There are plenty of good free solutions. The Sajber jukebox is one. There are even packages like mpserv that will allow you to distribute your archive over many machines. There's no reason to involve big business here.
I think Windows strength, in comparison to UNIX, is that a lot of old UNIX programmers are still using malloc() and free(), fixed buffer sizes, and various programming idioms of C. I think that this is encouraged by the lack of free/cheap C++ dev environments
What rock have you been living under? Gnu C++ has been around for quite a while now. Not only is there g++ 2.8 which supports all the latest ansi stuff like templates and exceptions but there is even egcs - the competing derivative version.
There is no reason that you can't do OO on unix. Perhaps many of the commercial vendors are stuck with C and procedural programming but that's because they're dinosaurs and slowly dying. Here in the Free World we have a plethora of OO development environments to choose from. True, many projects are still written in C, but that's a matter of personal choice as many people simply don't like C++ and none of the alternatives (objC, Java, perl/python) seem applicable so they use C. A good example is gtk+. It's design is very much OO, using an object system hacked together from macros and typecasts. But that base has allowed other people to implement language bindings for many truly OO languages.
If you want exposure to the cutting edge, I suggest you check out languages like Perl, Python, and Java. Python and Java enforce a strict OO methodology and employ many of the latest language features and ideas in a cross platform manner.
If you've found the cutting edge within the microsoft realm and are happy with that, good for you. Personally I could never stand being tied to windows.
I keep asking myself, when these people do benchmarks, why do they use quad cpu boxen when they know linux doesn't work so hot with em?
Don't know about you, but linux runs great on my quad ppro.. There were some 2.1 kernels that didn't fair so well but now I'm running kernel 2.2.5 on debian 2.1 and all 4 cpu's are busy encoding mp3's:)
While I agree that unix (especially free unix) thrives on standards, I think you're not making a critical distinction here. What we have are two different notions of 'standard'
To the corporate types a 'standard' is a dominant product in the industry that they can feel safe with because they know it won't be going away any time soon. This is why some people consider microsoft to be a 'standard'
To the unix geeks a standard is some kind of protocol or api that allows for programs to interoperate, i.e. posix, X, etc. This is largely independent of implementation, as is evidenced by the plethora of unix variants that will all run the same C programs pretty much right out of the package. This happens in the free world as well and it is a healthy thing.
I think that the gnome/KDE split (while excessively nasty at times) is a virtue. Our community thrives on parallel development and adherence to standard interfaces. While a KDE program might use qt and a Gnome program will use gtk, the differences pretty much stop there, as it is looking like kde and gnome will talk to eachother. These are not mutually exclusive software packages, so neither of them needs to become a 'standard' in itself. As long as they can interoperate there are no problems.
What about the duplication of effort you might ask? I say that is healthy as well. It seems that when code is useful to all it is shared, and when people have different ideas as what to do they do things differently. If the idea works out well, others will use it. Imposing any more structure on it than that is unnatural and can't be done.
Even when different software packages are mutually exclusive, for example the linux and freebsd kernels, it is improper to say there are no standards because while kernel internals may differ there are well established interfaces that portable code can utilize to avoid platform dependence.
And so what if joe user doesen't care about diversity. Free software is not driven by joe user. Let the masses run redhat. Redhat is no reason debian can't continue to exist. Free software is a different paradigm where the traditional corporate rules just do not apply. Free software is interoperable because it is in its best intrest to be so. Yes some distributions will die. But the good ones will not, because if they are good then people will realize this and pick up the project if the origional author leaves off. This has happened to so many projects it's not even funny. Gimp/Gtk is a good example. So is the debian distribution. It's not like when a company dies and takes its products with it.
If you havent pick a language yet, learn (in order of importance)
C++, VisualBasic, J++, Java, perl, Fortan, Cobol
I'm sorry but I fail to see how a monstrosity such as visual basic could be important whatsoever. And what the hell is J++? I'm guessing it's M$'s proprietary java. Unless you want to be stuck on windows for the rest of your life I'd suggest avoiding any of those kludges.
There's plenty of cross platform languages that will do everything and more that microsoft's solutions will do. C/C++, java, perl, tcl to name a few. Learning a microsoft specific language is relegating yourself to enduring whatever they feel like dumping on the developer community in the future.
