Slashdot Mirror

I'm not trying to troll here. It certainly looks more polished than the train wreck that 4.1 and 4.2 was

If you aren't trying to troll, then you must be trying to be serious, but...I have to ask anyway...are you joking? I seem to remember KDE 4.2 being hailed as relatively stable when it was released, worlds better than 4.0 or 4.1. What happened to that?

Citations needed and provided:
http://www.osnews.com/story/20857/KDE_4_2_Released_Short_Interview_Aaron_Seigo/page2/
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6655/1/

And this one is a little more negative, but still along some of the same positive lines as the other two:
http://www.linux-ninja.com/2009/02/07/kde-42-review/

So...um...if I may ask...how was KDE 4.2 a "train wreck", as you put it? Are you sure you aren't trying to troll?

And also a doubling of the size of every pointer, meaning an inflation in the size of every instruction, causing an increase in the number of cache misses and an increase in the size of application binaries which means greater memory usage.

64-bit is *not* a panacea. It's better in some cases, worse in others, and which is better, 32-or 64-bit, depends entirely on workload.

While true, on x86-64, the the positives tend to outweigh the negatives. However, on architectures where 64-bit was not an afterthought, the negatives seem to outweigh the positives.

True, this is like MS claiming allowing unauthorized applications and devices on the internet would break the ISP's or Tier 1 provider's routers and then locking up all applications with a App store raking in 30% of the cost compulsorily.

Also, from the response from Apple:

Looking at the four statutory fair use
factors,18 although the use per se of the modified iPhone bootloader and OS on an individual
handset is of a personal nature, it is not a transformative use, and because a jailbroken OS is
often used to play pirated content, the act of jailbreaking should be considered of a commercial
nature since it facilitates obtaining applications without paying fees for the them.

snip...

In sum, the value of the OS software to the iPhone, and therefore to Apple, is that it
enables the iPhone to function as a platform for the mobile computing experience that
differentiates the iPhone from its many competitors. This, in turn, increases the value of Appleâ(TM)s
iPhone copyrights and, again, overall consumer utility, making the iPhone a more attractive
product to consumers.

Huh? WTF? A jailbroken OS is often used to play pirated content? Apple keeps rejecting(censoring?) useful apps that developers and companies have spent lots of time and money on for silly reasons such as political content, duplication of functionality, mature content etc. The real reason is not piracy, it's because Apple wants to keep that 30% cut of all apps sold and control all the content while at the same time not angering AT&T with their approved Apps to keep the ~$17/month that Apple gets paid for each iPhone customer.

Is this what Apple calls the platform for the mobile computing experience? And there are a bunch of people including Jobs calling the iPod touch the equivalent of a netbook. http://www.osnews.com/story/20424/Jobs_on_Cheap_Computers_Netbooks http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/01/the-iphone-and-ipod-touch-apples-netbook.ars Please, no thanks.Do not pervert the word computer to mean a walled garden. Call it a phone, gaming console, e-book reader etc. if you wish. This makes the evil MS look like defenders of freedom in shining armor. God forbid if a company like Apple won the PC wars back in the 80s instead of IBM/PC compatibles. *shudder*

When this originally came up, at least one contributor on the OS News discussion (http://www.osnews.com/story/21882/Microsoft_s_Linux_Kernel_Code_Drop_Result_of_GPL_Violation) of the issue suggested that the GPL code that was being linked to Microsoft's binary blob was *also* Microsoft's code (see http://www.osnews.com/thread?374824 for example). I've not seen a definitive statement from an interested party either supporting or refuting this.

The guy who pointed out the violation to Greg KH notes that the driver contained GPL and closed portions, which is not consistent with the terms of the GPL license: http://linux-network-plumber.blogspot.com/2009/07/congratulations-microsoft.html

That doesn't contradict the idea that Microsoft was linking its own GPLed code to its own closed code, which would be inconsistent but would be within their rights if they are the copyright holder on both portions.

Of course, it's a different matter if their original GPLed shim contained others' GPLed code. Indeed, if it included Linux Kernel header files then it probably did, in which case it actually would have been violating those developers' copyrights. I don't see how that's worse than the way the NVidia (or any other closed source drivers) work, though - or do they do some cunning / evil trick to get around this situation? Linus has previously said that he thinks binary drivers are acceptable if they were written for another platform first and therefore not a derived work of the kernel - I think his opinion on that is inconsistent and nonsensical but it's easy to imagine that the MS binary portion of the driver was developed for other platforms and therefore believed to be covered by this.

