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Review of New Xandros 4.1 Professional Linux
holden writes "OpenAddict has a review of the new Xandros 4.1 professional.Some of the big changes in professional include a newer kernel, AIGLX, and support for 3G wireless. One of the subtle, but still very important changes, is that Xandros has finally removed the registration requirement, and users can now access Xandros Networks without registering first. Techworld is one of many that is already looking at Xandros as a possible challenger to Windows Vista"
I first heard of Xandros when No Starch Press based their book Linux Made Easy on the distro. I assumed it was a distro meant for those with simple home needs. But here we hear about a "professional" edition. What's the niche of the distro, and how do its maintainers intend to set it apart from the many other options out there?
The shared bar between applications on MacOS still infuriates me
They are trying to target Windows users and make the system easy for those not familiar with Linux. It is suppose to work in theory.
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http://www.openaddict.com.nyud.net:8090/page.php?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
You can distribute a disc that has GPL software along with non-GPL software on it. As long as you include the source for all the GPL software you're not necessarily breaking any GPL rules.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Why does it infuriate you? It's not like you can use more than one of them at one time, and it saves screen real-estate because everything doesn't have to have its own.
I am one of the very few slashdotters that have publicly said that Xandros, Freespire and especially Xandros are one of the best distros out there. I even contributes a few days ago that these distros actaully work as advertised.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208360&cid=169 89294.
What came out of that contribution was being touted as one who had contributed flamebait!
Now, with this view from Techworld, I feel very happy inside. This makes me wonder why there is all this hype about K[U]buntu, which is dogged with all sorts of bugs. Thanks once again to the folks at Xandros.
True enough. And I can refuse to go anywhere near it. Choice is good!
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Seamless access to shared Windows folders and printers
The ability to write to Windows NTFS partitions
Seamless Microsoft Exchange connectivity
If an enterprise already has a Windows environment, why would they be interested in upsetting everything and installing new Linux workstations? I'm not saying Linux can't perform, but keep in mind that if things are running smooth already, the least of their costs are going to be Windows client licenses. They are spending money on Windows servers for file storage, mail, directory services, etc, so they may as well use Windows as the client software as well. Vista isn't going to be this enormous expenditure because most corporate computers will not upgrade to Vista until the computer hardware is replaced anyway.
This sounds like just another one of these "Linux Is Read and Poised To Overthrow Microsoft on the Desktop!" articles that Slashdot sees every couple months (especially around the end of the year, when next year just might be the Year of Linux).
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Seamless access to shared Windows folders and printers
The ability to write to Windows NTFS partitions
Seamless Microsoft Exchange connectivity
Can't I already do that with debian?
Not only that, but contrary to popular belief, a Linux distro company is not required by the GPL either to provide the source for download or even to provide the source with a copy of the distro disks. Section 3 of the GPL makes it very clear that the minimum required is a written offer to provide the source.
The companies that include by default do so out of good practice and community spirit.
Once you get used to it, though, it's really nice. Why should every application waste screen space with a menu bar?
Anyway, I'm posting from my PowerBook right now...
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Also, on a less than entirely random note, the Open Circulation edition of Xandros is not limmited to 30 days, but naturally it doesn't have all of the third party software that Xandros has licensed for inclusion with its for $ versions.
Ummm, sloppy focus isn't going to let you have the focus on more than one window at one time. You simply don't have to click to navigate the windows. So you're still stuck with the same problem. I do agree about wasting a little bit of space at the top if you have a wide screen, but ... meh. Having it go all the way across the top is still less space than each application having its own menu bar.
Why should I move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen every time I want to access a menu? If you have multiple instances of an application open and you don't keep track what exact instance has the focus at the moment you might fuck something up out of confusion.
:)
There are many flaws to this system as well. I can't stand it personally and even though I don't like it the "normal way" either (you're right that it e.g. wastes space) I'd prefer each application with it's own menu bar to the osx style.
