[[I don't know how many of the calls need to go back to the X server, but my guess is only the ones dealing with windowing and user input.]]
Well the GP was talking about pressing a key, so that's definitedly user input.. And the latency for the reaction to user input is quite critical for a game, but does the kernel --> X server --> games context switches induce really a measurable latency for a player? I don't know..
That's funny, because I'm quite happy with Thunderbird, whereas this week I finally switched from FF to Opera, I delayed the transition as much as I could, but FF general slowness and several times using 100% CPU was too much to bear.
Well I played Deus Ex when its graphism were obsolete, but I still enjoyed it quite a lot. If there is a lesson to be learned by the Wii, it's that graphism aren't that important when the rest is well done..
Sure but currently to have this nice display and nice low power hardware, you have to use a keyboard designed for children (small keys). Ok you can probably carry another keyboard with you, but that makes a not very portable laptop.
For the first part, it sounds to me as a stupid rationalisation, for the second part, I know, and I suspect that they are also sexist (in the sense that they don't allow exactly the same position for men or women) but as I know these variants less than catholics, I only commented on the catholics..
>That's total b.s. Firefox, for example, is not a "classic Unix style application", it's a poorly written Windows style application that's been ported to Linux--badly. And its responsiveness doesn't suck for lack of multithreading, it's responsiveness sucks among other things because of AJAX and networking issues.
Try something, open a bunch of non-ajax webpage in multiple tabs: the main window will freeze for some time: this sucks as if you have tab already opened, you'd want to read them while the other tabs are loading, but you can't and this is not an issue caused by AJAX or by networking issue (as the tab you'd want to read are already here).
>Yeah, it's just that the BeOS user experience doesn't include most of the applications people actually want to run.
That's true unfortunately, but this doesn't change the fact that the responsiveness seen by users on Linux or Windows sucks compared to what BeOS provided.
>Multithreading doesn't automatically make applications any more responsive.
True it depends of the application, but with modern multi-tab applications, multi-threading ensure that the user can still read the other tab even if one tab becomes busy, that's a very interesting form of responsiveness which has nothing to do with 'damaged window'.
>You can easily configure a Linux system with the same limited functionality as BeOS; most people choose not to because, ultimately, functionality and getting the job done matters more than "feel".
No, you cannot, you're the one who is saying responsiveness == windows damage: I'm not.. Note that the nice thing that BeOS provided was that it was responsive/booted fast/application started fast *by default* no need to tweak it..
>And FF would freeze the same way on BeOS! It's FF freezing, not Linux.
Sure but who cares? On BeOS, the few applications which were available didn't freeze, on Linux they do because classic Unix style application are single threaded. So on Linux, the responsiveness experienced by the user suck, on BeOS, it didn't.
>What was more "responsive" wasn't BeOS, it was BeOS apps, and they were more responsive because they didn't do much.
No, it's more a design issue than anything: BeOS designers encouraged dual-thread usage for applications which make their interface very responsive.
FF's interface appears to be single threaded as shown by the way it freeze, this has nothing to do about doing more or doing less (except that coding multi-threaded interface is more complex so for the same development time you have a little less time to develop feature).
>>Well, I'm using Linux everyday at work, and I tell you: it doesn't feel responsive. >Well, if it is, you're doing something seriously wrong: >http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZD7QraljRfM >That sort of stuff works on standard $600 desktop hardware.
Pretty effect != responsiveness. All these shiny effects don't prevent FF from freezing when you open several tab for example.
>Well, and you also think that BeOS is better than Linux. It appears your preferences differ from those of most computer users.
I think that the responsiveness on BeOS was better than what we have on Linux now (on 10 times more powerful hardware), yes, but it doesn't mean that I think that BeOS was better than Linux: there were not enough free apps on BeOS to make it more interesting than Linux.
