If you look back four or five years at the average linux desktop, you will realize that it was very primative. During this time they have been catching up to other OS's and have been doing a fairly good job.
People keep saying that KDE and GNOME aren't innovating, but what are they supposed to innovate. In my eyes, true innovation will come first with new hardware. Currently, I think that our desktops are fairly optimized for the usage of mice and keyboards and there are few things left to invent that will make usability much different.
I think that customizability and eaze of customizablity is the best thing to do right now. It is what prevents repetative tasks. Konqueror for example actually makes life easier by providing plugins to view most common file formats. This is not new by any means, but it is a good thing.
Right now we really need to focus more on content producing software as that is what is truly lacking. I believe that KOffice has the best short term potential, because it seems as if much of the other effort is going towards open office, which will take some time to finish if they plan to switch toolkits and provide integration with gnome( aren't these the current plans?).
I think that the next step in desktop innovation will be voice recognition. Not for writing content, but for navigating the desktop. It will be very hand when you can just walk in to the room and yell Slashdot at your computer and it will be loaded before you sit down:)
If you would do your research you would relize that Konqueror is more standards compliant than Mozilla and NS. Not to mention it is leaner, more extensable, quicker, and more stable.
I'm not quite sure about that. Konqueror isn't even close to being stable, ditto Mozilla.
I don't know about Mozilla(probably ugly), but Konqueror is very nicely coded. Konqueror is becoming *very* stable and I think is an excellent browser. The source code is very structured and readable. I tend to believe that using Qt and OO code helps create very readable and easy to understand programs.
You are a f_cking idiot. You are implying that a proprietary system is fine because we can find the backdoors and covor them with 2x4s. This is the dumbest thing that I have ever heard.
Matt Newell
Re:Linus should have his own action-figure line
on
Linus Talks About 2.4
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· Score: 1
Linus was a millionaire at one point from all of the linux startup companies giving him stocks, but now the stock isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Seriously though, I think that Linux stocks kinda got the shaft. Many people put a lot of money into tech stocks that had no business plan and when they went belly up, people thought that all tech stocks were the same. Companies like Redhat and VALinux do have business plans and probably will make money in the future, just not overnight.
Windows does not have HTML preview, text preview, or integrated digital camera support. You do not know what you are talking about.
I believe that integrated camera support was implemented first with gnome-vfs(only by a couple of weeks), while html preview and text preview are both native to kde.
True, but if the sattelite were to take a picture at an angle that was perpendicular to the radius of the earth, there would be way to much atmosphere and refraction to get any decent resolution.
Matt Newell
I am beginning to hate technical discussions on slashdot because people read a few comments here and there and think that they actually know something. Mach-like kernels attempt to address this problem by dividing the kernel into "servers".
I love the idea of a microkernel, but it is innefficient by nature and this has been proven time and time again. Other kernels address it by using languages that have better support for modularization (SML, Java, etc.)
Modularization can be done very efficiently and fairly easily in plain C. I think that C++ could be used in the kernel, but misuse of it's features would lead to disaster.
Matt Newell
You don't have a clue what you are talking about. This would make the servers even more slow than they already are when running in user space. The whole point of khttpd is to deliver static pages(usually cached) without context switches. This can be done in very little time and makes static serving much faster. Tux goes above and beyond this by allowing dynamic content to be generated by using cache objects(or something like that).
Just because something runs in kernel space does not make it faster, it just means less latency between interrupt and application response. This is why microkernel design kinda sucks, if your NIC driver is in user space, then when an interrupt happens, the kernel has to switch to user space then back to kernel space and this is why performace is very bad.
Having GUI functionality in the kernel will not make the GUI any faster, it will just bloat(bloat==unneeded shit) the kernel and lead to frequent crashes. I do think that graphic card drivers should reside in kernel space though, that way they can handle dma/agp/interrupts without having a seperate kernel module and they don't have to worry about using a lock to make sure that only one application will use the graphics hardware at a time. I think that only the bare minimun functionabliliy to exploit the hardware is necessary though.
I run Linux and I only have to reboot when I accidently step on the power strip button(this actually happend a few days ago). My resourse leaky apps get deleted and there is always a new, less buggy version to install for free.
Who the hell pays good money for an OS that slows down when it runs for a while. Think about that - It slows down when it runs!
And It has never crashed, not even with the shit-generic video card.
