You can install synaptic easily on debian and it actually comes with Lenny if you select the desktop "package". It'll automatically check for updates. You could always put the updating into a cron job, so you never have to do it. I'll probably do that once lenny goes to stable.
Don't be silly. Stallman may think he has the corner on the term "free" but your parent is using it how most people would define the term. Just because that's how he defines doesn't mean it's wrong if others define it differently.
A counter-argument to that is why waste all the effort getting it working for most OSs but lose the war in getting people to use it. Instead, it may be better to code with the idea in mind that you'll port later and try launching to the largest platform first. The whole mantra of 'release early and often' is applicable, in my mind.
There is a free HTML version of the book here. One of the demands, for writing the book, that is was to published under a free license. It was definitely an interesting read.
Just as an FYI, Mepis is now debian driven. In fact, it uses the Debian stable repositories except for a repository that has backported packages and other custom stuff. The only reason I have moved away from it, is the oldness of stable.
If you're looking for something more bleeding age I would suggest checking out arch. You'll have to do a little work to get it up to the usability that OpenSUSE is because it makes you build your own system. On the plus side though, it's a rolling release (so you don't have to reinstall it again) and it's comparatively fast since you choose what daemons to run.
Exactly. I haven't had to deal with that yet but I use email as documenting for letting people know things, like smaller products that aren't tracking through the normal paper. It's a great CYA.
I've ran both Fedora and Debian and have not had any notable problems with packaging issues. The only reason (in regards to package) that I prefer Debian's system is apt seems (to me) to be much faster then yum. I've heard of the rpm hell but have never experienced it...
I keep hoping that Ubuntu or Mepis get up to Libranet quality standards someday.
I just want to throw out that Mepis is awesome at automatically mounting flash drives, recognizing videcams, installing flash, java. My only beef with it is that it uses etch's repos, which means some of the newer stuff may not be available (in my case a library I needed that wasn't in the repos). Though my Mepis system still runs by switching over the Lenny repos. Libranet must have been pretty good if it beats out mepis.
They knew what they were doing from Batman Begins. From imdb the end of Batman Begins.
Jim Gordon: What about escalation? Batman: Escalation? Jim Gordon: We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds. Batman: And? Jim Gordon: And *you're* wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops. Now, take this guy: armed robbery, double homicide. Got a taste for theatrical, like you. Leaves a calling card. [Gordon presents Batman with a clear plastic evidence bag containing what appears to be a single playing card; Batman turns it over to reveal a "Joker"] Batman: I'll look into it.
It must certainly is. Without Redhat we wouldn't have CentOS. CentOS is built from Redhat's source with all the trademarking removed. http://www.centos.org/
Maybe being modular means that it will be easier to trim down vista for the next version (since I'm assuming the next version will be vista redux but with another name).
I find the liberation fonts more visually appealing. Fedora has a lush look to it without any tweaking, in my opinion... and part of that is the font choice. If you're curious what it looks like, just do a search for Fedora screenshots.
So UAC is equivalent to doing a su -c 'some command', in that it asks for a password (or whatever Vista's equivalent is) each time? If so, that would be IMHO annoying.
If ready for the desktop means GUI everything and consistant style (read intigrated everything) you can count me out. The fastest to use programs use keyboard shortcuts for all common tasks, this is initialy slower than a gui but eventualy multiple times faster. I prefer a fast CLI, with the gui only used for software that benifits from it. Done properly, I don't think those two goals are mutually exclusive. For example, Fedora's update notifier provides an easy way to 'point-and-click' for updating packages. What do I use it for? Just as an announcement so I know that something can be updated. Then I go to the command line and simply type 'yum update' since that tends to be quicker.
My point is that the GUI environment will generally use a command-line program as the back-end. So my hope is that 'desktop-ready distros' will give the option to use the command line.
A.I. was kind of weird, but it was pretty good. Just as a little tidbit, Kubrick worked on A.I. before Spielberg and it wasn't until Kubrick died that Spielberg actually became involved. I'd like to believe that the weirdness came from Kubrick.:)
Agreed, working with Fedora sounds good because both Ubuntu and Fedora are on a 6-month release cycle. Granted, Fedora is a little more loose with their release date. It's not as set in stone as Ubuntu. But even having them within the same week would be easy (I would think) to accomplish.
agree to a six-month and 2-3 year long term cycle The only fly in the ointment is that it sounds like Mark would like to see a 2-3 year long-term support release from the other distributions. I just don't see Fedora doing that. Their whole shtick is being on a the forefront of development. Doing a long-term support would be counterproductive. This is especially true since users can always use CentOS or Redhat for long-term support.
