Sounds like solaris, in a way. For major apps, that's not too bad.
For all apps, good gods that's horrible. I remember doing my first solaris install.../opt was a mess. Nowdays I don't install anything solaris doesn't need (that it will let me not install anyway) so it's not as painful.
Could you imagine _every_ one of the GNU utilities having their own subdirectory in/opt? Argh...
I agree fully that the FSSTD isn't redhat's fault; UNIX has been that way for quite some time (although, I noticed in my xenix manual that home directories were under/usr, and binaries under/bin - that was interesting).
/usr/local is very handy. If something in is/usr/local, it's because I put it there. It's my own little section to play with. I don't mess with/usr unless I have to.
/home may be confusing to a windows migrant, but where else would you suggest putting user info? Windows NT gives you c:\winnt\profiles\user - how is that any different? A normal user will never need to move outside their home directory.
The/usr/apps,/usr/utils, etc. is less handy than you might think. Why would you organize them in such a way? You don't chdir into a directory like that to run a program, and a user doesn't have rights to anything there anyway. What about libraries?/usr/share seems to fit this space fairly nicely, although I do wish there was a bit of standardization for/usr/share.
Personally, I don't mind the way things are now, although I'd like to see/opt used more for major packages like GNOME, mysql or mozilla. Small applications don't really need segregation (IMHO anyway).
I dunno, didn't sound like a putdown to me. It's a common phrase that gives most people the idea that we've been sitting on the edge of our seats waiting for the answers. More of a comment on its importance rather than its tardiness.
It's been a while, but I think IIS 4 had a gopher server... not sure though, since I only messed with IIS at work (if I were going to run a gopher server at home, it would be linux based).
A lot of things, really. Drag and drop, native filesystem support, etc. VMWare is like running on a different machine. You could also say why not just have another computer on your desk.
You can't play a sorenson-encoded quicktime video using software available for linux. I dunno, maybe wine will run quicktime. I don't watch quicktime video so I don't care.
I wasn't answering that question. I was answering the question about being able to play windows media formats under linux. I specifically answered that question and provided my view on how the software performed. Try to pay attention next time.
What he did was easy compared to reverse engineering a codec (CSS isn't a codec - it's a weak encryption system). Codecs are some of the hardest things to reverse engineer, especially when the specs aren't published. Sorenson video isn't a separate codec like the windoze codecs are - it's mixed in with a bunch of other stuff in the quicktime binary - so just getting the.dll file to work with linux won't work.
They both use the windoze codecs, and since media player has their codes installed through the standard windoze multimedia properties (they're all separate.dll files) they're relatively easy to get to use on linux (I say relatively easy as in respect to say, getting the sorenson codec out of the quicktime binary or the realplayer one out of realplayer). I use mplayer 'cause it plays mpeg and avi files, where last I checked (some time ago) avifile only plays avi's.
mplayer's damn good, but it's not gui - you skip through the movie using arrow keys and pgup/pgdn. Once you get used to it, you'll still wish for a slider, but you'll wish that the programs that had sliders also supported the keyboard. I hope when they do finish they gui (they're workin' on it) they keep the keyboard controls.
I've only found a couple of files that mplayer won't play correctly - and with those files _nothing_ would play them correctly. I collect a lot of movies (3 stooges episodes, simpsons, full-length movies, etc.) so I've tested it out pretty well.
Actually, if I remember right, the contenintal congress debated on what the official language in the US would be (they were rather pissed (the american version) at england at the time). Latin and a few other languages were considered (latin would have been cool), but they settled on removing the excess nonsense out of english spelling. I'm not sure on exactly how they went about it (I think they commissioned webster to do it, but I'm not sure - been too long).
Personally, I don't think they went far enough. We still got way too many useless letters in there. I mean, what the hell is 'c' for? Or 'x' or 'q' for that matter? Assign them to other sounds that need two letters and drop the stupid crap. And we did drop the 'u' out of 'neighbour' but why an 'e' and 'i' instead of an 'a'?
I think the english language is horrible. Unfortunately, the only language I've studied other than english is french, which is worse. But, everybody speaks it, so we ain't got much of a choice I guess.
Perhaps you mean shockwave? Like the guy above said, flash has been available for a long, long time. Same with realplayer and acrobat reader, and if you use plugger (don't have a link handy, but it's not hard to find) you can view just about any mime type supported on linux (hell, with mplayer you can view just about any movie 'cept shockwave, quicktime, or vivo - you have to compile it yourself and play with the pluggerrc file though).
