Fish may have legitimate reason for not wanting bicycle suitable for humans, however I would rather not use a bicycle based on the requirements of a fish.
Because you're not a fish. Your flaw is assuming you're superior, not different.
All of them do, in X.
For someone who works with logic everyday, you seem to have difficulty following simple true/false sentences. I never stated the contrary regarding X.
Inaccessible to the user without additional software, nearly unusable with said software, and in conflict with all other possible desktop enhancements due to lacl of design. How typically Windows-like.
In linux, every software is additional, so in that regard is the same. There is a long distance between "cannot" and "its not good enough" - for a guy who proclaims himself an engineer, you seem to lack precision in your statements.
It does not matter. I am an engineer, and my configuration of a desktop is conducive to complex engineering/software development work, therefore my requirements are legitimate, and Windows' inability to satisfy them is a flaw. Just because there are plenty of other engineers who have never seen anything other than Windows, does not mean that they do not suffer and do inferior job, or live shorter, more miserable lives, because of the deficiency of the environment forced on them.
You're probably the most desktop-happy person I've ever come across. I know, you can't even conceive the idea that other people - equally bright or brighter than you - opt for different things, or develop in different environment, Just because you probably work surrounded by monkeys, it is naive to assume everyone that doesn't agree with you is one.
Maybe in those X servers that run on Windows. X on Linux works just fine.
Shure, if you like to have an app on one screen and click on modal windows for that app on another screen. I'm shure its a feature (specially when its not the top window, and the modal dialog assumes the Z-index of the parent window on a different monitor), not a bug.
Some of software that I use is older than I am, and most of it is older than you are.
I've actually maintained software older than me. Unfortunely, software is a bit like cheap wine - excluding some very rare exceptions, it does go bad with age.
Burning hatred toward militant idiots is not narrow-mindedness.
That's the false part -- it works just fine when enabled.
It doesn't. That's what broken means. And yes, you can "unbreak it" by installing another DM. Out of the box, its mostly broken.
It runs display procedures and input for them, you extraordinary pedant.
So, it displays the output, does not actually run the program. What I find extraordinary is that the quality of your insults improve when you're caught dead wrong. Not bad.
No, it's just you are an idiot and I am not.
Maybe you're delusional, but hey I'm not a pediatrician, It may happen you're just passing gas.
My Nokia N900 phone has a desktop based on a full-featured X server. It works great (including scaled live view of running applications) despite very limited CPU performance. So does Plasma Active on all current implementations.
Actually, that is a pretty cool device. But hardly a tablet.
Do you realize that everything -- absolutely everything that you have ever used -- exists because people like myself at some point made critically important design decision, before worthless scum like yourself became able to "design" things by copy/pasting their work?
It is odd how you defend yourself as a good decision maker, and then go and make out-of-the-blue assumptions about other people. But your god complex regarding circuit design is amusing. Don't get me wrong - I do believe you're very good at what you do, but I actually find fascinating your need to insult others and the insecurity that drives it. Because I can actually do most of what you do (plus apparently a ton of other things that are completely foreign to you), without feeling superior about it.
It seems that at some point you forgot you didn't invent semiconductors, microelectronics, or discovered basic electric properties of different materials. You didn't created or improved the fab process. You didn't invent routing algorithms. Your designs always borrow from someone else, no matter how original they are. Negating that is just... stupid. From what I've interacted with you (this is not our first discussion:D), I'd never leave a critical design decision in your hands.
There are many differences between people like me and people like you, but one of the most fundamental is the reason why people like me really, really care about their tools. I can't use Windows not because Windows is inefficient or ugly, I can't use it because my work is my life, and my tools are parts of my thought process.
Lets cut the insulting crap. I (unfortunely) now use Linux everyday, been using BSD more than a decade, and for desktop work, I actually prefer Windows. If I was doing embedded systems design/development, I'd probably use something else. I'm not (currently), and most of the "workstation users" aren't either. I do understand what you're saying and it is a fair point - one of the reasons I use Windows so much is because I feel confortable with it. You feel the oposite, that's fair.
Allowing something like Windows into my work would contaminate my mind, turn me into a person too stupid to do things I am capable of doing.
You think too much of yourself. Its not a bad thing, but too much of it isn't usually good either. There are thousands and thousands of people capable of doing what you do, and probably some of them already do, and use Windows as a desktop. If you think people are intelectually inferior to you just because they don't choose the same stuff you do, you're a negation of yourself - too bright to understand how dumb you are.
Oh, and it also has some really crappy desktop, and made by the second most immoral entiry in the history of mankind after Inquisition.
I couldn't care less about morality. And there is no morality in technology - only money.
I admit I work a lot with BSD systems, and FreeNX/NX support of those operating systems is can be truthfuly described as "shitty". And while the latest versions of TS are packed with new features, we're talking about late nineties technology. NX may do today most of what TS did 12 years ago. Oddly enough, Citrix, one of the companies behind TS technology, is now fully vested in Linux tech, and they have a product that provides transparent virtualization for applications - a bit like the X over SSH, but with virtualized hosts.
