It seems to me that over the last year or two, there has been a flood of commentary focusing on what Linux should become in order to be useful, helpful, nice, good value, etc. etc. etc.
And all the while, each time I read one of these stories, I am secretly thinking to myself that I am quite satisfied with Linux as it is now. Linux+KDE3+OpenOffice+Mozilla+GIMP gives me the most enjoyable, productive computing environment I've ever had -- and I've had a lot of computers over the years (I was a 128k Mac owner, $3500 for a tiny monochrome scren and a 400k floppy!)
I sometimes wonder if there isn't a silent majority of Linux users who aren't at all interested in Linux-chases-Windows or Linux-chases-MacOS or Linux-needs-XYZ and who instead are just using Linux on a day to day basis and being glad it's the system that it is.
I'd hate to see this silent majority gradually lose the system they love as Linux is transformed into a Windows clone by vendors and project leaders who give too much credence to the voices of pundits (many of whom probably don't use Linux as their primary desktop anyway).
Only after a still-undisclosed number of hours spent making everything work just so.
I told you, less than an hour.
I am more than happy to admit that people like yourself find Linux to be viable. I'm just arguing that you're wrong.
Right, only "people like [my]self" find it to be viable -- only the lunatics and axe-murderers, right? And of course, their opinions are totally invalid and uncalled for!
God, what a jackass!
This is not a matter of opinion; it's pure objective fact. Mac OS X is far easier to use than Linux.
Right, and it's also pure objective fact that green is a better color than blue and that right is a better direction than left. Personal preference has no place in the world! It's for the hippies!
Okay, now I'm done with this thread. It is pointless to talk sense with someone who feels that sense is only for the elitists.
No, "friend", you're the one who suggested that the process in Windows was fine, but the process in Linux was not. I'm suggesting that it's the same process and that Linux is at least as viable as Windows as a desktop operating system, and that furthermore, I prefer it.
You're the one who (obviously) is decalring his/her own experiences to be the only ones of import. You think it, therefore naturally it must be true for everyone. Well, that's crap, plain and simple. I won't mince words either. I find Linux easy to use. It makes sense. It has detailed logging. It's well-documented, even down to the dusty depths.
And I find Windows much easier to use than Mac OS X. I bought a Beige G3 to play with OS X. It's supposed to be a "supported" system according to Apple. Well... OS 9 worked. But under 10.1, SCSI doesn't work, video is unaccelerated, ethernet disappears all the time without warning and the CD-ROM drive (the Apple CD-ROM drive) tends to hang the system.
No wonder you're on my enemies list; you simply discount any experiences or opinions other than your own as nonsense, all the while patronizingly referring to people as "friends" and putting ther feelings in "scare quotes".
This is my last post in this thread. I'll summarize.
1. Linux is not more difficult to use or install than Windows; it is merely different.
2. I prefer Linux to Windows.
3. All of my devices and software work under Linux. They work well. The Linux desktop works well. My friends who have tried it like it very much.
4. I do not spend hours and hours banging away at system libraries.
5. I find Windows confusing.
6. I find Mac OS X unstable (yes, on Apple hardware) and somewhat limiting.
7. I am perfectly willing to admit that others feel that Mac OS and Windows are easier to use that Linux. You, however, are not willing to admit that some people like myself might legitimately find Linux to be a perfectly viable desktop system.
Oh well. Long live Linux. And maybe Apple will fix Mac OS X.
Sorry, but you're just wrong. It's not a pain in the ass. Maybe it's a pain in the ass for you, but certainly you're not suggesting that you should be held up as the sole benchmark for normalcy in the world? Or are you?! I spent less than an hour getting everything up and running on my Tablet PC when I got it. Of course, this is because I use Linux all the time, so I know all of the little tweaks that I want to make and software that I want to grab and where they can be found. But that's my point!
To suggest that this is somehow *different* from Windows is disingenuous. Last time I installed Windows 2000 on a friend's desktop, we came up on first boot to a 16 color desktop and no ethernet. D'oh! How is this so much more user-friendly or brilliant than Linux? We had to know how to get to the control panel and instruct Windows to install a driver for the ethernet card from a driver CD. We then had to go to Web site for his 3D accelerator manufacturer and download the drivers. Of course, they were zipped, so we had to go to www.shareware.com and find an unzipper. Then, it conflicted with the incorrect driver Windows had chosen to install for the graphics hardware, so we had to uninstall that first. Blah, blah, blah.
God knows I can do these things faster by far on Linux. There are a whole bunch of people out there complaining about how hard Linux is to use and configure... but their basis for comparison is a different system -- Windows -- with which they are obviously much more familiar, and which more than likely came pre-installed on their PC with drivers loaded, etc., as you yourself already admitted. Hardly a fair basis for comparison, is it?
So I'll suggest again that you're implicitly arguing that either a) Linux will never be usable until it comes pre-installed, or b) Linux will never be usable until it is an exact Windows clone. That's certainly a point of view that some people have around here... but I certainly hope it doesn't happen because I personally find Linux easier to use as it is now, period.
