I can't figure out why people hate unity so much. Sure it's broken, but then again so is cinnamon. Neither one is anything even close to what I'd consider "release candidate" quality, let alone long term support levels. Both still contain bugs that Apple or Microsoft would have squashed months before release.
I'll say this about Unity. It's ambitious. Unity is the first linux GUI I've used which doesn't feel 5-10 years behind the competition. Gnome and KDE are functional. That's about it. They're not what I'd call forward-thinking. Unity is. Unity looks and acts like somebody put a lot of polish into the look and feel. Too bad they didn't put as much polish into the actual functionality, but as I've said, that seems endemic of linux GUIs. If canonical keeps polishing this thing in the ways that matter, they may have a GUI that more than 1%-2% of the computing populace cares about.
I'm not sure why people think Unity is a touchscreen-style interface on a desktop. That's Metro. Unity feels more like windows 7 than windows 8 does. Unity is basically windows 7 with the standard taskbar at the top by default, and some hybrid widget bar and osx-style launcher on the left. I actually like it, it makes the use of the extra side space on the overly-wide aspect ratio of modern monitors.
Disclaimer: I'm writing this from a laptop running ubtuntu 12.04, which previously had a half dozen other distros installed, including Mint Lisa. I'm no microsoft fanboy, and the only time I use OSX is for shits and giggles in a VM.
There is only linux for people who want to learn the nuts and bolts of linux at a slower rate than others.
I've spent the past few months giving several different distros a week or so each on my laptop (a standard Dell lattitude e6400, circa 2009. nothing exotic at all) to make an impression on me.
I'll admit I haven't played with Maya yet, but I spent a week with Lisa & cinnamon, which is easily as broken on install as any other linux distro I've ever used. Cinnamon was like a slightly prettyed up version of gnome 2, which makes me wonder why they even bothered to switch to gnome 3. Of course, it was just as broken as unity, if not moreso. the taskbar was "refreshingly" retro, circa windows 2000. in all the worst ways. i ditched the stock application manager applet and downloaded one that would stack open windows under a single taskbar icon, like a modern GUI... and it worked at least 2/3 of the time. Sorry, but a 2/3 success rate on -clicking on a taskbar icon- is a little much to swallow, so I ditched that and got the stock one back, except now if I opened more than 7 windows, they would scroll the "start" button (sorry, don't know the linux name for it) off the left side of the screen. what the hell? I couldn't make this up! Oh, did I mention that after I changed the default icon and name of the "start" button, it would never display the entire name again, putting "..." at the end instead? google told me that had been a bug since the -previous- version of Mint. That's crazy. Nobody thought to fix that? it's a simple pixel offset based on the size of the icon!
Tip of the iceberg here.
by the way, LM:Debian Edition was so broken as to not even be worth discussing.
by comparison, ubuntu 12.04 was, of course as I expected by this point, broken upon instalation, but after several hours of googling, some time in irc, and a lot of console commands later, I've got a mostly working install. some stuff is still screwed up (like the apps that -are- running but don't show up on the launcher bar), but I've learned to just deal with it for now. I've had it going for 3 weeks now and it's useable. putting it to sleep is a gamble, but this thing isn't mission critical so I just roll the dice every time.
I'm curious how long I can stick it out before I give up and go back to windows 7, which I'll freely admit does everything I need an OS to do, and has no major or even minor bugs that impact me on any sort of regular basis.
I'm no fanboy, of any OS, or any distro. I call it like I see it, and Linux (really I should blame it on the GUI, as the linux kernal itself is stable as a rock for the most part) is for people who like to work the nuts and bolts of their OS, because you pretty much have to. even the most "beginner-friendly" distros like Mint and ubuntu seem to require time spent at the terminal just to do stuff other operating systems consider basic functions, like say disabling a touchpad (no, touchpad-indicator applet does NOT work, as you should well know if you've actually used it).
20mbps is higher than the majority of the united states ever sees. I believe our average is around 11mbps.
Which is just as well. with a 300mbps transfer rate, those of us who have data caps (I don't, yet, but most US IPSs do) would chew through them so fast it'd be all but useless, as even with something like Comcast's "generous" 250GB/month cap, you would be able to reach your cap by the end of hour 2 of day 1. Seriously. 300mbps = 37.5MB/s, 37.5MB/s = 0.0366GB/s. 250GB / 0.0366GB/s = 6827s = 113.8m = 1.9hours.
