Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards Announced

aws4y writes "Linux Journal is reporting the results of its readers choice awards, among the winners are Slashdot for favorite Linux web site, Debian for favorite distro, Evolution for favorite email client and VIM for favorite editor."

Comments

Now that they love us...

[c_oflynn]

As a giant thank-you for picking Slashdot as fav discussion site, lets all go drop by their servers ;-)

finally

[metalac]

good thing RedHat didn't come accross as the best distro once again :)

Re:finally

[Jonathan the Nerd]

Gentoo will win next year, and EVERY YEAR AFTER FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, Gentoo is my favorite distribution, but I'm willing to admit it does have its disadvantages. Ever try to compile KDE on a Pentium II? I have. Multiple times. And every single upgrade, no matter how minor, requires a complete recompile. (Yes, I'm aware that I could just use binary packages, but I'm a control freak, and I can't stand the thought of using any software that wasn't compiled with -O47 -fabsolutely-suicidal-optimizations.)

Re:finally

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Ever try to compile KDE on a Pentium II?

Yes.

xanadu@set / $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 5
model name : Pentium II (Deschutes)
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 348.223
cache size : 512 KB


I have a MMX-200 at home. Makes a great router/firewall and all, but I got interested and tried to get a bit fancy with it. That idea when up in flames not much faster than the Hindenburg. I conpiled everything on my PIV-2.4GHZ and mounted the portage binary dir and installed it that way...

Re:finally

[bogie]

Why because then the poll would be accurate?
I hate when polls get ballot stuffed.

Re:finally

[caluml]

Ever try to compile KDE on a Pentium II?

Yep. emerge kde and go to bed.
You don't have to watch it actually compile, you know.
You also don't have to upgrade it every time a new ebuild comes out.

Freshmeat!

[Davak]

Where is freshmeat?

Freshmeat has to be the most addicted, most refreshed site that I know of.

It's like crack knowing that you can go and get new, exciting, cutting-edge software... and hell, it's updated all day long.

I love slashdot... but I think freshmeat deserved a mention as well.

Davak

Re:Freshmeat!

[gmhowell]

I avoid Freshmeat for exactly that reason. Last time I regularly read it, I was downloading source, config, make, etc. at least 20-30 times per day. It's like browsing the porn section at the video store and trying to pick just one.

Re:Freshmeat!

[xenoweeno]

It reminds me of my days checking Aminet's recent uploads page over and over back in my Amiga days.

If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution....

[tcopeland]

...you'll find Outport very handy (here's a screenshot).

It works quite well; I was able to convert most of my data with it.

Invalid Results

[pavon]

Wow, this is pure religious war fodder! What were they thinking? Linux Journal must be secretly run by MS, plotting to destroy linux from the inside out by fostering infighting!

Oh, and I demand a recount - they were using an inferior plurality tallying method. We all know that more people prefer emacs and it would have won if it's vote wasn't split between GNU emacs and Xemacs.

Re:Invalid Results

[devphaeton]

[b] Wow, this is pure religious war fodder! What were they thinking? Linux Journal must be secretly run by MS, plotting to destroy linux from the inside out by fostering infighting![/b]

You wanna go discuss that outside,? ;oP

Re:Invalid Results

[RevMike]

We all know that more people prefer emacs...

No, very few people prefer emacs, they just take up far more system resources than the vi/vim majority.

First round goes to the forces of light - the vi/vim camp!

Re:Invalid Results

[murphyslawyer]

You wanna go discuss that outside,?

No, I'm a Slashdot reader. The Yello Face burns us.

Re:Invalid Results

[twoslice]

I checked, most of the Debian support came from Florida...

Re:Invalid Results

[jonadab]

> We all know that more people prefer emacs and it would have won
> if it's vote wasn't split between GNU emacs and Xemacs.

No, I'm afraid there are many who prefer vim. Some nonsense about
it taking less time to load (which is of course silly considering
you only ever need to load your editor after you upgrade it (or
upgrade your kernel)), or something about cursor-movement keys being
for wussies, or somesuch, or meaningless complaints about the default
key bindings being bad (well, of course the defaults are bad; that's
why you _change_ them...) -- you know how people are -- they prefer
what they're used to, and don't like to take the time to learn
something (e.g., lisp) even if it will ultimately save them lots
of time. So it doesn't surprise me that vim is more popular than
Emacs. Heck, C is more popular than Perl, too; that doesn't make
it better. Back in my day, we didn't tolerate such whining and
infighting; all we had was software we wrote with our own hands in
binary using vacuum tubes, and we _appreciated_ it, because we knew
where we came from and understood discipline and .... Oh, am I
rambling? Let me tell you about rambling, sonny, why, when I was
a young whippersnapper...

Re:Invalid Results

[devphaeton]

No, I'm a Slashdot reader. The Yello Face burns us.

Actually, wouldn't that be:

The Cursed Yellow Face burnses us! Yessss!!!

Re:Invalid Results

[eternalWayfarer]

| So it doesn't surprise me that vim is more popular
| than Emacs. Heck, C is more popular than Perl,
| too; that doesn't make it better.

but in this case Emacs would be rather compared to Java. Running in windows based VMWare image (host would be Linux). And still this would be less bloat and less complex than Emacs^WThe other Editor.

edt on the other hand..

Re:Invalid Results

[jonadab]

> | So it doesn't surprise me that vim is more popular
> | than Emacs. Heck, C is more popular than Perl,
> | too; that doesn't make it better.
> but in this case Emacs would be rather compared to Java.

Don't be absurd. elisp is a much higher-level language than Java.
Java is, by comparison, much more like C or C++. elisp is not
quite Perl, but it's the next best thing, and actually it has
a couple of really nice facilities that are better than anything
comparable that Perl has -- notably, buffers and markers.

> And still this would be less bloat and less complex than Emacs

The reputation of Emacs for bloat is quite overblown. Yeah, the
source code tarball is rather on the large side of enormous, but
due to the miracle of autoloading, roughly zero percent of that
is loaded in memory at any given time. This "Emacs is huge and
bloated" idea came into being during an era when a megabyte of
RAM was a very large amount, more than the whole multiuser system
probably had available. In today's terms, it's rather small.

As far as complexity... well, yeah, Emacs is complex, because it
has lots and lots of features, but you only have to learn the
features you need.

The only situation I can think of where Emacs is too large is the
bootable floppy scenerio, and frankly vim is too large really for
that too. For bootable floppies, I go with UED, which is small
enough to go on a bootable single-sided, single-density 5.25"
floppy with room to spare and will load from the hard drive on
an 8086 at 4.7MHz faster than the screen can refresh. Try *that*
with vim. Ha.

Re:Invalid Results

[eternalWayfarer]

> Try *that* vim on a psion revo.. works like a charm.

Uhh what

[Sir Haxalot]

Slashdot for favorite Linux web site
Since when has Slashdot been a Linux website?

Re:Uhh what

[bc90021]

According to this since at least 2002, but I think it's more like since 1997... ;)

Re:Uhh what

[Skeezix]

Since they started publishing Linux stories, which has pretty much been since the beginning.

Re:Uhh what

[NineNine]

Since when has Slashdot been a Linux website?


You're new here, aren't you?

Re:Uhh what

[Sir Haxalot]

You're new here, aren't you?
Sir Haxalot's Latest 24 of 261 Comments
Yes.

