This looks to be much better support than most technical support I've seen so far. They even say two-hour response-time commitment and immediate response for critical calls.
I've had excellent dealings with HP's support. I had an HP-UX workstation at my last job. When I ordered it, I forgot to tell them to put some software on it (the X development libraries to be exact). I called them and asked them how to get them, they overnight FedEx'ed me a DAT tape with them. It was my mistake and they went out of their way to fix it. That's service.
It doesn't say how much the support will cost. The press release implies that the service is available right now ("...today announced the availability of HP Linux support services...").
Things are getting more and more interesting by the day in Linux land. If you told me seven years ago when I started using Linux that things would end up like this, I'd never have believed you...:-)
I'd be most interested in knowing how they'll be hooking those 2000 nodes together. That could get really expensive. Sounds like a cabling nightmare!:-)
I've always viewed Linux and FreeBSD as being somewhat equals. Linux is better in some areas (e.g., driver support) and FreeBSD is better in others (e.g., I hear FreeBSD tends to be a bit faster for server-type applications).
That said, I think the main reason I run Linux on all of my computers is because five or six years ago, Linux is what installed easier on my 386. I downloaded both Slackware and FreeBSD. I never could get FreeBSD running right on that hardware, but Linux did, so it stayed. The university I graduated from used FreeBSD on a LOT of lab machines. From my limited usage of them (just for compiling projects and what not), it behaved just like all of the other UNIXes I've used.
I wish the article would have addressed more technical issues. I want to know specifically what FreeBSD does better and what Linux does better. Of course, I'll support anyone's choice of either, I love Linux and I've heard few bad things about FreeBSD!
I'm getting a new second-hand computer this weekend (I'm playing the "how many computers can I fit in an apartment game")... I think I'll stick FreeBSD on there just give it a go.
Aside from the obvious technical blunders (such as Stallman's 1984 debut of Linux), ZDNet has missed the point.
It's not just that we're geeks who want to be sure you use the phrase Open Source right, but it's the fact that Open Source is a registered certification mark. The Open Source Definition sets conditions for its use, and as many of us pointed out in emails to Gore and friends, he's not even close to following those guidelines.
A certification mark isn't worth the electrons coming out of my radiating monitor if we don't call others on their misuses of it.
There has been too much media hype about Open Source, and with that media hype comes misunderstandings. And with any buzzword or catch phrase comes others trying to profit off of it in some way.
Gore's web pages are about as Open Source as a carrot.
This Mr. Wizard kit, as its name implies, consists entirely of culturing molds and bacteria. That should be done only under professional supervision--even if you don't follow the kit's suggestion that you culture matter from dirty garbage cans. We rate it Not Acceptable.
There is a certain amount of nerdliness to knowing Dvorak. How many slashdot readers have HP calculators? Those of us who do know how fun it is to loan our calculator to someone else and have them hand it back with the "+: Too few arguments" error message at the top of the screen because they couldn't use it.
It's the same thing with Dvorak. Sure, it's more comfortable and more efficient (RPN saves 30% of the keystrokes over algebraic entry), or at least we want to believe it's more efficient, but we like it because it lets us be different and eccentric.
So, we'll see the true nerds. They'll have RPN calculators and QWERTY-keyboards remapped and repainted to be Dvorak ones.
This was a pretty good RMS interview. Whoever transcribed it did a good job (aside from the grammatical and spelling errors, I digress). I could almost hear RMS' voice. The style was quite typical of the way RMS speaks.
I've been sitting on the fence about the whole RMS/GNU/Linux issue, but this interview really pushed me over to the "ahh, go to hell, RMS!" side.
Don't get me wrong, I respect RMS' work on Emacs, gcc, gdb, and his vision to create a free UNIX-alike. He's an incredible coder and I truly appreciate the work he's done. But the comments he made about "so-called Linux" and "the GNU system, but they're calling it Linux". Perhaps I get pissed about this because I see how humble Torvalds is about having created Linux---he always plays his accomplishments down. RMS on the other hand is trying too hard to get the credit he deserves and it comes across as though he's being egomanical.
I feel that RMS should be quite proud of what he's done, and I'll be the first to stroke his ego by saying that I use his software on a daily basis and praise him every chance I get.
Begging for recognition and playing the ego game just isn't something I thought I'd ever see RMS do, and I've been reading his Usenet postings and compiling his software for every UNIX machine I get near for many, many years. I'm very sad to see RMS get so excitable about this---it's just a name.
