Well, there are multiple desktop utilities that can help, as well as intelligently using minimize and Aqua's application hiding feature (alt-click a window).
It's not optimal, but then again I'm not really happy with anything but KDE.
I remember reading a blog entry from the VP of Microsoft responsible for security, and he told his relatives that he would no longer support their security problems on anything earlier than XP SP2.
He would only help them out with viruses and the like if they had SP2 or newer.
If the damn VP of Security at Microsoft can't keep his relatives' computers clean... well, you get the picture.
I rebuilt my box in January and it is still clean.
I take it you mean you changed all the hardware?
Or is this "rebuilt" concept mean "reformat/reload".
If so, 5 months of time between reformats is absolutely nothing to be proud of. My original g4 1ghz 12" powerbook went 3 years before I replaced it. My current home linux desktop has not been reformated since inception 4 years ago (including numerous hardware upgrades; two motherboards, three processors).
Windows boxes are the only ones with this notion of being "rebuilt". The rest of us don't ever have to do that. Seriously; how long did it take? 4 hours? 8 hours? 12 hours? Including all the man hours involved in reloading all your software, backing up all your documents and replacing them, and configurating Windows as-you-like it. Do you really feel the need to do that every 5-8 months?
A friend of mine has made the switch from Windows to Linux in an entirely different fashion: he made a backup of all his important data, formatted ALL his PCs, and installed SuSe Linux on each and everyone of them. Whereas I had an easy way back (dual-boot), he forced himself to "hang on" until he got the hang of the system. Nowadays Linux is the only thing he uses, and he won't return to Windows. I've always wanted to make a clean break, but am reluctant to do so, and therefor I always end up dual-boot.
Do I know you???
I'm a big advocate of the "clean break" method. I've been Windows free for over two years now.
Well, if you bought the boxed set, you have 2 DVDs worth of software.
Exactly how does one download/install software using Windows without the internet? Sure, you can purchase it from the store; but you can also purchase CDs worth of Linux software via snail mail delivery, and many larger retailers (Compusa, Fry's Electronics, Microcenter) have begun to carry Linux software.
Wrong. If you are running as a user, not administrator, then: 1. Search Internet. 2. Download file. Pray you have the right file. 3. If it's shareware, register the damn thing, or if its payware, buy it. Either way, wait for the e-mail pre-registration confirmation to come through with the "you must download this within 30 minutes for the link to be valid" e-mail. 4. Download file. 5. Once downloaded, make sure you can locate the file. This is not a trivial task for the average Joe user; neither browser is configured out of box to download directly to desktop. I've assisted many a user who "lost" a file. 6. Right click on file. Select, "Run As administrator". Type in your administrator password. 7. Follow dialogues. 8. Find out you need some Visual Basic runtime. Go back and locate that from Google. Repeate steps 5 through 7 for the runtime. 9. Repeat steps 5 through 7 after you've installed the runtime. 10. Run software. Pray that it doesn't need to run as administrator.
Linux: 1. Click on "K" or Gnome menu (Windows translation, "Start Menu"). 2. Click on "Utilities". 3. Click on "Software Management(SMART)" 4. Type in your administrator password at the GUI dialog, asking, "Please type in your adiminstrator password". 5. Type the name of the software you want to install in the search box, or browse by category 6. Click the checkbox next to the software(s) you want to install. 7. Click apply. 8. Enjoy your software.
Linux seems quite a bit easier.
Oh, but your software isn't in the repository? Suprising to me; most things you could possibly needs are avaliable in SuSE's numerous repositories. But if not, just about any software (including Skype, Firefox, OpenOffice, Acrobat, etc. ..) is shipped in RPMs that you can install directly, simply by double clicking on them, ala Windows, except with automated dependancy management.
And the next generation of distribution goes beyond that; download an autopackage or a klik:// file, and there's very little work to do at all!.
Linux software install is much, much easier than on Windows. Just because your used to the headaches of Windows installs doesn't mean that it is less complex.
Now, I do admit there is _less_ Linux software out there, at least in terms of professional midsized business office suites (Photoshop, etc. ..). But on the low end (utilities, DVD copying, picture management, basic office work, e-mail, etc. ..) and on the high end (Oracle, Apache, serving, enterprise level stuff) Linux trounces Windows in terms of ease of administration.
Besides, I highly, highly doubt that your enterprise level Windows apps are installed via "search on internet and double click."
I think that's a poor way to look at it..... IMHO.
Re: Many flavors of Linux.
Think Toolkit. Think components. Think small effective pieces. Think commodity.
Not every distribution is going to be the best desktop distribution, just as not every car manufacturer is produces the best family sedan.
Does that mean that we should settle on the one true car manufacturer? No; various companies produce better family sedans, better SUVs, better trucks, better semi-trailers, etc. . ..
The Linux world has not yet matured enough to really make "known" the strengths and weaknesses of each distribution, at least on a universal level. By known, I mean "known", the way its general knowledge that if you want a flashy car you buy a Benz or a Cadillac, and if you want a reliable car you purchase a Volvo or a Japanese sedan. But I firmly believe that it is going in that direction.
Need a Workstation or Server distribution? Go for Redhat, or SuSE enterprise Server or Desktop.
Want a free distribution? Debian, Fedora, OpenSuSE, or wide variety of others.
Like to tinker? Feel the need to build everything in house? Go Slackware, or Gentoo, or even Linux from Scratch.
Want a preload? Linspire, or Mandriva.