Re:Uhh what

[Molt]

Ah, you made the mistake of thinking Slashdot was unbiased professional journalism? It's a common mistake, keep reading it and the symptoms will go away though.

Re:Uhh what

[jo42]

Since the day when all the Linux fag-boys started hanging out here...

No suprises really..

[fault0]

This is pretty much the same as it was last year.

The "big three", OpenOffice, Mozilla, and KDE will probably continute to the most liked office suite, web browser, and desktop environment, respectively.

OpenOffice has won it since it's maturation, Mozilla since it's maturation (and the death of NS 4.7), and KDE has won it's category since 1999 (when the desktop environment category was introduced)

Re:Here go the browser wars...!

[quigonn]

Evolution is just like Outlook. In our office, we have a number of former Outlook users, who could us from the first second on. Evolution is definitely one of the killer applications that make Linux on the desktop more widespread.

Audio player XMMS

[bigjnsa500]

I have to disagree partly with this. Although its good for streaming and a small collection of music, but it shows its age when you have 10s of thousands of music files. There are no catagories, album cover display, sort by album/artist or ID3 displays, the skins are crap (same ones for years now), no MonkeyAudio, randomize sucks, takes forever to load a 18,000+ file playlist, etc.. Shall I go on?

I want the power and ease of use of RealOne, simple.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[Chris_Mir]

1. RIAA reads parent post (18,000+ file playlist)
2. RIAA knocks on door
3. ?
4. Profit!

lame.. I know :p

Re:Audio player XMMS

[Flamerule]

Speaking of XMMS problems....

Anyone else moderately-to-extremely annoyed at how in the track info listing in "View File Info", the "Comment" field is rendered useless because (at least in ogg) xmms looks for a "=" to start the comment field, instead of the proper "COMMENT="? So I have to go someplace else just to load up the track and see who the fuck the violinist is on Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. Is this an oversight that's never been fixed, or some bizarre "feature"?

It would also be nice if the playlist window could remember where you were last looking / where the last file you played was, instead of reverting to the beginning of the listing every time you restart it.

Don't want to get too vehement, since it is free software, but why did active development stop? All I really want is a winamp in linux, and xmms is a decent replacement, but nonetheless pretty inferior. I've tried to go to some other players -- zinf, for one. It was buggy as hell and crashed often... whatever.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[Otter]

If Apple had introduced a jukebox player like itunes and a winamp player, the winamp player would have probably been more popular. It was always like that, as before audion, macamp was the most popular, which was a direct winamp clone like xmms is.

I dunno -- the preference of Linux users seems to be shifting towards the new iTunes-like players like Juk and (which is the popular new GTK one, Rhythmbox?).

Re:Audio player XMMS

[bigjnsa500]

Its definitely a good player, but that's it. The problem is once get a large playlist, your moving towards a whole nother environment. I did some freshmeat searches and found a few program I might use. I forget what this type of software is called, something like groupware for music...

Anyway, all of them use there own frontend for categorizing and sorting, then call XMMS just to play the song. Maybe one day I can hope Real will port all of RealOne to Linux.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

To be honest, I have zero problems with XMMS other than I've yet to figure out how to play a CD with it. Open Location, no go. Open DIrectory (not that you can actually mount an ACD), no go. There's no "play device" (/dev/cdrom)or something like that option for XMMS (someone want to give me a bit of a clue here?)

xmms 1.2.7-r25, Gentoo (as new as it gets)

Re:Audio player XMMS

[fault0]

I think that's because xmms has been developmentally dead for a while now. It's still using gtk 1.2.x, while the next generation of distros will only ship with a few gtk 1.2.x apps (xmms will likely be one of them.)

The development and maturation of xmms2 will hopefully fix that.

The good thing about winamp-style players is that they stay out of the way, without being too out of the way. Juk, for example, can sit in the systray as one icon. For me, this is too out of the way. If you bring up the real juk window, you get a massive behemoth of a window. That's too much in my way. Just doesn't feel right.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[matlhDam]

Set the CD device and the directory you want the tracks to show up in using the CD Input Plugin Preferences, then go Open File and browse to that directory (/mnt/cdrom in my case, YMMV). You should have the tracks listed there.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[proj_2501]

I have never seen this problem. I play audio CDs through my sound card with no problems. Have you tried configuring the cd audio plug in? there should be a mount directory type thing there.

(iirc you want to NOT mount the cd, but still go to /mnt/cdrom)

Re:Audio player XMMS

[tuffy]

xmms 1.2.7-r25, Gentoo (as new as it gets)

xmms is actually up to 1.2.8 now. The VorbisGain support is nice.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[cow ninja]

FAQ Question 12

It's a little tricky but it will work

Re:Audio player XMMS

[bogie]

Switch to Rythmbox. XMMS is caught in a timewarp like you said. Fine if your one of the rare people who creates hundreds of playlists but not really practial for a lot of people.
You could also try Zinf. It also unlike XMMS at least makes an attempt to try to make navigating and organizing your music collection possible.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[jazzmans]

I adore XMMS, for playing my large (230 gig) collection of wav and mp3's, it's fast as hell, and random kicks ass compared to anything in the microsoft world. I could care less about what the skins do, I have simultaniously got GQ view running all my 10k images on random. funny, different strokes, jaz

Re:Audio player XMMS

[bigjnsa500]

I don't create large playlists, rather I just load them all in Directory Add. But the problem is once all of them are loaded up, you can't just play one artist or one album. This forces me to make playlists for each directory or each album, then load individually. This is a big pain in the you know what.

I favor something like RealOne that sorts (based on ID3 tags) Artist and Album. This gives me a very easy tree view of all Artists with their associated albums.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[repetty]

"Well, that's your own damned fault. Make your own skin, or download one of the veritable millions that are out there."

I have looked at so many skins that I'm sick. You know what? They suck. Every one.

Oh, they're kewl and all, but there's not one that's pleasant to use.

In fact, the skins are so bad that they actually make XMMS suck a bit too, which is a pity.

BTW, I'm not going to make a skin myself. If making a functional skin is possible, don't you think it would have been done by now?

XMMS is an example where Linux developers work too hard at copying Windows-compatible software instead of actually making a better product.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[WWWWolf]

Categories? I open playlist, and there's my categories, in neatly arranged .m3us.

Album cover display? I don't know why people have such an obsession with the looks of the music. I tend to listen to the music with my ears, not my eyes. Cover displays are useless. Visualizations are useless.

Skins? Skins suck. I far more prefer global, uniform UI look - yes, this is why Rhythmbox rules and why I'll be using it once gstreamer gets 1.0 out or something like that. I mean, come on. people actually use these? They're stronger than I am and have a freaking huge screen, I tell ya. I use the NeXTAMP skin on XMMS, goes well with the WindowMaker!

I used to have a huge playlist, but these days, I just split the thing in several files.

There are some other things I don't like about XMMS: GTK+ 1.x, the plugin API isn't as cool as it could be (the plugins can't get song metadata from player), and there's no built-in crossfade (there's a plugin that does this nicely, but it makes the wave display or the FFT display go way out of sync - not that I much care about any kind of visualizations anyway).

Re:Audio player XMMS

[aussiedood]

It would also be nice if the playlist window could remember where you were last looking / where the last file you played was, instead of reverting to the beginning of the listing every time you restart it.

