4. It's a final year project. Sorry, but this guy's just an undergraduate student, no offense but I find it highly unlikely he can come up with something superior to X, QT and GTK (all of which this system supposedly replaces) in a year of work.
Yeah, well twenty years ago, I was two months away from being conceived, and I'd already programmed three operating systems which could run both Linux and Windows binaries, an office suite capable of opening Word files, and a webbrowser!
I believe the problem is that it's trying to mount DevFS while the root partition is still mounted read-only, and I think the solution is to use an initrd (initial ramdisk). The 2.4.20 kernel that comes with Lindows 4 uses an initrd, and it of course works. I need to try building an initrd kernel soon.
When I accidentally crossgraded from Gentoo Linux to Debian GNU/Linux (because of a now-patched bug in Morphix 0.4), I had this problem. The solution was simply to have DevFS mounted automatically at boot (there's a kernel option for it).
3. VGRS shall not in any way attempt to warehouse, or register domain names in its own right other than through an ICANN-accredited registrar, except for names designated for operational purposes in compliance with Section 24 of the Registry Agreement. VGRS will certify to ICANN every six months that it is abiding by this commitment.
I converted to Linux for personal use because I couldn't afford a licence for Windows. I now can't go back to Windows because I need the freedom of having the source to apps I want to change available. That's also why I prefer Gentoo et FreeBSD to Debian et Red Hat.
I was using a form of hyperbole. Both 'everyone' and 'everyone in my area' contain the word 'everyone'. I said 'Addmitedly, this situation differs from area to area'. I'm talking about what's relevant to me and other people in my situation.
2) An operating system controlled by a government is eventually going to be oppressive and restrictive.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, owned by the Commonwealth Government of Australia, has recently been criticised of being biased. *Against* the Government.
AIM has a comfortable lead, MSN and Yahoo are fighting it out for 2nd place.
Read my post again. I mentioned this varies from region to region. The only (two) people I know that use AIM are not from around my area. The only person I know that uses Yahoo! also uses AIM and ICQ and MSNM. Abusing your monopoly to get another monopoly in a region is the same evil as abusing your monopoly to get a region in a large area.
This wouldn't bother me if I could just tell people to use AIM to talk to me because everyone else does. But I can't, because everyone else use MSNM, and I don't want to have to run Windows.
One thing all you people forget is that Microsoft abused their monopoly. I can remember a few years ago, everyone used ICQ. Microsoft starts putting MSNM into Windows. These days, everyone uses MSNM. Addmitedly, this situation differs from area to area, but I can't replace all my friends here in Melbourne with friends in NY just because they use AIM because NY is in a totally different country...
This is no different to Netscape. (Actually, it is, but it's worse, because there are free and suprerior offerings around, but Microsoft still wins out.)
And Dreamweaver is particularly transparent? How about Windows (until you know what one is)? Excel? If you have a problem with 'The GIMP', call it 'The GNU Image Manipulation Program'. That's much more descriptive than 'Photoshop'. Do you buy photos from Photoshop? --That's what it sounds like to me./. mods, please stop modding these posts up. They aren't interesting and insightful: they're repeats.
Re:Eye Candy
on
GTK+ TTY Port
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's interesting that once the flashy grapics is stripped away, today's user interface looks (and functions?) basically the same as yesterdays. Perhaps much of what we call 'advances in user interface' is just eye candy, or am I being deceived by appearances?
No, that's more or less right. Back in the 80s there were more advanced user interfaces than today. It's quite a pity Microsoft and Macintosh had to win out.
Hard drive, actually. (They're only disc if the normal form you handle them in is cicular. The disc in floppies is only removed from the casing when it breaks.)
And 'recognise' is validly spelt in England and America, so we should use that too?:P
(/me is, though staunchly in favor of spelling -or (color),* -ise (realise), -yse (analyse) -re (centre), -am (program),** -ogue (dialogue, but not dialog box).***)
*I would appreciate it if you who used -our would recognise when to use -our and when to use -or. 'Colourize' makes no sense whatsoever and is ugly. Most dictionaries worth however much you paid for them shouldn't include it. 'Colourise' makes some sense (but most dictionaries worth paying for shouldn't include it), but 'colorise' makes slightly more (and -ise-spelling dictionaries should have it). 'Colorize' is just ugly, but makes sense (perhaps the most sense, but it's too ugly to use).
