Well, drugs are frequently linked to inducing OOBEs, like in the case you mentioned, which are currently being studied at several major universities. Incidentally, OOBEs are well-recognized phenomena and are generally accepted as valid (apparently, most of us experience a few of them every night). So, in this case, if NDEs are linked to massive DMT production, OOBEs are definitely not surprising.
I find science interesting and enjoy studying it, but I don't find that it necessarily discounts the possibilities of eastern philosophy, alien abductions, ESP, etc...
As far as I'm concerned, at this moment, science can only explain a very tiny subset of reality through the use of models. These models may well prove to be incorrect (e.g. Newtonian Mechanics). Science is an interesting field, and definitely worth pursuing, but not at the exclusion of all other lines of thinking.
I'm a huge believer in eastern philosophy (I'm a Taoist, and I regularly practice Kundalini Yoga). The experiental evidence that I've experienced in favour of these is overwhelming. Of course, I never discount the possibility that these experiences could well be psychological, but even if they are, because an experience happens simply in my mind does not discount the accuracy of it.
I guess to me, the important thing is to keep an open mind to all of the possibilities.
Very well said. I don't see any reason to not believe in alien abductions, ESP, and eastern philosophy... in fact, in the case of eastern philosophy, for instance, I have enough experiental evidence to hold a strong belief in it. Sure, the majority of alien abduction incidents are probably just episodes of sleep paralysis, but regardless, there's no reason to believe that they *all* are.
I think the problem with science is that people put far too much stock in it. Science currently only explains (as far as I'm concerned) a very tiny subset of reality through the use of workable models, which may well be quite incorrect. It's definitely a field worth pursuing, but not at the exclusion of other lines of thinking.
Aside: To the best of my knowledge, interestingly, at the time of death, the brain mass-produces both DMT (dimethyltryptamine, a potent hallucinogen found in an alarmingly huge number of plants and animals - this may be a speculation) and GHB (gamma-hydroxy-butyrate - proven to be the case), which may account for the NDE phenomenon. Incidentally, I don't believe that this "scientific" explanation discounts the nature of the experience - a lot of DMT users believe that DMT reveals a more accurate, larger picture of reality than is attainable to us in our everyday lives.
Re:They'll never get me
on
Penguin2Apple
·
· Score: 1
I don't use "office" applications. Word? LaTeX. Excel? Awk and perl. Outlook? Mutt. Powerpoint? You've got to be kidding me.
For the record, I have Word, LaTeX, Excel, Awk, Perl, Entourage, Mutt, and Powerpoint all installed on my iMac running Mac OS X, and with the exception of Mutt (only because I've grown to prefer Entourage), I use them all daily without a problem.
In this case, it would appear that Mac OS X offers me *more* choice, rather than less.
Re:They'll never get me
on
Penguin2Apple
·
· Score: 1
Certainly, you can't change them, but I think that choice comes with both its benefits and its disadvantages.
Look at open systems like Linux, where you have 5,322,453,852 different GUI toolkits available to you. It gets to the point where software vendors don't want to support Linux because of the inconsistencies, and you need 6 billion libraries installed to use all the apps that you want.
Personally, I'd prefer to sacrifice a bit of choice and settle for standardized, consistent behaviour, which is what OS X offers me. Certainly, this is not the best choice for anyone, but for naive desktop users and people who get sick of constantly dealing with Linux sysadmin (e.g. me), it's a good option.
Fully agreed. I've used desktops that have focus-follows-mouse enabled, and it seems like either I'm accidentally knocking the mouse into another window, or the mouse cursor gets in the way of what I'm trying to read / write. Icky.
but Linux will help OS X by virtue of the applications which will be easily ported and distributed for X
How many Mac users do you think will install X on their systems? I doubt more than a tiny handful. And even among those that do, in most cases there's hardly a reason to use an X app; there are Aqua alternatives that are just as good or better (the only exception that really jumps at me is xchat, which, IMO, is better than any of the OS X IRC clients). The majority of Mac users would prefer to shell out a few bucks for well-known commercial alternatives. I think Abiword and the KDE web browser (memory slip - can't recall the name now) are excellent pieces of software, but I'd choose to use MS Word and MSIE over them in a heartbeat.