>>Well, you didn't look close enough to the demo: he launched 5 application simultaneously and had them running in a snap and whatever he did, the OS stayed responsive and very fast. >So what? I can launch 20 applications simultaneously in Linux and have them running in a snap;
Well, I'm using Linux everyday at work, and I tell you: it doesn't feel responsive. I played with BeOS (quite some time ago now) and it felt smooth, quick, reactive (on a PC ten time less powerful).
> that just isn't a big deal. Whether the OS stays responsive and fast depends on the apps.
Sure, if you ported FF to BeOS, it would suck as much on BeOS as it sucks on the other OS, that's true, but it's also true that using BeOS and its application felt responsive because they designed the applications which came with the OS, the toolkits, the programming guides this way, whereas using Linux or Windows don't feel responsive, and IMHO *this is* a big deal.
>If you launch Firefox, [..] simultaneously on BeOS, I guarantee you it would also bring it to its knees.
The thing is, you can bring an OS to 'its knees' while still making it 'responsive', and the video showed it quite well.. I remember another video where they overloaded the computer so that video rendering was stuttering, but the interface was still smooth, that's a priority issue and BeOS was nicely tuned for desktop load.
>But everybody uses Firefox because, in the end, it's still fast enough.
Well, I started using Opera because I don't think that FF is responsive enough. I don't understand why FF has a bigger marketshare than Opera: I think that Opera is better than FF. Currently I'm using 50% FF and 50% Opera because I cannot stand Opera's weird tab management scheme (which cannot fully emulate FF tab management), but as soon as they fix this, I'll gladly drop FF until it becomes responsive (I'm not holding my breath)..
>The ability to play eight movies simultaneously is a bad way of determining OS thread performance.
Agreed.
>Overall, I really don't see anything in BeOS that you don't get as well or better in a modern Linux system.
Well, you didn't look close enough to the demo: he launched 5 application simultaneously and had them running in a snap and whatever he did, the OS stayed responsive and very fast.
Linux/Windows users don't enjoy such responsiveness, even though we have far more powerful computer now.. As an example, when you open several bookmarks on Firefox, the window just freeze for several seconds, and people are used to this kind of behaviour:-(, whereas on BeOS everything stayed responsive all the time.
This is an application design issue (need to be supported by the kernel and the libraries of course), we could probably have this on Linux or Windows, but we don't unfortunately..
The thing is, you cannot truly compare Amiga with current OSs, because it had no memory protection and didn't run on PC's hardware, BeOS did.
And it was much more responsive than anything we have now.. Unfortunately, the situation won't change for a long time, because to have the same level of responsiveness as BeOS users enjoyed, you have to recode a big part of each application..
The availability of multi-core PC will ensure that the designers of new applications take into account multi-threading from the start, increasing the responsiveness of these new applications, but the migration will take a long time, *sigh*.
I've never used Photoshop, but while I really have a hard time using Gimp even for very simple manipulations(an old gimp version) at work, at home I had much better luck using Paint.NET.
So Gimp is really harder to use for beginners (does ingimp record the swearing of the users frustrated by Gimp), probably because it does things its own way..
>Built in support for virtual machines. Something like java in the kernel
I don't think that something like Java should be in the kernel, but there could surely be better communications with the GC used in Java (and other language) and with the kernel memory manager, this way the GC could better use the memory: increasing the heap used in low memory pressure situation and reducing memory used by the GC when the memory pressure increase.
There have been some research on this topic, and now that Java is GPL, maybe this will happen.
I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that 50% of the Americans believe that there are aliens on the earth, I wonder why so many Americans?
In France, from my informal questions hardly no-one believes in aliens living on the earth, of course on the other hand we have our own myths, for example the Graphological analysis (believing that you can know someone by looking how his writing look) which is very widespread: you almost always have to do one to get a high-paying job..
>The problem is that with almost every minor kernel version revision the driver interface is changed,
While it's true that driver interface change, usually those change only impacts some drivers not all.