Unlike Nvidia et al, MS has evidently realised that they'd look stupid not to release the code, so whilst they're not whiter-than-white they are actually doing better than some. Of course, they really need to do their best not to look hypocritical about intellectual property.

It sort of already exists, but it's not used as you suggest (yet). It would be nice if it were one drive with two virtual drives, separately accessible. MSI has a netbook with both SSD and HDD (seperate). Provided you could select where windows stores it's hibernate data (don't know, don't use windows), you could probably accomplish what you suggest fairly easily.

I wouldn`t rely on Asus for any kind of Linux support. If you want to run Linux, stay away from Asus and especially netbooks of them.

Why? They have a site to explain why, they openly say their products run best under Windows.

Here is the news story http://www.osnews.com/story/21589/Asus_Microsoft_Launch_Anti-Linux_Netbook_Campaign

Here is the site: http://www.itsbetterwithwindows.com/

You would wish it was a joke but it isn`t. Perhaps Asus better go back to their mainboard and Apple manufacturing business.

I think the real problem with this, and this is coming from a guy that builds and services MSFT products, is that they released free the ECMA parts and ONLY the ECMA parts. Which means of course it is still quite useless without the patent infringing parts you need to make it interoperable, like ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and Winforms. So if you want to actually build a program that will work in .NET in both Windows and Linux you will still have to risk patent trolling at a later date by MSFT. After the FAT bullshit I really wouldn't trust them not to bone .NET Linux users later if a PHB decided it would be a good market strategy.

Anyway according to OSNews De Icaza will be splitting Mono in half, into the ECMA standard parts and the other stuff like ASP.NET and everything else that will still be at risk. So unless all you want is the ECMA framework that won't actually run anything cross platform I really don't see any reason to get excited as there really isn't a way to use the ECMA parts without using the "dirty parts" and risking the gotcha. And considering that MSFT was very careful to make sure it covered ONLY the ECMA parts I would still consider it a gotcha.

They'll have to disclose the patents that they believe cover the implementation.

This might be in progress:
    http://www.osnews.com/story/21586

Then the patents can be worked around, and the issue is solved

FWIW, Microsoft believes certain patents are essential for implementing C# and CLI:

If they're going to sue users of Mono, why wouldn't they sue users of other software that also 'infringe' their patents?

Yes, they keep threatening this. See also SCO vs. IBM, et. al. vis-a-vis Baystar Capital.

Mono at least has the excuse that it's implementing an international standard.

DVD, h.264, myriad others? Patent licenses are frequently required to implement standards. Mono's official position is that if Microsoft comes after users based on patents (windows forms is the more likely target) they'll try to invent around it and if that's not possible, break compatibility. So then you have a product that somewhat works cross-platform, and Microsoft is the thought leader for your development platform.

If all those risks seem to be worth it, then who are we to get in the way? Competition is healthy.

About UAC: see this http://www.osnews.com/story/21653/Microsoft_Won_t_Fix_Windows_7_s_UAC

Apparently Win7's UAC isn't better: it's worse from a security POV..

The first "netbook" that started all the craze was the XO... everyone wanted one, even paying twice, donating one to schools to get one of those. And run Linux. The first next ones (asus, msi, etc) consolidated the trend, and run linux too. Till last year, most if not all netbooks had Linux as alternate (if not main) OS. And a bunch of distros/interfaces of linux specialised in netbooks started to show up (eeebuntu and similar, ubuntu netbook remix, moblin, android, etc)

Then the campaing started. Microsoft using a chainsaw to manage to show XP in an XO. Then saying that Linux netbook returns were 4 times higher than Windows ones (at least what an msi exec said, an asus one denied that). Some vendors giving lesser options/specs for Linux netbooks than for Windows ones. And linux offers and showings in netbooks starting to fade

The next incoming market for Linux in small pcs are arm based net/smart books. Started with linux in general, then Android, but recently started a push to say that the right OS for that platform is another Microsoft one, Windows CE.

