It's not the point. The point is that it came out in a terrible state, that nobody cared about it for years. And when it finally got some attention, it was too late for many users who had switched desktop, and, in my case, had stopped to even try to talk about it anymore with GNOME developpers. So the point is that organic development has its good points, and its issues. And calling me a troll for having this opinion, is actually the other point about people being ideological about it and dismissing everything that could be slightly critical of their dogma.
I know it's pretty common to skip reading the fine article, but in this case, don't miss it.
He explains why he was fooled by SCO; for example, how Caldera won a settlement against Microsoft, which led him to believe that the SCO Group (successor of Caldera) might actually win. But he doesn't try to dodge the blame; he takes on the blame due him and apologizes.
The problem is that he doesnt take the blame to the fullest.
Fisrt bad analysis: he didnt believe SCO would win its first trial.
Second bad analysis: Because he made a bad analysis, he bases his next behavior on this, and not on a thoughtfull analysis of the new situation. Stupid.
next (I'm bored to count): He doesnt gets that the first trial biggest problem was that it would lead to a new antitrust trial to microsoft, this one about microsoft being anticompetitive in order to gain a dominant position where the other one was about maintining its position. So SCO was greedy in accepting micorosoft money, and not very clever. They could have gained much more in refusing microsoft offer.
next: He didnt take into account that they were greedy, and maybe he could have taken into account that they made connexion with microosft during this first settled trial, all which would have given credit to groklaw suspition that microsoft was behind the SCO trial instead of his rebuffal ot their views.
last and most terrible anlysis: with all those errors and the few he admits, he continues to believe he is suited to this work. Wrong. He is either too naive or too stupid. Or too corrupted, but he wouldnt do such a public apology of error if he was, so I give him that, he is probably honnest.
No, I'm talking aboout GNOME which is a free software project. I don't get what you are talking about, both free software and open source can be done by individuals or corporate, and both can be done in an organic or carefully planed way.
The drawback to this "scratch what itches" organic way of development is that you can end up your project with big issues because no developpers cared for something that itches particularly front end users like, say, for example, a terrible file selector that isn't improved for years. Ideology aside, a little bit of carefull planning doesnt hurt either.
off topic: On my via epia xfce is actually slower than KDE.
The problem with xfce or gnome is not the choice they made per se, but the fact that you can't actually get out of them. If you happen to be a person that don't fit what they see as a regular user and what is good for you, you just can't have a good experience with their desktop. So yes, the KDE control center is crammed with features, but I only know and use those that I need and I have turned the desktop into a wonderfull, simple and sane experience for me. A thing that I can't do with GNOME, XFCE or any Windows. And before you actually dismisses me as a KDE fanboy: I was a GNOME user prior to their stance on "forced down your throat" usability. I had also all "regular users" I knows of try the GNOME desktop so that I don't force my choice on them and they all prefer KDE. So this is not a representative panel, it's just a familym but they are supposedly the target of this usability choice, but either because its defaults are windows like (wife used windows at work before they switched to Linux), either because they can turn it into a strange unbearable carnival of colors (youngsters), either because they can drag and drop all their heart between applications (grand parents) or because I can heavily customise it to suit my day to day work, everybody chose to use KDE. I'm sorry, but when I use the console it doesnt force me to use that command to another because it's "THE right way to do it", I can choose whichever I see fit for the job and pipe them into an unthought of combination. That's the part I like about the unix philosophy. To me the GNOME usability choice were not made to suit the users, but to suit the helpdesks. Users are versatile, I dislike and I'm even worried by this computer behavior which asks the user to fits the system and not the other way around.
By any yardstick, it is very clear that Microsoft IS A MONOPLY in the massive worlwide PC market. It is also clear that they maintain their monopoly by abusive practices and that the US government doesn't do anything to fix this. See the outcome of the microsoft US trial. So it's now clear that microsoft is used as a leverage by the us government and other governments have to step in and protect themselves. Which is happening.
