by a boggy mile, but it still wouldn't have sold. And that's because they've become a dirty brand - generally people use windows, not because they like it, but because they need to run particular software (office, business apps, games) or because they'd rather a mac but can't justify the expense. They have irritated geeks with their anti-competitive behaviour, and seem to be heading into an even more restrictive and walled-garden approach - but starting with the wall before really having a must-have product. These geeks are often the IT-support for friends/family with windows, and they're saying avoid microsoft unless you really have to. On top of all this, even among the general public, microsoft are not a cool brand (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ, http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/12/1732248/msft-reaches-out-to-hackers-do-epic- ). All they've got left going for them is their enterprise image. The 'if you want a proper computer to do work on, you use windows' image. But with Metro, they are just about to throw this down the pan, too. They are doing what nearly cost Blackberry their business - not realising their sales to the consumer were based on their cachet selling to enterprise, and by chasing the consumer, they will lose both groups of customer. And, frankly, after all the dirty tricks they've tried, you can't say they didn't deserve it.
Mint with MATE looks promising, but it was still a bit buggy last time I tried it. Cinnamon is nicer, and more polished, but I like the snappiness of G2. CentOS is still going to have to find somewhere to go after G2, and I really miss apt-get on it. I guess I should try debian.
but it's another thing to have an interface that will work on it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen a style blueprint for ubuntu phones/tablets interface yet, only that it'll run on QT. Personally, I'd like a full gnu/linux stack on a phone (and I use the N900), but I just don't see how Canonical are going to compress the years of tinkering done by apple, android and maemo to make a consistent touch-friendly interface that works on a small device. I'm ready to be surprised, but I think most of us are going to be disappointed.
I think Jolla looks promising, although they've a lot to prove, and at the moment there is way more hype and vapour than substance.
I agree, but I also think Canonical need to start making a profit or else there really will be no Ubuntu in the future.
It's just a shame that they have to go about making money in this way.
At the moment I'm still on 10.04, and I feel like Mario on a disappearing platform with canonical or gnome 3 waiting to catch me at the bottom. Needing to make a run and jump to MATE and Mint.
I gave it a go with Mint 13 - and on the whole I really liked it. There was the odd minor bug, though - some blacking out of the display for no apparent reason used to happen quite often.
I think MATE is the way of the future for me - but I'm waiting for it to become a little more mature. In the meantime, I went back to Gnome 2 with 10.04, and I'm quite* happy.
D
*I say 'quite', because the old gtk seems to be holding me back re: versions of software, which seem to be developed for gtk3 and onwards - so some slight stunting the libreoffice and gimp regards.
Suppliers must be able to prove that the system can integrate with external software that allows changing the online journal. It shall not be possible to change the entries in retrospect or change preset text on goods and services at registration. It shall not be possible to record sales without a receipt is printed. It shall not be possible to drive out more than one copy of the receipt. It shall not be possible to mark some groups so that they are included in the reports.
I can't remember who told me when I was much younger how to spot the people running cash businesses and not declaring all their tax - they wouldn't be able to get the mortgage for an expensive house, but the inside would be overly luxuriously appointed, and they'd often have a flash car bought outright.
I used my Thinkpad T40 as my main computing device for a solid 9 years prior to dropping it shearing off the hinge last month (although it still actually works!). Part of the reason for its longevity is the modular design - everything is easily swappable - allowing me to replace the fan at 5 years for about 30GBP with just a small screwdriver. Upgrading the RAM, hard-drive, optical drive etc was even easier often not requiring any tools.
I paid 1500GBP back when I bought it, and at the time many colleagues paid around 850GBP for the cheapest piece of plastic on the laptop market, which would inevitably overheat and break after 1 year, just after warranty. People thought I was wasting money at the time, but since then I've had 9 uninterrupted years of computing pleasure, typed on a unrivaled laptop keyboard, in a nice thin and light design, which still doesn't show it's age. My friends have been through 3 even 4 cheap laptops in this time, spending at least double in total, and having the inconsistency and annoyance of having to replace it 3 or 4 times.
I've replaced my T40 with a 14inch T60p that doesn't seem to have been used, but it's concerning that the more recent models are showing trends towards less modularity (i.e the X carbon) and possibly also to less quality. I'm not against change - and the Thinkpad series has gone through a lot of experiment and change since it's inception - the cheaper i-series and G-series, the butterfly keyboard, various tablet type forms. When they started out they were sleek, black and boxy - I think that modern finishing techniques can bring those design features into this decade. But they can't compromise on the quality or modularity to achieve that, or else they will quickly lose their cachet.