As ESR said, ego is part of what drives the free software movement. Getting recognition for your work is what makes us write and give away more software. I think it's important to feed RMS' ego as much as anyone else's in the movement, but when he distorts things in this way, it rubs me the wrong way.
To me it's just Linux, but I know that without RMS, Linux probably wouldn't be on my computer.
A pat on the back for RMS for a job well-done, but it's really time to calm down about the name issue. I'd like to see RMS stick to his freedom ideology, that's where he really shines!
They're only counting "commercial" units of Linux shipped. This probably doesn't include places like Cheapbytes which FTP Linux distributions and sell them themselves. And of course, this doesn't include people who FTP it for themselves.
I, for one, remember the days when FTP was the only way you could get Linux, and it's stuck with me. Out of the 20-30 machines I've put Linux on, I've never bought a commercial boxed set, so I guess those machines aren't counted.
I'm not saying that they _should_ be counting the FTP/Cheapbytes/etc. installations of Linux (how would they?), but keep it in mind. Growth will be more than they think.
Let me also say that, out of the box, Windows NT Workstation is useless. There's nothing you can do with it. You could run IE, that's about it. There is absolutely no functionality.
Constrast that with, say, Red Hat Linux which out of the box can run as a web server, POP3 server, has numerous email clients, has a full featured, high-quality C/C++ compiler, programmable text editors, a full range of text processing tools (sed, awk, perl, grep), can provide nice typeset output (TeX, LaTeX), can make beautiful graphics (Gimp), etc.
For crying out loud, you can't even setup tasks to execute periodically under NT without buying additional products. Linux at least has cron! For example, I wanted to record one hour of audio from the sound card input each day, compress it to MP3 and copy it to a Jaz disk so I can take it and listen to it at work. I have to do this at home on a Linux box because there's no way to script that up under NT easily.
Gates has got a flashy interface, but it's on top of a mess of nothingness underneath.
You can quote me on this: "Windows tells me how I have to work. I tell Linux how it's going to work for me."
Gates says that you get proliferations of different versions and everybody can go into the source code, and everybody does. I see Gates' point---he thinks that, for example, Red Hat and Debian are really different, and if I know Red Hat, that I'll be clueless at a Debian machine. We all know this is far from the truth. As a matter of fact, I think this "fractioning" of the market is a good thing. Different companies can market their distributions at different customers. Slackware is marketed towards the Linux experts who want complete control, Red Hat is marketed a newbies and people who want an easy to use system. Debian is geared towards those who want a truly free system. There are distributions of Linux for those who want to run it on tiny machines as routers. On the other hand, Gates only gives you one version of Windows NT. It's a one-size fits all scheme. He'll tell you it's better for you since it's all the same, but I'd rather see many different solutions geared towards different people so each person can pick what fits them best.
Gates says that Linux has no central point of control. How does that make a system bad? Contrast a company like Microsoft with the Linux movement. Having a central point of control for Microsoft certainly hasn't made Microsoft products more reliable in my opinion, or the opinions of many others.
Gates says that Linux's biggest feature is its price. No, it has to do with price (again, real freedom versus free beer). I'd like to say that I'd be willing to pay $200 for Linux, but I can't really say that since its freedom precludes that. But, let's put it this way: if Windows NT were free, I'd still pick Linux over Windows NT in a heart beat.
Gates says "We put things into our system like systems management that's not much fun for university developers". I work at a large company with hundreds of Sparc boxes and Dell machines running NT. The sysadmins will always tell you that the NT machines are a bitch to administer, and the Sparc and Linux boxes just run without any maintanence. At the last company I worked for, I setup an HTTP/FTP/POP3 Linux server. I left over a year ago and it's still running without any maintenance. Try that with Windows NT.
Gates says "It doesn't have a rich set of device drivers". Well, USB support isn't in there, but other than that, it supports my scanner, ethernet, SCSI, video, and multi-port serial card. NT, on my namebrand Dell machine here at work often can't recognize even the simplest namebrand hardware we try to add (between blue screens). And we're not idiots, either. As long as you don't buy brain dead Winmodems and pick decent hardware, there's nothing out there (again, with the exception of USB) that Linux doesn't work with.
