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| DistroWatch + TuxReports | June 17, 2002 | |
by , 20 December, 2001
There were a lot of interesting things that happened in the past year from the technical perspective. But, I'll not start with those. I'll get to a few of them later.
September 11, 2001 at 8:48 a.m. EST the world changed. For better or ill it has changed us all.
I was so sickened I was on auto-pilot for 2 weeks afterward. I still, months later, simply can not get my head to grasp what happened that day. It refuses to accept such monstrous activity as being from the same planet.
For the most part, I am very proud of how America has reacted. But not completely. The Bush administration is even now holding something over 1,000 people incommunicado in secret locations, without benefit of counsel. Some of these people are American citizens. Some are not.
To me it is frightening to contemplate that this is just so like Nazi Germany I can not believe it. I wonder if the American Gestapo wore their swastikas openly and proudly. The Attorney General of the United States sees absolutely nothing wrong with this. In fact, if he has his way, it's about to get worse. Secret military tribunals, completely outside the American legal system and answerable to no one, are being pushed for actively, by him.
The American constitution, bought in blood and defended many times the same way, makes no allowance for this. The actions of the Bush administration are unconstitutional to the extreme. America is held up as the shining example to the world of how freedom and democracy are supposed to work. What will they think of us if we, supposedly the guardian of Liberty's flame, do away with liberty and freedom within our own shores?
Think about it people. This is real. Just read the papers, or watch the evening news, and you will see how real it is.
Now for a quick look back at the major technical milestones of the year.
In Linux, the 2.4 kernel finally made it's appearance. True to form however the 2.2 kernel was still being actively developed and bugs squashed left and right. Alan Cox, Linus, and all the rest of the code warriors are to be commended for yet another job well done.
Microsoft finally got a judgement meted out to them for their long-standing monopolistic business practices. Of course, that is seriously being debated as to implementation. Red Hat added it's own bit of spice to the mix by offering to install Open Source software into the United States public school system, as part of the settlement agreement. We wait to see the result of that.
StarOffice 6.0 is almost ready to roll out the door. A legitimate replacement for Microsoft Office in every way.
Businesses, large and small, are really beginning to take a serious look at Linux as a legitimate replacement for their current operating system. Microsoft, as usual, is their own worst enemy. Windows 2000 shipped with something over 67,000 known bugs, and many are simply waiting for it to get better, before daring to trust their critical business applications with it.
On the consumer side, Microsoft has announced that they are withdrawing support for their older operating systems, starting with Windows 9x (and previous). I would suggest in the strongest possible terms that if you are running one of the Windows operating systems to become orphaned soon, you go to the Microsoft site, download to disk and save, any and all security updates you can find. You may not be able to get them later.
Microsoft, with XP, has really done a grave disservice to the consumer by bringing back extreme copy protection, and worse, not bothering to include a CD for the money you pay. This is inexcusable. Microsoft will no doubt find, like scores of companies before them, that the consumer simply will not sit still with this. Not any more. With Linux in the wings Microsoft needs to do some serious rethinking of their actions with Windows XP.
A look ahead to the next year should show Microsoft, chastened by the consumer voting with their wallets, removing extreme copy protection (call it what you will) from Windows XP and starting to include CD's with every purchase. This should have been done from the beginning and, to my mind, if an operating system does not come with a CD then it is not an operating system.
Not sure exactly what it is but if any company is going to tell me, the consumer, that I can not have the ability to reinstall an operating system that I bought legitimately, on that computer or on another (after removing it in accordance with the license agreement), then I simply will refuse to do business with that company. At all.
Linux is going to get better. Open Source guarantees this. With a bit of work on the install and configuration routines Linux is going to become a completely legitimate replacement for anything else. In the enterprise environment. In the Home. Everywhere. It will no longer be the province of geeks only.
This is the primary purpose of this site. To help bring Linux to the masses and Laurence is doing a great job with it. I am proud to be a part of that effort. I hope that my own humble efforts are seen as what they are, clear-eyed criticism born of over 20 years of experience in the computer industry. Not as simply Microsoft bashing.
To wrap up, I'd simply like to wish one and all a happy holiday season, no matter what you might call it. I will be going to visit with family over the holidays and won't be back until after the New Year.
When I come back I'll be doing a review of Peanut Linux 9.1 (the download version) and then the same for Vector Linux 2.0. Should be interesting to see how two distros that make the claim to being newbie-friendly--to the point of being able to install them off a Windows partition--come out in a head-to-head comparison. I look forward to that.
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