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Linux Kernel 2.6.29 Released
diegocgteleline.es writes "Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.29. The new features include the inclusion of kernel graphic modesetting, WiMAX, access point Wi-Fi support, inclusion of squashfs and a preliminary version of btrfs, a more scalable version of RCU, eCryptfs filename encryption, ext4 no journal mode, OCFS2 metadata checksums, improvements to the memory controller, support for filesystem freeze, and other features. Here is the full list of changes."
I totally misread that.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Geez, Windows has supported using access points on a Wi-Fi network for quite a long time.
Lunix playing catch up yet again!
I can't believe this wasn't mentioned..
Here's what the new linux logo looks like for this release.
Filesystems in the kernel, savages!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Further investigation into the cause of dataloss under the Ext4 Filesystem has revealed that it is not the fault of Application Developers, Ext4, nor even the evil POSIX manual of Doom. Its turns out that it Obama is so corrupt that he has caused major dataloss all around the nation. There! At least I'm an *on topic* Troll. Was that so hard?
The most important feature is the new mascot, Tuz. FTFA:
As everybody knows, only important fixes will be merged into the mainline kernel at this late stage of the development cycle. One of the fixes merged by Linus on March 17 was a high-resolution SVG image of "Tuz," the mascot of the 2009 linux.conf.au conference. Tuz, in his new home at Documentation/logo.svg, serves to remind the world of the difficulties faced by the Tasmanian devil and how the linux.conf.au attendees supported the effort to save this species from extinction.
eCryptfs filename encryption
Here's the eCryptfs home page for more information on this nifty addition.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Tuz the Tasmanian devil has replaced Tux as the kernel mascot (for this release) to raise awareness of this endangered species (which is threatened with extinction due to a scientifically interesting but horrific transmissible facial cancer.).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
We herd you like graphic modesetting, so we included the inclusion in your kernel so you can set modes while you include.
:)
Sorry - "include the inclusion" just screamed out for this.
Been working for years, for me.
I just plug in my printer, use the add printer wizard, select model, various sharing methods - no stupid driver installation that installs a bunch of bloatware.
Plug in my tablet, works instantly - no stupid driver installation that includes tray icon background processes.
Plug in wireless device, works instantly - no stupid driver installation that includes some special wireless manager that has a terrible UI and doesn't really work properly.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Even in Linux, most distro's don't have full filesystems built into the kernel. Instead they only build in a tiny in-memory fs that allows them to read an initrd. This means that they can have virtually any filesystem as a root filesystem without having to compile every conceivable filesystem into their general purpose kernel.
It is also possible to avoid ever booting in the way Linux machines boot. Instead, the boot process could act like the hibernate/resume functionality of Linux. So instead of loading programs into the address space from a filesystem, we simply read the resulting address space from disk. After all, some embedded devices don't need to ever use a filesystem, so in these cases loading a fs would be a waste of resources.
I just plug in my printer, use the add printer wizard
People still do this?
Extent support. In my experience ext2 can get pretty fragmented when running torrents.
Sooo... Any defragmenters out there yet?
And while were on that topic: Any Linux-based NTFS defragmenters?
while we're on
I'M SORRY GRAMMAR NAZIS!
I promise I won't drop apostrophes any more!
Sorry dude, you have to wait for kernel 2.8 for the joy and beauty modules that will enable your desktop product to have those attributes.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
What I find really weird is that on Windows, the default paper size is always "letter", when most people use A4.
Not in the U.S.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
What I find really weird is that on Windows, the default paper size is always "letter", when most people use A4.
In the United States, just about everyone uses "US Letter" (8.5 in. × 11 in., or 216 × 279 mm), and not "A4" (210 × 297 mm), which means that oftentimes on Linux, you have to remember to switch from A4 to Letter. In other words, there isn't really a sensible default for everyone.
A4 paper is rare in the United States.
I'm using a UK version of Windows.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
> I just plug in my printer, use the add printer wizard, select model, various sharing methods - no stupid driver installation that installs a bunch of bloatware.
The last two versions of Ubuntu that I installed, I did not even have to do that much. After first installation, I just turned the USB printer on. Ubuntu detected it, identified the correct make and model, installed all the drivers and set it as the default printer (since there wasn't already one set). Since during the installation I had set the timezone to Australian CST, Ubuntu had also set the localization correctly, and so consequently the default paper size was correctly set to A4.
