What you say is really insightful. (+4 insightful) but you ignore the fact that a lot of times companies don't program just so they can hire programmers.
Sometimes they hire their kid nephews or whatever just for the sake of giving them a job... And that's cool.
But sometimes (most of the time even?) they aren't interested in supporting programmers so much as getting various programs for internal use.
1) People are already using it and it seems stable
2) Alan already had it in his tree.
3) Putting it in makes life easier for Marcelo Tosatti. If Linus and Alan both agree that it should be in the kernel then people think it probably should be. If Marcelo includes ext3 on his own, people would question his judgement. On the other hand if Marcelo leaves it out and Alan stops producing his -ac tree then people who have been using ext3 will be upset.
I think he means that Microsoft created the PC as we know it today. It doesn't so much matter to him that the computers are the same but that people have them at all.
Without computers then there would be no programmers and no users, right?
This statement completely ignores the fact that there were other computers available besides the PC. Apple was really big and there were Tandys and Comadores.
I know that most people interpret his statement as claiming that Microsoft created standards, that's a part of what he is say, but mostly he is claiming that Microsoft created computers. It's not the first time Bill Gates has said something like that.
The thing that made Unix more pleasing than other operating systems was that its file system had been more cleverly designed.
The creators had the insight to see that users should be given a part of the file system to care for and to tend. That part came to be known as/home/username/ or "home" to the users. As Unix matured users seldom needed to venture into the rest of the filesystem. Eventually with an advanced distribution the only place the users had to visit was/etc. (This directory was an embarassment to the creators).
Although some data files were created in the users' directories to serve them, these files were called dot files and they were not intrusive for users. The visible files were created by the users and pleased the users greatly.
On other operating systems it was not this way. On these operating systems applications saved files in random locations. Executable files were mixed with data files and with libraries, which in turn mixed with other files. And on these operating systems there was no joy; only chaos and gnashing of teeth.
When evolution came it destroyed the beauty that was the Unix filesystem. It created data files and libraries and other files that no one had ever seen before in the users' homes.
Eventually the number of invading files came to outnumber the files that the users had created. Animosity between the two types of files grew until war broke out. The war was bloody and lasted for many years. The users faught bravely but eventually were forced to flee.
The new refugees saved files where ever they could find room. They saved written documents in/var and they saved images in/usr/local. But there was no order to it. Only chaos and fear.
His information was wrong but his post was not a troll (Intel was an investor in CNET until recently). The right response is to reply with a correction not to moderate it down.
Me too. It is silly to say that short cut keys don't speed things up. The articles he cites are from 1989 and 1992. Things have changed since then.
For example, I think now Tog would encourage programers to use standard short cut keys instead of saying that people should be able to configure them. And things like having a menu bar have become standard practices instead of being a new idea.
"Alt-tab, for example, is much faster than reaching for the mouse and moving it to the window and clicking, although a single key to switch applications would be nice."
One of the cool things about Enlightenment is that you can configure your windows to "lower" when you right click on the title bar. I configure almost all my windows to take up the full screen. This way to switch between windows instead of typing alt-tab I just throw my mouse to the top of the screen and right click followed by a left click.
With windows or a Mac you have to move the window around and resize things because they don't have this "lower" feature.
Alt-tab is only good if you already have your hands on the keyboard. Most of the time I use my computer for reading and not for typing so this isn't true.
I wish more people would realize the value of a "lower window" on right click feature so that I wouldn't have to hack themes and add it in. It's really important if you have lots of windows open at a time. Right now I have 3 full screen windows and 6 minimized windows as well as licq, xmms and gkrellm open. To cycle through the whole list with alt-tab takes a long time.
What good is it to have more than one VM? Honestly, just because something could be made into a feature doesn't mean that it should be.
I guess I have heard about other operating systems where you could choose between vm's but that doesn't make much sense to me. Did one of the vm's fail under certain cases? If so then it should have been fixed instead of just patching over the problem.
To me it makes more sense to just have one vm that works and is well understood.
In some ways I think it's cool that anyone can write their own widget set. For some purposes you need that extra functionality. And some times you are willing to sacrifice consistency to get a cool look.
But for most applications consistency is more important than looks.
The difference between KDE and gnome UI does not help anyone. Users get fewer apps and developers have to code things twice.