That's ludicrous.
I actually have that problem with my work-supplied 4g MiFi device. It has the verizon maximum 5GB/Month. I can easily use that all up on day 1 with no problems if I'm not careful.
your trolling is reaching epic proportions, but just in case you're serious...
1. Look up the pythagorean theorem. It's a^2 + b^2 = c^2, not a+b = 2c 2. Many major cities also have diagonal cross streets, not just north/south and east/west streets. 3. your alternative, cities which were not planned, very rarely have "straight" roads for long distances, so no road in those cities is ever going to get you directly to your destination in the fastest way possible unless it was designed exactly and for the sole purpose of getting people from where you currently are to exactly where you want to go.
I use DVDFab to decrypt both DVD and blu-ray to hard drive using the "copy whole disc" feature.
I use StaxRip for Blu-rays. I've found handbrake doesn't do subtitles correctly on Blu-Rays, and I like StaxRip better overall anyway (Can't really put my finger on why). I encode all my rips at 8000kbps dual-pass with 384kbps AC3 audio. Staxrip has a two-step process. It first demuxes the bluray source to a single audio file, a single video file, and multiple subtitle files, then in the second step it transcodes all of these into a single.mkv (or m4v) file. I've gotten best results ripping the DTS master to FLAC during the demux process, then encoding the result to AC3 on the transcode sweep. I set the quality to dual-pass instead of constant quality and set the bitrate to 8000kbps (which I've found to be a very good setting for most encodes to be watched on either a 50" plasma TV in the living room or a 28" monitor at my desk), and I use the "slower" preset. they mean it when they say "slower". I average right around 1fps on a dual core athlon II 245. average encodes are 36-48 hours. I don't care though because that's my file server and it's on 24/7 anyway, plus I figure if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right the first time.
DVDs I use a very similar process, except I use handbrake. Handbrake doesn't reveal the x264 presets, it has it's own presets. I just use the default "high" setting with a few minor tweaks. anamorphic is set to None. Since the audio is already in ac3 on DDs, I just do a straight "pass-through", and I have to manually add the subtitles (staxrip does it for you on blurays) to the container. I use 1600kbps for DVDs. I've tried higher, but I can't really see much if any improvement. DVDs are only so good to begin with (curse high res monitors for showing us this! i remember when DVDs were a revelation of clarity).
I used to use x264's CQ (VBR) with a setting of 20, 19, or even 18, but unlike VBR in audio encoding, I've gotten -very- inconsistent results from CQ, which is why I've now reverted back to dual-pass encoding. I've seen CQ encode one blu-ray at an average of 5000kbps, and the next one at 13000kbps, when the movies are similar in genre, composition, and age. I've seen it insist that a movie only needs 6000kbps when I can -see- the artifacting clear as day, etc. I'm hoping that CQ becomes usable one day, as I'm a big fan of true VBR, and it's faster to boot, but right now it's not something I can trust.
I do the same. Last thing I want is slow poorly responding menus with 27 unskippable/hard-to-skip previes, advertisements and warnings. My blu-rays are for the most part permanantly on the shelf. I've ripped every one to an 8000kbps dual-pass mkv file, stored on the house file server, that can play via VLC on the computer connected to the TV.
I rip the DVDs to 1600kbps mkv files, although that collection is so big that I've only got about 1/3 of them ripped. Will rip more on demand (And when hard drive prices come back down again).
I've got a first generation fermi-based GTX 470. Considering that, at the time, the parallel compute power was the big halo selling point of the new fermi gpu, I was very underwhelmed when I finally found some software that would actually use it. I saw speedups of only about 3x or so above and beyond my core 2 duo (only a 2-core!) e8400, and the quality was abysmal in comparison
I'm not saying that GPU transcoding -shouldn't- be a better option than cpu transcoding, it completely should be, but current implementations seem like completely ignored why we're transcoding in the first place and what our goals are. having a faster transcode is nice, yes. faster is always nice, but it's simply not worth the tradeoff in quality, which is the point.
