Actually whether or not they ship with Linux is a very important question. Giving Joe Sixpack the ability to walk up to a computer running Ubuntu (especially with Compiz/Beryl runnnig) and play around with, realize that it's not as complicated as people keep saying, would be HUGE! That would be even better than television commercials.
Huh? Isn't the point to get 'puters to the po' folks?
No, the point is to give them a self-sustainable means to access the information and information sharing abilities that the rest of us enjoy. The computer is just a means to that end. Intel's design isn't self-sustainable, it requires existing infrastructure for electricity, internet, and wireless access points. The OLPC can produce it's own electricity and wireless mesh network.
Even putting aside the infrastructure issues, third world countries cannot build these themselves for their citizens. OLPC is giving them the blueprints, hardware and software, to make these for themselves. The XO offerings are a prototype and starter offering, the goal is to have each country providing the hardware and software themselves. It's the proverbial "Teach a man to fish", as opposed to Intel's "Give a man a fish".
It's always bothered me how many folks of a liberal bent (in America) will send money, doctors, and missionaries to Asia, Africa, South America, etc... As well as adopting children from those regions. Will they do so for the 'hood or for Appalachia? Many that I've talked with react with horror at the very prospect.
There's a word for that - racism.
[/rant] No, the word for that is practicality. There comes a point where a large enough percentage of a nation has access to doctors, education, and the means of creating wealth, that giving them access to more of those doesn't equate to an increased consumption of them.
In parts of Africa, Asia and South America, these resources can have a far greater impact than in any part of the USA. Sending 100 more doctors into the Appalachians or inner-city New York won't noticeably reduce sickness in either place. Sending the same doctors to Ethiopia would have a significant impact on the lives of a large number of the people there.
So the question is, would you rather we put our resources to work for someone else, or have them wasted on ourselves?
Only the optional "folio" cover uses eInk, the main screen would be a more or less typical laptop screen, though the screen itself extends to the edge of the laptop, there is no plastic "frame" around it like most laptops have.
What I would like to know is why the Muslims don't believe that the holocaust didn't happen.
Because that would make it harder to hate the Jews for leaving Europe. The reason it is important for us to remember what the Nazis did is to make the thought of doing anything like it so utterly repulsive that nobody will support it. Since most holocaust deniers want to see Israel destroyed and it's Jewish population forcibly relocated, naturally they don't want to see Hitler when they look in the mirror. If they can convince themselves that nobody ever killed 6 million Jews, they can convince themselves that they will also stop before doing the same.
Unless Dell management is incredibly stupid, they won't be banking of a huge rush of uber-geek sales. If they market this, they can get the non-geek early adopters, the people who can't stand MS/Windows and are willing to experiment to find something better. Once Ubuntu emerges into the public knowledge, there will be more than just the geeks who will want it.
I've tried GimpShop, and it's still Gimp feature-wise, with a less gimp-ish interface layout that still isn't more than a passing resemblance of Photoshop. I have not tried Photoshop Elements.
With all due respect to open-source, which I use all the time (including Gimp), Photoshop is a remarkable piece of software that will not be easily duplicated. This isn't a case of open-source creating a free quality competitor to an expensive piece of crap like Linux/Windows, Firefox/IE, Apache/IIS. So far the best Photoshop alternative for Linux I've used is Krita, not Gimp.
Photoshop 7 yeah, CS1 maybe, CS2 or CS3 forget about it. But even if you could, Photoshop on Wine still costs as much as Photoshop on Windows, so it's not much of a selling point.
Once the codec is downloaded and installed, the file starts playing like it wasn't even interrupted.
And you can forget about ergonomic input devices. I've tried and failed to get wacom drivers working on 4 different distros...
You should let your device manufacturer know that you want a driver for your OS. Windows is lucky in that 90% of hardware is designed specifically for it, but it does fail spectacularly on that 10%. Linux is less fortunate, less than 1% of hardware is designed specifically for it (less than for Solaris, HP-UX or AIX), yet it also runs about 90% of the hardware out there.
Fair enough. The non-free components I was talking about are things like MP3 codec, which were used upthread as an example of something wrong with free Linux distros like Ubuntu. The same goes for the counterarguments about user friendliness. Sorry, but your interjection was in the middle of a thread on many topics, so it kind of got dragged into the middle of all of them.
When Linux applications / applets start getting names that regular people can relate to - only THEN will we start overcoming the hurdles to acceptance.
Hey that looks like fun, let me give it a shot:
What is Excel? What is PowerPoint? What is Access? What is Outlook? What is AIM? What is Safari? What is Fireworks? What is Dreamweaver? What is Acrobat? What is XP/Vista/Leopard/Tiger/Big cat name here?
