That's reassuring. Because: - I keep hearing that no home user could use command line, so it will not happen - Even if the file is downloaded, you should have none that it will NOT have any execution right, so good luck getting your error. Actually, you will most likely get : "bash:./superawesomescreensaver.bin: Permission denied"
So, no indication that you would even have to be root. Someone knowing what to do would not make the stupid thing you did (hint : you have to change the execution right before hoping to do any execution of your downloaded file). You clearly illustrated my point, as the scenario you described is flawed. And you were modded insightful for a scenario that just won't happen, which shows that at least your benevolent moderators are as clueless as most linux user would be. Sad and reassuring at the same time.
And I know now that YOU misunderstood what the grand parent was saying. Because all the grand parent is saying is based on flawed stereotypes.
In FOSS, these things can't be implemented in a way that is pervasive ??!!! Do you even know what an FS is, what a display server is, what a DE is in FOSS ?
Apps can be made to support every innovation, as long as it is FOSS ! Where your logic is flawed, is that the only apps that cannot do that are closed apps, like most apps are on Windows. FOSS is different.
For example, Mozilla innovated, the only apps that could not follow fast enough where closed plugins.
The X server, for example, is implementing those things announced in LongHorn right NOW ! And the DEs (Gnome, KDE) already have dev versions (of GTK+ and Kdelibs) trying to take advantage of these improvements. Yes, that is RIGHT NOW (the thing you say would take a decade). And once it is done in the framework, it works automagically in all the apps based on these DEs (like font handling or antialiasing for example).
FOSS has already i18n and l10n completely integrated, and it did not take a decade. Actually, the Linux desktop environnement are pretty young (less than 6 years), and already have imposed many framework, and changed directions several times too.
There is an authority since a long time in FOSS desktop world : freedesktop.org.
Stop spreading such lies. Each one of your sentence seems unfinished to spread half truths. Well, I suppose you know the Windows kernel pretty well. But it is NOT as solid as Linux, at best, it is as solid as the PART of Linux that deals with the same hardware and functionality. Windows still does not scale as well as Linux, even with threads on a single processor. It fails also faster under heavy load.
And you are switching easy (and bloatty) API with "ahead of *nix" too. You misinterpret 1 call of an easy API which is equivalent to 4 or 5 different calls on *nix. You make the mistake of thinking "easy to program" = "kernel ahead". That is just not true. You can "wait for a mutex to be released or a socket to become readable" on *nix. It is harder to program, because you have to actually know what you are doing, to know the theory. So, you have a better scaling than on Windows, but it is harder to program, that I agree. That does not make the Win NT kernel more powerful. Most professors would tell you such a complicated API should never go into a kernel, especially on these topics of parallelism and concurrency. This is better left in user space, and you have several libraries that implements this for you on Linux if you need them.
Perhaps *nix are showing their age, perhaps POSIX is showing its age, but saying that Linux is showing its age (compared to Win 2000, or even Win 2003) is nonsense. BTW, you change the subject from Linux to *nix in your post, I suppose it was done on purpose to spread more FUD.
Er, no. The point he was making was that just because you "can" get under the hood of free software doesn't mean that you can really do anything worthwhile.
You just proved my point that he did not debunk the myth, as this proves that that is no fault of OSS (or Free Software) that you cannot go under the hood : that's because of your time, or your expertise, I don't know. But the supposed myth was that "you are allowed to get under the hood". That is NOT a myth, that is a fact. The myth was not "you will be going under the hood when you need it", was it ?
I was betting from the excerpt, that the article was not well done, even very poorly done. It's worse than that, it is pretty stupid too. Well, taking the myths one by one: 1 : Red Herring. People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. People who want to help post on bugzilla, explain to the author, tell him about the problem, without feeling compelled to say that the product "sucks".
2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)
3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic.
4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence.
5 : Nobody said scratching personal itch was a good reason, that's just a fact. So where is the myth ?
6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you. The other way around does not work.
Sigh. How many times do we have to go over this for the slow learners? Two things.
I think I have to sigh too. People that say such things, I think, never ever use a Linux/Unix desktop. I think you are the slow learner.
I always see the same fallacious argument: - Viruses on Linux have the goal of destroying your home. Just because of Linux, you see, because no virus on Windows is doing that nowadays, they just mess up the system. If they did, that's the all machine that would be erased. Anyway, the kind of users who would fall for these viruses would not even be able to launch them on a Linux platform. That's the case NOW, I don't see why it would become worst tomorrow.
- I repeat, your mother could not launch that perl script you are talking about. No Linux client give you shell access directly, none will permit you to launch something such as perl or sh. Do you imply people who write Linux mail software are stupid or what ? They didn't do it before, and now that we see the danger, they will do it ? Come on !
In the improbable case where the perl script would be launched and worked, you would not even need any antivirus software to eradicate it. When your mother see it doesn't do anything, she will most probably erase it.
All this is assuming future desktop distros will have the home partition executable.
If you read the DCRaw story and homepage, you would see that the Photoshop CS plugin using at least part of dcraw, but, most importantly, that dcraw produces better results than the proprietary converter softs (see the links on the homepage).