I don't disagree with you there. Windows has the feeling of a big, nasty dictatorship to me... Personally, I'm not very happy with any of the operating systems available for Intel... which is why my P3 sits in the corner gathering dust and my iMac running Mac OS X is my main computer.
Ahhh... unfortunately with Linux, there never *is* a standard. Linux PDAs will suffer from the same problem that Linux desktops will suffer from... GNOME vs. KDE, Motif vs. GTK+ vs. Qt vs. Xaw3d vs. a million other GUIs, RedHat vs. Mandrake vs. Slackware vs. Debian vs. Caldera vs. SuSe, etc... etc... etc.... Choice is a good thing, but when standards are sacrificed, chaos emerges and things simply fail.
Linux is good for what it is... an operating system and a toy for geeks. But I don't care what anyone says. Linux simply isn't ready for everyday desktop usage, and definitely not ready for a PDA.
When you go to Tucows to download apps for your Linux PDA, you're going to have to navigate your way through a series of menus and be left with three apps for your specific processor and PDA - since every PDA will use a different embedded GUI, in all likelihood.
Re:Make it slick and easy and cool...
on
Sharp Readies SL-5000D
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Lets face it, most people still think Linux is an Ugly, cobbled together OS that is difficult to install and use.
I agree with the other two replies; I've been using Linux for over three years now, and I think Linux is an ugly, cobbled together OS that is difficult to install and use.
An acquaintance of mine said it best... He said that Linux has the feeling of a big shareware project that never quite gets completed. I'm inclined to agree with that statement.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't think Linux will ever take off with your every day Joe. Linux was designed by geeks, for geeks, and I think things are going to stay that way. Could it be made user friendly? Certainly - look at Mac OS X... they took BSD and made it accessible to the masses. But that was their specific goal; Linux users seem more concerned with making the 10,000,000th window manager and creating yet another GUI, which is all good and fun for geeks, but probably more detrimental for end users than anything else; it simply adds confusion and layers of complexity. Your typical user doesn't want choice... he/she just wants a user-friendly, attractive, easy to use system.
Re:Mac-only ..... nobody seems to get it.
on
The Guts Of An iPod
·
· Score: 1
Mac OS X 10.0.4 would have run like a dog with three broken legs on a G3 233 MHz CPU; however, trust me... Mac OS X 10.1 will certainly not be slow if you beef up the RAM. I have a G3 300 MHz iBook with 160 MB of RAM, and OS X 10.1 runs beautifully on it.
If you want to play around with OS X (it's definitely worth your time - I'm a Linux to Mac convert because of OS X), shop around on eBay for a ~ 300 MHz iMac. More than likely you won't be disappointed. I bought an iMac 233 to play around with OS X Public Beta and loved it so much that I bought a new iMac 600 the day the OS X 10.0 was released.
Re:Mac-only ..... nobody seems to get it.
on
The Guts Of An iPod
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The word from the tech support team at Apple is that they'll barely be breaking even on iPod sales; in fact, a single tech support call would put them at a loss for the unit (which is why they will be offering web tech support ONLY for iPod).
Clearly, in light of this, they haven't designed iPod to fatten their wallets. There's more than meets the eye here.
The hard drive alone, when bought by the end-consumer, retails for $399.
Personally, I've already ordered my iPod and I can't wait to get it!
M.U.L.E. was definitely one of my favorite games growing up. I spent hours and hours of my time playing it over and over again on my old C64. I would love to see an updated version!
I didn't mean to sound harsh... sorry. I certainly think that Debian is a fine distro; I just don't like Debian elitists always claiming that Debian is the be-all and end-all of Linux (which wasn't your intention).
Yes, my preferred disto is Redhat. I used to like Mandrake, but the USB support in the default install of Redhat is far superior to that of Mandrake, which is why I switched. (Mandrake couldn't handle my USB switchbox that shares my keyboard and trackball between my iMac and my P3).
