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Lycoris Desktop/LX Review
JigSaw writes: "Lycoris Desktop/LX (formerly known as 'Redmond Linux') is viewed by many as the new big distribution in the "Linux on the Desktop" arena. OSNews features an extensive review of the latest Lycoris and outlines the good and the bad things of the distro. In short, Lycoris seems to suffer from the general GNU/Linux situation to not be ready to power a true desktop-oriented, easy to use distribution yet."
Slim Shady!!!!!
...Frith Post?
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
. In short, Lycoris seems to suffer from the general GNU/Linux situation to not be ready to power a true desktop-oriented, easy to use distribution yet
Just making another distro isn't enough to be "Linux's answer to the desktop." It'll require more products, more "wizbangs", easier installation, and general "user friendliness" on all aspects. I'd concentrate on more products, ensuring you can go seamlessly between Windows and Linux flawlessly (Word docs as a minor example), before making a distro to be the "answer."
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
A good point of the distro is the inclusion of a WINE release. While I could only run correctly simple applications like notepad.exe and the Windows calculator, it is a nice addition. All the .exe programs are marked with the WINE icon and if you doubleclick them, WINE will try to load them.
..Uh, but there are far better native apps available for free.. Why would you ever want to run windows notepad or calculator? I understand the eventual goal of WINE to run all those exe's seamlessly, but why is WINE a nice addition in this distribution if it just runs simple programs that already have better native versions?
air and light and time and space
much better
The screenshots still say Redmond Linux, anyway.
That's a pretty cheezy desktop complete with XP colours - 'My Linux System' and 'Network Browser'? Isn't the separation of local and network mounts something we've always hated about Windows?
Hands in my pocket
Its only a repackaged Caldera with a 'xp-like' theme for kde.. with a much reduced package set.
I personally dont see the point.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mandrake 8.2 was released today, so we'll see which is better...
It'll be suing someone for a change
I hate this litigous society
After actually reading the review, it seems that most desktop distros have the installation thing down to a pin. It's the actual desktop that suffers.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I'm not sure if I read it correctly, but did it read that the basic LX install did NOT include the source code? So are they shipping a version that violates the GPL? I did see that the upgraded more expensive version includes 3 additional CD's, with one of them being marked as the source code disk. Could someone clear this up for me?
Personally, this is the most uninformed and uneducated review of a linux distribution I have ever read.
However, I hope that future versions of Lycoris will use a file automatically for their swap space instead of a real partition - in addition to the / partition. This will greatly simplify the installation process for many users and won't fragment their hard drives.
What is that supposed to mean?
Am I out of the loop or does linux support swap files (as opposed to partitions) now?
How much 'simpler' would it really make it anyway. It doensn't fragment the disk, put the swap at the end and be done with it.
It get's better:
It took 2 minutes to mount two FAT32 partitions (9 and 18 GB respectively), while the rest of the OS loading did not take more than 40 seconds. A shame really - I hope this (inconvenience mostly) will be fixed or altered to a faster algorithm.
I don't know what's wrong with the mounting issue, but what kind of faster algorithm is he talking about here?
</rant>
Pointer
[%- PROCESS life -%]
OSNews recently ran a story in which Stallman claimed that the GNU system, with the HURD kernel, would be released "real soon now". What does this have to do with Linux? Well, if you can get a version of GNU directly from the GNU project, with the Debian package manager, then there's no longer a need for other workstation distributions. Just like there's only one version of FreeBSD, there will be only one version of GNU. Therefore, any Linux companies can focus on the desktop, so duplication of effort is avoided, and more actual coding gets accomplished. If GNU/Debian corners the high-end market, then SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, et al. can theoretically work together to focus exclusively on the desktop market.
But, then, that's why my wife likes WinXP.
It does look good, and the ease of installation will attract some people, but I agree with the reviewer, starting up warm immediately after an install is typically a bad idea (as was stated in the article).
It seems they were trying to release an entry-level distro for the neophytes and n00bs that are interested, but don't want to get too far into things. I think, though, with no linuxconf, and problems loading rpms without some associations is going to cause major headaches with the "I call my brother for tech support" crowd (even moreso for the brothers/sisters/moms/dads/sons/daughers/etc that get the "Help Me!" call.
With some more refining, I think they could get something nice going, maybe they should have waited a little longer.
Randal Graves says: I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class... Especially since I rule.
Try this distribution, try Mandrake 8.2 (even the RC release), and you'll understand that Lycoris is not a big deal. In my humble opinion of course.
I have gotten used to using StarOffice, Mozilla, Licq, and several other applications that have almost taken the need to boot into Windows away completely. The only times I find myself booting into Windows is to play video games or watch media files that I can't find Linux players for (.wmv--mostly pr0n).
Since Linux can be configured well enough for my far-from-computer-geek girlfriend to use, and the only reason I boot into Windows is to surf for pr0n and play video games, I think that it would actually make a better solution in the working environment. All the productivity, none of the vices...
Just my two cents...
Personally, I think choice is good. I won't like Lycoris, because it only includes one application of each kind.
Mandrake is the way to go for newbies for Linux. Its a great distribution. The only sucky thing about mandrake, is its gcc-2.96 , which quite frankly sucks. But that little thing sucks equally bad with RedHat. *sigh*
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
that every "easy to use" Linux distro is actually only an easy install for the user?
Real work needs to be done in helping the user in case an application fails.
Also, every one of the distros seems to be very superficial; they simply include some nice skins and applications that resemble those in windows, but many of these applications are hardly as functional as their "hard to use" counterparts.
Shouldnt these companies put more of their money behind making powerful products easier to use?
...are mixed. I tried it out on my machine inside a VMWare Virtual Machine, but I could not get it to complete the install (I guess it had trouble with the "virtual" video card). I installed it on an old Pentium 233, but it was too slow to be usable (I guess KDE is pretty heavy on resources). Then I tried it on a Pentium II 350 and performance was acceptable. I like what they've done with the interface and all, especially the Network Neighborhood. Also, it's a good idea for newbies only to have a limited amount of apps (though they should have gone with OpenOffice...).
However, like the author, I wasn't impressed with app installation. With advanced installation managers like apt-get and red-carpet, it's a shame that Lycoris didn't achieve the same level of efficiency. Maybe they could adapt one of these (I really like Red-carpet, even with occasionnal glitch it makes updating and installing software so easy.)