Gates says "I really don't think in the commercial market, we'll see it [compete with Windows] in any significant way". I guess he's ignoring all of those Apache equipped Linux boxes out there.
Pretty much the standard FUD we've come to expect from Microsoft. After all, this article was posted on WUGNET, Windows Users Group Network. Ha.
I'm glad to say I've never paid for a Microsoft product, never recommended the purchase of one, and probably never will.
I wasn't aware of the extent of ESR's involvement in the creation of the APSL. I find it very disappointing that Apple reserves the right to revoke a developer's license at any time. That makes it pretty scary to devote your time to a project only to find out that Apple changed its mind after six months of work. One of the reasons why I'm willing to hack on GPL'ed software is my assurance that no one can take my rights away with respect to that software and my changes.
Oh, well. I wasn't planning on fooling with Apple's source anyway, but this is still quite a mark against their license.
Of course, I'll stick with the GPL for most everything I write.
Well, their corporate webserver certainly can't keep up with/. effect. For those interested:
% telnet www.theos-software.com http Trying 207.21.75.2... Connected to theos-software.com. Escape character is '^]'. HEAD / HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.0 200 OK Server: THEO+Server/1.0 Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:58:20 GMT Content-Type: text/html Last-Modified: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 21:39:12 GMT Content-Length: 0
Connection closed by foreign host.
It took me many tries to even get in, and then I come to find out that content length is zero. Not only would I not buy their software because of their wanting to steal Theo's domain name, but it looks like they, a corporation, can't either (a) afford the hardware to power the site or (b) have a webserver on par with IIS.
I checked out this book in the store and decided not to buy it. Nothing really new in the book, actually. I'd stick with the gtk tutorial that's already out there, it's pretty good. Also, download any gtk applications which do similar things with gtk that you might want to do, and grep their sources when you need more examples. Of course, having the gtk source itself is a must, especially if you're going to write your own widgets or extend the existing ones.
I hear O'Reilly is working on a gtk book. I'm sure it will be better, O'Reilly's stuff is usually quite good.
I'll say that gtk+ certainly isn't a *great* widget set, but then again, what else out there could we choose from?
Gtk-- is basically undocumented at this point. At least they've hit 1.0 (I hope it's a _real_ 1.0, not a Gnome 1.0).
Motif/Lesstif is arguably worse than gtk, and I programmed a lot of Motif.
OpenLook was just plain goofy (IMHO).
Xaw is ugly (but I've never programmed with it, so perhaps it's great from a programming standpoint), Xaw3d looks okay, but again, never programmed Xaw so it might just suck.
Qt may be okay now with the new license, the whole signals/slots thing looks interesting.
wxWindows always rubbed me the wrong way, it just never seems to look right on the host platform.
Oh, well. Maybe I should quit complaining and go write my own so we can have yet-another-widget set. That's what I'll call it, YAWS.
Here at work we have numerous documents done in MS Word that are around 600 pages. Do you have any idea how long it takes Word to repagniate 600 pages? Word seems to spontaneously repaginate every few minutes, even if you're in the middle of typing. Other groups here use FrameMaker or Interleaf.
MS Word may be fine for small (i.e., under 50 pages) documents, but for anything big, I'll ALWAYS stick with LaTeX + Xy-Pic + xfig---you can't beat those for reliability, portability, and speed. I work on the same documents at home (Linux) and work (Windows "Blue Screen" NT) with LaTeX. I wouldn't trust MS to actually make a Linux version truly interoperable with a Windows version, they couldn't do it with MS Office for the Mac.
I don't expect much from a company who writes cdplayer.exe for NT which crashes on my often. Damn you Microsoft, damn you all!
You beat me to it. For example, gcc is a VERY big part of Linux (or, GNU/Linux, if you must). Without gcc, where would we be? I doubt Linux would've gotten as far as it has without gcc. RMS also wrote the initial Emacs and also wrote gdb. I view those as VERY significant contributions, and that doesn't include the other software that the FSF has donated.
Seriously, Tom---what's your gripe with the FSF? RMS wants his ego stroked, he wants people to appreciate his contributions. If no one ever told Linus "thanks" and "good job", he may have stopped working on the kernel long ago.
ESR points out in the good ol' C&B paper that ego is a big part of free software development. RMS wants a piece of that, he wants appreciation.
