I don't actually think boot time is dominated completely by I/O activity
The HDD or SSD is still the bottleneck in todays computers.
As for the wireless, I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to connect to WEP with 802.1x authentication
That's kinda wierd... But did you know that if you have a wireless router that supports multiple types of encryption, you can not all use them simultaniously with most routers? You have to set your router to the type of encruption you want. Mind you that the WEP 'security' is a joke. Cracking the security with a Pentium 3 laptop takes about one week with Back|Track! WPA1/2 is much better as the encryption changes with every package. Notice that WEP is not WPA1!
IE 7 does suck, but your English is quite good regardless.
Well thank you:) I often get critisized about my English on the internet. It's kinda funny when I'm on voice communication... People tell me to go back to first school, but when I tell them I don't live in an English speaking country they go like "Huh? Oh so you moved to another country when you were young?" -"Ehm... no?" -"Oh so your parents are english?" -"Uhm... no?" -"Wow... you speak way better English than any non-native American that I know."... It's mostly due to the fact that my accent is more or less perfect:P
I don't really understand whether you dissagree with me or not, but I change my desktop wallpaper a lot, and everytime I use a red one I get a little jumpy. Red is also the color of blood which also puts you into an alarming state. Guess why traffic lights use red for "Look out! STOP!" and green for "it's OK, you can drive.".
Its the reason I can answer 98% of all computer related questions I receive
I thought you meant the man files in Linux (ie user$: man lynx)
Have you noticed how in more recent versions of Windows most programs ship local copies of dlls
That's awesome. I wish that with dpkg you could do that as well. This would be so incredibly usefull with multiple versions of Wine running so that I can finnaly install all of my Windows games at once.
I'm not really sure how a de-fragmentation option can suck if everything is working properly
Well the problem is that a defragmentation tool can't completely defrag NTFS because of the way NTFS works. Try this for example: run the standard windows defrag tool. Make a scann and defrag. Now that you're finnished run a scann again and defrag again. Now do it again and again and again. You will notice that every time you defrag NTFS it will become less and less and less messy. I can't explain to you why because it's too much explenating. Google an article on Ext3 vs NTFS fragmentation or something if you're interestedin how it works.
every linux program I've seen seems to store its data in tons of tiny files anyway. Hooray for artificial simulation of fragmentation
Linux could ofcourse let them be stored in a single entiety and load it at startup but then you will get Windows regitry hell and longer boot times.
Indexing at the file system seems to make much more sense than at the application level
Yes indeed, but it's Windows who indexes (that means a background process or something in userland) NTFS and not NTFS indexing... well NTFS. The whole thing about the new FS that should have come with Vista (something MS promised to deliver ever since Windows 95 or maybe even earlyer... I can't remember when exactly (Google yellow road to Cairo)) is that it indexes itself by nature, or is some sort of database which you can crawl through (not really sure what it actually is).
Certainly less so than randomly not being able to connect to wireless access points.
Are you referring to Ubuntu? I neer had problems with acces point. Well sometimes the connection drops but with Windows it's the same problem except for the fact that Windows doesn't show you it has lost onnection and just tries to reconnect every time and letting you think the connection is just slow.
But on the other hand, there is an option on the UPEK reader to store them in the reader itself
Yeah it is usualy stored in the Trusted platform Module chip but that chips is easily outreadable very easy. If you don't have physicall acces to the hardware it's much harder though...
Sorry for the crappy Englis but I am an ESL person and I am currently behind a friends Vista laptop with IE7 so no spelling check;)
RingTFM isn't going to get anyone anywhere. These days you can ask it on the Ubuntu forums and/or on www.linuxquestions.org and recieve kind and (mostly) helpful answers. Or did you recieve a manual (hardcopy) with your Dell Ubuntu laptop? If all fails you can also upgrade to 8.04 (if you want to play some games because drivers for 8.10 are still far away, except for Intel cards). If your DVD playback fails after the upgrade or after a clean install then you need to Google for what script you need to run (it's included and hidden in a default Ubuntu install. Note that Ubuntu always has DVD playback by default but if you want to watch DVDs with copy protection (like the old remastered Star Wars episodes) then you'll need to run that script once.