I transcode blu-ray rips to mkv at dual-pass 8000kbps with x.264's "slower" setting on an athlon II 245. the average encode takes anywhere from 36 to 48 hours. But I'm cool with that. do it right that once, and you're set for life. They're beautiful encodes.
but, at least in this context, speed is nearly irrelevant because it fails at the task at hand, producing high quality video.
who cares how fast it completes a task if it's failing? Nobody gives little jimmy props when he finishes the hour-long test in 5 minutes but scores a 37% on it.
Maybe windows 8 and it's baffling changes will push me back to linux again as a desktop OS, but I doubt it. I'll probably just stick with 7
Windows 7 is good. really really good.
I've spent two decades looking for the "perfect" daily user OS that covers all the bases. Hell, I even ran OS/2 2.1 for awhile. Windows 7 is the closest I've found yet. It does damn near anything, it does it stably, and it does it quickly. Please don't get me wrong, I'm no fanboy. I found xp to be satisfactory at best, if unexciting. Vista was pretty, but unsatisfactory. ubuntu was exciting, but frustrating. 7 hit the best high points of all of them. Even Microsoft's classic problem, eventual bloat death, doesn't seem to be much of an issue on 7. I've been running 7 since a few months after it came out and it's -solid-. I've used every major desktop (and several server) OS MS has made since windows 3.0, and I can tell you I have no problem saying 7 is their best effort ever.
The problem isn't that Linux is -bad-, the problem is that the competition is so good now. I hear even OSX is worthwhile now.
When they were fighting Windows ME, Linux Distros had a laughably easy target. When they were the alternative to an OS in XP that hadn't been majorly updated in 6 years, they had an easy time of it. Not anymore. They've got to step up their game and they haven't.
I've spent a bunch of time this morning playing around with configuring Mint 12 and Cinnamon to do a lot of the niceties that 7 (and probably OSX, I haven't used it lately) do out of the box. Now while I'm sure you'll point out that the configurability is a benefit, I'm constantly thinking (based on previous experience mind you) that as soon as I run into a config option that doesn't do what it says or is bugging out, I'm at a stopping point and I'm looking at either an irc chat room filled with people who may or may not be paying attention, or googling community forums and hoping that whoever had the same problem I just ran into figured out how to fix it.
The Linux experience, out of the box, isn't the equal of it's current competitors. Maybe it's better than what you grew up on, but that's the old ball game, not the new one. The linux experience, I'm told, can be made superior to those competitors. in theory. assuming no problems (which, there always seem to be somewhere. it's like the whole of most distros are one big neverending beta). However the time and effort required to get there seems herculean when you consider that the competitors are already there right out of the box.
tl;dr - Maybe I can't configure windows 7 to do everything a given distro of linux can do, but the way 7 does it is pretty damn good to begin with, and requires next to zero config time.
You're actually suggesting I ditch an nvidia gtx 470... for an intel integrated chip?
You're either trolling me, or so far missing the point that there's no reason to continue the discussion.
Intel's best current offering (no, ivy bridge doesn't count yet) the HD3000, has only just caught up to where Nvidia was with their mainstream 6xxx series, which came out in 2004. that's their best! lagging the better part of a decade behind the competition.
the average intel chipset out there, such as the ones built into north bridges, is more on par with the budget nvidia 4xxx series.
you sir are suggesting I ditch the ferrari for the vw bug, because the ferrari won't fit in my garage. That's not the solution, the solution is to use a different garage.
Right, blame me because I had to fix problems the OS caused.
ubuntu 9.04 was released the same month as the nvidia GTX 4xx series. I had a brand new GTX 470 and ubuntu 9.04 didn't have a clue what to do with it. It couldn't auto-config an xorg.conf file to save it's life.
I ended up going to nvidia's web page, downloading their proprietary driver, and installing it manually. from that point on, every time I updated the Kernal, as you said, xorg self-destructed and I had to manually reinstall the driver and then re-write portions of it to get a gui interface back. for chrissakes it was 2009, I shouldn't have had to deal with a shell on a desktop OS unless I wanted to. Thank god I started learning linux in the 90s or I wouldn't have had shit all idea what to do from that point. I can't see how any standard user would ever be able to stomach that bullshit. if your OS isn't fault-tolerant enough for the GUI to to deal with a new video card, well christ that's just poor design. I don't -CARE- whether it's the FOSS developer's fault or Nvidia's fault. I care whether the shit works, because I'm a user not a referee.
