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Godwin's Law Invoked in Linus/Gnome Spat
lisah writes "The flame wars between Linus Torvalds and the GNOME community continue to burn. Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,' a member of the Linux Foundation's Desktop Architects mailing list suggested that Torvalds use GNOME for a month before making such pronouncements. Torvalds, never one to back down from a challenge, simply turned around and submitted patches to GNOME and then told the list, '...let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they actually improve the code.' After lobbing that over the fence, Torvalds concluded his comments by saying, 'Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it makes things more logical, and code more readable.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
And there is a good reason why distros like Ubuntu default to GNOME and not KDE, in my experience it's a lot easier to break something in KDE, and it's harder for an end user to figure out how to get it to do things like, I don't know, not opening file downloads in a text editor. The other problem is that KDE is slow, REAL slow, I know that GNOME isn't exactly a speed demon, but KDE is suffering from code bloat and so many features being tacked on, and in the end performance takes a hit. I understand that Torvalds is frustrated with GNOME, and he can use KDE all he wants, but why does he have to criticize GNOME so much? The whole reason there are multiple window managers is because none of them do everything right, and so you put many of them out there and let people CHOOSE, he could have jsut as easily criticized KDE for bloat, and Fluxbox for missing features.
If they don't need some feature to be configurable (rather than consistent), then why would they do that change? It's open source, and the guy did the change as he wanted to. He can branch the code any time. What the hell is his problem? Megalomania? He should really try toning down his ego.
GNOME is very good because it has some of the best practises on by default. For most users, that is. The rest can modify the code as they please. What part of open source is Mr. Torvalds not getting?
Interesting fight. Linus wants configurability and flexibility to reign, which is a hallmark of linux. However, the dominance of Windows (and the success of Mac OS, OS X etc.), as well as the preponderance of "idiot's guides", should clearly lead us to believe that the majority of PC users are, in fact, idiots. Certainly there are many geeks and power users, and not all linux users are geeks, but the typical PC owner doesn't care about minor tweaks; most people just want their system to run and be usable.
Personally, I dualboot XP and Kubuntu, and I've used many other distros, but some people need the universal acceptance of XP apps and file formats, the ease/reliability of a Mac, or at least the simplicity of Gnome. I take pride in being able to take care of my daily business without employing MS software or other monopolistic products, but most pepole just want to do what they need to do without any hassle, and Gnome is a step in that direction, with a linux base. It works, and though I wouldn't try to make it a basic linux standard, I am glad it exists, as it surely leads to wider linux adoption.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
HOwever I do think that assuming he has some degree of autism isn't unlikely, I myself suffer from quite serios mental disorders and I seem to find that autism and other mental disorders (or what you like to call them, doesn't matter much) is much more common in "the geek community" than in the world surrounding us.
Probably has a lot to do with that the commputer is really a big help to people like me who have problems handling social situations.
But then again I do not know Linus at all, I just know that he is important to the Linux Kernel and I would like for the kernel to keep on developing, if I have to bow and jump around to please Linus I would do that as I know he is much better at doing what he does than I am and even if I were more skilled being humble and appreciating what Linus has done would let things run more smoothly.
First off, nice touchy feely people get nothing done. All good OSS projects depend on focussed, and often heavy handed, leadership. Linus might piss and moan about Gnome, but then a lot of people do about Linus too. Linus is effective because he's not democratic. Try send patches that Linus does not like upstream in the kernel. They will get squashed. Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they should be aware of the cultures they are playing with.
I run an OSS project too, one that is pretty successful. I don't willy-nilly accept patches that I don't like either. I will often take patches and recode them to be the way that I want them to be.
Linus is good. Linus contributes a lot, but untimately that does not give him the right to be a fuckwit in someone elses project, any more than it gives anyone else the right to be a fuckwit in his project.
Roll over and be nice to Linus is a poor way to handle things.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.
The Anti-Defamation League was not happy about this.
Interesting opinion; have you ever met Linus? I have. He's not the type of person I'd call a jerk.
Richard Stallman? Maybe; he certainly can be a jerk in certain situations. Eric Raymond (the obscurity he so richly deserves seems to have finally caught up to him, so that reference may no longer be relevant) is definitely a jerk. Meeting both those guys was an eye-opener.
Torvalds? He's a nice guy, actually. He's also a very smart guy who holds his opinions because he's spent a lot of time thinking about them. Despite what people tend to assume, he doesn't insist you agree with his opinion; he does, however, tend to insist that your opinion is well thought out if you wish him to take it seriously. Unfortunately, the Gnome troop seems to have stopped at "simple is good" and not realized that it, like anything, can be taken too far.