And no, I'm not some kind of ueber-geek with a pimple problem who spends hours a day tweaking configuration files. You seem to suggest that I've made a "hobby" out of Linux and spend lots of hours banging my head against system libraries or installing software. I can't tell you the last time I had to do any of that stuff. I write books. I use a word processor. I take photos. That's what I do. I have to earn a living, I don't have time to fsck with my computer all day!
And anyway, I have apt-rpm installed -- that's usually my first thing -- just like Windows users head straight for WinZip to install their software. There's no difference! And once apt-rpm is installed, if I want some software, all I have to do is type:
apt-get install xmms...and away we go. You see? No trouble. No hassle. Works great. And it's much faster than having to click, click, click through a thousand Wizards and registration screens like one does in Windows! Maybe it doesn't seem intuitive to you, a Windows user, but then the Windows add/remove software system with its broken registry keys seems very odd and complicated to me, a Linux user. See?
Yes, and if Linux had shipped with my tablet PC instead of Windows, such things as xscribble would have been installed by default, without needing my intervention, just as you've described.
So what you've just argued is that Linux isn't usable because it doesn't have Microsoft's monopoly. Now there's a political statement...
I am about to speak for all those of us who use a multimedia Linux desktop now for years, complete with audio, 3D acceleration, DVD, streaming video, full MS Office interoperability and KDE ease-of-use that even our Windows-ing friends comment on with envy...
You're absolutely wrong about Linux. Maybe you're even simple.
I'm very tired of the so-and-so's on Slashdot who keep posting that Linux is unusable without even giving any major distribution a real try. Linux on the desktop rules, I wouldn't use anything else. No, it's not exactly like Windows. In fact, it's better-- faster workflow, more intuitive desktop, better icons and themes, nicer applications, the ability to run Windows applications (under VMWare or Win4Lin) more stably than under Windows... But of course there's no arguing that it's different.
Still, if you can't be bothered to figure out your way around the differences and appreciate the wealth of features and applications that are already there for Linux and that have been putting Windows to shame already for years, it isn't the fault of Linux or the Linux community, it's the fault of you and nobody else. Some have said they don't have the time to figure out the features of Linux. Fine, they don't get to use them. But that doesn't mean they aren't there or that they aren't as usable as those of Windows or Mac OS! Sit a Windows guy down in front of a Mac OS X machine and watch what happens: he's as confused as hell. But nobody is storming around claiming that OS X is bad for the desktop because such claims aren't fashionable.
Justification: I am writing this right now from a multimedia tablet PC running Red Hat Linux and KDE3 with Light.v3 style and the iKons theme. Yes, the touchscreen works wonderfully! Yes, I have handwriting recognition via xscribble! Yes, I'm using all external USB peripherals, including a DVD player which is right now playing "Lola Rennt"! Yes, onboard audio and onboard 3D acceleration work properly! Yes, it makes my friends green with envy!
The problem with all of these IDE vs. SCSI performance discussions is that "performance" is a context-sensitive term.
Today's IDE drives can probably push more streamed data per unit time through an interface, however, if you can't afford intermittent burps in sustained throughput, SCSI still outperforms, and once you load a bus with multiple drives and try to use them simultaneously, IDE really begins to falter because the IDE specification is not terribly friendly to bus sharing.
And of course in database-type environments with many, many seek and small read and write operations going on, IDE drives completely suck in comparison to the much smaller average access and command queueing of SCSI.
So it depends on what "performance" means to you...
Um, SCSI is a direct descended of SASI, or Shugart Associates Systems Interface, which was created in response to IBM's mainframe needs. It was Shugart who submitted the original specs for the ANSI standard, IIRC.
Therefore it would be Shugart Associates who created SCSI, not Adaptec.
If you buy and sell a great deal, then a site like eBay can help to save more than you'd ever lose. I've recently bought all of the following on eBay:
A current model pen-based Fujitsu portable that retails for $4k. I got it for $1k on eBay. I'm using it right now. That's a savings of $3k! I love this machine and it works wonderfully. I could never have afforded it new. I also got a whole bunch of USB 2.0 peripherals for it at rock-bottom prices (i.e. 9.4GB DVD-RAM/DVD-R external USB for only $90!)
A whole pile of very cool clothing items that could never in a hundred years be found locally. I love my new red leather hat especially!
A series of faux egyptian art items that look incredible as a part of my decor. As a famous man once said, "chicks dig'em" and so do I!
A rare Nina Hagen tape and a rare Einstuerzende Neubauten tape, both of which are nearly impossible to get your hands on, which I was then able to record to.WAV files and burn to CD. Awesome!
Online auctions are wonderful! I've also sold perhaps $5,000 of old useless junk that I didn't need. But obviously, it wasn't junk to the buyers-- I freed space in my apartment and got cash, they got used items that they didn't want to pay new prices for. Win-win!
Have I ever been scammed? Twice. First time I tried to buy Mac OS X 10.1 on eBay and instead of the nice retail box in the picture, I got CD-R discs. I was out $100.00. I disputed with VISA and they credited my account. The second time I lost $600.00 trying to buy a digital camera. I got nothing and it seems that many were scammed (I was contacted by the FBI! The seller was somewhere in Tennessee and they had scammed many others, apparently.)
