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A Few MP3/Rio Links

Tech · Technology · 1998-11-24 20:10 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand dept. · 0 comments

Peter Pan writes sent us a link to a really tiny MP3 player that looks even more impressive then the Rio (Although it uses external storage). I think we posted it before, but I don't have time to check before class. Regardless, its cool, and relavant right now, especially because Ben Garland wrote an article on MacOpinion talking about how MiniDiscs are better than the Rio. Its an interesting read. Update: 11/25 11:45 by CT : Danse sent us a link to an article about a stereo component for MP3s. this one uses 2.2 gig ORB cartridges and looks pretty sweet. No costs or release date, but it looks very promising.

Feature:Linux Game Development

Games · Games · 1998-11-12 22:19 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the stuff-to-read dept. · 0 comments

Christian Reiniger of the new Linux Game Development Project has written up a nice piece that you might want to read if you want to see more games on Linux, and how this new project will aid that. The way I see it, the apps are coming, and in many cases, already here. We just need the games. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Christian Reiniger The Linux Game Development Center Rationale

Linux is gaining much attention these days. People who were anti-Linux for a long time suddenly discover that it has changed much the past few years, ultraconservative magazines feature positive stories about Linux at prominent places and The Big Ones in the computer business are almost crowding to support the former "hacker OS".

Good press is always welcome - but can Linux live up to its new image? Can it avoid to dissapoint the people finally giving it a try?

Well, the "It doesn't have a nice, easy to use desktop" and "There are no applications for it" arguments are vanishing in a puff of colorful smoke and the "It's too hard to install" problem is quietly dissolving. But there's still that nasty "But I can't play my favourite games in Linux!" thing.

Linux has games. Linux has good games. But that other operating system has several orders of magnitude more good games than Linux. That's bad. And difficult to overcome, as it's not only because of technical reasons. But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving problems and shipping around obstacles. There is no reason why we should not be able to solve this issue, too.

So what's the current situation, what needs to be done and what can be done? Here is a short overview of the major issues:

Despite Linux's rapid growth - both in terms of user base and existing software - it still is not generally perceived as viable platform for high quality games. Some of the often cited problems are without doubt true, but most of these are already at the verge of being solved and the others mainly need more public discussion.
While many game-related SDKs and applications exist or are in the make, there is no comprehensive overview of them available.
As all of these SDKs have their strengths and weaknesses, much can be gained by making them as modular and interoperable as possible, so that game developers can combine them to an almost optimal solution.
For both commercial game developers wanting to port games to Linux and yet-inexperienced Open Source® developers aspiring to write free games, easy to read documentation and online help via mailing lists and/or irc are very valuable.

Quick Summary

In essence we are suggesting that this new Linux Game Development Center be a kind of meta-project. It would be dedicated to advocating Linux as gaming platform, collecting knowledge about Linux game development and using it to help all interested people, providing facilities for discussion to Linux game developers and, last but not least, encouraging and helping existing free (Open Source®) game SDK projects coordinate with one another.

Please note that this is not an attempt to impose standards or rules on anyone. We just want to do what we can to help everybody coordinate their project with the others and to encourage all game SDK developers to develop compatible libraries.

This is also a call for developers, users and game SDK projects to join our efforts.

History

In the beginning ... there were many unrelated games SDK projects started by many different groups with little or no inter-group communication or coordination.

The initial initiative of starting the Linux Game Development site came from Ian Crawford (you can read his announcement of the site here).

It was first meant as a meeting and coordination point for people developing native and free Linux games, but its scope was soon widened to support Linux game development in general - the phrase "This site aspires to be the headquarters for all Linux game development" is from that time.

Cut - Switch to the PenguinPlay mailing list. Shortly after Ian's announcement of the site, Sam Lantiga suggested on the PenguinPlay mailing list that people could get together on IRC to discuss the future of Linux game development. His idea was considered as "really good" and after the first meeting the thing was extended to all people involved in pushing game development for Linux. Here are the archives of past meetings and the plans for future ones.