I did actually look at thinkfinger and fprint. Messing with PAM terrifies me as its the one way I can really think of to utterly break my system if I do it wrong.
Fingerprint master passwords are very insecure. Standards Linux passwords are hashed. By reading out your fingerprint something that is encrypted will be decrypted (or so I think that works). There are articles enough on the net about the bad shape fingerprint identification on computers is (at least) currently in. BTW, did you got grsync working?
As for Windows slowing down, I've honestly never seen it. Maybe I maintain my systems well, but I've also never had someone come to me and say my Windows is running slow. Please help.
In time the Windows registry starts becoming a mess. Third party background processes are loaded after Explorer is fully loaded. NTFS fragments heavily (there are defrag options, but they still suck). A Linux FS like ext3 fore example only start fragmentation when your partition is full for 80 percent or more. Later on more programs start conflicting with each other. Program X replaces DLL that program Y needs, etc. Windows indexes NTFS by keeping a record of all changes that you make and then write files in every folder you changed at shutdown(!). Then there are updates. Notice that every update makes your system slower! I recommend that with every SP you remove all updates and then install the SP. Futhermore: to have a more secure system you are required to have all sorts of scanning apps that slow down your WIndows install (Windows Defender, Hitman Pro, McAfee, etc). Ofcourse your probably thinking "Why run in admin mode?", well that's because most apps for XP require Admin privilages... So what are we getting? All kinds of malware. In the end Xp is just a dissaster situation. The pretty much fixed the default privilages in Vista (and then screwed up a 1000 other things, but oh well...)
Have you tried http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader? I am not really sure what to do about the mic array... I have no experience with more than 2 channels in Linux because I only need stereo. Have you asked for help in the Ubuntu forums? You might as well be watching a movie or something with a media player that does not support multiple channels. Is not PulseAudio able to mix/change channels on-the-fly?
Would that be the rdiff frontend that freezes kinit on KDE's startup if a backup is scheduled. I love not being able to launch applications for 30 minutes while a backup is running (yes I have experienced this).
Also, not viable by your own reasoning, because I should read Linux as Gnome.
No that is just what my dad thinks. Gnome will be the only thing my dad sees when he uses Linux. Therefore he thinks that Gnome (which could also be ran on *BSD) is Linux.
Sure, and I can have a virtual printer, just like in Linux that exports PDFs.
I am not reffering to that. You can actually import and export PDF files in OpenOffice.org3 and not by hitting the print button and selecting something like ÂPrint as PDF to fileÂ.
And you just listed the fact that your Dad uses a whole bunch of windows programs in Linux, which means MS isn't going away.
My dad works in a hospital and there they have Windows Mobile PDAs (there are alternatives). He requires Office 2003 because they use paid-for exotic non-MS developed plugins (that also do not work with MS Office 2007) that they require for certain files he uses. Doom3 and Quake4 are not Windows programs (cross platform)! He also uses MS Exchange at work (which is, together with Windows Mobile, not a program and not run on his Linux laptop) which he needs to be compatible with, but there are Exchange alternatives for Linux.
Also, if you Dad is dual booting, clearly some need isn't being fulfilled.
He has a dual boot but is not dual-booting so to speak. He just has it in case he needs to install something that is XP only (which never happened). It's also a sence of safety that he can go back into XP anytime he wants (he is new to Linux remember?)
The deficiencies of Gnome in regards to the technologically unimpaired have been well documented. Gtk+ tabs are my favorite example.
My dad knows how tabs work in Windows and IE7, so no problem here.
Wait, Amarok2 was released. Intruiging...
It's cross platform, but still in beta fase. I have it installed on my KDE4 box and have yet to encounter any bugs.
Sorry, [ubuntu 8.10]'s not released yet. XP is up to the task and it was released what, almost 8 years ago?
Yes XP will do everything, including letting you pull out your hairs for not doing what you ask it to do (virus here, malware there). After 6 months you can't play games at reasonable frame rates anymore (Dad: "Vince, Quake4 is stuttering. It didn't happen when the laptop was new.")