I really want shockwave support. It's not often I view a page that uses it, but when I do it's usually something I really want to see.
If you're a vendor, especially a commercial one, you're probably more interested in Netscape 6. Besides, you may need a stable API now, but guaranteed there'll be people just like you when there is a stable API. So it doesn't work out for you - well, it will work out for others later. Believe me, getting a good shining example of an XHTML/MathML/CSS2/whatever compliant browser that's rock solid and provides a stable platform will entice the vendors more than an almost-compliant browser (even IE qualifies as "almost" compliant these days).
As a webmaster, the standards compliance is the most important thing to me. I still won't be able to write pages that use the full standards, thanks to IE, NS4, and Opera, but it'll be there to set an example. Right now we're in a transitional period to CSS - standard compliance is a necessity. Granted, we can't throw our tables out completely yet, but when CSS3 comes out we should be able to. I want browsers to be at least CSS2 compliant once CSS3 is a standard.
I mean, really, who's more important here? People wanting to use API's, or webmasters? Who has more influence on the product? Sure, a few companies will use the mozilla API after a while, but not near as many as the webmasters who will design for it. What am I going to reccommend as webmaster for the corporate intranet? What am I going to design for on my public website?
I design all my pages in mozilla, and then add the hacks to get them presentable in IE (and opera if I feel like it). If you visit my site in IE, you won't get as good an experience as if you visited with mozilla. I reccommend mozilla to the people that read my site. And at the top of my site is a nice little sign for 4.x users - 'looking like crap in old brosers by design' (I can get away with that since I'm a low traffic site of little importance). This is what mozilla needs, and will shoot for. It's worth the wait.
I tried both corel and storm. There's a big difference between "based on debian" and "debian".
Corel tried to take the UNIX out of linux. When I couldn't find a package for the 'mail' command, I knew it wasn't the linux for me.
I can't remember what I didn't like about storm though - seems like I only had it for a couple weeks before I gave up in frustration.
Debian, though, is great - it's got a bit for everyone - want a server? Use stable. Want a stable workstation? Use testing. Want a bleeding edge install? Use sid (or unstable as it's called). And apt-get can't be beat. It wasn't as effective on corel and storm because there wasn't much to get - while debian has more packages than you can dream of (I think perhaps only SuSE has more, not sure).
I know few people who were already experienced with linux that used the corel distro. For a slackware/debian freak like me, it couldn't cut it.
Making their day a living hell is karma getting back at them.
Also, it makes them unhappy in their job.
Unhappy employees quit.
High turnover causes companies to lose money.
Companies that lose too much money go under.
Just deserts, really. I look at it like war; the soldier you just blew the head off probably doens't care much about why the war is being fought - he's doing what he's told. Does that mean we shouldn't shoot him?
Same here. I'd then ask them how they got the number, it's not voice phone (the phone was only attatched for testing), how it's a UUCP feed transferring important data, and then I'd start making up technical sounding stuff and confuse the hell out of them. I'd keep talking fast so they couldn't butt in, and at the end they'd either hang up or wait 'til I paused and say something stupid like "Oh, this isn't a normal phone?" At which point I'd start rambling again until they hung up.
Since my modem back then was only offline once or twice a month, I never bothered with trying to get rid of them - I just liked to mess with 'em.
I (in my shameful past) once worked as a telemarketer for about 3 weeks for an ambucs fundraiser. We cut out pages of phone books and marked off people we got ahold of.
Of course, after the fund drive, we threw away the pages. We had no "do not call" list. The next year, everyone would get called again.
Ever since GNOME came out, every article about GNOME or KDE has turned into a trollfest. It's like an event for them.
I wouldn't worry about it, GNOME and KDE are going to be around a long time, and I'm personally very glad for it. I wouldn't touch KDE with a 10 foot pole myself, but that's just personal preference - I'm glad it's there 'cause sometimes they think of things the GNOME folks don't, and vice-versa.
Just let the trolls do their thing - their karma (the real thing, not the slashdot thing) will adjust appropriately:)
Actually, fvwm was designed to be faster and take less resources than twm. That seems to have changed with version 2 (although it's still real freakin' fast) but if you want faster than twm try fvwm1.
CDE is still the standard desktop for UNIX (look at HU-UX, and I believe Tru64 and other commercial UNIXen as well, with the exception of BSD/i, which I think is strictly fvwm (but I could be wrong)).
GNOME is far more advanced than CDE is, and GTK is more advanced than motif (especially once v2 comes out, which is what sun wants on solaris). Looks like what sun's trying to do is consolidate the desktops somewhat; they want to be where the development is. There's plenty of development with GNOME.