About the bug reporting problem, this problem has been adressed the last months by Adam who posted this news. He has set up a team to go through all bugs and clean up the base, and they now follow all new bugs so that they don't leave reports unanswered, forgotten or unsolved. They also take care of the reporter side, whenever people need to be asked for details or tests. There is also a new bugzilla, much quicker, setup by vdanen iirc.
So yes, there has been problems, but there is also a strong will to do what it's right to correct them, and there are some fine persons over there to do it. Don't take what you experienced then for granted.
1. Searching for the new location for the repository. They seemed to constantly change the paths arbitrarily every few weeks or so, apparently because they 'decided' that the old path wasn't a good naming convention or something. This is now done interactively from the package manager, you just click "add" and it gets a list of mirrors over the internet, you choose one, and your medias are automagically configured: main + contrib + non-free which countain most of the stuff and their respective updates, backports, testing directories. (backports and testing being ignored by default without you having to configure anything). So all this is transparent to the user now.
2. Downloading the updated package info. there has been for years a synthesis version of this which is just a few Ko heavy. With the procedure above, the synthesis version is chosen by defaut, you can choose by media to use or not the synthesis version. So info updates takes only a few seconds unless you really want the extra infos that are in the complete info file.
All this is of course possible from the command line too.
anchoring the product to a time You are so right. And it was really thought as a representation of the technical reality and timeline of the distro, not for pure marketing reasons. Here is the complete story that is behind this names, if that interrests you...
The naming convention came from the switch to a one year release cycle for the 2006. Since the distro was going to be there for one year, and since most of this year was going to be 2006, it made more sense to call it 2006 and have it called 2006 for 3 months in 2005 than the other way around. The decision to switch to a one year cycle came from users requests for more stability.
Unfortunatly, this move, despite having been made at the users requests, wasnt a popular success. Just read the comments on this page and you will see that a lot of people want the last version of many apps as soon as possible. Which has some sense in the free software world where some apps just move so fast and sometimes a newer version means more stability. So with the 2007.0 the distro came back to a 6 months cycle.
But some aspects of the one year cycle remained in order to have the best of both world and again, it had to be reflected in the naming convention.
So, 6 months later the 2007.1 was built from the 2007.0 with no revolutionnary change to its foundations (like kernel, glib, gcc) but instead with many improvements and polishings in the desktops, fixing all those little bugs that were so irritating with every mandrake/mandriva release up to now, and a lot of work has been put into improving the existing mandriva tools, like the package manager and now the connexion manager. So the 2007.1 was a really stable yet up to date distro.
Another nice aspect of the distro since that time is the backporting infrastructure. Since the distro was going to stay for one year, in 2006 a lot of work has been put into making the softwares from the development version available easily to the previous version of the distro through a process that should not be a burden for the contributors. So the distro was back to a 6 months cycle, but this infrastructure was and is still there, and now important fast evolving apps like firefox can be backported quicker, which was one of the complaints made often to the distro. (You can see the importance of backporting in MEPIS recent swith to debian).
So all this led to chosing a name that would convey the fact that the 2007.1 was very close to the 2007.0, an evolution in time: "2007 spring".
Take all that with a grain of salt, I'm managing the Mandriva french forums for Mandriva, but I'm coming from the mandriva community and it really is my distro of choice.
A user friendly and user oriented distro. It is not perfect, it has flaw but they still try to improve it with end users in mind.
There is the club which can be seen as a way to support the distro and pay back for what you receive if you're not into development and contributions, but it is also a place to receive support ot to have your voice heard.
There has been time when the "voice heard" part was not obvious, but there are right now 2 paid moderators in the us forum and 1 in the french one. They are there to help users but also to make informations flow between developpers, head honchos and users.
recent example: the one year release date comes from users, they are now arguing that 18 months support is too low for a one year release schedule, it is being debated. kiosk, a new click to install web service was going to be only for silver users, both standard and silver complained, it will be available to standard users. a spanish user who posted many insightfull comments in the forum and attracted attention toward its support site has seen his forums become the official spanish language forums. I have many examples in mind, and it is true with cooker too, the development version, where some external users have a big influence on the distro itself. The problem till now was more that this external user influence was not very obvious than that it didnt exist.
