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OSCON 2008 Roundup
An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek wraps last week's event with Inside The OSCON 2008 Conference, which pulls together interviews with Mark Shuttleworth, Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin, MySQL's Zach Urlocker and Sam Ramji, who directs Microsoft's Open Source Lab. Best quotes: 'We will make a significant attempt to elevate the Linux desktop to the point where it is as good or better than Apple,' from Shuttleworth; and 'If I would start a business tomorrow I'd do it in the netbook marketplace. I'd build a dead-simple $200 device that targets sports fans, women over forty,' from Zemlin." We discussed Shuttleworth's better-than-Apple proposition while OSCON was going on. Update Jamie noted this OSCON Summary Video that might also be worth your time.
I will tell you why apple has better eye-candy than everyone else, and it's because of Core Animation. If you haven't seen it, you seriously need to look into it. It is everything you could want in an eye-candy library, and makes doing cute little things simple.
For example, when you do a search in a textbox or browser or something, OSX not only highlights the text, it makes it jump out for a second (stretch then shrink). It is really cool. I'm sure it annoys some people. It could be done on linux, but it would take a couple hundred lines. With core animation, it takes 10 or 15, and then because of the modularity of the whole OpenStep GUI system, it is easy to pass that capability into other programs.
Until Linux has a similar programming system, it will be hard to give it the same eye candy. Think about it: suppose I am trying to set up some effect on a windows machine. I know it will take a day or so of coding, so I am going to be careful to set it up and plan well before hand. If it turns out nice, I'm going to feel pretty good.
Whereas with core animation, if I suddenly think of something cool, I can just try it out. If it looks good, then great, if it doesn't, I can tweak it or throw it out until another good idea comes up. And you don't have to be an expert, it is pretty simple once you get it. So even the B-rate programmers can come up with this stuff, and the non-graphics programmers (documentation is still pretty horrible, however). That is cool. In fact it is one of the coolest things I've seen in programming in years.
Qxe4
Macs don't "just work".
People try them because they are told they "just work" and they pay highly for the privilege. When they discover that they have been lied to they are assured to "stick with it" and once they are heavily invested they are afraid to pull out because they don't want to lose that investment. Then they try to enlist other people so they don't feel so abnormal.
In other words, it's a cult. And if you find that too hard to believe, keep in mind that the leader of this cult is Steve Jobs. If you can't see that he is a cult leader then you're already lost.
How we know is more important than what we know.
apple may be a cult... but linux is a debilitating addiction:
http://xkcd.com/456
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
This just is flat out wrong.
This is like claiming that Apple has such polished desktops and product design because they have really good artists and industrial designers.
It is the management culture at Apple that makes those things happen and the people doing it are just the tools they use. And the same goes for Core Animation and the rest of OS X's UI and imaging technologies.
Just take one look at the visual abortion that is KDE 4.1:
http://www.linux.com/var/uploads/Image/articles/142661.png
Core Image isn't going to do anything to make that UI nightmare any better. There are fundamental problems that go far beyond the rendering tech used. There is a complete lack of even the most basic UI design concepts that have been developed over the past 20 years. Font rendering and layout problems, colour usage for UI elements, shadowing and light source consistency just to name a few of the most glaring errors.
A year from now KDE and Gnome will be just a train wreck of UI elements with some more random bling thrown in a continuing futile attempt to 'prove KDE/Gnome is ahead' of Windows and OS X.
Core Animation would do nothing to help the mess that is KDE/Gnome. It would just add additional pointless bling.
I totally agree with you. I just started hacking around with Cocoa, and I am pretty blown away by how elegant it is.
Objective C is pretty amazing, too. (I couldn't speculate about whether developing for Cocoa with Java is fun or not).
It's a total cliche, but it's true: You only get one shot at making a good API. If it has warts that you want to get rid of later, be assured that millions of developers will have written code that depends on those warts.
Yeah it's basically due to the easy modularisation of the apple API due to Cocoa (objective-c). THat makes programming for mac so simple. Linux has an equivalent to this in Gnustep/Etoile with Objective C but it is lacking developer manpower. I am convinced that with a lot of developers backing gnustep/etoile it could easily replicate the mac experience on linux and surpass it.
From your answer I can see you have never used Cocoa. A house-framer with a 12-oz hammer isn't going to have to work twice as hard to get stuff done as one using a 21-oz hammer. The tools a person uses are extremely important. A person who is tired from fighting all the time with the GUI-toolkit is not going to have the energy to be creative about how it looks. The GGP had a better point: it is not enough to just create 'prettiness,' it more importantly has to be functional. And that is where you get the double win with openstep: not only is it easy to make pretty, it is easy to make usable. If you so desire.
Qxe4
About 3 cups vegetable oil
2 (1 1/4-inch-thick) boneless top loin (New York strip) steaks (about 1 lb each)
3 1/8 teaspoons spice rub for beef
1 (1-lb) package frozen french fries
2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced lengthwise
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 450F.
Heat 1 inch oil in a 4- to 5-quart heavy pot over high heat until it registers 375F on thermometer.
While oil heats, pat steaks dry, then rub all over with spice rub (and salt if necessary). Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 12-inch ovenproof heavy skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then sear steaks, turning over once with tongs, until well browned, about 5 minutes total. Transfer skillet to oven and roast 10 minutes for medium-rare.
Check oil while searing steaks, and when it registers 375F, begin frying french fries in 2 batches (add fries carefully; they may have ice crystals, which could cause spattering), stirring occasionally, until golden and crisp, 4 to 5 minutes per batch. Transfer fries with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain and season with salt and pepper while hot. Return oil to 375F between batches.
Turn off heat under pot, then add garlic and fry until pale golden, 30 seconds to 1 minute, and transfer with slotted spoon to paper towels. Toss fries with garlic in a large bowl.
Transfer steak to a cutting board and let stand 5 minutes. Slice steak and serve with fries.
Me.
I don't even have a linux desktop right now. I just think it (linuxhaters) isn't any good.
It reads like it was written by a 18-year-old sub-literate kid who missed the "satire" part of "fratire". Even if the writer (writers?) understood linux, I couldn't read it due to the latent homosexuality making me so uncomfortable on the the author's behalf (why is everything about balls, cock, and ass to you?).
Back in the day, we had UGH. Now that was some good hate.
Don't hold your breath:
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/catastrafont.html
A few more years Linux fonts will suck in an equally but completely different way.
I'm not so sure. Apple 'just worked' and had a GUI from the 80s (pre-os X), and now just works and has a modern GUI. It happens that that OS X is also when the masses really started using Macs again. Now, there are *A LOT* of factors that changed in that timeframe - marketing, GUI, features, etc. However, is there any proof, one way or the other, that that the 'just works' is enough without a flashy GUI?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
at the risk of feeding the trolls... you happily paid for vista? that's like happily paying for sodomy by an elephant penis covered by a barbed wire condom
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
People don't use Macs because the GUI is pretty. They use Macs because "they just work"
People do buy macs 'cause the hardware is prettier, which I think is what most people think of when they think Mac eye candy. At this point, Windows just works about as often as Macs do,(meaning just fine as long as it's used as intended) so usually once cost/functionality are factored in, it probably does boil down to eye candy.