Personally I tend to think Gnome's "users are idiots" attitude is not so much due to thinking that users are idiots; I think it's more due to the fact that a few large corporations pay for most of Gnome's development, and they want their users to be treated as idiots. Someone has to have control of the computer, and as is true with Microsoft, the last thing they want is for that control to rest with the person using it.
It is true, and it will always be true, that some people who use computers will never understand them at any level, and they will find a way to hurt themselves with any options you give them. It is also true that most people do not fall into this group, and despite what all the 14 year old fanbois who frequent Slashdot believe, they are not the only ones who can make sense of of a computer; most people who use them become quite adept at making them do what they want.
For Gnome to persist in preventing them from using the computer as they see fit is a shame (interestingly certain folks in the Mozilla project also seem to be infected with this disease, although in that case more pragmatic viewpoints usually prevail). Despite what so many seem to believe, an easy to use UI is not mutually exclusive to a flexible and capable UI; that so many developers assume it to be true is much more a function of their own lack of vision and ability than a reflection on the reality of the situation.
You haven't installed windows lately then. I've just been on a clean-up and reinstall/migrate jolly. I've installed two copies of windows XP pro on two different computers; two copies of vista on same, one 32-bit, one 64-bit, and kubuntu edgy on one of the boxes.
Kubuntu needed a one line command to install the binary nvidia drivers (I could have done it in the gui with a couple of clicks also); all else worked out of the box, apart from the 100s of MBs of updates and patches; but then windows needs that also, so that's a draw.
Windows XP doesn't properly recognise either sound card, my mouse, my graphics cards, my tv-tuners, some of the onboard motherboard devices, my gig network cards, hell I even need a boot floppy for the sata drivers to install it; I had to dig a floppy drive out of storage especially. I had to manually track down and install the drivers from half a dozen different websites, which is tricky when your network card doesn't work yet. And before you complain it's an old OS, it's entirely microsoft's fault they haven't issued SP3 with updated drivers and all the patches; I believe we get to wait until 2008 for that.
Vista needs updated motherboard drivers and graphics card drivers, sound card drivers and mouse drivers, most of which aren't available at all yet, or are 'technology previews' and don't work yet. I'm looking at you, Mr Nvidia SLI, and Mr Razer, we don't do signed vista 64 drivers yet.
Out of the box compatibility SUCKS for windows, and always has. Why most people don't encounter this is because their OEM does all the hard work for them and provide an installed finished product. They could do so with linux, and have just a slick a product. What linux lacks is application support these days, not drivers out of the box. Even wireless is very slick on ubuntu last time I tried it.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
I can guarantee that most of the linux based studios in the CGI industry run Gnome. It's simpler, faster and more stable than KDE. I am sure you know that the people there push really hard the video subsystems of the computer hardware. In these conditions it's really easy to figure out which one is the better GUI shell. :) ) - in fact this is a solid part of the "fun". It's great also for people who are not totally dependent all the time by their GUI shell - sysadmins, web/apps coders, terminal users, web surfers, etc.
KDE is great for home users who like eyecandy and are ready to spend time tweaking the window manager to work exactly the way they want ( or dont
For those of us, who really need stable and just working GUI - Gnome is the way to go. But of course, it needs some time and the right conditions to understand that. Once you start feeling the heat of the upcoming deadline and at the same time experience instabilities and wackines of the GUI shell and this is screwing up the graphic apps you need to work stable to get the job done on time, you will start appretiating Gnome little more.
I dont know what is the Gnome problem of mr.Torvalds. Maybe he is thinking at the code level, but for me and most of the people i know and work with, Gnome is just the better solution than KDE. It's not about configurability and pretiness - it's about stability. Most people at work dont really care much how the GUI looks and feels like, as far as it does the expected job. And of course i am talking specificaly about the needs of CGI production. Maybe the situatoin is quite different at other places, industries, project types and workflow requirements.
The words above are based on my observations.
Here is my personal opinion - i like Gnome + Motiff theme - it is simple, it works. It allows me to do my pretty pictures better, faster and with less stress - i suppose it's good then ( at least for me ).
I agree that some choices are a bit hidden in GConf, like disabling those stupid "My Computer" or "Trash" icons on the Desktop, or disabling raise-on-click for the window manager. But in the end, Gnome works for me, and quite well.