Clearly this is not a smoking gun... the room of Neo's "guns, lots of guns" is tiny compared with the amount of weapons Microsoft is using in all fronts to try to stop the flood. Will it succeed? I only hope that not.

The only valid measurement of code quality
http://www.osnews.com/story/19266/WTFs_m

Wow, that critic seems oddly familiar

They're working on it. Well, not exactly, but Firefox and Chrome will both support the new HTML/JS extension framework being discussed.

Oh yeah, this video also makes me drool. Damn, Nintendo should throw that into the next-gen DS. That would be phenomenal. Or hell, they should just snap up Pandora and sell it as the DS2, or something. ARM is awesome.

I realize that exact figures don't really change your argument much but market share figures are something that have long been slippery. The more appropriate figures, in my opinion, put Windows at about 88%, Mac at 9.7 and Linux around 1%.

"Appropriate"? Only if you enjoyed the Kool-Aid. The marketshare.hitLink site is owned by NetApplications, whose business model was selling rebranded Windows executables to track Windows visits to Windows websites. No bias there, eh?

http://blog.linuxtoday.com/blog/2009/05/1-linux-market.html
"Matt Assay said it was at 2.02%

ZDNet reported on Feb 24th, 2004 http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=5334 that the 2003 Linux desktop market share hit 3.2% and expected it to hit 6% by 2007.

In 2005 they reported that the 2004 saw the Linux desktop at 4%.

I believe that the all the ZDNet figures were spot on. If anything, the Linux desktop market share has continued to increase and is probably currently at 8-10% and rising. Dell and the other PC OEMs wouldn't have invested in selling Linux pre-installed if it appealed only to less than 1% of the desktop market.

It is quite obvious that NetApplications latest "report" is merely Microsoft's continuing attempt to control the news about Linux's success in replacing Windows on the desktop...."

The best evidence that the NetApplications "report" is fake is from Ballmer himself. In a Feb, 2009 presentation he displayed a graph showing the percentages of desktop marketshare for Windows, Linux and Apple. HE puts the Linux pie slice at around 10%, and slightly larger than Apple's.
http://www.osnews.com/story/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Competitor_than_Apple

Ballmer can't listen to his own PR pulp. He has to plan using real data. Fortunately, he let it leak.

I've found several articles about the Extremadura LinEx project but I have been unable to find any information about exactly which schools were migrated.
One article (http://lwn.net/Articles/41738/) from 2003 states one computer for every two children were installed so I would say a substantial amount of all schools were running LinEx by June 2003.
An other article (http://www.osnews.com/story/12611) from November 2005 states that 66000 computers in schools and education centers and an additional 14000 in public administration buildings.
According to a third article (posted August 2006) on debian.org, all schools were migrated to Linux during 2004 ((Article in Swedish) http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060803.sv.html)

Screw PSNR. Use your eyeballs. Though dated, these screen shots pretty much seal the deal. Theora sucks, quality wise. I'm actually a big fan of Vorbis, but that's because I've found it to be a better codec for audio, but the same isn't the case for Theora's video quality.

Until the Linux community comes together under a common vision for Linux it has virtually no chance of competing with Microsoft Windows for a place on the desktop.

If that really was the case, Microsoft wouldn't be fighting tooth and nail trying to demote Linux's name etc.

As long as the Linux community is split between the different Linux distros

Why does the community matter? With Microsoft the community doesn't matter, with Apple, the community doesn't matter. A lot of the contributing developers in Linux would continue developing for Linux without the so called "Linux community"

But it takes someone with a higher degree of technical skill to install, support, and maintain Linux as compared to Microsoft server solutions.

I'm a net admin for both Window and Linux systems. In all honesty, there are many times I have found I needed greater technical skills to deal with some Windows issues as I had to reverse engineer closed-source software to discover exactly where a fault was (for example: Microsoft Exchange doesn't like it when disk controllers tell it to wait, and will likely cause database corruption - I discovered this with extensive debugging and reverse engineering). Speaking of which, do you even know how difficult it is to get Microsoft Exchange working properly for more than a hundred users? The amount of work is bloody insane, hell even doing simple things like getting effective spam filtering working is mind bogglingly ludicrous and you want me to believe that?

