Java on web browsers has possibly gotten worse with years. Java 6 update 3 contains improvements to both install and startup of the JVM within web browsers.
Current multi-media web dev is relegated to Flash, but I'm sure that there are many skilled programmers out there that would be glad to have a lean Java VM & API working in web browsers. Sun gave up long time ago, Google could take over and make it ubiquitous. A new spec for easily embedded media components is in the works, hopefully it will make it into Java 7, and will be a good compliment to Java FX script on the web. There is talk about plugging it into existing media frameworks like GStreamer or VLC, to bring in all of their supported formats. Sun may have deglected multi-media, but it's not quite forgotten yet.
* Application bundles - drag and drop install, removal. Ability to drag an.app to anywhere in the file system at any time. App resources all contained in the.app directory structure instead of scattered all over the file system There are many apps that live and work in their own directory structure, it's really a developer decision more than an OS decision. That being said, how does OS X handle third-party dependencies, multiple user's data, and all that with.app bundles?
*/Application directory - default place for App bundles to be copied to Why is this necessary? And what would you classify as an App? Sure Firefox is an app, but what about command-line tools? Some I consider apps, some tools, where do they go? The FreeDesktop folder structures will help more than this for most users.
*/Preferences - standard place for apps to store their user specific settings instead of hidden . files in the main user home directory Again, this is both a developer's decision, and seems unnecessary. Do you keep all user's preferences in the same directory?
* An app interface building tool that has OS X level UI element default spacing when laying out an interface to help with the jarringly hideous problems virtually every Linux app has with visual layout An App interface for which toolkit? GTK? QT? X? WX? AWT/Swing? SWT? TK? And what about themes that have different widget styles, sizes, different fonts and icons? There are too many different toolkits used in Unix land to make a single unified interface builder, it's not like OS X where you just have Cocoa.
Oh, well I don't use Quicken, but a quick check of my repository shows gnucash and kmymoney2 as Quicken alternatives for Ubuntu, I also know there used to be a couple of Java based ones, so it not like he wouldn't have options.
Or put the other way: you can have an old OS which will open Word/Excel files if needed, run the best home accounting software on the market, and can handle quite a few games, or a new OS which can do none of these things. There are no less than 4 programs available to Linux users for opening Word and Excel files, and I have no idea what home accounting software you are referring to, about the only thing you were right about is games support, and this is obviously not a gaming PC.
And yes, XP is an old OS, just because they took so long to make Vista doesn't mean XP is "modern", and I for one don't count XP SP2 as a new release. And no, XP SP2 can't do everything that Ubuntu 7.10 can do.
I bet windows XP or 2000 would install on this thing and run just as fast as this Ubuntu variant they're using So you can have a 7-8 year old OS that you can't upgrade to the next version, or a 6 month old (at most) OS that you can upgrade, for free.
OpenOffice.org Impress can open and save.ppt files, so they will still be able to do that. There are also utilities to sync with palm devices, I hear they work pretty well now. Printers may be an issue, depending on the maker and quality of the printer. Printing photos can be done from the default image viewer (not Gimp), I don't see how that would be very difficult to teach.
Honestly, get a Ubuntu LiveCD, pop it into their current computer, and test drive it. I'm sure there will be a learning curve, but it shouldn't be too steep, certainly less steep than moving them to Vista or MS Office 2007.
If MS came by later and offered free, or heavily discounted copies of Windows, I could see how Nigeria would accept it. Yes, but even a free copy of Windows takes time and manpower to install, which isn't free. I'm sure to make this offer viable, Microsoft had to offer some department head a grant to cover paying all those workers $100/hr (that's a standard rate, right?) for their trouble.
I would be shocked, shocked I tell you, if the head of that department were to pay his workers only $2/hr and pocket the rest of the money for himself, that would be unethical. Of course that would in no way be Microsoft's fault, right?
I expect that once they get XP running on OLPC's, they will go directly to some not-so-honest government bureaucrats and offer a substantial monetary "grant" to help them install XP on all those new OLPC's they just bought It seems I was mostly right, s/OLPC/CMPC/g
Perhaps you didn't read the other thread where everybody was discussing exactly what configuration changes to make to fix this problem? Anybody who can use a text editor and follow directions could fix that problem. As for being a contender, for many people it already is, but the biggest thing holding Linux back isn't quality, it's market share. A lot of people use Windows, and most people don't like change, so a lot of people are going to continue to use Windows, at the very least until they buy a new PC. If quality mattered, Apple would be dominant.
