Do you know if there's a (recent) database of such hardware anywhere? The FSF is compiling a one, but it's currently only got info about wireless network cards and unsupported SD card readers.
Okay, I'll provisionally retract that comment, but with the note that I don't know anyone who would default to using "American" to refer to modern cultural or legal things pertaining to the N&S America, nor anyone would interpret "American" in such a way, who also uses English as their native language. (By an explicit or implicit change of context, such a use may be the obvious one, but it's not "default".)
It still doesn't change the default English definition of "America(n)", or make the majority of English speakers (who don't come from the US) American as our friend the GGP suggested.
I think I wasn't completely clear; nevermind, often happens. I'm not objecting to having a configuration menu-item in a program, such as Edit/Preferences in Gnome apps, Tools/Options in Windows apps, APP/Preferences on the Mac or Options in ROX.
But with KDE, programs tend to have a "Settings" menu, under which is at least half-a-dozen different items, each of which has a dialog box or submenu behind it, which quite often have different parts with different tabs behind *them*, with buttons like "Advanced options" with god-knows what behind them! That's what I'm objecting too, and it's why I said "submenu" (I was trying to be concise, so I can see where the ambiguity crept in, and now I've got myself a long post explaining me, so obviously I failed completely). I prefer a limited but not constricted number of options, accessed through a menu item, as on every major and many minor DEs other than KDE. KDE's approach means I can never remember how I configured this one setting last time I tried. There's just too much to wade through!
And I'm not saying that no desktop environment should have that kind of customisability, either. I don't particularly think I lose anything by KDE's existence, so I'm quite happy to let it exist. That's what I meant when I said "I'm not a fan of".
(BTW: I think you'll find that users (try to) do things, rather than using applications or DEs.)
I suppose it depends on to what extent and in what ways you want your programs to integrate. Still, it doesn't negate my original point which is that it's not fair to exclude Gtk+-non-Gnome apps on the grounds that they aren't Gnome apps, because people who run Gnome desktops and fire up the Gimp don't see it as a foreign program; it's just another program. A bit like Firefox on Windows. It's not foreign, it's interface is just a bit different in some ways from Office. (Not picking Firefox because it's a cross-platform app, but because it's the only other program that runs on Windows I could think of (aside from other cross-platform apps).)
Regarding fixing KDE, it has a number of problems which are probably insurmountable, blocking the further development. KDE has the spectre of TrollTech over them (which is probably a concern looking for a problem but it still exists and many people the Major Commercial Distros care about are never going to get around it). KDE's written in C++ which (as I understand it) severely limits its acceptibility to many programmers as well as the development of bindings for different languages. Most importantly, it's impossible to "fix KDE's problems". KDE's problems are things like its implementation of customisability and Windowsness that Gnomers hate with a passion, but KDErs couldn't live without. You'd end up forking the environment. (TBH, I think that would be the best thing that ever happened to the free desktop, but I don't think Gtk+ will ever go away...)
If it weren't the cost that was the problem, a better option would be for all the major and lesser desktop environments that try to be mainstream and complete (e.g. KDE and Gnome, as well as Xfce and ROX and probably some others I can't think of just now) to come up with a plan to redesign the whole underlying system from the ground up, so that they share as much of the ground as possible. The toplevel stuff would remain completely different. KDE would keep its truckload of menus and Windows button orders; higherlevel stuff could remain written in C++. Gnome would keeps its spartan prefrence dialog boxes and Macish button orders; higher level stuff could remain written in Python or gcj or Mono or whatever's the flavor of the day.
Of course, that's never going to happen, but at least a fork of KDE might mean that you can get the technical advantages of KDE without its user interface (if that exists).
and what drives many to KDE is basically the same thing: flexibility, customization, uncommon but beneficial features, i.e., choice.
I don't see KDE as more flexible/customisable than Gnome. Under Gnome, if I don't like the file manager, I can rip it out and replace it with something different, no problems. Can do it with the same toolkit, but the flexibility is basically the union of Nautilus and my preferred replacement (and all the other Gtk+-based filemanagers out there). Or maybe I don't like the window manager? I can rip it out and replace it with something different, no problems (if they support the latest window manager hints). The panel? Same again!
(Of course, there comes a point where you've swapped out so many programs that you don't have any of Gnome left at all, and that's obviously not Gnome, but Gnome+Xfce's file manager or Gnome+Sawfish is still basically Gnome.)
KDE, though, as far as I can see, is basically the one thing. It has a lot of options, but the options I want include hiding them (I'm not a particular fan of having a "Settings" submenu there, on every program—it's scary!), as well as many I can't seem to make KDE abide by. I want my web browser and my file manager to work in diametrically opposed ways (one new window on single primary click, the other new tab on single secondary click, and so forth), but Konqueror seems to prefer to try and be both. And so forth.
AFAIK, there's no other KDE-like web browser than Konqueror, no other KDE-like filemanager than Konqueror, and so forth. Also swapping them out. Gnome makes it reasonably clear, but I can't see how in KDE.
To me it seems as if the Gtk+ based options try their hardest to follow the Unix ideal of lots of little programs that do one thing brilliantly. They obviously sacrifice this ideal to varying degrees, but they still attempt it.
I could be wrong on all of my statements about KDE. I would invite corrections & instructions, and not flames.
(I'm not trying to say that KDE's bad or anything.
