Ubuntu has consistently recognized every piece of hardware I've thrown at it (with the exception of an oddball onboard audio card that never worked right even in Windows) for the past 2 years. It even recognized and configured a USB WiFi device nearly immediately after it was plugged in (and that impressed the hell out of me just a couple weeks ago - I've never seen Linux handle USB WiFi cards properly, even with days of "tweaking"). I'm not sure what issues you've had with power management, but my only issue with anything in that category is forgetting to set the "screensaver" delay higher, and getting locked out of my desktop because I was staring at the ceiling for a few minutes.
Is it possible your information is a bit outdated?
I haven't played around with ext4. From what I read I didn't think it would be much different than ext3.
Actually I am really not satisfied with IO prioritization on linux in general. I haven't found a way to launch a low-priority task that won't interfere with more important tasks when working with the disk. ionice doesn't seem to do anything at all, at least on my Ubuntu install. Simply setting the priority of a process (e.g. renice) ought to affect not only its cpu priority but also disk IO and IP packet prioritization (at least upstream). I don't know if any OS does that though.
Interestingly enough, I just ran into this brick wall again yesterday - I plugged in a thumb drive for the first time to my quad-core, 64-bit system that has never touched its swap partition, and transferred a 1.8 GB file. It took nearly 15 minutes, and the entire system shuddered to a halt while it did it. I was appalled.
The same operation in Windows 7 takes a little over 3 minutes, and there's no loss of system responsiveness. Windows XP takes slightly longer, at just under 4 minutes. (These numbers are for the exact same USB storage device.)
Someone on the kernel team needs to track this bug down; it's been around (with no consistent fix available) for what, 6 years now?
Well if the Apple marketdroids had not been quite so incessant when it came to attacking anyone that posted anything against Apple in any forum for any reason, it would not have become quite so much fun to now continually hit them with that trolling stick. Apple marketing basically went way too far and are now starting to pay a price for it and it is only beginning, those Apple marketdroids are just so laughably over-defensive it's fun to poke them at every opportunity.
Kinda like Scientology, I guess... only without the lawsuits and death threats.
Not sure how you manage to spend $6,000 at Alienware without upgrades. Looking just now, the most expensive base desktop system is about $4k.
But I can see that your reading comprehension is terrible, so I'm just going to assume that your math is equally bad. Or that perhaps you're just legitimately stupid.
(It's OK. We can't all be above-average.)
What part of "a couple years ago" did you not understand? To me, that would imply that I would not be able to price-check using the current website prices, considering the (relatively) rapid changes such a site would undergo, to fluctuate with the component market.
... and you have the temerity to attack my reading comprehension?
The above sentence is complete, and grammatically accurate; If you can't parse it, blame your teachers.
I sort of remember something like this from grade school.
Yes, but can you parse it? Or does "I sort of remember something like this from grade school" translate to "I don't recall what I learned in grade school"? If you don't recall anything from grade school, you have wasted the education system's time. Worse yet, you've wasted your own. One cannot learn multiplication without having first learned addition. One cannot truly comprehend "green" without having first learned "blue" and "yellow".
The Constitution of the United States of America had a nod to a limited copyright, with the idea that it would promote the arts and sciences for there to be a period of time in which the original creator of an idea would be able to profit from it. (Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, wherein it states as a goal "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;")
Here's an article entitled The Founding Fathers Had Copyright Right, explaining how and why copyright was first introduced (back when the U.S.A. was just a twinkle in the founding fathers' eyes). It bears little resemblance to the convoluted and draconian system we now have in place.
As of 1790, that "limited time" was a period of 14 years, with a possible 14 year extension (assuming the author was still alive), for a possible maximum of 28 years from date of creation. Those periods were more than double those originally specified in earlier documents, which ranged from 5 to 7 years.
More recently, the Copyright Term Extension Act has shoved everything in quite the wrong direction for anything to ever reach the public domain.
For example:
Mickey Mouse was created in 1928. Mickey Mouse's likeness will not be legal to reproduce without a license until 2036, or maybe even 2047 (there is some legalistic ambiguity). And that's assuming that the copyright laws are not changed yet again to suit corporate greed... Because, you know, Disney hasn't had enough time to properly profit from Mickey Mouse yet, since he's only 83 years old!