I, for one, greatly appreciate RMS's contributions, and I recognize them. I still don't call it GNU/Linux, my habits are otherwise, but when I explain Linux to someone, I explain how the FSF contributed greatly with all of the classic UNIX utilities (sed, awk, grep, etc.) as well as a pretty darn good C/C++ compiler, debugger, and GNU make.
I think it'll take Tom quite a while to write all of that himself. We can have Tom/Linux with Tom CC, tdb (Tom's debugger), and Tom Make. Have fun, Tom, come back in ten years when you've finished those and we'll see what else you can waste your time on.
Not hype and buzzwords
on
Linux on CNN
·
· Score: 1
I'm surprised that Linux is hype and buzzwords. I've used it for five years and gotten lots of work done with it including using it for homework for my math and computer science degrees.
I had no idea it was just hype. Someone should tell Linus and Alan so they can give it up.
Maybe I should quit using it and use Windows 2000. Ooops, that's just hype, too. I could get an IMac---no, that's hype. Okay, I'll get an Amiga, no, there's hype about their comeback. WAIT! An Apple IIGS, no one gives a shit about those anymore. I can no go live in a world free of hype. Where can I get a IIGS?
Also, nerds only work on that which is cool, and I think we have enough cool stuff to work on the way it is.:-) I think all of the best nerds are already working on their own projects.
The most important thing ESR said above was that the suits can't stop us. Just keep coding and keep doing what we've always done. They can't keep the community from going in whatever direction it wants to. Regardless of what happens to Linux commercially, it won't change how I treat it and how I use it. And everything I ever write will be some form of GPL, LGPL, or something similar.
I don't care about world domination, I just want an OS that I enjoy using and that works well for me. World domination would be just icing on the cake.:-)
When I went to that page, an annoying Java-like dialog box opened on my NT machine asking me to download a plug-in. The page was visible without the plug-in, though.
But why on earth does every "big" website these days have a stupid plug-in to go along with it? MSNBC told me it's "only" a 20 minute download at 28.8.
The day Rob makes a Slashdot plug-in to download is the day I stop visiting slashdot.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
This looks to be much better support than most technical support I've seen so far. They even say two-hour response-time commitment and immediate response for critical calls.
:-)
I've had excellent dealings with HP's support. I had an HP-UX workstation at my last job. When I ordered it, I forgot to tell them to put some software on it (the X development libraries to be exact). I called them and asked them how to get them, they overnight FedEx'ed me a DAT tape with them. It was my mistake and they went out of their way to fix it. That's service.
It doesn't say how much the support will cost. The press release implies that the service is available right now ("...today announced the availability of HP Linux support services...").
Things are getting more and more interesting by the day in Linux land. If you told me seven years ago when I started using Linux that things would end up like this, I'd never have believed you...
I'd be most interested in knowing how they'll be hooking those 2000 nodes together. That could get really expensive. Sounds like a cabling nightmare! :-)
I've always viewed Linux and FreeBSD as being somewhat equals. Linux is better in some areas (e.g., driver support) and FreeBSD is better in others (e.g., I hear FreeBSD tends to be a bit faster for server-type applications).
That said, I think the main reason I run Linux on all of my computers is because five or six years ago, Linux is what installed easier on my 386. I downloaded both Slackware and FreeBSD. I never could get FreeBSD running right on that hardware, but Linux did, so it stayed. The university I graduated from used FreeBSD on a LOT of lab machines. From my limited usage of them (just for compiling projects and what not), it behaved just like all of the other UNIXes I've used.
I wish the article would have addressed more technical issues. I want to know specifically what FreeBSD does better and what Linux does better. Of course, I'll support anyone's choice of either, I love Linux and I've heard few bad things about FreeBSD!
I'm getting a new second-hand computer this weekend (I'm playing the "how many computers can I fit in an apartment game")... I think I'll stick FreeBSD on there just give it a go.
Aside from the obvious technical blunders (such as Stallman's 1984 debut of Linux), ZDNet has missed the point.
It's not just that we're geeks who want to be sure you use the phrase Open Source right, but it's the fact that Open Source is a registered certification mark. The Open Source Definition sets conditions for its use, and as many of us pointed out in emails to Gore and friends, he's not even close to following those guidelines.
A certification mark isn't worth the electrons coming out of my radiating monitor if we don't call others on their misuses of it.
There has been too much media hype about Open Source, and with that media hype comes misunderstandings. And with any buzzword or catch phrase comes others trying to profit off of it in some way.