Matt Newell
Re:Drunk on the WINE of human happiness
on
Wine In New Skins
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· Score: 1
You are to stupid to even go to the Wine website and read that WINE=Wine Is Not an Emulator
It is a native library that does some tricky dynamic linking. It is possible to run faster than windows and someday probably will.
How many people(average users) use winblinds? And even with winblinds, the default width of dialog boxes doesn't change, so the example of the text running off the end of the dialog still holds true.
What he was trying to say is that kde uses a better widget positioning scheme. I have programmed win32 and qt/kde and this is very true. The best part about qt/kde is the hierarchal nature of the widget's layout in both code and visualization which win32 lacks.
Matt Newell
I compile KDE from CVS and Konqueror is getting very stable and nice. Every day improvements are made and I think that soon it will be just as good as IE(A month ago I would have laughed if someone told me that). JavaScript seems to work *VERY* well in all my experiences and I haven't had it crash for a long time. I haven't tried Java yet because you need a Java VM installed, so I can't comment on that, but I'm sure that it is comming along nicely also.
For all of you that think KDE is unstable, which it was a bit for 2.0, wait for 2.1. Since the release of 2.0, every bug that I know of has been fixed and many new features have been added.
If you actually think that a compiler will/can make code efficient and fast, then you have a lot to learn.
Proper design is the essential aspect of making software efficient. Clean fast algorithms will always increase a programs speed and efficiency, optimized code will not. Sometime try making a 3d game without using some kind of bsp/portal/other system to get rid of unseen polys. You can optimize the drawing code all you want, but performance will still suck!
You can't just add the four processes memory together, a very large portion(almost all) is shared memory. This means that mozilla is using 25megs, not 100.
I do agree with your point though, mozilla sucks. It is a bunch of big bloated crap that we don't even use.
As I have watched Mozilla progress, I slowly became disappointed, and thought that Linux would never have an open source alternative that really supports the newest technology.
Then I started using KDE from CVS and my hope was restored. The version of konqueror that shipped with KDE2 is very good, but the work hasn't stopped. Every day there are changes that make Konqueror more standards complient and a better browser.
Would it be possible to use information from a GPS card for an encryption key? It seems that if the kernel got the location from the card at boot time and used that as the key it would be possible to limit computer access to that location. Because no information is ever entered into the machine, there would be no brute force method.
You could even have it boot a small disk image if the key was incorrect, and write random data over the disk in the background.
If you use a good encryption algo and encrypt the entire drive( including partition table etc. ) wouldn't it be impossible to crack the encryption?
These are just ideas that I pulled from somewhere and I know very little about encryption so don't flame me for being an idiot.
If, by reading (not downloading, not uploading, but just looking at) the code, they can find a hole
How do you expect to read the code without downloading it? Oh wait, I get it, you upload your eyeballs:)
Anyway, there are allready plenty of known security hole in the products mentioned. Why would someone need any more?
Didn't Open Source software used to be about techinal merit? Or has all this BS always been around.
Trolltech is good.
QT is good.
KDE is good.
Gnome is good.
Enlightenment is good.
(Your favorite whatever) is probably good also.
As far as I am concerned any individuals and/or companies that release their code to be used by others are doing a good service to all of us and we should praise them(Even if the code is crap).
QT/KDE are trying to give away their work so we can use it and stupid people tell them that they are evil because of pure BS(liscensing).
Everyone needs to sit back and look at the software that is running on their computer and just be happy, if you don't like something then fix it.
If you haven't tried konqueror(kde's browser) yet you are in for quite a surprise! It is fast and does a great job of rendering. It supports javascript, ssl, java, and can open just about any type of file for viewing(It also can make use of Netscape plugins such as flash).
It is now, just in the last few weeks, getting very stable, better than netscape or mozilla. I suggest you give it a try along with the rest of KDE2. It will be out soon:)
I have used designer and it is by far the most convenient gui design utitity to date. It does not requtire that you use any particular toolkit or language. It outputs an xml description of the widget/dialog that you have designed and you can then have a seperate program(uic) output a c++ header and source file. You could easily create a program that outputs source in (enter your toolkit/lanuage here). It doesn't try to control your whole application so you can easily use it on existing applications. It is a very nice piece of OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.
For all of you out there that like to complain, why don't you head on over to sourceforge and start a new project(toolkit, language, maybe OS) because I'm sure you'll do everything just perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
If you look back four or five years at the average linux desktop, you will realize that it was very primative. During this time they have been catching up to other OS's and have been doing a fairly good job.