I try out KDE every two years (and recently), and even after throwing out all those junk buttons in those thousands of toolbars, I still end up with an UI that's incredibly clunky, ugly, menus full of stuff that I won't ever need and where I can't find WHAT I need and so on.
Honestly, Gnome works for many people, and KDE does, too. What's the problem with that? It's about TASTE or PREFERENCE. Don't argue about it; just let people freely choose their desktop.
I'm not throwing insults at whoever happens to prefer KDE. I'm not labeling the KDE devs as designers of torture chamber UIs. I like the kernel Linus developed (though BSD is fine, too), but he should really work on that attitude "everyone but me is an idiot" problem.
Exactly. It's ironic that Linus accuses developers of one desktop (among different alternatives) of being Nazis, while it's him that wants that one-size-fits-all, all bow to the leader!
I find that most KDE and Gnome devs and users are perfectly agreeable people that prefer their desktop and sometimes argue why the other side is wrong, but they don't insult anybody, and they respect that there's another desktop out there that also has many people liking it.
I prefer Gnome (I really don't like KDE at all!), but others prefer KDE. Others use Window Maker. Fine. What's the point?
It's not about cost, it's about libre freedom. *Especially* someone who claims to be a pragmatic advocate of freedom should learn to respect that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT, and they aren't idiots just because they don't agree with Linus.
This Linus thing smells a whole lot like OCD, and like someone could use a therapy (or just calm down a bit).
There is a reason why i rip everything gnome & kde related out of a linux distro after an install... the UI is too much like windows.
I still use fvwm1 (with all of its quirks/bugs) because it gets rid of some of the *basic* usability issues that gnome and kde fail to resolve.
To list a couple:
I think my point is that the gnome and kde projects are not so much about innovating as keeping up with microsoft... We need to create a community devoted to the idea of seeing what Redmond does and saying 'hey, thats interesting, but I can do that better'
This is what the kernel community does constantly... Linus is the gatekeeper, and he is right to critisize... When was the last time you totally changed the internal architecter of a subsystem of your project because you were wrong? For Linus it was the 2.4 MM (mid release cycle) /p?
"But Linus does really seem to have a bit of an attitude problem at times."
This is just an attempt at doing a Theo (of OpenBSD), throwing people under the bus for having strong opinions and overinterpreting the written. Try evaluating the arguments.
As to Linus, yeah, it may be true and from what anecdotal stuff I've read, he may very well have that attitude problem. But often times, he's *right* and I care more if something gets better than the pissing match and comparing of testical sizes.
There also seems a sentiment that if someone flies off the hook a bit, that the person doing so is wrong and has little or no reason to. I disagree with this; often how someone acts is a direct reflection of who they are dealing with and that the "arse" being responded to often encircles themselves with those of like minds. As someone who went to the same college as Havoc Pennington and at the same time, and sparred with him on the uchi.* newsgroups, Havoc is quite dense, both in not seeing the big picture as well as rather salient points; he's a damn smart guy that just often latches on to the dumbest points which makes you wonder if it's the same person you're dealing with. That the gnome developers may, in general, reflect that characteristic of dysfunctionality is not surprising.
There is also the simple fundamental question too outside of the personality conflicts--Is gnome any good? Or, rather, has gnome improved much in recent memory? Given the goals, the changes ove the years, I'm rather sick of it. I use gnome today (default in Ubuntu). Many times, I wonder what the HELL they are doing. I often have to use the command line because shit is broken. It lacks basic configuration. What does configure is often broken. It's got bugs that just don't get fixed; they get refeatured, as in they disappear because something else got implemented, often to return later. It's freakin' slow. It handles some things very well, like multiple open windows, but that's basic; it'll then turns into a slug and switches to a slow navigation mode after just a few moments prior handled things elegantly (try having 100 windows open of a particular app and compare to, say, XP of the same--explorer beats it down handily, using a slightly slower processor, and less RAM). The only good thing I like from that community really is Evolution (which seems to get better although does throw you from time to time with minor interface changes).
So, throwing aside Godwin's Law and the personalities, evaluate the idea central to the argument itself, the usability, the speed, does it work well for you--to that end, is gnome any good? For me, the answer is no. And that makes Linus more right. Your answer may very well differ, which revisits the crux of this matter.
I've cursed and cursed that the friggin right click doesn't lower the window.
I've literally been complaining about this crap for over 5 years.
http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40743
BTW. I could have sworn that that a month after last time when we had this flame war one of the gnome guys created a patch to make it configurable. At the time, I wasn't using Gnome regularly so I didn't save it and now I can't find it anymore.
