Intel is working with Linux ISV's to update their CPUID databases.
CPUID databases, what the heck is that? There's no such thing. And Intel doesn't have to "work with the ISV's" to fix anything, Alan Cox has fixed this proc cpuid reporting problem a long time ago (in 2.2.18pre20), so P4 owners only need to download 2.2.18 which should be out any day now (pre25 which is out is supposed to be the final version).
GNOME on Windows? Perverse! Why not integrate GNOME parts into the Linux kernel while they're at it! Oh wait, they already did:)
But seriously, this is very cool and even if YOU don't see any value in any of this, someone else will undoubtedly use it to make some cool stuff. People who bitch about projects like this (and especially Mozilla) don't always realize that the code is almost always developed for fun by volunteers. The time a volunteer spent coding the IRC client for Mozilla would likely not have been spent fixing bugs in the main source tree had the project never been started (because that is boring and hard work). But maybe, this volunteer who coded the IRC client for fun, fixed a couple of bugs in the main source tree to resolve issues he discovered while writing his own client. Something worth thinking about.
Many of the people who bash Mozilla probably haven't tried it out lately. The latest nightly loads in about 3 seconds on my machine, new windows spawn instantly (gota love that third mouse button spawning) and it is FASTER at page rendering than IE5 on my machine (and several magnitudes faster than N4). And you know what? IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME. Try a build from last week and compare it to todays build. The newer build is noticeably faster. And next weeks will be even better.
Market share. So IE got 80% market share, so what, sites still have to work for Netscape users, if the business decides only to support IE you know the site is going to be some annoying signing-dancing-blinking circus, which I would rather not visit anyway. And while IE might have 80% market share RIGHT NOW, that doesn't mean we're living in status quo. If AOL decides to include N6 in some future AOL version, Netscape instantly gains 50% market share. And let's not forget the set top boxes (not the crappy old MS ones). What is Nokia's new set top box running? Mozilla!
Seems like each year someone tries to push this sort of gadget to market as new. I have an Logitech WCS system that does excatly what this new gadget claims to do, and I've had it for over 5 years. I got it at a bargain sale for about $30, great for flight sims (HOTAS baby!) but works in other games too of course (since it's nothing but a mini-keyboard really).
I'm not exactly sure what kind of I18N support gcc 2.95.2 is lacking
I am having big problems with I18N support in my programs when using RH7, could you please point me to where you heard about this? I read the article, scanned the redhat bug database but I haven't found any info on what might be wrong with I18N.
It's a pretty well known fact that IIS kicks Apaches ass when only serving static content (dynamic content serving is pretty equal between the two IMO). If you're only serving static pages go with the Tux web server which just hit 1.0. It requires a Linux 2.4 kernel (since it uses the new kernel server) and it is in totally different speed league than either IIS or Apache.
I understand Red Hat 7 ships with a new compiler (gcc 2.96?) and RPM4. What does this mean for backward compatability? If I create a binary RPM with RH7, can RH6.x users install it? I suspect RPM4 will cause problems.
If it's new, how come the version number is 3.0? Anyway, remember that security works best in layers, use TCP wrappers, a good firewall and possible even a Tripwire/Veracity like intrusion detection tools and you're relatively safe ( and remember to keep up with your distributions errata!).
AMD will is announing that they will have a
live webcast from Linuxworld 2000 on the 15th. Let's hope they announce some news about new optimized compilers for Linux or something at the show.
Except that GNOME is going about this entirely the wrong way. They're writing a lot of useful stuff (the canvas, html components, etc.) except they can't figure out why somebody would want to use this stuff outside of GNOME. GTK+ could benefit from the standard inclusion of some of these things and it's likie fighting for a firstborn to move them out of GNOME into GTK+.
Is it so strange that the GNOME team primarily write GNOME components? GTK+ is a small and fast widget set and I think huge complex components like the GNOME canvas is the last thing it needs.
Example: In the previous article about Miguel speaking (sorry, no reference), one poster mentioned how he had gotten flamed for taking the
GNOME html component and removing the GNOME dependencies. Clearly, an html component that everybody can use is a good thing. Requiring
GNOME to use this html component is not a good thing.
AFAIK the only "GNOME html component" around is the GtkHTML component (used for example in the Helix Code Installer, Updater and some wizards).
I'm pretty sure it works in GTK+ only apps too.
So if the CORBA server breaks, the whole system is useless. At 3 am, when the system will only come up in single user mode, and ORBit wont
run...what do you do?
I have yet to see any adressing of this issue. Until it is properly adressed (perhaps just have objects that edit the files in/etc themselves for you? so an experienced admin can still go in and change themn on his own?) then I think this must stay exclusivly in user application space.
