Slashdot Mirror
Linux Desktop Summit 2004 Review
An anonymous reader writes "I had the experience this week of attending the Linux Desktop Summit hosted
by Michael Robertson's Linspire, Lindows, or whatever you want to call it these days. Irregardless of what you call it, it's Linux, and the general
consensus from vendors and attendees was, "We're here to stay."
I have to say that this was an interesting convention. Keeping in line with the Linux community, there was more of a sense of community rather than the
typical "Choose our product" ambiance, With a few exceptions of course."
How many times was "Year Linux Takes The Desktop" was said at the summit? ;)~
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
Irregardless of what you call it
So I must call it Linspire then?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Irregardless of what you call it
Irredudant
Don't want to be an asshat but I think it should be "regardless" not "Irregardless of what you call it" . Proper grammar and spelling leads to something positive, though I'm not sure what. Lou Sir
every year is called 'the year of th elinux desktop', but every year little progress SEEMS to be made. the fact is, Linux IS still around, and will be for a long time. it's acceptance on the desktop will rise as younger folks come into the workplace. think about it, more college students use/understand linux and open source, so yeah, I'm bullish on the future of Linux on the Desktop.
Plus, with WMs like XFCE4 and desktops like Gnome2.6 and KDE 3.2, you can tell that the technology is already there for 90% of what you need on the desktop.
VDS
free ipod and free gmail!
I've been to several conferences in the past few years and have noticed a huge reduction in the amount and quality of conference swag. In the heydays of 1998 and 1999, you could come away with enough clothes to last you all year without washing (about 5 or 6 t-shirts), but nowadays you'd practically have to kill some booth babe to score a pen or mousepad.
This guy says Novell is giving away t-shirts again? Does this foreshadow a return to the heady days of the dotcom boom? Buy tech stocks, folks, it looks like we've got ourselves an upswing in the making!
I have been pwned because my
they're issued by the biggest software company in existence.
IBM?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Linux:
* has 73.2% better interoperopenfunkability;
* is 21.1% more likely to smell like fresh pine;
* and is 25.7% faster via bogolumped figinert bus operability within the plantifold interface than any version of Windows.
Slightly OT, but I can't resist ...
... (they have a GUI front-end for everything, CUPS, Samba, even VPN!!) It probably beats the crap ot Linspire anyday of the week.
... this rant was OT and morely for my fellow Mandrake users ...
There is no denying it. Mandrake is a lovely 100% GPL user-friendly distro, that seems to be rather popular
But even without knowing much about this meeting, I'm pretty sure that Mandrakesoft wasn't there. Why? because Mandrakesoft does a crappy job of MARKETING. And its getting really annoying too watching crap distros like Linspire get so much spot-light.
Like I said
Sunny Dubey
the article was kinda lacking in the way of telling us if the particular printer being raffled could print on a *nix! I would be downright hilarius/evil if it was XP only.
I was working for Garage Games at this conference.
The large robot game is Dark Horizon's: Lore and it will be released for linux in a few weeks. It is already available for windows and osx.
We also showed Think Tanks, Orbz, and Marble Blast. All of these are available for windows, mac and linux, from the Garage Games site.
We did NOT demo Doom. People were playing that because some of the machines didn't have good enough 3D acceleration (i.e. no nvidia cards) to run the other games.
huh this is amazing, the slashdot effect roars in like a lion and takes down any server in its path, has anyone thought of using to to bring down severs intentioanlly? why not give the ip's of some people you dont like,everyone try to connect to them and theyll be slashdotted to oblivian before you know it! mods: this is not a flame! its called satire, you dont have to like it but you dont have to mod it donw either.
that profitable companies using / pushing linux are essential for it to gather mainstream acceptance.
I know it may leave a nasty taste in your mouth to witness the commercialization of linux, but really, its something we should not only get used to, but push.
Im sorry, but the trailing sentance in the article posting made my inner penguin frown...
Irregardless of what you call it, it's Linux, and the general consensus from vendors and attendees was, "We're here to stay."