I'm probably going to offend people but neither KDE nor Gnome seems to be significantly "better looking" than the other. They are only different. I can not imagine coding in gtk just to get some cool look that wasn't possible in qt. The same is true for qt. To me they seem to be different just for the sake of being different and that's not a good enough reason to break consistency.
Remember when Guillaume Laurent stopped working on gtk-- and switched to qt? It was a big deal and there were a lot of strong feelings involved. If Gnome and KDE looked the same it would have been a simple matter of a developer using a different library. Instead it was viewed as a switch from being a member of the Gnome communitee to being a part of the KDE camp. People don't seem to understand that many developers don't want to be a part of any Gnome/KDE communitee.
Anyways that's enough of a rant from me. I have to go.
I just read an interesting quote from
IEEE Software, Vol. 13, No. 5, September 1996:
"The 1994 Standish Group survey found that the average IT project took about 220 percent of its planned schedule."
Perhaps we've become a lot better about setting up reasonable schedules since 1994, but I have a don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that.
Your post is probably not make you very popular but I think it's pretty insightful. This are somethings ever Linux user thinks about from time to time. Here are some of my thoughts.
* Where do I mount and unmount things ?
I don't think users should have to do this at all. It should be done automatically by the kernel. The fact you have to do it at all is a problem.
* Where do I load and unload kernel modules ?
This is also a kernel thing. You mention that you are using BSD. I haven't used that but Linux really should be able to do this stuff automatically. Providing an graphical UI to make up for kernel deficiencies is not a good solution.:P
* Where can I reconfigure my kernel, compile it, isntall it and reboot all by checking a few boxes and hitting a button ?
Most distros provide an RPM/deb of the kernel. Regular users shouldn't have to compile their own kernels. Advanced users can use command line tools. (I find "make menuconfig" surprisingly well thought out and intuitive).
You mention that you don't like using gnome apps. Personally I use enlightenment with Gnome apps. I have some KDE apps installed just to see how they work, but I never use kde apps in day to day work.
The real solution is to make KDE and Gnome look and feel the same. Developers do not want to develop two diferent user interfaces for Linux. They often don't want to "join" KDE or Gnome and have to deal with all the backage that entails. Developers just want to write a program that works on ALL Linux desktops.
As it is, instead of saying, "I use Linux" people should just say, "I use Gnome." or "I use KDE." That would be more honest.
Some desktop applications that I would like would be more tools to work with.debs. Also I don't seem to have any graphical frontend to "find" installed on my computer but I think there must be one somewhere.
You talk about the command line. I was just looking through my ~/.bash_history and I don't see much that I couldn't have done in a graphical way. Some things like dict, gcc, make, grep, apt-cache search, and so on are more easily done from the command line even though there are graphical ways to do them.
I generally use only open source programs. I don't use flash pluggins, for example, because I don't like close source standards for things on the internet. (There are open source flash viewers but no open source generators).
But games are a different. Games don't need support. You can't make money off an open source game. Your business doesn't rely on a game to run. You don't really need a game at all.
I look at games as the same as movies. They are entertainment. No one asks for open source movies. Sometimes I guess, it might be fun to have the source code to a game but it's not necessary.
You will probably get flamed by people asking for the source code. People who do that are wusses. I think most people are more reasonable than that.
I just tried it and it does not seem be true... But perhaps he changed the user-agent or something.
Just because you shouldn't do something is no reason to not do something.:) Good software designers test everything.
Anyways I think the author thought he was being funny but he doesn't seem to realise that this is exactly the type of thing that Microsoft loves to do. They have far too much time on their hands so they try to make life miserable for people.
>>It is X appologists like you that are keeping Linux away from the mainstream desktop.
There are reasonable things to complain about with X but that is not one of them. Except on Linux sites I have never heard a single person complain about X.
I have shown people my Linux desktop. Everyone thinks it looks awesome.
We use Linux in the computer lab at school. No one complains about X.
Mainstream users could not care less about X. The only thing they care about is that they don't have to configure it. This is a problem but it's a fixable issue.
You are right to say that X is fast and responsive if you have an accelerated graphics card.
