I think it's time that many OSS developers stop trying to play catchup with MS
But they don't. That's your perception, that's not theirs (there are exception of course). The only people I see with these perceptions are people that DON'T know or use Linux.
you're already there
They know that.
If you don't set the bar any higher than trying to reinvent the functionality already present in Windows
But they do already. Again, that's your perception. That's why Windows actually implements functionalities present in Linux (since WinXP at least). But you would have to use Linux since a long time to understand this.
the masses will never take notice
The masses didn't take notice before, and developers have raised the bar since a long time. The bar has been raised since 1998, some of these bars have even been in the news, but people keep on ignoring it. So the problem is not in the effort the community is doing, it's in the people (inertia or whatever).
There seems to be this idea that people hate MS and/or Windows and are looking for any excuse to move to OSS
Nonsense. If sth does not work, you try sth else : if it is better, you keep it, you don't go for the lamer and more expensive solution, that would be beyonf all stupidity. That's how I moved entirely to Linux. I gradually switched, moving one functionality on Linux each time it failed badly on Windows. And I had lots of inertia, for example, I lost months of mails 2 times before I moved to Linux. I kept on with video not working randomly for months (making me loose hours and hours to fix) before going to geexbox. ALl this because constantly, people were telling me how great Windows was, how you could do this and that. Some people telling me that their Windows don't crash for days, that they never put an antivirus and were never infected. And when I investigate, I realise these people take most of their time tweaking everything for Windows to work right, the same things over and over, reinstall everything every 6 months with a ghost, and all that only to play games (so they don't have real data to save)... I decided to switch when I tried an experiment for a week : how much troubles I had with Windows, and then with Linux. I started 4 days of Windows, and stopped there, when I realised I was constantly cursing and getting angry on Windows, every single day, nothing ever worked right, I was not productive at all, fearing every move ! I switched to Linux right away, thinking that at least, if it was the same in Linux, it was prettier. Well, I switched entirely in january 2001 and never looked back. Actually I did when people told me how WinXP was so wonderful. But at the time, I had no more time to play with OS (I still don't), so if it does not work within a reasonable time, it's out. Windows was out when I installed it fresh, put it to do some work like in Linux (working 24/24 7/7), and realise that it became unusable and locked every time after 1 week of this regime. Worse, it could not do what I could with Linux (like 3 simultaneous desktops or use all of my hardware). I could say that in a sense, I hate Windows for all the time I lost with this OS. Fortunately, now I'm free of all these hassles. I even got myself rid of all the people calling for support for their oh-so-easy-Windows (that I was maintaining). trangely enough, without me supporting them, they all switched to Linux (where I support them) or abandoned computing altogether.
You are one kind of big trolls with guts, especially when I compare your posts #13885797 and then #13886913. They just prove what a troll you are, with stupid and false arguments to boot.
1. You say Linux has a need for package management (which it already has), that it's a big flaw for Linux, then you say that packages are bad, and hence package management. It should be sufficient to dispel all of your troll, but I find it interesting to see how off base anti-Linux trolls are.
2. You don't even understand what people explain to you. You say the user should install without user interaction. Your vision is so narrowed to limited shrink wrapped OS it's amazing ! With a Linux distro, you have ALL languages, you can truely change on the fly, The system is not able to select the language it should speak to you before you tell him, so you need user interaction before install, same for time zone and all other l10n issues, but we already told you that. You don't want to install every language on your system, that's bloat if you don't use them, and that's what you are asking for. And people still have BIG problems guessing what others think or want, and you would want a Linux distro to do it ? Did you want to appear funny or stupid ? Your answer is amazing, quoting OS X apps and user prefs, yuo don't even get that the user pref you talk about has to be entered by the user.
3. The formal separation of System and applications sure work best than in other desktop environments. I'm able to boot in a base system without apps since always in Linux. Then I can mount all the other app and users volumes from anywhere I want. I don't know if it is possible in OS X, but it sure is in Linux. No unprivileged user can install app in Linux either by default. You can allow it if you want. Don't talk about customization please, you're making a fool of yourself, that's one of the big strength and innovation of Linux.
4. Try not to contradict yourself in the same sentence, please. And try to not make your opinion appear like assertions. This point is so trollish and false I won't feed it anymore than that, especially since that's actually Windows that copied everything in its GUI from others (then other people will start to answer that everyone copies everyone, sigh).
5. I can't think of a simple thing, or even anything, with which a Linux distro treats you like a moron. Distros are actually trying to be dumber to accomodate a perceived need for supposedly dumb user, a perception actually encouraged by trolls like you. FYI, moving with a laptop from AP to AP is not a simple thing, and not a thing a dumb user could do. Setting up the WiFi is hard enough (next to impossible) for such users (that's why some offer paid support to install WiFi for them). If you have to find a wizard, it is already too late : a wizard should not have to be found, especially when it's more useful, the first time you need it. Fortunately that's not the case in Linux, though it is in Windows. You should not talk about Windows here, because all of your point are solved or in the process of being solved in Linux, but are big flaws in Windows. To the point where I wonder if you were not being ironic.
6. We agree on this statement, which Linux desktops follow already.
7. You obviously don't understand development. Dev tool is a dev tool. It should allow you to make kernel modules or end user apps, or libraries. So it should allow you to put files anywhere you want. Anyway, that's the build tool that decides where your files will stay, and they on Linux, they do not encourage the use of package management, I don't know where you saw such thing. The build tools allow you to interact easily with a package manager, but that's all. Drag and drop GUI creation already exist for both Gnome and KDE too.
Linux developers should focus on creating tools, not emulating tools already created
Why ? You don't understand their needs, you don't understand dev, you sure are the last person I would ask for advice as to wh
That having been said, I've used linux before, I've used Windows
Me too, and what you say is looking like FUD to me.
If you want to install something not included in the distro, you're in for some work
And it's worse in Windows. Try to install ANYTHING and you are in for a LOT of work, especially when you lose your english-speaking centric vision like all people not speaking english do (that's true even for games). Want to install anything ? Have to go buy it. Most Windows app on the internet are impossible to install to all of my users, because they don't understand english.
I tried installing FreeNX on Mandriva over a SSH terminal
And I bet you think it's a good example. NO average user will try to install FreeNX, you are already in geeky or experienced people territory.
I never did get it working. Apropos hadn't been set up by default, and install was failing on a file whose package I couldn't find.
So you failed and the packager failed too. Linux could be the best in everything, it could not replace you or the packager.
Be better than Windows
It already is in many ways. Average people do not have a network.
Install all the docs by default. Never assume that your user doesn't need man pages.
But lots of comments on Slashdot say that people don't want to read docs. Often, they are the same that say that Linux needs docs (damned if you do, damned if you don't).
Label each program with a name that describes what it does
Already done (you have used Linux 5 years ago ?), next. Mandriva destroys this a little, blame Mandriva.
Look at Windows accessories
Before being able to do that, I'd have to open the menu where a mess of non descriptive app names and company names I don't care about. Good try but failed.
So, what's easier, drakxconf or Control Panel?
Drakxconf...
Let's also map some commands to likely alternatives. man is good, but what if help worked too? Maybe if help pointed to an overview of man, apropos, lynx and some docs?
Already done, next.
Usabilty testing by non programmers. I like vi about as much as the average person. That is, not very. compared to the MS-DOS edit.exe, vi is pretty weak. Or rather, it's very strong, but it makes what should be a 100% intuitive task for anyone familiar with a computer into a series of random button-pushing and man-reading sessions.
Try to stay focused on an issue. Vi was there before your usability testers. It is still around and still more powerful that what you cited. Now try to explain to me what are the intuitive tasks you are talking about. I take the graphical gvim for Windows (see, not even the best implementation of vi) : it can do everything you do with notepad or edit.exe (which is not intuitive). Plus all the powerful text manipulation that are impossible to do with Notepad.
But if you want to put this sort of thing all over, how about building a map
How about you learn how to do it ? You are not the average user, clearly.
I'd love to be able to download a single installer, run it (in the gui!) let it figure out where everything is, what needs to be downloaded, what dependencies need satisfying
You already have it and don't even need to install it. You never used Linux right ?
Windows does this well, Mac does this well, why is this so hard for Linux?
It's not, Linux does this well. You just want to blame Linux for something it is not responsible for. Loki installer is not even the only one to install apps like you want on Linux. I installed at least 3 games (one, privateer, being "free") wich used Loki installers. Try to change your tired FUD next time.
There are tutorials for Mandriva (when you buy it, you even have the printed doc), and at least one book with videos. I agree that for the desktop versions, this would be a good idea.
I have a hard time believing what you say is not FUD...
(1) The sound software I was trying to use didn't work in GNOME, because GNOME uses ESD
The average person does not install these kind of sound software, but worse, the cause you give is wrong. I use multiple simultaneous desktop, one of them is Gnome, with ESD. ESD uses ALSA since a long time, so I have a hard time believing it would block any app (it doesn't at home), specially because IIRC Ubuntu is what started the correct ALSA software mixing. Even worse, since 2.10, Gnome uses ALSA as its sound system by default, even when esd is launched, esd being there for old apps. Your killing of esd should not be necessary anymore nowadays, so I rather think you tried to be elite with your Ubuntu install, and screwed everything, like (2) indicates.
(2) I couldn't install some libraries (such as libc6-dev) because they were in a munged state at the point where I did my apt-get update.
An average user does not install important libraries like libc. Even worse, they don't do things like updating from one version of Ubuntu to another with apt-get, giving them a munged state.
To sum up, you wrongfully attributed flaws to Linux, when these are your flaws instead. Even worse, the flaws you talk about, average users don't do them.
These were time-consuming, frustrating annoyances for me, but for someone who's not a computer geek, they'd be total showstoppersw
Fortunately, they will never do such things, so they will not even have to give up.
And BTW, Gagne might want to update the subtitle of his book, "Kiss the blue screen of death goodbye." I have to use Windows a lot at work. I haven't seen a BSOD in years.