I find I can setup most common administrative functions in a company with a copy of SuSE in around 30-60 minutes while on Windows it can take me several hours. This is with knowing the procedures (YasT makes it so simple, Windows doesn't have everything as readily exposed in the GUI in a easy to setup manor - see differences between setting up active directory, webservers, mail, spam filtering, dhcp, update servers, network boot installation, hardware configuration, networking, package management, security and so on).

Sorry, I am sceptical of your friend's claims.

Until the Linux community stops whining about the evils of Microsoft

On this situation it depends. If Microsoft is going out of their way and attempting to stop Linux growth by underhanded tactics - I don't feel that this information shouldn't be publicized and as we all know, they do plenty of it.

begins to deliver a Linux-based desktop OS that is as simple and user-friendly as Microsoft Windows

In quite a few cases I have found Linux distributions to be far easier than Microsoft Windows, that said, there is always room for improvement - ease of use in my opinion is not the issue.

Linux has been around for a decade but its [usage] numbers are still low.

According to Microsoft they are higher than Apple's.

Why?

Linux has been growing at an ever increasing rate every year, not decreasing, so they are doing something right.

Slashdot, RTFA, blah blah blah.

If you go to the Wiki, and read the link in the top article, there is a link to OS News. If you follow that and read down in the comments, you'll find this post by the architect of the VGA emulation.

Apparently it really is emulation. Their MCU that they use as a PCI interface has a mode that generates the raw pixels when given VGA commands. It handles the VGA interface. The graphics processor just receives (from it's perspective) pixmaps that are constantly generated by the MCU in VGA mode.

The guy says that VGA on their card is actually resolution independent (since the MCU generates what is needed) and could actually be up-sampled to show clearer fonts without the OS having any idea it was going on.

He says it's not the cleanest way of doing things (from a methodology standpoint), but it has the least impact on the design of the hardware (compared to a "real" VGA interface).

from http://www.osnews.com/permalink?360100 As the original architect of the way VGA is done on this board, perhaps I can offer an explanation. There is perhaps a more straightforward way of implementing VGA than the way we did it. The direct route would require two components. One piece is the host interface that interprets I/O and memory accesses from PCI and manipulates graphics memory appropriate. The other piece is a specialized video controller that is able to translate text (which is encoded in two bytes as an ASCII value and color indices) in real-time into pixels as they're scanned out to the monitor. This is actually how others still do it. To us, VGA is legacy. It should be low-priority and have minimal impact on our design. We didn't want to hack up our video controller in nasty ways (or include alternate logic) for such a purpose, and we didn't want to dedicate a lot of logic to it. Doing it the usual way was going to be too invasive and wasteful. Also, we want eventually to do PCI bus-mastering, which requires some high-level control logic, typically implemented in a simple microcontroller. So we thought, if we're going to have a microcontroller anyhow, why not give it dual purpose. When in VGA mode, the uC we designed (which we call HQ) intercepts and services all PCI traffic to OGD1. Microcode we wrote interprets the accesses and stores text appropriately in graphics memory. Then, to avoid hacking up the video controller, we actually have HQ perform a translation from the text buffer to a pixel buffer over and over in the background. Its input is VGA text. Its output is pixels suitable for our video controller. Aside from the logic reduction, this has other advantages. The screen resolution as seen by the host is decoupled from the physical display resolution. So while VGA thinks it's 640x400, the monitor could be at 2560x1600, without the need for a scaler. It's easily programmable, and we have complete control over how the text is processed into pixels; for instance, we could have HQ do some scaling or use a higher-res font different from what the host thinks we're using. We call it emulation because, in a way, our VGA is implemented entirely in software, albeit microcode that's loaded into or own microcontroller.

But you can still get Dell's Mini 9 and System76's Starling Netbook with Ubuntu.
Also, brace for the ARM wave of netbooks this year, such as this 299$ Touch Book from Always Innovating.

But you can still get Dell's Mini 9 and System76's Starling Netbook with Ubuntu.
Also, brace for the ARM wave of netbooks this year, such as this 299$ Touch Book from Always Innovating.

Portage for windows perhaps?

And then there is Microsoft's market share statistics...

http://www.osnews.com/story/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Competitor_than_Apple

OJ was able to get off because he hired an incredibly talented set of lawyers.

