User:Becha/unixoid xkcd

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New Version

September 2016, The F Word: Fantastic Feminist Festival: http://thefword.nl/

Old Version

May 2016

This was material used for Hacking feminism lecture on Linux: https://wiki.laglab.org/Hacking_Feminism#Sixth_meetup

Linux, explained through xkcd explainer

Long version

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1508:_Operating_Systems

Explanation In this comic, Randall gives an overview of past, present and (speculatively) future of the operating systems running in his house at any given time. Notably, because Randall is fascinated by technology, he has had more than one OS running in his household since the mid '90's. The timeline tracks how Operating Systems have come and gone over the years, and the gradual shift from desktop Operating Systems to mobile can be observed. Beyond the present day, we see some of Randall's humorous predictions as to which technologies and companies will dominate the Operating System landscape in the future. It may be that the OS that is closest to the time-line is also the one he mainly uses during these extended periods. Previous and current systems: • MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System): The default, command-line-based OS on most IBM PC-compatible computers. Early versions of Windows operated as shells on top of MS-DOS rather than stand-alone OSes in their own right, which may explain part of the overlap in those two bars. • Apple's Mac OS (Macintosh Operating System): The OS of Apple's Macintosh line of computers. Randall's bar indicates that he stopped using Macs in 2001, after Mac OS had been superseded by the new and then-buggy Mac OS X. • Linux: An open-source (typically free) Unix-like OS. Randall's bar indicates that he likely used it on one or two PCs starting from 1999 while still using Windows on other PCs, or perhaps was dual-booting one or more PCs with Windows, until abandoning Windows in 2007 to use Linux full-time. This timing coincides with the release of Microsoft's controversialWindows Vista and the advent of more user-friendly Linux distributions. • OS X (Macintosh Operating System v10): The successor OS of Apple's Macintosh line of computers. Although it was sometimes marketed as merely the 10th version of the earlier Mac OS, it was largely a new product. The bar indicates Randall's renewed use of Macintosh computers in 2009 after the OS had matured and Macs had transitioned to Intel processors. • Android: The upper layers of the OS running on Android phones and tablets, above the Linux kernel. Randall is indicating that he has at least one of these devices. • Apple's iOS: The OS of iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, iPod Touch and Apple TV. Randall is indicating that he also has at least one of these devices.


http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/225:_Open_Source

Richard Stallman, or rms after his handle, is an old-school hacker known these days primarily for establishing the Free Software Foundation and initiating the GNU Project in the early 1980s, which produced major portions of what would later be the GNU/Linux operating system. In this capacity, he's also known for being one of the most ardent and outspoken proponents of free software, sometimes called open source software. In fact, his advocacy is so emphatic and polemical that he has garnered active dislike from traditionalists who believe that software source code should be retained as a trade secret by its developer(s). Stallman has expressed that he did not even wish to be in a comic using the word Open Source, see the trivia section.

While this dislike may not rise to the level of hiring ninja assassins to remove him from the world, it is strong. The joke of the comic, as it also turns out, is that the two ninjas was just out to have a fun time teasing Stallman, and they seemed to know that Stallmans paranoia about Microsoft makes him sleep with no less than two katana swords near his bed. This type of swords were one of the traditionally made Japanese swords that were used by the samurai of feudal Japan. A ninja was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. Their covert methods of waging irregular warfare were deemed "dishonorable" and "beneath" the samurai-caste, who observed strict rules about honor and combat. So this makes sense in this comic with Stallman the samurai and the ninjas the lackeys of the oppressing Microsoft (at least in his mind). It also turns out that they specifically chooses a target for their raids that have reason to be paranoid of come larger companies that might send someone after them, and thus sleeps with weapons near their bed. Stallman has received a Katana due to this comic, see the trivia section.

GPL refers to the 'GNU General Public License', which is a copyright license written by the FSF that covers much GNU software and plenty of other free software besides. It stipulates that software so copyrighted must always be provided along with full source code, and that everyone in possession of such software is free to use, study, modify, and redistribute it for any purpose whatsoever (including sale or resale) provided they give due credit to any other contributing developers, also provide access to the complete source code, and retain all copyright notices.