The cool thing about the RAW format is that you can then apply all the transforms the camera is doing, but with a more powerful computer, meaning you use, hopefully, more powerful, but more demanding algorithms. You can still refer to your camera to get the actual settings when the photo was shot, or use Wine (under Linux) with some proprietary converters. That is not a problem. There are some tools for some cameras (like Canon, which I have) that can extract the infos. There are links on the DCRaw page for that too.
I think both java and C# have a huge place in Gnome app development. As an example of an impressive app (that's pretty speedy) written for gtk in java, see Azureus. Eclipse is another app written in java that really rocks. Both are speedy, probably as fast as they would be if written in C or C++
Well, Azureus explains well why I am afraid of these Java and Mono desktop apps. When I tried Azureus (a bittorrent client), I left it running for 3 days. It ate more and more memory by the hour, eating an enormous amount of memeory in the end. What's worse, none of my bittorrent downloads would advance, or were very very slow (like 1 KB/s). It was suspicious, so I tried the ncurses bittorrent client after 3 days : within 5 minutes, I was at full speed on most of the torrents !!!
I then erased Azureus without any more thought, and thought that it was no wonder some people said Bittorrent was slow, if they use such pitiful tools that eat all their memory. Because, a lot of people told me Azureus was a wonderful tool:(
Some people rported enormous memory footprints for mono apps too. And to talk about all these high level language apps I've tried, that have GTK API hooks, most of my Python GTK app still leak memory like no other. I use liferea, for example, and I still have to stop it from time to time because it leaks memory.
First : Anime is not a genre, it's just japanese animation. Yes, it has certain characteristics, most of them invented by Osamu Tezuka with Astro, and some developped in Horus.
You compare the low signal to noise (for you). IMHO, it has always been low (perhaps 3-4 good series every year for 50 series), and is pretty consistent among the years. But the worst is that you compare the noise with what you are seeing in the USA. If I had to judge, say, american TV series from what we get in France, I can assure you I could say most of it is crap (I can't say that about only 4 series in 20 years, for myself). I have talked with a lot of fan, who said there were no more good anime since 1998. That's the year all Anime stopped suddenly on TV in France, because Hokuto No Ken used to be broadcasted to children ! The fact is, a lot of excellent Anime (like Utena or Noir, pretty popular here nowadays) was broadcasted during all this time, but we had no access to it.
The most shocking for me in your post, though, is when you say most anime are for teenagers. I agree, but for at least 30 years, anime has always been said containing too much violence and sex, outside of Japan (even in Japan in fact). That is still the case in France, even though Miyazaki has done a lot to break this false accusation. I agree we were all deterred to support Anime...
BTW, your description of Cowboy Bebop shows that you are probably too young to catch the constant references to Jazz music in this anime, making it a gem for the fans. I'm too young too, but a fan explained to me a lot of references, it is amazing. Things like the name of the Clown was NOT chosen at random, CD or DVD covers have the same layout as famous Jazz LP. I guess that most of the powerful content in this anime passed over your head (mine too):))
Americanized anime ? Well, it has already started, and IMHO and those of nearly all other fans I know or who have watched some, it IS crap. I'm talking for french fans, as I am french. Some time ago, just before the launch of the new americanized astro boy (we are talking of Astro Boy there !!!), we had a "retrospective" (what's the english word for this ?) with all first episodes of each Astro series. It was very entertaining, but the new Astro series was a disaster for all the audience, as it had no spirit, nothing of the other far older series.
There are a lot of studios still doing their "cell" coloring and all (if you can say "using Photoshop on Mac" for "working on cell") . We had a conference with Satoshi Kon, and it was clear that he could not have done his films as he liked if working with koreans. I think that works more for TV series.
Though 3 countries have different causes, as the initiative of so-called Open Source development is still in the hand of the Western people and internationalization of current OSS is poor, it is no wonder those countries start their own movement
Could you be a bit more explicit, please ? Do you mean asian i18n of OSS is poor, or something other than that ? I ask because, last time I checked (some weeks ago), you could use most of OSS, even on command line, with UTF-8. Sure, everything is not i18n. I thought the only problem with i18n was that it was not a lot tested on the command line. On GUI, it is pretty tested. I have not tried Korean, but I know I can use Japanese (write, read) even on the FS. The GUI works pretty well, some problems remain for the low-level system, though. Granted, some i18n are pretty recent, like the first good support for ncurses in 5.4 versions from some weeks ago. You seem to have some experience with this, so what's the state of i18n today on Linux ?
I'm french, so, I have less quirks than asian (actually, it works perfectly), but I use some of the GNU asian i18n features, and have no problems in GUI.
What you say is fondamentally flawed, because you are comparing apples and oranges. You see Linux as a company, but Linux is not. So a Linux (company) monopoly doesn't mean anything, whereas a Microsoft monopoly has a meaning. To me, wen you talk about a MS monopoly versus a Linux monopoly, that is as if you were talking about a television broadcast company monopoly versus LCD type television monopoly. Repeat after me, Linux is not a company.
I compile from source (with my own packaging system based on nALFS and installwatch), and I can not agree with all of what you say.
Building from sources makes it easier to change an option, and you do NOT need to recompile everything that depends on it. I know, I do it all the time. At worst, you may need to restart some servers that depend on some libs (like when you update openssl).