The Helix Setup Tools system Miguel talks about is basically a GNOME front end and a Perl backend to the standard system configuration scripts. This new system does in NO way affect your ability to manually edit these files.
In fact, Miguel propses that the Helix Setup Tools
store all their data in XML files and that you could easily revert back to, say, the settings you used last week, with only a few clicks. Sounds better than editing some obscure configuration file at 3 am doesn't it?;)
This doesn't make it any less cool. Its just not a panacea, like it sounded like this talk was trying to make it out to be.
Maybe BONOBO isn't an panacea, but it's still damn cool and I *really* hope it does take off big time.
You mean something like Assembly 2K, the worlds largest demo scene event? It starts this thursday in Helsinki Finland (you know, the country of Future Crew and Linus Torvalds...). If you can't make it there you can always download the competition winners from the net once it's over.
Call to Power has all the shortcomings of CivII plus a bigger map more tedious gameplay and a general feeling of a rip off. Every time Sid comes out with a game it is always an improvement on the previous one.
I understand Alpha Centauri was actually designed by Brian Reynolds, but Sid obviously influenced the game a lot since they both work under the same Firaxis roof. Brian and Sid are supposedly working together on the new official Civilization III. Let's hope they port it to Linux a little quicker than Alpha Centauri!
As for Activision, I hear their new Civilization Call to Power II has over a hundred new units, but still uses the same game engine as the old one. Doesn't sound too promising.
I already own the windows version, but I'm still getting it for Linux since it includes the "Alien Crossfire" expansion pack, and I want to support gaming on Linux.
Alpha Centauri is definitely one the finest games I've ever played. It's one of those games that once you start playing you'll forget to eat, sleep and work... for days! If you like Civilization (1&2, not that Activision Power crap) or Master of Orion/Magic you're going to love Alpha Centauri. It's got excellent AI, good graphics and killer gameplay. It even runs relatively well on my old P200, and it doesn't require a 3D card.
Miguel mentions that "if you think GNOME sucks it's probably because you are using Red Hat's version". This is just so true.
Why does the default desktop supplied by Red Hat have to be so uggly? The icons on the taskbar aren't event lined up properly for christssakes, but seem to be placed by random. The theme is most boring one possbile, and the settings of the windowmanager is enough drive anyone mad. When you've installed the latest Red Hat you have to spend at least an hour to get the settings somewhat usable. Don't even get me started on the *totally* messed up Netscape fonts. What are people new to Linux going to think! They can't be expected to mess around with fontpaths and fontservers.
The point I'm trying to make is that Red Hat has just slapped the latest version of GNOME available at the time, compiled it straight from its pristine sources and added two links to redhat.com on the desktop. That's just not going to cut it, not this century. If you want to see how a desktop *should* look , straight out of the box, take a look at Helix Code's GNOME version. Now *that* is a good looking and behaving desktop, a desktop I wouldn't be ashamed to show a user who knows nothing about Linux. First impressions are important! If Red Hat has any clue they'll be using Helix's versions from on. They are VAR after all, so how about adding some value to the product! It costs them nothing.
If you look at the sales statistics of PC games you'll notice that most games sell surprisingly few copies. A game can be called successful today if it manages to ship over 10 000 units. When we're talking about quantities this small, every single sale counts!
This has been said before, but I'll say it again: If you don't want to be playing Tomb Raider and RTS clones the rest of your life, support quality games by *buying* them. Don't warez that copy of Escape from Monkey Island, support LucasArts as one of the last makers of classic adventure games! Buy a Jane's simulation game, while they still make them!
Don't settle for that cloned, watered down, so called game, try a game from a different genre for once, you might be positively surprised!
Don't need Java, AIM, Flash or Net2Phone? Then grab ftp://ftp.mozilla. org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest/mozilla-win32-nb1b. zip instead, it's only 5MB. It is the very latest build of the stabilized Netscape beta branch, compiled on April 4. The official Netscape6 PR1 release uses an Mozilla engine that is already several weeks old.
Note that the Mozilla site doesn't currently offer daily Linux Netscape beta branch builds, only the normal experimental/milestone daily builds.
Bioware has planned a Linux port of Neverwinter Nights right from day 1. NWN being primarily a client/server multiplayer game (and apparently a really interesting one too) I think it wasn't really an option not to support Linux. Why you ask? Because the platform statistics for FPS servers is currently something along the lines of 70% Linux, 30% Windows, the difference being even bigger in Europe (Can't remember an exact reference, but check the Bluesnews archives). All the big known dedicated servers run on Linux. As an example, the server availability for Half-Life was abysmal until Sierra finally got the server port out, and now it's the most popular game online (mainly because of the Counterstrike mod).
