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Show of hands if you think Windows is easy to use ... If I'm driving a car with a radio, I usually fiddle with the dials way down around 88-90 FM to listen to NPR, for Car Talk, All Things Considered, and the occasional science show. Now AlKini gives me another reason: "National Public Radio's "High Tech" section covers the Linux World Expo: Linux Moves to Heart of Corporate America (top item ATM).
NPR's Chris Arnold for All Things Considered: www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/200008 16.atc.07.ram (Real Audio)"
A major issue raised by the High Tech section article is ease of use; maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.
Well, surely all this has shown ... something! OK. Perhaps now everyone can stop submitting the story about the experiment which has been reported as showing a previously unheard of increase in the speed of light. drinkypoo writes: "It turns out that 'Not only does the speed of light remain unsurpassed, but Wang's experiment wasn't even about that.' To be specific, 'the team developed a method of manipulating the wavelengths of a beam of light, thereby altering the way it arrives at its destination. Because short wavelengths become longer and long ones become shorter, the natural fanning outward that marks a light pulse is eliminated; consequently the shape of the pulse at its destination appears the same as at its origin.' It seems that the journalistic frenzy and a NEC press release are to blame. Salon Magazine is carrying the full story here."
Reports have been greatly exaggerated. We reported a few days ago that IBM's Project Monterey had been killed. Not so, says dentar, who writes: "I am attending SCO Forum 2000, and contrary to what was published in Sm@rt-aleck Reseller, IBM is NOT ditching Monterey. It is going to be called AIX-5L. (NOT AIX-RL like the article says). The Sm@rt reseller article is very poorly researched and is pure yellow journalism. In fact, IBM is very ticked about the article."
Where are the software-release-date betting pool sites? fonixmunkee writes: "Found an interesting story on BetaNews regarding Microsoft reportedly working on porting some of their software to linux. Check it out here."
For either P.R. or experimental purposes at least, though, doesn't it seem like Microsoft will offer some Linux software soon? While there's often no accounting for corporate decision making, to ignore the large, vibrant, growing Linux market would be to ... ignore a large, vibrant and growing market. Fine by me; I never much like having my words mangled by Word, and I have never pined for Outlook.
The more numerous the laws ... werdna writes: "Counsel for Napster, Inc. just submitted their initial brief on Appeal, explaining why the preliminary injunction should be reversed. The brief sets other arguments, any one of which could be a basis for reversal.
Whatever may be said of Judge Patel's decision, she set forth her reasoning squarely, which made it possible for Mr. Boies to crisply and concisely join the issue: Whether the test for contributory infringement of an internet service will be that the services has a "mere capacity for substantial non-infringing uses" (the test adopted by the Supreme Court for VCR's), or Judge Patel's new creation of a "present primary purpose " test, in direct contravention of the Supreme Court's decision in the Betamax case. The answer to this question can have broad-sweeping impact on the internet as a whole.
Interestingly, the brief shows that the Ninth Circuit itself originally adopted the "primary purpose" test when it first reviewed the Betamax case, noting that the Supreme Court expressly rejected that argument there. It is sometimes advocacy to a judge to remind them that the District Court they are reviewing just made the same mistake they made years ago."
I know you guys hate to admit it, but a standard Win 95/98 setup is easy to install and operate. Its fine to stress Linux's strengths (ease of use ain't one of 'em), but don't be ridiculously biased...
--
Chaosnetwork
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
Everyone here claims windows is the OS for idiots or the average dumb consumer, yet have trouble installing it :)
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
the line "I have never pined for Outlook" is hilarious.
Seriously though, I doubt microsoft will port much if anything to Linux. The reason MS dominates so often is that any windows box you buy, comes straight from the manufacturer with lots of its software installed. Of course IE beat out Netscape in browser wars, its right there on the desktop when you boot up for the first time. Similarly, I dont think people, especially not-so-techy people, will go out of they're way to install new MS software on a Linux box when it comes with free defaults ready to go. Add to that the fact that much of Linux's appeal is that it is free, who would want to ruin that by shelling out for some proprietary software?
peas,
-Kabloona
I guess I'm the History Nazi now, but "yellow journalism" doesn't mean what they think it means. It refers to the influential muckraking (and sometimes inaccurate and inflammatory) journalism practiced around the turn of the century by newspapermen such as H.L. Mencken. "Yellow" refers not to cowardice but to the yellow ink used.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
We are all pretty screwed
Any kind of new, filesharing technology will be pushed aside for the bland, boring, corporate controlled web.