It works like that for me. Perhaps you need to install an later version??? I am running 1.2.7.

Re:Audio player XMMS

[Flamerule]

Hey, thanks dude. I am running 1.2.7, but your comment gave me an idea, so I searched through the preferences menu, and sure enough, there's a "Save Playlist Position" setting.

Alright, that's one niggle gone.

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[fault0]

Kopete has a much nicer interface than Gaim, but over the last year, it's been horribly immature compared to Gaim. Gaim, on the other hand, is extremely mature. It's been aroun d for 5 years.

Perhaps kopete will manage to win next year, once it's shipped as part of KDE 3.2 in a few months.

Let the drink wars begin!

[Davak]

Coffee? Coffee?

I see Mt. Dew as the drink of the programming generation...

I enjoy coffee. Mt. Dew improves the code.

(until you've had way too much... and at that time all code goes to sh!t. But, hey, that's life)

Davak

What? Vim?

[Noryungi]

Vim for best editor?? What are these guys smoking? Where is Emacs?

Oh wait... I already use vim all the time. Ahem. Never mind me, carry on...

(Said firmly tongue-in-cheek, of course! Feel free to mod me down, now) ;-)

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[bigjnsa500]

One thing that I really, really hate about Kopete is that there is no option whatsoever to enable RETURN as send. Gaim/ICQ/LICQ all have this. When you hit return it should send the message. I hate have to take my hand off the keyboard just to click Send.. Argh!!!

VIM?

[ducomputergeek]

Geesh, I must be the only one that *still* uses PICO....

Re:VIM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope the "du" in your username does not stand for "Drexel University" because I'd really hate to be going to the same school with someone as lame as you.

Re:VIM?

[FileNotFound]

- Drexel Student
I like PICO!

Alright so it's semi lame and I use vi 99% of the time, still I'd rather use pico. Why not? It works.

By the way...I'm hating going to the same school as an AC.

PS - How's the Drexel Shaft handling you? They lost my insurance registrationg for the 3rd time so far..

Re:VIM?

[Haeleth]

Dunno about that, but I'm probably the only person here who regularly uses Windows Notepad. :p

Re:VIM?

[swillden]

Dunno about that, but I'm probably the only person here who regularly uses Windows Notepad.

Does that run under Crossover?

Re:VIM?

[WombatControl]

PICO? Please say you meant GNU nano (which is the default editor for Debian and has the same functionality as PICO without the onerous license.)

Re:VIM?

[spauldo]

They got a pine equivalent as well, perhaps?

Just wonderin' if anyone ever got around to replacing it. Pine rocked back in the day.

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[Karma Sucks]

The problem is that not many people know about Kopete. Guess it doesn't have a big enough distribution yet.

Red Bull and Mountain Dew Lose Ground.

[The Angry Mick]

Favorite Programming Beverage: COFFEE

Anyone care to venture a guess as to what today's marketing meeting will be about?

link

[AbdullahHaydar]

What's the deal with linking to slashdot in the article blurb? Isn't someone who is reading the article automatically already on slashdot (and most likely on the homepage, at least for today)?

Re:Here go the browser wars...!

[lanswitch]

Well, and after switching from Links I can see the advantages of Mozilla...

Firebird works good on my machine. Are you sure that you don't have configuration problems which cause mozilla to crash? Maybe it's hidden in your taskbar when starting up, so that when you launch it, it starts up for a second time? It will then surely ask for another profile, since the first one is already in use.

Re:WARNING!!! ORIGINAL ARTICLE HACKED!!!

[phlyingpenguin]

You made a mistake:

Favorite Network or Server Appliance: LINKSYS ROUTER

Linksys likes Linux.

I've mirrored SlashDot before it gets Slashdotted

[goldcd]

Here

Odd mix.

[lumpenprole]

Does it strike anybody else as odd that the favorite desktp is KDE and the favorite email app is Evolution? Are there that many people mixing the two? I'm genuinely wondering because I seem to get mixed results when I do that. That's why I stuck to kmail.

Re:Odd mix.

[fault0]

Yup, there are plenty of people using KDE and Evolution. Perhaps the upcoming release of KDE 3.2 along with Kontact will change that for some people. However, other people, like myself, will probably stick with Evolution for the following features:

1. Exchange 2000 support
2. Client side IMAP filtering

But.. I'd probably switch to using kmail/kontact partially if it had HTML editing =)

Re:Odd mix.

[BigGerman]

Does Evolution have Mozilla-like Bayesian Spam killing?
I could not find any references on the home page.

Re:Odd mix.

[drunk_as_in_beer]

Yeah, you'll notice that many of the popular apps are all GTK+ based. Gaim, Evolution, etc. I was using KDE and mostly GTK+ apps for a while. They run fine in KDE. Then I switched to Gnome. I find the KDE apps tend to load really slow in Gnome. The only thing I really like from KDE is the Konqueror file browser, though.

I think they should have include Favorite File Browser in this.

Re:Odd mix.

[fault0]

In the end, it's all about the features. There isn't a desktop environment that runs on UNIX systems that I'm aware of that can beat KDE in terms of features. People run Evolution for it's features too.

The next closest is probably GNOME 1.4.

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[fault0]

Agreed.. it breaks what almost all IM clients have used in the last 4 years.

I rememeber old versions of MacICQ used to do what Kopete does now, and it was annoying as fuck. It should at least be an option.

It's a joke or what?

[tirenours]

All of this is so stereotypical...
VIM, C++, Coffee!?

It don't show what is good on linux, it just show what the wannabies think is good. Come on... C++!

Re:It's a joke or what?

[fault0]

C++ is used almost exclusively by three of the biggest projects that won this year in terms of lines of code: Mozilla, OOo, and KDE.

C++ on UNIX-like systems has been on an uptake, and it's usage on large projects shows that it is good for maintainability and production of such projects.

Re:It's a joke or what?

[tirenours]

Gimp has been made in C and it is a large project. Gimp is popular and quite good. Does it mean that the C programming language is good for large and complicated projects?

Don't forget that C and C++ are dangerous languages that are prone to hard to find errors and dangerous errors. C and C++ are picked by newbies because it is popular.

Re:It's a joke or what?

[fault0]

Uhm, I said nothing about C. C can be used fine for large projects.

However, gimp is nowhere near as large in terms of LOC as Mozilla or OOo is. If you want to compare something, use the Linux Kernel. It is pretty large in terms of LOC.

> that are prone to hard to find errors and dangerous errors

At least with C++, many people use smart pointers (like in boost) or smart/automatic memory management. Both Mozilla and KDE (not familiar with OOo, but I'm sure it does too) make extensive use of both of them.

> C and C++ are picked by newbies because it is popular.

What do you suggest, rewriting Mozilla, OpenOffice, and KDE in something like Java or Python? That would be pathetically slow.

Re:It's a joke or what?

[H8X55]

i would have thought red hat would have been in there with the other stereotypes, but alas...

Re:It's a joke or what?

[tirenours]

The linux kernel uses the C language on purpose: A kernel is a low-level software, something that the C is good at. But the GIMP isn't what I call a low level software nor a small utility.

I'm not saying that you should use python (although I like python) to create every software. But choosing C++ or C for every project for the sake of its popularity is quite a weak reason. Are they the best languages? No. They are only good at some tasks. This is why there is a diversity in the programming languages kingdom: most languages are good at some task(s) and bad a others. You can choose the one that fits the most to your project or your team.