You haven't but I have, and mine was documented on the MS support site, so stop believing you are the center of universe. A lot of BSOD for Windows XP are documented on MS site, try informing yourself instead of spouting nonsense.
What makes MSH rock is that it's a python-like programming languaje PLUS a user-oriented (user=administrator) shell like bash
Perhaps that's interersting from the POV of the programmer, but from the POV of the sys admin, it's a nightmare. Those that don't understand Unix are bound to reimplement it, badly. Bash goes out of its ways to provide tools and syntax allowing you to remove all customizations others could have put in the environment. Korn shell compatible shells are lightweight and portable and cross-platform and respect a small standard. Lacking any of this means a shell is NOT like bash (or any other shell). So your premise is wrong for MSH. MSH does not have MOST of these power features of shells, so I don't understand how you can compare it to them.
In linux we're used to program scripts with python
I'm not. Who is this 'we' ?
then pass the data through pipes to bash to do something with it. Crappy.
This says it all. It is one of the most powerful feature of Unix, and you call it 'crappy'. Again, 'those that don't understand Unix...' FYI, I saved several production data in real time in big french firms thanks to this crappy feature...
When you have to do things like "command | cut -d ' ' -f 3 | cut -d ':' -f 1" to get some data, you know something is WRONG
Which, obviously here, is the person who has wrote this garbage. I would never write this, but would rather write a sed command to do that.
The cool thing about MSH that its a SUBSTITUTE to bash/cmd.exe, not a "complement" like python is
It sure is cool. csh was cool too. Look at what happened to it. Cool and Useful/Powerful are not the same.
Is not that bash or python are bad
Fortunately you have enough common sense to agree with that.
but bash-like shells are 30-years-old unchanged technology
Proven technology, what is wrong with that ?? FYI, people have tried to add cool things to the concept (csh types, zsh,...). Bash is actually an evolution of sh/ksh, contrary to what you say. It's just more powerful. A shell must have, among its features, stability and security. 30 years old is a good thing when you want these. Given that MSH is developed by MS, and given their track record on these 2 points (stability, security), excuse me if I don't hold my breath on MSH.
Fortunately, there're people writing user-oriented python-based shells, like http://ipython.scipy.org/
User-oriented python-based shells, OMG !! Given the problems I've got till this day with Python apps (memory leaks, unexplained and untracable crashes), given the tedious work of migrating core systems based on Python (look at Gentoo), excuse me, but I think I will stay with bash for a long time.
Considering NT was scaling multi-processors before Linux even existed, this is a bit of a rich statement. (Especially since Linux didn't even consider SMP until 1996, when it was a mature feature of NT by then.)
I find it rather rich that trolls like you have the guts to call others trolls, using rhetoric to prove your point and hoping nobody will notice. Linux 2.0 came in June 1996 with SMP support. So if SMP was not considered in Linux until 1996, you are basically saying that in less than 6 months, SMP was implemented in Linux better than in NT, where you say it was a mature feature ?!!! I would call that a feat.And I wonder how you can call SMP a mature feature in NT, when it was not scaling better than in Linux, which was implemented in less than 6 months, like you implied.
Considering there is 128-way SMP version of Windows (running on NT) available, I would assume NT knows how to handle more than 2 processors, just a guess though.
I never heard of any 128-way SMP version of Windows. I heard of a custom secret implementation that supposedly does that, that's all. But no version of Windows commercially sold actually does that. And SMP versions of Windows scales very poorly.
Also considering the desktop versions of WindowsXP support 2 processors standard
Against that's false. Home edition does not support 2 processors standard (HT is not SMP nor 2 processors support), Pro edition does. Stop lying... oh you can't, without destroying your point.
and NT has for years and years, I might suggest that it even has an edge on some OSes that SMP is just becoming realistic. (XP does Dual Processors with HT, effectively managing 4 virtual CPUs and this is the desktop edition for the average Joe.)
Continuing your lies huh ? HT is not SMP, stop your nonsense. SMP was realistic in Linux way before NT, despite SMP being implemented in NT first : that speaks volumes for NT OS, and tend to prove GP point. Again, WinXP Pro support your 4 virtual CPUs, not Home. The distinction is important, if you want to make Linux comparison, because standard desktop editions of Linux distros come with SMP support. For Windows, standard desktop edition is XP Home, which has no such support. It could, but it doesn't.
Now should we talk about how it hasn't been until later versions 2.4 of Linux that in an SMP world, process affinity even become stable. (According to Intel, AMD and other people trying to create real world Linux SMP solutions.)
Still lying huh ? Process affinity wasn't becoming stable at end of Linux 2.4, it was just not implemented before. And it ended up implemented pretty fast. But I know why you added the word 'stable' in your rant : rhetoric implying it was there but not stable before. Anyway, despite not having process affinity, Linux kernel was running circles around NT kernel, so you should keep this subject hidden.
Or we could talk about hotplug of memory and processors with Linux - which is still not supported as it is with NT and Solaris. (And Linux you even get the fun of reconfiguring if you want to flip processors in downtime even.)
Well, you got me there. I did not even know that there was this type of hardware supported in x86 architecture. You are not credible though, because these kind of hotplug are only in limited set of configurations, not available to most Linux programmers, that's why, if they exist, they are still not implemented. There are little numbre of devs that can afford a E25K you know ? But you chose a good example, forgetting the load of other features that Linux kernel has, that makes NT kernel a toy OS. Stability is enough to kill any of your arguments though. You will give me crap about NT running for months (with 1 service) and you having seen Linux crash, the difference is that: Stability in Linux is the norm, in NT it's the exception. I mean that a Linux crash is news, while a NT running for years is news too.
IMO Microsoft made computing cheap (as in $) well before Linux was a twinkle in Linus' eye. And MS still makes computing cheap relative to all other commercial offerings.
You got to be kidding. MS never made computing cheap. You think it's cheap (as in $) because you are fooled by the price of the product you see upfront. When it's time to implement the solution, that's when you start to learn that you need lots of other MS tools that cost lots of money to make it all work, and it's not cheap anymore. If MS computing were so cheap, nobody could explain why companies paid Software Assurance (for nothing, though some still try to justify their choice, to not appear like the cash cows they are). Linux goal was not to make computing cheap BTW.
SUN and Apple had the world by the tail in those days (mid 80's)
It's the same now for MS, if you believe what everyone (you included) tell us (see Massachussets case opponents).
but they never worked to commoditize themselves
And MS doesn't either now. Their OS is a growing part of the price of a new computer.
An argument could even be made that Microsoft with its relatively low priced OS is what made the business model that created Linux
Such nonsense just shows your ignorance. No business model created Linux, this I think you can't understand. The GPL spirit is completely the opposite of the spirit of MS creator Bill G. No one with some clue could make an argument that MS induced the creation of Linux.
The only way to compete with cheap (as in $) is free (as in beer)
Perhaps, but Linux was not created to compete with Windows. Your other mistake is that nobody in the OS world 'compete with cheap'. You sound like a MS shill really. What you call 'compete with cheap' is actually 'doing battle with a monopoly', but reality semms to have escaped your mind.
Of course what you say is false, but lots of people like you would want people to believe such BS. Call me back when my Mustek 12000 SP is supported under Windows XP. FYI, the manufacturer answer is to go buy another scanner. And again FYI, it works flawlessly under Linux. Same thing for my old Miro PCTV. I finally found a driver that more or less works under Windows XP, but it's still too much of a hassle. And I spent days finding it, a normal user would have given up. To discover that the codecs that came with the card do not work anymore on Windows XP (that's for the people who says Windows is super backward compatible). I can't even record in VirtualDub anymore with this card (for the same people). Some of the devices I have do not work either under Windows XP (like PS2 pad adapter). If I wait too long to launch games (the only thing I use Windows for these days, namely finishing the games I bought for it years ago, like BG2 and extensions) they don't launch, and Windows display a strange error full of numbers and no games will ever launch anymore until reboot. No one has been able to help me. I recently updated to DirectX 9.0c, but now I know I will never finish one of my game that does not support more than Direct X 8. That's for the stable thing. There would be a lot more to say about my experience with the oh-so-wonderful Windows, but I switched to Linux for a reason. And I had the same experience at work, till this day. I love it here when I show the Windows techies an obvious bug, then find a workaround, tell them 'seen the bug ?', they tell me "no I didn't" (a bug I showed them seconds before, talk about selective amnesia caused by Windows), then the bug reappears (a bug in Word XP), I take the time to assure they saw the bug, to hear them say 'well, what did you do to this computer ?' (yeah, it's the user fault of course).
Well, I can reasonnably say that, given my experience with Windows (up to XP), it is not stable and does not support every hardware you can throw at it.
Well, the same applies to OS's. If you factor in the whole mile-long list of reasons, and not just take one aspect out of context, for a lot of people Windows actually is the best choice
I beg to differ. To simplify to the max, reasons for Windows being used has NOTHING to do with the reasons for people that go to McDonald's. People don't go to Mc Donald's because they know someone in the vicinity that will help them to eat for free, while that's the case with OSes. Mc Donald's imply a sense of scarcity, nothing like that with software.
Windows right now is not popular because people love it or because it is simple. Well, to say that, I only have to look at the TONS of Windows magazine explaining lots of trivial things that should have been simple in Windows, and yet people buy these again and again. I only have to remember that AS SOON AS I stopped providing support (and other illegal things) for Windows to my vicinity, they all stopped using Windows or computers altogether.
The only thing to be proud of for MS is their monopoly. You will always read how simple and loved Windows is on forums like Slashdot, while other forums for normal users are full of people angry, with things that do not work, and who put up with it, or give up. And these are the people that can't afford to pay for phone support or don't have a geek that will waste hours to help them...
Right now, Windows is the best choice when you are ready to give up lots of money, and have a geek to help you. For the family and friends I manage, Windows is not the best choice. I'm still in the minority, but I sure hope this situation will improve.