So, all in all, I would say, users would find in mandriva a distro for them and by them. You don't need to be technical to have influence over there like in most other distro.
Also, the discussion as to what will be in 2007 have started, so it's time to voice you preferences. (and contrary to what is often heard, you don't need to pay to log in in the forums or to acces the mandrivaclub.com site). http://forum.mandrivaclub.com/index.php?op=En http://club.mandriva.com/ DISCLAIMER: I'm the french moderator (see above). It therefore explains both my bias and the mistakes and frenchisms in my post.
You missed the stage where the software you wanted to install wasn't in the repository, so you couldn't find it in the Software Wizard. I didn't miss it, it's not what this article is about. When a package is not in the repository, you're left on your own just like in windows. I agree with you that this stage is a problem and less practical than rpmdrake, that's my point.
As for source code, it's a last option, but it's still more practical than not having it.
I think there is over 11000 rpms in mandriva repositories right now.
When theory and reality disagree, reality wins. Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software. If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.
If I want to install software X under windows, i must: -find the site of the publisher or some software site -find the installer -download the installer -click the installer -answer questions -be aware of spyware
If I want to install software X under Mandriva, i must: -check that it is not already installed since it comes with hundreds of softwares -click the Software Wizard -find the software (by finding it in its category or searching for his name) -click OK
I therefore disagree with your statement.
What you really mean is that it is more difficult to install softwares under linux the windows way. That is true, and that is what this article is all about: you don't install software the same way under linux and under windows.
The linux way is more difficult to set up if you are a windows user, since you have to grasp the concept of repository and then you have to learn one new software "the software manager" prior to installing softwares (like in windows, newcomers had to learn the installer first, which seems so easy to them by now), but, AFTERWARDS, installing programs is easier: -no internet search -no decision about where to install -security -the same amount of clicks or type
I thinks it's a very good idea to describe the softwares installation process under linux, which may be puzzling at first to grasp when coming from windows but is really a no brainer afterwards.
As for the online documentation that the article describes, it is contained in the distribution, just install with the "Software Packages Installation wizard" those packages : mandriva-doc-Starter-fr mandriva-doc-Drakxtools-Guide mandriva-doc-Command-Line mandriva-doc-Server_Conf_Guide
The first 2 being the most importants for the beginner. Once installed, they will be accessible in the documentation menu.
Also, if you need help and support afterwards, go to the mandrivaclub forums, you don't need to be a paying member to post there, you just have to register a login as in any online forum. It is a community driven forum, yet with the en/us forum admin being a paid mandriva employee, an uber help machine and an "original doom" speed freak. http://forum.mandrivaclub.com/
I've got a better offer. What about they try to find a local solution that will be better localised, that will have local support, that will create jobs, that will keep their cash inside the country, all this meaning that it will help develop a local well adapted independant IT which will benefit their country as a whole?
Bullshit! By destroying the internal rules that are well adapted to each local economy and presenting a carbon copy of the US lack of sane legislation as a "unified EU solution" you're giving away EU's collective ass to the US majors. No thanks!
Unification? Yes, of course! Desintegration? No way!
It was meant to unify Europe into a large trading bloc that would rival the U.S. in trading and negotiating power. Read your history books about Europe. Europe has never been meant as being a rival to the US. Europe was meant for european countries to stop slaughtering each others in bloody senseless wars. To reach this goal, economical goals were set up as a first step, and law unification will be another. So yes, law unificcation is good and will happen, but law unification doesnt mean no regulation or no law and power to the rich only. Sorry, we don't want no brainless politically corrupting majors, power shortages, illiteracy, poor and uneffective public school systems and what else. Most european citizen want regulations as long as they are effective as a protection against social abuses.
