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Hi, I found your viewtouch app interesting, just a note about the demo page ( http://www.viewtouch.com/demo.html ). You can replace the Cygwin installation (which seems to be *very* overkill for what you want) for a simple Xming + putty install.

BTW I tried to run your demo and I kept getting connection timed out (maybe because I am in the UK).

Cheers.

The open source ATI folks have a tool for the r300 chipsets called revenge and another tool imaginatively called radeondump which I gather do something similar. However tools like the mmiotrace are useful for both efforts so I think both projects are as "sophisticated" as each other.

See ATI dri drivers. Support for the r300 and above came about through reverse engineering effort so in many ways the ATI reverse engineering effort is far further along (in so much as there are end user drivers that are even capable of the basic desktop effects)...

A VP of sales knows it all too well. I believe it once I see it.

I've got an older nVidia card now and I'm placing my hopes on http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

I'm GNU/Linux all the way and will only buy hardware that supports it.

Uh, people have been working hard to understand how the hardware works in order to write open source drivers. See here for example. The problem is that ATI doesn't open up the specs for their recent cards so there are very few and tedious avenues to having open source drivers (eg. reverse engineer the binary drivers, probing hardeware settings, etc). As far as I know, there's practically full opne source 3D drivers for R100-R200 based cards, somewhat full 3D drivers for R300 based cards, and no support for later models. So the OSS community is working on the driver issues, it takes time without documentation.

Or do this (which is obvious to me):

1. Link statically. Yes, this will make the executable a few megabytes larger. Disks are big.
2. Call run the equiv. of "dirname /proc/self/exe" to get installation path. Use this in game code to locate data files.
3. Package the resulting executable + data files as .tbz.

If you're lazy, you can provide manual instructions from this point that are essentially create directory under /opt, extract tbz to /opt/installdir, create program icon to refer to packaged executable.

If you're not lazy, make a second executable that carries out those instructions. I believe a portable method for a program to create a launch icon is desribed somewhere at freedesktop.org

> GNOME technologies quite often benefit KDE, too: see e.g. d-bus

You know, this is exactly why GNOME gets so much financial support: top-notch marketing and communication.

D-BUS is actually KDE technology. D-BUS is explicitly the offspring of KDE's wonderful DCOP technology, only generalized, detached from X's ICE authentication mechanism, and from the Qt toolkit, to make it acceptable for GNOME people to use it.

Yet you, a KDE fan, if I understand correctly, believed it a GNOME tech. Pretty interesting, isn't it?

Those charts look pretty hot to me. Did you look at the chart in the page? http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/l ibrary/os-perlgdchart/pie_step1_step2.gif
). Anti-aliased lines and text :]

Let's compare this to what I'd get if I asked most professionals for a chart. (These were the first ones from google). The lack of anti-aliasing hurts one's eye, these all look like they're from 1995.
http://support.alphasoftware.com/images/XD_Interac tive_Pie_Chart.gif
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa192481. odc_vststockallocation2003_fig03(en-us,office.11). gif
(the second one is 3d)

And in response to your comment
> When will open source advocates learn to delegate the graphic design aspect of their work to professionals? if only the programming types in charge of these projects would admit they're better at making code than graphics.
You seem to have missed the point. The article is about free software that can be used by professional and non-professional alike to create some hot graphics. Perhaps you're referring to the ugliness of the original tux logo? It's not 1995, and developers aren't resigned to producing their own graphics. If you look all free software houses pushing their brand use professional designers. Think of the firefox logo (2004)
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/branding-fire fox
or of ubuntu and gnome's curves, and check out the tango project http://tango.freedesktop.org/
Desktop linux has never looked so sexy.

Why so sour, AC?

1. Work will begin after Pidgin 2.0.0 is released
2. It will probably use gstreamer or farsight
3. Pidgin will eventually have both video and voice support but it will take a lot of time

To me, "truly free" sounds nice philosophically but not practically.

I am thinking about what things are non-free on my Ubuntu Distro and it is only one thing, the Nvidia drivers.

The nouveau team is making great progress with that and Mark has already said that they would be switching the drivers the moment something viable comes out.

