The RISC OS scheme has security problems on multiuser systems (running !Boot when you look at a directory is not good!) but ROX doesn't use boot files.
Incidentally, ROX uses Gtk and XDND, so it should play nice with GNOME apps.
Re:the rant that CmdrTaco mentioned ....
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Themes.org Cracked
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No, no, no!
X applications can talk to each other, even if they're running on different machines. This is used for cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop, xkill, etc.
You have two xterms open on your local machine.
Using one of them, you ssh to a remote machine.
The remote machine can now open windows on your display and interact with all other clients.
The remote machine pastes rm -rf ~ into the other xterm. Of course, it would normally do something more sneaky...
Re:the rant that CmdrTaco mentioned ....
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Themes.org Cracked
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So, to conclude - there is no extra security risk from running X apps remotely. The programs are still running on the remote machine, they're just displaying on your local X server.
The remote application can send messages to any local application. Like, say, looking for a local xterm and inserting keypresses...
Mac OS (Classic, not X) does not do that. It does the exact opposite: put the filesystem in plain, obvious, tangible view. The user actually manipulates files and folders, and never touches an abstraction like the Start menu, $PATH or whatever. That's one of the nice things with Mac OS (again, not X), in my experience: you
really feel in control of the filesystem.
Mac OS X OTOH hides much of the filesystem and brings Start menu-like abstractions. A nice touch is the package system, where an app (or lib, or whatever) behaves like a single file, yet actually is a whole hierarchy of files and dirs for the OS. Makes packaging complex apps really nice, and allows drag-and-drop installs just like the Old Days.
Absolutely! The problem with the Windows and Unix filesystems isn't that they're big, it's that they're organised is a system-friendly, rather than user-friendly, way.
A user-oriented filesystem would put a program's binary and its help files together, for example, rather than having a 'bin' directory and a 'doc' directory.
As you say, if you lay things out sensibly then you don't even need an installer, just cp / tar will do (or graphical equivalents).
<Plug>Anyway, check out the ROX Destop which supports this already!</Plug>
Re:multitasking games; windows vs linux
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This means that if you are playing some 3d game, and someone accesses your server, of perhaps just some program you are running just needed disk access, that program gets all cpu (for just a very short time). It results in a sudden drop in framerate.
Well, what happens on Windows when someone accesses your web server while you're playing a game?
If you're running stuff in the background then either:
It will interrupt your game, or
It won't work while you play.
If you want to stop something (eg cron, apache) from running at all, you can send it a SIGSTOP to freeze it. Unfreeze with SIGCONT. Or don't run updatedb from cron - run it manually instead when
you've got some free time.
Why do I have to be root to install binary RPMs anyway? I mean, I can install the Gimp from source as an ordinary user... why is it so hard to install from RPMs?
Why don't more desktops support application directories? Then, I just download a binary archive, extract it and run!
No need to be root, no need to run any scripts and no problems uninstalling if it all goes wrong.
What XML does is it makes reading in files MUCH easier. With one function call, I can turn a filename into a tree structure of its contents.
CSV is great if you've got 'flat' data (like a list), but what about if your data is in a tree?
Also, XML is somewhat self-documenting because the tag names hint at the purpose of each field. Which of these file formats would you rather try to figure out?
Slashdot Mirror
The gnome-python package is here:
www.gnome.org.
The package includes lots of simple example programs which are easy to read, and handles calling the init functions for you.
There are more tutorials on using python to create Gtk apps here.
The RISC OS scheme has security problems on multiuser systems (running !Boot when you look at a directory is not good!) but ROX doesn't use boot files.
Incidentally, ROX uses Gtk and XDND, so it should play nice with GNOME apps.
I double-click on it to uncompress it.
This shows a Gnucash folder.
It's installed!
You can.
Archive, System and several other applications install like this. You just need a filer that supports it.
X applications can talk to each other, even if they're running on different machines. This is used for cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop, xkill, etc.
You have two xterms open on your local machine. Using one of them, you ssh to a remote machine. The remote machine can now open windows on your display and interact with all other clients.
The remote machine pastes rm -rf ~ into the other xterm. Of course, it would normally do something more sneaky...
The remote application can send messages to any local application. Like, say, looking for a local xterm and inserting keypresses...
I'd call that a security risk.
Mac OS X OTOH hides much of the filesystem and brings Start menu-like abstractions. A nice touch is the package system, where an app (or lib, or whatever) behaves like a single file, yet actually is a whole hierarchy of files and dirs for the OS. Makes packaging complex apps really nice, and allows drag-and-drop installs just like the Old Days.
Absolutely! The problem with the Windows and Unix filesystems isn't that they're big, it's that they're organised is a system-friendly, rather than user-friendly, way.
A user-oriented filesystem would put a program's binary and its help files together, for example, rather than having a 'bin' directory and a 'doc' directory.
As you say, if you lay things out sensibly then you don't even need an installer, just cp / tar will do (or graphical equivalents).
<Plug>Anyway, check out the ROX Destop which supports this already!</Plug>
Well, what happens on Windows when someone accesses your web server while you're playing a game?
If you're running stuff in the background then either:
- It will interrupt your game, or
- It won't work while you play.
If you want to stop something (eg cron, apache) from running at all, you can send it a SIGSTOP to freeze it. Unfreeze with SIGCONT. Or don't run updatedb from cron - run it manually instead when you've got some free time.Remember elite on the BBC? A 3D space trading game that ran in 32K (including 20K screen memory, plus the OS!)
So, although there is a theoretical trade-off between size and features, I suspect that this has little effect in practise...
To summarise: yes, you can install as a normal user, but only from source, which is daft!
Nope - won't work.
Running configure will update Makefile and config.h, which means you have to recompile. So, it's not a binary install.
Application directories allow you to easily install binary packages without being root.
Why don't more desktops support application directories? Then, I just download a binary archive, extract it and run! No need to be root, no need to run any scripts and no problems uninstalling if it all goes wrong.
CSV is great if you've got 'flat' data (like a list), but what about if your data is in a tree?
Also, XML is somewhat self-documenting because the tag names hint at the purpose of each field. Which of these file formats would you rather try to figure out?
CSV:
"Bob", "756838", "124437"
XML:
<name>Bob</name>
<phone>756838</phone>
<fax>124437</fax>
File manager too cluttered or slow? Try this:
You can do away with much of the symlinking by updating the tools.
Eg, have a help command which simply looks inside the 'Help' subdirectory of the application (in fact, the filer just opens that directory).
Likewise, you can make your shell 'run' a directory by running the file 'AppRun' inside.
You can even include the source code and make AppRun a shell script that compiles a binary for your platform automatically if it doesn't yet exist.
Also, this means that the source, help and binaries never get out of sync!
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