Ditto here. I plug my Archos Gmini into my laptop, which is running Slackware, and I drag and drop music onto it, no problem.
No goofy drivers, no 3rd party software, no arcane commands. It just works.
Apple puts out a proprietary, defective-by-design consumer electronics product and won't port the required software to platforms other than Mac OS or Windows and it's somehow a Linux shortcoming?
???
I'm confused.
Re:I have an honest question.
on
Beginning GIMP
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· Score: 1
Linux sucks compared to OS X.
I use Linux as my desktop OS at home and at work. I have also used OS X... there are two modern Macs in my house and while they're shiny and pretty, the interface bugs the hell out of me... and there are very few ways of making that better.
OS X is about choice... Apple's choice. It's a one-size fits all environment and if you don't like it, the Mac zealots out there will rip you a new one.
But I can't stand OS X for even basic day-to-day stuff.
So I run KDE on Slackware. It does everything it's told and I can do literally anything I want with it and no one can tell me otherwise. And it doesn't fight with me, it just does it.
And it's free.
GIMP sucks compared to Photoshop.
I'll give you that one. I hate GIMP. But that's one app.
OpenOffice sucks compared to Microsoft Office.
Not. Have you used OpenOffice.org? Even on my Windows boxes I don't bother installing MS Office anymore, and I have Office 2003, the "latest and greatest".
Firefox sucks compared to Opera.
I'll give you that one too, but that's my subjective opinion. I have been using Opera since version 6.x or so and in my opinion Firefox has a long way to go before it's a viable alternative. But it's still better than IE.
The only honest conclusion one has to come to is that the open source development model is an extremely poor way to develop software.
Right. Like proprietary software development models don't put out absolute steaming piles of CRAP and charge money for them?
I work for an application service provider... we host Windows terminal servers for clients who log in via RDP and do everything on our servers... email, web surfing, productivity apps, you name it.
As a result of this arrangement, we have to load scads of 3rd party applications, most of which are proprietary and cost a bundle of cash.
And you know what? 99% of those apps are complete shit. Buggy, poorly documented, poorly supported (if at all), incredibly difficult to implement and manage, and essentially impossible to troubleshoot when you have inexplicable and cryptic errors.
And on top of all that, some of these "software" companies (and I use the term loosely) have the gall to throw byzantine and oppressive licensing schemes into the mix as well (can anyone say "Intuit"? Gooooood, I knew you could)... so not only do you pay a pile of money per user for awful software that barely works, once or twice a day you get to call your system administrator and kill rogue processes from it from users who aren't even logged in anymore because the shitty program thinks you have "too many users" running it for the license you paid for.
My point here in this rant?
You have encountered some FOSS that wasn't very good in your opinion. So have I. But you know what? There is a lot of shit software out there, and just as much of it if not more is proprietary in nature.
That's a fact of life in the software world. The majority of applications out there suck... the nice thing about Free and Open Source Software is that if you get something that sucks at least you didn't pay through the nose for it or get locked into some archaic format or platform in the process.
Ditto here. I'm mostly self-taught in Photoshop; my wife is a graphic designer, and the only time I would need to ask her for help is when I'm trying to accomplish something complicated technique-wise. The interface in Photoshop was always really intuitive to me and very easy to figure out.
I've been trying to force myself to use The GIMP as an alternative for a couple of YEARS now and it's pretty frustrating, even using the "GIMPShop" interface hack.
That and the lack of some simple functions -- or perhaps just hiding/labelling of some simple functions is so damnably obscure that they aren't readily apparent to me even after spending hours trying to figure them out -- make The GIMP a pretty lame alternative.
My experience has not been that Linux supports 'far more hardware out of the box that Windows'. If anything they are equal at best; the hardware support is for Linux is impressive but the driver quality, feature support and ease of installation is usually better in Windows.
In my experience, Linux has far better native hardware support than Windows.
As just one example, I have a Toshiba Satellite A75 S2112. When I install XP on it, I spend the next hour or so installing 3rd party driver after 3rd party driver for everything under the sun on the goddamned thing... video, sound, modem, network, DVD drive.
When I install Slackware on it, everything works out of the box except the wireless... and with the Madwifi installed (which takes all of about a minute and a half), that works too.
All that with the default 2.4.29 kernel that comes with Slack 10.1.