Am I mad that I've been scammed twice? Perhaps. But compared to buying retail where I live, I'm still way ahead. And the stuff I've been able to buy is much cooler. And when you also account for used items I've been able to turn into cash that would otherwise simply have been given away or worse thrown into a landfill or incinerator, I'm really not behind by any stretch of the imagination. I'm living much better than I could afford to live if eBay didn't exist.
The key on sites like eBay is to scrutinize the seller's feedback carefully. If you are unsure, simply e-mail them and ask if you can give them a call and talk about it. If you still feel uneasy, don't buy!
Since the beginning of December alone, I have received four e-mail messages claiming to be from eBay, pointing to various Web sites which ask for credit card or membership information. They all have the following in common:
1. Partially (but not expertly) forged mail headers. 2. Web site which looks pretty authentic but isn't hosted at eBay (imagine that!) 3. A threat of some sort -- "If you fail to verify your information within four days, your account will be suspended." 4. Grammar or spelling mistakes if you look closely.
When I got my first couple of these a year ago or so, I dutifully reported the messages to eBay and the abuse@ addresses for the mail server and Web host used in the transactions. But now I receive so many of them, I just ignore them.
I nope not too many people are dumb enough to fall for this, but sadly, I suspect that some are...
Wow, what an insensitive response. It strikes me that the original poster was trying to help others by making them aware of something that they might be affected by, yet might not see for themselves.
Read the last few lines of the post again. If you can't understand it when people have the best interests of others at heart, someday you'll likely end up desperately needing help while stupidly turning it down because of your own pride.
I for one hope that the original poster overcomes his/her demons and even if you won't, I'll certainly give them a cookie for posting their "story" in a potentially hostile environment like this one...
Re:SCSI for workstations?
on
IDE RAID Examined
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Ummm, no.
Try getting sustained data transfer rates out of an IDE RAID under load. It won't happen. You'll stutter. *boom* goes your realtime process.
SCSI RAID, on the other hand, streams happily along with very little CPU load.
I'm a very creative person -- I'm a freelance author/photographer and I do a lot of imaging work as well.
But I'm also a hardcore Linux user. What you said about reinventing the wheel over and over again is to some extent true... No two hardcore Linux users have a similar system; every "serious" Linux system is intensely personal and really built from the ground up for the individual, you're right...
But my intenseley personal system has now been more or less "done" for a decade. I'm using the same basic set of information management and graphics management scripts, the same home directory hierarchy, the same homegrown network tools and so on. In short, I have a system that is fully streamlined for my specific type of work and my working habits.
Yes, MacOS would probably allow me to be creative as well. But with my Linux system, which is tailor-made for me, I can be creative faster and with less busywork. It's a more pure, elemental kind of creative outlet.
The parent post basically said "I believe we should let the strong survive, so if Salon can't, that's too bad".
No, he did not say "if Salon can't survive" he said "if Salon can only survive through charity" and then he used the term 'Darwinist' to describe that condition.
My point is that the social Darwinist would analyze the situation and say: If this company is able to survive based on charity, then its ability to get charitable donations was a useful adaptation that led to its survival.
A Darwinist never says "That's going to survive, but because I don't like the way it's going to survive, I think we should remove its means of survival and let it die."
And Darwinism has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with "strength" per se. The lack of knowledge about Darwinism on a site like Slashdot should be shocking to all...
Sort of...it's more of a "those which were better suited for the environment survived due to the qualities that made it better suited."
Exactly. And this is an obvious, pointless statement. They wouldn't survive due to the qualities that made it worse suited now, would they? Just what the beneficial qualities were is a subject for useful investigation, and I said that. But were is the operative word here -- past tense. Anyone who proposes that social Darwinism provides some kind of insight into the future or even into present conditions is simply selling snake oil. If you analyze the "selective causes" of the present or future, you're merely analyzing things which either haven't died yet or haven't survived yet -- and you don't know which until it's all over! To draw any conclusions about survivability in the middle of the game using the selective model is at best a precarious task, and at worse... a Slashdot post.
People have proposed you explain cultural information [vub.ac.be] by the same mechanism.
I am aware of this (my degree is in cultural anthropology). But be careful -- the uses of social Darwinism are as a model for explaining the past, not as a policy matter for guiding the future. There is a huge difference.
No, what was argued is that if you can't survive in a context (ie as a business you cant make money), then you are going to be left behind.
But you are again misusing social Darwinism and natural selection in the same way as the original poster. You can't rule out survivability as a part of the context itself. If Salon.com "survives" due to charity, then it has survived, period. You can't say "But it didn't survive in the 'fair' way -- the way that I wanted it to!" because in Darwinism, the context is the environment -- all of it -- not just the parts you want to look at. If you begin to research anything from organisms to corporations under the Darwinist microscope but circumscribe your context artificially, then your research will be useless and your conclusions wrong.
Survived is survived, charity or otherwise. "I didn't like the way it survived!" has nothing at all to do with Darwinism -- I'll say once it again.
You don't like social Darwinism at all. You've just argued against it.
If a firm manages to get handouts, they have managed to survive somehow, showing that they are adept at something useful for survival (i.e. getting handouts), and that is all that social Darwinism implies.