I know of a hell lot of people who really hate windows and would love to switch over to Linux... They try to use all kind of thingies over MSN
These two things do not make sense : people hating windows and using all kind of thingies over MSN ??? How can you say they would love to switch over to Linux, when you say next that there are a lot of things impeding them on Linux ? How can you say that when you don't even know how to explain things to people ? Because how come people say "Linux huh ?" when your problem is not even related to Linux ? If Gaim does not support webcam in Windows, it's still a Linux problem ? Please don't try to sell Linux to people, you do more harm than good. I install Linux for people, but I review their need first, and I explain them what will cause problem, what does not work, in a positive manner, not saying "it's Linux's fault" when I can. The problem of video and audio is because of proprietary vendors closing their protocols and codecs. Stop saying OSS is at fault, and if you want things to change, bug the proprietary vendors.
The main point of TFA, really, is "Where's the voice and webcam support?"
Fortunately they don't ask such questions, especially since they would appear uninformed. With all the talks about patents and knowing the willingness of MS or Yahoo to cooperate with OS projects, one does not need to think very long to understand why the situation is such. Voice and webcam support of course is not a problem, the codecs are.
This is a major stumbling block in open-source IM, and it doesn't affect just young people.
This is not. See ? I can affirm things too. Perhaps a minor stumbling block, surely not a major one. It affects mostly young people, because there are not so much people able to: - buy a webcam - buy a microphone - plug them where they should (especially the microphone) - configure all of this in the IM client (some people will tell me it it's very simple in Windows, some people I know still struggle with their webcam 3 years after starting using this) - willing to let their face seen to everyone
I'm in my early forties and Linux has been my exclusive desktop OS for over five years
I'm in my early thirties, and Linux has been my exclusive desktop OS for nearly 5 years (will be in 01/2006).
My wife is in her thirties and would also be a Linux user except for one thing: Yahoo Messenger, and specifically the voice/video features, is her number one app (ahead of even email) for keeping in touch with her family and friends overseas
My wife is also in its early thirties, and she has absolutely no problem keeping in touch with her family, text is good enough for her. I said to her that soon, she should be able to send video through the webcam. None of the people she talks to have webcam or audio, so she doesn't even see the interest. I understand your problem, just don't say everyone wants this. It's a plus (I think) when it works well. That means lots of bandwidth and low latency to work well.
It's all about the applications for a lot of people, and IM is the only area that immediately comes to mind where there is really a huge gap between capabilities of open-source clients versus proprietary ones
The gap is mostly in favor of OSS software though. Video and audio need high bandwidth and low latency, few people have this where I live, it's only starting to emerge now. I could not do these reliably 2 weeks ago, and the only people I know that do video (but not voice) struggle with it since 3 years. Chatting with text would give them better results (it would be instant, not losing 10s of minutes each time they want to talk).
However, turn to IM, and OSS is years behind the times. The author of TFA had it right. I know none of us really like hearing that there's something OSS doesn't do as well as proprietary software, and we especially don't like hearing that proprietary is kicking our asses in some area, but sometimes it's true. This is one of those times.
Nonsense. You still did not say why OSS is years behind. You could not, because you'd have to realise that when OSS does not do something, it's because it's blocked or impaired intentionally by proprietary software vendors. OSS is limited by patents threats on all these audio and video codecs needed to talk with other IM clients. High bandwidth will allow us to use less efficient, but not patented video and audio codecs to talk with others. If it hasn't been done before, that's mostly to avoid litigations. Even plugins in IM where partly invented to allow a program to withdraw a protocol or codec without destroying the entire program (the same with gstreamer, necessary for these kind of apps).
Having a world-class IM, with voice, video, etc., is crucial for OSS at this juncture. I hope people who are working on major OSS IM clients like gaim or Kopete are reading this thread and also read TFA and realize how important this is.
You talk like most OSS newbies, I have a hard time to believe you use Linux since 5 year
I have 2 advices for you : - Try talking about a recent PAID Linux distro, not a free downloaded one (which is for confirmed users) from 5 years ago - Look at the supported hardware on the box, and then USE the free support you paid for when you have a problem (it lasts for 1 month) Then come back to talk seriously about usability of the distro (or of Linux, though you won't be up to date with a paid distro), not the stupid FUD you put in your post.
You must be pretty stupid then, as the Bitsream Vera fonts that are used (I use the same on all the desktops I have on Linux) are provided by XOrg (at least in 6.8.2). These fonts were the standard since the fontconfig system was stable, as seen in its default config files (in/etc/fonts I think).
So you don't even have to install them, and it looks fantastic like that out of the box (with AA of course).
So yes, I repeat, you are pretty stupid or worse, a pretty stupid troll. At least the correct answer to your post was actually in the 3 choices you provided, good point.
Someone wrote that GNOME is an OSX killer before. Well yeah, maybe in 2020.
OK well, you corrected someone, fine.
You see, Nautilus alone is vastly inferior to Finder (the new one). Of all gnome components, nautilus is the one that sucks most. Try browsing a large directory with thousands of files with nautilus, konqueror and windows explorer. The latter ones scan the directory MUCH faster. Nautilus takes about 1-2 MINUTES - unacceptable.
What I see: - You didn't explain how Nautilus is vastly inferior to Finder, but you still affirm it - You did explain why Nautilus sucks, only problem is that you used a flawed argument
Of course Windows Explorer will display the directory faster, which does not mean it has scanned it faster or that it scanned it correctly. You forgot to say that the functionality is abysmal in Windows Explorer compared to Gnome, and that Windows Explorer is broken, while Nautilus is not and will display things correctly. Try renaming a OpenOffice document to.doc in Windows Explorer, it will change the app icon despite it being the same file !!! Now remove any extension, the broken Windows Explorer don't know anymore what this file is. Now do the same in Nautilus, and see the icon stay the same. Do the same with an image or video file, look at how Nautilus show you a thumbnail when Windows Explorer shows you an app icon. Now rename the file the same as before. Look at how it is broken and Nautilus is not. In some MS OS (like Win200), once you changed the extension (for example,.png to.gif) the stupid Windows Explorer will not even show you any image anymore in the left side, like something in it crashed or something. And you dare say Nautilus suck ? Perhaps by your standard, where it must be fast before it works, but in my standard, I don't give a damn that it is fast if it does not work. What is the purpose of your fast displaying of thousands of files if you can't even be sure of their type, let alone see their content instantly ? You will take more time finding the right one than me with my Nautilus in the end !!! Unlike you, I don't open directories for the sake of opening them, but to get work done.
Also, it is evident that once an ORDINARY USER (no hacker, no power user, no admin, no dev) has to edit a config file, the whole design has failed
I would have thought that only the configuration GUI design was at fault, but you know better of course... You're pathetic really, you talk like Gnome is a huge block like Windows while every self-respecting troll knows that Gnome is made of lots of parts, the configuration being one. And yet you say the whole design is wrong if a config file has been edited ? I see, you prefer having nothing at all like in other OSes ?
Of course, this is not gnomes problem alone, but to a great deal the underlying OS; however, we are talking about an OSX killer, right?
No we are not, only someone called it that, you could not even give his name. What is your audience for this post ? I'm starting to wonder...
If you aren't lucky, and the hardware doesn't fit 1:1 with the distro, you have to dig through obscure manpages.
Are you confused ? We call them "obscure manpages" the "Web" or "distribution vendor support". You did pay for the distro you're complaining about right ? You know they offer free phone support when you buy their distro right ?
I also read that anyone that is not able to edit configfiles is an idiot and everyone MUST learn how to do this
By the same someone than before or another ? You seem to base your facts on random writing by random people : are you a stupid fool or what ?
See, I doubt a biologist that made some photos about a weird plant and want to download them from his cam to his PC is interested in editing config files just to get this to work - he JUST WANTS TO DO HIS JOB and is certainly not interested in lear
One problem I have with Evince is the Print function. I don't know if it's caused by gnome-print, CUPS or Cairo (I think that's the culprit), but the output : - is different from what is on screen - uses different fonts, which do not work with non-ascii characters
I will try and investigate the issue further once I have all Gnome 2.12 installed. I actually tried on Gnome 2.10 with Cairo 1.0 and evince 0.4.0, so perhaps that's the cause.
What's sad is that you see them coming from far far away, but the worst is that their arguments are always flawed. So they play with emotional things, and don't even get that right (Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with > 1% marketshare, I suppose they meant < 1 %...). And then, say stupid things like :
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Eliminating the context, and deliberately forgetting the part about the GUI, like Synaptic or Mandrake Update (which are available in the menu, with names like "Update your system" or "Add new applications").
But wait, they are even more stupid than that !!!! They have no shame. They even talk about the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and then, to illustrate that, ask How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?. Which of course, has nothing to do with Linux configuration issues, and everything to do with the Quake 3 editor not providing a convenient installation method. I don't know Quake 3 per se, so I can't verify what these unreliable sources say, but if these guy http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/ can provide an installation file for their Open Source game that works on any Linux thanks to the very old Loki installer, I think any proprietary company can do it too.
Oh but wait, I checked and Quake 3 actually comes with the same installer at least for the french version !!!!
But of course, this old troll had to detail all the installation instructions of the NVidia driver and whatnot for XFree, to sound complicated. Trolls these days... I suppose this one will be resurrected often though. Reminds me of the good old days, when old trolls were reappearing even though the problems were fixed a long time ago. Heck, today I just saw "X does not support PNP displays", "X is slow", "Linux has bad font support"...
Fortunately, anti-Linux trolls do not include "Linux has no games" when they talk about difficulty of installing Quake 3 on it, thank god !
some of the recent 2.6 releases including new drivers for obscure proprietary hardware
What is this nonsense ? You don't want Linux to support hardware ? Linux can not be usable by just supporting standard hardware you know ?
A large number of organizations (as well as Debian Stable and Redhat) still use 2.4. It's pretty pathetic
Isn't that a good thing ?!!! You sound like a troll. What is pathetic with that ?!! And FYI, RH does not use 2.4 as default anymore, and their 2.4 kernel included backports from 2.6. Debian Stable supports both 2.4 and 2.6, you're several weeks late.
