I think the headline was misleading. The poster probably meant configuration stuff, such as XF86Config, modules.conf, bashrc, etc.(Oh maybe THAT was why the directory is called/etc!!!)
He's asking about GUI stuff (GNOME/KDE) because where he comes from these things are configured in the graphical environment -- he might have heard about all those advancements in the user interface Linux had lately and thought it had already got to this stage. --
You probably already have it, it comes with the Midnight Commander (so, if you don't have it, install mc). I personally don't like MC that much, since I was a DCOM user (not Windows DCOM, the old "Directory Commander" -- I liked it so much I'll probably clone it to Linux someday) but it's worth installing MC just to have mcedit.
I even have an "alias edit=mcedit" (old habits...)
It uses the "Borland keys" (Shift-Del cuts, Shift-Ins copies, Ctrl-Ins pastes, Shift-arrows select), so using mcedit to program in Free Pascal feels like using good ol' Turbo Pascal -- but in full object-oriented multithreaded multitasking 32-bits glory!!!:)
A few weeks ago I had an idea of making a page with Linux tips and stuff, based on my own experiences -- I switched to a Linux-only configuration this year (was a long time DOS [and consequently Windows] user), so I think passed recently through all those things the poster was referring to.
I have already got together some material: some random tips on configuration and programs and a few little scripts (even some "one-liners") I came up with that really ease my life in the command line.
And of course, if anybody would like to help me out on this I'd appreciate a lot!
That's great! I really enjoy Pascal programming, and sometimes I'd like to put together some GUI apps but, being unfamiliar with both the language and the toolkit makes things difficult. Maybe using a familiar language I could go through the GTK toolkit with less trouble. What is needed now is Glade support... Last time I checked it could generate even Eiffel code, but not Pascal...
Ok. Let's imagine a scenario where the "No ad" becomes a popular thing. And what if the evil guys from the industry also put out on Napster the song with the ad named as "BSB - Crap Song (no ad).mp3" to confuse users?...
That reminds me of that sig that a guy uses here, in bold characters: I just bought 2 Foo Fighters CDs that I wouldn't have if I hadn't heard the MP3 first. Well, if that is what MP3s are for -- getting to know different bands and then going after their CDs -- something I (and this guy seems to) do, then these MP3s with advertisements would "do just fine", right? It would be like listening to a radio where each song is selected on demand (especially when fast connections become popular). I actually don't think it's a bad idea...
Most people (think of all Windows users out there) wouldn't go through all this hassle. Remember that a lot of people who listen to MP3 don't even know how to encode! -- Even with user-friendly stuff as MusicMatch out there (many never heard about it).
Besides, and what if the ads were added with a fade in/out effect, as they do in radio? Then you would either cut a bit off the song or listen to the ad.
Well, a thought I had (back when I naively thought CD/MP3 players did not exist and that was an excelent idea)...
<Well, technically a CD player eats up a LOT of energy
...being the songs MP3 compressed, it would be less data to read, so the CD would spin less, right? It could read a whole song in, say, 10/20 seconds (?), throw it all to a 10MB flash buffer and then sleep.
I don't know if the models available today use this technique, but it would also solve the skipping problem...
The MSX ruled in the Eighties! (in Japan and (here) in South America) But it was much more a computer than a gaming console, I mean, it had cartridge inputs where you would just put a cartridge, turn it on, play and turn it off, but when you turned it on without a cartridge it booted into BASIC.
By the way, does Tesla (the band) exists anymore? Ah, and my favorite is "The Great Radio Controversy", hehehe. An interesting fact is that I only got to know who Nikola Tesla was by reading the album sleeve... Heh, that's a little taste of our educational system... Who said music is not culture?
It's good to see that people in the industry feel somewhat like I do... After studying some different computer languages at college, I found out that none of them fully satisfied me, and most important, none of them explored the full potential of concepts like object orientation, etc, in a practical way. I've been thinking a lot about the concepts that today's programming languages lack, maybe they'll end up in my (how's it called in English?) term paper (or something like that). I was thinking about some things among the lines of what Sweeney wrote, and another detail I always feel that is a key factor in productivity is the syntax. We all can get used to any syntax, as terrible as it can be, but some "traps" of an obscure syntax can be a pain to even an experienced programmer, not to speak of newcomers to a language. Maybe this is not the right place to say those things, since the C and UNIX tradition walk hand in hand and I don't exactly feel that C is a great language in terms of syntax... Saving keystrokes in expense of readability is a bad, bad thing. And I don't believe that the ideal object-oriented language can be an extension of a procedural language, it has to be object-oriented from the bottom up (C++ and Java go down the drain here). I really think that we need a new language, maybe it's about time for the development of a new language, this time in the "open-source spirit". Most languages were mostly created by one or two people, what about democratically define a standard for an 'open language' then implement it? Would that be possible?
I guess there must be many other geeks out there
who are also into progressive rock...?
Among other rockers I noticed that the proggers
are usually seen as the "geeks of rock" because
we're so "detailistic" (does this word exist
in English?), always going for complex,
technical music.
Ends up hapenning that being a computer geek I
feel the same when "normal" people refer to
prog rockers as to when they refer to computer
geeks...
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine always says...
"If Windows wasn't free, I'd use Linux."