Noobie friendly, or direct transfer from Windows? IMHO, there's only one answer: SuSE.
There's absolutely no more reason for Linux to converge on a standard, except for some basic principles to make life easier for packagers/distribution manufacturers. One does not download a Windows kernel from Microsoft.com for customization; you take whatever setup your OEM manufacturer supplies (and yes, sometimes these are different from stock (in rare situations)). Why do you expect a Linux kernel from kernel.org to drop directly into your distribution.
SuSE does the packaging thing right. It's an RPM distribution, with active development on APT and several other packaging options, including SMART and Klik://, YUM, ZMD. All of these are directly interoperable; changes made in SMART are represented correctly in YaST2, RPM, and APT.
Rather than having the "one true way", you can use _any_ method you like. They recommend YaST2 for OpenSuSE, and ZMD for SuSE Desktop Linux; that's what's described in the manuals, including printed screenshots.
But should you choose to use SMART instead, you don't have to futz around with the commandline and vast numbers of text configuration files; install SMART from YaST2, then stick to SMART's GUI for handling your packages. Same with APT/Kynaptic/Synaptic, or whatever RPM-style packaging system you choose to use.
Re: Desktop Environments.
SuSE, for a long time, "picked" the "correct" desktop environment. KDE. Then the SuSE people would create their own custom KDE distribution, pretty heavily modified from stock, with boat loads of bugfixes, fixed user-mode automounters, bugfixes for network browsing, correctly setup flash, java, and PDF plugins out-of-box, and easy install of MIME-integrated media players, including the necessary framework for DVD playing should you purchase a licensed DVD decss package.
This has changed, however, recently. As Gnome and KDE have gotten closer to the freedesktop specifications, it's gotten much easier for distribution managers to produce a dual-environment setup. Gnome and KDE on SuSE interoperate well; you can feasibly switch back and forth with no problems whatsoever. They are both well polished, as well. In SuSE 10.1, Beagle is integrated into both environments, as are OpenOffice.org, Acrobat, Flash, and Java. Everything just bloody works!
This is a result of both backend changes in Gnome and KDE to get closer to freedesktop, and a lot of hardwork by the SuSE people (including Novell's Ximian team, who now works with the SuSE people).
SuSE has eliminated 99% of the technical barriers to desktop Linux adoption. Hardware (printing/scanning/3D/networking (including wireless)) works out of box, there's an effective default install of software (including
On SuSE, the only thing you cannot install via Smart is support for encrypted DVD playback. That's the one time you'll have to use the commandline, to run this shell script, which automagically downloads/compiles it for you.
Everything else, included the ATI/NVIDIA drivers, can be install via GUI, and configured via GUI.
10.1 just came out. It's super slick. Give it a try.
The 911 hijackers, notable filled out some portions of their Visa applications with incredibly suspicious answers. They traveled on a student visas, and were studying at a school called things like, "In the West U.S.". They left their permanent address, both abroad and in the U.S. blank, or listed things like "hotel" as their permanent address abroad.
Yeah, I know, its the national review, which is a crap site, but they actually have links to scans of the Visa applications.
IIRC, Mohammad Atma, the chief "hijacker", was also stopped at a security checkpoint when boarding the airplane on 9/11. The security screen could not figure out why Mr. Atma was setting off the metal detector, wanded him, and then after determing that it was his "chest" that was "beeping", passed him through.
Rather than monitoring all of our phone calls, perhaps we should spend money on processing Visa applications better and faster. These errors should not have happened, and it is probably a result of the turn around time of Visa applications being so long; the few examiners that are out there churn through them as fast as possible.
As an Iranian American, this is a big issue for me; my family is trying to immigrate, and has spent a ridiculous amount of time (on the order of 5-10 years) trying to get in. Tons of paperwork, too. That the fucking hijackers should have no problem getting student visas with such shoddy applications makes me furious.
"Legal Means" only affords you protection if the regulations are followed. Most of the hijackers student visa applications should have been denied, and the U.S. already has mechanisms to pursue proper security checks on people applying for visas. We don't need a new data mining net; we need the existing mechanisms to be applied properly.
Let me highlight to particularly salient points in that article. They speak for themselves:
"U.S. authorities missed some obvious signs that might have prevented some of the Sept. 11 hijackers from entering the country, the federal commission investigating the attacks said Monday.
Government officials have said the 19 hijackers entered the country legally, but the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said its investigation found at least two and as many as eight had fraudulent visas. The commission also found examples where U.S. officials had contact with the hijackers but failed to adequately investigate suspicious behavior.... At the start of a two-day hearing on border and aviation security, the commission staff issued a statement saying FBI Director Robert Mueller had testified that all of the hijackers came "lawfully from abroad," while CIA Director George Tenet described 17 of the 19 hijackers as "clean."
We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to reevaluate those statements," the commission staff said."
AND The panel said part of the problem was a lack of coordination among immigration officials and a focus on keeping out illegal immigrants rather than potential terrorists.
I have a feeling this last point is only getting worse; People think that illegal immigrants = Terrorist, and it couldn't be further from the truth.
IMHO, Windows 1.0 doesn't count. I start my Windows clock with 3.0; Windows 1.0 has as little to do with 3.1 as pre-11 X protocols have to do with X11.
X emerged in 1984, by the way.
I'd compare X11 to 3.0, or 3.11; that'd be 87 versus 92, or 90, take your pick.