Sure, we can go back and forth about what deficiencies are, but ultimately, you will defend Linux and I will be amused, because I used to be the same way, hell, I even contributed a few patches, but in the end, it wasn't worth it for me.
I am not defending it because I want to win. I am also not a Linux fanboy (I would love to be able to use FreeBSD instead). I just have the nasty habit to try to correct everything that I think is incorrect. I am helpful and creative, but can also be a pain in the ass sometimes because of that;)
The point remains that feature parity is hard. For instance, OS X and Vista (higher version) now have built in backup functionality while the best backup solution I was able to find for Linux was dar which, while nifty and easily scriptable, is shell only.
Kubuntu has an QT out-of-the-box(TM) backup utility that can do pretty much the same as that of Windows XP SP2 Pro whatever(R).
Or, the fact that PowerPoint can output to multiple monitors. Speaking of MS Office, I find OneNote dead useful. Ironically, thats because I first discovered BasKet and realized OneNote works mostly the same, only its done better, but BasKet is in limbo from the KDE 3 -> 4 transition.
Ehm... if Microsoft is dead, then Microsoft Office is dead as well... Same goes for MS Office For Mac...
That, and the fact that drivers aren't available for a tremendous amount of hardware.
Which doesn't really matter because you won't resell an old computer model/version to a person who already bought that one. In other words: work only on drivers for the hardware that you are about to sell. And another plus: "Yeah that was a Vista machine... it wasn't designed for Linux. But look at what we have here: The new Dell(TM) Designed For Linux Linspiron 6400(R)!;)
Sure, its great to say in theory, but do you think Dell or HP wants to foot the bill for improving an Office suite, [...]
Ehm... it's not an Office suit; it's the only Office suit still in existence. Do you think that when MS stopped producing Office disks that companies and therefore household can legally 'pirate' them? No they won't.
hardware drivers, the graphics system, the desktop shell, and all the little useful tidbits that come with an operating system like hardware configuration utilities (this is where I think Linux has the hardest time) when it can rely on a multitude of partner companies to do it for them like Broadcom/Intel/MS which have specialized knowledge in the area.
Ehm... HP printers work with Linux, Intel has GPL'ed Linux drivers, Broadcom works with the new Ubuntu wireless stack.
The reason I am so down on this is I myself actually bought the m1330 from Dell with Ubuntu installed, yet I have 3 1/2 pieces of outright non-functional hardware and wireless with almost crippled functionality on the machine purportedly designed for Linux.
Yeah right... My fathers Dell Precision workstation laptop designed for XP and Vista that is one year old came with Windows XP actually works 100% with the latest Ubuntu out-of-the-box(TM) with the exception of the nVidia driver but that's because it's somewhat bleeding edge X.Org that nVidia is yet to support... And I'd love to hear from you what this 'crippled' functionality might be...
. It'd be great if it worked and I could have a viable alternative to Windows on PC hardware, but I've become to cynical at this point to think it will.
My dad can safely dual-boot XP with Ubuntu. He can browse the web with Firefox (with ad-block plus so he gets no adds in his face,flash, and a fake user agent so he can check his hotmail), sync his Windows PDA and MS Exchange stuff with Evolution. Can import and export PDF files with OpenOffice.org3, can do all he wants with MS Office 2003 that works with Cross-Over Linux as well as the MSOOXML import filer plugin for MS Office 2003, can play a game of Doom3 and Quake4 natively (my dad loves id-software games and guess what?; they all have Linux clients)
In the meantime, I'll look wistfully over the fence at the Mac pasture where the grass certainly looks greener.
It does? Wow... nice Firefox browser you have there... Is that OpenOffice.org for opening the latest ODF spec files? There are more of them flying around the web than MSOOXML files and definitely in the future wh
My primary language is Dutch, which has pretty much the same grammer as German. I am 19 years old and the only thing you get to learn here at school in the Netherlands is "Hello what's your name?", "Do you like meatballs" and some Brittish-English sayings.