Another reason things just work is 'cause Apple GUI's tend to be fairly intuitive, so it's easy to get things working, once the user gets accustomed to it. Lots of FOSS UI's aren't up to par with the typical mac offering.
open source modern art: laser taggi
I meant to ask about the existence of something like Etoile in my comment above. Thanks.
Actually it's both. Without good managment, the project will go every which way like an ADD child with multiple personalities. Then you get things like feature bloat, inconsistent UI and general visual clutter. I could probably add to the list as well. But without good engineers, you have an inflexible UI API that developers don't want to deal with, and end up with less 'flashy' apps. And without good artists, your project will make the users' eyes bleed. No one group is significantly more important than the others. If any of them fail, the project will be majorly set back.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Yeah, I agree, it needs a lot of work. It will happen, let me tell you why. Microsoft is going to be out of the picture (even their stock-holders have no faith in them: check their stock price). So what is left? OSX. Imagine you are Dell, HP, and Lenovo. What are you going to do if you can't push OSX, and Microsoft is dying? You start pushing Linux. Maybe this won't happen, but it isn't an unreasonable scenerio.
And it can be done. Each one of the problems you have listed can be overcome, and furthermore OSX has showed how to solve a lot of those problems. It's going to be a lot of hard work, but it can be done. And incidentally, I don't even think Interface Builder is that great. It gets the job done, but the latest version annoys me.
Qxe4
I know you're just trolling, but man am I tired of the 'Apple is teh cultz!' post. A lot of people like OSX UI. Unsurprisingly, when you consider they've actually got a set of usability standards to follow. Why not take a look at all the independent assessments of Apple's usability design. Or the awards Macs have received. Etc, etc. No cult member will tell you to look at independent evidence. But I'm asking you to before you try to sell some crazy scheme about why Macs aren't even viable products.
We're not talking about the people who "just like it", we're talking about the people who claim it "just works". It doesn't just work! The fact is that for the vast majority of people who get on a Mac for the first, second, or even 20th time, they damn thing doesn't "just work" it doesn't even "just kinda work". What it does is anything but. So stop speaking shit. I challenge everyone who has never used a Mac to go to the Apple Store and try to perform the most basic of tasks.. hell, try to switch from one maximized application to another. Enjoy the learning curve. They don't.. just.. work..
How we know is more important than what we know.
"Anonymous Coward" is very well known in the MacOS programming community.
What exactly doesn't "just work" in your estimation? How are we defining ""just works"? If you take a Mac from the Mac store and sit down and use it (i.e. don't install a bunch of garbage on it before you figure out how to use it), well, most people find it pretty intuitive. You say you have problems switching between "maximized" applications -- which applications are those? Most OSX programs do not start up "maximized", and usually switching applications is a matter of clicking a window behind the front one. Or clicking the red or yellow dot in the upper left hand corner of most windows and then clicking the window behind. Most people figure this out pretty quickly. If that's your best example of Macs not "just working," it seems to prove the opposite case -- Sit down in front of windows and figure out the same thing (a lot of Windows apps actually DO startup "maximized"), or a linux machine (which could look like anything depending on the window manager installed and the programs opened). Of course a Mac doesn't "just work" in the sense that no computer "just works"; the human being always needs to do something to the computer, but MacOS X does seem to make it easier to figure out what the human is supposed to do next.
I would disagree, while there is a (shallow) learning curve, when I plug in a printer it "just works". When I select a random network printer at my school it "just works". Yes, this is because these drivers are all installed (and is an option). The only driver I've had to install myself was NTFS3g, which normal users don't need. What part of OSX doesn't just work for you? Yes, it has its kinks and oddities (why is there not a damn simple paint program that comes with it?), but most of the differences between OSX and Windows can be learned in an hour or two. Please, if you are going to say it doesn't "just work" use some examples. My experiences obviously differ from yours. But then, I'm one of the guys who bought it because I liked having a nice UI on top of a *nix terminal.
The dock is different from the taskbar, but it is pretty easy to pick up. My 83 year old grandfather picked it up in about 2 or 3 minutes. Couldn't most users?
I was able to go to a friends house and plug in his completely foreign scanner/printer combo into my Ubuntu laptop and it "just worked", without even installing any drivers. I'd never even used a scanner on Linux before, never had need to, and I could also claim, and be correct, that the basic user interface for gnome on Ubuntu could be learned in a few minutes. That does not mean that Linux "just works", it means that "it works for me".
There's a big difference.
I would disagree, while there is a (shallow) learning curve, when I plug in a printer it "just works".
then you do agree with me.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That's a trick question because you can't maximize applications.
But in my experience there are those hot corner thingers that make every window fly out of whatever nook or cranny you hid it in and then you just click the one you want. Combining youur visual processing ability and Fitt's law mean you're much more likely to end up with the window you wanted sooner than say a linear search via alt-tab.
Now I don't own any Macs, but frankly, that's a killer feature.
Gee, i did just that about 12 years ago. Actually i was kinda forced into it being how the only computer available to me was a Mac. Took me a couple of days to understand the whole thing. In my opinion it has always "just worked." If i remember correctly, i had designed an album cover in that week. I have never looked back since. Thank you and good night.
Took me a couple of days to understand the whole thing.
What? So it didn't "just work"? Huh?
How we know is more important than what we know.
WTF are you talking about? Your Command or Tab is broken, or maybe you're talking about Kiosk mode? Well, you can't switch from one app to another in Kiosk mode, that's what Kiosk mode is designed to prevent.
They use Macs because "they just work".
I constantly hear this quote from Mac fanboys but it doesn't make any sense. The implication is that other computer systems don't work. I'm on a machine that dual boots Windows and Linux, and guess what? It works!
And you know what else. Nearly every server in the world is on Linux or Windows and they work too. And most businesses are running Windows or Linux and it works there too. And finally Linux and other non-Apple OS's are running nearly all of the embedded systems in the world. And what's most interesting about this is how microscopically small the amount of these people who think Apple "just works" is.
What? So it didn't "just work"? Huh?
Hey, jackass. "it just works" mean things just work (and this is generally true). It does *not* mean "I don't have to learn how to use it".
How you got the second notion from that phrase is beyond me.
Everything new has a "shallow learning curve". This "insight" makes your initial post inane, in retrospect, except for the "cult-of-Apple" part, on which I have no comment.
Any insightful discussion on the "just works" part of your post would have to get into differential comparisons of new user experiences under various OS's.
WTF? "update" only retrieves the package lists, which cannot ruin anything even theoretically. "dist-upgrade" is a bit of a risk but if you're using official repositories and the stable branch, you'd have to try really hard to break something. Either way, it's hardly Debian's fault.
Sam ty sig.
"it just works" mean things just work (and this is generally true). It does *not* mean "I don't have to learn how to use it".
Control the language and you control the debate, eh? I see you are still drinking the Koolaid.
