Considering Windows 7 won't run on a machine half its age, I'd say it speaks -- as I said -- of the greater driver availability.
I have to admit, I don't get it... I mean, back in the 90s I used this Riscom/8 ISA multiport serial card I got at a flea market, and it was great... But finally I moved on to systems without ISA slots and left that thing behind. So why should I care if Linux still has the Riscom/8 driver? Why should I care that it can still run on a 386 when even OLPC (never mind the horde of netbooks) is an order of magnitude more powerful? What is the point, man?
The drivers I care about are those for the hardware I currently use...
Linux was designed to operate as a desktop server, the best of both worlds, able to run on minimal resources yet still have full unix server style functionality. That's why it does both admirably but only if your idea of a desktop is a CLI.
I have seen some rather complex scripts that are portable that do some useful things.
Here's one: most uses of "find" together with "xargs"...
By default, "find" prints out newline-delimited filenames, while "xargs" consumes whitespace delimited values... So if you've got filenames with spaces in them, you're in trouble.
The GNU solution is the "--print0" argument to "find", and the "-0" argument to "xargs" - which uses the zero-byte as a delimiter for both commands... The problem is, this isn't supported in other implementations of "find".
This is just one example of a command where the command-line switches, or input or output form of a command may vary drastically between different platforms. MacOS is a prominent example of an environment where common GNU command-line switches aren't supported...
The problem is further complicated by the fact that there's no good mechanism provided by the shell to deal with these issues. There's no way to say "I want to run find, but specifically I need GNU find" - and GNU find on your system could be "find", "gfind", or it could just not be there at all.
You can get far by sticking to the lowest-common-denominator set of features... but I think the shell is seriously limited in terms of providing a stable set of features across platforms - the set of commands can vary wildly across distributions or OSes, and the shell itself doesn't provide any means to deal with that problem. I'd really like to find a good solution to that...
Ok, that's fine. Why doesn't Apple just do that instead of trying to abuse copyright law?
Apple's retail presence has been rather strong for the last several years. Not being able to sell OS updates in their own retail stores would somewhat limit their ability to get people to buy those updates... Plus not everyone has a good internet connection.
I've given Mono a fair bit of consideration. I should give it more, because I feel like it's important to evaluate carefully these technologies that might be useful to me...
For interoperability I think Mono is a good thing, end of story.
But I don't think it's a technology that I want as an integral part of my Linux system. There is the whole "Microsoft may decide to be bitches" thing, which kind of puts me in the position of liking what Mono can offer but not wanting to rely on it too much... But there's also the fact that it's kind of a little bit alien. I want a Unix system based around Unix concepts... Mono has at least a few Windows-isms to it (.exe extensions, for instance) but I don't know if it goes deeper than that. That's OK for a package I'm installing to gain the ability to run.NET software, but it's not something I want in a package that I'm going to use to build new applications and such for Linux. I wouldn't want to treat Mono as a core part of a Linux system if it has too much Windows flavor to it. It's just not the kind of system that I want. I like the technology (especially now that Mono supports native compilation) but I feel like it's also important for the technology to fit the system where it's to be used.
I do feel there's a need for some of the things Mono has to offer: I love what.NET does in terms of promoting cooperation between different programming languages (the various.NET versions of scripting languages and other programming languages, built to take advantage of the CLR, and so on) - it should be easy to pass objects from one programming language to another, and it should be easy to bind existing libraries to different programming languages - and.NET does that. Scripting languages benefit from having a good, efficient intermediate bytecode form - that is also provided by.NET. This is why, despite being a bit uneasy with Mono (partly, I'll freely admit, due to long-standing prejudice and grudge regarding Microsoft) it's still appealing to me.
Installed Psi on Windows, OS X, or Linux lately? Give it a shot and get back to me about if you should stick Qt apps in the same class with Java or.NET/Mono.
I have. I'm not sure what your point is, honestly.
Before you declare that you're any different, think of how you put gas in your vehicle.. Do you care how the fuel pump works? If you're like me you only throw a fit when the clip that holds the fuel lever open is broken, but otherwise don't pay much attention.
I didn't feel the article did a good job of answering that, either.
"Mono isn't trying to replace Java -- or.Net, for that matter. It's trying to do a lot more, and that makes it a project well worth watching."
