Anyone who uses Sid and a handful of unofficial repositories will be almost as current as Gentoo "~arch".
However, using unofficial repositories is not as painless as it might look.
*The repository might go offline any time
*The repository might not recompile their packages for a new library in the official repository, making it useless
*The repository probably didn't spend as much time packaging the software as they should have, which can lead to at least 2 things:
- Ugly stuff like debs who installs themselves in/usr/local (I've seen that on several occasions)
- Very painful upgrades when the software from the unofficial repository eventually reaches main (mostly dependencies).
With gentoo I never had such problems with masked packages and unofficial ebuilds. Which doesn't mean that debian sid doesn't have other advantages.
What I would have them rather do is not say they'd give everything back to wine if it was not their intention, or if what they truly meant was 'We'll give back to wine... in 15 years'.
Now regarding their business model, it can be argued that they're actually a service company. A large part of the popular games they support run just as well in wine, like Warcraft III and Half-Life / Counter Strike. A big chunk of what Transgaming provides to its customers is an easier to install and to configure wine, just like codeweavers with crossover.
I'm sick of these bastards that make huge contributions to open source software and then don't want to pay hosting costs for thousands of kiddies to download source at install time!
Last I checked, the winex public cvs tree was hosted by sourceforge. So it really must be costing transgaming a lot of money when someone downloads from there.
226 of which are from a transgaming employee $ grep -i @transgaming.com ChangeLog | wc -l 226
And 1701 for codeweavers $ grep -i @codeweavers.com ChangeLog | wc -l 1701
So Transgaming gave back a little after all. But not that much. I browsed the top transgaming changelog entries and they concerned relatively minor stuff, like fixes for alsa audio support.
Sorry but I'm still convinced that Transgaming has been a bad wine citizen (the fact that the licence permitted it doesn't change my opinion), and that they were deceiving the community when they said they'd give back everything to wine after they reach a certain number of subscribers. I guess they have reached that number since they have not yet filed for bankruptcy.
Nice and neat, but it doesn't stop your browser from actually downloading the image as the hosts file would.
Actually, it can. It depends what you put on your customized stylesheet.
Some people want to get a completely ad free web experience. Others, feel guilty about it, and don't want to get rid of the ads to show their support to the site, but want to make them less annoying.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ -moz-outline: medium dashed red;
-moz-opacity: 10%; }
468x80 images and iframes are downloaded and displayed, but they are 90% translucent and are outlined by a big red dash.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ visibility: hidden !important; }
Banners & iframes are downloaded but not displayed.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ display: none !important; }
Banners and iframes are neither downloaded nor displayed.
This site provides a sample antibanner stylesheet, as well as instructions on how to use it with opera, mozilla and others.
if you use a Gecko browser (mozilla phoenix galeon), you can get rid of those annoying flash ads by using a special 'userContent.css'
Put that file in the chrome subdirectory of you mozilla profile, and all the flash ads on anandtech & other sites should be gone, without breaking legitimate flash usage (stupid games, awkward menus, 900kB site intros, etc.)
It's not the first time that I see comments on how on some linux distributions config files are not where they should be (in/etc) and how *BSD is so much better in that respect.
I've been using Linux for 5 years, and over they years I tried several distributions (Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, Gentoo) and I don't remember having to edit a config file that was not in/etc (besides user config in my home). So can you please give examples of config files that are not in/etc?
Now, regarding *BSD. A couple of months ago, I went in a cybercafe and wanted to chat with friends on irc. However as soon as I tried to connect to an IRC server, it would disconnect me for 'having an open proxy'. I asked the manager. He said he was aware of the problem but didn't know how to get rid of it. I told him they probably had an open proxy. He asked me if I was familiar with unix. The next minute he had me logged as root on their FreeBSD NAT trying to find the problem;)
I ran 'netstat' and found out that they had Squid running, and that me getting kicked from IRC was probably to due to the fact that it was poorly configured. I immediatly looked for a the config file in/etc or/etc/squid but didn't find anything. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that the config file was in/usr/local/squid/etc or some very weird path like that. Not really the 'everything system related is in/etc like it should' you describe. The story had an happy end since a few minutes later I managed to log on IRC.
Disclaimer: it was my first and only time doing 'administrative tasks' on a *BSD system so it could be a bad example. I do not mean to troll, just giving one example that is opposite to the parent poster's experience. Are Linux distributions so bad at having all config files in the same place, and are the BSDs better are it?