:)
People keep saying that KDE and GNOME aren't innovating, but what are they supposed to innovate. In my eyes, true innovation will come first with new hardware. Currently, I think that our desktops are fairly optimized for the usage of mice and keyboards and there are few things left to invent that will make usability much different.
I think that customizability and eaze of customizablity is the best thing to do right now. It is what prevents repetative tasks. Konqueror for example actually makes life easier by providing plugins to view most common file formats. This is not new by any means, but it is a good thing.
Right now we really need to focus more on content producing software as that is what is truly lacking. I believe that KOffice has the best short term potential, because it seems as if much of the other effort is going towards open office, which will take some time to finish if they plan to switch toolkits and provide integration with gnome( aren't these the current plans?).
I think that the next step in desktop innovation will be voice recognition. Not for writing content, but for navigating the desktop. It will be very hand when you can just walk in to the room and yell Slashdot at your computer and it will be loaded before you sit down
Matt Newell
If you would do your research you would relize that Konqueror is more standards compliant than Mozilla and NS. Not to mention it is leaner, more extensable, quicker, and more stable.
I'm not quite sure about that. Konqueror isn't even close to being stable, ditto Mozilla.
I don't know about Mozilla(probably ugly), but Konqueror is very nicely coded. Konqueror is becoming *very* stable and I think is an excellent browser. The source code is very structured and readable. I tend to believe that using Qt and OO code helps create very readable and easy to understand programs.
You are a f_cking idiot. You are implying that a proprietary system is fine because we can find the backdoors and covor them with 2x4s. This is the dumbest thing that I have ever heard.
Matt Newell
Linus was a millionaire at one point from all of the linux startup companies giving him stocks, but now the stock isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Seriously though, I think that Linux stocks kinda got the shaft. Many people put a lot of money into tech stocks that had no business plan and when they went belly up, people thought that all tech stocks were the same. Companies like Redhat and VALinux do have business plans and probably will make money in the future, just not overnight.
Matt Newell
It runs on top of X you idiot.
Matt Newell
It is a sad day today, I didn't think of this as a joke, more of a good idea.
Matt Newell
Running KDE CVS with AA text, Alpha Blended icons, and lots of other cool stuff(some of it is even productive:)
Windows does not have HTML preview, text preview, or integrated digital camera support. You do not know what you are talking about.
I believe that integrated camera support was implemented first with gnome-vfs(only by a couple of weeks), while html preview and text preview are both native to kde.
Matt Newell
True, but if the sattelite were to take a picture at an angle that was perpendicular to the radius of the earth, there would be way to much atmosphere and refraction to get any decent resolution. Matt Newell
I am beginning to hate technical discussions on slashdot because people read a few comments here and there and think that they actually know something.
Mach-like kernels attempt to address this problem by dividing the kernel into "servers".
I love the idea of a microkernel, but it is innefficient by nature and this has been proven time and time again.
Other kernels address it by using languages that have better support for modularization (SML, Java, etc.)
Modularization can be done very efficiently and fairly easily in plain C. I think that C++ could be used in the kernel, but misuse of it's features would lead to disaster.
Matt Newell
You don't have a clue what you are talking about. This would make the servers even more slow than they already are when running in user space. The whole point of khttpd is to deliver static pages(usually cached) without context switches. This can be done in very little time and makes static serving much faster. Tux goes above and beyond this by allowing dynamic content to be generated by using cache objects(or something like that).
Just because something runs in kernel space does not make it faster, it just means less latency between interrupt and application response. This is why microkernel design kinda sucks, if your NIC driver is in user space, then when an interrupt happens, the kernel has to switch to user space then back to kernel space and this is why performace is very bad.
Having GUI functionality in the kernel will not make the GUI any faster, it will just bloat(bloat==unneeded shit) the kernel and lead to frequent crashes. I do think that graphic card drivers should reside in kernel space though, that way they can handle dma/agp/interrupts without having a seperate kernel module and they don't have to worry about using a lock to make sure that only one application will use the graphics hardware at a time. I think that only the bare minimun functionabliliy to exploit the hardware is necessary though.
Matt Newell
I run Linux and I only have to reboot when I accidently step on the power strip button(this actually happend a few days ago). My resourse leaky apps get deleted and there is always a new, less buggy version to install for free.
Who the hell pays good money for an OS that slows down when it runs for a while. Think about that - It slows down when it runs!
