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New Mozilla, Corel, and Napster Releases
Everybody and his sister seems to have submitted at least one of these links: First, Mozilla build M11 is out. Go for it! Check this Mozilla.org page for details. Second, there's a Linux port out for Napster. We already mentioned it earlier here, but apparently a lot of people missed the reference. Go get it already. And third, Corel Linux is now available - if you can handle a 311 MB. If you can't burn a CD, compile your kernel with loopback support and try 'mount -t iso9660 -o loop 6.1-i386.iso /mnt/cdrom'
You do not need the CD-R if you are already running Linux. Use the o loop command. One of you techies can post the proper syntax. It was on a previous discussion. Intial comments is that it is not bad but can use improvement. For a version 1.0 I guess it is ok. Dont complain about what they left out as you can use 'update - aks Corel package manager' to download everything else you need. Cheers
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
This Napster thing looks kinda neat, but I would be a bit worried about giving the world access to my disk. The site is a bit sketchy on the details.
JM
Oink, Oink!!
This looks worrying. Of course, folks have already posted about local loopback devices for avoiding having to burn a CD, but what worries me is the end-user license agreement.
In particular, note these extracts:
1. Corel LINUX is a modular operating system made up of individual software components that were created by various individuals and entities ("Software Programs"). Many of the Software Programs included in Corel LINUX are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") and other similar license agreements which permit You to copy, modify and redistribute the Software Programs
So that's the definition of a "Software Program". Now what about:
B. PROPRIETARY RIGHTS:
All right, title and interest in the Software Programs, including source code, documentation, appearance, structure and organization, are held by Corel Corporation, Corel Corporation Limited, and others and are protected by copyright and other laws.
Is that actually in keeping with the GPL?
On a totally separate thread, does anyone know what the equivalent mechanism to 'apt-get dist-upgrade' is going to be, in particular, how the currently-in-development distribution is going to be mirrored, etc? Or is it all going to be relatively "stuck" stationary like RedHat / SuSE etc? (I mean, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 is very discrete. The above apt command isn't as discrete at all.)
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
However, it's still heavy in the bloat department like it's predecessor :\ I don't wanta mail reader in my web browser, or a web page editor, or anything else but a web browser. If the source is open enough, perhaps those "features" can be excised and save me precious hard drive space and RAM.
Just my first impressions..being posted from Mozilla itself.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
You don't need to be a developer to make a contribution to the Mozilla project! You can see the list of bugs most voted for her e. If you want to help the developers know which bugs you most want fixed, choose a bug or two from this list or another Bugzilla list and go vote for it!
1. YOU CERTIFY THAT YOU ARE NOT A MINOR AND THAT YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY ALL OF THE
:). Dare to keep kids off Linux.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS SET OUT IN THE LICENSE BELOW. DOWNLOADING AND/OR USING THE
PRODUCT WILL BE AN IRREVOCABLE ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE
LICENSE.
Guess we gotta keep those kiddies away from Linux, it's worse than crack
-matt
I installed corel linux from the iso yesterday evening (european time).
The installation is quite good. It automatically detected all my hardware (ok I've got a simple machine : voodoo banshee, ne2000 pci clone ide hd). Then the graphical installer asked me for a user login name, good point. After that I had to choose between some premade configurations, like destop/server/custom). I choosed custom. With this option I had the possibility to choose to install any package of the distribution. I choosed almost all of them and went to the next step.
Now I had to choose on what partition I wanted to install, an ext2 one or a windows/dos partion. Good choice for beginners. Of course I installed on an ext2 one. The graphical fdisk is good and easy to use, but it seemed a little buggy for the free space calculation (eg it said 125 meg free but I could only create a 110 meg swap partition).
After that is the rather long and boring package installation. No problem with it except the mouse cursor was rather slow and jumpy during this process , not good for a first timer thinking linux is a true multitasking os (I know it is, it must be because the installation is using the framebuffer I think).
Then I was asked to reboot, no question asked about the boot loader or anything else, bad point here.
After the reboot, quite a shock, the OS loader is not LILO but a rather nice graphical (320x200) menu with an animated disk on the lower right corner. I can choose between corel linux and some expert/safe mode. I can also choose windows and dos. This is good for non linux users, but I have 4 different linux installs at home for testing and of course none were found so I had to reinstall lilo (I'm pretty sure I could have changed the configuration of the boot manager but I had no time for it).