And of course I don't have intel basic graphics, because this wasn't some spare system I dug out of the garbage, this was my primary system, you know the one that everybody argues it's "year of the linux desktop" for?
The fact that everybody "disagreeing" with me not only knows what I'm talking about, but knows how to fix these problems proves that you all have run into them too.
You're right, but I don't see that as a positive. It's like the battered housewife who keeps saying "sure he hits me, but I know deep down he really loves me." As somebody who has tried, repeatedly, to join the linux faithful... it doesn't seem to matter which distro I try, they all have something that eventually becomes a dealbreaker.
I tried as early as 1995 with slackware, since then I've tried fedora, several versions of ubuntu, mint, and mint debian edition (that last one didn't even last the entire morning on my system. if it can't do basic input device configuration correctly, what the hell can I expect of it really when I actually want to DO something)
The best I was able to stomach was a ubuntu 9.04 install that lasted me the year and a half between XP being too old and Vista being too buggy before windows 7 was just too damn good (oh no, I see the downmods incoming) to keep fighting with linux. When it was working, it was good. When it wasn't working... well hell, it felt like it was 1993 and I was editing autoexec.bat, config.sys, and win.ini all over again.
Be honest people, even if you're a fan, put down the kool-aid and admit that Linux fights with you FROM DAY ONE. It's like an annoying little brother. Sure you love him, but there's always something he's doing to annoy you. A buddy of mine described Linux on your primary machine aptly: "It's like the hot rod you build in your garage. It's a lot of fun to play with, and you learn a lot turning those wrenches, but it's not really something you want to drive every day."
it should be impossible as previously thinking was that the only way the elements for planetary formation are created is via prior supernovas. these stars shouldnt have had access to the materials needed to create planets. either there were more -very- early supernovae than thought, or these planets are interstellar captures.
and so on... but more over, why in the world would it make any sense to make copyright infringement only kick in after 24 hours? who would write a law like that? nobody would, because nobody has. it's an urban legend, continually circulated, just like all urban legends.
Every private site/tracker I've ever gone to the trouble of getting access to has so little content as to be pointless. They've got a few hundred torrents listed and they're all crap. every last one one of em. even if one of them were good, you've got like 5 people seeding anything. if you're lucky.
Perhaps I'm just not leet enough to get access to the super secret mega underground pirate bay equivalent.
They sure do! I used to borrow books from the library every week. You ever borrowed an mp3 from a library?
A library is either a public or a private institution, where either way funds have been set aside to purchase works (generally copyrighted works) for use of the members of the library. The temporary loans of these works to members is fully supported by the laws of the united states.
downloading an mp3 off of bitorrent is none of these things.
The closest we have to a legal "mp3 library" is spotify (and it actually uses vorbis, not mp3, not that the format makes any difference), which I do in fact use.
What makes you think that you can take the book at the bookstore into the back room, xerox the book's pages, and take it home and read those pages for 24 hours before what you just did becomes illegal? why wouldn't it be illegal the second you did it, what does a 24 hour period have to do with it?
it's always been uploading the file to others that they're pissed off about, not downloading it yourself.
sure they don't want you downloading music illegally, but what they tend to sue people for is offering the file out to others. Which of course just about every peer-to-peer file sharing system does by default. So people confuse one with the other.
I think there's a pretty big difference (at least legally speaking) between leaving your (legal-for-you-to-use) files on an insecure ftp site that somebody might find by accident, and putting your files on a public site and then advertising their existence to people looking to download them.
I'm not saying that they don't both have the potential to end you up in court, but one is going to be far far easier for the prosecution to proceed with than the other.
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I can't figure out why people hate unity so much. Sure it's broken, but then again so is cinnamon. Neither one is anything even close to what I'd consider "release candidate" quality, let alone long term support levels. Both still contain bugs that Apple or Microsoft would have squashed months before release.
I'll say this about Unity. It's ambitious. Unity is the first linux GUI I've used which doesn't feel 5-10 years behind the competition. Gnome and KDE are functional. That's about it. They're not what I'd call forward-thinking. Unity is. Unity looks and acts like somebody put a lot of polish into the look and feel. Too bad they didn't put as much polish into the actual functionality, but as I've said, that seems endemic of linux GUIs. If canonical keeps polishing this thing in the ways that matter, they may have a GUI that more than 1%-2% of the computing populace cares about.
