Maybe it's your hardware. I have everything accellerated on my KDE3 box and it all runs fast. In Windows, I had everything running off of a striped IDE RAID-0 array, and it was fast. Under KDE, it is running off of non-striped drives, but uses different partitions for different things. I am not noticing any difference in speed of apps, really. OpenOffice is pretty slow at loading, no matter what. On Linux, it seems to be faster than my Windows machine at work, but that is because I have a faster CPU and 7200 RPM drives at home. OpenGL games on my Linux box seem faster than in Windows.
It would be best for you to compare Windows XP with KDE. Windows 2000 was much more optimized for older hardware. 128 MB of RAM will run KDE just fine, but you should probably have 256 MB instead. It is the same for Windows XP. Otherwise, you are going to be accessing the swap file all the time, and it is time consuming. My machine has 1024 MB of RAM and it never touches the swapfile on my Linux box. So everything loads nearly instantaneously.
It all depends on a lot of variables. Hardware and drivers is the biggest issue. Often, in Linux you will also find all sorts of server daemons running that you don't need. It is very important to shut those off if you are going to use it as a desktop OS. Overall, my performance and stability is perfect. I have no complaints. Windows 2000 was a good OS, but I have decided not to use it any more, purely for the political reasons.
I love Linux, and use it instead of Windows at home.
Recently, someone hit my car, so I had to buy a 25 year old truck to just to have something to drive. Since then, I've had to become a mechanic of sorts. I've fixed all sorts of little things on that truck in the last few months, and I actually find that kind of stuff *enjoyable*.
So here I am, typing this message on Slashdot, on my Slackware 8.1 box, and I look at my figernails and what do I see? I see grease and oil that I couldn't get off of my hands from replacing my truck's shocks this weekend.
So the ignornant people of this site can call me a redneck if they like. I personally would have never thought that I was the type to do mechanic work... And I am sure that none of you would ever think that some "redneck" could be a Linux "hacker".
Excuse me... I am going to affix a Tux sticker to my truck's bumper, along side the STP and hunting club stickers that were already there when I bought the truck.
I am a big fan of the Plastiq Musiq stuff, produced by Joy Electric front-man Ronnie Martin. It is a different kind of sound... YOu either like it or you hate it.
Joy Electric is at www.joyelectric.com Soviet ia at http://www.sovietmusic.net/ PQMQ label is at www.plastiqmusiq.com/
Most of the stuff is more synth-popish that what you might be looking for though.
I have been using a great new KDE-based GUI for CDRecord and many other programs, called Arson. I have been toying around with it a bit and it is loaded with features. It kinda reminds me of Nero for Unix machines.
http://arson.sourceforge.net/
Perhaps it could be compiled and used in MacOS? The program isn't finished yet, but shows a lot of potential.
"every body knows that XP was just a pretty GUI and it looks like this is too."
You just explained it right there. People want Windows XP (or MacOS) without the Windows or the Mac.
There isn't anything wrong with that. Why not take some of the best features of the other popular GUIs and put it into your own? You can always use a different desktop environment and/or window manager.
I personally think that it looks more like MacOS X than a Windows machine, though.
I use KDE 3.1 at home on my Slack 8.1 box... I must say that it is the best GUI that I have ever used. I would have never expected it to become so nice. Not only is it pretty (very), but it is fast and full of features and configurability. I don't intend to do any major updates to my box, but it looks like I can expect some excellent new features and imporvements next year.
If I am not mistaken, can't KDE3 just do it now for you in with its control panel?
I haven't used that feature before (there is an add fonts feature), but I saw it there and never tried it. I did things by the command line in the same manner that you did- and even then, it was super simple.
KDE3 supports truetype fonts just fine. I ripped them out of the CAB files on my old Windows disks and they look excellent.
I KNEW that I should keep those Windows disks around for something.
I replaced all of my default KDE fonts with similar Windows TrueType fonts, and the whole GUI is just BEAUTIFUL. Everything is slick, antialiased, and clean. Opera makes web pages look like in art-form in KDE3 also (assuming you install the right version of Opera, and an old version of QT libraries).
I installed Lycoris on my girlfriend's P-90 and it runs fine with KDE operating. You must have 128 MB of RAM, but the same goes for most modern GUIs. As a matter of fact, I think that XP needs a reccommended 256 MB of RAM.
I agree. The default kernel is fine. Sometimes, there are a few things there that you don't need, like PCMCIA and RAID, but everything works. No recompiling is EVER needed, and everything is modular.