Legally, this gives all users of such software exactly the same rights under copyright as the developer(s), and prevents any developers from ever taking away those rights from users, which is the defining feature of 'free-as-in-libre' software. It also has the effect of making all software derived from GPL software thereby also GPL, even if 'derived' merely means 'borrowed a few lines of code from'. Some (e.g. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer) have therefore argued that this makes GPL software behave as a kind of 'license virus', which spreads GPL-guaranteed freedoms to any software used in close conjunction with GPL'd software during development, such that businesses should actively avoid adopting free and open source software, so as not to jeopardize software developers' legal standing with regard to proprietary IP copyrights.

During the attack Richard Stallman begins to speak like he quotes an old play. For instance the wording "For a GNU dawn!" is pronounced "For a g'new dawn!", following the pronunciation of GNU, so it is a version of New Dawn, a sentence used often in fiction. He even gets annoyed when it turns out the ninjas just run away, he had clearly waited a long time to, even looking forward to, defending him self with his katanas.

Because as it turned out that the two "ninjas" made a prank with him, and they realized that they had so much fun out of Stallman that they plan to do more of these nightly raids even mentioning two other possible future targets on their way out of the window:

Eric S. Raymond is a famous hacker who wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar and has been something of an unofficial spokesperson for open source as a software development methodology. The plan to prank Eric Raymond could be a bad one since he is an experienced martial artist, swordsman, and firearm enthusiast. However, this seems to be the attraction of these two "ninjas" as can be seen by what they seems to know about their other possible target:

Linus Torvalds is the creator of the Linux kernel, an free/open source operating system kernel inspired by the Unix kernel, which proved to be the final component that, combined with then pre-existing GNU system functions and userland components, produced the first fully free operating system, Linux. The plan to prank Torvalds would at first sound more boring as the mild-mannered Finn, while known to be strongly, abrasively opinionated, is otherwise mostly harmless. However, one of the ninjas seems to know otherwise since it is rumored that Linus sleeps with nunchucks in the same way that Stallman sleeps with two katana swords. The nunchaku is a traditional Okinawan martial arts weapon consisting of two sticks connected at one end by a short chain or rope.

(( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Unix_timeline.en.svg/500px-Unix_timeline.en.svg.png ))

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/272:_Linux_User_at_Best_Buy

Best Buy is an American chain of electronics and media stores. As with many such big box shops, they only sell pre-bundled software and boxed pre-built hardware, where the computers on offer are either Macs or other PCs, usually pre-installed with some variant of the Mac OS X or Windows NT operating system families. Most personal computer hackers/enthusiasts (as opposed merely to workaday computer users) wouldn't be caught dead buying a pre-made computer, preferring instead to build their own using self-selected hardware components and install and configure their own preferred operating systems and software. As such, the subtext is that somebody buying a complete pre-packaged home computer system at Best Buy wouldn't know or care much about computers. The salesperson is trying to sell antivirus software to Cueball because selling such software (e.g. Norton or Kaspersky) to prospective Windows PC owners is generally a good sales tactic. The vast majority of all computer malware is engineered specifically to exploit Windows, and Windows' inherent anti-malware protection might most charitably be described with the phrase "lacklustre, but not as bad as before". Windows users therefore will want antivirus protection, especially for use on a brand new machine that will soon be connected up to the internet. Moreover, because the ecosystem of viruses and malware which thrive by infecting Windows PCs is constantly evolving (see 350: Network) and being redesigned to take advantage of new exploits and fool last-month's antivirus software, it is quite prudent for a Windows PC owner to always keep their malware protection absolutely up-to-date, and many such security suites need to be regularly renewed with new versions. While some viruses and malware can afflict Linux, in general UNIX and workalike operating systems of its type (e.g. BSD) are far more robust and secure than Windows, with fewer exploitable vulnerabilities; so, Cueball is confident (probably rightly so) that he will be fine without added security. Moreover, Linux is free software, so although malware protection usually isn't necessary for it, excepting for tasks requiring very high security standards (such as on servers and supercomputers), if extra protection is desired by the user it is generally easily obtainable, often gratis. Back in 2007, after the commercial failure that was Windows Vista and with a stagnant Mac market, many in the Linux community believed that Linux would soon wipe out Windows as the operating system of choice for desktop PCs, after years of slow-but-steady growth. This explains the cheeky triumphalism of the final panels of the comic, in which Cueball hops on his quick, slick vehicle and speeds away. It's worth noting that • this desktop reversal has not happened, though • Linux did achieve a peak in popularity in 2011 just as Windows users were laboriously switching from Windows XP to Windows 7, with Linux peaking again in 2014 and Windows arguably in decline, and in any case • desktop PCs themselves have slowed in sales, losing ground first to laptops and most recently to embedded devices, where Linux does indeed heavily excel its competition, e.g. Android handily outcompeting both the previously dominant iPhone (which was first released mere days after this comic) as well as the never-popularWindows Phone The title text makes sense in light of the fact that, like Linux, the software design of OS X (both are based on Unix, OS X through Darwin - see 676: Abstraction) limits the amount of harm that can be done by malicious software, and Macs thus also have fewer viruses and malware than Windows. Apparently, Mac and Linux users flock together just waiting for some salesperson to come along and mistake them for someone gullible enough to use Windows. This is taking the piss out of the smugness sometimes to be found among Mac and Linux users, who may view their preferred systems as hip and different from the "mainstream" Microsoft systems which they feel are manifestly inferior.