The primary purpose of VCRs, before video tape rentals most certainly was Copyright infringement, but if it hadn't been allowed the video rental industry never would have started.
Similarly, any new technology that moves the Internet away from the highrachal, centrally controllable Web model to a more Peer-to-peer model could be used readily for copyright infringement. This judgment could mean that any technological advances in certain directions must contain copyright controls, limits on what the user can do with information on their own computer, in order to even be developed.
When Radio first came out, it was everybody talking to everybody else. It was going to liberate everyone, and free the information for the tech nerds. But we all know what happened, air filled with the meaningless chatter of a few, franchise radio stations owned by Disney. I would like it if that didn't happen to the Internet.
We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I am the anti-intuitive computer user, though.
:)
I'll admit that MacOS is easy to install and use, but when it comes to sheer joy of installation, I stand by my claim that Mandrake goes on easier than Windows. Doesn't even need a reboot till the process is complete.
Of course, that's with my particular rotating collections of hardware that pass as PCs, some of which grouse about having any OS at all.
Installing new software, that's a different story -- some things are ridiculously easy to install under Linux (a nightly build of mozilla, most any RPM), but there are some things I've never gotten on right, or that slip on in one distro but flounder when I try to put them on another. In that regard, Windows may be ahead, but I don't use it often enough to say, and I've never been much of a Windows user anyhow.
I'm excited about Eazel (and other Gnome related projects) because of the even greater ease of use they promise, though. The Mac -- now *that* I'll admit beats any Linux gui I know for intuitiveness, but "intuition" varies enough person to person that I can see why some people prefer windows-like GUIs better. Variety, spice of life, now available with extra flavor, from Lipton.
Trying to put an AOL client onto Windows NT, for instance (for my mom! for my mom!) gave me hours of trouble, until I found out that the Windows AOL client doens't work with NT anyhow. (maybe that's changed with 2000? Dunno, don't care.) Installing certain MS software has failed for me inexplicably at different installation points -- and so have some linux distro's installs. But I can try another Linux (for free) -- with MS you're stuck with an expensive annoyance.
So there's my natural bias, don't mean it to be ridiculous, only in keeping with my own experience. I certainly hope you have a better time with any OS than I generally do!
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Before porting 50 meg or so of Office Linux needs a GUI that doesn't suck, so why are we listening to this anti-MS FUD?
More Win98 users will be added in China in the next 6 months than all the present desktop Linux users total. Of course someone who thinks installing '98 is difficult is likely emotionally traumatized by the mere thought of anything Micros~1 and likely to sound like an idiot to anyone who can do both.
Just another perl hacker in Bangkok
So does anyone here really believe that Napster were not engaged in vicarious infringment - or, in other words, do they believe that Napster did not intend their software to be primarily used to copy MP3s of commercial music?
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
We recently migrated to Outlook due to corporate, and I made the comment: I never thought anything would make me pine for CC Mail again....
I work in a Unix shop where we all have to share one Winblows box for e-mail and I must say that Outlook is a major PIA. (Pain in the Artichokes)
But at least the web access works with Netscape. (At least until the next Exchange patch...)
And more to the point made by Kabloona, MS cannot port anything to Linux without losing much of the mindshare they currently enjoy. Our desktops are getting slicker, (Check out KDE2) our uptime is still better, and our reputation is better.
But heck, I just applied for a job as a Solaris admin and got: "Could you send me your resume in DOC format??" I sent it as a perl app instead.
~Hammy
"We're all Devo!" ~Boogie Boy
I hate to be the Terminology Nazi here, but "Nazi" doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It refers to a murderous political party that rose to power in Germany after world war one. While its leader, Adolph Hitler probably did have lots of anal sex (really), it does not refer to someone who is anal about facts, rather someone who kills lots of Jews.