NX is (mostly) a commercial product. I've used both the free version and the OSS implementation (FreeNX). It is similar o TS (cant remember if implemented audio), but a bit slower, and AFAIK no printer forwarding support. The FreeNX I tried had some issues (FreeBSD ports at the time had only a 32 bit version, dont know if meanwhile changed), and still lacks central management of sessions, capture/sharing of sessions and decent speed on local networks.
XDMCP and remote X are disabled on Ubuntu because for home users they are nothing but a potential security hole. Enabling them is trivial for those who need them.
Take the time you spend trying to insult people from inside your bubble to actually read what you're replying to. Did I complain about being disabled? No, I complain about being broken.
X servers for Windows don't run Windows applications, and mostly don't run X applications, either, due to extreme ineficciency, outdated implementations, and nonexistent hardware support.
Actually, an X Server runs no applications at all - it is the client that runs the applications.
Apparently idiots like you believe that all X implementations are as crappy as those.
Apparently you must be using a X Server implementation different from anyone else, since according to you it runs your applications instead of just rendering them. Good to know. You must be one of those guys for which everyone is an idiot, right? Or are you just compensating your own social akwardness?
Microsoft Office is an application for making pretty documents with incoherent formatting, and using a pseudo-database with calculations, that grew into something that has more in common with absurdist art than any productive activity.
So, in other words, working with simple tools like Microsoft Office seems to be beyond your habilities. Most of what you said could be said about any program. Really.
X/Xorg: is an application for making pretty documents with incoherent formatting
MySQL: a pseudo-database with calculations
DIA: absurdist art
People who only use it, would be better off with a tablet-keyboard combination -- too bad, one that Microsoft tried to sell is total crap, at large extent because their tablet-style UI is almost as bad on tablets as it is on desktops
And this is relevant to the current topic how? But do tell me about all those X/Xorg tablets, inquiring minds want to know...
If you judge workstations use by the type of users who waste computers' capability the most, you you are bound to end up with idiotic preferences -- oh wait, this is what Windows mlti-screen support is!
I'm shure your CPU is taxed at 99%, and your work is more relevant like no other. You could die tomorrow and probably no one would give half a shit about your work, Machines are tools, not the endgame. Really, get a life.
Obviously, a Windows user wouldn't know a case when virtual desktop are useful, from his own ass.
Obviously, any narrow-minded individual has problems understanding a reality where people have different needs, so instead resorts to cheap sleazy insult. I could point out that none of what you actually said is true (some graphics adapters DO support scrollable viewports, Windows does provide switchable viewports, not everyone uses what you use, there is a shit ton of problems/issues with multi-monitor support in X, and some of them are more than a decade old, etc etc etc), but it would be pointless. A narrow-minded person has no mental space available for a different perspective.
At least when it DIDN'T work, you didn't get a blank screen - the festive white (or black) smoke that would come out of the VDU were a good sign that something went wrong.
No longer a Windows user; but Windows does not have any where near the same level of functionality for multi-monitor support the Linux does.
Are you comparing Windows XP with a latest linux distro? Because I had problems for _years_ with X/Xorg and multiple monitors.
Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
None of the applications I use make sense being spread across monitors horizontally, maximized, so never needed it. Can you give me an example of such application?
Windows system (2008 Server I think)
Pick a 2009 Linux distro, install it on a laptop, and then span the desktop to another monitor, with different resolutions. Now try see a fullscreen movie on the 2nd monitor, and tell me about it. Or boot up the SO, plug an external video device, and see how the resolution detection works.
And office dwellers who have Word on one screen and Excel on another because they have no scrollable/switchable viewports?
Viewports makes sense for some applications and for low-res displays. I actually hate them, and toggling an app on a different viewport will toggle the whole viewport. On high-res monitors, you may find yourself dragging windows on a small applet on a corner of a screen.
On the other hand, I get more usable screen with Windows than I'd get with X. The difference is noticeable on high-res screens, and translates to more lines of code at once on each screen. Scalable font rendering is usually crappy in X, and most of the times the widgets and dialogs look like something drawn by a kid (there are some exceptions, but even with tabbed windowmanagers or minimal windowmanagers like blackbox you will have the font problem). At least with Windows, application-specific modal dialogs don't popup on the wrong screen or under some other window (again) on the wrong screen.
but it's not ready for any serious use as a workstation.
I guess your notion of workstation is a machine you use. Different people have different needs.
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
Given that you have _several_ X Servers for Windows (some of them free), I can't see why not. What I can see is Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mint with completely broken XDMCP funcionality, and its a trending issue - that alone somewhat reflects the usage that kind of feature has nowadays. And the problems usually don't end with XDMCP.
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
I don't know what a "workstation user" is. I know a lot of "workstation users" that only use Microsoft Office and Outlook. I also know a lot of them that use Adobe Photoshop extensively, so it appears that you have problems distinguishing the forest from the trees. I myself am a "workstation user", and use both Windows and X server on Windows, and have no need whatsoever in executing remote GUI applications over X.
Do you even understand what this is about? All this IS IMPLEMENTED in nice UI, the article is about a new KDE utility for it.