I'm not sure why people think Unity is a touchscreen-style interface on a desktop. That's Metro. Unity feels more like windows 7 than windows 8 does. Unity is basically windows 7 with the standard taskbar at the top by default, and some hybrid widget bar and osx-style launcher on the left. I actually like it, it makes the use of the extra side space on the overly-wide aspect ratio of modern monitors.
Disclaimer: I'm writing this from a laptop running ubtuntu 12.04, which previously had a half dozen other distros installed, including Mint Lisa. I'm no microsoft fanboy, and the only time I use OSX is for shits and giggles in a VM.
There is no linux for a novice.
There is only linux for people who want to learn the nuts and bolts of linux at a slower rate than others.
I've spent the past few months giving several different distros a week or so each on my laptop (a standard Dell lattitude e6400, circa 2009. nothing exotic at all) to make an impression on me.
I'll admit I haven't played with Maya yet, but I spent a week with Lisa & cinnamon, which is easily as broken on install as any other linux distro I've ever used. Cinnamon was like a slightly prettyed up version of gnome 2, which makes me wonder why they even bothered to switch to gnome 3. Of course, it was just as broken as unity, if not moreso. the taskbar was "refreshingly" retro, circa windows 2000. in all the worst ways. i ditched the stock application manager applet and downloaded one that would stack open windows under a single taskbar icon, like a modern GUI... and it worked at least 2/3 of the time. Sorry, but a 2/3 success rate on -clicking on a taskbar icon- is a little much to swallow, so I ditched that and got the stock one back, except now if I opened more than 7 windows, they would scroll the "start" button (sorry, don't know the linux name for it) off the left side of the screen. what the hell? I couldn't make this up! Oh, did I mention that after I changed the default icon and name of the "start" button, it would never display the entire name again, putting "..." at the end instead? google told me that had been a bug since the -previous- version of Mint. That's crazy. Nobody thought to fix that? it's a simple pixel offset based on the size of the icon!
Tip of the iceberg here.
by the way, LM:Debian Edition was so broken as to not even be worth discussing.
by comparison, ubuntu 12.04 was, of course as I expected by this point, broken upon instalation, but after several hours of googling, some time in irc, and a lot of console commands later, I've got a mostly working install. some stuff is still screwed up (like the apps that -are- running but don't show up on the launcher bar), but I've learned to just deal with it for now. I've had it going for 3 weeks now and it's useable. putting it to sleep is a gamble, but this thing isn't mission critical so I just roll the dice every time.
I'm curious how long I can stick it out before I give up and go back to windows 7, which I'll freely admit does everything I need an OS to do, and has no major or even minor bugs that impact me on any sort of regular basis.
I'm no fanboy, of any OS, or any distro. I call it like I see it, and Linux (really I should blame it on the GUI, as the linux kernal itself is stable as a rock for the most part) is for people who like to work the nuts and bolts of their OS, because you pretty much have to. even the most "beginner-friendly" distros like Mint and ubuntu seem to require time spent at the terminal just to do stuff other operating systems consider basic functions, like say disabling a touchpad (no, touchpad-indicator applet does NOT work, as you should well know if you've actually used it).
I'm jealous.
20mbps is higher than the majority of the united states ever sees. I believe our average is around 11mbps.
Which is just as well. with a 300mbps transfer rate, those of us who have data caps (I don't, yet, but most US IPSs do) would chew through them so fast it'd be all but useless, as even with something like Comcast's "generous" 250GB/month cap, you would be able to reach your cap by the end of hour 2 of day 1. Seriously. 300mbps = 37.5MB/s, 37.5MB/s = 0.0366GB/s. 250GB / 0.0366GB/s = 6827s = 113.8m = 1.9hours.
That's ludicrous.
I actually have that problem with my work-supplied 4g MiFi device. It has the verizon maximum 5GB/Month. I can easily use that all up on day 1 with no problems if I'm not careful.
your trolling is reaching epic proportions, but just in case you're serious...