The first time I choosed corel linux, and this was quite a shock : No boot messages ! The OS loader stays "on top" of the text and I did not find the way to get rid of it (of course choosing expert mode won't show this screen). This is very windowish and a rather bad point for any serious linux user. A rather strange thing is that the first time it booted, it fscked the partition so it took a loooong time and I had no idea what was happening (the loader writes some text like loading linux/check partitions and so on).
then kdm was launched. A rather standard kdm, ala NT. I was able to choose between root and the user I had created. I logged in as a normal user to get on a almost standard KDE screen, with some new icons.
There are of course some great novelties, like the file manager, windows share browsers and other great program but everything looks so muck like windows that it made me want to puke. I know KDE is really windows like, but with the corel extensions they took this idea to the extreme. You can even share a directoy by clicking on properties in the context menu, exactly like NT !
Of course it's rather impressive and nice for a former windows user but I think some originality would have been a good idea.
Here is the worst point : I did not find a way to configure my french keyboard "globally" for the console and X. The only way I found was to choose an international keyboard for each user I created. Really bad point here corel.
One other thing to note is that there is no translation in the things corel added to kde so it's one other bad point. It's really strange to get windows half in franch half in english. They should have killed all other langages so no one would have complained.
So even if corel did an incredible job developping some excellent tools and programs, I think the distribution is way too windows like and not for non english people. Too bad, hopefully this will be corrected in 1.1 !
In conclusion if you are already a linux user, this is not for you. But for a windows user this may be a good way to start using linux.
Btw a friend of mine was not even able to start the installation, it simply rebooted at the hardware check.
J-F Mammet
webmaster@softgallery.com
In Windows Netscape a profile is basically the same as the linux .rc files and associated user independent information. Windows doesn't really tell programs what user you are, nor does it have a home directory for storing program configurations for each user (it sorta does, but there is no standard for third party programs of where to put configurations) Anyways in netscape for windows, if you have multiple users, when you run it, it ask you what profile you want to use. (Basically who you are? sorta...)
Anyways profiles are just specific configurations for each user, such as your email information and display settings for Netscape/Mozilla.
Why don't you look at the ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly
And you will see that they work on a release till they get all the features they want in it. Start working on the next release, continue to fix bugs on the previous till they reach a point where they think they have all the new features fairly stable. Then they release it.
I've skimmed through the FAQ and release notes, but I can't find much info on Full Circle that is compiled into Mozilla. The release pages says "Full Circle Enabled builds allow transmission of crash data back to Netscape, improved crash analysis, and posting of crash related information to the netscape.public.mozilla.crash-data news group".
That is pretty cool, but is it safe? Also, does that mean when I find a bug, I don't need to report it? It is reported automatically?
Anyone have any more info, or pointers to info?
This sig is false.
He has a very good reason, but I'm not sure if he told me in confidence or not.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Let's see...
Napster takes a list of MP3 files on my hard drive, uploads the list to a server, and sets other users out downloading those files, and it's a must have.
Real networks takes a list of music-specific data files on my hard drive, and uploads the list to a server, along with some other access data, and they're a villain.
And the only difference between them is (a) Slashdot's word that I should download Napster, and (b) some legaleze in the license or usage agreements.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
ftp://128.253.254.56/corellinux-oc_1.0.iso
SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers
SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers
Good work mozilla team! Keep it up and you may run the world yet!
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Isn't it obvious? They want to remain in control of the clients, so they can add ads to the linux version too eventually. And they're afraind of clones for windows.
Check out Corel's stock price at yahoo. Up around 10% or so.
Yippee!
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
(insert "html shouldn't be used for layout/design" comment here)
I've got a fair amount of tables on my page; I've recently been checking to see how Mozilla renders it.. somewhat akin to the acid test page.
Now, the page itself is pretty much 4.0 compliant, albeit somewhat complex; the W3 validator bitches about ampersands in CGI URIs, so there's nothing I can do about that. In any case...
In MSIE and NS current versions, the page looks pretty much like I'd expect it to. There are minor variations, nothing of great concern.
Now, in M10, The grey box in the middle was shrunken, sorta pushed over to the left a little bit. OK, not exactly what I wanted, but not horrid. In M11, however, the grey box gets shoved waaay over to the right, running into other tables.