How we know is more important than what we know.
you can say osx has great icandy, but what about compiz-fusion?? i never seen multi desktops on a spinning cube, nor the wobbly windows, nor the burning windows, or the magic lamp effect on any other os then linux!!!
Sorry, then; just be aware that your meaning wasn't clear to me until you replied. You might want to add the "No OS just works" up front next time.
Speaking as a person who has just in the last two weeks migrated to OS X from Windows (I had used Windows since 3.11) and hitherto had little prior experience of OS X, I can definitely attest to the statement "it just works." I shan't go back to WIndows, and I most definitely won't be using Linux on the desktop again (each time was a painful experience).
I am posting this from a fairly new Mac lappy and I would estimate that I've used the Mac OS on this thing less than two dozen times. Bootcamp + XP SP3. FTW
And yes, yes I bought it for the beauty of the hardware.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Macs don't "just work".
People try them because they are told they "just work" and they pay highly for the privilege.
TBH, I bought a Mac because I'd had enough of issues with hardware (both under Windows and Linux) which didn't do what it said on the box.
Which is not to say there isn't the occasional issue - if I'm buying a peripheral I need to ensure it's not some Windows-only POS but to be honest I'd have avoided such things in the Windows world as well because IME Windows-only peripherals are Windows only because the manufacturer decided to shave a bit off their costs and do the legwork in the driver rather than on the chip. And seldom do you find a product in which corners are cut but is still produced to half-decent quality.
But (and again, this is purely my experience, YMMV etc etc), describing all Apple users as a bunch of brainwashed cult members is generally only done by people who have either never used OS X or never used it for more than an hour or so.
I would just like to say, your post is utter bollocks. I bought a Mac last week for the first time in my life, after using Windows since 3.11 and abhorring everyone who turns Macs into some kind of magical entity. And did everything "just work"? Yes, I can assure you it did.
I'm not so sure.
Apple 'just worked' and had a GUI from the 80s (pre-os X), and now just works and has a modern GUI.
It happens that that OS X is also when the masses really started using Macs again.
Now, there are *A LOT* of factors that changed in that timeframe - marketing, GUI, features, etc. However, is there any proof, one way or the other, that that the 'just works' is enough without a flashy GUI?
There's plenty of proof of the exact opposite, as it happens. Clever marketing can sell a product which is otherwise running about 2-5 years behind everything else in the marketplace.
Witness MS-DOS and the rise of the IBM PC compatible at a time when Apple had a much larger market share than they have ever since.
Is that all the Linux leaders today can think of, is copying or matching what has already been done? "When we catch up to OS X..." "If only we targeted netbooks..." - Why can't they think of anything original? By the time they've reach their their target it will have already moved.
I got tired of spending more time tweaking the system instead of working on my projects so I got a base model MacBook Pro online. No taxa and with discount. The Mac works for me NOT because of the eye candy but the overall system design makes work pleasant and smooth. You don't have to go through 5 submenus and 3 tabs just to adjust some setting. Nothing is perfect, but it works more often and easily than other OS I found. The same tasks/apps installs faster, launches faster, error out more gracefully, takes less footprint than the Gateway I have at work with the same specs running XP Pro. The Mac runs cooler and quieter, and staring at its screen for hours doesn't hurt my eyes like with PC monitors. The multi-touch trackpad is something every laptop will eventually imitate.
Just because not every GUI behaves like on Windows and not every short cut key work the same do not mean it doesn't "just work". I find the Windows paradigm often leads to the most physically and mentally debilitating UI design ever.
Come on, Linux! Find or invent the next big thing. Focus and get all the groups to work on it together!
May I interrupt your rant and ask for some facts please? Where are the usability studies showing OS X or Windows to be superior?
The fact is that Apple has never shown their usability to be better than anybody else's.
And you have nothing to back up statements "There is a complete lack of even the most basic UI design concepts that have been developed over the past 20 years." Come on, try naming those "basic UI design concepts" that Gnome or KDE supposedly violate.
The real problem is X and the fact that it is an utter pile of gash.
That's a pretty ironic statement, given that both Apple and Microsoft had to abandon their previous window systems a few years back and adopt an X11-like architecture.
If you take a Mac from the Mac store and sit down and use it (i.e. don't install a bunch of garbage on it before you figure out how to use it), well, most people find it pretty intuitive.
And this is different from Linux how?
If you plop down an Ubuntu system on someone's desktop, in my experience, they find it "pretty intuitive" as well. Actually, many users prefer the Ubuntu desktop because it's easier to find and launch the apps that they need; nobody has has had any complaints about it.
or a linux machine (which could look like anything depending on the window manager installed and the programs opened).
That's a bullshit comparison. You need to compare desktop operating systems, not a kernel and a desktop OS.
Furthermore, OS X can also "look like anything" if people choose to theme it.
I have just come to the major conclusion that all three of the main operating systems are right for different people. OSX and Apple in general - Pretty and easy to use - but arent you going to pay for it. Dont dare to want anything to different like crysis. Windows - I need MS Word and MS project etc.. so its like work and it has a major market share Linux - I can't go back to windows only now as I am addicted to the free software p!ssing about with new distros and making OSX people go oooo - how do you do that (compiz) What I really want (or not maybe) is the b4stard child of windows with a linux kernel and then the world to adopt it or just the world to adopt the distro of my choice ...mwwoohhahahaha
On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
What if I want to work with multiple maximised applications?
"Most applications don't start maximised" isn't a solution. I want them maximised, so if they don't start that way, I will do it manually. And from there, I can't just "[click] a window behind the front one".
And once I have 5-6 maximised applications (which is more often than not), "clicking the red or yellow dot in the upper left hand corner of most windows and then clicking the window behind" becomes an utter PITA.
OSX may be pretty, but it's a usability trainwreck. There's nothing intuitive about it.
Compared to Windows the Mac indeed "just works". But it still has many problems.
My main problem with Linux right now are the damn fonts... They look like complete crap without heavy aliasing. This should *NOT* be the case even with the extra font packs installed.
You probably didn't set up the right anti-aliasing in preferences; that can happen on Windows and OS X as well. The OS doesn't know what you need or want.
When you use X or power management features or bluetooth..etc its not long before something starts going haywire.. at least thats been my experience.
Did you buy supported hardware? If not, that's like complaining that when you install OS X on your PC, things don't work.
It's not a Linux problem when Linux doesn't work on unsupported hardware, and that simply will never get fixed.
Compared to RDP there is no contest in terms of network resources consumed by remote sessions. X11 is a pig.
That is by design: X11 and RDP are designed for totally different bandwidth/performance/functionality tradeoffs.
Furthermore, modern X11 applications are not written or tested for remote usage anymore. The equivalent of RDP in the Linux world is VNC, which works very well.
Give it a few more years and I'm sure Linux will continue to make great strides on the desktop... IMHO they really do just need to kill the damned X11 system alltogether.
You don't know what you're talking about. Microsoft and Apple had to abandon their idiotic attempts at window systems and Windows UI Server and Quartz now have the same architecture (asynchronous client-server systems) as X11. X11 is still the better system.