You are wrong when you say that a source-based distribution is inefficient, because many people can have many different options for the same package, and one binary can not bear all the choices. I use LVM, simpleinit-msb, LDAP for users and other things, a powerful mailing server with antispam and all,.... Except source based distributions, no one is able to deliver LVM, and it is old technology. There is a reason. Redhat tried and it didn't work. A LOT of common problems a lot of Linux users have (like slow boot), I just do not have them, because of this powerful system I developed, and because I can control everything with a fine grain.
I compile everything with athlon-mp on my bi-athlon workstation (a bi Athlon MP 2200+), everything with i386 on my firewall box (a Pentium P75), everything with athlon-xp on my other box (which have an old Athlon 500). Why should have to cripple my main workstation ? And I never had one problem with march optimisation (I use -O2 too). I have more than a thousand packages installed on these systems, everything is automated, except the changing of version numbers of packages.
Your point of the patched binary is stupid really. Even on my P75 (32 MB of memory), which is pretty slow to compile, I would have the patch compiled way before a patched binary appear. The reason is simple : the patch is always available as source first (hey, it's a patch). And a binary patch is always at best several hours away.
Yes management issues are in our hand. But there are tools to deal with it. I agree that it's time consuming when you start, but after that, you have sth more powerful than any distro. I use nALFS and installwatch basically (with some LFS scripts, like nuke).
As for the support, it is done by the authors of software, in a true free software spirit. When I have a package that do not compile, I do a fast analysis (well, because I can, not everyone can, I agree), and I make a bug report or go on the ML. I always have a fix or a workaround within 24 hours. I do not spend 3 hours searching why sth does not compile, when it used to compile before. As all is automated, I do not spend time monitoring anything. I change my package versions in my XML, launch nALFS, select what to install, and it does the rest. Well, sometimes, the download locations or the format of the package can change, so I may have to change that too.
Actually, you are right for basic "compiling from sources". But I use nALFS, and while I spent a lot of time creating more than a thousand XML install description files (one for each package I use), I now have all the benefits of packages you noted, and all the benefits of compiling from source. I have all of these, and I have a complete control of my box. When a security update is out, I need only the time to modify the software version in one XML file, then I launch nALFS, and I update. Updating Gnome or KDE is a breeze, well, after I updated all version numbers of packages. Security updates are a breeze too. The point is not just a petty performance tweak, the point is to have a powerful and durable system. It worked beautifully.
My install system can even recreate a boot CD (in 5 hours, zero human intervention) or/and a boot DVD. It's really powerful, really.
And as I am in control, I have none of the problems of distributions, like no more support for old versions (I am always up to date if I really want to, I can lag behind if I want to, that is a change of version in a XML file away), or everything that changes between versions.
That is true. But I compile everything from source, with automated LFS (with nALFS exactly). And I use installwatch with the nuke script (that I tweaked a bit).
I can then use nuke to uninstall anything, or make tarballs of compiled packages, or anything. I now have a bunch of profiles (more than a thousand XML files). So it's very easy to see what options I used to compile any package on my system.
My systems are based on LFS, but are tweaked, with things like all users in a LDAP database, LVM2, devfs (and now udev), kerberos,...
For example, I can recreate a base system with nALFS : I put one CD and one DVD in my box, launch nALFS with my base system profiles. Then I wait several hours, and when I come back, I have a base bootable system on CD, and one another more complete, with all packages downloaded from the internet, on the DVD (also bootable).
When I want to update some package, I update the version number in a big XML file, I launch nALFS and update. I can erase the old versions before, to clean up a bit, with nuke.
So I am in total control of the system, and updates are very fast. For example, I'm on gnome 2.6 since 2 days, and it is not even out yet.
I see a lot of people with problems I never had too (with XFree for example, by the way, the latest XFree is broken for Linux, on purpose I think, as I've seen where it has been borked), only because I am always up to date (sometimes, it can be backwards, living on the bleeding edge, you know...).
So I have my own automatic package management, and it works really well. the only time I lose, is when I update the version numbers of packages, or when I create a new XML for a new package (like a new game for example). But that is done only once. nALFS is really a powerful piece of software.
This not surprising, considering Gnome 2.6 will not be released for another 2 days. Unless you have some method for pulling tarballs from the future that you'd like to let us know about.
I must have one, as the tarballs are available on the Gnome ftp site since some days. I know, I run Gnome 2.6 right now...
I'd *love* to see a vanilla Linux standard that all programmers could program to without worrying about which of 97 flavors of Linux were installed on the PC
Every time I hear this argument, I just wonder how all these software get written on Linux. Do you mean that the authors of The Gimp, Audacity, KDE, Gnome, cdrtools,... and all the other free software have several code base, one for each Linux flavor ? Do you mean they are geniuses ? Because, let me tell you, all these softwares are available for every flavor of Linux, and AFAIK, they have only one code base for all these flavors of Linux. I'd love to see whining programmers become geniuses like those who program software on Linux.
You are right but, before Linux 2.6, burning audio CD on the fly could take a very long time, or perhaps even impossible. I ran into issues with burning audio CD on the fly before kernel 2.6. On the fly was so long (was going at 1X instead of 16X), that I was compelled to burn in two steps (extract then burn images). Now, it works perfectly. The author also has other issues too, but my guess is he was not using K3B. Because K3B does everything he wanted to do (except extracting in.cda format I think, which is stupid, as WAV is the same in quality).
I agree with the other appreciations though. For camcorder, I agree more on the concern of video softwares, still lacking on Linux.
