I've got to point out this site for improving fonts even more. The difference it made to my fonts was amazing - and I was already using sub-pixel rendering and a laptop display with freetype2-2.1.2 (with the bytecode interpreter compiled in).
I STRONGLY recommend you try it out - he even includes a pre-compiled libfreetype (built for Red Hat, I think, but works great on Mandrake 9.0). You'll need to put it in the right directory, and create the right symbolic links to it.
I don't know how much of the improvement is due to this guy's improvements, and how many are due to the upcoming freetype2-2.1.3, but whatever - Linux fonts are no longer inferior to look at.
I don't know how the healthcare system works in the USA (I'm in the UK), but there's another thing worth pointing out about employer healthcare systems.
Most healthcare (but certainly not all) is needed in old age - after you retire. This is one reason why employer healthcare systems can be appear to be so cheap, relative to overall healthcare costs.
1) OK, this was perhaps a little unfair on my part. I didn't mean to denigrate the Red Crescent organisation, but I wondering whether, given the original poster's comments, he would have the same level of trust of a muslim organisation. However, given his reply, it appears that he does.
Have you really thought about what your saying for more than 5 seconds ?
Suppose the USA goes to war with Iraq. Suppose americans are taken prisoner on their way to Iraq, and imprisoned somewhere in the middle east, without any legal representation, or hope of release.
1) Will it be OK if the internation red crescent (yes there is such a thing - it's a muslim organisation) says they're being treated OK ?
2) Is it OK if those americans have no rights under the Iraqi system, as they are housed on foreign soil, and have never touched its shores ?
3) Is it OK if Iraqi troops are exempt from war crimes during the US/Iraqi war, because they're trying to defend their country against a foreign aggressor ? After all, Saddam Hussein takes it very seriously when his soldiers don't follow his rules.
"Note that journaling your filesystem only keeps the metadata intact, not the file data itself".
That depends on which journaling filesystem you use, and, sometimes, which mode you use it in.
For example, the Linux ext3 file system supports three different journaling modes: "journal", "ordered" and "writeback".
From the "mount" man page:
journal All data is committed into the journal prior to being
written into the main file system.
ordered This is the default mode. All data is forced directly
out to the main file system prior to its metadata being
committed to the journal.
writeback Data ordering is not preserved - data may be written into
the main file system after its metadata has been commit-
ted to the journal. This is rumoured to be the highest-
throughput option. It guarantees internal file system
integrity, however it can allow old data to appear in
files after a crash and journal recovery.
"You can still loose data, such as the contents of a document you were editing but had not saved".
Well unless you've got some special sort of memory, you're going to lose everything you (or the application) haven't saved, whatever type of file system you use.
Someone else can answer for GNOME, since I'm not using it right now, but for KDE, start up Explorer, errr, Konqueror, right-click on a file, select the confusingly-named "Edit File Type..." option, then "Add..." an application to the "Application Preference" box.
"RPM is pretty crap how it dumps all your apps into/usr or/usr/bin without any thought"
And this gets modded as Insightful?
Dear God, this is a disappointment.
RPM dumps your apps wherever the person who made the RPM file told it to put them. Try running "rpm -ql......" sometime. It's the policy of whoever builds the RPM files you're complaining about, not RPM itself. But you've probably just heard a few people say "RPM is crap" and decided to jump on the bandwagon.
Secondly, why is it better to have all the apps in/apps ? How does that improve anything ? You can't just install or remove an app by creating or removing one sub-directory. That's part of the reason a tool like RPM was built in the first place.
There may well be some merit towards splitting entries in/usr/bin into separate sub-directories (e.g. X (already done, though the X directory structure is a mess), GNOME, KDE, etc.). But how do you draw the distinction? What about IPTABLES, for instance? Is it part of the OS? Or part of a firewall application? What about KDE applications? Are they part of KDE, or separate applications? Similarly with GNOME.
Maybe we want to break everything down into a series of individual packages. Hang on, that sounds a bit like RPM.....
Learn about how to use RPM. Read up on the "-ql" and "-qf" options. Then if you want to complain about it, complain about some of the things it doesn't do well, or at all (many of which it wasn't really designed to do).
"If the GNU people suddenly decided that their software was no longer open source and changed their licensing"
So if the very people who invented the GPL decide to do the complete and utter opposite of what they're whole organisation is base on ?
Then why on earth did they invent the GPL ? Why didn't RMS pursue what would have been an extremely lucrative career for someone of his skills ? Why did he spend many years of his life promoting the cause of free software ?
And why does the GPL say "If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation." (emphasis mine) ?
And by the way, the FSF consider "Open Source" to be something slightly different to what they produce (for what it's worth).
".....concentrate on proper coding standards (comments etc etc) before ever worrying about the rest of the infrastructure"
"Configuration and documentation management would come third, and not too late either"
How can you mention requirements specs and design specs and say that coding standards, of all things, should be tackled before configuration control, document management and project infrastructure ?
".....the intergration of the menus is a much needed improvment."
Errr.....hasn't Mandrake had this menu integration since at least Mandrake 8.2 (probably earlier, but I can't remember now) ?