Also, newspapermen of the early 1900s used black ink, but on high-acid-paper that quickly turned yellow.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
It does seem that someone... whether NEC or reporters, I'm not sure... was a little irresponsible with the "faster-than-light" story. Even the title of the Nature article, "Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation," seems a little misleading. Although all the articles clearly indicated that this experiment was not at odds with Einsteinian relativity, none of them really explained it.
I don't know that much about physics, but I knew something weird was happening here, and I found a little bit of explanation in the Feynman Lectures on Physics (Volume 1, Chapter 31).
For light of frequency omega, in a material with electrons having resonant frequency omega0, the index of refraction is:
n = 1 + (Ne^2)/(2 epsilon0 m (omega0^2 - omega^2))
The dependence on omega shows that a material transmits light at different speeds, depending on the frequency (or, from a different point of view, the wavelength) of the light. This phenomenon is called "dispersion." Now, for some frequencies, (omega0^2 - omega^2) will be negative and n can be less than one, implying "superluminal" propagation in the sense that light of that frequency may be transmitted faster than "c", the speed of light in vacuum.
Feynman notes that the difference in index of refraction indicates a "that the phase shift which is produced by the scattered light can be either positive or negative." However, he is careful to point out that signals themselves are not transmitted faster than c, because transmission of a signal depends on the index of refraction at multiple frequencies. The index tells the speed at which the node of the wave travels, but the node in itself can carry no information. In order to transmit information, the frequency of the wave must be varied.
So, it appears that the idea of sending light at "faster-than-light" speeds is an old one, well understood by physicists. The theory of relativity has not been violated, and this has been known for some time. Feynman, apparently, taught it to beginning physics students at Caltech in the 1960s. News sources must have simply been attempting to make the story into something more appealing to the public. "Laws of physics break down!" But in reality, no laws have been violated, physics is fundamentally unchanged, and the net result seems to have been a confused public.
Matt Reece
hey, monterey is long dead. The code isn't, but monterey was ibm & sco's new unix, then sequent came on board, then IBM bought sequent, then caldera bought SCO.
So, does IBM kill the cool x86/ia-64 code? Or do they just keep the code, excuse themselves from the SCO commitment. Of course!
Now it's just them in monterey, no one else, so do they kill the brand they've been hyping for the last two years? Nope.. Watch, they'll probably rename AIX to Monterey (think warp or domino).
why is this so damn clear to me?
And what will the HR dude do with your perl app?
I am so tired of Napster news on slashdot.
Could we create separate "Napster whining"
section so I can switch it off in my preferences?
Not that I am do not care about the freedom
of speach, but I do not use damned thing - I have
my minidiscs and happy with them.
For the casual web surfing game player, windows is clearly easier to get set up and use. It came with the computer to begin with...so the install process never even took place, and wizards are provided so that 97% of the populace can get their AOL up and running without cracking a manual.
However, if you are more interested in poking around and just looking at what all that nifty hardware actually does and how it interacts, I think poking around in the /proc tree is much more easy to do than navigating through a bunch of meaningless windows in the control panel. As a friend of mine demonstrated, it is easier to hook a remote control car up to the parallel port with joystick control in linux than in windows NT or 98. Try to get ttyquake running in windows, I imagine it is difficult.
The point is, for Nerds linux provides a better platform for monkeying around and doing inane things with computer science than windows. To do nerdy things, (outside of gaming which does not really count) linux is just easier to play with. Since /. caters to nerds and not normal people, one shouldn't consider normal uses when arguing about regular uses. The question should be: upon which os is it easier to write a driver for your homemade usb blender? On which os is it easier to pipe revving noises to the speaker when the load goes up? Under which os is it easier to send a message to your beeper when the ports get scanned?
Outside of the enigmatic and mysterious sect of the BSDs, I cant understand why any computer geek could not enjoy linux for just being nerdy.
Check out this story.
"However, confessing that even his parents and sister prefer Windows -- which is compatible with far more software programs -- over Linux, Torvalds predicted Linux will not "catch up" with Windows for "perhaps five or 10 years." "
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
(yes timothy, I've met you - CTY)
;)
:)
For the meat of this post relevant to the subject, skip the next paragraph and then everything after it. But I hope the rest has some interesting stuff too.
