Slashdot Mirror

Adobe's not gonna give you RPMs, sorry.

Why not? That is the LSB standard for installing applications on Linux.

People here bitch about Microsoft, then rip them off by stealing their taskbar, "start menu", integrated filesystem and net browser, and so forth.

Did Microsoft "innovate" these things? No - they "stole" them from other operating systems. Did you call Microsoft out for that too, or is it only Gnome and KDE developers who can't borrow ideas from other desktops? Look at this article for an example of Gnome developers trying to innovate a bit and what do you get - flames away!

One sane programming library

Right, just like the one library that exists in Mac OSX or Windows. Ooops, they have multiple libraries too. And have you noticed the freedesktop.org project to unite some of the technology behind Gnome and KDE?

The removal of X

This is such a crock of BS, and every person who tries to to explain why X should be removed comes off as someone who doesn't understand history and is doomed to repeat it. Ever wonder why every X "replacement" has flopped? Furthermore, X isn't stainding still - check X.org.

Finally, an ATTITUDE CHANGE

If you are getting flamed by zealots then maybe you need to get away from #linuxn00bs (and slashdot) and notice that there is a large mature community that uses Linux for work, and is more interested in pragmatisim than zealotry. Yes, there are zealots, but most of them are not in a real position to influence Linux adoption.

but the average user who actually buys news hardware and drivers, installs new applications and removes them, does homework, and all the other things the average computer user does these days will have tough times compared to the much easier Windows XP

Finally, something that makes sense. People are working on ideas for this, but quite frankly with device manufacturers only releasing Windows drivers and no specs it is a very difficult problem to solve. But I suppose you have ideas to contribute instead of just complaints?

Here at Florida computer science is through liberal arts and computer engineering is through engineering. The distinction between the two is like most people have said, ie engineering core etc.. The computer classes are essentially the same, but engineering students are required to take Digital Design and Mircoprocessor Applications. These two course are very valuable in my opinion, and I wouldn't want to have just the computer science degree from here. But, the again Robert Love is studying computer science and math. So what do I know.

As far as jobs and interviews, I have never had trouble with that. I destroyed the undergraduate program here (Summa cum laude) and I am currently destroying the graduate program. The biggest thing now is the flashy companies like IBM, Microsoft etc.. aren't hiring all that much. So if you want a job you probably have to work for Harris, Lockheed, Northrup etc... Traditionally these are the jobs that the less qualified graduates get from here. There will always be jobs for the well educated and talented engineer/science person who has done well at their university. It is just a matter of whether you want that job or not.

Seems like Robert Love is looking into getting X/GNOME up faster (skip to after first picture). Obviously he's focused on GNOME but with any luck the techniques he uses and general X bits can be pushed to or KDE directly for wider usage.

First off the availability is slowly but steadily increasing. With projects like Ardour nearing major releases even professional recording studios are starting to take note. Even the home user is finding more useful tools available. And with preemptive kernels there's lots of possibilities.

The future for Linux holds many things. Hackers composing music? You bet.

Are you running 2.4.20 with the preemptive patch? If not, you may want to try it. On my previous system, Ogg file playback would be choppy and interactive events like this would be choppy as well. The preemptive patch fixed 'em all. I've not had any trouble with it and it's mature (it's actually part of the 2.5 kernel now).

It doesn't look like there is a preemptive patch for 2.4.21 yet, but check back in a couple of days.

There are various patches like the Robert Love's preempt patch which might be considered production quality. And perhaps some collections of production quality patches exist out there. But I wouldn't say -ac or -dj are in that category.

Or any of the patches marked 'preXYZ'. They're 'pre' for a reason you know. I'd be thrashing them on test servers, then giving feedback to the maintainer of that series. Let the maintainer declare them stable first.

You'll find in environments ambivalent to Linux that you really need to prove its stability to management first. Trying a new whiz bang kernel can have unforeseen side effects, in meetings that you'll never be invited to; and whose outcome you will only learn when it's too late to change it. "We let Bill convert server X to Linux and then it corrupted the filesystem. Clearly Linux carries more business risk than expected."