YellowDog is a decent distro. I have played around with 1.2 and it worked well on my iMac (the install sucked, but I was left with a fully configured, working system). Personally, since OS X's release, I've found little use in running Linux on the iMac... OS X seems to solve all the annoyances that I had with Linux/*BSD.
I'm quite sick of the whole MP3 fiasco. As far as I can tell, the prices of all technology has decreased dramatically in the last ten years with the exception of CD prices, which have shot up to outrageous amounts.
For instance, an acquaintance of mine suggested I give a new artist a listen because I enjoy similar artists. So I went and downloaded the mp3s, and very much enjoyed them. Yesterday I went to my local CD store with the intention of buying the CD, only to find out that it was listed at $29.99 CDN. That's robbery. Ten years ago I could buy CDs at $16.99 CDN, and the most expensive CDs I saw were $19.99 CDN. Now the majority of CDs that I'm interested in cost $24.99 CDN, and quite frankly, I'm not honest enough to be willing to pay that much... I'd rather stick with the mp3s.
I'm so sick of people always saying that disabling JavaScript is the answer to disabling popup ads. Many websites require you to have JavaScript enabled to use them properly, and it's not a feasible solution to tell people to disable it.
Hell, while we're at it, let's just shun every technological advance that we can. Let's all use Lynx so we won't have to look at all those graphics. Or perhaps we could just telnet to the web servers and manually request pages. That would solve our popup problem once and for all now, wouldn't it?
Turning off Java is fine, and AFAIK, many people have turned off Java. However, turning off JavaScript isn't an option for most people, because a lot of sites heavily rely on client side JavaScript to function properly.
I'd like to try Debian (on i386 - no way is my Mac OS X getting replaced), but trying to download an ISO from their website is like trying to pull my own teeth out. And they have no FTP installation options like the *BSDs have. Time being, it's just too inconvenient.
Omni is definitely cool, and I switch between IE and Omni all the time. Unfortunately, my University's stupid webpage is compliant with practically no web browsers, so I need to use IE to access it (and have it work).
I've heard about rootless X on OS X, but I have no idea where to find it! Any leads on where I can find it?
I, like some of the other posters here, am an OS X user - in fact, when I heard about OS X Public Beta, despite being a poor university student, I was so excited that I specifically went on eBay and bought myself an older iMac, just to play around with it. The GUI is gorgeous, and I instantly fell in love. Wanna know why?
I used to be a frothing at the mouth Linux advocate. I ran Linux exclusively (Mandrake 7.2, as a matter of fact - which I found to be an excellent distro) on my PC, and swore by it. However, after a year of running Linux, I constantly felt that I was always waging some kind of war against my computer. There was always sys admin to be done. And worst of all, so much time was spent configuring, and not enough being productive. For instance, say one day I want to change the theme of my entire desktop (and I'm running KDE, let's say). So I select a KDE/Qt theme, and all is well. But wait - I'm also running a few GNOME/GTK+ apps. This means that I've got to find a decent GTK+ theme, and find a way to change it - and the only ways I know of doing this are to edit.gtkrc, try to figure out the name of the GNOME configuration control tool, or load GNOME, which I don't particularly want to do. And then there's Netscape, and emacs, and xterm, which means editing.Xdefaults over and over and over (and over) again, until I find a color scheme that is acceptable.
Anyways... I got sick of always battling my computer. I just wanted something that worked. Mac OS X works. You know what? I loved the Public Beta so much that I ran out and bought a new iMac the day that the final version was released. I installed it, and you know what? There was no fighting with sound, USB, etc... settings. Everything just worked. The OS X GUI is absolutely gorgeous. And after having installed XFree86 and XonX, With a couple keystrokes, I can switch my screen to an X server and run all my old, familiar Linux apps.
Despite the fact that I absolutely loathe Microsoft operating systems, I must say that IE is the best web browser I've ever used, and Office is an excellent office suite. Guess what? Now that I run OS X, I can run both of them.
Anyways... my biggest beef with Linux and *BSD is that the USB support is still not up to par. Due to the fact that I have a P3 and an iMac, and I switch between them frequently, I bought an excellent mac USB keyboard, a MS IntelliTrackBallthingy, and a USB hub. Thus, by flicking the switch on my hub, I can have the mouse and the keyboard active on whatever workstation strikes my fancy, right?