I'm sorry, but X11 is slower than GDI/USER. That's just a fact. No, its not. X11 is wicked fast. The problem isn't that X11 isn't fast; it's that your system isn't, by default, double buffered. X11 is a lean, mean, pixel pushing machine; it carries little overhead, and is very very extensible. Make no mistake, X11 is super-duper fast; that's one of the reason it's ran on a variety of systems far, far before Windows was a gleam in Bill Gate's eye. The developers themselves have admitted that the X protocol is inefficient (especially as used by the toolkits), Huh? that Xlib is not suitable for modern applications (and it's now finally being replaced) Huh? Partially true; but it works, and in enterprise, too. and that the acceleration architecture is simply not suitable for desktop usage. Double huh? XAA, maybe. EXA? No way. Note that EXA is supported on a number of X servers, and that both the Nvidia and ATI proprietary servers provide high performance X render acceleration.
Not to mention the new AIGLX and XGL hacks/intermediate steps towards a new X architecture. These two are ridiculously slick, and I use both on a regular basis. Every system in my household, my parents household, and my office run Linux (except for the OS X boxes). Every one of these runs either XGL or some kind of composite window manager, and they "feel" faster in Linux than on XP.
Furthermore, exactly what GUI server do you think they use for video editing, or any of the other high-end workstation uses that Linux has?
Please take a look here; Xorg's performance is something that has undergone careful consideration. I have used Windows and Linux side by side on the same machine and the Windows GUI is always faster. On my T43, for example, dragging windows on Linux will sometimes leave trails, no matter what WM/DE I'm using. Only if you aren't using a composite manager.
I quote:
Most X drivers do not synchronize their drawing to the vertical retrace signal from the monitor. (To be fair, very few windowing systems do this consistently, even MacOS X.) This leads to a tearing appearance on some drawing operations, which looks slow. If the vertical retrace signal could be exposed through the SYNC extension, applications could defer their rendering slightly and reduce or eliminate tearing. This requires extending each driver to support this, as well as adding a little support code to the server itself. The un-Composited model of X operation requires many round trip operations to redraw areas when they are exposed (window move, etc.). It is important that X be able to make Composited operation fast in the future.
My parents can't be trusted with a Windows system. It gets infested with crap.
They run just happily on SuSE systems. Yes, I install software for them, but it is very rare that they need new stuff. They can use the klik:// stuff easily, too.
Linux is here today, for many of us. My parents, my grandparents, etc. . . .
I used to be a Mediacom customer in Iowa City, and had a good number of friends who worked at one of their local customer support centers.
This doesn't surprise me in the least.
That company is a bunch of crooks. I've been overbilled by them repeatedly. Their service is sub-sub-par (yes, worse than worse than average), and I heartily recommend anyone using them to switch to a combination of DSL & Satellite. I expect the Mediacom CEO to pickup the AT&T party line that no one needs more than a 1.5 Mbps internet connection.
Anyone heard of a provider openly advocating net neutrality? I want to switch to them.
"It's only because MS is so far ahead already; they feel no need to rush their product out the door."
"This time they'll get the security issues right."
"Damned if they do, damned if they don't. You Linux advocates complain no matter what; admit that this way they'll avoid the bugs!"
"It's Windows! It's the biggest project anywhere! 3 million lines of code! And it's Vista, the biggest upgrade yet! What's a few months between friends? Vista is WAY bigger than any Linux distribution!"
"Microsoft has to be enterprise ready. Linux is for dweebs and nerds. Of course Windows has a longer release cycle; that's 'cause its better"
"It's not fair; if MS didn't have to deal with all these vindictive, nerdy hackers, Windows wouldn't take so long to develop. Imagine if Apple or Linux had to deal with these black hat hackers."
You can install the easy-to-install Limewire RPM from Limewire's site (installing me "click on the 'download' link", and then press the "Install in YaST" link on the embedded RPM browser that shows up in your web browser. Limewire's icon will show up under the "Internet" category in your KDE menu.
How is this not far easier than on Windows?
All you have to do is go to YaST, search for "SNES", and install it. No hunting out which-is-the-right file, no worrying about stuff you can't install;
It's all managed by RPM, via GUI, and all the packages you could ever want are avaliable. The worst thing you'll ever have to do is learn to add an additional RPM source, and there are step-by-step screenshot guides that show you how to do that. These guides are generally easier to use than the step-by-step guides which show you how to install a wireless router, or a printer (on Windows; printing on SUSE is dead easy).
It's not a problem with FOSS; ease of use is up to the distro makers. I don't expect Gentoo or Slackware to be easy for noobs; that's not why they are there. Use Mandrake or SuSE (especially SuSE). I've converted my relatives to SuSE, and they don't mind a bit.
As an experiment, I recently tried switching to a Gnome-based Linux system to replace my Windows desktop. I do a bunch of fairly standard office tasks -- spreadsheets, word processing, email, etc. But I do have some specific needs, such as needing to use a particular scanner, save files to a SMB share, etc.
Sounds like me. Scanning, SMB shares, yadda yadda.
Using Linux was an unmitigated disaster. Things that seem like absolutely basic functionality don't work right. I spent literally 40+ hours poring over online forums trying to figure out how to get pieces of software to work right together. OpenOffice pops up random dialog boxes when you try to save to a file share, Flash doesn't really work right on Linux under Firefox, Evolution doesn't like having its email repository stored on a share, etc, etc.
Your experience is atypical. I'd say its because you used Gnome & a weird distribution. Try SuSE, and try KDE. KIOslaves make short work of networking, in any form. In any file dialog, you can "browse" to the network, or you can use smb:/// to browse there. It's cake.