Hmmm...actually, it makes me realize that perhaps Ximian should put out their own distro, following the same kind of philosophy: they already have the e-mail client (evolution) and the install/update manager (Red-carpet), and the Gnome desktop can be configured to look and feel like Windows almost as much as KDE can...use Galeon as a browser, Open or StarOffice for productivity, add a "network neighborhood" app like they have for Desktop/LX and you would have a very newbie-friendly - as long as they fix Nautilus so it's faster (that's Gnome weakest point right now: the Gnome File Manager is ugly and Nautilus is slow...)
Hey, Ximian, are you up to it? I'd buy a copy...
Reminder: find a new sig
The old distros like Slackware and Debian suck goat's penis when compared to something that's actually usable out-of-box like Mandrake 8.x or Red Hat 7.x.
The owls are not what they seem
yes Linux does support swapfiles now
All the features here: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/82.php3. Looks like a great release!
>Am I out of the loop or does linux support swap files (as opposed to partitions) now?
Of course and Linux supports swap in a file instead of a partition. What do you think the mkswap command can do?
>I don't know what's wrong with the mounting issue, but what kind of faster algorithm is he talking about here?
The FAT32 mounting is PAINFULLY slow for me too. Other distros do not have the particular problem. Therefore, it has to be something wrong with their code.
Maybe he has no idea what he's talking about or maybe this distribution really sucks. But for a consumer friendly distribution, it sure as hell is confusing :)
...is cryogenically frozen. Sorry.
As far as the swapfile/partition issue, he raises a valid point. parittioning is a pain in the arse for new users. You ask a user who really doesn't have any idea of how he will be pushing the system to make a permament decision about how his swap should be and he will be confused. You have been able to swap to files for a long time, and I do it, as sometimes I need a lot of swap, and other times I need next to done, and that flexibility is not easy with a partition. A parttion may give a speed boost, but with a good filesystem that becomes less and less of an issue.
As far as the second issue, I have no clue how those fat32 mounts can cause such a slow issue. He is trying to look at it from an end user perspective, and this is exactly the sort of thought an end user would have. Likely the distro is doing something extra that is slow enough to block mounts, maybe some sort of indexing service or something. His statement about an algorithm is silly, but perhaps apt if the distro is doing something special at mount time that it could postpone to run in the background...
I know nothing about this distro and am completely uninterested, but I think his review was very good look from a user level perspective. Not big on techinical details, but the target audience of this distro isn't very technical...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I downloaded the ISO image and dropped it into my daughters virus ridden K6-300 WIN98 box. Couldn't have been easier. I upped her memory (128+32 MB) and used a new disk (40 Gig). She has access to all her old Word, and MS Access via the 'K' apps. All she needs is word processing, e-mail, browsing and occasional spread sheet. It could access everything on my home MS based machines. This is a good replacement for WIN98. Decent fonts, easy set up.
well, doesnt it?
I know I'll probably come off as a pro-Linux zealot for this.. but..
I am a first year compsci student. Before this year, all of my attempts to try to use Linux failed horribly.. but in January this year, I installed Redhat, and immediately fell in love. I've slowly been learning how to take advantage of all of Linux's more advanced features, and I've lately been able to fix problems based on intuition, rather than long searches on Google.
Whenever any of my friends come over, they see my computer, and they gasp. They love the way KDE looks, they love the Liquid theme, they love transparent menu's, they love the functionality of the command prompt, they ENVY the fact I can leave it on for days.. even weeks without having to so much as log out. (probably not the safest thing to be doing.. but it makes me feel big, lol)
The only things which prevent people from installing Linux on their own computers are the following
1. Lack of MSN messenger (Kmerlin) built in. They would not know where to look, if they were going to find it.. and it seems to be the most popular messenger at my university.
2. Once and awhile the Xserver bombs, and deletes the 'fixed fonts'.. which requires some knowledge to fix.
3. Decent CD burning software
4. A file sharing program which does not bomb all the time.
5. Better media support - Built in Divx support... easy to install quicktime support.. easy to find realplayer (it takes awhile to find realplayer if you don't know where to look)
The last thing it needs is to be pre-installed on a few computers.. but this article shows why that isn't likely to happen.
In preparation for Ballmer meeting with a Dell executive to talk about the computer maker's support of Linux, a confidential Microsoft briefing e-mail notes as a talking point that "it's untenable for a 'premier partner' of Windows 2000 to be doing aggressive marketing development for another operating system."
"This little drama ends" later that year, Kuney said, with Dell abandoning its Linux efforts with the head of the program being reassigned.
Overall, I think Linux is pretty much ready for the desktop. Everyone here is always bitching about stuff like document support.. which for the desktop, IMO, is pretty irrelevant. The majority of people out there transfer documents by copying and pasting to emails.
I don't know what's wrong with the mounting issue, but what kind of faster algorithm is he talking about here?
:) But then again, I only reboot when upgrading kernels so...
:)
He is a she, and like all (ex-)BeOS users, Eugenia is obsessed with bootup speed, because BeOS booted in about 12 seconds on most machines (it actually booted in 8 seconds on my BeBox during the DR days). A small amount of tweaking got me a 15 second bootup time in Linux (from the GRUB prompt to my X session manager, xdm), and that includes SCSI initialization. The main rule is of course is to avoid anything that starts with a K!
However, in all my Linux years I have never ever waited *2 minutes* for a partition to mount. So either Eugenia's box is terribly slow, or something is very wrong with that Linux distro, or she's lying
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Jezzball doesn't run very well under WINE. But luckily, there's a (in all humbleness) much improved native equivalent. So that's not a very good example. :)
A foe today is a friend tomorrow. No point in seeing the world in naive, black and white terms like GWB does. Negotiating a fat and delicious trade agreement with Iraq with enticements for democracy, for instance, would be a much better solution than the gung-ho bomb-the-shit-out-of-the-ragheads American approach.
Ok, if you really, REALLY have to fight (after being really invaded, for instance), then go ahead and fight. Just restrain from bombing the shit out of the enemy because you can do business with them later on.
The owls are not what they seem
Once you completed the installation and booted your new Lycoris Desktop/LX system, you'll be greeted with a handsome X login window (KDM).
A feature most of us don't use anyway, which has been an option in most distros for about 3 years now.
As a GNOME user, I didn't realize that with KDE 2.1x, the kpackage RPM management tool was integrated with the desktop so that it would launch when you double-click an RPM file in Konqueror.
looks like thats a KDE feature, which is avalible with every major distro
Other than Samba, no other system daemons that could be security risks are running
this i feel actually is a feature, i've always thought it was dumb to by default install and run 17 daemons that home users really aren't going to use.
