So I wonder what old George feels about fanfiction? After all, that's often a big rewrite of things, or an addition to the official "canon" of a story/series. Yet I wouldn't doubt that some of the most dedicated fans (at least of anime) are good fanfic writers.
In fact, in the anime fandom world, fanfiction is a very much established part of fandom. Take, for example, the work at theria.net, which has THE best Slayers fanfics I've seen, some of which (I think) are of like quality with the actual Slayers anime series. In Japan, the corporations and the laws distinguish between "public" publications (say, running Sailormoon in the popular Kodansha magazine) and "private" publications (the thriving doujinshi environment of unofficial, but legal, fan work based on copyrighted material).
To say that fandom is something that should be limited to retelling someone else's vision strikes me as an extremely narrow statement that would have an adverse effect on fandom, and entertainment in general, if it were to suddenly become true.
Not that it makes it any less silly, of course. You might run over to kuro5hin or another reputable news source for the rest of the day if it's really that big of a deal (which I never understand but don't argue with either:3 ), there are other sites than Slashdot to fulfill your mindless headline propogation needs for 36 hours. ^_^;
The point of this has always seemed to me not to have just the word be the password, but also the subtleties of the user's voice. ie, if I speak my password then it lets me log on, but if you speak it it recognizes that you're not me and denies access.
The biggest problem with this technology is making it work correctly when, say, user has a cold. How do you let them log on then, but still deny other people? And how do you deal with recordings? I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way though. It would be really in depth, granted, and although I don't actually know the state of voice recognition out there, I have my doubts that it's already implemented in a nice Free package.
IIRC Neovangelist said he was going to work up that bit as something that could be submitted to the main FreeBSD-CURRENT branch. So, the answer to your question is yes.:)
Heh, the problem with Linux is the hype. Sure, you attract a lot of really talented people. But you also attract people just because Linux is 'cool'.
I've started out with Linux, but I've been considering sampling one of the BSDs for a while. I'd been wavering between Net and Free, but I guess the balance has now been cast towards Free. ^^;
Okayokayokay. How many of you went to the site and said, "Oh, this is supposed to be a new OS, but all there is is a Sawfish skin. Therefore, this loser thinks he can recreate an OS by skinning GNOME, this is fuck stupid, QED."
Go read the site again. All the way through. This being Slashdot doesn't excuse you -_^ This is supposed to be basically a rewrite of FreeBSD to integrate X and (eventually) provide some really snazzy features. Sure, it's ambitious. But what new OS project isn't? True, he doesn't have a distribution available yet. But he's admitted that it probably wouldn't run on most people's machine yet either. Even so, this isn't entirely useless info. It's attracting attention of potential developers. These things take time, and the project is only just begun. To the naysayers, I make this challenge. Go home, take your favorite free Unix kernel, and rewrite it. Integrate X. Add voice recognition. Rewrite the desktop layer. Now, do this all by yourself and see how long it takes.
Then again, you could also try remembering that slashdot doesn't exist for your own personal gratification, so there may occasionally pop up headlines that you just don't want to read about. Do us all a favor and skip over them instead of flaming. This may be/., but let's not turn it into alt.* USENET. Try showing a little maturity for once.
Personally, I'm very interested in this, seriously. It's making me figure out how to fit in a FreeBSD partition on my box. I'm not particularly talented in any hackish area, I think it'd be really cool to work on this once I got up to speed...
Aren't you forgetting? One of the strengths of open source is supposed to be the ability to draw people of many skills out of seemingly nowhere, so he doesn't have to do it all HIMSELF. Bakabaka:P
Personally, I'm pretty interested by this and am awaiting the first release. I'm even going to go install FreeBSD when I can manage an extra partition so I can get up to speed.
> The Linux cult cannot accept software from the Evil Ones.
My point exactly. They can't handle the fact that MS has a far better OS than their toy, Linux.
As much as I hate to respond to such blatant OS advocacy:3
It may be hard to remember, especially somewhere like here with a very vocal band of rabid zealots on every side of every issue, but not all of us Linux users are like that. Personally, I use Sylpheed and I don't care what other people use to read their email. I send my family virus alerts for big stuff when I hear about it, but that's it. I don't harp on them because they don't use Free (as in... yeah) Software. I use Unix. Other people don't. Big deal.
<retaliation>
It's not nice to randomly call other people's preferred tools toys, by the way. ^_^; Linux is a valid Unix-like operating system. It's no more a toy than BSDlite, System 7, or Windows 2000 Professional. Unless you'd like to imply that the operating systems that serve practically everything on the Internet (Unix variants and Windows-based server platforms) are toys, I'd take some more time to consider what you say. Remember, when you make unbacked claims like that you're no better than the "Linux bigots" (or ANY OS bigots) you (and, coincidentally, I) hate so much.