1. Look up the pythagorean theorem. It's a^2 + b^2 = c^2, not a+b = 2c
2. Many major cities also have diagonal cross streets, not just north/south and east/west streets.
3. your alternative, cities which were not planned, very rarely have "straight" roads for long distances, so no road in those cities is ever going to get you directly to your destination in the fastest way possible unless it was designed exactly and for the sole purpose of getting people from where you currently are to exactly where you want to go.
I use DVDFab to decrypt both DVD and blu-ray to hard drive using the "copy whole disc" feature.
I use StaxRip for Blu-rays. I've found handbrake doesn't do subtitles correctly on Blu-Rays, and I like StaxRip better overall anyway (Can't really put my finger on why). I encode all my rips at 8000kbps dual-pass with 384kbps AC3 audio. Staxrip has a two-step process. It first demuxes the bluray source to a single audio file, a single video file, and multiple subtitle files, then in the second step it transcodes all of these into a single .mkv (or m4v) file. I've gotten best results ripping the DTS master to FLAC during the demux process, then encoding the result to AC3 on the transcode sweep. I set the quality to dual-pass instead of constant quality and set the bitrate to 8000kbps (which I've found to be a very good setting for most encodes to be watched on either a 50" plasma TV in the living room or a 28" monitor at my desk), and I use the "slower" preset. they mean it when they say "slower". I average right around 1fps on a dual core athlon II 245. average encodes are 36-48 hours. I don't care though because that's my file server and it's on 24/7 anyway, plus I figure if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right the first time.
DVDs I use a very similar process, except I use handbrake. Handbrake doesn't reveal the x264 presets, it has it's own presets. I just use the default "high" setting with a few minor tweaks. anamorphic is set to None. Since the audio is already in ac3 on DDs, I just do a straight "pass-through", and I have to manually add the subtitles (staxrip does it for you on blurays) to the container. I use 1600kbps for DVDs. I've tried higher, but I can't really see much if any improvement. DVDs are only so good to begin with (curse high res monitors for showing us this! i remember when DVDs were a revelation of clarity).
I used to use x264's CQ (VBR) with a setting of 20, 19, or even 18, but unlike VBR in audio encoding, I've gotten -very- inconsistent results from CQ, which is why I've now reverted back to dual-pass encoding. I've seen CQ encode one blu-ray at an average of 5000kbps, and the next one at 13000kbps, when the movies are similar in genre, composition, and age. I've seen it insist that a movie only needs 6000kbps when I can -see- the artifacting clear as day, etc. I'm hoping that CQ becomes usable one day, as I'm a big fan of true VBR, and it's faster to boot, but right now it's not something I can trust.
I do the same. Last thing I want is slow poorly responding menus with 27 unskippable/hard-to-skip previes, advertisements and warnings. My blu-rays are for the most part permanantly on the shelf. I've ripped every one to an 8000kbps dual-pass mkv file, stored on the house file server, that can play via VLC on the computer connected to the TV.
I rip the DVDs to 1600kbps mkv files, although that collection is so big that I've only got about 1/3 of them ripped. Will rip more on demand (And when hard drive prices come back down again).
Between my wife and I, we have 7 computers. dedicating one to transcoding isn't a big deal. it's also our file server, so it's on 24/7 anyway.
I transcode 2-5 videos at a time usually. once every few weeks/months.
I've got a first generation fermi-based GTX 470. Considering that, at the time, the parallel compute power was the big halo selling point of the new fermi gpu, I was very underwhelmed when I finally found some software that would actually use it. I saw speedups of only about 3x or so above and beyond my core 2 duo (only a 2-core!) e8400, and the quality was abysmal in comparison
I'm not saying that GPU transcoding -shouldn't- be a better option than cpu transcoding, it completely should be, but current implementations seem like completely ignored why we're transcoding in the first place and what our goals are. having a faster transcode is nice, yes. faster is always nice, but it's simply not worth the tradeoff in quality, which is the point.
I transcode blu-ray rips to mkv at dual-pass 8000kbps with x.264's "slower" setting on an athlon II 245. the average encode takes anywhere from 36 to 48 hours. But I'm cool with that. do it right that once, and you're set for life. They're beautiful encodes.
but, at least in this context, speed is nearly irrelevant because it fails at the task at hand, producing high quality video.
who cares how fast it completes a task if it's failing? Nobody gives little jimmy props when he finishes the hour-long test in 5 minutes but scores a 37% on it.