Now that doesn't mean everyone will have a completely free workable system, but for me personally I can see it happening soon

swfdec finally makes a free flash codec that can handle YouTube and the next day they announce all the good content is going away!

so just don't run any DRM enabled operation system.

I hope this new project begins full steam, but a big part of me is sad that between projects like Kopete, Gaim, Trillian, Miranda, etc. that we're dividing efforts instead of having one truly incredible messenger that works across all networks, supports all the features of each network (including full voice and video).

Dammit, the DRI wiki link should point here. That's what I get for rushing.

If one is only interested in a free (libre) graphic driver for Linux, one could check the the status of hardware accelerated 3D support on the Direct Rendering Infrastructure project wiki.

Here is, more or less, the lay of the land as of today:
Intel: i810 and newer are officially supported by Intel
ATI: Radeon 7000 up to X850 offer 3D support through a reverse engineered driver. Generally better performing than Intel although not quite as stable.
VIA: On-board Unichrome video has a free driver included with X. Not sure if VIA has helped with development or not but I had working 3D out-of-the-box running Ubuntu on a VIA EPIA motherboard that I purchased recently.
Matrox: G200, G400, G450 and G550 have accelerated 3D support with X driver. Not sure if Matrox had any hand in this.
nVIDIA: There is currently NO hardware accelerated 3D with a free driver for any nVIDIA chipset. This may change in the future due to efforts by the Nouveau project but nVIDIA is definitely not helping the situation.

So if you want to reward a vendor for Linux support, buy Intel. If you want higher performance and a free driver, buy ATI. If you already own nVIDIA, help the Nouveau project.

If one is only interested in a free (libre) graphic driver for Linux, one could check the the status of hardware accelerated 3D support on the Direct Rendering Infrastructure project wiki.

Here is, more or less, the lay of the land as of today:
Intel: i810 and newer are officially supported by Intel
ATI: Radeon 7000 up to X850 offer 3D support through a reverse engineered driver. Generally better performing than Intel although not quite as stable.
VIA: On-board Unichrome video has a free driver included with X. Not sure if VIA has helped with development or not but I had working 3D out-of-the-box running Ubuntu on a VIA EPIA motherboard that I purchased recently.
Matrox: G200, G400, G450 and G550 have accelerated 3D support with X driver. Not sure if Matrox had any hand in this.
nVIDIA: There is currently NO hardware accelerated 3D with a free driver for any nVIDIA chipset. This may change in the future due to efforts by the Nouveau project but nVIDIA is definitely not helping the situation.

So if you want to reward a vendor for Linux support, buy Intel. If you want higher performance and a free driver, buy ATI. If you already own nVIDIA, help the Nouveau project.

Perhaps they would trade their packet sniffers for some "MMIO snoopers" and dig into Nouveau?

Seriously, there is plenty of stuff out there that needs improvement. And if Microsoft eventually is out of the picture, imagine all those poor people who reverse-engineer Microsoft products, focusing on really interesting things in the next 10 years. It could be a new golden age...

Perhaps they would trade their packet sniffers for some "MMIO snoopers" and dig into Nouveau?

Seriously, there is plenty of stuff out there that needs improvement. And if Microsoft eventually is out of the picture, imagine all those poor people who reverse-engineer Microsoft products, focusing on really interesting things in the next 10 years. It could be a new golden age...

I owned an ATI video card, and I switched to a NVidia just after switching to Linux... :-) At the momente I use official NVidia closed source drivers, but Nouveau is getting better everyday.

Given that the Mozilla/Firefox browsers have such an enormous codebase to be maintained and debugged would you recommend that the efforts of those developers be spent writing a window manager

No. That is why you use a "standard" Window Manager like MetaCity. It's intended to do the heavy lifting of screen layout while the application instructs the WM according to the agreed upon protocols.

Given that the Mozilla/Firefox browsers have such an enormous codebase to be maintained and debugged would you recommend that the efforts of those developers be spent writing a DE based on it?

Do I think that the Mozilla developers should do it as a mainline part of the Mozilla/Gecko codebase? No. Do I think it should be done as a separate project built on top of the Mozilla platform? Yes. The latter does not necessarily mean a reduction in the developer support for the Mozilla codebase, and may actually attract new developers to working on improving the platform.