Darwinism itself is a kind of useless null concept outside the bounds of history (i.e. evolutionary history). It basically states that those things which have survived... did, and those things which haven't... didn't. There is no "deserves to survive" or "doesn't deserve to survive" in natural selection, there is only "those things will survive that have found or adapted a way to survive." It is interested if you want to look backward at a kind of roadmap of development. It is completely uninteresting for predicting what will happen in the future or for explaining what is happening at any given instantaneous observation.
What you've argued is that charity isn't beneficial to society. Whether or not that is true, it has little to do with Darwinism or natural selection.
I use a Newton 2100 and I have everything in it going back to about 1997-- contacts, school notes, letters, e-mail, appointments, jots about this or that, maps and sketches, books, birthdays, archived usenet posts (yes, I read usenet on my PDA), old Web content (archive that too, if it's useful enough) etc. etc. etc.
I'm running out of space once again (right now I am at 44MB of storage) but thanks to the ATA driver for Newton, I'll probably be picking up a 128MB CompactFlash card for it soon.
I'm so worried about losing my Newton that I have two backup units sitting in a drawer, just in case.
Then let me be very explicit. The group of servers of which I speak were each shut down *once* in the autumn of 2001 to move them all into the next room after a crack formed in the wall of they room they were in (seriously) the day after a freeze; water had begun to seep in to the room. Total downtime was less than 5 minutes each. There have been no reboots, crashes, or restarts for other reasons. I suppose your Windows 95 box has behaved similarly?
First of all, the servers in question aren't running 2.4.x or the most recent version of Slackware.
Next, I didn't say they *report* an uptime of >700 days (they do not), only that they have been running without crashes or similar interruption for >700 days. But it is very easy to know power on, power off and unintended interruption dates because such data for these machines is all logged, in pencil, to paper.;)
They have been extremely maintenance free and yes, under load. I did not say that they didn't slow down (my god, how they can slow down) but they have not fallen completely over (a.k.a. hung/crashed) and that is all that matters.
Congratulations, you have very effectively debunked a pile of claims I never made.
The "open source developers" of which you speak now count among their number professional developers from companies like IBM and SGI who have been working hand over foot for the last few years to bring Linux to large computing platforms. Check the development mailing lists.
It's not like Linus has been sitting in his bedroom coding for a decade and now suddenly SGI is going to download the kernel and throw it at supercomputing hardware. Big companies are and have been investing development dollars in Linux in order to make Linux ready for platforms like this one. And the great thing about Linux is that whatever SGI or IBM adds, the community tends to get back in the form of permanent enhancements to Linux.
I concede that FreeBSD *is* more stable than Linux. However, the data you're using is nearly five years old, an eternity in the technology world. FreeBSD is certainly no longer an order of magnitude more stable than Linux, while at the same time both FreeBSD and Linux are several orders of magnitude more stable than Windows on "do-it-yourself" hardware found at small companies or in homes.
Of course, for controlled quantities like vendor-supplied hardware, all three can be very stable, though I'd still suggest that FreeBSD and Linux are at least an order of magnitude more stable than Windows.
And just to inject some of my own anecodtal evidence, on a volunteer basis I administrate several SMP x86 file and Web servers for NGO's/NPO's that 1) run Slackware Linux, 2) have uptimes >700 days and 3) have significant load a good percentage of the time with load spikes at times that can reach into the stratosphere.
1. It's true, most applications for Linux can be run under FreeBSD.
2. It's a matter of personal choice to run one or the other on a desktop workstation. I run Linux because it's just more fun. Better 3D games support, newer drivers for everything and much more rapid development full of new ideas, little bits of GNU humor or cleverness all over the place and a lot of variety. It feels right. Of course, a lot of FreeBSD users would say that 3D gaming is for gamer weenies, newer drivers equal more unstable drivers, GNU humor and cleverness are really just lack of professionalism and variety is really the same thing as inconsistency. It's all a matter of personal taste if it's your personal system.
For non-personal systems, I'd say it's more a matter of whatever your vendor is pushing. In more and more cases these days, that will be Linux, but there are still some large firms that are outfitting people with *BSD.
Did you read that link? I've been there in the past. None of the applications you linked to run properly (i.e. at 5 level), while they all run properly in Win4Lin.
Re:Wonderful.
on
Fun With Wine
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I don't know which version of wine you use. But I have downloaded every Wine release, compiled, installed, and run it. I want Wine to work. I read the Wine Weekly News. It would be nice to be able to abandon Win4Lin's "windows in a window" environment in favor of individual application windows.
But I can still not get the Office installer or the Inernet Explorer installer or the Photoshop installer to run.
I've even tried several times using Wine with the filesystem created by Win4Lin, which had an "already existing Windows install" containing Office and IE and PS. No dice.
Here and there (mostly on/.) I hear of people who are able to use Wine to run every last Windows application under the sun. "Wine works great, and it works great now!" they say. But I can't get most any application installers to work with Wine, even with the latest releases. And no Web sites out there exist that give any hints, beyond DLL games that also don't produce desired results.
If you have nice, step-by-step instructions for getting Office 2000 and Internet Explorer 6 and Photoshop 6 to install and run in Wine, please post them here! The Linux community will be very grateful, as this would allow a large number of people to migrate to Linux by using Wine to run their important applications.