Yo moron! Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason netscape may be so "buggy" under linux is because it's *NOT* a native linux program, but a port of a Windows program?
Withought stooping to your level, I will simply suggest you look a little closer into the origins of mosaic.
For some reason netscape seems to be one of the buggiest applications on linux..
I've crashed it dozens of times.
I've had the pleasure of having netscape crash when I wasn't even using. Just last night I suddenly realized that my wmaker window list was much shorter than it had been a minute ago, and that this was due to all my netscape windows disspaearing.. And I wasn't even using it.
I was just thinking about it and when I first started using linux (spring 96) being able to still use netscape was a really big plus for me. I wouldn't have taken to it nearly as fast if I was stuck using lynx all the time.
But given that I think that the availability of a browser thats 'good enough' for most people has retarded the development of a free version. And the recent mozilla debacle seems to be even more a case in point: The biggest threat to free software is software that's _almost_ free. (I think RMS said that at some point)
I've only had one problem with a linux program and that was the new version of netscape it kept dying with a bus error whatever that is...
And indeed this is not a problem with the os but with buggy applications, which are possible in any context.
FYI, a bus error is an unaligned memory access, usually one that's not aligned on a four byte boudary (although this is architecture dependent). So if you want to make your program bus error, try this:
3dfx have released their 3d specs to SOMEBODY and have done so for more than a year. So in this sense, they have offered more 3d support than anyone else ( no-one else has offered any )
What 3dfx has done is they have dealt with the free software community in a method that destroys the inherent parallelism in the development model. Yes, we have glide for linux, but it is consistently behind what is available for windows. If you are willing to accept that kind of second rate treatment because it's the best that has been offered to you, then go ahead, be my guest. But the sad reality is that they feel that they don't have to deal with our community any more than they already have because they have Daryll working in his free time writing drivers for them.
We cannot let the industry think that this kind of treatment is acceptable. I realize things are changing, but they will only change insofar as we show companies that we are a viable market and deserve the same treatment as other market segments. Even companies that have 'supported' linux for a long time (like id) still release their linux ports many months after their windows ports, and they're still buggy as hell and don't work right for quite some time after that (and yes I know this will be different for quake 3, but that still doesen't change the fact that we've gotten the shaft up until now)
So go ahead and complain about the lack of support from 3dfx , but don't forget to complain about ALL of the other guys.
You are right here. The others are just as bad if not worse. But that doesen't mean 3dfx is good for our community.
Oh, btw, they didn't JUST release the 2d spec for the Banshee. THey released the glide source code and the vodoo / voodoo2 drivers. Which is a tad more than any other 3d card maker has done
I'd sure like to see where the glide source code has been released to. Daryll's got it. But if I want to see how they handle something specific, I can't even ask him. It does do us some good, but progress is painfully slow. And if you're thinking that them posting Daryll's port of glide on their website constitutes releasing it, you've got something coming. I think you need to listen to what you're saying, you're starting to sound like one of their marketing drones.
3dfx has never as much lifted a finger to our benefit. All the glide porting and such was done _independently_ by Daryll Strauss in his free time. Under and NDA I might add. Apparently they think their intelectual property is more important than our freedom and ability to use their hardware.
You might say that they are good because they release specs to their hardware. I say bullshit because the only specs they've released are those to the 2D chipset in the voodoo banshee, and only _after_ Daryll had ported XFree to it. Still nothing else.
If they did actually release specs when they were useful, then we would have glide running on the voodoo banshee. But as it is, the only person able to do that is Daryll. I have this little theory that if 3dfx knew what was good for them (which they obvoiously don't) they would have hired people in house to do this long ago, and we would all be running voodoo banshees for 3d modeling and such. But no, they've got their collective head rammed so far up their ass that it's not possible for them to see the light.
This is a good thing because the absence of M$ offshit is what keeps a lot of people away from alternative platforms. We all know better than to be caught using that junk, but the majority of the population are already familiar with these apps.
Given the ability to use word or excel on linux, the operating system will become even more trivial than before, so competetion will take place based upon technical merits. As we all know, micro$oft cannot even begin to compete in terms of technical competence, so they will loose their os monopoly.