It's trying to do a lot more than just be another Java or a compatibility layer for.Net. Like what, specifically?
I am not so biased that I can't see some value to it - there's real value to a language which is more expressive than C or C++, but also more efficient than Python or Ruby. There's real value to having solid mechanisms in place for component wrapping, object brokerage, or whatever you choose to call non-trivial IPC with a consistent interface. But I also can't escape Microsoft-related FUD about Mono's future (it is a real danger, as far as I'm concerned) - and as long as developers believe in that danger, Linux as a system won't fully exploit Mono.
Having to run things under the CLR was one of my big problems with Mono, though - I'm glad to see they got native compilation in there. It just seems ridiculously stupid, once your program's working nicely, not to provide the efficiency of a good native compilation.
Even without answering it, it's obvious that there is a good answer, because Mono is seeing uptake by serious projects. For example, the Unity game engine and the popular virtual world Second Life.
I remain unconvinced. So people are using it. Does that mean I want to use it?
Let's put this another way - it's not all about this doom & gloom scenario, that Microsoft may someday decide to cause trouble for Mono - whether that means using its existence as an excuse to try to charge licensing fees to Linux developers or whatever else... Though that does concern me, honestly. (It's kind of an unavoidable part of this whole equation, I think...)
There's this issue of adoption. I don't really want to stand behind a technology that I don't have faith in. The question isn't why don't I have faith that Mono is the right direction, it's more, why should I? Again, the CLR was a big stopping point for me, and the tie to Microsoft (and specifically the potential that they could use that to cause trouble) still is. There's value to what it offers and value in the fact that, being related to Microsoft's efforts with.NET, it will continue to move forward in the foreseeable future... But I don't want the baggage of CLR (thankfully not a problem now) and I don't want an environment that is too alien to the Unix approach of doing things. (I don't know the extent to which that is an issue...)
Microsoft, on the other hand can't seem to field any product without hooking it intimately into Windows. I've yet to see what making IE "an integral part of Windows" does for it that the more loosely-connected Firefox doesn't. Except, of course, for facilitating the spread of malware.
It's not what the integration does for IE, it's what the integration does for Windows.
Basically, they've implemented this web browser, right? All fine and good. But the use of that browser isn't limited to "icon on the desktop"-type launches. They can offer the browser's HTML engine as a library so people's programs can include HTML-based documentation, they can offer the browser itself as a COM object that other programs or script can control for automation. As a component, having a web browser that's a standard part of the OS is a valuable asset... And even if it's not the best web browser, the one people would choose all things being equal, developers at least know what to expect of it. (Developers can read up on IE's various flaws and work around them. But, on the other hand, if they don't know what HTML engine is rendering their stuff, they don't know what flaws they might be dealing with.)
When you have the browser in there as a component, having it additionally in there as an application is nearly trivial. Viewed strictly in terms of cost versus benefit it's senseless not to do that.
Sugar just couldn't deliver. Anybody with a clue about software development could have predicted it.
Just look at the mess:
We write an ENTIRELY NEW and FULLY INCOMPATIBLE toy interface in a REALLY SLOW language that is only mildly popular with free software programmers.
Python is "only mildly popular" with free software programmers? That's news to me...
I agree with what you say about using fundamentally inefficient programming tools on resource-limited hardware. Low-power hardware can do quite a lot if you really code with your target platform in mind. But another thing to consider is that they only have limited resources to develop this thing - if writing in Python can reduce the time it takes to write all this stuff then I think it's still the right choice.
A key question to consider is how much of the system is really written in Python, versus how much is implemented as a library in C. Obviously GTK as a whole is a C library - presumably a lot of other things are implemented as compiled libraries as well. Even on a slow system, optimization doesn't have to go all the way to the top.
So why not just use a regular Linux desktop? Probably the goal was to have something specifically tailored to the machine and what it was intended to do... To organize the machine specifically for educational purposes. There's a lot in a typical Linux desktop that doesn't serve that goal - and some that might, but which won't support the XO's mesh networking or Sugar's mechanisms for organizing data. So if they were to re-use existing apps, there would be a lot of work to do adapting them.
As for moving away from Linux and to XP - probably the people getting these machines are attaching a higher perceived value to getting XP on the machines than to getting Linux -- any Linux. The OLPC group's goal is to maximize the machine's usefulness while minimizing its cost... They don't specifically seek to promote free software.
