Resposta à idéia de que software-livre seja coisa do PT
Hoje, em seu blog, Reinaldo Azevedo afirmou software livre está preso ao PT. Normalmente eu não ligaria para o que ele escreve, mas não custa educar as pessoas, custa?
A picture for users of lesser OSs
All in all, GNU/Linuxes are pretty mundane operating systems. There is nothing too fancy about them - It's more or less a collection of operating systems good ideas (Andrew Tanenbaum will never read this, fortunately), rolled out as a kernel (Linux itself), with a very polished userland (GNU, plus other programs that particular distros select) on top of it.
Its roots date back to the 70s, to Unix - it was made to its image. Current versions of both are quite similar and a Linux user will be pretty much at home on OSX, BSD, Solaris or AIX.
But those 70's ideas do not mean Linux is an old-fashined OS that brought nothing new to the world of operating systems.
One of the nicest things GNU/Linux introduced is comprehensive software package dependency and update management. With it, if you want to install a program, you can pick it from a list and, like by magic, all libraries, resources and everything else the program depends, plus the program itself, are installed. No need to browse the web after an installer, no need to run programs as a super-user, nothing. Everything quick and simple. And then, when the time comes a new version of something in your computer becomes available, the machine warns you and prompts you to install it, regardless of where it came from, as long as its publisher is registered with the software management system (like the Chrome browser and the VirtualBox VM tools in the picture you see, as well as Skype, which you don't see in the picture because mine is up-to-date). Software components are neatly divided in packages that depend on each other. Need a DVD burner? Codecs will be downloaded with it.
And then, when something becomes unnecessary or obsolete, the machine offers to delete it and conserve disk space.
Other operating systems attempt to accomplish the same with a variety of tools, but none, perhaps with the exception of OpenSolaris (because they hired the guy who designed Debian's package management), has anything that comes even close.
Cool, isn't it?
Monkey business
Ah... The stuff you find in your DNS logs...
Sep 5 07:21:03 heinlein named[1825]: client 200.171.10.117#1481: query (cache) 'www.itau.com.br.planetofapes/A/IN' denied
Would anyone with über-sysadmin superpowers care to explain what that means?
Ubuntu e o tempo de boot
Não é lenda que máquinas Linux quase nunca bootam. Assim sendo, o tempo que elas levam para ficar disponíveis depois de serem ligadas é despresível comparado com o tempo em que você fica usando a máquina. Infelizmente, nem todo mundo pode deixar seu computador ligado, suspenso ou hibernando todo o tempo. Eu prefiro desligar meu netbook quando não vou usá-lo por algumas horas e, por conta disso, tenho que passar por uma "partida a frio" do computador quando quiser usá-lo de novo.
Pensando nesses usuários, o pessoal da Red Hat e da Canonical tem feito enormes progressos na redução do tempo de partida de nossos computadores. O vídeo abaixo (tirado daqui) mostra um Thinkpad com "disco" flash indo do auto-teste ao browser em pouco mais de 20 segundos.
Bootar de um disco de verdade deve demorar mais, mas, ainda assim, estou impressionado com o resultado.
Se pelo menos o Vista fizesse isso depois de um BSOD...