It makes sense that those with a lot of money would hire the best lawyers. Now that Obama chooses the cream of the crop, suddenly these guys are somehow no good?

How naive you are:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html
http://www.osnews.com/story/21190/Obama_s_DOJ_Sides_with_RIAA

It's cute defending your man to the last. I still have my Ron Paul sticker proudly displayed and can proudly say I did not vote one democrat or republican the last election. Yeah, my candidates lost, but at least I didn't buy into bullshit. Like George Carlin says, the people who run this country just don't give a fuck about you.

I must be missing something. I have a Debian FreeBSD Live CD from 2006. Here it was reported that Debian imported the FreeBSD Kernel over 4 years ago. What exactly happened now that is new?

Never heard of OSNews ?

She is an ugly, fat *fucking* pig. Check out her disgusting fat face here.[http://www.eugenia.co.uk/images/eugenia.jpg]

Here is her lame shit bio:

Name: Eugenia Loli-Queru [AKA FAT PIG STUPID BITCH]

Title: Editor-in-Chief [Editor? HAHAHAHA. That's a laugh. Cant spell or speak and is not technical.]

Email: eugenia@osnews.com [fat.pig@goatse.cx]

Personal website: http://www.eugenia.co.uk/

Birthday: 24th May, 1973

Current residence: Foster City (San Francisco Bay Area), CA, USA

Short biography: I worked for 2 years at BeNews, serving the BeOS and its community, and before that I was contributing as a news editor for a well known Gaming news site for about 8 months and I also co- held a fan site (LandOfEden) in the early development days of Lionhead's Black'n'White. For more information about me, you can always check my homepage.

I am Greek and english is not my native language. We do OSNews for fun (however, OSNews takes most of my time every day), so if you have a problem with my spelling and grammar either a) do not come back (spare us and save your time too) b) send me a proofread version of the article in question.

Whining about something I can't radically improve overnight, is not an option.
[osnews.com]

I have to agree. And now for posterity's sake I will post a fine collection of Eugenia treatises.

Ok. I am really getting tired of Slashdot reposting the crap rag OSNEWS on here. Please, PLEASE stop "editors". I don't know which of you has a fetish for Eugenia Loli, but this is supposed to be a Nerds site, not a technically impaired idiot site. Please, I implore you, please, STOP RE-POSTING OSNews *Crap* here. Here stuff is devoid of technical cross examinations, rife with conjecture and poor spelling and grammar, and she does what has long been disallowed here, the censoring of Anonymous Cowards. It is bad enough Slashdot isn't critically edited or reviewed, but in the absence of recourse by a commenting public free from censorship and suppression, OSNews is a totalitarian one way street. Please consider that she is likely to be getting kickback to review and announce things, and with her one way system, she could very well be lying to suit the needs of her underwriters without having recourse.

Hi there fat fucking pig lard ;p How are you you sweaty ugly fat Greek pig?

Why does anyone listen to Eugenia fat pig. she is a fucking cunt. Did you ever read her shit in OSNews? she censors out fucking everyone. its worse than the cunt moderation here on Slashdot. dude, it is a sad day here on Slashdot when you listen to a stupid fat bitch who is clearly dumber than any Ziff (Sith Davis) Davis idiot, and dare i say it, even fucking lamer than Jon the Jerkoff Katz.

Eugenia Loli needs to exposed. I will post 3 articles that show how fascist the Greeks can be, and that people like Eugenia perpetrate. Then I will cover My Big Fat Greek Wedding, with Fat being the operative word. Then some random Eugenia quotes. I hate you Eugenia, for being a fascist at OSNEWS. You are a pathetic waif who can not accept dissent, and you dictate to your small and withering community. I hope you get ovarian cancer.

Fat Eugenia Loli's Friends Ban all electronic games by mistake. Its people like Eugenia Loli that show that the formerly great state of Greece has eroded into a festering inbred, stupid hairy totalitarian fucks like herself. Now is the fatty greases sweltering out of her cellulite that makes it seem like Grease would be a more apropro name than Greece.