>This is why the current fluid kernel/driver interface specification is unsustainable and unmanageable in the long term
In the *very long term* maybe, but currently the amount of code changed each day is accelerating not slowing, so apparently it's not too painful yet.
In the long term, yes I can the see the interface kernel/driver stabilizing, but not for the reason given but because the kernel itself stabilize, so this will take a long time..
Google Calendar synchronization support with no offline possibility is quite useless I think, if I have to go online I'll use directly Google calendar..
I read his post, and these 'reasons' are obviously false: if they managed to release ZFS under CDDL which *is* a Free license, just incompatible with the GPL, it obviously means that they were able to contact all the interested parties, so why not GPL?
So either one licensee refused to license their code under the GPL but was ok for CDDL (unlikely) or much more likely Sun wants to see ZFS everywhere except on Linux which is a direct competitor.
Well, you know Linus sometimes also makes mistakes: I think that this is well accepted that 'transparent networking' as described by Linus is poor: what happens when there is a network/server error?
Well the client freeze or crash because the software is just doing function calls.. Somehow I doubt that this is the best possible answer!
So if you want something better, you *have* to handle errors caused by the network, so you might as well use a network API instead of something which looks like a function call but isn't.
>>Does Lord of the Rings, one of the most horrendously written classics ever created, qualify as having literary value? >Nope. Great book, tho. Read it 7 time already, in 2 languages.
Great book? I really didn't enjoy it, I don't know why it had so much success..
Now Lois Mc Master Bujold's vorkosigan series or Isaac Asimov books (foundation!), those are really good.
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[[I don't know how many of the calls need to go back to the X server, but my guess is only the ones dealing with windowing and user input.]]
Well the GP was talking about pressing a key, so that's definitedly user input..
And the latency for the reaction to user input is quite critical for a game, but does the kernel --> X server --> games context switches induce really a measurable latency for a player?
I don't know..
That's funny, because I'm quite happy with Thunderbird, whereas this week I finally switched from FF to Opera, I delayed the transition as much as I could, but FF general slowness and several times using 100% CPU was too much to bear.
Well I played Deus Ex when its graphism were obsolete, but I still enjoyed it quite a lot.
If there is a lesson to be learned by the Wii, it's that graphism aren't that important when the rest is well done..
Sure but currently to have this nice display and nice low power hardware, you have to use a keyboard designed for children (small keys).
Ok you can probably carry another keyboard with you, but that makes a not very portable laptop.
For the first part, it sounds to me as a stupid rationalisation, for the second part, I know, and I suspect that they are also sexist (in the sense that they don't allow exactly the same position for men or women) but as I know these variants less than catholics, I only commented on the catholics..
>Christianity doesn't preach the superiority of men or the inferiority of women.
Of course, and if you believes this I have a bridge to sell..
If memory serves, the catholics said that women didn't have a soul for a long time, and even now they don't allow women to be pope for example.
>That's total b.s. Firefox, for example, is not a "classic Unix style application", it's a poorly written Windows style application that's been ported to Linux--badly. And its responsiveness doesn't suck for lack of multithreading, it's responsiveness sucks among other things because of AJAX and networking issues.
Try something, open a bunch of non-ajax webpage in multiple tabs: the main window will freeze for some time: this sucks as if you have tab already opened, you'd want to read them while the other tabs are loading, but you can't and this is not an issue caused by AJAX or by networking issue (as the tab you'd want to read are already here).
>Yeah, it's just that the BeOS user experience doesn't include most of the applications people actually want to run.
That's true unfortunately, but this doesn't change the fact that the responsiveness seen by users on Linux or Windows sucks compared to what BeOS provided.
>Multithreading doesn't automatically make applications any more responsive.
True it depends of the application, but with modern multi-tab applications, multi-threading ensure that the user can still read the other tab even if one tab becomes busy, that's a very interesting form of responsiveness which has nothing to do with 'damaged window'.
>You can easily configure a Linux system with the same limited functionality as BeOS; most people choose not to because, ultimately, functionality and getting the job done matters more than "feel".