Well, partially right... Certainly, if I'm running Windows, BeOS, QNX, or Solaris, then everything runs well, but if I'm running Linux or *BSD, it ain't gonna happen. On Linux, if I'm in an XFree86 session and I switch the USB switchbox to my mac and then back again, my trackball refuses to function. If I CTRL-ALT-F1 to console mode, then switch, then switch back, and CTRL-ALT-F7 to X mode, then about 75% of the time everything works as expected. The other 25% of the time, neither my mouse nor my keyboard is detected (at which point, they are never detected again). This means pressing the reset button and waiting for fscks. I wish that I could run FreeBSD on my P3, but BSD is even worse in this arena.
A friend of mine put it well... (not to get flamed - this is the way I feel) - he said that Linux has the feeling of a big shareware project that never gets finished.
So in conclusion... when I have a breathtakingly gorgeous OS that has the ability to run all the Linux apps (with the installation of an X server), and can run all the mainstream apps (such as MS, Adobe, etc... products), why would I even consider switching to Mandrake on my G3?
Good question, but I wouldn't suspect that their task was that much easier. OS X runs on a Mach/FreeBSD core, true enough... but it does not use X - instead it uses Aqua and Quartz, so I suspect a large amount of the APIs had to be rewritten.
Re:bah -- qt the "de facto" standard?
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 1
If GTK+ were to come out for Mac OS X, I would be absolutely thrilled.
However, in the meantime, GTK+ does not exist for Mac OS X (is the port for Mac OS 9 and under, or OS X, which uses a completely different API?). wxWindows does not seem to support Mac OS X (only 9 and under). Thus, I'm extremely excited about the possibility of using Qt.
Re:WxWindows is the de facto cross platform Standa
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 1
There is, unfortunately, still no wxWindows support for Mac OS X (Mac OS 9, yes). And unfortunately, the current working version of wxWindows for Mac OS 9 requires Codewarrior, which is something that a lot of developers do not want to spring for.
Slashdot Mirror
...by this logic, changing channels during a commercial break would also constitute theft.
Man, from all the crimes I seem to unknowingly commit these days, I make the Mafia look like a troupe of girl scouts.
Well, drugs are frequently linked to inducing OOBEs, like in the case you mentioned, which are currently being studied at several major universities. Incidentally, OOBEs are well-recognized phenomena and are generally accepted as valid (apparently, most of us experience a few of them every night). So, in this case, if NDEs are linked to massive DMT production, OOBEs are definitely not surprising.
I find science interesting and enjoy studying it, but I don't find that it necessarily discounts the possibilities of eastern philosophy, alien abductions, ESP, etc...
As far as I'm concerned, at this moment, science can only explain a very tiny subset of reality through the use of models. These models may well prove to be incorrect (e.g. Newtonian Mechanics). Science is an interesting field, and definitely worth pursuing, but not at the exclusion of all other lines of thinking.
I'm a huge believer in eastern philosophy (I'm a Taoist, and I regularly practice Kundalini Yoga). The experiental evidence that I've experienced in favour of these is overwhelming. Of course, I never discount the possibility that these experiences could well be psychological, but even if they are, because an experience happens simply in my mind does not discount the accuracy of it.
I guess to me, the important thing is to keep an open mind to all of the possibilities.
Very well said. I don't see any reason to not believe in alien abductions, ESP, and eastern philosophy... in fact, in the case of eastern philosophy, for instance, I have enough experiental evidence to hold a strong belief in it. Sure, the majority of alien abduction incidents are probably just episodes of sleep paralysis, but regardless, there's no reason to believe that they *all* are.
I think the problem with science is that people put far too much stock in it. Science currently only explains (as far as I'm concerned) a very tiny subset of reality through the use of workable models, which may well be quite incorrect. It's definitely a field worth pursuing, but not at the exclusion of other lines of thinking.
