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::Welcome to the Open world:: All FOSS, lovers we Want you!!!
- Thread starter gayan kalhara
- Start date
isuru143 said:
I got ubuntu hardy 8.4 versions I'm using xubuntu right now, and i dual booted with kubuntu, Kubuntu is grate lyk vista, its effects are grate but i gor 256 Ram so its bit hard to work with...
xubuntu is better than normal ubuntu edition, couz its clear interface and speed, But If you want nice interface with amazing effects kubntu is better..
and also i have installed edubuntu surface with xubuntu, But I don't recomand it if you gonna begin with it..
currently i have those and have these CDs, Ubuntu, xubuntu, kubuntu,Red Hat 9, open suse (this is grate)
gayan kalhara said:
Ok,Then I First download Xubuntu and Install it.Can I install dual OS like XP and XUBUNTU,BCOZ If there is a problem with anything I can come online(with XP) and ask from you....
isuru143 said:
yes i have done the same. I triple booted, XP,Xubuntu and Kubuntu..
But You don't have to download and install xubuntu,, If you got downloaded edubuntu now. so try it its OK.. No probs,,,,, bro...
whts your modem,, I think many modems are covered by newest ubuntu 8.10 version but I havn't tried yet.. If you got ant prob please let me knowisuru143 said:
Last edited:
Why Software Should Not Have Owners
Why Software Should Not Have Owners
by Richard Stallman
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us.
Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs “owners”, most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.
The copyright system grew up with printing—a technology for mass production copying. Copyright fit in well with this technology because it restricted only the mass producers of copies. It did not take freedom away from readers of books. An ordinary reader, who did not own a printing press, could copy books only with pen and ink, and few readers were sued for that.
Digital technology is more flexible than the printing press: when information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with others. This very flexibility makes a bad fit with a system like copyright. That's the reason for the increasingly nasty and draconian measures now used to enforce software copyright. Consider these four practices of the Software Publishers Association (SPA):
Owners make several kinds of arguments for giving them the power to control how we use information:
Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives.
And above all society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary cooperation in its citizens. When software owners tell us that helping our neighbors in a natural way is “piracy”, they pollute our society's civic spirit.
This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
The economic argument for owners is erroneous, but the economic issue is real. Some people write useful software for the pleasure of writing it or for admiration and love; but if we want more software than those people write, we need to raise funds.
For ten years now, free software developers have tried various methods of finding funds, with some success. There's no need to make anyone rich; the median US family income, around $35k, proves to be enough incentive for many jobs that are less satisfying than programming.
For years, until a fellowship made it unnecessary, I made a living from custom enhancements of the free software I had written. Each enhancement was added to the standard released version and thus eventually became available to the general public. Clients paid me so that I would work on the enhancements they wanted, rather than on the features I would otherwise have considered highest priority.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a tax-exempt charity for free software development, raises funds by selling GNU CD-ROMs, T-shirts, manuals, and deluxe distributions, (all of which users are free to copy and change), as well as from donations. It now has a staff of five programmers, plus three employees who handle mail orders.
Some free software developers make money by selling support services. Cygnus Support, with around 50 employees [when this article was written], estimates that about 15 per cent of its staff activity is free software development—a respectable percentage for a software company.
Companies including Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices have combined to fund the continued development of the free GNU compiler for the language C. Meanwhile, the GNU compiler for the Ada language is being funded by the US Air Force, which believes this is the most cost-effective way to get a high quality compiler. [Air Force funding ended some time ago; the GNU Ada Compiler is now in service, and its maintenance is funded commercially.]
All these examples are small; the free software movement is still small, and still young. But the example of listener-supported radio in this country [the US] shows it's possible to support a large activity without forcing each user to pay.
As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying “No” to proprietary software.
You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software. You deserve to be able to learn how the software works, and to teach your students with it. You deserve to be able to hire your favorite programmer to fix it when it breaks.
You deserve free software.
I have found this article long time ago.. this one is considered as the longest and the oldest article on this topic..
source = http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
Why Software Should Not Have Owners
by Richard Stallman
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us.
Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs “owners”, most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.
The copyright system grew up with printing—a technology for mass production copying. Copyright fit in well with this technology because it restricted only the mass producers of copies. It did not take freedom away from readers of books. An ordinary reader, who did not own a printing press, could copy books only with pen and ink, and few readers were sued for that.
Digital technology is more flexible than the printing press: when information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with others. This very flexibility makes a bad fit with a system like copyright. That's the reason for the increasingly nasty and draconian measures now used to enforce software copyright. Consider these four practices of the Software Publishers Association (SPA):
- Massive propaganda saying it is wrong to disobey the owners to help your friend.
- Solicitation for stool pigeons to inform on their coworkers and colleagues.
- Raids (with police help) on offices and schools, in which people are told they must prove they are innocent of illegal copying.
- Prosecution (by the US government, at the SPA's request) of people such as MIT's David LaMacchia, not for copying software (he is not accused of copying any), but merely for leaving copying facilities unguarded and failing to censor their use.
Owners make several kinds of arguments for giving them the power to control how we use information:
- Name calling. Owners use smear words such as “piracy” and “theft”, as well as expert terminology such as “intellectual property” and “damage”, to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public—a simplistic analogy between programs and physical objects.
Our ideas and intuitions about property for material objects are about whether it is right to take an object away from someone else. They don't directly apply to making a copy of something. But the owners ask us to apply them anyway. - Exaggeration. Owners say that they suffer “harm” or “economic loss” when users copy programs themselves. But the copying has no direct effect on the owner, and it harms no one. The owner can lose only if the person who made the copy would otherwise have paid for one from the owner.
A little thought shows that most such people would not have bought copies. Yet the owners compute their “losses” as if each and every one would have bought a copy. That is exaggeration—to put it kindly. - The law. Owners often describe the current state of the law, and the harsh penalties they can threaten us with. Implicit in this approach is the suggestion that today's law reflects an unquestionable view of morality—yet at the same time, we are urged to regard these penalties as facts of nature that can't be blamed on anyone.
This line of persuasion isn't designed to stand up to critical thinking; it's intended to reinforce a habitual mental pathway.
It's elementary that laws don't decide right and wrong. Every American should know that, forty years ago, it was against the law in many states for a black person to sit in the front of a bus; but only racists would say sitting there was wrong. - Natural rights. Authors often claim a special connection with programs they have written, and go on to assert that, as a result, their desires and interests concerning the program simply outweigh those of anyone else—or even those of the whole rest of the world. (Typically companies, not authors, hold the copyrights on software, but we are expected to ignore this discrepancy.)
To those who propose this as an ethical axiom—the author is more important than you—I can only say that I, a notable software author myself, call it bunk.
But people in general are only likely to feel any sympathy with the natural rights claims for two reasons.
One reason is an overstretched analogy with material objects. When I cook spaghetti, I do object if someone else eats it, because then I cannot eat it. His action hurts me exactly as much as it benefits him; only one of us can eat the spaghetti, so the question is, which? The smallest distinction between us is enough to tip the ethical balance.
But whether you run or change a program I wrote affects you directly and me only indirectly. Whether you give a copy to your friend affects you and your friend much more than it affects me. I shouldn't have the power to tell you not to do these things. No one should.
The second reason is that people have been told that natural rights for authors is the accepted and unquestioned tradition of our society.
As a matter of history, the opposite is true. The idea of natural rights of authors was proposed and decisively rejected when the US Constitution was drawn up. That's why the Constitution only permits a system of copyright and does not require one; that's why it says that copyright must be temporary. It also states that the purpose of copyright is to promote progress—not to reward authors. Copyright does reward authors somewhat, and publishers more, but that is intended as a means of modifying their behavior.
The real established tradition of our society is that copyright cuts into the natural rights of the public—and that this can only be justified for the public's sake. - Economics. The final argument made for having owners of software is that this leads to production of more software.
Unlike the others, this argument at least takes a legitimate approach to the subject. It is based on a valid goal—satisfying the users of software. And it is empirically clear that people will produce more of something if they are well paid for doing so.