I *can* recompile my kernel, but I *don't* recompile my kernel. If I need some more obscure device to work, I download a driver module and tell my/etc/rc.d/rc.modules file to load it on startup. But 90% of the time, it is all there and works fine.
2d and 3d is fast and reliable, if you have a proper video card. Most distributions handle this right away with all popular devices.
Even Windows doesn't do all of this. But I guess that it depends on what you want in an OS?
The OSX argument it tiring. It is a great OS, and the Mac hardware is nice... But the Apple "replacement plan" requires that you buy their hardware when they decide for you to do it. This is how they make their money, but it doesn't compare to the flexibility that you get with a standard x86 PC.
I agree with you. MacOS X is a great Operating System, and deserves lots of praise, but: I won't buy a Mac until I can build one myself. Aside from that, I am not exactly partial to the way that Apple locks it's customers into upgrading entire machines just for the sake of running new software. As much as they try to make the G4 machines look modular, they are not. It is a totally different ballpark than what you get with a PC.
But then again, this is how they make their money, and some people are fine by playing by those rules.
OpenOffice uses them just fine, as long as the truetype server is installed, *however*...
OpenOffice seems to have its own libraries for rendering the fonts in its menues and stuff. On my machine, the documents can use beautiful, anti-aliased TrueType fonts, but the menus and buttons do not. I know that it will work, but I haven't really tried to look into tweaking it.
I've recently totally switched over to Linux and I love it. I think that you just have to find the right distribution to suit your needs. I am not saying that Linux is perfect (Windows and MacOS aren't either), but there will always be future improvements.
Find the right hardware that is properly supported if you are wanting to use Linux. hardware manufacturers still aren't interested in being all that supportive, but it is getting better.
The writer of this document makes some very valid points... However... I think that he misunderstands a few things about Linux. You have to compile programs because the OS is designed for multiple architectures and variations of Posix OS's. It isn't like you have Windows available for much of anything other than x86 machines. This is the reason for compiling programs.
Perhaps his conclusions about X11 are based upon the distribution that he is using, and the drivers that are installed. If you have good hardware, with good drivers, you can get great performance out of it. Framebuffer drivers don't cut it, and there is a great possibility that is what he was using. My fonts are beautifully anti-aliased under KDE 3. I can use Windows TrueType fonts, and in my opinion it all looks as good as the fonts on MacOSX, and most certainy is prettier than the font anti-alising in Windows 2000.
3D graphics in Linux are just fine, if you have the proper drivers. My video card has BETA drivers right now, but I get about a 10% increase in speed over what I got in Windows 2000. Games like Wolfenstien and Quake 3 are very fast and stable.
But all isn't perfect. Sound devices are still goofy. Programs like ARTs help alleviate some problems of devices hogging a sound device, but it all boils down to having properly written drivers. Programs for gnome/kde/etc. kinda seem awkward when mixed. Standards aren't set very well in many cases. There are wuite of few problems, but for some the advantages to Linux outweigh the problems.
It is all about deciding what you need. Linux isn't for everyone (yet). Windows isn't for everyone. MacOS isn't for everyone. Amiga Desktop isn't for everyoing (boing!). But I found that over the years, the maturity and eas-of-use of Linux has grown at incredible rates. Over time, certain desktop features will get better and better. For what I need and want, it does the job well.
Things just have to happen one step at a time. Linux will improve, and one would assume that Windows will do the same thing. I for one know that I am a Slackware fan for life. I think that Slack 8.1 is the best OS that I have *ever* used. But it did take a bit of tweaking to make it perfectly suit my needs.
The writer really didn't need to justify his switching back to Windows, but his story was a bit interesting I suppose.
PowerVR is making some decent drivers for the Kyro boards. I use a Kyro 2 in my Linux box, and it plays all of the games just fine (Wolf, Quake, etc.) These drivers are just betas right now, but they are going to be switching to the same library as the Windows versions with the release of the first official drivers (akin to the nVidia driver model for Linux). The interesting thing is that these drivers seem to work faster in Linux already than they did in Windows. RTC Wolfenstien seems to be much more fluid in Linux for some reason. It will be interesting to see how the final drivers turn out.
I think that some of these companies are finally taking the initiative to write drivers for Linux. I hope that the trend keeps growing.
Make sure that you download it from MS's update site. Afterward, you can right click on any app and tell it to emulate Win 95,98, or NT4. I have had success with a lot of games, such as Grim Fandango.
Perhaps you misunderstand what you are calling "improvements".