Pronounce: Butterface.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Someone- please tell me what usb wifi adapter product can be used to make this happen? I have searched and found some related docs that mention support being limited to a couple chipsets. Which always confused my too-much-but-too-little networking knowledge. The git commit message here mentions nothing about hardware support limits. My prior test, perhaps invalid, was to take a fedora-9 box, buy several usb adapters, and type "iwconfig bla mode master" hoping for success, but never seeing success. I always thought this was because the prism2 or whatever supported chipsets were rare, but now maybe I'm thinking the code wasn't in the kernel yet??? Please someone, give me a link to a newegg or amazon usb product, and the essence of the quick howto.
As long as you followed step #0. Check printer compatibility here and scanner compatibility here. Unless they got a Tux logo or something, because there are still devices that don't have Linux drivers. I agree, when it works it works much better on Windows and most things work, but a two minute googling may still save you a lot of grief. Plus, there's nothing wrong with supporting manufacturers that really have first-class Linux drivers.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ask the people who mentioned the same thing, three times.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I've added a cross reference for the new kernel source to my site here. Also included is a .patch generator, just click the "modify" link next to files (the $modify text next to directories is a bug) and you can generate a .patch for sending upstream based on your edits. Just thought I'd contribute somehow.
He was just being through
redundant
redundant
redundant
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
In all honesty, I've just used off the shelf hardware with no idea if it would work or not. Thanks for the site though, I think I might use that in future.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Plus, there's nothing wrong with supporting manufacturers that really have first-class Linux drivers
Well, you don't mention them by name., but I am guessing your referring to HP.. which is always a pretty safe bet for compatibility, and their software for Linux is pretty good.. so I'll support them by saying that my recent purchase of a cheap all in one HP printer turned out to be pretty cool.. and I did your google thing as well.. when I had run across the printer and liked the price, the first thing I did before buying it was to google "HP F2210 Linux problem" saw no problems, and links to drivers, and knew it was cool to go for it.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
[sigh]
This again?
For the last time, Gnome and KDE are not going to merge! And we don't want them to merge! Healthy, friendly competition is good!
A Single-Unified-Linux-Desktop is neither desirable nor necessary for "world domination" or even "the year of the Linux Desktop"
No sig for the moment.
There is no "UK" version of Windows, sorry. You use the English version.
No kidding.
I'm honestly not sure it still applies to KDE in the 4.x era, but at least in the 3.x era, the philosophies were quite different. Gnome's policy of (pseudoquote) "there's one best way to do it and we don't want to confuse the users with too many config options" was extremely frustrating for many KDE users and devs, particularly the power users that /like/ to configure the desktop until it uniquely fits them like a glove, while likewise, the KDE "if it can be configured, different people are going to want different things, so let's expose every single possible configuration option to the user in the GUI" was extremely frustrating to many Gnome users and devs, particularly those who just want it to work, damit, because they have work to do.
The point is, forcing the devs and users who find the one policy most useful to follow the other one, surely is effective... at causing useless squabbles and getting nothing done! Keep the "there's only one true way" folks away from the "make it configurable for everyone" folks, and both types can continue to improve their product without getting in the way of each other.
Similarly of course with all the other "Linux is too divided" debates, from too many distributions, to vi/emacs, to... whatever. It's a free community and part of the strength therein lies in the freedom. Even if it were possible to take away that freedom to create one's own product, there'd be little point, as were it to happen, we'd just end up back with the monopolistic monstrosity that is MS. One size does NOT fit all, and encouraging differentiation and innovation, certainly based on common standards, but /only/ /based/ on common standards, is a /good/ thing.
That said, the one thing that does keep the Linux community from incompatibly splitting up much like the proprietary Unix community did is again, that it's all open and shared. Each distribution and individual app therefore has an interest not only in doing what it was created for really well, even if that splits from the community, but ALSO in following the common solution where it really doesn't matter for what it was created for, because every deviation from the common solution costs maintenance time and resources, time and resources that could otherwise be invested in bettering either the differentiating aspects further, or in advancing the common ones. In practice this dynamic ensures that individual solutions only diverge from the common where it really matters to them, because every divergence costs resources, and divergence just for the sake of it is thus less efficient and dies out relatively quickly, compared to those who focus resources on divergence only where it directly furthers their goals and on otherwise bettering the common solution, submitting patches upstream, etc. Thus, unlike the proprietary Unix solutions, divergence for the sake of divergence simply isn't efficient enough to survive, and ultimately dies. But where there's a good reason for divergence, that only serves to drive a sharper focus on bettering the different solutions that remain, driving the evolution of the community as a whole even faster.
