If all the various Linux distros merged into one single distro, Windows XP would still have 75% of the market, so by your reasoning still nobody would write software for Linux.
As others have pointed out, creating a.rpm and.deb will get you 99% of the Linux desktop market.
Look at Mandriva's Metisse window manager, it already handles arbitrary rotation of application windows, even along multiple axes. I can definitely see this being used on a table-based display.
From the article, this MPX thing seems to consist of nothing more than a modified X server, running "normal" (i.e., designed for a single cursor) applications. Therefore, it is not nearly as impressive as the MS Surface. Actually if you read more into the technology, MPX provide multi-touch and multi-input information to any application that wants to make use of it, but it also provides the standard single-input interface that most existing apps expect. So you get the best of both worlds, backwards compatibility with all of your existing software, plus all the new software that is going to take advantage of multi-input/multi-touch technology.
The buffer overflow isn't in Java code, it's native (probably C) code. Sun implemented a lot of the Java APIs with existing native code libraries, especially in areas of images and 2d graphics. This is also part of the reason the open sourcing of the full J2SE is taking so long, most of this native code wasn't written by Sun, instead it was licensed from a third party.
That may be enough to prevent the creation and distribution of derivative works. I'm not really sure how trademark laws apply to copyrighted and/or public domain works. But at least the unmodified original, once in the public domain, could be copied and distributed for free.
Yeah, I know this was a joke, but I still need to point something out. This is talking about expiration of copyright, not trademark. So the animation "Steam boat Willy" would fall into the public domain, but the character "Mickey Mouse" would still be a Disney trademark, so nobody else could create new content with "Mickey Mouse" in it, or even a character that could easily be confused with Mickey Mouse. Therefore Walt's characters would still make be making money, as long as Disney keeps making new content, since that gets a new copyright protection.
You can disable the network manager from your Session preferences, System->Preferences->Session. This will stop it from loading on the next login. To remove it right away, the process is called "nm-applet", just kill it.
So now we trundle off to the store to buy yet another hardware workaround for the 'just works' Linux distro. Not what I meant, and anyway no stores sell just a simple USB->PS/2 converter anymore anyway, I checked all my local stores recently for one, everyone just suggested I buy a cheap mouse that comes with a converter, (one sales person even suggested that I remove the adapter, then return the mouse for a refund). At any rate, you already mentioned that a fix exists for your problem upstream, so you can either apply it to your system now or wait for the next release of Ubuntu to apply it for you. I was just offering a way to make it work now if you choose to not apply the fix yourself.
Oh wait, maybe it won't. Probably it might. I don't think I've ever seen it not. You could find that it would or there exists the liklihood that under some circumstances there might be an issue whereby the proposed solution is not the ideal means of resolving the possible scenario described herein. I can't guarantee that it would work under Windows either, not even Microsoft guarantees that it will work under Windows. I try to stay away from making absolute assertions, so "it will probably work" is the best you'll get from me. If that bothers you so much that you're unwilling to try, that is fault in your character and not in Ubuntu's code.
And heres another thing: I don't care. Obviously.
To that end I run OSX. And I can only wonder why I didn't see this punchline coming a mile away.
Well that's that settled then. Yeah, no need to actually read the rest of the post or anything. Everything after that was just random characters that should in no way influence your preconceived notions.
Can you use a PS/2 converter on your mouse? If so, that would probably make it work, I don't think I've ever heard of a problem with PS/2 mice.
I've seen problems with Azureus running under GCJ or compiled with GCJ (Eclipse too for that matter). Running under the Sun JVM I haven't had any problems, so you might try that instead. Azureus is also not part of the default Ubuntu install, so I don't think they have the responsibility to make sure it works as well as their default offerings. Ubuntu comes with it's own Bittorrent client installed by default.
Here's the thing, Ubuntu doesn't write all of their software, so they don't really control when the upstream versions will be fixed. So instead they test what is available and pick the most stable and feature-complete offerings there are, and release them on a regular schedule. If they had to wait for all the bugs to be worked out of all the programs, they'd be called Debian Stable, and we already have one of them.
You're right, all that talk about driver problems, resolution issues, instructions on removing the network icon and suggestions on troubleshooting his Gnome bugs, that was all my subtle way of saying "screw you buddy, I won't help you". Thank god you're smart enough to read between the lines to see what I *truly* meant, without confusing the issue with facts.