And for the newbies, they are influenced by the popularity of those languages. I've talked with a few ones that didn't wanted to learn anything else than C++ because everyone was using it. I clearly suspect that a good bunch of C++ users are like this, and have a very low programming culture.

Re:It's a joke or what?

[fault0]

I don't think you've ever properly used any higher-level C++ constructs. The STL, the boost libraries, helper classes in Mozilla, helper classes in Qt/KDE, and i'd imagine classes in OOo's framework all help produce a higher level C++. It brings the high speed of development of Python while keeping the high performance that C/C++ entails.

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[Drantin]

I haven't tried Kopete yet, but does ctrl+enter work?

Favorite Linux site

[ArmenTanzarian]

As in the one that gets me really excited about Linux: Windows Update

Not A Linux Site

[ticklemeozmo]

...among the winners are Slashdot for favorite Linux web site...

Who keeps telling me that /. is unbiased news and "we are a not a linux site"?

Re:Not A Linux Site

[Flamerule]

Who keeps telling me that /. is unbiased news and "we are a not a linux site"?

heh, what are you smoking? No one ever claims /. is unbiased -- everyone whines about how it is biased.

Anyway, being a "Linux site" doesn't have anything to do with being biased or not, it just means it covers Linux news.

Slashdot now gets /.'ed

[192939495969798999]

And now, for the first time ever, Slashdot itself gets /.'ed by one of it's own stories.... shouldn't that cause a paradox that destroys the universe, like if Marty saw himself in Back to the Future 2?

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[BanSiesta]

There is such an option. Settings->Configure shortcuts->Send message. Just set Return as your custom shortcut for this action, and you're done.

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[fault0]

> Goto settings and configure the shortcuts to send on hitting enter.

Ah, wow.. I didn't even think about that. I doubt many other people will either, and assume that kopete doesn't support this.

VIM best editor?

[ynohoo]

{flamebait} if VIM is the best editor available for Linux it could be a while before its ready for the mainstream{/flamebait}

Seriously, I use both vi & emacs when I have to, but I know IBM had better editors on mainframes 15 years ago, and Windows has plenty of good free editors available. Whats taking you guys so long? Having to memorise keyboard commands is not an intuitive interface.

Re:VIM best editor?

[RevMike]

As a vim zealot, I've got to flame you.

What do you use? SPF?

Come back when you've used EVE or pmate.

Re:VIM best editor?

[stratjakt]

It's not about intuitive interface, useful features, or ease of use.

It's about memorizing obscure commands to make you feel like you're a real computer genius, even if you only use your PC to write your ST:TNG/Farscape crossover erotic fanfiction.

Re:VIM best editor?

[mst76]

> Having to memorise keyboard commands is not an intuitive interface.

That's exactly what I told my piano teacher.

Re:VIM best editor?

[leoboiko]

Some people want intuitive interfaces. Some want powerful interfaces. Power is the reason I switched to GNU/Linux in the first place.

I don't care about the mainstream, ease of use or intuitiveness. Emacs is powerful, Vim is powerful, and that's why I use both.

Re:VIM best editor?

[scotch]

It's a readers choice award. The fact that they picked a programer's editor (vim, though the same could be said of emacs) indicates that the readers that voted were largely programmers. There are plenty of free mickey-mouse pointy-go-clicky editors available for X/linux, too. Any moron can program an editor with the sophistication of MS notepad with modern toolkits in under a day. Go to freshmeat and search for editors - there are probably many dozens. If you're prefer one of those to something with power, fine, just don't complain that Vim or emacs might be a tool of choice for someone who uses an editor all day long, every day.

And I don't recall that an "intuitive interface" was a criteria for any of the awards, nor even a criteria for a good application. It can help, but it's not always the most important consideration. The only "intuitive interface" is the nipple - everything else is learned.

Re:VIM best editor?

[ynohoo]

Heh, I've written my own - for Windows. Only useful for COBOL though (flame on!). But it does have a navigable treeview - why no one else has thought of this for when you're wading through a few thousand lines of code is beyond me.

For everything else I use PFE (again Windows).

P.S. long live Kibo!

Re:VIM best editor?

[RevMike]

The only "intuitive interface" is the nipple - everything else is learned.

I agree, but everyone else seems to want a touchpad on their laptop, or even carry around a mouse.

Re:VIM best editor?

[swillden]

The only "intuitive interface" is the nipple - everything else is learned.

Not true.

Even the nipple has to be learned. Ever watched a newborn trying to figure it out? Although the rooting and sucking reflexes are instinctive, it usually takes them two or three days to figure out how to set their mouth right and get a good grip.

Re:VIM best editor?

[Atario]

Having to memorise keyboard commands is not an intuitive interface.

So? The benefit of an interface being intuitive only lasts till you need to do something non-intuitive in the first place. If, after that point, all you have is the ability to do intuitive things, you're screwed. WYSIAYG (What You See Is All You Get) syndrome.

If, on the other hand, you want to start getting useful and complex things done quickly, memorizing cryptic commands is your best bet. (Hello, Unix/Linux users?)

Case in point: modern PC games. Commands are all cryptic keypresses which must be memorized. If you had to play by selecting commands with a mouse from a categorized menu -- you'd be dead before you pressed the first command.

P.S. YAY VIM! I've been using it for years (and plain VI before that).

Re:VIM best editor?

[madmaxx]

Best is always arguable ;-) Both VIM and Emacs, though, are incredible code-editors, and are mature, feature-rich, and fun. VIM and Emacs are not toys, they are heavy-duty tools ... hence the not-so-lean-learning-curve.

There are *hundreds* of free text editors for GNU/Linux though, some of which are incredibly easy to use. Gedit, Scintilla, Glimmer, Anjuta, Pico, Nano, Jed are a few I can think of off the top of my head. The free Java editors work well too (Jedit, etc.).

Re:VIM best editor?

[scotch]

Have we had this conversation before? The fact that a newborn baby, a creatrure with no apparent intelligence, survival skills, or other self-defense capabilities, can figure out the nipple in a few days makes it pretty fucking intuitive, in by book.

Re:VIM best editor?

[swillden]

Have we had this conversation before?

Not that I recall.

The fact that a newborn baby, a creatrure with no apparent intelligence

No apparent intelligence? You obviously haven't spent much time with infants; or else you haven't spent much time thinking about the massive complexity of the things they have to learn and understand. Recognizing faces, for example.

survival skills

The rooting and sucking reflexes, as well as a number of other instinctive abilities are survival skills.

or other self-defense capabilities

What does self-defense have to do with it? And, in any case, newborns come with a built-in self-defense mechanism -- the pre-programmed protective instincts of adults and the tools with which to trigger them.

can figure out the nipple in a few days makes it pretty fucking intuitive, in by book.

I don't consider a simple operation that takes three days to learn "intuitive".

"Intuition" is a slippery thing, though. To talk about this rationally, you really need to define the term clearly. It's not very intuitive ;-)

Re:VIM best editor?

[scotch]

No apparent intelligence? You obviously haven't spent much time with infants; or else you haven't spent much time thinking about the massive complexity of the things they have to learn and understand. Recognizing faces, for example.