Or is that what you meant by "No comparison" ?
You may have a point about the default interface looking better - I don't know, I've not used the new Red Hat distribution. But I don't know a single Linux user who doesn't tweak his/her environment to get it just the way they like it.
"It's very sad that such an influential news website as/. is lowering itself to promoting incremental upgrades of individual distributions".
No, it isn't. It's interesting techie news, and news that will interest a lot of people here. Let's watch and see how many comments get posted to this article, to find out whether I'm right.
"The focus should be on the overall effort of the Linux development community".
Then why don't we talk about the excellent community that exists around Mandrake (more so than some other distros), and let's discuss whether this has helped make Mandrake 9.0 a superb release or not.
"I understand how important Mandarke is.....since it is for 'n00bs'".
Not just for n00bs. I use it, I'm pretty happy with it, and I've been a Unix programmer (and system administrator) for 15 years, and a Linux user for many of those years. If Mandrake can stop the occasional QA howlers, it'll be even better. But they've really made an effort with 9.0 - let's find out whether they've succeeded.
"...the focus should still be on the overall development of the kernel".
Why ? Of course it's of interest, but it's not the only thing. The kernel, on its own, is more-of-less useless - it doesn't do anything on its own. But what is does do is enable everything else to work. It is a means to an end. That end is a may be a work tool, a plaything, a communication tool, or a hobby (for some even a cause). Any of those ends, or the means to those ends, is worthy of discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm generally not a big fan of open source and anit-capitalist solutions....."
Except where I make money from them !!!
I've got to point out this site for improving fonts even more. The difference it made to my fonts was amazing - and I was already using sub-pixel rendering and a laptop display with freetype2-2.1.2 (with the bytecode interpreter compiled in).
I STRONGLY recommend you try it out - he even includes a pre-compiled libfreetype (built for Red Hat, I think, but works great on Mandrake 9.0). You'll need to put it in the right directory, and create the right symbolic links to it.
I don't know how much of the improvement is due to this guy's improvements, and how many are due to the upcoming freetype2-2.1.3, but whatever - Linux fonts are no longer inferior to look at.
Hell yes, but a little thing happened last year in September that pushed civil liberties to the background for the "Free World".
Without civil liberties, you do not have a "Free World".
I don't know how the healthcare system works in the USA (I'm in the UK), but there's another thing worth pointing out about employer healthcare systems.
Most healthcare (but certainly not all) is needed in old age - after you retire. This is one reason why employer healthcare systems can be appear to be so cheap, relative to overall healthcare costs.
"The countries bitching about the AIDS drugs actually worked to combat HIV"
So all those poor, stupid, evil people in the third world are just sitting idly by doing nothing while people die around them ?
"To me it sounds like a Patent grab attempt"
Yeah - how important is saving millions of lives anyway, when there's money to be made ?
".....just because thier government has crappy money policy"
Ditto.
"Anyhow, my point is that all these homes are wired yet people still flock to these cafes unnecessarily."
And why do we go out to (normal) cafes / restaurants when we have food at home ?
Well it still manages to list files faster than my eyes can read them.
So don't expect me to do anything about it.
"In my driving experience, the majority of bad drivers I've seen are....."
In short, everyone except me.
Geek Volunteer Overseas - Prologue
Geek Volunteer Overseas - Arrival
1) OK, this was perhaps a little unfair on my part. I didn't mean to denigrate the Red Crescent organisation, but I wondering whether, given the original poster's comments, he would have the same level of trust of a muslim organisation. However, given his reply, it appears that he does.
Jesus, no wonder they say programmers have problems designing desktops for "normal" users.
Looks like some of them can't even get the language right. And then they expect the bloody language to change.
(NOTE: This rant is only aimed at people for whom English is a first language).
Have you really thought about what your saying for more than 5 seconds ?
Suppose the USA goes to war with Iraq. Suppose americans are taken prisoner on their way to Iraq, and imprisoned somewhere in the middle east, without any legal representation, or hope of release.
1) Will it be OK if the internation red crescent (yes there is such a thing - it's a muslim organisation) says they're being treated OK ?
2) Is it OK if those americans have no rights under the Iraqi system, as they are housed on foreign soil, and have never touched its shores ?
3) Is it OK if Iraqi troops are exempt from war crimes during the US/Iraqi war, because they're trying to defend their country against a foreign aggressor ? After all, Saddam Hussein takes it very seriously when his soldiers don't follow his rules.
"Note that journaling your filesystem only keeps the metadata intact, not the file data itself".
That depends on which journaling filesystem you use, and, sometimes, which mode you use it in.
For example, the Linux ext3 file system supports three different journaling modes: "journal", "ordered" and "writeback".
From the "mount" man page:
journal All data is committed into the journal prior to being
written into the main file system.
ordered This is the default mode. All data is forced directly
out to the main file system prior to its metadata being
committed to the journal.
writeback Data ordering is not preserved - data may be written into
the main file system after its metadata has been commit-
ted to the journal. This is rumoured to be the highest-
throughput option. It guarantees internal file system
integrity, however it can allow old data to appear in
files after a crash and journal recovery.
