Take mysql and CVS... there has been nice and friendly win32 graphical tools long before any was available in Unix.
Whose fault is that? Linux is, after all, the platform where "barely good enough" is just fine. If you ask "how do I do xyz", the geeks will always refer you to some command line tool, when 90% of the people would prefer a GUI tool. If you complain, they say the CLI tool works fine, so why bother? You can't convince them that it's a problem.
Also, since I'm already jacked into the net via ethernet on my main Linux machine, which holds my mp3's, does this mean I have to get a second NIC card to plug the Receiver into?
They're called 'hubs', and you should look into one.
Internet Explorer is very slow right now, especially with loading and scrolling.
To be fair, I don't know of ANY OS X program where the scroll wheel works as well as it does on Windows. On a PC (even an older one, say, 300mhz), the scroll wheel in IE moves the page up and down, basically in real time. On OS X, you move the wheel, a bit later it jumps to that section, move the wheel some more, it waits then jumps again, etc. It's not very fluid at all, and it's very annoying.
My computer has 640 MB of RAM, I can't figure out what's so hard about scrolling a window.
Man, I was really looking forward to 8.2 for PPC. They seemed to really be getting it together. The beta has some bugs but nothing that can't be fixed.
It would not surprise me for that release to never happen now:(
Re:Cross Platform Performance Improving
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Mozilla 0.9.9 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
I commented [slashdot.org] on Mozilla's cross platform performance during the.9.6 release, and I must say, thought still noticeably slower in linux than windows - the linux performance has improved substantialy. Mozilla has been my standard browsers on my win32 platforms and it's startup time has improved enough in linux to really be useable.
If you think it's slow on Linux, be glad you're not using it under OS X.
So, how long before someone sues Apple for forcing people to buy OS-X with their Mac hardware. Is it really that much different then M$? Or are they worse. I mean, I can build an x86 system without M$ OSes. I cant do the same with a Mac
Except that Apple does not have a monopoly on personal computers. (don't get me wrong, I'd like to see the OS unbundled too, but I don't think they are doing anything "wrong" by not doing so.)
Re:Used? Maybe. New? Not hardly.
on
Low-end Laptops?
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· Score: 1
I own one, and OS X runs very slow WITH 512 MB RAM.
Re:another Linux user's experiences with OSX
on
Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 1
There are almost no books available (BN doesn't even have a Mac section anymore, while their Linux and open source section is quite large).
LOL, think for just a moment about WHY there aren't any OS X books. Hello?!?
That's right, but I'm talking about OS X, not OS 9.
OS 9 is not a fair comparison - it's more like Windows 98 than 2000. Mac users who want a stable system must use OS X. The equivalent PC operating system is Windows 2000.
Windows 2000 is far faster than OS X with the same amount of memory.
My own experience tells me that a 500mhz Mac (iBook, 640 MB RAM) runs OSX and common apps (browser, mail, newsreader, IM) at roughly the speed of a Pentium II 300 with Windows 2000. That's terrible.
Even a lowend PC these days ($700 or so) will run Windows FAST, whereas Apple's lowend end runs OS X slowly.
Most of the Mac's "speed problems" lie in the OS, not the hardware. Linux on the iBook described above flies.
Right now, you can buy a 500mhz Apple iBook for $999 brand new. It's nice hardware and the battery lasts forever, built in 802.11b, etc.
Now the bad news - the PPC distributions of Linux are not nearly as good as the x86 ones at making things "work". Plan on having to swap kernels and do a lot of tweaking to get everything working. If that's not your thing, stick to x86.
I could easily recommend this laptop once Yellow Dog or Mandrake gets their act together. It's my belief that a PPC-centric distro should at least have Airport and sound working after the install. To my knowledge, no current PPC distro will do that.
Mandrake 8.2 PPC final seems pretty close, maybe it will solve some of these problems.
The reason why Yellow Dog Linux isn't as good as other Linux distros for the PC is because Macs are a closed platform that stifles competition on purpose. Try Linux on an open platform like the PC, and it's a whole different story.
Oh, please. Yellow Dog is exactly the same Linux that runs on x86. The same things that are broken in RedHat are broken in Yellow Dog.