Not sure I understand this fully, but I guess a rootkit changes the windows kernel in such a way that the signature becomes invalid, and so the UEFI refuses to load the windows kernel - is that right? So I presume the only way a rootkit can circumvent this is to either not change the kernel, or to re-sign it with the correct key. Have I got this right?
I'd always assumed Meego had been canned because Elop is a Microsoft Trojan Horse who just wanted to get back into bed with Microsoft and kill anything new, open-source and great. But reading this story of events, I'm quite dismayed to read just how unguided and wasteful the development process apparently was. Even though the final end product (the N9) was terrific, it looks like they only got it properly together when they were told that the project would be canned after the release of the N9. It really does look like a lack of overriding vision and lack of staff working towards a common goal which resulted in the Meego project swimming in circles while the tide took them out.
Going with Microsoft was obviously a bad choice, though. What he needed to do was scrap Symbian, say that Meego would be scrapped after the N9. Pretend to sign a deal with Microsoft. Wait for the greatness that was the N9. Sell the N9. Profit. Develop the N9 to get it to work on LTE., upgrade the processor, memory etc & Profit more...
He also answers this question in Linux Format's current issue (http://www.linuxformat.com/). I don't think he thinks UEFI is much of a threat.
I'm not paid my Linux Format or anything, but I do read it on an irregular basis, and when they interviewed him, they did ask a lot of the above questions. If you find some of the questions aren't answered, it might be worth getting a copy of the magazine to read the interview - it's pretty interesting.
Using gnome-fallback in Ubuntu 12.04 with their indicator package - I find it has all of the features I loved from gnome 2 - a 'places' menu (a proper one, not the cut-down extension in gnome-shell), and proper workspaces with proper drag-and-drop functionality etc etc. It obviously lacks some of the new and good features of gnome-shell - the type-to-search for applications and windows overview.
It seems to run on gtk3 and gnome3 - so is it a viable alternative to unity/gnome-shell/kde etc?
...my unreplaceable one-of-a-kind Nokia N900 becomes irreparable, to come up with a phone worthy as its successor. It seems pretty solid, so I'll give you a few years. (fingers crossed)
The mobile market definitely needs a full gnu/linux phone. In fact, the N900 follows on from a privileged few mobile devices with desktop-like capability - the psion 3a, psion 5mx, Nokia 9500 communicator, Nokia E90 (only just). And it was only really the Psions that didn't shy from giving you the full OS experience just because it was a mobile device. Why can't my mobile device have a full fledged file-manager with drag-and-drop capability or a desktop where I can place regularly used files as well as applications?
But maybe I'm mad - apparently you don't need these things on the desktop either.
I posted a bit further down my current work-around - gnome-session-fallback is in fact, excellent.
So far, it seems to have all the features of gnome2 in 10.04, and looks just as good.
The only thing is - you need a clean install of 12.04, then add gnome-session-fallback. For some reason, on an upgrade from 11.10, I'm left with a classic gnome that looks a bit botched (odd colours, date/time in the middle etc.).
Maybe this desktop has a future? (PS it also appears to be gnome 3).
Yep, having the same problem. It all looks quite nice and functional until you've got multiple windows in multiple applications open. Then it turns into a mess.
I still think Unity holds a lot of promise, but, apart from the problem above, it's still too sluggish for me.
Apologies for going slightly off topic, but I think I've a personal anwser to all this desktop dystopia discourse. Like a lot of others, I really liked gnome 2. And I find Unity and Gnome-Shell a step back (despite at least 5 months of perserverance). I've tried XFCE, and was planning on giving KDE and Cinnamon a good go, until I installed gnome-session-fallback in Ubuntu 12.04, which is, as far as my testing so far has seen, almost identical to gnome 2.
Is this a proper 'destop environment'. Is it even gnome3? Can it be used on other distros? Does it have a future?
I can at least anwser the last question, which is that from now on, it will be the 5-year future for anyone asking me to install linux on their computer.