Since this new Qt is built on top of the linux framebuffer infrastructure it will most likely use the standard frambebuffer drivers too. Currently there's at least drivers available for the Matrox cards, some TGA cards and a generic VESA 2.0 one.
BTW, if you haven't checked out the frambuffer stuff yet, you really should, it's quite cool. You get a Tux logo while Linux boots up and you can have hi-resolution text consoles. Framebuffer support seems to be tagged experimental in the 2.2 kernels at the moment, but I've found that it works pretty well.
It will have support for anti-aliased text and alpha-blending, two basic features missing in X11R6. It would take about a complete rewrite of the way X11 handles fonts to get anti-aliasing support, so don't expect it anytime soon:(
I know the technical reason why we can't have anti-aliased fonts (only 1 color/font allowed etc.), but why don't we have true alpha-blending yet (either provided by X or the windowmanager)?
If Nvidia chooses not to support DRI and develops its own proprietary infrastructure, doesn't it means developers will have to support the Nvidia solution in addition to the standard DRI one?
Also, if you have to choose between one of the APIs due to time constraints, do you choose the Nvidia solution which works with Nvidia cards or do you develop for the open DRI solution, which will probably have drivers for all other major 3D cards... hmm, not too hard a choice, is it?
One of the main news items on Finnish TV tonight was about Echelon. In brief, Tony Blair told the EU commission today that Britain hasn't betrayed Europe by participating in the US spy network also known as Echelon. Interesting was also the mention of that Echelon probably started as early as 1940.
Those who can understand Finnish can read a pretty good article summarizing the news here. Finland is one of the biggest supporters of privacy and protection of the individual in the EU.
I don't think Real is really interested in bringing their product line to the Linux desktop at all, instead I think they are counting on the emerging of cheap hand held devices (Web pads etc.), many of which will be running some sort of Linux. This could be a very big market in the future, and they don't want to be left out.
In any case, more software is always a good thing.
Werner Almesberger will talk about the interesting possibilty of launching a new Linux kernel from within Linux. This sounds like a cool feature, in theory you wouldn't even have to restart a machine for kernel upgrades anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Intel is working with Linux ISV's to update their CPUID databases.
CPUID databases, what the heck is that? There's no such thing. And Intel doesn't have to "work with the ISV's" to fix anything, Alan Cox has fixed this proc cpuid reporting problem a long time ago (in 2.2.18pre20), so P4 owners only need to download 2.2.18 which should be out any day now (pre25 which is out is supposed to be the final version).
GNOME on Windows? Perverse! Why not integrate GNOME parts into the Linux kernel while they're at it! Oh wait, they already did :)
But seriously, this is very cool and even if YOU don't see any value in any of this, someone else will undoubtedly use it to make some cool stuff. People who bitch about projects like this (and especially Mozilla) don't always realize that the code is almost always developed for fun by volunteers. The time a volunteer spent coding the IRC client for Mozilla would likely not have been spent fixing bugs in the main source tree had the project never been started (because that is boring and hard work). But maybe, this volunteer who coded the IRC client for fun, fixed a couple of bugs in the main source tree to resolve issues he discovered while writing his own client. Something worth thinking about.
Many of the people who bash Mozilla probably haven't tried it out lately. The latest nightly loads in about 3 seconds on my machine, new windows spawn instantly (gota love that third mouse button spawning) and it is FASTER at page rendering than IE5 on my machine (and several magnitudes faster than N4). And you know what? IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME. Try a build from last week and compare it to todays build. The newer build is noticeably faster. And next weeks will be even better.
Market share. So IE got 80% market share, so what, sites still have to work for Netscape users, if the business decides only to support IE you know the site is going to be some annoying signing-dancing-blinking circus, which I would rather not visit anyway. And while IE might have 80% market share RIGHT NOW, that doesn't mean we're living in status quo. If AOL decides to include N6 in some future AOL version, Netscape instantly gains 50% market share. And let's not forget the set top boxes (not the crappy old MS ones). What is Nokia's new set top box running? Mozilla!
Seems like each year someone tries to push this sort of gadget to market as new. I have an Logitech WCS system that does excatly what this new gadget claims to do, and I've had it for over 5 years. I got it at a bargain sale for about $30, great for flight sims (HOTAS baby!) but works in other games too of course (since it's nothing but a mini-keyboard really).