I wonder how you could be modded insightful, as the difference between GitS manga and GitS anime are an order of magnitude more than the ones between LotR book and film.
You seem also to imply that there was a lot of fans of GitS manga, and that it was a masterpiece, before the movie was created, as it is the case for LotR. That is just not true.
Mamoru Oshii incentives to do a film have nothing to do with the incentives of Hollywood. They would never have done anime/films like the ones Mamoru Oshii has done (Tenshi no tamago, Patlabor 1 and 2, Avalon,...).
You should have been modded funny I think...
But just as I imply here, I guess not every moderator can be a fan of Oshii enough to understand.
This news is mostly misguided in that respect. Shirow is only behind the manga. GitS the movie would never have been the wonder it was without the genius that is Mamoru Oshii. I'll go as far as saying that Mamoru Oshii gave more power to the story than Shirow ever could.
Even the anime design shouts "Mamoru Oshii team" all over it. Kenji Kawai is part of the "Mamoru Oshii team", so, well, even though he has his detractors, I always found him to be on par with the like of Joe Hisaishi or Youko Kanno (geniuses), and sound plays a great role in the feel of Oshii's anime (like for Sergio Leone films).
As others stated, your problems are not due to the 2.6 kernel, Debian stable is at fault... No, not even Debian stable, you are at fault. Trying to install bleeding edge by hand on Debian stable, are you mad ?
I can tell you, for having done it, that bind9 latest versions, dhcpcd and iptables all work pretty well on 2.6, and compile without a hitch. And iptables is fully working here : my firewall script works just as fine in 2.6.
For netfilter support, I will tell you where to go : Device Drivers -> Networking support -> Networking options. Once there, check "Network packet filtering" and you can go there. Enable everything you need as modules or in the kernel, and here you go.
Should you have talked about lm_sensors support, It would have been more interesting though...
Well, you are right in that you need to change some configs in XFree.
This FAQ is your friend.
Mostly, changing the mouse protocol from auto to event should improve the mouse behaviour;)
Well, it is mostly accurate. Just a few notes though: - LVM1 and LVM2 commands can coexist, yes. But in practice, you will not be doing that, because it implies you go changing all your boot scripts, which is VERY dangerous. What I've done (and I think I am not alone, even Gentoo does this I believe), is just overwrite LVM1 with LVM2. LVM2 has a compatibility layer with LVM1, so it's OK. - You are right that you should convert your metadata from LVM1 to LVM2, because LVM1 implies a pretty performance hit on 2.6 (I can feel this with SCSI disks !). But it is very dangerous IMHO. Fortunately, I have prepared a full automated custom LFS install, and I will soon make the migration, by copying data to another disk/OS, which is safer. - LVM2 actually uses symlinks to lvm, when compatibility with LVM1 is activated anyway. So, I do not have to use 'lvm vgcreate', and all my scripts work as before without change.
I even tried to implement EVMS, and it worked, but it is always way behind in term of kernel versions, and the patches are incompatibles with some other patches I need (like supermount), and you have to change all your metadata (then EVMS owns your box !). So I ditched EVMS.
I do not think there is any GPLed code in XFree86, I thought there was one licence for all of the project. OpenSource code perhaps, but not GPLed. I say this, because RMS warned several years ago, I think, that putting your code under XFree licence (so it must have been mandatory) was putting it at odds, and was very dangerous, in case the project behaves badly. That's just what happened.
You say there is chunks of code that have been copied from the linux kernel. I think you are talking about DRM, and I would say that was the other way around : DRI/XFree code was copied into the kernel. XFree is so important, even I am considering contributing the little time I have to XServer sooner than I thought, if it does not see a flood of developpers in the two coming months (if this fiasco is not canceled, I mean). I say "even I", because I have so little time on my hand, not for any other reason.
Re:My Review of KDE 3.2
on
Review: KDE 3.2
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Oh my ! Did you download Slackware packages ? Because my eexperience is very different from yours. First, you go, the day of the release, to the servers... I agree with you that all the mirrors should have been updated before the release annoucements. But I do not understand your complaints. You have to be pretty dedicated to KDE to rush on it the first day of release. I did the same (though KDE is for my wife), but I found the german servers that were ready, and dealing with the load very well : yes, there were mirrors ready with the source files at least, and I downloaded at full speed from them, the first hour after release. So, I think your complaint is a lot emotional, because it is clearly stated in the announcements that you SHOULD use the mirrors. KDE is from Europe, and most top developers are germans, so search the german mirrors first. That's a hint for next time.
On first load, I was impressed by the speed, compared to the KDE 3.1.4 I had before : it was nearly two times faster on my main box (the longest part being the session restore). So I think the Slackware packages have a problem. I do not say it should be as fast as here (I have a bi AMD 2200+ here, but 3 desktops are running on it simultaneously), but 20% slower shows something is wrong. I am on a 2.6 kernel, so, perhaps, if you are on 2.4, that could be an explanation.
Nothing crashed on my box yet;) so I didn't know if the kill feature was working well.
As for media associations, nothing happened to them here after the upgrade from source, so, the Slackware packages are definitely wrong I think.