Yes, you can buy Crossover Office for some increased (yet still limited) application support. And you can buy into the Transgaming situation for some increased (yet still limited) gaming support. And you could even buy WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux for a while, which used wine for some increased (yet still limited) application support. But that's a lot of $$, a lot of different installations of wine on a single system, and still no Photoshop 6!
Notice that I mentioned "the free version of Wine."
Yes, I can pay for an aftermarket Wine to run Office, but I can also run MS Office and Internet Explorer in Win4Lin, as well as Photoshop (which codeweavers can't help me with), so even paying $$, Wine comes out loser.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that over the last year or two, there has been a flood of commentary focusing on what Linux should become in order to be useful, helpful, nice, good value, etc. etc. etc.
And all the while, each time I read one of these stories, I am secretly thinking to myself that I am quite satisfied with Linux as it is now. Linux+KDE3+OpenOffice+Mozilla+GIMP gives me the most enjoyable, productive computing environment I've ever had -- and I've had a lot of computers over the years (I was a 128k Mac owner, $3500 for a tiny monochrome scren and a 400k floppy!)
I sometimes wonder if there isn't a silent majority of Linux users who aren't at all interested in Linux-chases-Windows or Linux-chases-MacOS or Linux-needs-XYZ and who instead are just using Linux on a day to day basis and being glad it's the system that it is.
I'd hate to see this silent majority gradually lose the system they love as Linux is transformed into a Windows clone by vendors and project leaders who give too much credence to the voices of pundits (many of whom probably don't use Linux as their primary desktop anyway).
My $0.02.
Only after a still-undisclosed number of hours spent making everything work just so.
I told you, less than an hour.
I am more than happy to admit that people like yourself find Linux to be viable. I'm just arguing that you're wrong.
Right, only "people like [my]self" find it to be viable -- only the lunatics and axe-murderers, right? And of course, their opinions are totally invalid and uncalled for!
God, what a jackass!
This is not a matter of opinion; it's pure objective fact. Mac OS X is far easier to use than Linux.
Right, and it's also pure objective fact that green is a better color than blue and that right is a better direction than left. Personal preference has no place in the world! It's for the hippies!
Okay, now I'm done with this thread. It is pointless to talk sense with someone who feels that sense is only for the elitists.
No, "friend", you're the one who suggested that the process in Windows was fine, but the process in Linux was not. I'm suggesting that it's the same process and that Linux is at least as viable as Windows as a desktop operating system, and that furthermore, I prefer it.
You're the one who (obviously) is decalring his/her own experiences to be the only ones of import. You think it, therefore naturally it must be true for everyone. Well, that's crap, plain and simple. I won't mince words either. I find Linux easy to use. It makes sense. It has detailed logging. It's well-documented, even down to the dusty depths.
And I find Windows much easier to use than Mac OS X. I bought a Beige G3 to play with OS X. It's supposed to be a "supported" system according to Apple. Well... OS 9 worked. But under 10.1, SCSI doesn't work, video is unaccelerated, ethernet disappears all the time without warning and the CD-ROM drive (the Apple CD-ROM drive) tends to hang the system.
No wonder you're on my enemies list; you simply discount any experiences or opinions other than your own as nonsense, all the while patronizingly referring to people as "friends" and putting ther feelings in "scare quotes".
This is my last post in this thread. I'll summarize.
1. Linux is not more difficult to use or install than Windows; it is merely different.
2. I prefer Linux to Windows.
3. All of my devices and software work under Linux. They work well. The Linux desktop works well. My friends who have tried it like it very much.
4. I do not spend hours and hours banging away at system libraries.
5. I find Windows confusing.
6. I find Mac OS X unstable (yes, on Apple hardware) and somewhat limiting.
7. I am perfectly willing to admit that others feel that Mac OS and Windows are easier to use that Linux. You, however, are not willing to admit that some people like myself might legitimately find Linux to be a perfectly viable desktop system.
Oh well. Long live Linux. And maybe Apple will fix Mac OS X.
Sorry, but you're just wrong. It's not a pain in the ass. Maybe it's a pain in the ass for you, but certainly you're not suggesting that you should be held up as the sole benchmark for normalcy in the world? Or are you?! I spent less than an hour getting everything up and running on my Tablet PC when I got it. Of course, this is because I use Linux all the time, so I know all of the little tweaks that I want to make and software that I want to grab and where they can be found. But that's my point!
...and away we go. You see? No trouble. No hassle. Works great. And it's much faster than having to click, click, click through a thousand Wizards and registration screens like one does in Windows! Maybe it doesn't seem intuitive to you, a Windows user, but then the Windows add/remove software system with its broken registry keys seems very odd and complicated to me, a Linux user. See?
To suggest that this is somehow *different* from Windows is disingenuous. Last time I installed Windows 2000 on a friend's desktop, we came up on first boot to a 16 color desktop and no ethernet. D'oh! How is this so much more user-friendly or brilliant than Linux? We had to know how to get to the control panel and instruct Windows to install a driver for the ethernet card from a driver CD. We then had to go to Web site for his 3D accelerator manufacturer and download the drivers. Of course, they were zipped, so we had to go to www.shareware.com and find an unzipper. Then, it conflicted with the incorrect driver Windows had chosen to install for the graphics hardware, so we had to uninstall that first. Blah, blah, blah.