OpenOffice.org-kde, the SuSE variant, works brilliantly. Flash is well configured on SuSE to work perfectly in both Firefox and Konqueror. And depending upon whether you need exchange-like abilities, KMail is a vastly superior e-mail client. More stable, more features, faster; the whole enchilada.
Did I mention that nearly every KDE application is network transparent? Then there are the user interface difficulties. Windows and OSX are the only 2 OSes I'm aware of where companies actually have done meaningful user testing to verify what works and what doesn't. Gnome and KDE are nice window managers, but they're just not set up right for office tasks. Sure I can sit around and change everything from the icons' sizes to the taskbar size, but who wants to spend days configuring their computer like that?
Yes, and no. Once again, try SuSE. KDE is a base "setup" of applications. SuSE's KDE is polished. Automounting works properly. Network browsing works properly. Flash & Java work properly. Printing works properly. Scanning works properly. And all of these things are configured via YaST, an excellent (if a bit slow) setup tool. And don't even get me started on file associations (what program runs when you double-click on a file with a given extension). No matter what I tried, I couldn't get Gnome to let me change the file associations for files on an SMB share.
I dunno. I think Gnome is pretty, but I think its pretty much unusable for the average user.
KDE on the other hand, is drop-dead easy. Network shares are just folders, like any other (smb:// , ftp://http:/// hell, even crazy things like tar:// and beagle://, not to mention the incredibly cool fish:// , which lets you browse a remote filesystem on any system running SSH, and only SSH). Right click; go to properties. You can change the default application for this particular file there. There's also a little wrench button, and when you mouse over it, it says something to the effect of, "mime type settings". Go into this, and you get a similar dialogue, except it selects default programs for the mimetype, as well as file extensions associated with this mimetype.
I think its superior to both OS Xs and XPs way of doing things.
You can also access this dialog through the "Open With..." context menu, as well as in the KDE-Control-Center. And, it's absolutely opaque how to change them for regular files too without resorting to editing text files in/usr/share/blahblah. I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Are we still talking about file ->program associations? This is not something I've ever done in KDE, and we run 3 KDE desktops at home, and 6 at work. As for this perceived threat from webapps, I don't think Microsoft should be worried at all. Even the mighty Google knows that trying to reimplement MS
#3 is only 1/2 of their EU troubles. That fine includes a DAILY component. Only a couple million a day, IIRC, but still. Also, there have been noises of the EU preventing Vista deployment.
Not to mention that MSN search is the default search (and home page) in IE6.
Another poster made an extremely valid point; Google is a VERB by this point.
Google is one of the few "nerd websites" that has developed enough name recognition to have developed a substantial following through the entire "internet content" marketplace.
Google's won this round, despite MS's best efforts. Not only does MS have to do things like make "Live.com" a default portal, it'll have to defeat Google's mindshare. I don't see that happening anytime soon; in fact, I think Google is still on the up-and-up, while crap like Live.com is stillborn.
Google & Yahoo are tearing apart the search market. MS is a third tier player.
There's nothing new in the MS pipeline. MS loves vaporware, and lately MS hasn't been able to execute.
Even at the top of it's game, MS would have trouble dealing with the current landscape, and MS is most definitely not at the top of its game right now.
If MS didn't have huge marketshare and a huge pile of cash they'd be in serious trouble. As it is, MS can coast nearly indefinitely.
But stop with the "MS is going to kill everyone else 'real-soon-now'". It's bullshit, and even MS employees don't believe it anymore.
Put up or shut up. Your posting as AC; so lets hear these wonderous future plans that caused you to change your business plan.
These companies (and Google in particular) have been buying quite a bit of dark fiber. Maybe tell light it up, and start selling bandwidth to ISPs, or setup their own wireless ISPs.
When you get fucked by the middle man, and you have plenty of money, the best response is to cut the middle man out.
Google seems to plan ahead. I'm guessing that even if they loose this current "neutrality" battle with the telecos, they'll have an alternate system in place. Of course, they'd prefer it if everyone could "neutrally" access their service, but I'm guessing that smaller providers like Speakeasy, Wide Open West, and the smatter of medium ISPs and wireless ISPs out there will get the option of buying bandwidth from a coallition of internet companies.....
These guys have more than enough money to build such a thing, and some of these companies have already started to purchase the necessary fiber lines.
Get a WRT54G. Run DD-WRT. Use either the PPTP server or OpenVPN.
Done and done.
Of course, your WRT54G won't handle more than 10 users or so; you'll want to switch to a dedicated box or router for that. But you can't beat it in terms of cost/avaliability-- you can get this sucker up and running in 5 minutes flat, pick one up from bestbuy for ~$50, and there are no moving parts whatsoever.
For a very small office, its great. For a series of small offices in a larger company, its okay too. We use this sort of segmented VPN in our offices because of bandwidth reasons; we don't have enough uplink at any given location to really setup a better solution, and we can't financially justify purchasing more than 1 Mbit/s of uplink anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there are multiple desktop utilities that can help, as well as intelligently using minimize and Aqua's application hiding feature (alt-click a window).
It's not optimal, but then again I'm not really happy with anything but KDE.
I remember reading a blog entry from the VP of Microsoft responsible for security, and he told his relatives that he would no longer support their security problems on anything earlier than XP SP2.
He would only help them out with viruses and the like if they had SP2 or newer.
