Posted by
timothy
on from the version-number-fever dept.
meisenst writes "Lindows 2.0.0 is out, and features, among other things, the ability to browse Windows network shares and map them as you would on a Windows machine. The ISO release notes are here(1), the announcement is here(2) (for now, anyway), and some screenshots are here(3). Looks good!"
Seriously...the more we make a big fuss about things like this, the worse Linux looks. Anyone not familiar with Linux would think "So does this mean that Linux users couldn't see Windows shares until just now? What else does Linux not have?"
-- ...
Re:Michael Robertson Is Cooperative
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Saying Michael Robertson is cooperative when Bruce Perens asks him to do something... is like saying the pope listens to people who happen to be cardinals...
Another step in the wrong direction
by
tokki
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Linux and open source needs to just drop X as the GUI, and come up with something new. Something developed with the general consumer in mind. Something that doesn't require KDE or Gnome to patch it's many shortcomings.
Why are we all deluding ourselves into thinking that X11 and it's KDE/Gnome companions are viable desktop environments for consumers when they really aren't. It does the open source movement a disservice to constantly hype up an inferior platform while ignoring it's many shortcomings, simply because it says "open source" or "Linux".
Re:Another step in the wrong direction
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Here comes the "X sucks" post again. What is wrong with X? Why break all compatibility just to ditch X? Why ditch X at all?
1) There are no good alternatives. Period. DirectFB doesn't support nearly as many cards, and Berlin isn't even ready.
2) Network transparency. Some people claim that it's useless today but that's just false. It's still being used in corporate environments and it's becoming more and more important in the embedded market. If you want to create an alternative, it better be network transparent.
3) X is proven. It's more than 15 years old now. Don't think X sucks just because XFree86 isn't the best implementation.
4) X is extensible. Nearly all shortcomings can be worked around using extensions. Take a look at XRender for example. Or DRI. Or DGA. And in the near future: translucent windows, screen resizing and rotation (RandR or something).
5) X is fast enough. No X isn't slow. Moving windows doesn't seem to be smooth, but that's because of the communication between the window manager and the window, not because X is slow. When I switched to Metacity, moving windows suddenly became *a lot* smoother. Yes, X communicates through sockets. But locally, pixmaps (95% of all traffic) are transferred through shared memory (at least XFree86 does). CPUs are becoming faster and faster, so socket overhead should become smaller and smaller. Of course, assuming that the driver is good and fast.
6) XFree86 configuration is currently complicated. But that won't stay that way. Why ditch XFree86 and replace it with something new and incompatible when you can just improve XFree86? The developers are already planning on getting rid of XF86Config completely and go for hardware autodetection.
Re:Another step in the wrong direction
by
spitzak
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A lot of people here are saying "you don't have to replace X, you can fix it". And this is true, so in fact the original poster is wrong. But what is correct is that I don't see any sign of anybody "fixing" X. And it very much needs it.
Want some examples:
1. "Extensions" should not be allowed without a library that detects the extension and simulates (however crudly) the extension when it is not there. The purpose is not to make your program work on older systems, but to make it so you don't have to put any "if" statements in there when writing software that uses the extension. Becasue of the lack of this, NO extensions since about 1986 have ever been successful, all the ones that anybody uses are assummed to be there by the software (shared memory, shape). The only example I know of a correctly-written extension is Xft, which does emulate itself on old X11 servers, and you will notice that it is being used quite a lot!
2. Get rid of colormaps. I mean totally, they are GONE. The server should not report any "visuals" other than a single "true color" visual. If the hardware is not true color then it simulates it by using a color cube, the contents of this cube cannot be accessed or queried by an application and it cannot tell this is being done.
3. Absolute guaranteed support of every image format of 1, 3, and 4 channels with any number of bits that is a power of 2 from 1 to 32. Currently a library that wants to do this has to make an NxM set of translations, from an arbitrary input image format to an arbitrary one depending on the X server. If this crap was moved to the server it would only be an Nx1 set of transformations, vastly less, because the server knows exactly what the output format is. Also do alpha mixing of 4 channels images. I don't care how freaking slow it is, just do it so we don't have to do something even slower in the program. While you are at it, you should be able to read back an arbitrary image format from the screen and the server does the conversion. And it should use shared memory or whatever the fastest possible communication is *automatically*, not by me setting up the shared memory extension!
4. Keith, if you are writing Xrender extension, please try to make the interface so it is not confusing! I have a window id, I want to say "draw_into(window)" and then "moveto(x,y); lineto(x,y),... fill()". The main thing is that there is no reason for a "context" argument. OpenGL has worked without one forever, even in multithreaded, and you will notice that OpenGL is portable between systems and toolkits.
Re:Looks good... but where's the Windows support?
by
chill
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The point is to stop using MS Office, as well as MS Windows.
For a large number of businesses, StarOffice or OpenOffice will handle what they need. Are they perfect? No, especially in converting documents with Macros.