Let's look at the word here.
regardless adj. In spite of everything; anyway: continues to work regardless.
ir pref. variant of in-.
in pref. Not: inarticulate. Before l, in- is usually assimilated to il-; before r to ir-; and before b, m, and p to im-.
Regardless is the correct word in this situation. "Irregardless" is the equivalent of saying "Not regardless".
Obviously not the usage that the submitter had in mind.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
In my experience it is not as simple as that. Most people have resistance for change. When they have got used to one operating system it is not easy to teach them to do things in a different way. And Linux is still behind Windows in terms of usability, which I think should be the first priority for future Linux development.
9 out of 10 users agree that downloading 4 CDs of mostly worthless extras that will be outdated in a month to install Fedora blows.
"Irregardless" may not be a word, but its used so much it now is a word. What happended to the nazi's? They had so many nations attacking them that they evenually lost. You cant stop us all, irregarless of how hard you try :P
9 out of 10 people agree that downloading 4 cds for free is better then paying $150.
Creative Demolition
YES, Novell gave out a SuSE/Novell/Ximian shirt.
I also left with a Real Helix shirt
A PC Club shirt
And the Desktop Linux Conference shirt
If you were lucky, you got one of the shirts the mozilla guy raffled out. (I saw him just *give* one to Nat Friedman, but thats ok) I was lucky to grab a nice CD 'n' sleeve of mozilla goodness.
Seagate gave out the trippiest pen I've ever seen.
DeviantArt gave out nice stickers.
Sun gave out CDs of StarOffice and the Java Desktop
Some random mousepads.
PC Club gave out a coupon for a free case/powersupply with a purchase of $200 or more
The prize goes to sub300.com. They gave out little bottles of maple syrup. there were so many after the conference they were handing out extra ones whether you wanted them or not.
I'm yet to have pancakes or french toast, so i can't comment on them. They say 100% pure, so it should be pretty good.
religion != morality
4 CDs with high-quality, FREE software that let you choose among competing softwares which to install!
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
The other 1 out of 9 people have a slow dialup connection. :-(
I shudder involuntarily every time I come across that "word." Do us a favor and buy yourself a dictionary, preferably an old-school OED or something, and hit yourself over the head with it. Repeatedly.
Mike
Yeah, I sure am glad they've included Korean language fonts and documentation for KDE and other completely worthless junk.
9 out of 10 users agree that netinst + apt-get beats the shit out of downloading 4 CDs.
That's why Slashdot's servers run on Windows right guys?
For all the talk of new technology and pace of change, the real pace of change is incredibly bad. Conventional wisdom equates change with the constant appearance of new technologies. Real change is seen in technology that increase productivity at the commodity level. The desktop is the commodity and applications are a response to peoples need to process information. The integration between the two is pathetic Other than at a superficial level - quote whatever new schemes you like - there is no linking between how the desktop manages and represents its information and the applications that people use other than through manual labor. It is in the interests of any company who controls a market to keep the pace of change slow, is Sun the one to break this cycle?
Someone was there. They didn't have any decorations or such. I didn't even talk to the guy. Then again, Sun didn't really make an effort to have a booth either. In fact, they weren't there at all the first day.
religion != morality
how is that a troll? becuase the commenter's opinion is different than the mods?
You are what most people here would call a troll, but I'm going to respond to your statements. In reverse order. If you are indeed a troll, MS is going to have a lot of fun with your abuse of their certificates, but I doubt you are one.
First, let me explain my personal POV: I use Windows. I see that Microsoft is the de facto standard and respect them for making good, usable software products. I do support Free software because I think it's "cool", but some of the stuff is just a pain to use.
GFDL licensing: About the most anyone would want to copy is the facts, which aren't copyrighted. Besides, you need to post a copy of the GFDL to use it (yuck); you may be better of with Creative Commons, if you're going to license your posts at all (which no one I've seen here does, despite their love of free licensing).
Torvalds the hacker? He uses hacker in a different sense, admittedly not the mainstream sense. He avoids using the word "hacker" in published news articles because his interpretation of the word is a positive thing (one who, like you, enjoys coding wiht computers), rather than the common sense of one who breaks into computers. I really wish they'd pick another term for computer/programming enthusiasts so as to avoid the negative connotations.