And the linux desktop isn't going to appear over night, it's going to take lots of apps, mainly game and business app support. When you can buy a game with a linux binary and windows on the same cd.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
I think both you and the reviewer are applying a fallacy I often see in online reviews and evaluations -- especially on Slashdot. I call it the Me Fallacy. This fallacy is the assumption that your own needs are the needs of the product's target audience. So you applaud and criticize when the product succeeds and fails to meet your needs -- even if that's not what the product is trying to do.
I see this in the review (which does make some good points) when it criticizes Lycoris for not providing development apps. This is an end user distro, for Pet's sake! Of course, a developer might want it anyway (I'm going to try it in the hope that it will integrate with my company's IPX network better than the others), but such a user is perfectly capable of downloading apps -- and is more interested in how well the distro accomodates third-party packages than what specific packages the distro provides.
>However, in all my Linux years I have never ever
:)
:)
>waited *2 minutes* for a partition to mount. So
>either Eugenia's box is terribly slow,
Dual PIII 450 Mhz, 512 MB of RAM. Lycoris is installed on a *fast* SCSI drive, while both the FAT32 partitions are on an also modern IDE drive.
> or something is very wrong with that Linux distro,
I read somewhere that their FAT32 code is still alpha. I am sure there is A LOT of room for improvement.
> or she's lying
You are very welcome to come and see it yourself if you are living in the Bay Area. You are warmly invited to our house and experience it yourself.
It's not flashy wizards and pretty icons that matter. It's a file selection widget that filters on extension and works for all the applications. It's a unified printing and font management model. It's little details like this - unsexy, and invisible to those of us who have become accustomed to the workarounds - that really make a difference.
Press release
Product page
She's the jealous type! lol,...
Am I out of the loop or does linux support swap files (as opposed to partitions) now?
:-) In other words, no need for the file to be subjected to all the stuff that it would be if it were on a normal ext2/ext3 partition.
:-)
:-P
Yes, you are way out of the loop. But he is still full of it. Even on an NT box it is still best to make a seperate partition for your swap space. It tends to run faster that way. Same thing goes for linux. Plus, the swap partition is designed for well... swapping.
But as far as "can it be done" goes, yes it can. It has been an option now for as long as I can remember. Since the 2.x kernel at least. I remember doing it in Slackware 4.0. (And that came out years and years ago).
The solution here is to simply auto partition your drive. Do it all in the background. If someone wants to do it all themselves.. then that distro wouldn't be for them.. have them use RedHat.
And as far as "fragmenting" their hard drives... I am confused.. am I out of the loop here? I thought a fragmented drive was when files were not stored on concurrent parts of the drive. Silly me.
There is no niche left for an operating system hacked together by students, with an appaling security model, and an antideluvian user interface.
Educational.
Anybody attempting to design a truly user-friendly Linux distro needs to start by making IceWM the default window manager. IceWM gives the average users What They Want: a simple clean desktop. The taskbar isn't filled with junk (well, maybe a little, but the distro should default it out), just a set of simple buttons. Yes, it looks a lot like Windows, but that's not necessarily bad. What's important is that it's a clean interface that users can understand right away. The desktop war is won or lost in the first minute that the user looks at the screen and decides if s/he understands what's going on.
Miko O'Sullivan
(me typing it into my Slackware 8.0 machine)
root@friedmud:~# linuxconf
su: linuxconf: command not found
Well, I don't have it - and I get along fine without it - so why the hell does does lycoris need it?? I am sure that this is something from the Hat/Drake land that people think is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Nothing is necessary in linux - there is always a different/possibly better way to do it.
Derek
something that's actually usable out-of-box
Define usable.
Are you referring to a distro that thinks it might know more about my system than I do? Or perhaps one that decides that I know either nothing, or I know every dependancy for every binary that I might possibly want to install?
Slackware is usable - I can have a slack box installed and configured in under an hour, and I will know exactly what's installed and why.
How can someone who is so strongly-opinionated and blunt, so sure of himself to call the review "this is the most uninformed and uneducated review of a linux distribution I have ever read" afford to be so misinformed about Linux (yes, you can have swapping in a file, you can even share that file with Windows, read the Howto)?
And moreover, how can someone who demonstrates such blatant arrogance and ignorance, get such high mods?
I totally agree with the review, to have a swap file instead of a partition totally makes sense for desktop installs, because you don't want to increase the number of primary partitions, which you have only 4 anyway.
Sigged!
Fuck you....Slackware is the best linux distro out there
I could be completely off my rocker here but wasn't it ALWAYS possible to use swap files instead of partitions?
... /swap
/etc/fstab like:
/swap
Now I don't necessarily mean swap files directly supported by the kernel, but if you _really_ wanted to use a swap file instead couldn't you create a file, format it as a linux swap and then mount it as a loopback device?
Something like:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap
# mkswap
Then put an entry in
/swapfile swap swap defaults,loop 0 0
And finally:
# swapon
I just tried this on slackware 8.0 with kernel 2.4.18 and it works. I don't know if this is a "new feature" or anything but I'm pretty sure that as long as your kernel supports loopback devices then this would work.
Maybe someone with better kernel knowledge could provide some better insight.
P.S I still don't see why you would want to do this. Espcially considering that in any good install program geared towards end-users they would not have to worry about partitioning (and even if they did it seems to me like paritioning would still be easier than doing what I described above). At least I know that I would still prefer a swap partition as opposed to a file anyway...
--
Garett
For once I would like to see a distro bold enough to have Enlightenment as its default windows manager.
I installed it on a box that Win2K installed, just to see what would happen and how it would work. True, it did give me the option of leaving Win2K intact, and created the necessary entry in GRUB to let me dual boot the box to either Win2K or Lycoris Linux and it was coolmto be able to play solitaire while the install was copying files in the background, so give them 5 stars on "ease of installation". My 12 year old daughter could easily install this distro (but then she's an honor student ;>). And it performed as advertised as far as letting me copy files from my Win2K partition, as well as letting me connect to network (NT) shares without having to do any extra configuring. People in the lab asked "What OS is this, anyway, this is slick"). But that's where any good features end. It has a greatly reduced feature set - the version of KDE it ships with doesn't even work. You can't do anything with most of the KDE apps as installed. Oh, sure, there is a fix on their auto-update server : but you have to download hundreds of megabytes fo get the fixes. What's the point? They obviously don't care about testing their product before putting it in a box for sale (I installed from their ISO images which I downloaded). So it's Caldera with a non-working version of KDE and a slick installer. Whoopee. I support RedHat at work , so that's what I've been running at home and found the Lycoris distro to be too painful to be worth the trouble. I'd much rather run Ximian Gnome on RedHat 7.2 (with it's ext3 file system! :>), but that's just a personal preference. With all the hassle of even getting Lycoris apps (OK, KDE apps), to work, I don't think this is a good Linux distro for newbies.