That's a bullshit comparison. You need to compare desktop operating systems, not a kernel and a desktop OS.
So you need to only compare the desktop? You do understand that this "Desktop OS" entirely depends on X11, hence it's ported to many different "Operating Systems" by itself. I can run GNOME or KDE on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, Solaris, Cygwin, Linux - at least thats a start. The parent was correct, it's the window manager and application set you use on X11 that determines your "experience." Let me know when the X Window Server is officially an "Operating System" - it will be big news for sure. You need to learn what the correct usage of the term "Operating System" and how there is a difference between Windows running on top of DOS or OS X running on top of Darwin, and GNOME or KDE or whatever running off of a cross-compatible X Window server. There's a big-ass difference.
I *challenge* you to take a person who has never used a Mac to the Apple store and ask them to use a Mac to do any standard task. Actually listen to what they say. If they don't mutter "how the hell do I..?" in the first 5 minutes you've found a genius. It is not intuitive. You're told it is intuitive and you believe it, but have you actually tested it?
Mr. (or Miss or Mrs, for that matter) MG, you appear to have a great deal of anger about OS X and how intuitive or otherwise it is.
Why? Why does it matter to you what OS anyone elects to use? More to the point, how is it any of your damn business? Everyone is entitled to their opinion, surely?
My only issue with e17 is the lack of the systray. The devs explain the reasons why they decided to not include it, and they are legit reasons, but still, the systray has become something inportant, and if it will never be revived then that's something that might keep me off of it in the long run. I always used e16 in the late 90s whenever I ran X11 off of a unix OS.
What I'm curious and excited about is when the Microsoft Open Source Lab actually opens up some good ol MS source code! Or am I misinterpreting what the Lab is for? I'm just guessing it's either for that - or for dissecting open source software and seeing which parts used stuff from their imaginative IP list that Balmer is always adding new things to. Who wants to bet that they buy their lab goggles from McAfee?
You should check out enlightenment's edje library. That same animation could be done in 10-15 lines of simple, non-C code (so that designers can do the animations, not programmers)
The nipple's intuitive. Everything else is more or less hard to learn.
Command+~ switches windows. Command+Tab switches applications. You're right that the Zoom button does fit-to-content in some apps and maximize in some apps and I'd rather see it do just one of them, preferably maximize.
Just as intuitive as the nipple; now that all modern tits come with a Command key (the one labeled with the microsoft logo, or the one with 'alt').
In other words, it's a cult.
Then how come you're acting so much more brainwashed than the people with positive things to say about Macs?
"It just works" is obviously referring to the machine being usable on day one, without requiring a lot of work first. In other words, the software to do what you want to do is already there and there's no preinstalled deadweight bloatware or nagware that you need to waste time removing. It also suggests that the software is of higher quality and crashes less often.
I'm sorry, but it's completely fair for Apple to boast that their OS "just works" when most people use Windows. Microsoft's OS is a broken (non-working) mess on day one, compared to MacOS or Ubuntu. Whether it's a clean install of Windows and you're missing apps, or it's direct from Dell/HP/etc and bogged down with junk, either way you're a good chunk of work away from a decent experience. Then there's the issue of applying the updates, since some of those updates have to be installed by themselves and you have to reboot before more updates can be applied. And I've seen plenty of systems with "automatic updates" enabled that wouldn't get any new updates until I manually went to Windows Update.
As long as they're being compared to Windows, Macs definitely do "just work."
I'm confused. Are you talking about something other than what's in the Layouts tab of System -> Preferences -> Keyboard? Because there's also the keyboard setup that happens during the install process. What's missing?
E17 (i.e. Enlightenment) has been promising a lot of this kind of thing for a while now. Of course, the Hurd, and DNF also promise a lot as well...
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
For the same reason we should care about what Christians believe - cause they are delusional and accepting irrational belief as "ok" is bad for all of us in the long run.
Their belief in charity and community are just a ticking time bomb. I heard the other day they were giving out free food and clothing to the poor! This must be stopped.
EOF
Sounds less like spam and more like FUD to me. Any /. Dev wanna check from which IP address GP and this comment came from? Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if they came from the Redmond area.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Don't reply to the AC's, they are automated AI drones spouting canned comments from a database to waste your time and forum space. They are 2nd generation spam.
EOF
I don't find Mac intuitive at all. I am a developer who finds his way around in linux and windows without any problems and every time I need to do something on a Mac I want to scream. For me Mac is a step down from windows. Linux > Windows > OSX GUI's are not intuitive! They might be for the designer/developer who made it but not for the general user out there.
Absotively posilutely right. Couple of years back at work I had a choice of either a PC and win xp or a mac and osx (we used PCs with win nt before that). I chose the mac to escape the ms straightjacket - after less than six months the only thing I was using it for was email (built a clandestine PC from bits and pieces for real work).
The year I spent with osx was one long frustrating battle with the UI that soured me on macs. The os was stable enough but I wish they'd spent a bit less time on eye candy and a bit more on making the UI more customisable.
Tried Linux at home (OpenSUSE 10) and was amazed at how everything _just works_ (my way). I've still avoided xp, love KDE (gave up on the gnome desktop early on).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
http://www.linux.com/var/uploads/Image/articles/142661.png
Looks like a [bad] fanboi theme on XP...
"virtual applicance"? as in : runs in VmWare?
If that's the case, then complain at VMWare. .deb package, which means that anybody trying Ubuntu in VMWare will necessarily go through a compile (and probably subsequently say that "Linux is not ready for the desktop, cause you have to compile stuff just to install")
Their Ubuntu8.04 image is screwed up for people with non QWERTY keyboards. The VMWare tools are also not available as
A standard Ubuntu 8.04 install sets up the keyboard correctly.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
I am the bone of my Mac
Silicon is my body, and electrons are my blood
I have written over a thousand lines
Unknown to -1
Nor known to 0
Have withstood pain to use many API
Yet those hands will never hold anything
So as I pray, unlimited xcode works
must be your hardware. on an intel laptop with a broadcom card + bluetooth, compiz, etc and had no problems from X11, but on a new laptop with an ati card things are a bit less stable
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
What's X11-like about the Apple windowing system ?
As an Apple user let me say both "Hooray" and "Finally!!" I can hardly wait :)
Speaking personally, I don't really care what any group believes as long as they don't try and impose their beliefs on me or use them as an excuse to cause harm to me or anything I feel strongly about. I certainly have better things to do than try and convert them to atheism.
I don't really see how your "you are deluded and I will keep on telling you this until you agree with me" attitude is fundamentally different from Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on doors and asking if the occupants have found God.
It depends on how you interpret "just works". If you take it to mean you can use it with no training/manual without ever having seen the system before, of course it doesn't "just work". If you take it to mean that the built-in functionality is stable and fast, with enough functionality to accomplish most basic tasks, and an easy way to add third-party functions, then OS X does "just work". Windows and KDE4 don't "just work", KDE3.5 and Gnome (on linux with a package manager with repositories, say, ubuntu/kubuntu) and OSX do.