And do you know what the punchline is? On this laptop is a neat little "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" plate embedded in the outside of it that I can't remove without creating an eyesore out of the shell.
Considering how big a pain in the ass it is to get XP to work on the bloody thing, it should really read "Designed for Slackware Linux"... installation of Slack on this laptop takes around half the time and is a hell of a lot easier.
It probably helps if you're >=6'2 and muscular. I wouldn't try the badass approach if I was tiny & weak.
You'd be surprised how well it can work though. I'm 5'6". Those who would bully are so unused to anyone showing any real backbone or self-defense that most of them don't really know how to deal with it when they encounter it, even from someone on the shorter side, like myself.
I'm an Opera user as well (predominately), and I too have encountered some weird performance issues on Slashdot threads in Opera. I've discovered that turning off the "smooth scrolling" seems to prevent them, but I know just what you're talking about.
I also agree about FF1.5... they've fixed a lot of things, but there are still some really stupid irritating things (such as the spawning a new window when you get new extensions... I hate that) that keep making me go back to Opera.
If Opera had an "adblock" and "flash block" plugin, I'd probably never use anything else.
I've heard that about Ubuntu. Another option to try may be Slackware. I've had zero trouble getting Slackware to work on any laptop on which I've installed it.
I know it's no Acer, but I'm writing this from a Toshiba Satellite A75-S2112 running Slackware 10.1. The only "special" thing I had to do was install the madwifi from source to get the on-board Atheros wireless to work. Other than that, with Slackware, everything worked right out of the gate on this laptop, and every other laptop I've tried.
Right... and that's ultimately what it comes down to. Personal preference.
To me, being able to just simply drag and drop files onto a hard-drive based player and go is important, so is being able to use it on any platform without having to go to any extreme lengths to do so. Simplicity and functionality.
For me, an iPod is simply inadequate and overpriced when I can get more functionality (and functionality closer to my expectations) with a different device.
That's not to say that I think the iPod sucks or anything... I don't. If there were no such device as the Archos Gmini 400, I probably would have settled for an iPod. But I think I'm more satisfied with what I have now.:-)
The Archos Gmini 400 -- the player I ended up buying -- does maintain an internal database. That's how I'm able to browse music on it by genre, or by artist, or by the year it was released.
That has absolutely nothing to do with how I put songs on it.
I don't have a problem with a digital music device that maintains an internal database of such information. That would just be silly. I couldn't care less about that.
And I realize that there are 3rd party hacks one can use to load an iPod.
That isn't my point. The point is, I shouldn't have to resort to hacks to use a device such as this... it should work out of the box and not require the use of such measures in order to get it to have what I consider to be normal functionality.
There's no reason why it couldn't... but they designed it this way, and I consider that to be defective design.
My beef is with the intentional restriction placed on the iPod by Apple to force users to use a proprietary app with which to load music onto the device if they want to listen to it.
I'm not against DB based players... if I am understanding the term correctly, the player I currently have maintains an internal database of metadata based on ID3 tags.
The difference is, I can load it via my file system if I don't want to use an app like MusicMatch Jukebox or WinAmp.
If iPods allowed me to do that, I probably would have bought one.
The Archos Gmini 400 player I have can do all that too, and it doesn't require me to use any one app. It can work with some computer-based music playing programs for playlist/metadata management, but it isn't required to.
Myself, I drag-and-drop actual files onto it, but then, I keep ALL my music on it all the time, so that isn't very labor intensive. Whenever I get a new CD, I rip it and add it to the music already on it.
Where playlists are concerned, I make those most of the time on the device itself, a lot of times by genre or artist, depending on my mood. I have a bunch of different playlists on it that I cycle through and play around with.
And I'll bet it doesn't take me any longer to do it on the Gmini 400 than it does you on your iPod.
That's the difference. Flexibility. It has the same capabilities, but doesn't shove one-way-and-one-way-only in your face if that's not the way you want to do it.
I can load music on my Archos player and listen to it... from ANY computer I've tried, regardless of what music apps are installed on that computer, regardless of operating system... Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
Can your iPod do that?
Oh yeah. I have several of my favorite DVDs ripped that I can watch on my Archos player too. It also has a line out adapter to display video on a TV if I want to play something that others can enjoy as well.
And the Gmini 400 has a voice recorder on it.