I don't know. I think there's more merit to this whole sugar thing than you suggest.
I have an old friend who commented that having to use a horizontal scrollbar in an iframe on a web page was "soooo hard". You can't and shouldn't try to please everybody.
Horizontal scroll is evil, and any kind of scroll on an iframe is doubly evil. So what you've got there is 2*evil^2
Why is this? Well, when you're dealing with a language that's formatted like English - that is, rows of text, horizontal scroll means you have to scroll twice for each line. UI generally isn't very well suited to scrolling in more than one direction, either - except in cases where you can scroll by dragging the content, it usually requires going from one scrollbar to the other to find your info.
Now, combine that with the problems caused by scrolling an iframe - specifically, the scrollbars for the iframe are themselves part of scrolled content - so if you scroll up or left one of your scrollbars may disappear completely - or you may scroll up in the main window to view the top half of your iframe, scroll down to read the bottom half... Click the iframe scrollbar to page down the iframe and then scroll back up on the main window to see the top half of the iframe again...
Saying that this process makes working with such a page "hard" isn't exactly a good, clear expression of what's wrong with it... But there's lots of things wrong with an interface like that. It's just bad design, bad design that goes beyond the realm of ignorance and into incompetence.
The issue at this point isn't so much about having a coherent desktop - KDE provides that. (I can't personally vouch for Gnome...) The issue is that this "coherent desktop" is less a feature of "Linux" per se and more a feature of KDE (or Gnome). This desktop can run applications that aren't part of the environment - but if you want the integration you have to stick to stuff that really is part of that environment.
Do the Reefer Mad ask the same question x90 in one hour? If not that it's preferable.
Well, if you want to be all serious about it, then I'd say (from personal experience) Alzheimer's ability to kill a man piece by piece over the period of several years is way worse than pot's ability to (I guess) make you lazy, hungry, and slightly stupid for a short period of time.
But, back in the realm of funny... It's the REEFER MADNESS! It will take your life away and sell your soul to Satan!
Yep, a Heinlein movie would be great! They should make Stranger in a Strange Land. The orgies would be epic!
In a world alien to man... "We've lost contact with the Envoy!" The child of human explorers... (voice distorted by radio)"Repeat, we have found a survivor!" Is an alien. "Damnit, man, you don't understand! He - is - a - Martian!"
(cue wild drum beat, footage of Mike jumping around on Martian rocks like an ape through the trees - hovercars diving through clouds - Jill punching out a guard in Bethesda)
Douglas: That young man's claim to Mars will be MINE! Jubal: THAT YOUNG MAN IS UNDER MY PROTECTION!
It doesn't cost you more $2000 in equipment and then your elbow grease. Hopefully, some people start putting some quality shit up on YouTube soon, it's just a matter of time...
I thought we killed the million-monkey concept years ago.
It seems to all hinge on whether there's a handful of artists who really care about the quality of their work, within that mob of video-bloggers, whiny bitches, and folks who post just any old thing - and whether people manage to find that quality work out of that giant pile of output...
If you never had the memories... they (the alzheimers) cant take it away.
It takes more than memories.
Now the problem here is that patients may be able to avoid Alzheimer's by smoking pot - but they inevitably succumb to the REEFER MADNESS, which is ten times worse.
This isn't interesting, filming is a verb meaning shooting video. You don't get modded interesting for complaining that shooting people ought to leave them dead or maimed.
<shrug> People can mod me how they like.
Don't mind me, I just have a bit of an affinity for traditional photography, is all.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering Windows 7 won't run on a machine half its age, I'd say it speaks -- as I said -- of the greater driver availability.
I have to admit, I don't get it... I mean, back in the 90s I used this Riscom/8 ISA multiport serial card I got at a flea market, and it was great... But finally I moved on to systems without ISA slots and left that thing behind. So why should I care if Linux still has the Riscom/8 driver? Why should I care that it can still run on a 386 when even OLPC (never mind the horde of netbooks) is an order of magnitude more powerful? What is the point, man?
The drivers I care about are those for the hardware I currently use...