The Night Defender Fat Eugenia Loli Fat

Sweating and farting nervously on the verge of mental meltdown, ELQ reloads each of her precious OSNews pages, making sure all is well. Fifty Internet Explorer windows are open in W

My bad, I forgot that OSNews have changed their comment system sometime ago. Here are the updated links:

http://osnews.com/thread?226219
http://osnews.com/permalink?226313
http://osnews.com/permalink?226315

In addition to those, OO.o is still slower to me than Word 2003, let alone 2000. Would be tolerable if it was only on loading, but saving is also slower, and unlike Word, Writer doesn't let me continue editing while saving.

My bad, I forgot that OSNews have changed their comment system sometime ago. Here are the updated links:

http://osnews.com/thread?226219
http://osnews.com/permalink?226313
http://osnews.com/permalink?226315

In addition to those, OO.o is still slower to me than Word 2003, let alone 2000. Would be tolerable if it was only on loading, but saving is also slower, and unlike Word, Writer doesn't let me continue editing while saving.

My bad, I forgot that OSNews have changed their comment system sometime ago. Here are the updated links:

http://osnews.com/thread?226219
http://osnews.com/permalink?226313
http://osnews.com/permalink?226315

In addition to those, OO.o is still slower to me than Word 2003, let alone 2000. Would be tolerable if it was only on loading, but saving is also slower, and unlike Word, Writer doesn't let me continue editing while saving.

Damn, seems like Slashdot has somehow eaten my comment.

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226219
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226313
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226315

Damn, seems like Slashdot has somehow eaten my comment.

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226219
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226313
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226315

Damn, seems like Slashdot has somehow eaten my comment.

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226219
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226313
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226315

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226219

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226313

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226315

This is only from the WP point of view. Some of the comments may be not relevant with the latest version, but only some. I try every new version of OO.o to track its achievements. And being a tecnical translator, I am a serious wordprocessing user with a strong focus on efficiency.

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226219

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226313

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226315

This is only from the WP point of view. Some of the comments may be not relevant with the latest version, but only some. I try every new version of OO.o to track its achievements. And being a tecnical translator, I am a serious wordprocessing user with a strong focus on efficiency.

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226219

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226313

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comment_id=226315

This is only from the WP point of view. Some of the comments may be not relevant with the latest version, but only some. I try every new version of OO.o to track its achievements. And being a tecnical translator, I am a serious wordprocessing user with a strong focus on efficiency.

Vista really doesn't suck. I say this as an OS X, Linux, and M-Windows user.

But if Microsoft wants to increase marketshare among the people using unlicensed installations of the OS, it's the Vista-style *licensing* of Win7 that must change.

The licensing model of Vista (and Win7) is like dongle, only worse: it's a dongle with an expiry date. It penalizes the customer. If I buy an authentication key, *I* should be the one to say on which computer I install it. I shouldn't have to call Redmond for permission if I change computers.

Probably this:

    BeOS Lives: Haiku Impresses

http://osnews.com/story/20951/BeOS_Lives_Haiku_Impresses

Yep, exact same kernel and everything. On XP x64, I hear there's even a properties page somewhere that still says "Windows 2003 Server x64" (maybe it was even the sidebar of the start menu).

I wouldn't know firsthand, since I actually run Windows 2003 Server x64 on my laptop.

http://www.osnews.com/story/3655

It's OK, but I should disable the comment I'm forced to write for the log every time I want to shutdown or reboot.

>

The fact that companies like HP and Dell sell netbooks (and pre-load Linux across their product lines) shows just how far the Linux trend has already progressed.

Linux netbooks have a 4 times higher return rate than XP ones though

http://www.osnews.com/story/20362/Canonical_Confirms_MSI_s_Linux_Return_Rate_Statement

Sunday we reported on an interview with an MSI manager, who stated that internal research had shown that the return rate for the Linux version of MSI's Wind netbook was four times as high as that of the Windows XP version. He claimed that the unfamiliarity of people with Linux was the culprit. This claim sparked some serious discussion around the net, but now MSI's statement is being repeated by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

One of the problems with MSI's Andy Tung's statement was that it was impossible to say if the figures extended beyond MSI's own Wind, and if it was possible to apply this claim to the general netbook market. Canonical's marketing manager, Gerry Carr, confirms in an interview that retun rates for netbooks running open source software is indeed higher than that of those running Windows XP. "We don't know what the XP return rates are," Carr states, "But I will say that the return rate is above normal for netbooks that offer open-source operating systems."