**Note to all you evil Australians who insist on using misspelling the word as 'programme'. You aren't showing how unamerican you are. When English was exported here, 'program' was the correct spelling in England too...
***And compact disc (because it's circular), but floppy disk (because it's square). Not to mention grey and tyre.
That said, after you've gone though the full install... you will have learned a LOT more about how Linux works than you will from a text based installer.
Nonesense. I use Gentoo. I learnt most of what I know of Linux from my Slackware days before Gentoo, so maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm almost certain that installing Gentoo doesn't teach you all that much. You know mostly what you have installed, but you don't learn of the significance of the various packages when you emerge system or run the bootstrap script. You don't even now how to./configure --help | less;./configure [desired options] && make && make install!
Right. So what they did was a study of how Windows/ME and Windows/2000 (and maybe a few Windows/95) users acclimatized to W/XP or to KDE.
Which makes sense, given that people will be moving from WinNT4/95/98* to XP or Linux.
*I'm assuming that a lot of them were NT4/95 people because these are the OSes that people used to use that Microsoft is saying they want sell. I haven't read the complete report. Not speaking German.
Here's a challenge: Go to a college computer lab... and ask random students if they've heard of Linux.... Then ask if they've considered switching to it. Be sure to tell them that some distributions of Linux can be quite easy to use. It won't matter... You may be surprised by what they tell you. And I guarantee games will be on the menu (in the majority of cases, anyhow).
There's an incredible problem with that test, games aside. Most students in a computer lab who've heard of Linux who don't use it already, in my experience, will have heard about it because they've been forced to use it for Uni. By ssh or telnet. X will be a foreign concept to them. So they'll think of Linux like they do DOS. And why should they have to go back to a CLI if they don't have to?
(One other problem with Linux, though, is that there's distros for the power user, distros for the beginner user, but no distros for the intermediate user who wants to be able to change anything but doesn't want to have to use the CLI. And that is a valid group of people.)
I'd be more interested in seeing a study in which half the group tried it on GNU/Linux,KDE first then on Windows, and the other half, vice versa.
Why? How many totally nave people are there that are likely to start using a computer, KDE, Windows XP, or otherwise? Most people have used Windows boxes. Those that haven't aren't that likely to start to, and will probably be full of people who would resent being made to, so I doubt they'd exactly volunteer to be in a study about it...
I wonder, did they consider experience with Windows 9x as _no_ experience with Windows XP?
I imagine so. Most people who would start using Windows XP or KDE for the first time have probably learnt Windows 9x, so as unfortunate as it may be, this should be an assumed knowledge.
I was thinking about it, and one comment I would have is the [comments] don't actually say what they're linking too, only what kind of content there is. Links should, and I know I don't always obey this but I will eventually, actually say what they are. Then you begin to get long things like [(dummy) etext on rabid donkeys] and by that stage, you've lost the advantage of it, and might just as well have said that you should read the (dummy) re-hashed etext on rabid donkeys, and any advantage you might still have had you've totally lost, because that's what you would've (should've) said in the first place.
Hmm... actually, you make a good point. Usually when someone does something like that, they do things like this[1], which is incredibly annoying and only removes any sort of continuity. I've seen that manner of linkage done too many times on webpages (once is too many, but I've seen it a lot more than once).
[1]: http://www.example.com/ (So you can understand why I hated it so much.)
But I might consider using it. But I'm not sure that I'd have much use: My webpage (which I'll accessiblise and fix up (not everything there is linked too) soonish), I think, normally either makes it clear what I'm linking too or links to things within my site. (And it probably isn't especially important; it's merely an information repository that most people will never look at; some will look at it once, and a handful will come back later.)
readability is decreased by highlighting many phrases as inline anchortext (better to isolate the links at the end of the sentence or paragraph, imho)
That is without a doubt a matter of opinion. I know you've said that, but I still feel like presenting my reason for believing the opposite.
Basically, separating the link from what it refers to is incredibly bad. It makes it harder to work out what it's referring to. It might become somewhat useless.