Linux was designed to operate as a desktop server, the best of both worlds, able to run on minimal resources yet still have full unix server style functionality. That's why it does both admirably but only if your idea of a desktop is a CLI.
<shrug> KDE works for me...
Care to elaborate?
I have seen some rather complex scripts that are portable that do some useful things.
Here's one: most uses of "find" together with "xargs"...
By default, "find" prints out newline-delimited filenames, while "xargs" consumes whitespace delimited values... So if you've got filenames with spaces in them, you're in trouble.
The GNU solution is the "--print0" argument to "find", and the "-0" argument to "xargs" - which uses the zero-byte as a delimiter for both commands... The problem is, this isn't supported in other implementations of "find".
This is just one example of a command where the command-line switches, or input or output form of a command may vary drastically between different platforms. MacOS is a prominent example of an environment where common GNU command-line switches aren't supported...
The problem is further complicated by the fact that there's no good mechanism provided by the shell to deal with these issues. There's no way to say "I want to run find, but specifically I need GNU find" - and GNU find on your system could be "find", "gfind", or it could just not be there at all.
You can get far by sticking to the lowest-common-denominator set of features... but I think the shell is seriously limited in terms of providing a stable set of features across platforms - the set of commands can vary wildly across distributions or OSes, and the shell itself doesn't provide any means to deal with that problem. I'd really like to find a good solution to that...
You must have meant cylon.
No, Adama's a Mormon. Tigh is a Cylon.
Ok, that's fine. Why doesn't Apple just do that instead of trying to abuse copyright law?
Apple's retail presence has been rather strong for the last several years. Not being able to sell OS updates in their own retail stores would somewhat limit their ability to get people to buy those updates... Plus not everyone has a good internet connection.
I've given Mono a fair bit of consideration. I should give it more, because I feel like it's important to evaluate carefully these technologies that might be useful to me...
For interoperability I think Mono is a good thing, end of story.
But I don't think it's a technology that I want as an integral part of my Linux system. There is the whole "Microsoft may decide to be bitches" thing, which kind of puts me in the position of liking what Mono can offer but not wanting to rely on it too much... But there's also the fact that it's kind of a little bit alien. I want a Unix system based around Unix concepts... Mono has at least a few Windows-isms to it (.exe extensions, for instance) but I don't know if it goes deeper than that. That's OK for a package I'm installing to gain the ability to run .NET software, but it's not something I want in a package that I'm going to use to build new applications and such for Linux. I wouldn't want to treat Mono as a core part of a Linux system if it has too much Windows flavor to it. It's just not the kind of system that I want. I like the technology (especially now that Mono supports native compilation) but I feel like it's also important for the technology to fit the system where it's to be used.
I do feel there's a need for some of the things Mono has to offer: I love what .NET does in terms of promoting cooperation between different programming languages (the various .NET versions of scripting languages and other programming languages, built to take advantage of the CLR, and so on) - it should be easy to pass objects from one programming language to another, and it should be easy to bind existing libraries to different programming languages - and .NET does that. Scripting languages benefit from having a good, efficient intermediate bytecode form - that is also provided by .NET. This is why, despite being a bit uneasy with Mono (partly, I'll freely admit, due to long-standing prejudice and grudge regarding Microsoft) it's still appealing to me.
"Toonami is presented in full, rich mono. Stereo is vastly overrated."
Installed Psi on Windows, OS X, or Linux lately? Give it a shot and get back to me about if you should stick Qt apps in the same class with Java or .NET/Mono.
I have. I'm not sure what your point is, honestly.
Before you declare that you're any different, think of how you put gas in your vehicle.. Do you care how the fuel pump works? If you're like me you only throw a fit when the clip that holds the fuel lever open is broken, but otherwise don't pay much attention.
Guess what time it is?
It's time for a CAR ANALOGY!
One word: Cylon.
There, fixed that for you.
What's the point of Mono?
Reasonable question.
I didn't feel the article did a good job of answering that, either.
"Mono isn't trying to replace Java -- or .Net, for that matter. It's trying to do a lot more, and that makes it a project well worth watching."
It's trying to do a lot more than just be another Java or a compatibility layer for .Net. Like what, specifically?