What I really like about Linux, especially with a good distro (Debian anybody?), is that stuff is rediculously easy to install as timothy says, and you get nice default settings and everything works (especially with Debian, where the package configuration mechanism is well-defined and thought out) and you don't have to mess with it, but when you decide to go "power-user", everything is right there, from simple-to-edit text configuration files to the complete sources of most available programs; you can mess around with stuff. And if you royally screw something up, apt-get reinstall <package>.
As far as user-friendliness, X Windows as-is, with GNOME and KDE (pick one...), is about as easy to use as Windows while being much more customizable (heck, throw in a new window manager if you don't like how yours works! then try that in windows...). The only problem is that the user that Eazel etc. tries to cater to has been force-fed M$ Windows GUI all of their (computing) life. Get people started on Linux, and people will be comfortable with it without (much) special catering.
Mac OS X looks darn sweet, though... I have to wonder what Linux's fate will be competing against that. Anybody ported Aqua to Linux yet?
Oh, forget AOL with network drivers. An AOL install will mess with configuration all over a Windows system (why in the world would an ISP adjust power management settings? Well AOL does, from what I've heard, source Fred Langa). You'll generally have a call to tech support to do any kind of network config after installing AOL, because in my experience it often just doesn't work anymore.
Odd that with all the "effort" that Microsoft has been putting into "compatibility" between "releases", stuff still doesn't work right between versions. Linux, on the other hand, has no problem with foreign packages (alien), and if it does, it's a simple matter to know why. But since most every Linux program is free and packaged in the two most common formats, rpm and deb, anyway, there is very often zero problems here.
My bias is of course towards Linux (because it's free, cool, ("enough, Ken" - shut up already, little voices!)), but I still maintain a power-user knowledge of Windows, and to a lesser extent MacOS, because those are what most people presently use. Realistically today, you cannot expect the average Windows user to go out and (gasp!) buy (you mean you actually have to pay money for Linux? Oh, you get it on a CD! Ah, okay.) a Linux distro and have a clue what [s]he is doing with it, but fortunately this is poised to change.
Linux has its faults. But the difference is, with Linux I can easily track down the root of the problem and have at least the chance to fix it if it involves modifying code (but if I don't, someone else can), but even with equal power-user status on Windows, I can still spend hours trying to track down a problem that should be obvious (try networking...).
If you've read this far through my hopefully informative, intersting ("this is your last warning, Ken" shut up already! I mean it! these little voices are really bothering me...) Oh, timothy is a cool guy; you should talk to him. He gave me a Slashdot / Andover dart gun! (oops, was I not supposed to tell anybody? oh well...) But more than that, he knows what he's talking about and he led an interesting discussion this year, first session (remember that, Tim?). No, I'm not trying to suck up
Kenneth
Two popular newspapers had competing comic strips. One was "The Yellow Kid" by Outcault and the other was an imitation. They both used yellow ink to fill in the shape of the boy's gown.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sorry, I mainly use KDE so I don't follow GNOME happenings as much as I follow KDE. I thought Nautilus was GNOME's competitor to Konqueror. But from what I have seen of Konqueror it will kick Netscape's ass. Hey it even supports XML! I also found that KMail is pretty good so bye bye Netscape when KDE 2.0 comes out. Hey the way KOffice is going I soon won't need Star Office! So why don't we forget about getting ports of M$ trash to Linux? My only wish is that I could have a decent Japanese IME and Japanese word pro on Linux, then I could do away with Windoze forever (at home at least).
-Jasa -- Linux - The SOURCE will be with you, ALWAYS
I disagree with this idea that "windows is easy to install". Here is a little rant that I sent off a couple days ago on the subject which explains why.
... fdisk gets
... the problem is that
\begin{rant}
I've installed Linux on several machinces in the last year, including a
bleeding-edge laptop, an older laptop, and a couple of desktops, one
overclocked. I've installed windows (mostly 98, once 2000) on all of
them at least once, as well.
