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Lucy Linux, Dressed to Kill
An anonymous reader sent us a fairly positive article
about Linux but
written primarily from the perspective of a Mac advocate. Talks
a lot about KDE, the usability issues and similiarities between
Mac and Linux advocacy.
Hmmm, I'm running Linux (Debian) and NetBSD on Alphas. Mostly 64-bit clean and works well (egcs _is_ getting better for Alpha, slowly but surely), and is the progenitor for other 64-bit ports (Sparc64, PA-RISC, MIPS).
Also running Linux (also Debian) on my m68k Amiga.
Would I recommend running Linux on a non-Intel platform? In my experience with Debian Alpha and m68k, the answer would be an emphatic *YES* - surely the ports lag behind i386, but with the growing popularity (and falling cost, well-documented industry-standard controllers, etc.) of Alpha, the non-Intel 64-bit ports will reach parity within the next few years.
However, the biggest difference between nearly every non-Intel platform and Apple Macintosh hardware (m68k and PPC/G3) is that low-level info is available for most non-Intel platforms. Apple hardware extensively uses proprietary ASICs and is undocumented (apart from the sparse info on their website and Apple Technical Library). They apparently do not want anyone to know that their serial and memory controllers are definitely not of the same calibre that the PowerPC 750 CPU that they're so fond of touting is. Contacting Apple engineers for technical info is like pulling teeth through your arse; they can get downright nasty over the telephone!
That Linux/Alpha "isn't worth it" to RedHat's Bob Young is largely irrelevant - the RedHat AXP-list and Debian-Alpha lists are very active and with much-appreciated assistance from Linux enthusiasts within Compaq (formerly Digital), Alpha Linux still has great potential for scientific and hopefully media disciplines.
Just my $0.02.
that was one of the redhat sluts they drove up from north carolina.
think its in the linuxworld pics... the things ppl wont do for commercial software.
viva debian!
Hey. I think Mac is pretty (and) cool. If it wasn't for Steve Jobs there would be NO Window Maker and NO AfterStep. I currently use those and I think Mac has (and always had) the coolest and most user friendly GUIs. On the other hand, I share the #linuxwarez opinion about KDE =:P. OSes, unlike girls or women (which are human beings, not objects or binary code) can fit on the same hard drive. So you can run both MacOS/Rhapsody and Linux on the same machine without having to lie to /etc/fstab about your HFS partitions or anything like that.
PS: This was written from a geekguy's point of view.
She can hike that gun to me.
Did anyone notice todays Doonesbury in the paper!
Seems, i believe her name is Alexa, the little girl who has her web-cam up, is pushing "Red Cap" Linux on her web-cam site.
If there's need for a new mascot, it should be her!
imho, Miss Mac is way cuter than Lucy Linux
You can edit your .Xresources to fix the page up/down problem. It seems that Redhat modifies their resources to not do that by default.
From experience I knew that these were the hidden files Macs use to track files and their apps, as well as having something to do with the GUI, I believe.....
.kshrc and .mailrc because, "If I didn't put it there, I don't want it in MY home directory!!!"
It's absolute nonesense for an OS to do that. Don't put mystery files on my media without my permission.......
Uh, Unix dotfiles are pretty much analogous to hidden desktop files in the MacOS. I once knew a user who kept deleting his
I bought a PowerBook G3, specifically to run Linux, how many laptops have builtin SCSI and Ethernet?
that's fer sure!
Have you seen the
Porn Pilot mascots?
Middle button can be simulated by pressing right+left button at the same time.
Believe me, I learned the hard way!
Adobe photoshop is what started the whole mac craze in 84 and 85. IT was only 3 years ago when the mac version of photoshop was always 2 version aheard. I remember all the windows users talk about version 3 when 5 was out for the mac. I assume your joking.
Women are "open source." Most of us just don't want to know what they are thinking...
/.'ers don't want to know this...
Face it, most women aren't thinking about how "much" they "want" to fulfil some "geek's" sexual fantasies.
I'm sure most
The Mac community swallows anything Apple sticks to them, like taking their PR newswires for gospel. There's an unhealthy lack of criticism on their part to keep Apple on its toes.
The Apple modus operandi, by being proprietary software and hardware, is inherently at the extreme to the Linux model, and it'll take more than a pretty GUI to bridge the gap.
>And part of the problem with X is that this middle-button-paste is not documented at all.
man xterm contains this:
[clip...]
Pointer button two (usually middle) `types' (pastes) the text from the
PRIMARY selection, if any, otherwise from the cut buffer, inserting it
as keyboard input.
[clip...]
Well, that girl was cute, but she looked like a girl, not a woman. (Then again, maybe she's just young-looking... nah!.)
Getting back to the article and the analogy used, I'm confused whether Miss Mac is Apple itself, or Apple's customers. 'Cause if it's Apple corp., then I've dated Miss Mac, and man, the woman did me wrong!. I thought she was pretty, but she just took all my money, when I wanted action, she just called me a geek. I better stop before I write a blues song.
Lucy Linux, however, has a heart of gold!
Which leaves utterly heart-broken.
weakness of X? X supports a wide range of cut and paste and leaving snippets lying about connected to various applications. It's up to the application programmers to use it (which they don't).
and you put up with having to reboot every five minutes?
I have been using Linux for 2 1/2 years. This is the first time I've heard of the menu and I am amazed. You would think that they would document it somewhere where people woudl actually look (not on the 60 page of the man page for the program, but perhaps print it out in cmd line options).
What is the incentive, or likelyhood, that someone is going to develop high-end printing software under linux? There aren't too many programmers with a burning desire to print their brochures better and more cheaply, so such software will remain missing until either A) someone with a dire printing need and the expertise to know what is needed decides to learn a lot of programming B) a linux hacker develops a ken for printing full-page ads or C) someone decides there's a market for it and pays for the development
There is a wide space between cool filters in the gimp and professional-quality CMYK separations.
Apple has consistently described its relationship with Microsoft in positive terms since Steve Jobs became CEO. The sole exception is the DOJ trial. If you assume that Microsoft did behave in the manner described by Avie Tevanian and other Apple execs, how could you expect them to say otherwise? Especially when other companies that have benefitted far more from riding Microsoft's coat tails have made their complaints public. Give Apple a break, they have come a long way in working with Microsoft.
RedHat sluts??????
She's wearing a Tux t-shirt.
She's cute.
She might even know what Linux IS.
...
You need to get out more.
I think that's the woman from the TV show "La Femme Nikita."
I hope the producers don't take offense.....
That's not what I consider cut and paste. Cut and paste means that you can higlight something, cut it, unhilight it, go do stuff for a while, then maybe hours later paste it somewhere. The biggest problem with the middle mouse method is that it has to be hilighted to paste., so I can't cut something, and then hilight something else to paste over.
Ya know, I've played with Macs before... Hell, I even used one while writing in high school, but I've never taken it seriously as an OS I'd use. I read that article and I wanted to laugh out load here at work. I'm sorry, Mac people talking about how good their OS is and then showing Linux next to it... well, if Microsoft did that five years ago my system wouldn't be infected with Windows 98.
I bit the bullet and bought a Turbo Mouse. My one button mouse now sits weaping in the corner. Cut and paste, I messed around until I figured it out.
BTW, I'm posting this using MkLinux on my G3. Soon to be a proud owner of LinuxPPC.
Here too. We need a mirror!
have you tried using the gimp for cymk? last i heard, it couldn't be done.
-cpt kangarooski, too lazy to login
Women are "open source." Most of us just don't want to know what they are thinking...
/.'ers don't want to know this...
Face it, most women aren't thinking about how "much" they "want" to fulfil some "geek's" sexual fantasies.
I'm sure most
But then again, geeks all over the world have had their fingers in it. ANYBODY can get their hands on it. Likes a big hard disk, but comes on a floppy as well. Likes lots of RAM. As far as hardware goes, the faster the better. Can keep going non-stop for months, without ever going down on you. Is, by default, multi-user. You can share it with your friends. If you get it on the street, the shrinkwrap comes off without a fight. Gladly gives you an intimate look at the source
:)
Don't forget. If you don't have a lot of RAM or just need a little more, Linux is happy to SWAP.
I'd finally be able to understand them.
Bravo to DroneB for correcting that crazy post...h art1.jpg
You give me $5000 to spend on a mac and $2500 to spend on a Dell system, and the mac will blow the pc away... I would prove this to everyone by getting some quotes from apple's and Dell's web sites, but I ran into some problems. I went to apples web site, and got as close to $3000 as possible without going over. I had a killer system with a 9gig SCSI drive, zip drive, 350mhz G3, DVD drive, 56k modem, 10/100 ethernet, and ofcourse, a scsi card for the hard drive. I went to dell's page, and although most of the items I had put on the G3 were there, like 9gig SCSI, DVD, network card, zip and so on. The only problem was that dell won't let you get the SCSI drive with the DVD or zip. I guess dell doesn't think people need to use a scsi drive and a zip or scsi and dvd together in one system! Of course PC systems will be cheaper, but that will be in price AND quality. I would say at most you might pay $300 more for a mac. I don't mind paying a little extra to know that I got an quality product. I don't recall that apple has made any G3 upgrades. That is what 3rd parties are for, and they do an excellent job. MacOS X is $500. Not the same cost as the hardware. As for it being slow... check out this link, a graph on MacOSX server vs. a Dell and Sun system: http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/images/apachec
If the app is properly written, the creator codes should only affect what happens when you double click on the document.