Also Xandros uses KDE where the option for a osx-like top menu bar is just a radio button away (only for KDE applications though).
I'll bite.
Actually, most folks who run Linix/*BSD/whatever don't do it due to Windows costing money.
Having an OS that doesn't suck is priceless.
Using Windows drives me nuts.
It came installed with Mozilla and not Firefox. This is where the road back to Win2K/Xp stared. Looking thorugh their software repository I searched for Firefox and it wasn't there. So I check the forums. I found a post about installing Firefox. Well it was about 7 pages at that time. Reading through the first two showed me that no way in hell was I going to go through all the admin mumbo jumbo just to install Firefox. I was too lazy from trying out several destop distros that day.
Anyways I went back to windows cause it just works. Now before I get flamed by the "You're just too stupid to run Linux" fanboyz, know that I've ran/run and setup Slackware 10.1 and FreeBSD 6 web servers at home with no problems so my techincal abilities/curiosities are above the average computer user but what had to be done to install Firefox on XandrOS was just retarded and this is what keeps a steady supply of new users away from Linux. Most joe/jane average computer user has no problems finding/installing and configuring software preferances but thats if its provided for them through an installer.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
A more poignant poem exploring the differences between OSes, I have yet to see.
...Will I be able to Watch the same movies and video clips I do now? What about my E-Book Collection? Will I be able to use the programs I use now for backing up my DVD Collection ? ( AnyDVD and CloneDVD ) Will I Be able to play the games I own right now ? ( Battlefield series Ect......Not that I did'nt reallllly enjoy Tux Racer) What about my hardware , will I have to "Roll my own" drivers for my computer ? Will it do all of this out of the Box (or the download) How much will I have to Relearn about computers (sorry I have very little free time to put away for learning a lot of new crap to do the same stuff I do now.) I do not mind spending a little time on learning a new operating system. I do mind spending a lot of time on Kernels and drivers and all of this other crap. When I can install this ( on the same computer as my XP just in case ) And it gives me the same uses as XP does without a trip thru Geekfest 4000 then i'll do something besides yawn)...
NEWSFLASH! This distro is NOT for you. It's not developed for you, it's not designed for you, it's not intended for you. You want to game? Use Windows [for now], or buy a console.
This is intended for business desktops. Nobody should be playing Battlefield on it. Nobody should be messing around with kernels and drivers on it. An IT team will install it on supported hardware, and set it up for you. You just need to use it to ring up that order of fries.
Nothing to see here
By the same token - meh I don't care if each application has its own menu bar - makes me have to move the mouse less if I have to do something in an app that doesn't have focus yet.
Besides there are plenty of ways to save even more space. The real waste of space isn't the menubar - its the window decorations. I keep windows around on my desktop for games but I use Zen on my laptop with Fluxbox - I like having everything at the click of a mouse and if you turn off window decorations and bind some keys to close minimize and maximize then you typically save as much space as eliminating the menubar and at the same time the fluxbox bar is a lot smaller than the os x dock. Theres no icons on your desktop by default in fluxbox (you can add them with rox or adesklets) so theres that much less clutter and combine all this with the goodness of sloppy focus and you barely move your mouse. Very elegant.
What I will give Windows is how quick it is to pick up - from what I've seen atleast - YMMV. The amount of free screen space in the end probably depends more on the user. I've a very sparse Windows desktop and I've seen Mac users cover their desktops in icons and make sure their dock is filled with every application even if they don't use most of them.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Both GUIs suck wildly. They are slow as hell and everything clutters up the place and the apps get in each others way.
... Standards and Practices !
A nice fluxbox/windowmaker, multi screen, I run 5 with keyboard shortcuts CTRL/Right-Left arrows. So a bunch of instantly accesible windows. No damn bar at all. Right click on vacent screen, or the wierd key between the windose and ctrl keys on the right, for a menu. Lots of keyboard shortcuts. Alt-m for mail is as fast as you can do it.
It's so much faster and easier than any of the commercial setups.