God knows I can do these things faster by far on Linux. There are a whole bunch of people out there complaining about how hard Linux is to use and configure... but their basis for comparison is a different system -- Windows -- with which they are obviously much more familiar, and which more than likely came pre-installed on their PC with drivers loaded, etc., as you yourself already admitted. Hardly a fair basis for comparison, is it?
So I'll suggest again that you're implicitly arguing that either a) Linux will never be usable until it comes pre-installed, or b) Linux will never be usable until it is an exact Windows clone. That's certainly a point of view that some people have around here... but I certainly hope it doesn't happen because I personally find Linux easier to use as it is now, period.
And no, I'm not some kind of ueber-geek with a pimple problem who spends hours a day tweaking configuration files. You seem to suggest that I've made a "hobby" out of Linux and spend lots of hours banging my head against system libraries or installing software. I can't tell you the last time I had to do any of that stuff. I write books. I use a word processor. I take photos. That's what I do. I have to earn a living, I don't have time to fsck with my computer all day!
And anyway, I have apt-rpm installed -- that's usually my first thing -- just like Windows users head straight for WinZip to install their software. There's no difference! And once apt-rpm is installed, if I want some software, all I have to do is type:
apt-get install xmms
Yes, and if Linux had shipped with my tablet PC instead of Windows, such things as xscribble would have been installed by default, without needing my intervention, just as you've described.
So what you've just argued is that Linux isn't usable because it doesn't have Microsoft's monopoly. Now there's a political statement...
I am about to speak for all those of us who use a multimedia Linux desktop now for years, complete with audio, 3D acceleration, DVD, streaming video, full MS Office interoperability and KDE ease-of-use that even our Windows-ing friends comment on with envy...
You're absolutely wrong about Linux. Maybe you're even simple.
I'm very tired of the so-and-so's on Slashdot who keep posting that Linux is unusable without even giving any major distribution a real try. Linux on the desktop rules, I wouldn't use anything else. No, it's not exactly like Windows. In fact, it's better-- faster workflow, more intuitive desktop, better icons and themes, nicer applications, the ability to run Windows applications (under VMWare or Win4Lin) more stably than under Windows... But of course there's no arguing that it's different.
Still, if you can't be bothered to figure out your way around the differences and appreciate the wealth of features and applications that are already there for Linux and that have been putting Windows to shame already for years, it isn't the fault of Linux or the Linux community, it's the fault of you and nobody else. Some have said they don't have the time to figure out the features of Linux. Fine, they don't get to use them. But that doesn't mean they aren't there or that they aren't as usable as those of Windows or Mac OS! Sit a Windows guy down in front of a Mac OS X machine and watch what happens: he's as confused as hell. But nobody is storming around claiming that OS X is bad for the desktop because such claims aren't fashionable.
Justification: I am writing this right now from a multimedia tablet PC running Red Hat Linux and KDE3 with Light.v3 style and the iKons theme. Yes, the touchscreen works wonderfully! Yes, I have handwriting recognition via xscribble! Yes, I'm using all external USB peripherals, including a DVD player which is right now playing "Lola Rennt"! Yes, onboard audio and onboard 3D acceleration work properly! Yes, it makes my friends green with envy!
The problem with all of these IDE vs. SCSI performance discussions is that "performance" is a context-sensitive term.
Today's IDE drives can probably push more streamed data per unit time through an interface, however, if you can't afford intermittent burps in sustained throughput, SCSI still outperforms, and once you load a bus with multiple drives and try to use them simultaneously, IDE really begins to falter because the IDE specification is not terribly friendly to bus sharing.
And of course in database-type environments with many, many seek and small read and write operations going on, IDE drives completely suck in comparison to the much smaller average access and command queueing of SCSI.
So it depends on what "performance" means to you...
Um, SCSI is a direct descended of SASI, or Shugart Associates Systems Interface, which was created in response to IBM's mainframe needs. It was Shugart who submitted the original specs for the ANSI standard, IIRC.
Therefore it would be Shugart Associates who created SCSI, not Adaptec.
Online auctions are wonderful! I've also sold perhaps $5,000 of old useless junk that I didn't need. But obviously, it wasn't junk to the buyers-- I freed space in my apartment and got cash, they got used items that they didn't want to pay new prices for. Win-win!
Have I ever been scammed? Twice. First time I tried to buy Mac OS X 10.1 on eBay and instead of the nice retail box in the picture, I got CD-R discs. I was out $100.00. I disputed with VISA and they credited my account. The second time I lost $600.00 trying to buy a digital camera. I got nothing and it seems that many were scammed (I was contacted by the FBI! The seller was somewhere in Tennessee and they had scammed many others, apparently.)
Am I mad that I've been scammed twice? Perhaps. But compared to buying retail where I live, I'm still way ahead. And the stuff I've been able to buy is much cooler. And when you also account for used items I've been able to turn into cash that would otherwise simply have been given away or worse thrown into a landfill or incinerator, I'm really not behind by any stretch of the imagination. I'm living much better than I could afford to live if eBay didn't exist.
The key on sites like eBay is to scrutinize the seller's feedback carefully. If you are unsure, simply e-mail them and ask if you can give them a call and talk about it. If you still feel uneasy, don't buy!