The problem that I have is that when have something inside my head that I want to say in English than it is really hard to convert it to English. It's like converting a.jpeg image to.svg, if you know what I mean;)
Damn it! You got me... Well, there's no point in hiding the truth now... Truth is I decided not to paint that painting in the past, just to fsck up Wikipedia you know (it's fun), but when seeing my own counterpart in the past I was forced to run as fast as I could to my time machine. But being in a hurry I pressed the l big red button too soon and well... my entire body wasn't completely inside the machine, so that's where my ear went.
I'm about to go to bed now and fix my missing ear tomorrow. Keep an eye on the Wikipedia page, but don't tell anyone, OK? I have created too much time paradoxes already;)
With Apple in complete control of what hardware gets supported in Mac OS X (read the EULA of Mac OS X or search for hackingtosh on/. to see that Mac OS X may only be installed on Apple products), a lot of manufacturers will be left out of the Mac platform.
These manufacturers have no choice but to find a solution for the market that they are in. That solution will be the most 'soccer mom'-accessible legal OS. In that case that means Linux. But here comes the obvious problem: our hardware does not work under Linux! And another problem you just pointed out: feature X and functionality Y are missing! The companies have no choice but to fix the issue(s) or go down...
But what do you think companies will do when they cannot manufacture for the Mac platform? What would you do if you were the CEO of [insert company 'not-accepted' by Apple]? I would do all I can to save the market I invested heavily in. I would bundle forces. But then again I am just a 19-year old tech enthusiast...
Mac adoption you say? Well, what exactly do you think PC-manufacturers will do when they fear the PC platform is going to get replaced by the Mac-platform?;)
Wikipedia is just the central place for what society knows. What society knows is the truth of Wikipedia. Define truth? You can not. I'm having endless discussions with my dad just on what the word means.
I'd love to have another endless discussion with anyone here about the definition of truth, but in the end 'what happened' is only observed by a human being.
(Unless you are utterly stupid) Office 2007 is much easyer and you can learn it in less than 5 minutes (I teached it myself).
MS Offie powerusers and companies do not want to switch because 2003 plugins/extensions do not work with 2007. And there is no need to switch thanks to the automated OOXML import plugin for MS_Office
First of all: Microsoft hasn't once delivered innovation.
Cause and effect: Piracy causes loss of income for proprietary software companies. Too much piracy causes bankruptcy. Bankruptcy causes Microsoft to go down. Microsoft going down means no more Windows. No more Windows causes massice Linux adoption. Massive Linux adoption brings (true) innovation to the masses.
In other words: Let's organise a world scale piracy day so we can have innovation:)
My entire point was is that integrating IE into Windows is bullshit because you can get the same features when placing gecko on top of a shitload of layers and it would still work just as excellent. There is no denying that Gecko in Steam on Wine needs to go a loooooong way before it even reaches the Linux kernel.
First of all... IE is not integrated deeply into the Windows OS because it can be completely removed. Second of all... Firefox on Linux is on top of DE/WM on top of X on top of Linux and Linux shell, therefore not integrated, but gecko can easily replace the store in Steam when running Wine.
First off all... why do you want a PC that can read all old media? Yes I know it's cool and "because you can" and all that, but old media like disk storage won't be readable in the future (magnetic loss, etc).
So maybe it is because you want your data to be readable in the future? Then just hook everything up to you 'normal' PC and start converting to newer formats.
What I do is that I make backups on the regular by burning data to DVD's and exchanging my data between my computers. This way my data never gets lost. I also only backup/archive that which is actually important to me. That way my home folder get's more and more 'stuffed' but 1TB storage costs about $150/â110 these days. It's a fucking joke... My backups (School map, music, save games, pictures and some movies (none include porn because downloading porn is so 2001) now takes up 3 DVD's. That's about 2 fscking dollars so who cares?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't actually think boot time is dominated completely by I/O activity
The HDD or SSD is still the bottleneck in todays computers.
As for the wireless, I cannot, for the life of me, get anything to connect to WEP with 802.1x authentication
That's kinda wierd... But did you know that if you have a wireless router that supports multiple types of encryption, you can not all use them simultaniously with most routers? You have to set your router to the type of encruption you want. Mind you that the WEP 'security' is a joke. Cracking the security with a Pentium 3 laptop takes about one week with Back|Track! WPA1/2 is much better as the encryption changes with every package. Notice that WEP is not WPA1!