All operating systems have a learning curve. Everything does. The stability and built-in functionality of those systems, along with the ease of extending that functionality and the depth of the learning curve are the factors that determine if something "just works".
Not a sentence!
I think the bigger issue with Linux isn't the UI consisting of the widgets on the screen. I think it's the UI related to how software is installed and updated. For instance, which of the three installation methods would the general public most readily accept:
I know I've simplified these things, but by and large, the installation wizard and things like apt-get or RPM managers are cumbersome. I know that there have been instances on Linux (can't recall any on Windows) but almost all OS X installs are "drag this icon into your Applications folder and you are done." (Very rarely do OS X apps have a wizard, and those are mostly for power-user grade applications like Xcode or applications ported from the Windows world - I point my finger at companies like MS and EA here).
The other bit about Linux application installation issues is the concept of dependencies - unless things have changed significantly, trying to get applications to work on Linux is a chore to find out if you have the right dependencies, or to learn the package managers to try and make sure the dependencies are met. I would posit that if you fix the software installation process on Linux, you'll go a long way - longer than if you just make the widgets look different - to making Linux "desktop ready".
The other aspect that should be addressed is the "don't pander to the computer savvy mentality." For instance, Ubuntu is hailed as being one of the prime targets for the desktop, but it asks users to suddenly redefine kilo-, mega- and gigabyte by using different terminology (MiB vs MB); change concepts like drive mounting "where's my C drive!?!" and other things which, while yes they are just education topics, are things that are never really presented to the users when they first step into a non-Windows world.
Simply stated, the problems are not technical but social, and that's probably why the majority of the Linux crowd - which is focused on technical issues - is not where they want to be in terms of general public acceptance.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Apple: down 23% fom their 52 week high
Microsoft: down 30% from their 52 week high
VA Linux: down 66% from their 52 week high
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
For example, when you do a search in a textbox or browser or something, OSX not only highlights the text, it makes it jump out for a second (stretch then shrink). It is really cool.
jumping text in emacs would be really cool.
Women over 40 in fact constitute over 1/4 of the developed world adult population. That's not a targeted audience. In fact, I suspect that, as they have had significant life experience so far, it is a much more varied market than women under 40. Which shows that he doesn't understand what is meant by targeted marketing.
As an example, I've just ordered a MSI Wind with XP - why? Because the main reason for it is to work with my 3G HSDPA modem, that's why. Do I want a special Linux version with a built in modem? I do not. To get reliable reception, I need to be able to remote that modem up to 3M from the computer.
So here is an immediate point about the netbook market; I want to be able to remote my antenna so I don't have to sit on the car roof, or on my boat cabin, or on the side of the house which faces the phone mast, just to get a decent signal with a good S/N ratio. I'm a target market: mobile professional users living in rural areas. Currently Windows XP meets my needs and Linux doesn't. I am not interested in eye candy; I want a nice legible screen, and workable keyboard, a responsive operating system that does not need to spend the first 15 minutes of every day downloading anti virus updates and checking them, and the ability to get a 3G or ordinary wireless connection efficiently. Linux meets everything except the last, which unfortunately is the deal breaker. I don't even need long battery life because wherever I go I am normally near either mains or a 12V outlet.
Now, I know that this is not the "fault" of Linux. You will not find me wanting to replace either of my Linux servers with anything else, thank you. But real targeted marketing on the desktop would be to identify some real key user roles, and address their needs to make the result better than Windows, with no actual deal killers.
Mac OS X here is a red herring. Anybody as stupid as my neighbour who bought a Mac because he thought it would be "intuitive", and then found none of his expensive academic PC software would work, or the other one who bought a Mac because it was "easy to use" and still can't work out how to send an attachment, and forgets to label Office files with ".doc", is not going to have their problem fixed by Gnome or KDE any time soon (until there is a wetware upgrade...).
Netbooks are a possible market because their low cpu power makes anti-virus software a pain in the backside, and they will not run Vista. But that means that the focus has to be on communications, and efficient working with a smaller screen. To make that happen will need input from a company like Nokia or Samsung, who are not wedded to overpriced hardware like Apple or Sony.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Are you telling me that registered users don't spam?
Sent from my desktop computer
Apple: down 23% fom their 52 week high Microsoft: down 30% from their 52 week high VA Linux: down 66% from their 52 week high
Why look at VA Linux, when they don't even sell Linux anymore? Take a look at Red Hat, which is down only 14% from their 52 week high.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
What are you going to do if you can't push OSX, and Microsoft is dying? You start pushing Linux. Maybe this won't happen, but it isn't an unreasonable scenerio.
It is a completely unreasonable scenario. And where do get off saying that Microsoft is a dying company? Here's their FY 2008 earnings release. Tell me again how $60B a year is a dying company. Perhaps you were talking out your ass?
My grandma officially can use the Eee PC Xandros OS after trying for months and failing to feel like she could do anything in OSX. Now my parents have a spare rather new Macbook of some sort...hmm...
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
One of the biggest 'just works' is Zeroconf/Bonjour. You can take a room full of brand new out of the box Macs, turn them on and they are on the network. Nothing to setup. Toss in a zero conf printer (like those from HP) and again, nothing to setup. I went to my Uncle's for Thanksgiving and had to print something. Without setting anything up or even forgetting I didn't have a printer installed I did the "Apple-P" and low and behold his USB printer on his desktop was setup as a ZeroConf, I hit print and it just worked.
Zero Conf on Debian wasn't as fun. It took a few hours of reading the config files, but it's now working. Best part is being able to reference any computer on the network by .local instead of IP and having it figure it out. Mac and the Debian box even talk sexy ipv6 to each other automatically. But it was far from "just working"
I have used and administered Linux systems for a decade now. Whenever I try to setup a "Linux" desktop such as Ubuntu, there is always a long list of problems that would never, ever afflict a Mac or Windows system.
Here are some of the current problems:
- NumLock light is opposite the NumLock mode (this on a dead-common 104-key setup). We see a very high degree of spurious breakage of what should otherwise be very solid functionality.
- Right-click in Firefox 3.x sometimes executes random context item without even displaying the context menu. This bug remained in the 3.0 GA release (and I doubt Mozilla cares all that much, as they are actually not fond of "Linux" as a PC platform).
- Certain non-GPL drivers keep disappearing whenever a system update happens to include the kernel (an essential design flaw of the Linux kernel, though a workaround should be possible).
- Video settings keep getting 'reset' after system updates. The user is then often deprived of a workable UI and they are told to edit xorg.conf from a CLI! Bizzarrely, Xorg and the others will supply example GUI apps (like a clock) but won't write a GUI to manage the display. The 'experts' at the Xorg and Xfree projects also have no concept of a usable 'fallback' mode for a desktop display, say switching to XGA res and framebuffer mode when things go wrong. Supposedly this would be "up to the distro" to take care of, but "the distro" doesn't have the comprehensive knowledge to make an integrated fail-safe display configurator (or not a good one).
- NetworkManager in the Control Panel having a markedly different feature set than the seperate network manager that resides on the "systray"... and that stamp over each others' settings particularly when Wifi is used. This is disgraceful.