Still, though, would you want a comprehensive network application such as a web browser to be directly integrated with the code and memory allocations which make up the display?

I do not understand this point. The Mozilla Platform is NOT a web browser. The Mozilla Platform is a collection of desktop and web technologies that can be used to construct a web browser. Or a variety of other applications. This is no different than the Win32 or Cocoa APIs, both of which contain support for Web Technologies in addition to standard desktop technologies. Thus Win32 systems have Internet Explorer (based on MSHTML renderer), Cocoa systems have Safari (based on WebKit renderer), and Mozilla systems have Firefox (based on Gecko renderer).

My understanding is that the underlying structure of the javascript environment is too rickety to ensure that an application built within it will ever be bulletproof.

Your understanding is incorrect. Javascript/ECMAScript is a full language limited only by its APIs. For XUL applications, Javascript apps have access to the complete XPCOM library; an API similar in concept to Win32 or Cocoa.

As touched upon in a recent discussion on a Slashdot book review, the primary issue with Javascript is that the majority of those who think they know how to program in it, do not.

Modern web browsers, IMHO, already have too much unrestricted access to the rest of the system. This can be configured away by the user but only at a severe cost to modern day functionality. Cookies are an illustration of this point: disabling cookies for an entire day would tank a normal daily network routine.

First off, this is neither here nor there. Issues affecting a desktop web browser do not relate to a desktop application unless it choses to provide web browser services. At that point, the standard issues with accessing network resources apply. It is up to the individual application to find a method of dealing with network security. Just as it is up to any network-enabled Windows or Mac application to deal with network security.

I appreciate that java, in and of itself, isn't slow but that the slowness is often brought about by layering the jvm on top of the already existent OS.

Incorrect. Java has surpassed C++ in a variety of benchmarks. Anyone who has paid attention to Java within the last 7 years is aware of these benchmarks. (Example) While perceived performance problems exist (e.g. slow startup, "feel" of GUI, etc.) the Virtual Machine itself is actually quite fast by virtue of runtime optimizations.

The jvm environment reminds me of the BASIC interpreter which the beloved C=64 provided in that it works like a jit compiler.

The C64 did not JIT the BASIC code. It is well known

Mozilla would make a great OS.

I don't know what project the parent post was refering to, but it is not only GIMP (with some interesting ideas) that got rejected.

Other projects that were not selected include interesting improvements to the desktop infrastructure, such as GStreamer (list of ideas) or Avahi (list of ideas).

And they most certainly accelerated. Two things can happen:
1. Their output is redirected to an offscreen buffer (either a framebuffer object or an older pbuffer)
2. There's an option to pass fullscreen unobstructed windows straight to the card.

Furthermore the reason why AIGLX doesn't work with the ATI binary drivers is because they don't yet implement GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap GL extension. The composite extension is handled by X itself - not the graphics driver - and thus is a non-issue.

You are right that XGL doesn't expose all the extensions/features of regular X though. The usual place where you see this is in video as XGL is forced to use a card's 3D support for everything and if you don't have pixel shaders not being able to use the accelerated Xv that the regular X provides tends to be slow.

Finally what's this about about compiz not being GPL'd? Where did you get that from - please quote your source. Given Beryl is not (yet) a complete rewrite of compiz, that basically means compiz must have had a BSD/MIT or GPL style licence in the first place...

For a, b and c I don't have an answer, but for d you can use the middle button of the mouse; it gives you the context menu you are looking for. For e, nautilus uses the shared-mime-info http://www.freedesktop.org/software/shared-mime-in fo database. You can customize the behavior by right click on the file, and in "Properties" select the "Open With" tab and choose the default application. After that, it will use that as the default application for all the files of the same type.

I was impressed by the author's attention to detail and clear specification of the tested systems and the steps involved in using them.

One useful correction would be that programs are just as easy to install on .rpm-based systems as they are on .deb-based systems. The default tool on Fedora Core 6 is called YUM and it does all the dependency resolving necessary. There are even simpler front ends to it such as Pup and Pirut. Package installation, deinstallation, upgrade and update are just as easy as they are with Aptitude.