Totally agree with your post, though I should put the disclaimer that I run Fedora as well. Ubuntu and Fedora are made for two different purposes so you can't judge them by the same rubric. If you want user-friendly* and stability go with Ubuntu. There is obviously a need for a Linux distro that is more appetizing to newcomers to Linux. If you want more of the bleeding-edge, Fedora is there always pushing with the new versions of software. FF3 beta makes a ton of more sense** in Fedora then Ubuntu.
* I do have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I first installed Fedora 8 (still haven't made it to 9 yet). I expected it to be very technical but the worse thing was setting up the partitions (which I have done before and is probably documented in the wiki regardless).
Fedora is still fairly user-friendly in its own right (can't compare it to the latest Ubuntu since I don't run it). The only configuration tinkering that I had to do was the boilerplate ones related to non-Free software (java applets, flash, wireles, etc). It really does a good job letting you know when there updates, has a pleasing font, etc. I've never encountered the reported 'RPM hell'.
** I have heard the argument that Ubuntu would be stuck supporting FF2 if they started with that. It seems reasonable to upgrade from FF2 to FF3 when FF3 is released. Maybe I'm missing something.
If you don't feel like reading through a few man pages to find the answer, then consider something else. I recently installed Debian Etch to finally blow away my Windows installation. It too requires reading documentation; I don't think that's a bad thing.
I use Ubuntu, and 8.04 also shipped with FF3beta. Which surprised me mostly because 8.04 is the long-term-support version. I always got the impression that means it's built to be as stable as possible. I've heard that this is because if they shipped with FF2, they would be stuck supporting that version for all of 8.04's life. Starting with FF3, it will eventually be off beta. I'm surprised that they can not just upgrade from FF2 to FF3 but what do I know.
Incidentally, I checked and on Debian it's Gaim 2.0.0beta5 that is being supported. From what I remember, that pretty much translated to the first version of Pidgin.
Well, the alternative is to make everyone march to some sort of schedule, which not even Microsoft can do. Actually that may change. Quoting here, who is quoting Mark Shuttleworth's blog.
He pledged: "If two out or three of Red Hat (RHEL), Novell (SLES) and Debian are willing to agree in advance on a date to the nearest month, and thereby on a combination of kernel, compiler toolchain, GNOME/KDE, X and OpenOffice versions, and agree to a six-month and two-to-three year long term cycle, then I would happily realign Ubuntu's short and long-term cycles around that." Hopefully other distros and software maintainers go along with this idea. It can only help.
I'd tend to agree. On my machine is both Fedora 8 and Debian Etch. Debian's "stable" code is maddeningly stable sometimes. For instance, Fedora keeps up along with the Pidgin version, whereas Debian Etch currently maintains a Gaim version (I forget which exact version).
However, Fedora has a lot of focus on upstream work that distros, who focus on stability, can benefit from. Not saying either is better, but there's a place for each of them. So... you do tend see some less mature software in Fedora but that's expected. I'm not sure how the other distros operate but Debian and Fedora seem to be on the opposite sides with what is released.
Slashdot Mirror
You can install synaptic easily on debian and it actually comes with Lenny if you select the desktop "package". It'll automatically check for updates. You could always put the updating into a cron job, so you never have to do it. I'll probably do that once lenny goes to stable.
Ype... as soon as I get alsa to work I'll go watch the latest trailer on apple's website!
Don't be silly. Stallman may think he has the corner on the term "free" but your parent is using it how most people would define the term. Just because that's how he defines doesn't mean it's wrong if others define it differently.
A counter-argument to that is why waste all the effort getting it working for most OSs but lose the war in getting people to use it. Instead, it may be better to code with the idea in mind that you'll port later and try launching to the largest platform first. The whole mantra of 'release early and often' is applicable, in my mind.
There is a free HTML version of the book here. One of the demands, for writing the book, that is was to published under a free license. It was definitely an interesting read.
Just as an FYI, Mepis is now debian driven. In fact, it uses the Debian stable repositories except for a repository that has backported packages and other custom stuff. The only reason I have moved away from it, is the oldness of stable.
