Re:um, ever heard of the word "asthetics" ?
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(no one's likely to read this at this point, but...)
I'm all for aesthetics. Give me pretty looking windows any day. I have tons of themes and they do a really nice job of making my desktop a happier place to be.
The trouble is, Enlightenment does such a rotten job of it. Sawmill is much more configurable than Enlightenment is, uses a whole ton of the same themes and doesn't slow everything down in the process. It does a better job of being aesthetic and yet doesn't interfere with my work by being slow and unweildy.
I don't dislike Enlightenment just for being pretty, I dislike it because it's a PITA to work with on a daily basis.
Re:Bluesteel: not just for Enlightenment anymore..
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Gnome? Bigger ick. I installed Enlightenment and minimized a window. An icon appeared on the screen in its place. If there's a way to change that behavior, I sure didn't find it in the sparse configuration options.
Which is exactly why the transparent dragging was so annoying. Not because of the option itself, but because it probably took some deal of effort for a special effect of so little use. Give me speed and give me heavy-duty configuration over plain eye candy.
That's what I'm ranting about, really.
Bluesteel: not just for Enlightenment anymore...
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I must admit, Bluesteel looks pretty nifty. It's got nice sharp corners and a neat shape to it. I actually went to the trouble of installing Enlightenment for it.
Then I discovered that Enlightenment sucks.
It ran slowly, used icons for things (ick), and made a general mess of my X session. I won't even get started on the customization menu ("transparent" window dragging? WTF?). Maybe somebody really loves Enlightenment, but that somebody is not me.
So then I found Sawmill. Sawmill has the Bluesteel theme, and yet doesn't suck. It has no icons, has genuinely useful customization, and lets me attach a theme to as many or as few windows as I'd like. (I usually pick one xterm for Bluesteel, just cuz). So, I voted for Bluesteel anyway simply because Shinyblue wasn't available.
Enlightenment may suck, but its prettiness can be ported...
RedHat got the top spot by far in the "preferred NOS" section. Is it a popular but poor OS? I don't think so. It's not surprising to find faults in various bits of Linux, but what'll be interesting is how quickly such faults are fixed.
I hope this patch, or something equivilent hacked out between IBM and Linus/Alan/etc. will make it into the 2.3 tree prior to 2.4. IBM looks to be continuing their great Java and Linux software development, much to everyone's benefit.
And don't forget that little feedback thing at the bottom. Let IBM know these are the sorts of things we like to hear!
...but it is the product of a lack of confidence, or a misunderstanding of how truly open licenses work in practice. It's very rare that anyone "takes over" a GPL'd project by forking, unless the original author becomes incompetent. And BSD licenses generate a lot of patches from people simply because they want to be part of the process, even if everyone doesn't have to.
Basically, it's a BSD-type license with the stipulation that "all modifications must be sent to the original author". As with many systems that contains a single critical point, there's no backup plan should that point fail (i.e. the author leaves/dies/etc.).
With the GPL, I give code to all because I have to.
With the BSD, I give code to anybody because I want to.
With the BPL, I give code back to the author because I have to, and everyone else because I want to. Making it just as viral and a lot more monopolistic.
I'm pretty sure/. posted an article about the Opera release late last month, which is why I downloaded it and tried it out. Wasn't bad then, a bit on the early alpha side, but it felt good and didn't hog lots of memory.
But this is the same release, not a newer release. The binaries are byte-for-byte the same. So if you've already downloaded it once, there's no need to re-download it.
This happens in both the old and new dclock, too. Rather funny, I think. I really should patch that and give the author a little help. I didn't get the wierd xdaliclock bug, but it does think the year is 0 (rather than 00). Not sure if that's a bug or feature. But other than that, everything works fine.
Just for spite I decided to turn on my laptop at about 11pm for a couple hours, simply because everyone was saying how "you should turn your computer off until after midnight!" Bah! Linux didn't care. Python didn't care. Emacs didn't care. So pffft! to them:P:)
Linux support is all over the web. HOWTO sites are abundant. Precompiled software is abundant. Distributions are abundant. There's lots of places to get useful info about Linux, which equals support - and that's what people really want. Most software compiles on both, Linux binaries can run on BSD (on the proper hardware), but where's the support? There's some, certainly, but nowhere near as much as Linux has.
Licensing is not the cause. Linux runs lots of software using BSD-type licenses (Apache has a similar license, IIRC), and that hasn't driven anyone away except for the die-hard zealots (who are in the minority). The real cause is a lack of support, and that needs to be addressed before BSD starts garnering popularity.
Perhaps it can be addressed with commercial *BSD distributions, more *BSD web sites, or maybe just a new mindset in the community - perhaps the *BSD users don't want popularity. But the conditions won't change until the support arrives.
9. Since the software is GPL'd, if Microsoft was to ursurp it, the last GPL'd version would forever be available. Thus, the developers moving to work on other distributions (3) could continue to develop it (under new names if necessary).