"You can still loose data, such as the contents of a document you were editing but had not saved".
Well unless you've got some special sort of memory, you're going to lose everything you (or the application) haven't saved, whatever type of file system you use.
Yes, but no-one would by a Linux distribution if it kept going down.
It's also nice to see this amongst the changelog:
Drag-and-drop of URLs : Improved compatibility with non-KDE apps
Good work all round, guys.
Thank you for a calm, well-reasoned comment amongst acres of rubbish.
According to a comment on the OfB.biz article, one of the things the KDE League has spent money on is a PR firm.
Perhaps that PR firm has been kept busy announcing new releases of KDE, such as KDE 3.0.4, OUT TODAY.
And the man at the centre of the storm, Andreas Pour (also known as Dre), has been busy too - here's another announcement of KDE 3.0.4 at dot.kde.org.
Nice to see he's keeping on in there and just getting on with the job. All this code doesn't just appear by magic.
I must be tired. I read that as:
6" dildos should be enough for anyone - Bill Gates
Someone else can answer for GNOME, since I'm not using it right now, but for KDE, start up Explorer, errr, Konqueror, right-click on a file, select the confusingly-named "Edit File Type..." option, then "Add..." an application to the "Application Preference" box.
"RPM is pretty crap how it dumps all your apps into /usr or /usr/bin without any thought"
......" sometime. It's the policy of whoever builds the RPM files you're complaining about, not RPM itself. But you've probably just heard a few people say "RPM is crap" and decided to jump on the bandwagon.
/apps ? How does that improve anything ? You can't just install or remove an app by creating or removing one sub-directory. That's part of the reason a tool like RPM was built in the first place.
/usr/bin into separate sub-directories (e.g. X (already done, though the X directory structure is a mess), GNOME, KDE, etc.). But how do you draw the distinction? What about IPTABLES, for instance? Is it part of the OS? Or part of a firewall application? What about KDE applications? Are they part of KDE, or separate applications? Similarly with GNOME.
And this gets modded as Insightful?
Dear God, this is a disappointment.
RPM dumps your apps wherever the person who made the RPM file told it to put them. Try running "rpm -ql
Secondly, why is it better to have all the apps in
There may well be some merit towards splitting entries in
Maybe we want to break everything down into a series of individual packages. Hang on, that sounds a bit like RPM.....
Learn about how to use RPM. Read up on the "-ql" and "-qf" options. Then if you want to complain about it, complain about some of the things it doesn't do well, or at all (many of which it wasn't really designed to do).
"If the GNU people suddenly decided that their software was no longer open source and changed their licensing"
So if the very people who invented the GPL decide to do the complete and utter opposite of what they're whole organisation is base on ?
Then why on earth did they invent the GPL ? Why didn't RMS pursue what would have been an extremely lucrative career for someone of his skills ? Why did he spend many years of his life promoting the cause of free software ?
And why does the GPL say "If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
Foundation." (emphasis mine) ?
And by the way, the FSF consider "Open Source" to be something slightly different to what they produce (for what it's worth).
".....concentrate on proper coding standards (comments etc etc) before ever worrying about the rest of the infrastructure"
"Configuration and documentation management would come third, and not too late either"
How can you mention requirements specs and design specs and say that coding standards, of all things, should be tackled before configuration control, document management and project infrastructure ?
".....the intergration of the menus is a much needed improvment."
Errr.....hasn't Mandrake had this menu integration since at least Mandrake 8.2 (probably earlier, but I can't remember now) ?
Or is that what you meant by "No comparison" ?
You may have a point about the default interface looking better - I don't know, I've not used the new Red Hat distribution. But I don't know a single Linux user who doesn't tweak his/her environment to get it just the way they like it.
Well if you use KDE, try Control Center -> Peripherals -> Mouse -> Advanced.
"It's very sad that such an influential news website as /. is lowering itself to promoting incremental upgrades of individual distributions".
No, it isn't. It's interesting techie news, and news that will interest a lot of people here. Let's watch and see how many comments get posted to this article, to find out whether I'm right.
"The focus should be on the overall effort of the Linux development community".
Then why don't we talk about the excellent community that exists around Mandrake (more so than some other distros), and let's discuss whether this has helped make Mandrake 9.0 a superb release or not.
"I understand how important Mandarke is.....since it is for 'n00bs'".
Not just for n00bs. I use it, I'm pretty happy with it, and I've been a Unix programmer (and system administrator) for 15 years, and a Linux user for many of those years. If Mandrake can stop the occasional QA howlers, it'll be even better. But they've really made an effort with 9.0 - let's find out whether they've succeeded.
"...the focus should still be on the overall development of the kernel".
Why ? Of course it's of interest, but it's not the only thing. The kernel, on its own, is more-of-less useless - it doesn't do anything on its own. But what is does do is enable everything else to work. It is a means to an end. That end is a may be a work tool, a plaything, a communication tool, or a hobby (for some even a cause). Any of those ends, or the means to those ends, is worthy of discussion.
It's been at these volumes for a few months on DALnet. Right now there's 127,488 users, according to one of the servers.
Mind you, half of those users seem to be spambots.