Hopefully the ATI drivers do TV in/out without lots of finagling now... I got TV in to work (kind of) with old gatos CVS drivers, but TV out under X never worked.So, how many releases until someone gets around to converting this to autoconf/automake? -_^
As for the actual "edit mime types" menu link, it calls an old name of the capplet that handles file types. But yeah, my GMC associations are screwed and I'll be visiting GNOME IRC channels to (try to) fix it once I have my main computer back on the Internet. I'm kind of wary of trying Nautilus again, I didn't like the feel of it ^_^;
Shockwave support can be achieved through use of Macromedia's plugin if your browser supports Netscape-style plugins. From personal experience, it's quite good... it plays the Glove on Fight movies flawlessly. It used to have timing issues with that Zero Wing thing, but under Galeon 1.x it seems to be fine.I haven't tried KDE yet, so I don't know much about Konqueror...
And I'm not mentioning this just for the generic "smaller footprint than Mozilla", "it's Mozilla Lite", etc etc etc stuff that gets repeated everywhere.Since Galeon 1.0 released, I've used it extensively and said to myself, "This is kind of like Internet Explorer... only better."Fullscreen is bound to the same key even (although i hacked it to F10 since I use F11 for windows list), it has a similar feel to the app windows (suitably translated to the GNOME look/feel du theme). Its preferences window is IMO prettier than IE's (for me, a system not only has to be usable and powerful but aesthetically pleasing:), and international support is just as good (eg, Japanese fonts load/display correctly, and I've only seen Korean displayed under Galeon). Add to that the tabbed browsing (I do prefer the Galeon version, even though it's not all THAT different) and you've got a really nice product. And yes, there ARE plugins:)I started out with Mozilla and kind of tolerated it (since my FIRST browser was Netscape), but Galeon is (for me) the nicest browser I've used. Certainly it can compete with IE, and I'd bet it's more secure:) You also have other good choices... old Netscape and Emacs users will like Mozilla for the "kitchen-sink" perspective ( -_^ ), you've got official Netscape 6 releases for Unix (well, at least for Solaris, probably not Linux-based systems), Konqueror (which is REALLY popular among KDE users and said to be a very high quality product), and Opera (which is also a Win32 product, or at least was). Certainly we have good browsers, at least IMO.
Indeed ^_^ The new gnomecc, interestingly enough, reminds me (but only vaguely) of screens I've seen of the OS X System Preferences box. I like the dual-pane nature of the new gnomecc more, though. It's definitely an improvement!Now, to figure out how I fscked up my file-types... (which is almost definitely my fault though)
... has hit its pre-major-release alpha/beta cycle. AbiWord 0.99.1 is available for download from their SourceForge project page, although it hasn't been announced on abisource.com yet, oddly enough. You can even get $(SYSTEM_PACKAGE_FILE_FORMAT)s for it.
Once you get it configured and compiled, it's a reliable and powerful system. But if the kernel is too hard to configure and compile, that severely limits how widely Linux can get adopted. I have a serious question for you. When's the last time you configured and compiled kernel32.dll? No? How about the Mac OS 9 system executable? Never?Kernel configuration and compilation only needs to be a one-time event at distributor HQ. Users should not have to worry about such things. Imagine the impact on Windows use if it did:) The latest 2.4 kernels still have compilation problems in some drivers (2.4.17 has problems in USB, 2.4.18pre4 has problems in one of the sound drivers). Congratulations, you've proven that *gasp!* some modules are still immature. Fortunately, nothing else. It is a major inconvenience, don't get me wrong, and it alienates people who need to use those modules. However, it's hardly a fatal shortcoming. Every time you recompile the kernel, you need to recompile some kernel modules. If you're recompiling the kernel, taking the time to compile modules isn't that much of an inconvenience IMO. What makes "make bzImage ; cp arch/(arch)/boot/bzImage/boot/(img_name) ; $(editor)/etc/lilo.conf ; (add section) ; lilo" more convenient than "make modules; make modules_install"? Dependencies and recompilation aren't working correctly--some things don't recompile when they should, and lots of things recompile over and over and over again. I have to admit ignorance, being an i386 user, which you have to admit the kernel is kind of geared towards (in that linuxppc, arm, etc are still not always fully integrated). Exactly what problems are you referring to? I don't want to say there aren't any, but I haven't had any. The kernel itself is a 30Mbyte download. Yes? Your point? It compiles to less than 1Mbyte. Do either of these arguments really mean anything here? Not that I can see. The kernel hackers keep telling us that C and make are just great tools for building kernels. Reasoning: C is the traditional Unix language. Why? Because it's reasonably portable, due in part to Unix's popularity. This is not a system I can recommend to non-technical users Non-technical users wouldn't ever want to rebuild their kernel. So why should the kernel build process be streamlined for their benefit? If they need an "unsupported" or for some reason different configuration and they can't do it themselves, let them do what a corporate $(OTHER_OS) user would do: call in the technical support people. This is why companies like Red Hat exist in the first place. It must be possible to write drivers and other kernel modules that can be compiled separately from the kernel and work across many versions. Binary modules really should keep working across minor version number changes (2.2 to 2.4, for example). Okay, first: you *can* compile modules separately from the kernel. I've done it. Want an example? ALSA, and the TI calculator link module. Secondly, IANA experienced kernel hacker, but the reason there's that minor version difference is because things *changed*. If it were so different that we started a whole new stable branch, chances are something *significant* has changed.Heck, modules aren't guaranteed to compile across tiny version numbers, but most do without problems.