Well, the irc meetings became a regular event (each Saturday) and the possibility to have a real-time discussion through irc gave a big push to our work. We started discussing on how we could coordinate our efforts better, how to make Linux more appealing to professional game developers etc. After a few meetings we came to the conclusion that it would be best to merge the SDK projects (ClanLib, CrystalSpace, GAMES and PenguinPlay) to one, giving it the full support. It seemed to be the right thing, but we were a bit uneasy with it, as merging projects is a very, very difficult task.

Then Charles Durst threw in an proposal for a clearing house project, i.e. a project that would give developers from different game SDK projects a good way to communicate with each other, remind these developers to keep the different SDKs compatible to each other etc. He first proposed that PenguinPlay could become this "meta-project", but we found Ian Crawford's "Linux Game Development Center" much more fitting.

We started working on the homepage for this and Charles wrote an announcement text we wanted to post on Slashdot or Freshmeat and several newsgroups. However, as we assembled material for the homepage, discussed its structure etc it slowly mutated from the "Linux Game SDK Coordination Center" to a site for Linux game development in general - the "Linux Game Development Center" or LGDC for short. Ian's original site laid the foundation for this (as it was aimed at helping people to develop actual games) and the transformation was completed when the "Linux Game Breeding (LGB)" (aimed at creation of new projects around Linux GameDev) and "Linux Gaming Awareness (LGA)" (aimed at advocating Linux to commercial game developers) projects joined in.

So here we are. The Linux Game Development Center is a project from Open Source® game developers, maintained by them and dedicated to all people interested in the subject. Located at www.linuxgames.org, it serves as a sister site to www.linuxgames.com, the already well-established site targeted towards game players.

The Proposal

The new Linux Game Development Center would:

Maintain a collection of links to various game SDK projects and a "news page" of the current status and functionality of each.
Help coordinate efforts to increase compatibility and perhaps create "glue" software between the libraries produced by different game SDK projects.
Help game SDK developers coordinate with one another (via mailing lists and perhaps IRC get-togethers), and share algorithms and code. This could even help SDK developers abstract out new layers of common or overlapping functionality between projects.
Help to fill the functionality gaps that are currently preventing any combination of game SDK libraries from being comprehensive enough for many professional game developers to use.
Help to direct game developers to the right tools for their particular tasks. Making it easy to find software for a particular purpose, within certain platform, language or license requirements. We are considering using existing web-based knowledge base tools such as WikiWikiWeb or faq-o-matic, as well as tables of the features and limitations of each available package.
Collect the general feedback that game developers might want to give the Linux community about any porting problems they might have. And helping to start, extend or fix projects to meet those needs.
If neccessary initiate and host "please port this to Linux" petitions and mane the commercial game developers aware of the demand.
Find volunteers willing to port commercial games to Linux and act as mediator between them and commercial game houses.
Provide facilities for discussion between commercial game developers and Linux users on how support for Linux can be increased in the future.
Help rally game SDK development efforts to port existing game libraries to needed, unsupported platforms.
It could help direct interested people to other projects as needed to help with bugfixing, porting, and documentation (especially with respect to interoperability between projects).
It could even have a relationship to game SDK projects and Open Source® games somewhat similar to the relationship Debian has with the packages that it collects. It could collect easy-to-find and easy-to-install packages of game SDKs and try to make it easy for a new developer to choose the one(s) that best meets their needs. It could even help develop policies to ensure clean interaction between libraries wanting to be added to the collection.

While game development for Linux would be an important goal of the web site, the most important goal would be the development of quality cross-platform game libraries. For that reason, developers of games and game SDKs for platforms other than Linux would be more than welcome to join us. Especially if they are interested in porting software to or from Linux.

In the end, there would still be multiple, competing game SDK packages, but that should be OK as long as at least one comprehensive open-source solution can be cobbled together from the pieces. As we have seen with multiple distributions, and even the KDE/GNOME projects, competition can sometimes be a very good thing ... if you can see past the flame wars.