Maybe instead of spending time switching policies, kernel developers should be consulting with end-users to find out why we're not using 2.6
What for ? Are you stupid ? Clearly, you are not representative of Linux users : we use what is provided by our distro, and they supported Linux 2.6 since a long time ago. Most distros do actually support Linux 2.6, and FYI there was a race about which distro would support it first when the kernel was out. I think you can not understand that because you think a distro can't support 2.4 and 2.6 at the same time. This thinking must come from the people that want you to believe that apps running on 2.4 are incompatible with apps running on 2.6. I tell you : these people are MS shills and they are wrong.
Aside from security patches, any effort on 2.4 development/maintenance needs to stop. It's a brain drain, and active maintenance is encouraging people to be lazy in upgrading.
You have to let go of this Windows mentality that you are forced to upgrade even when it works. Linux 2.4 still works pretty well, it was still running circles around every version of Windows for example. To this day, MS still have to take very old RH releases with Linux 2.4 (without 2.6 backports) to compare to its latest Win2003, because of that. So why should people change when it's not broken ?
Right now 2.6 is a lame-duck kernel, and if they keep trudging on and release the next stable without looking at why 2.6 isn't the defacto kernel of choice today, Linux will be rather fubar'd.
Please stop making a fool of yourself. Even the more specialised distros like Geexbox use the latest Linux 2.6 refinements. You are 3 years late at least ! Like most MS shills. I don't imply that you are one BTW, but you are pretty clueless like them.
I'm a fairly technical user, not a tech god by any stretch of the imagination, but I know my way around
Actually you don't, but have problems admitting it. That's one of the first problem you should overcome. I understand, given your attitude and perceived proficiency, the reactions you must have gotten from true technical users on Linux forums.
I do all my own XVID rips from Vdub, I can install most Linux distros without a problem, and I'm damned proficient at packages like Photoshop and Illustrator. In addition, I'm a gamer from back in the DOS days, so concepts like editing text files (config.sys, autoexec.bat, etc) don't necessarily scare me.
You are a vibrant example of the fact that you do not learn anything that lasts on a MS platform. Nothing of what you cited is actually valuable when learning to use a computer and understanding it. All what you learned will be lost. All the things I learned on Windows are lost already. On Linux it's the complete opposite. What you say also shows that people think they are technical when they learn such things, because clueless users around them praise them as gurus. Even your proficiency in Photoshop and Illustrator are very specialised and won't help you understanding how to use an OS.
That said, as much as I like the concept of Linux, I simply will not try it any longer until I hear that a number of problems have been solved.
Number one should be swallowing your pride and accepting you are a newbie. Your "problems" show it well... Number two should be really understanding the concept of Linux (you meant FOSS, but you're a newbie), which you still did not grasp, your "problem" B is evidence of that. Of course, often, for various reasons, this means you have to buy a commercial Linux distro. You are not a freeloader right ? I thought so, because you would not have the indecency to make such complaints if you were one.
A) Years ago, binary distros appeared to fix that very "problem". You are actually worse than a newbie for that matter.
B) Any time you are forced to drop to a command line, you should inform the developer. That is, if you really understood the concept of Linux. But obviously you don't, so such a thing is beyond you. And as you are a newbie, you still see the command line badly, even though even MS is tripping over itself to provide a decent one. It's strange too, that you have to modify so many text files constantly in Linux. You must be applying the MS way to your Linux tests I think.
C) You forgot to say what would "cut it" (since man pages and message boards won't). There is at least something positive : 50 % of the time, you got the answer you were searching for, which I find amazing because you are truely a clueless n00b like they called you. It shows because among the people giving you contradictory answers (or at least that's how you perceived the answers), you did not try one to come back and report to people what worked. FOSS is still a stranger to you I'm afraid.
You are not in favor of Open Source, as you think, because you do not even understand it and the process implied by it. You do not even know the existence of binary distros that fix all the problems you have stated. Too bad, but this only means that if everyone was to switch to Linux, you would be one of the last.
I attest that I have seen a surge of unstability on my Linux machines. And I can also attest that all the kernel panics or lock ups where due to hardware problems : SCSI and IDE disks crashing; IDE cdroms dieing, killing the IDE port entirely; mobo dieing. Actually, I think this must be due to the fact that my Linux machines run 24/24 7/7 since 2001 and that some components had never been replaced.
You forgot to add that Win95 could use pre-emptive multitasking only for new 32 bit apps. Which means it was cooperative for most apps at launch and long after launch (until Win98).
I hope people realize that you can be a Microsoft Windows users and still use most, if not all, of the open-source software mentioned here.
Actually, it's not a very good choice. It's tedious, and the Windows platform is too limited to use every features of these apps. Most FOSS apps on cygwin are unstable, slow, and heavily degraded compared to when they are used on Linux.
To me, the deal-breaker, the must-have, of the open-source software is GIMP. Unless you're a professional graphic artist employed by a company that is willing to buy the $600-a-pop Photoshop for you, GIMP is a perfect alternative.
And that's especially true of the GIMP. Windows interface just is not usable if you have no MDI, that's why a lot of people complain about the GIMP interface : they use it on Windows, which is too limited to handle it. Even on Gnome, a windows manager like metacity just started to support some of the requirements for using GIMP 2 efficiently.
I've never taken one single computer graphics class in my life and I've managed to learn how to use GIMP and created dozens of graphics for my blog at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/.
A lot of free articles and free books have been written to learn to use the GIMP, that's what makes it so good. Good luck with Photoshop. Does it still come with the learning video ? I could not know, because all the people I know that use Photoshop use warez versions, and have no helpful video. Even worse, these people can only do very basic things with it...
I don't personally know a single person that uses OpenOffice instead of MS Office, and it's all because of network externality. Is my copy of Office busted? I'm sure someone can help me fix it.
I'm not so sure. Every average user I've seen in this situation reinstalls everything, hoping to fix the issue.
I am sure that if I just click "Save," everyone else will be able to see this document, because everyone uses MS Office.
Which is of course false, as any regular user of MS Office knows. One of the problems is the over simplification like these. What you described is the expected behaviour, not the real one. Sure enough Office 97 users could not read Office 2000 documents if these Office 2000 users just clicked "Save". Worse, the Office 2000 will bug the user everytime to convert the Office 97 document... The formatting will often be broken too.
The average PC user doesn't care about "Free as in freedom, not free as in beer." Free as in beer is what will get the software out there.
Wrong, he does not know about it. Once you stop providing and installing warez to them, they will pretty soon get it.
I guess the most unfortunate part is that increasing recognition of OSS to "average PC users" won't add a single person to those contributing to the source. Average PC users consume, not produce, applications.
That's not the goal. The goal is to acquire critical mass for drivers and some proprietary apps. The fact is that too much average users thinking thay are elite users try to force their (often wrong) opinion on OSS developers.
The "average" PC user doesn't give a flying fuck about the "Open Source" movement or Linux or whatever.
You forgot to say he does not guve a flying fuck about "Windows" too. The average users sees the computer, sometimes Word, sometimes Excel. Actually, most average users using these software at home only see Office, because that's what they bought for an expensive price, or got from their company, and asked some geek to install, or shelled more bucks to make someone else install it.
Everyone else I know would be burdened by using non-standard software, whether they pay for it or not.
Everyone else I know IS burdened by using ANY software they have no formation for, whether they pay or not. All the people I switch to Linux actually accepted the switch the day I stopped supporting their Windows. And I told them there is plenty of paid support for Windows. Guess what, they preferred the switch, especially when less than a month after that, all the Windows machines I stopped supporting fubared. Even the one who I thought found support elsewhere contacted me last week to ask me about computer parts (he's going to buy a new machine), because his computer was completely dead (actually, from the symptoms, only his Windows is dead, but I won't tell him a thing about that, no more Windows support).
MOST people feel they don't pay for OS or Office software because it is normally buried in the "buy price" of a new PC.
MS Office sure is not.
Since the buy price of a new PC is affordable for most people, there is no clear compelling reason to use software that is not supported and can be "forked" into a million different version just "because you can".
These are not the reasons to use these softwares. They actually work the way they should, that's the primary reason.
I don't understand the part about "better" permissions. Windows ACL are grainier than unixy permissions, that's for sure. But fact shows that it is no better, as nobody uses it. Actually, some people use it and it's a nightmare. I fail to see how this can be considered better than a system which is actually used (like unixy permissions) and works well. Too much security kills security. But worse, looking at the Samba documentation (a very good source to understand some of the complicated Windows functionning), we see that Windows ACL are in fact very badly implemented, to a point where a user can deny himself access to its own file just by changing the ACLs, without any way to get it back. This could never happen with a good permission system. Actually, Linux permissions can already provide most of the functionality of Windows ACL, without the huge stupidity (see Samba docs for an explanation). Linux with ACL provides all the functionality of Windows ACL and more (with Samba).
But saying that SELinux tries to come close to what Windows offers is completely bogus ! SELinux is far ahead of what Windows can provide in matter of security. Even Linux capabilities are way more advanced !!
Some people have some guts, calling Windows ACL better than unixy permissions, when the later stops wiruses, which the former still can't do today. So much for the better system. Next you will come telling me it's better 'in theory'.
Which is BS as the code already available in GPL will stay GPL. Even worse, the new non-GPL code produced by these programmers could never be incorporated in the kernel. So your scenario B is just impossible to achieve.
I have serious doubt for the scenario A, as the programmer was already working on Linux before MS applied its 'non compete' clause, so I doubt it will be valid, especially if the programmer works on it on its hobby hours, or if MS fires him afterwards.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's time that many OSS developers stop trying to play catchup with MS
...
But they don't. That's your perception, that's not theirs (there are exception of course). The only people I see with these perceptions are people that DON'T know or use Linux.
you're already there
They know that.