The problems that the author experiences with 64-bit Flash are unfortunately a result of there being insufficient pressure from GNU/Linux consumers on vendors to supply Free software. A similar problem is experience by many Ubuntu users that rely on the non-Free drivers produced by Nvidia for their graphics cards, or the various non-free binary blobs used for some dodgy wireless hardware. This will continue to be a problem as long as distributions like Ubuntu facilitate the manufacturers of this hardware in evading one of the central principles of Free Software. The manufacturers can't do a good enough job of staying current with the kernel and so GNU/Linux will always be a second class citizen as long as we accept this. Fortunately there are manufacturers, such as Intel that provide Free software for their 3D graphics cards and their wireless chipsets and so it's worth choosing their components when building a new system. (I used to buy ATI stuff because the Free 3d drivers were better than the Free Nvidia ones, but apparently the nouveau project is opening up the list of working Free Nvidia cards. I'll probably be giving Nvidia and ATI both a miss in favour of Intel though).

Unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth is a short-term thinker who is pushing many of the Ubuntu developers into including binary, closed blobs that work until you update your system. This is the tired old "I'm a pragmatist" line which has been releiving the pressure on manufacturers to open their drivers and on users to choose non-closed hardware while purchasing new systems. It's anything but pragmatic and leads to the sort of frustrations seen in the article.

There are some details on the release page on the Freedesktop wiki.

From that page:

X11R7.2 supports Linux, BSD, Solaris, Microsoft Windows and GNU Hurd systems. It incorporates significant stability and correctness fixes, including improved autoconfiguration heuristics, enhanced support for GL-based compositing managers such as Compiz and Beryl, and improved support for PCI systems with multiple domains. It also incorporates the new, more extensible XACE security policy framework.

Release notes should be on the download page, they're marked 'forthcoming' at the moment, but wait a day or two and they should appear.

It's example like this I want to give to all who say "Meh ! I don't need my drivers to be opensource, nVidia's drivers for linux are good enough".

Yeah. And how are you going to port them to Haiku ? nVidia has not interests in supporting additional OS that don't even have 1% market share. (It's already incredible that they support BSD, Solaris and 2 Linux platforms) But if nouveau project succeeds, Haiku people will have a nice opensource code base from which to adapt a driver. And without good hardware support, nice systems like haiku won't get widespread use.

I wish a lot of luck to Haiku, and hope they'll find a way to survive in the difficult place where companies only focus on the 1-2 most popular platforms, and refuse to help the others.

Right. Which is why the OSS community is making such a big deal of them *now* - because the functionality has been around for ages ? Maybe that would also explain why, until quite recently, those fancy features were nowhere to be seen ?

I've been playing around with XGL for a couple of years. However, I couldn't remember when I first heard about it, so I looked it up. The earliest reference I found was an email from David Reveman dated Nov 4, 2004. The first I heard about AIGLX was in February 2006. nVidia presented a paper at XDevConf that talked about it. I don't have the history of development of Apple's Quartz Compositor handy. Maybe a Mac user can add that information? However, I believe it predates XGL. To be fair, Windows Aero Desktop Compositing Engine was first demoed in 2003.

I can just see that you're going to pull out some example from SGI

I was going to give Sun's Looking Glass as an example. However, the earliest material I can find on that is 2004. Maybe Microsoft was first on this one. However, to be fair, you couldn't use Aero until recently.

XGL/AIGLX has come a long way in a short time. It's biggest problem has historically been lack of interest and poor 3D support in Linux. I'm glad there is finally some interest being generated.

XPDF - The De-facto best PDF viewing engine on Linux has recently been forked into the poppler projet : a project to separate core function into a library to make easier to create software using the XPDF engine, like KPDF (Nice poppler rendering engine, but unlike the original XPDF has a non ugly interface too).

Because of its portable and easily integrable characteristics, poppler will probably be at the origins of the first viable alternative to Acrobat Reder (slow) and GhostView for Windows (Ugly).
So controlling the "Programs using Poppler" section in the Poppler Wiki and looking for promising Windows application is a good starting point.
There's a poppler based win32 program called Sumatra PDF viewer. For now it's a very early unstable version (0.3), but one day, it may become the perfect alternative.

XPDF - The De-facto best PDF viewing engine on Linux has recently been forked into the poppler projet : a project to separate core function into a library to make easier to create software using the XPDF engine, like KPDF (Nice poppler rendering engine, but unlike the original XPDF has a non ugly interface too).