You're confusing familiarity with clarity. But even still, Ubuntu uses "Text Editor", "Web Browser", "Media Player", "Image Viewer", "Document Viewer", etc when you're looking for an application by function.
Not unless you think it's reasonable to draw conclusions about the overall usability of something as complex as an operating system solely from the default icon pack...
Of course not, that would be as stupid as drawing conclusions requiring the free availability of a non-free component. But thus far almost every example of why Ubuntu is worse than Windows has in reality proven either feature parity, or Ubuntu working better. The default icon set was merely the latest example given, not the sum of all examples given.
Ah, so the argument that "Windows is more user friendly than Linux" should really be that "Windows is just now as user friendly as Linux"? Sorry for not being familiar with Vista, but it is relatively new and nobody I know has it yet, so I haven't had much exposure to it. I'd upgrade my XP machine, but that would cost more money than I want to spend and being 3 years old, it probably needs new hardware too.
Congratulations to Microsoft for fixing this, by the way. It probably would have been fixed sooner it, if they didn't wait 6 years. I'm sure I'll find lots of goodies in Vista when my company finally decides to upgrade our workstations.
You Linux apologists have yet to admit that the MP3 codecs aren't installed by default in anything except possibly XMMS. Not the default audio player that installs with Ubuntu, not Audacity and not VLC and not any other of the 50 or so MP3 players in the repos, all of which use different icons for their playlist buttons, their file add buttons, their fucking play buttons.
Ok, now that I'm done laughing, I can respond.
No, MP3 codecs are not installed by default on any free distro, that is because you have to pay somebody for the right to distribute them. Microsoft pays them, Apples pays them, multiple Linux distros pay them and include the codec by default. You want something that costs money, but you want it for free, and you somehow think this is Ubuntu's fault? If out of the box MP3 support is so damned important to you, then pony up the cash for it yourself.
Windows doesn't come with every codec installed by default either and WMP, try as it might, just can't ever seem to find and install the missing codec for you. Your complain about different applications looking different is also ludicrous, name two mp3 players for Windows that look the same. Hell, every WinAmp skin has different looks and buttons.
So you installed Amarok and it worked OK therefore all other applications built for KDE work fine under Gnome? You are the one making shit up.
No, but I've not had a problem with any of the Ubuntu supported ones. And KDE apps run a hell of a lot better in Ubuntu than they do on Windows. I have had all manner of Windows apps cause instability and system crashes, but I don't blame Microsoft when I install third party apps, why do you blame Ubuntu?
It means your granny had a perfectly good solution, decided against using it, actively engaged several options that gave her access to software Ubuntu specifically says it doesn't support, install a program that has nothing to do with what she wanted it do, and you are blaming Ubuntu for it. It also means that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Because appending a K to the front of your applications means that it was designed for KDE, which means that it might work with Gnome or it might just bring down the entire GUI, who knows.
Have you even used a Linux distro in recent years? I installed Amarok (KDE Music app) on a default Ubuntu/Gnome install, it told me what KDE components it needed and installed them. I launch Amarok and it run, inside Gnome, with no problems. Are you just making shit up?
She didn't know Ubuntu had a default MP3 player because the icon for MP3 files is a greyish rectangle just like thousands of other files with extensions she doesn't know anything about. Unlike, say, Windows, where the icons are actually informative if you have an app installed that has informed Windows of what the file is.
Really? Because on mine they used the music file icon even before I had the MP3 codec installed. Maybe you're grandma's been screwing around with the icon packs again? Now here's a fun thing to try, open windows explorer and create 2 new files, name them test.mp3 and test.wmv, then looking at just the icons, could your grandma tell which was audio and which was video? Heck, could she even tell you if they were media files? On my Windows XP SP2, they both are white file icons with a colored circle on them. Now I know that the colored circle is the WMP icon, but would grandma? It in no way tells her what type of file it is. Compare that to my Ubuntu, where the MP3 file has a music note icon and the WMV has a video reel icon.
The truth is that the repos are full of half finished forks of other forks which result is Linux users having access 49 different applications that all fail to adequately perform some simple task, the 50th one of course maybe works properly but good luck finding it. And good luck figuring out its lousy UI.
Again, Audacity is NOT a music player! Ubuntu installs by default the best program for 90% of the use cases. Just because Ubuntu didn't stop you from installing Audacity to listen to your MP3, instead of using the default intalled RhythmBox do it, doesn't mean Ubuntu did anything wrong.