I haven't spent a ton of time with infants, but I used to be one. Anyway, we're talking about newborns, not infants in general. Neborns don't recognize faces or anything else for much longer than 3 days. But they figure out the nipple. There is really nothing else a newborn figures out in the first week or longer of its life other than the nipple. Or perhaps you can name something? What are the "other instinctive abilities" of which you speak? Please constrain yourself to the time period in which the newborn "learns" the nipple, which I'm being generous in letting you set at 3 days, although everyone I've talked to has said the newborn figures it out passibly well the first day or even first hour of their lives.

I don't consider a simple operation that takes three days to learn "intuitive".

It wouldn't take you (hopefully) 3 days to learn, It takes something with virtually no skills for interfacing with the outside world (less than) 3 days to learn.

Why are we having this conversation again? Oh yeah, I said "nothing is intuitive, except the nipple". You're saying "the nipple is not intuitive". Since you're not arguing that other things are intuitive while the nipple is not, you are in effect arguing that nothing is intuitive, including the nipple, I conclude that our positions are close enough that we would appear to be bickering extremists to the outside observer. So on that count, I would agree to disagree with you over the point of the nipple.

The point of the quote "the only intuitive interface is the nipple, everything else is learned" is not really to pontificate on the nipple, but instead to point out that almost everything humans do is learned, and the ease of a task is greatly impacted by the abilities and experiences of the taskee. Your objections with respect to the veracity of the clause about the nipple don't affect the main purpose of the quote at all.

So, here you've sidetracked me into quibbling about nipples, but I don't care about the nipple. Instead, I would rather discuss the meaningfulness of the phrase "intuitive interface". If you don't want to discuss that issue and would rather focus on the nipple, you can just bugger off.

HAND

Re:VIM best editor?

[swillden]

It wouldn't take you (hopefully) 3 days to learn, It takes [someone] with virtually no skills for interfacing with the outside world (less than) 3 days to learn.

Which reinforces the point of the quote. "Intuition" is built from experience. The best definition of the word I've ever heard is "subconsciously applied experience". According to that, the nipple is non-intuitive by definition, because the infant *has* no relevant experience. (Note that it's not true that the newborn has no experience; they do learn some things in the womb).

As for whether or not the use of a nipple is intuitive to an adult... well, the usage is a bit different and it's also not entirely intuitive. Learning and practice is necessary. And fun!

Your objections with respect to the veracity of the clause about the nipple don't affect the main purpose of the quote at all.

As I pointed out, my quibbles about the clause strengthen the main purpose of the quote. To infants, with nearly zero experience, learning the nipple is hard and time-consuming.

BTW, those people who told you that most newborns get it in the first day/hour, are either wrong or are referring to artificial nipples. The female breast takes some learning. Many hospitals even offer support in the form of a person who comes in and teaches the mother how to teach the baby; it's not completely intuitive even for the mothers.

If you're wondering how I know about this, not only do I have four children of my own, but my wife and I volunteered at the local hospital's newborn ICU for three years. Although we worked primarily with parents of sick babies, helping them to cope, a great deal of "generic baby knowledge" of both normal and premature/sick babies was necessary.

But don't believe me: next time you're in a bookstore, pick up one of the many books for new mothers. They cover the topic quite well. You may also be surprised to find that such books are often thick and densely packed. Very little about babies, or children, or teenagers, is intuitive.

Re:Here go the browser wars...!

[H8X55]

Do you mean Mozilla Thunderbird?

Smooth move, Linux Journal..

[grub]

SCO had never heard of Debian before. Now that Debian is everyone's favourite distro, SCO will sue them too!

What about Favorite Linux Geek?

[El Cubano]

Here are some choices:

• Linus Torvalds
• Alan Cox
• Bruce Perens
• Robert Young (CEO, RedHat)
• Ian Murdock (Founder, Debian Project)
• RMS (but only if it is a vote for favorite GNU/Linux geek)

Re:What about Favorite Linux Geek?

[British]

Yes, let's nominate Linus Torvalds for best Linux Geek. Then let's proceed to change the name of the publication to "DUH! magazine".

Re:What about Favorite Linux Geek?

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

I think every list like this needs to include Donald E. Knuth.

Re:What about Favorite Linux Geek?

[eternalWayfarer]

seconded. on the other hand, could we just drop RMS? Thank you

Mozilla and Evolution

[RevMike]

I expect that Firebird will take the top browser spot once it matures.

Other than Outlook integration, has anyone an opinion on Thunderbird's future compared to Evolution?

Re:Mozilla and Evolution

[Brad Mace]

Evolution 1.0.5 which is currently in debian-testing has pretty crappy email, though the rest of the program is pretty nice. Hopefully the latest version (1.4) has improved that. So far, thunderbird is better for email than evolution in every way. Evolution has so many other features to worry about that it's unlikely it will match thunderbird.

Re:Mozilla and Evolution

[molarmass192]

Well, I use the Mozilla browser *and* mail client. Since I use both, I use Mozilla instead of Firebird.

As for the Moz mail client, my biggest rave is it's junk mail filter. Other than that it's a very basic email client, certainly not as feature full as Evolution but it's well organized, easy to use, and it just works. If you're looking for calendaring functionality, you're not going to find it in Moz mail. There's another app that adds that called Calendar but I've never used it. Mind you, I've been using Moz mail forever (NS 3.x) so I'm pretty accustomed to it now.

Re:Mozilla and Evolution

[repetty]

"[Mozilla is] certainly not as feature full as Evolution"

Oh, yeah, like Mozilla doesn't tell me what the temperature is. And every email app needs a calander or it just isn't an email app worth using.

I like 'em both (and use them both) but let's NOT encourage feature bloat any more than we have to.

--Richard

PS: That goes for Microsoft, too.

interesting "paradox"

[riggwelter]

I find it interesting that in the application categories, GNOME/GTK+ apps won out (Mozilla (yes, it's GTK+ remember), Evolution, Gaim, GIMP, even XMMS (still! GStreamer/Rhythmbox has a long way to come yet)), while the favorite desktop was KDE...

Do a lot of people run KDE, yet mostly use GTK+/GNOME apps then?

Re:interesting "paradox"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, KDE is an extremely mature desktop environment compared to GNOME, but it's app are extremely immature compared to their their non-kde equivalents:

Let's compare:

mozilla -> konqueror.. konqueror has gotten a lot better recently in kde 3.2-alpha, but it's still probably more immature than Mozilla.

evolution -> kmail.. again, kmail has gotten a lot more mature with kontact in kde 3.2-alpha, but it's still immature compared to kontact.

gaim -> kopete.. once again, kopete will be shipped as part of kde 3.2, but large architectural changes within the last year have caused lots of instability in kopete. it finally seems to be stabalizing now.

gimp -> krita.. the predecessor to krita, krayon (changed name due to trademark issues), was actually a quite usable app. However, krita's whole architecture was changed, and then the developer working on the architectural changes had to stop working on it for real life issues. it left krita without any usable tools and with no developers.

XMMS -> noatun.. I love KDE, but for kde4, noatun/arts has to go. It just sits there, taking 20% of my CPU by doing software mixing, even while properly configured to use ALSA. I'd rather take xmms, using 1% of my CPU, hardware mixing by my sblive drivers.

So yes, I've used KDE since GNOME 2.0 was released (I used GNOME 1.4 before that, but GNOME 2.x is pathetic), and have always used a bunch of non-kde apps. It's fine.