Netscape can read jpegs, Photoshop can read jpegs, and they don't care what app created them. True, if I double click on a jpeg created by Photoshop, the OS will autmatically try to open it in Photoshop. If I want to open the same jpeg in Netscape, I drag-and-drop the file (or it's alias) onto Netscape, or I can go through Netscape's file dialog box to open the jpeg.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Word files are automatically associated with Word (a good thing), but I can still open those same files with WordPerfect or Nisus (assuming they have the ability to understand the format).
Having to change the type or creator is extremely rare. If you *really* need to, you can download one of the hundreds of small freeware apps that let you do this, write a script, or even use Norton's Fast Find or Apple's ResEdit. There's even a popular (I don't remember the name) patch that allows you to do this in the "Get Info" dialog box.
My mainpoint is that 99.99% of the time, the type/creator method works exactly as it should: invisibly allowing different apps to use the same file formats, while associating the file with it's creator. My bet is that most users never have the need to change the type/creator, which to me is a sign that Apple got things right.
I bought a PowerBook G3, specifically to run Linux, hoe many laptops have builtin SCSI and Ethernet?
Some would embrace her. Some would find fault, because she is not the right type of open source.
Preferred Mascot:
- Miss Mac
- Lucy Linux
- Tux
- Cheesecake (Mmmmmmm...Cheeeesecaaaake)
- Taco sux0r/polls suck/hemos blows
miss mac has a certain Melissa Milaon charm about her, but is too 80's lookin...blonde tall and long-legged is good ;)
all hail the holy gimp.
:)
Photoshop sux.
And is way out of my price range
Yay GIMP.
Who else loves the GIMP?
DullBlade, I bet you five bucks that you don't work in print.
Although I do a lot of stuff, most of my work has been in typesetting for print projects.
Let me give you some background in the print world.
It used to be, with photolithography, that typesetters would take other people's copy and generate a photographic print (a 'whiteprint') of it. This was usually just a long column of text, with minimal formatting, in one of a relatively small number of typefaces. Whiteprints of copy and of photos would then go to the compositors, who would arrange everything, by hand, on sheets of paperboard. The whiteprints were affixed to it with wax. Then that went to platemaking, a lithographic plate was made via a photographic method and the plate went to the pressroom and they put it on a roller and printed with it.
It was a fscking nightmare, but there was no way out.
When computers first began to enter the print world, they were used chiefly by typesetters. I myself once used some of this stuff in school, after it had been outdated. The typesetter would type stuff into the computer, and if any formatting was required, like italicizing something, control codes very similar to HTML or TeX were used. Then it printed directly to film, and you still made a whiteprint. So it wasn't a big improvement.
PageMaker (and the infrastructure of the Macintosh, PostScript and cheap ($7000) laser printers) changed this. Basically they merged the typesetters and compositors, by putting a virtual compositing setup on the computer. It was a lot faster to slide stuff around onscreen and get photoready laser prints than to use the old methods. The adoption of the Mac for printing purposes was incredibly fast.
BUT ONLY BECAUSE WAX WAS A PAIN IN THE ASS. The old method was still used, just on the screen, rather than in the real world.
Generally, everyone in the print world is very, very conservative. If something is working, it is left alone. If something is broken, it's fixed as rapidly as possible. If something can be sped up, it is. The reason is the almighty deadline. We don't screw around looking for better ways to do stuff, because we'd waste time looking. We don't waste time looking for the right way to fix stuff, because we'd waste time when a kludge will do. And as long as the budget holds out, we'd add anything if it'll shave off five minutes. (Case in point: An HP laser printer was having problems printing 10MB TIFFs. So they overnighted 64MB of RAM for the printer, figuring that it might help. It did but was probably not the 'right' solution. If the 'right' solution would have taken longer, they wouldn't have bothered)
So currently 90% of everyone uses Macs, with XPress or PageMaker, Illustrator or Freehand and Photoshop. The remaining 10% either still use the old paste up methods, or use Wintel (usually not by choice but by fiat of the MIS)
While a lot of us know how to keep the Macs running, and have some technical savvy, they still aren't willing to fsck about with a good thing. That's just a matter of fixing things fast, without waiting for repairmen. Most couldn't care less, because they're DESIGNERS. The computer is just a way to avoid wax-based paste-up, but has little intrinsic value.
So why would these sorts of people care about Linux? Free software is not really important, as it's management's job to pay for it. And they do. Hardware and type are much more expensive than software (Adobe's full type library is something like $15,000, and that's just ONE foundry. This is why we all pirate type). Further, everyone would have to learn how to use Linux, how to keep it working properly, and how to use all of the new programs. All this to get back to where we started, and which would likely involve the missing of a few deadlines.
And we do not like to miss deadlines. If Microsoft is only a month late, it's a miracle. If we're two days late we will probably never see the client again. Print is not good for one's social life. OTOH, it's probably very similar to software development, but possibly on LSD and PCP simultaneously. (YMMV; everyone likes to gripe about their jobs)
So even if Linux has all of the tools we need, for free, they have to be significantly better in ways that are probably unimaginable now, for people to look into them. The only reason that we use computers is because they are exactly like paste-up, but without wax, and the waste of time involved in outputting all the pieces. It's not because of a love of computers, I can tell you that.
TeX, from my brief look at it (I'm much more interested in computers than most of my colleagues) isn't sufficinently similar to paste up to win many friends. It may be good at doing books, but so is Quark, with it's stylesheets and master pages, and we already HAVE Quark, and it's good for other things besides.
The GIMP offers a subset of Photoshop's functionality, and we already HAVE Photoshop, which is good for more stuff than the GIMP. Like CYMK, which is more commonly used than RGB. If you could invent a CYMK monitor, you'd get rich fast off of all the designers who would buy them (RGB/CYMK conversions are very annoying in the resulting color shifts. That's why color correction is such a big deal. sRGB is awful, btw)
So by and large, most Photoshop users are unlikely to become aware of the GIMP and even if they were, wouldn't care. The sole exception is among the lucky few who work on projects that are exclusively in RGB. Which is to say new media and the web. And there are damn few web designers who get to work on projects that don't inherit art from more important or preexisting print projects (CYMK again)
Worse yet for your argument, most Photoshop users are designers. Precious few designers can program. So finding a team to develop MacGIMP is tricky. On Linux, very many users are programmers, so it's not quite as tough.
And as for 'nor does it mean you have a clue,' let me tell you something: Not one professional designer that I have ever met knew about the GIMP. One had a vague idea about Linux. I am an _extremely_ well-informed designer. And I like to think of myself as competent too, thanks very much.
You see, what we do is function as a black box, accepting the requirements of clients and outputting something they're willing to accept, on a deadline so tight that if it were an ass, it would crap diamonds (pardon my french). For the GIMP to win acceptance among the large body of people who would actually use it - people who currently use photoshop, it would have to have not only all of the functionality of the latter, but be so similar as to make a transition from program to another quick and painless, coexist with all the stuff that has come before, and make something much better in our lives, like DTP did in a paste-up world. The GIMP falls way short.
Hopefully it will improve - I'd like it to. But I just can't spare time for something that isn't all there yet.
You can get around the annoying behavior in Netscape by erasing the URL before your paste.
Just click in the Location: box and type
Ctrl-u and it will erase the URL.
_steve
How's that for a compromise? ;-)
Good readin' for a friday afternoon. The author
suggests a point that he doesn't state as such.
The idea is *nix, whatever the flavor, is the wave
of the future.
You gotta love that.
All I can say is...
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew, get it away
Linux, hot chicks, guns...mmmmm
Course I'd probably have to compete with Tux for her favour. And he'd probably kick my ass. Maybe if I'm lucky Lucy will kick my ass.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Might I interject that Apple's primary product is not the Mac OS, but the hardware that it runs on? While MacOS 8.5 and previous versions are very sorry examples of OS design, MacOS X shows a lot of promise. As for "Mac people talking about how good their OS is", this article is written from the context of a Mac zealot...would you expect him to badmouth MacOS?
Also, there are alternative OS's for Macs, both 68k and PPC. Allow me to submit NetBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, and LinuxPPC for consideration. My Mac Centris (old, I know) runs NetBSD and MacOS...the primary functions of MacOS are, 1. booting NetBSD, and 2. Downloading packages to my Newton MessagePad.
All in all, I found it a nice look into the mind of a Mac addict as he views the Linux phenomenon.
Posted by DroneB:
A drag & drop applescript to change file/creator type is really easy to write, and those sorts of scripts are handy to have around to do batch changes as well. All the tools are included in the Apple Extras folder to write the scripts. Also ResEdit can change creator/file types easily and is easy to use - open the file, choose get info from the file menu, and edit away - just don't mess with the rest of the resource fork. As far as easily opening files in other applications - just drag & drop 'em. Spring loaded folders make this especially easy now.