Ubuntu 6.06 is intended to provide a secure and stable environment for a long period of time. It is designed to use the same packages (with only security and stability updates) until the end of it's support cycle. That is why there is no Firefox 2 offered to you from Ubuntu's update manager. There is also no IE7 for Windows2000 users (for other reasons), so your problem isn't unique to Ubuntu.
So you have two options, you can either upgrade your OS to a recent version of Ubuntu, which is still free and usually painless, or you can download and install Firefox 2 directly from Mozilla. It's worth nothing that this is twice as many options as a Windows2000 user wanting IE7 has.
It's not elitism because he's not complaining about a lack of knowledge on the specifics, but a complete lack of understanding of the topic all together.
To extend you analogy, imagine someone wants to buy a car for off-roading. They says that Land Rover is the only good option because Ford isn't 4WD. Someone lacking understanding of the specifics doesn't know which Ford vehicles have 4WD, someone lacking an understanding of the topic doesn't know that "Ford" isn't a vehicle, but rather a manufacturer of multiple and varied vehicles.
Now you admitted knowing next to nothing about cars, but if someone told you that Ford doesn't have 4WD, you'd still know they're an idiot. If you asked someone what kind of car they drive, and they said a leather one (because it has leather seats), you'd know they're an idiot.
What makes computer different than cars is that it's socially acceptable to be an idiot when it comes to a computer, and there is no expectation that you should be corrected. Indeed, correction is often treated with hostility, as we see in this thread.
Just out of curiosity, what did your grandmother do when she wanted to listen to an MP3 on Windows? Did she go to Add/Remove programs? Good luck finding anything useful there. Did she Google search for a Windows MP3 player? What if Audacity was at the top of Google's list? Would it be Microsoft's fault if she downloaded it and installed it, and had the same problems? It's not even a media player!
No, I'm guessing that grandma would just double-click the MP3 file and it would open the default MP3 player in Windows, am I right? Well guess what, if she did the same thing in Ubuntu, she would get the exact same result, her MP3 file playing in the default MP3 player. Now try the same with a Vorbis file on either OS, and tell me how much easier Windows is.
I can't comment on uninstalling Gaim or playing GnomeNetHack as I've never done either, but I've installed plenty and removed plenty from Ubuntu's package manager and I never had a problem. I've installed the same program on Ubuntu and Windows, and it has always been easier on Ubuntu. I would rather install a.DEB than run a.EXE installer, any day.
Have you ever tried to remove a Windows program? It tells me there are DLL files in/Windows/System32/ that are probably not needed anymore, and registry keys that may not be needed anymore, and data files that shouldn't cause a problem if I remove them, but am I sure that I really want to do all that? And what about all of the programs listed in Add/Remove programs that I've already deleted? It says it can't uninstall them because the uninstaller doesn't exist, but they're still in the f*cking list! That's user friendly?
Or maybe the person posted exactly what made sense to them. Not everybody thinks of "Linux" as the complete OS. Furthermore, to say that "Linux" has HI designers because Gnome and KDE have HI designers would be wrong, because Gnome and KDE are not "Linux" programs, they are also used in the BSDs, Solaris and Mac. It would be like saying that Microsoft has HI designers because Photoshop is so easy to sue.
Just because one person doesn't understand that the Kernel and the Desktop can be separate, doesn't mean everybody has to dumb-down their understanding to not be a troll.
Exposure to microwave radiation at the levels inside of a microwave, while non-ionizing, would still kill you by boiling the water in your body. I admit, through, that "why we're not all dead from radiation exposure" does sound like I'm talking about long term effects of ionizing radiation. Thanks for the clarification.
A microwave oven is a Faraday cage, the radiation it generates is contained within the oven itself. That's why your hand doesn't get hot when you touch the door while it's running. That's also why we're not all dead from radiation exposure.
Except for the fact that the radio stations already payed for the right to play the Supremes' music.
To use the house analogy some else used, if you build a house, and sell it for an agreed upon amount, you can't come back 20 years later and claim that the original sale didn't pay you enough, and the buyer should now pay you more.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually whether or not they ship with Linux is a very important question. Giving Joe Sixpack the ability to walk up to a computer running Ubuntu (especially with Compiz/Beryl runnnig) and play around with, realize that it's not as complicated as people keep saying, would be HUGE! That would be even better than television commercials.
Even putting aside the infrastructure issues, third world countries cannot build these themselves for their citizens. OLPC is giving them the blueprints, hardware and software, to make these for themselves. The XO offerings are a prototype and starter offering, the goal is to have each country providing the hardware and software themselves. It's the proverbial "Teach a man to fish", as opposed to Intel's "Give a man a fish".
