active".  Remember that MS has been making 
> multiple OSes for a long time. You've always been able to multi-boot off 
> MS operating systems.
> 

Umm. Wait.. Being "allowed" to pick, if I choose to, which OS to boot, 
without having to fiddle with "active" flags, is a bad thing? I must 
admit to being a tad confused here. It sounds like you are suggesting a 
high tech version of the goofy, "I installed a switch, so that before I 
turn the machine on, I can pick if I want the Windows or the Linux HDD 
to be the master!". First thing I thought when I saw it was, "OK, so.. 
How do I set this up so that it uses an electronic switch, so that I can 
simply toggle the switch, while the machine is still running, and have 
it flip the drives during the reboot, when the machine shuts down 
temporarily, before restarting?" The last thing on my mind was, "How do 
I make it harder to flip the switch.", which is what having to directly 
specify "which" partition is active, while, possibly, the wrong OS 
booted in the first place, from a cold start, does to the boot sequence.

I.e., instead of waiting 5 seconds for Grub/Lilo to time out and 
autoboot the default, I have to boot all the way into what ever OS is 
currently "active" before I can tell it I *really* wanted to boot into 
the other one. WTF?


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     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> How do a layman do that?  But then again, a layman won't install Linux 
> anyway...

fdisk, diskpart, the disk management GUI, or whatever it is you normally 
use to partition the GUI.

I'm not sure YaST lets you do it, but that's almost expected, given that 
Linux ignores the flag.  I'm pretty sure I remember the linux 
command-line partitioner (whatever it's called ... fdisk?) letting you 
set it.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Umm. Wait.. Being "allowed" to pick, if I choose to, which OS to boot, 
> without having to fiddle with "active" flags, is a bad thing? 

No, of course not. And both Windows and Linux let you do that, and 
neither lets you conveniently edit the menus of the others.

But being allowed to pick which OS to boot by fiddling with the active 
flags is *also* supported by Windows, but not by Linux.

In other words, the standard MBR says "load the boot sector from the 
active partition."  If this is Windows, Windows reads boot.ini and gives 
you a choice. So it's two steps.

But if (for example) you have the GRUB boot partition, you cannot delete 
the Linux partition and still be able to boot the machine. If you have 
the standard boot partition, you can set a different partition active 
(while you're deleting the Windows partition anyway) and get that OS 
starting up.

> I.e., instead of waiting 5 seconds for Grub/Lilo to time out and 
> autoboot the default, I have to boot all the way into what ever OS is 
> currently "active" before I can tell it I *really* wanted to boot into 
> the other one. WTF?

No, you're misunderstanding. If the standard MBR is there, it'll give 
you the menu configured into whatever OS is on the partition that's 
"active".  If the GRUB MBR is there, it gives you Linux's menu, 
regardless of what's active.

Both Windows and Linux offer boot-time menus for picking which OS you 
want, without having to start up the whole kernel first. Windows *also* 
lets you use someone else's menu if you want to.

And yes, if it's Linux, and you want it to boot a different OS, you have 
to wait to go all the way into Linux before you can change the default 
OS to boot. And once you've done that, you're screwed, because you can 
never boot back into Linux again unless you're sitting at the console. 
So, don't try to switch back and forth remotely, which is what I was 
talking about in the first place.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.
> 
> Yes, but since (as I understand it) you need a copy of ntfs.sys on your
> Linux partition to make that work, Linux first has to already be booted
> and capable of mounting the right drive and finding ntfs.sys to copy it.
> I guess you could do it, but it certainly sounds ... messy. :-)

No, that's the old and unsafe system. ntfs-3g is an actual implementation of
the NTFS filesystem.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> No, that's the old and unsafe system. ntfs-3g is an actual implementation of
> the NTFS filesystem.

See? I told you I don't know what I'm talking about with Linux. :-) Cool.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> How do a layman do that?  But then again, a layman won't install Linux 
>> anyway...
> 
> fdisk, diskpart, the disk management GUI, or whatever it is you normally 
> use to partition the GUI.
> 
> I'm not sure YaST lets you do it, but that's almost expected, given that 
> Linux ignores the flag.  I'm pretty sure I remember the linux 
> command-line partitioner (whatever it's called ... fdisk?) letting you 
> set it.

That was a rethoric question... a layman doesn't know how to partition 
disks or what the hell it is anyway. ;)

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:23:10 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I was hoping I hadn't missed something with GRUB development. ;-)
> 
> In matters Linux, always assume I don't know more than you do. :-)

Thing is, I always assume I'm going to learn something new, especially 
when talking with you, Darren. :-)

>>>>> Maybe. I don't have any trouble using Windows' bootloader to load
>>>>> GRUB. You just have to set it up right. It's pretty trivial.
>>>> Yup.  But it's not something that I've ever seen automated by the
>>>> Linux installers.
>>> No, because they can't write to NTFS partitions.
>> 
>> ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.
> 
> Yes, but since (as I understand it) you need a copy of ntfs.sys on your
> Linux partition to make that work, Linux first has to already be booted
> and capable of mounting the right drive and finding ntfs.sys to copy it.
> I guess you could do it, but it certainly sounds ... messy. :-)

I'm now wondering if that's the case - if it uses ntfs.sys; I was under 
the impression it does, but in searching for that information, it seems 
another driver, called the "captive" driver uses a shim from ReactOS to 
wrap around ntfs.sys.  I'll have to do a little more digging to see if 
ntfs-3g uses that or not.

>> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves
>> that way about how the system boots.
> 
> Dude, it's been that was since the IBM XT came out.  The very first hard
> drive, before you could have more than 4 partitions, had a boot sector
> that would boot off the "active partition". That's what it's *for*.

Well, yes.  There was specific boot sector code in the MBR to do that, 
though.  GRUB can be installed either way, but it does enhance things a 
bit more - kinda like the old System Commander software did.

> Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a
> decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is
> doing wrong here?

My understanding is that the Microsoft MBR (at least as included in 
Vista, possibly with older versions as well) depends on that boot.ini 
file, much as GRUB depends on the files in /boot/grub.

>> They want to be the only OS there, so they just play like they are. 
>> They should stop doing that, maybe they will with Windows 7?
> 
> Doing what? I have no problem at all telling Windows to boot Linux on
> the next go, simply by changing the active partition to be partition 2
> instead of partition 1.  Once I get into Linux, I can reconfigure GRUB
> to default to booting Windows. But after that, I can never get back into
> Linux again, because Windows can't change GRUB's configuration, so if I
> set the active partition to the GRUB partition, it'll still boot
> Windows.

Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.  
But also, GRUB can be told to change the default for a single boot only - 
at least I seem to recall there's an option to do that.

> Now who is the only OS that'll boot?

Installing Linux (at least openSUSE) on a drive with Windows on it, the 
installer will set Windows up as a menu option so you can select either.  
Installing Windows after Linux, though, Windows won't add Linux to the 
boot menu automatically.  I guess that's what I was trying to say.

> If GRUB's boot sector actually loaded the boot sector off the active
> partition, just like ever other boot sector written in the history of
> hard drives on IBM computers and their clones, you could remotely switch
> back and forth by using the same procedure that's worked since day 0 on
> the IBM AT. Sadly, the Linux developers want to be the only OS that can
> be booted, so they didn't bother to follow the standard. ;-)

I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was 
in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:33:54 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> I'm not sure YaST lets you do it, but that's almost expected, given that
> Linux ignores the flag.  I'm pretty sure I remember the linux
> command-line partitioner (whatever it's called ... fdisk?) letting you
> set it.

YaST will let you do this.  I was just in there checking it out. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:13:01 -0200, nemesis wrote:

> Jim Henderson escreveu:
>> On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:24:15 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>>> So they can't modify
>>> the Windows boot menu to accomidate Linux. So they clobber the Windows
>>> boot sector with the GRUB boot sector.  Which, honestly, wouldn't be
>>> all *that* awful, if they actually followed the rules for
>>> booting,which is to say, boot the partition marked "active".  If they
>>> did that, you could boot back and forth between Windows and Linux
>>> without being at the console.
>> 
>> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves
>> that way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS
>> there, so they just play like they are.  They should stop doing that,
>> maybe they will with Windows 7?
> 
> I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D

You'll have to video that one. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:58:37 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> ntfs-3g can write safely to NTFS partitions.  I almost said it didn't
>> matter, but forgot that with Windows you do have to modify boot.ini for
>> that purpose.
> 
> To be clear, you have to modify boot.ini to add a new option to the
> Windows boot menu choice. But you do *NOT* have to modify boot.ini to
> boot something instead of Windows. You just change the active partition.
> You can boot off a MS-DOS floppy and change yourself from booting
> Windows to booting Linux or Solaris or whatever else you might have
> there.
> 
> Unfortunately, since GRUB doesn't follow the rules that have been in
> place for 25+ years, this doesn't work with GRUB. Used to work with
> LILO, but apparently GRUB's per-partition boot loader requires GRUB's
> MBR to work right, according to some informal tests I just did.

I think this is because GRUB is actually a more complex piece of software 
compared to LILO.  LILO also had problems booting a system that was on a 
cylinder greater than 1024 IIRC.

>> Yeah, it's really kinda - well, expected, I guess - that MS behaves
>> that way about how the system boots.  They want to be the only OS
>> there,
> 
> Um, no. They behave exactly the opposite. MS's boot sector will boot
> whatever partition is marked "active".  Remember that MS has been making
> multiple OSes for a long time. You've always been able to multi-boot off
> MS operating systems.

That's not how I remember it, but I generally didn't have multiple MS 
OSes installed simultaneously.

> Solaris was the OS that wiped out your partition table, on the grounds
> that you couldn't possibly want Windows *and* Solaris both. And GRUB is
> apparently incapable of booting from its own partition without the help
> of its own MBR, which doesn't pay any attention to the active flag.

Now I could see that with Solaris. :-)

Jim

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