There is no continent known as "America". (There's one known as "North America" and another known as "South America", but that's irrelevant.) In English, the only thing "America" (reliably) applies to is the United States of America. Whilst speaking English, it's a very good idea to use the English definitions of words. (To refer to both North and South America collectively, it is common in English to say "the Americas", the "Western Hemisphere" or the "New World".)
PS: It is most galling when Europeans confuse many regions where there are many English-native speakers with the USA. Most certainly, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not part of the USA, yet in these countries "America" is and has been since before there was a United States of America referred to the contemporary equivalents (such as revolting colonies) of the US (Perhaps not by every single speakers in these areas, and it may not be official policy, but by a significant-enough proportion that you cannot assume anyone who calls the USA "America" is American).
(I've assume you're a non-native user of English. If you are using English natively, yours is a lost cause and you know it. Please ignore this post as I shall retrospectively ignore you.)
They're just using GTK and are not truly Gnome apps.
So? They often integrate well enough that the average user can't tell the difference because they all look and feel the same, follow the same interface guidelines and so forth (to a degree at least). Does it matter what underlying library system they have? And why should Gnome-developers re-write programs that behave perfectly well-enough for them?
The thing is, there's only one Qt-based desktop environment popular on free operating systems: KDE. On the other hand, there's a lot of Gtk+-based DEs, so that people writing programs in Gtk+ make try to them useful for these people too.
There's also a difference in perspective. KDE is the core as well as every application that runs on KDE. On the other hand, Gnome is just the core, with a bunch of sattelite apps designed to integrate well with Gnome, that use the Gnome libraries to varying extents. This is, I think, part of the history of Gtk+ and KDE: Gtk+ was written for a random program and adopted by a desktop environment, whereas Qt was brought into the free software world by being adopted to a desktop environment.
(Firefox and OpenOffice.org aren't Gtk+, they just emulate it, poorly. They miss out on many of Gtk+'s best features in doing so.)
I welcome a more "UNIXy" desktop environment vs KDE or Gnome.
What's that meant to mean? You want a DE that is built from a lot of small parts that each do their own thing, instead of a single monolithic application? Depending on how you interpret "small parts", either KDE xor Gnome probably fits the bill quite nicely. ROX is even leaner (with a Gnomish interpretation thereof), but then you tend to use Gnome (or generic) apps to fill in the gaps. GNUStep I think tends towards the Gnomish interpretation too.
Perhaps you mean you want to treat everything as a file rather than masking it behind a menu that manages all your applications. If you like the MacOS X interpretation of that where you start applications by clicking on an icon that actually literally contains the app, then you'll like ROX, which does basically the same thing (insert above disclaimer here).
Note that ROX isn't remotely application-based. You could make a hierarchy something along the lines of ROX-Gnome-Windows-MacOS X, where on the left-most edge, you tend to focus on files and windows as the focus of your interface, whereas on the other end you have applications. This isn't a case of one being better than the other, but just different paradigms that work for different people. Personally, I'm typing this on a Ubuntu/PPC box because I couldn't get myself to like the app-based interface. If, however, you consider this important, note that GNUStep is based on the same base as MacOS X and inherits the application-based interface. In combination with Window Maker, you might find you quite like it.
On my computer, drag and drop and the clipboard both work; they also do on all other computers I've used that run a free desktop. I use drag and drop and X's two clipboards on a regular basis, depending on what exactly I'm doing. I always seem to be able to move & copy stuff around.
Mac OS X doesn't have a common look, with the whole brushed metal vs aqua thing. Mac OS X also doesn't have a common feel, with Carbon- and Cocoa-based applications doing different things at times. Also, try clicking on an unfocused window some time. Different programs do different things when you do that; even the same program does different things when you do it to different *parts* of a window!
With free desktops, the different toolkits and looks-and-feels are in competition with each other (of sorts) so that it's usually quite easy to avoid programs that don't use your preferred toolkit. On Mac OS X, though, it's just one whole, so you have to cope with the different raise/focus/do on click behaviors.
I'll never for the life of me understand why the toolkit "fragmentation" "has to stop". So many people have said that before. I think that's the only reason they keep saying it.
There's GNUstep (an article on which was posted shortly before this one). I don't know how integrated it is with the shell, though. Normally to run an application in your GNUStep-equivalent-for-a-path, you run "openapp ". I've never found GNUstep to be particularly usable.
There's also the ROX Desktop. By default, it doesn't interfere with your shell (how could it, if it's distributed as a series of AppDirs?), but someone's written a patch to Bash so that appdirs in your $PATH are accessed by (the executable in an AppDir is named "AppRun", so obviously the method can't be quite equivalent). I've never used it (I prefer zsh) and it mightn't cleanly apply any more though... (If you run "rox ", then the appdir opens; the command "rox" behaves similarly to open on MacOS X or openapp on GNUStep except that rox doesn't maintain its own path. ROX is, after all, a series of AppDirs.) I run a ROX desktop.
... there are a huge number of free (open & closed source) modules...
I suspect you do not know what I mean when I speak of "free software". I am not talking about the amount of money charged for the products ("freeware", free beer), but rather the freedom other people have to take the software, modify it, and redistribute it (free speech, free markets).