Carr further explains:

Unclear selling is happening, typically online. The customer will get their netbook sent to their home and they imagine to find something like a Microsoft desktop, but they see a brown Ubuntu version. They are unwilling to learn it and they were expecting to have Windows. We said a long time ago, we didn't want to make a Windows clone. It has a different interface especially with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. We think it's a better way but it's not the same way people are used to. That unfamiliarity can take a while to learn and there is an education that has to be stressed.

As some have noted, it's interesting that people who switch from Windows to Mac OS X do not seem to have this problem. Personally, I believe that there are some logical reasons why this is the case. I think most people buy a Mac after having it seen in operation at a friend or relative, or even after having played with it at an Apple Store or an official retailer. Also, I think most people already know that Apple is different than Windows, and as such, when they choose to purchase a machine from Apple, they are aware it's going to be different. There is also a psychological effect at work; an Apple computer is not cheap, and post-purchase rationalisation will certainly play a role here.

These factors do not play much of a role in the purchase of a netbook. They are much cheaper, and often, online resellers are unclear that they do not come with Windows. In addition, people are simply less familiar with the whole concept of Linux than they are familiar with Apple - it is easier to deal with something new and different if you know there's going to be something new and different in the first place. And to make matters worse, there are probably very few 'real' retail stores who carry Linux machines for prospective buyers to test.

All in all, I agree with Carr when he says that it doesn't really matter how good or bad desktop Linux is; the fact that it's different is in and of itself reason enough for its adoption rate to be slow.

One of my clients makes hardware and they support Linux. They have Ubuntu machines in the test lab and the testers absolutely hate Ubuntu. Whereas thinks like Sleep and Hibernate just work on Windows, even the much maligned Vista, getting them to work on Ubuntu requires endless fiddling around.

For some people this fiddling around is a hobby, and a chance to prove to yourself that you're smarter than average. For most people, it's a waste of time.

Copypasta.

To worry about if OSNews and Gizmodo are right. The company has built up the "cult of Jobs" over the years to almost mythic status, and if they are right and Steve Jobs is dying and isn't long for this world the stock price is going down the crapper.

While you,I,and the guys here at Slashdot know that one guys does not a company make, too many of the press and public have built up the "Steve=Apple" mythos and it will slaughter their stock price. They should have been diffusing this for years instead of milking it to add to the "Apple Cool" branding. The only way I can see them not getting blasted all to hell in the market if Steve is really dying is to bring back the Woz to keep the mythos lovers happy while they have him "groom" a successor to the throne. Otherwise 2009 could mean some seriously bad times for Apple ahead.

> ... the semantic web never did, and never will take off without significant AI involvement.

I understand that the point of Nepomuk is to allow for automated tagging by the standard tools of the KDE desktop. For instance, say you receive a picture from an IM contact who KDE also knows (through the address book framework, Akonadi) lives in Europe.

Then Nepomuk would allow you to make search queries as "Bring up all the pictures that people living in Europe sent me last week". Well, that's the theoretical goal anyway; we will see if they ever get there.

There's one nifty application already: you can create a Folder View plasmoid on your desktop, and instead of making it display ~/Desktop/ as usual, you can make it display the result of a query through the Nepomuk KIO slave. See here how it works.

Why the negativity ? Why can't everyone in the Linux/BSD/OpenSource communities raise their glass and say "Congratulations! Good work!" I thought we were on the same side here. Today, you pop in a "modern" linux distro and 97% of the time, it just works. Some kid grabs an install disc for fedora or ubuntu, and he boasts to his friens "yeah, I run linux". Yet they have learned nothing. I am proudly a slackware and debian user and always will be. Run RedHat/Fedora and you learn RedHat/Fedora. Fine. Run Ubuntu and you learn Ubuntu. Run Slackware and you learn Unix/Linux. Slackware is run at many universities as a major portion of the network. It is run in libraies, schools, and even some business. Not to mention many many home users around the world. There were 3,000 visits and downloads to the slackware site in aug 08. Some say there is no package management. Well yes there is. There is no dependency checking but the most needed dependencies are already part of the install. And if you get a message saying you need something, then go get it. [rhetorical] Whats the big deal? Dont blindly follow the script kiddies into ubuntu land. "Yeah dude, I run Linux." No, you clicked "OK" or "Continue" a few times and ripped a DVD. Ooooo you're a linux god. :p Go get Slackware or pure debian. Slackware: Myths and Cliche http://www.osnews.com/story/3329/Slackware_Myths_and_Cliches_--_Another_Newbie_s_Point_of_View

>You know, sarcasm aside, the linux versions of these netbooks have a much higher return rate than the Windows versions.