*cough* REPOST *cough*
Actually it's not really but there's already been a review mentioned on here. Once again I will go on the record and say this is one of my favorite distro's!
to Linux and the community that modded your ass to +5. What a sad bunch of losers. Sure you enjoy having to wait 2 or more minutes for your OS to boot. Yeah, any kind of shit is OK if it's Linux, I guess.
is the nature of your game.
It seems like like all those new Distributions, which want to come up with a Desktop-Linux, simply cut all the good software/tools away from Linux and hide the root account from the users as good as they can. Look at IcePack, Lindows or Xandros.
They all seem castrated to me, like a Kernel + KDE. I like the approach of Mandrake, who try to deliver an easy to use and configure GNU/Linux System, much more (And Mandrake 8.2 is really good). It's easy, but powerfull (Suse and Caldera are too) and not easy and varporware like Lycoris etc..
Boycot? Blackout? Subscriptions?
I don't care!
I'm not sure that I have better knowledge, but I do know that you've been able to do this for a while. As you said, I think it's been since loopback mounts were supported.
My theory is that the swap partition is faster, since you are cutting out the middleman of the normal ext2fs/ext3fs/whatever layer, and going straight to disc from the kernel VM layer. But that's just my theory; it could be the case that using a swap file is just as fast. Windows uses a swap file IIRC.
The problem with doing the automatic partitioning is that the user who's going to be the most interested in desktop Linux is the same person who is most likely to need to dual-boot with Windows for the near future. Dual-booting with Windows means that you have to mess with partitions, which means that not needing a swap partition is a little bit of a bonus in terms of installability. Or that's my theory, at least.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
For a couple of reasons..
/usr/apps (or wherever). Uninstallation is as simple as deleting the program directory. I think this way of installing things would make more sense to a longtime Win9X user than an RPM manager.
:)
The first being simplicity; KDE and GNOME look great, and usually run well, but I think somebody coming from a Win98 sort of environment could be easily overwhelmed by the extensive config menus and excessive drek that a lot of distros tend to install. (Although it sounds like Lycoris is better than some in that regard). As for installing software, ROX has a nice system. ROX Apps are self contained within their own directories, with config options stored in a ~/Choices directory. This way of doing things is especially well-suited for apps written in scripting languages with GTK bindings, like Perl, Python, or PHP... installation is just a matter of unzip/tarring the App directory into
The other reason I think ROX would be a good candidate is speed... it runs so much faster on my 566 Celeron than GNOME or KDE ever did. GNOME and KDE's sluggish performance was one of the reasons I never used my Linux partition much... things were just faster in Windows.
It's not the most polished environment, but it's very usable... and if a company did decide to get behind ROX for a distro, I think it could quite a contender. YMMV.
The underlying problem with any desktop environment that tries to cater to non-techie Windows users is the dependance on shared libraries that so many Linux apps have; packages from the original installation disk might conceivably work fine with the system, but user used to just downloading the InstallShield wizard and double clicking on it is going to be frustrated when he goes to install a program from somewhere else and it tells them they have to install some other library first, etc.
On the other hand, if a distro tries to compensate and include every damn library under the sun, more experienced users will scream about bloat.
I downloaded the .iso and installed Lycocis on two machines the other day. One was a pretty dismal failure, the other was a pretty fair success.
Lycoris did NOT like my dual-processor, no-IDE hard drive main system. While it DID install, it couldn't recognize my LS-120 drive as a floppy drive to make a rescue disk. Red Hat 7.2 does. Lycoris botched the LILO install on my main SCSI drive leaving me with LI and no boot disk. It made no mention of recognizing the second processor and the box has 1 Gb of RAM, which requires a kernel toggle -- I have no idea if it actually did. It also defaults to NOT installing the necessary Xine plugin to play CSS-encrypted DVDs. You've gotta track that down yourself.
However, on the single-processor Athlon, w/768 Mb of RAM and an IDE HD and a normal floppy, it worked fine. Install went smoothe and everything was recognized. It was very similar to Windows, which is the point -- keep the mental transition to a minimum.
Personally, I don't like the wallpaper. I found it to be too garish and distracting. However, that is easily enough fixed. I also don't like the theme that fakes transparency (liquid?), as it chews up too much CPU time and seems to make the machine a little sluggish. Again, easy enough to fix.
Recommendations: Kit, while functional, is a bit spartan for most Windows people's IM. A nice Jabber client or the actual Netscape AIM client would be much better. Install DeCSS by default and the plugin for Xine to play encrypted DVDs. It played everything else, though -- DivX, MPEG, OGG, MP3, etc.
KOffice is nice, if you don't need major compatibility with MS Office. Since they left out Konqueror and used Mozilla, I'd suggest replacing KOffice with OpenOffice.
Finally, work a deal with the Crossover people and include the Crossover plugin installed and a wizard to install Quicktime and Shockwave.
It is actually a real good distro for people who know little to nothing about PCs. For power users, it is something to avoid.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I started out with Mandrake 6. I liked it and the Mandrake org, so I'll stay with them
The review seemed to be written with the whimsy that is expected of a Linux install if it is to push WindowsXP off the desktop, for example: "Installation on our dual PIII 450 Mhz seemed to go well and I could play a Solitaire game while waiting for the installation to complete in the background" Uhm did you get good cards? What am I supposed to take from this?
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
As long as I've known linux - since 93 actually (ran it on a 386dx40 with 4 megs of ram) it has always supported swap files - however they are generally not recomended - even today.
Won't having a swap file instead of a partition actually create problems with disk fragmentation? IIRC, it is the growing and shrinking of files that causes fragmentation, not having extra partitions on the drive.
As someone who has been using Linux since 1995 but gotten tired of fiddling with the obscure config files with no proper documentation and standardization instead of getting real work done, I define usability:
Allows a non-geek (I'll admit some technical training here, though) to install the operating system by him/herself so that a manual is required only for occasional troubleshooting in the case of non-standard hardware.
RedHat and Mandrake in particular are almost there. Microsoft has been there for years.
The owls are not what they seem
That being said, mimicking Windows because it's a nice clean interface isn't such a bad idea. Like everything else in building a good product, being a copycat isn't a bad policy. Users generally want these simple UI features, and not much more:
Miko O'Sullivan
Has sold out of it's previous CDs and is selling very well.
Micrsoft OWNS the desktop and is moving into the medium sized server arena.
looks like linux is moving in the high end (with IBM mainframes and the medium server markets and breaking up bill gates party.
youre right about the desktop for now. the thing with open source is we can wait and still be around
besides kde and gnome have benn around for less than 4 years. took much longer than that for MS to get to win 3.1.
what you say?
that means eventually you wont get to suck Big Bills
donkey?
shiznit
Now, just slap me silly and call me Susan....