(Umm... (looking around) I guess it's pretty obvious that I'm a "True Believer" (tm), isn't it. Yes, I am, and for that I'm not going to apologize! =:^)
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
The Linux wireless drivers page lists which drivers support master/access point mode (see the AP column). The list isn't perfect (the hostap driver definitely supports AP mode :-) but it seems to be a case of omissions. The table also says what form factor the supported chipsets come in (so you can tell which ones you will be able to get in USB form). I'd guess the rt2500usb or p54usb drivers would be your best bet.
Another useful page is the Linux wireless chipset directory which tries to list which cards have which chipsets (there's even a single page table with all the added chipsets but I won't link to it from here). This lets you build a list of boxes with the desired chipsets inside them (finding out whether this is true in reality can in itself can be a fraught process though). The chipset is really the important part in all of this.
I'm not going to point to an Amazon page because I have not bought a USB wifi card with the capabilities you describe from Amazon. I'm in no position to tell you that XYZ USB device on Amazon definitely works as I haven't done it myself. I have used hostapd on Linux and OpenBSD before now on a creaky old Prism 2.5 card and that worked for me but again that's not what you asked.
Finally here's a guide to using hostapd to set a card up in access point mode (just using iwconfig to set master mode is not enough). Googling for hostapd linux will turn up plenty more guides which may be easier to follow.
Good luck!
I was slightly disappointed when looking for the amount of drivers added for desktop users. Looking through the release log, I can only find one driver added for the home desktop user. It's for a new 3G modem, which is nice. I'd expected lots of other devices to be added, actually. One of the things that disappoints people when moving to Linux, is that it doesn't support their hardware.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Wrong. There is a British localisation of Windows, to deal with the fact that we have different keyboards, currency, timezone and spellings. You can pick UK as an entity distinct from the rest of the Anglosphere in the installation process, much as you do with the friendlier GUI installers on Linux.
Don't know what Ash-Fox is talking about re: paper sizes though, all my Windows comps chose A4 as the default paper size.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
When upgrading from .28 to one of the latest .29 rc's, one of my ext4 filesystems got corrupted. Something to do with resize inode. Had to reboot my old .28 kernel to be able to fix it with fsck. No data loss that I'm aware of (lost+found was empty).
I think this was originally an ext4dev fs from the .26 era. I have been staying with .28 since. This is a 322 GB fs which is not critical for boot, but obviously I don't want to lose data.
Perhaps I ought to backup and recreate the fs under .29.
(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)
Pun intended:
"US Letter" aspect ratio (1.28) is more distant from golden ratio (1.61) than "A4"'s (1.41).
Plus, there's nothing wrong with supporting manufacturers that really have first-class Linux drivers.
This may be a stupid question, but where can I find this kind of information?
It's easy to find "someone got this to work with linux" pages, but how do i find out about what hardware really works well with linux? (and how to get it outside of the US)
Not in the UK either. Mine have always defaulted to A4.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
What I find really weird is that on Windows, the default paper size is always "letter", when most people use A4.
In the United States, just about everyone uses "US Letter" (8.5 in. × 11 in., or 216 × 279 mm), and not "A4" (210 × 297 mm), which means that oftentimes on Linux, you have to remember to switch from A4 to Letter. In other words, there isn't really a sensible default for everyone.
Simple solution. If you live in a country that uses the metric system (most of the world) then use "A4". If you live in a country that still uses the Imperial System (the USA and a few other countries that are slowly converting to metric) then stick to "Letter".
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Windowmaker? IceWM? enlightenment?
These are available, but apparently the ONLY thing keeping "Linux from the Desktop" is that KDE and GNOME exist.
Nah, I don't buy it.
When they are merged, you'll be complaining that there's KNOMDE and WindowMaker and that you won't get "Linux on the Desktop" until they are merged.
Then WMKNOMDE and XFCE will stop there being "Linux on the Desktop".
And when there is only one desktop, it will be that it's the wrong one.
And when it's the right one, it'll be that GIMP is a stupid name for a program.