Europe does exist. She does not exist through a comparaison or an opposition with the USA, who also exist themselves by themselves. It is just a matter of having Europe defined in relation to what is already there, not by destroying everything that seems a problem. Finding solutions is what will make Europe exist, and for that, we need politically courageous men, not braind dead sold out lobbyists. And there are a lot in the european parlament.
And yes, if all this comes true, we will be a counter weight to the USA, but it will be a consequence, not a goal. And they need it too.
I think the most damaging thing to the linux comunity right now is distro wars. It gives a false impression of "this" linux being good and "that" linux being bad. Many users who would consider to switch are repelled by such distro wars, and those who do the big jump discover with time that many of the problems are structural and are to be found across every distros. They are then discouraged. Good luck in your trip.
You didnt answer my question about when you used the torrents.
Every thing that is in the panel is configured by right clicking on it and choosing configure panel. Those alternative menus are configured there also.
The alternative menus have been removed by default because there is a crash of the panel when exiting KDE. This crash is very difficult to find, they have been trying for weeks to pinpoint it, but no luck. It happen only to certain users, certain users have removed it by removing the alternative menus. To some users it is coming anyway, other users have removed it by creating a new ~/.kde. They made this because it was the best way to remove the problem for 95% of those who would have got it without asking htem to go through difficult manipulations. And they documented it in the errata or release notes. I found all this info in the forum, in the errata or release notes and in cooker.
Once fooled with my user agent, the pop up asks me to give rights to the java applet to read file in my home directory and delete them. I'm not the proper target for such a thing: You don't touch my files, you don't look into my home, be gone!
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the point.
The point is that it came out in a terrible state, that nobody cared about it for years. And when it finally got some attention, it was too late for many users who had switched desktop, and, in my case, had stopped to even try to talk about it anymore with GNOME developpers.
So the point is that organic development has its good points, and its issues.
And calling me a troll for having this opinion, is actually the other point about people being ideological about it and dismissing everything that could be slightly critical of their dogma.
I know it's pretty common to skip reading the fine article, but in this case, don't miss it.
He explains why he was fooled by SCO; for example, how Caldera won a settlement against Microsoft, which led him to believe that the SCO Group (successor of Caldera) might actually win. But he doesn't try to dodge the blame; he takes on the blame due him and apologizes.
The problem is that he doesnt take the blame to the fullest.
Fisrt bad analysis:
he didnt believe SCO would win its first trial.
Second bad analysis:
Because he made a bad analysis, he bases his next behavior on this, and not on a thoughtfull analysis of the new situation. Stupid.
next (I'm bored to count):
He doesnt gets that the first trial biggest problem was that it would lead to a new antitrust trial to microsoft, this one about microsoft being anticompetitive in order to gain a dominant position where the other one was about maintining its position. So SCO was greedy in accepting micorosoft money, and not very clever. They could have gained much more in refusing microsoft offer.
next:
He didnt take into account that they were greedy, and maybe he could have taken into account that they made connexion with microosft during this first settled trial, all which would have given credit to groklaw suspition that microsoft was behind the SCO trial instead of his rebuffal ot their views.
last and most terrible anlysis: with all those errors and the few he admits, he continues to believe he is suited to this work. Wrong. He is either too naive or too stupid. Or too corrupted, but he wouldnt do such a public apology of error if he was, so I give him that, he is probably honnest.
No, I'm talking aboout GNOME which is a free software project.
I don't get what you are talking about, both free software and open source can be done by individuals or corporate, and both can be done in an organic or carefully planed way.
The drawback to this "scratch what itches" organic way of development is that you can end up your project with big issues because no developpers cared for something that itches particularly front end users like, say, for example, a terrible file selector that isn't improved for years.
Ideology aside, a little bit of carefull planning doesnt hurt either.
off topic: On my via epia xfce is actually slower than KDE.