But the only OS I know of that enforces a ten connection limit are the "Workstation" versions of NT, 2K, etc.
Microsoft put that in way back when because people were running Netscape's server apps with unlimited connections on NT WorkStation instead of paying the big bucks for NT Server. I understand they also put the ten connection limit back into XP or Win2K as a stealth "update" with a recent Service Pack.
So who really owns Redmond Linux? Could it be some other company based in that part of the country?
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Swap files don't change size dynamically under Linux, so using a swap file shouldn't make much difference to fragmentation.
The French lasted 6 whole weeks, dammit!
That has to be the most persistent of all urban legends. For more information, see here, here (next to last paragraph) or here. You can view his death certificate here.
'nuff said!
I'm a Texan so I can speak with authority. Mexican pussies smell like tacos. They at least have that vague cumino smell that you get from most Mexican food. Maybe it's because they eat a lot of cumin. Who knows? I was once with an Indian chick and she tasted like curry. It makes me wonder if Japanese chicks taste like sushi. I must sample more to expand my knowledge!
Lycoris isn't the only friendly Desktop. ELX (http://www.elxlinux.org) seeks the same goals and is available now.
I downloaded it and tried it out a couple of weeks ago after the last review posted on slashdot.
I quite liked it. I think it would be a good distro for newbies.
However I have since removed it for one main reason -
I wanted to install some software that required glibc2 and discovered that Lycoris is only glibc1.
A fairly important fact that neither of these two reviews mentioned.
I was wrong about the swap partition.
I admit that.
I don't usually play with linux on desktops. I install it (with a swap partition) and it runs. It's a workstation and a development platform for me.
I hontestly don't remember the option of a swap file being mentioned in the docs I read when I started installing linux.
Most of the systems that I install linux on _need_ a large swap partition.
Having an opinion doesn't make someone arrogant.
While the author (I really meant to be gender inspecific, sorry about that) did graze over some of the details of the system, this was not an 'extensive review.'
I should have taken the time to make that point (my main one) more clear.
The article was, however, very informative.
My attemt was not to be a troll, honest.
Pointer
[%- PROCESS life -%]
What is that supposed to mean?
Am I out of the loop or does linux support swap files (as opposed to partitions) now?
Both - you are out of the loop, and Linux has supported swap files (as opposed to partitions) for quite some time.
I imagine letting Windows suers have to decide on placement for yet another Linux partition confuses them, hence the authors desire for a single partition.
I'm tempted to figure out how to do it myself. Not exactly the silly point-and-click to log in, but something that will let me go back and open another session as a different user easily.
:1
Getting at more than one X session at a time in Linux is needlessly complicated. The nice login screens should have this in mind. Why would a login prompt for a multi-user operating system only handle a single logged in user at a time? Silly.
I know it's only:
startx --
(or whatever the brain-dead syntax is) to start another session, but there really ought to be a better way.
The "loop" option is not needed for the fstab mntops field.
I've used this (under Slackware) since the 2.0.x
kernel days, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't require the loopback filesystem.
On an unrelated note, I thought "Redmond Linux" was a much better name, which would be easy to protect (as the company is located in Redmond)
Yes, but even for all of the Windows-familiarity they have put into the product, they didn't want the product to be associated with a certain company, also located in Redmond.
I like the name. The "LX" trademark is just cool, blows "XP" right out of the water.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Some dumbass wrote:
There is no niche left for an operating system hacked together by students, with an appaling security model, and an antideluvian user interface.
To what operating system would you be referring? Certainly not linux. Millions of individuals, schools and companies use linux and are extremely happy with it. I use linux daily and if I ran a business I would most likely run it using linux exclusively.
Go take your mindless FUD, spread it on some toast and shove it up your ass.
P.S I still don't see why you would want to do this.
Here's a case in point: whilst working in a physics laboratory, I set up machines with 128 MB RAM with two 128 MB swap partitions--this was the standard I'd been taught, and it had never failed me. One of the computers kept hanging whenever a user ran one of his simulation programs. It quickly became obvious that he needed far more memory & swap space. Rather than reformatting (since I was out of partition space), I created a new 512 MB swap file, and that solved his problem (course, buying extra RAM later on also helped, but in a university setting a swapfile is much easier to create than RAM is to buy).
I two possible issues with what he is doing. One, it is a dual processor system. Your average user will not have one of these. Two, he is using the $30 version. Let's face it, the other review (another /. article) used the $40 version, and it seem to work better. I would recomend get the $40 version even if you're not a developer. It's only $10. It's not like there is $200+ difference between the prices (like windows).
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
If you have the time and patience to install this thing go ahead. It might be worth it.
It doesn't partition the drives from the install and runs into annoying errors.
I'm giving up on it. It's time for Mandrake 8.2!
Linux is the worst operating system ever!
Here is the funny thing about this review. This Distro is specifically for those users who would never ask these questions and if they did they could do whatever it is they needed in a gui. What else could you ask for?
you glib, linux-oriented smug fuck. the review is written from a windows-centric viewpoint, for windows users to understand all the better. This happebns to be crucial for the process of weaning folks away from the MS monopoly. I guess you are so much smarter for thinking of these things like a bitch. But that is ultimately the downfall of OSS, isn't it, that self-satisfied nerds have to knock the dumbed down presentations and attempts at usability for their own gratification.
as for the faster algorithms, how about one that just opens the damn FAT table and assumes the partition is the same size as last time it opened? That would probably speed up the mounting of fat32 partitions nicely.
Why is it that every one assumes that installation is one of the main areas (still) that Linux needs to improve on?
I know next to nothing about Linux, yet I can install and use Redhat 7.x and Mandrake 8.x without any problems.
If Linux becomes a force on the desktop market, will it not be installed when Joe/Jane Public buys their machine from Dell?
But the only OS I know of that enforces a ten connection limit are the "Workstation" versions of NT, 2K, etc.
You misunderstood grandparent. The ten connection limit isn't part of the product they're selling. It's a limit on the FTP server hosting the ISOs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I run lycoris on no fewer than 5 machines inside and outrside of a windows domain. I disagree with the 'not ready' statement and it shows that the person who commented on the article hasnt used the distro.
In all 5 cases (all different machines) it found all hardware and installed seamlessly, the video card on my personal notebook (Dell LS400) was found perfectly, something Mandrake 8 and 8.1 couldnt manage.
the Distro has built in and fully workin Div-xm,DVD, Mp3 and the Koffice suite, Samba configured to acccess windows shares by default and wine.