And a 10 hour battery life that recharges pretty quickly.
My point isn't so much a plug for my player of choice as much as it is to say that iPods and iTunes aren't exactly the be-all-end-all of digital audio players. They're good, but the majority of their popularity is due to the marketing genius of its makers, not its usability and flexibility and quality.
For slightly less money I wound up (after doing quite a lot of research) purchasing a device that is actually quite a bit more user-friendly and totally cross-platform, and has more capabilities to boot.
Stop complaining about being *required* to use iTunes; Apple can't make it mass-storage compatible, because of the record labels*. (pure conjecture)
Well that's their choice not to, isn't it?
They went well out of their way to basically limit the functionality of their product.
So it's my choice to go with a product that has no such limitations. Oh well.
And I'm fully aware of apps out there that can make the iPod functional without the use of iTunes.
That doesn't make me any happier. It's a workaround for an intentional crippling of their product. To me, that makes the product defective. Worse, because they designed this defect into it.
No thanks. I don't care about that, or their reasons for doing it. I would love an iPod, but until they "fix" that glaring problem with it and maybe add some features, I'll be sticking with a superior product that actually does more and isn't designed with flaws marketed to customers as "features".
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, that's pretty slick. I might have to give that a try! Thanks for the linkage. :)
Well, let's put this in perspective a bit.
My preferred mail client is Evolution... but Windows can't run it.
By your logic, that's a Windows shortcoming because Novell hasn't created a Windows version?
Interesting thought, but I don't follow.
Ditto here. I plug my Archos Gmini into my laptop, which is running Slackware, and I drag and drop music onto it, no problem.
No goofy drivers, no 3rd party software, no arcane commands. It just works.
Apple puts out a proprietary, defective-by-design consumer electronics product and won't port the required software to platforms other than Mac OS or Windows and it's somehow a Linux shortcoming?
???
I'm confused.
Linux sucks compared to OS X.
I use Linux as my desktop OS at home and at work. I have also used OS X... there are two modern Macs in my house and while they're shiny and pretty, the interface bugs the hell out of me... and there are very few ways of making that better.
OS X is about choice... Apple's choice. It's a one-size fits all environment and if you don't like it, the Mac zealots out there will rip you a new one.
But I can't stand OS X for even basic day-to-day stuff.
So I run KDE on Slackware. It does everything it's told and I can do literally anything I want with it and no one can tell me otherwise. And it doesn't fight with me, it just does it.
And it's free.
GIMP sucks compared to Photoshop.
I'll give you that one. I hate GIMP. But that's one app.
OpenOffice sucks compared to Microsoft Office.
Not. Have you used OpenOffice.org? Even on my Windows boxes I don't bother installing MS Office anymore, and I have Office 2003, the "latest and greatest".
Firefox sucks compared to Opera.
I'll give you that one too, but that's my subjective opinion. I have been using Opera since version 6.x or so and in my opinion Firefox has a long way to go before it's a viable alternative. But it's still better than IE.
The only honest conclusion one has to come to is that the open source development model is an extremely poor way to develop software.
Right. Like proprietary software development models don't put out absolute steaming piles of CRAP and charge money for them?
I work for an application service provider... we host Windows terminal servers for clients who log in via RDP and do everything on our servers... email, web surfing, productivity apps, you name it.
As a result of this arrangement, we have to load scads of 3rd party applications, most of which are proprietary and cost a bundle of cash.
And you know what? 99% of those apps are complete shit. Buggy, poorly documented, poorly supported (if at all), incredibly difficult to implement and manage, and essentially impossible to troubleshoot when you have inexplicable and cryptic errors.
And on top of all that, some of these "software" companies (and I use the term loosely) have the gall to throw byzantine and oppressive licensing schemes into the mix as well (can anyone say "Intuit"? Gooooood, I knew you could)... so not only do you pay a pile of money per user for awful software that barely works, once or twice a day you get to call your system administrator and kill rogue processes from it from users who aren't even logged in anymore because the shitty program thinks you have "too many users" running it for the license you paid for.
My point here in this rant?
You have encountered some FOSS that wasn't very good in your opinion. So have I. But you know what? There is a lot of shit software out there, and just as much of it if not more is proprietary in nature.
That's a fact of life in the software world. The majority of applications out there suck... the nice thing about Free and Open Source Software is that if you get something that sucks at least you didn't pay through the nose for it or get locked into some archaic format or platform in the process.