Tried switching off Desktop Effects (which was only on for the Expose-like feature, anyway), and suddenly I lost my desktops. Turned them back on, and I still only had one. It's definitely a bug, but one that I haven't been able to recreate so far. That said, it's one bug so far. How many bugs have you seen in Windows? OS X? The problem is that Gnome's virtual desktop manager can only track one virtual desktop at a time. With Desktop Effects, thing like the desktop cube require access to all the desktops at once for displaying. Because of this Compiz/Beryl reduce the number of Gnome virtual desktops to 1, then increase the width of that virtual desktop to a your screen width x the number of desktops you set in Compiz/Beryl. It's a bit of a hack, but until Gnome/KDE/others change the way they handle virtual desktops, it's necessary. Beryl has a desktop plugin that will replace Gnome's desktop manager (including virtual desktops) with their own, and I think this also allows you to have different backgrounds on each, but last I heard it's still pretty raw and lacking a lot of the features of Gnome's desktop.
I think you're wrong, there. I've never modified my player settings or file associations, and double-clicking an mp3 in Nautilus brings up Totem. This is a stock 7.04 install. I could very well be wrong, it's been a while since I had a stock install, so I can't always remember which of my settings I changed and which are still the default.
Easier said than done, both in Windows and in Ubuntu. Messing around with it for a few minutes, I can't figure out how to get rid of that icon. Indeed, though I did find out how to disable it: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=248323&cid=198 25389
And you still miss the point. The point is that it's totally, completely, and gigantically irrelevant that it works for you. Let me repeat this: IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT IT WORKS FOR YOU. It's actually very relevant to me. And at any rate, I didn't mention that to imply that it was the other guy's fault, I was pointing out that "it doesn't just work" wasn't a universal truth. You take things too personally if you consider that statement an accusation of some kind.
Finally, if you would have continued to read the rest of my post, you would have seen me trying to help solve his problems instead of just saying "yeah, it doesn't work for you, you're screwed, have a nice day.", which seems to be what some people around here seem to want me to say. So yeah, Ubuntu doesn't "just work" for him, but maybe, just maybe, it doesn't have to stay that way.
I'm not sure anybody ever said this particular system was from Dell. If it was from Dell, then I agree that they should have caught these errors in testing.
I heard about the ATI difficulties, but sadly that was the only option available for my laptop. (Which is ironic, because they advertise their systems as being Linux friendly.) I do remember reading on Slashdot about ATI making their drivers open-source in the future... or something like that. Maybe that would improve it? There is an open-source 2D driver that I think is pretty good, but the 3D driver from ATI seems to have all the problems. If you don't want Compiz or Beryl (or Compiz Fusion now), the 2D driver should provide what you need.
As for open-sourcing them, the Slashdot article was (surprise) misleading. What was actually said was that AMD/ATI would be paying more attention to interoperability with open source, they didn't actually say they would be releasing anything as open source. If they open the specs at least you might get 3D support in the current open source driver.
This shouldn't even be necessary in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty), any gstreamer application like Rythmbox or Totem should be able to download and install the codecs you need the first time you try to play a media file. I did that for WMV, it actually worked surprisingly well.
Actually, I've noticed this too. I have a 24" monitor at 1920x1200, nvidia 7900gt, and the available screen area just seems smaller on Ubuntu + Gnome than with Windows. The icons are a lot bigger, the system fonts are bigger. Not to mention, the fonts just aren't as smooth. If I make them smaller, no amount of antialiasing or "cleartype" fiddling in Gnome (I forget what it's actually called, sub-pixel rendering I think), will fix it. As it is, I'm stuck with fonts with a slight rainbow halo that are too big. I've noticed that by default icons and fonts are larger on Linux than on Windows. I'm not sure if they just assume you'll be using a higher resolution than you do in Windows (which I do, specifically because the linux fonts are big enough to read at the higher resolution), or if they just want the extra pixels for better detail.
I now there is sub-pixel rendering available for Linux fonts, but I don't recall what it is. It may not be installed by default on Ubuntu because of patent issues. If you're getting a "rainbow" halo, it may be that the sub-pixel rendering has the pixel order different than what your monitor actually has (BGR instead of RGB). I don't have an LCD monitor, so I'm not very familiar with this. Try asking about it on the Ubuntu forums.