But I have a minor quible. Please don't use the term "User error" when describing configuring X. Configuring X is really a pain and needs to be fixed. Sometimes it's more luck than skill.:(
>>I mean, the whole world seems to be holding its breath for the death of X11/freeX86.
Slashdot seems to be in an anti-X mood today. The truth is that the whole world is not waiting for the death of X11.
Xfree86 does have some configuration problems where it's still a pain to set it up. (The definition of painful is that I have to set it up period. With the kernel I can just apt-get install it, but with X I have to dpkg-reconfigure it.)
But X is not going away any time soon. The reason for that is not network transparency as some people argue. The reason is backwards compatability.
In fact, X doesn't really NEED to go away. Over the last few years the XFree86 developers have made tremendous progress in improving X and adding important extensions to the protocol.
To say that X is slow is really a lie. X is slow if you don't have one of the 5 accelerated graphics cards. Otherwise it's fine. (btw, I think you'll find that replacements to X have just as hard a time getting hardware specs as the Xfree86 guys do so creating a new window system doesn't help here)
X can be improved. And it's getting improved... But it's going to take time.
Anyways... I didn't mean to rant. I have to go because today is a great day to not be in front of a computer.
Some web pages feel like they have been invaded when a major website links to them. All these clueless posters start giving an opinion when they may not know the culture or the author of the story or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
What you say is really insightful. (+4 insightful) but you ignore the fact that a lot of times companies don't program just so they can hire programmers.
Sometimes they hire their kid nephews or whatever just for the sake of giving them a job... And that's cool.
But sometimes (most of the time even?) they aren't interested in supporting programmers so much as getting various programs for internal use.
HTH
I think it's fine to put it into 2.4
1) People are already using it and it seems stable
2) Alan already had it in his tree.
3) Putting it in makes life easier for Marcelo Tosatti. If Linus and Alan both agree that it should be in the kernel then people think it probably should be. If Marcelo includes ext3 on his own, people would question his judgement. On the other hand if Marcelo leaves it out and Alan stops producing his -ac tree then people who have been using ext3 will be upset.
4) Ext3 doesn't change anything.
5) You still can use ext2 if you want.
A nit to pick. The first PC's were way more expensive than comparable Apple computers at the time.
PC's caught on because of IBM's name brand and marketing. They weren't cheap.
They got cheaper after compaq cloned them, though.
I think he means that Microsoft created the PC as we know it today. It doesn't so much matter to him that the computers are the same but that people have them at all.
:P
Without computers then there would be no programmers and no users, right?
This statement completely ignores the fact that there were other computers available besides the PC. Apple was really big and there were Tandys and Comadores.
I know that most people interpret his statement as claiming that Microsoft created standards, that's a part of what he is say, but mostly he is claiming that Microsoft created computers. It's not the first time Bill Gates has said something like that.
You may or may not agree with his statement.
The thing that made Unix more pleasing than other operating systems was that its file system had been more cleverly designed.
/home/username/ or "home" to the users. As Unix matured users seldom needed to venture into the rest of the filesystem. Eventually with an advanced distribution the only place the users had to visit was /etc. (This directory was an embarassment to the creators).
/var and they saved images in /usr/local. But there was no order to it. Only chaos and fear.
The creators had the insight to see that users should be given a part of the file system to care for and to tend. That part came to be known as
Although some data files were created in the users' directories to serve them, these files were called dot files and they were not intrusive for users. The visible files were created by the users and pleased the users greatly.
On other operating systems it was not this way. On these operating systems applications saved files in random locations. Executable files were mixed with data files and with libraries, which in turn mixed with other files. And on these operating systems there was no joy; only chaos and gnashing of teeth.
When evolution came it destroyed the beauty that was the Unix filesystem. It created data files and libraries and other files that no one had ever seen before in the users' homes.
Eventually the number of invading files came to outnumber the files that the users had created. Animosity between the two types of files grew until war broke out. The war was bloody and lasted for many years. The users faught bravely but eventually were forced to flee.
The new refugees saved files where ever they could find room. They saved written documents in
The age of darkness had begun.
This was not a troll.
His information was wrong but his post was not a troll (Intel was an investor in CNET until recently). The right response is to reply with a correction not to moderate it down.
I have meta-moderated you as "unfair."
Not if your hands are already on the mouse...
"I disagree."