The biggest problem with having multiple, competing projects is the resultant (developer and user) confusion. What we are proposing is a Linux Game Development Center that is aimed simply at reducing that confusion by helping people to find, evaluate, combine and use the available tools, or to develop new, missing ones.

Request

At this point, we are mainly looking for:

More people to work on the web-site (in particular people who have ideas for ways we should do it with existing or new web server and/or database technologies).
Other game SDK related projects that should be added, or who want to help, or who should at least join the linuxgames mailing list(s).
Other Game or Game SDK developers who want to be in on the discussions, prioritizing, development, or who just want to influence the direction of the Linux Games project in one way or another.

All interested people are invited to join the linuxgames mailing list and participate in the discussions (send a blank message to linuxgames-subscribe@sunsite.auc.dk)

Current Linux Game Development Projects

These are the current Linux Game Development projects we have been able to locate and invite to participate. If your favorite project is not included, let us know and please join us.

Charles Durst, Christian Reiniger

Microsoft's OS is an integral part of your PC

Features · Microsoft · 1998-10-20 12:30 · posted by sengan · from the allegedly dept. · 0 comments

Microsoft is not going to wait for the outcome of its trial with the DOJ before attacking Linux. The battle scene is France, where Microsoft's new (expendable?) regional director Marc Chardon has just issued an open letter to his clients. Click below to read the translation of the Linux-section (it's in French) and some commentary. The new director of Microsoft France (MF) has just issued an open letter to his clients. Most of the letter says essentially "We're right. Critics aren't. Millions of people use our products." and other fascinating insights. However it does contain two interesting revelations: Microsoft's OS is an integral part of your PC, and Linux is of very limited interest to anyone but fringe groups (students and researchers).

As previously reported, it is illegal in the EU to tie the sale of a product with another in the EU. However Microsoft France (MF) argues that because a computer can be argued non-functional without an operating system (or a hard-drive), what is being sold is a single product, not two. A little later, MF's director contradicts himself by stating that "assemblers" (basically small computing shops that will assemble a computer from standard components according to your desires) will sell you a computer without an OS -- is that a broken computer? Indeed, since the same letter claims there are more OS's for PCs than any other computer, we must be dealing with a product tied to another precisely because no other OS is sold (according to the letter) with a computer.

Further down, you'll see a whole section devoted to Linux. While today Microsoft's lawyers declared Linux to be developed by a single person, MF's director claims it to be a movement. I've translated the rest of what he had to say about Linux since it's interesting...

"It would seem that Linux does not satisfy the requirements of most companies, let alone the general public.

Linux presents limits that will slow down its widespread distribution, particularly in companies and the general public

In terms of the system's stability, Linux has problems of general coordination, and one feels strongly the lack of a project leader. Linus Torvald ( S: Microsoft can't spell!) left university last year to join a Californian company. The development of Linux has since considerably slowed down. Similarly, the maintenance of Linux' functionality depends on the mobilization of its teams. Thus, certain of its functions have not been updated in the last two years.

The installation of Linux is delicate. For optimal system performance, each version must be tuned on each computer at each installation, by a competent computer-technician. Setting it up and its administration are therefore not within the reach of a computer-technician used to more friendly operating systems, let alone basic users. Using Linux is complex, its programs generally take text commands.

Finally most Linux application software has limited functionality. Word processors rarely have functionality common on today's PC or Macintosh: dynamic spelling correction, graphic input of tables, integration of imported graphics. Most Linux word processors bear more resemblance to Microsoft Write written in 1985.

Linux' advantages of zero-cost and open source are not relevant criteria for most users.

The zero-cost of Linux is a non decisive advantage: the cost of an OS is minor in comparison to the other costs of a company. The price of the OS is only one of the elements of computers in companies. Putting a traditional OS into place costs many times the price of the OS itself, and the same goes for the creation of an application program and its maintenance. So, by installing Linux, one saves the cost of the OS, but one increases the cost of installation, and one takes risks for the maintenance of the applications and the system itself.