I'm running it on an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad R60 with an ATI videocard and 1gig RAM. Good luck, I've heard ATI cards are particularly problematic for Linux (Vista too, actually).
I used Synaptic to get the plugin for Firefox to view movies (ie quicktime) that are embedded in webpages, but whenever I get one it shows up as a [no video]. Could be that you don't have the right codecs. What Firefox plugin are you talking about? Is it a quicktime plugin specifically?
I'm actually planning on switching away from Ubuntu trying a different distro (Gentoo or Archlinux, something less bloated and with more control). Ubuntu just has random problems for me. I've heard good things about Mepis, PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint, you might want to add them to the list of distros to try.
You indirectly insulted the person with legitatmate problems, ignored other problems and blamed it on the others. And used the fact that it worked for you as a solid proof that it should work for him. When did I do any of those things? Please read my post before complaining about it.
As a Linux user sience 1994 I can tell you it doesn't matter how long you have been using it for, it doesn't just work for other people. Which is exactly why I put in the "for me" condition in that statement.
I have never had this problem, but it seems your gnome setup has some problems (I'm assuming it's not just your screen resolution not displaying the bottom of the screen). So it is a case of Ubuntu just not working... They chose gnome and gave it good defaults setups... So if it doesn't work then it is not working out of the box. So Ubentu screwed up. Yes, it's quite possible that Ubuntu screwed this up. But saying "Ubuntu has some problems" is much less helpful them specifying which part of Ubuntu has the problems (though saying "Gnome has some problems" is only slightly more specific, but I didn't have enough information to go much further).
Uh, huge? It's tiny for me. What is your screen resolution? Are you running 640x480? Because that might be causing some of your other Gnome display problems. And transparent? The notifications I get on Windows XP aren't transparent. Are you using Compiz or Beryl? Those could cause some of your other problems if your video card can't handle them. Intimadate the person with the problem. That will make it better. How can that possible be considered intimidation?
It may be from ubunto just not working finding the best resolution. Still Ubunto fault. Which is why I was asking what his resolution was. By the way, it turned out that there was no resolution problem, it was a preference and perception problem.
Or it could be something different. If it doesn't happen for you and it never did, then you are not qualifed to respond to that problem. Bullshit, you don't have to have personally experienced a problem to know how to troubleshoot it.
So take if off, what's so hard about that? Because it is possible it is configured in a way that it is not ovious how. It turns out that is the case. Though I did end up telling him exactly how to accomplish it, so give me some credit for helping (by the way, how much have you helped him?).
Icon sets come with different sizes for each icon for different applications. Are you using the biggest size when you don't need it, or again is your screen resolution so low that even 32x32 looks huge? Because Ubuntu is flawed and cann't detect the correct screen resolution because it Doesn't Just work! Again, it turns out that the resolution was just fine, it was just that he wanted them to be even smaller than they were. Again, preferences and perceptions, not anything technically wrong with the software.
I'm pretty sure it's just a panel applet, you can probably just right-click it and remove it from the panel. I'll have to check when I get home to be sure (new job won't let me run Linux on my workstation). Nevermind this, I just checked a Feisty install and there is no remove option on right-click. You can stop if from loading by disabling it in your Session preferences (System->Preferences->Session), and to kill it in your current session, "ps -ef |grep nm-applet" to get the process id to kill. This is a pretty counter-intuitive way of dealing with it, hopefully it will get improved in the next release (network monitor was new in Feisty).
Meaning I gave as much help as I could for the list of issues given and the details available from them. If he has more issues or more details (the 'got any more' part), I can try to give better help. Are you seriously complaining about that?
By 'work' you must mean 'boots up'. I shouldn't be suprised at this, since the main effort of the Linux movement seems to be getting it to function in any way at all with a given set of hardware. By 'work' I mean it has been my primary OS both at home and at work for almost 2 years. It does everything that I need it to do with minimal fuss. Hardware is a major factor in a good Linux experience, and I've always made sure that mine has good working drivers for Linux (even non-free in the case of my nVidia card).
This one I might have to take blame for myself. To be fair, I Add/Removed several music players while trying to find one that would actually play an MP3. At some point one of them successfully alerted me to its need for an MP3 codec as well as directing me to where I could find it. I suspect that Rhythmbox failed to accomplish that. It was probably one of the many that provided absolutely no indication that any operation had taken place at all after I directed it to play an MP3. Ubuntu 7.04 has improved this quite a bit, I'm pretty sure that anything that uses gstreamer will now tell you if you need a specific codec, and download and install that codec for you if it's available from Ubuntu's repos (MP3 codec is available). I can't swear that Rythmbox will do this, since I had the codecs before I upgraded to 7.04, but I'm pretty sure it will work.