I am not so biased that I can't see some value to it - there's real value to a language which is more expressive than C or C++, but also more efficient than Python or Ruby. There's real value to having solid mechanisms in place for component wrapping, object brokerage, or whatever you choose to call non-trivial IPC with a consistent interface. But I also can't escape Microsoft-related FUD about Mono's future (it is a real danger, as far as I'm concerned) - and as long as developers believe in that danger, Linux as a system won't fully exploit Mono.
Having to run things under the CLR was one of my big problems with Mono, though - I'm glad to see they got native compilation in there. It just seems ridiculously stupid, once your program's working nicely, not to provide the efficiency of a good native compilation.
Even without answering it, it's obvious that there is a good answer, because Mono is seeing uptake by serious projects. For example, the Unity game engine and the popular virtual world Second Life.
I remain unconvinced. So people are using it. Does that mean I want to use it?
Let's put this another way - it's not all about this doom & gloom scenario, that Microsoft may someday decide to cause trouble for Mono - whether that means using its existence as an excuse to try to charge licensing fees to Linux developers or whatever else... Though that does concern me, honestly. (It's kind of an unavoidable part of this whole equation, I think...)
There's this issue of adoption. I don't really want to stand behind a technology that I don't have faith in. The question isn't why don't I have faith that Mono is the right direction, it's more, why should I? Again, the CLR was a big stopping point for me, and the tie to Microsoft (and specifically the potential that they could use that to cause trouble) still is. There's value to what it offers and value in the fact that, being related to Microsoft's efforts with .NET, it will continue to move forward in the foreseeable future... But I don't want the baggage of CLR (thankfully not a problem now) and I don't want an environment that is too alien to the Unix approach of doing things. (I don't know the extent to which that is an issue...)
there's genuinely some pretty cool stuff in the .net libraries
Accepted. But could you please elaborate?
Microsoft, on the other hand can't seem to field any product without hooking it intimately into Windows. I've yet to see what making IE "an integral part of Windows" does for it that the more loosely-connected Firefox doesn't. Except, of course, for facilitating the spread of malware.
It's not what the integration does for IE, it's what the integration does for Windows.
Basically, they've implemented this web browser, right? All fine and good. But the use of that browser isn't limited to "icon on the desktop"-type launches. They can offer the browser's HTML engine as a library so people's programs can include HTML-based documentation, they can offer the browser itself as a COM object that other programs or script can control for automation. As a component, having a web browser that's a standard part of the OS is a valuable asset... And even if it's not the best web browser, the one people would choose all things being equal, developers at least know what to expect of it. (Developers can read up on IE's various flaws and work around them. But, on the other hand, if they don't know what HTML engine is rendering their stuff, they don't know what flaws they might be dealing with.)
When you have the browser in there as a component, having it additionally in there as an application is nearly trivial. Viewed strictly in terms of cost versus benefit it's senseless not to do that.
Sugar just couldn't deliver. Anybody with a clue about software development could have predicted it.
Just look at the mess:
We write an ENTIRELY NEW and FULLY INCOMPATIBLE toy interface in a REALLY SLOW language that is only mildly popular with free software programmers.
Python is "only mildly popular" with free software programmers? That's news to me...
I agree with what you say about using fundamentally inefficient programming tools on resource-limited hardware. Low-power hardware can do quite a lot if you really code with your target platform in mind. But another thing to consider is that they only have limited resources to develop this thing - if writing in Python can reduce the time it takes to write all this stuff then I think it's still the right choice.
A key question to consider is how much of the system is really written in Python, versus how much is implemented as a library in C. Obviously GTK as a whole is a C library - presumably a lot of other things are implemented as compiled libraries as well. Even on a slow system, optimization doesn't have to go all the way to the top.
So why not just use a regular Linux desktop? Probably the goal was to have something specifically tailored to the machine and what it was intended to do... To organize the machine specifically for educational purposes. There's a lot in a typical Linux desktop that doesn't serve that goal - and some that might, but which won't support the XO's mesh networking or Sugar's mechanisms for organizing data. So if they were to re-use existing apps, there would be a lot of work to do adapting them.
As for moving away from Linux and to XP - probably the people getting these machines are attaching a higher perceived value to getting XP on the machines than to getting Linux -- any Linux. The OLPC group's goal is to maximize the machine's usefulness while minimizing its cost... They don't specifically seek to promote free software.
I don't know. I think there's more merit to this whole sugar thing than you suggest.