Me too. It is silly to say that short cut keys don't speed things up. The articles he cites are from 1989 and 1992. Things have changed since then.
For example, I think now Tog would encourage programers to use standard short cut keys instead of saying that people should be able to configure them. And things like having a menu bar have become standard practices instead of being a new idea.
"Alt-tab, for example, is much faster than reaching for the mouse and moving it to the window and clicking, although a single key to switch applications would be nice."
One of the cool things about Enlightenment is that you can configure your windows to "lower" when you right click on the title bar. I configure almost all my windows to take up the full screen. This way to switch between windows instead of typing alt-tab I just throw my mouse to the top of the screen and right click followed by a left click.
With windows or a Mac you have to move the window around and resize things because they don't have this "lower" feature.
Alt-tab is only good if you already have your hands on the keyboard. Most of the time I use my computer for reading and not for typing so this isn't true.
I wish more people would realize the value of a "lower window" on right click feature so that I wouldn't have to hack themes and add it in. It's really important if you have lots of windows open at a time. Right now I have 3 full screen windows and 6 minimized windows as well as licq, xmms and gkrellm open. To cycle through the whole list with alt-tab takes a long time.
What good is it to have more than one VM? Honestly, just because something could be made into a feature doesn't mean that it should be.
I guess I have heard about other operating systems where you could choose between vm's but that doesn't make much sense to me. Did one of the vm's fail under certain cases? If so then it should have been fixed instead of just patching over the problem.
To me it makes more sense to just have one vm that works and is well understood.
>>UI diversity is good.
In some ways I think it's cool that anyone can write their own widget set. For some purposes you need that extra functionality. And some times you are willing to sacrifice consistency to get a cool look.
But for most applications consistency is more important than looks.
The difference between KDE and gnome UI does not help anyone. Users get fewer apps and developers have to code things twice.
I'm probably going to offend people but neither KDE nor Gnome seems to be significantly "better looking" than the other. They are only different. I can not imagine coding in gtk just to get some cool look that wasn't possible in qt. The same is true for qt. To me they seem to be different just for the sake of being different and that's not a good enough reason to break consistency.
Remember when Guillaume Laurent stopped working on gtk-- and switched to qt? It was a big deal and there were a lot of strong feelings involved. If Gnome and KDE looked the same it would have been a simple matter of a developer using a different library. Instead it was viewed as a switch from being a member of the Gnome communitee to being a part of the KDE camp. People don't seem to understand that many developers don't want to be a part of any Gnome/KDE communitee.
Anyways that's enough of a rant from me. I have to go.
I just read an interesting quote from IEEE Software, Vol. 13, No. 5, September 1996: "The 1994 Standish Group survey found that the average IT project took about 220 percent of its planned schedule."
Perhaps we've become a lot better about setting up reasonable schedules since 1994, but I have a don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that.
Your post is probably not make you very popular but I think it's pretty insightful. This are somethings ever Linux user thinks about from time to time. Here are some of my thoughts.
:P
.debs. Also I don't seem to have any graphical frontend to "find" installed on my computer but I think there must be one somewhere.
* Where do I mount and unmount things ?
I don't think users should have to do this at all. It should be done automatically by the kernel. The fact you have to do it at all is a problem.
* Where do I load and unload kernel modules ?
This is also a kernel thing. You mention that you are using BSD. I haven't used that but Linux really should be able to do this stuff automatically. Providing an graphical UI to make up for kernel deficiencies is not a good solution.
* Where can I reconfigure my kernel, compile it, isntall it and reboot all by checking a few boxes and hitting a button ?
Most distros provide an RPM/deb of the kernel. Regular users shouldn't have to compile their own kernels. Advanced users can use command line tools. (I find "make menuconfig" surprisingly well thought out and intuitive).
You mention that you don't like using gnome apps. Personally I use enlightenment with Gnome apps. I have some KDE apps installed just to see how they work, but I never use kde apps in day to day work.
The real solution is to make KDE and Gnome look and feel the same. Developers do not want to develop two diferent user interfaces for Linux. They often don't want to "join" KDE or Gnome and have to deal with all the backage that entails. Developers just want to write a program that works on ALL Linux desktops.
As it is, instead of saying, "I use Linux" people should just say, "I use Gnome." or "I use KDE." That would be more honest.
