this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Oracle stands for "One Raging Asshole Called Larry Ellison"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Damn. Gotta save this one.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I always heard the R stood for Rich

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’ll never forgive them for destroying Sun

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They tried to wreck Android also.

Google a few years later: Hold my beer.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Never again. Twice I’ve been at fast-growing startups that went with Oracle, and both times it was the worst mistake the business made.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not difficult to guess: they got EA'd. IBM'd. FaceBook'd. Their startup got bought up, hollowed out, and dissolved. All in the name of killing off competition and padding staff rolls.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've found many startups are merely "investments" by some entrepreneur that were intended from inception, whether explicitly or not, to be grown to a sufficiently negotiable state and sold to the biggest buyer. That's not to say that big tech companies don't buy-out their competition, but many startups also dream of being bought-out.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I wish he'd respond. But from my experience, Oracle sells you a license that's just what you need, nothing more. They do so on good terms to get you in the door. Then when you rely on their database they jack up the rates and start ridiculous pricing strategies that either force you to rearchitect away from Oracle entirely or sacrifice your ability to use their product and force you to work around their license.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Oracle doesn't have customers, it has hostages.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is an enemy of my enemy case.

It makes sense to trust Oracle in this instance as they stand to lose if IBM has sole control over enterprise Linux.

However, remember that as soon as the profit motive is gone, Oracle's support will also vanish.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is no universe in which Oracle is doing the right thing. In all the myriad multiverse, Oracle is never the good guy. Ever.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

In this case specifically, they are doing the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons.

You're right. Oracle is definitely not the good guy here, it's just that their goals happen to align right now.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Corporations gonna be all corporationy

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The ad campaign by Oracle and SUSE is working. Red Hat made changes to the way it distributes source because they wanted other groups to use the community upstream and become part of the community instead of just copy and pasting Red Hat source. Now Oracle and SUSE are doing exactly what Red Hat was hoping the community would do while acting like they're defying and battling Red Hat... In the end Red Hat's goal was achieved. More community involvement with more special interest groups contributing to a better Enterprise Linux for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Oracle" sounds like they were trying to be as dystopian cyberpunk as possible when naming their company.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

They destroy everything they touch...

I am only happy for the damaged they made to MySQL popularity. ;-)

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

I trust Oracle... to find a way to charge me an arm and a leg and a spleen for basic functionality.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No way I'm ever gonna trust a company that is chasing profits

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't trust any publicly traded company, once a business has completed it's IPO it's owned shareholders and led by a CEO legally obligated to chase profits as the primary objective. Corporations spend money on PR and brand marketing to make us think otherwise, but under US law it's crystal clear they only chase profits.

It's kinda sickening to hear people say they "love" Apple, Amazon, Netflix, etc... These corporations derive their "right" to exist from one of the most horrible miscarriages of justice in history. The 14th Amendment was put into law to grant the rights of citizenship to freed slaves after the US Civil War in an effort to abolish a system created by greedy oligarchs to profit from the suffering of others. Unfortunately, the conservative Justices on the US Supreme Court decided in 1886 that a new system could be created to allow greedy oligarchs to profit from the labor of others. That ruling was called Corporate personhood.

Full disclosure, as a computer nerd in the 1990's, I really did fall in love with Google, it seemed it represent everything Apple and Microsoft did not. Back in the Pre-IPO days between 1998-2004 Google engineered some of the most useful and innovative services on the Internet for consumers. Now I view Alphabet Inc as possibly the most dangerous corporation in the realm of technology. Relentlessly striving to control the Internet through DRM tech like Widevine, the AMP framework, and proliferating a Surveillance Capitalist strategy to target everyone online, track them across the Internet and harvest their data for profit.

I do have some faith in companies like Valve and System76 because they are privately owned and do not always act in a "profits above all else" mentality.

[–] Zink 9 points 1 year ago

Your first paragraph about only profit mattering isn’t even hyperbole.

I’m a computer nerd just like many here, but I went to business school too. There’s no “haha screw the consumers” snickering when you learn about business administration. It’s a simple well-meaning concept that the goal of going into business is to make money for the owners who invested their own money into the company.

Private companies are one thing, but then once they go public, a whole new set of rules and circumstances occur. The “owners” are a nebulous cloud of faceless investors & institutions, many (most?) of whom don’t give a shit about the company itself, just the risk/return and asset category it represents.

The C-suite has a fiduciary duty to make that money for those shareholders, plus those individuals generally have to own a bunch of stock in order to further align their priorities with profit and share price. You don’t want the investing community to see that you had a chance to double profits this year and didn’t take it, which can lead to the short-sighted decision making we see so often. Plus driving up the share price short term makes you yourself able to cash out and diversify a bit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You should though. Because if the company is chasing profits you know for sure what they're doing. If they are not chasing profits, then no one knows what they will do next. Like non-profit American Red Cross, who laundered half a billion and did fuck all to help Haiti https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like non-profit American Red Cross, who laundered half a billion and did fuck all to help Haiti https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes

Yea, the Red Cross is fucked up, and I learned that from my dad in 1996 when he died. All about the money. I'll send my money to St. Jude, thank you very much...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Sorry for your loss...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TBH, the likes of oracle are probably what led to this. Rocky/Alma weren't seeking profit, and neither did CentOS before it was turned into kinda stable Fedora.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it weren't for VirtualBox I would avoid them all together. It's just so damned convenient though.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Kvm/qemu is really good too you should try it out or is there special feature holding you back on virtualbox?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

No one's a good guy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And this is why I choose Debian...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And this is why I choose Debian…

You mean the distribution where Canonical has in the past outright bought votes to align Debian closer to Ubuntu? If you think I'm making shit up, look up the fiasco that led to the insanely protracted (roughly a year) very public debate about making Upstart the default init system. Here's a tldr from a German IT website:

Besides SysV Init, which is currently used by Debian, there is Systemd, which is mainly developed by Red Hat, Canonical's own Upstart, and OpenRC, which is developed by Gentoo. Only Systemd and Upstart are believed to have a chance. It is unlikely that SysV Init will remain, OpenRC cannot keep up with Upstart or Systemd in terms of technology and innovation. More and more Linux distributions are turning to Systemd, while Upstart is currently used exclusively by Canonical, after Red Hat used it for RHEL 6 and Fedora 9, but is relying on Systemd for RHEL 7.

The two committee members who have already made their opinions known are former Canonical employee Ian Jackson and Russ Allbery. While Jackson favors Upstart, Allbery is clearly in favor of Systemd. Two other members, Colin Watson and Steve Langasek, both employed by Canonical, will probably only support Upstart. The other members are Don Armstrong, Andreas Barth and Keith Packard, newly elected to the committee, as well as chairman Bdale Garbee.

Original: https://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/20622/debatte-um-das-init-system-bei-debian-8-h%C3%A4lt-an.html Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).

It's now less public but Canonical still has its tentacles in Debian with Snap and such.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Debian is 100% community run, it cannot "have tentacles" in it. There is no leader that takes the choices that can be influenced.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I just hope that SUSE keeps them in check for now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

i mine monero on their servers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Shoutout to oracle for hosting the only xonotic server in India running right now!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have noticed they did something in open source? But I don't know what. Somebody got a link or sum where i can find info on what happened

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