I haven't tried compiling it from scratch, so I'll give that a shot. I don't use alsa myself, but I'm sure there's optimizations I could put in - haven't tried it 'cause it's not that important to me.
Cool, thanx for the links. I wouldn't run my server on one of these (I like to have at least 5 or 6 disks in a RAID 5 setup), but it's nice to know they finally made one.
There's a utility called id3 that does this. On my system (debian) I've got three packages - id3, id3v2, and libid3 installed, so it's bound to come from one of those (prolly id3). Check your distro for binaries.
I haven't tried it, but I don't see why it wouldn't work - mplayer supports.wmv files, so perhaps someone could modify it to play.wma (the version I got won't play mp3, but I imagine it's probably just because it wasn't designed to play audio only - it plays mpeg just fine).
I agree - I like GQmpeg's interface. Very nice on a 1600x1200 screen, whereas xmms is tiny. It still has the same 'winamp'ish look for the main window, but having the playlist as a regular gtk+ window is nice.
Thing is, on my system (K6-II 500) it skips when I change desktops, move files around on IDE drives, scroll in netscape (sometimes), etc. xmms doesn't.
What would be great (and for all I know, it may be out there - I haven't looked) was for there to be a gui plugin or somesuch that used gtk+ (and qt for the kde guys). I've never been a fan of the winamp-style look-like-a-car-radio interface. For one, a lot of my mp3's have long titles - mix that with long author names, and you can't tell what songs you're listing in the playlist.
Like I said, I haven't looked, so it may be out there... perhaps I'll do some checking around.
Yep, have fun with your nice little RAID 1/0 system, with its slow performance (no one told you having two IDE devices on the same controller slows them down considerably, did they?) and your IRQ's all allocated (hmm... one IRQ for every two devices, eh?). Have fun replacing your drives years before SCSI people do, because they're made cheap.
I'll stick with my nice RAID-5 in hardware setup (ain't seen that for IDE yet).
Oh, and network? Depends what you do. I sure as hell ain't doin' no video editing on a network drive. Hell, having my home partition on a network drive is unbearably slow for some things.
I haven't replaced ANY of my SCSI drives in the last few years. I've replaced about 5 IDE drives.
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Sounds like solaris, in a way. For major apps, that's not too bad.
/opt was a mess. Nowdays I don't install anything solaris doesn't need (that it will let me not install anyway) so it's not as painful.
/opt? Argh...
For all apps, good gods that's horrible. I remember doing my first solaris install...
Could you imagine _every_ one of the GNU utilities having their own subdirectory in
I agree fully that the FSSTD isn't redhat's fault; UNIX has been that way for quite some time (although, I noticed in my xenix manual that home directories were under /usr, and binaries under /bin - that was interesting).
/usr/local, it's because I put it there. It's my own little section to play with. I don't mess with /usr unless I have to.
/usr/apps, /usr/utils, etc. is less handy than you might think. Why would you organize them in such a way? You don't chdir into a directory like that to run a program, and a user doesn't have rights to anything there anyway. What about libraries? /usr/share seems to fit this space fairly nicely, although I do wish there was a bit of standardization for /usr/share.
/opt used more for major packages like GNOME, mysql or mozilla. Small applications don't really need segregation (IMHO anyway).
/usr/local is very handy. If something in is
/home may be confusing to a windows migrant, but where else would you suggest putting user info? Windows NT gives you c:\winnt\profiles\user - how is that any different? A normal user will never need to move outside their home directory.
The
Personally, I don't mind the way things are now, although I'd like to see
I dunno, didn't sound like a putdown to me. It's a common phrase that gives most people the idea that we've been sitting on the edge of our seats waiting for the answers. More of a comment on its importance rather than its tardiness.
It's been a while, but I think IIS 4 had a gopher server... not sure though, since I only messed with IIS at work (if I were going to run a gopher server at home, it would be linux based).
A lot of things, really. Drag and drop, native filesystem support, etc. VMWare is like running on a different machine. You could also say why not just have another computer on your desk.
Secret pagan version?
Dammit, why didn't anyone tell me about this? Damn, I should join the pagan linux mailing list I guess. Us pagans gotta stick together.
You can't play a sorenson-encoded quicktime video using software available for linux. I dunno, maybe wine will run quicktime. I don't watch quicktime video so I don't care.
I wasn't answering that question. I was answering the question about being able to play windows media formats under linux. I specifically answered that question and provided my view on how the software performed. Try to pay attention next time.