Here's what I want.
1) The top of the window should be next to an edge so I can click on it easily.
2) Right click should lower it. Currently middle click works but I really think the right click is less awkward.
I've got maybe 50-70 windows open at a time and I need to be able to cycle through them as fast as possible. I need to have Fitz law working for me.
3) The gnome terminal needs to stop sucking. I've got a frigging 3Ghz computer with 1G of RAM and a top of the line graphics card. Why does gnome terminal slow my whole box down when it's just scrolling ascii? Also why does it take a second for me to highlight text in gnome terminal? When I don't disable the feature where you can double click to select a word that takes up to five seconds...
Sorry I guess the terminal thing wasn't really related. I got on a rant and couldn't stop. But seriously, fix the blasted right click to lower stuff at least. Even if it takes a command line utility to customize it that's fine.
Looking at the patches Linus has provided they mostly relate to the window manager metacity.
I am 100% with Linus on this one. A few years back Gnome was using the sawfish window manager. Not only could this be configured to your hearts content, you could even write your own extensions for it. With sawfish windows could do some real magic.
Gnome saw sawfish and its configurability and decided it was bad -- and to some extent it was, there were a plethora of options. The right solution to this is to find a good set of default options and provide a configuration tool that presents just the options that people are most likely to configure + an advanced configuration dialogue for those that want to play with the more interesting options.
Gnome threw the baby out with the bath water when they went to metacity.
For a while I stopped using Gnome and used ratpoison as my window manager. Ratpoison shows the power of being able to do all your window manipulation from the keyboard (this is quite important for me, I have a neuromuscular disorder and so avoiding the mouse can make me much more productive -- metacity does not give me that option).
More recently I kept hearing about 3-D window managers and decided to give beryl a try. Now beryl comes with a plethora of options and has reasonably good support for keyboard navigation. Fingers crossed some gnome based linux distributions will go for beryl as their window manager.
Going from ratpoison to beryl is maybe going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but what the two have in common is configurability.
Linus is right, one size fits all sucks.
You are making the classic mistake of petty little armchair dictators everywhere. What is right for you is right for everyone.
You don't want to configure things, so NOBODY wants to configure things so things that can be configured are bad.
I hope that you are a homosexual or your partner is going to extremely frustated. What works for you, will not work for her. (yeah yeah, slashdot and partner, har har)
If what you claimed is true then Harley Davidson would be bankrupt since for a long period of their history their bikes most certainly did NOT work out of the box. Are they bankrupt? Oh, no, they are actually doing fairly well and the bikes from that era were you first needed to put in some major work on your new purchase are actually highly sought after. Covered in rust and in pieces and mixed up with another model? All the better!
You can't switch on discovery channel and not see a program were people that a product that works out of the box and then cut it apart into little bits to configure it to their liking.
So are these persons not people?
No, you think because you don't like something, nobody likes it.
Well, sorry kid, but that is the way fundementalists think. I am X so everyone is X and if they are not they are wrong.
Humanity is far more complex, we want/need different things and we are going to argue about it forever. This is a GOOD thing. It is why things happen. It was the crap western bikes that gave the japanese their chance and is why in a world were you have HD doing extremely well, some people buy honda's because they want a bike that really just fucking drives out of the box and they don't ever have to mess with.
On the other hand, people also still buy bucatti bikes. A brand that never ever managed to create a single piece of equipment with two wheels that just works. (I do not know anything about the reliability of their four wheeled car, except that I want one. Road car that can outrace a F1 car. Fap fap fap.)
Humans eh.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The solution is simple. A default gnome desktop install package that just works, and an additional power-users tweak package. Like Windows has with TweakUI (only more powerful). The extra step involved in installing the extra package would prevent accidental stuff-ups by grandma and grandpa, while being easy enough for l337 h4x0rz to install and configure.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
Erm, Gnome gives you the choice not to use it. That's what I've done.
Look out!
I'm glad you like the flavour of GNOME brand kool-aid, but really, this "GNOME is inherently superior" meme is ridiculous.
And yes, I use GNOME myself. I use it not because I think it's good, but because I find KDE even less pleasant to use, and trying out other alternatives would take time and effort, and I do most of my real work in a terminal window or an emacs frame anyway. Even then, it took considerable effort to get a usable environment out of GNOME. For example, I had to install an unsupported third-party hacked Metacity, because the GNOME developers refuse to fix the broken behaviour in the official version with regard to multi-monitor setups.