The problem with xfce or gnome is not the choice they made per se, but the fact that you can't actually get out of them. If you happen to be a person that don't fit what they see as a regular user and what is good for you, you just can't have a good experience with their desktop.
So yes, the KDE control center is crammed with features, but I only know and use those that I need and I have turned the desktop into a wonderfull, simple and sane experience for me. A thing that I can't do with GNOME, XFCE or any Windows.
And before you actually dismisses me as a KDE fanboy: I was a GNOME user prior to their stance on "forced down your throat" usability. I had also all "regular users" I knows of try the GNOME desktop so that I don't force my choice on them and they all prefer KDE. So this is not a representative panel, it's just a familym but they are supposedly the target of this usability choice, but either because its defaults are windows like (wife used windows at work before they switched to Linux), either because they can turn it into a strange unbearable carnival of colors (youngsters), either because they can drag and drop all their heart between applications (grand parents) or because I can heavily customise it to suit my day to day work, everybody chose to use KDE.
I'm sorry, but when I use the console it doesnt force me to use that command to another because it's "THE right way to do it", I can choose whichever I see fit for the job and pipe them into an unthought of combination.
That's the part I like about the unix philosophy.
To me the GNOME usability choice were not made to suit the users, but to suit the helpdesks. Users are versatile, I dislike and I'm even worried by this computer behavior which asks the user to fits the system and not the other way around.
By any yardstick, it is very clear that Microsoft IS A MONOPLY in the massive worlwide PC market.
It is also clear that they maintain their monopoly by abusive practices and that the US government doesn't do anything to fix this. See the outcome of the microsoft US trial.
So it's now clear that microsoft is used as a leverage by the us government and other governments have to step in and protect themselves. Which is happening.
About the bug reporting problem, this problem has been adressed the last months by Adam who posted this news.
He has set up a team to go through all bugs and clean up the base, and they now follow all new bugs so that they don't leave reports unanswered, forgotten or unsolved. They also take care of the reporter side, whenever people need to be asked for details or tests.
There is also a new bugzilla, much quicker, setup by vdanen iirc.
So yes, there has been problems, but there is also a strong will to do what it's right to correct them, and there are some fine persons over there to do it. Don't take what you experienced then for granted.
1. Searching for the new location for the repository. They seemed to constantly change the paths arbitrarily every few weeks or so, apparently because they 'decided' that the old path wasn't a good naming convention or something.
This is now done interactively from the package manager, you just click "add" and it gets a list of mirrors over the internet, you choose one, and your medias are automagically configured:
main + contrib + non-free which countain most of the stuff and their respective updates, backports, testing directories. (backports and testing being ignored by default without you having to configure anything).
So all this is transparent to the user now.
2. Downloading the updated package info.
there has been for years a synthesis version of this which is just a few Ko heavy.
With the procedure above, the synthesis version is chosen by defaut, you can choose by media to use or not the synthesis version. So info updates takes only a few seconds unless you really want the extra infos that are in the complete info file.
All this is of course possible from the command line too.
anchoring the product to a time
You are so right. And it was really thought as a representation of the technical reality and timeline of the distro, not for pure marketing reasons.
Here is the complete story that is behind this names, if that interrests you...
The naming convention came from the switch to a one year release cycle for the 2006.
Since the distro was going to be there for one year, and since most of this year was going to be 2006, it made more sense to call it 2006 and have it called 2006 for 3 months in 2005 than the other way around.
The decision to switch to a one year cycle came from users requests for more stability.
Unfortunatly, this move, despite having been made at the users requests, wasnt a popular success. Just read the comments on this page and you will see that a lot of people want the last version of many apps as soon as possible. Which has some sense in the free software world where some apps just move so fast and sometimes a newer version means more stability.
So with the 2007.0 the distro came back to a 6 months cycle.
But some aspects of the one year cycle remained in order to have the best of both world and again, it had to be reflected in the naming convention.