Since the beginning of December alone, I have received four e-mail messages claiming to be from eBay, pointing to various Web sites which ask for credit card or membership information. They all have the following in common:
1. Partially (but not expertly) forged mail headers.
2. Web site which looks pretty authentic but isn't hosted at eBay (imagine that!)
3. A threat of some sort -- "If you fail to verify your information within four days, your account will be suspended."
4. Grammar or spelling mistakes if you look closely.
When I got my first couple of these a year ago or so, I dutifully reported the messages to eBay and the abuse@ addresses for the mail server and Web host used in the transactions. But now I receive so many of them, I just ignore them.
I nope not too many people are dumb enough to fall for this, but sadly, I suspect that some are...
Wow, what an insensitive response. It strikes me that the original poster was trying to help others by making them aware of something that they might be affected by, yet might not see for themselves.
Read the last few lines of the post again. If you can't understand it when people have the best interests of others at heart, someday you'll likely end up desperately needing help while stupidly turning it down because of your own pride.
I for one hope that the original poster overcomes his/her demons and even if you won't, I'll certainly give them a cookie for posting their "story" in a potentially hostile environment like this one...
Ummm, no.
Try getting sustained data transfer rates out of an IDE RAID under load. It won't happen. You'll stutter. *boom* goes your realtime process.
SCSI RAID, on the other hand, streams happily along with very little CPU load.
Maybe, maybe not.
I'm a very creative person -- I'm a freelance author/photographer and I do a lot of imaging work as well.
But I'm also a hardcore Linux user. What you said about reinventing the wheel over and over again is to some extent true... No two hardcore Linux users have a similar system; every "serious" Linux system is intensely personal and really built from the ground up for the individual, you're right...
But my intenseley personal system has now been more or less "done" for a decade. I'm using the same basic set of information management and graphics management scripts, the same home directory hierarchy, the same homegrown network tools and so on. In short, I have a system that is fully streamlined for my specific type of work and my working habits.
Yes, MacOS would probably allow me to be creative as well. But with my Linux system, which is tailor-made for me, I can be creative faster and with less busywork. It's a more pure, elemental kind of creative outlet.
The parent post basically said "I believe we should let the strong survive, so if Salon can't, that's too bad".
No, he did not say "if Salon can't survive" he said "if Salon can only survive through charity" and then he used the term 'Darwinist' to describe that condition.
My point is that the social Darwinist would analyze the situation and say: If this company is able to survive based on charity, then its ability to get charitable donations was a useful adaptation that led to its survival.
A Darwinist never says "That's going to survive, but because I don't like the way it's going to survive, I think we should remove its means of survival and let it die."
And Darwinism has nothing , I repeat, nothing to do with "strength" per se. The lack of knowledge about Darwinism on a site like Slashdot should be shocking to all...
Sort of...it's more of a "those which were better suited for the environment survived due to the qualities that made it better suited."
Exactly. And this is an obvious, pointless statement. They wouldn't survive due to the qualities that made it worse suited now, would they? Just what the beneficial qualities were is a subject for useful investigation, and I said that. But were is the operative word here -- past tense. Anyone who proposes that social Darwinism provides some kind of insight into the future or even into present conditions is simply selling snake oil. If you analyze the "selective causes" of the present or future, you're merely analyzing things which either haven't died yet or haven't survived yet -- and you don't know which until it's all over! To draw any conclusions about survivability in the middle of the game using the selective model is at best a precarious task, and at worse... a Slashdot post.
People have proposed you explain cultural information [vub.ac.be] by the same mechanism.
I am aware of this (my degree is in cultural anthropology). But be careful -- the uses of social Darwinism are as a model for explaining the past, not as a policy matter for guiding the future. There is a huge difference.
No, what was argued is that if you can't survive in a context (ie as a business you cant make money), then you are going to be left behind.
But you are again misusing social Darwinism and natural selection in the same way as the original poster. You can't rule out survivability as a part of the context itself. If Salon.com "survives" due to charity, then it has survived, period. You can't say "But it didn't survive in the 'fair' way -- the way that I wanted it to!" because in Darwinism, the context is the environment -- all of it -- not just the parts you want to look at. If you begin to research anything from organisms to corporations under the Darwinist microscope but circumscribe your context artificially, then your research will be useless and your conclusions wrong.
Survived is survived, charity or otherwise. "I didn't like the way it survived!" has nothing at all to do with Darwinism -- I'll say once it again.
You don't like social Darwinism at all. You've just argued against it.
If a firm manages to get handouts, they have managed to survive somehow, showing that they are adept at something useful for survival (i.e. getting handouts), and that is all that social Darwinism implies.
Darwinism itself is a kind of useless null concept outside the bounds of history (i.e. evolutionary history). It basically states that those things which have survived... did, and those things which haven't... didn't. There is no "deserves to survive" or "doesn't deserve to survive" in natural selection, there is only "those things will survive that have found or adapted a way to survive." It is interested if you want to look backward at a kind of roadmap of development. It is completely uninteresting for predicting what will happen in the future or for explaining what is happening at any given instantaneous observation.
What you've argued is that charity isn't beneficial to society. Whether or not that is true, it has little to do with Darwinism or natural selection.