XP offers a few more embedded multimedia apps, that aren't there from the start with Windows 2000. So upgrade you apps. It is just as capable.
The slow boot-up of Windows 2000 is a DCHP bug in the OS that can be fixed with some tweking, or upgrading to some sort of ethernet-based Internet connection. Your reason for it starting up slow was probably due to you having a modem. Keep in mind that Windows 2000 was originally intended for the workgroup environment, and 90% of users would be on a LAN connection. My home Windows 2000 box would start up in about 30 seconds with my cable modem/ethernet setup, but would time out for about 2 minutes on a standard 56k modem. This is because it would time out while looking for a network and DHCP server. Windows XP fixes that little issue for the modem users of the world.
But of course... None of this is an issue, because I use Slackware Linux now. Having used every major release of Windows for the past 10 or so years, I can safely say that I don't fit your description (misconception) for the average Slashdot user. Perhaps you don't understand this OS stuff as much as you'd like to believe that you do, and perhaps you insist on lambasting other Slashdot users for this very reason.
Yes, I'm afraid of XP. That is why I switched to Linux. I don't want DRM. I don't want to be locked into weird licensing schemes. I don't want to have my computer forcefully upgraded or changed to fit someone elses initiative. Maybe you don't understand this? That's fine, but quit being so ignorant to other peoples motives for not choosing the same route.
Did you try running it in compatibility mode? I was able to get some Win9x only games to run in Windows 2k by having it emulate Win 9x.
For the record though, Windows 2000 is just as cabale for gaming as the other Windows products (if not moreso). DirectX and OpenGL apps work fine. Disney obviously stuck some exclusive code into their program and decided to offer a BS excuse so that they didn't have to fix it.
Perhaps they have figured out that everyone that has Windows 2000 doesn't want Windows XP. They really have no reason to upgrade.
Windows 2000 is a pretty good OS, and though I now use Slackware Linux for all of my work, I would never switch to Windows XP.
It is in MS's best interest to try to force users to make the switch, even if they won't achieve more functionality or stability (the will achieve less stability, actually).
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's your hardware. I have everything accellerated on my KDE3 box and it all runs fast. In Windows, I had everything running off of a striped IDE RAID-0 array, and it was fast. Under KDE, it is running off of non-striped drives, but uses different partitions for different things. I am not noticing any difference in speed of apps, really. OpenOffice is pretty slow at loading, no matter what. On Linux, it seems to be faster than my Windows machine at work, but that is because I have a faster CPU and 7200 RPM drives at home. OpenGL games on my Linux box seem faster than in Windows.
It would be best for you to compare Windows XP with KDE. Windows 2000 was much more optimized for older hardware. 128 MB of RAM will run KDE just fine, but you should probably have 256 MB instead. It is the same for Windows XP. Otherwise, you are going to be accessing the swap file all the time, and it is time consuming. My machine has 1024 MB of RAM and it never touches the swapfile on my Linux box. So everything loads nearly instantaneously.
It all depends on a lot of variables. Hardware and drivers is the biggest issue. Often, in Linux you will also find all sorts of server daemons running that you don't need. It is very important to shut those off if you are going to use it as a desktop OS. Overall, my performance and stability is perfect. I have no complaints. Windows 2000 was a good OS, but I have decided not to use it any more, purely for the political reasons.
I forgot to mention that I am an EE student too.
I love Linux, and use it instead of Windows at home.
Recently, someone hit my car, so I had to buy a 25 year old truck to just to have something to drive. Since then, I've had to become a mechanic of sorts. I've fixed all sorts of little things on that truck in the last few months, and I actually find that kind of stuff *enjoyable*.
So here I am, typing this message on Slashdot, on my Slackware 8.1 box, and I look at my figernails and what do I see? I see grease and oil that I couldn't get off of my hands from replacing my truck's shocks this weekend.
So the ignornant people of this site can call me a redneck if they like. I personally would have never thought that I was the type to do mechanic work... And I am sure that none of you would ever think that some "redneck" could be a Linux "hacker".
Excuse me... I am going to affix a Tux sticker to my truck's bumper, along side the STP and hunting club stickers that were already there when I bought the truck.
I am a big fan of the Plastiq Musiq stuff, produced by Joy Electric front-man Ronnie Martin. It is a different kind of sound... YOu either like it or you hate it.
Joy Electric is at www.joyelectric.com
Soviet ia at http://www.sovietmusic.net/
PQMQ label is at www.plastiqmusiq.com/
Most of the stuff is more synth-popish that what you might be looking for though.