Aside: To the best of my knowledge, interestingly, at the time of death, the brain mass-produces both DMT (dimethyltryptamine, a potent hallucinogen found in an alarmingly huge number of plants and animals - this may be a speculation) and GHB (gamma-hydroxy-butyrate - proven to be the case), which may account for the NDE phenomenon. Incidentally, I don't believe that this "scientific" explanation discounts the nature of the experience - a lot of DMT users believe that DMT reveals a more accurate, larger picture of reality than is attainable to us in our everyday lives.
I don't use "office" applications. Word? LaTeX. Excel? Awk and perl. Outlook? Mutt. Powerpoint? You've got to be kidding me.
For the record, I have Word, LaTeX, Excel, Awk, Perl, Entourage, Mutt, and Powerpoint all installed on my iMac running Mac OS X, and with the exception of Mutt (only because I've grown to prefer Entourage), I use them all daily without a problem.
In this case, it would appear that Mac OS X offers me *more* choice, rather than less.
Certainly, you can't change them, but I think that choice comes with both its benefits and its disadvantages.
Look at open systems like Linux, where you have 5,322,453,852 different GUI toolkits available to you. It gets to the point where software vendors don't want to support Linux because of the inconsistencies, and you need 6 billion libraries installed to use all the apps that you want.
Personally, I'd prefer to sacrifice a bit of choice and settle for standardized, consistent behaviour, which is what OS X offers me. Certainly, this is not the best choice for anyone, but for naive desktop users and people who get sick of constantly dealing with Linux sysadmin (e.g. me), it's a good option.
Fully agreed. I've used desktops that have focus-follows-mouse enabled, and it seems like either I'm accidentally knocking the mouse into another window, or the mouse cursor gets in the way of what I'm trying to read / write. Icky.
but Linux will help OS X by virtue of the applications which will be easily ported and distributed for X
How many Mac users do you think will install X on their systems? I doubt more than a tiny handful. And even among those that do, in most cases there's hardly a reason to use an X app; there are Aqua alternatives that are just as good or better (the only exception that really jumps at me is xchat, which, IMO, is better than any of the OS X IRC clients). The majority of Mac users would prefer to shell out a few bucks for well-known commercial alternatives. I think Abiword and the KDE web browser (memory slip - can't recall the name now) are excellent pieces of software, but I'd choose to use MS Word and MSIE over them in a heartbeat.
I don't disagree with you there. Windows has the feeling of a big, nasty dictatorship to me... Personally, I'm not very happy with any of the operating systems available for Intel... which is why my P3 sits in the corner gathering dust and my iMac running Mac OS X is my main computer.
Ahhh... unfortunately with Linux, there never *is* a standard. Linux PDAs will suffer from the same problem that Linux desktops will suffer from... GNOME vs. KDE, Motif vs. GTK+ vs. Qt vs. Xaw3d vs. a million other GUIs, RedHat vs. Mandrake vs. Slackware vs. Debian vs. Caldera vs. SuSe, etc... etc... etc.... Choice is a good thing, but when standards are sacrificed, chaos emerges and things simply fail.
Linux is good for what it is... an operating system and a toy for geeks. But I don't care what anyone says. Linux simply isn't ready for everyday desktop usage, and definitely not ready for a PDA.
When you go to Tucows to download apps for your Linux PDA, you're going to have to navigate your way through a series of menus and be left with three apps for your specific processor and PDA - since every PDA will use a different embedded GUI, in all likelihood.
Lets face it, most people still think Linux is an Ugly, cobbled together OS that is difficult to install and use.
I agree with the other two replies; I've been using Linux for over three years now, and I think Linux is an ugly, cobbled together OS that is difficult to install and use.
An acquaintance of mine said it best... He said that Linux has the feeling of a big shareware project that never quite gets completed. I'm inclined to agree with that statement.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't think Linux will ever take off with your every day Joe. Linux was designed by geeks, for geeks, and I think things are going to stay that way. Could it be made user friendly? Certainly - look at Mac OS X... they took BSD and made it accessible to the masses. But that was their specific goal; Linux users seem more concerned with making the 10,000,000th window manager and creating yet another GUI, which is all good and fun for geeks, but probably more detrimental for end users than anything else; it simply adds confusion and layers of complexity. Your typical user doesn't want choice... he/she just wants a user-friendly, attractive, easy to use system.