PenGun
Do What Now
PenGun
Do What Now ???
Windows users, if they're like my family, have no problems because I do all the heavy lifting. At most, they have to reboot the machine after a few hundred hours uptime to get a given application running again. They use Office, Limewire, AIM, Winamp, iTunes, etc. If desktop Linux can provide that level of use to ordinary users, fine.
Now in terms of deployment, Windows sucks. Everything has to be hand managed. The patches required to deal with the security problems, spyware, adware is huge problem. And managing all of this to get things running and keep them, is a chore. So again if Linux can fix this or eliminate them then great.
But ordinary users don't want to do the Linux way of installing and futzing with things that sort-of work.
That's ridiculous. Just to edit a web page you need an editor, a browser and an ftp client. I run em' in seperate windows.
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
Do What Now ???
"...If Windows was OPEN and FREE, companies wouldn't give two shits about free software, and Linux would be hosed and unusable."
There, I fixed that for you.
You almost made some good points, AC.
Windows is still a cesspool I choose not to swim in whenever possible.
Well, that, and it's probably easier to just throw the source in a tarball on an ftp server and forget about it than train a secretary on dealing with an obscure request that only comes up twice a year.
After all, I am strangely colored.
The only distro of linux that is even vaguely close enough to mature to be a valid challenger to Vista might be Ubuntu, and that is still pushing it.
Then why is it being Touted as "a possible challenger to Windows Vista". It would only be a challenger to Windows Vista if it was going to be used by the same userbase.
:)]. It has nothing to do with whether or not you 'understand Linux'. It's about your attitude of 'Waaah, this distro doesn't fit my needs perfectly so I'm going to complain'.
Well if you had actually read the summary and the article you would understand that the product is called "Xandros Desktop Professional, and that based on the features listed and discussed, is most likely being touted as a possible challenger to Vista Business Edition. Maybe Techworld didn't spell it out for you, but I assumed that features such as "Thin clients and terminal emulation", "Seamless Microsoft Exchange connectivity", or "Ready for mass deployment in enterprise settings via xDMS, Xandros Deployment and Management Server" would have clued you in on that fact.
You said THIS distro is not for me. OK ill bite. Which Linux distro would fit my needs as listed above ? Are there any like that ?
No, I'm not aware of any distro that caters to people who whine that a distro targeted at enterprise customers doesn't support games written for a completely different operating system. Don't complain that Linux doesn't support every piece of software written for Windows. It's hardly the fault of Linux, and quite frankly amazing that it can be made to run any software written for Windows. If you want to complain that Linux can't run your games, start bitching at the game developers. It is their choice to write games for Windows. Other developers are capable of writing cross-platform games, such as Doom 3, Quake 4, UT2004, Neverwinter Nights etc.
Trust me, I'd be very happy if all the best games ran in Linux, whether it be because the developer's wrote it that way, or because the smart folks who hack on Linux figured out a way to make them all work. But it just isn't there yet, so if you want to play games and use specific software written for Windows, just use Windows.
Also I dont ring up Fries. I run 4 group homes for mental patients with dozens of clients and a dozen or so employees.Is this yet another example of Linux Leetness . You dont Understand Linux You must work at some Burger Joint.
You are capable of running 4 group homes and dealing with a dozen employees, yet you come into this forum and post like a 16year old who just got off the night-shift at Wendy's [No offense to those few intelligent 16yr olds working at burger joints
Nothing to see here
I bought the Xandros a month or so ago. I tried using it. Although it installed well (as is the case with most Linux distro's these days), I was unhappy with the selection and even the philosophy. The main thing that bothered me most was that I could find nearly no software on their network and most of what was installed out of date. I also didn't like the idea that all these facilities touted in these posts were only available on a paid for basis. The home edition didn't even have basic things such as the ability to play movies or listen to music. You had to pay for the premium. Didn't make alot of sense to charge for the these basic facilities.