Once that's gone, then alternative ways of working will be much more accessable to the masses, and people will realize there's more than one way (the microsoft way) to go about things. And once we expose people to the wonders of the world of free software, they will relize that there are really excellent applications out there that are totally free (gimp, lyx, emacs, etc..).
The only downside to this is of course if the availibility of apps that are 'good enough' deters potential developers from working on superior projects. Canonical example of this is netscape, whose browser has been proverbially 'good enough', good enough to restrict the user base of potential projects enough to effectively kill them off.
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There are plenty of good free solutions. The Sajber jukebox is one. There are even packages like mpserv that will allow you to distribute your archive over many machines. There's no reason to involve big business here.
What rock have you been living under? Gnu C++ has been around for quite a while now. Not only is there g++ 2.8 which supports all the latest ansi stuff like templates and exceptions but there is even egcs - the competing derivative version.
There is no reason that you can't do OO on unix. Perhaps many of the commercial vendors are stuck with C and procedural programming but that's because they're dinosaurs and slowly dying. Here in the Free World we have a plethora of OO development environments to choose from. True, many projects are still written in C, but that's a matter of personal choice as many people simply don't like C++ and none of the alternatives (objC, Java, perl/python) seem applicable so they use C. A good example is gtk+. It's design is very much OO, using an object system hacked together from macros and typecasts. But that base has allowed other people to implement language bindings for many truly OO languages.
If you want exposure to the cutting edge, I suggest you check out languages like Perl, Python, and Java. Python and Java enforce a strict OO methodology and employ many of the latest language features and ideas in a cross platform manner.
If you've found the cutting edge within the microsoft realm and are happy with that, good for you. Personally I could never stand being tied to windows.
Don't know about you, but linux runs great on my quad ppro.. There were some 2.1 kernels that didn't fair so well but now I'm running kernel 2.2.5 on debian 2.1 and all 4 cpu's are busy encoding mp3's :)
While I agree that unix (especially free unix) thrives on standards, I think you're not making a critical distinction here. What we have are two different notions of 'standard'
To the corporate types a 'standard' is a dominant product in the industry that they can feel safe with because they know it won't be going away any time soon. This is why some people consider microsoft to be a 'standard'
To the unix geeks a standard is some kind of protocol or api that allows for programs to interoperate, i.e. posix, X, etc. This is largely independent of implementation, as is evidenced by the plethora of unix variants that will all run the same C programs pretty much right out of the package. This happens in the free world as well and it is a healthy thing.
I think that the gnome/KDE split (while excessively nasty at times) is a virtue. Our community thrives on parallel development and adherence to standard interfaces. While a KDE program might use qt and a Gnome program will use gtk, the differences pretty much stop there, as it is looking like kde and gnome will talk to eachother. These are not mutually exclusive software packages, so neither of them needs to become a 'standard' in itself. As long as they can interoperate there are no problems.
What about the duplication of effort you might ask? I say that is healthy as well. It seems that when code is useful to all it is shared, and when people have different ideas as what to do they do things differently. If the idea works out well, others will use it. Imposing any more structure on it than that is unnatural and can't be done.
Even when different software packages are mutually exclusive, for example the linux and freebsd kernels, it is improper to say there are no standards because while kernel internals may differ there are well established interfaces that portable code can utilize to avoid platform dependence.
And so what if joe user doesen't care about diversity. Free software is not driven by joe user. Let the masses run redhat. Redhat is no reason debian can't continue to exist. Free software is a different paradigm where the traditional corporate rules just do not apply. Free software is interoperable because it is in its best intrest to be so. Yes some distributions will die. But the good ones will not, because if they are good then people will realize this and pick up the project if the origional author leaves off. This has happened to so many projects it's not even funny. Gimp/Gtk is a good example. So is the debian distribution. It's not like when a company dies and takes its products with it.
I'm sorry but I fail to see how a monstrosity such as visual basic could be important whatsoever. And what the hell is J++? I'm guessing it's M$'s proprietary java. Unless you want to be stuck on windows for the rest of your life I'd suggest avoiding any of those kludges.