If that example isn't broken enough for you, have a look at this list of when things enter the public domain, and note that the current copyright law ensures that a book published on 15 March 1923 will enter the public domain on 1 January 2019, despite nearly everyone who was alive when it was published being dead now - nevermind 7 more years. It also shows that a sound recording published in 1978 will enter the public domain no earlier than 2049. If it was recorded prior to 1972, then it won't become public domain until at least 2067. This literally means that music recorded before I was born will not be in the public domain before I die. I expect this holds true for most of us, actually, and not just me. As an aside, this is also why restaurants do not sing "Happy Birthday" with the lyrics and melody you learned growing up.
Actually, the other half of the problem is the idea that all consumers are greedy, conniving bastards who will cheerfully steal anything from "big corporations", given half a chance, so the "big corporations" assume all of them are criminals before they've even had the opportunity to purchase a product.
Or maybe it's a system of laws that practically guarantees that every person is a lawbreaker in some form or fashion, allowing the enforcement agencies to pick up, detain, and criminalize any person at any time, giving a supposedly valid reason for doing so.
Oh, wait, no. The biggest problem is a governmental system based on the idea that not enough people will care enough to stop those with money from doing anything they damn well please.
Wait, it might be that money makes the world go 'round, and 90%+ don't have enough to do anything not directly related to personal survival (if even that much).
Hmm. These all seem to be huge problems. Where to start?
Now laws are in the best interests of the biggest bank accounts.
Not familiar with The Golden Rule? "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Not disagreeing with you, by the way, just wanted to point out that what you said is similar to a Mitch Hedburg joke. "I used to do a lot of drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."
I'm still waiting for corporate entities to be executed for capital crimes - until then, I won't actually believe they're people. A possible alternative would be to make the CEO of the company directly and personally responsible for everything the company does, as if the CEO had done it him/her self - make 'em earn those golden parachutes by risking life in prison.
A lot of harvesting is already largely automated; this article's "new thing" is pre-harvest agricultural automation - specifically, using 'bots to plant stuff (or at least place seedlings and potted plants). Perhaps the foodstuffs you're describing won't be able to be automated (yet), but if it comes right down to it, we can grow our own tomatoes, melons, and squash to supplement the mass-produced (read: automated) foodstuffs like grains and tree-borne fruit. If bots can plant seeds, other bots can water/fertilize those seeds, and yet other bots can harvest the product, it'll be a revolution in the agricultural industry. The price still needs to come down, since they're targeting the "$25,000 to $50,000 per unit" price range, but all it will take is someone realizing they can still make a profit selling nearly the exact same thing for 10% of the price, making up the difference in volume - Selling an item for 10% of the profit will likely generate 20x the sales, thus actually generating twice the profit - something the music/movie industries might do well to learn.
The biggest issue with agriculture, as I see it, is that we're mass-producing corn (a product with dubious nutritional value) on most of our arable land, and then turning around and producing fuel with it. That land could be put to much better use with an actual nutritionally viable crop, or even as hemp (the productive qualities of industrial hemp are too many to list in a single post, but I'll throw some basics out for general consumption, and trust google to provide more information for those who are interested: paper, textiles (clothing, fabric, rope), biofuels, construction materials (mortar, fiberboard/particleboard, cardboard), oxygen (more than trees!)... the list goes on and on and on).
Interestingly enough, apples (and I assume other fruits) have been harvested using machinery for decades, at least. I recall a trip to an apple orchard when I was in elementary school (nearly 30 years ago) where they showed us the equipment - in essence, they slung a tarp beneath the tree, and a big motor with a giant rubber band wrapped around itself and the tree shook the tree to make the apples fall.
Sounds like something out of a cartoon, when I describe it like that...
Utilizing solar power for the plant-tending machinery sounds like a good idea, at first... then you realize that plants themselves are solar powered, and therefore every square meter you are devoting to powering the machinery is a reduction of the potential plant-matter production. A possible semi-alternative might be to make the roofs of all homes into solar arrays, thus providing shelter and power simultaneously - of course, the occupants of those dwellings may not want to give up the electricity this would generate.
LFTR-based energy solutions come immediately to mind as a cheap, plentiful, and safe solution to our power needs.
Thorium is fairly plentiful, is produced as a "waste" by-product of conventional mineral-extraction processes, and the US has a stockpile of it large enough to run the entire country (and then some) for nearly a decade. The process of extracting energy from it results in an incredibly small mass of waste, orders of magnitude less than our current plants produce.