People who advocate free software aren't selfish people who believe no-one should have the right to charge money for their software. In fact, many free software advocates make a living earning money from free software. Free software is about the unsocial behavior of a number of large companies and small shareware developers and anyone in between who arrogantly believe that they can write bug-free software first time, every time; or that if they do provide buggy software, that's legitimate grounds to later prevent their users from talking to others are accessing their data (e.g. the not-always-forwards compatible and nearly backwards-compatible Microsoft Office file formats).
As for the rest of your points.
(1) DotNetNuke is indeed free, but it is dangerously so. It relies on and advertises a non-free platform. DotNetNuke encourages people to stay with proprietary platforms, and it relies on proprietary libraries. It would be better if it was designed to run using only freely-available libraries and on a freely-available platform.
(2) I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem as if Web Matrix is free, based on the link. I couldn't see any reference to the source code. See my introductory para.
(3) DotNetNuke makes it hard enough to find any information on their website. I suspect your definition of "free" is misled, but I can't actually find any info on their website so I won't say anything here.
(4) That link takes me to a page on what seems to be non-free software. Being able to run non-free software on GNU+Linux is neither an advantage nor desirable.
(5) That's not relevant. None of what can be done with Microsoft's Minesweeper requires programming, but the software's still non-free, all the same.
The issue here isn't whether DotNetNuke is free or open, the issue is whether it's built solely on free and open software. If it isn't, it's dangerous and doesn't deserve the respect of free software developers and advocates. If you're familiar with Christian scripture (a lot of people who aren't Christian are), you could liken it the man who built his house on sand. It doesn't matter how fine the house is, if its foundations are flimsy like sand, the whole thing can and likely will collapse. The more people who realise the dangers inherit in free software built on a non-free base, the better.
Yeah, you start with a word you know the spelling of... Then, it tells you how to pronounce it (in English ones at least), if it's irregular how to define it, its meanings, and often its etymology.
The thing is, Free Software vs Open Source is precisely what this is about. DotNetNuke is clearely properly open source, and another open source developer couldn't criticise him because of that, unless they misunderstand what open source is.
A free software developer, tho, could; he's almost as bad as a proprietery software developer--possibly worse--because, even though there's an adequate (perhaps not perfect) environment for which Shaun Walker could've written his tool using solely free software, he's encouraging people to stick with the proprietry base. His software is one of the temptations that we need to avoid if we're to obtain a fully free-software world.
So yes: As an open-source developer, Walker has a legitimate complaint. As a free-software developer, he doesn't.
(In case you're wondering, no, I have no idea how to spell "propriet[|a|e]ry".)
I think you overstate the recency of this phenomenon. As far as I can remember, my first GNU/Linux distro, Red Hat 5.1, had separate -devel packages, as has every version of Debian I've managed to get installed (tho, I admit, most of my experience with Debian is "Bastard, why won't you install" followed by "Bastard, isn't apt supposed to be easy to use?! I give up, welcome back Gentoo/Slackware/FreeBSD").
As for the rest, I strongly agree that the spirit of the GPL and the Free software movement isn't just to make it legally impossible to close the software, but to make it easy for anyone to make changes too. Perhaps that goes without saying but:)
I think that's the GRP stuff (Gentoo Reference Platform). I haven't looked into it in-depth but I understand it's relatively peripheral and so does, indeed, miss out on a lot of stuff. Could be wrong though.
I bought my iRiver last year; it looks like the model is superceded, or at least there's newer equivalents by iRiver out now. I based my decision to buy it on my sister's then-boyfriend's, which was a model earlier and he'd had it for a while. I think iRiver got it from the beginning—but then, they support Ogg Vorbis, so it's no real surprise.
As for Apple, they'll never change, and it won't hurt them a bit. Apple's that good at marketing and making sure the masses want what they have. "Kick me harder!" I understand it means you can hide the filesystem from the user, or something. (I never really looked at the iPods---I knew they were out of the question so the exact details of why they were were irrelevant.)
My iRiver works with no drivers (other than default USB stuff). I just plug it into to my GNU/Linux box, and drag the icon from one ROX-Filer window to the other to copy music on or off. Then, I go to the folder on the iRiver and play. It just worked the day I bought it, and it still just works today. In fact, this was one of my prereqs when buying it---iPods were completely out of the question for this (and other) reasons.
I understand the American versions have some differences, but I woudn't know what they are. It may be that in America you need to have a separate database.
1. Ever heard of a source rpm? Tarball of the program + patches that were used (if any) + spec file that contains the build parameters & a Changelog. Not all of us have the time or inclination to dig through the source.
I'm not the OP, but I think you might've missed the point. (Of course, you might not've, but then I just have a different point.)
On distributions like Debian, Red Hat or Ubuntu, if a package is in the package-management tree, then great, you're sweet, but if for whatever reason it's not, you'll have a tiring time trying to compile it from scratch. In fact, it's actually hard. If, however, you're on Gentoo, or Slackware, you'll find it's a piece of cake. It takes a while, but you barely have to think about it. You'll have GCC there. You'll have the auto-tools there. You'll have most if not all the header files already installed.
The thing is, though, that most binary ueberleet packagemanager distributions separate the -dev packages from the real ones. It's terribly irritating. It's why I haven't been happy with any of the "easy" distros, and why I'm thinking I might install Gentoo on my box on Monday (I currently have Ubuntu on an iMac G5, so Slack's not an option).