Because of its portable and easily integrable characteristics, poppler will probably be at the origins of the first viable alternative to Acrobat Reder (slow) and GhostView for Windows (Ugly).
So controlling the "Programs using Poppler" section in the Poppler Wiki and looking for promising Windows application is a good starting point.
There's a poppler based win32 program called Sumatra PDF viewer. For now it's a very early unstable version (0.3), but one day, it may become the perfect alternative.

Since the Linux kernel does not do as much as the Windows kernel (not in any way a value judgement), this is to be expected. More CPU and memory bandwidth are available to the game under Linux. This type of benchmark is shortsighted.

Translucent windows under X have been developed competently by at least four different teams before OSX. The feature is commonly requested and frequently attempted. Usually, people decide it's not worth the CPU hit. OSX and Vista are the first systems which have implemented this feature through hardware acceleration. Neither invented the idea. Neither is in any way visionary or brilliant for saying "hey, let's use this 3D hardware, then maybe performance won't be teh suck".

We did 16-bit platforms when you people were laughing at us and saying "get a real computer". You don't get to bitch about it now that we've pushed you off most of your own home field.

The Tango project already has - http://tango.freedesktop.org/static/cvs/tango-icon -theme/scalable/actions/document-save.svg

No-one seems to have commented on the fact that if NDA requirements are met the drivers cannot be open source. This doesn't mean fewer binary blobs, it means more.

Open Source drivers have been written under NDA before. What this typically means is that they are write-only code. The NDA will prevent things like properly labelling constants and helpful comments, so you end up with code full of magic constants and seemingly random operations. It's basically impossible for anyone to maintain without the NDA'd documentation, so you are pretty much screwed if you want to port it to another OS or maintain it when the original author gets bored or dies.

Check out the nouveau project. You're right, there is only a blob available today. If these guys continue to have success, there may be a proper open source driver later this year. GLX Gears is running (sans depth buffer) on NV40 hardware. Other hardware is sure to follow, and fuller implementations will also follow. The key is that they have something working and a way to figure out how to get the rest working.

I think they already know about it.

This community does provide 'standards' for interoperability, including drag and drop. Various UI operations mightn't work as seemlessly as on Windows or Mac but the intent is there.

Interesting timing. I have a E6600 system on order with a $50 Asus EAX550 video card based on the hoary ATI R300 core so I could run an open source video driver. Plenty fast enough for 2D and potentially some low-end (non-game) 3D. I tried hard to find something newer and faster, but failed. Matrox has a fully open source driver for some of its older cards, expensive, with lamentable performance, and the second head wouldn't drive the required frequency, which completely negates Matrox's long standing reputation for excellent finals. What I used to like about Matrox is you always knew what you were getting, even if it was a little behind the curve. Then the day came when Microsoft update pushed a new Matrox driver that eliminated multidesk support with narry a "this might screw you over" or "really do this?" I was in the middle of a deadline push and lost half a day discovering that Matrox had fed this into the Microsoft update pipeline in full deliberation. It proved faster to buy an ATI product than research alternative multidesk implementations in software. Still, I have a fondness for what Matrox used to stand for back when NVidia was setting benchmark records with finals that rendered fifty tints of pastel grey.

Since I collected these links just two days ago, I might as well include them:

http://www.skynet.ie/~airlied/talks/ols06/ols2006. odp -- DCC 2006, MIME problem, but opens with evince directly
http://www.skynet.ie/~airlied/talks/ddc05/ddc_pres .sxi -- DCC 2005, didn't read this one myself
http://free3d.org/
http://intellinuxgraphics.org/
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item =576&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item =463&num=1

Yes, you are missing something, since you are obviously not following the developer blog: 8 8

Yes, you are missing something, since you are obviously not following the developer blog: 8 8

thank you for such a detailed reply :)

1) I rather not deal with and learn the tools Microsoft has provided to accomplish tasks in the same fashion as I'm used to in unix/linux ?

this is not at all the case: i would switch in one day, if i would find something on the microsoft windows side that would provide the flexibility and power that the combination of opensource tools provide.