Slashdot Mirror
That's reassuring. : ./superawesomescreensaver.bin: Permission denied"
Because
- I keep hearing that no home user could use command line, so it will not happen
- Even if the file is downloaded, you should have none that it will NOT have any execution right, so good luck getting your error. Actually, you will most likely get : "bash:
So, no indication that you would even have to be root. Someone knowing what to do would not make the stupid thing you did (hint : you have to change the execution right before hoping to do any execution of your downloaded file).
You clearly illustrated my point, as the scenario you described is flawed. And you were modded insightful for a scenario that just won't happen, which shows that at least your benevolent moderators are as clueless as most linux user would be.
Sad and reassuring at the same time.
And I know now that YOU misunderstood what the grand parent was saying. Because all the grand parent is saying is based on flawed stereotypes.
...
In FOSS, these things can't be implemented in a way that is pervasive ??!!! Do you even know what an FS is, what a display server is, what a DE is in FOSS ?
Apps can be made to support every innovation, as long as it is FOSS ! Where your logic is flawed, is that the only apps that cannot do that are closed apps, like most apps are on Windows.
FOSS is different.
For example, Mozilla innovated, the only apps that could not follow fast enough where closed plugins.
The X server, for example, is implementing those things announced in LongHorn right NOW ! And the DEs (Gnome, KDE) already have dev versions (of GTK+ and Kdelibs) trying to take advantage of these improvements. Yes, that is RIGHT NOW (the thing you say would take a decade). And once it is done in the framework, it works automagically in all the apps based on these DEs (like font handling or antialiasing for example).
FOSS has already i18n and l10n completely integrated, and it did not take a decade. Actually, the Linux desktop environnement are pretty young (less than 6 years), and already have imposed many framework, and changed directions several times too.
There is an authority since a long time in FOSS desktop world : freedesktop.org.
And it is doing a nice job thank you.
Well, we will see if you are right
What ??!!! STraw men and red herrings !!!
Stop spreading such lies. Each one of your sentence seems unfinished to spread half truths.
Well, I suppose you know the Windows kernel pretty well. But it is NOT as solid as Linux, at best, it is as solid as the PART of Linux that deals with the same hardware and functionality. Windows still does not scale as well as Linux, even with threads
on a single processor. It fails also faster under heavy load.
And you are switching easy (and bloatty) API with "ahead of *nix" too. You misinterpret 1 call of an easy API which is equivalent to 4 or 5 different calls on *nix. You make the mistake of thinking "easy to program" = "kernel ahead". That is just not true. You can "wait for a mutex to be released or a socket to become readable" on *nix. It is harder to program, because you have to actually know what you are doing, to know the theory. So, you have a better scaling than on Windows, but it is harder to program, that I agree. That does not make the Win NT kernel more powerful. Most professors would tell you such a complicated API should never go into a kernel, especially on these topics of parallelism and concurrency. This is better left in user space, and you have several libraries that implements this for you on Linux if you need them.
Perhaps *nix are showing their age, perhaps POSIX is showing its age, but saying that Linux is showing its age (compared to Win 2000, or even Win 2003) is nonsense.
BTW, you change the subject from Linux to *nix in your post, I suppose it was done on purpose to spread more FUD.
Er, no. The point he was making was that just because you "can" get under the hood of free software doesn't mean that you can really do anything worthwhile.
You just proved my point that he did not debunk the myth, as this proves that that is no fault of OSS (or Free Software) that you cannot go under the hood : that's because of your time, or your expertise, I don't know.
But the supposed myth was that "you are allowed to get under the hood". That is NOT a myth, that is a fact.
The myth was not "you will be going under the hood when you need it", was it ?
I was betting from the excerpt, that the article was not well done, even very poorly done. :
...
It's worse than that, it is pretty stupid too.
Well, taking the myths one by one
1 : Red Herring. People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. People who want to help post on bugzilla, explain to the author, tell him about the problem, without feeling compelled to say that the product "sucks".
2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)
3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic.
4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence.
5 : Nobody said scratching personal itch was a good reason, that's just a fact. So where is the myth ?
6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you. The other way around does not work.
7 : Conclusion : worthless article
Sigh. How many times do we have to go over this for the slow learners? Two things.
:
I think I have to sigh too.
People that say such things, I think, never ever use a Linux/Unix desktop.
I think you are the slow learner.
I always see the same fallacious argument
- Viruses on Linux have the goal of destroying your home. Just because of Linux, you see, because no virus on Windows is doing that nowadays, they just mess up the system. If they did, that's the all machine that would be erased. Anyway, the kind of users who would fall for these viruses would not even be able to launch them on a Linux platform. That's the case NOW, I don't see why it would become worst tomorrow.
- I repeat, your mother could not launch that perl script you are talking about. No Linux client give you shell access directly, none will permit you to launch something such as perl or sh. Do you imply people who write Linux mail software are stupid or what ? They didn't do it before, and now that we see the danger, they will do it ? Come on !
In the improbable case where the perl script would be launched and worked, you would not even need any antivirus software to eradicate it. When your mother see it doesn't do anything, she will most probably erase it.
All this is assuming future desktop distros will have the home partition executable.
If you read the DCRaw story and homepage, you would see that the Photoshop CS plugin using at least part of dcraw, but, most importantly, that dcraw produces better results than the proprietary converter softs (see the links on the homepage).