- Poor support for a wide range of devices, large and small, internal and USB: TV tuners, modems, Wifi, etc. Even video cards are still a problem.
- Audio blockages in inexpensive hardware. Don't rely on calendar alarms, nor softphones, nor audible status indicators because they may turn out to be inaudible - you never know. And ever it shall be through last year's fashionable audio architecture, and probably next year's too.
- High power consumption on both desktops and notebooks. On desktops, starting many programs will spin-up all of my drives 'just because'. And why a file dialog that pops up with my home directory needs to spin up all of my drives is beyond me. It certainly isn't needed on other desktop OSes. I can't tell you the number of times that changing the display res or doing a system update has remove the power-saving option from xorg.conf. Also, many other examples of low battery life on laptops.
Other observations:
- File browsing is very screwed-up. The browsers keep displaying data through differing schemas, often within the same program, and they have differing ways of describing a file path. Even when they stick to a URL format, the 'handler' part can be made-up and non-sensical, conflicting with other parts of the same utility for accessing the same resource. When file dialogs from other apps are brought into the picture, the confusion becomes severe.
- Drivers: There is no standardization and logo-branding effort to address the devices problem. Are hardware vendors supposed to put a penguin on the box if their product is compatible? They don't really know, and no one at the Linux Foundation or the major distros is going to approach them about this simple but essential practice. There is also no ABI, but I won't "go there".
- Drivers: The group that is responsible for adding and maintaining most device support isn't interested in providing a simple way to find out whether a particular device is supported. Because, you know, that would be interfacing with end-users... Ick.
- Apps: Try doing tech support for a "Linux" application. I have done it for a living! There is literally no way to predict what sort of UI you will have to guide them through or which supporti
The last time I attempted to use iTunes was an unmitigated disaster. I'm pretty sure we are already beating apple. I never have problems like that in Rhythmbox. TVtime needs a lot of work though....
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned this, but Apple is a hardware company and their software OS "Just Works" largely because they have complete control over the hardware it runs on. Windows & Linux machines have hardware from any number of different companies across the planet which require different drivers or other software to work on their OS. Macs don't.
Funny, I found a Mac incredibly intuitive and easy to use -- especially after 5 years of Linux.
First of all, my enthusiasm for looking for the interesting points amidst dismissive names, such as fanboys and freetards, is waning. Please, if we must babble our useless cliches, let us return to welcoming our frist posting "In Soviet Union" joke overlords.
The phrase "just works" dates back to the mid-80s and was no more than a relative statement at best. Since then, everyone has made great strides in simplifying usability. Comments about server and embedded space are irrelevant because, as you imply, when people talk about using or not using Apple, they are talking about consumer use. Commercial use (and there are niches where Apple systems have been and are preferred) make higher demands on systems and somebody spends time with the users and back in the server room to keep things going. Word has it that Windows systems require more administration, but I certainly cannot prove those assertions. I have experiences and observations which suggest it's true, but I would imagine this holds no more credence than your claim of dual-booting adequacy, or any other commonly heard testimony which, much like the phrase "This call is important to us," fades in believability with its repetition.
Let me conclude by adding that I want form and function, engineering and aesthetics. Again, though others are rapidly catching up, Apple has been leading the way at delivering a high level of both in a personal computer. People use Macs because people like using Macs. Was that so hard? And Shuttleworth is right in thinking that striving for a higher aesthetic in the gui and making the concomitant library changes will necessitate engineering challenges that, if met, will improve the *buntus' usability and lower the barrier to consumer application on Linux development. People who think it's about an Apple-esque skin are missing the point.
If "asynchronous client-server" architecture makes something "the same as ... X11", then practically all asynchronous networked software is the same as X11. That's not a meaningful distinction.
No, OSX is NOT going to "defeat" windows.
Apple is a hardware company, first and foremost. The software they sell is to increase their revenue. They tried being a software company. If it wasn't for Jobs there would be no Apple right now.
It's only Linux at this point. That's the reason why you've got to go and yell at the idiot developpers behind KDE4 who think they know UI design, and tell them to get their asses back on track. What they're doing is bassackwards, they're designing things all wrong (I don't know shit about "good UI" and I think it's bullcrap but I can see all the "wrong things" in KDE.) and it's time users gave them a piece of their mind more directly, or helped with better themes, instead of simply nagging on slashdot.
OSX is an ugly look. KDE4 needs to be KDE4.
I don't think anybody is looking hard enough for interface developpment tools, Qt has a million, and so does GTK...
Seperate from the core OS, and you can install other DEs.
Granted it's far from X but this is just a quick observation. I'm sure there's other resemblences, but everyone has moved to creating a window system that can be removed from the OS. That was pretty much X's only really good idea.
That's not proof the opposite happened, that's circumstantial evidence suggesting that you can't be sure it happened. I already said you can't be sure one way or the other, so you really didn't counter my point.
There are a *lot* of factors that could be involved.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Again, *what* exactly doesn't just work? What task do your users mutter about not finding a solution to? And how long does it take them to find it on their own, in comparison to other OS's out there? I've helped "break in" a number of users on Macs for the first time and I haven't really seen the experience you're describing. Not at all. Yet I have seen it from longtime Windows users who are just transitioning from an older version of Windows.
Says the guy bringing out "stfu"....
In addition to what the other guy said, I would suggest looking at the P/E ratio instead of the percentage change from the 52 week high. It is (in general and of course fraught with errors) a better measurement of what investors think of the company. Apple had a P/E ratio above 40 at it's peak, and currently has a P/E ratio of 31. A rough measurement is that the P/E ratio of a decent company should be around 20.
Microsoft has a P/E ratio of 14, which I believe indicates people see very little growth possibility for Microsoft, although I don't think most investors have factored in Microsoft or Linux taking their Market share.
And of course, what stock investors think often has no relation to reality, it is just surprising to me, because the general computer industry is growing at roughly 15% per annum, and yet there is such pessimism on Microsoft's stock.
Qxe4
How is this different from Windows? If you want them maximized you maximize them and then you command-tab to switch, just like you would alt-tab in windows. Neither is more intuitive than the other but at least MacOS begins by default without the apps minimized so that there is an obvious way to switch before you learn the magic keystrokes.
The nipple is the command key!
It is a completely unreasonable scenario.
It is not a completely unreasonable scenario. Are you suggesting there is no way for Microsoft to lose the market? Are you aware that at one time, people said similar things about IBM? IBM is still around, but it isn't in any way the company it once was.
Microsoft's lifeline is Windows (and office). If people don't want it anymore, then the cash flow dries up. Mac sales grew by 40% over last year. The previous year they grew by 30%. Apple is expected to introduce a new line of low cost computers by the end of the quarter, which will (hopefully for them) increase the speed of Mac adoption.
Is my scenario going to happen? Maybe, maybe not. You can never be sure about the future: but it is not unreasonable.
Qxe4
and it's time users gave them a piece of their mind more directly, or helped with better themes, instead of simply nagging on slashdot.
Uh huh....you do realize it seems like you are simply nagging on slashdot, right? The sad thing is, interface development tools are not enough, if the underlying framework is hard to use.