The current situation, as I can see it, is you have Slackware, which doesn't have an auto-fulfilling package management system; you have Gentoo, which takes five years to get anything installed; and you have RedHat/Debian-based distros, which all (afaik---I'd be glad of a correction!) separate the programs from the -devs.
I'd be happiest if there was a binary distro that actually left the.h files in place but had an automatic package management system. I don't *want* to search the net for the dependencies. I don't *want* to compile all the software. But when I *have* to compile the software, I want to be able to do it without fretting about this -dev package or that one (which on Ubuntu at least often seem to have different basenames from the non-dev equivalent, changing hyphens or version number incorporation).
It's not like the.h files cost much in this day of hundreds-of-gigabyte hard drives (mine's so big, I don't even know how big it is!) and broadband internet connexions; and for those people who do have limited connections, I'm not saying *every* distro should do it.
I didn't say there was any; or, I didn't mean to. (I was talking about the time before wide acceptance, when the scientist who has the idea tends to believe it, even though they haven't collected the evidence yet. You may, of course, disregard this, because when they're wrong it's quite often evident early on so maybe no-one hears about it; and anyway, wild conjectures are where interesting science comes from.)
Most scientific theories are unproved. The theory of evolution is unproved. The theory of relativity is unproved. These, and many others, are laudable and highly usable descriptions/predictions which seem to hold, but they are not proved. Still, they are widely held to be true. If I asked most people I know where we came from, they would attempt to describe evolution; if I asked most people I know how come we stick to the ground, and why a ball comes down again when I throw it up (but not when I throw it down), they would attempt to describe gravity. (Actually, they'd probably look at me oddly, but they still believe in gravity rather than pixies who cruelly pull everything back down to earth.)
What's wrong with being anti-religious? Personally I am definitely against anything that encourages folk to believe in things without proof (repeatable proof, at that).
Really? Most knowledge isn't actually founded on serendipity, but rather by people who firmly believe something (even though they don't have the evidence for it yet), and then they're able to show that it's true. Otherwise, all research would be exploratory research. It's not though, of course; you have people saying "based no these results from that research, I hypothesise we can extrapolate in this way. I have no evidence for it yet: Please give me money so I can find it, or not".
As to the fact that there's no proof that a god exists, so what? There's no proof of a lot of theories, yet good scientifically-minded people will often accept that it's a very good description of reality. But still not proven.
And we also have the problem that what you would consider sufficient evidence that god exists is likely different from other people. For instance, if you saw a vision of God and Mary that was entirely consistent with your experience in the Catholic educational system (this is a hypothetical you, obviously), and you knew you hadn't been taking any drugs, and you didn't think yourself mad, it would seem reasonable to conclude that God may well exist. Given what you learnt in your Catholic education, I think it would even be more reasonable that you tell other people, too.
Catholics are also not against doubt, tests, experiements, scepticism or questioning; indeed, they invite it. But they have their beliefs, too.
Atheistic fundamentalism and "anti-religiousness" is just as bad for the world and for people as religious fundamentalism.
Firefox doesn't look all that much like Gtk+, really. The menus are totally off, for instance; and scrollbars can't emulate the Gtk+ theme properly (for instance, if you have the up and down scroll things together in Gtk+, Firefox and Mozilla-based apps in general ignore this). Also, contrast Firefox's tabs with the tabs of a Gtk+ application.
Also, there are fairly significant differences in feel. Unless there's been some recent change, Firefox uses a Windows-style file chooser instead of a Gtk-like one (I'll admit I have a suspicion this has been fixed, but I can't test it now).
Another difference I can think of is setting keyboard shortcuts. In its default config, Gtk+ lets you set them simply by hovering over the menu item and typing what you want as a shortcut for that (Gnome disables this though). Firefox behaves as Windows does regardless of your Gtk+ settings.
There's also subtler differences that you notice if you almost exclusively use Gtk+ apps and then have to use a Windows one. The way menus work on Windows is particularly frustrating: They keep closing on me for reasons I can't understand. (I also notice just now---I'm using Windows---that wheelscrolling in text boxes is different. In Gtk+, if you reach the bottom, it stops scrolling. In Windows, if you reach the bottom, the entire window the text box is in scrolls. The wheelscroll jump is bigger, too.)
Still, I recognise that Wine is never going to be able to change the behavior of Windows apps to emulate Gtk+, even in the unlikely event that it can emulate the look of Gtk+.
Pardon me for being an idiot, but I've often heard the argument of hard-coded, auto-changing VCRs. It doesn't seem to make sense that they exist. Do they? How many people have them? They can't be all that important, surely, because even in the US not every state has daylight savings; and in different places daylight savings starts at different times (frex, in here in Australia, it starts at the beginning of October in Tasmania, the end of October in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and the ACT, and doesn't happen in the remaining states and territories. Compare October with the March-or-what it starts in in the US). In fact in 2000 for the Olympics, we started daylight savings in September so that it it happened while the Olympics were on, so that Americans would be able to watch them better, or something.
So are there really millions of these hard-coded auto-changing VCRs that it's a legitimate argument? Do people who make them just limit their market (to the admittedly sizable) region that has daylight savings for the same period as most of the US?
(Personally, as a Victorian, I'd prefer we started daylight savings at the start of October, same as Tasmania—it makes sleeping much easier.)
Slashdot Mirror
Have you seen this? It's just scary!
