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I'm asking because there are only Windows drivers for EXT2

If you feel like doing a little manual work, you could use coLinux to load those obscure file systems like Ext3, ReiserFS and XFS.

Shake. Con Colivas defrag. ext4 will ship with a defrag tool.

I'm hard-pressed to think of a single advantage a button has, unless you mean simply for aesthetic purposes.

I think that's a big part of it. That's also why I don't really want a scrool wheel. I prefer my keyboards as a big matrix of similar keys. :) I realize it's inferior in terms of usage, though it's hardly a big deal to me. The only time-critical function is mute, which typically has its own button. And instead of tactile feedback, I get instant visual feedback popping up on the screen (e.g.). Another reason is that I'm not sure how well an analogous volume control is supported by the USB keyboard spec -- and if it would end up requiring a driver in Windows and being unsupported for a long time on Linux.

Sadly, the background is probably the most important part of the initial user experience. So why are all these backgrounds ass-ugly? They might have been cool in 1994 with the release of NIN's Downward Spiral, but this is 2008. Everything is glossy black and blue.

(First of all, I know I get potty-mouthed when I post drunk. Sorry 'bout that. Anyway, new day.)

Neither rpm nor deb are anything like "proprietary solutions." They're fully documented and mostly compatible. rpm --> deb can be accomplished trivially. As for the reverse, I think you can set up Red Hat based distros to use apt. Not my area of expertise, though.

Regarding your idea about package manager compatibility, that's not something that's possible on the lowest level. apt will probably never be compatible with rpm packages, and rpm will never be compatible with debs. What you're looking for is much more likely to be accomplished by a frontend, like this one.

Finally, as for "why don't they seem to care?" well, proponents of each believe their solution to be the technically superior one, of course. That's Linux, man, that's choice. Free software is about choice, even at the expense of growth, and that's a Good Thing, it's what got us this far and it'll carry us to the future.

deb has definitely become more the de facto standard over the past few years with the rise to prominence of Ubuntu. I mean, yeah, I wish everybody would just shut up and standardize on deb, but others feel the same way about rpm, and that's certainly their prerogative. fwiw, I absolutely never have trouble finding debs for stuff. Haven't in years. I'll admit that I'm spoiled because I do use Ubuntu and packages for it are everywhere, but I just I just don't find the whole deb/rpm debate to be as much of an issue as you're making it out to be.

I'm glad they're finally going to put some attention on boot time and speed. I'm a big fan of getting your boot times down, mine is 8 seconds (brag brag...).

But when I see Ubuntu and it boots slower than XP and... Well, feels slower than XP, I have to facepalm. Linux is supposed to be the faster one, it's supposed to be the one where you can say "Man, you use XP? It's so slow! Use Linux!", but with Ubuntu you can't really say that. Not that it's Ubuntu's fault, I put the blame on Gnome. The Gnome desktop is bulky and slow, your *panel* shouldn't be using CPU cycles constantly, or the amount of memory gnome-panel uses. There's alternatives for sure (And I'm not talking about KDE, it's almost as bad.), but you have to piece it together yourself because it isn't a single DE. I.E, Openbox WM, pypanel or bmpanel or lxpanel or lbpanel or one of those (I prefer pypanel and bmpanel), pcmanfm filenavigator (Can also set icons on the desktop and manage wallpapers), and on and on. There's tons of lightweight programs out there with the same abilities, just not packaged neatly together. But people are trying! Just have a look at crunchbang linux and DEs like lxde. Using this stuff, you can get that old 550mhz thinkpad you have in your closet up and running again, webbrowsing and e-mailing at lightning speeds. THIS, to me, is what Linux should represent. Not the slow bulky thing you have to buy a new computer for!

But about the other things with the new Ubuntu release, polishlinux has a great review of what Ubuntu alpha looks like right now, and what we can expect from it here.

Looks like nautilus is finally getting tabs, although the lighter pcmanfm has had tabs for awhile. I'm really excited about is improvements with the network manager and with xorg... Two places that really need improvement. Seems like wireless support improves with each release, and I hope it continues on that awesome path. And it seems that the kernel 2.6.27 will be out in time for this release! It's already on rc5, and most kernels don't go past rc10 before release (And they're releasing an rc once a week, or about once a week).

It's all very exciting, but again the one thing I hope for more than anything else is speed and bloat! Keep Linux the OS that you say "You don't even have to get a new computer for it. It's fast, unlike Vista/XP/OSX/Everythingever", please please please

http://polishlinux.org/apps/ssh-tunneling-to-bypass-corporate-firewalls/

Thankfully they have got rid of those absurd glass borders. On immediate appearance however I think it still looks pretty discontinuous and lost as an overall design.

Why such vast tracts of grey? In some of the screenshots on the PolishLinux site window elements are surrounded by entire football fields of grey nothingness.

Why the faded titles in the panel? What are they intended to signify?