Maybe windows 8 and it's baffling changes will push me back to linux again as a desktop OS, but I doubt it. I'll probably just stick with 7
Windows 7 is good. really really good.
I've spent two decades looking for the "perfect" daily user OS that covers all the bases. Hell, I even ran OS/2 2.1 for awhile. Windows 7 is the closest I've found yet. It does damn near anything, it does it stably, and it does it quickly. Please don't get me wrong, I'm no fanboy. I found xp to be satisfactory at best, if unexciting. Vista was pretty, but unsatisfactory. ubuntu was exciting, but frustrating. 7 hit the best high points of all of them. Even Microsoft's classic problem, eventual bloat death, doesn't seem to be much of an issue on 7. I've been running 7 since a few months after it came out and it's -solid-. I've used every major desktop (and several server) OS MS has made since windows 3.0, and I can tell you I have no problem saying 7 is their best effort ever.
The problem isn't that Linux is -bad-, the problem is that the competition is so good now. I hear even OSX is worthwhile now.
When they were fighting Windows ME, Linux Distros had a laughably easy target. When they were the alternative to an OS in XP that hadn't been majorly updated in 6 years, they had an easy time of it. Not anymore. They've got to step up their game and they haven't.
I've spent a bunch of time this morning playing around with configuring Mint 12 and Cinnamon to do a lot of the niceties that 7 (and probably OSX, I haven't used it lately) do out of the box. Now while I'm sure you'll point out that the configurability is a benefit, I'm constantly thinking (based on previous experience mind you) that as soon as I run into a config option that doesn't do what it says or is bugging out, I'm at a stopping point and I'm looking at either an irc chat room filled with people who may or may not be paying attention, or googling community forums and hoping that whoever had the same problem I just ran into figured out how to fix it.
The Linux experience, out of the box, isn't the equal of it's current competitors. Maybe it's better than what you grew up on, but that's the old ball game, not the new one. The linux experience, I'm told, can be made superior to those competitors. in theory. assuming no problems (which, there always seem to be somewhere. it's like the whole of most distros are one big neverending beta). However the time and effort required to get there seems herculean when you consider that the competitors are already there right out of the box.
tl;dr - Maybe I can't configure windows 7 to do everything a given distro of linux can do, but the way 7 does it is pretty damn good to begin with, and requires next to zero config time.
You're actually suggesting I ditch an nvidia gtx 470... for an intel integrated chip?
You're either trolling me, or so far missing the point that there's no reason to continue the discussion.
Intel's best current offering (no, ivy bridge doesn't count yet) the HD3000, has only just caught up to where Nvidia was with their mainstream 6xxx series, which came out in 2004. that's their best! lagging the better part of a decade behind the competition.
the average intel chipset out there, such as the ones built into north bridges, is more on par with the budget nvidia 4xxx series.
you sir are suggesting I ditch the ferrari for the vw bug, because the ferrari won't fit in my garage. That's not the solution, the solution is to use a different garage.
Right, blame me because I had to fix problems the OS caused.
ubuntu 9.04 was released the same month as the nvidia GTX 4xx series. I had a brand new GTX 470 and ubuntu 9.04 didn't have a clue what to do with it. It couldn't auto-config an xorg.conf file to save it's life.
I ended up going to nvidia's web page, downloading their proprietary driver, and installing it manually. from that point on, every time I updated the Kernal, as you said, xorg self-destructed and I had to manually reinstall the driver and then re-write portions of it to get a gui interface back. for chrissakes it was 2009, I shouldn't have had to deal with a shell on a desktop OS unless I wanted to. Thank god I started learning linux in the 90s or I wouldn't have had shit all idea what to do from that point. I can't see how any standard user would ever be able to stomach that bullshit. if your OS isn't fault-tolerant enough for the GUI to to deal with a new video card, well christ that's just poor design. I don't -CARE- whether it's the FOSS developer's fault or Nvidia's fault. I care whether the shit works, because I'm a user not a referee.
And of course I don't have intel basic graphics, because this wasn't some spare system I dug out of the garbage, this was my primary system, you know the one that everybody argues it's "year of the linux desktop" for?