I realise and understand that Metafilter-style let's-mark-every-other-word-as-a-link can be annoying, destracting, useless and stupid. Especially when you're picking random words and linking to related sites when it could be better done by listing your resounces. However, this should not make you want to remove every single inline link.
If you're referring to an organisation or source of information, it's very useful only helpful to put it there.
So umm... I'm very bad at having debates when I have an actual point to prove and am not just arguing out of my arse on topics of the universe. But I think I might've got my message across...
If you find any inline links to be too intrusive, just set your user agent to underline them in the same color as the text around them. or make them italic. or purple. or something. Your useragent does let you do that, doesn't it?
What I don't understand is why so many/.-ers hate it so much. Just because it's not GNU/Flash?
As far as I'm concerned, GNU, SchmeeNU (or GNU, Schmnoo).
I hate Flash because so many webdesigners think it's an alternative to HTML. Navigating through poorly-designed Flash-based websites when the Flash offers no advantage over HTML is very annoying. Look ma, I can reimplement scrollbars! Except that mine look so much cooler, except that you don't need to click, but you can't choose how fast you want to scroll, it's slow as hell or nothing!
And SVG beats Flash because it can be mixed into the same page as HTML so everything works normally, except it's a better kind of normal.
They arn't building these things with the intent of dual boot, just doesn't make sense to worry about something 0.01% of those who buy one will do. Why not make it nicer for the 99.99 percent that will use it like normal.
Yes, but it makes more sense to make 100% happy then 99.99% happy and 0.01% unhappy.
Also to other, I don't think any PC maker has included a straight off the shelf version of windows in nearly a decade.
The version of Windows XP Home I got on my Dell laptop (less than a week old) didn't have the drivers pre-installed, which makes it close enough to off-the-shelf for me. But one thing it didn't do was overwrite my Linux partitions.
Slashdot Mirror
4. It's a final year project. Sorry, but this guy's just an undergraduate student, no offense but I find it highly unlikely he can come up with something superior to X, QT and GTK (all of which this system supposedly replaces) in a year of work.
Didn't X start as something like that though?
Yeah, well twenty years ago, I was two months away from being conceived, and I'd already programmed three operating systems which could run both Linux and Windows binaries, an office suite capable of opening Word files, and a webbrowser!
I believe the problem is that it's trying to mount DevFS while the root partition is still mounted read-only, and I think the solution is to use an initrd (initial ramdisk). The 2.4.20 kernel that comes with Lindows 4 uses an initrd, and it of course works. I need to try building an initrd kernel soon.
When I accidentally crossgraded from Gentoo Linux to Debian GNU/Linux (because of a now-patched bug in Morphix 0.4), I had this problem. The solution was simply to have DevFS mounted automatically at boot (there's a kernel option for it).
(From Appendix I)
perhaps? I'm not really sure if that's a problem, but it seems to my naive self to be.
Sudgestion too mod's: before ewe mod people up as funny, make shore they've learn't two spell punctuate.
I converted to Linux for personal use because I couldn't afford a licence for Windows. I now can't go back to Windows because I need the freedom of having the source to apps I want to change available. That's also why I prefer Gentoo et FreeBSD to Debian et Red Hat.
I was using a form of hyperbole. Both 'everyone' and 'everyone in my area' contain the word 'everyone'. I said 'Addmitedly, this situation differs from area to area'. I'm talking about what's relevant to me and other people in my situation.
2) An operating system controlled by a government is eventually going to be oppressive and restrictive.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, owned by the Commonwealth Government of Australia, has recently been criticised of being biased. *Against* the Government.
AIM has a comfortable lead, MSN and Yahoo are fighting it out for 2nd place.
Read my post again. I mentioned this varies from region to region. The only (two) people I know that use AIM are not from around my area. The only person I know that uses Yahoo! also uses AIM and ICQ and MSNM. Abusing your monopoly to get another monopoly in a region is the same evil as abusing your monopoly to get a region in a large area.
This wouldn't bother me if I could just tell people to use AIM to talk to me because everyone else does. But I can't, because everyone else use MSNM, and I don't want to have to run Windows.
They do support a huge IM network.