It's always bothered me how many folks of a liberal bent (in America) will send money, doctors, and missionaries to Asia, Africa, South America, etc... As well as adopting children from those regions. Will they do so for the 'hood or for Appalachia? Many that I've talked with react with horror at the very prospect.
There's a word for that - racism.
[/rant] No, the word for that is practicality. There comes a point where a large enough percentage of a nation has access to doctors, education, and the means of creating wealth, that giving them access to more of those doesn't equate to an increased consumption of them.
In parts of Africa, Asia and South America, these resources can have a far greater impact than in any part of the USA. Sending 100 more doctors into the Appalachians or inner-city New York won't noticeably reduce sickness in either place. Sending the same doctors to Ethiopia would have a significant impact on the lives of a large number of the people there.
So the question is, would you rather we put our resources to work for someone else, or have them wasted on ourselves?
Only the optional "folio" cover uses eInk, the main screen would be a more or less typical laptop screen, though the screen itself extends to the edge of the laptop, there is no plastic "frame" around it like most laptops have.
Unless Dell management is incredibly stupid, they won't be banking of a huge rush of uber-geek sales. If they market this, they can get the non-geek early adopters, the people who can't stand MS/Windows and are willing to experiment to find something better. Once Ubuntu emerges into the public knowledge, there will be more than just the geeks who will want it.
I've tried GimpShop, and it's still Gimp feature-wise, with a less gimp-ish interface layout that still isn't more than a passing resemblance of Photoshop. I have not tried Photoshop Elements.
With all due respect to open-source, which I use all the time (including Gimp), Photoshop is a remarkable piece of software that will not be easily duplicated. This isn't a case of open-source creating a free quality competitor to an expensive piece of crap like Linux/Windows, Firefox/IE, Apache/IIS. So far the best Photoshop alternative for Linux I've used is Krita, not Gimp.
Photoshop 7 yeah, CS1 maybe, CS2 or CS3 forget about it. But even if you could, Photoshop on Wine still costs as much as Photoshop on Windows, so it's not much of a selling point.
How about something like this?
http://bp3.blogger.com/_awSiQq1wVto/RjTjbrvfzrI/A
http://bp2.blogger.com/_awSiQq1wVto/RjTiybvfzpI/A
Once the codec is downloaded and installed, the file starts playing like it wasn't even interrupted.You should let your device manufacturer know that you want a driver for your OS. Windows is lucky in that 90% of hardware is designed specifically for it, but it does fail spectacularly on that 10%. Linux is less fortunate, less than 1% of hardware is designed specifically for it (less than for Solaris, HP-UX or AIX), yet it also runs about 90% of the hardware out there.
Fair enough. The non-free components I was talking about are things like MP3 codec, which were used upthread as an example of something wrong with free Linux distros like Ubuntu. The same goes for the counterarguments about user friendliness. Sorry, but your interjection was in the middle of a thread on many topics, so it kind of got dragged into the middle of all of them.
What is Excel?
What is PowerPoint?
What is Access?
What is Outlook?
What is AIM?
What is Safari?
What is Fireworks?
What is Dreamweaver?
What is Acrobat?
What is XP/Vista/Leopard/Tiger/Big cat name here?
You're confusing familiarity with clarity. But even still, Ubuntu uses "Text Editor", "Web Browser", "Media Player", "Image Viewer", "Document Viewer", etc when you're looking for an application by function.
Ah, so the argument that "Windows is more user friendly than Linux" should really be that "Windows is just now as user friendly as Linux"? Sorry for not being familiar with Vista, but it is relatively new and nobody I know has it yet, so I haven't had much exposure to it. I'd upgrade my XP machine, but that would cost more money than I want to spend and being 3 years old, it probably needs new hardware too.
Congratulations to Microsoft for fixing this, by the way. It probably would have been fixed sooner it, if they didn't wait 6 years. I'm sure I'll find lots of goodies in Vista when my company finally decides to upgrade our workstations.
No, MP3 codecs are not installed by default on any free distro, that is because you have to pay somebody for the right to distribute them. Microsoft pays them, Apples pays them, multiple Linux distros pay them and include the codec by default. You want something that costs money, but you want it for free, and you somehow think this is Ubuntu's fault? If out of the box MP3 support is so damned important to you, then pony up the cash for it yourself.
Windows doesn't come with every codec installed by default either and WMP, try as it might, just can't ever seem to find and install the missing codec for you. Your complain about different applications looking different is also ludicrous, name two mp3 players for Windows that look the same. Hell, every WinAmp skin has different looks and buttons.No, but I've not had a problem with any of the Ubuntu supported ones. And KDE apps run a hell of a lot better in Ubuntu than they do on Windows. I have had all manner of Windows apps cause instability and system crashes, but I don't blame Microsoft when I install third party apps, why do you blame Ubuntu?