If the damn VP of Security at Microsoft can't keep his relatives' computers clean... well, you get the picture.
I rebuilt my box in January and it is still clean.
I take it you mean you changed all the hardware?
Or is this "rebuilt" concept mean "reformat/reload".
If so, 5 months of time between reformats is absolutely nothing to be proud of. My original g4 1ghz 12" powerbook went 3 years before I replaced it. My current home linux desktop has not been reformated since inception 4 years ago (including numerous hardware upgrades; two motherboards, three processors).
Windows boxes are the only ones with this notion of being "rebuilt". The rest of us don't ever have to do that. Seriously; how long did it take? 4 hours? 8 hours? 12 hours? Including all the man hours involved in reloading all your software, backing up all your documents and replacing them, and configurating Windows as-you-like it. Do you really feel the need to do that every 5-8 months?
Once again, this is Windows only.
Damn! Obviously, Linux isn't ready for the home user.
Remember: It's Windows Media Player for Windows 11.
WMPfW for short.
A friend of mine has made the switch from Windows to Linux in an entirely different fashion: he made a backup of all his important data, formatted ALL his PCs, and installed SuSe Linux on each and everyone of them. Whereas I had an easy way back (dual-boot), he forced himself to "hang on" until he got the hang of the system. Nowadays Linux is the only thing he uses, and he won't return to Windows. I've always wanted to make a clean break, but am reluctant to do so, and therefor I always end up dual-boot.
Do I know you???
I'm a big advocate of the "clean break" method. I've been Windows free for over two years now.
It's nice breaking an addiction.
Well, if you bought the boxed set, you have 2 DVDs worth of software.
Exactly how does one download/install software using Windows without the internet? Sure, you can purchase it from the store; but you can also purchase CDs worth of Linux software via snail mail delivery, and many larger retailers (Compusa, Fry's Electronics, Microcenter) have begun to carry Linux software.
Nonsense. You must be living in the nineties.
.) is shipped in RPMs that you can install directly, simply by double clicking on them, ala Windows, except with automated dependancy management.
.). But on the low end (utilities, DVD copying, picture management, basic office work, e-mail, etc. . .) and on the high end (Oracle, Apache, serving, enterprise level stuff) Linux trounces Windows in terms of ease of administration.
Windows: Search internet, download file, double click and follow onscreen instructions. Idiot proof.
Wrong. If you are running as a user, not administrator, then:
1. Search Internet.
2. Download file. Pray you have the right file.
3. If it's shareware, register the damn thing, or if its payware, buy it. Either way, wait for the e-mail pre-registration confirmation to come through with the "you must download this within 30 minutes for the link to be valid" e-mail.
4. Download file.
5. Once downloaded, make sure you can locate the file. This is not a trivial task for the average Joe user; neither browser is configured out of box to download directly to desktop. I've assisted many a user who "lost" a file.
6. Right click on file. Select, "Run As administrator". Type in your administrator password.
7. Follow dialogues.
8. Find out you need some Visual Basic runtime. Go back and locate that from Google. Repeate steps 5 through 7 for the runtime.
9. Repeat steps 5 through 7 after you've installed the runtime.
10. Run software. Pray that it doesn't need to run as administrator.
Linux:
1. Click on "K" or Gnome menu (Windows translation, "Start Menu").
2. Click on "Utilities".
3. Click on "Software Management(SMART)"
4. Type in your administrator password at the GUI dialog, asking, "Please type in your adiminstrator password".
5. Type the name of the software you want to install in the search box, or browse by category
6. Click the checkbox next to the software(s) you want to install.
7. Click apply.
8. Enjoy your software.
Linux seems quite a bit easier.
Oh, but your software isn't in the repository? Suprising to me; most things you could possibly needs are avaliable in SuSE's numerous repositories. But if not, just about any software (including Skype, Firefox, OpenOffice, Acrobat, etc. .
And the next generation of distribution goes beyond that; download an autopackage or a klik:// file, and there's very little work to do at all!.
Linux software install is much, much easier than on Windows. Just because your used to the headaches of Windows installs doesn't mean that it is less complex.
Now, I do admit there is _less_ Linux software out there, at least in terms of professional midsized business office suites (Photoshop, etc. .
Besides, I highly, highly doubt that your enterprise level Windows apps are installed via "search on internet and double click."
This is not the responsibility of the Kernel developers. "Linux".
This is the responsibility of the distribution packagers.
Try SuSE. No Fstab editing required.
I think that's a poor way to look at it..... IMHO.
.
Re: Many flavors of Linux.
Think Toolkit. Think components. Think small effective pieces. Think commodity.
Not every distribution is going to be the best desktop distribution, just as not every car manufacturer is produces the best family sedan.
Does that mean that we should settle on the one true car manufacturer? No; various companies produce better family sedans, better SUVs, better trucks, better semi-trailers, etc. . .
The Linux world has not yet matured enough to really make "known" the strengths and weaknesses of each distribution, at least on a universal level. By known, I mean "known", the way its general knowledge that if you want a flashy car you buy a Benz or a Cadillac, and if you want a reliable car you purchase a Volvo or a Japanese sedan. But I firmly believe that it is going in that direction.
Need a Workstation or Server distribution? Go for Redhat, or SuSE enterprise Server or Desktop.
Want a free distribution? Debian, Fedora, OpenSuSE, or wide variety of others.
Like to tinker? Feel the need to build everything in house? Go Slackware, or Gentoo, or even Linux from Scratch.