Which linux distribution? http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/456:_Cautionary

Linux has many versions, called "distributions". Each distribution, or "distro", has a different look and feel, and different feature sets and design philosophies. Ubuntu is a very popular "beginner" version of Linux, designed to "just work" and be familiar/usable to people fresh out of Windows. Debian is a popular but somewhat more "advanced" distro, more traditionally "Unix-like" than Ubuntu, with a huge and diverse base of supported software that generally requires more Linux know-how to configure and use, or at least more eagerness to learn. Gentoo is a very advanced distro allowing for extreme customization and optimization but requiring extensive install and setup time. Because Cueball's cousin is fed up with Ubuntu trading functionality for ease-of-use, she decides to switch to Debian or maybe Gentoo, both of these successive options promptingCueball to fear that she may just be getting in deeper and deeper. ("Autoconfig issues" refers to 416: Zealous Autoconfig) Some advanced users of Linux choose to compile their kernel from source; Gentoo requires this, and is customarily compiled locally. Source code is a computer program expressed in an easily human-readable format, often simply as text. However, source code cannot be run directly by a computer, and instead needs to be "compiled" into object code, a computer-runnable but human-unreadable low level code. A coder will generally hack a program in source code, then compile their source code so that the computer itself may run the program (see 303: Compiling). This means that with Gentoo, instead of downloading an already functional Linux system to install and run, users download the source code for the system, customize it to their own needs, then compile the code into a runnable version of the OS, all before they can begin to use the system. To many such advanced users, their installation of Linux is like a hobby sportscar: A never-ending project, constantly tweaked and cleaned and adjusted to improve performance, that spends far more time sitting around with its hood open than actually being used for its ostensible purpose. In the final panel, Cueball's cousin has become addicted to Linux, and is lost in the flow of hacking her kernel to her liking, having forgotten whatever it was she originally purchased the new PC to do. The title text jokes about the bad support for many then-common Wi-Fi cards within Linux back in 2008. It is likely that the last cautionary aspect of the comic, explicitly present in both its title and its conclusion, is sarcastic. Randall is clearly very fond of Linux and even a Linux and open source advocate. (See 272: Linux User at Best Buy as an example.) At the beginning of the comic, the cousin seems to barely know how computers work past very basic end-user functionality. After just a few weeks, she's become extremely advanced. Not only can she compile her own kernel, she does not do so by blindly following instructions. She does so in a critical and meaningful way. This high praise of Linux is most likely wrapped into a facetious tone of caution for comic reasons.

Yet another Debian fork: Devuan: https://lwn.net/Articles/685521/

Why not OpenBSD: because you have 40% chance of shark attack if you try an upgrade: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/349:_Success

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