Posted by FUJIMO:
Women are open source. However, due to the use of built in options packaging and firmware controlled interfacing, they conflict with all known architectures...
Posted by DroneB:
Those files were part of the desktop database which tracks file types, and also tracks the information so that when you put the disk back in the drive the relative positions of things on the disk and desktop follows, which is really useful if you are using a mac. So what if a few tiny invisible files appear on your disk? They are very useful from the Mac side, and can be deleted if you do not want them. As far as it goes they should be invisible for a typical user because they would have no benefit from editing them, and could screw up the way the file system is handled if they removed them. Those files did not have any serious effect on your disk or hurt you or your media in any way.
The most aggravating thing about certain Linux/BSD advocates is their railing against FUD, and then pulling out their own lies and FUD to bash Macs. Your price quotes are unrealistic (you could pay that much, but only if you were stupid, and did no research), and MacOS Server's GUI is not particularly bloated/slow. It is true that as the next phase of OpenStep/NextStep it does have a lot of features, but if you want to kill them you can. BTW - There are many companies that offer hardware upgrades, if you want an IBM or a Motorola PPC upgrade then you can take your pick and get them from various dealers - though not from Apple who generally do not sell upgrades.
I'm in love. Such beautiful curves, such promise is such a prim and gentle package. Ah, that I'm
:)
going to have to live my life without such beauty.
I even like the nickname, 'bubbles'.
The Cray really is a damn sexy computer. Just wish that girl would put some clothes on and get
out of the way
Yesssss. Let's get Nikita as mascot. She'll take care of ol' Billy boy, heheheheheh.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Hmmmm. Had me a few of those at Ralph & Kuckoo's(sic) in Baton Rouge. Verrrrry good.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Why? Because there isn't always an easy option to *change* those creator codes, or file types.
Personally, I think "the right way" to do it is either to autodetect filetypes, or to *always* have an easy way to open a file in another application.
I've had to copy files off of a CD and use Norton Utilities on a Mac to change a creator type to view a movie before, because it was associated with the wrong application, and I've had even more trouble with text files that are too big to open in SimpleText.
This is a Mac feature that I don't consider to be user-friendly, due to the lack of useful options.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I understand... why listen to him... but Ill tell you this... I know him, and he is
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Miss Mac aint bad, but shes definitely lacking some sex appeal compared to Lucy.
Damn, I need a bucket of cold water to pour on my head now.
Apple's main problem is that when it comes to letting you run non-Apple OS's on their hardware they act like the hardware sales are unimportant compared to their software sales, and when it comes to running their software on someone else's hardware, they act as if the software sale is unimportant compared to the hardware.
In a way, this gives them the worst of both worlds... all the liabilities of both and advantages of neither.
Cutting off cloning is vastly inconsistent with their decision to not be friendly to alternate OS's running on their hardware.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
"cut and paste...were non-existant"???? I've been using cut and paste under X since the X 10 days. Just highlight with the mouse in one application, then hit the paste button (middle mouse button) in any other application. It works a lot more consistently than cut and paste on my Windows machine, and doesn't require the extra headache of pulling down the Edit->Copy and Edit->Paste menus.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Freeciv should compile on LinuxPPC AFAIK.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
And the use of mouse buttons as copy/paste substitutes is documented where? :)
It's not something that's directly obvious to someone used to a different interface. Both Windows and MacOS have Edit menus with the options so someone could, in theory, find them. It also requires a "middle" mouse button, which not everyone has.
-Virgil
--
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
Yeah, she was cute back in '84, but I prefer someone who matures with age.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Escape from the Matrix. Choose Linux.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Hell Linux works on some macs...Why not a Three-way with Mrs Mac and Lucy Linux.
Damn! Now I need a cold shower too. So much for conserving water
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Granted, the part of one car has little chance of working in another car, but once you learned to fix the engine of a Dodge Neon, you have a working knowledge of how to repair the engine of a Nissan Sentra. Both have the same TYPE of parts, though the parts are different. The only real oddball out there is the Mazda RX-7 with thier Wankel Rotary Engine...totally different beast. The OS Situation is a lot like that. You have different flavors of *nix. You learned one, you can probally muddle your way through the others with a bit of time and a 'ell of a lot of man pages. Microsoft is like the Wankel engine, Totally different. The difference between the Auto and the OS, is this...
Call Mazda and ask for instructions on how to fix the engine. You can get from Mazda:
Part Descriptions
Part Specfications
Placement of the parts
how to remove the parts
how to replace/repair the parts
Specs on how the engine functions
places to go for repair if you really @#$% it up
damn near everything you need to build the damn thing
Ask Microsoft for similar help and you get
Code?...nope.
Application hooks for optimial program function?...not the last time I checked.
How Windows runs?...not likely.
Help when it @#$%s up?...they tell you to reinstall.
There was a joke spreading through E-Mail that you probally read called Car95...that explains the attitude about Microsoft
My Two Coppers
Phoenix
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
I rather like the iMac anime girl myself.
- BAB3Z !!!!!!1
HTH
...which would have the effect of reinforcing the stereotype of Linux users as sexually-frustrated, vaguely misogynistic misfits. And would probably alienate some proportion of female potential Linux users.
I'll tell you what's wrong with the way the Mac handles files...once I put a student's disk in a Mac so as to read his Word file (I use FreeBSD, so I don't have Word, wouldn't want it anyway). After we merely opened the file and printed it (no editing to the file) we put the disk back into my computer to deal with other files, and low & behold, about three or four mysterious files had appeared. From experience I knew that these were the hidden files Macs use to track files and their apps, as well as having something to do with the GUI, I believe.
It's absolute nonesense for an OS to do that. Don't put mystery files on my media without my permission. Don't presume I need you to tell me what app to use with what file. I'll tell you what I want done. Extensions can be useful, especially because they give the user pertinent information. The user can then make the important decisions. The MacOS's most annoying trait is assuming the user is a flaming idiot.
Of course, from what Mac users I know, it may be an appropriate assumption if your willing to pay over 5000 dollars for a G3, when you could by equivalent hardware from Dell for almost half the cost, and install your choice of *nixes (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, RedHat, Debian, SUSE) on it. Not only will you have saved money on hardware, but you won't be bound to a single company for further hardware upgrades (gee, I want a new chip, let's get an AMD rather than an Intel!) and won't have to pay as much for software as you did for your hardware (hm...MacOSX, a BSD4.4 derivative which is slowed by a Mach microkernel sitting between the BSD kernel and the hardware and a bloated, slow GUI for several hundered dollars, or FreeBSD...a BSD developed beyond the 4.4 release of BSD for 3 versions for free! Tough choice here...). The smart money's on an inexpensive PC box and *BSD/Linux distribution (whatever is your flavor of the month).
Sigh. Look, I do web and print design for a living. It's not much of a living, but anyhow....
What would really make the GIMP become a serious contender to Photoshop is a Mac binary. My box is not currently supported by Linux, although it should be soon. But even so, I'll be damned if I'm going to reboot, when my layout and illustration programs (Quark XPress/Adobe PageMaker and Adobe Illustrator/Macromedia Freehand) are on the Mac side. Having to use the GIMP under Linux is unacceptable to me, and I'm a pretty liberal designer, with an interest in linux, beos, etc. Most designers would balk at the thought of anything that would even possibly, maybe screw up their systems, which are known quantities, even if they still sometimes crash.
What the GIMP people need to do is out Photoshop Photoshop, and on its own turf, too boot. Few people in design and production are willing to have overlapping programs (outside of prepress, where you want to have all programs). Quark OR PageMaker. Illustrator OR Freehand. Photoshop OR... uh... heh. Well there is no viable alternative yet. Not professionally pal. And I'm a professional.
Give me Photoshop or give me the GIMP with CYMK support, colorsync support, Mac binaries, better undo/text support/paths/scaling than Photoshop....
I do think that with effort the GIMP could become a competitor to Photoshop. But until it's every day, in every way, better, it's not going to win too many friends in the design world. Sorry.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Alright. In case you don't recieve my mail, you can get ahold of me at (bear with me, spam avoidance here):
@gryphon.auspice.net
Those three letters are "cpt" of course.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I think you may have misunderstood me.
Minor evolutionary advances are no problem. Especially if they help satisfy our need for speed (or are percieved to do so). Personally, I've been wanting to experiment with the MacOS X Server that Apple's just released, since I think that the Un*x underpinnings could save a lot of time rebooting, and read-only disk images could protect against virii. Don't misconstrue the crashing thing by the way; the Mac's font system is old and has been extended I don't know how many times. Furthermore, since we tend to exceed these limits, and for project management reasons, we use a lot of software that is known to cause instability, betting that we'll save more time not having to shuffle stuff around. Plus this is only my impression, and I'm sure a lot of designers have trouble-free setups.
Anyhow, the problem is with major evolutionary changes. (the last revolutionary change was probably the use of photography. Computer design generally uses metaphors and extensions of what we had) Moving from the MacOS to Linux, and from our current tools to new tools is not really as major as I may have inadvertantly made it appear, but it's no walk in the park either.