And the point is that this is pretty much a standard feature of other operating systems, such as Windows. Without requiring you to use a specific WM/DE or installing a shitton of libs. It is 10 years late, and as the video shows, many laptops even assume the SO has that capability to the point of having a marked shortcut for it.
And there is nothing OSS/free in the *nix world vaguely near Terminal Services. Internally, the desktop compositing is somewhat similar to X, but works way better over slow links, with the plus of actual audio support, resource sharing (disks and printers), and a _usable_ clipboard (still waiting on that on *nix). The case usage of TS is somewhat different from remote GUI applications, but from what I see on a daily basis, way more useful.
I'm not familiarized with ColdFire, but the grid size on the manufacturing process is no way of measuring the relevance of a given product. There are a ton of applications that actually require reliable processors instead of "latest tech". Some embedded applications may require 10-20yr lifespan under radiation, extreme heat, magnetic interference, and so on and so on. Just because they aren't the best choice to create handheld devices to play Angry Birds, or to create desktop computers, doesn't mean they aren't useful.
But you have probably forgotten that pretty much all *NIX and *BSD clones - actively developed clones - have abandoned it.
Its a mixed bag. Even the most used *NIX deskop operating system is still (mostly) opensource. On the other hand, during the 80's, very few UNIX manufacturers actually invested on x86 architecture, and traditionally microcomputer software was distributed in binary form (for several reasons, not only because of so-called "trade secrets).
Throw in here the USL v. BSDi case, and actually there was a period of time when there was no open source - except for the FSF/GNU.
Since - at the time - Linux was also mostly unusable as a real kernel, to compile UNIX GNU stuff you'd already need to have a workstation WITH an operating system, and a compiler (if you need to compile GCC).
Yet itself AFAIK it still can not even claim full ANSI C support - least C++ support or support of any arch except x86/x64.
It was "the facto" standard compiler for BSD operating systems until 1994 - and while is no match for modern GCC, probably one of the reasons it was ditched was because of proper x86 support - Keep in mind that this compiler is older than the x86 ISA. Also, only the _new_ version is x86/x64 only. You may not like it, but it exists and was a viable option - far far away from the RMS speech of "before me there were none". And if you like C++ with GCC, well - do not thank RMS for it.
The point being before RMS, OSS was equivalent to BSD.
And after RMS, they still aren't GPL. Other than the Linux Kernel (not at all related to RMS) and GCC, almost every other major project stays away from both the FSF and the GPL, while the business model RMS despises adapts to its limitations (eg. the Linux kernel is riddled with commercial hooks for 3rd party - closed source - modules and extensions; see eg. kernel namespaces).
Still, early versions of GNU libc and cc in the 80s and 90s where crucial. At the time it was not only the open source model which was doubted - it was doubted whether "bunch of unemployed hippies" can write anything as sophisticated and of production quality. FSF/GNU under RMS guidance had managed it.
RMS was hardly an "unemployed hippie" - at least no more than the guys who wrote the BSD. The idea that GCC (as an opensource C compiler) was "novel" is also a nice fairytale - pcc exists since the seventies.
EGCS happened much later, in the end of the 90s. As old saying goes (I have forgotten original wording), person who have contributed something major to development eventually becomes a major impediment to development himself. RMS religious zeal was important instrument to persist through the times of total commercialization of the software. Now, after he made sure that open source exists and thrives, he himself is more of an obstacle to the future of what he had created.
That epic battle between commercial software and open-source only exists on RMS's head and on a handful of follower's heads. Fact is that OSS predates RMS, many commercial software relies on it, GPL itself is an aberration (and the internet as you know it would not exist if base libraries that implement protocols were GPL and not BSD), and most relevant OSS today isn't even GPL - the big exceptions are Linux Kernel (that actually didn't start as a GPL project), and GCC itself.
On the system of a real computer user, every disk has a line like this in/etc/smartd.conf:/dev/disk/by-id/ata-COMPANY_MODEL_SERIAL -a -d sat -n never -m root@intranet.myhomenetwork -M diminishing -s (L/../../5/17)
On the system of a real computer user that actually CARES about data, you'd have at least a good RAID setup or something like ZFS. And not only smartd isn't part of most real-world operating systems (its a package), but also SMART info is usually lacking in preventing any kind of failure. I actually have on my desk several broken disks with pristine SMART data.
Doing that part to keeping your data safe doesn’t cost any relevant effort at all.
Maybe, but you actually did noting in this regard. It is way more useful (but still dumb as fuck) to scan the system log for ata crc and timeout messages (ever seen those?) than just gathering SMART data. Another point is that - even if you actually get relevant SMART errors, most of the time you are already late.
What you know today as GCC was done as "fork-and-merge". There was a lot of resistance in integrating the patches/changes provided by EGCS. Had he get away with it, GCC would probably be dead, and you'd be running a fork of it.
Linux would not exist without the annoying aspects of GNU and the FSF.
Given that Linux did not start as a GPL project, I seriously doubt it. And it is widely known that Linux was started because of licensing issues with Minix, and because 386BSD wasn't available.