I could have just gone and installed this stuff by getting the packages and struggling with them. I even started to do that, but I found there were almost NO repositories for it. When I went looking for info on the forums most people were not happy with either the software selection, the philosophy, or the registration mechanism.
Let's just say I was disappointed and went looking for a distro that had the software I wanted (basic essential stuff for a home system). I paid about $100 for it and then had to abandon it. I don't know what their 4.1 professional is but I suspect it is exactly more of the same.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
That Burger joint employment theory is crtainly supported by your inability to render quotes effectively on /.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
The issue/problem is trying to unseat Windows as the current/incumbent OS. Many efforts are made to give Linux distos a "Windows" feel simply because that is what people are used to. In order to educate people that the OS is NOT what the story is all about, you need to show them an interface that they are comfortable with and willing to work within. When all the applications that they want to run *just run*, then they might understand.
:)
One of the biggest conceits within the Linux community is "Of course it't better, so just use it". Even if it's true, you need to help people along the path. Think of it as a language. If I could *prove* that, for example, Esperanto was a better and more efficient language for communication I would have a hard time making people switch if it was completely unlike anything they had ever seen before. There needs to be a strong tie to the language they already know to ease the pain of switching, or else it just isn't worth it.
I could ramble on about the problems, and where Linux apps really aren't as polished as Windows (Gaim vs Trillian for example) but I'm pretty drunk right now. Typing this much has been a pretty significant accomplishment.
IIRC, Xandros is what became of Corel Linux.
.Net architecture.
As well, IIRC, Corel sold their distro to Xandros about a year after Microsoft pumped $135 million of much needed cash into Corel in a "joint development and marketing alliance" to get Corel to port their various Windows apps to the
Prior to this, Corel had been poised to port WordPerfect to Linux (natively - I believe there was already a WINE-based port) and were working on all sorts of initiatives to help make desktop Linux competitive with Windows. Then they got this investment, they talked about staying the course with Linux, but it languished, announced projects languished, and then they sold it.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I *started* with the *Mac* introduction to menubars, back about 1986. Windows was merely EmbraXtending the original brilliant design. Now, fully a quarter of my job is about wandering the weird options buried in menus to solve nuisances for those above me who decide they shouldn't have to care. I became grumpy with IE7 taking away my menubar, and found the command to put it back, and back at the *top* of the screen.
Again there are alternating comments upon the ease of use of Xandros. I'm a moderate user... on Windows. This makes all my knowledge completely worthless for Linux, and I'll be reduced to beginner's luck. Y'all who are already experts don't need convincing. "Newbs are where your target audience is". I'd like to think I'm a semi intelligent Newb(N), but then I also can't seem to navigate the RMVehicle efficiently either.
Since I switched out of MacOS about 1998, I've used about fifteen Windows systems. When it comes time soon for me to do the Big Switch, I'll keep some detailed notes. Anyone interested?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Can we get past the idea that we have to have two completely separate computers... one for gaming and one for business? This is 2006. I think we can have one machine that does both.
XP Professional does both. Hell, even Macintosh does both to some level.
Telling people that they should dual boot is not going to get new users any time soon.
Please, Mac makes beautiful hardware.
As far as the OS goes its pretty but a distant second to Windows.
I have a Mac and a PC (XP) and I won't take sides on what's a better overall system because both
have their merits. But in terms of usability, OSX has that infuriating icon bar at the bottom
which doesn't nest with sublevels. The file system has a weird horizontal orientation in the
'explorer' which smacks of "we need to look different from Windows" logic. The window maximize
feature (which doesn't lock to the screen) is also infuriating. But most of all... and this is
something that I cannot forgive Apple for: The one button mouse is fundamentally inferior.
Support for two buttons is limited in the OS.
Apple is always getting credit for being design intensive -- but this is more of an aesthetic
judgement IMHO. Microsoft (as much as I love to bash them) deserves far more credit than they
get for designing an extraordinarily usable UI.