We'd have to ditch much of our existing skills and either learn or retrain on using and maintaining Linux systems (we frequently get grief from MIS with Macs, so why would they want to help with Linux?), learn or retrain for the new software. The GIMP is quite similar to Photoshop, so actually it would probably present the easiest change. However, rebooting from one OS to another in order to use different programs is not going to be acceptable. The illustration software you pointed out in a previous branch looked interesting, but I didn't have the chance to try it out (still awaiting Linux for my particular Mac). TeX, I must argue though, is not awfully useful anymore. Sure, it's great for typesetters, and I'll agree readily that it's pretty certainly one of the most bug-free programs ever. But the holy trinity of design (right now) is Compositing, Vector Editing and Raster Editing. (Embodied in Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop. PageMaker and Freehand are also fairly popular) Most of us in the print world function more as compositors than typesetters for any job large enough to require much of a style guide.
Typesetting functions for anything of that length (books, really) are either performed by authors who use computers or the small group of typesetters still remaining. (a lot of them are secretaries who either moonlight or are pressed into service. Also graduate students ;)
Although I couldn't try it out to be sure, ImPress didn't impress me very much as a compositing program, only as an illustration program. Trust me on this, compositing with an illustration program is not all that much fun. I've seen people who used Illustrator and Freehand for that purpose, and they could have saved a lot of time by using Quark or PageMaker.
And worst of all, a lot of existing documents would be lost if we changed over to different programs. That would mean a whole lot of time lost if a client wanted another print run, or had a minor change to make (especially a global change, like inserting a page someplace other than the end) VERY good programs for converting proprietary data formats without losing data or screwing up positioning, etc. would be essential for this task. Adobe is releasing a new program called InDesign (or something like that) which is supposed to replace PageMaker and compete with Quark. So they included a converter that is supposed (so the rumor says) to convert Quark files with 99% accuracy. If they hadn't done that, few people would be likely to switch.
So using the GIMP necessitates using a whole new set of programs, using a new operating system and the loss of specific device drivers for esoteric equipment and for the early adopters, loss of compatability (or the perception of compatability) with the rest of the dtp groups in the world. And of course the standard concerns (which don't have to be valid to have a real effect) about switching to Linux.
This is still a very large evolutionary step, and while I'd certainly like to use Linux, I just can't get my work done as quickly (if at all) on it right now. In the future this may not be the case, and then Linux and the programs available for it will have met the conditions for engendering a changeover. Think of the dilemma developers would face if a platform had an editor and a linker and no compiler. That's what we've got, only designers usually don't have the ability to code for themselves. Surprising as this may sound, not everyone cares to program. Thus other programmers would be needed to selflessly (open source software, remember) write the tools that other people need. It's beginning to be done, but Linux is just not there YET.
BTW, Photoshop does have some scripting potential in version 4.0 and later, with Actions, and on the Mac anyhow, some hooks into AppleScript (IIRC). Maybe not totally scriptable, but I don't think that it's a commonly used feature. DeBabelizer is a more obscure tool that gets used a lot for that sort of work because it's better and not a hardship to use in conjunction with everything else.
As for your point about how informed I am, well yes, I was speaking in the context of my profession. (Although I do read a lot and usually win at Trivial Pursuit, if that helps :) But how well informed do designers have to be? While I think that it's good to have a thorough knowledge of the tools that are available to oneself, that really is secondary to having a thorough knowledge of the tools at hand, the process you're involved in (composition, prepress, etc.) and plain old artistic sense. Being able to rapidly make things look good is what we do. Everything else, no matter how interesting or neat, is used in the service of that goal.
Oh, and the only section I found on CYMK in the GIMP manual (via the index on the web version) said that there was such a thing as CYMK and gave a brief description of it. I didn't see anything that indiciated that the GIMP supported it (although I infer that you can always make four greyscale images to correspond to each plate, but that's an awful way to do things). CYMK is not trivial to support in any program, that's true. It's also not a trivial feature. We NEED it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
| Things that Mac users take for granted, like
:)
| copy and paste, and consistent key shortccuts
| across applications, are non-existant.
I presume you're using a two-button mouse under X11? X cut-and-paste (which does exist - it's how I pasted the text I quoted above) works much better when you have a three button mouse, as the middle button is used to paste. Note that this is for the most part text cut 'n' paste only, but it it there, and works with pretty much any X application. If you've got a two button mouse you can usually emulate a three-button by clicking left and right at once, but this is a far from optimal solution when you can get a 3-button mouse that'll work in X for dirt cheap.
As for the consistent key shortcuts, remember that X isn't a GUI.
-- Rick
< /flamebait >
OS Matrix SRP
Linux $0-headache in 6 seconds flat
(just kidding, I had a bad linux week)
Mac OS $90-100
Win98 $180-200
WinNT $275-300
Which proprietary OS is cheaper again?!
Completely open? I've heard the occasional grumble that bits of Linux are completely open. I'm not sure how that works tho...
Many platforms? why, do have all them?!
Apple Darwin comes pretty close to completely open source (at least in spirit it does) and all it'll take is porters to get it to different cpu's and that work is done for x86 according to some coders.
its so faste to cut and paste text in X.
When i am in windows, i always try to use the X method, and then i sit and wonder why the damn thing didn't paste. Then i remember that i got to right click, seclect copy, the right click again and then select paste. Its a real hassle. Anyway...
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
by any reasonable definition of the term.
For a prime example of the kinds of, er, citizens that I have to deal with, check out www.macopinion.com's forums.
There is a huge differnce from a Senior Staff Software Engineer for Lockheed Martin Astronautics (John) and some moron calling themselves MaCfReAK or some other such nonsense getting it loud and wrong...
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
And you are DEAD wrong buddy.
As good as the GiMP is at what its good at, it is practically useless to profressional print designers.
It's funny, too, because as a Linux user, I see this all the time from people that all like like Scriptfu-thiss or GPL-that....
But, as it's been stated, it's not suitable for printing.
Ah well.
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
Postcript, and Rage-,er, PageMaker.
I find it funny how similar uniformed platform zealos are, regardless of the platform and te Mantra that they spew...
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
I can I'm pretty experienced with Linux... but 6 foot tall blondes?
Otherwise - a great article that sheds some light on the goofy super-evangelist types.
Oh come on! I'm pretty conservative, and I could have done without the JPG files, but I think he used a perfect metaphor! Haven't you ever heard a Mac user (Or for that matter, a die-hard Linux user) talking about his computer? You'd think they have sex with the thing by the way they gush over its features. It's as bad as religion (and I'm religious too). When you've spent that much time fighting for the existence of your OS against the onslaught of the Evil Empire, when you know you can serve the user better, only to have the limelight stolen by someone else...
Well, he might have come up with some other metaphor, but not one with the same level of resonance as the julted girlfriend.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but try the Linux Chiq.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Damn you, uclick.com!
If that does not work, go to http://www.newsday.com/comics/comics.htm.- --------------------------
------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
As a mascot, that is.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Doonesbury 19990409
The URL will probably change tomorrow.
Trudeau is a commie ass wipe.
I always preferred Bloom County.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
ah, but handling the 6-ft blonde chick is SO much more fun than handling Linux!
;-p
i've been using linux constantly (workstation/router/server/blah) for the past 8 months maybe, (maybe i've never checked xterm's man file (never had to, pretty simple:)) i've always been pissed off at netscape's inconsistency in copying and pasting, (i.e. the paste menu item was still greyed off when i had selected something. grr.. but finally someone mentioned X's ability to paste with the middle mouse button. ahh. thanks a bunch :) btw (made transition from slack -> debian and loving every minute of it, except for the unexplained wp8 seg faults and rvplayer's refusal to work)...
-- adraken
rather off-topic-esque... i think the shift-page-up/shift-page-down is the right way to go, since plenty of apps, as you say, have page up/page down as valid keys...
my problem: for some reason xterms under solaris don't behave like this... they scroll up/down on page up/page down, without the shift requirement. this annoys me, since now my page up/page down doesn't get sent to the app running in the terminal. grrr...
i've read the xterm man-pages, and perhaps i'm blind, but i can't seem to find any info on this anywhere...
how do i make xterm pass the page up/page down to the program running in terminal and use shift-page-up/shift-page-down to scroll instead... anyone have any ideas?
AMEN!
That drives me nuts as well. I'm not sure, but I think that is a function of the window manager (selection), isn't it?
It should be possible to change how selection works at the window manager level, it would be nice if some of the WM developers would give us the choice between implicit selection (like we have now) and explicit selection.
If you've got an Xlib programming manual handy, check out chapter 12.4.
Who knows, maybe I'll try to hack explicit selection into a window manager this weekend...
Heheh, I don't know what else they've got on that site, but my companies firewall won't let me get it...
"Forbidden By Ratings Check" - what a hoot!
Next, good ol' slashdot won't be on the approved site list. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my company has sold it's soul to Microsoft.
...then a lot more geeks would have dates.