It must be possible to write kernel modules with more safety in mind. There should also be some way to apply some memory protection to kernel modules when desired. Well, exactly what do you mean by memory protection? The build system needs to get fixed. There is no reason why adding or removing a module should result in a recompilation of the whole kernel. Maybe it's time to get rid of "make" altogether for the kernel. Again, what is wrong with the build system? Please be specific if you've encountered problems. Also, there is no reason why adding or removing a module should result in a recompilation of the whole kernel. In my experience, if that's the case, you're doing something wrong. The configuration system needs to get fixed. The kinds of questions it asks right now just cannot be answered by a normal user. Redundant, please see my comment about "normal" users above:) In fact, there really shouldn't be much of any configuration: all the different options should be dynamically loadable. Yes, this even means MMX-optimized versions of some piece of code or other.You have two options for this as I see it: just-in-time compilation of the kernel (ICKY!) or wasting space with all the different "versions" of the kernel binaries (also icky, but not as). flexible dynamic binding of functions at runtimeBuzzword alert! -_^ allow people to start writing kernel components in languages other than C, foremost C++. I like C++, but it's not as portable as C yet. It might be fine for Microsoft, who only makes products for one platform and one compiler, essentially. Not so Linux. And while MOST people compile linux with gcc (I bet), g++ still isn't as "feature-rich" as some other compilers. (It's still really nice, though, I like it:) C++ can really help with safety, security, resource management, and modularity.
So can learning to code correctly and efficiently. Programming languages are NOT silver bullets to be applied massively to CS problems.This post sounds kind of like something I, as a student, should be expected to write: trying to apply hard-and-fast pure CS theory to real-life problems.
Off-topic? Stating the ironic quirkiness of 2.4 in a thread about problems people have been having in 2.4 is off-topic? C'mon. The 2.4 series has had a few problems. I haven't had them. I don't want it to be true, and I fervently wish it weren't. But 2.4 wasn't a joy-ride for everyone. While this post was a little too cynical for my tastes, it wasn't off-topic. Hell, it wasn't necessarily too wrong, either.Moderation Totals: Offtopic=1, Insightful=1, Total=2. (Score 2: Offtopic)Why was this modded as such?
My current linux kernel is about 800kb. The Mach kernel from OS X is about 4 megs (based on terminal screens I've seen on Ars Technica). kernel32.dll is 500kb, but I have no idea what's actually IN it, so that isn't necessarily representative... (kernel32 + user32 = 1 meg).
Oh, and MOST nonessential items in the linux kernel *are* modular. USB? Got a module for my USB printer. Compiled USB in, don't know why. I just haven't moved it out yet. Sound? Modular. (I use ALSA, BTW.) Filesystems? I only have three compiled in: ext2, ext3, iso9660. Hell, I could probably move out iso9660 if I really wanted to; the exts are there because the filesystem you boot root as needs to be compiled in; I use ext3, but ext2 is there for safety more than anything else.
linux may be monolithic, but that doesn't mean it can't be modular. It is, very much so.
As far as I know pre-emptive multitasking is a basic feature in ANY Unix. EVERY linux kernel (and BSD kernel, and Mach kernel... ) does pre-emptive multitasking.
"But what about the pre-emptive patch?"
That makes it so that a process in kernel context can be pre-empted. See, Unix processes generally run in two modes: user mode (userland) for your general computation and boring stuff like that, and system/kernel mode for stuff like requesting hardware access. Normally when the system is in a kernel context a task switch isn't allowed, so the kernel can't be interrupted (pre-empted). Robert Love's patch changes this so that a process can be pre-empted at any time, even when it's context-switched to be in kernel mode (assuming it's not in a spinlock, etc.)
Graphing kernel releases vs. time is always interesting:) (Especially with that 2.4.15/2.4.16 snafu... hey, 24 hours between point releases. Oh well, no Universal PnP bugs ^_^; ) Especially if you track every "official" release, including -preX releases.
So what's your point? Here's what I did: I got an old Word 97 CD that nobody uses anymore and stole all the fonts from it. Add that directory to X's font path and BINGO. Universal anitaliased bliss ^_^ Then, if you're so inclined, remove the old bitmapped fonts' directories from the font path and you never have to worry about them again. I didn't have to patch the X server or anything special. (Well, I did have to run a program to generate scaling information in lieu of running xfontdir, but since you'd have to do xfontdir anyway... ) Of course, it's probably good out of principle to keep "fixed" around...Mind you, I haven't tried the version of this story involving "kill all the old X fonts" yet:) However, there's nothing wrong with Truetype support under XFree86 4.1.0, certainly. I haven't looked at a poorly rendered font since I did this... and it's not like it would be terribly difficult for distributions to do out of the box. The only question is where do we get the free TT fonts:) And I'm not even sure if that would be a problem.
