Yeah, that's basically my experience with them. I still install & play the first one sometimes, mostly to play single-player with bots and do Hoth over and over, or to play the galactic conquest mode or whatever it's called. It's not a great game, but come on, Hoth!
II was terrible, though. Maybe it's better multiplayer?
I'm, at the very least, what you'd call a "power user" in both Linux and Windows. I've used both for years. I started on Win 3.1 on the one side and on... god, I don't know, I think Potato was the stable Debian then, so 9 years for Linux. As my main window manager/DE I've used, in order of time spent, Gnome, XFCE, Windowmaker, KDE, and Enlightenment.
I'm only familiar with one of those terms, when applied to window managers. Two if by "windowshading" you mean that "roll up in to the title bar" effect you can get with a double-click on said title bar in some environments, but I'm not sure how that would do anything but make an even worse mess of The GIMP so I'm guessing you meant something else.
What I'm saying is, after YEARS of use, The GIMP is still the only program prodding me to even begin to give a damn about these features. All the other apps I've used had their shit squared away without my having to drastically modify my entire desktop experience. Hell, IIRC old versions of Fireworks (maybe new ones, too, haven't used it in years) even looked quite a bit like The Gimp, but managed to behave in an un-broken way even on Win98 without forcing me to change window management settings or requiring its own virtual desktop.
For reference, I started (semi) serious image editing on Paint Shop Pro, then The GIMP, then Photoshop, then back to The GIMP, then (thank god) back to Photoshop. My current favorite UI in an image editor? Paint.net's pretty damn good, IMO, for anything up to and including moderately complex edits/workflows.
Even if a whole graphics shop managed to switch over to The GIMP, they'd still have to have a copy or two of Photoshop kicking around if they ever have to accept and alter.psd files from outside sources, as The GIMP's support for that format is lacking and likely to result in unpleasant "god, this image looks really flat... wait, WTF happened to my pretty, subtle drop shadows!" conversations when the outside designers see what you've done.
a) How many other apps basically require you to give them their own desktop just to make them usable?
b) It still becomes a giant clusterfuck if you have more than a couple images open.
c) There's still the issue of getting toolbars to behave sanely. The best I've been able to do is to sticky them and then focus-follows-mouse my whole WM for the duration of my editing session, but that's a pain in the ass and is still awkward (e.g. no one-click or default way to make the image just large enough that it isn't covered by a toolbar, to cite one of many annoyances)
d) What the hell are Windows users supposed to do about it? Switch to Linux or BSD or whatever because a single app requires all kinds of bizarre shit from their windowing environment, while thousands of others get along fine with or without those features?
Ah, The GIMP--the only application in the world that expects the user and WM to supply most of the UI features that other programs manage to provide on their own.
God help you if you don't like whatever dumb shit settings you have to use to make The GIMP's interface suck less, or if you don't want to switch/upgrade your WM just because this one program has taken it upon itself to evangelically push a set of WM features and settings that aren't expected by any other application in the whole world.
Or if you're running it on Windows. Then you're just fucked.
Part of the trouble is the attitude of GIMP interface lovers (and the devs?) re. what is the job of the app and what's the job of the WM--specifically, it seems they think that it's the user's job to make sure they're running it in a windowing environment that can pick up The GIMP's slack, since that stuff is "the WM's job, not the app".
This is a problem because no other programs that I'm aware of subscribe to that philosophy, and (perhaps consequently) I don't even know what environment I'd have to run the damn thing in to get the features it ought to provide on its own. I mean, you're just totally fucked in Windows, and even in Linux the best I've managed was a combination of sticky windows and focus-follows-mouse with a dedicated virtual desktop for The Gimp--but I hate focus-follows-mouse and I hate The Gimp for (apparently) expecting me to use it to make their interface remotely usable.
I can't remember ever using another program that expected me to bend my environment to the needs of the program, rather than the app finding a way to fit in and handle its own damned unique needs, especially since my preferred WM setup is about as vanilla as you can get.
Next step for GNOME is complete removal of the multiple desktop paradigm, since without edge flipping there isn't much point to multiple desktops.