Meanwhile, slick yuppies would be stuck with the half-lame sheep they "liscence" from Microsoft for $100 a shot.
Finding God in a Dog
Until Apple offers an OS that doesn't crash, doesn't cost $$, is completely open, and runs on many platforms (x86, powerpc, alpha, sparc...), forget them.
If Apple continues with Darwin, this is exactly what you will have. It already doesn't crash, doesn't cost money, and partially open. It is written in a way that it can be easily ported to other platforms.
Remember though that they are a hardware company, so they are not going to give all their software for free, and they are not going to develop software for competing platforms. But this is true of any corporation, and you have to buy hardware from someone.
I had to use X for hours before I figured out that middle button is paste. And you don't have to do edit->copy, edit->paste on a Mac. You can do this with keyboard shortcuts which takes practically no time at all. As I am sure you are aware, Apple established the convention of using zxcv for the 4 most common operations, so you can invoke them by feel with one hand. And part of the problem with X is that this middle-button-paste is not documented at all. Nor is it terribly consistent. It works slightly differently differently in some applications than others. Nearly every Mac app I have seen supports the standard File and Edit menu commands with the standard key shortcuts. Linux simply does not have this level of consistency.
The other thing I find really annoying about X cut-and-paste is that the operations of selecting and copying are indistinuaishable. For example, if I want to paste a URL into Netscape, selecting the current URL blows away the new URL I just copied. It ought to be possible to select text without clobbering the contents of the clipboard. I also frequently want to use the contents of the clipboard several times, and I would like it to stay there until I am done with it. In X this means that I can't do any text selections (say in emacs) until I am done with the contents of the clipboard. The time I save with the middle-button click is more than taken up in going back to recopy something that got overwritten in the clipboard.
There are a *lot* of things like that in X. For all its improvements, the unix GUI's are still less intuitive, consistent, and useful than either Windows or the Mac OS. Linux is a kick-ass OS in technical terms, but it has a long way to go before I am willing to give up my Mac as my primary home computer.
Just my Mac partisan $.02
'man xterm'. Under the section 'POINTER USAGE'. Somewhere around page 23.
Where did you expect it to be documented :-)?
Once you get under the hood and discover that any one part on a Honda CRX is not going to work on a Honda Prelude, much less a Mustang, then you learn how much money is generated by aftermarket parts. Why should I have to buy special tools to work on each type of car? Because that is how the world works. I can use any OS pretty well. Linux, however, is the only one that I have the tools to get under the hood and tune up.
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion-i.e. none to speak of. - Lazarus Long
Or even easier, select your URL and just click the middle button (or left/right together) somewhere in the actual page viewing area, and it will take you right there! /. a long time ago...)
(I think I actually learned that in a thread on
missmac wasn't bad either, actually...
Assuming you are talking about Debian 2.0+ with
glibc, WP8 uses libc5 so you need the libc5
versions of Xpm and Xlibs. After I got these, wp8
ran fine.
"Have you noticed that one and only one software maker consitantly spreads FUD, lies and misinformation about the competetion?"
No I haven't, not to defend Microsoft too much, but maybe you haven't been listening to Apple talk about MS latly, or for that matter the Linux community in general talking about MS or Apple.
b
Until Apple offers an OS that doesn't crash, doesn't cost $$, is completely open, and runs on many platforms (x86, powerpc, alpha, sparc...),
forget them.
That is why you shouldn't say gimp in a reply to "wheres photoshop." Still, gimp would be good to artsy people who want to make digital art, web pages, games, lots of stuff that just doesn't need to be printed. Its not a toy just becuase you can't do whatever you want with it. I hear that toy remark sometimes, not from this guy though.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
After using linux for a little while, that cruddy little system of doing right clicks, menu, cut, right menu .... on and on, gets anoying when in windows. Use linux for a while, and you will almost forget it.
Also, the keyboard shortcuts can do cut and paste. Like I can right click a mail URL from netscape, and copy it in balsa with "SHIFT+INS". I use balsa, a gnome app, to show that it is pretty consistent with most X apps. If the app isn't consistent with that, and it's a big deal to you, don't use it. (however, netscape used to crash when when using "SHIFT+INS". Lets see if works with the 4.51 version after I click submit).
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
guess what happened.
However, the SHIFT,CTRL,INS,DEL combos work in gnome apps, emacs, rxvt, and probably more, I just don't use much else besides those.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
By anybody who doesn't know what the gimp is, or its printing problems, this relates only to people who need to make magazines, brouchers, etc. It should be fine for making images to print out for a report or the like.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
This is an honest question: where do you get DTP stuff for linux. Also, illistration software (I don't really need an answer for this, tgif seems good, though I am not professional enough to judge it with commercial competitors)
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
How do I know to click the right mouse button. Plus, most can do it by clicking 2 the left+right buttons together (yea, I know this is a mac article, but the people with linux on a mac must do something like that).
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
Right up their with breast cancer as far as offensive material goes IMHO...
-RWR
"Although we may build the technology that we define as tools, we must be vigilant that those tools do not define us."
Linux/Alpha "isn't worth it"
Obviously, Digital Domain (the company that did the rendering for Titanic) doesn't think that Linux/Alpha isn't worth it.
Obviously, someone has drastically taken Red Hat's Bob Young out of context.
some would embrace and romance her, some would criticize her, others (*cough*Al Gore*cough*) would whore her.
Please, don't count your problems with the i740 video card as a problem with Linux. Intel has been anal about not releasing the specs for this chipset, so no drivers can be GPLed! Everybody who reads this, send Intel an email about why they should release the specs. /.er pointed out, copy is automatic, paste is middle button on mouse. Nice!
The backspace key? In an xterm... "stty erase " does the trick. Or you can muck with xmodmap.
As another
Have fun...
M.
If y'all want a really good-looking Linux mascot, check out the lynx.
(bigger version here)
Now's there's something I want gracing my Linux box };-)
(apologies to Tux)
iSKUNK!
Well, are you going to write a HOWTO-6ft-Blondes or what?!?
tgif
the source would be incomprehensible, poorly commented, and certainly NOT Y2k capable.
technical whipping boy, Occam's Strop (think about it...)
Consistency can be taken too far. As long as cut&paste and a few other things are almost universal, I'm happy.
It's funny this came up, because I've always thought of the Mac as kind of a cute girl. I like them, but I don't have any desire to be one. Similar for Mac: I like them, I'm glad they're around, but I wouldn't normally use them.
http://as.themes.org
its the theme of the week/month/whatever
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
then I could compile my own
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
..thus the beauty of protected mode.
They still have to make the transition from one mouse button to two, and you ask them to start using THREE buttons.
Please treat this as a joke, not as a flame bait. OK, treat it as you like.
Um, the clipboard is used to copy a lot more than simple text, in a well designed application you can copy objects not just pictures and text. Example: Forms programming. You can highlight a command button and copy/paste it. And the functionality is *system-wide* not application-dependant, i.e., the programmer doesn't have to think about it.
I meant I wouldn't give up my Mac for Linux unless they had Photoshop for it. Maybe not even then.
--
InstantCool
Until it can run Photoshop, I wouldn't give it second look. Artsy nerds like me live in Photoshop. In fact, Adobe should make PhotoOS.
--
InstantCool
The key word in that sentence was consistantly.
Sure you hear testosterone charged flamers from every camp spreading all sorts of garbage about every platform.
However, only one major corporation has a totally consistant, comprehensive, systematic, high profile, high budget machine of FUD and lies against anything that looks like it might compete with their product.
It is this aspect of Microsoft that is so damn disgusting!
As far as I can tell, the only purpose it served was to give sex-deprived geeks some hot chicks to gawk at.
HEY!
Some of us resemble that remark!
(It's almost miller time and I'm giddy.)
(Make that Abita Purple Haze time!)
Evil thought. . .along the lines of a shot of
"Lucy Linux" with a "This is your love life on
LINUX", and a shot of (insert you preferred
hideous, vaugely female image here), with a
"This is your love life on Windows.
Any Questions ???
Yeah, I used a Mac SE30 in high school. That was a long time ago... Back when I had my Commodore.
Let's face it, MacOS does a lot of things right. Yes, it needs protected memory and multi-tasking, things that are available with OSX Server now, or consumer shortly. But as for the interface, sorry but it blows linux away. Way more consistant than any desktop, I'm guaranteed that I can drag anything onto anything else with desired results. Cut and paste between apps always works. It's visually appealing. Give me an xterm with OSX and I'll be very happy.
if women were open source then they would have many pushers and men would fight over wich 'pimp' was better?
When using X, I always have "postit" running, which gives you a small and simple area to paste into and store small strings (like URL's).
It woud be nice if there were a cut&paste manager for X though, where you could access older selections. From an old memory, it seemed to me that X had many cut buffers where things could go...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's just BS. Cut and paste in X sucks. It's works OK for some apps -- a simple highlight to copy is fine (most of the time), but that won't work with netscape (and probably other motif apps). You have to go use the menus. Sometimes, copying from the Edit menu doesn't even work. And of course, you don't find this out until you've switched 3 desktops away, hit the middle mouse button, and out pastes the last thing you had highlighted somewhere else. Arg!