Although I'm sure this is already lost in the flood of comments:)
I started out running Debian 2.2r2(3?), which had a 2.2 kernel. I never had any problems with it, and I didn't have very fancy hardware. I did have a fun ride getting integrated i815 audio/video to work (that was all I had then). Upgrading to 2.4.4 didn't really help with that issue... I had impeccable stability, but I never really pushed the envelope:)
Things got more interesting around 2.4.10, partly because my HD crashed (the Deathstar effect) and I rebuilt my system. Lack of MIDI for the SB Live! finally drove me to use ALSA drivers (SB Live! MIDI hasn't worked for me with OSS drivers). No problems support-wise for the Radeon-based card I had for kernel-related issues (kernel DRI mainly). Nice USB support except for the cheap Visioneer 4400 scanner I had (which isn't the kernel's fault). Stability and performance under medium loads has been generally good. I flirted with the pre-emptive and lock-breaking patches for a while, but things got really messy under 2.4.17 (stuff happened that I stopped using Windows to get away from, ie, sudden hard system freezes), so I dropped back to 2.4.16 with no patches. I'll probably try again with.18 or something. The only speed complaint I've really had is gmc takes a long time to scan directories with lots of stuff in them:)
Now, I haven't really had many problems. 2.4.13-ac8 oopsed, but since I was panicking about midterms at the time I didn't really look at it that closely, and never got around to actually reading the oops screen (I took a pic of it with someone else's camera... ). I haven't taken time to find out why yet, but XMMS' memory footprint has this habit of growing unbounded ^^; The ALSA output plugins make it worse.
For the curious: my system is a P3 866 with 128 megs of RAM to start. I upgraded to 512 megs in July when I was running 2.4.4; that's the most memory my motherboard can take, alas. Heaviest loads include running XMMS, apache, xinetd, xchat, and compiles at the same time, so not too bad. Apache was mainly serving stuff to one or two people at maybe 20-30k/sec. I've been generally happy with the 2.4 series, but since I haven't really pushed my system hard yet I may experience problems later when I do:3
If you need a 2.4 (I need for my hardware), use 2.4.9. The last kernel before the new VM. It may not be the fastest kernel out there, but it is quite stable. But definitely do not anything between 2.4.10 and 2.4.17.
Huh... interesting. What hardware are you running on? Just curious, since I read a report on LKML (the thread is the flamefest-titled "Rik spreading bullshit about VM" ^^; ) where someone was hypothesizing that that very range of kernels might be kind of a "sweet spot" for the AA VM... at least on their hardware, I guess.
Personally, I haven't really had any problems with 2.4... the only bad thing I've had happen is an odd oops using 2.4.13-ac8 which I still haven't looked at the screen for that much. Of course, there might be other issues at play on my system since I did a Very Stupid Thing with the kernel headers... An interesting thing though, I couldn't run a self-compiled X under 2.4.14 (IIRC), the binaries kept segfaulting until I did that VST and changed what was in/usr/include/linux and/usr/include/asm (I know... ^^; now I know better). However, that change is probably going to have me go and recompile a lot of software on my system now after I change the headers back to what I had on the system at the time. (Or just rebuild my entire system:3 ) (Yes, I'm one of those linux from scratch weirdos... )
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Chapter 12, sec. 1201. In other words, anything that happens to be protecting copyrighted work falls under the DMCA's jurisdiction. So, if you happen to be protecting copyrighed work by chmod'ing it 600 and someone cirvumvents your Unix file access, they're violating the DMCA and can be sent to prison or fined a lot of money.
Take Unix, for instance, It was a spare-time hack done in the back room by a handful of techies trying to turn an abandoned computer into something useful. Yes. Let's take UNIX, actually. How many people worked on UNIX in its
initial developmental stage? Not a whole heck of
a lot. Hacker tradition holds that it was
Kernighan, Ritchie, and Dennis if my memory
serves me correctly (which I'm not 100% sure of... ) The key word is handful.Don't get me wrong. Ever since I've become an open source supporter, I've been much more than impressed with what I've seen. Heck, I trust more that Mozilla 1.0 will work correctly, and that gxanim will be able to let me watch the Utena movie in DivX format, more than I trust that Windows will work correctly at some point in the future. (And I've had some bizarre Windows crashes... as in, "Let's click on the Start Menu and watch Windows BURN!!! ten minutes after the system boots!" type crashes... ) Open source is an excellent way to develop stable, user-friendly software, and perhaps its greatest advantage is the ability to draw on a vast developer base.However, if we're to address what Microsoft calls the "chasing taillights" factor, we don't just need to be able to do amazing hacks. We need to be able to innovate, no da. And I believe that this is the point that Dan was making. I believe that it was Knuth that first hammered home the point that innovation does not happen in committee. (I mean... look at Microsoft:) I think that if we're going to have successful new OS projects, the best way to do it just might be to have a few VERY committed people sit back and get a nice, clear vision of what they want to do and how. Then, bring in the rest of the community and get down to it.Of course, I'm very willing to be proved wrong by someone:)
Slashdot Mirror
So I wonder what old George feels about fanfiction? After all, that's often a big rewrite of things, or an addition to the official "canon" of a story/series. Yet I wouldn't doubt that some of the most dedicated fans (at least of anime) are good fanfic writers.