To top it all off, it's impossible for a LFTRplant to "melt down", and the startup/shutdown process takes a matter of hours, rather than weeks or months. As a matter of fact, there was a research group who made a reactor in the 50s who simply turned it off for the weekend on Friday, then turned it on again on Monday - they just shut it down for two days, then brought it back up.
As another indication of safety, the US government funded a research group in the 1950s who very nearly put a thorium reactor in an airplane. They stopped not because of safety concerns, but because fission-powered aircraft were not as cheap and expendable as the newly-developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology as a delivery system. Missiles don't require a crew to ride them into enemy airspace.
Speaking of the military aspects of cheap power, one interesting "benefit" of LFTR technology is that weapons-grade fissionable material is not a waste product of the process. This may have something to do with the huge number of fast-breeder nuclear reactors in the US; their main product (other than energy) is weapons-grade plutonium.
Yet another indicator of safety: This is a pdf from the Thorium Energy Alliance that has, on its front page, a picture of enough thorium to satisfy a person's lifetime energy needs being held in a bare hand. You see, thorium isn't nearly as "radioactive" as other nuclear materials - it's not fissile, it's merely fertile.
If the US isn't careful, they're going to lose any ability to utilize this technology; Both China and India are working on thorium-based reactors currently, with China's expressed goal being to monopolize the IP rights - yet another reason to abolish the current Intellectual Property system?
More information on thorium and thorium-based technologies can be found here.
It's actually blown Ubuntu away for the last 6 months!
Interestingly enough, it was 6 months ago that Ubuntu introduced Unity - and made it the default. Of course, you could still select "Ubuntu Classic" at the login screen and get the Gnome2 environment.
...and then to add insult to injury, they removed the ability to choose "Ubuntu Classic" this month, when they released 11.10.
I have moved to Ubuntu 10.04 in an attempt to let them get over themselves and give the users what they want (and are screaming for). If they haven't handled it properly in 12.04 (the next LTS), I may decide to see how Mint has handled themselves.
Windows is way more maintenance-intensive than Linux. It's only the initial setup of Linux that's more work.
Initial setup is more work? We obviously have differing opinions on what constitutes "work"... or maybe we disagree on what constitutes "more".
Please show me how to automatically install a dozen professional-grade software packages on half a dozen systems running Windows, truly unattended, while complying with all of their various licensing requirements - preferably by running a script located on a "server" known as "my laptop".
Oh, and just to note: I installed the OS on those machines over the network using my laptop as a DHCP/BOOTP/TFTP server. Can Windows do that? Sorry, I should have been more specific. Can Windows do that legally? In a non-Enterprise environment? Without spending a week preconfiguring stuff and entering license keys? For Free?
Download Ubuntu 11.10 and tell me how to change to Gnome 2 easily in a supported way that doesn't involve random PPAs
Easy: Use it to download and burn 10.04, then install that. The LTS still uses Gnome2, and hopefully by the time the new LTS drops, someone will have come up with a decent Gnome3-based DE.
As I've stated elsewhere, Canonical kinda missed the fact that a lot of the reason they pulled in Windows users in droves was that Windows moved to a completely unfamiliar desktop environment.
On the other hand, I have to give Canonical props... they've completely redefined "completely unfamiliar desktop environment".
But, it's more than that, have they ever fixed the bug that made it impossible to log in via bluetooth keyboard?
Wait, you actually want to spew your password as plaintext over the airwaves? Let me know where you're having this "login" issue, me and my laptop may come help you "resolve" that...
Changing the default GUI depends on your distribution packaging alternative GUIs without fucking it up. If your distribution can't package a default GUI without fucking it up, they're likely to not do the alteratives very well either.
The solution is to get a GUI agnostic distro. Debian proper has good packages for whatever GUI you care to run.
Changing the GUI in Ubuntu is quite simple, actually. "sudo apt-get install gui_of_your_choice".
That is, if you prefer XFCE, you can "sudo apt-get install xfce4", and voila. Alternatively, you could go with the Ubuntu flavor of xfce, and "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop". Prefer KDE? "sudo apt-get install kde-full" or if you prefer a preconfigured setup, "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop".
As yet another alternative, you can choose to install the flavor of Ubuntu that has your preferred desktop environment already on it: Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. - This assumes, of course, that this decision is being made prior to install.