I'd (probably inaccurately) estimate that about 1/3 of the copying and pasting I do while using X involves taking URLs and opening them in netscape. Face it; it's a PITA. It's probably the single biggest weakness of X.
You're a suburbanite.
I must admit that I've stretched myself out on a limb with this thread. I really can't support the position that Linux has equivalent tools. I can't even support the position that the average designer is capable of getting Linux running well enough to get anything done.
I don't really know about all of these issues; when I jumped onto this thread, it was in annoyance about somebody complaining about not having everything handed to him on a silver platter. I never wanted to start arguing over the presence, absence, or utility of certain features (though I ended up doing just that).
I still disagree that the GIMP should try to match something like Photoshop exactly feature-for-feature and identical interface. It's really not that hard to learn a new interface, and things like scripting really change all the rules when it comes to features. The GIMP isn't supposed to be Photoshop, it's supposed to be the best tool they can make for image processing, which just happens to mean that it will share a lot of features with Photoshop. If they come up with a better way of doing something, they shouldn't throw it away because it isn't the same way Photoshop does it.
BTW, I certainly wouldn't call the switch to computers an evolutionary change in printing or graphic design! Switching platforms isn't a revolution for the whole printing industry, but it would be for the graphic designers. My working definition of evolutionary vs. revolutionary is: it's evolutionary if your skills retain their value, it's revolutionary if your skills lose their value. Switching from Photoshop to the GIMP necessarily means learning a new interface and losing some of your old files; I'd rate this as more evolutionary, though, really. But switching to Linux and tools like TeX means learning a whole new mode of operation; that is a revolutionary change.
As for "relatively well informed" and all that, I wasn't arguing that a person needed to know about every tool on the market to be qualified for their job, I was arguing that a person needs to have thorough knowledge of both tools before making a critical comparison. A competent, or brilliant for that matter, graphic designer is not automatically qualified to dismiss the GIMP after a 2 minute glance at the web-site. That is the point I was originally trying to make.
As for CYMK support, what I had said is that it is not trivial to use in any current program. You can obviously still do CYMK stuff in the GIMP, it's just not supported with nice things like preview. You have to eyeball images and understand what colours are too bright to show up and know how things look different under different lighting conditions. Much of this guesswork can be taken out by certain features which GIMP doesn't have, but not all of it.
All that said, I still think the GIMP is pretty cool. The CYMK stuff I was referring to is here. It basically says that if you correctly calibrate your system and your printer takes EPS files, it shouldn't be a problem.
I'm not involved in graphic design at all (except minor dabbling), and I don't really understand the problems of moving to a CMYK colour model. To my uninformed mind, it sounds like it should be a pretty trivial problem (though I am assured it isn't): for each piece of printing hardware, establish a gamut and produce software for transforming from RGB to CMYK for that device (this should easily be automated with appropriate software and scanning devices), informing the operator of any illegal colours. Each paint program should be able to take gamut information and exclude the use of illegal colours. Calibration should be simple as well: an inexpensive light-pen type device should measure the colour of blocks of light on the screen (or special monitors could auto-calibrate), and a similar device should read the output-pattern of the printer.
A quick look at the GIMP manual suggests that something vaguely similar is in place already, minus the simple calibration schemes (which all seem to be ridiculously expensive and reliant on eye-balling). CYMK-preview & illegal colour detection should be easy to add with script-fu (if someone hasn't done it already)... Of course, no CYMK stuff is worth a damn if everything isn't perfectly calibrated. Is there an industry standard gamut format in which a g.d. can expect to have the necessary data for a job he is going to do? (perhaps we should continue this by email, I'm at variedinterests@hotmail.com)
TeX is near-ideal typesetting software (and the least buggy piece of code you're ever likely to see). Add a good macro library like LaTeX and it's reasonably easy to use, too (about like hand-coding HTML). It scales well from a one-page document to an encyclopedia. Between TeX and another utility, you can produce postscript output.
Stuff like this is a bit of a change of philosophy from Mac/win95 applications: it has a fairly steep learning curve, but once you learn how to use it you can work far more efficiently than with point & click toys.
Brilliant, just brilliant.
"Your free software is better than my commercial software, but still not good enough."
Linux has all the tools a graphic designer needs, all for free. If you don't want to reboot into Mac, learn to use them and stop throwing money away.
GIMP developers aren't interested in competing with Photoshop, they're interested in making the best image processing software for themselves and their friends. They and their friends run Linux. Don't complain that Linux users should port their stuff to Macs. If Mac users want the GIMP, they should port it themselves.
The GIMP is growing in popularity pretty damn' quickly, pal. People are using it professionally. Just because you're a professional doesn't mean your opinion is common among professionals, nor does it mean that you have a clue about which software is the best. I've heard professional programmers say that C is useless, and we should all be working in Visual Basic. Professional doesn't mean informed, or even competent.
People who are so caught up in the moment-to-moment world of deadlines that they stick to the most minimal evolutionary advances are doomed to be replaced by people who allow time for retraining.
Most of your arguments directly apply to any revolutionary (as opposed to evolutionary) improvement.
BTW: The GIMP does not offer a mere subset of Photoshop's functionality. How can you even compare something with no scripting capability to something with full scripting?
As for your "extremely well informed" bit, what you really mean is relatively well informed for your industry. Being aware of a product in a field of people unaware of a product does not make you "extremely well informed".
ABTW: There's a section on CMYK in the GIMP manual. Have you read it?
Anyway, CMYK is far from trivial with any software package.
http://www.32bitsonline.com/article.php3?file=issu es/199903/lj-19990311&page=1
"it is practically useless to profressional print designers"
Profressionals: people who want to be considered professional, but who 1) don't even pay enough attention to detail to correctly spell it and 2)would never learn about the potential of a tool like the GIMP because they are too lazy to try it. See "Week-course wonder" and "\/\/arez d00dz"
Hey, Check out Lokisoft. They're writing a version of Civ for Sparc Linux, as well as Alpha. Not sure about ppc, though...
Hold Gimp up to the capabilities of, say, Corel Phot-Paint. Gimp is nothing in comparison.
There was a picture that I saw a while back with this girl in this grey underwear, and on the band it said, "Linux - You know you want me." Does anyone know about where I could find this again? I want it as wallpaper.
I said I was chasing a fatal bug in my program; I'm not allowed to make really stupid mistakes?
Normally my Mac runs without rebooting for days. Admittedly this was never true before System 8.1.
Doug
Maybe I just haven't looked long enough, but I have yet to find a terminal that will scroll backwards with the pageup/pagedown and let me select, copy and paste stuff that I already typed or that came out of a program. Like NCSA Telnet.
gEdit seems to work okay, but one of the earlier text editors I tried (the default under KDE, probably) had a totally broken copy/paste implementation.
Doug
I never I'd link Linux together with a hot chick with a gun until today...
I now how a brand new way of looking at my OS..
Thanks man..
argh. photoshop unscriptable? please.
scriptable with applescript? check.
scriptablte with photomatic? check.
scriptable with (x-platform) actions? check.
btw, your knowledge and insight really show through when your response to "GIMP isn't ready to displace photoshop" is that print designers who have deadlines are doomed. how worldly of you. you might try walking a mile in their shoes.
-- jm3 * john manoogian III
have you tried The GIMP?
The GIMP is handy for some things, but to say that GIMP is a Photoshop replacement is an insult to Photoshop.
Some of us resemble that remark!
oh, i didn't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with sex-deprived geeks wanting hot chicks to gawk at! :) it's just that there are plenty of other places on the net to find pictures of hot chicks to gawk at.
moreover, articles like this are one of the things which make a lot of women not want to identify as geeks. i'd rather have fewer sexist articles and more women in the idustry, wouldn't you?
I am a fan of both MacOS and Linux; I think that they each have their advantages -- for some things I prefer to use one, for other things I prefer the other. (For example, I prefer to write code in emacs under Linux, but I prefer to write email in Eudora under MacOS, though I certainly can and often do write code in BBEdit and email in pine...) I certainly prefer them both to any version of Windows.
This article is directed at Mac users who know nothing about Linux, and perhaps for them it is a good first thing to read about Linux. But personally, I didn't think it really said anything much at all.
All the stuff comparing the OSes to women was just plain stupid. It didn't serve to make any point that wasn't made just as effectively without the metaphor. As far as I can tell, the only purpose it served was to give sex-deprived geeks some hot chicks to gawk at, and to make the article longer without adding any content.
Well, he might have come up with some other metaphor, but not one with the same level of resonance as the julted girlfriend.
perhaps it would have had more resonance for me if it weren't at the same time so sexist.
i think it also would have had more resonance if there had been any content in the article. but all it said was "hey Mac users -- there's this thing you may have heard about, and you should find out about it before you start saying bad things about it."
I can see it now, Lucy Linux as a supermodel shaped penguin, probably with a gun and cape.
Of course, she's married to Tux..
Driving backwards on the highway of life
>In short, Mac users need to know what's available
> in order to possibly request needed features for
future MacOS versions.