IE 7 does suck, but your English is quite good regardless.
Well thank you :) I often get critisized about my English on the internet. It's kinda funny when I'm on voice communication... People tell me to go back to first school, but when I tell them I don't live in an English speaking country they go like "Huh? Oh so you moved to another country when you were young?" -"Ehm... no?" -"Oh so your parents are english?" -"Uhm... no?" -"Wow... you speak way better English than any non-native American that I know."... It's mostly due to the fact that my accent is more or less perfect :P
I don't really understand whether you dissagree with me or not, but I change my desktop wallpaper a lot, and everytime I use a red one I get a little jumpy. Red is also the color of blood which also puts you into an alarming state. Guess why traffic lights use red for "Look out! STOP!" and green for "it's OK, you can drive.".
Its the reason I can answer 98% of all computer related questions I receive
I thought you meant the man files in Linux (ie user$: man lynx)
Have you noticed how in more recent versions of Windows most programs ship local copies of dlls
That's awesome. I wish that with dpkg you could do that as well. This would be so incredibly usefull with multiple versions of Wine running so that I can finnaly install all of my Windows games at once.
I'm not really sure how a de-fragmentation option can suck if everything is working properly
Well the problem is that a defragmentation tool can't completely defrag NTFS because of the way NTFS works. Try this for example: run the standard windows defrag tool. Make a scann and defrag. Now that you're finnished run a scann again and defrag again. Now do it again and again and again. You will notice that every time you defrag NTFS it will become less and less and less messy. I can't explain to you why because it's too much explenating. Google an article on Ext3 vs NTFS fragmentation or something if you're interestedin how it works.
every linux program I've seen seems to store its data in tons of tiny files anyway. Hooray for artificial simulation of fragmentation
Linux could ofcourse let them be stored in a single entiety and load it at startup but then you will get Windows regitry hell and longer boot times.
Indexing at the file system seems to make much more sense than at the application level
Yes indeed, but it's Windows who indexes (that means a background process or something in userland) NTFS and not NTFS indexing... well NTFS. The whole thing about the new FS that should have come with Vista (something MS promised to deliver ever since Windows 95 or maybe even earlyer... I can't remember when exactly (Google yellow road to Cairo)) is that it indexes itself by nature, or is some sort of database which you can crawl through (not really sure what it actually is).
Certainly less so than randomly not being able to connect to wireless access points.
Are you referring to Ubuntu? I neer had problems with acces point. Well sometimes the connection drops but with Windows it's the same problem except for the fact that Windows doesn't show you it has lost onnection and just tries to reconnect every time and letting you think the connection is just slow.
But on the other hand, there is an option on the UPEK reader to store them in the reader itself
Yeah it is usualy stored in the Trusted platform Module chip but that chips is easily outreadable very easy. If you don't have physicall acces to the hardware it's much harder though...
Sorry for the crappy Englis but I am an ESL person and I am currently behind a friends Vista laptop with IE7 so no spelling check ;)
Damn Small Linux with Fluxbox?
Isn't a raytracing algorythm just a few lines of code? Yet Quake3 with raytracing is heavyer than Crysis...
Yeah so!? Cars are also getting bigger and more complex over time, so Linux must be heading in the right direction!
Did I just... ? Oh sh-
I should probably read the manual.
RingTFM isn't going to get anyone anywhere. These days you can ask it on the Ubuntu forums and/or on www.linuxquestions.org and recieve kind and (mostly) helpful answers. Or did you recieve a manual (hardcopy) with your Dell Ubuntu laptop? If all fails you can also upgrade to 8.04 (if you want to play some games because drivers for 8.10 are still far away, except for Intel cards). If your DVD playback fails after the upgrade or after a clean install then you need to Google for what script you need to run (it's included and hidden in a default Ubuntu install. Note that Ubuntu always has DVD playback by default but if you want to watch DVDs with copy protection (like the old remastered Star Wars episodes) then you'll need to run that script once.
I did actually look at thinkfinger and fprint. Messing with PAM terrifies me as its the one way I can really think of to utterly break my system if I do it wrong.