For those interested in setting up alsa, note that the modules options file in the article is only valid for alsa 0.9 up to rc3
The line options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=4 snd_device_mode=0660 snd_device_gid=29 snd_device_uid=0
wont work with newer versions (for instance Sid has 0.9rc5, an so I guess Testing will have it soon too), because (from www.alsa-project.org) We have changed the kernel module symbol names (module parameter names). We removed prefix 'snd_'. Please, update your/etc/modules.conf files by hand or use our alsa-driver/utils/module-options script which does this job. Please, notice that 'snd_' prefix is not equal to 'snd-' prefix (module name) which is left unchanged.
That means you need to change the previous line into something like: options snd major=116 cards_limit=4 device_mode=0660 device_gid=29 device_uid=0
Hope this helps
Re:99 bucks for already out of date software.
on
Xandros 1.0
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
From the interview:
A key message that we want to convey is that we are not trying to compete for the bleeding edge user. We want people to actually get their daily work done -- everything should just work. If you look at most of those other distributions, much of what's there either doesn't work, or it's too hard for the average user to understand or to use. That's the key difference.
So it's ok..they are not targeting you, me, the linux geeks & the bleeding edge crowd. I don't know many among those who would pay $99 for an up to date distribution anyway.
They're targetting business users, the office desktop, and want to make a cheap OS that just plain works, even in fields where Linux traditionnaly doesn't do too well (browser plugins, compatibility with Microsoft software) thank to a tight integration with Codeweaver's Crossover plugin & office.
So.. I'm not interested in Xandros, but that doesn't mean Xandros is not interesting.
With all the trick jump stuff (e.g. wall jump when you dodge away from a wall), the adrenaline combos, I think there is still a lot to be learned from ut2k3.
I guess it's a bit like when the strafe jump was discovered in quake.
What dissapoints me is that the aiming seems not very precise and I can't figure out when I hit or I miss. And, since the games feels rather laggy, it makes aiming all the more difficult.
From what I read elsewhere, it's an ex-loki games employee now working on the ut2k3 project who has done most of the port himself. I even think he did it mostly in his free time, since a linux client wasn't really the top priority of the management.
Anyway, props to him for it works just fine on my linux box
Now that it works on linux, we just need to have strafe jumps and qstat/ase support (in game server browsers suck)
What will make the trip from Tokyo to Osaka much shorter with the maglev, is not only the übercool new technology & speed, but mostly the fact that the tracks will be much shorter.
If you take a look at the tracks map (the current Tokyo-Osaka tracks are in orange), you'll see that they don't go in a straight line at all: they follow the coast (through Shizuoka), and after Nagoya they still take a longer path to go through Kyoto instead of heading directly towards Osaka.
The reason for this is that Japan is constituted mostly of mountains. And the straight line from Tokyo to Osaka has to cross many of them. As a result, the construction of the straight Tokyo-Osaka maglev line will cost billions
- They need to develop the new maglev technology and stabilize it
- They need to build hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and bridges
- They need to build the maglev tracks
Therefore, don't expect the maglev to be inaugurated before at least a decade.
btw ac the fastest Shinkansen is not the hikari, but the nozomi. The Hikarii IIRC stops at least in Shizuoka, Nagoya, Kyoto, whereas some Nozomis don't make any stop between Tokyo and Osaka, and thus gain a few minutes.
I heard SO 6.0 will be sold for approximately 100 (like $112), so Mandrake can't give it to the $5 a month / $60 a year members.
The people who subscibed to Mandrake club did it because they want to support the distro, so I guess they'll do the math and understand that it just isn't possible to give them StarOffice.
Anyway, OpenOffice is not very different from StarOffice, and it's available for free, so what's the big deal?
As long as intel's compiler is not GPL and does not support as many architectures as gcc does, I don't think gcc will vanish any time soon.
Plus everytime benchmarks showed that a closed source product was faster/better than the free software counterpart, the open source community worked hard to improve its champion.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who uses Sid and a handful of unofficial repositories will be almost as current as Gentoo "~arch".
/usr/local (I've seen that on several occasions)
However, using unofficial repositories is not as painless as it might look.
*The repository might go offline any time
*The repository might not recompile their packages for a new library in the official repository, making it useless
*The repository probably didn't spend as much time packaging the software as they should have, which can lead to at least 2 things:
- Ugly stuff like debs who installs themselves in
- Very painful upgrades when the software from the unofficial repository eventually reaches main (mostly dependencies).
With gentoo I never had such problems with masked packages and unofficial ebuilds. Which doesn't mean that debian sid doesn't have other advantages.
In case Coral gets slashdotted, use this mirror to view slashdot
What I would have them rather do is not say they'd give everything back to wine if it was not their intention, or if what they truly meant was 'We'll give back to wine... in 15 years'.