In fact, in the anime fandom world, fanfiction is a very much established part of fandom. Take, for example, the work at theria.net, which has THE best Slayers fanfics I've seen, some of which (I think) are of like quality with the actual Slayers anime series. In Japan, the corporations and the laws distinguish between "public" publications (say, running Sailormoon in the popular Kodansha magazine) and "private" publications (the thriving doujinshi environment of unofficial, but legal, fan work based on copyrighted material).
To say that fandom is something that should be limited to retelling someone else's vision strikes me as an extremely narrow statement that would have an adverse effect on fandom, and entertainment in general, if it were to suddenly become true.
Ohhhhh ... so THAT'S what that Amazon "one-click" patent was about.
-_^
1f 17 m4k35 j00 f331 n3 b3773r, 7|-|15 \/\/45 4 "r331" p057 70 d5 b1c|-|1n d3b14n m41l1n l157. 17 w4z 3v3n p0573d 477 1n 1337 l1k3 d15!
Not that it makes it any less silly, of course. You might run over to kuro5hin or another reputable news source for the rest of the day if it's really that big of a deal (which I never understand but don't argue with either :3 ), there are other sites than Slashdot to fulfill your mindless headline propogation needs for 36 hours. ^_^;
The point of this has always seemed to me not to have just the word be the password, but also the subtleties of the user's voice. ie, if I speak my password then it lets me log on, but if you speak it it recognizes that you're not me and denies access.
The biggest problem with this technology is making it work correctly when, say, user has a cold. How do you let them log on then, but still deny other people? And how do you deal with recordings? I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way though. It would be really in depth, granted, and although I don't actually know the state of voice recognition out there, I have my doubts that it's already implemented in a nice Free package.
IIRC Neovangelist said he was going to work up that bit as something that could be submitted to the main FreeBSD-CURRENT branch. So, the answer to your question is yes. :)
Heh, the problem with Linux is the hype. Sure, you attract a lot of really talented people. But you also attract people just because Linux is 'cool'.
I've started out with Linux, but I've been considering sampling one of the BSDs for a while. I'd been wavering between Net and Free, but I guess the balance has now been cast towards Free. ^^;
Okayokayokay. How many of you went to the site and said, "Oh, this is supposed to be a new OS, but all there is is a Sawfish skin. Therefore, this loser thinks he can recreate an OS by skinning GNOME, this is fuck stupid, QED."
Go read the site again. All the way through. This being Slashdot doesn't excuse you -_^ This is supposed to be basically a rewrite of FreeBSD to integrate X and (eventually) provide some really snazzy features. Sure, it's ambitious. But what new OS project isn't? True, he doesn't have a distribution available yet. But he's admitted that it probably wouldn't run on most people's machine yet either. Even so, this isn't entirely useless info. It's attracting attention of potential developers. These things take time, and the project is only just begun. To the naysayers, I make this challenge. Go home, take your favorite free Unix kernel, and rewrite it. Integrate X. Add voice recognition. Rewrite the desktop layer. Now, do this all by yourself and see how long it takes.
Then again, you could also try remembering that slashdot doesn't exist for your own personal gratification, so there may occasionally pop up headlines that you just don't want to read about. Do us all a favor and skip over them instead of flaming. This may be /., but let's not turn it into alt.* USENET. Try showing a little maturity for once.
Personally, I'm very interested in this, seriously. It's making me figure out how to fit in a FreeBSD partition on my box. I'm not particularly talented in any hackish area, I think it'd be really cool to work on this once I got up to speed ...
Aren't you forgetting? One of the strengths of open source is supposed to be the ability to draw people of many skills out of seemingly nowhere, so he doesn't have to do it all HIMSELF. Bakabaka :P
Personally, I'm pretty interested by this and am awaiting the first release. I'm even going to go install FreeBSD when I can manage an extra partition so I can get up to speed.
> The Linux cult cannot accept software from the Evil Ones.
My point exactly. They can't handle the fact that MS has a far better OS than their toy, Linux.
As much as I hate to respond to such blatant OS advocacy :3
It may be hard to remember, especially somewhere like here with a very vocal band of rabid zealots on every side of every issue, but not all of us Linux users are like that. Personally, I use Sylpheed and I don't care what other people use to read their email. I send my family virus alerts for big stuff when I hear about it, but that's it. I don't harp on them because they don't use Free (as in ... yeah) Software. I use Unix. Other people don't. Big deal.
<retaliation>
It's not nice to randomly call other people's preferred tools toys, by the way. ^_^; Linux is a valid Unix-like operating system. It's no more a toy than BSDlite, System 7, or Windows 2000 Professional. Unless you'd like to imply that the operating systems that serve practically everything on the Internet (Unix variants and Windows-based server platforms) are toys, I'd take some more time to consider what you say. Remember, when you make unbacked claims like that you're no better than the "Linux bigots" (or ANY OS bigots) you (and, coincidentally, I) hate so much.