I would question why you trust a company that is profitable; it just shows they have business sense. Torvalds on the other hand releases all his code for public review. Who would you trust more: a company with a profit motive, or a programmer whose code has been widely peer-reviewed?
Besides, as he readily admits, he isn't writing the majority of Linux code these days, and anyway he only writes the kernel. Most software that's called "Linux" is really just random free software that happens to work with Linux.
And Linus Torvalds is an employee of Transmeta, a well-known CPU maker.
Red Hat is a marketer, not the server. I assume Apache is the server you're using. I'd like to see your data, because the setup may not be optimal; open-source servers normally come configured for development, not deployment. Besides, the times for static content may be so small that a millisecond difference may amount to 276%.
Windows admittedly installs a heck of a lot faster and easier, but none of the software comes with it, and it's hard to configure. Linux solutions offer much more customizability and power at the expense of user-friendliness.
What is "development costs"? Cost of paying employees? They may be better qualified. Besides, J2EE isn't really open-source, it's probably just espoused by the radical (non-evil-)hacker community for being "not Microsoft".
IIS and Apache (I don't know what you mean by Linux 7.0, I assume you mean Red Hat 7.0, an older version that is based around a Linux 2.x core and probably includes Apache) don't put any particular constraints on costs; after all, if it's the same web page you're hosting, it's the same amount of data being sent.
Windows is more well-known, and training Windows is much cheaper, I'll grant you that. I wouldn't recommend Linux-based desktops for the average employees, simply because they have most likely been born and raised into the Windows culture. However, if by LinuxOS you mean LindowsOS, I'll give you my opinion of that: dirty marketer taking free Linux, adding pretty colors, and overpricing everything. There's no need for Linspire to cost more than Windows itself.
Imagine yourself as an impartial viewer: would you trust someone with Microsoft certificates giving facts in support of Microsoft products? I wouldn't even trust Linux people if they claim their product is better than MS's with just statistics. (For example, MS Office on the Mac is native. OpenOffice.org uses X and takes way too long to load. I believe, however, that OOo will at some point pass up Office, so I'll use it if that happens or seems close to happening.)
Bad karma: Don't attack Linux viciously, Slashdot people are touchy. Post your statements as a question, and pretend to want to be converted, and they won't hate you.
(y35, I |n0w 3y3'v3 1ik31y b33n +r0113d, but one can dream, no?)
I'll deny it.
I found Mandrake 9.2 to be fairly buggy and easy to confuse. Try changing to/from GMT in the hwclock sometime. Try calling your optical disks something other than CDROM0, CDROM1, CDROM2, etc. sometime. Try running their framebuffered version of VNC sometime and explain why it runs 10x slower than vanilla VNC?
I'm just an AC, so don't listen to me, but Mandrake shouldn't market themselves until they get a distribution that has more than skin-deep beauty.
good call
suckers
Use spell check. That's what it's for.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's a cut-n-paste job. You wasted your time answering.
Put identity in the browser.
A "Yo' Mama" joke (at least in spirit, if not in spelling) was modded Insightful, yet a comment on the nonexistence of "irregardless" was modded offtopic? The latter at least was more intelligent.
Guys guys guys... I think your missing the joke. Look at the names "Linux 7.0" and "LinuxOS", etc... Look at the exaggerated and blatanlty false percentages and statistics. Then the GNU copyright notice at the bottom, this isn't a troll its a joke, but I've seen this on /. before a few months back, so it is redundant, but not a troll. Just thought I'd clear things up. I'm surprised BillCrayMCSD hasn't replied yet to correct these people.
Regards,
Steve
"Irregardless isn't even a word"
"yes it is, it means without lack of regard"
mund freud.