I use a Newton 2100 and I have everything in it going back to about 1997-- contacts, school notes, letters, e-mail, appointments, jots about this or that, maps and sketches, books, birthdays, archived usenet posts (yes, I read usenet on my PDA), old Web content (archive that too, if it's useful enough) etc. etc. etc.
I'm running out of space once again (right now I am at 44MB of storage) but thanks to the ATA driver for Newton, I'll probably be picking up a 128MB CompactFlash card for it soon.
I'm so worried about losing my Newton that I have two backup units sitting in a drawer, just in case.
Then let me be very explicit. The group of servers of which I speak were each shut down *once* in the autumn of 2001 to move them all into the next room after a crack formed in the wall of they room they were in (seriously) the day after a freeze; water had begun to seep in to the room. Total downtime was less than 5 minutes each. There have been no reboots, crashes, or restarts for other reasons. I suppose your Windows 95 box has behaved similarly?
First of all, the servers in question aren't running 2.4.x or the most recent version of Slackware.
;)
Next, I didn't say they *report* an uptime of >700 days (they do not), only that they have been running without crashes or similar interruption for >700 days. But it is very easy to know power on, power off and unintended interruption dates because such data for these machines is all logged, in pencil, to paper.
They have been extremely maintenance free and yes, under load. I did not say that they didn't slow down (my god, how they can slow down) but they have not fallen completely over (a.k.a. hung/crashed) and that is all that matters.
Congratulations, you have very effectively debunked a pile of claims I never made.
The "open source developers" of which you speak now count among their number professional developers from companies like IBM and SGI who have been working hand over foot for the last few years to bring Linux to large computing platforms. Check the development mailing lists.
It's not like Linus has been sitting in his bedroom coding for a decade and now suddenly SGI is going to download the kernel and throw it at supercomputing hardware. Big companies are and have been investing development dollars in Linux in order to make Linux ready for platforms like this one. And the great thing about Linux is that whatever SGI or IBM adds, the community tends to get back in the form of permanent enhancements to Linux.
I concede that FreeBSD *is* more stable than Linux. However, the data you're using is nearly five years old, an eternity in the technology world. FreeBSD is certainly no longer an order of magnitude more stable than Linux, while at the same time both FreeBSD and Linux are several orders of magnitude more stable than Windows on "do-it-yourself" hardware found at small companies or in homes.
Of course, for controlled quantities like vendor-supplied hardware, all three can be very stable, though I'd still suggest that FreeBSD and Linux are at least an order of magnitude more stable than Windows.
And just to inject some of my own anecodtal evidence, on a volunteer basis I administrate several SMP x86 file and Web servers for NGO's/NPO's that 1) run Slackware Linux, 2) have uptimes >700 days and 3) have significant load a good percentage of the time with load spikes at times that can reach into the stratosphere.
1. It's true, most applications for Linux can be run under FreeBSD.
2. It's a matter of personal choice to run one or the other on a desktop workstation. I run Linux because it's just more fun. Better 3D games support, newer drivers for everything and much more rapid development full of new ideas, little bits of GNU humor or cleverness all over the place and a lot of variety. It feels right. Of course, a lot of FreeBSD users would say that 3D gaming is for gamer weenies, newer drivers equal more unstable drivers, GNU humor and cleverness are really just lack of professionalism and variety is really the same thing as inconsistency. It's all a matter of personal taste if it's your personal system.
For non-personal systems, I'd say it's more a matter of whatever your vendor is pushing. In more and more cases these days, that will be Linux, but there are still some large firms that are outfitting people with *BSD.
Did you read that link? I've been there in the past. None of the applications you linked to run properly (i.e. at 5 level), while they all run properly in Win4Lin.
I don't know which version of wine you use. But I have downloaded every Wine release, compiled, installed, and run it. I want Wine to work. I read the Wine Weekly News. It would be nice to be able to abandon Win4Lin's "windows in a window" environment in favor of individual application windows.
/.) I hear of people who are able to use Wine to run every last Windows application under the sun. "Wine works great, and it works great now!" they say. But I can't get most any application installers to work with Wine, even with the latest releases. And no Web sites out there exist that give any hints, beyond DLL games that also don't produce desired results.
But I can still not get the Office installer or the Inernet Explorer installer or the Photoshop installer to run.
I've even tried several times using Wine with the filesystem created by Win4Lin, which had an "already existing Windows install" containing Office and IE and PS. No dice.
Here and there (mostly on
If you have nice, step-by-step instructions for getting Office 2000 and Internet Explorer 6 and Photoshop 6 to install and run in Wine, please post them here! The Linux community will be very grateful, as this would allow a large number of people to migrate to Linux by using Wine to run their important applications.
Yes, you can buy Crossover Office for some increased (yet still limited) application support. And you can buy into the Transgaming situation for some increased (yet still limited) gaming support. And you could even buy WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux for a while, which used wine for some increased (yet still limited) application support. But that's a lot of $$, a lot of different installations of wine on a single system, and still no Photoshop 6!
Notice that I mentioned "the free version of Wine."
Yes, I can pay for an aftermarket Wine to run Office, but I can also run MS Office and Internet Explorer in Win4Lin, as well as Photoshop (which codeweavers can't help me with), so even paying $$, Wine comes out loser.