Windows WILL find the hardware, every time, and doesn't have the right
drivers for it, and will drive your 21 inch monitor hooked to a big,
fast 3d card at 640x480x8bit until you take it by the hand, after many
reboots, and lead it to a driver for your card, and another for your
monitor, which YOU must dig up. Then you must reboot AGAIN!
Contrast this to Linux: it correctly detects the card, just as does
windows, and then loads a good driver for it. It offers you a sensible
default resolution, and you're off. All the other hardware is handled
similarly by Linux: it finds it, gives you a decent driver, and things
just work. The windows example is also standard: it finds some kind of
hardware, loads a lowest common denominator driver, and then expects YOU
to do the work of making it work right.
Don't try to install Win98 to replace NT, by the way
baffled, scandisk crashes, setup.exe craps out
they don't know that NTFS isn't FAT, and die in an uninformative
manner. I had to use Linux's fdisk to repartition as ef2s, then MSfdisk
thought that the partition was "unformatted", or some such, and could
work with it.
In short, it seems to me that Windows is MUCH harder to install than is
Linux. Windows does have a fancy graphical installation tool, not quite
so nice as Corel's, perhaps, but it really doesn't DO anything for you!
Linux, with or without the eye-candy, gives you far fewer hassles, far
fewer reboots than even win2000, and seems to me to require a bit less
knowlege of the hardware, as well. Linux only requires that you guess
which interrupt your soundcard wants. That you can get by trial and
error (some day I'll write down which one works, so I don't have to try
the guessing game at each install on a given machine).
Windows requires that you have the manufacturer's driver on hand for
EVERY part in your machine! For a frankenstein box, assembled out of
old parts, that can be a big problem. You have to know what you have,
and go find the drivers, and on and on. First stop, the FCC website, to
try to find out who made each board, and then go find out that the
manufacturer is out of business and no more drivers. For a Compaq (don't
buy Compaq if you want to run windows), knowing your hardware is still a
big problem. Finding the drivers on the Compaq disk is painfull. For
Linux, all the drivers are on one CD, and the installer finds the right
one for you. THAT'S easy.
Yes, Linux app's do seem to be lagging a bit yet, but Staroffice 5.2 is
getting pretty close to MSOffice. You will soon be able to do
Microsofty things as well as MS, and serious work is already much easier
on Unix. By the way, administering NT on a home system doesn't seem any
easier to me than the same chores on Linux. Maybe even harder, since at
least with Linux, I know what's behind the GUI. You never really know
that with MS.
It always bugs me to hear this "Linux is hard to install" line, since
that exactly contradicts my experience.
\end{rant}
Nels Tomlinson
See what I've been reading.
Ok, here is a point that I'm sick of hearing, and am going to put to rest right now. Mircosoft products for linux isn't the reason it's not on business desktops.
If that were the case, MacOS would have the lion's share of the market here. Both IE and Office for the MacOS are better then their WIndows counterparts. IE5 being the most standards compliant browser there is. Office for MacOS being just as good. And with Office 2001 being completly carbonized, it will also be better then their Windows version.
There are reasons that people say why businesses aren't using linux on their corprate desktops. Inconsistant user interface, lack of bussiness apps for linux, fear of open source, etc. The MacOS doesn't have any of these "shortcommings". So why doesn't it own this market? Bases on the reasons that people give for lack of linux use in my eyes are invalid. There are other os'es that do everything they say is needed. Yet they are realatively unused and passed over.
The only negatives I can see to using MacOS on a corp. desktop would be cost of Apple hardware. But cost isn't something these businesses aren't concerned with. MacOS may not be a rock of stability, but is Win9x?
So what is the real reason that linux isn't on the business desktop? Or better yet, why hasn't MacOS been able to get to this market? And as a follow-up.....if linux gets to where the MacOS is in number of aps, ease of use, etc., will it even matter?
I don't think I'm alone here; ftp installs of FreeBSD and OpenBSD are fairly common/frequent.
Red Hat took about 45 minutes to install off a CD when I re-evaluated the main distros this spring. This was on a P-133 with 32 MB ram and a 24x CD-rom. AFC Archvile, you must have really screwed it up to make it take 3 weeks...or was that FUD?