Moving to a Linux desktop is a COST and CONTROL issue. Linux/OpenOffice for 10,000 desktops costs $0 -- or maybe $79 if you want to buy a disk and save the download time. A knowledgable admin can then create a custom "Kickstart" for the install, and image the drives using "dd" -- saving money on Norton Ghost in the process.
A bit of effort on the part of company admins, coders and you can save a LOT of cash on licenses. Not to mention the $$ involved with keeping the licenses current, on file and in compliance.
But, you're right in the SOME Windows support should be offered. Maybe a partnership with the CrossOver or WineX people so people who *NEED* a Windows app have an option.
--
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
OS/2 is the PERFECT example! Do you know what killed OS/2? No, it wasn't IBM's marketing. It was lack of Win32 compatibility, as well as lack of hardware compability. All the apps and drivers were being written for Windows, and IBM had to run around begging developers.
I mean, IBM used to ship OS/2 AND Windows 3.1 (3.1!!) on the same boxes. You had to go through a rigamorole to delete OS/2 and install Win 3.1. Yet everyone did, because the software selection and hardware select for OS/2 completely sucked.
Compability is everything! It's been proven time and time again.
-- Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Re:User vs Root
by
Minstrel78
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Lindows "solves" the problem by simply having the user run as root all the time. I frankly can't see how Lindows is anything but the worst of both worlds.
Re:Something else to consider...
by
rseuhs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Exactly, there is certainly a market for these things, even though it's not perfect for everybody.
Another example is the kiosks at our campus. All they do is run all day and display one webpage (the institute's webpage) to let students subscribe to lessions.
Or I saw a laptop in a bar whose sole purpose is to play mp3s all day long.
Nobody can tell me that these machines have to run Windows.
Re:We tested Lindows....
by
rseuhs
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Actually, Lindows has something that every other Linux distribution lacks:
Good marketing. Just the name "Lindows" attrackts a lot of users. Thousands of ex-RedHat users who have only seen GNOME will love Lindow's KDE desktop and will think that's the difference between Linux (which is KDE for them) and Lindows.
OEM contracts. Walmart sells those preinstalled. Many of the 200$ PCs will be used as web/email/simplewordprocessing computers, which can be done with any Linux distribution, also Lindows.
Of course many will upgrade to real Linux distributions, but as a bridge from Windows, Lindows seems quite nice for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Lindows discovers Samba. Amazing.
Seriously...the more we make a big fuss about things like this, the worse Linux looks. Anyone not familiar with Linux would think "So does this mean that Linux users couldn't see Windows shares until just now? What else does Linux not have?"
...
Saying Michael Robertson is cooperative when Bruce Perens asks him to do something... is like saying the pope listens to people who happen to be cardinals...
Linux and open source needs to just drop X as the GUI, and come up with something new. Something developed with the general consumer in mind. Something that doesn't require KDE or Gnome to patch it's many shortcomings.
Why are we all deluding ourselves into thinking that X11 and it's KDE/Gnome companions are viable desktop environments for consumers when they really aren't. It does the open source movement a disservice to constantly hype up an inferior platform while ignoring it's many shortcomings, simply because it says "open source" or "Linux".
The point is to stop using MS Office, as well as MS Windows.
For a large number of businesses, StarOffice or OpenOffice will handle what they need. Are they perfect? No, especially in converting documents with Macros.
Moving to a Linux desktop is a COST and CONTROL issue. Linux/OpenOffice for 10,000 desktops costs $0 -- or maybe $79 if you want to buy a disk and save the download time. A knowledgable admin can then create a custom "Kickstart" for the install, and image the drives using "dd" -- saving money on Norton Ghost in the process.
A bit of effort on the part of company admins, coders and you can save a LOT of cash on licenses. Not to mention the $$ involved with keeping the licenses current, on file and in compliance.
But, you're right in the SOME Windows support should be offered. Maybe a partnership with the CrossOver or WineX people so people who *NEED* a Windows app have an option.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
OS/2 is the PERFECT example! Do you know what killed OS/2? No, it wasn't IBM's marketing. It was lack of Win32 compatibility, as well as lack of hardware compability. All the apps and drivers were being written for Windows, and IBM had to run around begging developers.
I mean, IBM used to ship OS/2 AND Windows 3.1 (3.1!!) on the same boxes. You had to go through a rigamorole to delete OS/2 and install Win 3.1. Yet everyone did, because the software selection and hardware select for OS/2 completely sucked.
Compability is everything! It's been proven time and time again.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Lindows "solves" the problem by simply having the user run as root all the time. I frankly can't see how Lindows is anything but the worst of both worlds.
Another example is the kiosks at our campus. All they do is run all day and display one webpage (the institute's webpage) to let students subscribe to lessions.
Or I saw a laptop in a bar whose sole purpose is to play mp3s all day long.
Nobody can tell me that these machines have to run Windows.
Of course many will upgrade to real Linux distributions, but as a bridge from Windows, Lindows seems quite nice for me.