If you don't set the bar any higher than trying to reinvent the functionality already present in Windows
But they do already. Again, that's your perception. That's why Windows actually implements functionalities present in Linux (since WinXP at least). But you would have to use Linux since a long time to understand this.
the masses will never take notice
The masses didn't take notice before, and developers have raised the bar since a long time. The bar has been raised since 1998, some of these bars have even been in the news, but people keep on ignoring it. So the problem is not in the effort the community is doing, it's in the people (inertia or whatever).
There seems to be this idea that people hate MS and/or Windows and are looking for any excuse to move to OSS
Nonsense. If sth does not work, you try sth else : if it is better, you keep it, you don't go for the lamer and more expensive solution, that would be beyonf all stupidity. That's how I moved entirely to Linux. I gradually switched, moving one functionality on Linux each time it failed badly on Windows. And I had lots of inertia, for example, I lost months of mails 2 times before I moved to Linux. I kept on with video not working randomly for months (making me loose hours and hours to fix) before going to geexbox. ALl this because constantly, people were telling me how great Windows was, how you could do this and that. Some people telling me that their Windows don't crash for days, that they never put an antivirus and were never infected. And when I investigate, I realise these people take most of their time tweaking everything for Windows to work right, the same things over and over, reinstall everything every 6 months with a ghost, and all that only to play games (so they don't have real data to save)
I decided to switch when I tried an experiment for a week : how much troubles I had with Windows, and then with Linux. I started 4 days of Windows, and stopped there, when I realised I was constantly cursing and getting angry on Windows, every single day, nothing ever worked right, I was not productive at all, fearing every move ! I switched to Linux right away, thinking that at least, if it was the same in Linux, it was prettier. Well, I switched entirely in january 2001 and never looked back. Actually I did when people told me how WinXP was so wonderful. But at the time, I had no more time to play with OS (I still don't), so if it does not work within a reasonable time, it's out. Windows was out when I installed it fresh, put it to do some work like in Linux (working 24/24 7/7), and realise that it became unusable and locked every time after 1 week of this regime. Worse, it could not do what I could with Linux (like 3 simultaneous desktops or use all of my hardware).
I could say that in a sense, I hate Windows for all the time I lost with this OS. Fortunately, now I'm free of all these hassles. I even got myself rid of all the people calling for support for their oh-so-easy-Windows (that I was maintaining). trangely enough, without me supporting them, they all switched to Linux (where I support them) or abandoned computing altogether.
You are one kind of big trolls with guts, especially when I compare your posts #13885797 and then #13886913.
They just prove what a troll you are, with stupid and false arguments to boot.
1. You say Linux has a need for package management (which it already has), that it's a big flaw for Linux, then you say that packages are bad, and hence package management. It should be sufficient to dispel all of your troll, but I find it interesting to see how off base anti-Linux trolls are.
2. You don't even understand what people explain to you. You say the user should install without user interaction. Your vision is so narrowed to limited shrink wrapped OS it's amazing ! With a Linux distro, you have ALL languages, you can truely change on the fly, The system is not able to select the language it should speak to you before you tell him, so you need user interaction before install, same for time zone and all other l10n issues, but we already told you that. You don't want to install every language on your system, that's bloat if you don't use them, and that's what you are asking for. And people still have BIG problems guessing what others think or want, and you would want a Linux distro to do it ? Did you want to appear funny or stupid ? Your answer is amazing, quoting OS X apps and user prefs, yuo don't even get that the user pref you talk about has to be entered by the user.
3. The formal separation of System and applications sure work best than in other desktop environments. I'm able to boot in a base system without apps since always in Linux. Then I can mount all the other app and users volumes from anywhere I want. I don't know if it is possible in OS X, but it sure is in Linux. No unprivileged user can install app in Linux either by default. You can allow it if you want. Don't talk about customization please, you're making a fool of yourself, that's one of the big strength and innovation of Linux.
4. Try not to contradict yourself in the same sentence, please. And try to not make your opinion appear like assertions. This point is so trollish and false I won't feed it anymore than that, especially since that's actually Windows that copied everything in its GUI from others (then other people will start to answer that everyone copies everyone, sigh).
5. I can't think of a simple thing, or even anything, with which a Linux distro treats you like a moron. Distros are actually trying to be dumber to accomodate a perceived need for supposedly dumb user, a perception actually encouraged by trolls like you. FYI, moving with a laptop from AP to AP is not a simple thing, and not a thing a dumb user could do. Setting up the WiFi is hard enough (next to impossible) for such users (that's why some offer paid support to install WiFi for them). If you have to find a wizard, it is already too late : a wizard should not have to be found, especially when it's more useful, the first time you need it. Fortunately that's not the case in Linux, though it is in Windows. You should not talk about Windows here, because all of your point are solved or in the process of being solved in Linux, but are big flaws in Windows. To the point where I wonder if you were not being ironic.
6. We agree on this statement, which Linux desktops follow already.
7. You obviously don't understand development. Dev tool is a dev tool. It should allow you to make kernel modules or end user apps, or libraries. So it should allow you to put files anywhere you want. Anyway, that's the build tool that decides where your files will stay, and they on Linux, they do not encourage the use of package management, I don't know where you saw such thing. The build tools allow you to interact easily with a package manager, but that's all.
Drag and drop GUI creation already exist for both Gnome and KDE too.
Linux developers should focus on creating tools, not emulating tools already created
Why ? You don't understand their needs, you don't understand dev, you sure are the last person I would ask for advice as to wh
That having been said, I've used linux before, I've used Windows
...
Me too, and what you say is looking like FUD to me.
If you want to install something not included in the distro, you're in for some work
And it's worse in Windows. Try to install ANYTHING and you are in for a LOT of work, especially when you lose your english-speaking centric vision like all people not speaking english do (that's true even for games).
Want to install anything ? Have to go buy it. Most Windows app on the internet are impossible to install to all of my users, because they don't understand english.
I tried installing FreeNX on Mandriva over a SSH terminal
And I bet you think it's a good example. NO average user will try to install FreeNX, you are already in geeky or experienced people territory.
I never did get it working. Apropos hadn't been set up by default, and install was failing on a file whose package I couldn't find.
So you failed and the packager failed too. Linux could be the best in everything, it could not replace you or the packager.
Be better than Windows
It already is in many ways. Average people do not have a network.
Install all the docs by default. Never assume that your user doesn't need man pages.
But lots of comments on Slashdot say that people don't want to read docs. Often, they are the same that say that Linux needs docs (damned if you do, damned if you don't).
Label each program with a name that describes what it does
Already done (you have used Linux 5 years ago ?), next.
Mandriva destroys this a little, blame Mandriva.
Look at Windows accessories
Before being able to do that, I'd have to open the menu where a mess of non descriptive app names and company names I don't care about. Good try but failed.
So, what's easier, drakxconf or Control Panel?
Drakxconf
Let's also map some commands to likely alternatives. man is good, but what if help worked too? Maybe if help pointed to an overview of man, apropos, lynx and some docs?
Already done, next.
Usabilty testing by non programmers. I like vi about as much as the average person. That is, not very. compared to the MS-DOS edit.exe, vi is pretty weak. Or rather, it's very strong, but it makes what should be a 100% intuitive task for anyone familiar with a computer into a series of random button-pushing and man-reading sessions.
Try to stay focused on an issue. Vi was there before your usability testers. It is still around and still more powerful that what you cited. Now try to explain to me what are the intuitive tasks you are talking about.
I take the graphical gvim for Windows (see, not even the best implementation of vi) : it can do everything you do with notepad or edit.exe (which is not intuitive). Plus all the powerful text manipulation that are impossible to do with Notepad.
But if you want to put this sort of thing all over, how about building a map
How about you learn how to do it ? You are not the average user, clearly.
I'd love to be able to download a single installer, run it (in the gui!) let it figure out where everything is, what needs to be downloaded, what dependencies need satisfying
You already have it and don't even need to install it. You never used Linux right ?
Windows does this well, Mac does this well, why is this so hard for Linux?
It's not, Linux does this well. You just want to blame Linux for something it is not responsible for.
Loki installer is not even the only one to install apps like you want on Linux.
I installed at least 3 games (one, privateer, being "free") wich used Loki installers. Try to change your tired FUD next time.
There are tutorials for Mandriva (when you buy it, you even have the printed doc), and at least one book with videos. I agree that for the desktop versions, this would be a good idea.
I have a hard time believing what you say is not FUD ...
(1) The sound software I was trying to use didn't work in GNOME, because GNOME uses ESD
The average person does not install these kind of sound software, but worse, the cause you give is wrong.
I use multiple simultaneous desktop, one of them is Gnome, with ESD. ESD uses ALSA since a long time, so I have a hard time believing it would block any app (it doesn't at home), specially because IIRC Ubuntu is what started the correct ALSA software mixing. Even worse, since 2.10, Gnome uses ALSA as its sound system by default, even when esd is launched, esd being there for old apps.
Your killing of esd should not be necessary anymore nowadays, so I rather think you tried to be elite with your Ubuntu install, and screwed everything, like (2) indicates.
(2) I couldn't install some libraries (such as libc6-dev) because they were in a munged state at the point where I did my apt-get update.
An average user does not install important libraries like libc. Even worse, they don't do things like updating from one version of Ubuntu to another with apt-get, giving them a munged state.
To sum up, you wrongfully attributed flaws to Linux, when these are your flaws instead. Even worse, the flaws you talk about, average users don't do them.
These were time-consuming, frustrating annoyances for me, but for someone who's not a computer geek, they'd be total showstoppersw
Fortunately, they will never do such things, so they will not even have to give up.
And BTW, Gagne might want to update the subtitle of his book, "Kiss the blue screen of death goodbye." I have to use Windows a lot at work. I haven't seen a BSOD in years.
You haven't but I have, and mine was documented on the MS support site, so stop believing you are the center of universe. A lot of BSOD for Windows XP are documented on MS site, try informing yourself instead of spouting nonsense.