While you're right that there's no reason not to include a feature like that, I hardly think removal of multiple desktops follows. I've never used edge flipping and love multiple desktops (I just use ctrl+arrow to switch)
People always complain about this, but what are these awesome features I should be using that Gnome won't allow? I'd honestly love to know, 'cuz there must be all kinds of great workflow-enhancing, appearance-improving shit out there that I just don't know about and that Gnome won't permit me to use.
The only time I've run in to this was the spatial folder view crap, but that was trivial to turn off even then and IIRC they saw the light very soon after and made it a checkbox in an options dialogue.
The schools pay the teachers, the lesson plans belong to the school.
Guess it sucks for them that I'm not on the payroll then, huh? Good luck using my wife's best lesson plans without the (sometimes tiny, sometimes huge) parts I contribute.
Seriously though, they're hers. They're paid hours-plus, and time at home isn't part of the "plus". She's off the clock when she does most of it, and good luck untangling who "owns" it between me, her friends who are teachers, her colleagues at school, and internet resources.
The world needs more Open Source curricula. Let's take the resource we've already paid for and use them to help educate everyone.
How this would work in real life:
The open source curricula would be ignored until someone wrote a book about them aimed at administrators and gave it some damned stupid name ("cooperative liberated learning" or some such shit). It would include one or two "case studies" (anecdotes).
At that point, about half of the administrators in the country would decide that they like the sound of it, but not all the details, and implement it in a half-assed way that would cause it not to work at all. Teachers would be forced to comply with the tiny bit of the open source curriculum that was in use, while being discouraged from using the rest (even if they've read the book and realize that the district is doing it very, very wrong).
Five or so years pass, the administrators read some other book, then implement about 1/2 of the system proposed in it because that liberated-learning thing "just didn't work out". The cycle begins again.
On the plus side, hundreds of consultants would make (i.e. steal from the taxpayers) loads of money teaching school districts the "liberated-learning method" during those five years.
Hell, every time they kill a file sharing venue the one that replaces it is more convenient.
Napster? Not as good as the similar networks (ED2K, etc.) that replaced it. Torrents, better in turn. Suprnova, the first huge Torrent site to die? Not as good as The Pirate Bay.
I love TPB's interface, but I can only assume that the next huge site will be even better, if the trend continues.
I went out and bought a PS2 and Gamecube instead, and I turned my back on the tear-your-hair-out, bug-ridden computer gaming forever. Gone were the days of Atari 800, Commodore=64, and Amiga gaming when playing was as simple as popping in a floppy and plugging-in a joystick. PC gaming was a major headache-inducing endeavor.
That sucks. You missed out on some of the best games, ever. '95-2002 or so was a really, really good time for gaming (especially on the PC). You're right that it was also the most irritating time, but damn it was awesome anyway.
I mean, I guess it depends on what you play--platformers? Yeah, consoles and early PC stuff (Commander Keen I-VI, Duke Nukem 1/2, Hunter Hunted, etc.) are where it's at, as well as some of the newer indie platformers. Wasn't a good time for those, at least on the PC.
Adventure games, though? You missed some good stuff from Lucasarts. FPS? Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Dark Forces series, Thief series, Half Life series... the list goes on and on. Damn near every good FPS (with a very few exceptions) was released during that time, or at least had its series start rooted there. RTS? Whoa boy did you miss some good games. RPG? The mind boggles at how lacking in good titles that genre would be without the PC RPGs that came out in that time period.
More importantly I can still play the Amiga versions, whereas the PC versions crash both my Win98 and WinXP machines. (That's why I hate using PCs for gaming.)
I really can't believe there are still people who don't know about DosBox.
The real dark age of computer games, in that we have trouble playing many of them now, is the Win95/Win98 era. 2d games from then can usually be played in VMWare or VirtualBox or something, but for 3D games you've still got to have an old computer kicking around with Win98 installed. Some still work on modern Windows, but many don't, or only work partially.
I'm pretty sure that wasn't the joke. The "funny" mod is for the humorous description of Gears of War, I think, and not for some broken conception of gaming history that the poster fails to highlight in any way, thus leading me to believe it was unintentional.
If you're talking about me, I just finished my second playthrough of Mech Commander 2 in as many weeks (I somehow missed it back when it came out--solid game), I'm watching my wife play through Persona 4 on the PS2, time-wasting with Worms 4 occasionally (admittedly, it's such a crappy game that I almost feel bad playing it--it's just the only jump-in-and-play game I have installed right now), and preparing to start up Mass Effect while I wait for Dragon Age: Origins to come out early next month. When I'm in the mood for it I fire up Sanitarium and do a couple more chapters in it.