The same amount of information is known about the video, sound, network card in a Powerbook G4 as is known about the video, sound, and network card in a Dell. In both cases it's up to a third party (not Apple or Dell) to write and implement drivers. The problem isn't that it's PPC, the problem is that Linux is mostly useless unless you know a good deal about computers, whereas other operating systems can be used by mere mortals.
Please note that I'm not advocating "dumbing-down" Linux. I think it's important that the user be able to tweak it to their heart's content.
But there is NO justifiable reason that something as simple as setting up a network card via DHCP should be so difficult. It's just stupid. For some reason people are scared that if you make it easier, you will somehow make it less powerful, but I don't think that has to be the case.
Pump, ifconfig, netcfg, pico, whatever are great tools for the power user. They aren't great tools for a newbie, in fact, they are quite poor, since you'd have to know the name of the tool prior to using it. Just finding the name of the tool can be a challenge in itself.
Having a "K" menu item for "Ethernet Settings", on the other hand, that brought up an OS X style network configuration box, would be much more usable for many people.
The problem is that no one is interested in writing a new network setup control panel, because the existing tools work just fine. For them.
I think if we consistently held spammers financially liable for the headaches they cause, that would be sufficient deterrent and punishment.
No problem, that would work for me - but now we need a law that forces ISPs to turn over the name, address, and phone number to me so that I can sue them. Right now, most ISPs won't give you anything without a warrant.
That aside, I've always wondered why people get so upset over spam. It's not that hard to hit the delete button. I get about 10 spam mails a day. It takes about 1/2 a second to read the subject, realize it's spam, and hit the delete button. Over the course of a year, I lose 30 minutes. That's not such a big deal to me.
You're obviously not a dialup user. And at 10 a day, you receive just ONE TENTH of the amount of spam of several people I know.
Many folks can only get a 28.8 dialup connection to the internet. Downloading, reading, and deleting 50 spams a day can easily take 10-15 minutes DAILY. That's 3,600 minutes a year. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of free time.
To make matters worse, many spammers are now starting to send HTML and Flash email. On a slow connection, it can take 20 seconds just to download a single piece of email!
Please remember that not everyone is lucky enough to be sitting on a high-speed university pipe.
Is imprisonment or execution really appropriate punishment for such "crimes" as spamming, running an open relay, or software piracy?
I'd gladly trade any moral qualms I might have for the joy of seeing a few American spammers locked up. Yes, I'm serious, and no, I don't think that means I have a lack of empathy.
I think that locking up a few spammers might make future spammers think twice.
Lately, I've been experimenting with Yellow Dog Linux, a RedHat variant for PowerPC hardware. (G3, G4, Powerbook, iBook etc). After the install, I tried to get it working with my Airport Base Station, a setup that works fine for Mac OS 9, X, and various Windows clients.
For some reason, when the Yellow Dog machine gets an IP from the base station, it doesn't automatically "know" what the DNS servers are. This information is provided to the base station, and thus it's wireless clients know about the DNS servers as well. For some reason it doesn't work, and I can talk to numeric IPs but not named hosts.
Of course, when I did this under OS X, it worked on the first try, and has worked reliably for months. I never had to use to edit text files, read man pages, or get yelled at in IRC because I didn't know what "Pump" for DHCP was.
The funny thing is, not only does it not work the way it should, but that you are presumed to be stupid for not knowing why!
I've also never had to reboot my computer into command line mode because my "Xfree86 config file" went wrong.
I just want to USE my computer, not waste hours reading Usenet and trying command after command in order to make something work that should be taken care of automatically. That's why I like Macs.
When compared to open-source software, the usefulness of proprietary software is limited. GPL'ed code can outlast the corporation that creates it.
What use is the GPL if the software created under it is unusable? I'm currently fighting with YellowDog linux, trying to get it to work with an Apple Airport Base station that hands out IPs and routes traffic.
Mac OS X and Windows clients can connect just fine and browse the web. Under YellowDog, I can ping numeric hosts, but anything that requires a lookup (www.yahoo.com) fails. No one knows why. I'm sure after I do some research and tweak some stuff, it will work. But the point is, I shouldn't have to!