My two cents of course. Nothing intended as a flame here. As I said, I have both machines
and use them both.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
One typical Linux thing that's not in Win that I particulary like is the ingenious pager. I have just a 15" display and utilizing multiple desktops makes handelig of many open programs a breeze. So by having browser and email apps on one desktop, my terminals and ftp client in another and my development tools in a third I completly avoid a taskbar that's crowded beyond belief and I don't have to jugle 15 windows on a small workspace.
So maybe I'm not a certified Windows hater/ Linux zealot but atleast I have a very comfortable desktop...
I wonder if I'll be able to upgrade my OCE 3.0 install to OCE 4.0. Apt-get seems to work well enough on OCE 3.0 and Debian is pretty good at upgrading distros. OCE 3.0 is pretty old (Woody based, I believe) and there don't seem to be any updates recently.
For a system that is supposed to work friendly with a Windows environment OCE 3.0 has some serious limitations. As a normal user I can't write to a Samba share every other Linux distro I've used has no trouble with. I have to change files on the server as root or use FISH/SSH. Pretty annoying.
I rather like the Explorer-like Xandros File Manager but I still tend to use Konqueror since XFM doesn't support tabs and had limited Kioslave functionality. Also, K3B isn't in the Xandros OCE repository and CD burning is limited to 4X (oh well, I'm not in a hurry).
I could just blow Xandros away and install a modern distro, but it still works fine for web surfing and listening to MP3s and I don't see the point in burning a few hours with a new install and all the attendent fiddling just to overcome a few minor annoyances.
"Very few companies really care if they can modify the software themselves, especially if it works. You're confusing businesses for hobbyists again."
You're confusing "works" again.
I don't think it means what you think it means.
Converting all those nasty Unix boxes to Windows back in the day took many an IT department from a part time job for one engineer to a full time job for 20 monkeys. Been there. Done that.
MOST "software" is written in house, for in house use.
People seem to forget that.
With Windows, you get to play roulette with the OS, and you have precious little control.
(how is THIS update going to hose our system..???)
This has been interesting.
Thanks for playing, Mr. Ballmer.
I feel the same way about Windows and Linux. I like the user interface and the programming APIs of Windows, but the OS itself just isn't well done. GNU/Linux based systems, on the other hand, have a (moderately) great kernel, but finding a distro that works is very difficult.
I started out using UNIX-based systems only, at home, in October 2004, so it's already been two years for me. I tried SuSE, Solaris, Slackware, FreeBSD, Debian and Ubuntu, and so far, I can say that Ubuntu is the one that I liked most. However, GNOME in Ubuntu 6.10 is broken for me, I cannot burn CD's via Nautilus, for instance -- on Debian (3.1r3 stable), that worked! But there's still K3b, so that was no problem. But on every single Linux distribution that I encountered, something just didn't work (and often also couldn't be made to work).
What I really like about Ubuntu (6.10) is, that it comes with the latest and greatest software packages, like GCC 4.1, GNOME 2.16, and so on.
Before that journey to find the right distro, I was using SuSE, and was becoming increasingly bothered by it. SuSE seems to never test their packages, so plenty of those don't work. I cancelled my subscription after 10.1, because it had so many flaws, when I tried it.
What I dislike about Slackware is, that many of the packages aren't dependency-checked properly. It's easy to break your system with just one install.
FreeBSD slowly disintegrated as I was using it, still don't know why. Probably also a dependency checking problem; the more software you installed, the more things became broken. But the whole kernel stuff in FreeBSD is just nice; to load a kernel module, all you have to do is to change a single config file. You don't have to recompile the kernel.
Solaris is a great OS, but is apparently not intended for the desktop (for example, I couldn't get my USB scanner to work with it). Also, administration significantly differs from Linux or BSD systems. Perhaps I'll try that again sometime.
So, the bottom line, from my point of view is, that Ubuntu is the best GNU/Linux distro I've seen so far, and I hope it'll stay on my machine long enough that I don't have to buy Windows Vista or XP.