Want a preload? Linspire, or Mandriva.
Noobie friendly, or direct transfer from Windows? IMHO, there's only one answer: SuSE.
There's absolutely no more reason for Linux to converge on a standard, except for some basic principles to make life easier for packagers/distribution manufacturers. One does not download a Windows kernel from Microsoft.com for customization; you take whatever setup your OEM manufacturer supplies (and yes, sometimes these are different from stock (in rare situations)). Why do you expect a Linux kernel from kernel.org to drop directly into your distribution.
SuSE does the packaging thing right. It's an RPM distribution, with active development on APT and several other packaging options, including SMART and Klik://, YUM, ZMD. All of these are directly interoperable; changes made in SMART are represented correctly in YaST2, RPM, and APT.
Rather than having the "one true way", you can use _any_ method you like. They recommend YaST2 for OpenSuSE, and ZMD for SuSE Desktop Linux; that's what's described in the manuals, including printed screenshots.
But should you choose to use SMART instead, you don't have to futz around with the commandline and vast numbers of text configuration files; install SMART from YaST2, then stick to SMART's GUI for handling your packages. Same with APT/Kynaptic/Synaptic, or whatever RPM-style packaging system you choose to use.
Re: Desktop Environments.
SuSE, for a long time, "picked" the "correct" desktop environment. KDE. Then the SuSE people would create their own custom KDE distribution, pretty heavily modified from stock, with boat loads of bugfixes, fixed user-mode automounters, bugfixes for network browsing, correctly setup flash, java, and PDF plugins out-of-box, and easy install of MIME-integrated media players, including the necessary framework for DVD playing should you purchase a licensed DVD decss package.
This has changed, however, recently. As Gnome and KDE have gotten closer to the freedesktop specifications, it's gotten much easier for distribution managers to produce a dual-environment setup. Gnome and KDE on SuSE interoperate well; you can feasibly switch back and forth with no problems whatsoever. They are both well polished, as well. In SuSE 10.1, Beagle is integrated into both environments, as are OpenOffice.org, Acrobat, Flash, and Java. Everything just bloody works!
This is a result of both backend changes in Gnome and KDE to get closer to freedesktop, and a lot of hardwork by the SuSE people (including Novell's Ximian team, who now works with the SuSE people).
SuSE has eliminated 99% of the technical barriers to desktop Linux adoption. Hardware (printing/scanning/3D/networking (including wireless)) works out of box, there's an effective default install of software (including
Install SuSE, and use The Smart Package Manager.
On SuSE, the only thing you cannot install via Smart is support for encrypted DVD playback. That's the one time you'll have to use the commandline, to run this shell script, which automagically downloads/compiles it for you.
Everything else, included the ATI/NVIDIA drivers, can be install via GUI, and configured via GUI.
10.1 just came out. It's super slick. Give it a try.
This is only partly true.
;-)
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I watched a history channel special on this
The 911 hijackers, notable filled out some portions of their Visa applications with incredibly suspicious answers. They traveled on a student visas, and were studying at a school called things like, "In the West U.S.". They left their permanent address, both abroad and in the U.S. blank, or listed things like "hotel" as their permanent address abroad.
http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray1009
Yeah, I know, its the national review, which is a crap site, but they actually have links to scans of the Visa applications.
IIRC, Mohammad Atma, the chief "hijacker", was also stopped at a security checkpoint when boarding the airplane on 9/11. The security screen could not figure out why Mr. Atma was setting off the metal detector, wanded him, and then after determing that it was his "chest" that was "beeping", passed him through.
Rather than monitoring all of our phone calls, perhaps we should spend money on processing Visa applications better and faster. These errors should not have happened, and it is probably a result of the turn around time of Visa applications being so long; the few examiners that are out there churn through them as fast as possible.
As an Iranian American, this is a big issue for me; my family is trying to immigrate, and has spent a ridiculous amount of time (on the order of 5-10 years) trying to get in. Tons of paperwork, too. That the fucking hijackers should have no problem getting student visas with such shoddy applications makes me furious.
"Legal Means" only affords you protection if the regulations are followed. Most of the hijackers student visa applications should have been denied, and the U.S. already has mechanisms to pursue proper security checks on people applying for visas. We don't need a new data mining net; we need the existing mechanisms to be applied properly.
Let me give you another article:
http://www.11alive.com/news/usnews_article.aspx?s
Let me highlight to particularly salient points in that article. They speak for themselves:
"U.S. authorities missed some obvious signs that might have prevented some of the Sept. 11 hijackers from entering the country, the federal commission investigating the attacks said Monday.
Government officials have said the 19 hijackers entered the country legally, but the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said its investigation found at least two and as many as eight had fraudulent visas. The commission also found examples where U.S. officials had contact with the hijackers but failed to adequately investigate suspicious behavior.
At the start of a two-day hearing on border and aviation security, the commission staff issued a statement saying FBI Director Robert Mueller had testified that all of the hijackers came "lawfully from abroad," while CIA Director George Tenet described 17 of the 19 hijackers as "clean."
We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to reevaluate those statements," the commission staff said."
AND
The panel said part of the problem was a lack of coordination among immigration officials and a focus on keeping out illegal immigrants rather than potential terrorists.
I have a feeling this last point is only getting worse; People think that illegal immigrants = Terrorist, and it couldn't be further from the truth.
Meh. I miss spoke, perhaps.