... 11084 apps and increasing each day. Now who says Linux doesn't have any apps? :)
I'm not exactly sure what kind of I18N support gcc 2.95.2 is lacking
I am having big problems with I18N support in my programs when using RH7, could you please point me to where you heard about this? I read the article, scanned the redhat bug database but I haven't found any info on what might be wrong with I18N.
It's a pretty well known fact that IIS kicks Apaches ass when only serving static content (dynamic content serving is pretty equal between the two IMO). If you're only serving static pages go with the Tux web server which just hit 1.0. It requires a Linux 2.4 kernel (since it uses the new kernel server) and it is in totally different speed league than either IIS or Apache.
I understand Red Hat 7 ships with a new compiler (gcc 2.96?) and RPM4. What does this mean for backward compatability? If I create a binary RPM with RH7, can RH6.x users install it? I suspect RPM4 will cause problems.
If it's new, how come the version number is 3.0? Anyway, remember that security works best in layers, use TCP wrappers, a good firewall and possible even a Tripwire/Veracity like intrusion detection tools and you're relatively safe ( and remember to keep up with your distributions errata!).
AMD will is announing that they will have a live webcast from Linuxworld 2000 on the 15th. Let's hope they announce some news about new optimized compilers for Linux or something at the show.
Except that GNOME is going about this entirely the wrong way. They're writing a lot of useful stuff (the canvas, html components, etc.) except they can't figure out why somebody would want to use this stuff outside of GNOME. GTK+ could benefit from the standard inclusion of some of these things and it's likie fighting for a firstborn to move them out of GNOME into GTK+.
Is it so strange that the GNOME team primarily write GNOME components? GTK+ is a small and fast widget set and I think huge complex components like the GNOME canvas is the last thing it needs.
Example: In the previous article about Miguel speaking (sorry, no reference), one poster mentioned how he had gotten flamed for taking the GNOME html component and removing the GNOME dependencies. Clearly, an html component that everybody can use is a good thing. Requiring GNOME to use this html component is not a good thing.
AFAIK the only "GNOME html component" around is the GtkHTML component (used for example in the Helix Code Installer, Updater and some wizards). I'm pretty sure it works in GTK+ only apps too.
So if the CORBA server breaks, the whole system is useless. At 3 am, when the system will only come up in single user mode, and ORBit wont run...what do you do?
/etc themselves for you? so an experienced admin can still go in and change themn on his own?) then I think this must stay exclusivly in user application space.
;)
I have yet to see any adressing of this issue. Until it is properly adressed (perhaps just have objects that edit the files in
The Helix Setup Tools system Miguel talks about is basically a GNOME front end and a Perl backend to the standard system configuration scripts. This new system does in NO way affect your ability to manually edit these files.
In fact, Miguel propses that the Helix Setup Tools store all their data in XML files and that you could easily revert back to, say, the settings you used last week, with only a few clicks. Sounds better than editing some obscure configuration file at 3 am doesn't it?
This doesn't make it any less cool. Its just not a panacea, like it sounded like this talk was trying to make it out to be.
Maybe BONOBO isn't an panacea, but it's still damn cool and I *really* hope it does take off big time.
...can't we have a demo competition instead?
You mean something like Assembly 2K, the worlds largest demo scene event? It starts this thursday in Helsinki Finland (you know, the country of Future Crew and Linus Torvalds...). If you can't make it there you can always download the competition winners from the net once it's over.
Call to Power has all the shortcomings of CivII plus a bigger map more tedious gameplay and a general feeling of a rip off. Every time Sid comes out with a game it is always an improvement on the previous one.
I understand Alpha Centauri was actually designed by Brian Reynolds, but Sid obviously influenced the game a lot since they both work under the same Firaxis roof. Brian and Sid are supposedly working together on the new official Civilization III. Let's hope they port it to Linux a little quicker than Alpha Centauri!
As for Activision, I hear their new Civilization Call to Power II has over a hundred new units, but still uses the same game engine as the old one. Doesn't sound too promising.
I already own the windows version, but I'm still getting it for Linux since it includes the "Alien Crossfire" expansion pack, and I want to support gaming on Linux.
Alpha Centauri is definitely one the finest games I've ever played. It's one of those games that once you start playing you'll forget to eat, sleep and work... for days! If you like Civilization (1&2, not that Activision Power crap) or Master of Orion/Magic you're going to love Alpha Centauri. It's got excellent AI, good graphics and killer gameplay. It even runs relatively well on my old P200, and it doesn't require a 3D card.
Miguel mentions that "if you think GNOME sucks it's probably because you are using Red Hat's version". This is just so true.