The cool thing about the RAW format is that you can then apply all the transforms the camera is doing, but with a more powerful computer, meaning you use, hopefully, more powerful, but more demanding algorithms. You can still refer to your camera to get the actual settings when the photo was shot, or use Wine (under Linux) with some proprietary converters. That is not a problem. There are some tools for some cameras (like Canon, which I have) that can extract the infos.
There are links on the DCRaw page for that too.
I think both java and C# have a huge place in Gnome app development. As an example of an impressive app (that's pretty speedy) written for gtk in java, see Azureus. Eclipse is another app written in java that really rocks. Both are speedy, probably as fast as they would be if written in C or C++
:(
Well, Azureus explains well why I am afraid of these Java and Mono desktop apps.
When I tried Azureus (a bittorrent client), I left it running for 3 days. It ate more and more memory by the hour, eating an enormous amount of memeory in the end. What's worse, none of my bittorrent downloads would advance, or were very very slow (like 1 KB/s). It was suspicious, so I tried the ncurses bittorrent client after 3 days : within 5 minutes, I was at full speed on most of the torrents !!!
I then erased Azureus without any more thought, and thought that it was no wonder some people said Bittorrent was slow, if they use such pitiful tools that eat all their memory. Because, a lot of people told me Azureus was a wonderful tool
Some people rported enormous memory footprints for mono apps too. And to talk about all these high level language apps I've tried, that have GTK API hooks, most of my Python GTK app still leak memory like no other. I use liferea, for example, and I still have to stop it from time to time because it leaks memory.
I can not agree with you on several points.
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:))
Disclaimer : I'm french.
First : Anime is not a genre, it's just japanese animation. Yes, it has certain characteristics, most of them invented by Osamu Tezuka with Astro, and some developped in Horus.
You compare the low signal to noise (for you). IMHO, it has always been low (perhaps 3-4 good series every year for 50 series), and is pretty consistent among the years. But the worst is that you compare the noise with what you are seeing in the USA. If I had to judge, say, american TV series from what we get in France, I can assure you I could say most of it is crap (I can't say that about only 4 series in 20 years, for myself). I have talked with a lot of fan, who said there were no more good anime since 1998. That's the year all Anime stopped suddenly on TV in France, because Hokuto No Ken used to be broadcasted to children ! The fact is, a lot of excellent Anime (like Utena or Noir, pretty popular here nowadays) was broadcasted during all this time, but we had no access to it.
The most shocking for me in your post, though, is when you say most anime are for teenagers. I agree, but for at least 30 years, anime has always been said containing too much violence and sex, outside of Japan (even in Japan in fact). That is still the case in France, even though Miyazaki has done a lot to break this false accusation. I agree we were all deterred to support Anime
BTW, your description of Cowboy Bebop shows that you are probably too young to catch the constant references to Jazz music in this anime, making it a gem for the fans. I'm too young too, but a fan explained to me a lot of references, it is amazing. Things like the name of the Clown was NOT chosen at random, CD or DVD covers have the same layout as famous Jazz LP. I guess that most of the powerful content in this anime passed over your head (mine too)
Americanized anime ?
Well, it has already started, and IMHO and those of nearly all other fans I know or who have watched some, it IS crap.
I'm talking for french fans, as I am french.
Some time ago, just before the launch of the new americanized astro boy (we are talking of Astro Boy there !!!), we had a "retrospective" (what's the english word for this ?) with all first episodes of each Astro series.
It was very entertaining, but the new Astro series was a disaster for all the audience, as it had no spirit, nothing of the other far older series.
There are a lot of studios still doing their "cell" coloring and all (if you can say "using Photoshop on Mac" for "working on cell") . We had a conference with Satoshi Kon, and it was clear that he could not have done his films as he liked if working with koreans. I think that works more for TV series.
Though 3 countries have different causes, as the initiative of so-called Open Source development is still in the hand of the Western people and internationalization of current OSS is poor, it is no wonder those countries start their own movement
Could you be a bit more explicit, please ?
Do you mean asian i18n of OSS is poor, or something other than that ?
I ask because, last time I checked (some weeks ago), you could use most of OSS, even on command line, with UTF-8. Sure, everything is not i18n.
I thought the only problem with i18n was that it was not a lot tested on the command line. On GUI, it is pretty tested. I have not tried Korean, but I know I can use Japanese (write, read) even on the FS. The GUI works pretty well, some problems remain for the low-level system, though.
Granted, some i18n are pretty recent, like the first good support for ncurses in 5.4 versions from some weeks ago.
You seem to have some experience with this, so what's the state of i18n today on Linux ?
I'm french, so, I have less quirks than asian (actually, it works perfectly), but I use some of the GNU asian i18n features, and have no problems in GUI.
What you say is fondamentally flawed, because you are comparing apples and oranges.
You see Linux as a company, but Linux is not.
So a Linux (company) monopoly doesn't mean anything, whereas a Microsoft monopoly has a meaning.
To me, wen you talk about a MS monopoly versus a Linux monopoly, that is as if you were talking about a television broadcast company monopoly versus LCD type television monopoly.
Repeat after me, Linux is not a company.
I compile from source (with my own packaging system based on nALFS and installwatch), and I can not agree with all of what you say.
.... Except source based distributions, no one is able to deliver LVM, and it is old technology. There is a reason. Redhat tried and it didn't work. A LOT of common problems a lot of Linux users have (like slow boot), I just do not have them, because of this powerful system I developed, and because I can control everything with a fine grain.