Dissent != damage. Competition is what keeps the community strong, and all camps will be better for it. The friction between the movements helps keep the fires hot, and that's not a bad thing.
This would make a great "budget disc". Loki could put the Quake 1 data + soundtrack on a CD along with Quake 1 for Linux (compiled for several architectures) and the source code. Maybe even toss in a level editor or three. For a reasonable price (~$15 ?) I'd pick it up.
M11 was alright, but still on the buggy side with odd menu glitches and a variety of other annoyances. M12 has fixed the menus, renders pages super-fast, and everything looks crisp. Not bad at all.
But I couldn't get it to compile out of the box, even with the IDL libraries installed. However, I did track down a binary RPM and all went smoothly. Still, the memory footprint and CPU usage are excessive for day-to-day use. A couple of pages takes up a whopping 30 megs of RAM! Lots of debugging code, I'd imagine. There's still plenty of minor glitches, but nothing that should be too difficult to fix.
I wonder if Opera will make it out before xmas for a comparison...
Beginners don't think anything until they're told or they find out for themselves. The nice thing about being a beginner is a lack of predefined notions. How often do beginners actually need copies of things? For numerical values it's helpful, but those copy anyway. Typically if you have a some list of things (an item that doesn't copy by default), you don't care whether it's a copy or not. You just cycle through the list, do something to the elements and move on.
As for the whitespace issue, it can be annoying, but minimized with the use of a decent text editor. Python has quirks, certainly, but seems more consistant than Perl in general. Consistancy is good for beginners (maybe not for everybody, but certainly for beginners).
Python and Java are great beginner languages, but for somewhat different reasons. Java is a conceptually simple language, stressing object re-use (and interfaces) with strong typing. Code written in Java is often quite readable with a mediocrum of care and if something compiles, you can be reasonably sure it'll run with only a logic bug or ten.
Python is also conceptually simple, but it stresses operator overloading over object re-use and inheritance trees are typically pretty shallow. Lack of types make for code that's quick to write, not too hard to read, but you have to check them well because your arguments could be anything.
Maybe there should be an "Algorithms in Python" book. The language is ideal for beginners - even moreso than Java because of built-in lists and hashes.
Let every registered user rank every slashdot article and show the rankings in the main screen. There really are a lot of articles every day and seeing an article averaging, say, 4/5 would mean it's something interesting to lots of folks and might be worth a look. Users could even set article thresholds just like comment ones.
Maybe at last we could see an end to all this "this article stinks!" nonsense.
Maybe you have a photographic memory to remember two month old stories, but it's news to me. I'm more than a little sick of this whole "more money" == "sellout"|"poor quality"|"don't have to care anymore" line. If you'd prefer the job of filtering through dozens of submissions a day, feel free to start your own site.
There's still a number of glitches, especially in the redraw department, but it's now looking quite nice overall. Rather futuristic, actually. When it's finished I'm certain it will replace Netscape on my own machine.
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.
The article quotes explicitly: "somebody else set this up for me and I never have to touch it again because it never breaks" which is the mentality at work. Nobody expects Joe User to set up a Linux box, but the auther does believe Joe User can use one fine once it's set up properly - much like an average user can use properly installed Windows.
And if a Linux GUI is the user's first experience, there won't be any Windows training to undo. It seems reasonable to me...
I can't speak scientifically, but using my Sun 20" CRT all day strains the hell out of my eyes - while using my laptop's 14.1" LCD does not. I bought a laptop for the portability, but when I'm doing lots of text work I rarely use anything else.
The LCD does look a lot cripser and sharper. Perhaps that has something to do with it.
I'll have to give the obligitory ThinkPad plug here. They cost a bit more than other brands, but their keyboards are top-notch. Their 14.1" screen models have a full-size keyboard I use 8+ hours a day without a problem, they have no Windows keys and they come standard with a 3-button trackpoint. If you want portable computing, I can't recommend IBM strongly enough.
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I'm all for aesthetics. Give me pretty looking windows any day. I have tons of themes and they do a really nice job of making my desktop a happier place to be.
The trouble is, Enlightenment does such a rotten job of it. Sawmill is much more configurable than Enlightenment is, uses a whole ton of the same themes and doesn't slow everything down in the process. It does a better job of being aesthetic and yet doesn't interfere with my work by being slow and unweildy.
I don't dislike Enlightenment just for being pretty, I dislike it because it's a PITA to work with on a daily basis.
Which is exactly why the transparent dragging was so annoying. Not because of the option itself, but because it probably took some deal of effort for a special effect of so little use. Give me speed and give me heavy-duty configuration over plain eye candy.
That's what I'm ranting about, really.
Then I discovered that Enlightenment sucks.