No, you cannot, you're the one who is saying responsiveness == windows damage: I'm not..
Note that the nice thing that BeOS provided was that it was responsive/booted fast/application started fast *by default* no need to tweak it..
>And FF would freeze the same way on BeOS! It's FF freezing, not Linux.
Sure but who cares? On BeOS, the few applications which were available didn't freeze, on Linux they do because classic Unix style application are single threaded.
So on Linux, the responsiveness experienced by the user suck, on BeOS, it didn't.
>What was more "responsive" wasn't BeOS, it was BeOS apps, and they were more responsive because they didn't do much.
No, it's more a design issue than anything: BeOS designers encouraged dual-thread usage for applications which make their interface very responsive.
FF's interface appears to be single threaded as shown by the way it freeze, this has nothing to do about doing more or doing less (except that coding multi-threaded interface is more complex so for the same development time you have a little less time to develop feature).
>>Well, I'm using Linux everyday at work, and I tell you: it doesn't feel responsive.
>Well, if it is, you're doing something seriously wrong:
>http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZD7QraljRfM
>That sort of stuff works on standard $600 desktop hardware.
Pretty effect != responsiveness. All these shiny effects don't prevent FF from freezing when you open several tab for example.
>Well, and you also think that BeOS is better than Linux. It appears your preferences differ from those of most computer users.
I think that the responsiveness on BeOS was better than what we have on Linux now (on 10 times more powerful hardware), yes, but it doesn't mean that I think that BeOS was better than Linux: there were not enough free apps on BeOS to make it more interesting than Linux.
>>Well, you didn't look close enough to the demo: he launched 5 application simultaneously and had them running in a snap and whatever he did, the OS stayed responsive and very fast.
>So what? I can launch 20 applications simultaneously in Linux and have them running in a snap;
Well, I'm using Linux everyday at work, and I tell you: it doesn't feel responsive.
I played with BeOS (quite some time ago now) and it felt smooth, quick, reactive (on a PC ten time less powerful).
> that just isn't a big deal. Whether the OS stays responsive and fast depends on the apps.
Sure, if you ported FF to BeOS, it would suck as much on BeOS as it sucks on the other OS, that's true, but it's also true that using BeOS and its application felt responsive because they designed the applications which came with the OS, the toolkits, the programming guides this way, whereas using Linux or Windows don't feel responsive, and IMHO *this is* a big deal.
>If you launch Firefox, [..] simultaneously on BeOS, I guarantee you it would also bring it to its knees.
The thing is, you can bring an OS to 'its knees' while still making it 'responsive', and the video showed it quite well.. I remember another video where they overloaded the computer so that video rendering was stuttering, but the interface was still smooth, that's a priority issue and BeOS was nicely tuned for desktop load.
>But everybody uses Firefox because, in the end, it's still fast enough.
Well, I started using Opera because I don't think that FF is responsive enough. I don't understand why FF has a bigger marketshare than Opera: I think that Opera is better than FF.
Currently I'm using 50% FF and 50% Opera because I cannot stand Opera's weird tab management scheme (which cannot fully emulate FF tab management), but as soon as they fix this, I'll gladly drop FF until it becomes responsive (I'm not holding my breath)..
>The ability to play eight movies simultaneously is a bad way of determining OS thread performance.
:-(, whereas on BeOS everything stayed responsive all the time.
Agreed.
>Overall, I really don't see anything in BeOS that you don't get as well or better in a modern Linux system.
Well, you didn't look close enough to the demo: he launched 5 application simultaneously and had them running in a snap and whatever he did, the OS stayed responsive and very fast.
Linux/Windows users don't enjoy such responsiveness, even though we have far more powerful computer now.. As an example, when you open several bookmarks on Firefox, the window just freeze for several seconds, and people are used to this kind of behaviour
This is an application design issue (need to be supported by the kernel and the libraries of course), we could probably have this on Linux or Windows, but we don't unfortunately..