When I get a lull I'll be playing some of the classic adventure games that I haven't already (including Sam & Max, shockingly) and re-trying Planescape: Torment (hopefully the fucking thing won't bug and crash at the same spot every time no matter which save I load about 2/3 of the way through the game, like it did last time)
At any time, I might get an itch to replay one of my favorites, like Deus Ex, Red Alert 2, the Half Life games, the Thief series, Arcanum/Fallout/Fallout 2, Morrowind/Oblivion (heavily modded to avoid game-ruining suckitude), etc.
I play games. My piles (ok, shelves, and yes, it's most definitely plural) of to-read books and the few hundred movies my movie-geek friend and I are working through frown disapprovingly when I do, but I play plenty of games.
Good FPS games, too. Valve still reliably makes good ones (the mostly-not-gameplay-related fiasco[s] with L4D notwithstanding), but other than that... the only FPS I've played in the last couple years that I'd call good is STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I've played a couple that were OK (e.g. Bioshock) but no other truly good ones. Hell, I've got a folder full of HL1 single-player mods that are better than most new FPS games.
We've also lost the space fighter/mech sim genre (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander, Tachyon: The Fringe, Mechwarrior series). The last entry in either genre that I know of--and it was just an expansion for 2000's Mechwarrior 4--came out 7 years ago.
AFAIK, the last good space fighter game was Tachyon: The Fringe, and it's 9 years old. It and X-Wing: Alliance, released a few months earlier, were kind of the last gasp of the genre.
Those sorts of games have too steep a learning curve for the modern gaming crowd, and use too many buttons. Kind of like the Mechwarrior series.
Ah, that's right. I'm damn rusty. Stupid midwestern US--it's practically impossible to learn and retain a second language other than Spanish around here. No native speakers to practice on.
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Yes, because the many socialist democracies of Europe are well known for taxing students.
Oh, wait, I got that backwards, they're well known for paying students while they're in school and charging them nothing for tuition.
Yeah, that's basically my experience with them. I still install & play the first one sometimes, mostly to play single-player with bots and do Hoth over and over, or to play the galactic conquest mode or whatever it's called. It's not a great game, but come on, Hoth!
II was terrible, though. Maybe it's better multiplayer?
I'm, at the very least, what you'd call a "power user" in both Linux and Windows. I've used both for years. I started on Win 3.1 on the one side and on... god, I don't know, I think Potato was the stable Debian then, so 9 years for Linux. As my main window manager/DE I've used, in order of time spent, Gnome, XFCE, Windowmaker, KDE, and Enlightenment.
I'm only familiar with one of those terms, when applied to window managers. Two if by "windowshading" you mean that "roll up in to the title bar" effect you can get with a double-click on said title bar in some environments, but I'm not sure how that would do anything but make an even worse mess of The GIMP so I'm guessing you meant something else.
What I'm saying is, after YEARS of use, The GIMP is still the only program prodding me to even begin to give a damn about these features. All the other apps I've used had their shit squared away without my having to drastically modify my entire desktop experience. Hell, IIRC old versions of Fireworks (maybe new ones, too, haven't used it in years) even looked quite a bit like The Gimp, but managed to behave in an un-broken way even on Win98 without forcing me to change window management settings or requiring its own virtual desktop.
For reference, I started (semi) serious image editing on Paint Shop Pro, then The GIMP, then Photoshop, then back to The GIMP, then (thank god) back to Photoshop. My current favorite UI in an image editor? Paint.net's pretty damn good, IMO, for anything up to and including moderately complex edits/workflows.
So a single "apt-get" was enough to drive you away? You must not have liked Ubuntu to begin with, then.
Actually, I don't think GCC is included.
You've gotta install the build-essentials package to get it, IIRC.
Which makes sense, as less than 1% of users are likely to need anything out of the hundreds of megabytes of basic dev software that package installs.
Even if a whole graphics shop managed to switch over to The GIMP, they'd still have to have a copy or two of Photoshop kicking around if they ever have to accept and alter .psd files from outside sources, as The GIMP's support for that format is lacking and likely to result in unpleasant "god, this image looks really flat... wait, WTF happened to my pretty, subtle drop shadows!" conversations when the outside designers see what you've done.
My issues with that:
a) How many other apps basically require you to give them their own desktop just to make them usable?
b) It still becomes a giant clusterfuck if you have more than a couple images open.
c) There's still the issue of getting toolbars to behave sanely. The best I've been able to do is to sticky them and then focus-follows-mouse my whole WM for the duration of my editing session, but that's a pain in the ass and is still awkward (e.g. no one-click or default way to make the image just large enough that it isn't covered by a toolbar, to cite one of many annoyances)
d) What the hell are Windows users supposed to do about it? Switch to Linux or BSD or whatever because a single app requires all kinds of bizarre shit from their windowing environment, while thousands of others get along fine with or without those features?
Ah, The GIMP--the only application in the world that expects the user and WM to supply most of the UI features that other programs manage to provide on their own.
God help you if you don't like whatever dumb shit settings you have to use to make The GIMP's interface suck less, or if you don't want to switch/upgrade your WM just because this one program has taken it upon itself to evangelically push a set of WM features and settings that aren't expected by any other application in the whole world.
Or if you're running it on Windows. Then you're just fucked.
Part of the trouble is the attitude of GIMP interface lovers (and the devs?) re. what is the job of the app and what's the job of the WM--specifically, it seems they think that it's the user's job to make sure they're running it in a windowing environment that can pick up The GIMP's slack, since that stuff is "the WM's job, not the app".
This is a problem because no other programs that I'm aware of subscribe to that philosophy, and (perhaps consequently) I don't even know what environment I'd have to run the damn thing in to get the features it ought to provide on its own. I mean, you're just totally fucked in Windows, and even in Linux the best I've managed was a combination of sticky windows and focus-follows-mouse with a dedicated virtual desktop for The Gimp--but I hate focus-follows-mouse and I hate The Gimp for (apparently) expecting me to use it to make their interface remotely usable.
I can't remember ever using another program that expected me to bend my environment to the needs of the program, rather than the app finding a way to fit in and handle its own damned unique needs, especially since my preferred WM setup is about as vanilla as you can get.
While you're right that there's no reason not to include a feature like that, I hardly think removal of multiple desktops follows. I've never used edge flipping and love multiple desktops (I just use ctrl+arrow to switch)
See, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for.
I didn't know about that and might actually start using it (in Windows, at least)
What does Gnome not do that you want it to?
People always complain about this, but what are these awesome features I should be using that Gnome won't allow? I'd honestly love to know, 'cuz there must be all kinds of great workflow-enhancing, appearance-improving shit out there that I just don't know about and that Gnome won't permit me to use.
The only time I've run in to this was the spatial folder view crap, but that was trivial to turn off even then and IIRC they saw the light very soon after and made it a checkbox in an options dialogue.
They quite literally "contract" anew every year, in fact.
Guess it sucks for them that I'm not on the payroll then, huh? Good luck using my wife's best lesson plans without the (sometimes tiny, sometimes huge) parts I contribute.
Seriously though, they're hers. They're paid hours-plus, and time at home isn't part of the "plus". She's off the clock when she does most of it, and good luck untangling who "owns" it between me, her friends who are teachers, her colleagues at school, and internet resources.
How this would work in real life:
The open source curricula would be ignored until someone wrote a book about them aimed at administrators and gave it some damned stupid name ("cooperative liberated learning" or some such shit). It would include one or two "case studies" (anecdotes).
At that point, about half of the administrators in the country would decide that they like the sound of it, but not all the details, and implement it in a half-assed way that would cause it not to work at all. Teachers would be forced to comply with the tiny bit of the open source curriculum that was in use, while being discouraged from using the rest (even if they've read the book and realize that the district is doing it very, very wrong).
Five or so years pass, the administrators read some other book, then implement about 1/2 of the system proposed in it because that liberated-learning thing "just didn't work out". The cycle begins again.
On the plus side, hundreds of consultants would make (i.e. steal from the taxpayers) loads of money teaching school districts the "liberated-learning method" during those five years.
Hell, every time they kill a file sharing venue the one that replaces it is more convenient.