They would have made their own kernel in a timely fashion and Linus may never have been motivated to make his own.
A couple of years after Linus started Linux, the 386BSD was made freely available. Even considering that Hurd was started almost one year before Linux, if not for Linus work (and all the volunteers), RMS and the whole GPL thinggy would be a remainder of the nineties, like pagers and AOL, while we'd be using BSD-derived workstations.
Yeah, and here are some applications that run in demanding environments, that were not written in C++, and that you would probably be hard-pressed to write in C++ (at least with the same results):
Example 1: a DSL. Nice, but for demanding environments, go check ADA - full blown OOP - and generally slower than C++.
Example 2: A FTT routine, how nice. Having worked with assembly implementations on several architectures, hardly a good example - except if you look at all that "demanding" software that also uses FFT in C++. And its not like C++ is a black container unable to use 3rd party libraries.
Example 3: A fringe functional language. Don't get me wrong, I actually like some of the concepts of Haskell, but it is not a mainstream language, nor is an "industry standard" (except some specific companies), And Haskel is actually SLOWER than C++. A lot.
Why are you bitching about "demanding environments"? Can you enumerate which companies RMS has worked for? Because what I see is a guy completely out of touch with reality. And you may like him a lot, thats your problem, but if he had his way, you'd be compiling your ghc with EGCS today. If you think C++ is so broken, tell me - what is the size (bytes) of an unsigned int in C? Why promote so shamelessly such a defect-prone language - specially after a decade of vunlerabilities related to the poor implementation of the standard library? Why don't you bitch about that?
And you have *tons* of demanding environment examples done with C++, Python, PHP, Java, Ruby, C#/.NET, etc. and only a few done in pure assembly. Even most operating systems try to use as little assembly as possible. So your point is?
Disclaimer: I don't even like C++. It has most of the atrocities of C coupled with a half-assed OO support.
Nitpick note: in FreeBSD, you can easily switch from md5 to other encryption scheme (blowfish?) by editing/etc/login.conf. I'd assume many other unixes also provide this funcionality.
But again, once it's loaded, why would you ever close it?
Because, at least CS5/5.5 is quite unstable, and sometimes I need the used RAM for something else. And 6, while a bit more stable, tends to create "working swap files" like there is no tomorrow, that can grow quite fast.
And since you mention lightroom, surely your workstation has 24-32GB of RAM in it at least.
You don't need that amount of RAM to use regular shoots in Lightroom (~20Mpx per pic). Lightroom problem is mostly I/O bound, not RAM. 8GB is more than enough to work with sessions of a couple of hundred photos. A SSD disk is a way better improvement than another 8GB of RAM.
So the question is, by *properly* using our PCs, do you notice a real difference?
Oh yes. Hell yes. Lightroom works and feels like a "regular" application, Photoshop seems like MS Word starting up. Everything is just snappy. And while RAM is fast, it can max out easily. SSDs are the best upgrade I've ever made. If you use Windows, it's like when you had a XP machine and went straight away from 128Mb to 2GB, but it is better. And it lasts longer than a Service Pack. I couldn't care less about booting times (my desktop is always on), but eg. on Chrome (usually > 100 tabs opened) it went from half a minute opening and closing to less than a second.
Even with non-modern CPUS, that is the case - the HLT instruction (in x86) does precisely that - stops the CPU until an external interrupt is fired. Well, if it spends too much time serving interrupts (as in waiting for hardware to respond), it will spend less time halt'ing. So, even with a CPU from the late seventies, you'd probably get a power usage increase by using a faster device.
Ha! I've had for years a desktop (an open case) with two 10Krpm 18GB IBM SCSI drives. You could hear the machine on a different floor! And yes, it was in my room. Say what?
Are you F** kidding? My quad-core Q6600 workstation runs *laps* around a Core i5 with server-grade SATA disks. Actually it runs *laps* around a server-grade P411 SAS RAID controller (RAID10, 4 disks) on everything I/O intensive, and it is a pretty shitty SSD. It is probably the best upgrade I've ever made, and when you go SSD, you don't go back. When you see dreadful slow apps like Adobe Photoshop opening as if they were Notepad, you'll know. Buying an SSD (instead of a new board, new cpu and new memory) allowed me to squeeze a couple of years more of my current desktop. Oh and don't get fooled by >100Mb/s benchmarks on spinning disks - throw a couple dozen of random operations per second, and they will calm down to a single-digit MBps troughput.
I think you are confusing senior devs with geriatric devs. I'd say you get two types of juniors - the academic and the hacker. The academic tries to apply (to a varying extent) endless layers of abstraction or really obvious/dumb approaches to not-so-complex problems. They usually produce acceptable code, but the algorithms usually are crap. The hacker usually has a lot more experience, but often repeats patterns he saw elsewhere without thinking too much about them. Their code tends to be crappier, but it is usually compensated by their real-world experience.
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Fish may have legitimate reason for not wanting bicycle suitable for humans, however I would rather not use a bicycle based on the requirements of a fish.