Thus, on first glance, it appears that something, in one of the milestones, is wrong. I understand that my page might not be really simple, that's an aside, and I will deal with it later. My concern is that the two milestones rendered the page differently. For the longest time, I've heard that Mozilla is (as in, yes, currently, right now) fully 4.0/CSS1/whatever else compliant. However, such observations have me wondering otherwise....? Could someone clarify?
See http://linux.corel.com/products/linux_os/licensing .htm for more detailed licensing.
It looks like the Corel additions are all under the "Corel Public License" or "CPL", which is exactly the same the the Mozilla license with Corel replacing references to Mozilla and Netscape.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
why doesn't someone who has more time than I do try to break in to a computer running it.. Like, say.. Your own. (It runs on port 6699..)
I played with it for one second and got this.
# telnet 127.0.0.1 6699
1
Press all the keys I tried, and after one keystroke, it says INVALID REQUEST. Don't press anything for 10-15 seconds, it drops the onnection.
It shouldn't be too hard to figure out what keystroke is not invalid.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Mine (M11) seems to load the pages pretty quick, but I got 3 Dr. Watsons in about 10 minutes. Ahhh.. the joys of alpha software. My biggest beef is the "My Panels" box which seems to come up by defailt. First, how do I kill it? I want it gone, dead...bye bye. I don't want to slide it over to the left, I want it gone gone gone.
:)
Second, why does this "real estate hogging intrusion of my space" come up by default? (Insert-> I'm turning into an old fart disclaimer) Whatever happened to designing a clean interface??? Why why why can't you give me a nice clean interface. I just wanna plug in a url and go to a website. I just want a nice big box for that page to load up in. I don't want panels, I don't want channels, (Insert-> cryptic Dr. Seuss reference for other old farts) I don't want green eggs and ham. Can somebody, for the love of God please help me.
Otherwise it is starting to look pretty good
Nice review thanks for posting it.
I also checked out some of the screenshots from the article that is linked in this story, and they seem extremely windowish. Right down to the file manager, whose toplevel entry is "My Linux" (apparently a modification of "My Computer" in windows)
I can understand their desire to appeal to a certain segment of the market, and I think that they're doing just that. But I don't think I'd use it personally because of that. I didn't stop using windows just because I didn't think it was a stable OS (although that was one of the reasons) I stopped using it also because I thought the UI was boring and unimaginative. Look at X, and linux, and you have 2.0E50 choices for how you want to interact graphically with your machine. I would hate to go back to the same old UI after going through the linux learning curve.
Points to them though for making the install easier, and for making linux friendly to new people. I just hope that they don't make it so windowish over time that it loses its soul as a UNIX. That kind of worry is probably premature at this point, but I still wonder.
Seems to me though that another free software distribution stepping to the plate though means one thing - more choice. That's another reason why I'm in linux in the first place too. (Even if I don't plan on using it, I still like the fact that the choice is there)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Runs blisteringly quick on a PII 233Mhz laptop.
...
Also appears quite stable.
But then I'm running Linux. I assume from your ``IE4 on the same hardware'' comment that you're running under Windows. But then everything runs like a dog under Windows
Chris Wareham
It's quite a dilemna; if they include components that have licensing agreements that require some degree of consent on the part of the user, they require an "adult's" consent.
It is particularly a problem for software that requires something like unto the "dastardly" MSFT EULA; it is less of an issue with Free Software, but even there, there is some need to be able to enforce the terms of GPL, XFree86 License, and other such licenses, and that can certainly be problematic for the young'uns.
A more pointed question, that isn't directly relevant to this particular situation:
The fact that we might like the answer to be yes does not necessarily make it so...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I'm running it on Linux (P133, 64Mb) and it's also dog slow compared to Netscape. Removing debugging might speed it up a bit, but there are a fair few speed related bugs in bugzilla now so I don't think that's really the issue.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
No problem. You will have to buy the suite for 79.99 I think. Check out linux.corel.com for more info.
Go for it, I say.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I compiled it without the debugging code, as I don't expect to be working on it any time soon - just wanted a quick look at the improvements. I think you'll find that most of the Bugzilla comments regarding performance come from people testing the precompiled versions. These have the debugging code and extra symbols specifically to try and get some valid feedback. However, the vast majority of people are only having a quick peek at Mozilla and are either incapable or unwilling to file a useful bug report.
Chris Wareham