Qxe4
Ok fine, do that. I urge the entire Linux user community to please tune out anything that has to do with Solaris, Windows, Mac OS X, and any OS that isn't derived from sacred Linux code.
Don't even look at a Mac or Vista desktop, you wouldn't be interested, nothing to see there. Linux is perfect, and in every way. It's not even useful to draw comparisons between Linux and other ungodly OS's, so just run a mental grep -v Apple|Sun|Mac|Solaris|Windows|Microsoft filter on everything you read. Correct my regex, and I'll end you.
Don't ponder what a commercial OS can do on proprietary hardware, x86 is the best hardware EVAR. Linux is a better desktop than Windows and Mac OS X COMBINED, and a better server OS than Solaris, AIX, HPUX, and I hear it even gives Z/OS a run for its money.
Just stay in your happy place, and you'll all be fine.
Oh, and don't forget to drink the koolaid!
But that's the point. The major Linux distros are now reaching the point where they DO 'just work' on the majority of PCs, there's no farting around with driver discs like in Windows.
There are a few thorny hardware vendors that are making it difficult for those distros who value software freedom and open licenses to support 'out of the box' (Broadcom possibly being the most notorious).
CN=poolmeister.OU=lurkers.CN=slashdot
Oh, please, get a clue. We're talking about window systems here. X11 was one of the first asynchronous client-server window system. And it's the asynchronous client-server aspect that Mac and Windows users keep whining about. Yet, after more than a decade each, both companies came around and adopted an asynchronous client-server architecture for their window systems as well.
If you have some other complaint about X11, please share it with us.
It's all about control, monkey boy. You can encrust your cage with rubies and diamonds and put a full bar in it, I'm still not going to live there. Same thing with iEverythingElse. I'd sooner whistle to myself.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
That was pretty much X's only really good idea.
Many other technologies you take for granted today were pioneered with X11: mixed desktop and 3D graphics, client/server 3D graphics, separation of window management from applications, theming, 3D look-and-feel, remote GUIs, pixel accurate graphics, backing store policies, server-side extensibility, window server media handling, mixed direct screen buffer and desktop interfaces, and tons more.
And technologically, X11 and the desktops built on it are lightyears ahead of both Windows and OS X, even if you don't realize it.
X11 is still where the innovation happens; Windows and Macintosh are merely commercial imitations.
Excellent blog.
I love linux, I use it, I think is a great OS for a server, nertworking, etc.
But, even today, linux fonts sucks. I can not understand how fonts in linux still sucks, let's say, 15 years later.
There absolutely is nothing even remotely resembling Open Source going in any Microsoft entity, subsidiary, or within Microsoft itself. Open Source was defined 10 years ago and Microsoft's efforts in no way even remotely resemble that definition.
Microsoft is trying to Embrace Open Source, to Extend it their direction, and then Extinguish it by making the real Open Source obscure and arcane.
We are smarter than this people. We do not want Microsoft involved in Open Source at any level for any reason, period. We don't want what we have created tainted by the beast.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
That's not proof the opposite happened, that's circumstantial evidence suggesting that you can't be sure it happened. I already said you can't be sure one way or the other, so you really didn't counter my point.
There are a *lot* of factors that could be involved.
I'm not sure what sort of evidence wouldn't be considered circumstantial.
MSDOS was miles behind more-or-less everything else that existed in the personal market - particularly in terms of UI and ease of setting up. This remained the case for its entire life.
Now, I can't produce evidence of this without spending an inconvenient number of hours going into the history of personal computing, but if you're prepared to seek a little for yourself, I suggest you look up the Amiga, the Atari, the BBC Micro, the Acorn Archimedes - all sold into the personal market in the 1980s.
Industries where a killer application was really important tended to stick to a particular type of computer with little regard for what was popular outside of their industry. Sibelius, a music notation and composition program, started life on the Acorn Archimedes and was a killer app at the time - plenty of musical types bought Acorn computers purely for Sibelius. (Sibelius was later ported to the PC, but not until most of the IT industry had given up the Acorn RISC-range of computers for dead)
Similarly, DTP applications were for years streets ahead on Mac OS and, IIRC, the Atari. The Atari and the Amiga also had some damn good musical sequencing applications - indeed the MOD file format originated on the Amiga.
Yet today, none of these systems survive. I would consider it fair to infer from this that being the best tool for the job is not enough for a given piece of technology to survive.
The issue you are encountering has nothing to do with Linux or Ubuntu. It has to do with how they configured and locked down your configuration. Linux keyboarding works fine. I doubt 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the population of the 50 million worldwide users have issues with Linux and their keyboard.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
At my shop I'm tasked to remove Vista and replace it with XP on more machines than I see with Vista come in for other issues. Those vista issues I do see are nasty and show how haphazardly the OS was implemented.
I have also been tasked more in the past few months to put linux on machines even for elderly people. People in their late 60s to early 80s want me to put Linux on their computers. And, when done I rarely hear back from them. Those that do visit me say that Linux is working well for them and that aside from the normal learning curve and some glitches Linux appears to do all that they want.
As far as the glitches go Linux is no more glitch prone than XP or Vista. At least with Linux you are guaranteed your privacy and you are significantly more secure. No one in the open source community will get away with trying to install 47 programs onto your computer that monitor what you do and report it back to Microsoft. No one will put a tool in there that forces you to activate your product and regularly report back to them (as Microsoft does) about your continued use.
Under linux you don't pay for software, software that is by all intents and purposes as competent as their commercial counter parts.
I'm happy to be the one that demonstrates a solid and attractive desktop linux to the customers that come into my store and that look at it and want it.
Two people yesterday alone looked at my desktop and thought it was beautiful and when I showed them some of the features they felt it was fancy.
What does this mean? It means that the linux is getting to the average person who can see that it is running your computer and doing things your way (without the worry of viruses, malware, and Microsoft) that's important .
Everyday Linux makes programs in most arenas. My hat goes off to those that work hard to make it possible.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that I've yet to see proof that /Apple/ is moving ahead in the computer market with a drastically inferior product, or a product, as much as I hate it, that is technically less than on-par with the competition. At least in computer/OS terms. Well, my experience suggests it's inferior in terms of accessibility for people with certain disabilities, but that hardly is a major affect for most users.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
OK. Thank you very much for that pointer. I will reinstall my own VM. ... it seems there has been a kernel change which has messed up some keyboards like the MacBook Pro I'm using.
I thought it was general, because several people complained on the Ubuntu forums, and were told to go edit files
Edmund
This is not a signature.
Actually, I'm stuck using Ubuntu because it has support compiled in for some FTDI based usbserial hardware I'm using - usually I employ Puppy in a VM. And yes, I consider resorting to a compiler to be something to be done with malice aforethought :)
Edmund
This is not a signature.
There's no such thing as an inferior OS these days - it's all in the applications and, to a lesser extent, peripheral support.
I've heard it said - and there is a glimmer of truth to it - that Unix makes difficult things possible; Windows makes easy things difficult and Apple make difficult things $19.99.