And when it's named something else...
Cohesion? No no. There are people developing all sorts of BSDs, Darwin, Hurd, etc. It's shockingly wasteful, I know. All these people should stop wasting their time and start developing a unified kernel.
The locale should be consulted. I find it extremely irritating that every time I install Adobe Reader, I need to navigate through menus to find out where the Units submenu lies this time, and then set it manually to cm or mm. Ignoring for the moment the fact that most computers are not in USA, software should really consult the system locale for things like default paper sizes, units to be used etc.
It is quite annoying when there is a group assignment at the university, somebody from the group invariably throws a letter-sized document at you and when you try to reformat it, it turns out it completely murders all formatting, thus adding extra work to an already tight schedule.
A4 isn't meant to be equal to the golden ratio. It is meant to be 1/Root2, or Root2, depending on your outlook on life. Designed such that if you stick two of them together, you get the next size up. Or on cutting one in half, get the next size down; again, depending on your outlook on life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size
The golden ratio isn't really all that useful for writing paper. The A system is based on A0 being 1 square metre, and the sides being in a sqrt(2) proportion so that each time you cut an A(n) sheet in half along the long edge, you get two A(n+1) sheets. Plus, it makes calculating letter weights really easy: given the paper weight in g/m^2, you just divide that by 2^4 = 16 for A4, 2^5 = 32 for A5, etc, then multiply by the number of sheets.
What I find really weird is that on Windows, the default paper size is always "letter", when most people use A4.
Not in the U.S.
"Most people" don't live in the US. I think somewhere around 94% of the world's population live elsewhere. But even in local Windows versions (in Israel, at least) the system is set for "letter" paper.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Gnome's policy of (pseudoquote) "there's one best way to do it and we don't want to confuse the users with too many config options" was extremely frustrating for many KDE users and devs, particularly the power users that /like/ to configure the desktop until it uniquely fits them like a glove, while likewise, the KDE "if it can be configured, different people are going to want different things, so let's expose every single possible configuration option to the user in the GUI" was extremely frustrating to many Gnome users and devs, particularly those who just want it to work, damit, because they have work to do.
so the best thing to do, is give a fully configurable system, and ship with a default set of configurations. Choose one at install: 'desktop', 'server', 'custom' or 'mom' configuration options.
dumbing things down because you think your users don't want options is patronising and stupid. even the ones who 'just want it to work' will occasionally disagree with a choice you made for them.
I think multiple desktop environments is still a good thing, but a unified development environment would be even better. That's my problem with Gnome v KDE - not the desktop per se, but the 2 different ways of developing GUIs. If there was just the one, it'd be easier to do the development, things would fit nicer together, they'd probably be better support and facilities for the development. This is one thing Microsoft got right (along with its GUI style guidelines). Think of this like common standards, you can build any website, but you do it using a common set of html primitives; or you can build any linux distro, but you do it with a common kernel.
Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) is only for Intel hardware in this release. Other graphics hardware will have to wait for a later release.
The most important feature is the new mascot, Tuz.
And here I was thinking we were going to get a new, faster, slimmed-down penguin.
You must have eaten some free (as in freedom, not free as in beer) corn.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
A version of Windows that comes with British localizations.
Stop getting US versions?
Localizations are set to use UK settings by default, so you wouldn't need to set your date format, keyboard layout etc.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Simple solution. If you live in a country that uses the metric system (most of the world) then use "A4". If you live in a country that still uses the Imperial System (the USA and a few other countries that are slowly converting to metric) then stick to "Letter".
So what if you live in Canada, where we use both the metric system and US letter paper?
The tragedy of it, at least from an outsider's view, is that while the aims of KDE and Gnome are 95% the same and only 5% different, the 5% difference has caused the 95% of effort to be duplicated.
Is it beyond the realm of possibility to have one desktop environment, fully configurable, and a "user-friendly" skinning of it that hides most of the configuration? If the answer is that KDE and Gnome are already like that, then there is a really tragic 100% duplication of effort.
Hmmm... I have the opposite problem... for some reason paper size keeps defaulting to A4 and we don't have a sheet of it anywhere, only letter.
That doesn't work though, since here in Canada we are metric but we use Letter size paper.
reimplement it, poorly.
Indeed.
Over the years I have collected both retail and OEM along with MSDN copies of windows.