</retaliation>
Hopefully the ATI drivers do TV in/out without lots of finagling now ... I got TV in to work (kind of) with old gatos CVS drivers, but TV out under X never worked.So, how many releases until someone gets around to converting this to autoconf/automake? -_^
As for the actual "edit mime types" menu link, it calls an old name of the capplet that handles file types. But yeah, my GMC associations are screwed and I'll be visiting GNOME IRC channels to (try to) fix it once I have my main computer back on the Internet. I'm kind of wary of trying Nautilus again, I didn't like the feel of it ^_^;
Shockwave support can be achieved through use of Macromedia's plugin if your browser supports Netscape-style plugins. From personal experience, it's quite good ... it plays the Glove on Fight movies flawlessly. It used to have timing issues with that Zero Wing thing, but under Galeon 1.x it seems to be fine.I haven't tried KDE yet, so I don't know much about Konqueror ...
And I'm not mentioning this just for the generic "smaller footprint than Mozilla", "it's Mozilla Lite", etc etc etc stuff that gets repeated everywhere.Since Galeon 1.0 released, I've used it extensively and said to myself, "This is kind of like Internet Explorer ... only better."Fullscreen is bound to the same key even (although i hacked it to F10 since I use F11 for windows list), it has a similar feel to the app windows (suitably translated to the GNOME look/feel du theme). Its preferences window is IMO prettier than IE's (for me, a system not only has to be usable and powerful but aesthetically pleasing :), and international support is just as good (eg, Japanese fonts load/display correctly, and I've only seen Korean displayed under Galeon). Add to that the tabbed browsing (I do prefer the Galeon version, even though it's not all THAT different) and you've got a really nice product. And yes, there ARE plugins :)I started out with Mozilla and kind of tolerated it (since my FIRST browser was Netscape), but Galeon is (for me) the nicest browser I've used. Certainly it can compete with IE, and I'd bet it's more secure :) You also have other good choices ... old Netscape and Emacs users will like Mozilla for the "kitchen-sink" perspective ( -_^ ), you've got official Netscape 6 releases for Unix (well, at least for Solaris, probably not Linux-based systems), Konqueror (which is REALLY popular among KDE users and said to be a very high quality product), and Opera (which is also a Win32 product, or at least was). Certainly we have good browsers, at least IMO.
Indeed ^_^ The new gnomecc, interestingly enough, reminds me (but only vaguely) of screens I've seen of the OS X System Preferences box. I like the dual-pane nature of the new gnomecc more, though. It's definitely an improvement!Now, to figure out how I fscked up my file-types ... (which is almost definitely my fault though)
Once you get it configured and compiled, it's a reliable and powerful system. But if the kernel is too hard to configure and compile, that severely limits how widely Linux can get adopted. I have a serious question for you. When's the last time you configured and compiled kernel32.dll? No? How about the Mac OS 9 system executable? Never?Kernel configuration and compilation only needs to be a one-time event at distributor HQ. Users should not have to worry about such things. Imagine the impact on Windows use if it did :) The latest 2.4 kernels still have compilation problems in some drivers (2.4.17 has problems in USB, 2.4.18pre4 has problems in one of the sound drivers). Congratulations, you've proven that *gasp!* some modules are still immature. Fortunately, nothing else. It is a major inconvenience, don't get me wrong, and it alienates people who need to use those modules. However, it's hardly a fatal shortcoming. Every time you recompile the kernel, you need to recompile some kernel modules. If you're recompiling the kernel, taking the time to compile modules isn't that much of an inconvenience IMO. What makes "make bzImage ; cp arch/(arch)/boot/bzImage /boot/(img_name) ; $(editor) /etc/lilo.conf ; (add section) ; lilo" more convenient than "make modules; make modules_install"? Dependencies and recompilation aren't working correctly--some things don't recompile when they should, and lots of things recompile over and over and over again. I have to admit ignorance, being an i386 user, which you have to admit the kernel is kind of geared towards (in that linuxppc, arm, etc are still not always fully integrated). Exactly what problems are you referring to? I don't want to say there aren't any, but I haven't had any. The kernel itself is a 30Mbyte download. Yes? Your point? It compiles to less than 1Mbyte. Do either of these arguments really mean anything here? Not that I can see. The kernel hackers keep telling us that C and make are just great tools for building kernels. Reasoning: C is the traditional Unix language. Why? Because it's reasonably portable, due in part to Unix's popularity. This is not a system I can recommend to non-technical users Non-technical users wouldn't ever want to rebuild their kernel. So why should the kernel build process be streamlined for their benefit? If they need an "unsupported" or for some reason different configuration and they can't do it themselves, let them do what a corporate $(OTHER_OS) user would do: call in the technical support people. This is why companies like Red Hat exist in the first place. It must be possible to write drivers and other kernel modules that can be compiled separately from the kernel and work across many versions. Binary modules really should keep working across minor version number changes (2.2 to 2.4, for example). Okay, first: you *can* compile modules separately from the kernel. I've done it. Want an example? ALSA, and the TI calculator link module. Secondly, IANA experienced kernel hacker, but the reason there's that minor version difference is because things *changed*. If it were so different that we started a whole new stable branch, chances are something *significant* has changed.Heck, modules aren't guaranteed to compile across tiny version numbers, but most do without problems.