Why are the minimise and maximise icons raised, tiny and 'stuck on' rather graphically integrated into the window title? Window barnacles? In some screenshots they look annoyingly small to be a mouse target, especially compared to the window title.

Why is the panel so g i g a n t i c? To show off the icon authors scalable icons in all their glory or is there a practical reason to swallow so much valuable realestate? I would certainly never want to see this on my laptop..

Such things make KDE4.1 look lacking in vision, despite so many improvements graphically and otherwise in other areas. Perhaps it's time to cave in and simply pay an accomplised designer to pull it all together. Alternatively, why not hand it over for critique to a master's degree design class?

Here is a related (p)review of latest revision of KDe 4.1 (not the exact alpha just released): http://polishlinux.org/kde/kde-4-rev-802150-work-in-progress/ "Plasma has gone under major API changes and is still a bit wonky, Dolphin gets tabs (hell yeah!), Phonon gets a Gstreamer backend, KWin gets wobbly windows (hell yeah!), and KInfoCenter and K3b get KDE4 ports. KDE 4.1 will be sure to blow your mind." A bit more comprehensive and screenshot-rich than the ArsTechnica article.

http://polishlinux.org/apps/educational-programs-in-gnulinux/

after looking at the reply above to Fedora vs. Ubuntu it appears that the package management has been drastically improved with Apt-Yum. I will have to play with Fedora again.

Fedora vs. Ubuntu

Guys, this is an April Fools joke! Here is the real story, basing on the Jason Matusow's blog post from today: Microsoft admits manipulation, abandons OOXML.

Irregularities and political decisions in ISO DIS 29500 March 2008 votes:

Germany

In a steering committee of 20 people a vote was taken to answer this question: "did the process run according to the rules and without irregularities?"

6 answered no and 7 abstained!

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49525/limited-choice-at-german-din http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

Norway

21 members of the committee voted NO to fast-track this DIS but it was decided to vote yes anyway.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-50031/oil-fire-in-norway-microsoft-buys-another-standards-body

Denmark

The technical committee didn't agree to change the disapproval vote but it was "decided" to vote yes anyway.

The committee S-142/U-34 under Danish Standards could not agree to change their vote from No to Yes.

A couple of hours later:

http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6718 says that the announcement from Danish Standards will not be made until Friday and that the Chair of the committee has been barred from speaking about the result of yesterday's meeting.

After some Microsoft political intervention to revert this ( the Prime Minister of Denmark is a Microsoft friend ), we have this: http://www.en.ds.dk/4227

Another political decision, influenced by Microsoft lobbyists.

Malaysia

The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation decided on Malaysia's final position on OOXML ("abstain" ), overturning the 81% "Disapprove" position by ISC-G and TC4.

http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-minister-of.html http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/malaysian-indus.html

Poland

On March 20, 2008, Technical Committee (KT 182) of PKN was supposed to either accept the recommendation (which was to vote YES for the proposed standard) or not accept it, and thus recommend PKN to vote NO or abstain from voting. Of 45 members, 24 appeared on the meeting. And the votes looked like this:

• 12 votes supporting the reccomendation,
• 10 votes rejecting it,
• 2 abstaining to vote.

No consensus has been achieved concerning the recommendation. Thus, the chairman of KT 182, Elzbieta Andrukiewicz, decided to allow the missing members to vote by e-mail during the next 10 days (till the end of March).

The email vote was taken, counting a "no mail sended" as an "approval" !!!

Clearly, there was no technical consensus in Poland, but the chairman forced the rules to favour an approval.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49455/polish-chairwoman-distributes-microsoft-propaganda http://polishlinux.org/poland/possible-manipulation-around-ooxml-process-in-poland/ http://polishlinux.org/poland/poland-confirms-its-approval-for-ooxml-in-iso/

Croatia

Out of 35 members of TO Z1, 17 sent a vote, and there were three votes for, and fourteen against fast-tracking OOXML, which is relative rejection rate of 82%. Members who voted were individual experts, IBM, CLUG and HrOpen. However, since there were less than 51% of votes, the voting process was declared invalid, and the previous vote holds ( "approve" ) !

M

Irregularities and political decisions in ISO DIS 29500 March 2008 votes:

Germany

In a steering committee of 20 people a vote was taken to answer this question: "did the process run according to the rules and without irregularities?"

6 answered no and 7 abstained!

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49525/limited-choice-at-german-din http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

Norway

21 members of the committee voted NO to fast-track this DIS but it was decided to vote yes anyway.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-50031/oil-fire-in-norway-microsoft-buys-another-standards-body

Denmark

The technical committee didn't agree to change the disapproval vote but it was "decided" to vote yes anyway.

The committee S-142/U-34 under Danish Standards could not agree to change their vote from No to Yes.

A couple of hours later:

http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6718 says that the announcement from Danish Standards will not be made until Friday and that the Chair of the committee has been barred from speaking about the result of yesterday's meeting.