Some desktop applications that I would like would be more tools to work with
You talk about the command line. I was just looking through my ~/.bash_history and I don't see much that I couldn't have done in a graphical way. Some things like dict, gcc, make, grep, apt-cache search, and so on are more easily done from the command line even though there are graphical ways to do them.
The whole point was so that people would upgrade their browsers.
Are you browsers the latest versions of IE running on windows? You need to upgrade that Mac to Microsoft WindowsXP and get the newest IE.
And those morons complaining about nightly builds of Mozilla on Linux also should upgrade to XP and IE.
*sheesh* You would have thought that would be obvious by now.
I generally use only open source programs. I don't use flash pluggins, for example, because I don't like close source standards for things on the internet. (There are open source flash viewers but no open source generators).
But games are a different. Games don't need support. You can't make money off an open source game. Your business doesn't rely on a game to run. You don't really need a game at all.
I look at games as the same as movies. They are entertainment. No one asks for open source movies. Sometimes I guess, it might be fun to have the source code to a game but it's not necessary.
You will probably get flamed by people asking for the source code. People who do that are wusses. I think most people are more reasonable than that.
For every user who complains about a web page there are a hundred who also hate your web page but don't complain.
Just because a lot of people use your web page doesn't mean they like it. It just means that there isn't something better yet.
But it's your site so do whatever you want.
I just tried it and it does not seem be true... But perhaps he changed the user-agent or something.
:) Good software designers test everything.
Just because you shouldn't do something is no reason to not do something.
Anyways I think the author thought he was being funny but he doesn't seem to realise that this is exactly the type of thing that Microsoft loves to do. They have far too much time on their hands so they try to make life miserable for people.
When someone asks to be moderated down it is your duty to comply. To do otherwise would simply be rude and incosiderate.
Thank you very much,
Error27
>>It is X appologists like you that are keeping Linux away from the mainstream desktop.
There are reasonable things to complain about with X but that is not one of them. Except on Linux sites I have never heard a single person complain about X.
I have shown people my Linux desktop. Everyone thinks it looks awesome.
We use Linux in the computer lab at school. No one complains about X.
Mainstream users could not care less about X. The only thing they care about is that they don't have to configure it. This is a problem but it's a fixable issue.
You are right to say that X is fast and responsive if you have an accelerated graphics card.
:(
But I have a minor quible. Please don't use the term "User error" when describing configuring X. Configuring X is really a pain and needs to be fixed. Sometimes it's more luck than skill.
But in general, I would agree with your post.
>>I mean, the whole world seems to be holding its breath for the death of X11/freeX86.
Slashdot seems to be in an anti-X mood today. The truth is that the whole world is not waiting for the death of X11.
Xfree86 does have some configuration problems where it's still a pain to set it up. (The definition of painful is that I have to set it up period. With the kernel I can just apt-get install it, but with X I have to dpkg-reconfigure it.)
But X is not going away any time soon. The reason for that is not network transparency as some people argue. The reason is backwards compatability.
In fact, X doesn't really NEED to go away. Over the last few years the XFree86 developers have made tremendous progress in improving X and adding important extensions to the protocol.
To say that X is slow is really a lie. X is slow if you don't have one of the 5 accelerated graphics cards. Otherwise it's fine. (btw, I think you'll find that replacements to X have just as hard a time getting hardware specs as the Xfree86 guys do so creating a new window system doesn't help here)
X can be improved. And it's getting improved... But it's going to take time.
Anyways... I didn't mean to rant. I have to go because today is a great day to not be in front of a computer.
It's sometimes bad form...
Some web pages feel like they have been invaded when a major website links to them. All these clueless posters start giving an opinion when they may not know the culture or the author of the story or whatever.
I would have assumed he had figured out all that stuff by now seeing as he took months and months ponderring the problem.
But it all does sound fairly simple now when you break it down into little thing like hiring people who already know how.
:P
Does "format /mbr" actually work or did you mean "fdisk /mbr"?
I'm fairly sure that he knows what he is talking about.
They were discussing this week ago on the lkml but www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/ is down right now so I can't find the link.
It was in a thread about module_licenses.
ACPI will not be supported propperly until 2.5.x For ACPI to work every driver needs to support it and that's a lot of work.
But it's definately something that people care about.