It must be possible to write kernel modules with more safety in mind. There should also be some way to apply some memory protection to kernel modules when desired. Well, exactly what do you mean by memory protection? The build system needs to get fixed. There is no reason why adding or removing a module should result in a recompilation of the whole kernel. Maybe it's time to get rid of "make" altogether for the kernel. Again, what is wrong with the build system? Please be specific if you've encountered problems. Also, there is no reason why adding or removing a module should result in a recompilation of the whole kernel. In my experience, if that's the case, you're doing something wrong. The configuration system needs to get fixed. The kinds of questions it asks right now just cannot be answered by a normal user. Redundant, please see my comment about "normal" users above :) In fact, there really shouldn't be much of any configuration: all the different options should be dynamically loadable. Yes, this even means MMX-optimized versions of some piece of code or other.You have two options for this as I see it: just-in-time compilation of the kernel (ICKY!) or wasting space with all the different "versions" of the kernel binaries (also icky, but not as). flexible dynamic binding of functions at runtimeBuzzword alert! -_^ allow people to start writing kernel components in languages other than C, foremost C++. I like C++, but it's not as portable as C yet. It might be fine for Microsoft, who only makes products for one platform and one compiler, essentially. Not so Linux. And while MOST people compile linux with gcc (I bet), g++ still isn't as "feature-rich" as some other compilers. (It's still really nice, though, I like it :) C++ can really help with safety, security, resource management, and modularity.
So can learning to code correctly and efficiently. Programming languages are NOT silver bullets to be applied massively to CS problems.This post sounds kind of like something I, as a student, should be expected to write: trying to apply hard-and-fast pure CS theory to real-life problems.
Off-topic? Stating the ironic quirkiness of 2.4 in a thread about problems people have been having in 2.4 is off-topic? C'mon. The 2.4 series has had a few problems. I haven't had them. I don't want it to be true, and I fervently wish it weren't. But 2.4 wasn't a joy-ride for everyone. While this post was a little too cynical for my tastes, it wasn't off-topic. Hell, it wasn't necessarily too wrong, either.Moderation Totals: Offtopic=1, Insightful=1, Total=2. (Score 2: Offtopic)Why was this modded as such?
My current linux kernel is about 800kb. The Mach kernel from OS X is about 4 megs (based on terminal screens I've seen on Ars Technica). kernel32.dll is 500kb, but I have no idea what's actually IN it, so that isn't necessarily representative ... (kernel32 + user32 = 1 meg).
Oh, and MOST nonessential items in the linux kernel *are* modular. USB? Got a module for my USB printer. Compiled USB in, don't know why. I just haven't moved it out yet. Sound? Modular. (I use ALSA, BTW.) Filesystems? I only have three compiled in: ext2, ext3, iso9660. Hell, I could probably move out iso9660 if I really wanted to; the exts are there because the filesystem you boot root as needs to be compiled in; I use ext3, but ext2 is there for safety more than anything else.
linux may be monolithic, but that doesn't mean it can't be modular. It is, very much so.
Always nice to see people booting INTO linux for gaming :)
As far as I know pre-emptive multitasking is a basic feature in ANY Unix. EVERY linux kernel (and BSD kernel, and Mach kernel ... ) does pre-emptive multitasking.
"But what about the pre-emptive patch?"
That makes it so that a process in kernel context can be pre-empted. See, Unix processes generally run in two modes: user mode (userland) for your general computation and boring stuff like that, and system/kernel mode for stuff like requesting hardware access. Normally when the system is in a kernel context a task switch isn't allowed, so the kernel can't be interrupted (pre-empted). Robert Love's patch changes this so that a process can be pre-empted at any time, even when it's context-switched to be in kernel mode (assuming it's not in a spinlock, etc.)
Graphing kernel releases vs. time is always interesting :) (Especially with that 2.4.15/2.4.16 snafu ... hey, 24 hours between point releases. Oh well, no Universal PnP bugs ^_^; ) Especially if you track every "official" release, including -preX releases.
So what's your point? Here's what I did: I got an old Word 97 CD that nobody uses anymore and stole all the fonts from it. Add that directory to X's font path and BINGO. Universal anitaliased bliss ^_^ Then, if you're so inclined, remove the old bitmapped fonts' directories from the font path and you never have to worry about them again. I didn't have to patch the X server or anything special. (Well, I did have to run a program to generate scaling information in lieu of running xfontdir, but since you'd have to do xfontdir anyway ... ) Of course, it's probably good out of principle to keep "fixed" around ...Mind you, I haven't tried the version of this story involving "kill all the old X fonts" yet :) However, there's nothing wrong with Truetype support under XFree86 4.1.0, certainly. I haven't looked at a poorly rendered font since I did this ... and it's not like it would be terribly difficult for distributions to do out of the box. The only question is where do we get the free TT fonts :) And I'm not even sure if that would be a problem.