If they want ideas to talk about instead of continuing to bleat that this year is the year of Linux on the desktop (It's not yet), I'll give them a few. * Better hardware support. I have some new motherboards which don't work under Linux because the ATI northbridge chips in them aren't detected. This is ATIs fault as much as Linux's - but it's slowing acceptance. We need more vendors writing drivers for Linux. * Better software installation, etc. The great thing about Linux is customisability. Thing is, it's a pain for most users, and is a pain for me even though I can use a command line. Something needs to be done about it. Something like an add/remove program tab to keep track of packages/source code. Standard libraries that all desktop linux should have. Better interfaces between this code and the desktop etc. Half the time you'll never know what's in your machine until you look, and THEN you have to know where it is, and what package it is, and what that package is for, and what depends on it etc.etc. In a perfect world, a newbie user should be able to compile a source coded package for a desktop distro with a single click, with seamless configure && make && make install.... as if it were an MSI install package.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Microsoft Word and the english unabridged dictionary seems to think it is. Maybe it means that a person has exceptionaly less regard or actually does regard? M R Ducks
half of the dictionaries list it
Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.
> > Bad karma: Don't attack Linux viciously
;-)
> (Score:-1, Flamebait)
I couldn't've said it better myself.
I show my support for this post by replying logged-in.
for dissing his lines.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
From my experience, Mandrake 9.1 was a lot better than 9.2
I must say I'm dismayed by these younger trolls' disrespect for the hard labor of their colleagues. BillGrayMCSD needs to have an ungreased Yoda doll inserted anally and horizontally.
All hail Mike Bouma, for he is the true MS Office Specialist and widely respected Amigan!
OK, I'll bite. Here is how you know the parent of your post is a troll.
First: SEVERAL INDEPENDENT RESEARCH INSTITUTES
Who exactly are these independent institutes?
Second: LinuxOS
What exactly is LinuxOS, I know that the Linux kernal is the basis of many distros, I've never heard of one named LinuxOS though.
Third: Linux 7.0 webserver
I've never heard of this application before. Linux itself is at 2.6, but the main webserver is Apache. So what exactly is this idiot talking about?
Fourth: * $40.25 per megabit of throughput per second. * $1.79 per peak request per second.
Numbers thrown out for shock value that have no explanation on how they arrived at those numbers and the numbers themselves don't mean dick. "per megabit of throughput per second" - Really, How was that tested? Was this throughput for a network connection, or was it for disc writes? Was the hardware identical? What exactly does "$1.79 per peak request per second" mean? It doesn't tell me anything.
And finally, the telltale sign that the post was a troll: opensores in the place of opensource.
And, after all that, I can't believe that I took the bait to explain how the idiot is a troll.
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." --Howard Aike
Usually the last CDs contain only optional stuff like that.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
why would you want to do any of the things in your post? hardly a problem with mandrake!!
Definately the youngest looking person there (but i know he's in his late 20s). He was also the most enthusiatic. Most people were simply selling their companies. He actually talked about GNU/Linux in general, and mentioned that what truely drived its progress was the passion for a custom operating system, and not the hate for Redmond. I really like that.
:(
:)
It was funny to watch him exchange verbal blows with Robert Lewis. You could totally tell they did *not* like eachother. Lewis kept cutting him off.
(paraphrased)
"Nat is kinda young, so he might not remember when..."
"And you're kinda old"
(crowd laughed, they both "smiled", but you can totally tell it was war)
I *really really really* wanted to talk to him, but he seemed to always be running around (not to mention he made me nervous), so during that panel i took notice of the fact that he was chatting...
Hail Ethereal! Hail Ettercap! Hail aimsniff!
I didn't want to read his messages, I just wanted to get his handle.
He's a smart guy, when I messaged him he realized I had intecepted his packets, so his first message was:
"You've been reading my messages, you jerk"
When i finally told him who i was, he stopped talking. I think he thought I was coming on to him. You know, in that gay kinda way...
Oh well. On other notes, Doc Searls (Linux Journal) was pretty funny (he was using a PowerBook of all things), and GarageGames gets the award for best presentation (after Nat's of course.) Ian Murdock *vanished* after the speech that proceeded his.
Linspire takes the prize for being the most user friendly linux distribution i've ever used. Looks and feels like windows. A nice GUI frontend to apt-get. A near clone of apple's iTunes called Lsongs (very nice, download the source NOW). They tweeked Mozilla so it has all the plugins working on install. What scares me is the fact that you are logged in as #.