If certain people consider the permanent availability of source code to be an absolute guaranty of independence from software editors, we fail to see the benefit for a company or a person to have access to the source of his OS.

However, the distribution of the OS source code is very useful for students and researchers, to understand the inner-workings of the OS and eventually to change it. Linux will therefore probably stay for a long time a good subject of study for computer-scientist, rather than an OS destined for widespread distribution. "

I must apologize for any mistakes in my translation. Use babelfish to get an alternative translation. I'm open to any corrections. update! Linux Weekly News has just published a de-babelfished translation of the whole letter.

S: This letter obviously contains many "inaccuracies":

If I buy a car, is the fuel a separate product or not? What about electricity? Computers are non-functional without it. I hope the EU lawyers will notice this wriggling.

His attacks on Linus stating that Linux development has slowed down are not credible with the inflow of new developers and the number of ports now in the standard kernel. The letter very much ignores the fact that Transmeta lets Linus hack on Linux during office hours and has other employees that contribute, underplays Red Hat employing kernel developers, and completely ignores the current tidal surge of major corporations towards Linux: Intel, Compaq, Oracle, Sun, to name but a few.

Anyone who has had to install Windows from scratch, as I do every 3-6 months when it has corrupted its hard-drive beyond repair at work, knows that installing Windows is a royal pain. It takes over an hour, requires minding (yes... I'm just here to click OK)... Linux takes me 20 minutes on an 100 Mhz system. The only argument here is: when Windows is pre-installed (i.e. when you buy your machine) it's easier than it is to install Linux. Duh!

I, and many others don't view GUI's as necessarily friendly. Until they are a substitute for true understanding, I prefer to have control over my system and to be able to repair it. The usual answer for Windows to reinstall everything, and then try eliminating various components until you've found the "culprit". The same applies for source code. Funny that the latest C'T has devoted 19 pages to "Hacks & Bugs & Workarounds: Large Projects with Word, and how one survives them". To me, and many others, this is an unacceptable hit on my productivity.

Indeed, the whole notion that Linux is too hard for the average user is nonsense to me. I gave my mother a Linux box -- I'm living 8 timezones away so I cannot help her fix an unreliable OS. She cannot rely on computer-savvy neighbours either, since she's in a very rural area. But, with Linux as her first computer, she is happy using it laying ridicule on Microsoft's claims about the difficulties that the average layman will experience.

Complaints about Word processors are unfair since most Windows word-processors are also not very advanced. Percentage-wise (if you count all the free, shareware, and old ones), I expect Windows/DOS have a worse ratio. Only a few products provide the features Marc discusses. Similarly, on Linux, we have WordPerfect 7 (hey Corel, port WordPerfect 8!), Applixware, and StarOffice (which I sometimes use), Angoss, Dtop, and Axene's Xclamation, On the free front we have Emacs which is also used by a very large number of people under NT and which will soon have a WYSIWYG interface, Thot, EZ, Papyrus, Cicero, Doc, Maxwell, and new promising upstarts such as Glue. And let's not forget TeX: I and my fellow PhD students wrote their theses in it because it copes well with 700 page documents. Most academic papers must be written, and many books are written in it. It also accepts any graphics as encapsulated postscript. TeX is still the only format which is guaranteed to come out looking the same on any computer, and still looks better to me and many others than the output of any other product. As to dynamic spell-checking, I turn it off: I think, I write, I reread, I spell-check. Dynamic spell-checking just breaks the flow of my thoughts.

The attack on zero-cost software is a pretty obvious diversion, and tries to draw the reader's attention away from the fact people use Linux because of its stability and features rather than its cost.

Finally, Microsoft's attempt to make academics and students irrelevant is interesting, since they are the ones pushing Linux, but also very dangerous. France values intelligence and high education more than most other societies, as Marc Chardon's own CV shows.