Because you're not a fish. Your flaw is assuming you're superior, not different.
All of them do, in X.
For someone who works with logic everyday, you seem to have difficulty following simple true/false sentences. I never stated the contrary regarding X.
Inaccessible to the user without additional software, nearly unusable with said software, and in conflict with all other possible desktop enhancements due to lacl of design. How typically Windows-like.
In linux, every software is additional, so in that regard is the same. There is a long distance between "cannot" and "its not good enough" - for a guy who proclaims himself an engineer, you seem to lack precision in your statements.
It does not matter. I am an engineer, and my configuration of a desktop is conducive to complex engineering/software development work, therefore my requirements are legitimate, and Windows' inability to satisfy them is a flaw. Just because there are plenty of other engineers who have never seen anything other than Windows, does not mean that they do not suffer and do inferior job, or live shorter, more miserable lives, because of the deficiency of the environment forced on them.
You're probably the most desktop-happy person I've ever come across. I know, you can't even conceive the idea that other people - equally bright or brighter than you - opt for different things, or develop in different environment, Just because you probably work surrounded by monkeys, it is naive to assume everyone that doesn't agree with you is one.
Maybe in those X servers that run on Windows. X on Linux works just fine.
Shure, if you like to have an app on one screen and click on modal windows for that app on another screen. I'm shure its a feature (specially when its not the top window, and the modal dialog assumes the Z-index of the parent window on a different monitor), not a bug.
Some of software that I use is older than I am, and most of it is older than you are.
I've actually maintained software older than me. Unfortunely, software is a bit like cheap wine - excluding some very rare exceptions, it does go bad with age.
Burning hatred toward militant idiots is not narrow-mindedness.
You must love your mirror.
That's the false part -- it works just fine when enabled.
It doesn't. That's what broken means. And yes, you can "unbreak it" by installing another DM. Out of the box, its mostly broken.
It runs display procedures and input for them, you extraordinary pedant.
So, it displays the output, does not actually run the program. What I find extraordinary is that the quality of your insults improve when you're caught dead wrong. Not bad.
No, it's just you are an idiot and I am not.
Maybe you're delusional, but hey I'm not a pediatrician, It may happen you're just passing gas.
My Nokia N900 phone has a desktop based on a full-featured X server. It works great (including scaled live view of running applications) despite very limited CPU performance. So does Plasma Active on all current implementations.
Actually, that is a pretty cool device. But hardly a tablet.
Do you realize that everything -- absolutely everything that you have ever used -- exists because people like myself at some point made critically important design decision, before worthless scum like yourself became able to "design" things by copy/pasting their work?
It is odd how you defend yourself as a good decision maker, and then go and make out-of-the-blue assumptions about other people. But your god complex regarding circuit design is amusing. Don't get me wrong - I do believe you're very good at what you do, but I actually find fascinating your need to insult others and the insecurity that drives it. Because I can actually do most of what you do (plus apparently a ton of other things that are completely foreign to you), without feeling superior about it.
It seems that at some point you forgot you didn't invent semiconductors, microelectronics, or discovered basic electric properties of different materials. You didn't created or improved the fab process. You didn't invent routing algorithms. Your designs always borrow from someone else, no matter how original they are. Negating that is just... stupid. From what I've interacted with you (this is not our first discussion :D), I'd never leave a critical design decision in your hands.
There are many differences between people like me and people like you, but one of the most fundamental is the reason why people like me really, really care about their tools. I can't use Windows not because Windows is inefficient or ugly, I can't use it because my work is my life, and my tools are parts of my thought process.
Lets cut the insulting crap. I (unfortunely) now use Linux everyday, been using BSD more than a decade, and for desktop work, I actually prefer Windows. If I was doing embedded systems design/development, I'd probably use something else. I'm not (currently), and most of the "workstation users" aren't either. I do understand what you're saying and it is a fair point - one of the reasons I use Windows so much is because I feel confortable with it. You feel the oposite, that's fair.
Allowing something like Windows into my work would contaminate my mind, turn me into a person too stupid to do things I am capable of doing.
You think too much of yourself. Its not a bad thing, but too much of it isn't usually good either. There are thousands and thousands of people capable of doing what you do, and probably some of them already do, and use Windows as a desktop. If you think people are intelectually inferior to you just because they don't choose the same stuff you do, you're a negation of yourself - too bright to understand how dumb you are.
Oh, and it also has some really crappy desktop, and made by the second most immoral entiry in the history of mankind after Inquisition.
I couldn't care less about morality. And there is no morality in technology - only money.
I admit I work a lot with BSD systems, and FreeNX/NX support of those operating systems is can be truthfuly described as "shitty". And while the latest versions of TS are packed with new features, we're talking about late nineties technology. NX may do today most of what TS did 12 years ago. Oddly enough, Citrix, one of the companies behind TS technology, is now fully vested in Linux tech, and they have a product that provides transparent virtualization for applications - a bit like the X over SSH, but with virtualized hosts.