Linspire has plenty of potential, maybe not here, but in the 3rd world market it seems they will beat M$ to the ground. According to Robertson, their computers outsell M$ based computers at Elektra, mexico's largest electronics chain.
My tip: never use IM/FTP/Email at a conference unless you are using SSL/SSH/Kereberos or anything of that nature.
Come on mods, it's a good troll, and not even off-topic.
:) Awesome.
The normal consumer associates Linux with a sucicidal friendless nerd from some godforsaken corner of Northern Europe, a plainly insane right wing lunatic, and an "alternative lifestyle" Communist throwback to Woodstock with a facial hair problem.
This is the best troll I've seen in a while. Really, brilliant. Bravo, sir.
...or all summits combined?
Where was this Linux Desktop Summit? Is this a regular event? How may one attend?
Perhaps you meant "regardless"? Or maybe it was "irrespective" you were looking for? REGARDLESS, I think "irregardless" is generally considered a nonsensical word.
ever see Super Troopers?
chug! chug! chug!
Unfortunately there's one fly in that soup. Games! That's the problem. It's not browsers, or mail clients, or office applications or multimedia players, all of which are available in generally superior versions for Linux. It's games.
I'd save everybody a vast amount of aggravation if I could just install Linux and be done with it, but I can't because most people have games they want to play, and they won't run under Linux.
And I'm not just referring to kids: most of the over 50s around here have MS Flight Simulator (we live near a large airfiled, and are surrounded by pilots, ex-pilots, wannabe pilots, etc); they've often spent hours and hours downloading big mods for it over crappy dial-up lines and they aren't going to like being told that they wasted the effort.
Nor do the vast majority of Windows users want to dual boot: they will say, quite reasonably, "why should I have to do that?"...
As Bill Gray demonstrates, the biggest obstacle to linux/FOSS deployment on the desktop will be the local admins who have a huge personal investment in the status quo.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, but "irregardless" is in the dictionary. So really, they're all trolls.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
If that's what they think about Fedora, imagine what they think about Debian!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
It's Mike Bourna's brilliant troll, but this guy put his own name in the (c) notice. Lowlife leeches.
I've seen the exact same post several times over the last 2 years too.
=TROLL
The path of Linux is the path of Google.
I believe that Google's popularity as a search engine increased by way of word of mouth from cluey computer users (not necessarily geeks, but people that install their own hardware, muck around with applications and that sort of thing) who consistently received quality search results in a time when the previous kings (altavista, yahoo, etc) were starting to become bloated and returning rubbish.
I know that many people I know now rely on Google without ever using another search engine because they've found out that it's what I use, or I've recommended it.
Linux will likely follow the same path, and so (as is obvious) success will come when Linux strongly meets the needs of prosumers, advanced computer users, etc. So, you're right -- hardware support is essential. Flawless support of digital cameras is essential.
It's great for some here to say that people will become turned off Windows because of spyware and worms, but I suspect they'll turn to their advanced pals and learn about SpyBot and AdAware before they strip their machine bare, try to choose or locate a new operating system and take the plunge into learning how it works.
Because, the fact is, with Windows Update, SpyBot, AdAware, a virus checker like AVG, and commonsense, Windows is pretty decent, and definitely "good enough" for the majority.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
1. Find infringing troll post
2. Pull poster into court
3. ???
4. Get two trolls off Slashdot
5. PROFIT!!!
Debian Netinst = 30 megs
apt-get only what you need
use the unstable tree and everything is up to date.
Dipshit.
I use Mandrake 9 myself, and I'm no marketing genius, but I have to say this was not exactly the best way to build any confidence in the future of the distribution.
Drivers are nice and all, but you still get an Epson printer. A printer that dries up the print heads in a few days and uses half a cartridge of ink cleaning itself, a printer that cleans itself even if it isn't 'dirty', a printer that uses multi-colour cartridges that need to be replaced when you run out of just one colour, a printer with chipped cartridges that can't be refilled without much mucking around, a printer that interrogates the print cartridges to make sure that Epson got their pound of flesh out of you today, and a pricing model that says "Here take this free printer, we'll screw you later on consumables".