i do not suggest to reinvent all this tools that already exist... or force people to use them. the approach would be more integrative and not a replacement. cmd.exe can stay - to make all this longterm developers happy - but in addition there should be a completely integrative way to add other things natively.

sure, there is visual studio... there is also a gcc-like compiler for win32, but that's not the point. it's like giving a person some tools and saying that he is in theory now able to build a house to sleep tonight. a user is at a loss... most linux users are using packages nowadays and do not know/care about compiling the bits together.

they simply type some command like "my-favourite-pkg-manager -install this-cool-tool" and it will download and install it.
it will also update it whenever the user types "my-favourite-pkg-manager -update-my-system".

exactly like microsoft and apple now also implemented the idea. but they are lacking the extensibility by the communities. you cannot simply "add" yet another tool to windows update... it will only check windows related things and all the other buyed software have to provide their own (what they do nowadays - quite a mess - my windowsXP installation runs 13 processes from different companies to look for updates).
and here comes the difference of apples osx and microsofts vista (in regard of *nix opensource projects):
apples osx has the ability to let the user compile/add upon an already existing *nix environement a package manager and enjoy the avialability of all the pieces that apple is not packaging but a community is packaging.
in vista, you cannot build upon something that does not exist. of course you can try to use cygwin - if you have lots of time :)

[QUOTE]
"Heck, wake me up when Linux distros ever decide on just one packaging subsystem and a well-supported (that means: actually used) common desktop API, and I'll look back into linux development. "

every distro has its own packaging system - diversity! (with all the advantages and disavantages diversity has - i mean biologically spoken)
you choose your distribution and you are happy with what you have. no need to try other packaging system ;)

there exist different window manager and desktop environements - again diversity!
luckily we are that they can be installed all side by side. GTK and QT and others - they have well defined API's that keep changing, but this is progress.
about standards, as far you can introduce standards in an environement where evolution works and things get favoured or extinct, they do develop - like the freedesktop ideas about .desktop files and mime-entries. these are "standards" because they are accepted by most opensource projects. if you are interested in some text, have a look here:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fdeskto p_2dentry_2dspec
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fshared _2dmime_2dinfo_2dspec

about your vista experience: removing the menubar is a feature you can do in KDE with CTRL-M... only that you can make it reappear with pressing this key combinations again ;)

i really hope that microsoft is taking it seriously what it claims to do soon - to have a look at "compatiblity with linux" - all this milions of windows users need to grow up once :)

thank you for such a detailed reply :)

1) I rather not deal with and learn the tools Microsoft has provided to accomplish tasks in the same fashion as I'm used to in unix/linux ?

this is not at all the case: i would switch in one day, if i would find something on the microsoft windows side that would provide the flexibility and power that the combination of opensource tools provide.

i do not suggest to reinvent all this tools that already exist... or force people to use them. the approach would be more integrative and not a replacement. cmd.exe can stay - to make all this longterm developers happy - but in addition there should be a completely integrative way to add other things natively.

sure, there is visual studio... there is also a gcc-like compiler for win32, but that's not the point. it's like giving a person some tools and saying that he is in theory now able to build a house to sleep tonight. a user is at a loss... most linux users are using packages nowadays and do not know/care about compiling the bits together.

they simply type some command like "my-favourite-pkg-manager -install this-cool-tool" and it will download and install it.
it will also update it whenever the user types "my-favourite-pkg-manager -update-my-system".

exactly like microsoft and apple now also implemented the idea. but they are lacking the extensibility by the communities. you cannot simply "add" yet another tool to windows update... it will only check windows related things and all the other buyed software have to provide their own (what they do nowadays - quite a mess - my windowsXP installation runs 13 processes from different companies to look for updates).
and here comes the difference of apples osx and microsofts vista (in regard of *nix opensource projects):
apples osx has the ability to let the user compile/add upon an already existing *nix environement a package manager and enjoy the avialability of all the pieces that apple is not packaging but a community is packaging.
in vista, you cannot build upon something that does not exist. of course you can try to use cygwin - if you have lots of time :)