I have an old friend who commented that having to use a horizontal scrollbar in an iframe on a web page was "soooo hard". You can't and shouldn't try to please everybody.
Horizontal scroll is evil, and any kind of scroll on an iframe is doubly evil. So what you've got there is 2*evil^2
Why is this? Well, when you're dealing with a language that's formatted like English - that is, rows of text, horizontal scroll means you have to scroll twice for each line. UI generally isn't very well suited to scrolling in more than one direction, either - except in cases where you can scroll by dragging the content, it usually requires going from one scrollbar to the other to find your info.
Now, combine that with the problems caused by scrolling an iframe - specifically, the scrollbars for the iframe are themselves part of scrolled content - so if you scroll up or left one of your scrollbars may disappear completely - or you may scroll up in the main window to view the top half of your iframe, scroll down to read the bottom half... Click the iframe scrollbar to page down the iframe and then scroll back up on the main window to see the top half of the iframe again...
Saying that this process makes working with such a page "hard" isn't exactly a good, clear expression of what's wrong with it... But there's lots of things wrong with an interface like that. It's just bad design, bad design that goes beyond the realm of ignorance and into incompetence.
Mod parent up...
The issue at this point isn't so much about having a coherent desktop - KDE provides that. (I can't personally vouch for Gnome...) The issue is that this "coherent desktop" is less a feature of "Linux" per se and more a feature of KDE (or Gnome). This desktop can run applications that aren't part of the environment - but if you want the integration you have to stick to stuff that really is part of that environment.
Do the Reefer Mad ask the same question x90 in one hour? If not that it's preferable.
Well, if you want to be all serious about it, then I'd say (from personal experience) Alzheimer's ability to kill a man piece by piece over the period of several years is way worse than pot's ability to (I guess) make you lazy, hungry, and slightly stupid for a short period of time.
But, back in the realm of funny... It's the REEFER MADNESS! It will take your life away and sell your soul to Satan!
Yep, a Heinlein movie would be great! They should make Stranger in a Strange Land. The orgies would be epic!
In a world alien to man...
"We've lost contact with the Envoy!"
The child of human explorers...
(voice distorted by radio)"Repeat, we have found a survivor!"
Is an alien.
"Damnit, man, you don't understand! He - is - a - Martian!"
(cue wild drum beat, footage of Mike jumping around on Martian rocks like an ape through the trees - hovercars diving through clouds - Jill punching out a guard in Bethesda)
Douglas: That young man's claim to Mars will be MINE!
Jubal: THAT YOUNG MAN IS UNDER MY PROTECTION!
(beat... black screen, fade in)
Berquist: You're coming with me...
(beat... black screen, fade in)
Mike (snarling): I... GROK... WRONGNESS!
Stranger In A Strange Land... Rated R.
The one cool thing about Kevin Costner; refuses to ever do a sequel. Wish others in Hwoodland did that.
And thus, despite huge demand, we are spared from sequels to Waterworld, The Postman, or The Bodyguard...
Blade Runner meets the unibomber. Shudder.
"Unabomber"...
I thought we killed the million-monkey concept years ago.
It seems to all hinge on whether there's a handful of artists who really care about the quality of their work, within that mob of video-bloggers, whiny bitches, and folks who post just any old thing - and whether people manage to find that quality work out of that giant pile of output...
And that's why business sucks. Everything: including science, law, medicine, art, politics, education, takes a back seat to money-making.
Except, of course, for super disco breakin'.
If you never had the memories... they (the alzheimers) cant take it away.
It takes more than memories.
Now the problem here is that patients may be able to avoid Alzheimer's by smoking pot - but they inevitably succumb to the REEFER MADNESS, which is ten times worse.
This isn't interesting, filming is a verb meaning shooting video. You don't get modded interesting for complaining that shooting people ought to leave them dead or maimed.
<shrug> People can mod me how they like.
Don't mind me, I just have a bit of an affinity for traditional photography, is all.
>> If they want everyone to respect their law, they should lead by example and prevent their CCTVs from filming without people knowing.
> There's a small loophole there - CCTV's do not use film!
Pedantic-Man(tm) approves! It should also be noted that Pedantic-Man's VW TDI (diesel) has no 'gas' pedal. :)
Right on! XD