So what do you think of all this?

I'd like to thank A Dark Elf, Jacky Liu, and Linux Weekly News Daily for some of the material I used here.

Linux first for OpenGL MAME

Games · Games · 1998-09-23 21:26 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the amazing-things-to-waste-time-on dept. · 0 comments

slim writes "Someone's written an OpenGL version of Mame for Linux/MESA. See Details and screenshots . Fun things that can be done include mapping Pac Man onto a rotating plane, mapping the game onto a 3D cabinet, bilinear filtering the game, and of course vectors rendered and antialiased in hardware. " Very cool, and very demented.

Microsoft is the biggest

Microsoft · 1998-09-16 06:45 · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the sigh-what-a-day dept. · 0 comments

Intrepid reader Alex Buell sent this story over our way. Yes, the news is true: Microsoft has surpassed General Electric, and is the biggest company on the planet. Granted, it's mostly because their stock trades at astronomically high prices, but still 261,000,000,000$USD is a whole lotta zeros. Of course, good luck getting it out of the bear market.

Disappearing MP3 Encoders

News · News · 1998-09-11 00:07 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the this-aint-cool dept. · 0 comments

John Hayward-Warburton writes "A group of people at 8hz.com have been developing an MP3 encoder in an open way (just download the source and join the mailing list if you wish): but the people at the Fraunhofer Institute (who, among others, hold the patents to parts of the MP3 encoding process) have asked to discuss the payment of licence fees to the Institute. Accordingly, the programs have been removed from the websites where they were being developed. This is a sad day for people who thought they were free to help develop good-sounding data-reduction for audio. One of the letters is now now on show. "

Disappearing MP3 Encoders

News · News · 1998-09-11 00:07 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the this-aint-cool dept. · 0 comments

John Hayward-Warburton writes "A group of people at 8hz.com have been developing an MP3 encoder in an open way (just download the source and join the mailing list if you wish): but the people at the Fraunhofer Institute (who, among others, hold the patents to parts of the MP3 encoding process) have asked to discuss the payment of licence fees to the Institute. Accordingly, the programs have been removed from the websites where they were being developed. This is a sad day for people who thought they were free to help develop good-sounding data-reduction for audio. One of the letters is now now on show. "

Eric Raymond wins Seybold Internet Vision Award

News · News · 1998-09-02 21:22 · posted by Hemos · from the getting-what-you-deserve dept. · 0 comments

Paul Crowley (really) writes "Seybold is the major publishing conference where Ballmer made his remarkable remarks about Apache and Linux. This year they've instituted awards to recognise "products or people who have helped to move the publishing industry forward", and one of the three awards has gone to Eric Raymond for his "active involvment in the open source movement". Forward looking people. "

Batch o Quickies

News · News · 1998-08-27 07:53 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the stuff-to-read dept. · 0 comments

Alex Prestin sent us This Link to a strange picture of the iMac, and what appears to be its long lost little brother. Ewan Leith wrote in to tell the world that "PC Plus in the UK goes on sale tomorrow (the 27th) with Suse 5.2 on the cover CD, along with another CD full of linux programs." Donovan was the first to warn the world that the 2.1.119 kernel is now out. I compiled my 2.1.118 kernel a wopping half hour before the 119 release. Sigh. Colin Walls sent us a link to the latest Spencer F. Kat cartoon thingee. There's another piece of aftermath from last weeks standards hoopla. icetrey wrote in to say "OctobrX and Bishop have chosen me, icetrey, to be the new blackbox themes webmaster. It has a new look, as well as a few new themes for 40.x."

Star Office on ZDNet

News · News · 1998-08-27 03:12 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the stuff-to-read dept. · 0 comments

Richard Walkington writes "ZDNet are quoting comments from a discussion on slashdot yesterday in an article about Star Office for Java. The interesting thing is that they have chosen two quotes moaning about the size and speed of Star Office. These quotes do not really represent the general tone of the discussion." They also failed to credit the person they quoted, as well as linking through TCWWW^TM.