If you're looking for something more bleeding age I would suggest checking out arch. You'll have to do a little work to get it up to the usability that OpenSUSE is because it makes you build your own system. On the plus side though, it's a rolling release (so you don't have to reinstall it again) and it's comparatively fast since you choose what daemons to run.
VMWare and Parallels seem to be better choices if you can afford them
vmware server edition is free, barring a registration via email. At least it was 3 months ago...
You must care somewhat, otherwise you wouldn't comment. ;)
Exactly. I haven't had to deal with that yet but I use email as documenting for letting people know things, like smaller products that aren't tracking through the normal paper. It's a great CYA.
I've ran both Fedora and Debian and have not had any notable problems with packaging issues. The only reason (in regards to package) that I prefer Debian's system is apt seems (to me) to be much faster then yum. I've heard of the rpm hell but have never experienced it...
I keep hoping that Ubuntu or Mepis get up to Libranet quality standards someday.
I just want to throw out that Mepis is awesome at automatically mounting flash drives, recognizing videcams, installing flash, java. My only beef with it is that it uses etch's repos, which means some of the newer stuff may not be available (in my case a library I needed that wasn't in the repos). Though my Mepis system still runs by switching over the Lenny repos. Libranet must have been pretty good if it beats out mepis.
They knew what they were doing from Batman Begins. From imdb the end of Batman Begins.
Jim Gordon: What about escalation?
Batman: Escalation?
Jim Gordon: We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds.
Batman: And?
Jim Gordon: And *you're* wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops. Now, take this guy: armed robbery, double homicide. Got a taste for theatrical, like you. Leaves a calling card.
[Gordon presents Batman with a clear plastic evidence bag containing what appears to be a single playing card; Batman turns it over to reveal a "Joker"]
Batman: I'll look into it.
I went to Ubuntu after Linspire started to be based on Ubuntu.
Any plans to try out Debian then?
> RHEL is 100% GPL as far as i know
It must certainly is. Without Redhat we wouldn't have CentOS. CentOS is built from Redhat's source with all the trademarking removed. http://www.centos.org/
Maybe being modular means that it will be easier to trim down vista for the next version (since I'm assuming the next version will be vista redux but with another name).
I find the liberation fonts more visually appealing. Fedora has a lush look to it without any tweaking, in my opinion ... and part of that is the font choice. If you're curious what it looks like, just do a search for Fedora screenshots.
So UAC is equivalent to doing a su -c 'some command', in that it asks for a password (or whatever Vista's equivalent is) each time? If so, that would be IMHO annoying.
My point is that the GUI environment will generally use a command-line program as the back-end. So my hope is that 'desktop-ready distros' will give the option to use the command line.
I'm not worried about it, I just interpreted Mark's comment as he was. Either that or he's not being very precise with his wording.
* I do have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I first installed Fedora 8 (still haven't made it to 9 yet). I expected it to be very technical but the worse thing was setting up the partitions (which I have done before and is probably documented in the wiki regardless).
Fedora is still fairly user-friendly in its own right (can't compare it to the latest Ubuntu since I don't run it). The only configuration tinkering that I had to do was the boilerplate ones related to non-Free software (java applets, flash, wireles, etc). It really does a good job letting you know when there updates, has a pleasing font, etc. I've never encountered the reported 'RPM hell'.
** I have heard the argument that Ubuntu would be stuck supporting FF2 if they started with that. It seems reasonable to upgrade from FF2 to FF3 when FF3 is released. Maybe I'm missing something. If you don't feel like reading through a few man pages to find the answer, then consider something else. I recently installed Debian Etch to finally blow away my Windows installation. It too requires reading documentation; I don't think that's a bad thing.
Incidentally, I checked and on Debian it's Gaim 2.0.0beta5 that is being supported. From what I remember, that pretty much translated to the first version of Pidgin.
I'd tend to agree. On my machine is both Fedora 8 and Debian Etch. Debian's "stable" code is maddeningly stable sometimes. For instance, Fedora keeps up along with the Pidgin version, whereas Debian Etch currently maintains a Gaim version (I forget which exact version).
However, Fedora has a lot of focus on upstream work that distros, who focus on stability, can benefit from. Not saying either is better, but there's a place for each of them. So... you do tend see some less mature software in Fedora but that's expected. I'm not sure how the other distros operate but Debian and Fedora seem to be on the opposite sides with what is released.