Do you know if there's a (recent) database of such hardware anywhere? The FSF is compiling a one, but it's currently only got info about wireless network cards and unsupported SD card readers.
Thanks!
Okay, I'll provisionally retract that comment, but with the note that I don't know anyone who would default to using "American" to refer to modern cultural or legal things pertaining to the N&S America, nor anyone would interpret "American" in such a way, who also uses English as their native language. (By an explicit or implicit change of context, such a use may be the obvious one, but it's not "default".)
It still doesn't change the default English definition of "America(n)", or make the majority of English speakers (who don't come from the US) American as our friend the GGP suggested.
I think I wasn't completely clear; nevermind, often happens. I'm not objecting to having a configuration menu-item in a program, such as Edit/Preferences in Gnome apps, Tools/Options in Windows apps, APP/Preferences on the Mac or Options in ROX.
But with KDE, programs tend to have a "Settings" menu, under which is at least half-a-dozen different items, each of which has a dialog box or submenu behind it, which quite often have different parts with different tabs behind *them*, with buttons like "Advanced options" with god-knows what behind them! That's what I'm objecting too, and it's why I said "submenu" (I was trying to be concise, so I can see where the ambiguity crept in, and now I've got myself a long post explaining me, so obviously I failed completely). I prefer a limited but not constricted number of options, accessed through a menu item, as on every major and many minor DEs other than KDE. KDE's approach means I can never remember how I configured this one setting last time I tried. There's just too much to wade through!
And I'm not saying that no desktop environment should have that kind of customisability, either. I don't particularly think I lose anything by KDE's existence, so I'm quite happy to let it exist. That's what I meant when I said "I'm not a fan of".
(BTW: I think you'll find that users (try to) do things, rather than using applications or DEs.)
I suppose it depends on to what extent and in what ways you want your programs to integrate. Still, it doesn't negate my original point which is that it's not fair to exclude Gtk+-non-Gnome apps on the grounds that they aren't Gnome apps, because people who run Gnome desktops and fire up the Gimp don't see it as a foreign program; it's just another program. A bit like Firefox on Windows. It's not foreign, it's interface is just a bit different in some ways from Office. (Not picking Firefox because it's a cross-platform app, but because it's the only other program that runs on Windows I could think of (aside from other cross-platform apps).)
Regarding fixing KDE, it has a number of problems which are probably insurmountable, blocking the further development. KDE has the spectre of TrollTech over them (which is probably a concern looking for a problem but it still exists and many people the Major Commercial Distros care about are never going to get around it). KDE's written in C++ which (as I understand it) severely limits its acceptibility to many programmers as well as the development of bindings for different languages. Most importantly, it's impossible to "fix KDE's problems". KDE's problems are things like its implementation of customisability and Windowsness that Gnomers hate with a passion, but KDErs couldn't live without. You'd end up forking the environment. (TBH, I think that would be the best thing that ever happened to the free desktop, but I don't think Gtk+ will ever go away...)
If it weren't the cost that was the problem, a better option would be for all the major and lesser desktop environments that try to be mainstream and complete (e.g. KDE and Gnome, as well as Xfce and ROX and probably some others I can't think of just now) to come up with a plan to redesign the whole underlying system from the ground up, so that they share as much of the ground as possible. The toplevel stuff would remain completely different. KDE would keep its truckload of menus and Windows button orders; higherlevel stuff could remain written in C++. Gnome would keeps its spartan prefrence dialog boxes and Macish button orders; higher level stuff could remain written in Python or gcj or Mono or whatever's the flavor of the day.
Of course, that's never going to happen, but at least a fork of KDE might mean that you can get the technical advantages of KDE without its user interface (if that exists).
and what drives many to KDE is basically the same thing: flexibility, customization, uncommon but beneficial features, i.e., choice.
I don't see KDE as more flexible/customisable than Gnome. Under Gnome, if I don't like the file manager, I can rip it out and replace it with something different, no problems. Can do it with the same toolkit, but the flexibility is basically the union of Nautilus and my preferred replacement (and all the other Gtk+-based filemanagers out there). Or maybe I don't like the window manager? I can rip it out and replace it with something different, no problems (if they support the latest window manager hints). The panel? Same again!
(Of course, there comes a point where you've swapped out so many programs that you don't have any of Gnome left at all, and that's obviously not Gnome, but Gnome+Xfce's file manager or Gnome+Sawfish is still basically Gnome.)
KDE, though, as far as I can see, is basically the one thing. It has a lot of options, but the options I want include hiding them (I'm not a particular fan of having a "Settings" submenu there, on every program—it's scary!), as well as many I can't seem to make KDE abide by. I want my web browser and my file manager to work in diametrically opposed ways (one new window on single primary click, the other new tab on single secondary click, and so forth), but Konqueror seems to prefer to try and be both. And so forth.
AFAIK, there's no other KDE-like web browser than Konqueror, no other KDE-like filemanager than Konqueror, and so forth. Also swapping them out. Gnome makes it reasonably clear, but I can't see how in KDE.
To me it seems as if the Gtk+ based options try their hardest to follow the Unix ideal of lots of little programs that do one thing brilliantly. They obviously sacrifice this ideal to varying degrees, but they still attempt it.
I could be wrong on all of my statements about KDE. I would invite corrections & instructions, and not flames.
(I'm not trying to say that KDE's bad or anything.