NX is (mostly) a commercial product. I've used both the free version and the OSS implementation (FreeNX). It is similar o TS (cant remember if implemented audio), but a bit slower, and AFAIK no printer forwarding support. The FreeNX I tried had some issues (FreeBSD ports at the time had only a 32 bit version, dont know if meanwhile changed), and still lacks central management of sessions, capture/sharing of sessions and decent speed on local networks.
XDMCP and remote X are disabled on Ubuntu because for home users they are nothing but a potential security hole. Enabling them is trivial for those who need them.
Take the time you spend trying to insult people from inside your bubble to actually read what you're replying to. Did I complain about being disabled? No, I complain about being broken.
X servers for Windows don't run Windows applications, and mostly don't run X applications, either, due to extreme ineficciency, outdated implementations, and nonexistent hardware support.
Actually, an X Server runs no applications at all - it is the client that runs the applications.
Apparently idiots like you believe that all X implementations are as crappy as those.
Apparently you must be using a X Server implementation different from anyone else, since according to you it runs your applications instead of just rendering them. Good to know. You must be one of those guys for which everyone is an idiot, right? Or are you just compensating your own social akwardness?
Microsoft Office is an application for making pretty documents with incoherent formatting, and using a pseudo-database with calculations, that grew into something that has more in common with absurdist art than any productive activity.
So, in other words, working with simple tools like Microsoft Office seems to be beyond your habilities. Most of what you said could be said about any program. Really.
X/Xorg: is an application for making pretty documents with incoherent formatting
MySQL: a pseudo-database with calculations
DIA: absurdist art
People who only use it, would be better off with a tablet-keyboard combination -- too bad, one that Microsoft tried to sell is total crap, at large extent because their tablet-style UI is almost as bad on tablets as it is on desktops
And this is relevant to the current topic how? But do tell me about all those X/Xorg tablets, inquiring minds want to know...
If you judge workstations use by the type of users who waste computers' capability the most, you you are bound to end up with idiotic preferences -- oh wait, this is what Windows mlti-screen support is!
I'm shure your CPU is taxed at 99%, and your work is more relevant like no other. You could die tomorrow and probably no one would give half a shit about your work, Machines are tools, not the endgame. Really, get a life.
The rest of your response is plain false.
If you say so...
Obviously, a Windows user wouldn't know a case when virtual desktop are useful, from his own ass.
Obviously, any narrow-minded individual has problems understanding a reality where people have different needs, so instead resorts to cheap sleazy insult. I could point out that none of what you actually said is true (some graphics adapters DO support scrollable viewports, Windows does provide switchable viewports, not everyone uses what you use, there is a shit ton of problems/issues with multi-monitor support in X, and some of them are more than a decade old, etc etc etc), but it would be pointless. A narrow-minded person has no mental space available for a different perspective.
At least when it DIDN'T work, you didn't get a blank screen - the festive white (or black) smoke that would come out of the VDU were a good sign that something went wrong.
No longer a Windows user; but Windows does not have any where near the same level of functionality for multi-monitor support the Linux does.
Are you comparing Windows XP with a latest linux distro? Because I had problems for _years_ with X/Xorg and multiple monitors.
Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
None of the applications I use make sense being spread across monitors horizontally, maximized, so never needed it. Can you give me an example of such application?
Windows system (2008 Server I think)
Pick a 2009 Linux distro, install it on a laptop, and then span the desktop to another monitor, with different resolutions. Now try see a fullscreen movie on the 2nd monitor, and tell me about it. Or boot up the SO, plug an external video device, and see how the resolution detection works.
And office dwellers who have Word on one screen and Excel on another because they have no scrollable/switchable viewports?
Viewports makes sense for some applications and for low-res displays. I actually hate them, and toggling an app on a different viewport will toggle the whole viewport. On high-res monitors, you may find yourself dragging windows on a small applet on a corner of a screen.
On the other hand, I get more usable screen with Windows than I'd get with X. The difference is noticeable on high-res screens, and translates to more lines of code at once on each screen. Scalable font rendering is usually crappy in X, and most of the times the widgets and dialogs look like something drawn by a kid (there are some exceptions, but even with tabbed windowmanagers or minimal windowmanagers like blackbox you will have the font problem). At least with Windows, application-specific modal dialogs don't popup on the wrong screen or under some other window (again) on the wrong screen.
but it's not ready for any serious use as a workstation.
I guess your notion of workstation is a machine you use. Different people have different needs.
Since apparently for you multiple monitors on Windows is for office and for games because it lacks virtual desktops, there you go: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881.aspx.
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
Given that you have _several_ X Servers for Windows (some of them free), I can't see why not. What I can see is Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mint with completely broken XDMCP funcionality, and its a trending issue - that alone somewhat reflects the usage that kind of feature has nowadays. And the problems usually don't end with XDMCP.
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
I don't know what a "workstation user" is. I know a lot of "workstation users" that only use Microsoft Office and Outlook. I also know a lot of them that use Adobe Photoshop extensively, so it appears that you have problems distinguishing the forest from the trees. I myself am a "workstation user", and use both Windows and X server on Windows, and have no need whatsoever in executing remote GUI applications over X.