Re:interesting "paradox"

[0racle]

Why not, i just build Gnome 2.4, and have been using it since, i had used KDE3 before. Gnomes nice now, I'll probably keep using it as my desktop for now, but I still use all my KDE apps, kmail, kdevelop, knode k[insert normal name here]

To be perfectly honest I really looked at Gnome only because i use GDM and since upgrading to 2.4 from 2.2, it wont read the scripts to launch other window managers, and i cant find out why. oh well, at least Gnomes not bad now. except metacity, i dont like metacity

Re:interesting "paradox"

[McGarnacle]

Mozilla (yes, it's GTK+ remember)

Actually, it's XUL.

Re:interesting "paradox"

[riggwelter]

Actually, it's XUL.

Oh please, it's GTK+!

You can build it with GTK+ 1.2 or 2.x.

It uses native GTK+ widgets for scrollbars, buttons, etc...

It can be embedded within other GTK+ applications (Galeon, Epiphany...)

If it looks, acts and smells like it...

It's GTK+!

Re:interesting "paradox"

[McGarnacle]

No, it's Gtk. Not that you can see much of it - XUL provides most of the visible stuff - but the underlying system for displaying windows and stuff is Gtk.

Yep. But considering it doesn't follow user-defined GTK+ themes, and so look "integrated" with the rest of a user's GTK+ apps or Gnome desktop, I don't consider it GTK+.

Re:interesting "paradox"

[McGarnacle]

Oh please, it's GTK+!

See other thread.

It can be embedded within other GTK+ applications (Galeon, Epiphany...)

Galeon and Epiphany just use mozilla's rendering engine, the fact that they are both GTK+ apps is irrelevant. One could write a web browser in QT (didn't konqueror do this at one point?) using mozilla's rendering engine, if one so desired...

Sweet.

[Soulfader]

I hadn't known of this. Thanks.

Re:If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Destination: c\temp

This was about *NIX...

Why not postgresql?

[nbdy]

Most of time people select mysql. But postgresql is much more advance regarding to features, and not bad performance too....

Re:Why not postgresql?

[FroMan]

Agreed.

Between postgres and mysql, I definitely like postgres more. How easy can you get?


% initdb -D /var/postgres/
% postmaster -D /var/postgres
% createdb adatabase
% psql adatabase


That will get you up and running. With a few edits to /var/postgres/ config files and you are doing well. For all that you get for basically free a number of other features that are well beyond mysql.

Postgres works wonderfully for setting up a quick database. If you are more concerned for performance, then worry about the mysql/postgres debate. If you want a simple to setup database postgres does it for me.

Re:Why not postgresql?

[drunk_as_in_beer]

Is there a good library for using postgres from C++?

Re:Why not postgresql?

[FroMan]

You mean like odbc? Or do you mean like libpqxx?

Myself, I would avoid anything other than odbc/jdbc or another generic library for databases. Programming for a specific database is a bad plan in my view. There is a reason we use SQL to communicate with databases, why mess that up with using libpqxx or using native mysql calls? What you save in speed (assuming it is faster since it is native) you lose in portability.

Re:Why not postgresql?

[spauldo]

For me, it's the documentation.

I don't need most of the features postgres has - most of my stuff is just blog-style databases or simple tracking stuff (the one exception being a database I wrote for my business, tracking customers, tickets, and systems, but again, it didn't need anything fancy) so postgres' featureset is actually above my level of knowledge. Very little in mySQL is above my knowledge because I printed out a 3" binder worth of manual and read the technical parts of it. Hell, you could say that the mySQL manual taught me most of the SQL I know.

I looked over postgres docs a while back (about a year back I'd say) and they just didn't match what was available in the mySQL manual, much less the unoffical docs available elsewhere on the 'net. Damn near every question I have - even the stupid ones from not using SQL in a year - is easily locatable in the manual. One day, I'll teach myself all that fancy 'view' and 'subselect' stuff, but until I need it, I'm set to go with mySQL.

Note that if postgres has gotten better docs in the last year, then disreguard the previous rant - I'll be checking it out again prolly around christmas.

Vile

[The Ape With No Name]

What about Vile? If you don't use vile you are knuckdragging troglodyte that who probably attended a State College!

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[bigjnsa500]

I would have never seen that. Thanks man. Now I am finally *complete* ;) hehe...

Re:Here go the browser wars...!

[Eric Ass Raymond]

insisted on creating a new profile every time I launched it

I've been frustrated by the same thing.

I can open a new browsing window from the File menu in an existing browser window but I can't launch it from the taskbar. What's with this?

Is it the same silly open source mentality according to which it is not kosher to launch another copy of emacs if you need another buffer - you should use ctrl-x-5-2 instead...

Emacs!

[soboroff]

Favorite editor: Emacs
Favorite email client: Emacs
Favorite web browser: Emacs
Favorite office suite: Emacs
Favorite IDE: Emacs
Favorite programming language: Emacs Lisp
Favorite IM client: Emacs
Favorite source browser: Emacs
Favorite FTP client: Emacs
Favorite filesystem browser: Emacs
Favorite shell: Emacs
Favorite psychotherapist: Emacs
Favorite HTML editor: Emacs
Favorite windowing system: Emacs
Favorite newsreader: Emacs
Favorite calendaring tool: Emacs
Favority blog tool: Emacs
Favorite graphics tool: Em...er...Gimp!

Re:Emacs!

[ttyv0]

One of the slashdotters sigs would be a nice answer to this:
vi VS emacs wars are pointless...
vi is superior

Re:Emacs!

[kurosawdust]

Favorite graphics tool: Em...er...Gimp!

Emacs could actually win this one too (although still facetiously, but that fits in with the theme of your post, I gather :P). I only know this because i was browsing through O'Reilly's Learning GNU Emacs when I saw a picture of an ASCII-art "house", and looked on the previous page to find the section heading "Emacs Graphics Mode". Now I love emacs as much as the next man, but I think I speak for most of us when I say, "*shudder*"

Re:Emacs!

[WombatControl]

Hey! I create XPMs and SVG files in Emacs you insensitive clod!

OK, so I don't... but you could if you wanted to and were insane enough to try.

Re:Emacs!

[Basje]

Yeah, I agree. Emacs is a great integrated system. Too bad it's texts editor sucks so much.

Re:Emacs!

[po8]

Hee hee. Check out our Ricochet Robot site. Carl did all the SVG graphics you'll find there in a text editor...

Re:Emacs!

[wdr1]

Favorite graphics tool: Em...er...Gimp!

Dude!

emacs -f picture-mode

-Bill

SCO file lawsuit...

[D-Cypell]

The SCO corperation and its shareholders have filed a lawsuit against the publishers of Linux Journal.

They have issued the following statement...

"We have held a private poll with similar categories and many of the results are the same as that of the linux journal readers. Obviously somebody has access to our internal preference results (IPR) and are reproducing our preferences without permission. These opinions are solely owned by SCO corperation, however, we have kindly agreed to allow members of the linux community to share our opinions provided they send us $699 (increasing to $1099 after 2 weeks)."

Re:Here go the browser wars...!

[jonadab]

> Evolution is just like Outlook.

This explains a great deal. Given how cra^H^H^Hlousy Evolution is,
it makes me glad I have never had the misfortune to use Outlook.

Coffee ?