That's debatable, I remember that one news (I think it was from MSI, not sure) said that the netbook with Linux had a much higher return rate that Windows but another news from Asus say that this isn't the case:
http://www.osnews.com/story/20568/EeePC_Return_Rate_is_Similar_for_Windows_and_Linux

As both are using different distribution, maybe this could be the explanation or they have different market or someone is lying, I don't know..

Hi, I'm one of NCP (Nexenta Core Platform) developers. The Ubuntu part of Nexenta is the userland. So over 5000 apps that you see in our repository are ports of 8.04 counterparts.

Theres some more information for developers in an article I wrote over at OSnews.

Well AROS developers broke off and are now developing AnubisOS based on GNU/Linux with the AROS/Amiga GUI. It was unveiled at the AROS show and It is being kept a secret so who knows what it will be like in a few years when it is finished?

This is what twitter has been doing to Slashdot for most of the year:

http://slashdot.org/~SockDisclosure/journal/214377

Advocacy in action:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1014837&cid=25591469

Disagree with the troll and find yourself in his troll list, where
he also documents death threats for the win.

Bragging with buddies about how "M$" monitors the way he creates accounts on Slashdot:

http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/08/irc-log-07112008/#tNov%2007%2021:19:07

Treatment of people who revealed what he was doing:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=993447&cid=25494651

Trascending Slashdot and bringing everyone down by association:

http://www.osnews.com/conversation/483454a1/Do_you_get_tired_of_the_Web_Hype_
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2008-August/154926.html
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2933313#post347878554
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/11/06/5924058.aspx#6051569

Original submission, with original puerile style:

"Analysts at Bloomberg noticed the tumble in M$'s traditional software sales last quarter and blamed it on netbooks:

The devices, which usually cost less than $500, are the fastest-growing segment of the personal-computer industry -- a trend that's eating into Microsoft's revenue. Windows sales fell short of forecasts last quarter and the company cut growth projections for the year, citing the lower revenue it gets from netbooks. When makers of the computers do use Windows, they typically opt for older and cheaper versions of the software.

Equipping Linux on a computer costs about $5, compared with $40 to $50 for XP and about $100 for Vista, according to estimates by Jenny Lai, a Taipei-based analyst at CLSA Ltd.

This is why, M$ declared war on the segment last year and palm top computers in previous years. While they may have successfully tamed the Asus EEE PC but, they can't hold back everyone who wants to make a buck on cheap hardware and free software. Analysts have predicted the fall of M$'s business model when computers break below $250/unit retail. We are there now, and it has shown in the bottom line."

Welcome to the trolled by twitter club, timothy.

I don't see any quality issue. Its crisp clear.

The relative value of a lossy video codec is in how good the quality is, at a respective bitrate. If you crank up the bitrate on ANY video codec, you'll get something that is true to the original, but at a prohibitive bitrate.

VP3 and Theora have been tested, over and over again, and simply do not provide better quality than practically any other video format, at a reasonable bitrate. Nearly all Divx/MPEG-4 ASP and h.264/AVC codecs substantially outperform it, as has been demonstrated time and time again...

http://www.doom9.org/codec-comparisons.htm
http://www.doom9.org/codecs-quali-105-3.htm
http://ww.osnews.com/story/19019/Theora-vs-h.264/

And yet, it's EXTREMELY computationally intensive... I doubt any CPU out there can decode 1080p Theora videos in real time. Many slightly older systems can't even decode DVD-resolution Theora videos. Putting Theora behind even H.264 in the performance dept.

The only thing VP3/Theora does well is extremely low bitrate videos, because of its deblocking filter. Still, it's not remotely as good as H.263 or H.264/AVC in that aspect, but still, it's something...