I have been using a great new KDE-based GUI for CDRecord and many other programs, called Arson. I have been toying around with it a bit and it is loaded with features. It kinda reminds me of Nero for Unix machines.
http://arson.sourceforge.net/
Perhaps it could be compiled and used in MacOS? The program isn't finished yet, but shows a lot of potential.
"every body knows that XP was just a pretty GUI and it looks like this is too."
You just explained it right there. People want Windows XP (or MacOS) without the Windows or the Mac.
There isn't anything wrong with that. Why not take some of the best features of the other popular GUIs and put it into your own? You can always use a different desktop environment and/or window manager.
I personally think that it looks more like MacOS X than a Windows machine, though.
I meant to say that I use 3.01, not 3.1.
I use KDE 3.1 at home on my Slack 8.1 box... I must say that it is the best GUI that I have ever used. I would have never expected it to become so nice. Not only is it pretty (very), but it is fast and full of features and configurability. I don't intend to do any major updates to my box, but it looks like I can expect some excellent new features and imporvements next year.
If I am not mistaken, can't KDE3 just do it now for you in with its control panel?
I haven't used that feature before (there is an add fonts feature), but I saw it there and never tried it. I did things by the command line in the same manner that you did- and even then, it was super simple.
KDE3 supports truetype fonts just fine. I ripped them out of the CAB files on my old Windows disks and they look excellent.
I KNEW that I should keep those Windows disks around for something.
I replaced all of my default KDE fonts with similar Windows TrueType fonts, and the whole GUI is just BEAUTIFUL. Everything is slick, antialiased, and clean. Opera makes web pages look like in art-form in KDE3 also (assuming you install the right version of Opera, and an old version of QT libraries).
You mean NT 4, right?
I installed Lycoris on my girlfriend's P-90 and it runs fine with KDE operating. You must have 128 MB of RAM, but the same goes for most modern GUIs. As a matter of fact, I think that XP needs a reccommended 256 MB of RAM.
I agree. The default kernel is fine. Sometimes, there are a few things there that you don't need, like PCMCIA and RAID, but everything works. No recompiling is EVER needed, and everything is modular.
/etc/rc.d/rc.modules file to load it on startup. But 90% of the time, it is all there and works fine.
I *can* recompile my kernel, but I *don't* recompile my kernel. If I need some more obscure device to work, I download a driver module and tell my
2d and 3d is fast and reliable, if you have a proper video card. Most distributions handle this right away with all popular devices.
Even Windows doesn't do all of this. But I guess that it depends on what you want in an OS?
Mod this person up.
The OSX argument it tiring. It is a great OS, and the Mac hardware is nice... But the Apple "replacement plan" requires that you buy their hardware when they decide for you to do it. This is how they make their money, but it doesn't compare to the flexibility that you get with a standard x86 PC.
I agree with you. MacOS X is a great Operating System, and deserves lots of praise, but: I won't buy a Mac until I can build one myself. Aside from that, I am not exactly partial to the way that Apple locks it's customers into upgrading entire machines just for the sake of running new software. As much as they try to make the G4 machines look modular, they are not. It is a totally different ballpark than what you get with a PC.
But then again, this is how they make their money, and some people are fine by playing by those rules.
Exactly. He usually goes out and buys a new computer with a shiny new Windows OS installed. Mod this guy up, please.
If you install your own OS, your are bound to have some difficulties. It doesn't matter what OS it is.
OpenOffice uses them just fine, as long as the truetype server is installed, *however*...
OpenOffice seems to have its own libraries for rendering the fonts in its menues and stuff. On my machine, the documents can use beautiful, anti-aliased TrueType fonts, but the menus and buttons do not. I know that it will work, but I haven't really tried to look into tweaking it.
I've recently totally switched over to Linux and I love it. I think that you just have to find the right distribution to suit your needs. I am not saying that Linux is perfect (Windows and MacOS aren't either), but there will always be future improvements.
Find the right hardware that is properly supported if you are wanting to use Linux. hardware manufacturers still aren't interested in being all that supportive, but it is getting better.
The writer of this document makes some very valid points... However... I think that he misunderstands a few things about Linux. You have to compile programs because the OS is designed for multiple architectures and variations of Posix OS's. It isn't like you have Windows available for much of anything other than x86 machines. This is the reason for compiling programs.
Perhaps his conclusions about X11 are based upon the distribution that he is using, and the drivers that are installed. If you have good hardware, with good drivers, you can get great performance out of it. Framebuffer drivers don't cut it, and there is a great possibility that is what he was using. My fonts are beautifully anti-aliased under KDE 3. I can use Windows TrueType fonts, and in my opinion it all looks as good as the fonts on MacOSX, and most certainy is prettier than the font anti-alising in Windows 2000.