Yea but, I think it goes both ways. The fact is, KDE is derivative. KDE has a much to gain from studying MacOS. For example, I am not really satisfied with the drag and drop capabilities of KDE yet.
On the other hand, I wish Mac had a less opaque way of handling file types.
Further, I like the appreciate that KDE uses MIME types. I just wish that there was a faster way to set it up. How about if a modified drag onto the app automatically set the MIME type up (and updated the icon too).
I think that it is clear that KDE rocks.... but it lacks some of the polish of MacOS.
Regards,
proclus
I thought the article was cute.
Funny you should mention MacII. Booting a MacII under was my first linux experience, last year. I learned alot. Now I run LinuxPPC on my G3 Mac, in an AppleTalk network with that old MacII. It is running another free OS; MacOS System 7.5.5. I'll keep it that way too, because of all those old proprietary nubus cards in the MacII.
I've got Ghostscript under MacOS too, so I can print to a StyleWriterII without rebooting the G3.
I love Apple _and_ Linux.
Regards,
proclus
No problem there. Apple is a hardware company. I run LinuxPPC on my G3 and love it. I could go on and on about this. Let's just say that Linux rocks on a G3.
proclus
(finish the sentance)
No offense to Tux of course, but she's not too bad to have on a sticker plastered to every computer...
> the unix GUI's are still less intuitive, consistent, and useful than either Windows or the Mac OS.
Because of the lack of consistency, I don't think the other two are valid generalizations to make. Because it's customizable, I can (and do) set X up to whatever configuration I feel is most intuitive and useful for me. It's also quite easy to set it up to be an unmanagable bear, if that's what you're into.
And, while the Mac's UI is nice, though not entirely to my tastes, I find even the worst X setups to be more intuitive, consistent, and useful than Windows has ever been.
I'll have to disagree with you there. Normally I prefer brunettes, but Miss Mac has that wide-eyed, innocent, helpless look to her. I prefer a woman who can take care of herself... and I'm sure Ms. Linux knows how to use that gun... she's certainly capable of SIGKILLing any process that messes with her...
The author found a good metaphor for his comparison to relate it to normal people and events, and he ran with it. The pictures were of popular figures in our culture, which you might see on any entertainment web site, and aren't inherently sexist. (I've seen the movie La Femme Nikita in French with subtitles, and it deals with a lot of issues. I don't think they're objectifying that particular woman there. :)
.jpg's of pretty women to prove a point was sexist, then so be it. However, I think that many people would see it as a nice pictoral explanation to the dry descriptive text here. This article wasn't completely dry either, so you could also consider the addition somewhat whimsical and humorous. (like Linux having genital herpes... :)
The content wasn't bad. It wasn't what I'd call a technical article, but telling people to be informed before they start spouting arguments is always good. Judging from the ranting about how "X doesn't support cut-and-paste", I'd like to see articles like this more often...
If you somehow thought linking two
Also, if this somehow misled you, there were also links to other Linux sites, which should correct any misinformation for the avid reader. Also an example of getting informed before you rant.
Anyhow, I found the article to be remarkably informative and well-written, and that didn't offend me either.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Software is usually about making my life better: more productive, more fun, more interesting.
:) I've never owned a Mac before, though I've used them and my next computer WILL be a G3, because it offers me what I want: power, style, speed at a decent price. I will be running Linux because I enjoy the OS and I enjoy the freedom it gives me, but I probably also will run MacOS X because it will be convenient to do so (i.e. powerful, elegent and usable, and has the dev tools I want).
For that reason, freedom is only one way to make my life better - it's not the only way. I disagree fundamentally with your postulation that "everybody loses" when software is not free. It is, and always will be a *choice* as to whether software is free, as the freedom to *choose* about what you do with your property is a more fundamental freedom than to have the freedom to have widespread modification/redistribution rights to someone else's property, intellectual or otherwise.
The mainstream is not going to all of a sudden awaken from their slumber and realize magically that our personal freedoms are being trounced upon by proprietary software. This is based on the fundamentally flawed assumption that intellectual property rights don't exist from a moral/ethical perspective. The jury's still out on that one because history & economics have shown the power of "property-driven" societies.
As RMS says, the one threat to software freedom is to use proprietary software when it is "convenient to do so". Do you really think the herd is going to move to free software unless it IS MORE CONVENIENT than proprietary? That IS the reason Linux & Apache are so successful. Will the GIMP replace Photoshop any time soon? I doubt it. Will vi/emacs+gcc replace the major IDE environments out there? Very, very, doubtful.
As for your domestic violence analogy: I'm a recent Mac convert - I guess I must be a masochist, is that it?
Mac users do 'get it', after living in there self-enforced bubble over the last 10 years, they're starting to venture out of it and realize there's a big, complex world out there. Perhaps some Slashdot users will do the same some day....
-Stu
You didn't say, but nothing fits THAT bill. Just listen to Red Hat, who says Linux/Alpha "isn't worth it".
Are you even RUNNING Linux on one of those non-Intel platforms, and would you reccoment it to others?
And doesn't "completely open" mean you're using an open sourced CPU (sputter!), or at least avoiding Intel and their evil Slot One?
Hypocrite.
You're 100% right... there is NO [good] reason we can't have multiple platforms, like during the HEALTHY computer wars of the 1980's. I like to think the 80's were the Golden Age of home.. I mean PERSONAL computers.
:)
From an American perspective at least, if you weren't scared off by FUD and wanted GOOD graphics and an easy to program system.. you got an 8-bit Atari. If you wanted to run "all the latest software"... you got a Commodore 64 (with a pathetic disk i/o system marginally faster than an Atari 1010 tape drive..). Later the roles were somewhat reversed with the Atari ST and the Amiga. The Atari ST was the first Macintosh clone... just buy the Magic Sack, some Apple ROMS and you've got a faster, cheaper Mac.
Porting software between OS's was relatively easy, although the ports sometimes offended advocates (ST users will remember being insulted by that dickhead who now runs 3DO... RIP), like Marble Madness for the ST not eving having a title screen. Programming was easy using BUNDLED TOOLS that came with the computer. I used to type in all the code from Antic, and A.N.A.L.O.G., and port non-Atari stuff from COMPUTE!
These days some people argue against multiple platforms, and this saddens me. Why is it people will bitch about their local cable monopoly by think it would be better for just one software platform? The point of all this is to highlight just one point, which you touched:
It's NOT difficult to port software xplatform, and to a lesser extent but still true it's NOT difficult to support it either.
1st, the LACK of diversity is the #1 reason why Windows sucks so bad... nobody is a real threat so Microsoft won't change. Say goodbye to the last piece of "Open" code in Windows... DOS goes bye-bye in Win2K. Some Windows users say "we need Apple for competition and to make Windows better", but few of these people give serious consideration to Windows "alternatives", so what's the point of lip talk?
2nd, MOST porting difficulty can be attributed to using Microsoft tools in the first place. If you didn't build your freakin app using black boxes like Direct3D and ActiveX you wouldn't be dumbfounded when your app won't port.
That's all. I have work to do.. end rant.
You're 100% right... there is NO [good] reason we can't have multiple platforms, like during the HEALTHY computer wars of the 1980's. I like to think the 80's were the Golden Age of home.. I mean PERSONAL computers.
:)
From an American perspective at least, if you weren't scared off by FUD and wanted GOOD graphics and an easy to program system.. you got an 8-bit Atari. If you wanted to run "all the latest software"... you got a Commodore 64 (with a pathetic disk i/o system marginally faster than an Atari 1010 tape drive..). Later the roles were somewhat reversed with the Atari ST and the Amiga. The Atari ST was the first Macintosh clone... just buy the Magic Sack, some Apple ROMS and you've got a faster, cheaper Mac.
Porting software between OS's was relatively easy, although the ports sometimes offended advocates (ST users will remember being insulted by that dickhead who now runs 3DO... RIP), like Marble Madness for the ST not eving having a title screen. Programming was easy using BUNDLED TOOLS that came with the computer. I used to type in all the code from Antic, and A.N.A.L.O.G., and port non-Atari stuff from COMPUTE!
These days some people argue against multiple platforms, and this saddens me. Why is it people will bitch about their local cable monopoly by think it would be better for just one software platform? The point of all this is to highlight just one point, which you touched:
It's NOT difficult to port software xplatform, and to a lesser extent but still true it's NOT difficult to support it either.
1st, the LACK of diversity is the #1 reason why Windows sucks so bad... nobody is a real threat so Microsoft won't change. Say goodbye to the last piece of "Open" code in Windows... DOS goes bye-bye in Win2K. Some Windows users say "we need Apple for competition and to make Windows better", but few of these people give serious consideration to Windows "alternatives", so what's the point of lip talk?
2nd, MOST porting difficulty can be attributed to using Microsoft tools in the first place. If you didn't build your freakin app using black boxes like Direct3D and ActiveX you wouldn't be dumbfounded when your app won't port.
That's all. I have work to do.. end rant.
Actually, xterm will do both, with one exception.
You probably don't want the terminal to scroll on page up/page down. Those are perfectly valid keys to the programs running inside the terminal.
xterm will scroll the buffer using Shift-Page-up and Shift-Page Down.