My home network is a windows XP pro one with a shared internet connection (dont laugh it works 100% perfectly and requires 2 seconds setup) Lycoris found it without config and worked straight away fpr all web funtions, it connects by default with my shares and it does so on windows 200 active directory as well.
In short its a desktop OS for the average user, it doesnt come with advanced features, compilers and dev tools installed but you can download and install them, its a full working simple to use and install linux distro for everyone. I gave it to my mother of all people and she loves it - it does everything she needs, loads fast, looks like fun and she can run her windows stuff.
I have given this OS to about 20 people from technical linux zealots to newbies and all of them have enjoyed using it and the newbies love it - in short its an OS i as an IT manager can roll out on a desktop, it's built on top of redhat and users RPMS which makes it great if you already have redhat servers and use the OS in your environment.
Yes it needs work but what is doesnt need is apache or any other server components, it doesnt need compilers and 10 shells instaled as a default, its a desktop linux and it works and for the first time a user doesnt need to resort to makefiles and consoles to try and get anything working in the OS (Div-x Under redhat anyone ?)
It works for what it is and its worth $29 or you can download for free.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
In fact, you don't need to have the source available for everyone publicly - you can limit the source distribution to those who purchased the product from you.
Wrong. According to the GNU GPL, if you're going to satisfy section 3 by offering CDs via mail order, you must
Will I retire or break 10K?
I notice Lycoris has made a decision that I really wish more distros would make:
/etc/init.d/ script to set up iptables, I can configure /etc/smb.conf, I can apt-get update from security.debian.org, I can enter some lines into /etc/fstab and /etc/crontab... need I go on, this can all be done... by an experienced sysadmin! Pull some of this stuff together into a system that functions as a unit and you've got something pretty damn amazing that will knock the pants off expee any day of the week. I just wish I had some more spare time and could code better, a handful of people could probably do what I've suggested (not that I think that's all of what Linux needs to be desktop complete, but it's certainly impressive and not hard to do.)
DON'T SHOVEL LOADS OF IDENTICAL SOFTWARE ON!
The K menu on Lycoris is sanely organised and there's one of everything. If you look at your average dist, when a user fires up the brand new desktop they're greeted with a load of disordered crap in the menus, half of which sticks out like a sore thumb (GTK+/Qt mismatch... sigh I really wish we could standardise on one of these. Preferably Qt but then of course it's put out by an Evil Company (TM) nevermind the fact that it's GPL.) and the other half just doesn't work. That's not a great first impression to make. Just by sorting out the defaults on installation Lycoris has taken a huge step forward.
The one thing imho that Linux needs on the desktop is a more homogeneous feel. One desktop environment and one widget set. One administration package. I want to boot into a KDE only desktop, start up KControl and schedule some backups every weekend and select "Automatically install security updates every week", maybe set up some email and web accounts for the kids, set up my firewall to "Allow web server and email traffic", and set up a home LAN and share some files around. If I were an end user doing that I'd think "Holy shit I can't do THIS under Windows!"
Come on fellas, this can be done. I can write an
Show some common sense. The question isn't whether Lycoris can run notepad. The reviewer was just using it test Wine. Not a very meaningful test, of course. But then it wasn't a very meaningful review. Obviously nobody's going to use Wine just to run notpad. Not even Windows diehards like notepad!
Install DeCSS by default and the plugin for Xine to play encrypted DVDs.
They're a company; they can't do that. It would be a direct violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, leaving the company liable for $100,000 (maximum statutory penalty per work for copyright infringement) for each DVD that the studios have released.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe the installer should have a small built-in version of Solitaire embedded in it
Better yet, Tetris. Wouldn't it rule if you could play Tetris from within an operating system's installer? It would also be really easy to scale the game length to the install progress: just increase the speed of the falling pieces.
Will I retire or break 10K?
To what operating system would you be referring?
Grandparent was talking more along the lines of project for an advanced operating systems course at a university.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I loaded it on my box several weeks ago after seeing the other review mentioned here on Slashdot (as part of my neverending quest to have a linux distro that I can use that all my friends aren't using... the last one being Debian, which has the amazingly-cool apt-get and the amazingly-annoying Rage-pro-doesn't-work-with-X bug.
.org site. Implemented, and so far so good. Up and running for several weeks.
So, installed it. Ran into a couple oddities on an older machine (p166, Rage Pro, dual NICs, serial mouse and ancient keyboard), but got it up and running. After digging around for the non-existent Firewall/Internet-Sharing software in the review (for several hours... Bad first reviewer! That doesn't exist!), I gave up and found the 4 lines I needed in a How-to on their
All in all, pretty good. But, for example: my mouse stopped working. No idea why. But I can't fix it, that I can (as a newbie Linux user) tell! It automatically starts in X, so I need to be able to get to the control panel somehow. No luck. And for the average user, what then? Oh, and on my ancient system, it's Slow. Sloooooooooooow......
So, we'll see if I can get the mouse up. If not, next distro...... SuSe!
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Linux has supportted for a long long time. I know I was using it on a early 1.2 kernel. Running early versions of slack and redhat. I still have the page in my first linux book that explains how to do it bookmarked. Somebody here politely got all the commands correct. No loopback required. Faster without it.
I'm going to try this tomorrow. I have to install Slackware 8.0 on one of our dev workstation, and I was thinking about experimenting with the size of the swap.
Sigged!
> There is no niche left for an operating system hacked together by students, with an appaling security model, and an antideluvian user interface.
Posh; Windows is still used by millions of people, and Bill Gates & Co graduated a loooong time ago.
You idiot! See the "Re:" in front of the comment? Try pushing the "Parent" button
I've tried the usual...RedHat, Mandrake and SuSe, but is there any other ones out there? So far I like Mandrake the best, but it is slow and fills the hard drive fairly quick.
Are there any Desktop Linux Distributions for low-end machines out there that I should try? Or does anyone have any tips to slim down the Mandrake install? I've gotten it down to about 700mb after install. Could it be possible to get it even more smaller?
I believe what the reviewer (Eugenia is a greek female name by the way) means is that if the user does not like Lycoris and decides to go back to Windows, s/he will then have a small partition of a couple of hundred megabytes (usually 128MB).
A clueless computer user is not likely to know how to merge this small partition with one of the other partitions. So s/he will end up with a tiny partition that is pretty much useless for anything other than temporary storage for not-very-large files.
Fragmentation sounds like a fine term to describe this situation, IMHO. Even though the term typically means something different.