So, 6 months later the 2007.1 was built from the 2007.0 with no revolutionnary change to its foundations (like kernel, glib, gcc) but instead with many improvements and polishings in the desktops, fixing all those little bugs that were so irritating with every mandrake/mandriva release up to now, and a lot of work has been put into improving the existing mandriva tools, like the package manager and now the connexion manager.
So the 2007.1 was a really stable yet up to date distro.
Another nice aspect of the distro since that time is the backporting infrastructure.
Since the distro was going to stay for one year, in 2006 a lot of work has been put into making the softwares from the development version available easily to the previous version of the distro through a process that should not be a burden for the contributors. So the distro was back to a 6 months cycle, but this infrastructure was and is still there, and now important fast evolving apps like firefox can be backported quicker, which was one of the complaints made often to the distro. (You can see the importance of backporting in MEPIS recent swith to debian).
So all this led to chosing a name that would convey the fact that the 2007.1 was very close to the 2007.0, an evolution in time: "2007 spring".
Take all that with a grain of salt, I'm managing the Mandriva french forums for Mandriva, but I'm coming from the mandriva community and it really is my distro of choice.
A user friendly and user oriented distro.
It is not perfect, it has flaw but they still try to improve it with end users in mind.
There is the club which can be seen as a way to support the distro and pay back for what you receive if you're not into development and contributions, but it is also a place to receive support ot to have your voice heard.
There has been time when the "voice heard" part was not obvious, but there are right now 2 paid moderators in the us forum and 1 in the french one. They are there to help users but also to make informations flow between developpers, head honchos and users.
recent example:
the one year release date comes from users, they are now arguing that 18 months support is too low for a one year release schedule, it is being debated.
kiosk, a new click to install web service was going to be only for silver users, both standard and silver complained, it will be available to standard users.
a spanish user who posted many insightfull comments in the forum and attracted attention toward its support site has seen his forums become the official spanish language forums.
I have many examples in mind, and it is true with cooker too, the development version, where some external users have a big influence on the distro itself.
The problem till now was more that this external user influence was not very obvious than that it didnt exist.
So, all in all, I would say, users would find in mandriva a distro for them and by them. You don't need to be technical to have influence over there like in most other distro.
Also, the discussion as to what will be in 2007 have started, so it's time to voice you preferences. (and contrary to what is often heard, you don't need to pay to log in in the forums or to acces the mandrivaclub.com site).
http://forum.mandrivaclub.com/index.php?op=En
http://club.mandriva.com/
DISCLAIMER: I'm the french moderator (see above). It therefore explains both my bias and the mistakes and frenchisms in my post.
You missed the stage where the software you wanted to install wasn't in the repository, so you couldn't find it in the Software Wizard.
I didn't miss it, it's not what this article is about. When a package is not in the repository, you're left on your own just like in windows. I agree with you that this stage is a problem and less practical than rpmdrake, that's my point.
As for source code, it's a last option, but it's still more practical than not having it.
I think there is over 11000 rpms in mandriva repositories right now.
When theory and reality disagree, reality wins. Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software. If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.
If I want to install software X under windows, i must:
-find the site of the publisher or some software site
-find the installer
-download the installer
-click the installer
-answer questions
-be aware of spyware
If I want to install software X under Mandriva, i must:
-check that it is not already installed since it comes with hundreds of softwares
-click the Software Wizard
-find the software (by finding it in its category or searching for his name)
-click OK
I therefore disagree with your statement.
What you really mean is that it is more difficult to install softwares under linux the windows way.
That is true, and that is what this article is all about: you don't install software the same way under linux and under windows.
The linux way is more difficult to set up if you are a windows user, since you have to grasp the concept of repository and then you have to learn one new software "the software manager" prior to installing softwares (like in windows, newcomers had to learn the installer first, which seems so easy to them by now), but, AFTERWARDS, installing programs is easier:
-no internet search
-no decision about where to install
-security
-the same amount of clicks or type
I thinks it's a very good idea to describe the softwares installation process under linux, which may be puzzling at first to grasp when coming from windows but is really a no brainer afterwards.