As an aside, I chose to "downgrade" to Ubuntu 10.04 (the LTS release) because while I hate Unity, I want to use the same distro across my almost-a-dozen machines - it makes the maintenance easier. I want to use something that has a default software load fairly close to my desired end result - I wouldn't install Kubuntu if I wanted XFCE for my desktop environment, for example.
My recent "upgrade path" was to back up data on those machines that were running something higher than 10.04, and reload them. I ran a few shell scripts to add my standard software package load to them, made a few cosmetic changes via the GUI, restored the data I backed up, and they're "done".
Now I have a 6-month reprieve from having to decide on a new distro. Similarly, Canonical gets a 6 month period to pull their heads out of the sand with their next LTS before I decide I really do need to install something else.
More ethical? Software is not ethical, people are. And FOSS people tend to be assholes.
The "assholiness" of FOSS advocates has nothing to do with the licensing of FOSS itself. The main problem with "non-free" software is that the creators/distributors assume their users are thieves. Very similar to the "non-free" music/movies market, now that I think about it - one of the reasons I rip everything I purchase to mp3 and avi is so that it will work on my portable devices, but another one is that it lets me skip the FBI Warning that says I can go to jail and pay huge fines if I "misuse" the content I paid for.
I've switched to XFS for my Ubuntu install. My main complaint with EXT3 was it takes forever to delete large files (e.g. 10 GB TV recordings) making the system unresponsive (which will corrupt a recording currently underway). Current versions of grub seem to boot XFS fine.
Does EXT4 have the same issues? I ask because I haven't experienced the issues you describe - then again, I'm not working with files bigger than about 4GB.
While I'm not a heavy Ubuntu user, I don't understand the care about sudo. Just type sudo passwd root and you have a root account just like everyone else. It takes 1 minute post-install.
Alternatively, you can just get used to typing sudo before things that require root access, and accept the security measure at face value. Not having an account named root means that you're not exposing your system to that particular threat.
Not trying to be a zealot or start a flame war, just explaining the reason sudo exists in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu has consistently recognized every piece of hardware I've thrown at it (with the exception of an oddball onboard audio card that never worked right even in Windows) for the past 2 years. It even recognized and configured a USB WiFi device nearly immediately after it was plugged in (and that impressed the hell out of me just a couple weeks ago - I've never seen Linux handle USB WiFi cards properly, even with days of "tweaking"). I'm not sure what issues you've had with power management, but my only issue with anything in that category is forgetting to set the "screensaver" delay higher, and getting locked out of my desktop because I was staring at the ceiling for a few minutes.
Is it possible your information is a bit outdated?
I haven't played around with ext4. From what I read I didn't think it would be much different than ext3.
Actually I am really not satisfied with IO prioritization on linux in general. I haven't found a way to launch a low-priority task that won't interfere with more important tasks when working with the disk. ionice doesn't seem to do anything at all, at least on my Ubuntu install. Simply setting the priority of a process (e.g. renice) ought to affect not only its cpu priority but also disk IO and IP packet prioritization (at least upstream). I don't know if any OS does that though.
Interestingly enough, I just ran into this brick wall again yesterday - I plugged in a thumb drive for the first time to my quad-core, 64-bit system that has never touched its swap partition, and transferred a 1.8 GB file. It took nearly 15 minutes, and the entire system shuddered to a halt while it did it. I was appalled.
The same operation in Windows 7 takes a little over 3 minutes, and there's no loss of system responsiveness. Windows XP takes slightly longer, at just under 4 minutes. (These numbers are for the exact same USB storage device.)
Someone on the kernel team needs to track this bug down; it's been around (with no consistent fix available) for what, 6 years now?
Well if the Apple marketdroids had not been quite so incessant when it came to attacking anyone that posted anything against Apple in any forum for any reason, it would not have become quite so much fun to now continually hit them with that trolling stick. Apple marketing basically went way too far and are now starting to pay a price for it and it is only beginning, those Apple marketdroids are just so laughably over-defensive it's fun to poke them at every opportunity.
Kinda like Scientology, I guess... only without the lawsuits and death threats.
Not sure how you manage to spend $6,000 at Alienware without upgrades. Looking just now, the most expensive base desktop system is about $4k.
But I can see that your reading comprehension is terrible, so I'm just going to assume that your math is equally bad. Or that perhaps you're just legitimately stupid.
(It's OK. We can't all be above-average.)