Do you even understand what this is about? All this IS IMPLEMENTED in nice UI, the article is about a new KDE utility for it.
And the point is that this is pretty much a standard feature of other operating systems, such as Windows. Without requiring you to use a specific WM/DE or installing a shitton of libs. It is 10 years late, and as the video shows, many laptops even assume the SO has that capability to the point of having a marked shortcut for it.
And there is nothing OSS/free in the *nix world vaguely near Terminal Services. Internally, the desktop compositing is somewhat similar to X, but works way better over slow links, with the plus of actual audio support, resource sharing (disks and printers), and a _usable_ clipboard (still waiting on that on *nix). The case usage of TS is somewhat different from remote GUI applications, but from what I see on a daily basis, way more useful.
I'm not familiarized with ColdFire, but the grid size on the manufacturing process is no way of measuring the relevance of a given product. There are a ton of applications that actually require reliable processors instead of "latest tech". Some embedded applications may require 10-20yr lifespan under radiation, extreme heat, magnetic interference, and so on and so on. Just because they aren't the best choice to create handheld devices to play Angry Birds, or to create desktop computers, doesn't mean they aren't useful.
But you have probably forgotten that pretty much all *NIX and *BSD clones - actively developed clones - have abandoned it.
Its a mixed bag. Even the most used *NIX deskop operating system is still (mostly) opensource. On the other hand, during the 80's, very few UNIX manufacturers actually invested on x86 architecture, and traditionally microcomputer software was distributed in binary form (for several reasons, not only because of so-called "trade secrets).
Throw in here the USL v. BSDi case, and actually there was a period of time when there was no open source - except for the FSF/GNU.
Since - at the time - Linux was also mostly unusable as a real kernel, to compile UNIX GNU stuff you'd already need to have a workstation WITH an operating system, and a compiler (if you need to compile GCC).
Yet itself AFAIK it still can not even claim full ANSI C support - least C++ support or support of any arch except x86/x64.
It was "the facto" standard compiler for BSD operating systems until 1994 - and while is no match for modern GCC, probably one of the reasons it was ditched was because of proper x86 support - Keep in mind that this compiler is older than the x86 ISA. Also, only the _new_ version is x86/x64 only. You may not like it, but it exists and was a viable option - far far away from the RMS speech of "before me there were none". And if you like C++ with GCC, well - do not thank RMS for it.
The point being before RMS, OSS was equivalent to BSD.
And after RMS, they still aren't GPL. Other than the Linux Kernel (not at all related to RMS) and GCC, almost every other major project stays away from both the FSF and the GPL, while the business model RMS despises adapts to its limitations (eg. the Linux kernel is riddled with commercial hooks for 3rd party - closed source - modules and extensions; see eg. kernel namespaces).
Still, early versions of GNU libc and cc in the 80s and 90s where crucial. At the time it was not only the open source model which was doubted - it was doubted whether "bunch of unemployed hippies" can write anything as sophisticated and of production quality. FSF/GNU under RMS guidance had managed it.
RMS was hardly an "unemployed hippie" - at least no more than the guys who wrote the BSD. The idea that GCC (as an opensource C compiler) was "novel" is also a nice fairytale - pcc exists since the seventies.
EGCS happened much later, in the end of the 90s. As old saying goes (I have forgotten original wording), person who have contributed something major to development eventually becomes a major impediment to development himself. RMS religious zeal was important instrument to persist through the times of total commercialization of the software. Now, after he made sure that open source exists and thrives, he himself is more of an obstacle to the future of what he had created.
That epic battle between commercial software and open-source only exists on RMS's head and on a handful of follower's heads. Fact is that OSS predates RMS, many commercial software relies on it, GPL itself is an aberration (and the internet as you know it would not exist if base libraries that implement protocols were GPL and not BSD), and most relevant OSS today isn't even GPL - the big exceptions are Linux Kernel (that actually didn't start as a GPL project), and GCC itself.
On the system of a real computer user, every disk has a line like this in /etc/smartd.conf: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-COMPANY_MODEL_SERIAL -a -d sat -n never -m root@intranet.myhomenetwork -M diminishing -s (L/../../5/17)
On the system of a real computer user that actually CARES about data, you'd have at least a good RAID setup or something like ZFS. And not only smartd isn't part of most real-world operating systems (its a package), but also SMART info is usually lacking in preventing any kind of failure. I actually have on my desk several broken disks with pristine SMART data.
Doing that part to keeping your data safe doesn’t cost any relevant effort at all.
Maybe, but you actually did noting in this regard. It is way more useful (but still dumb as fuck) to scan the system log for ata crc and timeout messages (ever seen those?) than just gathering SMART data. Another point is that - even if you actually get relevant SMART errors, most of the time you are already late.
GCC was a crucial part of this
What you know today as GCC was done as "fork-and-merge". There was a lot of resistance in integrating the patches/changes provided by EGCS. Had he get away with it, GCC would probably be dead, and you'd be running a fork of it.
Linux would not exist without the annoying aspects of GNU and the FSF.