Sometimes proprietary is better, because it can do a specific task with no fuss. I'm a home user, and I could care less whether my software is "free" or "Free" or "proprietary" - I just want to be able to use my computer.
1. I remember Rogers used to run an ad campain that promoted their high-speed internet by describing how fast you can download audio off the internet (this was back in the Napster days).
AT&T Broadband (in Los Angeles, anyway) was until recently running a campaign with a catchy tune about "email, chat, and MP3s, all you'll ever need" or something like that.
The first time I heard it I laughed out loud. Why doesn't the RIAA go after AT&T for promoting "piracy'? Because megacorps never go after each other, they go after the little guy instead.
Much of this problem stems from a bad choice of words. I'm referring to "ripping", which to the nerd crowd means "extracting digital audio from a cd to a computer".
To the rest of the world, however, they equate "rip" with "rip-off" as in "steal".
This whole problem is a result of bad word choice by the folks that coined the term for digital audio extraction. If they would have called it "extraction" or "transformation", Disney wouldn't be able to criticize Apple this way.
Just downloaded the isos, plan to install tonight. Crossing fingers.
For what it's worth, if you currently use Yellow Dog, they have a how-to on getting the Airport card going, and it didn't seem too bad. Yellow Dog website.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft spanks open source in the desktop operating systems market, which is the 95% of the computing population that ISN'T running a server.
Clue - users don't want to be told to use a command line in order to make their system work.
Whose fault is that? Linux is, after all, the platform where "barely good enough" is just fine. If you ask "how do I do xyz", the geeks will always refer you to some command line tool, when 90% of the people would prefer a GUI tool. If you complain, they say the CLI tool works fine, so why bother? You can't convince them that it's a problem.
It's nice to have an OS X native Notes, but what I really need is Domino Designer.
They're called 'hubs', and you should look into one.
Do you think the user should have to have a gigahertz computer in order for a browser to not be slow? I don't - I think that's dumb.
To be fair, I don't know of ANY OS X program where the scroll wheel works as well as it does on Windows. On a PC (even an older one, say, 300mhz), the scroll wheel in IE moves the page up and down, basically in real time. On OS X, you move the wheel, a bit later it jumps to that section, move the wheel some more, it waits then jumps again, etc. It's not very fluid at all, and it's very annoying.
My computer has 640 MB of RAM, I can't figure out what's so hard about scrolling a window.
It would not surprise me for that release to never happen now :(
If you think it's slow on Linux, be glad you're not using it under OS X.
Except that Apple does not have a monopoly on personal computers. (don't get me wrong, I'd like to see the OS unbundled too, but I don't think they are doing anything "wrong" by not doing so.)
I own one, and OS X runs very slow WITH 512 MB RAM.
LOL, think for just a moment about WHY there aren't any OS X books. Hello?!?
OS 9 is not a fair comparison - it's more like Windows 98 than 2000. Mac users who want a stable system must use OS X. The equivalent PC operating system is Windows 2000.
Windows 2000 is far faster than OS X with the same amount of memory.
Even a lowend PC these days ($700 or so) will run Windows FAST, whereas Apple's lowend end runs OS X slowly.
Most of the Mac's "speed problems" lie in the OS, not the hardware. Linux on the iBook described above flies.
Now the bad news - the PPC distributions of Linux are not nearly as good as the x86 ones at making things "work". Plan on having to swap kernels and do a lot of tweaking to get everything working. If that's not your thing, stick to x86.
I could easily recommend this laptop once Yellow Dog or Mandrake gets their act together. It's my belief that a PPC-centric distro should at least have Airport and sound working after the install. To my knowledge, no current PPC distro will do that.
Mandrake 8.2 PPC final seems pretty close, maybe it will solve some of these problems.
Oh, please. Yellow Dog is exactly the same Linux that runs on x86. The same things that are broken in RedHat are broken in Yellow Dog.
The same amount of information is known about the video, sound, network card in a Powerbook G4 as is known about the video, sound, and network card in a Dell. In both cases it's up to a third party (not Apple or Dell) to write and implement drivers. The problem isn't that it's PPC, the problem is that Linux is mostly useless unless you know a good deal about computers, whereas other operating systems can be used by mere mortals.