It ran slowly, used icons for things (ick), and made a general mess of my X session. I won't even get started on the customization menu ("transparent" window dragging? WTF?). Maybe somebody really loves Enlightenment, but that somebody is not me.
So then I found Sawmill. Sawmill has the Bluesteel theme, and yet doesn't suck. It has no icons, has genuinely useful customization, and lets me attach a theme to as many or as few windows as I'd like. (I usually pick one xterm for Bluesteel, just cuz). So, I voted for Bluesteel anyway simply because Shinyblue wasn't available.
Enlightenment may suck, but its prettiness can be ported...
Every time I see the commercial for that flick, I can't help but think:
"Turn on the lamp and then find the torch!"
*sigh*
RedHat got the top spot by far in the "preferred NOS" section. Is it a popular but poor OS? I don't think so. It's not surprising to find faults in various bits of Linux, but what'll be interesting is how quickly such faults are fixed.
And don't forget that little feedback thing at the bottom. Let IBM know these are the sorts of things we like to hear!
And at the bottom:
"Connecting People with Information"
Basically, it's a BSD-type license with the stipulation that "all modifications must be sent to the original author". As with many systems that contains a single critical point, there's no backup plan should that point fail (i.e. the author leaves/dies/etc.).
- With the GPL, I give code to all because I have to.
- With the BSD, I give code to anybody because I want to.
- With the BPL, I give code back to the author because I have to, and everyone else because I want to. Making it just as viral and a lot more monopolistic.
Sorry, but I'll pass.But this is the same release, not a newer release. The binaries are byte-for-byte the same. So if you've already downloaded it once, there's no need to re-download it.
Just for spite I decided to turn on my laptop at about 11pm for a couple hours, simply because everyone was saying how "you should turn your computer off until after midnight!" Bah! Linux didn't care. Python didn't care. Emacs didn't care. So pffft! to them :P :)
Licensing is not the cause. Linux runs lots of software using BSD-type licenses (Apache has a similar license, IIRC), and that hasn't driven anyone away except for the die-hard zealots (who are in the minority). The real cause is a lack of support, and that needs to be addressed before BSD starts garnering popularity.
Perhaps it can be addressed with commercial *BSD distributions, more *BSD web sites, or maybe just a new mindset in the community - perhaps the *BSD users don't want popularity. But the conditions won't change until the support arrives.
9. Since the software is GPL'd, if Microsoft was to ursurp it, the last GPL'd version would forever be available. Thus, the developers moving to work on other distributions (3) could continue to develop it (under new names if necessary).
Dissent != damage. Competition is what keeps the community strong, and all camps will be better for it. The friction between the movements helps keep the fires hot, and that's not a bad thing.
This would make a great "budget disc". Loki could put the Quake 1 data + soundtrack on a CD along with Quake 1 for Linux (compiled for several architectures) and the source code. Maybe even toss in a level editor or three. For a reasonable price (~$15 ?) I'd pick it up.
But I couldn't get it to compile out of the box, even with the IDL libraries installed. However, I did track down a binary RPM and all went smoothly. Still, the memory footprint and CPU usage are excessive for day-to-day use. A couple of pages takes up a whopping 30 megs of RAM! Lots of debugging code, I'd imagine. There's still plenty of minor glitches, but nothing that should be too difficult to fix.
I wonder if Opera will make it out before xmas for a comparison...
As for the whitespace issue, it can be annoying, but minimized with the use of a decent text editor. Python has quirks, certainly, but seems more consistant than Perl in general. Consistancy is good for beginners (maybe not for everybody, but certainly for beginners).
Python is also conceptually simple, but it stresses operator overloading over object re-use and inheritance trees are typically pretty shallow. Lack of types make for code that's quick to write, not too hard to read, but you have to check them well because your arguments could be anything.
Maybe there should be an "Algorithms in Python" book. The language is ideal for beginners - even moreso than Java because of built-in lists and hashes.
Just my minor nit about typing :)
Maybe at last we could see an end to all this "this article stinks!" nonsense.
Maybe you have a photographic memory to remember two month old stories, but it's news to me. I'm more than a little sick of this whole "more money" == "sellout"|"poor quality"|"don't have to care anymore" line. If you'd prefer the job of filtering through dozens of submissions a day, feel free to start your own site.
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.
And if a Linux GUI is the user's first experience, there won't be any Windows training to undo. It seems reasonable to me...
Still, it's an interesting theory :)
The LCD does look a lot cripser and sharper. Perhaps that has something to do with it.
I'll have to give the obligitory ThinkPad plug here. They cost a bit more than other brands, but their keyboards are top-notch. Their 14.1" screen models have a full-size keyboard I use 8+ hours a day without a problem, they have no Windows keys and they come standard with a 3-button trackpoint. If you want portable computing, I can't recommend IBM strongly enough.
Perhaps the Linux Montage would show the best aspects of Linux. Just a thought..