What part of "a couple years ago" did you not understand? To me, that would imply that I would not be able to price-check using the current website prices, considering the (relatively) rapid changes such a site would undergo, to fluctuate with the component market.
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.
The above sentence is complete, and grammatically accurate; If you can't parse it, blame your teachers.
I sort of remember something like this from grade school.
Yes, but can you parse it? Or does "I sort of remember something like this from grade school" translate to "I don't recall what I learned in grade school"?
If you don't recall anything from grade school, you have wasted the education system's time. Worse yet, you've wasted your own.
One cannot learn multiplication without having first learned addition.
One cannot truly comprehend "green" without having first learned "blue" and "yellow".
The Constitution of the United States of America had a nod to a limited copyright, with the idea that it would promote the arts and sciences for there to be a period of time in which the original creator of an idea would be able to profit from it. (Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, wherein it states as a goal "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;")
Here's an article entitled The Founding Fathers Had Copyright Right, explaining how and why copyright was first introduced (back when the U.S.A. was just a twinkle in the founding fathers' eyes). It bears little resemblance to the convoluted and draconian system we now have in place.
As of 1790, that "limited time" was a period of 14 years, with a possible 14 year extension (assuming the author was still alive), for a possible maximum of 28 years from date of creation. Those periods were more than double those originally specified in earlier documents, which ranged from 5 to 7 years.
More recently, the Copyright Term Extension Act has shoved everything in quite the wrong direction for anything to ever reach the public domain.
For example:
Mickey Mouse was created in 1928. Mickey Mouse's likeness will not be legal to reproduce without a license until 2036, or maybe even 2047 (there is some legalistic ambiguity). And that's assuming that the copyright laws are not changed yet again to suit corporate greed... Because, you know, Disney hasn't had enough time to properly profit from Mickey Mouse yet, since he's only 83 years old!
If that example isn't broken enough for you, have a look at this list of when things enter the public domain, and note that the current copyright law ensures that a book published on 15 March 1923 will enter the public domain on 1 January 2019, despite nearly everyone who was alive when it was published being dead now - nevermind 7 more years. It also shows that a sound recording published in 1978 will enter the public domain no earlier than 2049. If it was recorded prior to 1972, then it won't become public domain until at least 2067. This literally means that music recorded before I was born will not be in the public domain before I die. I expect this holds true for most of us, actually, and not just me. As an aside, this is also why restaurants do not sing "Happy Birthday" with the lyrics and melody you learned growing up.
Actually, the other half of the problem is the idea that all consumers are greedy, conniving bastards who will cheerfully steal anything from "big corporations", given half a chance, so the "big corporations" assume all of them are criminals before they've even had the opportunity to purchase a product.
Or maybe it's a system of laws that practically guarantees that every person is a lawbreaker in some form or fashion, allowing the enforcement agencies to pick up, detain, and criminalize any person at any time, giving a supposedly valid reason for doing so.
Oh, wait, no. The biggest problem is a governmental system based on the idea that not enough people will care enough to stop those with money from doing anything they damn well please.
Wait, it might be that money makes the world go 'round, and 90%+ don't have enough to do anything not directly related to personal survival (if even that much).
Hmm. These all seem to be huge problems. Where to start?
Now laws are in the best interests of the biggest bank accounts.
Not familiar with The Golden Rule? "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Not disagreeing with you, by the way, just wanted to point out that what you said is similar to a Mitch Hedburg joke.
"I used to do a lot of drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."
I'm still waiting for corporate entities to be executed for capital crimes - until then, I won't actually believe they're people. A possible alternative would be to make the CEO of the company directly and personally responsible for everything the company does, as if the CEO had done it him/her self - make 'em earn those golden parachutes by risking life in prison.
... so it's only illegal if you get caught?
A lot of harvesting is already largely automated; this article's "new thing" is pre-harvest agricultural automation - specifically, using 'bots to plant stuff (or at least place seedlings and potted plants). Perhaps the foodstuffs you're describing won't be able to be automated (yet), but if it comes right down to it, we can grow our own tomatoes, melons, and squash to supplement the mass-produced (read: automated) foodstuffs like grains and tree-borne fruit. If bots can plant seeds, other bots can water/fertilize those seeds, and yet other bots can harvest the product, it'll be a revolution in the agricultural industry. The price still needs to come down, since they're targeting the "$25,000 to $50,000 per unit" price range, but all it will take is someone realizing they can still make a profit selling nearly the exact same thing for 10% of the price, making up the difference in volume - Selling an item for 10% of the profit will likely generate 20x the sales, thus actually generating twice the profit - something the music/movie industries might do well to learn.