When you get into your position by abusing your monopoly, you get what comes to you.
I don't see anything wrong with this.
One thing all you people forget is that Microsoft abused their monopoly. I can remember a few years ago, everyone used ICQ. Microsoft starts putting MSNM into Windows. These days, everyone uses MSNM. Addmitedly, this situation differs from area to area, but I can't replace all my friends here in Melbourne with friends in NY just because they use AIM because NY is in a totally different country...
This is no different to Netscape. (Actually, it is, but it's worse, because there are free and suprerior offerings around, but Microsoft still wins out.)
And Dreamweaver is particularly transparent? How about Windows (until you know what one is)? Excel? If you have a problem with 'The GIMP', call it 'The GNU Image Manipulation Program'. That's much more descriptive than 'Photoshop'. /. mods, please stop modding these posts up. They aren't interesting and insightful: they're repeats.
Do you buy photos from Photoshop? --That's what it sounds like to me.
It's interesting that once the flashy grapics is stripped away, today's user interface looks (and functions?) basically the same as yesterdays. Perhaps much of what we call 'advances in user interface' is just eye candy, or am I being deceived by appearances?
No, that's more or less right. Back in the 80s there were more advanced user interfaces than today. It's quite a pity Microsoft and Macintosh had to win out.
Hard drive, actually. (They're only disc if the normal form you handle them in is cicular. The disc in floppies is only removed from the casing when it breaks.)
And 'recognise' is validly spelt in England and America, so we should use that too? :P
(/me is, though staunchly in favor of spelling -or (color),* -ise (realise), -yse (analyse) -re (centre), -am (program),** -ogue (dialogue, but not dialog box).***)
*I would appreciate it if you who used -our would recognise when to use -our and when to use -or. 'Colourize' makes no sense whatsoever and is ugly. Most dictionaries worth however much you paid for them shouldn't include it. 'Colourise' makes some sense (but most dictionaries worth paying for shouldn't include it), but 'colorise' makes slightly more (and -ise-spelling dictionaries should have it). 'Colorize' is just ugly, but makes sense (perhaps the most sense, but it's too ugly to use).
**Note to all you evil Australians who insist on using misspelling the word as 'programme'. You aren't showing how unamerican you are. When English was exported here, 'program' was the correct spelling in England too...
***And compact disc (because it's circular), but floppy disk (because it's square). Not to mention grey and tyre.
That said, after you've gone though the full install ... you will have learned a LOT more about how Linux works than you will from a text based installer.
./configure --help | less; ./configure [desired options] && make && make install!
Nonesense. I use Gentoo. I learnt most of what I know of Linux from my Slackware days before Gentoo, so maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm almost certain that installing Gentoo doesn't teach you all that much. You know mostly what you have installed, but you don't learn of the significance of the various packages when you emerge system or run the bootstrap script. You don't even now how to
Right. So what they did was a study of how Windows/ME and Windows/2000
(and maybe a few Windows/95) users acclimatized to W/XP or to KDE.
Which makes sense, given that people will be moving from WinNT4/95/98* to XP or Linux.
*I'm assuming that a lot of them were NT4/95 people because these are the OSes that people used to use that Microsoft is saying they want sell. I haven't read the complete report. Not speaking German.
Here's a challenge: Go to a college computer lab ... and ask random students if they've heard of Linux. ... Then ask if they've considered switching to it. Be sure to tell them that some distributions of Linux can be quite easy to use. It won't matter... You may be surprised by what they tell you. And I guarantee games will be on the menu (in the majority of cases, anyhow).
There's an incredible problem with that test, games aside. Most students in a computer lab who've heard of Linux who don't use it already, in my experience, will have heard about it because they've been forced to use it for Uni. By ssh or telnet. X will be a foreign concept to them. So they'll think of Linux like they do DOS. And why should they have to go back to a CLI if they don't have to?
(One other problem with Linux, though, is that there's distros for the power user, distros for the beginner user, but no distros for the intermediate user who wants to be able to change anything but doesn't want to have to use the CLI. And that is a valid group of people.)
I'd be more interested in seeing a study in which half the group tried it on GNU/Linux,KDE first then on Windows, and the other half, vice versa.