What makes MSH rock is that it's a python-like programming languaje PLUS a user-oriented (user=administrator) shell like bash
...' ...
...). Bash is actually an evolution of sh/ksh, contrary to what you say. It's just more powerful.
Perhaps that's interersting from the POV of the programmer, but from the POV of the sys admin, it's a nightmare.
Those that don't understand Unix are bound to reimplement it, badly.
Bash goes out of its ways to provide tools and syntax allowing you to remove all customizations others could have put in the environment. Korn shell compatible shells are lightweight and portable and cross-platform and respect a small standard. Lacking any of this means a shell is NOT like bash (or any other shell). So your premise is wrong for MSH. MSH does not have MOST of these power features of shells, so I don't understand how you can compare it to them.
In linux we're used to program scripts with python
I'm not. Who is this 'we' ?
then pass the data through pipes to bash to do something with it. Crappy.
This says it all. It is one of the most powerful feature of Unix, and you call it 'crappy'.
Again, 'those that don't understand Unix
FYI, I saved several production data in real time in big french firms thanks to this crappy feature
When you have to do things like "command | cut -d ' ' -f 3 | cut -d ':' -f 1" to get some data, you know something is WRONG
Which, obviously here, is the person who has wrote this garbage. I would never write this, but would rather write a sed command to do that.
The cool thing about MSH that its a SUBSTITUTE to bash/cmd.exe, not a "complement" like python is
It sure is cool. csh was cool too. Look at what happened to it. Cool and Useful/Powerful are not the same.
Is not that bash or python are bad
Fortunately you have enough common sense to agree with that.
but bash-like shells are 30-years-old unchanged technology
Proven technology, what is wrong with that ?? FYI, people have tried to add cool things to the concept (csh types, zsh,
A shell must have, among its features, stability and security. 30 years old is a good thing when you want these. Given that MSH is developed by MS, and given their track record on these 2 points (stability, security), excuse me if I don't hold my breath on MSH.
Fortunately, there're people writing user-oriented python-based shells, like http://ipython.scipy.org/
User-oriented python-based shells, OMG !!
Given the problems I've got till this day with Python apps (memory leaks, unexplained and untracable crashes), given the tedious work of migrating core systems based on Python (look at Gentoo), excuse me, but I think I will stay with bash for a long time.
Considering NT was scaling multi-processors before Linux even existed, this is a bit of a rich statement. (Especially since Linux didn't even consider SMP until 1996, when it was a mature feature of NT by then.)
... oh you can't, without destroying your point.
:
I find it rather rich that trolls like you have the guts to call others trolls, using rhetoric to prove your point and hoping nobody will notice.
Linux 2.0 came in June 1996 with SMP support. So if SMP was not considered in Linux until 1996, you are basically saying that in less than 6 months, SMP was implemented in Linux better than in NT, where you say it was a mature feature ?!!!
I would call that a feat.And I wonder how you can call SMP a mature feature in NT, when it was not scaling better than in Linux, which was implemented in less than 6 months, like you implied.
Considering there is 128-way SMP version of Windows (running on NT) available, I would assume NT knows how to handle more than 2 processors, just a guess though.
I never heard of any 128-way SMP version of Windows. I heard of a custom secret implementation that supposedly does that, that's all. But no version of Windows commercially sold actually does that. And SMP versions of Windows scales very poorly.
Also considering the desktop versions of WindowsXP support 2 processors standard
Against that's false. Home edition does not support 2 processors standard (HT is not SMP nor 2 processors support), Pro edition does. Stop lying
and NT has for years and years, I might suggest that it even has an edge on some OSes that SMP is just becoming realistic. (XP does Dual Processors with HT, effectively managing 4 virtual CPUs and this is the desktop edition for the average Joe.)
Continuing your lies huh ? HT is not SMP, stop your nonsense. SMP was realistic in Linux way before NT, despite SMP being implemented in NT first : that speaks volumes for NT OS, and tend to prove GP point. Again, WinXP Pro support your 4 virtual CPUs, not Home. The distinction is important, if you want to make Linux comparison, because standard desktop editions of Linux distros come with SMP support. For Windows, standard desktop edition is XP Home, which has no such support. It could, but it doesn't.
Now should we talk about how it hasn't been until later versions 2.4 of Linux that in an SMP world, process affinity even become stable. (According to Intel, AMD and other people trying to create real world Linux SMP solutions.)
Still lying huh ? Process affinity wasn't becoming stable at end of Linux 2.4, it was just not implemented before. And it ended up implemented pretty fast. But I know why you added the word 'stable' in your rant : rhetoric implying it was there but not stable before.
Anyway, despite not having process affinity, Linux kernel was running circles around NT kernel, so you should keep this subject hidden.
Or we could talk about hotplug of memory and processors with Linux - which is still not supported as it is with NT and Solaris. (And Linux you even get the fun of reconfiguring if you want to flip processors in downtime even.)
Well, you got me there. I did not even know that there was this type of hardware supported in x86 architecture. You are not credible though, because these kind of hotplug are only in limited set of configurations, not available to most Linux programmers, that's why, if they exist, they are still not implemented. There are little numbre of devs that can afford a E25K you know ? But you chose a good example, forgetting the load of other features that Linux kernel has, that makes NT kernel a toy OS. Stability is enough to kill any of your arguments though. You will give me crap about NT running for months (with 1 service) and you having seen Linux crash, the difference is that
Stability in Linux is the norm, in NT it's the exception.
I mean that a Linux crash is news, while a NT running for years is news too.
Call NT a Toy OS all you w
IMO Microsoft made computing cheap (as in $) well before Linux was a twinkle in Linus' eye. And MS still makes computing cheap relative to all other commercial offerings.
You got to be kidding. MS never made computing cheap. You think it's cheap (as in $) because you are fooled by the price of the product you see upfront. When it's time to implement the solution, that's when you start to learn that you need lots of other MS tools that cost lots of money to make it all work, and it's not cheap anymore. If MS computing were so cheap, nobody could explain why companies paid Software Assurance (for nothing, though some still try to justify their choice, to not appear like the cash cows they are).
Linux goal was not to make computing cheap BTW.
SUN and Apple had the world by the tail in those days (mid 80's)
It's the same now for MS, if you believe what everyone (you included) tell us (see Massachussets case opponents).
but they never worked to commoditize themselves
And MS doesn't either now. Their OS is a growing part of the price of a new computer.
An argument could even be made that Microsoft with its relatively low priced OS is what made the business model that created Linux
Such nonsense just shows your ignorance. No business model created Linux, this I think you can't understand. The GPL spirit is completely the opposite of the spirit of MS creator Bill G.
No one with some clue could make an argument that MS induced the creation of Linux.
The only way to compete with cheap (as in $) is free (as in beer)
Perhaps, but Linux was not created to compete with Windows.
Your other mistake is that nobody in the OS world 'compete with cheap'. You sound like a MS shill really. What you call 'compete with cheap' is actually 'doing battle with a monopoly', but reality semms to have escaped your mind.
Of course what you say is false, but lots of people like you would want people to believe such BS. Call me back when my Mustek 12000 SP is supported under Windows XP. FYI, the manufacturer answer is to go buy another scanner. And again FYI, it works flawlessly under Linux.
Same thing for my old Miro PCTV. I finally found a driver that more or less works under Windows XP, but it's still too much of a hassle. And I spent days finding it, a normal user would have given up. To discover that the codecs that came with the card do not work anymore on Windows XP (that's for the people who says Windows is super backward compatible). I can't even record in VirtualDub anymore with this card (for the same people).
Some of the devices I have do not work either under Windows XP (like PS2 pad adapter).
If I wait too long to launch games (the only thing I use Windows for these days, namely finishing the games I bought for it years ago, like BG2 and extensions) they don't launch, and Windows display a strange error full of numbers and no games will ever launch anymore until reboot. No one has been able to help me. I recently updated to DirectX 9.0c, but now I know I will never finish one of my game that does not support more than Direct X 8. That's for the stable thing. There would be a lot more to say about my experience with the oh-so-wonderful Windows, but I switched to Linux for a reason.
And I had the same experience at work, till this day. I love it here when I show the Windows techies an obvious bug, then find a workaround, tell them 'seen the bug ?', they tell me "no I didn't" (a bug I showed them seconds before, talk about selective amnesia caused by Windows), then the bug reappears (a bug in Word XP), I take the time to assure they saw the bug, to hear them say 'well, what did you do to this computer ?' (yeah, it's the user fault of course).
Well, I can reasonnably say that, given my experience with Windows (up to XP), it is not stable and does not support every hardware you can throw at it.
Well, the same applies to OS's. If you factor in the whole mile-long list of reasons, and not just take one aspect out of context, for a lot of people Windows actually is the best choice
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I beg to differ. To simplify to the max, reasons for Windows being used has NOTHING to do with the reasons for people that go to McDonald's.
People don't go to Mc Donald's because they know someone in the vicinity that will help them to eat for free, while that's the case with OSes.
Mc Donald's imply a sense of scarcity, nothing like that with software.
Windows right now is not popular because people love it or because it is simple. Well, to say that, I only have to look at the TONS of Windows magazine explaining lots of trivial things that should have been simple in Windows, and yet people buy these again and again. I only have to remember that AS SOON AS I stopped providing support (and other illegal things) for Windows to my vicinity, they all stopped using Windows or computers altogether.
The only thing to be proud of for MS is their monopoly. You will always read how simple and loved Windows is on forums like Slashdot, while other forums for normal users are full of people angry, with things that do not work, and who put up with it, or give up. And these are the people that can't afford to pay for phone support or don't have a geek that will waste hours to help them
Right now, Windows is the best choice when you are ready to give up lots of money, and have a geek to help you. For the family and friends I manage, Windows is not the best choice. I'm still in the minority, but I sure hope this situation will improve.
I know of a hell lot of people who really hate windows and would love to switch over to Linux ... They try to use all kind of thingies over MSN
These two things do not make sense : people hating windows and using all kind of thingies over MSN ???