The biggest issue with agriculture, as I see it, is that we're mass-producing corn (a product with dubious nutritional value) on most of our arable land, and then turning around and producing fuel with it. That land could be put to much better use with an actual nutritionally viable crop, or even as hemp (the productive qualities of industrial hemp are too many to list in a single post, but I'll throw some basics out for general consumption, and trust google to provide more information for those who are interested: paper, textiles (clothing, fabric, rope), biofuels, construction materials (mortar, fiberboard/particleboard, cardboard), oxygen (more than trees!)... the list goes on and on and on).
Where's my flying car? No, this one doesn't count.
Interestingly enough, apples (and I assume other fruits) have been harvested using machinery for decades, at least. I recall a trip to an apple orchard when I was in elementary school (nearly 30 years ago) where they showed us the equipment - in essence, they slung a tarp beneath the tree, and a big motor with a giant rubber band wrapped around itself and the tree shook the tree to make the apples fall.
Sounds like something out of a cartoon, when I describe it like that...
Simply outsourcing will only serve to destroy the west
Sadly enough, I'm considering moving to India so I can get a job in the IT field in the US market.
I wish I were joking.
Utilizing solar power for the plant-tending machinery sounds like a good idea, at first... then you realize that plants themselves are solar powered, and therefore every square meter you are devoting to powering the machinery is a reduction of the potential plant-matter production. A possible semi-alternative might be to make the roofs of all homes into solar arrays, thus providing shelter and power simultaneously - of course, the occupants of those dwellings may not want to give up the electricity this would generate.
LFTR-based energy solutions come immediately to mind as a cheap, plentiful, and safe solution to our power needs.
Thorium is fairly plentiful, is produced as a "waste" by-product of conventional mineral-extraction processes, and the US has a stockpile of it large enough to run the entire country (and then some) for nearly a decade. The process of extracting energy from it results in an incredibly small mass of waste, orders of magnitude less than our current plants produce.
To top it all off, it's impossible for a LFTR plant to "melt down", and the startup/shutdown process takes a matter of hours, rather than weeks or months. As a matter of fact, there was a research group who made a reactor in the 50s who simply turned it off for the weekend on Friday, then turned it on again on Monday - they just shut it down for two days, then brought it back up.
As another indication of safety, the US government funded a research group in the 1950s who very nearly put a thorium reactor in an airplane. They stopped not because of safety concerns, but because fission-powered aircraft were not as cheap and expendable as the newly-developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology as a delivery system. Missiles don't require a crew to ride them into enemy airspace.
Speaking of the military aspects of cheap power, one interesting "benefit" of LFTR technology is that weapons-grade fissionable material is not a waste product of the process. This may have something to do with the huge number of fast-breeder nuclear reactors in the US; their main product (other than energy) is weapons-grade plutonium.
Yet another indicator of safety: This is a pdf from the Thorium Energy Alliance that has, on its front page, a picture of enough thorium to satisfy a person's lifetime energy needs being held in a bare hand. You see, thorium isn't nearly as "radioactive" as other nuclear materials - it's not fissile, it's merely fertile.
If the US isn't careful, they're going to lose any ability to utilize this technology; Both China and India are working on thorium-based reactors currently, with China's expressed goal being to monopolize the IP rights - yet another reason to abolish the current Intellectual Property system?
More information on thorium and thorium-based technologies can be found here.
Or if you prefer to leave the system's software as stock as you can, use this:
# echo export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars
It turns them off without ripping them out (in case something else "needs" them, and reinstalls them for you).
It's actually blown Ubuntu away for the last 6 months!
Interestingly enough, it was 6 months ago that Ubuntu introduced Unity - and made it the default. Of course, you could still select "Ubuntu Classic" at the login screen and get the Gnome2 environment.
...and then to add insult to injury, they removed the ability to choose "Ubuntu Classic" this month, when they released 11.10.
I have moved to Ubuntu 10.04 in an attempt to let them get over themselves and give the users what they want (and are screaming for). If they haven't handled it properly in 12.04 (the next LTS), I may decide to see how Mint has handled themselves.
Windows is way more maintenance-intensive than Linux. It's only the initial setup of Linux that's more work.