I have a kernel 2.4.16 + preempt patch.
It is the most stable config I ever had using this kernel generation.
I explain :
Before, with kernel 2.2.1x I only had "some" preformance issues (mostly disk access related) and what I thought were apm problems (this is a laptop).
Since I have been using kernel 2.4 I happened to have good times but mostly bad surprises.
pcmcia (I use the pcmcia-cs package) is not quite plug'n play (system even hanged once) but symptoms vary from version to version.
So, the big PROS is that, yes, I boot a much quicker way.
The CONS is that since the 2.4.6/7, I bitterly regret upgrading this kernel since the functionality I gained was compensated by the new bugs.
Note that I don't mention the APM because besides the Windowmaker apm applet, I don't even imagine using the suspend/resume on this laptop.
BTW, when I see the difference with and without the preempt kernel, I wonder why this is not implemented in the official tree (radio button : "server or desktop" ?).

I am stuck with my 2.4.16 with the preempt patch.
It is damn' stable and quick so why should I change for a test kernel ?

Sorry, haven't used WTS, can't say a thing about it's performance.
About 'zilla though. Have you used it over WTS? how did it feel like? redraws?.
When you talk about mozilla redrawing after being 'out of view'.. It just means that Mozilla sucks at using using Expose event. I recently noticed this too, when galeon repainted it's windows serially, not getting all expose-events at a time. maybe i should file a bug or something ;). usually applications keep imagemap of themselves in memory, so it's redrawn very fast.
Mozilla is an complicated applications, with loads more windows than any 'Windows' application. (all thos fucking XMLeze schnutzels).

About OSX.. you get what you pay for. These guys, Apple Engineers, had something over 5-6 years on their hands, to get this thing done. They did it full-time, and paid. Compare this to XFree86.. Their [Apple] hardware is documented and don't have to fight to support _myriads_ of different cards.

Responsiviness: This is actually a Linux (when on linux ;) thing. I recently tried a preemptible kernel patch and was very surprised at snappiness (we're talking about p200 here..) of my desktop. It wasn't bad before , but oh boy was it a nice change ;)

Cheers!

• Use the preemptible kernel patch.

Don't forget the Preemptible Kernel patch. This will reduce latencies and overall make a desktop machine feel snappier.

From what I hear, however, it's not recommended for servers where bandwidth is more important. But then again, you wouldn't be putting a bleeding edge kernel on there anyway, now would you?

So journalling's been available to the masses for a while now. Or maybe Michael meant ease of converting for the installed base?

Now if only the damn preemptible kernel patch would make it in. Unfortunately, it looks like that's going to wait until 2.4.5. *sigh*...

Case in point from yesterday: Running gnome desktop, with a kernel build going in the background, while ripping a CD, running mozilla and netscape 4.x, and running and testing a mod_perl/mysql system, all on the same machine, xmms didn't miss a beat.

No, I'm not exaggerating. This was all on a 700MHz Athlon, 256M, IDE.

If you're on a desktop machine, try the kernel pre-emption patch - it's nice, and will make everything feel more responsive and smooth, since in addition to the normal user-space pre-emptive multitasking, the patch allows a lot of kernel calls to be pre-empted.

Even if you don't want to use the patch, you might want to try renicing X negatively to make it feel a bit snappier.

As long as we're going for broke, how's about a little preemption too?

The Preemptible Kernel patches can result in a desktop that reacts/feels faster... I'm running it here with 2.4.10 on an Inspiron 4000 laptop and I'd have to say I'm impressed - everything feels a bit zippier. The only problem I've had is that there seems to be some loop that it has optimized that blasts bits around the memory bus at high speeds with a rthymic pattern - in short if I'm in a really quiet room the high pitched busses are a bit noisy... Maybe my hearing is too good!

Anyway - doesn't look like much changed since pre-6 so the pre-6 patches should work but if you want to be sure you can wait until rml releases the 2.4.11 final patch. I'd recommend checking it out if you have the time...

Those of you who use Linux as a desktop may be interested in the pre-emptible kernel patch for 2.4.10, available from here.

This patch allows the rescheduling of in-flight kernel syscalls if a higher-priority process than the process calling the syscalls becomes eligible to run.

What it means in practice for the typical desktop user is a major enhancement to interactive performance under Linux, especially when under heavy load. Your X pointer will never freeze with this patch. Using this patch, I have played skip-free mp3's whilst my system has had a loadavg of 20, and my KDE desktop was still usable. I could never hope to achieve this with ordinary Linux. It's a really impressive bit of work. Go try it out.

Of course, people with the need for proper real-time response out of Linux (musicians, for example) will love it even more... maximum latencies for me with this patch are under 4ms - again, very impressive.

It's slated for inclusion in the mainline kernel early in 2.5, but could do with lots of testing first... you know what to do.