It is larger than it needs to be, how about that? The small icon that appears in the system tray is delightful, but the larger-than-it-needs-to-be balloon containing "Software Updates are available..." text, the one that appears on top of everything regardless of what I am doing, even if I'm playing a game, and demands that I click its X, is the one I mean. It has some kind of icon above its text, a lightbulb possibly? Ok, so we just have different definition of "huge" when it comes to notifications. Having it popup during a game would be annoying (I don't play games anymore, so I didn't know it did that), I remember that happening to me with Win2000 back when I used Windows and played games. I'm not sure if this is a Gnome issue, or something with X11 fullscreen windows. Submit a bug report to Gnome anyway, if it's an X11 thing they should be able to pass it upstream.
Anyway, my screen resolution is 1920x something I forget. On a 24" wide format screen. The icon is still larger than it needs to be.
I am not using Beryl although it seemed to work well and never crashed, because I thought it might be the culprit behind my missing panels and workspaces and the like. I removed it and tried Desktop Effects, same problems. Turned off Desktop Effects, same problems. What video card are you using? I seem to remember some Intel cards having issues with wide aspect ratios. Not sure it it would cause any of your problems though.
Fantastic for you then. I just tried, but your solution didn't fix my problem. You're getting the same error with Azureus?
The hard part is that there does not seem to be any configuration option that will allow me to remove it. I expect it to be somewhere under the other options for my network configuration but I have yet to find it. I'm pretty sure it's just a panel applet, you can probably just right-click it and remove it from the panel. I'll have to check when I get home to be sure (new job won't let me run Linux on my workstation).
Slashdot Mirror
Windows update forgot to upgrade Firefox, Thunderbird, Java, Eclipse, and many others. So yeah, I guess it is just for show.
If all the various Linux distros merged into one single distro, Windows XP would still have 75% of the market, so by your reasoning still nobody would write software for Linux.
.rpm and .deb will get you 99% of the Linux desktop market.
As others have pointed out, creating a
Look at Mandriva's Metisse window manager, it already handles arbitrary rotation of application windows, even along multiple axes. I can definitely see this being used on a table-based display.
http://www.mandriva.com/projects/metisse/
Here's the difference:
Java was behaving badly, so it was patched.
Windows was patched, now it is behaving badly.
The buffer overflow isn't in Java code, it's native (probably C) code. Sun implemented a lot of the Java APIs with existing native code libraries, especially in areas of images and 2d graphics. This is also part of the reason the open sourcing of the full J2SE is taking so long, most of this native code wasn't written by Sun, instead it was licensed from a third party.
That may be enough to prevent the creation and distribution of derivative works. I'm not really sure how trademark laws apply to copyrighted and/or public domain works. But at least the unmodified original, once in the public domain, could be copied and distributed for free.
Yeah, I know this was a joke, but I still need to point something out. This is talking about expiration of copyright, not trademark. So the animation "Steam boat Willy" would fall into the public domain, but the character "Mickey Mouse" would still be a Disney trademark, so nobody else could create new content with "Mickey Mouse" in it, or even a character that could easily be confused with Mickey Mouse. Therefore Walt's characters would still make be making money, as long as Disney keeps making new content, since that gets a new copyright protection.
You can disable the network manager from your Session preferences, System->Preferences->Session. This will stop it from loading on the next login. To remove it right away, the process is called "nm-applet", just kill it.
Can you use a PS/2 converter on your mouse? If so, that would probably make it work, I don't think I've ever heard of a problem with PS/2 mice.
I've seen problems with Azureus running under GCJ or compiled with GCJ (Eclipse too for that matter). Running under the Sun JVM I haven't had any problems, so you might try that instead. Azureus is also not part of the default Ubuntu install, so I don't think they have the responsibility to make sure it works as well as their default offerings. Ubuntu comes with it's own Bittorrent client installed by default.
Here's the thing, Ubuntu doesn't write all of their software, so they don't really control when the upstream versions will be fixed. So instead they test what is available and pick the most stable and feature-complete offerings there are, and release them on a regular schedule. If they had to wait for all the bugs to be worked out of all the programs, they'd be called Debian Stable, and we already have one of them.