But the economic argument has a flaw: it is based on the assumption that the difference is only a matter of how much money we have to pay. It assumes that “production of software” is what we want, whether the software has owners or not.
People readily accept this assumption because it accords with our experiences with material objects. Consider a sandwich, for instance. You might well be able to get an equivalent sandwich either free or for a price. If so, the amount you pay is the only difference. Whether or not you have to buy it, the sandwich has the same taste, the same nutritional value, and in either case you can only eat it once. Whether you get the sandwich from an owner or not cannot directly affect anything but the amount of money you have afterwards.
This is true for any kind of material object—whether or not it has an owner does not directly affect what it is, or what you can do with it if you acquire it.
But if a program has an owner, this very much affects what it is, and what you can do with a copy if you buy one. The difference is not just a matter of money. The system of owners of software encourages software owners to produce something—but not what society really needs. And it causes intangible ethical pollution that affects us all.
Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives.
And above all society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary cooperation in its citizens. When software owners tell us that helping our neighbors in a natural way is “piracy”, they pollute our society's civic spirit.
This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
The economic argument for owners is erroneous, but the economic issue is real. Some people write useful software for the pleasure of writing it or for admiration and love; but if we want more software than those people write, we need to raise funds.
For ten years now, free software developers have tried various methods of finding funds, with some success. There's no need to make anyone rich; the median US family income, around $35k, proves to be enough incentive for many jobs that are less satisfying than programming.
For years, until a fellowship made it unnecessary, I made a living from custom enhancements of the free software I had written. Each enhancement was added to the standard released version and thus eventually became available to the general public. Clients paid me so that I would work on the enhancements they wanted, rather than on the features I would otherwise have considered highest priority.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a tax-exempt charity for free software development, raises funds by selling GNU CD-ROMs, T-shirts, manuals, and deluxe distributions, (all of which users are free to copy and change), as well as from donations. It now has a staff of five programmers, plus three employees who handle mail orders.
Some free software developers make money by selling support services. Cygnus Support, with around 50 employees [when this article was written], estimates that about 15 per cent of its staff activity is free software development—a respectable percentage for a software company.
Companies including Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices have combined to fund the continued development of the free GNU compiler for the language C. Meanwhile, the GNU compiler for the Ada language is being funded by the US Air Force, which believes this is the most cost-effective way to get a high quality compiler. [Air Force funding ended some time ago; the GNU Ada Compiler is now in service, and its maintenance is funded commercially.]
All these examples are small; the free software movement is still small, and still young. But the example of listener-supported radio in this country [the US] shows it's possible to support a large activity without forcing each user to pay.
As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying “No” to proprietary software.
You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software. You deserve to be able to learn how the software works, and to teach your students with it. You deserve to be able to hire your favorite programmer to fix it when it breaks.
You deserve free software.
I have found this article long time ago.. this one is considered as the longest and the oldest article on this topic..
source = http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
isuru143 said:Hay don't give up!
Just do and continue it.
You can make a different!
ya ya...I don't give up... This is the hard way but I like the hard way..
I need help from you guys also
Free Software is More Reliable!
Free Software is More Reliable!
Apologists for proprietary software like to say, “free software is a nice dream, but we all know that only the proprietary system can produce reliable products. A bunch of hackers just can't do this.”
Empirical evidence disagrees, however; scientific tests, described below, have found GNU software to be more reliable than comparable proprietary software.
This should not be a surprise; there are good reasons for the high reliability of GNU software, good reasons to expect free software will often (though not always) have high reliability.
GNU Utilities Safer!
Barton P. Miller and his colleagues tested the reliability of Unix utility programs in 1990 and 1995. Each time, GNU's utilities came out considerably ahead. They tested seven commercial Unix systems as well as GNU. By subjecting them to a random input stream, they could “crash (with core dump) or hang (infinite loop) over 40% (in the worst case) of the basic utility programs…”
These researchers found that the commercial Unix systems had a failure rate that ranged from 15% to 43%. In contrast, the failure rate for GNU was only 7%.