The fact that everybody "disagreeing" with me not only knows what I'm talking about, but knows how to fix these problems proves that you all have run into them too.
You're right, but I don't see that as a positive. It's like the battered housewife who keeps saying "sure he hits me, but I know deep down he really loves me." As somebody who has tried, repeatedly, to join the linux faithful... it doesn't seem to matter which distro I try, they all have something that eventually becomes a dealbreaker.
I tried as early as 1995 with slackware, since then I've tried fedora, several versions of ubuntu, mint, and mint debian edition (that last one didn't even last the entire morning on my system. if it can't do basic input device configuration correctly, what the hell can I expect of it really when I actually want to DO something)
The best I was able to stomach was a ubuntu 9.04 install that lasted me the year and a half between XP being too old and Vista being too buggy before windows 7 was just too damn good (oh no, I see the downmods incoming) to keep fighting with linux. When it was working, it was good. When it wasn't working... well hell, it felt like it was 1993 and I was editing autoexec.bat, config.sys, and win.ini all over again.
Be honest people, even if you're a fan, put down the kool-aid and admit that Linux fights with you FROM DAY ONE. It's like an annoying little brother. Sure you love him, but there's always something he's doing to annoy you. A buddy of mine described Linux on your primary machine aptly: "It's like the hot rod you build in your garage. It's a lot of fun to play with, and you learn a lot turning those wrenches, but it's not really something you want to drive every day."
well, if you want to go by the other 3 major consoles, I think you can safely assume the 90% shovelware estimate is probably pretty accurate.
Unless the console is so unpopular that even the shovelware developers aren't interested in releasing for it.
it should be impossible as previously thinking was that the only way the elements for planetary formation are created is via prior supernovas. these stars shouldnt have had access to the materials needed to create planets. either there were more -very- early supernovae than thought, or these planets are interstellar captures.
well there is this
http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=24
and this
http://www.pro-music.org/Content/questions/DosAndDonts.php#Q13
and this
http://www.uky.edu/UKIT/security/policy_riaa.htm
and so on... but more over, why in the world would it make any sense to make copyright infringement only kick in after 24 hours? who would write a law like that? nobody would, because nobody has. it's an urban legend, continually circulated, just like all urban legends.
pretty sure it's never been legal for those either.
also, eating pop rocks and pepsi together still won't kill you.
for a woman presumably born while Thomas Jefferson was president, her embrace of digital media is admirable.
Every private site/tracker I've ever gone to the trouble of getting access to has so little content as to be pointless. They've got a few hundred torrents listed and they're all crap. every last one one of em. even if one of them were good, you've got like 5 people seeding anything. if you're lucky.
Perhaps I'm just not leet enough to get access to the super secret mega underground pirate bay equivalent.
hearsay and rumor, nothing else. it's the digital equivalent to "I hear you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex"
They sure do! I used to borrow books from the library every week. You ever borrowed an mp3 from a library?
A library is either a public or a private institution, where either way funds have been set aside to purchase works (generally copyrighted works) for use of the members of the library. The temporary loans of these works to members is fully supported by the laws of the united states.
downloading an mp3 off of bitorrent is none of these things.
The closest we have to a legal "mp3 library" is spotify (and it actually uses vorbis, not mp3, not that the format makes any difference), which I do in fact use.
ok, you want a more technically correct analogy?
What makes you think that you can take the book at the bookstore into the back room, xerox the book's pages, and take it home and read those pages for 24 hours before what you just did becomes illegal? why wouldn't it be illegal the second you did it, what does a 24 hour period have to do with it?
answer: nothing.
you're not a lawyer are you?
no more than it's legal to take a book home from the bookstore to review for 24 hours before you decide to buy it.
Where would you get that idea from?
it's always been uploading the file to others that they're pissed off about, not downloading it yourself.
sure they don't want you downloading music illegally, but what they tend to sue people for is offering the file out to others. Which of course just about every peer-to-peer file sharing system does by default. So people confuse one with the other.
I think there's a pretty big difference (at least legally speaking) between leaving your (legal-for-you-to-use) files on an insecure ftp site that somebody might find by accident, and putting your files on a public site and then advertising their existence to people looking to download them.
I'm not saying that they don't both have the potential to end you up in court, but one is going to be far far easier for the prosecution to proceed with than the other.