Both retail and OEM discs are set to use British currency, locale, timezone, keyboard settings etc. by default.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It's easy to change defaults, especially when using the add printer wizard - I just noted it was something I found weird about Windows - completely ignores my locale settings and suggests "letter" format.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This is the keystone grammar police. dont do that again, or well come after you and you're family.
"Most people" don't live in the US.
Most people living in English-speaking industrialized countries live in the United States. Add up the population of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the two-thirds of Canada that isn't Quebec, and you still have less than half the U.S. population. (This might change somewhat once India industrializes further.) Besides, Canada uses US Letter paper too. So if you publish one edition of a desktop environment for the English language, and not separate editions for North America and the Commonwealth, it might be fair to default to North American settings.
Only two countries do not use A4 as the standard size for paper.
And these two countries have the lion's share of the industrialized native anglophones. Or do your desktop environment and your applications come set to Letter even when you install them in a language other than English?
Is it beyond the realm of possibility to have one desktop environment, fully configurable, and a "user-friendly" skinning of it that hides most of the configuration?
Yes. Gnome does this by hiding a lot of obscure options in gconf instead of exposing them in the UI, and people like you still complain that there aren't any options. QED
If the answer is that KDE and Gnome are already like that, then there is a really tragic 100% duplication of effort.
You're begging the "Mythical Man-Month" question, that is assuming that doubling the number of developers on one desktop is going to double the quality of that desktop. It won't, and in the short term adding people is likely to make things worse!
And let's not even get into the number of talented-but-egotistical people on both sides who will would say "Piss off! You killed my pet project, I'm not helping with yours." and go off to develop iPhone fart noise apps instead of working on the other desktop...
0 1 - just my two bits
It's an imagined tragedy. Yes, there is a lot of duplication of effort between the two camps. But tasking their combined developers with a single desktop system (GDE? KNOME?) is unlikely to make it twice as good, or get features completed twice as fast. Instead, it'll probably lead to the reverse.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
No, the beak is the horrific facial deformity.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
I have a Brother and it defaults to A4 on Linux, which is really annoying in the US where most paper is legal.
Time makes more converts than reason
The HP drivers default to Letter though, regardless of your computer's locale settings.
I hope you don't mean to imply that the US is slowly converting to metric. We are not and probably never will. I learned the metric system from a young age because we were taught that it would eventually be the standard in the US as it is elsewhere but I haven't seen any real change in this direction. Metric usage is usually reserved for science and mathematics in the US, but common measurements will never standardize on metric, it's too ingrained in our system and culture.
Time makes more converts than reason
My hope is that we get to merge efforts to produce a desktop product that is not only beautiful to look at, but also a joy to work with.
Not only is it impossible to get everyone to agree on what makes a good desktop, but competition is vital for creating a good user experience. Why do you think Windows sucks so completely? One reason is that most people who use computers don't have any choice but to use Windows: there is no healthy competition to force MS to make it not suck.
Merging efforts is bad because it means we are all stuck with the lowest common denominator. Imagine an America On-line desktop. No thanks.
You're correct, tho I'd not put it in quite those terms.
It's important to remember that for the most part, the FLOSS (Free/libre and open source software) community is composed of volunteers. While few would have the crass my way or no way reaction you suggest, the point is that there's always other things a good coder could be working on, always a dozen other projects he's interested in too, competing for his attention, and when motivation on a particular one he's spending a lot of time on goes down, so, ultimately, does his level of contribution to that project.
Thus the effect in practice is the same even if the reasons given differ. If a project doesn't closely enough follow a dev's ideals, he'll be less committed to it, and there's always more projects competing for his time and interest than he has time and interest to give anyway, so his participation by defining characteristic ultimately goes down as well. Thus, form a combined KDE/GNOME/XFCE/whatever, and the loss of interest will almost certainly mean it progresses little if any faster than each of the projects is doing on its own, now. At the same time, the competitiveness and copying of great ideas from one to the other will decrease as well, and Linux and larger FLOSS (including the freedomware BSDs and OpenSolaris) community will suffer not only the loss of variety, but the loss of internal competitive pressure and innovation it now has, with little if any gain in trade.