How can you say they would love to switch over to Linux, when you say next that there are a lot of things impeding them on Linux ?
How can you say that when you don't even know how to explain things to people ? Because how come people say "Linux huh ?" when your problem is not even related to Linux ? If Gaim does not support webcam in Windows, it's still a Linux problem ?
Please don't try to sell Linux to people, you do more harm than good. I install Linux for people, but I review their need first, and I explain them what will cause problem, what does not work, in a positive manner, not saying "it's Linux's fault" when I can.
The problem of video and audio is because of proprietary vendors closing their protocols and codecs. Stop saying OSS is at fault, and if you want things to change, bug the proprietary vendors.
The main point of TFA, really, is "Where's the voice and webcam support?"
:
Fortunately they don't ask such questions, especially since they would appear uninformed.
With all the talks about patents and knowing the willingness of MS or Yahoo to cooperate with OS projects, one does not need to think very long to understand why the situation is such. Voice and webcam support of course is not a problem, the codecs are.
This is a major stumbling block in open-source IM, and it doesn't affect just young people.
This is not. See ? I can affirm things too. Perhaps a minor stumbling block, surely not a major one. It affects mostly young people, because there are not so much people able to
- buy a webcam
- buy a microphone
- plug them where they should (especially the microphone)
- configure all of this in the IM client (some people will tell me it it's very simple in Windows, some people I know still struggle with their webcam 3 years after starting using this)
- willing to let their face seen to everyone
I'm in my early forties and Linux has been my exclusive desktop OS for over five years
I'm in my early thirties, and Linux has been my exclusive desktop OS for nearly 5 years (will be in 01/2006).
My wife is in her thirties and would also be a Linux user except for one thing: Yahoo Messenger, and specifically the voice/video features, is her number one app (ahead of even email) for keeping in touch with her family and friends overseas
My wife is also in its early thirties, and she has absolutely no problem keeping in touch with her family, text is good enough for her. I said to her that soon, she should be able to send video through the webcam. None of the people she talks to have webcam or audio, so she doesn't even see the interest.
I understand your problem, just don't say everyone wants this. It's a plus (I think) when it works well. That means lots of bandwidth and low latency to work well.
It's all about the applications for a lot of people, and IM is the only area that immediately comes to mind where there is really a huge gap between capabilities of open-source clients versus proprietary ones
The gap is mostly in favor of OSS software though. Video and audio need high bandwidth and low latency, few people have this where I live, it's only starting to emerge now. I could not do these reliably 2 weeks ago, and the only people I know that do video (but not voice) struggle with it since 3 years. Chatting with text would give them better results (it would be instant, not losing 10s of minutes each time they want to talk).
However, turn to IM, and OSS is years behind the times. The author of TFA had it right. I know none of us really like hearing that there's something OSS doesn't do as well as proprietary software, and we especially don't like hearing that proprietary is kicking our asses in some area, but sometimes it's true. This is one of those times.
Nonsense. You still did not say why OSS is years behind. You could not, because you'd have to realise that when OSS does not do something, it's because it's blocked or impaired intentionally by proprietary software vendors. OSS is limited by patents threats on all these audio and video codecs needed to talk with other IM clients. High bandwidth will allow us to use less efficient, but not patented video and audio codecs to talk with others.
If it hasn't been done before, that's mostly to avoid litigations. Even plugins in IM where partly invented to allow a program to withdraw a protocol or codec without destroying the entire program (the same with gstreamer, necessary for these kind of apps).
Having a world-class IM, with voice, video, etc., is crucial for OSS at this juncture. I hope people who are working on major OSS IM clients like gaim or Kopete are reading this thread and also read TFA and realize how important this is.
You talk like most OSS newbies, I have a hard time to believe you use Linux since 5 year
I have 2 advices for you :
- Try talking about a recent PAID Linux distro, not a free downloaded one (which is for confirmed users) from 5 years ago
- Look at the supported hardware on the box, and then USE the free support you paid for when you have a problem (it lasts for 1 month)
Then come back to talk seriously about usability of the distro (or of Linux, though you won't be up to date with a paid distro), not the stupid FUD you put in your post.
You must be pretty stupid then, as the Bitsream Vera fonts that are used (I use the same on all the desktops I have on Linux) are provided by XOrg (at least in 6.8.2). These fonts were the standard since the fontconfig system was stable, as seen in its default config files (in /etc/fonts I think).
So you don't even have to install them, and it looks fantastic like that out of the box (with AA of course).
So yes, I repeat, you are pretty stupid or worse, a pretty stupid troll. At least the correct answer to your post was actually in the 3 choices you provided, good point.
Someone wrote that GNOME is an OSX killer before.
:
.doc in Windows Explorer, it will change the app icon despite it being the same file !!! Now remove any extension, the broken Windows Explorer don't know anymore what this file is. Now do the same in Nautilus, and see the icon stay the same. Do the same with an image or video file, look at how Nautilus show you a thumbnail when Windows Explorer shows you an app icon. Now rename the file the same as before. Look at how it is broken and Nautilus is not. In some MS OS (like Win200), once you changed the extension (for example, .png to .gif) the stupid Windows Explorer will not even show you any image anymore in the left side, like something in it crashed or something.
... You're pathetic really, you talk like Gnome is a huge block like Windows while every self-respecting troll knows that Gnome is made of lots of parts, the configuration being one. And yet you say the whole design is wrong if a config file has been edited ? I see, you prefer having nothing at all like in other OSes ?
...
Well yeah, maybe in 2020.
OK well, you corrected someone, fine.
You see, Nautilus alone is vastly inferior to Finder (the new one). Of all gnome components, nautilus is the one that sucks most. Try browsing a large directory with thousands of files with nautilus, konqueror and windows explorer. The latter ones scan the directory MUCH faster. Nautilus takes about 1-2 MINUTES - unacceptable.
What I see
- You didn't explain how Nautilus is vastly inferior to Finder, but you still affirm it
- You did explain why Nautilus sucks, only problem is that you used a flawed argument
Of course Windows Explorer will display the directory faster, which does not mean it has scanned it faster or that it scanned it correctly. You forgot to say that the functionality is abysmal in Windows Explorer compared to Gnome, and that Windows Explorer is broken, while Nautilus is not and will display things correctly. Try renaming a OpenOffice document to
And you dare say Nautilus suck ? Perhaps by your standard, where it must be fast before it works, but in my standard, I don't give a damn that it is fast if it does not work. What is the purpose of your fast displaying of thousands of files if you can't even be sure of their type, let alone see their content instantly ? You will take more time finding the right one than me with my Nautilus in the end !!! Unlike you, I don't open directories for the sake of opening them, but to get work done.
Also, it is evident that once an ORDINARY USER (no hacker, no power user, no admin, no dev) has to edit a config file, the whole design has failed
I would have thought that only the configuration GUI design was at fault, but you know better of course
Of course, this is not gnomes problem alone, but to a great deal the underlying OS; however, we are talking about an OSX killer, right?
No we are not, only someone called it that, you could not even give his name. What is your audience for this post ? I'm starting to wonder
If you aren't lucky, and the hardware doesn't fit 1:1 with the distro, you have to dig through obscure manpages.
Are you confused ? We call them "obscure manpages" the "Web" or "distribution vendor support". You did pay for the distro you're complaining about right ? You know they offer free phone support when you buy their distro right ?
I also read that anyone that is not able to edit configfiles is an idiot and everyone MUST learn how to do this
By the same someone than before or another ? You seem to base your facts on random writing by random people : are you a stupid fool or what ?
See, I doubt a biologist that made some photos about a weird plant and want to download them from his cam to his PC is interested in editing config files just to get this to work - he JUST WANTS TO DO HIS JOB and is certainly not interested in lear
One problem I have with Evince is the Print function. I don't know if it's caused by gnome-print, CUPS or Cairo (I think that's the culprit), but the output :
- is different from what is on screen
- uses different fonts, which do not work with non-ascii characters
I will try and investigate the issue further once I have all Gnome 2.12 installed. I actually tried on Gnome 2.10 with Cairo 1.0 and evince 0.4.0, so perhaps that's the cause.
anti-Linux (MS ?) Shills are at it again, with their support to mod them up. The oldest occurrence of this post I can find is this one : http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=135647&cid =11333134 .
...).
... I suppose this one will be resurrected often though. Reminds me of the good old days, when old trolls were reappearing even though the problems were fixed a long time ago. ...
What's sad is that you see them coming from far far away, but the worst is that their arguments are always flawed.
So they play with emotional things, and don't even get that right (Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with > 1% marketshare, I suppose they meant < 1 %
And then, say stupid things like :
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Eliminating the context, and deliberately forgetting the part about the GUI, like Synaptic or Mandrake Update (which are available in the menu, with names like "Update your system" or "Add new applications").
But wait, they are even more stupid than that !!!! They have no shame. They even talk about the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and then, to illustrate that, ask How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?. Which of course, has nothing to do with Linux configuration issues, and everything to do with the Quake 3 editor not providing a convenient installation method. I don't know Quake 3 per se, so I can't verify what these unreliable sources say, but if these guy http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/ can provide an installation file for their Open Source game that works on any Linux thanks to the very old Loki installer, I think any proprietary company can do it too.
Oh but wait, I checked and Quake 3 actually comes with the same installer at least for the french version !!!!
But of course, this old troll had to detail all the installation instructions of the NVidia driver and whatnot for XFree, to sound complicated. Trolls these days
Heck, today I just saw "X does not support PNP displays", "X is slow", "Linux has bad font support"
Fortunately, anti-Linux trolls do not include "Linux has no games" when they talk about difficulty of installing Quake 3 on it, thank god !
some of the recent 2.6 releases including new drivers for obscure proprietary hardware
What is this nonsense ? You don't want Linux to support hardware ? Linux can not be usable by just supporting standard hardware you know ?