No, Mac users kvetch about X11 because it requires sending every little damned pixel across the connection rather than sending sensible drawing instructions like one does in Quartz. Oh, and X11's godawful color modes.
Don't even have to use profanity. Essentially you could say that "proprietard" is the equivalent of the expression of profanity you make.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
No, Mac users kvetch about X11 because it requires sending every little damned pixel across the connection rather than sending sensible drawing instructions like one does in Quartz
Are you just not listening? X11 and Quartz do the same thing: they both have connections and they both send vectorized instructions across them. The only difference is that X11 has been doing this for 20 years and does it a lot more efficiently, while Apple only came around half a dozen years ago.
Oh, and X11's godawful color modes.
Those are the same "godawful color modes" Apple used to support as well. If you don't like them ignore them. X11 is going to keep them because it is much more widely used than just the desktop, in scientific devices, factory automation, and lots of other settings.
I think that it gets too far into one's experience and how they work. When the Mac Mini came out, I dropped the five bills to check it out. I found that if I could not get a binary installer I could not install an application and any time I wanted to modify any settings it was a chore to dig around for them. It turned into a movie/mp3 machine and didn't do much else for the next year. Then it died suddenly and for no appearant reason (with a CD stuck in there, that was a pain).
There was some selector thing that really annoyed the hell out of me.
With a DOS/Windows backgroud, I downladed Slackware in 98 or 99 and threw it on an old machine. It "Just Worked" and I found that a lot more usable than the Mac could ever be.
if debian is breaking you are doing it wrong, it's arguably the most stable linux distro around. if you are worried about stability take the universe and multiverse repos out your apt sources.lst
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
Don't forget good tools, libraries, and APIs. If you have a massive software stack that's completely unmodular because it uses no APIs or plugins or anything, making it incredibly difficult to add or remove features and actually work on the damn thing, that will help kill the project. You won't have such horrible problems with feature bloat if you make the system modular so that modules can compete.
Quite simply, don't forget the planning.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Linux has several systems which are very unmodular and need to be scrapped and replaced with much more modular, flexible, and extensible systems. Use and help improve the existing APIs that are great out there, or come up with your own, but planning and planning for new plans to come about later (extensibility) is certainly one of the more important steps of a project. Of course it requires good coders and artists, too, and general community interest and support.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
You shouldn't have to develop programs that are DE-centric. If Cocoa is so much better than GTK and QT, Freedesktop.org needs to help push some new APIs that GUI front-ends can use to create programs more rapidly that are not specific to one DE. wxWidgets seems to be really far behind and it's an API to allow modularity that's needed, not a specific library. Linux should push hard to get some professional, clean, and polished APIs together to make programming for Linux a snap, so it doesn't matter what DE the user prefers using.
If QT has a feature GTK doesn't, and you write your program to use that feature, make QT be a required dependency or whatnot until GTK can fill in that hole with something. The future of Linux is modular programming, so the sooner it's embraced the better off everyone will be and the easier access to software and less duplication of work will exist, among other benefits. Don't let Linux fragment, it needs all the help it can get. Open APIs that are well planned out and built will save everyone, users and developers alike, from being locked into massive software stacks. Modularity = win win for everyone.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
"it just works" mean things just work (and this is generally true). It does *not* mean "I don't have to learn how to use it".
Control the language and you control the debate, eh? I see you are still drinking the Koolaid.
What kool aid? I said "it just works" means that things "just work". You seem to think it means you don't have to know how to operate them. Which, of those two, seems like word games?
linuxhaters is awesome, right? It's like maddox only somehow dumber and less entertaining (which is itself impressive, I guess).
Err... Maybe I should put it in terms you'll understand:
linuxhaters sucks big hot hard freetard cock!
- freetard
Actually, even Jeremy Alison of SAMBA fame agrees with the general thrust and acknowledges the technical acumen of the LinuxHaters blog. He is a big proponent of free software, GPLv3 etc., yet considers it valuable criticism of the way the community is running things. So I guess that makes you a doctrinaire, humorless, freetard. :p
It is written in the style of the Unix Hater's Handbook. So yes, its insulting and potty-mouth but it effectively draws the humorless and doctrinaire in, and those are the types with the least tenable ideas and attitudes about "Linux". LinuxHater makes mincemeat of them, showing what a sorry gruel of platitudes and excuses they keep dishing out. IMO he is doing us a big favor.
Check out the article on fonts... the author has his Linux chops and knows well of which he (angrily) speaks.
And really, who would bother to get so angry so often unless he loved something about Linux? Its clear to me and others that he hates it and loves it too.
Re: Adsense, I didn't see any ads on the blog, except the ones for LinuxHater t-shirt/mug things.
[tired of posting AC, here I am, the linuxhaterhater...]
It is not written in the style of Unix Hater's Handbook. Unix Hater's never degenerated into homophobic right-wing rants. And it was clever. And well written. And technically accurate.
I re-read the handbook for the first time in a decade when the Allison op-ed hit slashdot (and you saw the little hissy the author threw about the summary link being to zdnet, right? That wasn't a joke.) Unix Hater's is every bit as good as I remember (see my earlier comment).
Allison's point of view seems absurd to me. He thinks that the "community" has to embrace this cretin so that they don't seem humorless. That's just PR. It reminds me of Bill O'Reilly going on the Colbert Report to show he wasn't "humorless". It's not genuine, it's not necessary.
About the fonts article, I am totally unimpressed that you managed to find an article that wasn't totally uninformed, when there are a dozen articles on the front page without any merit at all.
Allison's good-humor act isn't fooling anybody on the other side of the fence. And this blog is a terrible bug report system. Linuxhaters only value to foss, as far as I can tell, is showing the problems that linux beginners encounter. And even that involves cutting away 80% of the boring pseudo-fratire lameness.
Linuxhaters is no Unix Hater's. Not even close.
Yet Unix isn't even close to Linux in terms of the pretense and hubris of trying to sell a desktop solution without defining a platform.
LinuxHater goes overboard now and then, but who doesn't on their blog. In any case, he is neither a news broadcaster nor a newspaper columnist.
BTW I didn't notice homophobia in the blog entry you lined to. But if its any consolation to you, he takes a FOSS blogger to task for some pretty sexist behavior on a developer site. No doubt he is being opportunistic about it, but the upshot is that the more he brings up stuff like this, the more likely he is to get egg on his face if he does any more 'PI' stuff himself.
He did start pushing this theme is labeling the FSF a terrorist organization. I think that's at least a little bit funny, don't you? Tee-hee??
It was just the spam that got my goat, really. Were it not for that, it just would have been background stupidity.
About the homophobia, randomly from the front page:
I want to find the FSF/terrorist thing funny, as I'm not so mad anymore, but I just can't, mainly because of this:
I have so many problems with that sentence that I don't know where to start. For instance, what's wrong with Al Jazeera?
The foss community has a freaking awesome sense of humor, our cup runneth over with funny memes. We don't have to prove to anybody that we can take a joke. I mean, we can claim Linus "You are all stupid and ugly" Torvalds; we're obviously cool with some smack talking.