Given that Linux did not start as a GPL project, I seriously doubt it. And it is widely known that Linux was started because of licensing issues with Minix, and because 386BSD wasn't available.
They would have made their own kernel in a timely fashion and Linus may never have been motivated to make his own.
A couple of years after Linus started Linux, the 386BSD was made freely available. Even considering that Hurd was started almost one year before Linux, if not for Linus work (and all the volunteers), RMS and the whole GPL thinggy would be a remainder of the nineties, like pagers and AOL, while we'd be using BSD-derived workstations.
Yeah, and here are some applications that run in demanding environments, that were not written in C++, and that you would probably be hard-pressed to write in C++ (at least with the same results):
Example 1: a DSL. Nice, but for demanding environments, go check ADA - full blown OOP - and generally slower than C++.
Example 2: A FTT routine, how nice. Having worked with assembly implementations on several architectures, hardly a good example - except if you look at all that "demanding" software that also uses FFT in C++. And its not like C++ is a black container unable to use 3rd party libraries.
Example 3: A fringe functional language. Don't get me wrong, I actually like some of the concepts of Haskell, but it is not a mainstream language, nor is an "industry standard" (except some specific companies), And Haskel is actually SLOWER than C++. A lot.
Why are you bitching about "demanding environments"? Can you enumerate which companies RMS has worked for? Because what I see is a guy completely out of touch with reality. And you may like him a lot, thats your problem, but if he had his way, you'd be compiling your ghc with EGCS today. If you think C++ is so broken, tell me - what is the size (bytes) of an unsigned int in C? Why promote so shamelessly such a defect-prone language - specially after a decade of vunlerabilities related to the poor implementation of the standard library? Why don't you bitch about that?
And you have *tons* of demanding environment examples done with C++, Python, PHP, Java, Ruby, C#/.NET, etc. and only a few done in pure assembly. Even most operating systems try to use as little assembly as possible. So your point is?
Disclaimer: I don't even like C++. It has most of the atrocities of C coupled with a half-assed OO support.
Nitpick note: in FreeBSD, you can easily switch from md5 to other encryption scheme (blowfish?) by editing /etc/login.conf. I'd assume many other unixes also provide this funcionality.
But again, once it's loaded, why would you ever close it?
Because, at least CS5/5.5 is quite unstable, and sometimes I need the used RAM for something else. And 6, while a bit more stable, tends to create "working swap files" like there is no tomorrow, that can grow quite fast.
And since you mention lightroom, surely your workstation has 24-32GB of RAM in it at least.
You don't need that amount of RAM to use regular shoots in Lightroom (~20Mpx per pic). Lightroom problem is mostly I/O bound, not RAM. 8GB is more than enough to work with sessions of a couple of hundred photos. A SSD disk is a way better improvement than another 8GB of RAM.
So the question is, by *properly* using our PCs, do you notice a real difference?
Oh yes. Hell yes. Lightroom works and feels like a "regular" application, Photoshop seems like MS Word starting up. Everything is just snappy. And while RAM is fast, it can max out easily. SSDs are the best upgrade I've ever made. If you use Windows, it's like when you had a XP machine and went straight away from 128Mb to 2GB, but it is better. And it lasts longer than a Service Pack. I couldn't care less about booting times (my desktop is always on), but eg. on Chrome (usually > 100 tabs opened) it went from half a minute opening and closing to less than a second.
Even with non-modern CPUS, that is the case - the HLT instruction (in x86) does precisely that - stops the CPU until an external interrupt is fired. Well, if it spends too much time serving interrupts (as in waiting for hardware to respond), it will spend less time halt'ing. So, even with a CPU from the late seventies, you'd probably get a power usage increase by using a faster device.
Ha! I've had for years a desktop (an open case) with two 10Krpm 18GB IBM SCSI drives. You could hear the machine on a different floor! And yes, it was in my room. Say what?
Seek time isn't zero. But it shure seems like it :D
Are you F** kidding? My quad-core Q6600 workstation runs *laps* around a Core i5 with server-grade SATA disks. Actually it runs *laps* around a server-grade P411 SAS RAID controller (RAID10, 4 disks) on everything I/O intensive, and it is a pretty shitty SSD. It is probably the best upgrade I've ever made, and when you go SSD, you don't go back. When you see dreadful slow apps like Adobe Photoshop opening as if they were Notepad, you'll know. Buying an SSD (instead of a new board, new cpu and new memory) allowed me to squeeze a couple of years more of my current desktop. Oh and don't get fooled by >100Mb/s benchmarks on spinning disks - throw a couple dozen of random operations per second, and they will calm down to a single-digit MBps troughput.
Senior devs are often worse than the juniors IME.
I think you are confusing senior devs with geriatric devs. I'd say you get two types of juniors - the academic and the hacker. The academic tries to apply (to a varying extent) endless layers of abstraction or really obvious/dumb approaches to not-so-complex problems. They usually produce acceptable code, but the algorithms usually are crap. The hacker usually has a lot more experience, but often repeats patterns he saw elsewhere without thinking too much about them. Their code tends to be crappier, but it is usually compensated by their real-world experience.