Gore's web pages are about as Open Source as a carrot.
I like the Ecology Kit:
Ecology kits, 1973
This Mr. Wizard kit, as its name implies, consists entirely of culturing molds and bacteria. That should be done only under professional supervision--even if you don't follow the kit's suggestion that you culture matter from dirty garbage cans. We rate it Not Acceptable.
There is a certain amount of nerdliness to knowing Dvorak. How many slashdot readers have HP calculators? Those of us who do know how fun it is to loan our calculator to someone else and have them hand it back with the "+: Too few arguments" error message at the top of the screen because they couldn't use it.
It's the same thing with Dvorak. Sure, it's more comfortable and more efficient (RPN saves 30% of the keystrokes over algebraic entry), or at least we want to believe it's more efficient, but we like it because it lets us be different and eccentric.
So, we'll see the true nerds. They'll have RPN calculators and QWERTY-keyboards remapped and repainted to be Dvorak ones.
This was a pretty good RMS interview. Whoever transcribed it did a good job (aside from the grammatical and spelling errors, I digress). I could almost hear RMS' voice. The style was quite typical of the way RMS speaks.
I've been sitting on the fence about the whole RMS/GNU/Linux issue, but this interview really pushed me over to the "ahh, go to hell, RMS!" side.
Don't get me wrong, I respect RMS' work on Emacs, gcc, gdb, and his vision to create a free UNIX-alike. He's an incredible coder and I truly appreciate the work he's done. But the comments he made about "so-called Linux" and "the GNU system, but they're calling it Linux". Perhaps I get pissed about this because I see how humble Torvalds is about having created Linux---he always plays his accomplishments down. RMS on the other hand is trying too hard to get the credit he deserves and it comes across as though he's being egomanical.
I feel that RMS should be quite proud of what he's done, and I'll be the first to stroke his ego by saying that I use his software on a daily basis and praise him every chance I get.
Begging for recognition and playing the ego game just isn't something I thought I'd ever see RMS do, and I've been reading his Usenet postings and compiling his software for every UNIX machine I get near for many, many years. I'm very sad to see RMS get so excitable about this---it's just a name.
As ESR said, ego is part of what drives the free software movement. Getting recognition for your work is what makes us write and give away more software. I think it's important to feed RMS' ego as much as anyone else's in the movement, but when he distorts things in this way, it rubs me the wrong way.
To me it's just Linux, but I know that without RMS, Linux probably wouldn't be on my computer.
A pat on the back for RMS for a job well-done, but it's really time to calm down about the name issue. I'd like to see RMS stick to his freedom ideology, that's where he really shines!
All we need is the company name and the email address of those responsible at the company, and I'm sure we'll see a slashdot effect like no other.
I thought the 1st amendment covered satirical works like those on User Friendly and Segfault. I'm losing more and more faith in the US than ever...
They're only counting "commercial" units of Linux shipped. This probably doesn't include places like Cheapbytes which FTP Linux distributions and sell them themselves. And of course, this doesn't include people who FTP it for themselves.
I, for one, remember the days when FTP was the only way you could get Linux, and it's stuck with me. Out of the 20-30 machines I've put Linux on, I've never bought a commercial boxed set, so I guess those machines aren't counted.
I'm not saying that they _should_ be counting the FTP/Cheapbytes/etc. installations of Linux (how would they?), but keep it in mind. Growth will be more than they think.
Let me also say that, out of the box, Windows NT Workstation is useless. There's nothing you can do with it. You could run IE, that's about it. There is absolutely no functionality.
Constrast that with, say, Red Hat Linux which out of the box can run as a web server, POP3 server, has numerous email clients, has a full featured, high-quality C/C++ compiler, programmable text editors, a full range of text processing tools (sed, awk, perl, grep), can provide nice typeset output (TeX, LaTeX), can make beautiful graphics (Gimp), etc.
For crying out loud, you can't even setup tasks to execute periodically under NT without buying additional products. Linux at least has cron! For example, I wanted to record one hour of audio from the sound card input each day, compress it to MP3 and copy it to a Jaz disk so I can take it and listen to it at work. I have to do this at home on a Linux box because there's no way to script that up under NT easily.
Gates has got a flashy interface, but it's on top of a mess of nothingness underneath.
You can quote me on this: "Windows tells me how I have to work. I tell Linux how it's going to work for me."