Ditto here. I'm mostly self-taught in Photoshop; my wife is a graphic designer, and the only time I would need to ask her for help is when I'm trying to accomplish something complicated technique-wise. The interface in Photoshop was always really intuitive to me and very easy to figure out.
I've been trying to force myself to use The GIMP as an alternative for a couple of YEARS now and it's pretty frustrating, even using the "GIMPShop" interface hack.
That and the lack of some simple functions -- or perhaps just hiding/labelling of some simple functions is so damnably obscure that they aren't readily apparent to me even after spending hours trying to figure them out -- make The GIMP a pretty lame alternative.
You definitely can burn them for friends. In fact, buring iTunes tracks to CD and then re-reripping them is the easiest way to remove the DRM.
Considering the loss in quality in re-ripping using that method, that's not really a valid alternative.
It's a lot easier to just pay $5-$8 buying used CD's via Amazon. DRM-free music with which you can do anything you want.
Adobe Reader is a train wreck. I'll bet opening PDFs would work better for you if you used a different reader.
My experience has not been that Linux supports 'far more hardware out of the box that Windows'. If anything they are equal at best; the hardware support is for Linux is impressive but the driver quality, feature support and ease of installation is usually better in Windows.
In my experience, Linux has far better native hardware support than Windows.
As just one example, I have a Toshiba Satellite A75 S2112. When I install XP on it, I spend the next hour or so installing 3rd party driver after 3rd party driver for everything under the sun on the goddamned thing... video, sound, modem, network, DVD drive.
When I install Slackware on it, everything works out of the box except the wireless... and with the Madwifi installed (which takes all of about a minute and a half), that works too.
All that with the default 2.4.29 kernel that comes with Slack 10.1.
And do you know what the punchline is? On this laptop is a neat little "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" plate embedded in the outside of it that I can't remove without creating an eyesore out of the shell.
Considering how big a pain in the ass it is to get XP to work on the bloody thing, it should really read "Designed for Slackware Linux"... installation of Slack on this laptop takes around half the time and is a hell of a lot easier.
Ditto here. Personally, I can't stand GIMP, but it can read Adobe PSD files. It even preserves the layers.
It probably helps if you're >=6'2 and muscular. I wouldn't try the badass approach if I was tiny & weak.
You'd be surprised how well it can work though. I'm 5'6". Those who would bully are so unused to anyone showing any real backbone or self-defense that most of them don't really know how to deal with it when they encounter it, even from someone on the shorter side, like myself.
Damn skippy.
Whomever said "violence never solves anything" obviously never got the shit kicked out of him by 2 or 3 neanderthals after school.
I know one thing for sure. After I finally said "fuck this" and started defending myself, nobody ever messed with me in my school again. Period.
I'm an Opera user as well (predominately), and I too have encountered some weird performance issues on Slashdot threads in Opera. I've discovered that turning off the "smooth scrolling" seems to prevent them, but I know just what you're talking about.
I also agree about FF1.5... they've fixed a lot of things, but there are still some really stupid irritating things (such as the spawning a new window when you get new extensions... I hate that) that keep making me go back to Opera.
If Opera had an "adblock" and "flash block" plugin, I'd probably never use anything else.
I've heard that about Ubuntu. Another option to try may be Slackware. I've had zero trouble getting Slackware to work on any laptop on which I've installed it.
I know it's no Acer, but I'm writing this from a Toshiba Satellite A75-S2112 running Slackware 10.1. The only "special" thing I had to do was install the madwifi from source to get the on-board Atheros wireless to work. Other than that, with Slackware, everything worked right out of the gate on this laptop, and every other laptop I've tried.
My 2 cents.
Right... and that's ultimately what it comes down to. Personal preference.
:-)
To me, being able to just simply drag and drop files onto a hard-drive based player and go is important, so is being able to use it on any platform without having to go to any extreme lengths to do so. Simplicity and functionality.
For me, an iPod is simply inadequate and overpriced when I can get more functionality (and functionality closer to my expectations) with a different device.
That's not to say that I think the iPod sucks or anything... I don't. If there were no such device as the Archos Gmini 400, I probably would have settled for an iPod. But I think I'm more satisfied with what I have now.
Good lord. 5gb?