Building from sources makes it easier to change an option, and you do NOT need to recompile everything that depends on it. I know, I do it all the time. At worst, you may need to restart some servers that depend on some libs (like when you update openssl).
You are wrong when you say that a source-based distribution is inefficient, because many people can have many different options for the same package, and one binary can not bear all the choices. I use LVM, simpleinit-msb, LDAP for users and other things, a powerful mailing server with antispam and all,
I compile everything with athlon-mp on my bi-athlon workstation (a bi Athlon MP 2200+), everything with i386 on my firewall box (a Pentium P75), everything with athlon-xp on my other box (which have an old Athlon 500).
Why should have to cripple my main workstation ? And I never had one problem with march optimisation (I use -O2 too). I have more than a thousand packages installed on these systems, everything is automated, except the changing of version numbers of packages.
Your point of the patched binary is stupid really. Even on my P75 (32 MB of memory), which is pretty slow to compile, I would have the patch compiled way before a patched binary appear. The reason is simple : the patch is always available as source first (hey, it's a patch). And a binary patch is always at best several hours away.
Yes management issues are in our hand. But there are tools to deal with it. I agree that it's time consuming when you start, but after that, you have sth more powerful than any distro. I use nALFS and installwatch basically (with some LFS scripts, like nuke).
As for the support, it is done by the authors of software, in a true free software spirit. When I have a package that do not compile, I do a fast analysis (well, because I can, not everyone can, I agree), and I make a bug report or go on the ML. I always have a fix or a workaround within 24 hours. I do not spend 3 hours searching why sth does not compile, when it used to compile before.
As all is automated, I do not spend time monitoring anything. I change my package versions in my XML, launch nALFS, select what to install, and it does the rest. Well, sometimes, the download locations or the format of the package can change, so I may have to change that too.
Actually, you are right for basic "compiling from sources". But I use nALFS, and while I spent a lot of time creating more than a thousand XML install description files (one for each package I use), I now have all the benefits of packages you noted, and all the benefits of compiling from source.
I have all of these, and I have a complete control of my box. When a security update is out, I need only the time to modify the software version in one XML file, then I launch nALFS, and I update.
Updating Gnome or KDE is a breeze, well, after I updated all version numbers of packages. Security updates are a breeze too.
The point is not just a petty performance tweak, the point is to have a powerful and durable system. It worked beautifully.
My install system can even recreate a boot CD (in 5 hours, zero human intervention) or/and a boot DVD. It's really powerful, really.
And as I am in control, I have none of the problems of distributions, like no more support for old versions (I am always up to date if I really want to, I can lag behind if I want to, that is a change of version in a XML file away), or everything that changes between versions.
That is true.
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But I compile everything from source, with automated LFS (with nALFS exactly). And I use installwatch with the nuke script (that I tweaked a bit).
I can then use nuke to uninstall anything, or make tarballs of compiled packages, or anything.
I now have a bunch of profiles (more than a thousand XML files). So it's very easy to see what options I used to compile any package on my system.
My systems are based on LFS, but are tweaked, with things like all users in a LDAP database, LVM2, devfs (and now udev), kerberos,
For example, I can recreate a base system with nALFS : I put one CD and one DVD in my box, launch nALFS with my base system profiles. Then I wait several hours, and when I come back, I have a base bootable system on CD, and one another more complete, with all packages downloaded from the internet, on the DVD (also bootable).
When I want to update some package, I update the version number in a big XML file, I launch nALFS and update. I can erase the old versions before, to clean up a bit, with nuke.
So I am in total control of the system, and updates are very fast. For example, I'm on gnome 2.6 since 2 days, and it is not even out yet.
I see a lot of people with problems I never had too (with XFree for example, by the way, the latest XFree is broken for Linux, on purpose I think, as I've seen where it has been borked), only because I am always up to date (sometimes, it can be backwards, living on the bleeding edge, you know
So I have my own automatic package management, and it works really well. the only time I lose, is when I update the version numbers of packages, or when I create a new XML for a new package (like a new game for example). But that is done only once. nALFS is really a powerful piece of software.
This not surprising, considering Gnome 2.6 will not be released for another 2 days. Unless you have some method for pulling tarballs from the future that you'd like to let us know about.
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I must have one, as the tarballs are available on the Gnome ftp site since some days.
I know, I run Gnome 2.6 right now
I'd *love* to see a vanilla Linux standard that all programmers could program to without worrying about which of 97 flavors of Linux were installed on the PC
... and all the other free software have several code base, one for each Linux flavor ? Do you mean they are geniuses ?
Every time I hear this argument, I just wonder how all these software get written on Linux.
Do you mean that the authors of The Gimp, Audacity, KDE, Gnome, cdrtools,
Because, let me tell you, all these softwares are available for every flavor of Linux, and AFAIK, they have only one code base for all these flavors of Linux.
I'd love to see whining programmers become geniuses like those who program software on Linux.
You are right but, before Linux 2.6, burning audio CD on the fly could take a very long time, or perhaps even impossible. I ran into issues with burning audio CD on the fly before kernel 2.6. On the fly was so long (was going at 1X instead of 16X), that I was compelled to burn in two steps (extract then burn images). .cda format I think, which is stupid, as WAV is the same in quality).
