I'd read a lot of good things about Arch, so I decided to give it a go a few months ago. I wanted to like it, I really did, but my experience over 3 ~ 4 hours was reminiscent of installing Slackware circa 2002. I don't want to have to know how to configure every package on my system from scratch, I want them to mostly work, and then be able to tweak them. I simply don't have the time for anything else. Maybe this just means Arch isn't for me, but it seemed that the install process was going out of it's way to make things as complicated as possible, a particular example was wpa_supplicant being selected for install by default, but not wireless-tools!
Did I miss something obvious that makes the whole process a lot easier, or is Arch just "like that"?
For me the problem is precisely that they moved to Unity. Never mind the fact that it was clearly unfinished alpha quality software in it's first release, they fundamentally changed the default GUI with no warning. It was bad enough when they moved the default position of the window controls with no easy way of changing back, but a sudden switch from Gnome 2 to Unity is just ridiculous. My in-laws have a PC running Ubuntu and we've been keeping them on 10.04 so as not to confuse the hell out of them.
Umm, that's a bit of a leap from "a terminally ill person should be allowed the right to decide when they die" to "the government are going to start killing mental patients".
I'd have liked to see the test done with many more than 2 groups:
* real treatment, and told so * real treatment, and not told anything * real treatment, and told it's a placebo * placebo, and told it's real * placebo, and not told anything * placebo, and told so * no treatment
I'd also hazard a guess that the above list might be in order of effectiveness.
Exactly, it's called "giving a technical answer to a non-technical question".
The suggestion that if no C style "link"ing occurs then the GPL doesn't apply implies that the GPL applies differently to software written in different languages. And that's just daft.
Exactly the same way that Apple claimed the iPhone 2G radio hardware couldn't support MMS, despite the existence of SwirlyMMS. Also, not long after 3.1 came out, there was a hack to enable MMS on the 2G, and, surprise, surprise, it worked perfectly (apart from if your network detected you had a iPhone 2G and turned of MMS on your account).
I've done this with an iBook plugged into the cassette input of an Amstrad CPC. It was actually surprising how much you could compress the MP3. I think I went down at least as low as 64kpbs (can't remember any of the other settings) and have programs still load.
Are you assuming or have you actually tried? I got my beta key just now using my free Fileplanet account. Maybe it's cos I've had the account for ages, I only ever use it to get freebies:)
<snip> I spent the extra time to convert my Gentoo install into a read-only drive that hosts everything except/var and/home,/etc and/tmp are located on ramdisks and/etc is copied up from another directory at boot.
<snip> I also used nilfs2 as it's filesystem, screwed up it's entry in/etc/fstab so the garbage collector never runs, and left a bunch of unallocated space at the end of the drive for wear leveling.
Not a single problem yet.
If you have to do all that to make an SSD reliable, I'd say they aren't reliable enough for normal consumer use yet.:)
The BBC story on this says the site "...always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details". Surely it would have been more useful to display a message along the lines of "You idiot, you've just been duped by some spam. If this had been real we would have just stolen your credit card details. Please learn from this".
I don't see why Software Update shouldn't work. I installed 10.5.1 on my laptop and updated to 10.5.2 using Software Update, as well as installing various patches, it's all worked fine. Granted my laptop is fairly close to a real Mac (runs the vanilla Apple kernel with the EFI emulator), but I also had Tiger running on an AMD machine, and I'm pretty sure I used Software Update then too. The only thing you have to be careful of is that certain updates will break the system if it is too different from official Macs. I wonder if Psystar have intentionally disabled it somehow to prevent accidental breakage?
"the NVIDIA Binary Graphics Driver for Linux is vulnerable to a buffer overflow that allows an attacker to run arbitrary code as root. This bug can be exploited both locally or remotely
You say that as if it were a current problem. This has actually been fixed in the last 3(4?) driver revisions, including a bugfix only release to a previous branch of the drivers.
Is can I use this to my advantage to get a cheaper legal copy of Windows by installing an illegal one and letting WGA catch me? Does anyone know how much the WGA Kit costs?
I'd venture to say most people who use OS X are logged in as admins.
Even if this is true (but may not be, see below) being an admin under OSX is very different than being an admin under Windows. On Windows, you have rw permissions on everything, whereas under OSX, all it means is that you are in the sudoers file. This means that in order to do anything dangerous, you still need to type in your password again to gain (temporary) root privs.
Can someone else comment on how the OSX install/add user process prompts you to set up permissions. AFAICR the user is set up as a normal user first, and you then have to explicitly go to the user manager and give them admin permissions. Very different to Windows, where you are prompted to set up an admin user as part of the install process!
Time to upgrade to a fast colour laser printer, might hit that magic 1 fps mark! Or will we start seeing 1337 l1nux gamerz comparing framerates measured in ppm? Overclocked watercooled printers with windows in the side anyone?
Now, try to run an SoundBlaster AWE 64 in a Win2k box. Oh, that's right, you can't. Because SoundBlaster didn't release drivers for it, Win2k can't use it.
<nitpick> Hmm, a quick google suggests otherwise, win2k actually includes a driver for the AWE64, and I can confirm this by having one working in a win2k machine. </nitpick>
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Who didn't see this coming? Hands up, anyone? No?