And It has never crashed, not even with the shit-generic video card.
Matt Newell
You are to stupid to even go to the Wine website and read that WINE=Wine Is Not an Emulator It is a native library that does some tricky dynamic linking. It is possible to run faster than windows and someday probably will.
How many people(average users) use winblinds? And even with winblinds, the default width of dialog boxes doesn't change, so the example of the text running off the end of the dialog still holds true. What he was trying to say is that kde uses a better widget positioning scheme. I have programmed win32 and qt/kde and this is very true. The best part about qt/kde is the hierarchal nature of the widget's layout in both code and visualization which win32 lacks. Matt Newell
I compile KDE from CVS and Konqueror is getting very stable and nice. Every day improvements are made and I think that soon it will be just as good as IE(A month ago I would have laughed if someone told me that). JavaScript seems to work *VERY* well in all my experiences and I haven't had it crash for a long time. I haven't tried Java yet because you need a Java VM installed, so I can't comment on that, but I'm sure that it is comming along nicely also.
For all of you that think KDE is unstable, which it was a bit for 2.0, wait for 2.1. Since the release of 2.0, every bug that I know of has been fixed and many new features have been added.
Matt Newell
If you actually think that a compiler will/can make code efficient and fast, then you have a lot to learn.
Proper design is the essential aspect of making software efficient. Clean fast algorithms will always increase a programs speed and efficiency, optimized code will not. Sometime try making a 3d game without using some kind of bsp/portal/other system to get rid of unseen polys. You can optimize the drawing code all you want, but performance will still suck!
Matt Newell
You can't just add the four processes memory together, a very large portion(almost all) is shared memory. This means that mozilla is using 25megs, not 100.
I do agree with your point though, mozilla sucks. It is a bunch of big bloated crap that we don't even use.
As I have watched Mozilla progress, I slowly became disappointed, and thought that Linux would never have an open source alternative that really supports the newest technology.
Then I started using KDE from CVS and my hope was restored. The version of konqueror that shipped with KDE2 is very good, but the work hasn't stopped. Every day there are changes that make Konqueror more standards complient and a better browser.
If you haven't given it a try, you ought to.
Would it be possible to use information from a GPS card for an encryption key? It seems that if the kernel got the location from the card at boot time and used that as the key it would be possible to limit computer access to that location. Because no information is ever entered into the machine, there would be no brute force method.
You could even have it boot a small disk image if the key was incorrect, and write random data over the disk in the background.
If you use a good encryption algo and encrypt the entire drive( including partition table etc. ) wouldn't it be impossible to crack the encryption?
These are just ideas that I pulled from somewhere and I know very little about encryption so don't flame me for being an idiot.
If, by reading (not downloading, not uploading, but just looking at) the code, they can find a hole
How do you expect to read the code without downloading it? Oh wait, I get it, you upload your eyeballs:)
Anyway, there are allready plenty of known security hole in the products mentioned. Why would someone need any more?
Didn't Open Source software used to be about techinal merit? Or has all this BS always been around. Trolltech is good. QT is good. KDE is good. Gnome is good. Enlightenment is good. (Your favorite whatever) is probably good also. As far as I am concerned any individuals and/or companies that release their code to be used by others are doing a good service to all of us and we should praise them(Even if the code is crap). QT/KDE are trying to give away their work so we can use it and stupid people tell them that they are evil because of pure BS(liscensing). Everyone needs to sit back and look at the software that is running on their computer and just be happy, if you don't like something then fix it.
If you haven't tried konqueror(kde's browser) yet you are in for quite a surprise! It is fast and does a great job of rendering. It supports javascript, ssl, java, and can open just about any type of file for viewing(It also can make use of Netscape plugins such as flash).
:)
It is now, just in the last few weeks, getting very stable, better than netscape or mozilla. I suggest you give it a try along with the rest of KDE2. It will be out soon
I have used designer and it is by far the most convenient gui design utitity to date. It does not requtire that you use any particular toolkit or language. It outputs an xml description of the widget/dialog that you have designed and you can then have a seperate program(uic) output a c++ header and source file. You could easily create a program that outputs source in (enter your toolkit/lanuage here). It doesn't try to control your whole application so you can easily use it on existing applications. It is a very nice piece of OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.
For all of you out there that like to complain, why don't you head on over to sourceforge and start a new project(toolkit, language, maybe OS) because I'm sure you'll do everything just perfect.