What he did was easy compared to reverse engineering a codec (CSS isn't a codec - it's a weak encryption system). Codecs are some of the hardest things to reverse engineer, especially when the specs aren't published. Sorenson video isn't a separate codec like the windoze codecs are - it's mixed in with a bunch of other stuff in the quicktime binary - so just getting the .dll file to work with linux won't work.
mplayer will do it.
.dll files) they're relatively easy to get to use on linux (I say relatively easy as in respect to say, getting the sorenson codec out of the quicktime binary or the realplayer one out of realplayer). I use mplayer 'cause it plays mpeg and avi files, where last I checked (some time ago) avifile only plays avi's.
avifile might, dunno, never used it.
They both use the windoze codecs, and since media player has their codes installed through the standard windoze multimedia properties (they're all separate
mplayer's damn good, but it's not gui - you skip through the movie using arrow keys and pgup/pgdn. Once you get used to it, you'll still wish for a slider, but you'll wish that the programs that had sliders also supported the keyboard. I hope when they do finish they gui (they're workin' on it) they keep the keyboard controls.
I've only found a couple of files that mplayer won't play correctly - and with those files _nothing_ would play them correctly. I collect a lot of movies (3 stooges episodes, simpsons, full-length movies, etc.) so I've tested it out pretty well.
Actually, if I remember right, the contenintal congress debated on what the official language in the US would be (they were rather pissed (the american version) at england at the time). Latin and a few other languages were considered (latin would have been cool), but they settled on removing the excess nonsense out of english spelling. I'm not sure on exactly how they went about it (I think they commissioned webster to do it, but I'm not sure - been too long).
Personally, I don't think they went far enough. We still got way too many useless letters in there. I mean, what the hell is 'c' for? Or 'x' or 'q' for that matter? Assign them to other sounds that need two letters and drop the stupid crap. And we did drop the 'u' out of 'neighbour' but why an 'e' and 'i' instead of an 'a'?
I think the english language is horrible. Unfortunately, the only language I've studied other than english is french, which is worse. But, everybody speaks it, so we ain't got much of a choice I guess.
I really want shockwave support. It's not often I view a page that uses it, but when I do it's usually something I really want to see.
If you're a vendor, especially a commercial one, you're probably more interested in Netscape 6. Besides, you may need a stable API now, but guaranteed there'll be people just like you when there is a stable API. So it doesn't work out for you - well, it will work out for others later. Believe me, getting a good shining example of an XHTML/MathML/CSS2/whatever compliant browser that's rock solid and provides a stable platform will entice the vendors more than an almost-compliant browser (even IE qualifies as "almost" compliant these days).
As a webmaster, the standards compliance is the most important thing to me. I still won't be able to write pages that use the full standards, thanks to IE, NS4, and Opera, but it'll be there to set an example. Right now we're in a transitional period to CSS - standard compliance is a necessity. Granted, we can't throw our tables out completely yet, but when CSS3 comes out we should be able to. I want browsers to be at least CSS2 compliant once CSS3 is a standard.
I mean, really, who's more important here? People wanting to use API's, or webmasters? Who has more influence on the product? Sure, a few companies will use the mozilla API after a while, but not near as many as the webmasters who will design for it. What am I going to reccommend as webmaster for the corporate intranet? What am I going to design for on my public website?
I design all my pages in mozilla, and then add the hacks to get them presentable in IE (and opera if I feel like it). If you visit my site in IE, you won't get as good an experience as if you visited with mozilla. I reccommend mozilla to the people that read my site. And at the top of my site is a nice little sign for 4.x users - 'looking like crap in old brosers by design' (I can get away with that since I'm a low traffic site of little importance). This is what mozilla needs, and will shoot for. It's worth the wait.
I tried both corel and storm. There's a big difference between "based on debian" and "debian".
Corel tried to take the UNIX out of linux. When I couldn't find a package for the 'mail' command, I knew it wasn't the linux for me.
I can't remember what I didn't like about storm though - seems like I only had it for a couple weeks before I gave up in frustration.
Debian, though, is great - it's got a bit for everyone - want a server? Use stable. Want a stable workstation? Use testing. Want a bleeding edge install? Use sid (or unstable as it's called). And apt-get can't be beat. It wasn't as effective on corel and storm because there wasn't much to get - while debian has more packages than you can dream of (I think perhaps only SuSE has more, not sure).
I know few people who were already experienced with linux that used the corel distro. For a slackware/debian freak like me, it couldn't cut it.
Making their day a living hell is karma getting back at them.