I'd read a lot of good things about Arch, so I decided to give it a go a few months ago. I wanted to like it, I really did, but my experience over 3 ~ 4 hours was reminiscent of installing Slackware circa 2002. I don't want to have to know how to configure every package on my system from scratch, I want them to mostly work, and then be able to tweak them. I simply don't have the time for anything else. Maybe this just means Arch isn't for me, but it seemed that the install process was going out of it's way to make things as complicated as possible, a particular example was wpa_supplicant being selected for install by default, but not wireless-tools!
Did I miss something obvious that makes the whole process a lot easier, or is Arch just "like that"?
It wasn't that they moved to unity...
For me the problem is precisely that they moved to Unity. Never mind the fact that it was clearly unfinished alpha quality software in it's first release, they fundamentally changed the default GUI with no warning. It was bad enough when they moved the default position of the window controls with no easy way of changing back, but a sudden switch from Gnome 2 to Unity is just ridiculous. My in-laws have a PC running Ubuntu and we've been keeping them on 10.04 so as not to confuse the hell out of them.
Umm, that's a bit of a leap from "a terminally ill person should be allowed the right to decide when they die" to "the government are going to start killing mental patients".
I'd have liked to see the test done with many more than 2 groups:
* real treatment, and told so
* real treatment, and not told anything
* real treatment, and told it's a placebo
* placebo, and told it's real
* placebo, and not told anything
* placebo, and told so
* no treatment
I'd also hazard a guess that the above list might be in order of effectiveness.
The Horrendous Space Kablooie?
Exactly, it's called "giving a technical answer to a non-technical question".
The suggestion that if no C style "link"ing occurs then the GPL doesn't apply implies that the GPL applies differently to software written in different languages. And that's just daft.
Exactly the same way that Apple claimed the iPhone 2G radio hardware couldn't support MMS, despite the existence of SwirlyMMS. Also, not long after 3.1 came out, there was a hack to enable MMS on the 2G, and, surprise, surprise, it worked perfectly (apart from if your network detected you had a iPhone 2G and turned of MMS on your account).
I've done this with an iBook plugged into the cassette input of an Amstrad CPC. It was actually surprising how much you could compress the MP3. I think I went down at least as low as 64kpbs (can't remember any of the other settings) and have programs still load.
Are you assuming or have you actually tried? I got my beta key just now using my free Fileplanet account. Maybe it's cos I've had the account for ages, I only ever use it to get freebies :)
<snip> I spent the extra time to convert my Gentoo install into a read-only drive that hosts everything except /var and /home, /etc and /tmp are located on ramdisks and /etc is copied up from another directory at boot.
<snip> I also used nilfs2 as it's filesystem, screwed up it's entry in /etc/fstab so the garbage collector never runs, and left a bunch of unallocated space at the end of the drive for wear leveling.
Not a single problem yet.
If you have to do all that to make an SSD reliable, I'd say they aren't reliable enough for normal consumer use yet. :)
My facial expression shows little surprise.
The BBC story on this says the site "...always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details". Surely it would have been more useful to display a message along the lines of "You idiot, you've just been duped by some spam. If this had been real we would have just stolen your credit card details. Please learn from this".
I don't see why Software Update shouldn't work. I installed 10.5.1 on my laptop and updated to 10.5.2 using Software Update, as well as installing various patches, it's all worked fine. Granted my laptop is fairly close to a real Mac (runs the vanilla Apple kernel with the EFI emulator), but I also had Tiger running on an AMD machine, and I'm pretty sure I used Software Update then too. The only thing you have to be careful of is that certain updates will break the system if it is too different from official Macs. I wonder if Psystar have intentionally disabled it somehow to prevent accidental breakage?
You say that as if it were a current problem. This has actually been fixed in the last 3(4?) driver revisions, including a bugfix only release to a previous branch of the drivers.
Is can I use this to my advantage to get a cheaper legal copy of Windows by installing an illegal one and letting WGA catch me? Does anyone know how much the WGA Kit costs?
"You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly sir!"
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In Soviet Russia our new 2003-EL61ian overlords welcome you!
:-)
It's my first time too, fun isn't it
Then welcome!
Even if this is true (but may not be, see below) being an admin under OSX is very different than being an admin under Windows. On Windows, you have rw permissions on everything, whereas under OSX, all it means is that you are in the sudoers file. This means that in order to do anything dangerous, you still need to type in your password again to gain (temporary) root privs.
Can someone else comment on how the OSX install/add user process prompts you to set up permissions. AFAICR the user is set up as a normal user first, and you then have to explicitly go to the user manager and give them admin permissions. Very different to Windows, where you are prompted to set up an admin user as part of the install process!
Time to upgrade to a fast colour laser printer, might hit that magic 1 fps mark! Or will we start seeing 1337 l1nux gamerz comparing framerates measured in ppm? Overclocked watercooled printers with windows in the side anyone?
From the release notes:
:)
"OpenGL is now supported for printing"
Anyone care to explain this bizarre concept? Can I now connect my graphics card directly to my printer?
Don't suppose anyone knows of where I could get one, do they?
Certainly, go into any mobile phone shop and buy the phone that satisfies all the features you need. Then buy a tube of glue and a house brick...
<nitpick>
Hmm, a quick google suggests otherwise, win2k actually includes a driver for the AWE64, and I can confirm this by having one working in a win2k machine.
</nitpick>