Throw this theoretical OS on a newer machine (1GHz and up, all the way up to dual-core) and you've got a super simple OS that should be capable of a great deal. It's called Fedora, and it comes pre-installed on the OLPC XO-1, you can also run it (for free) on a cheaper laptop and get a fully functional, responsive computer.
Who says you would have to pay? Broadcast networks don't charge you for their content, they are advertiser funded. I'm sure that will be the case with legal P2P distributions of their content as well.
The trick will be to keep people from stripping the advertisements out and re-distributing it. A simple signing mechanism would suffice, providing a clear distinction between owner-approved copies and illegal copies. Maybe there can be a way for ISPs to inject their own advertisements, like how local broadcast stations inject their own advertisements, making P2P traffic a money maker for ISPs as well. Heck, the whole reason Verizon is investing so much in FiOS is because they want a slice of that TV advertising money, they're losing money on the network traffic itself.
Say what you will about Windows or Apple, but I buy a video card for my monitor, and it just works. I've heard horror stories about ATI drivers in Vista (XP too for that matter), and I don't think you can buy just any old video card and install it into your Mac, can you?
Ubuntu 7.10 included X.org 7.4, which has much better support for dual monitors and projectors. 7.10 also includes a new "Screens and Graphics" application for configuring X.org, including setting your graphics card driver and monitor information. This makes editing xorg.conf mostly unnecessary, the only time I have had to edit mine recently was because some update removed the "AddARGBVisuals" options required by my nVidia card to run Compiz. After entering in the make and model of my monitor, I was given all the resolution and refresh rate options supported, I had to manually enter them in 7.04. You should definitely try 7.10 if you are interested in using Ubuntu
Note: I don't think the LiveCD loads the nVidia driver's kernel module, so you may not be able to play with all of this in a liveCD session.
I believe Beagle is setup by default not to index while Ubuntu is in a power-saving mode. Then again, Beagle was replaced by Tracker in 7.10 (Gutsy), so maybe Tracker doesn't have a similar option.
Note quite, they are either arrested for doing something that _is_ illegal in that far away land (murder), or because "traveling for the purpose of" said activity (sleeping with little boys) is illegal in the US.
You are free to travel to a country that allows smoking Marijuana, smoke all you want over there, then come back to the USA (minus the MJ of course) and you've done nothing illegal.
Microsoft doesn't compete if it doesn't have to, being a monopoly means they don't have to. I expect that once they get XP running on OLPC's, they will go directly to some not-so-honest government bureaucrats and offer a substantial monetary "grant" to help them install XP on all those new OLPC's they just bought, for charity of course. Then all those future locked-in consumers (aka, children) will only ever see Windows XP installed on their new laptops.
whereas on Ubuntu the system actually prompts you like Windows Update *for every app you have ever installed* from an Ubuntu repository... A minor clarification for those who might not know, Ubuntu's update manager will update any software from *any* repository you tell it to use, not just the repositories hosted by Ubuntu. The Trevino repositories are particularly popular with Ubuntu users, plus Google and the Wine project hosts their own repositories, as do many other projects.
Ubuntu will keep your current release up to date, so you will continue to get updates to Feisty even after Gutsy is released. Update manager will inform you that a new release is available, but it will not dist-upgrade your system unless you explicitly tell it to.
Ubuntu is an attempt at a one size fits all linux distro but that isn't why experienced users are running linux. But that is why inexperienced users are running Ubuntu. Once they become experienced users, then they can customize it or change distros all they want, but they have to be beginners before they can become experts.
Installing Tomcat on Ubuntu was a snap for me: sudo apt-get install tomcat5.5
It has dependencies on either java-gcj, kaffe, or the virtual package java2-runtime. Since I already had sun-java6 installed (available in Ubuntu repos), which provides java2-runtime, I was all set to go.
With Ubuntu, if the package doesn't exist, it gets considerably more painful. Painful to the point that I don't think your average user would be willing to put up with it. I think the repository system is great, I just wish that there were decent installers for when it fails. .DEB is Ubuntu's equivalent of Microsoft's.MSI installer. Ubuntu will load.DEB files (and apt:// URLs) in GDebi, which informs you of any dependencies, resolves them if they are available in any of your repositories, and installed the package. Developers just need to create the.DEB package, they don't need to use a third-party installation wizard. The problem isn't that Ubuntu doesn't have an easy to use installer, its that not every developer bothers to make.DEB files.
No, but software licensing does become a factor when your 10 year old hardware is still churning along just fine, but the new version of your enterprise software only supports the new Windows, then the license lock-in become painfully visible. When you find yourself in a situation where your old hardware won't run the new Windows, then the pain becomes exponential.
