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Re: Why is linux not popular



On Sun, 19 Aug 2001, Boris Gorelik wrote:

> Hi, all!
> Before I continue, I'd like to say that I use linux (as workspace for 
> molecular modeling research and writing bad C++), I love linux and I hope 
> that some day philosophy behind linux will rule the world.
> OK, now I can say some bad things:
> 
> 1. Until Linux is not  _TRULY_ layman friendly, it has no chance in the 
> battle with MS-Windows and even with Mac-OS. I use RH7.1 and (with all my 
> respect to it) it is less friendly than Workbench 2.1 that I used to use with 
> my Amiga 500. Well of course there are lots of of help sources, but everyone 
> I know (including 2 programmers) think that they are too complicated. 
> 
> Look what mulix wrote as an answer on <gnubies-il@yahoogroups.com>:
> 
> >the simplest way would probably be to hack the sys_execve() syscall in
> >the kernel, to fail unless requested by root. note that this will
> >probably render your system useless (for example, any process that
> >*drops* priviledges will fail), without extensive hacking.
> These lines where taken from <gnubies-il@yahoogroups.com>.
> Well, it's like telling little child about sex through the central dogma of 
> protein translation and molecular biology.
> (sorry, mulix ;-)   )

Please don't take it out of context.

The question asked was something like:

"I have had my system rooted by a user who used a script called
'modutils.sh' . I thought I should secure my system by disallowing any
users to execute programs (even programs they have created). How do I do
that?"

This was generally an interesting way of saying "don't bother".

This wasn't, of course, all of mulix's answer.

> 
> I don't know why, (or maybe I do know), but the Israeli popular computer 
> press (like Captain Internet) barely remind Linux. Two years ago, I 
> wrote Captain Internet and asked them to add a column dedicated to linux, but 
> they never answered me.
> 
> 2. HEBREW
> I think it would be a good idea if someone release a _READY_ Hebrew enabled 
> distro. When I say ready, I mean that user has to be able to read and wright  
> Hebrew immediately after the installation (with no need to run scripts, 
> change files etc)

Mandrake (as of 7.1 or 7.2) was generally like that. All you have to do is
choose "Hebrew" in the installation menu. Although it's been a while since
I've looked at things.

Some tings are getting broken, and re-ammended, but that's what bug
reports are for.

One can make a 'Mandrake with fixes' distro.

> 
> 3. Developers (or: Microsoft conspiration)
> A friend of mine is a computer sciences student in a college (michlala) in 
> Tel Aviv. Every student in that college (and in many others) can get freely 
> MS-Studio from their library. More than that, they learn programming using 
> this package in classrooms. It's like giving free examplesof new (or old) 
> medicines to doctors (I'm a pharmacist, and believe me it WORKS). Can anyone 
> change this? 

giving away linux CDs? ;-)

There are a couple of well-known things to do:

you can make developers aware that their copy of MS-Studio isn't really
free, because by using it they lock themselves on a certain technology,
and becaome part of MS's cash-cow.

You can make X's development environments more atractive, by explaining to
future developers how to use them (for instance: most Technion CS 
graduates use pico as their standard editor in unix. They didn't bother
using better alternatives).

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir


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