--
I think the headline was misleading. The poster probably meant configuration stuff, such as XF86Config, modules.conf, bashrc, etc. (Oh maybe THAT was why the directory is called /etc!!!)
He's asking about GUI stuff (GNOME/KDE) because where he comes from these things are configured in the graphical environment -- he might have heard about all those advancements in the user interface Linux had lately and thought it had already got to this stage.
--
...I must say, is mcedit.
:)
You probably already have it, it comes with the Midnight Commander (so, if you don't have it, install mc). I personally don't like MC that much, since I was a DCOM user (not Windows DCOM, the old "Directory Commander" -- I liked it so much I'll probably clone it to Linux someday) but it's worth installing MC just to have mcedit.
I even have an "alias edit=mcedit" (old habits...)
It uses the "Borland keys" (Shift-Del cuts, Shift-Ins copies, Ctrl-Ins pastes, Shift-arrows select), so using mcedit to program in Free Pascal feels like using good ol' Turbo Pascal -- but in full object-oriented multithreaded multitasking 32-bits glory!!!
--
A few weeks ago I had an idea of making a page with Linux tips and stuff, based on my own experiences -- I switched to a Linux-only configuration this year (was a long time DOS [and consequently Windows] user), so I think passed recently through all those things the poster was referring to.
I have already got together some material: some random tips on configuration and programs and a few little scripts (even some "one-liners") I came up with that really ease my life in the command line.
And of course, if anybody would like to help me out on this I'd appreciate a lot!
Check it out: Living with Linux
-- Lode
--
That's great! I really enjoy Pascal programming, and sometimes I'd like to put together some GUI apps but, being unfamiliar with both the language and the toolkit makes things difficult. Maybe using a familiar language I could go through the GTK toolkit with less trouble. What is needed now is Glade support... Last time I checked it could generate even Eiffel code, but not Pascal...
Ok. Let's imagine a scenario where the "No ad" becomes a popular thing. And what if the evil guys from the industry also put out on Napster the song with the ad named as "BSB - Crap Song (no ad).mp3" to confuse users?...
That reminds me of that sig that a guy uses here, in bold characters:
I just bought 2 Foo Fighters CDs that I wouldn't have if I hadn't heard the MP3 first.
Well, if that is what MP3s are for -- getting to know different bands and then going after their CDs -- something I (and this guy seems to) do, then these MP3s with advertisements would "do just fine", right? It would be like listening to a radio where each song is selected on demand (especially when fast connections become popular).
I actually don't think it's a bad idea...
Most people (think of all Windows users out there) wouldn't go through all this hassle. Remember that a lot of people who listen to MP3 don't even know how to encode! -- Even with user-friendly stuff as MusicMatch out there (many never heard about it).
Besides, and what if the ads were added with a fade in/out effect, as they do in radio? Then you would either cut a bit off the song or listen to the ad.
LOL!
Well, a thought I had (back when I naively thought CD/MP3 players did not exist and that was an excelent idea)...
...being the songs MP3 compressed, it would be less data to read, so the CD would spin less, right? It could read a whole song in, say, 10/20 seconds (?), throw it all to a 10MB flash buffer and then sleep.
<Well, technically a CD player eats up a LOT of energy
I don't know if the models available today use this technique, but it would also solve the skipping problem...
A "toy" icon?
Shouldn't have been the "music" icon used instead?
Hot Grits?
The MSX ruled in the Eighties! (in Japan and (here) in South America)
But it was much more a computer than a gaming console, I mean, it had cartridge inputs where you would just put a cartridge, turn it on, play and turn it off, but when you turned it on without a cartridge it booted into BASIC.
By the way, does Tesla (the band) exists anymore?
Ah, and my favorite is "The Great Radio Controversy", hehehe.
An interesting fact is that I only got to know who Nikola Tesla was by reading the album sleeve... Heh, that's a little taste of our educational system...
Who said music is not culture?
It's good to see that people in the industry feel somewhat like I do... After studying some different computer languages at college, I found out that none of them fully satisfied me, and most important, none of them explored the full potential of concepts like object orientation, etc, in a practical way.
I've been thinking a lot about the concepts that today's programming languages lack, maybe they'll end up in my (how's it called in English?) term paper (or something like that). I was thinking about some things among the lines of what Sweeney wrote, and another detail I always feel that is a key factor in productivity is the syntax. We all can get used to any syntax, as terrible as it can be, but some "traps" of an obscure syntax can be a pain to even an experienced programmer, not to speak of newcomers to a language.
Maybe this is not the right place to say those things, since the C and UNIX tradition walk hand in hand and I don't exactly feel that C is a great language in terms of syntax...
Saving keystrokes in expense of readability is a bad, bad thing.
And I don't believe that the ideal object-oriented language can be an extension of a procedural language, it has to be object-oriented from the bottom up (C++ and Java go down the drain here).
I really think that we need a new language, maybe it's about time for the development of a new language, this time in the "open-source spirit". Most languages were mostly created by one or two people, what about democratically define a standard for an 'open language' then implement it?
Would that be possible?
I guess there must be many other geeks out there who are also into progressive rock...?
Among other rockers I noticed that the proggers are usually seen as the "geeks of rock" because we're so "detailistic" (does this word exist in English?), always going for complex, technical music.
Ends up hapenning that being a computer geek I feel the same when "normal" people refer to prog rockers as to when they refer to computer geeks...
Any other proggers out there to share a view?
--