[QUOTE]
"Heck, wake me up when Linux distros ever decide on just one packaging subsystem and a well-supported (that means: actually used) common desktop API, and I'll look back into linux development. "

every distro has its own packaging system - diversity! (with all the advantages and disavantages diversity has - i mean biologically spoken)
you choose your distribution and you are happy with what you have. no need to try other packaging system ;)

there exist different window manager and desktop environements - again diversity!
luckily we are that they can be installed all side by side. GTK and QT and others - they have well defined API's that keep changing, but this is progress.
about standards, as far you can introduce standards in an environement where evolution works and things get favoured or extinct, they do develop - like the freedesktop ideas about .desktop files and mime-entries. these are "standards" because they are accepted by most opensource projects. if you are interested in some text, have a look here:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fdeskto p_2dentry_2dspec
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fshared _2dmime_2dinfo_2dspec

about your vista experience: removing the menubar is a feature you can do in KDE with CTRL-M... only that you can make it reappear with pressing this key combinations again ;)

i really hope that microsoft is taking it seriously what it claims to do soon - to have a look at "compatiblity with linux" - all this milions of windows users need to grow up once :)

thank you for such a detailed reply :)

1) I rather not deal with and learn the tools Microsoft has provided to accomplish tasks in the same fashion as I'm used to in unix/linux ?

this is not at all the case: i would switch in one day, if i would find something on the microsoft windows side that would provide the flexibility and power that the combination of opensource tools provide.

i do not suggest to reinvent all this tools that already exist... or force people to use them. the approach would be more integrative and not a replacement. cmd.exe can stay - to make all this longterm developers happy - but in addition there should be a completely integrative way to add other things natively.

sure, there is visual studio... there is also a gcc-like compiler for win32, but that's not the point. it's like giving a person some tools and saying that he is in theory now able to build a house to sleep tonight. a user is at a loss... most linux users are using packages nowadays and do not know/care about compiling the bits together.

they simply type some command like "my-favourite-pkg-manager -install this-cool-tool" and it will download and install it.
it will also update it whenever the user types "my-favourite-pkg-manager -update-my-system".

exactly like microsoft and apple now also implemented the idea. but they are lacking the extensibility by the communities. you cannot simply "add" yet another tool to windows update... it will only check windows related things and all the other buyed software have to provide their own (what they do nowadays - quite a mess - my windowsXP installation runs 13 processes from different companies to look for updates).
and here comes the difference of apples osx and microsofts vista (in regard of *nix opensource projects):
apples osx has the ability to let the user compile/add upon an already existing *nix environement a package manager and enjoy the avialability of all the pieces that apple is not packaging but a community is packaging.
in vista, you cannot build upon something that does not exist. of course you can try to use cygwin - if you have lots of time :)

[QUOTE]
"Heck, wake me up when Linux distros ever decide on just one packaging subsystem and a well-supported (that means: actually used) common desktop API, and I'll look back into linux development. "

every distro has its own packaging system - diversity! (with all the advantages and disavantages diversity has - i mean biologically spoken)
you choose your distribution and you are happy with what you have. no need to try other packaging system ;)

there exist different window manager and desktop environements - again diversity!
luckily we are that they can be installed all side by side. GTK and QT and others - they have well defined API's that keep changing, but this is progress.
about standards, as far you can introduce standards in an environement where evolution works and things get favoured or extinct, they do develop - like the freedesktop ideas about .desktop files and mime-entries. these are "standards" because they are accepted by most opensource projects. if you are interested in some text, have a look here:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fdeskto p_2dentry_2dspec
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fshared _2dmime_2dinfo_2dspec

about your vista experience: removing the menubar is a feature you can do in KDE with CTRL-M... only that you can make it reappear with pressing this key combinations again ;)

i really hope that microsoft is taking it seriously what it claims to do soon - to have a look at "compatiblity with linux" - all this milions of windows users need to grow up once :)

My GeForce 7900GT works just fine doing hardware acceleration.

Unless nVidia never release this new graphics core on normal PC hardware, surely it will eventually get the attention of the Nouveau project and 3D+2D drivers will get developed.

Actually, I just checked and the Nouveau driver should work but Sony have hidden the interface through something called hypervisor.

For example take a look at the nvidia driver. Since a year, there's a reverse-engineering project to create a free dri-driver for nvidia, but it's not advancing at all. I guess lack of developer interest, because there's already the proprietary driver.