Yup, it sure is interesting to see that Epson like the money that comes out of linux users' pockets just as much as they like Windows users' money.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
You are shouting at the wrong crowd. It does not matter how right you are. With a Microsft certificate in hand, Slashdotters are going to mod you down. It is like cheering "Go Bears" in a Green Bay pub. Just be thankful that you made some zealots burn their mod points on you.
Have you Meta Moderated t
You're declaring an economic upswing of dot-coms because Novell is giving away free t-shirts?
That is because the mods are unpredictable...
Actually that is not true, the mods are highly predictable. This will get modded up because of that mention.
Also, the difference between -1 Flamebait and +5 Funny is the mood of the reader.
--Joey
Bill Gray, MCSE, MCDST, MS Office Specialist
I say you are wrong and I have the sufficient number of letters after my name to prove it.
Sen. Sir John Wilson III, BCompSci, PLO, KKK, SDA, IRA, OBE
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
Actually, I'd disagree on both points. Most people wouldn't notice if you swapped Windows XP and XPde on their machines until they realized that their desktop had been running for a couple of months without a virus attack bringing their system to its knees.
Yeah, until they went to Wal-mart, brought home a printer, and realized sticking in the Autoplay installer CD does nothing.
Or they tried to install the latest Sims expansion.
Or they wanted to fire up Yahoo Messenger, so they go to the website and download it, unable to install it and blaming it on Windows.
Or they look for "My Documents" or "\Windows\System."
Or...you get the idea. Hell, Linux doesn't even have a binary installation/uninstallation API for its desktops. I don't want to have to rely on GUI hacks like Synaptic or xterm "apt-get" solutions. Give me installer APIs! Why the hell is this being overlooked in favor of more sidebar buttons for KDE or redesigned file selector dialogs in GTK?
In other words, REGARDING what you call it.
This is almost as bad as people saying, "That's not unlike this," or whatever, when all you have to say is, "That's like this." Or worse, when people say, "I could care less," when what they actually mean, if they want to say that they don't care at all, is, "I could NOT care less." People are just so stupid. It all stems from the educational system, which completely and utterly sucks. Respect used to be with the teacher. What the teacher said, went. Teachers had the authority to discipline children. But not anymore. Teachers have to be afraid to say the wrong word, or look at some student the wrong way, or use the wrong tone of voice, or they'll get fired and end up on the national news for being "prejudiced" against some child. What a bunch of bullshit! It reminds me of airport security. They WON'T search someone who looks middle eastern because they might get offended, but they WILL search some nun or some child who comes through because they want to appear FAIR. In other words, they SAY they don't want to discriminate, but this behavior IS DISCRIMINATION!!!!! Discrimination works both ways! You can discriminate in order to benefit someone, or in order to unbenefit someone. But no, they won't see it this way, just as nobody sees the absurdity of schools sucking, and when the children fail the tests, because the school did a shitty job of teaching them, the state gets rid of the tests, instead of making the schools teach better.
Do you agree with some of what I've said in this post? If you're a U.S. citizen, write in Ralph Nader on the November 2004 ballot. Voting outside the "traditional" Democrat/Republican parties is the only way to fix this country.
No, he's not and hasn't been for months.
If you're going to write a saga in response to an obvious cut'n'paste troll, at least get your facts straight.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
...something which is unecessary on real operating systems.
Also I'm sure you are ultra careful when visiting certain sites, and avoid doing things which will lead to infestation. These are also things which aren't issues with real operating systems.
And then there's the mail client problem; You'd have made sure you have HTML and preview off, and closely monitor all attachments, in order to avoid those nasty viruses.
And patches! Don't forget the critical update patches! Every week now, isn't it? What fun.
Since I don't use Windows, instead preferring to work with a real operating system, I don't have such concerns.