Mac OS X 10.0.4 would have run like a dog with three broken legs on a G3 233 MHz CPU; however, trust me... Mac OS X 10.1 will certainly not be slow if you beef up the RAM. I have a G3 300 MHz iBook with 160 MB of RAM, and OS X 10.1 runs beautifully on it.
If you want to play around with OS X (it's definitely worth your time - I'm a Linux to Mac convert because of OS X), shop around on eBay for a ~ 300 MHz iMac. More than likely you won't be disappointed. I bought an iMac 233 to play around with OS X Public Beta and loved it so much that I bought a new iMac 600 the day the OS X 10.0 was released.
The word from the tech support team at Apple is that they'll barely be breaking even on iPod sales; in fact, a single tech support call would put them at a loss for the unit (which is why they will be offering web tech support ONLY for iPod).
Clearly, in light of this, they haven't designed iPod to fatten their wallets. There's more than meets the eye here.
The hard drive alone, when bought by the end-consumer, retails for $399.
Personally, I've already ordered my iPod and I can't wait to get it!
M.U.L.E. was definitely one of my favorite games growing up. I spent hours and hours of my time playing it over and over again on my old C64. I would love to see an updated version!
I didn't mean to sound harsh... sorry. I certainly think that Debian is a fine distro; I just don't like Debian elitists always claiming that Debian is the be-all and end-all of Linux (which wasn't your intention).
Yes, my preferred disto is Redhat. I used to like Mandrake, but the USB support in the default install of Redhat is far superior to that of Mandrake, which is why I switched. (Mandrake couldn't handle my USB switchbox that shares my keyboard and trackball between my iMac and my P3).
YellowDog is a decent distro. I have played around with 1.2 and it worked well on my iMac (the install sucked, but I was left with a fully configured, working system). Personally, since OS X's release, I've found little use in running Linux on the iMac... OS X seems to solve all the annoyances that I had with Linux/*BSD.
Judging from the fact that Debian (I386)is far superior to RedHat
Huh? I am inclined to disagree. Perhaps in YOUR opinion, but don't make absolute claims that are unjustified.
Someone mod the parent post down to flamebait.
This is ridiculous.
I'm quite sick of the whole MP3 fiasco. As far as I can tell, the prices of all technology has decreased dramatically in the last ten years with the exception of CD prices, which have shot up to outrageous amounts.
For instance, an acquaintance of mine suggested I give a new artist a listen because I enjoy similar artists. So I went and downloaded the mp3s, and very much enjoyed them. Yesterday I went to my local CD store with the intention of buying the CD, only to find out that it was listed at $29.99 CDN. That's robbery. Ten years ago I could buy CDs at $16.99 CDN, and the most expensive CDs I saw were $19.99 CDN. Now the majority of CDs that I'm interested in cost $24.99 CDN, and quite frankly, I'm not honest enough to be willing to pay that much... I'd rather stick with the mp3s.
I'm so sick of people always saying that disabling JavaScript is the answer to disabling popup ads. Many websites require you to have JavaScript enabled to use them properly, and it's not a feasible solution to tell people to disable it.
Hell, while we're at it, let's just shun every technological advance that we can. Let's all use Lynx so we won't have to look at all those graphics. Or perhaps we could just telnet to the web servers and manually request pages. That would solve our popup problem once and for all now, wouldn't it?
Turning off Java is fine, and AFAIK, many people have turned off Java. However, turning off JavaScript isn't an option for most people, because a lot of sites heavily rely on client side JavaScript to function properly.
I'd like to try Debian (on i386 - no way is my Mac OS X getting replaced), but trying to download an ISO from their website is like trying to pull my own teeth out. And they have no FTP installation options like the *BSDs have. Time being, it's just too inconvenient.
Omni is definitely cool, and I switch between IE and Omni all the time. Unfortunately, my University's stupid webpage is compliant with practically no web browsers, so I need to use IE to access it (and have it work).