No, Nikita is cooler.
>On the other hand, I wish Mac had a less opaque
>way of handling file types.
Eh? What's wrong with the way Macs handle filetypes?
Having a 'type' and 'creator' code associated with each file makes for a great deal of flexibility. Why should opening a text file directly always open a certain text editor? What if I want for than one text editor, for use with different kinds of text files?
For one thing, the way the Mac handles type/creator codes allows me to have multiple files of the same kind associated with different apps. What if I want some HTML files to open in Netscape, some in BBEdit, some in Simpletext, and some in Dreamweaver? The Mac keeps track of this, and it (normally) works quite well.
Also, it rids us of the concept of file type extensions - a relic that would have been gone long ago if things went right. A filename shouldn't have to function as a holder for metadata such as a file's type. The only reason Mac files have file extensions is due to convention (so you know what they are when they're stored on a 'foreign' file system).
The only thing Apple should do is make it a bit easier to manipulate type/creator information without having to open an app. Something in 'Get Info' and/or a contextual menu would be fine.
I just hope they don't go backwards with MacOS X. Putting extensions in the MacOS will go over like a Windows installation for most Mac people.
The BeOS has a pretty decent system set up for file types as well, although there is some room for improvement. Using MIME types is a very good idea, but the community hasn't really standardized enough for my tastes. Lots of bogus MIME types out there.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
This was an outstanding article, one that is rare to find among the Mac advocacy sites. I also think that this is just a precursor of things to come mainly because of MacOSX. Kind of tough to bash an OS (Linux) that is a kissing cousin of your future OS.
Now for the silly stuff. Some of the previous posters have expressed their preference for lucy over miss mac. I would like to point out that miss mac's picture is in b/w. Hence it is obvious that it must be the "before" picture taken prior to 1987 (i.e., pre-MacII). I'm positive that the "after" picture would, uh, kick your socks off.
(I don't know how many years I'd been using X11 before someone showed me that one.)
BY THE WAY, I'm not sure of the original author's intent, but he may have been speaking of more than just text cut-n-paste. Unix has been able to do this with text for years, but cutting and pasting formatting, images, diagrams and other sorts of data is more recent. I remember when Motif first implemented drag-n-drop. Can I drag an icon for an image file into a word processor and have it integrate the image into the document I'm working on? Maybe yes. Maybe no.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
No, Macintosh users(I think what he really
means here is The Mac Faithful) are like the
girlfriend who's a victim of ``domestic
violence''.
She's been with him for so long because he
tells her ``without me, you'd be nothing''(a
`PeeCee' user) and explains away the bruises to
her friends and family(David K. Every).
She needs him to justify her self worth.
She goes out of her way to please him(goes to
CompUSA and tidies up the iMacs when no one is
looking), all the while hoping that someday,
somehow he'll notice the devoted look in her
eyes...oh, yes...if he would only look at her...
But he never does.
Microsoft tells its users to bend over too; the
difference is they usually do not end up saying
``More...please,sir..I want more.''
*sigh*
The poor fools who write articles like this DO
NOT GET IT. It is not about marketshare, or
desktop applications, ``enterprise support'',
etcetera. When software is not libre, everybody
loses.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
That was one of the best articles on the Mac or Linux that I've read recently. I am disappointed, however, that the author failed to mention the availability of Linux for the PowerPc platform (even in the links section.) :)
:P)
I've been a Mac user for slightly over ten years, but I've also been using Linux on my Powermac for about 3 years. I'm really excited about the future of the Linux OS and GNU software, but more and more feel like an outsider it was once a friendly and open community. Simply because I don't like Intel hardware. One of the greatest strengths for Linux is that it runs on so many different types of processors, with the same behavior. And with the POSIX and other movements most software runs the same across them all. I just compiled the latest version of Windowmaker the other day right out of the tarball. So easy a chimp could do it.
As more and more "commercial" interest have begun developing shrink-wrapped software the ability of those of us who chose to use non-Intel processors are getting left out in the cold. Although often overlooked, this is in fact one of the main strengths of Open Source: if the code is open users can adapt the software for other platforms without your company having to spend the extra development costs.
Oh well, I am happy that so many of the rest of you in the Linux community will get to play the next Civilization or Quake. Just wish I couls join in all the excitement.
(This reply was written just after I've renetworked the SPARC network I administer for Soalris 2.6. Let's hope it sends!
Witchblade
PC people followed the wrong articles of 2~3 years ago. And the mood they made speed up destroying
Mac platform.
But, unlike them, the Mac person who wrote the
article is fair about the Linux.
It's more pleasant than being a Mac person 2~3
years ago.
I'm a Linux/Windows/Mac person.
I agree with the article.
Genital Herpes?? Eeewwwww!!!!!
And here I thought that Linux was immune, or at least resistant, to viruses.
But then again, geeks all over the world have had their fingers in it. ANYBODY can get their hands on it. Likes a big hard disk, but comes on a floppy as well. Likes lots of RAM. As far as hardware goes, the faster the better. Can keep going non-stop for months, without ever going down on you. Is, by default, multi-user. You can share it with your friends. If you get it on the street, the shrinkwrap comes off without a fight. Gladly gives you an intimate look at the source.
Linux is a slut!
Was that Nikita?? Hmmm..
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I hope everyone reads it and enjoys a well-written viewpoint from another side of the fence.
Enjoy, and don't let it degerate into G3 vs. Pentium or Mac vs. Linux or KDE vs. Gnome flamewars.
Am I hoping for too much?
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
It is beyond me why so many people think that OS's cannot or should not coexist. I am currently using both LinuxPPC and MacOS 8.5.1, and I could not be happier.
I totally agree that Macintosh advocates should become very aware about linux. It would be benefitial for the future of MacOS in general, with discovering features that should be included with any OS, one of the more obvious being the virtual desktops. Any mac user can see the functionality of many of the of the KDE, Gnome, etc. features, and maybe would be interested in having them in their already friendly OS
In short, Mac users need to know what's available in order to possibly request needed features for future MacOS versions.
That's my two cents.
"But we'd never spread lies about the competition. We have too much class."
GNU/Linux does.
I've been with OS/2 long enough that I consider myself a `battered-spouse' OS/2 user. Like anyone in a codependent relationship, I continue to use OS/2, and it doesn't seem to know that I'm seeing another operating system (and a freed one at that).
I feel empowered. I'm in control. My computer is MINE!
(I do not mean to make light of domestic violence, as that is a terrible thing (as I should well now, being a survivor of some moderate violence myself in the past). I am simply drawing an analogy.)
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
You might want to take a look at the xclipboard(1) program. It does exactly what you want. Just mark the text in your xterm or whatever, go to xclipboard, and click both the left and right mouse button simultaneously in the blank area (or middle mouse button if you have one). Voìla! xclipboard also has the cool `Next' and `Prev' buttons to go back and forth between texts. (You can use Alt+C and Alt+V to copy and paste in Netscape and most other Motif programs.)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
That's a quote from one of the section headers of the article.
The author also states: "it is not sufficient for us to simply bad mouth Linux and dismiss it. (Let Microsoft do that.) To do so makes us just as ignorant and stupid as the Best Buy salesmen who keep repeating the litany that Apple is dead or the PC idiots who seem to get everything wrong when they write about the iMac."
Have you noticed that one and only one software maker consitantly spreads FUD, lies and misinformation about the competetion?
Damnit there are hundreds and hundreds of different automobile models to choose from, yet they all are profitable and they all share enough traits and characteristics in common so that once you learn how to drive, you can drive any model.
There's no reason why several OS's can't simultaneously be successfull. There's also no reason why standards can't be open enough for several OS's to co-exist and transparently talk to one another and share data.
The biggest problem in the entire world of software is that one company, Microsoft, cannot tolerate the idea of anyone on the face of planet earth producing software except them.
If Microsoft would compete on an honest and decent level and on the merits of their own product, without using dishonest and sleezy tactics to try to undermine honest competition, I would have nothing against them.
Yet, it is these sleezy tactics that undermine and stifle innovation in the software world.
The author of this article shows a very mature and well reasoned position on the coexistance of platforms.
He has elevated my opinion of the Mac community.
Here's a Friday afternoon beer bottle toast to John Martellaro, Lucy Linux, and Miss Mac!
I've been a Mac user and programmer for 15 years. I recently got an Intel box and put Red Hat Linux on it. I didn't originally think I'd need to bother with X-windows, but when it comes to administering the system, it's nice to have a GUI.
Just getting my video card (i740) and keyboard (backspace key!) to work right in X was a long and painful adventure.
Things that Mac users take for granted, like copy and paste, and consistent key shortccuts across applications, are non-existant.
KDE feels clunky somehow; I can't describe it because I didn't like it and installed GNOME instead. GNOME feels better, but the Midnight Commander crashes, and has some really obvious bugs. KDE's filesystem-browser is pretty nice.
I'll stick to my Mac for most things, for now. But I'm reading slashdot and typing this reply while chasing a bug in my Mac program that's causing me to reboot every five minutes.
DOug