Microsoft Loses its Source Code

Caldera · 1998-08-26 22:05 · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the you-gotta-be-kidding dept. · 0 comments

skydancer writes "ZDNet/UK report that Caldera is less than happy that Micro$oft seem to have lost a crucial part of the DOS/Windows source code they promised to turn over after the federal court ruling. Careless, really... "

Escient Aquires the CDDB

News · News · 1998-08-18 22:58 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the tunes-and-puters dept. · 0 comments

Elwell wrote in to send us this link where you can read the Escient has acquired CDDB. Personally, I'd love to see more hardware integrate with things like the CDDB so I'm hoping for the best.

Teen Encryption and Slashdot

News · News · 1998-08-13 23:14 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the segassem-terces dept. · 0 comments

Paul Crowley wrote in to send us a link to a followup article on the 2048 bit teen encryption thing that we posted a bit ago. Talks about Slashdot a bit and about the problems with the article. I think the article is intended as an apology for the mistakes in the article. Refreshing honesty.

Maxwell Word Processor (Update)

Gnu · 1998-07-08 11:23 · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the news-got-delayed-somewhere-in-the-Atlantic dept. · 0 comments

Cmdr Taco's original posting said GPL was under consideration for Maxwell. Since version 0.5.3, it has been freed. I used an older version and was quite impressed by it: lighter and easier to install than StarOffice. For those that don't want an 80Mb Office Suite it's a good option. The authors are looking for help. Conversion to a free GUI toolkit would probably help ensure its wider acceptance.

Maxwell Word Processor (Update)

Gnu · 1998-07-08 11:23 · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the news-got-delayed-somewhere-in-the-Atlantic dept. · 0 comments

Cmdr Taco's original posting said GPL was under consideration for Maxwell. Since version 0.5.3, it has been freed. I used an older version and was quite impressed by it: lighter and easier to install than StarOffice. For those that don't want an 80Mb Office Suite it's a good option. The authors are looking for help. Conversion to a free GUI toolkit would probably help ensure its wider acceptance.

Tiny MP3 Players

Tech · Technology · 1998-07-02 02:40 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the gimme-gimme-gimme dept. · 0 comments

Christian Mogensen writes " Pictures of the tiniest MP3 player prototype from Cambridge Design Partnership. About the size of a box of matches. " All I can say is wow, but I still can't find how much audio these things hold (and I don't have time to find out :) Anyway, if you're interested, Read the Press Release .

Tiny MP3 Players

Tech · Technology · 1998-07-02 02:40 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the gimme-gimme-gimme dept. · 0 comments

Christian Mogensen writes " Pictures of the tiniest MP3 player prototype from Cambridge Design Partnership. About the size of a box of matches. " All I can say is wow, but I still can't find how much audio these things hold (and I don't have time to find out :) Anyway, if you're interested, Read the Press Release .

Digital Film for Existing Cameras

Tech · Technology · 1998-06-21 20:42 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the spiffy-ideas dept. · 0 comments

John Hartnup writes "This looks great - it's a digital camera shaped like a 35mm film cartridge, which fits in your existing camera body, so you can use all your SLR lenses etc if you've got them, or you can pop it in an instamatic. " Now that's a clever idea.

Feature:Brave new World

News · News · 1998-06-16 21:09 · posted by CmdrTaco · from the alternative-operating-systems dept. · 0 comments

Robin V. Stacey has written an excellent feature on installing an alternative operating system, and the troubles he encountered while doing it. The following is a feature by Slashdot Reader Robin V. Stacey Brave new World

We've recently taken the plunge and installed an alternative operating system onto my machine. It's not something to be carried out lightly, but I've personally found the effort involved to be most enlightening. Above all, it's convinced me that some things are better left well alone.