I've heard about rootless X on OS X, but I have no idea where to find it! Any leads on where I can find it?
I, like some of the other posters here, am an OS X user - in fact, when I heard about OS X Public Beta, despite being a poor university student, I was so excited that I specifically went on eBay and bought myself an older iMac, just to play around with it. The GUI is gorgeous, and I instantly fell in love. Wanna know why?
.gtkrc, try to figure out the name of the GNOME configuration control tool, or load GNOME, which I don't particularly want to do. And then there's Netscape, and emacs, and xterm, which means editing .Xdefaults over and over and over (and over) again, until I find a color scheme that is acceptable.
I used to be a frothing at the mouth Linux advocate. I ran Linux exclusively (Mandrake 7.2, as a matter of fact - which I found to be an excellent distro) on my PC, and swore by it. However, after a year of running Linux, I constantly felt that I was always waging some kind of war against my computer. There was always sys admin to be done. And worst of all, so much time was spent configuring, and not enough being productive. For instance, say one day I want to change the theme of my entire desktop (and I'm running KDE, let's say). So I select a KDE/Qt theme, and all is well. But wait - I'm also running a few GNOME/GTK+ apps. This means that I've got to find a decent GTK+ theme, and find a way to change it - and the only ways I know of doing this are to edit
Anyways... I got sick of always battling my computer. I just wanted something that worked. Mac OS X works. You know what? I loved the Public Beta so much that I ran out and bought a new iMac the day that the final version was released. I installed it, and you know what? There was no fighting with sound, USB, etc... settings. Everything just worked. The OS X GUI is absolutely gorgeous. And after having installed XFree86 and XonX, With a couple keystrokes, I can switch my screen to an X server and run all my old, familiar Linux apps.
Despite the fact that I absolutely loathe Microsoft operating systems, I must say that IE is the best web browser I've ever used, and Office is an excellent office suite. Guess what? Now that I run OS X, I can run both of them.
Anyways... my biggest beef with Linux and *BSD is that the USB support is still not up to par. Due to the fact that I have a P3 and an iMac, and I switch between them frequently, I bought an excellent mac USB keyboard, a MS IntelliTrackBallthingy, and a USB hub. Thus, by flicking the switch on my hub, I can have the mouse and the keyboard active on whatever workstation strikes my fancy, right?
Well, partially right... Certainly, if I'm running Windows, BeOS, QNX, or Solaris, then everything runs well, but if I'm running Linux or *BSD, it ain't gonna happen. On Linux, if I'm in an XFree86 session and I switch the USB switchbox to my mac and then back again, my trackball refuses to function. If I CTRL-ALT-F1 to console mode, then switch, then switch back, and CTRL-ALT-F7 to X mode, then about 75% of the time everything works as expected. The other 25% of the time, neither my mouse nor my keyboard is detected (at which point, they are never detected again). This means pressing the reset button and waiting for fscks. I wish that I could run FreeBSD on my P3, but BSD is even worse in this arena.
A friend of mine put it well... (not to get flamed - this is the way I feel) - he said that Linux has the feeling of a big shareware project that never gets finished.
So in conclusion... when I have a breathtakingly gorgeous OS that has the ability to run all the Linux apps (with the installation of an X server), and can run all the mainstream apps (such as MS, Adobe, etc... products), why would I even consider switching to Mandrake on my G3?
Good question, but I wouldn't suspect that their task was that much easier. OS X runs on a Mach/FreeBSD core, true enough... but it does not use X - instead it uses Aqua and Quartz, so I suspect a large amount of the APIs had to be rewritten.
If GTK+ were to come out for Mac OS X, I would be absolutely thrilled.
However, in the meantime, GTK+ does not exist for Mac OS X (is the port for Mac OS 9 and under, or OS X, which uses a completely different API?). wxWindows does not seem to support Mac OS X (only 9 and under). Thus, I'm extremely excited about the possibility of using Qt.
There is, unfortunately, still no wxWindows support for Mac OS X (Mac OS 9, yes). And unfortunately, the current working version of wxWindows for Mac OS 9 requires Codewarrior, which is something that a lot of developers do not want to spring for.