There's plenty of cross platform languages that will do everything and more that microsoft's solutions will do. C/C++, java, perl, tcl to name a few. Learning a microsoft specific language is relegating yourself to enduring whatever they feel like dumping on the developer community in the future.
Withought stooping to your level, I will simply suggest you look a little closer into the origins of mosaic.
I've had the pleasure of having netscape crash when I wasn't even using. Just last night I suddenly realized that my wmaker window list was much shorter than it had been a minute ago, and that this was due to all my netscape windows disspaearing.. And I wasn't even using it.
I was just thinking about it and when I first started using linux (spring 96) being able to still use netscape was a really big plus for me. I wouldn't have taken to it nearly as fast if I was stuck using lynx all the time.
But given that I think that the availability of a browser thats 'good enough' for most people has retarded the development of a free version. And the recent mozilla debacle seems to be even more a case in point: The biggest threat to free software is software that's _almost_ free. (I think RMS said that at some point)
And indeed this is not a problem with the os but with buggy applications, which are possible in any context.
FYI, a bus error is an unaligned memory access, usually one that's not aligned on a four byte boudary (although this is architecture dependent). So if you want to make your program bus error, try this:
What 3dfx has done is they have dealt with the free software community in a method that destroys the inherent parallelism in the development model. Yes, we have glide for linux, but it is consistently behind what is available for windows. If you are willing to accept that kind of second rate treatment because it's the best that has been offered to you, then go ahead, be my guest. But the sad reality is that they feel that they don't have to deal with our community any more than they already have because they have Daryll working in his free time writing drivers for them.
We cannot let the industry think that this kind of treatment is acceptable. I realize things are changing, but they will only change insofar as we show companies that we are a viable market and deserve the same treatment as other market segments. Even companies that have 'supported' linux for a long time (like id) still release their linux ports many months after their windows ports, and they're still buggy as hell and don't work right for quite some time after that (and yes I know this will be different for quake 3, but that still doesen't change the fact that we've gotten the shaft up until now)
You are right here. The others are just as bad if not worse. But that doesen't mean 3dfx is good for our community.
I'd sure like to see where the glide source code has been released to. Daryll's got it. But if I want to see how they handle something specific, I can't even ask him. It does do us some good, but progress is painfully slow. And if you're thinking that them posting Daryll's port of glide on their website constitutes releasing it, you've got something coming. I think you need to listen to what you're saying, you're starting to sound like one of their marketing drones.
Since when has 3dfx supported linux?
3dfx has never as much lifted a finger to our benefit. All the glide porting and such was done _independently_ by Daryll Strauss in his free time. Under and NDA I might add. Apparently they think their intelectual property is more important than our freedom and ability to use their hardware.
You might say that they are good because they release specs to their hardware. I say bullshit because the only specs they've released are those to the 2D chipset in the voodoo banshee, and only _after_ Daryll had ported XFree to it. Still nothing else.
If they did actually release specs when they were useful, then we would have glide running on the voodoo banshee. But as it is, the only person able to do that is Daryll. I have this little theory that if 3dfx knew what was good for them (which they obvoiously don't) they would have hired people in house to do this long ago, and we would all be running voodoo banshees for 3d modeling and such. But no, they've got their collective head rammed so far up their ass that it's not possible for them to see the light.
Why else would you call it property?
This is a good thing because the absence of M$ offshit is what keeps a lot of people away from alternative platforms. We all know better than to be caught using that junk, but the majority of the population are already familiar with these apps.
Given the ability to use word or excel on linux, the operating system will become even more trivial than before, so competetion will take place based upon technical merits. As we all know, micro$oft cannot even begin to compete in terms of technical competence, so they will loose their os monopoly.
Once that's gone, then alternative ways of working will be much more accessable to the masses, and people will realize there's more than one way (the microsoft way) to go about things. And once we expose people to the wonders of the world of free software, they will relize that there are really excellent applications out there that are totally free (gimp, lyx, emacs, etc..).
The only downside to this is of course if the availibility of apps that are 'good enough' deters potential developers from working on superior projects. Canonical example of this is netscape, whose browser has been proverbially 'good enough', good enough to restrict the user base of potential projects enough to effectively kill them off.