Using a file as a swap area would be a superior approach (for clueless users, not for people who want to run a fast box) as it would eliminate the additional step of restoring the swap partition, in case they decide to go back to exclusive Windows use.
I briefly had this distro installed on one of my computers, that the family uses, and had it set up to look as much like Windows as possible. I had Office running through Wine (it just worked *shrug*), and I wanted to see if it would trick the family. Long story short, the major difference they noticed was the fact that the interface was incredibly slow. Click on the "Go" button, and you wait two or three seconds to bring it up, even on a 1.7GHz P4.
Windows flies, KDE drags. Linux won't win on the desktop until the interface can actually compete with Windows, for every user.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
In short its a desktop OS for the average user, it doesnt come with advanced features, compilers and dev tools installed but you can download and install them, its a full working simple to use and install linux distro for everyone. I gave it to my mother of all people and she loves it - it does everything she needs, loads fast, looks like fun and she can run her windows stuff.
I have given this OS to about 20 people from technical linux zealots to newbies and all of them have enjoyed using it and the newbies love it - in short its an OS i as an IT manager can roll out on a desktop, it's built on top of redhat and users RPMS which makes it great if you already have redhat servers and use the OS in your environment.
Yes it needs work but what is doesnt need is apache or any other server components, it doesnt need compilers and 10 shells instaled as a default, its a desktop linux and it works and for the first time a user doesnt need to resort to makefiles and consoles to try and get anything working in the OS (Div-x Under redhat anyone ?)
It works for what it is and its worth $29 or you can download for free.
I'd have to agree with your assessment. I've been a Unix sysadmin for over a decade, and I'm certainly not shy of a command line. All the same, as a home user, I find I'm not so much a user of Linux as I am a user of KDE. rarely do I go to the command line or open a bash shell, I use the machine in the same way that I use Windows or a Mac. The kind of things I use a home computer for are internet access, word processor, etc. just like any Joe User would. And I can accomplish those things quite easily with a simple point and click. As rarely as I have to go to the command line, I have to wonder if the typical user would have to see it at all. I'd even be willing to bet that the next iteration of KDE will make the typical home users need to see the command line obsolete.
Something like:
... /swap
/etc/fstab like:
/swap
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap
# mkswap
Then put an entry in
/swapfile swap swap defaults,loop 0 0
And finally:
# swapon
Ahh yes...
That should be entirely clear for all Windows users!
I see now.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
It's not so much whether beginners find it initially easier to use, but that once the users learn the basics of how to use the overall system interface, how much can they apply those basics to quickly learning the interface of a new application.
That being said, there's a lot of bad decisions that one can make in interface design that are just plain stupid from a cognitive psychology standpoint and shouldn't be done in any interface on any platform in any circumstance. And microsoft is a frequent practitioner of this stupidity. Windows' Multi-row tabs are a perfect example, because they do not conform to the user expectation about how folder tabs are laid out: in a file cabinet, you do not have one folder tab above another and the visual search you do for a desired tab strictly on a horizontal plane. The even more confusing part about the multi-row tabs were that the widgets (i.e. the tabs) actually switch locations on screen, where the bottom tabs come to the top and vice-versa. Having widgets radically change their location on screen is a big no-no. In all fairness, Microsoft has recently been getting rid of the multi-row tabs, but why did it take them so long?
For years, usability experts have criticized Microsoft's UI shennanigans like multi-row tabs and Window-in-Window MDI, and Microsoft often does not make needed changes until 3-4 years later, if at all. Even if Microsoft gets rid of the bad design, 3rd party Windows application are by no means required to do this, and they often take even longer to purge their applications of Microsoft's bad UI than Microsoft.
There really is a double standard of design in the linux development community. If someone who knows nothing about OS design were to copy into the linux kernel a really stupid microsoft design that seriously compromised security and stability, something that OS development gurus and security experts have said for years should never be done, and do it all in the name of providing windows users with the same Blue Screens of Death and intrusions they're used to, they'd get burned at the stake with all the flames they'd get. If someone in the linux development community who knows almost nothing about interface design (which is really most of the linux development community) copies a microsoft design that seriously compromises usability and has been criticized for years by experts in the UI design field, they'd get a hearty pat by many in the linux community for "easing the migration for windows users".
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
It was a weak attempt at humor because the ten user limit ON THEIR SERVER just happened to match MSFT's hard coded limit on the MSFT workstation OS.
Actually, if I recall right, Windows NT, 2K, and XP workstation operating systems don't limit incoming TCP connections to ten but rather incoming connections to IIS Personal Edition. (Note that IIS serves HTTP 403.9 error messages instead of "connection refused" messages.) If you're using Apache and friends instead of IIS, you can not only handle more connections but also protect yourself from Revenge of Son of CV.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yes, you're entirely right, as anyone who would bother to even slightly check before posting would see. From the very first line of the description in the mkswap(8) man page:
mkswap sets up a Linux swap area on a device or in a file.
There's no need to do any loopback mount silliness. Also, this isn't unique to Linux -- both Solaris and Irix can swap to files. This is *nix, after all -- the "everything is a file (stream)" idea runs pretty deep.
That name sounds familiar...
I smell a Lycos lawsuit!
I get disturbed every time I read about linux and the "desktop" market. It seems to me that what makes a successful desktop market OS is one functions similar to the OS's people already use (windows, macOS..). The goal here seems not to come up with new and better was of doing things, but to make everything as similar to what people know as possible. Unfortunately, what people are used to seems to be bloated GUI's and "user friendly" programs that don't provide the same functionality as their more advanced counterparts.
VIM comes to mind as an example (nothing against you EMACS users out there). It's far from what would be considered a "desktop" editor or "user friendly", but in the hands of someone who is accustomed to it, it becomes a very powerful tool. I guess my point is that what makes a good "desktop" OS is not necessarily what makes a good OS.
I suppose this is the advantage of having different distributions though, give the "desktop" users what they want and the rest of us can do our own thing.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
However, I am increasingly getting the idea that trying to do a me-too of Windows for the desktop is missing the point. Windows has already created its market segment and is abandonning it with
What would be useful is to pitch an environment where people can use their old files with little effort but get something above Windows.
The obvious choice there is security. As many IT managers are trying to address the Windows/Outlook/Word/... virus problem at the Firewall they will find out in a couple of years that there is no point in trying to do that. First, you will not stop them all. Second, in thinking you can address the issues at the gate makes you lax in addressing them elsewhere.
The best place to stop virusses is to make the workstation platform stop them, or in fact not propagate them. That is where a Linux-based distro could add value. Create an environment where users only run apps in a sandbox that prevents apps to do uncontrolled things like wipe the user's files, send virusses, send personal info to untrustworthy@offshore.spy.