Fingerprint master passwords are very insecure. Standards Linux passwords are hashed. By reading out your fingerprint something that is encrypted will be decrypted (or so I think that works). There are articles enough on the net about the bad shape fingerprint identification on computers is (at least) currently in. BTW, did you got grsync working?
As for Windows slowing down, I've honestly never seen it. Maybe I maintain my systems well, but I've also never had someone come to me and say my Windows is running slow. Please help.
In time the Windows registry starts becoming a mess. Third party background processes are loaded after Explorer is fully loaded. NTFS fragments heavily (there are defrag options, but they still suck). A Linux FS like ext3 fore example only start fragmentation when your partition is full for 80 percent or more. Later on more programs start conflicting with each other. Program X replaces DLL that program Y needs, etc. Windows indexes NTFS by keeping a record of all changes that you make and then write files in every folder you changed at shutdown(!). Then there are updates. Notice that every update makes your system slower! I recommend that with every SP you remove all updates and then install the SP. Futhermore: to have a more secure system you are required to have all sorts of scanning apps that slow down your WIndows install (Windows Defender, Hitman Pro, McAfee, etc). Ofcourse your probably thinking "Why run in admin mode?", well that's because most apps for XP require Admin privilages... So what are we getting? All kinds of malware. In the end Xp is just a dissaster situation. The pretty much fixed the default privilages in Vista (and then screwed up a 1000 other things, but oh well...)
I'd completely stress out in that room because of the red colors.
Non-functional fingerprint reader
Non-functional microphone array
Have you tried http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader? I am not really sure what to do about the mic array... I have no experience with more than 2 channels in Linux because I only need stereo. Have you asked for help in the Ubuntu forums? You might as well be watching a movie or something with a media player that does not support multiple channels. Is not PulseAudio able to mix/change channels on-the-fly?
Would that be the rdiff frontend that freezes kinit on KDE's startup if a backup is scheduled. I love not being able to launch applications for 30 minutes while a backup is running (yes I have experienced this).
Have you tried grsync? That is rsync with a GUI that is able to configure rsync as well. Screenshot from the official website: http://www.opbyte.it/grsync/screenshot.html
Also, not viable by your own reasoning, because I should read Linux as Gnome.
No that is just what my dad thinks. Gnome will be the only thing my dad sees when he uses Linux. Therefore he thinks that Gnome (which could also be ran on *BSD) is Linux.
Sure, and I can have a virtual printer, just like in Linux that exports PDFs.
I am not reffering to that. You can actually import and export PDF files in OpenOffice.org3 and not by hitting the print button and selecting something like ÂPrint as PDF to fileÂ.
And you just listed the fact that your Dad uses a whole bunch of windows programs in Linux, which means MS isn't going away.
My dad works in a hospital and there they have Windows Mobile PDAs (there are alternatives). He requires Office 2003 because they use paid-for exotic non-MS developed plugins (that also do not work with MS Office 2007) that they require for certain files he uses. Doom3 and Quake4 are not Windows programs (cross platform)! He also uses MS Exchange at work (which is, together with Windows Mobile, not a program and not run on his Linux laptop) which he needs to be compatible with, but there are Exchange alternatives for Linux.
Also, if you Dad is dual booting, clearly some need isn't being fulfilled.
He has a dual boot but is not dual-booting so to speak. He just has it in case he needs to install something that is XP only (which never happened). It's also a sence of safety that he can go back into XP anytime he wants (he is new to Linux remember?)
The deficiencies of Gnome in regards to the technologically unimpaired have been well documented. Gtk+ tabs are my favorite example.
My dad knows how tabs work in Windows and IE7, so no problem here.
Wait, Amarok2 was released. Intruiging...
It's cross platform, but still in beta fase. I have it installed on my KDE4 box and have yet to encounter any bugs.
Sorry, [ubuntu 8.10]'s not released yet. XP is up to the task and it was released what, almost 8 years ago?
Yes XP will do everything, including letting you pull out your hairs for not doing what you ask it to do (virus here, malware there). After 6 months you can't play games at reasonable frame rates anymore (Dad: "Vince, Quake4 is stuttering. It didn't happen when the laptop was new.")