Having watched the progression -- and lack of real progress -- by Microsoft since MS-DOS, I won't be changing my stance anytime soon.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=Irregardless+&x=21&y=21
You are a moron and an Etat-Unians its expected of you to think with you foot in your mouth your not an american
1995 atari show "we're here to stay" say vendors
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!! no, I didn't need mental images of that one guy covered in flour and whatever else in the cell/room/whatever... thanks so much for reminding me of that movie :P
(\(\
(^v^)
(")")
This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
However, I can't decide which distro is best. I'm not as concerned about usability, since the apps are where usability is the issue, and they'll be the same regardless of the distro. What I'm concerned about is not having to support it after it's running, ease of installation of new software (for a newbie), and the ability to have it automatically receive errata updates.
I am a bit shocked that for this piece of news, have the comments are about "irregardless"; and no one is talking about the distros and experiences helping newbies use Linux on the desktop.
So, what distro is best for a newbie to computers that addresses the three issues I listed above?
Open Standards Portal
irregardless, it's regardless.
You must have broken your English teacher's heart.
It's really ironic how you sound like a grammar nazi, and proceed into a nonsensical rambling with no paragraph breaks, or even a logical thought process. This is not unlike the way a fifth grade student writes. Writing should be clear and tend to revolve around a single point. You seem to jump from point A to point Q. Personally, I could care less. This is just a goofy geek forum website. Irregardless of this fact, your hypocrisy was just too priceless to pass up.
Now, notice the use of ironic here. It is used in a roughly correct manner. You intended to blast horrible writing, but created horrible writing in the process. Some could argue that this is still not irony, but it is at least a decent use of the word.
"This is not unlike" is a valid phrase. It highlights that there are few things dissimilar. The phrase "This is like" would tend to highlight the similarities. It all depends on the tone, and what you would like to highlight.
The saying, "I could care less," means, "I care for some reason. I have the capacity and capability to not care. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure why I care." Whereas, "I could not care less," simply means, "I don't care at all."
"Irregardless" is a word. It means "regardless." And while I agree that it should not be used outside familiar conversation, it is not considered a double negative. But as shown with "This is not unlike," even double negatives have a place. Now it's time for someone to blast me on my misuse of commas or something.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
He uses hacker in a different sense, admittedly not the mainstream sense. He avoids using the word "hacker" in published news articles because his interpretation of the word is a positive thing (one who, like you, enjoys coding wiht computers), rather than the common sense of one who breaks into computers. I really wish they'd pick another term for computer/programming enthusiasts so as to avoid the negative connotations.
... "coders" and "hackers" ... let's call ourselves "cockers"!
Hmm
Overall the convention was ok. The speakers simply trying to pedal their wares was pretty old pretty fast. Congrats Sun, for more demonstration, less bullshit speeches. Whomever only gave them a half hour was really acting the fool. Anyone notice the Mandrake guy day 2? He left around noon it seemed like. Some asshole kids took over his booth, and apparently ate his cookies. They kept spouting off about Gentoo, and added a post-it note to the mandrake sign that made it read "Not Mandrake Software". I don't think the Mandrake guy noticed he was sitting 2 feet infront of the WAP. Next year hook Sun up with more speaking time.
but anyone can get GUI-frontend everything by simply installing Webmin (which is a throughly useful program that should come installed with every distro and enabled for local access for root only by default) and going to 127.0.0.1:10000
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
use the unstable tree and everything is up to date.
That sounds so wrong.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
What, exactly, makes a pen "trippy"? Just curious.
"The total amount of computions used in supporting this slashdot digression on "irregardless" exceeds the total number of machine computations performed in 19__."
Depending on how you fill in the blank, the above statement can be true (e.g. "00") or false (e.g. "99").
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
agreed!
(c) Frag Star HL, CS, RPG, FPS Specialist
Posting as AC as that acct's karma has hit "terrible" after just the ONE post! AND I had to change my IP address!
Unknown host ratpoison.sf.net
where are they now??? try here!!! but their homepage is borked...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As an aside, I went to this summit because I am working on the definitive book to help Windows home users start using Linux. If you have any suggestions for material, or want to help with feedback or in other ways, please email me.
Bendt Kretschmer (German author and journalist who called me an "imperialist" at lunch when I spoke in favor of stopping offshoring of software jobs) estimated that the true desktop share of Linux in Germany is 6%. Microsoft is automatically less popular as it is an American, not European, company (I guess there's a little bit of Imperialism in everyone, eh Bendt?)