IMHO, Windows 1.0 doesn't count. I start my Windows clock with 3.0; Windows 1.0 has as little to do with 3.1 as pre-11 X protocols have to do with X11.
X emerged in 1984, by the way.
I'd compare X11 to 3.0, or 3.11; that'd be 87 versus 92, or 90, take your pick.
No, its not. X11 is wicked fast. The problem isn't that X11 isn't fast; it's that your system isn't, by default, double buffered. X11 is a lean, mean, pixel pushing machine; it carries little overhead, and is very very extensible. Make no mistake, X11 is super-duper fast; that's one of the reason it's ran on a variety of systems far, far before Windows was a gleam in Bill Gate's eye.
The developers themselves have admitted that the X protocol is inefficient (especially as used by the toolkits),
Huh?
that Xlib is not suitable for modern applications (and it's now finally being replaced)
Huh? Partially true; but it works, and in enterprise, too.
and that the acceleration architecture is simply not suitable for desktop usage.
Double huh? XAA, maybe. EXA? No way.
Note that EXA is supported on a number of X servers, and that both the Nvidia and ATI proprietary servers provide high performance X render acceleration.
Not to mention the new AIGLX and XGL hacks/intermediate steps towards a new X architecture. These two are ridiculously slick, and I use both on a regular basis. Every system in my household, my parents household, and my office run Linux (except for the OS X boxes). Every one of these runs either XGL or some kind of composite window manager, and they "feel" faster in Linux than on XP.
Furthermore, exactly what GUI server do you think they use for video editing, or any of the other high-end workstation uses that Linux has?
Please take a look here; Xorg's performance is something that has undergone careful consideration.
I have used Windows and Linux side by side on the same machine and the Windows GUI is always faster. On my T43, for example, dragging windows on Linux will sometimes leave trails, no matter what WM/DE I'm using.
Only if you aren't using a composite manager.
I quote:
My parents can't be trusted with a Windows system. It gets infested with crap.
They run just happily on SuSE systems. Yes, I install software for them, but it is very rare that they need new stuff. They can use the klik:// stuff easily, too.
Linux is here today, for many of us. My parents, my grandparents, etc. . . .
I used to be a Mediacom customer in Iowa City, and had a good number of friends who worked at one of their local customer support centers.
This doesn't surprise me in the least.
That company is a bunch of crooks. I've been overbilled by them repeatedly. Their service is sub-sub-par (yes, worse than worse than average), and I heartily recommend anyone using them to switch to a combination of DSL & Satellite. I expect the Mediacom CEO to pickup the AT&T party line that no one needs more than a 1.5 Mbps internet connection.
Anyone heard of a provider openly advocating net neutrality? I want to switch to them.
"It's not THAT late."
"Still better than Linux"
"It's only because MS is so far ahead already; they feel no need to rush their product out the door."
"This time they'll get the security issues right."
"Damned if they do, damned if they don't. You Linux advocates complain no matter what; admit that this way they'll avoid the bugs!"
"It's Windows! It's the biggest project anywhere! 3 million lines of code! And it's Vista, the biggest upgrade yet! What's a few months between friends? Vista is WAY bigger than any Linux distribution!"
"Microsoft has to be enterprise ready. Linux is for dweebs and nerds. Of course Windows has a longer release cycle; that's 'cause its better"
"It's not fair; if MS didn't have to deal with all these vindictive, nerdy hackers, Windows wouldn't take so long to develop. Imagine if Apple or Linux had to deal with these black hat hackers."
"We're MS. The Volume Goes to 11 Here."
Did I miss any?
Use SuSE.
e ssional/snes9x.html
Seriously. The SuSE RPM database is excellent, and with online repositories you don't need to carry around CDs.
For example, Snes9x is part of SuSE: http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpackages/prof
Need to get roms?
You can install the easy-to-install Limewire RPM from Limewire's site (installing me "click on the 'download' link", and then press the "Install in YaST" link on the embedded RPM browser that shows up in your web browser. Limewire's icon will show up under the "Internet" category in your KDE menu.
How is this not far easier than on Windows?
All you have to do is go to YaST, search for "SNES", and install it. No hunting out which-is-the-right file, no worrying about stuff you can't install;
It's all managed by RPM, via GUI, and all the packages you could ever want are avaliable. The worst thing you'll ever have to do is learn to add an additional RPM source, and there are step-by-step screenshot guides that show you how to do that. These guides are generally easier to use than the step-by-step guides which show you how to install a wireless router, or a printer (on Windows; printing on SUSE is dead easy).
It's not a problem with FOSS; ease of use is up to the distro makers. I don't expect Gentoo or Slackware to be easy for noobs; that's not why they are there. Use Mandrake or SuSE (especially SuSE). I've converted my relatives to SuSE, and they don't mind a bit.
As an experiment, I recently tried switching to a Gnome-based Linux system to replace my Windows desktop. I do a bunch of fairly standard office tasks -- spreadsheets, word processing, email, etc. But I do have some specific needs, such as needing to use a particular scanner, save files to a SMB share, etc.
/usr/share/blahblah.
Sounds like me. Scanning, SMB shares, yadda yadda.
Using Linux was an unmitigated disaster. Things that seem like absolutely basic functionality don't work right. I spent literally 40+ hours poring over online forums trying to figure out how to get pieces of software to work right together. OpenOffice pops up random dialog boxes when you try to save to a file share, Flash doesn't really work right on Linux under Firefox, Evolution doesn't like having its email repository stored on a share, etc, etc.