Oh, and VLC isn't an MP3 player either.
Ubuntu 6.06 is intended to provide a secure and stable environment for a long period of time. It is designed to use the same packages (with only security and stability updates) until the end of it's support cycle. That is why there is no Firefox 2 offered to you from Ubuntu's update manager. There is also no IE7 for Windows2000 users (for other reasons), so your problem isn't unique to Ubuntu.
So you have two options, you can either upgrade your OS to a recent version of Ubuntu, which is still free and usually painless, or you can download and install Firefox 2 directly from Mozilla. It's worth nothing that this is twice as many options as a Windows2000 user wanting IE7 has.
It's not elitism because he's not complaining about a lack of knowledge on the specifics, but a complete lack of understanding of the topic all together.
To extend you analogy, imagine someone wants to buy a car for off-roading. They says that Land Rover is the only good option because Ford isn't 4WD. Someone lacking understanding of the specifics doesn't know which Ford vehicles have 4WD, someone lacking an understanding of the topic doesn't know that "Ford" isn't a vehicle, but rather a manufacturer of multiple and varied vehicles.
Now you admitted knowing next to nothing about cars, but if someone told you that Ford doesn't have 4WD, you'd still know they're an idiot. If you asked someone what kind of car they drive, and they said a leather one (because it has leather seats), you'd know they're an idiot.
What makes computer different than cars is that it's socially acceptable to be an idiot when it comes to a computer, and there is no expectation that you should be corrected. Indeed, correction is often treated with hostility, as we see in this thread.
Just out of curiosity, what did your grandmother do when she wanted to listen to an MP3 on Windows? Did she go to Add/Remove programs? Good luck finding anything useful there. Did she Google search for a Windows MP3 player? What if Audacity was at the top of Google's list? Would it be Microsoft's fault if she downloaded it and installed it, and had the same problems? It's not even a media player!
.DEB than run a .EXE installer, any day.
/Windows/System32/ that are probably not needed anymore, and registry keys that may not be needed anymore, and data files that shouldn't cause a problem if I remove them, but am I sure that I really want to do all that? And what about all of the programs listed in Add/Remove programs that I've already deleted? It says it can't uninstall them because the uninstaller doesn't exist, but they're still in the f*cking list! That's user friendly?
No, I'm guessing that grandma would just double-click the MP3 file and it would open the default MP3 player in Windows, am I right? Well guess what, if she did the same thing in Ubuntu, she would get the exact same result, her MP3 file playing in the default MP3 player. Now try the same with a Vorbis file on either OS, and tell me how much easier Windows is.
I can't comment on uninstalling Gaim or playing GnomeNetHack as I've never done either, but I've installed plenty and removed plenty from Ubuntu's package manager and I never had a problem. I've installed the same program on Ubuntu and Windows, and it has always been easier on Ubuntu. I would rather install a
Have you ever tried to remove a Windows program? It tells me there are DLL files in
Or maybe the person posted exactly what made sense to them. Not everybody thinks of "Linux" as the complete OS. Furthermore, to say that "Linux" has HI designers because Gnome and KDE have HI designers would be wrong, because Gnome and KDE are not "Linux" programs, they are also used in the BSDs, Solaris and Mac. It would be like saying that Microsoft has HI designers because Photoshop is so easy to sue.
Just because one person doesn't understand that the Kernel and the Desktop can be separate, doesn't mean everybody has to dumb-down their understanding to not be a troll.
Name me one OS where everything works, then you can say you win.
Exposure to microwave radiation at the levels inside of a microwave, while non-ionizing, would still kill you by boiling the water in your body. I admit, through, that "why we're not all dead from radiation exposure" does sound like I'm talking about long term effects of ionizing radiation. Thanks for the clarification.
A microwave oven is a Faraday cage, the radiation it generates is contained within the oven itself. That's why your hand doesn't get hot when you touch the door while it's running. That's also why we're not all dead from radiation exposure.
Theora is a patent-free, royalty-free open-source video codec. It's the video counterpart to the Vorbis audio codec and competitor to MPEG4 and WMV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora
http://xiph.org/
Except for the fact that the radio stations already payed for the right to play the Supremes' music.
To use the house analogy some else used, if you build a house, and sell it for an agreed upon amount, you can't come back 20 years later and claim that the original sale didn't pay you enough, and the buyer should now pay you more.