And then there are a whole bunch of defaults that fly in the face of good interface design, like the inexplicable decision to construct the desktop switcher (uh, sorry, "workspace switcher") such that the active des^H^H^H"workspace" looks less active than the inactive, uh, "workspaces". And of course providing an option to configure the colours used would be too confusing for Auntie Ethel...
See, here's the thing. I have never felt that Gnome treats me like an idiot ever since I started using it (somewhere around 2.10 I think).
Then again, maybe that's because I am an idiot and I just can't tell... :P
Seriously though, there's a couple of points here: first, interfaces that do their best to stay out of your way are good for some people. Second, if you design to please everyone, you end up with design-by-committee software that everyone hates. If the Gnome developers have got a vision of what the desktop should be, more power to them.
Maybe the reason I feel in control with Gnome is that its design fits my mode of thinking (interestingly enough, I was never comfortable with OS X). It's a bit hard for me to be objective here.
This seems a reasonable line of thought to me, so I'm willing to concede that I just don't know what I'm missing. I gather that the stuff that has been removed has been long gone by now, so maybe I simply don't know what the heck I'm talking about. In any case, every release of Gnome I've seen so far has only improved the experience for me. More and more stuff just works out of the box and more often than not, things are where I expect them to be. As long as that is the case, I don't mind if power-user tweak-everything features are added, just don't clutter my interface with them.
Sorry, here's a hi-fi version of the post with paragraphs and stuff.
I see your point, but, to continue in the way you put it, not everybody cares whether the environment is 95% or 99% perfect for them. Achieving 100% perfect, even if it were possible, would be way too costly in terms of time and effort to be worth it.
Even 99% perfect is that for a lot of people. I understand that if you sit 8+ hours a day in front of an editor writing code and often repeating pretty much the same mantra (in terms of tools they use for processing the code, not in the code itself), you may want to have it behave exactly the way you want. Geeks (who actually understand that the way things work aren't set in stone and usually could, at least in theory, be changed) in general are probably more sensitive in this way than most others, so editors and code are quite appropriate as an example even if there are also other people who spend most of their time using a single application or interface.
The last few percent tend to be the most expensive, regardless of the matter in question. I'm generally a control freak and used to want to be able to tweak everything they way I wanted it to work. Then I got tired of spending extra time just to get the last few percent done. I settled with the 95% that Gnome gives me.
Like my friend once put it: "Computer scientists always have to optimize everything to save five seconds, even if the optimization process itself takes your entire life." That's not to say that it's entirely a bad thing but it reveals the point that sometimes going all the way to the end doesn't give enough benefit to justify the cost.
No, please go ahead and discuss the pros and cons of the UI. That's what I wanted to say.
...), which would be cool to have. But the UI? Gods, no.
I'm just saying, Gnome works great for me, and for others KDE works. People who can't discuss the advantages but have to say something like "designed by Nazis" or "everybody switch to XY" has totally lost that discussion before it even began.
Seriously, I'd like some aspects from KDE, like better options in Epiphany (they're working on them; until then I'll stay with Seamonkey, don't like FF), and, um, that's pretty much it. I've also heard that KDE is really good at integrating the network into Konqueror (ssh, ftp,
Gnome is totally going into the right direction, and what desktop environment can claim to be perfect? KDE is moving to better performance with Qt4, and I also hope they are working on some not-as-kludgy themes, at *seriously* cleaning up that UI, and streamlining their apps. So I think the optimum would use aspects of both DEs.
The problem with this is... even if I WANTED to change how the borders interacted with each other, I can't bloody FIND the option under the SEA of similar options. At least Gnome chooses mostly sane defaults, so I have no urge to change anything. I was suffering from major option overload when I tried KDE, and sadly, although it was far prettier than Gnome, I just couldn't find any relevant options. For example - how the hell do I change tab width in KDevelop/Kate? It seems to default on 8 spaces making my code GIGANTIC. The docs tell me to change it in one option pane, but there is nothing relating to tab width on that pane....
I have seen enough anecdotal evidence to back up the GP's point. The smartest guy in my university classes had a very, very strange introverted personality and behaviors that definitely bordered on autism.
There is a certain degree of intelligence where the logical side of the brain dominates to the extent that the emotional/social side begins to suffer.. it's not as impossible as you seem to think it is, but also not nearly as common as the GP thinks.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
Straight on. I had a girlfriend once who was manically depressive and who made life very difficult for herself by talking herself into thinking she was a borderliner when every medical professional told her she wasn't.