The openness of Linux and other open software makes this task possible where it is impossible with closed Micro$oft apps.
just my 2 eurocents.
Ok, I can see your point with the clueless users. But as far as my comment goes, I couldn't care less if the reviewer was man, woman or somewhere inbetween. :-P
As far as fragmentation goes, that was more of a joke than anything else.
HOWEVER, the dhcp client had tons of trouble with my cable modem. It setup fine, but would never stay connected for more than a couple of minutes. I had to keep re-running dhclient just to check email. I tried power cycling the modem + all the other obvious and not so obvious fixes. Nothing would keep Lycoris connected to Charter Cable's service for more than a couple minutes at a time.
A quick install of Mandrake and no problems. I'd say Lycoris has some things going for it, but Mandrake still runs circles around it.
Having used Lycoris, I can say that it is an excellent choice as a desktop OS. Everything works very nicely right out of the box. Installation is easy. There is only one of each type of program. The interface is clean. Configuration is totally easy.
Let me first say that I am an experienced user of Mandrake, Red Hat, Suse, and Slackware. This is the best choice in a lean simple-to-use distibution. It doesn't have all of the extra crap that you see on a Suse or Red Hat distribution, but it is simple to install for novice users, unlike Slack.
If you want to compile programs from sources, it is as simple as downloading and burning a 150 MB developer's ISO (there aren't 3 disks as the review states). The faq tells you how to install all of the delevoper's RPMS.
This is totally ideal for novice Linux users or businesses. Even Wine works right out of the box. I was totally impressed with this and as a result I ordered a retail copy even though it is the same as the download edition.
But why am I not using it on my main computer? I missed playing Metal of Honor: Allied Assult. I aim to buy a laptop soon, and I will be using Lycoris on that. It is an excellent solution, and a well-thought peice of software. I expect that the next release will be even better.
My only real complaint is the partitioning wizard. I didn't particularly like the way that it was structured in comparision to Mandrake's graphical wizard, or Slackware's fisk based setup. It just seemed to clunky (as it normally does on a Caldera install) and the best option is to just let it do a default partition setup.
Windows users can't do that kind of things.
But every Linux user will find out sooner or later that this is possible.
Try MPlayer.
Whoa! Thanks for that link and program, dude!
I'm a big jezzballer on Win98, and this looks like a great replacement! I can't wait to try it out tonight. I'm trying to go all Linux, and the little things like this help make my life a better place.
Thanks a lot. I appreciate this. I tried the Linux Chess game, and got my butt kicked like 40 times by the computer before I gave up nearly in tears.
Thanks again for contributing what I consider to be a valuable little time-waster.
Mike M.
p.s. Maybe next you can make a version with Bill Gates' head floating around, and Tux cuts off *HIS* "air supply" with the GnuGun.
You fat fucking smelly Greek whore! Do you even wash on the rare occasions when your husband wants to fuck you? I bet your arse smells like a pig farm after eating all of the fucking pork and potatoes you cook-- you do nothing but sit all day, sweating and farting. It must smell like a swamp where criminals dump bodies in the sweltering heat.
Do you even shave? You sound like a lazy fucking wart of a housewife who wouldn't even bother. I bet the place is a mess too: dishes needing done, a layer of dust over everything, and stains and spills here and there. What a fucking pig-- a hairy fucking Greek bitch-pig.
Oh yeah, and your "skills" are laughable. You can't code for shit-- there's more holes in your PHP site than in a Greek brothel. Your English is terrible, which is pathetic for an editor-in-chief of a news site that reports in the language. Your obvious biases and slants make you look even more silly and unprofessional, as well as your multi-paragraph rants and fits of rage you write in your own forums. It's no wonder no one takes you seriously.
In short, ELQ, FUCK YOU. You are a loser, a no-lifer, a wanna-be, and a fecal smear in the world of technology. You are a detriment to the community you claim you serve. I challenge you to refute one thing I have said. You can't; it's all true.
And you know it.
-Turkish Delight
Eugenia--
Have you ever taken a step back and looked at your life? Taken a calming deep breath, cleared your head, and assessed the situation? Looked around at what you have made for yourself, what you've done and how it's affected you? If you had, it wouldn't be hard to see that things aren't as rosy as most people would be comfortable with; furthermore, it seems as if you're not comfortable with you or your situation either. It's no large feat to realize that things in your life are falling apart, and have been for quite a while. In fact, you don't really seem to have a life now and all that you own or have is going to go away eventually because it's not yours. Yes, Eugenia, here's the simple, terrible truth: your life is in shambles and it's only getting worse.
Let's take a look at the swill and depravity that you live in.
Your Slashdot journal entry from Saturday, March 02, 2002 encapsulates your attitude toward hygiene (or lack thereof) in one sordid little pill:
there is only ONE thing I can't stand: The upstairs people. They do things with the water at 6:30 in the morning, every morningEugenia, this is known as bathing. The concept may be foreign to your rancid Greek arse but it's a fact of life to millions of Americans everyday. Oops! I forgot you're not an American citizen. Well, we'll touch on that later...
Here are a few quotes out of your Slashdot journal, taken from Sunday, March 03 through Thursday, March 14, 2002 that do well to exemplify your lack of will-power and discipline.
Today, I started a "real" diet. And yes, this time, the diet IS HERE TO STAY [...] my diet goes well [...] Diet goes ok, I suppose. I mean, I feel that I do a more balanced diet now, as opposing of losing weight right here, right now. I hope it continues well [...] I feel a bit weak, but it is not too bad [...] Argh, I got a terrible headache now [...] I am roasting some pork and oven potatoes
Within just a short eleven-day period we see a rapid downward spiral into fleshly indulgence and lack of self-control, hastened by physical sickness and ailments resulting from simply eating properly. Your body has attuned itself so finely to your horrid eating habits that it actually grows ill over these eleven days to the point that finally, in desperation over a migraine, you cook up a grease-laden meal to satiate your thirst for all things fat.
Have you no self control? Look at yourself! You have a gut that just won't go away-- you look like an ugly, stinky, fat little troll even on your wedding day for Christ's sake! Have you no pride or respect for yourself? Not even just enough to make you stave off those pork and potatoes? Gluttony will destroy your life, Eugenia. It's already destroyed your body.
Eugenia, it's clear to me (and everyone else) that you're mentally unbalanced and delusional. Please, seek help immediately. You are in dire need of counseling and/or therapy for a myriad of issues, among which are hygeine, self-discipline, and proper English grammar. We're behind you all the way, Eugenia, you can do it.