You're right, all that talk about driver problems, resolution issues, instructions on removing the network icon and suggestions on troubleshooting his Gnome bugs, that was all my subtle way of saying "screw you buddy, I won't help you". Thank god you're smart enough to read between the lines to see what I *truly* meant, without confusing the issue with facts.
Finally, if you would have continued to read the rest of my post, you would have seen me trying to help solve his problems instead of just saying "yeah, it doesn't work for you, you're screwed, have a nice day.", which seems to be what some people around here seem to want me to say. So yeah, Ubuntu doesn't "just work" for him, but maybe, just maybe, it doesn't have to stay that way.
I'm not sure anybody ever said this particular system was from Dell. If it was from Dell, then I agree that they should have caught these errors in testing.
As for open-sourcing them, the Slashdot article was (surprise) misleading. What was actually said was that AMD/ATI would be paying more attention to interoperability with open source, they didn't actually say they would be releasing anything as open source. If they open the specs at least you might get 3D support in the current open source driver.
This shouldn't even be necessary in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty), any gstreamer application like Rythmbox or Totem should be able to download and install the codecs you need the first time you try to play a media file. I did that for WMV, it actually worked surprisingly well.
Lol, thanks.
I now there is sub-pixel rendering available for Linux fonts, but I don't recall what it is. It may not be installed by default on Ubuntu because of patent issues. If you're getting a "rainbow" halo, it may be that the sub-pixel rendering has the pixel order different than what your monitor actually has (BGR instead of RGB). I don't have an LCD monitor, so I'm not very familiar with this. Try asking about it on the Ubuntu forums.
So it is a case of Ubuntu just not working... They chose gnome and gave it good defaults setups... So if it doesn't work then it is not working out of the box. So Ubentu screwed up. Yes, it's quite possible that Ubuntu screwed this up. But saying "Ubuntu has some problems" is much less helpful them specifying which part of Ubuntu has the problems (though saying "Gnome has some problems" is only slightly more specific, but I didn't have enough information to go much further). Uh, huge? It's tiny for me. What is your screen resolution? Are you running 640x480? Because that might be causing some of your other Gnome display problems. And transparent? The notifications I get on Windows XP aren't transparent. Are you using Compiz or Beryl? Those could cause some of your other problems if your video card can't handle them.
Intimadate the person with the problem. That will make it better. How can that possible be considered intimidation? It may be from ubunto just not working finding the best resolution. Still Ubunto fault. Which is why I was asking what his resolution was. By the way, it turned out that there was no resolution problem, it was a preference and perception problem. Or it could be something different. If it doesn't happen for you and it never did, then you are not qualifed to respond to that problem. Bullshit, you don't have to have personally experienced a problem to know how to troubleshoot it. So take if off, what's so hard about that?
Because it is possible it is configured in a way that it is not ovious how. It turns out that is the case. Though I did end up telling him exactly how to accomplish it, so give me some credit for helping (by the way, how much have you helped him?). Icon sets come with different sizes for each icon for different applications. Are you using the biggest size when you don't need it, or again is your screen resolution so low that even 32x32 looks huge?
Because Ubuntu is flawed and cann't detect the correct screen resolution because it Doesn't Just work! Again, it turns out that the resolution was just fine, it was just that he wanted them to be even smaller than they were. Again, preferences and perceptions, not anything technically wrong with the software.
Meaning I gave as much help as I could for the list of issues given and the details available from them. If he has more issues or more details (the 'got any more' part), I can try to give better help. Are you seriously complaining about that?
I am not using Beryl although it seemed to work well and never crashed, because I thought it might be the culprit behind my missing panels and workspaces and the like. I removed it and tried Desktop Effects, same problems. Turned off Desktop Effects, same problems. What video card are you using? I seem to remember some Intel cards having issues with wide aspect ratios. Not sure it it would cause any of your problems though. Fantastic for you then. I just tried, but your solution didn't fix my problem. You're getting the same error with Azureus? The hard part is that there does not seem to be any configuration option that will allow me to remove it. I expect it to be somewhere under the other options for my network configuration but I have yet to find it. I'm pretty sure it's just a panel applet, you can probably just right-click it and remove it from the panel. I'll have to check when I get home to be sure (new job won't let me run Linux on my workstation).