Although I'm sure this is already lost in the flood of comments :)
I started out running Debian 2.2r2(3?), which had a 2.2 kernel. I never had any problems with it, and I didn't have very fancy hardware. I did have a fun ride getting integrated i815 audio/video to work (that was all I had then). Upgrading to 2.4.4 didn't really help with that issue ... I had impeccable stability, but I never really pushed the envelope :)
Things got more interesting around 2.4.10, partly because my HD crashed (the Deathstar effect) and I rebuilt my system. Lack of MIDI for the SB Live! finally drove me to use ALSA drivers (SB Live! MIDI hasn't worked for me with OSS drivers). No problems support-wise for the Radeon-based card I had for kernel-related issues (kernel DRI mainly). Nice USB support except for the cheap Visioneer 4400 scanner I had (which isn't the kernel's fault). Stability and performance under medium loads has been generally good. I flirted with the pre-emptive and lock-breaking patches for a while, but things got really messy under 2.4.17 (stuff happened that I stopped using Windows to get away from, ie, sudden hard system freezes), so I dropped back to 2.4.16 with no patches. I'll probably try again with .18 or something. The only speed complaint I've really had is gmc takes a long time to scan directories with lots of stuff in them :)
Now, I haven't really had many problems. 2.4.13-ac8 oopsed, but since I was panicking about midterms at the time I didn't really look at it that closely, and never got around to actually reading the oops screen (I took a pic of it with someone else's camera ... ). I haven't taken time to find out why yet, but XMMS' memory footprint has this habit of growing unbounded ^^; The ALSA output plugins make it worse.
For the curious: my system is a P3 866 with 128 megs of RAM to start. I upgraded to 512 megs in July when I was running 2.4.4; that's the most memory my motherboard can take, alas. Heaviest loads include running XMMS, apache, xinetd, xchat, and compiles at the same time, so not too bad. Apache was mainly serving stuff to one or two people at maybe 20-30k/sec. I've been generally happy with the 2.4 series, but since I haven't really pushed my system hard yet I may experience problems later when I do :3
If you need a 2.4 (I need for my hardware), use 2.4.9. The last kernel before the new VM. It may not be the fastest kernel out there, but it is quite stable. But definitely do not anything between 2.4.10 and 2.4.17.
Huh ... interesting. What hardware are you running on? Just curious, since I read a report on LKML (the thread is the flamefest-titled "Rik spreading bullshit about VM" ^^; ) where someone was hypothesizing that that very range of kernels might be kind of a "sweet spot" for the AA VM ... at least on their hardware, I guess.
Personally, I haven't really had any problems with 2.4 ... the only bad thing I've had happen is an odd oops using 2.4.13-ac8 which I still haven't looked at the screen for that much. Of course, there might be other issues at play on my system since I did a Very Stupid Thing with the kernel headers ... An interesting thing though, I couldn't run a self-compiled X under 2.4.14 (IIRC), the binaries kept segfaulting until I did that VST and changed what was in /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm (I know ... ^^; now I know better). However, that change is probably going to have me go and recompile a lot of software on my system now after I change the headers back to what I had on the system at the time. (Or just rebuild my entire system :3 ) (Yes, I'm one of those linux from scratch weirdos ... )
Chapter 12, sec. 1201. In other words, anything that happens to be protecting copyrighted work falls under the DMCA's jurisdiction. So, if you happen to be protecting copyrighed work by chmod'ing it 600 and someone cirvumvents your Unix file access, they're violating the DMCA and can be sent to prison or fined a lot of money.
Take Unix, for instance, It was a spare-time hack done in the back room by a handful of techies trying to turn an abandoned computer into something useful. Yes. Let's take UNIX, actually. How many people worked on UNIX in its initial developmental stage? Not a whole heck of a lot. Hacker tradition holds that it was Kernighan, Ritchie, and Dennis if my memory serves me correctly (which I'm not 100% sure of ... ) The key word is handful.Don't get me wrong. Ever since I've become an open source supporter, I've been much more than impressed with what I've seen. Heck, I trust more that Mozilla 1.0 will work correctly, and that gxanim will be able to let me watch the Utena movie in DivX format, more than I trust that Windows will work correctly at some point in the future. (And I've had some bizarre Windows crashes ... as in, "Let's click on the Start Menu and watch Windows BURN!!! ten minutes after the system boots!" type crashes ... ) Open source is an excellent way to develop stable, user-friendly software, and perhaps its greatest advantage is the ability to draw on a vast developer base.However, if we're to address what Microsoft calls the "chasing taillights" factor, we don't just need to be able to do amazing hacks. We need to be able to innovate, no da. And I believe that this is the point that Dan was making. I believe that it was Knuth that first hammered home the point that innovation does not happen in committee. (I mean ... look at Microsoft :) I think that if we're going to have successful new OS projects, the best way to do it just might be to have a few VERY committed people sit back and get a nice, clear vision of what they want to do and how. Then, bring in the rest of the community and get down to it.Of course, I'm very willing to be proved wrong by someone :)