Free music from Jack Merlot.
In cyberspace, nobody can hear you being sarcastic.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Why is everyone waiting for IE to come out for Linux. I always have found Netscape lot more stable on Windows NT 4.0 (I've hardly used 95 or 98)(Which I have to use at work 8) ) than IE. At home I run Linux Mandrake with Netscape (which is the least stable application on Linux) I am just wondering why people think IE for Linux is going to be any better. What about KDE's Konqueror and GNOME's Nautilus I am sure they'll be much better than IE or Netscape will every be for Linux.
Netscape is considerably less stable than IE 5.0+. This is a fact, as far as my experience shows. I use both every day while I am doing my current project (PHP development) and cannot stand the strange bugs in Netscape (text disappearing randomly, deciding to eat 50 MB memory for no reason, etc) and the incessant visits from the "Full Circle" bug reporting system. That means it crashed. Yes of course there are javascripts that can bomb IE and security holes, etc., but IE is far more useable, and much faster for my browsing needs.
Since I don't like Microsoft I'd sure like to see someone else release a good browser, but so far all I see are even more inferior browsers coming out. Opera? Fast as heck, but the CSS and Javascripts (DHTML) that work on IE and Netscape rarely work under Opera. Why don't they just emulate one or the other's JS implementation? We'll see, but so far IE is way in the lead in my book.
Chris
maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.
That said, Windows is more foolproof to install. It checks for more devices and writes progress to disk to mark how far along it is, in the event that it got crashed out by a rogue memory poke.
The fact remains that hardware detection and installation of appropriate drivers is an important part of OS setup. Having to find and download "experimental" or "beta" drivers that aren't included with the default CD (or network) install for a Linux or BSD system makes system installation a lot harder for many.
So the thing is acting a little like a LASER, only without a net amplification of the signal, sucking back the energy it gives to the output pulse from the input pulse.
Rather than actually somehow weirdly having precognition of the coming wave, the medium amplifies the leading edge of the pulse with its own energy, creating energy "holes" where it was taken, which collapse in reverse-order and suck away the energy of the rest of the incoming pulse, with the appearance of a backwards wave motion. The interaction of the pulse, the amplification, and the energy holes creates a pulse that very closely matches the shape of the center of the pulse nearer to the leading edge of the pulse, but the leading edge of the pulse isn't transmitted any faster than the speed of light, and the output pulse is different from the input pulse in that its leading edge is closer back to the highest point of the pulse, so it lacks the precursor that would allow the bulk of the output signal to be shifted forward as far second time, so the apparent FTL speed (to a device which can only detect the peak of the pulse) should drop off the longer the "wire" is.
The backward energy-sink "wave" is not truly a chain-of-events wave at all, like sound, but is merely a sequence of disconnected events that occur in wave-like fashion WRT their positions and timing, and is therefore not bounded by the speed of light (just as the area illuminated by a flashlight, or the point at which the blades of a closing pair of scissors meet, can theoretically be moved faster than the speed of light).
That's pretty funky. I can definitely see uses for it, if that's what it does.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
It is amazing to see who makes up all of plaintiffs in the case. Take a gander!
You ain't nothin' but a hounddog, a cryin' all the time! You ain't nothin' but a hound dog...
-AP
This is not a flame. This is a fact. If you are interested - read this story. Disclaimer: This is not about ease of use, but on the topic: Windows VS Linux in use
At work I have a good 600 PIII box with 256 RAM. I used to have Win NT on it and the speed was alright. I am doing intense Java development (JBuilder) constantly running Apache Web Server/JServ + JBuilder + Oracle Client + 5*(IE Windows) + a lot of other crap. It was running fine, but my friend told me that with Linux it will fly.
I erased everything, installed Redhat 6.2 with KDE and GNOME. I did not recompile the kernel.
I did not see any performance difference between KDE or GNOME, both sucked. Yes, sucked, you open up Netscape (16 megs of RAM!!!!) window and try to drag it - it moves very very sluggy. Now what is that? I downloaded Mozilla, just a little better.
Now with JBuilder and couple of Netscapes my RAM was 217M full!!! Now I understand that this is not really actuall memory that is used, but still.
