Slashdot Mirror

Commits to open source, then commits to extinguishing it.
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/45131

PCLinuxOS is great distribution. It can really wipe floor by using Ubuntu on it. http://www.tuxmachines.org/gallery/v/pclos2007/desktop.jpg.html Most users just need to understand that it's not about different OS's but it's about different Distributions. Ubuntu can be as good as any other distribution or any other distribution could be as good as Ubuntu. Only thing what really makes difference is default settings and Ubuntu had those bretty well (Mandriva was having better much earlier) but now there is PCLinuxOS. And now all "big" distributions are doing same, making things simple. And after few years, i think that there is no difference what distribution you choose, because almost all are samekind, like now, but with different themes, like now ;-)

Some people say some weird things about Eee and GPL, see here and here... I don't know whether what they say is true, but I guess it would be of interest to consumers who care about the GPL.

• The Year of the Linux Desktop! (2007)
• 2006: The year of desktop Linux?
• 2005 will be the year of the Linux Desktop
• Linux breaks desktop barrier in 2004: Torvalds
• I am convinced that 2003 is going to be the breakout year for Desktop Linux.

Someone put together a LiveDVD with a compilation of several of the most popular Linux games.
a review
It was on Slashdot or maybe Digg a while back IIRC.

of course for that part I would need a hard drive, since I know of no game that will do this.

Of course you would not need a hard drive for that, you can play a lot of games off a live CD, too:
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/6136

I used it, tried demos of Doom-3, Quake-4, UT2004, America's Army, Cube... Runs great. No HD - just boot a DVD and play. Oh, and you also have a full-blown working desktop with OpenOffice at your fingertips. All from a bootable DVD.

That's fine for now, but surely going to change when they leave the "prototype" phase:

"A small team of Red Hat engineers are customizing a Red Hat distro to the processor and hardware specifications of the machine."
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/3393

Err the developpers don't know how much time it will spend to boot on your machine with your set of services activated...
Some examples on tuxmachines for the RC1 http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/2551 vs http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/2569

AMD 2800+, kt400 mb, 512mb 333ddr ram, and a NVIDIA 6800.

        * Boots: 20 seconds
        * KDE: 12 seconds
        * OpenOffice: 4 seconds
        * Mozilla: 3 seconds
        * Shutdown: 15 seconds

Compared to opensuse on the same machine :

        * Boot up: 26 seconds
        * KDE: 22 seconds
        * OpenOffice: 7 seconds
        * Firefox: 3 seconds (not counting loading the default Novell webpage)
        * Shutdown: 20 seconds

Err the developpers don't know how much time it will spend to boot on your machine with your set of services activated...
Some examples on tuxmachines for the RC1 http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/2551 vs http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/2569

AMD 2800+, kt400 mb, 512mb 333ddr ram, and a NVIDIA 6800.

        * Boots: 20 seconds
        * KDE: 12 seconds
        * OpenOffice: 4 seconds
        * Mozilla: 3 seconds
        * Shutdown: 15 seconds

Compared to opensuse on the same machine :

        * Boot up: 26 seconds
        * KDE: 22 seconds
        * OpenOffice: 7 seconds
        * Firefox: 3 seconds (not counting loading the default Novell webpage)
        * Shutdown: 20 seconds

Just a point, yes, I'm a bit of a zealot, and yes, I eat my own dog food ;-)

Nothing but SuSE (and my OS X power book) in this household, my parents household, and my office.

About the fonts:
http://www.tuxmachines.org/images/super/OOo.jpg

They look much better than most other Linux installs. I believe they've already gotten better since the time of this screenshot; I do know that my current install looks better, but its important to get your screen dimensions set correctly if your monitor doesn't correctly report DDC information.

Computer-on-a-stick uses the Gnome desktop, includes remote access via SSH, VNC, RDP, and runs on Linux kernel 2.6.x so it is impervious to 99% of all spyware, adware, viruses & exploits since they target Windows OS & applications.

If you already have a USB memory device or if you PC can not boot from a USB device, then there are alternatives.

Two Linux distros designed for small size & boot on CDR or USB devices
Damn Small Linux 50MB http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/linuxuser/2005/06 /13/puppy-linux-live-reviewed/
Puppy Linux 40-90MB http://flaviostechnotalk.com/wordpress/index.php/2 005/06/11/damn-small-linux-12-review/

Two Linux distros designed to boot from CDR & used as the base for many derivatives
Knoppix http://www.linuxforums.org/news/article-24309.html
Slax http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/1193

I found a nice and detailed review about SymphonyOS on this site.

What I noted looking at the control panel screenshot, is that it looks a lot more complicate than what I remembered back from the days when I still used Windows (:grins:).

I mean, people always say "GNU/Linux is difficult to master, you need to be a genius to use that"... "what a mess of options, how can I find a way through that"... and then... please compare: Windows (Ok, the "classic view" link is there, but that's just an example) - A GNU/Linux desktop

This seems a common trend while time passes: systems become bigger and more difficult to use if you're not a literate (who, ten years ago, would have cared about what's a gateway being on Windows? who _doesn't_ now?). Good luck for GNU/Linux, then. It has been ten more years of experience in being complex. :-)

Seriously, computer literacy is becoming a prerequisite for every system out there, and this makes switches easier from Windows to anything else. Even if this isn't the matter, they're all becoming "more to read and less to click".

(PS: Counting the seconds before someone says something about how MacOSX solves all these problems by being the most simple system in the world yaddayaddayadda. :-) )

This explains everything about KDE development.

Personally, I think KDE's interface hasn't really changed all that much. Every year I try it out, it feels the same.

For instance, look at this screenshot from 3.4 RC1:

http://www.tuxmachines.org/gallery/view_photo.php? set_albumName=KDE_rc1&id=default3

That is one MASSIVE menu. The same redundancy I've been complaining about for years--"System," "Utilities," and "Settings"--is still there. Why are they even seperate menus? Why not remove all three menus and just have a link to the system configuration dialog? Oh, that's right, they have that too! That's four redundancies.

Why is there an "Edutainment" menu? Why is there an "Editors" menu? There should just be an "Applications" menu, and they let the user categorize their apps the way they want to. That menu is suffering from huge clutter overload!

And look at the apps. Basically, they have two names each. Instead of "AppName," you have "AppName (WhatItReallyIs)." Silly and redundant. If the original name isn't working well enough, rename it. Essentially, you're having to maintain two app names now instead of just one. When a name isn't descriptive enough, its icon should be--that's why Apple insists that OS X icons show the document type and some sort of action happening to that document or related tool, like the text editor showing a page with a pencil overlaid on it. Not all icons follow these guidelines, but they should, and the ones that do fit visually in the interface. Fishing through appnames with parenthetical descriptions is ugly and time-consuming.

Those are just a few examples. KDE is overloaded with buttons, tabs, sidebars, and input fields. A lot of that stuff is simply not needed but is only there because it seems like someone got happy with the form designer and stuck a bunch of stuff on all the forms to have multiple ways of doing things. You should have two or three really good ways of doing things, not seven ways that clutter up the really good ways.