Also, it makes them unhappy in their job.
Unhappy employees quit.
High turnover causes companies to lose money.
Companies that lose too much money go under.
Just deserts, really. I look at it like war; the soldier you just blew the head off probably doens't care much about why the war is being fought - he's doing what he's told. Does that mean we shouldn't shoot him?
Same here. I'd then ask them how they got the number, it's not voice phone (the phone was only attatched for testing), how it's a UUCP feed transferring important data, and then I'd start making up technical sounding stuff and confuse the hell out of them. I'd keep talking fast so they couldn't butt in, and at the end they'd either hang up or wait 'til I paused and say something stupid like "Oh, this isn't a normal phone?" At which point I'd start rambling again until they hung up.
Since my modem back then was only offline once or twice a month, I never bothered with trying to get rid of them - I just liked to mess with 'em.
I (in my shameful past) once worked as a telemarketer for about 3 weeks for an ambucs fundraiser. We cut out pages of phone books and marked off people we got ahold of.
Of course, after the fund drive, we threw away the pages. We had no "do not call" list. The next year, everyone would get called again.
It's not the slashdotters, it's the trolls.
:)
Ever since GNOME came out, every article about GNOME or KDE has turned into a trollfest. It's like an event for them.
I wouldn't worry about it, GNOME and KDE are going to be around a long time, and I'm personally very glad for it. I wouldn't touch KDE with a 10 foot pole myself, but that's just personal preference - I'm glad it's there 'cause sometimes they think of things the GNOME folks don't, and vice-versa.
Just let the trolls do their thing - their karma (the real thing, not the slashdot thing) will adjust appropriately
Actually, fvwm was designed to be faster and take less resources than twm. That seems to have changed with version 2 (although it's still real freakin' fast) but if you want faster than twm try fvwm1.
CDE is still the standard desktop for UNIX (look at HU-UX, and I believe Tru64 and other commercial UNIXen as well, with the exception of BSD/i, which I think is strictly fvwm (but I could be wrong)).
GNOME is far more advanced than CDE is, and GTK is more advanced than motif (especially once v2 comes out, which is what sun wants on solaris). Looks like what sun's trying to do is consolidate the desktops somewhat; they want to be where the development is. There's plenty of development with GNOME.
I haven't tried compiling it from scratch, so I'll give that a shot. I don't use alsa myself, but I'm sure there's optimizations I could put in - haven't tried it 'cause it's not that important to me.
Think I will give it a shot though, thanx.
Cool, thanx for the links. I wouldn't run my server on one of these (I like to have at least 5 or 6 disks in a RAID 5 setup), but it's nice to know they finally made one.
There's a utility called id3 that does this. On my system (debian) I've got three packages - id3, id3v2, and libid3 installed, so it's bound to come from one of those (prolly id3). Check your distro for binaries.
I haven't tried it, but I don't see why it wouldn't work - mplayer supports .wmv files, so perhaps someone could modify it to play .wma (the version I got won't play mp3, but I imagine it's probably just because it wasn't designed to play audio only - it plays mpeg just fine).
I agree - I like GQmpeg's interface. Very nice on a 1600x1200 screen, whereas xmms is tiny. It still has the same 'winamp'ish look for the main window, but having the playlist as a regular gtk+ window is nice.
Thing is, on my system (K6-II 500) it skips when I change desktops, move files around on IDE drives, scroll in netscape (sometimes), etc. xmms doesn't.
What would be great (and for all I know, it may be out there - I haven't looked) was for there to be a gui plugin or somesuch that used gtk+ (and qt for the kde guys). I've never been a fan of the winamp-style look-like-a-car-radio interface. For one, a lot of my mp3's have long titles - mix that with long author names, and you can't tell what songs you're listing in the playlist.
Like I said, I haven't looked, so it may be out there... perhaps I'll do some checking around.
Yep, have fun with your nice little RAID 1/0 system, with its slow performance (no one told you having two IDE devices on the same controller slows them down considerably, did they?) and your IRQ's all allocated (hmm... one IRQ for every two devices, eh?). Have fun replacing your drives years before SCSI people do, because they're made cheap.
I'll stick with my nice RAID-5 in hardware setup (ain't seen that for IDE yet).
Oh, and network? Depends what you do. I sure as hell ain't doin' no video editing on a network drive. Hell, having my home partition on a network drive is unbearably slow for some things.
I haven't replaced ANY of my SCSI drives in the last few years. I've replaced about 5 IDE drives.
Have fun with your IDE there, buddy.