As far as program development is concerned, I'm dissatisfied with the whole configure-script mess. It is far too complicated to learn in a reasonable amount of time, and so I won't develop native apps for GNU/Linux (and no, none of the IDE's worked for me, I tried all of them; every single one was unable to handle the configure stuff properly). Plus, if you don't have a package maintainer for every distro, you cannot distribute your app (because doing it yourself is virtually impossible due to the insane complexity). I decided to develop exclusively on Java in my sparetime. Not only the libraries are standardized and powerful, the development tools just work and are very powerful, but also I can distribute my apps in a single jar file.
Loading modules in Linux (let's say Ubuntu) is the same, you just need to edit a configuration file (most of the time that's not even needed, hardware detection will do its tricks). What happens is that sometimes a kernel is not compiled with all the necessary modules. If the kernel is compiled with the modules as loadable modules, then they become available for you to load from shell or at boot time, using the config file. Ubuntu (and Debian) even goes to the trouble of providing you with the mechanism of allowing you to compile a foreign module, with no kernel recompilation needed. I know little about FreeBSD, but I presume the mechanisms would have to be the same.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
YMMV.
But, to be fair - you can set the dock to autohide so it's only there when needed. And if you drag a folder to the dock you can treat it like a hierachial menu if you right-click it.
Right-click? Yes! OS X has context menus all over the place. If you don't like using the keyboard to emulate a right-click, just buy a half decent USB mouse instead. It'll work seamlessly.
I agree about finder though. Although that column view is only one of several views.
"...So I hung back and lurked. For 18 months. Can't beat a good old-fashioned lurking."
by train you mean tell them "if someone asks for the source code, mail them one of these CDs". that doesnt sound much more effort than putting a tarball on the server.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Fixed that for you, buddy.
$100, it is too much, potential new users wont pay that much, they would rather buy windows home editions.
There is an option where you can put two fingers on the trackpad and click, and it's equivalent to a right click. It's sweet. But trackpads drive me nuts usually, and it's easier just to plug in a USB Logitech Marble Mouse (God's own pointing device!) and right click 'til the cows come home.
If you haven't used Mac OS X lately, or not at all, give it a spin. It's been good since Panther, Tiger is nice, and Leopard will make the new MacIntels fly thanks to more native IA64 code. It's like Linux only more things work out of the box than Linux and you have to fiddle with it less. Oh yeah, the Terminal's used BASH for a while now. Just like Linux.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
explain why a bunch of heavily paid microsoft researchers cannot do the same thing.
Two words: backwards compatibility.
What kills Microsoft and produces problem after problem is their requirement (driven by perceived customer need) to have long backwards compatibility. They can't 'clean slate' things as often as Mac OS or Linux can.
If some part of Linux is demonstrated to be insecure by design, chances are somebody will decide it's ugly and rewrite the thing. Sure it might get patched, but eventually some programmer is going to decide that it's crufty enough to offend him, and just start over. Because you have a lot of people looking at the code, this happens often -- if the code isn't simple or elegant, another programmer may decide to try their hand at redoing it.
The people working on Windows are probably no smarter nor stupider than Linux developers, but they don't have the option of sitting down and re-implementing broken stuff. So instead, things get patched, and patched, and cruft grows, unseen except by a few people that understand it. There isn't the impetus to redevelop, because fewer people are working on the code; and broad changes are discouraged because of the need to retain compatibility and prevent a stable environment to commercial developers.
Providing a stable environment is Windows' major benefit to developers besides its userbase, but it also makes it architecturally inflexible and prone to design failures rather than simple code bugs. While any platform or piece of software can have bugs, and those bugs can be fixed, only a flexible one that's not overly concerned about backwards compatibility can fix architectural flaws when they become apparent.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
There are some users that -won't- switch away from MS no matter what for whatever reason.
The average marketeer knows it's nearly impossible to convert these users so don't waste too much energy on them. Apple does waste a great deal of energy on them over the years and look how it hasn't really worked.