Why? How many totally nave people are there that are likely to start using a computer, KDE, Windows XP, or otherwise? Most people have used Windows boxes. Those that haven't aren't that likely to start to, and will probably be full of people who would resent being made to, so I doubt they'd exactly volunteer to be in a study about it...
I wonder, did they consider experience with Windows 9x as _no_ experience with Windows XP?
I imagine so. Most people who would start using Windows XP or KDE for the first time have probably learnt Windows 9x, so as unfortunate as it may be, this should be an assumed knowledge.
Eh? Why not have them all do it on each?
Because then they'd be testing how KDE users acclimatised to Windows XP (or XP users to KDE), which wasn't the point of the study.
bigger samples
People have a habit of costing money.
better planning
I didn't see anything about planning in the article. I imagine it'll be in the report.
more detailed reporting of the results
From the article: The Relevantive usability study will be available for download in English in a few days. I imagine they'll be something in that.
I was thinking about it, and one comment I would have is the [comments] don't actually say what they're linking too, only what kind of content there is. Links should, and I know I don't always obey this but I will eventually, actually say what they are. Then you begin to get long things like [(dummy) etext on rabid donkeys] and by that stage, you've lost the advantage of it, and might just as well have said that you should read the (dummy) re-hashed etext on rabid donkeys, and any advantage you might still have had you've totally lost, because that's what you would've (should've) said in the first place.
Hmm... actually, you make a good point. Usually when someone does something like that, they do things like this[1], which is incredibly annoying and only removes any sort of continuity. I've seen that manner of linkage done too many times on webpages (once is too many, but I've seen it a lot more than once).
[1]: http://www.example.com/ (So you can understand why I hated it so much.)
But I might consider using it. But I'm not sure that I'd have much use: My webpage (which I'll accessiblise and fix up (not everything there is linked too) soonish), I think, normally either makes it clear what I'm linking too or links to things within my site. (And it probably isn't especially important; it's merely an information repository that most people will never look at; some will look at it once, and a handful will come back later.)
readability is decreased by highlighting many phrases as inline anchortext (better to isolate the links at the end of the sentence or paragraph, imho)
That is without a doubt a matter of opinion. I know you've said that, but I still feel like presenting my reason for believing the opposite.
Basically, separating the link from what it refers to is incredibly bad. It makes it harder to work out what it's referring to. It might become somewhat useless.
I realise and understand that Metafilter-style let's-mark-every-other-word-as-a-link can be annoying, destracting, useless and stupid. Especially when you're picking random words and linking to related sites when it could be better done by listing your resounces. However, this should not make you want to remove every single inline link.
If you're referring to an organisation or source of information, it's very useful only helpful to put it there.
So umm... I'm very bad at having debates when I have an actual point to prove and am not just arguing out of my arse on topics of the universe. But I think I might've got my message across...
If you find any inline links to be too intrusive, just set your user agent to underline them in the same color as the text around them. or make them italic. or purple. or something. Your useragent does let you do that, doesn't it?
What I don't understand is why so many /.-ers hate it so much. Just because it's not GNU/Flash?
As far as I'm concerned, GNU, SchmeeNU (or GNU, Schmnoo).
I hate Flash because so many webdesigners think it's an alternative to HTML. Navigating through poorly-designed Flash-based websites when the Flash offers no advantage over HTML is very annoying. Look ma, I can reimplement scrollbars! Except that mine look so much cooler, except that you don't need to click, but you can't choose how fast you want to scroll, it's slow as hell or nothing!
And SVG beats Flash because it can be mixed into the same page as HTML so everything works normally, except it's a better kind of normal.
They arn't building these things with the intent of dual boot, just doesn't make sense to worry about something 0.01% of those who buy one will do. Why not make it nicer for the 99.99 percent that will use it like normal.
Yes, but it makes more sense to make 100% happy then 99.99% happy and 0.01% unhappy.
Also to other, I don't think any PC maker has included a straight off the shelf version of windows in nearly a decade.
The version of Windows XP Home I got on my Dell laptop (less than a week old) didn't have the drivers pre-installed, which makes it close enough to off-the-shelf for me. But one thing it didn't do was overwrite my Linux partitions.