Meanwhile, there's actually quite a decent amount of cooperation and standard setting going on as it is. The freedesktop.org effort has standardized a quite a lot in the last few years, including among other things both *.desktop file format and the dbus interprocess communication protocol, both of which now are a common format used by both desktops. xorg itself is now a freedesktop.org project too, and there are continuing efforts in other areas. Where it makes sense, there's common standards, with each desktop having its own implementation, bringing its own flavor to the standard, while allowing a much higher level of cooperation than before, and apps from the one desktop that fit into the scheme configured for the other, or for both. It is in fact rather sad that the original "I have a dream" poster didn't mention these efforts at all.
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
Do all your typing in English on one side of the paper and French on the other?
I've never ever used A4 sized paper. 8x5"x11" only up here in Canada. From time to time I've also used "legal" which is 8.5"x14".
I also do business printing, for which we have a variety of wider paper formats, but none standard for printing normally.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The golden ratio isn't really all that useful for writing paper.
Except that, when you have an long-side-leading A4 printer, it can also print A3, because the long side of A4 is the same as the short side of A3. It makes the printer a little more versatile.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
Would it also be bad to suggest that they at least use the same gui toolkit?
:(
I'm always trying to get my gtk apps to look like my qt apps (gtkqt etc.), and it never seems to work quite right. There are a lot of good gtk apps which don't have equivalent qt versions and vice-versa. It keeps my poor linux desktop looking sad and unprofessional
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
I don't know. The usage in science and math is a good indicator that we are slowly moving to metric in the US...though it may still take another 50 years if it happens naturally.
Think of it this way: Metric tools will eventually be cheaper than ISA because of the laws of mass production. Many things like imported cars use metric sized bolts and screws. What's this? A racing game that uses km because of a lazy translation? Hey, my shoe size is also listed in metric! All of these little things that you don't notice are slowly piling into a mountain because of economic concerns of large corporations.
The US population is (very) slowly getting less scared of the metric whether you realize it not. Wouldn't it be crazy if congress passed a bill like the digital TV one to cut parts costs for mechanics and other industries instead of half-@ssing it?
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I think you'd be surprised in your culture's ability to change. Every other nation that metrified has said the same thing.
Yeah, being in grammar police family is a truely scary threat... I suspect some would take Sue aside as an alternative.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
As I said, there is no UK version of Windows. There are regional setting for the UK in the English version of Windows, but that doesn't make it a separate version.
The metric system for paper sizing is also rad because the page sizes stay proportional. You can draft a poster on A4 paper and then size it up, or you can print 2-up on A4 without scaling issues. (Cut a piece of letter size paper in two and its no longer proportional, you need to add white space for everything to fit.)
Back off, dude!
If this was a discussion on say, 'Linux on the Desktop', or '*nix-the New Distro',your comment would be cogent, insightful, and on topic. But the discussion has nothing to do with that topic, so your reply is just a troll.
Hint: We were discussing the release of the 2.6.29 Linux Kernal, not another release of a Linux distro. Get some perspective.
How many "normal computer users" would care, much less know what this means?
Those of us that do know what this means are excited...this is just "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters'...this has nothing to do with your "normal computer users" you are babbling about, this time.
Save your vitriol for the appropriate discussion to avoid looking like a n00b/troll/flamebait maroon.
Gahh! I've fallen to feeding confused trolls! *shoots self in face with BFG 9000*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Even in the US, metric is quite commonly used when measuring fizzy drinks or drugs.
Would it also be bad to suggest that they at least use the same gui toolkit?
It wouldn't too bad, iffin the difference between GTK and QT were just the look of the widgets.
It keeps my poor linux desktop looking sad and unprofessional
I've never understood this point of view. Don't we have work to do? How anal are we that we feel the need to be spending time worrying about the differences between one app's default widgets and file dialog boxes and another's? :)
If I want to get at a Windows user's address book, I'll use MAPI.
Unless your Windows user is using Thunderbird. (Or one of the "million" other mail applications that are sure to have broken MAPI support.)
http://kb.mozillazine.org/MAPI_Support
or just get a native postscript printer, which only needs a ppd file and not even that if you don't want to.
Eh, I have a few OCD tendencies. For instance, my productivity decreases as a function of my desk entropy ;) Not so much because I can't find stuff, but because I'm easily distracted/annoyed at the incongruences of a messy desk (or non-matching widgets...)
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
I'm easily distracted/annoyed at the incongruences of a messy desk...
I see. My desk (whether at home or at work) would drive you up the wall. :)