Now regarding their business model, it can be argued that they're actually a service company. A large part of the popular games they support run just as well in wine, like Warcraft III and Half-Life / Counter Strike. A big chunk of what Transgaming provides to its customers is an easier to install and to configure wine, just like codeweavers with crossover.
Oh, sound in a game is minor?
Until you stop bitching and contribute or run your own open-source business, shut up.
yes, native alsa support is not a big deal, since a) most people still use OSS, and b) Alsa OSS emulation works perfectly fine
I'm sick of these bastards that make huge contributions to open source software and then don't want to pay hosting costs for thousands of kiddies to download source at install time!
Last I checked, the winex public cvs tree was hosted by sourceforge. So it really must be costing transgaming a lot of money when someone downloads from there.
Alright
wget http://source.winehq.org/source/ChangeLog
I count 14826 changelog entries
$ grep @ ChangeLog | wc -l
14826
226 of which are from a transgaming employee
$ grep -i @transgaming.com ChangeLog | wc -l
226
And 1701 for codeweavers
$ grep -i @codeweavers.com ChangeLog | wc -l
1701
So Transgaming gave back a little after all. But not that much. I browsed the top transgaming changelog entries and they concerned relatively minor stuff, like fixes for alsa audio support.
Sorry but I'm still convinced that Transgaming has been a bad wine citizen (the fact that the licence permitted it doesn't change my opinion), and that they were deceiving the community when they said they'd give back everything to wine after they reach a certain number of subscribers. I guess they have reached that number since they have not yet filed for bankruptcy.
Nice and neat, but it doesn't stop your browser from actually downloading the image as the hosts file would.
Actually, it can. It depends what you put on your customized stylesheet.
Some people want to get a completely ad free web experience. Others, feel guilty about it, and don't want to get rid of the ads to show their support to the site, but want to make them less annoying.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ -moz-outline: medium dashed red; -moz-opacity: 10%; }
468x80 images and iframes are downloaded and displayed, but they are 90% translucent and are outlined by a big red dash.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ visibility: hidden !important; }
Banners & iframes are downloaded but not displayed.
iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ display: none !important; }
Banners and iframes are neither downloaded nor displayed.
This site provides a sample antibanner stylesheet, as well as instructions on how to use it with opera, mozilla and others.
ATI was just waiting for xfree 4.3.0 to eventually enter debian
(offtopic)
His name is Marcelo Tosatti, not Mario or Luigi
(/offtopic)
I miss the old (pre bk changelogs)
They were only a few lines long (say 5-15) and looked a bit like this
-ACPI fixes (Linus)
-XYZ driver updates (Alan)
Sure they were a lot less detailed, but at least they were "moderate-geek compliant".
With the new changelogs, I read the first few lines and then I give up, because it's too long and too complicated.
Dupes are Evil too!
I am pretty sure they won't all speak American English. ;-)
I'm working on a Universal Translator so that the american TV audience is not shocked when we make first contact
if you use a Gecko browser (mozilla phoenix galeon), you can get rid of those annoying flash ads by using a special 'userContent.css'
Put that file in the chrome subdirectory of you mozilla profile, and all the flash ads on anandtech & other sites should be gone, without breaking legitimate flash usage (stupid games, awkward menus, 900kB site intros, etc.)
It's not the first time that I see comments on how on some linux distributions config files are not where they should be (in /etc) and how *BSD is so much better in that respect.
/etc (besides user config in my home). So can you please give examples of config files that are not in /etc?
;)
/etc or /etc/squid but didn't find anything. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that the config file was in /usr/local/squid/etc or some very weird path like that. Not really the 'everything system related is in /etc like it should' you describe. The story had an happy end since a few minutes later I managed to log on IRC.
I've been using Linux for 5 years, and over they years I tried several distributions (Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, Gentoo) and I don't remember having to edit a config file that was not in
Now, regarding *BSD. A couple of months ago, I went in a cybercafe and wanted to chat with friends on irc. However as soon as I tried to connect to an IRC server, it would disconnect me for 'having an open proxy'. I asked the manager. He said he was aware of the problem but didn't know how to get rid of it. I told him they probably had an open proxy. He asked me if I was familiar with unix. The next minute he had me logged as root on their FreeBSD NAT trying to find the problem
I ran 'netstat' and found out that they had Squid running, and that me getting kicked from IRC was probably to due to the fact that it was poorly configured. I immediatly looked for a the config file in
Disclaimer: it was my first and only time doing 'administrative tasks' on a *BSD system so it could be a bad example. I do not mean to troll, just giving one example that is opposite to the parent poster's experience. Are Linux distributions so bad at having all config files in the same place, and are the BSDs better are it?