Miller also said that, “the three commercial systems that we compared in both 1990 and 1995 noticeably improved in reliability, but still had significant rates of failure (the basic utilities from GNU/Linux still were noticeably better than those of the commercial systems).”
For details, see their paper: Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of Unix Utilities and Services (postscript 146k) by Barton P. Miller <[email protected]>, David Koski, Cjin Pheow Lee, Vivekananda Maganty, Ravi Murthy, Ajitkumar Natarajan, and Jeff Steidl.
Why Free Software is More Reliable
It is no fluke that the GNU utilities are so reliable. There are good reasons why free software tends to be of high quality.
One reason is that free software gets the whole community involved in working together to fix problems. Users not only report bugs, they even fix bugs and send in fixes. Users work together, conversing by email, to get to the bottom of a problem and make the software work trouble-free.
Another is that developers really care about reliability. Free software packages do not always compete commercially, but they still compete for a good reputation, and a program which is unsatisfactory will not achieve the popularity that developers hope for. What's more, an author who makes the source code available for all to see puts his reputation on the line, and had better make the software clean and clear, on pain of the community's disapproval.
Source = http://www.gnu.org/software/reliability.html
This is also a grate articsl epessially for ppl who have doubts about FOSS
Free Software is More Reliable!
Apologists for proprietary software like to say, “free software is a nice dream, but we all know that only the proprietary system can produce reliable products. A bunch of hackers just can't do this.”
Empirical evidence disagrees, however; scientific tests, described below, have found GNU software to be more reliable than comparable proprietary software.
This should not be a surprise; there are good reasons for the high reliability of GNU software, good reasons to expect free software will often (though not always) have high reliability.
GNU Utilities Safer!
Barton P. Miller and his colleagues tested the reliability of Unix utility programs in 1990 and 1995. Each time, GNU's utilities came out considerably ahead. They tested seven commercial Unix systems as well as GNU. By subjecting them to a random input stream, they could “crash (with core dump) or hang (infinite loop) over 40% (in the worst case) of the basic utility programs…”
These researchers found that the commercial Unix systems had a failure rate that ranged from 15% to 43%. In contrast, the failure rate for GNU was only 7%.
Miller also said that, “the three commercial systems that we compared in both 1990 and 1995 noticeably improved in reliability, but still had significant rates of failure (the basic utilities from GNU/Linux still were noticeably better than those of the commercial systems).”
For details, see their paper: Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of Unix Utilities and Services (postscript 146k) by Barton P. Miller <[email protected]>, David Koski, Cjin Pheow Lee, Vivekananda Maganty, Ravi Murthy, Ajitkumar Natarajan, and Jeff Steidl.
Why Free Software is More Reliable
It is no fluke that the GNU utilities are so reliable. There are good reasons why free software tends to be of high quality.
One reason is that free software gets the whole community involved in working together to fix problems. Users not only report bugs, they even fix bugs and send in fixes. Users work together, conversing by email, to get to the bottom of a problem and make the software work trouble-free.
Another is that developers really care about reliability. Free software packages do not always compete commercially, but they still compete for a good reputation, and a program which is unsatisfactory will not achieve the popularity that developers hope for. What's more, an author who makes the source code available for all to see puts his reputation on the line, and had better make the software clean and clear, on pain of the community's disapproval.
Source = http://www.gnu.org/software/reliability.html
This is also a grate articsl epessially for ppl who have doubts about FOSS
Nearly 50% of IT Shops to Skip Windows Vista
A new survey finds lower-than-expected Vista deployments, while anticipation for Windows 7 builds.
Source-http://www.linux.com/feed/155631
A new survey finds lower-than-expected Vista deployments, while anticipation for Windows 7 builds.
Source-http://www.linux.com/feed/155631
DAMN SMALL LINUX
Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.
Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:
Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
Boot from a USB pen drive
Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize
CLICK HERE
Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.
Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:
Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
Boot from a USB pen drive
Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize
CLICK HERE