Gates says that you get proliferations of different versions and everybody can go into the source code, and everybody does. I see Gates' point---he thinks that, for example, Red Hat and Debian are really different, and if I know Red Hat, that I'll be clueless at a Debian machine. We all know this is far from the truth. As a matter of fact, I think this "fractioning" of the market is a good thing. Different companies can market their distributions at different customers. Slackware is marketed towards the Linux experts who want complete control, Red Hat is marketed a newbies and people who want an easy to use system. Debian is geared towards those who want a truly free system. There are distributions of Linux for those who want to run it on tiny machines as routers. On the other hand, Gates only gives you one version of Windows NT. It's a one-size fits all scheme. He'll tell you it's better for you since it's all the same, but I'd rather see many different solutions geared towards different people so each person can pick what fits them best.
Gates says that Linux has no central point of control. How does that make a system bad? Contrast a company like Microsoft with the Linux movement. Having a central point of control for Microsoft certainly hasn't made Microsoft products more reliable in my opinion, or the opinions of many others.
Gates says that Linux's biggest feature is its price. No, it has to do with price (again, real freedom versus free beer). I'd like to say that I'd be willing to pay $200 for Linux, but I can't really say that since its freedom precludes that. But, let's put it this way: if Windows NT were free, I'd still pick Linux over Windows NT in a heart beat.
Gates says "We put things into our system like systems management that's not much fun for university developers". I work at a large company with hundreds of Sparc boxes and Dell machines running NT. The sysadmins will always tell you that the NT machines are a bitch to administer, and the Sparc and Linux boxes just run without any maintanence. At the last company I worked for, I setup an HTTP/FTP/POP3 Linux server. I left over a year ago and it's still running without any maintenance. Try that with Windows NT.
Gates says "It doesn't have a rich set of device drivers". Well, USB support isn't in there, but other than that, it supports my scanner, ethernet, SCSI, video, and multi-port serial card. NT, on my namebrand Dell machine here at work often can't recognize even the simplest namebrand hardware we try to add (between blue screens). And we're not idiots, either. As long as you don't buy brain dead Winmodems and pick decent hardware, there's nothing out there (again, with the exception of USB) that Linux doesn't work with.
Gates says "I really don't think in the commercial market, we'll see it [compete with Windows] in any significant way". I guess he's ignoring all of those Apache equipped Linux boxes out there.
Pretty much the standard FUD we've come to expect from Microsoft. After all, this article was posted on WUGNET, Windows Users Group Network. Ha.
I'm glad to say I've never paid for a Microsoft product, never recommended the purchase of one, and probably never will.
I wasn't aware of the extent of ESR's involvement in the creation of the APSL. I find it very disappointing that Apple reserves the right to revoke a developer's license at any time. That makes it pretty scary to devote your time to a project only to find out that Apple changed its mind after six months of work. One of the reasons why I'm willing to hack on GPL'ed software is my assurance that no one can take my rights away with respect to that software and my changes.
Oh, well. I wasn't planning on fooling with Apple's source anyway, but this is still quite a mark against their license.
Of course, I'll stick with the GPL for most everything I write.
Well, their corporate webserver certainly can't keep up with /. effect. For those interested:
% telnet www.theos-software.com http
Trying 207.21.75.2...
Connected to theos-software.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Server: THEO+Server/1.0
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:58:20 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Last-Modified: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 21:39:12 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Connection closed by foreign host.
It took me many tries to even get in, and then I come to find out that content length is zero. Not only would I not buy their software because of their wanting to steal Theo's domain name, but it looks like they, a corporation, can't either (a) afford the hardware to power the site or (b) have a webserver on par with IIS.
I've already sent the prez there my letter.
I don't think I got my $500 worth. I wonder if they'll let my review actually get posted. I doubt it.
I checked out this book in the store and decided not to buy it. Nothing really new in the book, actually. I'd stick with the gtk tutorial that's already out there, it's pretty good. Also, download any gtk applications which do similar things with gtk that you might want to do, and grep their sources when you need more examples. Of course, having the gtk source itself is a must, especially if you're going to write your own widgets or extend the existing ones.
I hear O'Reilly is working on a gtk book. I'm sure it will be better, O'Reilly's stuff is usually quite good.
That little "N" logo is mesmerizing. I've been watching it for a few minutes straight and I think I'm going to hurl!