Why does the default desktop supplied by Red Hat have to be so uggly? The icons on the taskbar aren't event lined up properly for christssakes, but seem to be placed by random. The theme is most boring one possbile, and the settings of the windowmanager is enough drive anyone mad. When you've installed the latest Red Hat you have to spend at least an hour to get the settings somewhat usable. Don't even get me started on the *totally* messed up Netscape fonts. What are people new to Linux going to think! They can't be expected to mess around with fontpaths and fontservers.
The point I'm trying to make is that Red Hat has just slapped the latest version of GNOME available at the time, compiled it straight from its pristine sources and added two links to redhat.com on the desktop. That's just not going to cut it, not this century. If you want to see how a desktop *should* look , straight out of the box, take a look at Helix Code's GNOME version. Now *that* is a good looking and behaving desktop, a desktop I wouldn't be ashamed to show a user who knows nothing about Linux. First impressions are important! If Red Hat has any clue they'll be using Helix's versions from on. They are VAR after all, so how about adding some value to the product! It costs them nothing.
Okay, I'm done ranting now.
If you look at the sales statistics of PC games you'll notice that most games sell surprisingly few copies. A game can be called successful today if it manages to ship over 10 000 units. When we're talking about quantities this small, every single sale counts!
This has been said before, but I'll say it again: If you don't want to be playing Tomb Raider and RTS clones the rest of your life, support quality games by *buying* them. Don't warez that copy of Escape from Monkey Island, support LucasArts as one of the last makers of classic adventure games! Buy a Jane's simulation game, while they still make them!
Don't settle for that cloned, watered down, so called game, try a game from a different genre for once, you might be positively surprised!
Don't need Java, AIM, Flash or Net2Phone? Then grab ftp://ftp.mozilla. org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest/mozilla-win32-nb1b. zip instead, it's only 5MB. It is the very latest build of the stabilized Netscape beta branch, compiled on April 4. The official Netscape6 PR1 release uses an Mozilla engine that is already several weeks old.
Note that the Mozilla site doesn't currently offer daily Linux Netscape beta branch builds, only the normal experimental/milestone daily builds.
Bioware has planned a Linux port of Neverwinter Nights right from day 1. NWN being primarily a client/server multiplayer game (and apparently a really interesting one too) I think it wasn't really an option not to support Linux. Why you ask? Because the platform statistics for FPS servers is currently something along the lines of 70% Linux, 30% Windows, the difference being even bigger in Europe (Can't remember an exact reference, but check the Bluesnews archives). All the big known dedicated servers run on Linux. As an example, the server availability for Half-Life was abysmal until Sierra finally got the server port out, and now it's the most popular game online (mainly because of the Counterstrike mod).
Since this new Qt is built on top of the linux framebuffer infrastructure it will most likely use the standard frambebuffer drivers too. Currently there's at least drivers available for the Matrox cards, some TGA cards and a generic VESA 2.0 one.
BTW, if you haven't checked out the frambuffer stuff yet, you really should, it's quite cool. You get a Tux logo while Linux boots up and you can have hi-resolution text consoles. Framebuffer support seems to be tagged experimental in the 2.2 kernels at the moment, but I've found that it works pretty well.
It will have support for anti-aliased text and alpha-blending, two basic features missing in X11R6. It would take about a complete rewrite of the way X11 handles fonts to get anti-aliasing support, so don't expect it anytime soon :(
I know the technical reason why we can't have anti-aliased fonts (only 1 color/font allowed etc.), but why don't we have true alpha-blending yet (either provided by X or the windowmanager)?
If Nvidia chooses not to support DRI and develops its own proprietary infrastructure, doesn't it means developers will have to support the Nvidia solution in addition to the standard DRI one?
Also, if you have to choose between one of the APIs due to time constraints, do you choose the Nvidia solution which works with Nvidia cards or do you develop for the open DRI solution, which will probably have drivers for all other major 3D cards... hmm, not too hard a choice, is it?
One of the main news items on Finnish TV tonight was about Echelon. In brief, Tony Blair told the EU commission today that Britain hasn't betrayed Europe by participating in the US spy network also known as Echelon. Interesting was also the mention of that Echelon probably started as early as 1940.
Those who can understand Finnish can read a pretty good article summarizing the news here. Finland is one of the biggest supporters of privacy and protection of the individual in the EU.
I don't think Real is really interested in bringing their product line to the Linux desktop at all, instead I think they are counting on the emerging of cheap hand held devices (Web pads etc.), many of which will be running some sort of Linux. This could be a very big market in the future, and they don't want to be left out.
In any case, more software is always a good thing.
Werner Almesberger will talk about the interesting possibilty of launching a new Linux kernel from within Linux. This sounds like a cool feature, in theory you wouldn't even have to restart a machine for kernel upgrades anymore.