For those interested in setting up alsa, note that the modules options file in the article is only valid for alsa 0.9 up to rc3
/etc/modules.conf files by hand or use our alsa-driver/utils/module-options script which does this job. Please, notice that 'snd_' prefix is not equal to 'snd-' prefix (module name) which is left unchanged.
The line
options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=4 snd_device_mode=0660 snd_device_gid=29 snd_device_uid=0
wont work with newer versions (for instance Sid has 0.9rc5, an so I guess Testing will have it soon too), because (from www.alsa-project.org)
We have changed the kernel module symbol names (module parameter names). We removed prefix 'snd_'. Please, update your
That means you need to change the previous line into something like:
options snd major=116 cards_limit=4 device_mode=0660 device_gid=29 device_uid=0
Hope this helps
From the interview:
A key message that we want to convey is that we are not trying to compete for the bleeding edge user. We want people to actually get their daily work done -- everything should just work. If you look at most of those other distributions, much of what's there either doesn't work, or it's too hard for the average user to understand or to use. That's the key difference.
So it's ok..they are not targeting you, me, the linux geeks & the bleeding edge crowd. I don't know many among those who would pay $99 for an up to date distribution anyway.
They're targetting business users, the office desktop, and want to make a cheap OS that just plain works, even in fields where Linux traditionnaly doesn't do too well (browser plugins, compatibility with Microsoft software) thank to a tight integration with Codeweaver's Crossover plugin & office.
So.. I'm not interested in Xandros, but that doesn't mean Xandros is not interesting.
Probably pics of that guy so famous he appears on most slashdot polls.
What's his name again?
With all the trick jump stuff (e.g. wall jump when you dodge away from a wall), the adrenaline combos, I think there is still a lot to be learned from ut2k3.
I guess it's a bit like when the strafe jump was discovered in quake.
What dissapoints me is that the aiming seems not very precise and I can't figure out when I hit or I miss. And, since the games feels rather laggy, it makes aiming all the more difficult.
From what I read elsewhere, it's an ex-loki games employee now working on the ut2k3 project who has done most of the port himself. I even think he did it mostly in his free time, since a linux client wasn't really the top priority of the management.
Anyway, props to him for it works just fine on my linux box
Now that it works on linux, we just need to have strafe jumps and qstat/ase support (in game server browsers suck)
What will make the trip from Tokyo to Osaka much shorter with the maglev, is not only the übercool new technology & speed, but mostly the fact that the tracks will be much shorter.
If you take a look at the tracks map (the current Tokyo-Osaka tracks are in orange), you'll see that they don't go in a straight line at all:
they follow the coast (through Shizuoka), and after Nagoya they still take a longer path to go through Kyoto instead of heading directly towards Osaka.
The reason for this is that Japan is constituted mostly of mountains. And the straight line from Tokyo to Osaka has to cross many of them. As a result, the construction of the straight Tokyo-Osaka maglev line will cost billions
- They need to develop the new maglev technology and stabilize it
- They need to build hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and bridges
- They need to build the maglev tracks
Therefore, don't expect the maglev to be inaugurated before at least a decade.
btw ac the fastest Shinkansen is not the hikari, but the nozomi. The Hikarii IIRC stops at least in Shizuoka, Nagoya, Kyoto, whereas some Nozomis don't make any stop between Tokyo and Osaka, and thus gain a few minutes.
guess I should have tried preview first :/
anyway, are you sure about your third katakana?
Shouldn't your signature be more like this?
fUffhfjfbfN or even fNfUffhfjfbfN?
right now it reads "zardanicc"
or may be I just can't pronouce your user name correctly ^_^
fWff
ffVf...f
Just check the KDE cvs
:)
KDE 3.0 was tagged a couple of days ago..and they didn't want to announce it on April 1st
I heard SO 6.0 will be sold for approximately 100 (like $112), so Mandrake can't give it to the $5 a month / $60 a year members.
The people who subscibed to Mandrake club did it because they want to support the distro, so I guess they'll do the math and understand that it just isn't possible to give them StarOffice.
Anyway, OpenOffice is not very different from StarOffice, and it's available for free, so what's the big deal?
As long as intel's compiler is not GPL and does not support as many architectures as gcc does, I don't think gcc will vanish any time soon.
Plus everytime benchmarks showed that a closed source product was faster/better than the free software counterpart, the open source community worked hard to improve its champion.
gcc is dead, long live gcc