[argius]

Not for italians...

Elvis

[The Ape With No Name]

If you are not using Elvis then you are a scumsucking, RMS-subservient fool who probably failed out of a Philly-area private college. Elvis rules! Elvis is everywhere. Elvis is everything. Elvis is everybody, cuz Elvis is still the King.

Re:Elvis

[macshit]

The following is from etc/JOKES in the emacs distribution:

From: elvis@gnu.ai.mit.edu
To: emacs-19-bugs@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Subject: missing from etc/emacs.names
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 02:21:27 edt

Elvis
Masterminds
All
Computer
Software

Just so you boys know the score.

Thank you very Much,
The King

Re:Elvis

[Runagate Rampant]

Emacs
Lost
Vim
Is
Superior

This List Is Horribly Incomplete!

[BlackBolt]

... where is the "Cowboy Neal" option? THAT'S my favorite in ANY category!

Re:This List Is Horribly Incomplete!

[Khazunga]

You haven't been here in a while, have you?

Re:This List Is Horribly Incomplete!

[BlackBolt]

I figured that I could either make a Cowboy Neal joke, or a Natalie Portman hot grits joke; I settled on the Cowboy because "the classics never die".

And I still don't get why they dropped that poll option - just because Chris DiBona quit doesn't mean the new guy can't add in that one random option just for fun.

Re:WARNING!!! ORIGINAL ARTICLE HACKED!!!

[Bazzargh]

Favorite System Administration Tool: CTRL-ALT-DEL
Favorite Office Program: CLIPPY

what's the appeal of client-side IMAP filtering?

[waxmop]

I use procmail to handle that stuff. Then I can check my email from whatever IMAP client is handy. Is there an advantage of using client-side filtering vs. server-side?

Favorite OS to switch to

[plinius]

When the shit hits the fan and you need to actually get something done besides programming or webhosting, you switch to Windows and just do it.

Re:Favorite OS to switch to

[spauldo]

Only if you can't figure out how to do it in linux.

Re:Favorite OS to switch to

[plinius]

If your only reason for using Linux is to prove to yourself how clever you think you are, perhaps you should see a psychologist.

Favorite Portable Workstation ??

[morcheeba]

I noticed this:

Favorite Portable Workstation: QLI 15" AMD NOTEBOOKS

Since AMD laptops seem few and far between, I looked for some more info. It seems that QLI doesn't offer a 15" AMD option among the laptops they offer. The only AMD laptop they offer is 14.1", and if this is the one they meant, I have no idea why it would win. Other than the linux preinstall, it's totally undistinguished. The screen is 1024x768, has shared graphics memory, and the main memory runs at only 133MHz -- hardly a "workstation".

Is this a mistake, or did they used to offer an awesome computer?

Re:Favorite Portable Workstation ??

[Dasigner]

"AMD" probably means "Active Matrix Display".

Re:Favorite Portable Workstation ??

[morcheeba]

Ahh, that explains it - thanks. I haven't heard that term since TFT took over. I never thought of it until now, but maybe the lack of ambiguity is what TFT became preferred.

p.s. wow, my original post was poorly written. sorry.

And what about lemmy?

[RevMike]

I used Vile on an old VMS system. It was the only vi family editor that I could comple over there. At the time, I was using lemmy for my win32 work.

blah, KDE

[dh003i]

I much prefer GNOME to KDE -- faster and simpler.

page 1 Google links for pmate...

[ynohoo]

P-MATE
P-COMPANY >> nederlands | english P-MATE De originele plastuit waarmee vrouwen staand kunnen plassen P-MATE Enables women to pee standing up. ...
www.pmate.com/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages

PMATE
Oto strona pmate. Jeoeli interesuj cie Polskie Dziewczyny Miesica kliknij tutaj EROSKOP - The Best Of Polish Erotic Links. Dodaj ...
www.republika.pl/pmate/ - 2k - Cached - Similar pages

Re:Here go the browser wars...!

[selectap]

I use the following script to launch Mozilla. I like new windows in a tab, but you can comment that out and uncomment the new window line if you like.

#!/bin/sh

if /opt/mozilla/1.4/mozilla -remote "ping()" 2>/dev/null
then
# Uncomment one of the following lines according to the desired behavior:
# - replace the current page
#location=""
# - open in new window
#location=",new-window"
# - open in new tab
location=",new-tab"
exec /opt/mozilla/1.4/mozilla -remote "openURL($1$location)"
else
exec /opt/mozilla/1.4/mozilla "$@"
fi
exit 1

Uh oh.

[cgreuter]

...and VIM for favorite editor.

Looks like there's a bug in M-x stuff-ballot.

The term you're looking for is...

[doublem]

I beleive you MEANT to say:

TNG/Farscape slash

The FanFic part is implied by the "Slash" designation.

The ST: is implied if you only meant Star Trek, The Next Generation.

If you meant Classic Trek and Next Generation then you wanted to type:

TOS/TNG/Farscape slash

If you meant all Star Trek Shows:
ST(all)/Farscape Slash

or

ST(all)/FS slash

And of course if it was all about male on male dom on sub action:

ST(all)/FS slash Mm

Or all lesbian action with three subs and a dom:
ST(all)/FS slash Ffff

and if one of the subs is being forced into it:

ST(all)/FS slash Ffff nc

And if you have cross species sex I guess you could use the "Interracial" abbreviation:

ST(all)/FS slash Ffff nc intr

Re:what's the appeal of client-side IMAP filtering

[Jellybob]

Well... it's good if you're lazy, and just can't be bothered to setup procmail rules.

Not that I'm speaking from experience. At all.

kde and debian

[fdawg]

Does ayone else find it odd that the favorite window manager isnt included with the favorite distribution?

Last time I checked, KDE3 wasnt stable on debian. You were stuck with KDE2.something.

I could be wrong.

Re:kde and debian

[benjamindees]

Debian Stable comes with KDE 2

It's still better than Gnome, though. By 'better', I mean 'doesn't crash when I click on things' and 'has more than a couple of customization options'.

Sid (Testing) has KDE 3

It's included on the Knoppix CD and it seems pretty stable from what little I've used it.

Actual Votes?

[rmohr02]

So how close did Emacs come to VIM? Or was the Emacs vote split between GNU Emacs and XEmacs? How close was Galeon to Mozilla? PostgreSQL to MySQL?

I'm not necessarily interested in what is most popular, but how popular it was and what it's runners-up were.

Re:I've mirrored SlashDot before it gets Slashdott

[FroMan]

Well, as of now (2:52) you are not slashdotted. One knows you well deserve it though. :-P

Re:Favorite Instant-Messaging Client

[eternalWayfarer]

ever thought about trying centericq?

Re:If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution.

[Henk Poley]

Actually I'm searching for a way to import my Mozilla Mail boxes from Windows into Mozilla Mail or Evolution on Linux.

Seems rather impossible to get it right :-/

Re:If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution.

[tcopeland]

Hm. Are they just mbox files - or can you export them to mbox files? Evolution can handle importing those...

Re:I've mirrored SlashDot before it gets Slashdott

[Tin Foil Hat]

Let's hit 'im again. *snicker*

Re:If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution.

[Henk Poley]

Hmm, yes I know, that would *work*. But I have a lot of mailboxes (~30), so that would mean a lot of importing.