A large number of organizations (as well as Debian Stable and Redhat) still use 2.4. It's pretty pathetic
Isn't that a good thing ?!!! You sound like a troll. What is pathetic with that ?!! And FYI, RH does not use 2.4 as default anymore, and their 2.4 kernel included backports from 2.6. Debian Stable supports both 2.4 and 2.6, you're several weeks late.
Maybe instead of spending time switching policies, kernel developers should be consulting with end-users to find out why we're not using 2.6
What for ? Are you stupid ? Clearly, you are not representative of Linux users : we use what is provided by our distro, and they supported Linux 2.6 since a long time ago. Most distros do actually support Linux 2.6, and FYI there was a race about which distro would support it first when the kernel was out. I think you can not understand that because you think a distro can't support 2.4 and 2.6 at the same time. This thinking must come from the people that want you to believe that apps running on 2.4 are incompatible with apps running on 2.6. I tell you : these people are MS shills and they are wrong.
Aside from security patches, any effort on 2.4 development/maintenance needs to stop. It's a brain drain, and active maintenance is encouraging people to be lazy in upgrading.
You have to let go of this Windows mentality that you are forced to upgrade even when it works. Linux 2.4 still works pretty well, it was still running circles around every version of Windows for example. To this day, MS still have to take very old RH releases with Linux 2.4 (without 2.6 backports) to compare to its latest Win2003, because of that.
So why should people change when it's not broken ?
Right now 2.6 is a lame-duck kernel, and if they keep trudging on and release the next stable without looking at why 2.6 isn't the defacto kernel of choice today, Linux will be rather fubar'd.
Please stop making a fool of yourself. Even the more specialised distros like Geexbox use the latest Linux 2.6 refinements. You are 3 years late at least ! Like most MS shills. I don't imply that you are one BTW, but you are pretty clueless like them.
I'm a fairly technical user, not a tech god by any stretch of the imagination, but I know my way around
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Actually you don't, but have problems admitting it. That's one of the first problem you should overcome. I understand, given your attitude and perceived proficiency, the reactions you must have gotten from true technical users on Linux forums.
I do all my own XVID rips from Vdub, I can install most Linux distros without a problem, and I'm damned proficient at packages like Photoshop and Illustrator. In addition, I'm a gamer from back in the DOS days, so concepts like editing text files (config.sys, autoexec.bat, etc) don't necessarily scare me.
You are a vibrant example of the fact that you do not learn anything that lasts on a MS platform. Nothing of what you cited is actually valuable when learning to use a computer and understanding it. All what you learned will be lost. All the things I learned on Windows are lost already. On Linux it's the complete opposite. What you say also shows that people think they are technical when they learn such things, because clueless users around them praise them as gurus. Even your proficiency in Photoshop and Illustrator are very specialised and won't help you understanding how to use an OS.
That said, as much as I like the concept of Linux, I simply will not try it any longer until I hear that a number of problems have been solved.
Number one should be swallowing your pride and accepting you are a newbie. Your "problems" show it well
Number two should be really understanding the concept of Linux (you meant FOSS, but you're a newbie), which you still did not grasp, your "problem" B is evidence of that. Of course, often, for various reasons, this means you have to buy a commercial Linux distro. You are not a freeloader right ? I thought so, because you would not have the indecency to make such complaints if you were one.
A) Years ago, binary distros appeared to fix that very "problem". You are actually worse than a newbie for that matter.
B) Any time you are forced to drop to a command line, you should inform the developer. That is, if you really understood the concept of Linux. But obviously you don't, so such a thing is beyond you. And as you are a newbie, you still see the command line badly, even though even MS is tripping over itself to provide a decent one. It's strange too, that you have to modify so many text files constantly in Linux. You must be applying the MS way to your Linux tests I think.
C) You forgot to say what would "cut it" (since man pages and message boards won't). There is at least something positive : 50 % of the time, you got the answer you were searching for, which I find amazing because you are truely a clueless n00b like they called you. It shows because among the people giving you contradictory answers (or at least that's how you perceived the answers), you did not try one to come back and report to people what worked. FOSS is still a stranger to you I'm afraid.
You are not in favor of Open Source, as you think, because you do not even understand it and the process implied by it. You do not even know the existence of binary distros that fix all the problems you have stated. Too bad, but this only means that if everyone was to switch to Linux, you would be one of the last.
I attest that I have seen a surge of unstability on my Linux machines.
And I can also attest that all the kernel panics or lock ups where due to hardware problems : SCSI and IDE disks crashing; IDE cdroms dieing, killing the IDE port entirely; mobo dieing.
Actually, I think this must be due to the fact that my Linux machines run 24/24 7/7 since 2001 and that some components had never been replaced.
Pre-emptive multitasking
You forgot to add that Win95 could use pre-emptive multitasking only for new 32 bit apps.
Which means it was cooperative for most apps at launch and long after launch (until Win98).
I hope people realize that you can be a Microsoft Windows users and still use most, if not all, of the open-source software mentioned here.
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Actually, it's not a very good choice. It's tedious, and the Windows platform is too limited to use every features of these apps. Most FOSS apps on cygwin are unstable, slow, and heavily degraded compared to when they are used on Linux.
To me, the deal-breaker, the must-have, of the open-source software is GIMP. Unless you're a professional graphic artist employed by a company that is willing to buy the $600-a-pop Photoshop for you, GIMP is a perfect alternative.
And that's especially true of the GIMP. Windows interface just is not usable if you have no MDI, that's why a lot of people complain about the GIMP interface : they use it on Windows, which is too limited to handle it.
Even on Gnome, a windows manager like metacity just started to support some of the requirements for using GIMP 2 efficiently.
I've never taken one single computer graphics class in my life and I've managed to learn how to use GIMP and created dozens of graphics for my blog at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/.
A lot of free articles and free books have been written to learn to use the GIMP, that's what makes it so good.
Good luck with Photoshop. Does it still come with the learning video ? I could not know, because all the people I know that use Photoshop use warez versions, and have no helpful video. Even worse, these people can only do very basic things with it
I don't personally know a single person that uses OpenOffice instead of MS Office, and it's all because of network externality. Is my copy of Office busted? I'm sure someone can help me fix it.
... The formatting will often be broken too.
I'm not so sure. Every average user I've seen in this situation reinstalls everything, hoping to fix the issue.
I am sure that if I just click "Save," everyone else will be able to see this document, because everyone uses MS Office.
Which is of course false, as any regular user of MS Office knows. One of the problems is the over simplification like these. What you described is the expected behaviour, not the real one. Sure enough Office 97 users could not read Office 2000 documents if these Office 2000 users just clicked "Save". Worse, the Office 2000 will bug the user everytime to convert the Office 97 document
The average PC user doesn't care about "Free as in freedom, not free as in beer." Free as in beer is what will get the software out there.
Wrong, he does not know about it. Once you stop providing and installing warez to them, they will pretty soon get it.
I guess the most unfortunate part is that increasing recognition of OSS to "average PC users" won't add a single person to those contributing to the source. Average PC users consume, not produce, applications.
That's not the goal. The goal is to acquire critical mass for drivers and some proprietary apps.
The fact is that too much average users thinking thay are elite users try to force their (often wrong) opinion on OSS developers.
The "average" PC user doesn't give a flying fuck about the "Open Source" movement or Linux or whatever.
You forgot to say he does not guve a flying fuck about "Windows" too. The average users sees the computer, sometimes Word, sometimes Excel. Actually, most average users using these software at home only see Office, because that's what they bought for an expensive price, or got from their company, and asked some geek to install, or shelled more bucks to make someone else install it.
Everyone else I know would be burdened by using non-standard software, whether they pay for it or not.
Everyone else I know IS burdened by using ANY software they have no formation for, whether they pay or not.
All the people I switch to Linux actually accepted the switch the day I stopped supporting their Windows. And I told them there is plenty of paid support for Windows. Guess what, they preferred the switch, especially when less than a month after that, all the Windows machines I stopped supporting fubared. Even the one who I thought found support elsewhere contacted me last week to ask me about computer parts (he's going to buy a new machine), because his computer was completely dead (actually, from the symptoms, only his Windows is dead, but I won't tell him a thing about that, no more Windows support).
MOST people feel they don't pay for OS or Office software because it is normally buried in the "buy price" of a new PC.
MS Office sure is not.
Since the buy price of a new PC is affordable for most people, there is no clear compelling reason to use software that is not supported and can be "forked" into a million different version just "because you can".
These are not the reasons to use these softwares. They actually work the way they should, that's the primary reason.
I don't understand the part about "better" permissions.
Windows ACL are grainier than unixy permissions, that's for sure.
But fact shows that it is no better, as nobody uses it. Actually, some people use it and it's a nightmare. I fail to see how this can be considered better than a system which is actually used (like unixy permissions) and works well.
Too much security kills security.
But worse, looking at the Samba documentation (a very good source to understand some of the complicated Windows functionning), we see that Windows ACL are in fact very badly implemented, to a point where a user can deny himself access to its own file just by changing the ACLs, without any way to get it back. This could never happen with a good permission system.
Actually, Linux permissions can already provide most of the functionality of Windows ACL, without the huge stupidity (see Samba docs for an explanation). Linux with ACL provides all the functionality of Windows ACL and more (with Samba).
But saying that SELinux tries to come close to what Windows offers is completely bogus !
SELinux is far ahead of what Windows can provide in matter of security. Even Linux capabilities are way more advanced !!
Some people have some guts, calling Windows ACL better than unixy permissions, when the later stops wiruses, which the former still can't do today. So much for the better system.
Next you will come telling me it's better 'in theory'.
Which is BS as the code already available in GPL will stay GPL. Even worse, the new non-GPL code produced by these programmers could never be incorporated in the kernel.
So your scenario B is just impossible to achieve.
I have serious doubt for the scenario A, as the programmer was already working on Linux before MS applied its 'non compete' clause, so I doubt it will be valid, especially if the programmer works on it on its hobby hours, or if MS fires him afterwards.