3D graphics in Linux are just fine, if you have the proper drivers. My video card has BETA drivers right now, but I get about a 10% increase in speed over what I got in Windows 2000. Games like Wolfenstien and Quake 3 are very fast and stable.
But all isn't perfect. Sound devices are still goofy. Programs like ARTs help alleviate some problems of devices hogging a sound device, but it all boils down to having properly written drivers. Programs for gnome/kde/etc. kinda seem awkward when mixed. Standards aren't set very well in many cases. There are wuite of few problems, but for some the advantages to Linux outweigh the problems.
It is all about deciding what you need. Linux isn't for everyone (yet). Windows isn't for everyone. MacOS isn't for everyone. Amiga Desktop isn't for everyoing (boing!). But I found that over the years, the maturity and eas-of-use of Linux has grown at incredible rates. Over time, certain desktop features will get better and better. For what I need and want, it does the job well.
Things just have to happen one step at a time. Linux will improve, and one would assume that Windows will do the same thing. I for one know that I am a Slackware fan for life. I think that Slack 8.1 is the best OS that I have *ever* used. But it did take a bit of tweaking to make it perfectly suit my needs.
The writer really didn't need to justify his switching back to Windows, but his story was a bit interesting I suppose.
The heads fight?
"Why would anyone need more than 640k of memory?".
PowerVR is making some decent drivers for the Kyro boards. I use a Kyro 2 in my Linux box, and it plays all of the games just fine (Wolf, Quake, etc.) These drivers are just betas right now, but they are going to be switching to the same library as the Windows versions with the release of the first official drivers (akin to the nVidia driver model for Linux). The interesting thing is that these drivers seem to work faster in Linux already than they did in Windows. RTC Wolfenstien seems to be much more fluid in Linux for some reason. It will be interesting to see how the final drivers turn out.
I think that some of these companies are finally taking the initiative to write drivers for Linux. I hope that the trend keeps growing.
That's right. I was trying to remember which one that it was. Mutt seemed to stick out for some reason. Thanks for the correction.
Make sure that you download it from MS's update site. Afterward, you can right click on any app and tell it to emulate Win 95,98, or NT4. I have had success with a lot of games, such as Grim Fandango.
Perhaps you misunderstand what you are calling "improvements".
XP offers a few more embedded multimedia apps, that aren't there from the start with Windows 2000. So upgrade you apps. It is just as capable.
The slow boot-up of Windows 2000 is a DCHP bug in the OS that can be fixed with some tweking, or upgrading to some sort of ethernet-based Internet connection. Your reason for it starting up slow was probably due to you having a modem. Keep in mind that Windows 2000 was originally intended for the workgroup environment, and 90% of users would be on a LAN connection. My home Windows 2000 box would start up in about 30 seconds with my cable modem/ethernet setup, but would time out for about 2 minutes on a standard 56k modem. This is because it would time out while looking for a network and DHCP server. Windows XP fixes that little issue for the modem users of the world.
But of course... None of this is an issue, because I use Slackware Linux now. Having used every major release of Windows for the past 10 or so years, I can safely say that I don't fit your description (misconception) for the average Slashdot user. Perhaps you don't understand this OS stuff as much as you'd like to believe that you do, and perhaps you insist on lambasting other Slashdot users for this very reason.
Yes, I'm afraid of XP. That is why I switched to Linux. I don't want DRM. I don't want to be locked into weird licensing schemes. I don't want to have my computer forcefully upgraded or changed to fit someone elses initiative. Maybe you don't understand this? That's fine, but quit being so ignorant to other peoples motives for not choosing the same route.
Did you try running it in compatibility mode? I was able to get some Win9x only games to run in Windows 2k by having it emulate Win 9x.
For the record though, Windows 2000 is just as cabale for gaming as the other Windows products (if not moreso). DirectX and OpenGL apps work fine. Disney obviously stuck some exclusive code into their program and decided to offer a BS excuse so that they didn't have to fix it.
Perhaps they have figured out that everyone that has Windows 2000 doesn't want Windows XP. They really have no reason to upgrade.
Windows 2000 is a pretty good OS, and though I now use Slackware Linux for all of my work, I would never switch to Windows XP.
It is in MS's best interest to try to force users to make the switch, even if they won't achieve more functionality or stability (the will achieve less stability, actually).