I'll say that gtk+ certainly isn't a *great* widget set, but then again, what else out there could we choose from?
Gtk-- is basically undocumented at this point. At least they've hit 1.0 (I hope it's a _real_ 1.0, not a Gnome 1.0).
Motif/Lesstif is arguably worse than gtk, and I programmed a lot of Motif.
OpenLook was just plain goofy (IMHO).
Xaw is ugly (but I've never programmed with it, so perhaps it's great from a programming standpoint), Xaw3d looks okay, but again, never programmed Xaw so it might just suck.
Qt may be okay now with the new license, the whole signals/slots thing looks interesting.
wxWindows always rubbed me the wrong way, it just never seems to look right on the host platform.
Oh, well. Maybe I should quit complaining and go write my own so we can have yet-another-widget set. That's what I'll call it, YAWS.
Here at work we have numerous documents done in MS Word that are around 600 pages. Do you have any idea how long it takes Word to repagniate 600 pages? Word seems to spontaneously repaginate every few minutes, even if you're in the middle of typing. Other groups here use FrameMaker or Interleaf.
MS Word may be fine for small (i.e., under 50 pages) documents, but for anything big, I'll ALWAYS stick with LaTeX + Xy-Pic + xfig---you can't beat those for reliability, portability, and speed. I work on the same documents at home (Linux) and work (Windows "Blue Screen" NT) with LaTeX. I wouldn't trust MS to actually make a Linux version truly interoperable with a Windows version, they couldn't do it with MS Office for the Mac.
I don't expect much from a company who writes cdplayer.exe for NT which crashes on my often. Damn you Microsoft, damn you all!
You beat me to it. For example, gcc is a VERY big part of Linux (or, GNU/Linux, if you must). Without gcc, where would we be? I doubt Linux would've gotten as far as it has without gcc. RMS also wrote the initial Emacs and also wrote gdb. I view those as VERY significant contributions, and that doesn't include the other software that the FSF has donated.
Seriously, Tom---what's your gripe with the FSF? RMS wants his ego stroked, he wants people to appreciate his contributions. If no one ever told Linus "thanks" and "good job", he may have stopped working on the kernel long ago.
ESR points out in the good ol' C&B paper that ego is a big part of free software development. RMS wants a piece of that, he wants appreciation.
I, for one, greatly appreciate RMS's contributions, and I recognize them. I still don't call it GNU/Linux, my habits are otherwise, but when I explain Linux to someone, I explain how the FSF contributed greatly with all of the classic UNIX utilities (sed, awk, grep, etc.) as well as a pretty darn good C/C++ compiler, debugger, and GNU make.
I think it'll take Tom quite a while to write all of that himself. We can have Tom/Linux with Tom CC, tdb (Tom's debugger), and Tom Make. Have fun, Tom, come back in ten years when you've finished those and we'll see what else you can waste your time on.
I'm surprised that Linux is hype and buzzwords. I've used it for five years and gotten lots of work done with it including using it for homework for my math and computer science degrees.
I had no idea it was just hype. Someone should tell Linus and Alan so they can give it up.
Maybe I should quit using it and use Windows 2000. Ooops, that's just hype, too. I could get an IMac---no, that's hype. Okay, I'll get an Amiga, no, there's hype about their comeback. WAIT! An Apple IIGS, no one gives a shit about those anymore. I can no go live in a world free of hype. Where can I get a IIGS?
I'd rather have a relatively cheap rackmount case, anyone know where to get those?
Also, nerds only work on that which is cool, and I think we have enough cool stuff to work on the way it is. :-) I think all of the best nerds are already working on their own projects.
The most important thing ESR said above was that the suits can't stop us. Just keep coding and keep doing what we've always done. They can't keep the community from going in whatever direction it wants to. Regardless of what happens to Linux commercially, it won't change how I treat it and how I use it. And everything I ever write will be some form of GPL, LGPL, or something similar.
:-)
I don't care about world domination, I just want an OS that I enjoy using and that works well for me. World domination would be just icing on the cake.
When I went to that page, an annoying Java-like dialog box opened on my NT machine asking me to download a plug-in. The page was visible without the plug-in, though.
:-)
But why on earth does every "big" website these days have a stupid plug-in to go along with it? MSNBC told me it's "only" a 20 minute download at 28.8.
The day Rob makes a Slashdot plug-in to download is the day I stop visiting slashdot.