What does work is finding the consumers ready for a change or urgently needing something that they can't get in windows and building on them.
That's why when I see opinions flying about "as good as Windows" where good can be substituted for pretty much anything, it's just doesn't translate to business success. Yes, things on other platforms need to be similar to the norm, but within that context, transparency and 3D desktops aren't what drives adoption. Killer applications do.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
In theory that's sort of true but for the reality of Mac. This shows that it's possible to put an end user friendly face on *nix.
Not sure what you mean by enterprise though. AIX, Sun, Z/os, OS/400 are all perfectly capable enterprise systems.
if it occurs that infrequently then there isn't any harm in them asking someone in charge what to do.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Burning CDs and DVDs became more difficult around kernel 2.6.11 or so. The kernel developers discovered that ordinary users could to blow away the burner's firmware and decided to make this impossible. You can always burn as root, but not as an ordinary user. I've configured the KDE launchers for K3b on my machines to run as root.
I assume this problem exists on Windows as well but is ignored. Because Linux is by nature multi-user these sorts of problems are more serious. You wouldn't want someone to be able log into your machine remotely and destroy your burner.
For more on the issue, see this and related postings by Alan Cox on the Linux kernel developers list (http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/8/2/290).
I have a Mac and a PC (XP) and I won't take sides on what's a better overall system because both
have their merits. But in terms of usability, OSX has that infuriating icon bar at the bottom
which doesn't nest with sublevels. The file system has a weird horizontal orientation in the
'explorer' which smacks of "we need to look different from Windows" logic. The window maximize
feature (which doesn't lock to the screen) is also infuriating. But most of all... and this is
something that I cannot forgive Apple for: The one button mouse is fundamentally inferior.
Support for two buttons is limited in the OS.
Let me attempt to take away some of your frustration. First, set the Dock to auto hide, and ignore it. Then, use Command+Tab to move smoothly and quickly between APPLICATIONS. Within each application, use Command+` (backtick) to cycle between DOCUMENTS/WINDOWS within that application. It's easy, it's fast. If you let yourself get used to it you might even find it's just as good as the various ways Windows does it.
The Finder definitely needs and update but I find that sticking my most-used folders in the sidebar makes things run pretty smoothly. If you think it needs major improvement you aren't alone, that's for sure.
The window maximizing experience also takes some getting used to. I think it helps if you just let go of the mentality that every window in every application needs to fill up the whole screen. See, it's not really a maximize button it's a zoom button, and it's function is really defined by which application you use. I have found over time that it is nearly as useful in its own way as a real "maximize" button would be. You just have to get into a different mindset.
Don't like the one-button mouse? This is your weakest complaint, and it's been gone over a million times by now. ANY two-button USB mouse will work just fine with OS X and there are context menus in practically every application, so I don't know where you get the idea that support for two buttons is limited in any way. However I find that I very seldom need to access context menus in most applications because the keyboard shortcuts are so much easier and faster. Most of us got used to using the mouse way too much in Windows because the Control key based keyboard shortcuts are so cumbersome. The easy-to-use Mac keyboard shortcuts have replaced a vast amount of the mousing around I used to do in Windows. Furthermore, recent Apple notebooks have the ability to scroll and right-click just by using two fingers on the trackpad. So really the only problem is that you have to drop another $20 on a two-button USB mouse when you buy a Mac desktop machine. Whoopty doo.
Oh, and look up a little app called Quicksilver. It rocks, and gives you another reason to completely ignore the Dock.
Hope that helps.
"Don't like the one-button mouse? This is your weakest complaint, and it's been gone over a million times by now. ANY two-button USB mouse will work just fine with OS X"
So... Apple wants me to go and by a Logitech mouse for their superior-design computer?
I'll continue to call b.s.
Its time for Apple to pull their stick out of the mud and admit that their precious mouse has been radically improved upon by the design of others.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )