If you have 50 systems and want them all on the internet, NAT does not allow you to do that
BS, NAT allows that perfectly. You obviously don't understand NAT (or even PAT) at all.
Even if you want to attempt to claim port forwarding works with NAT to fake it, you fortunatly provided my argument that it doesnt
Port forwarding works perfectly thanks.
If you have 200 web servers, port forwarded from one IP, you yourself say you would hate to remember all those ports and which machine they go to, by your complaint at remembering IP addresses in IPv6
OMG ! You're really clueless. You know, there exist L7 analysing proxies/firewall that can NAT your 200 web servers without problem. There even are appliances that do that (and use Linux like Radware WSD). Even with my Linux router I can do that. Fortunately, I don't have to define any port forwarding for the TV RTSP at home, especially since the port change everytime and I need definitions for every machines in my network. And yet it works automagically, and yes, even if I look at 2 different TV channels on two different computers at the same time in my private network. The router will intelligently send the right packets back to the right computer. There are also HTTP, HTTPS intelligent routers, and for lots of others too (like FTP, IRC,...). This just shows you're wrong when you say that all my computers are not connected to the Internet while I'm NATed.
Fortunatly the rest of us use DNS, which lets us not have to remember IPs. DNS doesn't much help with port mappings like you prefer to use
I use DNS too, and it doesn't solve my RTSP problem for example, and I still use NAT.
The point is, your usage of the internet is very very limited, and atypical of the people here on slashdot
Rest assured that even for high end usage of the internet, NAT and all the technologies that come with it are pretty efficient.
I don't think he meant interoperability between operating systems, but rather applications and services
Except that interoperability definitions is about communication "between operating systems". So your poor excuse doesn't work and just show your total lack of clue.
Active Directory integrates seamlessly with Exchange, Group Policy, DNS, all forms of ACLs, and allows easy authentication of Windows users and computers
Active Directory doesn't integrate seamlessly with DNS or all forms of ACLs, these are complete lies. All the rest come from the same vendor : MS. And none of these are compatible with anything (except a minimum of SMTP). So please stop this BS.
Exchange connects and works great with Outlook and offers a feature set not yet matched by any open source solution
Are you stupid or what ? Exchange and Outlook come from the same vendor ! The features you talk about are plain useless in an open environment. Mail is not Outlook - Exchange - Outlook link you know ? I never saw any of these features reach me actually.
MS Office applications can simply and quickly communicate and transfer information back and forth. -- The significant thing is that it all just works together
What do you mean ? These kind of broad sweeping statements need to DIE.
I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and had to fight a small war to get accelerated graphics working
Funny it's just one package installation away. You being clueless doesn't mean it isn't simpler than Windows. I can explain to anyone how to install accelerated graphics on Ubuntu, I can't on Windows, as it's too complicated, even in the best case where you have a driver CD.
I had to change the wireless network stuff so it used ndiswrapper instead of whatever it was the installer wanted to use to prevent it from constantly dropping connections
A driver bug has nothing to do with the simplicity of the OS. At least try to find valid issues. I guess WinXP dropping wireless connections constantly even with official drivers never made you think WinXP is complicated.
I'm tired of giving examples just to have them shot down by people who think everybody is a hardware expert, has the contents of/etc/ memorized, and oh who cares because nobody needs accelerated graphics on Linux because there's no games to play anyway
Good thing you're tired trolling.
If the average user (and my install was very average) needs to manually edit config files, then Linux is still failing at being simple to install and use
Average users on Windows don't install accelerated graphics, they have a hard time installing wireless too, and will call and pay for support. If the average user needs to defragment hard drives, reinstall Windows, install antivirus, install antispyware,... then Windows is still failing at being simple to install and use.
Funny, but I find myself doing this very thing with Linux (what's broken? Is it GDM, Gnome, Nautilus? Did one of the services break? Which one? Ah, screw it, just reboot.)
Which is a complete lie, as on Linux, if you reboot, the problem will still be there. Reboot doesn't solve problems on Linux, as the OS is robust. What problem do you have that makes you reboot ? You cite GDM, Gnome, Nautilus, which just sounds very suspicious (if not stupid), as GDM and Nautilus just can't happen to cause a problem at the same level (you can't have a GDM problem once you use Nautilus, which means you have logged in already).
It couldn't possibly have anything to do that virtually every common OS besides Windows IS a *nix variant?
Perhaps. There are still no effort on interoperability on Windows.
I decided, after 10 years on a Microsoft operating system I would dual boot XP Pro and a generic install of Ubuntu
Why ? So you never used Linux before (at least, not in the 10 last years), point taken.
Reinstalled XP Pro in about 40 minutes, including time spent downloading and installing drivers
Must be a pretty streamlined process then, which betrays the fact that contrary to what you claim, you reinstalled your WinXP several time already.
To get Ubuntu to install on my machine, I had to manually edit a config file to get the screen to display correctly, but could only do so *after* the Ubuntu installer crashed (like, duh?)
Which is a complete lie. If you could edit a config file, that means Ubuntu was already installed. If the installer crashed, then it means one of two things : - You don't understand what you're doing, thought it crashed and rebooted the machine - It really crashed, but still managed to install the OS
I found this out after digging through Ubuntu forum posts for about an hour (there was nothing in the Wiki related to this). I like the idea of moving to open source software, but the reality is it is not as universal or simple as Windows
You never showed anything to assert this. You talked about installation issues, which do not show anything about Windows being simpler. Windows is not universal either, it works on x86 and limps on x86_64. And then, I'm sorry to have to tell you that once you have installed your WinXP, you still need the antivirus, antispyware,... which are NOT simple things. So Windows is still harder and not universal.
XP crashes for me (in the last 4 years of using it) have been rare, and when it is it is usually a memory leak from a particular application, not XP itself
A memory leak should not crash an OS. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with interoperability.
So far, every machine I've installed Linux on I've had serious compatibility issues in every case. I'm not trying to install Linux on my alarm clock here, these are every day, very common PC parts. I've yet to have a smooth Linux installation. It's simply not for mom and pop yet.
Actually, I think Stallman's changed more than the notion of free software. He's gone from "Source code should be free to anyone" to "Source code should be free to anyone who agrees with my politics." Right now, "politics" means DRM. But once that can of worms opens, it might be tough to close.
And what you think is wrong. Perhaps you saw Open Source and thought it was Free Software. Free Software always was about what is written on the FSF site. That you assumed that the diluted Open Source message was Free Software is your entire fault. Open Source feared this FSF message, and tried to dilute it so that more companies could adopt open source code, like free labor. They thought FSF would be hidden, even though they know pretty well that most open code is (L)GPL code. All these people are very afraid that FSF regains control and make their message understood, as most people writing free code use the GPL, and so should adhere to RMS' views. They're REALLY afraid, which is why there's all this pleading for GPLv3 to disappear entirely. They would not even let people have the choice to choose it or stay GPLv2. No, they want it to disappear entirely, so that no one can use GPLv3.
But this reminds me of a fundamentalist Christian having a conversation with a committed Atheist
Good for you. It doesn't mean it's related, or that what you are reminded of is significant.
Forbes and slashdot are two different worlds inhabited by people with completely different views on reality. It's not surprising Slashdot readers disagree with Forbes; it would be surprising if they did not. But by and large Forbes readers agree with Forbes. And by and large, Forbes readers run the companies slashdot readers work for
So you mean people reading Forbes loves to discuss a matter by avoiding it completely, and attacking people directly ? Wow, I feel reassured now, that these people run companies... NOT ! Or do you mean these people don't see the personal attacks in this piece ? Which would be even worse !
Now this is just one editorial, but it reflects a point of view that will become, I would guess, more prevalent as companies begin to take a hard look at just what they've gotten themselves into. The one thing the editorial does well is lay out the case in a way that is understandable: Socialist engineering by a radical. Uh oh! That's all I need to know
Guess as much as you want. There is one thing the editorial does well : personal attack on RMS. That's all I need to know, to dismiss it as made by a bad zealot at best. I thought zealots were doing disservice to their community. So how come it doesn't when it comes from Forbes ? Ah, that's only when the zealots are Free Software proponents, I understand now : it works only one way.
Neither Trotsky or Robespierre survived the zealotry they helped create
Jesus Christ didn't either. What's your stupid fallacious point ? You people are so silly, with your false authority fallacies.
It will be interesting to see if the "Open Source Revolution" can survive this, or whether it will shoot itself in the foot while people such as, oh, Microsoft, for example, stand on the sidelines with their arms folded, and big grins on their faces
People used to say the same thing when GPLv2 got out. Of course, what you say is just plain FUD.
1 - No piece of code is "inherently" anything but code. Code, by definition, is a set of commands subject to constraints. It is the use to which that code is put that gives it value
Which suppose you have the code beforehand. If you have no code, you can't even talk about its value, as you have nothing.
2 - If the GPL and GNU licences are about "Freedom for the user," with software and source so licensed labeled free for all to use, then by definition, exclusion creates a contradiction
You have lots of things wrong. GPL is about "freedom for the code", not for the user, and anyway, your definition of freedom is completely wrong. Exclusion doesn't contradict freedom, it is necessary to it : freedom of sth stops before it steps on freedom of other things.
As soon as the GPL begins excluding end-users of any sort, it will subvert all of the meanings - explicit or implicit - that are associated with the "Open" source community
Again, lots of things wrong. GPL is not exccluding any end-user. For example, with Tivo, Tivo company is not the end user of the GPL code it puts on its hardware. The people that will use the DRM ridden hardware are the end-user, so you have it completely backwards. Open doesn't mean you're not excluding people either. It applies to the code, and is one of its feature. Now, GPL ensures this feature stays with subsequent version. What exactly is subverting the meaning associated with "Open" source ? At least, the DRM clause in GPLv3 doesn't change anything about it.
Any cultural caché that it has gained as being a software revolution will disappear: the OSS community will become what it supposedly grew to counter. If we're going to go on and on about "freedom" in any context, let's not be hypocritical
As you don't even understand the GPL of Free Software, your conclusion is wrong, so it's a completely wrong and useless prediction. There is no freedom in any context, the freedoms protected by the GPL are clearly stated in the license. So you don't even know what you're talking about. Free Software don't give a damn about what OSS becomes, as OSS was meant to dilute the message of FSF and counter it, so businesses get free labor (perhaps that wasn't the goal, but the fact is that only GPL products are really protected against being used as free labor).
The fact is that in every generation, the machine with the most games wins, period
I can agree with that only if you mean that havnig the most games is the consequence of the console winning. If what you said was true, no new console could win against older ones. The XBox360 would be sure to win too, which seems doubtful to me.
So near as I can tell, it does not matter much if those games are good or bad. Look at the Game Boy: it bested competitor after competitor on the strength of its library and its battery life, vastly inferior graphics be damned. Similarly, the DS is beating the PSP not just because it has a crazy stylus, but also because the PSP has very few games
Again, this is a consequence. Sorry but, looking at the japanese charts, I see good PSP games (Gundam ones for example) do as well as good DS games the first week, I never see crappy games go to these levels on any of the DS or PSP. Even good GBA games (FFV advance) go to these levels. After the first week, the console market kicks in. And these good games do 100x sales of the crappy or normal ones. So that you think it does not matter is wrong. And those are what makes the console sell. When New SMB came out, the sales of DSL nearly doubled on the same week in Japan !!
If you want to predict the sales of a console, what matters most is the number of games published for it, nothing else
BS. Sales of these games are important too. Again, what you say is wrong, as PS2 sales (games and console) is destroying next-gen XBox360 in Japan, when NO XBox360 game make it to the top 50 chart. Do you mean then, that no Wii nor PS3 will sell ? I have high doubts about that. I predict the Wii and PS3 will destroy the XBox360 in Japan. Now count the number of instant hits made by japanese and american companies. OK, now remove the japanese companies for the XBox360 (due to low sales) and do the math.
What if glibc contains a security hole? What's the faster, more reliable option: rebooting or manually restarting ALL processes?
None of that. The faster method is switching to a low runlevel, like, say, runlevel 1, then go back to your usual runlevel. Manually doing it is stupid and only a Windows admin would even think about this sorry solution on a Linux box.
On a desktop, does it really matter if your reboot or logout/login?
Yes, it matters a lot. Like, say, if you have downloads running. You know, things like P2P for example, that still run when you logout, but are stopped if you reboot. There are lost of other examples.
On a major upgrade like this, how do you guarantee all applications are linked against the new version of the library? And please take into account that most of your user base are users, not admins
So why do they care about complicated things like "all applications are linked against the new version of the library?". They just don't care ! What they see is that updating Windows disrupt their work, and updating Linux doesn't. And as an admin, I see the same thing.
Rebooting is just a sane thing to do. I've seen way too many rooted unix boxes with uptime > 2 years...
I'm not surprised, you seem not to be qualified at all to run Unix boxes. And no, rebooting is not a sane thing to do at all. It should work without a reboot, especially for a Web browser. Rebooting is just admitting your defeat, admitting you're powerless and can't resolve the issue. FYI, on Linux, simply login out then in is enough to be sure to get all the new libraries.
So why exactly don't you call it the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (or sth similar) ? This is the true program name you know. So you blame others for your own laziness to use the complete program name ? How honorable !
I once read an interview with someone who worked on the ipod (no idea where or when), who claimed that the renaming and folder structure has nothing to do with the recording industry, but rather with the limitations of the early hardware and the requirement that playlists of thousands of files "open" instantaneous. Limitating filename lengths and the number of files in a folder apparently helped, as did storing the files' information in a central database. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds reasonable
It sounds even more reasonable when you realise that : - lots of people in the world do not use only ASCII characters like english speaking people do - the filesystem for Windows iPods is surely some FAT
Mix these two things. You just won't put any file with, say, a ':', on your FAT fs (try it if you don't believe me). This fs is pure sh*t, and it doesn't support UTF-8 well. Even NTFS doesn't support UTF-8 well. And guess what, the iPod is international, and has to store all these characters (including kanjis for example) and even the ':' that you put in your albums or titles names. I can do all that on my Linux OS, but few OS can, and actually, WinXP can't do it correctly by default, even less using FAT. So, I think the iPod software uses ASCII characters (perhaps with a hash algorithm) to store the files on your iPod FAT fs, and keep a record of equivalent filenames in its database, in true UTF-8. That's why I can have french named files (with ':' in titles) mixed with kanji/kana named files (for some of my japanese titles) on my iPod, seen equally well by iTunes, Gtkpod or my Linux FS. Yes, because gtkpod can export your files back to your ext3 fs (no need to burn anything to CD). I don't know for the Mac OS X FS, so I can't talk about it. Given that iTunes destroyed all my notations, or all my files each time (twice) I tried it, I'm glad I had this option on Linux.
At this point, the best contestant in the horizon seems to be the mobile phone which can play MP3s
This is plain silly !
Nowadays most people already have mobile phones
Including those that have an iPod...
The cycle of replacement on mobile phones is about 3 years. Mobile phones that can play MP3s just came out
Play MP3 is not the only thing MP3 players do. You also have to put your MP3 in them for free, which is a MAJOR hurdle on the phones you talk about.
Carrying around just a mobile phone is always lighter than carrying around a mobile phone plus a dedicated MP3 player
Which should tell you sth about the battery capacity of the phone.
Playing MP3s isn't such a special thing anymore. The technology is widespread and the processing power inside a mobile phone is more than enough for the task
Except that the purpose is not the same. If you have a mobile phone, that's not to be out of power when you need to call with it. OTOH there is no problem with not being able to play your MP3 because you have no more battery power.
Mobile phone manufacturers have an enormous amount of experience with things like saving batery power
With phones and their low quality mono sound, not with playing MP3 or AAC or related audio formats or even video.
The competition on making portable MP3 players with more storage has long reached the point of diminishing returns - unless you're going on vacations, carrying around weeks worth of music is of little use
So you admit hard disks iPod market can't be killed by these phones.
One can already see the consumers changing tack by going for smaller devices which use flash memory and have less storage capacity (for example iPod Nano). This makes it easier to build MP3 playing functionality on a mobile phone with an amount of storage which is acceptable for consumers
Another thing you missed in the MP3 player market, is the interface. I have a very hard time seeing a good interface for phone + iPod like.
mobile phone manufacturers have been trying to differenciate their products by adding cool new features to them. The ability to play MP3s is just another of those
Oh man ! A MP3 player doesn't just have the ability to play MP3, it is dedicated to play them, not a phone. Carriers don't want you to be able to do what you do with an iPod !
Eventualy dedicated MP3 players (including iPods) will be a niche market
That's BS that would be true only if a MP3 player was just a device "that has the ability to play MP3". In case you didn't realize it yet, all the would be iPod killers fit the description.
My only question is why is Gnome used as the desktop? Gnome is a great desktop environment, but it seems like these machines, having only 128 MB of ram and no way to do swap partions (it would ruin a flash drive to use it for swap) it seems like fluxbox, XFce, or blackbox might be better. I realize the gnome is modified, but still
Perhaps because these DE do not have as good assistive technology and i18n/l10n as Gnome. I know of no assitive technology (except very basic things) in XFCE at least. Gnome also has dedicated Office apps. And this is useful at the very launch of the desktop (like in GDM for example). I'm sure there are other reasons.
Hardware is almost required to debug some low-level system code. Real-time stuff, like device drivers and scheduler really requires hardware tracer to determine what happened and when
Huh ? This is called a serial console terminal, and I wouldn't call a terminal a 'hardware tracer'. Other OS just use a serial console to debug device drivers and scheduler, with most debugging done in software.
With XP, almost all of the crashes are due to bad (usually non-MS) device drivers. If you run a system with pure MS drivers and quality hardware you'll never see a BSOD
BS ! I've had a (documented on MS bugs site) BSOD just after install with WinXP for my Adaptec card, and not a cheap one. Unfortunately, the WinXP native drivers caused the BSOD, I even had to install Linux on the PC (which worked perfectly) to be able to install the driver from the vendor instead of the MS one, so that WinXP don't crash anymore. Unless you tell me Adaptec are not quality hardware (the card bought in 1999 is still working great BTW, and was not crashing in Win9x).
If you run the usual business suite of software (Office, Outlook, IE) you probably never see an application crash
No, but I've lost complete big documents because of Word (he couldn't read its own saved files, thankfully I have OOo now, that saved me several times already), I won't even talk about IE.
It's the crappy hardware and badly written drivers that cause the crashes. That's the difference with Apple.... since they control the hardware there's less crashes due to bad hardware and there are fewer third-party drivers for Mac hardware. The software is probably the same quality
In my case, I know that's complete BS (that crappy hardware causes the crashes), as I've run Linux on the same hardware as my only Windows client. And while the Linux tagged along just fine for weeks, the WinXP couldn't last more than a week without locking up or becoming unusable. Is it really badly written drivers or crappy OS ? I had an old Creative Live ! card that was dying (and finally died). WinXP was BSODing regularly when it was dying, then when it died, just BSOD at every boot. I then installed Linux on the PC, and it just tagged along, never crashed, telling me it couldn't initialise the driver, the driver saying it couldn't initialise the card.
Yes, and we all know how Microsoft ran up the price of Internet Explorer once Netscape was out of the picture...
Yes we know, and for those skeptical people out there, here it is : they ran up the price by not paying anymore people on improving Internet Explorer. Which means that before, the price of Windows included the cost of the dev team on IE. After Netscape was out of the picture, the price of Windows didn't include that cost anymore, but was still the same.
MythTV could really use a marketing guy to help with the new releases (actually, there are many open source projects that could benefit from this). The list of highly technical updates to MythTV don't really do justice to where MythTV is today
No, MythTV wouldn't benefit anything, as it's not a shrinkwrapped finished product. You'll only get more frustration. You already see people on this thread that installed dev versions and then complain MythTV is not stable.
Problem is, TiVO isn't really their main competitor in that space - that honor goes to Windows Media Center Edition
WinMCE is not a competitor either, as MythTV is not a shrink-wrapped product.
I'd also point out that I've installed MythTV on several boxes in the past year, and I'm not nearly so ecstatic about it as you
You're the first person I hear not being ecstatic about the power of his working MythTV box. Perhaps because you have several ?
Doing a secure setup is an absolute pain in the neck if you want to use that fancy backend/frontend architecture, and only slightly less so if you keep everything on the same box
BS, the secure setup is completely orthogonal to MythTV. And you have to use the backend/frontend no matter what. And you dare talk about security when involving a Windows version in the comparison ?
I also found performance and stability less than I would have preferred - not bad, mind you, but not really all that amazing, either
What does that mean ?!!! Sorry, but no Windows program is as efficient and stable as MPlayer/FFMPeg to play videos and audios, and FFMPeg is what MythTV uses internally.
The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often
BS and FUD. YOU decided to use devel versions of MythTV frequently, and now you dare complain. Releases are very infrequent, the latest (0.19) is more than 6 months old !! Is that what you call "frequently" ?
This is not to say WMCE is all peaches and cream, because it's not - but for people who can tolerate its limitations (which aren't terribly bad - yet), the easy setup and relatively cheap (compared to a new PC) Media Center Extenders give it some appeal
Got to be kidding right !! This has NO appeal, compared to : - skipping commercials - automatic programming - transcoding - all the powerful management options - Music, games, gallery,... - Reads every video and audio format - reliable : I can go out on vacations and be sure it won't fail any recordings.
I've been happily running a set of Myth boxen for more than a year now, and while I love the system, the one feature I had been sorely waiting for was an easy way to export to DVD. While a more involved method was possible, I look forward to being able to just create an ISO directly from Myth itself.
Even better, I would like to cut the videos and mark chapters from MythTV, before putting the result to DVD.
Hogwash. By those standards, nothing (except, perhaps, BSD's/bin/sh and a few other ancient works) deserves to be version >=1, because modern software is very seldom ever quite finished.
BS. The software is finished when the original author say he has every features he wanted and all work perfectly. Or even when it fits him to say it's finished. No matter of reasoning you can have on what "should be", will give you the right to impose anything on these people. You're not even the one dealing with these numbers, I just can't understand why you complain. That YOU have all the features you want in MythTV doesn't mean the authors or other people are the same. You basically are an egocentric person, thinking you are the metric by which MythTV completeness should be compared. You're even more stupid, not even knowing what MythTV does now (even though it's written right there on the front page in the features section) and crazy enough to evaluate FOSS products on their version number alone.
No, but it costs time. I've used Linux as a server OS since Slackware 1.0, and have no problems configuring most things, but to date I've spent three solid days over the last 18 months on various attempts to get Myth working
Mmmh, no, it doesn't cost time. Just like school doesn't cost you time. You invest time to build it, which means you will get this time back several times when it works. Like with school, the knowledge you get there will help you if you succeed in acquiring it. You've used Linux, but you never acquired the basic knowledge on how to put big projects on a Linux OS. Basically, it means planning. And yes, MythTV is a big project, not just one app you put on your box. Besides, MythTV is actually not a lot of work to get working. That's all the buggy peripherals around it that you must configure that take time. When I decided to tackle on MythTV, I planned 60 hours over one week to get it working, including compiling everything (from my custom OS to the latest MythTV component). And it worked out very well, most of the time was spent fixing hardware bugs. Like the hardest was that MythTV was freezing 10 seconds after launch, because the box couldn't handle the 8X AGP, I had to change it in the BIOS to 4X AGP, and the freeze was gone.
Hell, I went out and bought components based on recommendations for them being good video card and capture card to use with Myth, and I still couldn't get anything that worked
Clearly you relied on luck to make it work. I hope you learned luck won't work on Linux, but knowledge always does.
The most recent time, after blowing an entire weekend screwing around, I finally restored my Win2K backup that I'd made before I started, installed GBPVR and in about 5 minutes was up and running, and have been happy with that ever since
And I could have stayed with my GeexBox, finished in 0 seconds. But MythTV is WAY more powerful.
Features in Windows MCE not in MythTV: - Simple setup and configuration
Actually, that's not true at all. You never tried to install MCE right ? It's the exact same situation than MythTV, sometimes it's worse, as MythTv actually works with more hardware : if you take the well supported hardware, you have no problem. Go look support forums for MCE if you don't believe me. Only time it's simpler, is when MCE comes preinstalled in a media center, and there are some preinstalled for MythTV too.
You also forgot lots of Pros for MythTV. You didn't even touch the best ones (auto programming, plays EVERY video and audio files, integration of games,...). And I won't talk about the next version of MythTV as it's not out yet.
Of course, perceived simpler setup and configuration will still win, I won't deny that.
Well, it didn't beat me at all. Especially since it lacks the CPU and the drive, and the fact that the noisiest thing in my MythTV setup right now, is that old 80 GB hard drive, as most components were old things I didn't use anymore (Athlon CPU, old DDRAM memory). Of course, I won't just dump the old hard drive, I'll just wait for it to die. Unfortunately, it spins everytime, as it's the system disk, the other disk being a SATA 250 GB drive, which doesn't make any noticeable noise. Well, actually, you don't even hear that old disks when watching TV or videos.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have 50 systems and want them all on the internet, NAT does not allow you to do that
...).
BS, NAT allows that perfectly. You obviously don't understand NAT (or even PAT) at all.
Even if you want to attempt to claim port forwarding works with NAT to fake it, you fortunatly provided my argument that it doesnt
Port forwarding works perfectly thanks.
If you have 200 web servers, port forwarded from one IP, you yourself say you would hate to remember all those ports and which machine they go to, by your complaint at remembering IP addresses in IPv6
OMG ! You're really clueless. You know, there exist L7 analysing proxies/firewall that can NAT your 200 web servers without problem. There even are appliances that do that (and use Linux like Radware WSD). Even with my Linux router I can do that.
Fortunately, I don't have to define any port forwarding for the TV RTSP at home, especially since the port change everytime and I need definitions for every machines in my network. And yet it works automagically, and yes, even if I look at 2 different TV channels on two different computers at the same time in my private network.
The router will intelligently send the right packets back to the right computer. There are also HTTP, HTTPS intelligent routers, and for lots of others too (like FTP, IRC,
This just shows you're wrong when you say that all my computers are not connected to the Internet while I'm NATed.
Fortunatly the rest of us use DNS, which lets us not have to remember IPs. DNS doesn't much help with port mappings like you prefer to use
I use DNS too, and it doesn't solve my RTSP problem for example, and I still use NAT.
The point is, your usage of the internet is very very limited, and atypical of the people here on slashdot
Rest assured that even for high end usage of the internet, NAT and all the technologies that come with it are pretty efficient.
Actually this whole deal is a GPL workaround. Not exactly a violation (that's difficult to prove), but certainly a workaround
It's not at all. You aren't working around anything as long as you don't use the GPL code in a binary. Then you will see there is no workaround there.
That's why so many emblematic figures of the FLOSS movement are upset - they didn't expect Novell to be party to this
They are not upset about GPL code, they are upset about what will come of SuSE mainly, and lost every hope about Novell.
Because you don't have to wait for MS to work around the GPL - with some help from Novell, they already did
I think you will see soon enough that you're wrong.
I don't think he meant interoperability between operating systems, but rather applications and services
/etc/ memorized, and oh who cares because nobody needs accelerated graphics on Linux because there's no games to play anyway
... then Windows is still failing at being simple to install and use.
Except that interoperability definitions is about communication "between operating systems". So your poor excuse doesn't work and just show your total lack of clue.
Active Directory integrates seamlessly with Exchange, Group Policy, DNS, all forms of ACLs, and allows easy authentication of Windows users and computers
Active Directory doesn't integrate seamlessly with DNS or all forms of ACLs, these are complete lies. All the rest come from the same vendor : MS.
And none of these are compatible with anything (except a minimum of SMTP).
So please stop this BS.
Exchange connects and works great with Outlook and offers a feature set not yet matched by any open source solution
Are you stupid or what ? Exchange and Outlook come from the same vendor !
The features you talk about are plain useless in an open environment. Mail is not Outlook - Exchange - Outlook link you know ?
I never saw any of these features reach me actually.
MS Office applications can simply and quickly communicate and transfer information back and forth. -- The significant thing is that it all just works together
What do you mean ? These kind of broad sweeping statements need to DIE.
I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and had to fight a small war to get accelerated graphics working
Funny it's just one package installation away. You being clueless doesn't mean it isn't simpler than Windows.
I can explain to anyone how to install accelerated graphics on Ubuntu, I can't on Windows, as it's too complicated, even in the best case where you have a driver CD.
I had to change the wireless network stuff so it used ndiswrapper instead of whatever it was the installer wanted to use to prevent it from constantly dropping connections
A driver bug has nothing to do with the simplicity of the OS. At least try to find valid issues.
I guess WinXP dropping wireless connections constantly even with official drivers never made you think WinXP is complicated.
I'm tired of giving examples just to have them shot down by people who think everybody is a hardware expert, has the contents of
Good thing you're tired trolling.
If the average user (and my install was very average) needs to manually edit config files, then Linux is still failing at being simple to install and use
Average users on Windows don't install accelerated graphics, they have a hard time installing wireless too, and will call and pay for support.
If the average user needs to defragment hard drives, reinstall Windows, install antivirus, install antispyware,
Funny, but I find myself doing this very thing with Linux (what's broken? Is it GDM, Gnome, Nautilus? Did one of the services break? Which one? Ah, screw it, just reboot.)
Which is a complete lie, as on Linux, if you reboot, the problem will still be there. Reboot doesn't solve problems on Linux, as the OS is robust.
What problem do you have that makes you reboot ? You cite GDM, Gnome, Nautilus, which just sounds very suspicious (if not stupid), as GDM and Nautilus just can't happen to cause a problem at the same level (you can't have a GDM problem once you use Nautilus, which means you have logged in already).
It couldn't possibly have anything to do that virtually every common OS besides Windows IS a *nix variant?
... which are NOT simple things.
Perhaps. There are still no effort on interoperability on Windows.
I decided, after 10 years on a Microsoft operating system I would dual boot XP Pro and a generic install of Ubuntu
Why ? So you never used Linux before (at least, not in the 10 last years), point taken.
Reinstalled XP Pro in about 40 minutes, including time spent downloading and installing drivers
Must be a pretty streamlined process then, which betrays the fact that contrary to what you claim, you reinstalled your WinXP several time already.
To get Ubuntu to install on my machine, I had to manually edit a config file to get the screen to display correctly, but could only do so *after* the Ubuntu installer crashed (like, duh?)
Which is a complete lie. If you could edit a config file, that means Ubuntu was already installed. If the installer crashed, then it means one of two things :
- You don't understand what you're doing, thought it crashed and rebooted the machine
- It really crashed, but still managed to install the OS
I found this out after digging through Ubuntu forum posts for about an hour (there was nothing in the Wiki related to this). I like the idea of moving to open source software, but the reality is it is not as universal or simple as Windows
You never showed anything to assert this. You talked about installation issues, which do not show anything about Windows being simpler.
Windows is not universal either, it works on x86 and limps on x86_64.
And then, I'm sorry to have to tell you that once you have installed your WinXP, you still need the antivirus, antispyware,
So Windows is still harder and not universal.
XP crashes for me (in the last 4 years of using it) have been rare, and when it is it is usually a memory leak from a particular application, not XP itself
A memory leak should not crash an OS. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with interoperability.
So far, every machine I've installed Linux on I've had serious compatibility issues in every case. I'm not trying to install Linux on my alarm clock here, these are every day, very common PC parts. I've yet to have a smooth Linux installation. It's simply not for mom and pop yet.
For the DeCSS code censorship ?
What is the status of that ?
I hope it's not applied anymore, or this smells hypocritical.
Actually, I think Stallman's changed more than the notion of free software. He's gone from "Source code should be free to anyone" to "Source code should be free to anyone who agrees with my politics." Right now, "politics" means DRM. But once that can of worms opens, it might be tough to close.
And what you think is wrong. Perhaps you saw Open Source and thought it was Free Software.
Free Software always was about what is written on the FSF site. That you assumed that the diluted Open Source message was Free Software is your entire fault.
Open Source feared this FSF message, and tried to dilute it so that more companies could adopt open source code, like free labor.
They thought FSF would be hidden, even though they know pretty well that most open code is (L)GPL code.
All these people are very afraid that FSF regains control and make their message understood, as most people writing free code use the GPL, and so should adhere to RMS' views.
They're REALLY afraid, which is why there's all this pleading for GPLv3 to disappear entirely.
They would not even let people have the choice to choose it or stay GPLv2. No, they want it to disappear entirely, so that no one can use GPLv3.
But this reminds me of a fundamentalist Christian having a conversation with a committed Atheist
Good for you. It doesn't mean it's related, or that what you are reminded of is significant.
Forbes and slashdot are two different worlds inhabited by people with completely different views on reality. It's not surprising Slashdot readers disagree with Forbes; it would be surprising if they did not. But by and large Forbes readers agree with Forbes. And by and large, Forbes readers run the companies slashdot readers work for
So you mean people reading Forbes loves to discuss a matter by avoiding it completely, and attacking people directly ?
Wow, I feel reassured now, that these people run companies... NOT !
Or do you mean these people don't see the personal attacks in this piece ? Which would be even worse !
Now this is just one editorial, but it reflects a point of view that will become, I would guess, more prevalent as companies begin to take a hard look at just what they've gotten themselves into. The one thing the editorial does well is lay out the case in a way that is understandable: Socialist engineering by a radical. Uh oh! That's all I need to know
Guess as much as you want. There is one thing the editorial does well : personal attack on RMS. That's all I need to know, to dismiss it as made by a bad zealot at best.
I thought zealots were doing disservice to their community. So how come it doesn't when it comes from Forbes ? Ah, that's only when the zealots are Free Software proponents, I understand now : it works only one way.
Neither Trotsky or Robespierre survived the zealotry they helped create
Jesus Christ didn't either. What's your stupid fallacious point ? You people are so silly, with your false authority fallacies.
It will be interesting to see if the "Open Source Revolution" can survive this, or whether it will shoot itself in the foot while people such as, oh, Microsoft, for example, stand on the sidelines with their arms folded, and big grins on their faces
People used to say the same thing when GPLv2 got out. Of course, what you say is just plain FUD.
1 - No piece of code is "inherently" anything but code. Code, by definition, is a set of commands subject to constraints. It is the use to which that code is put that gives it value
Which suppose you have the code beforehand. If you have no code, you can't even talk about its value, as you have nothing.
2 - If the GPL and GNU licences are about "Freedom for the user," with software and source so licensed labeled free for all to use, then by definition, exclusion creates a contradiction
You have lots of things wrong.
GPL is about "freedom for the code", not for the user, and anyway, your definition of freedom is completely wrong.
Exclusion doesn't contradict freedom, it is necessary to it : freedom of sth stops before it steps on freedom of other things.
As soon as the GPL begins excluding end-users of any sort, it will subvert all of the meanings - explicit or implicit - that are associated with the "Open" source community
Again, lots of things wrong.
GPL is not exccluding any end-user. For example, with Tivo, Tivo company is not the end user of the GPL code it puts on its hardware.
The people that will use the DRM ridden hardware are the end-user, so you have it completely backwards.
Open doesn't mean you're not excluding people either. It applies to the code, and is one of its feature. Now, GPL ensures this feature stays with subsequent version.
What exactly is subverting the meaning associated with "Open" source ?
At least, the DRM clause in GPLv3 doesn't change anything about it.
Any cultural caché that it has gained as being a software revolution will disappear: the OSS community will become what it supposedly grew to counter. If we're going to go on and on about "freedom" in any context, let's not be hypocritical
As you don't even understand the GPL of Free Software, your conclusion is wrong, so it's a completely wrong and useless prediction.
There is no freedom in any context, the freedoms protected by the GPL are clearly stated in the license. So you don't even know what you're talking about.
Free Software don't give a damn about what OSS becomes, as OSS was meant to dilute the message of FSF and counter it, so businesses get free labor (perhaps that wasn't the goal, but the fact is that only GPL products are really protected against being used as free labor).
The fact is that in every generation, the machine with the most games wins, period
I can agree with that only if you mean that havnig the most games is the consequence of the console winning.
If what you said was true, no new console could win against older ones.
The XBox360 would be sure to win too, which seems doubtful to me.
So near as I can tell, it does not matter much if those games are good or bad. Look at the Game Boy: it bested competitor after competitor on the strength of its library and its battery life, vastly inferior graphics be damned. Similarly, the DS is beating the PSP not just because it has a crazy stylus, but also because the PSP has very few games
Again, this is a consequence.
Sorry but, looking at the japanese charts, I see good PSP games (Gundam ones for example) do as well as good DS games the first week, I never see crappy games go to these levels on any of the DS or PSP. Even good GBA games (FFV advance) go to these levels. After the first week, the console market kicks in.
And these good games do 100x sales of the crappy or normal ones. So that you think it does not matter is wrong.
And those are what makes the console sell. When New SMB came out, the sales of DSL nearly doubled on the same week in Japan !!
If you want to predict the sales of a console, what matters most is the number of games published for it, nothing else
BS. Sales of these games are important too.
Again, what you say is wrong, as PS2 sales (games and console) is destroying next-gen XBox360 in Japan, when NO XBox360 game make it to the top 50 chart.
Do you mean then, that no Wii nor PS3 will sell ?
I have high doubts about that. I predict the Wii and PS3 will destroy the XBox360 in Japan.
Now count the number of instant hits made by japanese and american companies.
OK, now remove the japanese companies for the XBox360 (due to low sales) and do the math.
What if glibc contains a security hole? What's the faster, more reliable option: rebooting or manually restarting ALL processes?
None of that. The faster method is switching to a low runlevel, like, say, runlevel 1, then go back to your usual runlevel.
Manually doing it is stupid and only a Windows admin would even think about this sorry solution on a Linux box.
On a desktop, does it really matter if your reboot or logout/login?
Yes, it matters a lot. Like, say, if you have downloads running. You know, things like P2P for example, that still run when you logout, but are stopped if you reboot.
There are lost of other examples.
On a major upgrade like this, how do you guarantee all applications are linked against the new version of the library? And please take into account that most of your user base are users, not admins
So why do they care about complicated things like "all applications are linked against the new version of the library?".
They just don't care ! What they see is that updating Windows disrupt their work, and updating Linux doesn't.
And as an admin, I see the same thing.
Rebooting is just a sane thing to do. I've seen way too many rooted unix boxes with uptime > 2 years...
I'm not surprised, you seem not to be qualified at all to run Unix boxes.
And no, rebooting is not a sane thing to do at all. It should work without a reboot, especially for a Web browser.
Rebooting is just admitting your defeat, admitting you're powerless and can't resolve the issue.
FYI, on Linux, simply login out then in is enough to be sure to get all the new libraries.
So my favorite Total Recall movie was all trash after all ?
So why exactly don't you call it the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (or sth similar) ?
This is the true program name you know.
So you blame others for your own laziness to use the complete program name ? How honorable !
I once read an interview with someone who worked on the ipod (no idea where or when), who claimed that the renaming and folder structure has nothing to do with the recording industry, but rather with the limitations of the early hardware and the requirement that playlists of thousands of files "open" instantaneous. Limitating filename lengths and the number of files in a folder apparently helped, as did storing the files' information in a central database. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds reasonable
It sounds even more reasonable when you realise that :
- lots of people in the world do not use only ASCII characters like english speaking people do
- the filesystem for Windows iPods is surely some FAT
Mix these two things. You just won't put any file with, say, a ':', on your FAT fs (try it if you don't believe me). This fs is pure sh*t, and it doesn't support UTF-8 well. Even NTFS doesn't support UTF-8 well. And guess what, the iPod is international, and has to store all these characters (including kanjis for example) and even the ':' that you put in your albums or titles names.
I can do all that on my Linux OS, but few OS can, and actually, WinXP can't do it correctly by default, even less using FAT.
So, I think the iPod software uses ASCII characters (perhaps with a hash algorithm) to store the files on your iPod FAT fs, and keep a record of equivalent filenames in its database, in true UTF-8. That's why I can have french named files (with ':' in titles) mixed with kanji/kana named files (for some of my japanese titles) on my iPod, seen equally well by iTunes, Gtkpod or my Linux FS. Yes, because gtkpod can export your files back to your ext3 fs (no need to burn anything to CD).
I don't know for the Mac OS X FS, so I can't talk about it.
Given that iTunes destroyed all my notations, or all my files each time (twice) I tried it, I'm glad I had this option on Linux.
At this point, the best contestant in the horizon seems to be the mobile phone which can play MP3s
...
This is plain silly !
Nowadays most people already have mobile phones
Including those that have an iPod
The cycle of replacement on mobile phones is about 3 years. Mobile phones that can play MP3s just came out
Play MP3 is not the only thing MP3 players do. You also have to put your MP3 in them for free, which is a MAJOR hurdle on the phones you talk about.
Carrying around just a mobile phone is always lighter than carrying around a mobile phone plus a dedicated MP3 player
Which should tell you sth about the battery capacity of the phone.
Playing MP3s isn't such a special thing anymore. The technology is widespread and the processing power inside a mobile phone is more than enough for the task
Except that the purpose is not the same. If you have a mobile phone, that's not to be out of power when you need to call with it. OTOH there is no problem with not being able to play your MP3 because you have no more battery power.
Mobile phone manufacturers have an enormous amount of experience with things like saving batery power
With phones and their low quality mono sound, not with playing MP3 or AAC or related audio formats or even video.
The competition on making portable MP3 players with more storage has long reached the point of diminishing returns - unless you're going on vacations, carrying around weeks worth of music is of little use
So you admit hard disks iPod market can't be killed by these phones.
One can already see the consumers changing tack by going for smaller devices which use flash memory and have less storage capacity (for example iPod Nano). This makes it easier to build MP3 playing functionality on a mobile phone with an amount of storage which is acceptable for consumers
Another thing you missed in the MP3 player market, is the interface. I have a very hard time seeing a good interface for phone + iPod like.
mobile phone manufacturers have been trying to differenciate their products by adding cool new features to them. The ability to play MP3s is just another of those
Oh man ! A MP3 player doesn't just have the ability to play MP3, it is dedicated to play them, not a phone. Carriers don't want you to be able to do what you do with an iPod !
Eventualy dedicated MP3 players (including iPods) will be a niche market
That's BS that would be true only if a MP3 player was just a device "that has the ability to play MP3". In case you didn't realize it yet, all the would be iPod killers fit the description.
My only question is why is Gnome used as the desktop? Gnome is a great desktop environment, but it seems like these machines, having only 128 MB of ram and no way to do swap partions (it would ruin a flash drive to use it for swap) it seems like fluxbox, XFce, or blackbox might be better. I realize the gnome is modified, but still
Perhaps because these DE do not have as good assistive technology and i18n/l10n as Gnome.
I know of no assitive technology (except very basic things) in XFCE at least. Gnome also has dedicated Office apps.
And this is useful at the very launch of the desktop (like in GDM for example).
I'm sure there are other reasons.
Hardware is almost required to debug some low-level system code. Real-time stuff, like device drivers and scheduler really requires hardware tracer to determine what happened and when
Huh ? This is called a serial console terminal, and I wouldn't call a terminal a 'hardware tracer'. Other OS just use a serial console to debug device drivers and scheduler, with most debugging done in software.
With XP, almost all of the crashes are due to bad (usually non-MS) device drivers. If you run a system with pure MS drivers and quality hardware you'll never see a BSOD
BS ! I've had a (documented on MS bugs site) BSOD just after install with WinXP for my Adaptec card, and not a cheap one.
Unfortunately, the WinXP native drivers caused the BSOD, I even had to install Linux on the PC (which worked perfectly) to be able to install the driver from the vendor instead of the MS one, so that WinXP don't crash anymore.
Unless you tell me Adaptec are not quality hardware (the card bought in 1999 is still working great BTW, and was not crashing in Win9x).
If you run the usual business suite of software (Office, Outlook, IE) you probably never see an application crash
No, but I've lost complete big documents because of Word (he couldn't read its own saved files, thankfully I have OOo now, that saved me several times already), I won't even talk about IE.
It's the crappy hardware and badly written drivers that cause the crashes. That's the difference with Apple.... since they control the hardware there's less crashes due to bad hardware and there are fewer third-party drivers for Mac hardware. The software is probably the same quality
In my case, I know that's complete BS (that crappy hardware causes the crashes), as I've run Linux on the same hardware as my only Windows client.
And while the Linux tagged along just fine for weeks, the WinXP couldn't last more than a week without locking up or becoming unusable.
Is it really badly written drivers or crappy OS ? I had an old Creative Live ! card that was dying (and finally died).
WinXP was BSODing regularly when it was dying, then when it died, just BSOD at every boot. I then installed Linux on the PC, and it just tagged along, never crashed, telling me it couldn't initialise the driver, the driver saying it couldn't initialise the card.
Yes, and we all know how Microsoft ran up the price of Internet Explorer once Netscape was out of the picture...
Yes we know, and for those skeptical people out there, here it is : they ran up the price by not paying anymore people on improving Internet Explorer. Which means that before, the price of Windows included the cost of the dev team on IE. After Netscape was out of the picture, the price of Windows didn't include that cost anymore, but was still the same.
You basically forgot two important ones : Pokemon and Fire Emblem.
Well, for Pokemon it depends on the game, some are more adults than others.
Fire Emblem is quite another story, a far more adult serie.
MythTV could really use a marketing guy to help with the new releases (actually, there are many open source projects that could benefit from this). The list of highly technical updates to MythTV don't really do justice to where MythTV is today
No, MythTV wouldn't benefit anything, as it's not a shrinkwrapped finished product.
You'll only get more frustration.
You already see people on this thread that installed dev versions and then complain MythTV is not stable.
Problem is, TiVO isn't really their main competitor in that space - that honor goes to Windows Media Center Edition
...
WinMCE is not a competitor either, as MythTV is not a shrink-wrapped product.
I'd also point out that I've installed MythTV on several boxes in the past year, and I'm not nearly so ecstatic about it as you
You're the first person I hear not being ecstatic about the power of his working MythTV box. Perhaps because you have several ?
Doing a secure setup is an absolute pain in the neck if you want to use that fancy backend/frontend architecture, and only slightly less so if you keep everything on the same box
BS, the secure setup is completely orthogonal to MythTV. And you have to use the backend/frontend no matter what. And you dare talk about security when involving a Windows version in the comparison ?
I also found performance and stability less than I would have preferred - not bad, mind you, but not really all that amazing, either
What does that mean ?!!!
Sorry, but no Windows program is as efficient and stable as MPlayer/FFMPeg to play videos and audios, and FFMPeg is what MythTV uses internally.
The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often
BS and FUD. YOU decided to use devel versions of MythTV frequently, and now you dare complain.
Releases are very infrequent, the latest (0.19) is more than 6 months old !! Is that what you call "frequently" ?
This is not to say WMCE is all peaches and cream, because it's not - but for people who can tolerate its limitations (which aren't terribly bad - yet), the easy setup and relatively cheap (compared to a new PC) Media Center Extenders give it some appeal
Got to be kidding right !!
This has NO appeal, compared to :
- skipping commercials
- automatic programming
- transcoding
- all the powerful management options
- Music, games, gallery,
- Reads every video and audio format
- reliable : I can go out on vacations and be sure it won't fail any recordings.
I've been happily running a set of Myth boxen for more than a year now, and while I love the system, the one feature I had been sorely waiting for was an easy way to export to DVD. While a more involved method was possible, I look forward to being able to just create an ISO directly from Myth itself.
Even better, I would like to cut the videos and mark chapters from MythTV, before putting the result to DVD.
Hogwash. By those standards, nothing (except, perhaps, BSD's /bin/sh and a few other ancient works) deserves to be version >=1, because modern software is very seldom ever quite finished.
BS. The software is finished when the original author say he has every features he wanted and all work perfectly. Or even when it fits him to say it's finished.
No matter of reasoning you can have on what "should be", will give you the right to impose anything on these people.
You're not even the one dealing with these numbers, I just can't understand why you complain.
That YOU have all the features you want in MythTV doesn't mean the authors or other people are the same.
You basically are an egocentric person, thinking you are the metric by which MythTV completeness should be compared.
You're even more stupid, not even knowing what MythTV does now (even though it's written right there on the front page in the features section) and crazy enough to evaluate FOSS products on their version number alone.
No, but it costs time. I've used Linux as a server OS since Slackware 1.0, and have no problems configuring most things, but to date I've spent three solid days over the last 18 months on various attempts to get Myth working
Mmmh, no, it doesn't cost time. Just like school doesn't cost you time.
You invest time to build it, which means you will get this time back several times when it works. Like with school, the knowledge you get there will help you if you succeed in acquiring it.
You've used Linux, but you never acquired the basic knowledge on how to put big projects on a Linux OS. Basically, it means planning. And yes, MythTV is a big project, not just one app you put on your box. Besides, MythTV is actually not a lot of work to get working. That's all the buggy peripherals around it that you must configure that take time.
When I decided to tackle on MythTV, I planned 60 hours over one week to get it working, including compiling everything (from my custom OS to the latest MythTV component). And it worked out very well, most of the time was spent fixing hardware bugs. Like the hardest was that MythTV was freezing 10 seconds after launch, because the box couldn't handle the 8X AGP, I had to change it in the BIOS to 4X AGP, and the freeze was gone.
Hell, I went out and bought components based on recommendations for them being good video card and capture card to use with Myth, and I still couldn't get anything that worked
Clearly you relied on luck to make it work. I hope you learned luck won't work on Linux, but knowledge always does.
The most recent time, after blowing an entire weekend screwing around, I finally restored my Win2K backup that I'd made before I started, installed GBPVR and in about 5 minutes was up and running, and have been happy with that ever since
And I could have stayed with my GeexBox, finished in 0 seconds. But MythTV is WAY more powerful.
Features in Windows MCE not in MythTV:
...). And I won't talk about the next version of MythTV as it's not out yet.
- Simple setup and configuration
Actually, that's not true at all. You never tried to install MCE right ?
It's the exact same situation than MythTV, sometimes it's worse, as MythTv actually works with more hardware : if you take the well supported hardware, you have no problem.
Go look support forums for MCE if you don't believe me.
Only time it's simpler, is when MCE comes preinstalled in a media center, and there are some preinstalled for MythTV too.
You also forgot lots of Pros for MythTV. You didn't even touch the best ones (auto programming, plays EVERY video and audio files, integration of games,
Of course, perceived simpler setup and configuration will still win, I won't deny that.
Well, it didn't beat me at all.
Especially since it lacks the CPU and the drive, and the fact that the noisiest thing in my MythTV setup right now, is that old 80 GB hard drive, as most components were old things I didn't use anymore (Athlon CPU, old DDRAM memory). Of course, I won't just dump the old hard drive, I'll just wait for it to die.
Unfortunately, it spins everytime, as it's the system disk, the other disk being a SATA 250 GB drive, which doesn't make any noticeable noise.
Well, actually, you don't even hear that old disks when watching TV or videos.