I could not take that, so I cleaned up everything and installed W2K Pro. And I love it. It is by far the best working environment I used.
The point is, Linux sucks on the GUI/X Windows big time. It is really slow and pretty buggy. On the other hand, I am using it as my firewall and loving it. With no X installed it makes the best server/firewall there is. It is relativelly easy to set up. And Java, Apache, Oracle run greatly on Linux as services. I think this is where Linux kicks major ass... But not on the client side.
Just my .02
http://dtum.livejournal.com
I think that the thing about waveform is about being able to prove that what came out is what went in. If you drive a car in one end of a mile-long railgun (at 55MPH) and, one second later, a smpking blob of molten metal pops out the other end (again, at 55MPH) , you can try to argue that the car went through the tunnel at 3600MPH. Other people might seriously question the claim.
It's more like driving a 12 foot car through a mile-long railgun, with 3 feet of the car sticking out the far side at the instant that 4 feet of the car have entered the near side.
It might even be like the above scenario, but with 5 feet of the car sticking out the far side at the instant that 4 feet have entered.
Yeah, it's that weird, if you view it as the same pulse/car coming out the far side.
On the other hand, try imagining that the car has an incredibly thin, stiff wire which has the car's plans magnetically encoded on it sticking out the front of it for miles (but which is not visible to the human eye), and the car drives into a car factory. An identical (except for having a shorter wire) car comes driving out the far side just as the car proper enters the near side. So it looks to our eyes as if the car has driven through very fast, or even been stretched or transported in time, but it has only actually been copied from the information on its leading wire. This is both easily understandable and a more accurate analogy.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Yeah, easy for you, someone who knows what he's doing, an experienced computer user. Now, do you think my grandpa could install Linux on his own? I know he couldn't... and he is a very typical new computer user. Linux is getting easier, and is easy for those familiar with computers, but it still has a long way to go before new computer users will be able to install Linux on their own....
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
The question isn't whether your grandpa could install Linux. The question is whether he could install Windows. I'd guess he probably couldn't. That doesn't mean that Windows is easier or harder then Linux. Probably, you'd find that overall, they are both even in terms of illiterate computer users to be able to learn how to use them.
-BrentI run GNU/Linux+KDE on a 300Mhz AMD system with 128 MB RAM and an old ATI Rage Pro graphics card (PCI) with a 6 GB HD. I run Apache, IBM WebSphere (on a different port), a couple of Netscapes, and I always have at least 5 kedit windows, soundtracker, and a few terminals open. My system flies compaired to my old Windows setup not to mention the huge gain in stability (and six desktops to fill up with programming goodness). In windows, if I had Netscape open, an edit window open, winamp playing, and tried to compile a Java app my computer would reboot itself (which took quite a long time). My system has never crashed while running Linux. In fact, the only time I turn my computer off is when I install nifty new hardware.
Seeing as how you have about twice the machine I do, your computer should have absolutely rocked under Linux. I think if it was slow you must have had a video driver problem as it is fairly easy to pick an unaccelerated video driver.
On the RAM issue, why are you complaining about 217 MB being reported as used when you also say you know about caching -- it's not as if that RAM is locked up -- Linux will give the RAM back when an app needs it.
Mmmmmm.... Well this is my sig.
Windows 2000 is a bit better, but the fact is that installing windows requires AT LEAST as much knowlege as does installing Linux. My father, now a grandpa, couldn't install either. He was an electronics technician for many years, a ham radio operator, and took several programming classes over the last 10 years. His first experiences with computers were back before magnetic core memory. I spent over an hour on the phone long distance getting him through installing windows. GUI's are terribly unintuitive at first use. The hundreds of little conventions about which window is active, how you move about, how you change things, the fact that dialog boxs pop up and CHANGE which window is active, are all confusing. That is actually one of the great things about the linux text-based installers: they don't require that you have the years of experience with the GUI.