This comment is absolutely right. I can't believe the kind of comments that have been modded up in this thread. The irony is that _healthcare_ is a precious commodity, only available to a certain percentage of US citizens - the same argument applies to healthcare in general, as it does to organs.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they'd take over the linux graphics-card market. Maybe not much of a market now, but potentially could be big enough to justify doing it.
by a boggy mile, but it still wouldn't have sold. And that's because they've become a dirty brand - generally people use windows, not because they like it, but because they need to run particular software (office, business apps, games) or because they'd rather a mac but can't justify the expense. They have irritated geeks with their anti-competitive behaviour, and seem to be heading into an even more restrictive and walled-garden approach - but starting with the wall before really having a must-have product. These geeks are often the IT-support for friends/family with windows, and they're saying avoid microsoft unless you really have to. On top of all this, even among the general public, microsoft are not a cool brand (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ, http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/12/1732248/msft-reaches-out-to-hackers-do-epic- ). All they've got left going for them is their enterprise image. The 'if you want a proper computer to do work on, you use windows' image. But with Metro, they are just about to throw this down the pan, too. They are doing what nearly cost Blackberry their business - not realising their sales to the consumer were based on their cachet selling to enterprise, and by chasing the consumer, they will lose both groups of customer. And, frankly, after all the dirty tricks they've tried, you can't say they didn't deserve it.
Mint with MATE looks promising, but it was still a bit buggy last time I tried it. Cinnamon is nicer, and more polished, but I like the snappiness of G2. CentOS is still going to have to find somewhere to go after G2, and I really miss apt-get on it. I guess I should try debian.
but it's another thing to have an interface that will work on it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen a style blueprint for ubuntu phones/tablets interface yet, only that it'll run on QT. Personally, I'd like a full gnu/linux stack on a phone (and I use the N900), but I just don't see how Canonical are going to compress the years of tinkering done by apple, android and maemo to make a consistent touch-friendly interface that works on a small device. I'm ready to be surprised, but I think most of us are going to be disappointed.
I think Jolla looks promising, although they've a lot to prove, and at the moment there is way more hype and vapour than substance.
I agree, but I also think Canonical need to start making a profit or else there really will be no Ubuntu in the future.
It's just a shame that they have to go about making money in this way.
At the moment I'm still on 10.04, and I feel like Mario on a disappearing platform with canonical or gnome 3 waiting to catch me at the bottom. Needing to make a run and jump to MATE and Mint.
I gave it a go with Mint 13 - and on the whole I really liked it. There was the odd minor bug, though - some blacking out of the display for no apparent reason used to happen quite often.
I think MATE is the way of the future for me - but I'm waiting for it to become a little more mature. In the meantime, I went back to Gnome 2 with 10.04, and I'm quite* happy.
D
*I say 'quite', because the old gtk seems to be holding me back re: versions of software, which seem to be developed for gtk3 and onwards - so some slight stunting the libreoffice and gimp regards.
These are the requirements from the article:
Suppliers must be able to prove that the system can integrate with external software that allows changing the online journal.
It shall not be possible to change the entries in retrospect or change preset text on goods and services at registration.
It shall not be possible to record sales without a receipt is printed.
It shall not be possible to drive out more than one copy of the receipt.
It shall not be possible to mark some groups so that they are included in the reports.
I can't remember who told me when I was much younger how to spot the people running cash businesses and not declaring all their tax - they wouldn't be able to get the mortgage for an expensive house, but the inside would be overly luxuriously appointed, and they'd often have a flash car bought outright.
I used my Thinkpad T40 as my main computing device for a solid 9 years prior to dropping it shearing off the hinge last month (although it still actually works!). Part of the reason for its longevity is the modular design - everything is easily swappable - allowing me to replace the fan at 5 years for about 30GBP with just a small screwdriver. Upgrading the RAM, hard-drive, optical drive etc was even easier often not requiring any tools.
I paid 1500GBP back when I bought it, and at the time many colleagues paid around 850GBP for the cheapest piece of plastic on the laptop market, which would inevitably overheat and break after 1 year, just after warranty. People thought I was wasting money at the time, but since then I've had 9 uninterrupted years of computing pleasure, typed on a unrivaled laptop keyboard, in a nice thin and light design, which still doesn't show it's age. My friends have been through 3 even 4 cheap laptops in this time, spending at least double in total, and having the inconsistency and annoyance of having to replace it 3 or 4 times.
I've replaced my T40 with a 14inch T60p that doesn't seem to have been used, but it's concerning that the more recent models are showing trends towards less modularity (i.e the X carbon) and possibly also to less quality. I'm not against change - and the Thinkpad series has gone through a lot of experiment and change since it's inception - the cheaper i-series and G-series, the butterfly keyboard, various tablet type forms. When they started out they were sleek, black and boxy - I think that modern finishing techniques can bring those design features into this decade. But they can't compromise on the quality or modularity to achieve that, or else they will quickly lose their cachet.
Not sure I understand this fully, but I guess a rootkit changes the windows kernel in such a way that the signature becomes invalid, and so the UEFI refuses to load the windows kernel - is that right? So I presume the only way a rootkit can circumvent this is to either not change the kernel, or to re-sign it with the correct key. Have I got this right?