Initial setup is more work? We obviously have differing opinions on what constitutes "work"... or maybe we disagree on what constitutes "more".
Please show me how to automatically install a dozen professional-grade software packages on half a dozen systems running Windows, truly unattended, while complying with all of their various licensing requirements - preferably by running a script located on a "server" known as "my laptop".
Oh, and just to note: I installed the OS on those machines over the network using my laptop as a DHCP/BOOTP/TFTP server. Can Windows do that?
Sorry, I should have been more specific.
Can Windows do that legally?
In a non-Enterprise environment?
Without spending a week preconfiguring stuff and entering license keys?
For Free?
The parent's disinclination to install a GUI aside, this is exactly why Ubuntu is shedding users.
Download Ubuntu 11.10 and tell me how to change to Gnome 2 easily in a supported way that doesn't involve random PPAs
Easy: Use it to download and burn 10.04, then install that. The LTS still uses Gnome2, and hopefully by the time the new LTS drops, someone will have come up with a decent Gnome3-based DE.
As I've stated elsewhere, Canonical kinda missed the fact that a lot of the reason they pulled in Windows users in droves was that Windows moved to a completely unfamiliar desktop environment.
On the other hand, I have to give Canonical props... they've completely redefined "completely unfamiliar desktop environment".
But, it's more than that, have they ever fixed the bug that made it impossible to log in via bluetooth keyboard?
Wait, you actually want to spew your password as plaintext over the airwaves? Let me know where you're having this "login" issue, me and my laptop may come help you "resolve" that...
Changing the default GUI depends on your distribution packaging alternative GUIs without fucking it up. If your distribution can't package a default GUI without fucking it up, they're likely to not do the alteratives very well either.
The solution is to get a GUI agnostic distro. Debian proper has good packages for whatever GUI you care to run.
Changing the GUI in Ubuntu is quite simple, actually. "sudo apt-get install gui_of_your_choice".
That is, if you prefer XFCE, you can "sudo apt-get install xfce4", and voila. Alternatively, you could go with the Ubuntu flavor of xfce, and "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop". Prefer KDE? "sudo apt-get install kde-full" or if you prefer a preconfigured setup, "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop".
As yet another alternative, you can choose to install the flavor of Ubuntu that has your preferred desktop environment already on it: Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc. - This assumes, of course, that this decision is being made prior to install.
As an aside, I chose to "downgrade" to Ubuntu 10.04 (the LTS release) because while I hate Unity, I want to use the same distro across my almost-a-dozen machines - it makes the maintenance easier. I want to use something that has a default software load fairly close to my desired end result - I wouldn't install Kubuntu if I wanted XFCE for my desktop environment, for example.
My recent "upgrade path" was to back up data on those machines that were running something higher than 10.04, and reload them. I ran a few shell scripts to add my standard software package load to them, made a few cosmetic changes via the GUI, restored the data I backed up, and they're "done".
Now I have a 6-month reprieve from having to decide on a new distro. Similarly, Canonical gets a 6 month period to pull their heads out of the sand with their next LTS before I decide I really do need to install something else.
More ethical? Software is not ethical, people are. And FOSS people tend to be assholes.
The "assholiness" of FOSS advocates has nothing to do with the licensing of FOSS itself. The main problem with "non-free" software is that the creators/distributors assume their users are thieves. Very similar to the "non-free" music/movies market, now that I think about it - one of the reasons I rip everything I purchase to mp3 and avi is so that it will work on my portable devices, but another one is that it lets me skip the FBI Warning that says I can go to jail and pay huge fines if I "misuse" the content I paid for.
Oops, there I go being a Fair Use Asshole.
I've switched to XFS for my Ubuntu install. My main complaint with EXT3 was it takes forever to delete large files (e.g. 10 GB TV recordings) making the system unresponsive (which will corrupt a recording currently underway). Current versions of grub seem to boot XFS fine.
Does EXT4 have the same issues? I ask because I haven't experienced the issues you describe - then again, I'm not working with files bigger than about 4GB.
While I'm not a heavy Ubuntu user, I don't understand the care about sudo. Just type sudo passwd root and you have a root account just like everyone else. It takes 1 minute post-install.
Alternatively, you can just get used to typing sudo before things that require root access, and accept the security measure at face value. Not having an account named root means that you're not exposing your system to that particular threat.
Not trying to be a zealot or start a flame war, just explaining the reason sudo exists in the first place.