There is no continent known as "America". (There's one known as "North America" and another known as "South America", but that's irrelevant.) In English, the only thing "America" (reliably) applies to is the United States of America. Whilst speaking English, it's a very good idea to use the English definitions of words. (To refer to both North and South America collectively, it is common in English to say "the Americas", the "Western Hemisphere" or the "New World".)
PS: It is most galling when Europeans confuse many regions where there are many English-native speakers with the USA. Most certainly, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not part of the USA, yet in these countries "America" is and has been since before there was a United States of America referred to the contemporary equivalents (such as revolting colonies) of the US (Perhaps not by every single speakers in these areas, and it may not be official policy, but by a significant-enough proportion that you cannot assume anyone who calls the USA "America" is American).
(I've assume you're a non-native user of English. If you are using English natively, yours is a lost cause and you know it. Please ignore this post as I shall retrospectively ignore you.)
They're just using GTK and are not truly Gnome apps.
So? They often integrate well enough that the average user can't tell the difference because they all look and feel the same, follow the same interface guidelines and so forth (to a degree at least). Does it matter what underlying library system they have? And why should Gnome-developers re-write programs that behave perfectly well-enough for them?
The thing is, there's only one Qt-based desktop environment popular on free operating systems: KDE. On the other hand, there's a lot of Gtk+-based DEs, so that people writing programs in Gtk+ make try to them useful for these people too.
There's also a difference in perspective. KDE is the core as well as every application that runs on KDE. On the other hand, Gnome is just the core, with a bunch of sattelite apps designed to integrate well with Gnome, that use the Gnome libraries to varying extents. This is, I think, part of the history of Gtk+ and KDE: Gtk+ was written for a random program and adopted by a desktop environment, whereas Qt was brought into the free software world by being adopted to a desktop environment.
(Firefox and OpenOffice.org aren't Gtk+, they just emulate it, poorly. They miss out on many of Gtk+'s best features in doing so.)
Actually, "standardize" is just as wrong in Australia as "tire" (for "tyre") or "center" (for "centre").
I welcome a more "UNIXy" desktop environment vs KDE or Gnome.
What's that meant to mean? You want a DE that is built from a lot of small parts that each do their own thing, instead of a single monolithic application? Depending on how you interpret "small parts", either KDE xor Gnome probably fits the bill quite nicely. ROX is even leaner (with a Gnomish interpretation thereof), but then you tend to use Gnome (or generic) apps to fill in the gaps. GNUStep I think tends towards the Gnomish interpretation too.
Perhaps you mean you want to treat everything as a file rather than masking it behind a menu that manages all your applications. If you like the MacOS X interpretation of that where you start applications by clicking on an icon that actually literally contains the app, then you'll like ROX, which does basically the same thing (insert above disclaimer here).
Note that ROX isn't remotely application-based. You could make a hierarchy something along the lines of ROX-Gnome-Windows-MacOS X, where on the left-most edge, you tend to focus on files and windows as the focus of your interface, whereas on the other end you have applications. This isn't a case of one being better than the other, but just different paradigms that work for different people. Personally, I'm typing this on a Ubuntu/PPC box because I couldn't get myself to like the app-based interface. If, however, you consider this important, note that GNUStep is based on the same base as MacOS X and inherits the application-based interface. In combination with Window Maker, you might find you quite like it.
On my computer, drag and drop and the clipboard both work; they also do on all other computers I've used that run a free desktop. I use drag and drop and X's two clipboards on a regular basis, depending on what exactly I'm doing. I always seem to be able to move & copy stuff around.
Mac OS X doesn't have a common look, with the whole brushed metal vs aqua thing. Mac OS X also doesn't have a common feel, with Carbon- and Cocoa-based applications doing different things at times. Also, try clicking on an unfocused window some time. Different programs do different things when you do that; even the same program does different things when you do it to different *parts* of a window!
With free desktops, the different toolkits and looks-and-feels are in competition with each other (of sorts) so that it's usually quite easy to avoid programs that don't use your preferred toolkit. On Mac OS X, though, it's just one whole, so you have to cope with the different raise/focus/do on click behaviors.
I'll never for the life of me understand why the toolkit "fragmentation" "has to stop". So many people have said that before. I think that's the only reason they keep saying it.
There's GNUstep (an article on which was posted shortly before this one). I don't know how integrated it is with the shell, though. Normally to run an application in your GNUStep-equivalent-for-a-path, you run "openapp ". I've never found GNUstep to be particularly usable.
There's also the ROX Desktop. By default, it doesn't interfere with your shell (how could it, if it's distributed as a series of AppDirs?), but someone's written a patch to Bash so that appdirs in your $PATH are accessed by (the executable in an AppDir is named "AppRun", so obviously the method can't be quite equivalent). I've never used it (I prefer zsh) and it mightn't cleanly apply any more though... (If you run "rox ", then the appdir opens; the command "rox" behaves similarly to open on MacOS X or openapp on GNUStep except that rox doesn't maintain its own path. ROX is, after all, a series of AppDirs.) I run a ROX desktop.
... there are a huge number of free (open & closed source) modules ...
I suspect you do not know what I mean when I speak of "free software". I am not talking about the amount of money charged for the products ("freeware", free beer), but rather the freedom other people have to take the software, modify it, and redistribute it (free speech, free markets).