D
I'd always assumed Meego had been canned because Elop is a Microsoft Trojan Horse who just wanted to get back into bed with Microsoft and kill anything new, open-source and great. But reading this story of events, I'm quite dismayed to read just how unguided and wasteful the development process apparently was. Even though the final end product (the N9) was terrific, it looks like they only got it properly together when they were told that the project would be canned after the release of the N9. It really does look like a lack of overriding vision and lack of staff working towards a common goal which resulted in the Meego project swimming in circles while the tide took them out.
Going with Microsoft was obviously a bad choice, though. What he needed to do was scrap Symbian, say that Meego would be scrapped after the N9. Pretend to sign a deal with Microsoft. Wait for the greatness that was the N9. Sell the N9. Profit. Develop the N9 to get it to work on LTE., upgrade the processor, memory etc & Profit more...
He also answers this question in Linux Format's current issue (http://www.linuxformat.com/). I don't think he thinks UEFI is much of a threat.
I'm not paid my Linux Format or anything, but I do read it on an irregular basis, and when they interviewed him, they did ask a lot of the above questions. If you find some of the questions aren't answered, it might be worth getting a copy of the magazine to read the interview - it's pretty interesting.
He answered this question in an interview carried out by Linux Format (the current issue) - "I wouldn't change a thing".
http://www.linuxformat.com/
n/t
True, but I rather like Thinkpads.
Me too! But I have icecream.
...too late.
on pages quite often, with the swirly circle turning eternally.
I miss the individual tab processes and fast flash, but otherwise, I'm happier using firefox now.
D
Me too - fallback mode seems to have all the advantages of gnome 2 for me.
Using gnome-fallback in Ubuntu 12.04 with their indicator package - I find it has all of the features I loved from gnome 2 - a 'places' menu (a proper one, not the cut-down extension in gnome-shell), and proper workspaces with proper drag-and-drop functionality etc etc. It obviously lacks some of the new and good features of gnome-shell - the type-to-search for applications and windows overview.
It seems to run on gtk3 and gnome3 - so is it a viable alternative to unity/gnome-shell/kde etc?
...my unreplaceable one-of-a-kind Nokia N900 becomes irreparable, to come up with a phone worthy as its successor. It seems pretty solid, so I'll give you a few years. (fingers crossed)
The mobile market definitely needs a full gnu/linux phone. In fact, the N900 follows on from a privileged few mobile devices with desktop-like capability - the psion 3a, psion 5mx, Nokia 9500 communicator, Nokia E90 (only just). And it was only really the Psions that didn't shy from giving you the full OS experience just because it was a mobile device. Why can't my mobile device have a full fledged file-manager with drag-and-drop capability or a desktop where I can place regularly used files as well as applications?
But maybe I'm mad - apparently you don't need these things on the desktop either.
I posted a bit further down my current work-around - gnome-session-fallback is in fact, excellent.
So far, it seems to have all the features of gnome2 in 10.04, and looks just as good.
The only thing is - you need a clean install of 12.04, then add gnome-session-fallback. For some reason, on an upgrade from 11.10, I'm left with a classic gnome that looks a bit botched (odd colours, date/time in the middle etc.).
Maybe this desktop has a future? (PS it also appears to be gnome 3).
Yep, having the same problem. It all looks quite nice and functional until you've got multiple windows in multiple applications open. Then it turns into a mess.
I still think Unity holds a lot of promise, but, apart from the problem above, it's still too sluggish for me.
D
Apologies for going slightly off topic, but I think I've a personal anwser to all this desktop dystopia discourse. Like a lot of others, I really liked gnome 2. And I find Unity and Gnome-Shell a step back (despite at least 5 months of perserverance). I've tried XFCE, and was planning on giving KDE and Cinnamon a good go, until I installed gnome-session-fallback in Ubuntu 12.04, which is, as far as my testing so far has seen, almost identical to gnome 2.
Is this a proper 'destop environment'. Is it even gnome3? Can it be used on other distros? Does it have a future?
I can at least anwser the last question, which is that from now on, it will be the 5-year future for anyone asking me to install linux on their computer.
This comment is absolutely right. I can't believe the kind of comments that have been modded up in this thread. The irony is that _healthcare_ is a precious commodity, only available to a certain percentage of US citizens - the same argument applies to healthcare in general, as it does to organs.
This blows fuzzy shots of Nessie out the water...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCL4dXUtblg