Please note that I'm not advocating "dumbing-down" Linux. I think it's important that the user be able to tweak it to their heart's content.
But there is NO justifiable reason that something as simple as setting up a network card via DHCP should be so difficult. It's just stupid. For some reason people are scared that if you make it easier, you will somehow make it less powerful, but I don't think that has to be the case.
Pump, ifconfig, netcfg, pico, whatever are great tools for the power user. They aren't great tools for a newbie, in fact, they are quite poor, since you'd have to know the name of the tool prior to using it. Just finding the name of the tool can be a challenge in itself.
Having a "K" menu item for "Ethernet Settings", on the other hand, that brought up an OS X style network configuration box, would be much more usable for many people.
The problem is that no one is interested in writing a new network setup control panel, because the existing tools work just fine. For them.
Uh, who do I file a lawsuit against? In what court? I don't even know if they are in the USA until I get that information from their ISP!
No problem, that would work for me - but now we need a law that forces ISPs to turn over the name, address, and phone number to me so that I can sue them. Right now, most ISPs won't give you anything without a warrant.
You're obviously not a dialup user. And at 10 a day, you receive just ONE TENTH of the amount of spam of several people I know.
Many folks can only get a 28.8 dialup connection to the internet. Downloading, reading, and deleting 50 spams a day can easily take 10-15 minutes DAILY. That's 3,600 minutes a year. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of free time.
To make matters worse, many spammers are now starting to send HTML and Flash email. On a slow connection, it can take 20 seconds just to download a single piece of email!
Please remember that not everyone is lucky enough to be sitting on a high-speed university pipe.
I'd gladly trade any moral qualms I might have for the joy of seeing a few American spammers locked up. Yes, I'm serious, and no, I don't think that means I have a lack of empathy.
I think that locking up a few spammers might make future spammers think twice.
Laugh all you want, but GUI applications are what make computers usable for the 99% of the population that AREN'T computer geeks.
For some reason, when the Yellow Dog machine gets an IP from the base station, it doesn't automatically "know" what the DNS servers are. This information is provided to the base station, and thus it's wireless clients know about the DNS servers as well. For some reason it doesn't work, and I can talk to numeric IPs but not named hosts.
Of course, when I did this under OS X, it worked on the first try, and has worked reliably for months. I never had to use to edit text files, read man pages, or get yelled at in IRC because I didn't know what "Pump" for DHCP was.
The funny thing is, not only does it not work the way it should, but that you are presumed to be stupid for not knowing why!
I've also never had to reboot my computer into command line mode because my "Xfree86 config file" went wrong.
I just want to USE my computer, not waste hours reading Usenet and trying command after command in order to make something work that should be taken care of automatically. That's why I like Macs.
What use is the GPL if the software created under it is unusable? I'm currently fighting with YellowDog linux, trying to get it to work with an Apple Airport Base station that hands out IPs and routes traffic.
Mac OS X and Windows clients can connect just fine and browse the web. Under YellowDog, I can ping numeric hosts, but anything that requires a lookup (www.yahoo.com) fails. No one knows why. I'm sure after I do some research and tweak some stuff, it will work. But the point is, I shouldn't have to!
Sometimes proprietary is better, because it can do a specific task with no fuss. I'm a home user, and I could care less whether my software is "free" or "Free" or "proprietary" - I just want to be able to use my computer.
AT&T Broadband (in Los Angeles, anyway) was until recently running a campaign with a catchy tune about "email, chat, and MP3s, all you'll ever need" or something like that.
The first time I heard it I laughed out loud. Why doesn't the RIAA go after AT&T for promoting "piracy'? Because megacorps never go after each other, they go after the little guy instead.
To the rest of the world, however, they equate "rip" with "rip-off" as in "steal".
This whole problem is a result of bad word choice by the folks that coined the term for digital audio extraction. If they would have called it "extraction" or "transformation", Disney wouldn't be able to criticize Apple this way.
For what it's worth, if you currently use Yellow Dog, they have a how-to on getting the Airport card going, and it didn't seem too bad. Yellow Dog website.