I did get Mozilla Mail on Linux to recognize my mailboxes imported under Mozilla Mail on Windows (from Microsoft Internet Mail and News). but uhm, haveing my inbox over would be nice too.

Re:If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution.

[tcopeland]

> But I have a lot of mailboxes (~30)

Yeah, I agree, that's a pretty tedious operation. It'd be nice if there was a command line script to drive that import process....

Re:If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution.

[Unregistered]

Greay link. I'm actually going to be switching my mom over from windows to linux. I guess i'll be seeing how well i can adapt this to kmail as well.

Re:Windows boot procedure...

[plinius]

Dear coward, FYI Windows comes free with most new computers.

This is why I avoid freshmeat.

[devphil]

Because this project is painfully insightful.

who are these people?

[2057]

i think the poll reflects the views of people who are trying to be to cool by trying to be really nerdy with their choises(yes i know i like the s rather than the c". how does KDE win? how does VIM win? i mean sure on my pure commandline boxes i use VIM but its not my favorite, even on pure command line you can run emacs, also i find gnome is far more productive than KDE, since the gdk enviorment, is most used by developers(by most i mean me) the only thing it lacks is that "busy" cursor so im done now. btw im gettng linux journal now and im gonna vote next year, and you should also!

Spam from Linux Journal

[ewen]

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that Linux Journal have started sending junk email (ie, spam) to their subscribers who were foolish enough to provide them with an email address?

Or that none of their staff even bother to reply to explain why they started spamming their subscribers?

Return-Path: announce@ssc.com
Delivery-Date: Fri Sep 26 08:38:38 2003
Received: from lists.ssc.com (mail.ssc.com [216.39.159.17]) by synagogue.naos.co.nz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3636D846EE1 for ADDRESS-ONLY-GIVEN-TO-LINUX-JOURNAL; Fri, 26 Sep 2003 05:07:14 +1200 (NZST)
Received: by lists.ssc.com (Postfix, from userid 521) id 6F21B1232DB; Thu, 25 Sep 2003 09:59:05 -0700 (PDT)
To: Linux Journal Subscriber <ADDRESS-ONLY-GIVEN-TO-LINUX-JOURNAL>
From: Linux Journal Electronic Offers <announce@ssc.com>
Reply-To: SearchEnterpriseLinux.com <contactus@searchenterpriselinux.com>
Subject: Access Linux white papers, expert advice, news, webcasts and more
Message-Id: <20030925165905.6F21B1232DB@lists.ssc.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 09:59:05 -0700 (PDT)

If you are involved in making crucial Linux migration, administration or security decisions, then visit SearchEnterpriseLinux.com where you'll find expert advice, white papers, webcasts, exclusive news and more.

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com is the Web's best Linux-specific information resource. Activate your free membership TODAY: SPAMVERTISED-URL [....]

And no, I didn't opt in at all; and yes, this does breach their privacy policy, but no one at Linux Journal appears to care.

My opinion of them went down considerably after that spamming started. Particularly since they no one at all there (and I mailed everyone I could find that was vaguely relevant) even bothered to respond to complaints about their actions.

Ewen

Eh... Rackspace?

[Spazmania]

Favorite Web-Hosting Service: RACKSPACE

Rackspace.com? Aren't they the ones that can't seem to keep spammers off their network? Or have they cleaned up their act?

Re:Eh... Rackspace?

[Spazmania]

That's good to hear. I'll open back up my spam filter accordingly.

you forgot...

[gumbi west]

Favorite bloatware: Emacs

Re:you forgot...

[d_i_r_t_y]

> Favorite bloatware: Emacs

they don't call it Eighteen Megabytes And Continually Swapping for nothing dude!

Freshmeat is 3rd.

[repetty]

Freshmeat landed in third place.

For that matter, out of 6,588 votes, Slashdot beat LinuxFR (whatever that is) by only 343 votes -- a virtual tie.

--Richard

Re:If you're converting from Outlook to Evolution.

[FearedThought]

You don't have to import at all. Just setup the same accounts you have in Windows under Mozilla in Linux. Then copy the contents of your Windows mail folder to your mail folder in Linux. Start up Mozilla and all your mail should be there.

This is covered in the FAQ

Favorite linux products - Link ?

[a1z26b2y25]

I do not know if this has been said before, but it would be nice of their posting would inclide links to the product web sites.

Re:what's the appeal of client-side IMAP filtering

[waxmop]

The more I think about client-side IMAP filtering, the less it makes sense. The whole point of the IMAP protocol was to allow the user to check email from any given client, for example the work computer, the home computer and the travel laptop.

If the client has a whole bunch of filtering built in, then, you have to synchronize across all the clients, which cancels out the original point.

The better solution would be to make a friendly GUI for procmail that any client can launch. Am I right?

Re:what's the appeal of client-side IMAP filtering

[Jellybob]

The better solution would be to make a friendly GUI for procmail that any client can launch. Am I right?

Completely. However since I don't have the understanding of procmail to do a good job of it, and don't have inclination to get one, client side filtering will have to do for now.

Re:Here go the browser wars...!

[jonadab]

> Sorry, but Outlook simply rocks.

Yeah? Other than the ability to catch viruses, name for me one
feature Outlook has that Pegasus Mail and Gnus don't both have,
or that isn't more flexible and extensible in Gnus and more
intuitive in Pegasus Mail.

The reverse (naming features it _lacks_, that pmail and Gnus have
been all over for quite a while) is *easy*. There are the really
obvious things, first of all, like an attachment UI that end users
don't have to call tech support about because it makes sense, and
the more advanced poweruser features like extensible filtering.

With Gnus the list goes on and on -- the ability to correctly rewrap
nested quotations; full scriptability of absolutely everything; an
advanced scoring system; pluggable storage backends; full bayesian
mail classification (for all categories, not just spam); fully
scriptable filters with access to the complete headers and body
of every message, plus parent messages in the thread if needed...
optional automatic folding of replies nested past a configurable
depth, and the user can unfold and refold them as desired just by
clicking on the attribution line; Faces support; ability (optionally)
to strip markup from HTML messages and show the text; ability to
apply syntax coloring and automatic indentation and custom folding
and whatnot to all or part of any message at the user's whim; those
are just the features *I* use; there are dozens more I've not
explored yet...

> Evolution is a mere shadow of what Outlook is.

For that, I'll take your word. It's not hard to believe (in all
respects except for security, of course); I've tried Evolution,
and it's junk; how anyone considers it an acceptable mailreader
is quite beyond me. (Then again, I have the same view of most
mail clients, including Mozilla Messenger and Eudora. I guess
I got spoiled early on Pegasus Mail, and now that I've used Gnus
I tend to expect quite a lot, feature-wise, out of mail software,
more than almost anything can deliver, I guess.)

So, I'll give Outlook the benefit of the doubt and figure that
you're right, it's many times better than Evolution (in all
respects except for security; Outlook's track record in that
regard is pretty solidly established as abysmal).

debian

[monkeyfinger]

i'm not impressed with debian. i've been using redhat 9 and i've had no problems with it. i read this article and thought i'd try debian. i downloaded the iso, burnt it onto a cd and booted it. it took fucking ages to install. the boot floppy it made also took fucking ages to get debian running. once it was running it said that x wasn't working. when i clicked on the option to configure x it gave me a blank box with no text so i was unable to configure. what a complete fucking waste of time.