People who advocate free software aren't selfish people who believe no-one should have the right to charge money for their software. In fact, many free software advocates make a living earning money from free software. Free software is about the unsocial behavior of a number of large companies and small shareware developers and anyone in between who arrogantly believe that they can write bug-free software first time, every time; or that if they do provide buggy software, that's legitimate grounds to later prevent their users from talking to others are accessing their data (e.g. the not-always-forwards compatible and nearly backwards-compatible Microsoft Office file formats).
As for the rest of your points.
(1) DotNetNuke is indeed free, but it is dangerously so. It relies on and advertises a non-free platform. DotNetNuke encourages people to stay with proprietary platforms, and it relies on proprietary libraries. It would be better if it was designed to run using only freely-available libraries and on a freely-available platform.
(2) I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem as if Web Matrix is free, based on the link. I couldn't see any reference to the source code. See my introductory para.
(3) DotNetNuke makes it hard enough to find any information on their website. I suspect your definition of "free" is misled, but I can't actually find any info on their website so I won't say anything here.
(4) That link takes me to a page on what seems to be non-free software. Being able to run non-free software on GNU+Linux is neither an advantage nor desirable.
(5) That's not relevant. None of what can be done with Microsoft's Minesweeper requires programming, but the software's still non-free, all the same.
The issue here isn't whether DotNetNuke is free or open, the issue is whether it's built solely on free and open software. If it isn't, it's dangerous and doesn't deserve the respect of free software developers and advocates. If you're familiar with Christian scripture (a lot of people who aren't Christian are), you could liken it the man who built his house on sand. It doesn't matter how fine the house is, if its foundations are flimsy like sand, the whole thing can and likely will collapse. The more people who realise the dangers inherit in free software built on a non-free base, the better.
Yeah, you start with a word you know the spelling of... Then, it tells you how to pronounce it (in English ones at least), if it's irregular how to define it, its meanings, and often its etymology.
The thing is, Free Software vs Open Source is precisely what this is about. DotNetNuke is clearely properly open source, and another open source developer couldn't criticise him because of that, unless they misunderstand what open source is.
A free software developer, tho, could; he's almost as bad as a proprietery software developer--possibly worse--because, even though there's an adequate (perhaps not perfect) environment for which Shaun Walker could've written his tool using solely free software, he's encouraging people to stick with the proprietry base. His software is one of the temptations that we need to avoid if we're to obtain a fully free-software world.
So yes: As an open-source developer, Walker has a legitimate complaint. As a free-software developer, he doesn't.
(In case you're wondering, no, I have no idea how to spell "propriet[|a|e]ry".)
No worries :)
:)
I think you overstate the recency of this phenomenon. As far as I can remember, my first GNU/Linux distro, Red Hat 5.1, had separate -devel packages, as has every version of Debian I've managed to get installed (tho, I admit, most of my experience with Debian is "Bastard, why won't you install" followed by "Bastard, isn't apt supposed to be easy to use?! I give up, welcome back Gentoo/Slackware/FreeBSD").
As for the rest, I strongly agree that the spirit of the GPL and the Free software movement isn't just to make it legally impossible to close the software, but to make it easy for anyone to make changes too. Perhaps that goes without saying but
I think that's the GRP stuff (Gentoo Reference Platform). I haven't looked into it in-depth but I understand it's relatively peripheral and so does, indeed, miss out on a lot of stuff. Could be wrong though.
I bought my iRiver last year; it looks like the model is superceded, or at least there's newer equivalents by iRiver out now. I based my decision to buy it on my sister's then-boyfriend's, which was a model earlier and he'd had it for a while. I think iRiver got it from the beginning—but then, they support Ogg Vorbis, so it's no real surprise.
As for Apple, they'll never change, and it won't hurt them a bit. Apple's that good at marketing and making sure the masses want what they have. "Kick me harder!" I understand it means you can hide the filesystem from the user, or something. (I never really looked at the iPods---I knew they were out of the question so the exact details of why they were were irrelevant.)
My iRiver works with no drivers (other than default USB stuff). I just plug it into to my GNU/Linux box, and drag the icon from one ROX-Filer window to the other to copy music on or off. Then, I go to the folder on the iRiver and play. It just worked the day I bought it, and it still just works today. In fact, this was one of my prereqs when buying it---iPods were completely out of the question for this (and other) reasons.
I understand the American versions have some differences, but I woudn't know what they are. It may be that in America you need to have a separate database.
What's wrong with Motif?
1. Ever heard of a source rpm? Tarball of the program + patches that were used (if any) + spec file that contains the build parameters & a Changelog. Not all of us have the time or inclination to dig through the source.
.h files in place but had an automatic package management system. I don't *want* to search the net for the dependencies. I don't *want* to compile all the software. But when I *have* to compile the software, I want to be able to do it without fretting about this -dev package or that one (which on Ubuntu at least often seem to have different basenames from the non-dev equivalent, changing hyphens or version number incorporation).
.h files cost much in this day of hundreds-of-gigabyte hard drives (mine's so big, I don't even know how big it is!) and broadband internet connexions; and for those people who do have limited connections, I'm not saying *every* distro should do it.
I'm not the OP, but I think you might've missed the point. (Of course, you might not've, but then I just have a different point.)
On distributions like Debian, Red Hat or Ubuntu, if a package is in the package-management tree, then great, you're sweet, but if for whatever reason it's not, you'll have a tiring time trying to compile it from scratch. In fact, it's actually hard. If, however, you're on Gentoo, or Slackware, you'll find it's a piece of cake. It takes a while, but you barely have to think about it. You'll have GCC there. You'll have the auto-tools there. You'll have most if not all the header files already installed.