Sure, we can go back and forth about what deficiencies are, but ultimately, you will defend Linux and I will be amused, because I used to be the same way, hell, I even contributed a few patches, but in the end, it wasn't worth it for me.
I am not defending it because I want to win. I am also not a Linux fanboy (I would love to be able to use FreeBSD instead). I just have the nasty habit to try to correct everything that I think is incorrect. I am helpful and creative, but can also be a pain in the ass sometimes because of that ;)
The point remains that feature parity is hard. For instance, OS X and Vista (higher version) now have built in backup functionality while the best backup solution I was able to find for Linux was dar which, while nifty and easily scriptable, is shell only.
Kubuntu has an QT out-of-the-box(TM) backup utility that can do pretty much the same as that of Windows XP SP2 Pro whatever(R).
Or, the fact that PowerPoint can output to multiple monitors. Speaking of MS Office, I find OneNote dead useful. Ironically, thats because I first discovered BasKet and realized OneNote works mostly the same, only its done better, but BasKet is in limbo from the KDE 3 -> 4 transition.
Ehm... if Microsoft is dead, then Microsoft Office is dead as well... Same goes for MS Office For Mac...
That, and the fact that drivers aren't available for a tremendous amount of hardware.
Which doesn't really matter because you won't resell an old computer model/version to a person who already bought that one. In other words: work only on drivers for the hardware that you are about to sell. And another plus: "Yeah that was a Vista machine... it wasn't designed for Linux. But look at what we have here: The new Dell(TM) Designed For Linux Linspiron 6400(R)! ;)
Sure, its great to say in theory, but do you think Dell or HP wants to foot the bill for improving an Office suite, [...]
Ehm... it's not an Office suit; it's the only Office suit still in existence. Do you think that when MS stopped producing Office disks that companies and therefore household can legally 'pirate' them? No they won't.
hardware drivers, the graphics system, the desktop shell, and all the little useful tidbits that come with an operating system like hardware configuration utilities (this is where I think Linux has the hardest time) when it can rely on a multitude of partner companies to do it for them like Broadcom/Intel/MS which have specialized knowledge in the area.
Ehm... HP printers work with Linux, Intel has GPL'ed Linux drivers, Broadcom works with the new Ubuntu wireless stack.
The reason I am so down on this is I myself actually bought the m1330 from Dell with Ubuntu installed, yet I have 3 1/2 pieces of outright non-functional hardware and wireless with almost crippled functionality on the machine purportedly designed for Linux.
Yeah right... My fathers Dell Precision workstation laptop designed for XP and Vista that is one year old came with Windows XP actually works 100% with the latest Ubuntu out-of-the-box(TM) with the exception of the nVidia driver but that's because it's somewhat bleeding edge X.Org that nVidia is yet to support... And I'd love to hear from you what this 'crippled' functionality might be...
. It'd be great if it worked and I could have a viable alternative to Windows on PC hardware, but I've become to cynical at this point to think it will.
My dad can safely dual-boot XP with Ubuntu. He can browse the web with Firefox (with ad-block plus so he gets no adds in his face,flash, and a fake user agent so he can check his hotmail), sync his Windows PDA and MS Exchange stuff with Evolution. Can import and export PDF files with OpenOffice.org3, can do all he wants with MS Office 2003 that works with Cross-Over Linux as well as the MSOOXML import filer plugin for MS Office 2003, can play a game of Doom3 and Quake4 natively (my dad loves id-software games and guess what?; they all have Linux clients)
In the meantime, I'll look wistfully over the fence at the Mac pasture where the grass certainly looks greener.
It does? Wow... nice Firefox browser you have there... Is that OpenOffice.org for opening the latest ODF spec files? There are more of them flying around the web than MSOOXML files and definitely in the future wh
I hsa tched ym dad.
My primary language is Dutch, which has pretty much the same grammer as German. I am 19 years old and the only thing you get to learn here at school in the Netherlands is "Hello what's your name?", "Do you like meatballs" and some Brittish-English sayings.