Now, it works perfectly. The author also has other issues too, but my guess is he was not using K3B. Because K3B does everything he wanted to do (except extracting in
I agree with the other appreciations though.
For camcorder, I agree more on the concern of video softwares, still lacking on Linux.
I wonder how you could be modded insightful, as the difference between GitS manga and GitS anime are an order of magnitude more than the ones between LotR book and film.
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You seem also to imply that there was a lot of fans of GitS manga, and that it was a masterpiece, before the movie was created, as it is the case for LotR.
That is just not true.
Mamoru Oshii incentives to do a film have nothing to do with the incentives of Hollywood. They would never have done anime/films like the ones Mamoru Oshii has done (Tenshi no tamago, Patlabor 1 and 2, Avalon,
You should have been modded funny I think
But just as I imply here, I guess not every moderator can be a fan of Oshii enough to understand.
This news is mostly misguided in that respect.
Shirow is only behind the manga.
GitS the movie would never have been the wonder it was without the genius that is Mamoru Oshii.
I'll go as far as saying that Mamoru Oshii gave more power to the story than Shirow ever could.
Even the anime design shouts "Mamoru Oshii team" all over it.
Kenji Kawai is part of the "Mamoru Oshii team", so, well, even though he has his detractors, I always found him to be on par with the like of Joe Hisaishi or Youko Kanno (geniuses), and sound plays a great role in the feel of Oshii's anime (like for Sergio Leone films).
As others stated, your problems are not due to the 2.6 kernel, Debian stable is at fault ...
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No, not even Debian stable, you are at fault. Trying to install bleeding edge by hand on Debian stable, are you mad ?
I can tell you, for having done it, that bind9 latest versions, dhcpcd and iptables all work pretty well on 2.6, and compile without a hitch.
And iptables is fully working here : my firewall script works just as fine in 2.6.
For netfilter support, I will tell you where to go : Device Drivers -> Networking support -> Networking options. Once there, check "Network packet filtering" and you can go there. Enable everything you need as modules or in the kernel, and here you go.
Should you have talked about lm_sensors support, It would have been more interesting though
Well, you are right in that you need to change some configs in XFree. ;)
This FAQ is your friend. Mostly, changing the mouse protocol from auto to event should improve the mouse behaviour
Well, it is mostly accurate. :
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Just a few notes though
- LVM1 and LVM2 commands can coexist, yes. But in practice, you will not be doing that, because it implies you go changing all your boot scripts, which is VERY dangerous. What I've done (and I think I am not alone, even Gentoo does this I believe), is just overwrite LVM1 with LVM2. LVM2 has a compatibility layer with LVM1, so it's OK.
- You are right that you should convert your metadata from LVM1 to LVM2, because LVM1 implies a pretty performance hit on 2.6 (I can feel this with SCSI disks !). But it is very dangerous IMHO. Fortunately, I have prepared a full automated custom LFS install, and I will soon make the migration, by copying data to another disk/OS, which is safer.
- LVM2 actually uses symlinks to lvm, when compatibility with LVM1 is activated anyway. So, I do not have to use 'lvm vgcreate', and all my scripts work as before without change.
I even tried to implement EVMS, and it worked, but it is always way behind in term of kernel versions, and the patches are incompatibles with some other patches I need (like supermount), and you have to change all your metadata (then EVMS owns your box !). So I ditched EVMS.
I know this should go in the FAQ too, oh well
I do not think there is any GPLed code in XFree86, I thought there was one licence for all of the project. OpenSource code perhaps, but not GPLed.
I say this, because RMS warned several years ago, I think, that putting your code under XFree licence (so it must have been mandatory) was putting it at odds, and was very dangerous, in case the project behaves badly.
That's just what happened.
You say there is chunks of code that have been copied from the linux kernel. I think you are talking about DRM, and I would say that was the other way around : DRI/XFree code was copied into the kernel.
XFree is so important, even I am considering contributing the little time I have to XServer sooner than I thought, if it does not see a flood of developpers in the two coming months (if this fiasco is not canceled, I mean).
I say "even I", because I have so little time on my hand, not for any other reason.
Oh my ! ... I agree with you that all the mirrors should have been updated before the release annoucements. But I do not understand your complaints. You have to be pretty dedicated to KDE to rush on it the first day of release. I did the same (though KDE is for my wife), but I found the german servers that were ready, and dealing with the load very well : yes, there were mirrors ready with the source files at least, and I downloaded at full speed from them, the first hour after release. So, I think your complaint is a lot emotional, because it is clearly stated in the announcements that you SHOULD use the mirrors. KDE is from Europe, and most top developers are germans, so search the german mirrors first. That's a hint for next time.
;) so I didn't know if the kill feature was working well.
Did you download Slackware packages ?
Because my eexperience is very different from yours.
First, you go, the day of the release, to the servers
On first load, I was impressed by the speed, compared to the KDE 3.1.4 I had before : it was nearly two times faster on my main box (the longest part being the session restore).
So I think the Slackware packages have a problem. I do not say it should be as fast as here (I have a bi AMD 2200+ here, but 3 desktops are running on it simultaneously), but 20% slower shows something is wrong. I am on a 2.6 kernel, so, perhaps, if you are on 2.4, that could be an explanation.
Nothing crashed on my box yet
As for media associations, nothing happened to them here after the upgrade from source, so, the Slackware packages are definitely wrong I think.