As for the online documentation that the article describes, it is contained in the distribution, just install with the "Software Packages Installation wizard" those packages :
mandriva-doc-Starter-fr
mandriva-doc-Drakxtools-Guide
mandriva-doc-Command-Line
mandriva-doc-Server_Conf_Guide
The first 2 being the most importants for the beginner. Once installed, they will be accessible in the documentation menu.
Also, if you need help and support afterwards, go to the mandrivaclub forums, you don't need to be a paying member to post there, you just have to register a login as in any online forum.
It is a community driven forum, yet with the en/us forum admin being a paid mandriva employee, an uber help machine and an "original doom" speed freak.
http://forum.mandrivaclub.com/
Exactly what I had in mind :)
I've got a better offer.
What about they try to find a local solution that will be better localised, that will have local support, that will create jobs, that will keep their cash inside the country, all this meaning that it will help develop a local well adapted independant IT which will benefit their country as a whole?
It was Ballmer with the coconuts and the carriage on the back, right?
Porting the Flash Player to 'alternative' platforms
and it pretty much explains that there won't be a 64 bits version as long as they don't find a guru that will rewrite this beast. Not portable.
No way?
Or we could mail them instead?
Bullshit!
By destroying the internal rules that are well adapted to each local economy and presenting a carbon copy of the US lack of sane legislation as a "unified EU solution" you're giving away EU's collective ass to the US majors.
No thanks!
Unification? Yes, of course!
Desintegration? No way!
It was meant to unify Europe into a large trading bloc that would rival the U.S. in trading and negotiating power.
Read your history books about Europe.
Europe has never been meant as being a rival to the US.
Europe was meant for european countries to stop slaughtering each others in bloody senseless wars.
To reach this goal, economical goals were set up as a first step, and law unification will be another.
So yes, law unificcation is good and will happen, but law unification doesnt mean no regulation or no law and power to the rich only.
Sorry, we don't want no brainless politically corrupting majors, power shortages, illiteracy, poor and uneffective public school systems and what else.
Most european citizen want regulations as long as they are effective as a protection against social abuses.
Europe does exist.
She does not exist through a comparaison or an opposition with the USA, who also exist themselves by themselves.
It is just a matter of having Europe defined in relation to what is already there, not by destroying everything that seems a problem. Finding solutions is what will make Europe exist, and for that, we need politically courageous men, not braind dead sold out lobbyists.
And there are a lot in the european parlament.
And yes, if all this comes true, we will be a counter weight to the USA, but it will be a consequence, not a goal. And they need it too.
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=22&DSC at=155&DCatType=3
On slashdot we only virtually read the articles, that's our policy.
I think the most damaging thing to the linux comunity right now is distro wars. It gives a false impression of "this" linux being good and "that" linux being bad.
Many users who would consider to switch are repelled by such distro wars, and those who do the big jump discover with time that many of the problems are structural and are to be found across every distros. They are then discouraged.
Good luck in your trip.
You didnt answer my question about when you used the torrents.
Every thing that is in the panel is configured by right clicking on it and choosing configure panel.
Those alternative menus are configured there also.
The alternative menus have been removed by default because there is a crash of the panel when exiting KDE.
This crash is very difficult to find, they have been trying for weeks to pinpoint it, but no luck. It happen only to certain users, certain users have removed it by removing the alternative menus. To some users it is coming anyway, other users have removed it by creating a new ~/.kde.
They made this because it was the best way to remove the problem for 95% of those who would have got it without asking htem to go through difficult manipulations. And they documented it in the errata or release notes.
I found all this info in the forum, in the errata or release notes and in cooker.
Once fooled with my user agent, the pop up asks me to give rights to the java applet to read file in my home directory and delete them.
I'm not the proper target for such a thing:
You don't touch my files, you don't look into my home, be gone!