Napster? Not as good as the similar networks (ED2K, etc.) that replaced it. Torrents, better in turn. Suprnova, the first huge Torrent site to die? Not as good as The Pirate Bay.
I love TPB's interface, but I can only assume that the next huge site will be even better, if the trend continues.
That sucks. You missed out on some of the best games, ever. '95-2002 or so was a really, really good time for gaming (especially on the PC). You're right that it was also the most irritating time, but damn it was awesome anyway.
I mean, I guess it depends on what you play--platformers? Yeah, consoles and early PC stuff (Commander Keen I-VI, Duke Nukem 1/2, Hunter Hunted, etc.) are where it's at, as well as some of the newer indie platformers. Wasn't a good time for those, at least on the PC.
Adventure games, though? You missed some good stuff from Lucasarts. FPS? Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Dark Forces series, Thief series, Half Life series... the list goes on and on. Damn near every good FPS (with a very few exceptions) was released during that time, or at least had its series start rooted there. RTS? Whoa boy did you miss some good games. RPG? The mind boggles at how lacking in good titles that genre would be without the PC RPGs that came out in that time period.
I really can't believe there are still people who don't know about DosBox.
The real dark age of computer games, in that we have trouble playing many of them now, is the Win95/Win98 era. 2d games from then can usually be played in VMWare or VirtualBox or something, but for 3D games you've still got to have an old computer kicking around with Win98 installed. Some still work on modern Windows, but many don't, or only work partially.
But I read books in my FPS games, you insensitive clod!
(yes, a Deus Ex fan here, if you haven't figure that out)
I'm pretty sure that wasn't the joke. The "funny" mod is for the humorous description of Gears of War, I think, and not for some broken conception of gaming history that the poster fails to highlight in any way, thus leading me to believe it was unintentional.
I'm not sure I follow.
If you're talking about me, I just finished my second playthrough of Mech Commander 2 in as many weeks (I somehow missed it back when it came out--solid game), I'm watching my wife play through Persona 4 on the PS2, time-wasting with Worms 4 occasionally (admittedly, it's such a crappy game that I almost feel bad playing it--it's just the only jump-in-and-play game I have installed right now), and preparing to start up Mass Effect while I wait for Dragon Age: Origins to come out early next month. When I'm in the mood for it I fire up Sanitarium and do a couple more chapters in it.
When I get a lull I'll be playing some of the classic adventure games that I haven't already (including Sam & Max, shockingly) and re-trying Planescape: Torment (hopefully the fucking thing won't bug and crash at the same spot every time no matter which save I load about 2/3 of the way through the game, like it did last time)
At any time, I might get an itch to replay one of my favorites, like Deus Ex, Red Alert 2, the Half Life games, the Thief series, Arcanum/Fallout/Fallout 2, Morrowind/Oblivion (heavily modded to avoid game-ruining suckitude), etc.
I play games. My piles (ok, shelves, and yes, it's most definitely plural) of to-read books and the few hundred movies my movie-geek friend and I are working through frown disapprovingly when I do, but I play plenty of games.
Good FPS games, too. Valve still reliably makes good ones (the mostly-not-gameplay-related fiasco[s] with L4D notwithstanding), but other than that... the only FPS I've played in the last couple years that I'd call good is STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I've played a couple that were OK (e.g. Bioshock) but no other truly good ones. Hell, I've got a folder full of HL1 single-player mods that are better than most new FPS games.
We've also lost the space fighter/mech sim genre (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander, Tachyon: The Fringe, Mechwarrior series). The last entry in either genre that I know of--and it was just an expansion for 2000's Mechwarrior 4--came out 7 years ago.
AFAIK, the last good space fighter game was Tachyon: The Fringe, and it's 9 years old. It and X-Wing: Alliance, released a few months earlier, were kind of the last gasp of the genre.
Those sorts of games have too steep a learning curve for the modern gaming crowd, and use too many buttons. Kind of like the Mechwarrior series.
Modern gamers. Ugh. Don't get me started.
GAMING HISTORY FAIL.
Doom 3 release date: August 3, 2004
Gears of War release date: November 9, 2006
Ah, that's right. I'm damn rusty. Stupid midwestern US--it's practically impossible to learn and retain a second language other than Spanish around here. No native speakers to practice on.