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Oh, well I don't use Quicken, but a quick check of my repository shows gnucash and kmymoney2 as Quicken alternatives for Ubuntu, I also know there used to be a couple of Java based ones, so it not like he wouldn't have options.
And yes, XP is an old OS, just because they took so long to make Vista doesn't mean XP is "modern", and I for one don't count XP SP2 as a new release. And no, XP SP2 can't do everything that Ubuntu 7.10 can do.
OpenOffice.org Impress can open and save .ppt files, so they will still be able to do that. There are also utilities to sync with palm devices, I hear they work pretty well now. Printers may be an issue, depending on the maker and quality of the printer. Printing photos can be done from the default image viewer (not Gimp), I don't see how that would be very difficult to teach.
Honestly, get a Ubuntu LiveCD, pop it into their current computer, and test drive it. I'm sure there will be a learning curve, but it shouldn't be too steep, certainly less steep than moving them to Vista or MS Office 2007.
I would be shocked, shocked I tell you, if the head of that department were to pay his workers only $2/hr and pocket the rest of the money for himself, that would be unethical. Of course that would in no way be Microsoft's fault, right?
Perhaps you didn't read the other thread where everybody was discussing exactly what configuration changes to make to fix this problem? Anybody who can use a text editor and follow directions could fix that problem. As for being a contender, for many people it already is, but the biggest thing holding Linux back isn't quality, it's market share. A lot of people use Windows, and most people don't like change, so a lot of people are going to continue to use Windows, at the very least until they buy a new PC. If quality mattered, Apple would be dominant.
Who says you would have to pay? Broadcast networks don't charge you for their content, they are advertiser funded. I'm sure that will be the case with legal P2P distributions of their content as well.
The trick will be to keep people from stripping the advertisements out and re-distributing it. A simple signing mechanism would suffice, providing a clear distinction between owner-approved copies and illegal copies. Maybe there can be a way for ISPs to inject their own advertisements, like how local broadcast stations inject their own advertisements, making P2P traffic a money maker for ISPs as well. Heck, the whole reason Verizon is investing so much in FiOS is because they want a slice of that TV advertising money, they're losing money on the network traffic itself.
Ubuntu 7.10 included X.org 7.4, which has much better support for dual monitors and projectors. 7.10 also includes a new "Screens and Graphics" application for configuring X.org, including setting your graphics card driver and monitor information. This makes editing xorg.conf mostly unnecessary, the only time I have had to edit mine recently was because some update removed the "AddARGBVisuals" options required by my nVidia card to run Compiz. After entering in the make and model of my monitor, I was given all the resolution and refresh rate options supported, I had to manually enter them in 7.04. You should definitely try 7.10 if you are interested in using Ubuntu
Note: I don't think the LiveCD loads the nVidia driver's kernel module, so you may not be able to play with all of this in a liveCD session.
I believe Beagle is setup by default not to index while Ubuntu is in a power-saving mode. Then again, Beagle was replaced by Tracker in 7.10 (Gutsy), so maybe Tracker doesn't have a similar option.
Note quite, they are either arrested for doing something that _is_ illegal in that far away land (murder), or because "traveling for the purpose of" said activity (sleeping with little boys) is illegal in the US.
You are free to travel to a country that allows smoking Marijuana, smoke all you want over there, then come back to the USA (minus the MJ of course) and you've done nothing illegal.
Microsoft doesn't compete if it doesn't have to, being a monopoly means they don't have to. I expect that once they get XP running on OLPC's, they will go directly to some not-so-honest government bureaucrats and offer a substantial monetary "grant" to help them install XP on all those new OLPC's they just bought, for charity of course. Then all those future locked-in consumers (aka, children) will only ever see Windows XP installed on their new laptops.
I would imagine the OP was thinking of 65535, the maximum number of different values that can be represented by a 16 bit integer.
How to:
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8047723203.html
Utility to do most of it for you:
http://ffem.org/daveb/pkgwrite/
Ubuntu will keep your current release up to date, so you will continue to get updates to Feisty even after Gutsy is released. Update manager will inform you that a new release is available, but it will not dist-upgrade your system unless you explicitly tell it to.
Installing Tomcat on Ubuntu was a snap for me:
sudo apt-get install tomcat5.5
It has dependencies on either java-gcj, kaffe, or the virtual package java2-runtime. Since I already had sun-java6 installed (available in Ubuntu repos), which provides java2-runtime, I was all set to go.
No, but software licensing does become a factor when your 10 year old hardware is still churning along just fine, but the new version of your enterprise software only supports the new Windows, then the license lock-in become painfully visible. When you find yourself in a situation where your old hardware won't run the new Windows, then the pain becomes exponential.