The Lindows clones of iTunes and iPhoto are spectacular! That is professional quality software that works out of the box, AND in some ways is better than Apple's versions. They are open sourcing these two programs, so if you want to help get a copy and start work on improving the underlying apps.
1. content-free but entertaining (Doc Searles), or
2. sales pitches for my product (most disappointingly, Ian Murdock's talk was one of these).
Better selection of speakers would be an improvement for next year. The best speakers were the industry commentators who didn't really have an axe to grind, such as all the journalists (Amy Wohl, Dee Anne Le Blanc, Brenno de Winter, etc).
Don't forget to contact me if you have any suggestions on a Windows-to-Linux book.
Peter van der Linden
The 2nd annual Desktop Linux Summit was held at the Del Mar Fairgrounds north of San Diego on April 22nd and 23rd. The event was sponsored by Linspire (formerly Lindows) and featured 17 panels on such topics as "International Expansion of Desktop Linux", "Desktop Linux at Play" and "Multimedia on Desktop Linux". Are you sensing the trend here? Every hour of both days one could hear references to "desktop Linux", and yet, for most of the summit, there never was a concise and consistent definition given to that phrase. Were we concerning ourselves with Linux on desktop computers, as opposed to laptops and handhelds? That wouldn't seem to be the case, as there was a panel entitled "Get Up and Go". According to the event program, this panel would address the fact that "Linux is no longer limited to desktop computers:how mobile will it get?" We never did discover exactly how mobile Linux could get, unfortunately. Due to the unexplained absence of Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame (whose name was misspelled in the program as "Prillo"; could that be why he decided not to appear?) this panel was reduced to a discussion of Linux pre-installed laptops being sold on college campuses by Morgan Lim. Were we there to discuss Linux on the home desktop. Not exclusively, as there were several discussions of Linux in the corporate environment. Brenno de Winter (Microcost) moderated the International Expansion panel mentioned before. Panel members spoke about their efforts to convince corporate IT managers to migrate their systems to a consolidated Linux platform. Mike Ferris (Red Hat) expounded on how an integrated, managed desktop Linux environment, like the one provided by Red Hat, will result in better productivity in the workplace. It was revealed that in May, a major unnamed British bank will announce their migration to the Red Hat desktop environment. Perhaps the use of the term "desktop Linux" was meant to refer to the graphic user interface, slightly different in each version of Linux, and in the opinion of many, not truly user friendly in any of them. If so, coverage of the topic was practically non-existent. The keynote address was to be presented by Jef Raskin, best known as the creator of the Macintosh. Mr. Raskin's presentation was titled, "The Humane Environment", a discussion of the user interface and it's affect on the overall user experience. However, due to a family emergency, Mr. Raskin was unable to attend. He did provide print-outs of his speech. I would have enjoyed hearing his impromptu remarks on this topic, and no doubt the question/answer period would have been lively. As it was, I had some insightful lunch-time reading, but felt robbed of the opportunity to explore this issue further. On reflection, perhaps the use of "desktop Linux" was to set a goal; the need to increase the number of Linux distributions on desktops, any and all desktops, from the home to the office. If this is indeed the goal of those who attended the summit, it would seem we still have many hurdles to overcome. Perhaps the best summery of those hurdles was presented by Doc Searls (http://www.searls.com/) in a follow-up to his presentation at last year's Desktop Summit, "Crossing the Chasm". This year's presentation, entitled "Inside the Tornado", focused on what Mr. Searls sees as the solution to the many difficulties ahead in the effort to bring Linux to desktops everywhere, the lack of overall ease of use. His analogy was the car rental business. No matter which car you have in mind as you approach the rental counter, you will end up renting a Chevy Cavalier. When Mr. Searls asked for a show of hands to indicate how many owners of a Chevy Cavalier were present, no one raised their hand. He then opined that no one actually owned a Cavalier because it's a boringly basic car; no frills, no fancy controls, just a really fundamental car that anyone can get into and drive. This, he said, is how Linux distributions need to present themselves to computer users for Linux to succeed in the desktop market. It needs to