The problem that I have is that when have something inside my head that I want to say in English than it is really hard to convert it to English. It's like converting a .jpeg image to .svg, if you know what I mean ;)
Damn it! You got me... Well, there's no point in hiding the truth now... Truth is I decided not to paint that painting in the past, just to fsck up Wikipedia you know (it's fun), but when seeing my own counterpart in the past I was forced to run as fast as I could to my time machine. But being in a hurry I pressed the l big red button too soon and well... my entire body wasn't completely inside the machine, so that's where my ear went.
I'm about to go to bed now and fix my missing ear tomorrow. Keep an eye on the Wikipedia page, but don't tell anyone, OK? I have created too much time paradoxes already ;)
With Apple in complete control of what hardware gets supported in Mac OS X (read the EULA of Mac OS X or search for hackingtosh on /. to see that Mac OS X may only be installed on Apple products), a lot of manufacturers will be left out of the Mac platform.
These manufacturers have no choice but to find a solution for the market that they are in. That solution will be the most 'soccer mom'-accessible legal OS. In that case that means Linux. But here comes the obvious problem: our hardware does not work under Linux! And another problem you just pointed out: feature X and functionality Y are missing! The companies have no choice but to fix the issue(s) or go down...
But what do you think companies will do when they cannot manufacture for the Mac platform? What would you do if you were the CEO of [insert company 'not-accepted' by Apple]? I would do all I can to save the market I invested heavily in. I would bundle forces. But then again I am just a 19-year old tech enthusiast...
Mac adoption you say? Well, what exactly do you think PC-manufacturers will do when they fear the PC platform is going to get replaced by the Mac-platform? ;)
Wikipedia is just the central place for what society knows. What society knows is the truth of Wikipedia. Define truth? You can not. I'm having endless discussions with my dad just on what the word means.
I'd love to have another endless discussion with anyone here about the definition of truth, but in the end 'what happened' is only observed by a human being.
(Unless you are utterly stupid) Office 2007 is much easyer and you can learn it in less than 5 minutes (I teached it myself).
MS Offie powerusers and companies do not want to switch because 2003 plugins/extensions do not work with 2007. And there is no need to switch thanks to the automated OOXML import plugin for MS_Office
First of all: Microsoft hasn't once delivered innovation.
Cause and effect: Piracy causes loss of income for proprietary software companies. Too much piracy causes bankruptcy. Bankruptcy causes Microsoft to go down. Microsoft going down means no more Windows. No more Windows causes massice Linux adoption. Massive Linux adoption brings (true) innovation to the masses.
In other words: Let's organise a world scale piracy day so we can have innovation :)
My entire point was is that integrating IE into Windows is bullshit because you can get the same features when placing gecko on top of a shitload of layers and it would still work just as excellent. There is no denying that Gecko in Steam on Wine needs to go a loooooong way before it even reaches the Linux kernel.
Google to users: "Do no evil to our wallet"
First of all... IE is not integrated deeply into the Windows OS because it can be completely removed. Second of all... Firefox on Linux is on top of DE/WM on top of X on top of Linux and Linux shell, therefore not integrated, but gecko can easily replace the store in Steam when running Wine.
TFA talks about the worth of the Linux financial ecosystem and not the worth of the Linux ecosystem itself.
BeTterFS? Better filesystem? I don't know how much you've been drinking but... ;)
First off all... why do you want a PC that can read all old media? Yes I know it's cool and "because you can" and all that, but old media like disk storage won't be readable in the future (magnetic loss, etc).
So maybe it is because you want your data to be readable in the future? Then just hook everything up to you 'normal' PC and start converting to newer formats.
What I do is that I make backups on the regular by burning data to DVD's and exchanging my data between my computers. This way my data never gets lost. I also only backup/archive that which is actually important to me. That way my home folder get's more and more 'stuffed' but 1TB storage costs about $150/â110 these days. It's a fucking joke... My backups (School map, music, save games, pictures and some movies (none include porn because downloading porn is so 2001) now takes up 3 DVD's. That's about 2 fscking dollars so who cares?
Next year Linux will turn 18, which means that Linux will be mature. So thÃt means that...
Next year is the year of Linux on the desktop! I can feel it!!!