After some Microsoft political intervention to revert this ( the Prime Minister of Denmark is a Microsoft friend ), we have this: http://www.en.ds.dk/4227

Another political decision, influenced by Microsoft lobbyists.

Malaysia

The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation decided on Malaysia's final position on OOXML ("abstain" ), overturning the 81% "Disapprove" position by ISC-G and TC4.

http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-minister-of.html http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/malaysian-indus.html

Poland

On March 20, 2008, Technical Committee (KT 182) of PKN was supposed to either accept the recommendation (which was to vote YES for the proposed standard) or not accept it, and thus recommend PKN to vote NO or abstain from voting. Of 45 members, 24 appeared on the meeting. And the votes looked like this:

• 12 votes supporting the reccomendation,
• 10 votes rejecting it,
• 2 abstaining to vote.

No consensus has been achieved concerning the recommendation. Thus, the chairman of KT 182, Elzbieta Andrukiewicz, decided to allow the missing members to vote by e-mail during the next 10 days (till the end of March).

The email vote was taken, counting a "no mail sended" as an "approval" !!!

Clearly, there was no technical consensus in Poland, but the chairman forced the rules to favour an approval.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49455/polish-chairwoman-distributes-microsoft-propaganda http://polishlinux.org/poland/possible-manipulation-around-ooxml-process-in-poland/ http://polishlinux.org/poland/poland-confirms-its-approval-for-ooxml-in-iso/

Croatia

Out of 35 members of TO Z1, 17 sent a vote, and there were three votes for, and fourteen against fast-tracking OOXML, which is relative rejection rate of 82%. Members who voted were individual experts, IBM, CLUG and HrOpen. However, since there were less than 51% of votes, the voting process was declared invalid, and the previous vote holds ( "approve" ) !

M

I hope that the EU antitrust investigation will somehow be successful in addressing this mess and punish Microsoft severely enough to dissuade them from trying such tactics ever again.

Denmark
http://www.ds.dk/

Poland
http://polishlinux.org/poland/no-consensus-over-ooxml-in-poland-yet/

Germany
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2FDIN-sagt-Ja-zur-ISO-Stan
dardisierung-von-OOXML--%2Fmeldung%2F105657&langpair=de|en&hl=sv&ie=UTF8

South Korea
http://osrin.net/2008/03/28/south-korea-votes-approve-for-isoiec-dis29500/

Norway
http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article92563.ece

I think the USA and the UK are also voting yes, but I don't have any links for those.

Are we using different googles? Mine returns http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/ as the top link.

Actually i think he was complaining that if you search for that you get a quiz :s IMO its the best way to get people to the rigt distro (its just a shame they dont favor ubuntu as much as they should)
http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
http://www.tuxs.org/chooser/

The main problem is the install, most people just cant be bother, until something like wubi becomes worthwhile. Or something like KDE4win gets people using linux apps the sameway itunes did for mac

You can read a review of Sugar here

http://polishlinux.org/apps/window-managers/a-brief-look-at-sugarui-by-redhat/

Choice quotes

"The capabilities of the applications that come with OLPC arent much better than those of modern cell phones"

"In Abiword, the functionality has been crippled to allow only simple formatting (bold, italic, underline, insert image). What is quite astonishing is that the files are saved ... in Microsoft .DOC format."

"Basing on my observations, the RAM usage is not lower and not even comparable with the lightweight GNU/Linux distributions like Damn Small Linux (which needs only 31 MB of RAM when booted from the CD)."

"The main issues I see with the current SugarUI are as follows:

* No handy file navigation. Using Firefox we can save an image to a folder and then search for it and open with Abiword but what about file copying and deleting?

* The system is interesting and may be a nice toy for the kids, but it currently lacks the features to be an effective tool in school. No decent calc program, a very poor document editor and no PDF support make it quite unusable for a 12-year old.

* What about multimedia? The Flash plugin is not enough. What about handling the audio and video streams?

* The interface is not clear to me. What are these circles and dots doing on top of the screen? It would be nice to see some KDE-like tool-tips for the not-too-intuitive icons, as well as a simple desktop personalizer."

• Linux distros ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/linux/
• BSD family ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/bsd/
• Distro chooser: http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/
• Distro comparisons: http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison/

• Linux distros ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/linux/
• BSD family ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/bsd/
• Distro chooser: http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/
• Distro comparisons: http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison/

• Linux distros ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/linux/
• BSD family ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/bsd/
• Distro chooser: http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/
• Distro comparisons: http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison/

• Linux distros ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/linux/
• BSD family ovieview: http://polishlinux.org/bsd/
• Distro chooser: http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/
• Distro comparisons: http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison/

"Many Poles? I certainly hadn't heard much about Polish bloggers before. I wonder why they're speaking out about Vista? :-)"

http://polishlinux.org/

It's one of the major linux distro review sites, they linked to from distrowatch.org all the time. ;)