As in 5 gigabytes?
Heh. I think we're comaring apples to oranges here.
The Archos player can work with a number of different computer-based music apps, like WinAmp or MusicMatch Jukebox.
My point is, it doesn't have to.
No, my database is on my computer as well.
My point is, the iPod requires that. My player does not.
That is not a "feature". That is a defect.
I think you've never used an Archos Gmini for a week.
The Archos Gmini 400 -- the player I ended up buying -- does maintain an internal database. That's how I'm able to browse music on it by genre, or by artist, or by the year it was released.
That has absolutely nothing to do with how I put songs on it.
I don't have a problem with a digital music device that maintains an internal database of such information. That would just be silly. I couldn't care less about that.
And I realize that there are 3rd party hacks one can use to load an iPod.
That isn't my point. The point is, I shouldn't have to resort to hacks to use a device such as this... it should work out of the box and not require the use of such measures in order to get it to have what I consider to be normal functionality.
There's no reason why it couldn't... but they designed it this way, and I consider that to be defective design.
My beef is with the intentional restriction placed on the iPod by Apple to force users to use a proprietary app with which to load music onto the device if they want to listen to it.
I'm not against DB based players... if I am understanding the term correctly, the player I currently have maintains an internal database of metadata based on ID3 tags.
The difference is, I can load it via my file system if I don't want to use an app like MusicMatch Jukebox or WinAmp.
If iPods allowed me to do that, I probably would have bought one.
Whether it sucks or not is irrelevent. That is nowhere near my point.
I'm not sure how it gets easier than putting in a new CD, ripping it, and then plugging in my player's USB cable and copying the album to it.
I suppose I could rip directly to it, and skip a step.
I guess I don't follow what you're saying. How does adding the necessity for a proprietary app make things somehow "easier"?
???
The Archos Gmini 400 player I have can do all that too, and it doesn't require me to use any one app. It can work with some computer-based music playing programs for playlist/metadata management, but it isn't required to.
Myself, I drag-and-drop actual files onto it, but then, I keep ALL my music on it all the time, so that isn't very labor intensive. Whenever I get a new CD, I rip it and add it to the music already on it.
Where playlists are concerned, I make those most of the time on the device itself, a lot of times by genre or artist, depending on my mood. I have a bunch of different playlists on it that I cycle through and play around with.
And I'll bet it doesn't take me any longer to do it on the Gmini 400 than it does you on your iPod.
That's the difference. Flexibility. It has the same capabilities, but doesn't shove one-way-and-one-way-only in your face if that's not the way you want to do it.
I can load music on my Archos player and listen to it... from ANY computer I've tried, regardless of what music apps are installed on that computer, regardless of operating system... Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
Can your iPod do that?
Oh yeah. I have several of my favorite DVDs ripped that I can watch on my Archos player too. It also has a line out adapter to display video on a TV if I want to play something that others can enjoy as well.
And the Gmini 400 has a voice recorder on it.
And a 10 hour battery life that recharges pretty quickly.
My point isn't so much a plug for my player of choice as much as it is to say that iPods and iTunes aren't exactly the be-all-end-all of digital audio players. They're good, but the majority of their popularity is due to the marketing genius of its makers, not its usability and flexibility and quality.
For slightly less money I wound up (after doing quite a lot of research) purchasing a device that is actually quite a bit more user-friendly and totally cross-platform, and has more capabilities to boot.
Stop complaining about being *required* to use iTunes; Apple can't make it mass-storage compatible, because of the record labels*. (pure conjecture)
Well that's their choice not to, isn't it?
They went well out of their way to basically limit the functionality of their product.
So it's my choice to go with a product that has no such limitations. Oh well.
And I'm fully aware of apps out there that can make the iPod functional without the use of iTunes.
That doesn't make me any happier. It's a workaround for an intentional crippling of their product. To me, that makes the product defective. Worse, because they designed this defect into it.
No thanks. I don't care about that, or their reasons for doing it. I would love an iPod, but until they "fix" that glaring problem with it and maybe add some features, I'll be sticking with a superior product that actually does more and isn't designed with flaws marketed to customers as "features".
I ended up buying an Archos Gmini 400. I bought it for $300 on Amazon.com and got a $25 mail-in-rebate, so it came out to around $275.
I've had it since June, and so far I have to say, I'm very pleased with it.