Your experience is atypical. I'd say its because you used Gnome & a weird distribution. Try SuSE, and try KDE. KIOslaves make short work of networking, in any form. In any file dialog, you can "browse" to the network, or you can use smb:/// to browse there. It's cake.
OpenOffice.org-kde, the SuSE variant, works brilliantly. Flash is well configured on SuSE to work perfectly in both Firefox and Konqueror. And depending upon whether you need exchange-like abilities, KMail is a vastly superior e-mail client. More stable, more features, faster; the whole enchilada.
Did I mention that nearly every KDE application is network transparent?
Then there are the user interface difficulties. Windows and OSX are the only 2 OSes I'm aware of where companies actually have done meaningful user testing to verify what works and what doesn't. Gnome and KDE are nice window managers, but they're just not set up right for office tasks. Sure I can sit around and change everything from the icons' sizes to the taskbar size, but who wants to spend days configuring their computer like that?
Yes, and no. Once again, try SuSE. KDE is a base "setup" of applications. SuSE's KDE is polished. Automounting works properly. Network browsing works properly. Flash & Java work properly. Printing works properly. Scanning works properly. And all of these things are configured via YaST, an excellent (if a bit slow) setup tool.
And don't even get me started on file associations (what program runs when you double-click on a file with a given extension). No matter what I tried, I couldn't get Gnome to let me change the file associations for files on an SMB share.
I dunno. I think Gnome is pretty, but I think its pretty much unusable for the average user.
KDE on the other hand, is drop-dead easy. Network shares are just folders, like any other (smb:// , ftp:// http:/// hell, even crazy things like tar:// and beagle://, not to mention the incredibly cool fish:// , which lets you browse a remote filesystem on any system running SSH, and only SSH). Right click; go to properties. You can change the default application for this particular file there. There's also a little wrench button, and when you mouse over it, it says something to the effect of, "mime type settings". Go into this, and you get a similar dialogue, except it selects default programs for the mimetype, as well as file extensions associated with this mimetype.
I think its superior to both OS Xs and XPs way of doing things.
You can also access this dialog through the "Open With..." context menu, as well as in the KDE-Control-Center.
And, it's absolutely opaque how to change them for regular files too without resorting to editing text files in
I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Are we still talking about file ->program associations? This is not something I've ever done in KDE, and we run 3 KDE desktops at home, and 6 at work.
As for this perceived threat from webapps, I don't think Microsoft should be worried at all. Even the mighty Google knows that trying to reimplement MS
#3 is only 1/2 of their EU troubles. That fine includes a DAILY component. Only a couple million a day, IIRC, but still. Also, there have been noises of the EU preventing Vista deployment.
Not to mention that MSN search is the default search (and home page) in IE6.
Another poster made an extremely valid point; Google is a VERB by this point.
Google is one of the few "nerd websites" that has developed enough name recognition to have developed a substantial following through the entire "internet content" marketplace.
Google's won this round, despite MS's best efforts. Not only does MS have to do things like make "Live.com" a default portal, it'll have to defeat Google's mindshare. I don't see that happening anytime soon; in fact, I think Google is still on the up-and-up, while crap like Live.com is stillborn.
Google & Yahoo are tearing apart the search market. MS is a third tier player.
Yak Yak Yak.
I'll believe it when I see it.
There's nothing new in the MS pipeline. MS loves vaporware, and lately MS hasn't been able to execute.
Even at the top of it's game, MS would have trouble dealing with the current landscape, and MS is most definitely not at the top of its game right now.
If MS didn't have huge marketshare and a huge pile of cash they'd be in serious trouble. As it is, MS can coast nearly indefinitely.
But stop with the "MS is going to kill everyone else 'real-soon-now'". It's
bullshit, and even MS employees don't believe it anymore.
Put up or shut up. Your posting as AC; so lets hear these wonderous future plans that caused you to change your business plan.
These companies (and Google in particular) have been buying quite a bit of dark fiber. Maybe tell light it up, and start selling bandwidth to ISPs, or setup their own wireless ISPs.
When you get fucked by the middle man, and you have plenty of money, the best response is to cut the middle man out.
Google seems to plan ahead. I'm guessing that even if they loose this current "neutrality" battle with the telecos, they'll have an alternate system in place. Of course, they'd prefer it if everyone could "neutrally" access their service, but I'm guessing that smaller providers like Speakeasy, Wide Open West, and the smatter of medium ISPs and wireless ISPs out there will get the option of buying bandwidth from a coallition of internet companies.....
These guys have more than enough money to build such a thing, and some of these companies have already started to purchase the necessary fiber lines.
Where are the "Hands off the Internet" lobbyists and shrills now?
I thought all the "big" companies were for non-regulation of the internet?
Go fuck yourselves, music industry.
Are we talking 5-10 man offices, over a DSL line?
Get a WRT54G. Run DD-WRT. Use either the PPTP server or OpenVPN.
Done and done.
Of course, your WRT54G won't handle more than 10 users or so; you'll want to switch to a dedicated box or router for that. But you can't beat it in terms of cost/avaliability-- you can get this sucker up and running in 5 minutes flat, pick one up from bestbuy for ~$50, and there are no moving parts whatsoever.
For a very small office, its great. For a series of small offices in a larger company, its okay too. We use this sort of segmented VPN in our offices because of bandwidth reasons; we don't have enough uplink at any given location to really setup a better solution, and we can't financially justify purchasing more than 1 Mbit/s of uplink anywhere.