My initial impressions were unfavorable. I expected the installation to be tricky after realizing I'd need to re-partition the hard drive to make room. The new OS demands it's own partition on which to reside - it's unable to exist on any other than it's own file system type. Fortunately, here at Computer Solutions, we know what we're doing. The ordinary user would be likely to run into problems from the start. If the distributor had included some sort of repartitioning tool with the startup code, this would be easily solved.

After the repartition we created a blank 500Mb hole for the OS to go on the test 2.1Gb hard drive. We couldn't get the installation CD to boot, despite being detected correctly by the BIOS, so had to use a boot floppy. Thankfully, all went well after that. We told the computer what size installation we wanted, our time zone, and a few other sundry tidbits of information. Most our our hardware was detected automatically, even the network card, but the graphics card gave it a few problems, and we chose to default to standard SVGA while a patch was downloaded off the 'net. A few reboots and the patch applied, and we were looking at a new Operating System. In all, the installation had taken 45 minutes, which is good going for a complete system change. We tested the system for a while, and it was only when we rebooted back into the real world that we hit one big problem. The **** OS had wiped our existing boot manager, replacing it with it's own boot code. We swore, we kicked it, we reached for our emergency boot disk. Saved by our own forethought and the previous OS, the newbie lost valuable points. The boot manager was told about the new kid on the block, and another reboot brought back the smiles.

When inside, you are presented with an uncluttered interface. This particular distribution of the OS automatically boots into a GUI, and requests a user name and password. We'd set these up early on, and (apparently) entered without hitch. Except our network was nowhere to be seen. We'd given the system a name (Medusae - all our computers are named after mythological creatures), we'd given it an IP address and netmask, and set up IPX networking so we could access our Netware fileserver. The network card was happy. The system had thrown us another curve. We changed things. We switched the network card. We altered the frame rate in IPX. We bought fresh coffee. To this day, we're not sure what happened, but after numerous reboots, the network came to life. Consistency is not this system's strong point.

We'd been told that one of the OS's perceived strengths is the sheer volume of available for it. This is good news, because we found our distribution to be pitifully lacking in the software department. Apparently, image manipulation tools, databases, programming tools, games and even word processors can be obtained. Much of it can been downloaded for no cost from the Internet - if you know where to look, that is - or available commercially on CDs. We recommend the latter option. If a company has taken time to produce a product, they deserve payment for it. Most commercial products have free demonstration versions, which are an excellent way to test the water without parting with hard earned cash. Most installations routines are identical, and several programs use a method of installation that makes uninstallation a relatively painless process. We found most software we tested to be adequate for our needs, even good in parts. If this is the shape of things to come, our existing OS had better watch out. Soon this newbie may have software to equal it.

The distributor claims it's the most stable version available, and that gives us cause for concern. Prior to the installation, we lurked around a few newsgroups, soaking up tips and potential pitfalls, to good effect. It certainly helped as we charted this (to us) uncharted territory. We found many users happy with the system, but after 2 week's intensive use, we've grown to wonder what they do on it. This system was tested heavily. We ran a graphic editor, a word processor and Quake at the same time. Crash. We ran Quake and Quake II simultaneously. Crash. Netscape Communicator would go down on it's own. The fact that it isn't just one program causing the problems leads me to suspect that it's the underlying OS at fault. Perhaps the kernel needs recompiling? Your thoughts on this would be most welcome.

During our brief test, we ran into problems with memory management, the network, the print queue, a disappearing CD-ROM drive, and even faults appearing on the hard drive. We found security to be almost non-existent. Possibly the problems were caused by our ignorance, possibly not. In almost all of the cases, we had to trust out own knowledge or reach for the Internet. Support from our particular distributor is known to be weak. We recognize that some of the difficulties we had, namely lack of support and lack of initial software, could be solved by choosing a different distributor. That, in itself, is a problem. We can't find one.

Until these problems are ironed out, this Operating System isn't really appropriate for life in the real world. Windows 95 isn't yet ready for the mainstream. Until it is, stick to Linux.

Robin V. Stacey
17th June 1998