The thing is, you cannot truly compare Amiga with current OSs, because it had no memory protection and didn't run on PC's hardware, BeOS did.
And it was much more responsive than anything we have now.. Unfortunately, the situation won't change for a long time, because to have the same level of responsiveness as BeOS users enjoyed, you have to recode a big part of each application..
The availability of multi-core PC will ensure that the designers of new applications take into account multi-threading from the start, increasing the responsiveness of these new applications, but the migration will take a long time, *sigh*.
Can you chose to be infected by a real virus or not?
No, you can't (well you can try to protect yourself, but it's not a choice), OTOH for GPL code, you have the choice to use it or not.
So it's a really poor analogy.
I've never used Photoshop, but while I really have a hard time using Gimp even for very simple manipulations(an old gimp version) at work, at home I had much better luck using Paint.NET.
So Gimp is really harder to use for beginners (does ingimp record the swearing of the users frustrated by Gimp), probably because it does things its own way..
>Built in support for virtual machines. Something like java in the kernel
I don't think that something like Java should be in the kernel, but there could surely be better communications with the GC used in Java (and other language) and with the kernel memory manager, this way the GC could better use the memory: increasing the heap used in low memory pressure situation and reducing memory used by the GC when the memory pressure increase.
There have been some research on this topic, and now that Java is GPL, maybe this will happen.
I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that 50% of the Americans believe that there are aliens on the earth, I wonder why so many Americans?
In France, from my informal questions hardly no-one believes in aliens living on the earth, of course on the other hand we have our own myths, for example the Graphological analysis (believing that you can know someone by looking how his writing look) which is very widespread: you almost always have to do one to get a high-paying job..
>The problem is that with almost every minor kernel version revision the driver interface is changed,
While it's true that driver interface change, usually those change only impacts some drivers not all.
>This is why the current fluid kernel/driver interface specification is unsustainable and unmanageable in the long term
In the *very long term* maybe, but currently the amount of code changed each day is accelerating not slowing, so apparently it's not too painful yet.
In the long term, yes I can the see the interface kernel/driver stabilizing, but not for the reason given but because the kernel itself stabilize, so this will take a long time..
Google Calendar synchronization support with no offline possibility is quite useless I think, if I have to go online I'll use directly Google calendar..
I remember that there were a gadget, worn like a watch which could exchange business cards communicating with current on top of the skin.
It never went anywhere.
I read his post, and these 'reasons' are obviously false: if they managed to release ZFS under CDDL which *is* a Free license, just incompatible with the GPL, it obviously means that they were able to contact all the interested parties, so why not GPL?
So either one licensee refused to license their code under the GPL but was ok for CDDL (unlikely) or much more likely Sun wants to see ZFS everywhere except on Linux which is a direct competitor.
If they were really interested in seeing ZFS everywhere, why did they release it in a license incompatible with the GPL license?
Well, you know Linus sometimes also makes mistakes: I think that this is well accepted that 'transparent networking' as described by Linus is poor: what happens when there is a network/server error?
Well the client freeze or crash because the software is just doing function calls..
Somehow I doubt that this is the best possible answer!
So if you want something better, you *have* to handle errors caused by the network, so you might as well use a network API instead of something which looks like a function call but isn't.
>>Does Lord of the Rings, one of the most horrendously written classics ever created, qualify as having literary value?
>Nope. Great book, tho. Read it 7 time already, in 2 languages.
Great book? I really didn't enjoy it, I don't know why it had so much success..
Now Lois Mc Master Bujold's vorkosigan series or Isaac Asimov books (foundation!), those are really good.
>Today's science is tomorrow's myth.
No, myth 'inventors' never used experiments to validate their 'facts'.
>I'm still not sold on the CG,
This kind of CG doesn't look expensive..
At least the animation seems ok: IMHO, it's more important to have a good animation that to have a nice CG.