The thing is, though, that most binary ueberleet packagemanager distributions separate the -dev packages from the real ones. It's terribly irritating. It's why I haven't been happy with any of the "easy" distros, and why I'm thinking I might install Gentoo on my box on Monday (I currently have Ubuntu on an iMac G5, so Slack's not an option).
The current situation, as I can see it, is you have Slackware, which doesn't have an auto-fulfilling package management system; you have Gentoo, which takes five years to get anything installed; and you have RedHat/Debian-based distros, which all (afaik---I'd be glad of a correction!) separate the programs from the -devs.
I'd be happiest if there was a binary distro that actually left the
It's not like the
I didn't say there was any; or, I didn't mean to. (I was talking about the time before wide acceptance, when the scientist who has the idea tends to believe it, even though they haven't collected the evidence yet. You may, of course, disregard this, because when they're wrong it's quite often evident early on so maybe no-one hears about it; and anyway, wild conjectures are where interesting science comes from.)
Most scientific theories are unproved. The theory of evolution is unproved. The theory of relativity is unproved. These, and many others, are laudable and highly usable descriptions/predictions which seem to hold, but they are not proved. Still, they are widely held to be true. If I asked most people I know where we came from, they would attempt to describe evolution; if I asked most people I know how come we stick to the ground, and why a ball comes down again when I throw it up (but not when I throw it down), they would attempt to describe gravity. (Actually, they'd probably look at me oddly, but they still believe in gravity rather than pixies who cruelly pull everything back down to earth.)
Things are proved only in mathematics and logic.
What's wrong with being anti-religious? Personally I am definitely against anything that encourages folk to believe in things without proof (repeatable proof, at that).
Really? Most knowledge isn't actually founded on serendipity, but rather by people who firmly believe something (even though they don't have the evidence for it yet), and then they're able to show that it's true. Otherwise, all research would be exploratory research. It's not though, of course; you have people saying "based no these results from that research, I hypothesise we can extrapolate in this way. I have no evidence for it yet: Please give me money so I can find it, or not".
As to the fact that there's no proof that a god exists, so what? There's no proof of a lot of theories, yet good scientifically-minded people will often accept that it's a very good description of reality. But still not proven.
And we also have the problem that what you would consider sufficient evidence that god exists is likely different from other people. For instance, if you saw a vision of God and Mary that was entirely consistent with your experience in the Catholic educational system (this is a hypothetical you, obviously), and you knew you hadn't been taking any drugs, and you didn't think yourself mad, it would seem reasonable to conclude that God may well exist. Given what you learnt in your Catholic education, I think it would even be more reasonable that you tell other people, too.
Catholics are also not against doubt, tests, experiements, scepticism or questioning; indeed, they invite it. But they have their beliefs, too.
Atheistic fundamentalism and "anti-religiousness" is just as bad for the world and for people as religious fundamentalism.
Firefox doesn't look all that much like Gtk+, really. The menus are totally off, for instance; and scrollbars can't emulate the Gtk+ theme properly (for instance, if you have the up and down scroll things together in Gtk+, Firefox and Mozilla-based apps in general ignore this). Also, contrast Firefox's tabs with the tabs of a Gtk+ application.
Also, there are fairly significant differences in feel. Unless there's been some recent change, Firefox uses a Windows-style file chooser instead of a Gtk-like one (I'll admit I have a suspicion this has been fixed, but I can't test it now).
Another difference I can think of is setting keyboard shortcuts. In its default config, Gtk+ lets you set them simply by hovering over the menu item and typing what you want as a shortcut for that (Gnome disables this though). Firefox behaves as Windows does regardless of your Gtk+ settings.
There's also subtler differences that you notice if you almost exclusively use Gtk+ apps and then have to use a Windows one. The way menus work on Windows is particularly frustrating: They keep closing on me for reasons I can't understand. (I also notice just now---I'm using Windows---that wheelscrolling in text boxes is different. In Gtk+, if you reach the bottom, it stops scrolling. In Windows, if you reach the bottom, the entire window the text box is in scrolls. The wheelscroll jump is bigger, too.)
Still, I recognise that Wine is never going to be able to change the behavior of Windows apps to emulate Gtk+, even in the unlikely event that it can emulate the look of Gtk+.
Pardon me for being an idiot, but I've often heard the argument of hard-coded, auto-changing VCRs. It doesn't seem to make sense that they exist. Do they? How many people have them? They can't be all that important, surely, because even in the US not every state has daylight savings; and in different places daylight savings starts at different times (frex, in here in Australia, it starts at the beginning of October in Tasmania, the end of October in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and the ACT, and doesn't happen in the remaining states and territories. Compare October with the March-or-what it starts in in the US). In fact in 2000 for the Olympics, we started daylight savings in September so that it it happened while the Olympics were on, so that Americans would be able to watch them better, or something.
So are there really millions of these hard-coded auto-changing VCRs that it's a legitimate argument? Do people who make them just limit their market (to the admittedly sizable) region that has daylight savings for the same period as most of the US?
(Personally, as a Victorian, I'd prefer we started daylight savings at the start of October, same as Tasmania—it makes sleeping much easier.)