The fact is that a new user is unlikely to be able to install any useful operating system on his own. Or windows, or BEOS. Would you expect a new auto user to be able to fix a car? Even a model T? New users have to be told how to find a gas tank! Remember the first time you tried to cook? Followong a receipe is easy when you know how: divide two eggs, cook some spagetti, reserve some of the water, and so on... if you aren't familiar with the jargon and the basics, it's gibberish. Same with computers. Nothing is easy until you understand it.
I posted a comment above, RE:windows is (NOT) easy to use, which details some other of my experiences with windows. I am convinced that windows is actually NOT easy to use, nor easy to install, when compared with old-style, command line unix. At the Purdue stat department the secretarys, who have windows pcs on their desks, use pine and vi on AIX for most of their work. They find it easier, and they teach it to temps because even for temps, the learning curve is short enough. They use those windows pcs for xterms, and for netsurfing.
When you start using a computer, you learn, through trial and error, how to accomplish the things you can imagine to do. Once you've learned it, and forgotten how you struggled, it's easy. By this standard, windows would be easy. So was VMS.
See what I've been reading.
That would be now?
No, that would be in about 3 1/2 months or so...
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Why? Office seemed to do ok on Microsoft Windows, and their GUI was/is pretty rotten by mid-90s standards (e.g. compared to MacOS and OS/2 Warp). I am skeptical that a good GUI is a prerequisite to office app success, since the historical evidence contradicts this.
LOL! While I was typing the above a coworker interrupted me and asked for help backing the contents of a Win95 hard disk up, to a directory on the file server. He opened two explorer windows, and dragged the hard disk icon from one, to the target directory in the other window. The computer told him it couldn't copy it and asked if he would like to create a shortcut instead. So I solved his problem by telling him to use the XCOPY command instead. If your assertion that Linux needs a GUI that doesn't suck before Office should be ported is correct, then perhaps Windows also needs a GUI that doesn't suck before Office is released for Windows.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
How to learn to use the Install or how to learn to use Linux? My Grandpa didn't install Windows, it came on the computer, but since then he has installed - on his own - various software titles. Could he have done this on Linux? I dunno, I doubt it... It doesn't get much easier than putting the CD in and clicking OK a couple of times...
As I said, Linux is making great strides in being easier to use for the computer novice, but it still has a long ways to go... and it should, I mean folks have been working on making Windows user friendly for several years longer than folks have been working on making Linux user friendly. Windows also has a very consistent look and feel. 99% of Windows apps have similar menu options, a consistent toolbar appearance, etc. With Linux, that familiarity is lacking (at least in my experiences).
I enjoy using Linux, and have two boxes, one in 98/2000 and the other exclusively Linux. I find myself using Linux more often than not... however, I am a computer science major, I've been using computers for 12 years (give or take). For the billions of everyday computer users out there, Linux is not up to par with Windows... not yet...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Well, you acknowledged that your Grandpa didn't install Windows, so therefore he just had to how to use "X". In this case Windows.
My Grandpa didn't install Windows, it came on the computer, but since then he has installed - on his own - various software titles. Could he have done this on Linux? I dunno, I doubt it... It doesn't get much easier than putting the CD in and clicking OK a couple of times...Well, You can have applications autorun from the CD in Linux when the CD is inserted, just like on Windows. A few OK's and the app is installed. Don't see a major difference between Linux and Windows here.
Windows also has a very consistent look and feel. 99% of Windows apps have similar menu options, a consistent toolbar appearance, etc. With Linux, that familiarity is lacking (at least in my experiences).That's silly. Microsoft doesn't even have a common look and feel between their own apps. I just upgraded from Office 97 to Office 2000 and all the menu's and widgets changed again. No more Services menu in Outlook. I still haven't figured out how to set Outlook up the way I had it before. Media Player has some sort of wierd skin now. Internet Explorer's scrollbars change color.
Non MS apps are even worse. Some of them don't have scrollbars that scroll with the mouse wheel. Some of them use old widgets. No, Windows is not any more consistant then Linux. But Like doesn't try to claim to be consistant. If you need consistancy, only run KDE apps, or Gnome apps.
The difference between Linux and Windows is not the ease of use, it's how much you already know. Must people who struggled to learn Windows, think that Linux is too hard. But what they are forgetting is that they struggled to learn Windows also.
-Brent