I think the best description of what happens when people diagnose themselves is in the first chapter of Jerome K Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat":
"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into some fearful, devastating scourge, I know and, before I had glanced half down the list of premonitory symptoms, it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever read the symptoms discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vituss Dance found, as I expected, that I had that too, began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Brights disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaids knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadnt I got housemaids knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaids knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to walk the hospitals, if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted mys
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Who are the apple zealots? And what is their relation to the apple nazis?
the Apple zealots try to get you to switch, while the Apple nazis kill you if you already didn't?
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Those dialogs are from older versions of OS X. You also seem to ignore that the Mac versions offer column view.
Look nothing like each other, and use entirely different controls and styles?
I completely agree with the parent post. Self-diagnosis is fraught with problems, and will generally lead to false positive diagnoses.
It turns out that this is also a common problem with first and second year medical students, as I found out from two separate friends who went through it.
Medical students spend most of their long waking hours reading about new (to them) diseases, syndromes, collections of symptoms. Naturally, their brains, being good at pattern-matching, find patterns in the quirks of their own experience, leading them to conclude that they have lived with some previously undiagnosed disease. Of course, this is not the case, but that doesn't stop it from happening to every new class of med students.
I even fell prey to the same thing when all the articles on Asperger's started flying around about 5 years ago, thinking: "OMG, I have this, and this, and this, and I score very highly on this survey, blah, blah, blah". Then, I think and observe some more, remember my med school friends, and read accounts like the parent, and realize that I'm just confused. Nevermind.
Interesting. I have found KDE to be quite stable, especially recent versions. On my Sun at work I will often be logged into my desktop for months at a time without issues. The browser will usually survive a week or so of heavy usage, though sometimes it will crash or consume too much memory. I have found, however, that Konqueror is much better with memory usage than Firefox, which often gobbles up everything it can get its hands on within a matter of hours.
On the Sun I went out of my way to download KDE (and a few apps like Amarok) since Sun's default of CDE sucks so bad. I quickly got fed up with Gnome when I could not for the life of me find a way to change it so the desktop used focus follows mouse instead of clicking. That and Gnome's horrible file dialog (which I also detest in Firefox).
I tried to see if I could get a modern version of Gnome to run about a year ago but quickly had to give up because some of the core Gnome libraries required Xrender, which Sun does not support on Solaris 8 on Sparc, (and Xorg does not run on Solars 8 Sparc either).
I have on a few occasions had KDE appear to lock up. I learned that killing kded and restarting it (not the whole desktop, just the daemon) made everything recover.
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And thus Macaddict's Law was conceived.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
I don't get the whining about gimp. To me, it looks like someone took the parts of photoshop that don't get "windowed" and "de-windowed" them. I mean what is the difference in gimp's and photoshop's gui? The wrapper/window.
Guess what? Slide that background in photoshop off the the side, and gee, you don't have access to file, edit, etc. but it looks like gimp.
Well, if I slide photoshop's "background" window off to the side, I find it isn't so much a background as a container, and my open documents move with it. If I minimize it, all my open documents are minimized, along with all the toolbars, etc. If I click to bring it to the front, all of its associated windows come with it. This is much more useful than having to manage all those windows independently.
But, frankly, that's the least of my concerns with Gimp. I find the fact that everything is organised into just two menus ("File" and "Xtras") inconvenient. A shallower, broader menu system makes it easier to find any individual item. Photoshop has 9 top level menus, each of which is substantially smaller than either of gimp's 2. Many of Gimp's menus have names that are incomprehensible to anyone but an expert. The handling of selections (particularly what it calls 'floating selections') is frankly bizarre, and difficult in practice to use even for somebody with months of experience using the software (albeit compared to years of using photoshop). Moving layers can be tricky, because layer selections change automatically when you click with the move tool (this is an option in photoshop, but not on by default).
The Linux kernel is critical, but a similar project such as HURD coming out earlier could have filled the same spot.
The HURD did come out earlier than the Linux kernel.. years earlier in fact. You have to remember that a lot of Linux' success is in fact do to Linus' personality.
Linus deserves a lot of credit, but let's credit him for what he did.
Yes, let's. You clearly don't understand that work on the HURD has been going on for decades. Still no usable OS.
Hmm, maybe Linus' work is a little more special than you're saying.
For that matter, how useful would Linux be without graphics and a browser (vast codebases)? Maybe Stallman isn't the alpha and the omega after all. Maybe it's really an unbelievably huge effort in which there's credit to go around.
Really, every substantial contributor should be mentioned in the name. But credit's always allocated unfairly. Get over it.