You say: "All the great GUIs in the world will not make Linux easy to use. "
Then you go on to list a number of GUI-advantages that BeOS, Windows and Mac has.
All those wizards and the likes, are just GUI-frontends for more complex stuff, and Linux can have them as well.
Eazel is adressing one concern (poor filemanager). Helix is adressing others (poor mail/productivity -clients). Both gives the user an easy and good GUI-frontend to something that can already be done. The Gnome-project adresses even more concerns, and if you've seen the wizard for Palm-connectivity, you'll se how far Gnome has progressed. Gnome 2.0 will be powerful, flexible and easy to use.
That the car-analogy is not good when it comes to software. Even though you might be able to figure out how a car operates, it is still very expensive to copy it. Besides, it is also much easier to find out if your competitor uses your copyrighted work.
By releasing the source code, what's to stop a competitor of from using it in their closed source-project? It will be rather impossible to prove it. Because of this, open source is not always the right decision. If you are afraid of other people stealing your ideas, open source is not for you.
And now for something completely different: the introduction seemed to talk about open APIs. Open APIs is _not_ the same as "open source". Microsoft should be forced to open up all their APIs to give competitors a fair chance. It would however be difficult to know wether MS has opened all of their APIs, or just some. It is like saying: "give me all your cash", and then _not_ strip search the person afterwards.
And if what you say is correct, they haven't done it the "proper" way. I still think they will.. if it runs through emulation right now, it's just normal (bad) corporate policy to get something out the door.
AFAIK Corel Word Perfect Office 2000 is in fact "native".
Wine has two ways of operating: 1. The way most people know of, running as an emulator. 2. Operating as a library for native compilation of programs originally written for the win32 api.
The whole point of wine, isn't point 1. That is just sort of a side effect. Wine is written as an API to act as a drop in replacement for MS's closed source win32-api.
Corel has modified their officesuite to allow for native compilation with the wine libraries.
If someone creates a program for the wine-api instead of the original win32-api, the application should work on windows, and all platforms with the winelib available. It will be Linuxnative, and Wine will be more like GTK and QT, than an emulator.
I made some remarks, stating that the original poster didn't have a clue, concerning OO-programming. OO is _not_ directly connected to not being compiled. (Although java sortof is).
I also made a comment about java being an interpreted language, and that this was a problem. Is this _really_ worth a minus one, redundant?
I'm disappointed by this. As a former javaprogrammer, still enjoying the language, I feel it is fair to state that having it as a compiled language would make it much more usable as a generic programming language. The native-compilers that exist for Linux seem promising, but not at all finished yet.
..that further standardization is a must? I'm not talking about ditching either KDE or Gnome, although I'm more in favor of Gnome.
I'm talking about: 1. Making KDE and GNOME work together, being able to drag and drop to eachother, and sharing objects. 2. Making KDE-apps look like Gnome-apps when run under Gnome, and vica versa. Some sort of QT 2.0/GTK theming-schema, that contains information about what QT-theme corresponds to what GTK theme. This would make it possible to make the fact that they aren't really the same transparent to the user. Think about being able to mix and match KDE and Gnome apps as you want, without sacrificing much of the interoperability.
This is truly necessary, IMHO, because both DE's have some great applications, that I want to use without loosing funcionality, and without switching DE.
I have heard something about 1. at least. Which is good, but do you have any further information as a GNOME-developer?
.. than the NVidia-cards. Sure, you can get the NVidia Quadro's, but it still is pretty middle-range.
Think about a big 8x + CPU workstation from SUN with a rackmountet 3dfx graphics system from Quantum. It may not sell in large quantities, but the margins sure are enormous on these beasts.
Perhaps 3dfx should realize that their current offerings cannot compete with NVidias in the middle-range market, and keep the Voodoo4 and 5 as low-end, ditch the Voodoo6, and consentrate on really large grahical systems, with 10+ VSA-chips. That's Voodoo Scalable Arcitecture alright.
I hope 3dfx can regain some of their momentum, as I have a rather nostalgic feel about them. NVidia's offerings are _much_ better though, and ATI is looking good. If VSA had reach products 1/2 year ago, they might have been a success in the home and OEM-market. Now it'll probably still stay afloat in the low-end market, but get killed in the mid-end.
This is not a matter of free speech. It is a different law altogether. If someone reproduced a book, in it's entirety here at Slashdot, most authors would be pretty pissed off. And rightly so. Free speech is about everyones right to comment something, not about everyones right to _copy_ something. That I feel, is the place where most free-speech-zealots go the wrong direction. I _do_ agree with almost everything they stand for, but not with this particular point. Besides, I've always felt that if you go just a tiny bit too far, your otherwise legitimate claims will have much less chance of being heard.
Please Andover... remove the selected postings. Microsoft may be "the big bad wolf", but copyright infringement is not the way to go.
Slashdot has always (at least partially) been a big defender of the GPL. The danger is that this infringement, ironically endangers the GPL, because it would be NULL and void if copyright-laws are not upheld.
Microsoft has done some distasteful things when you look at the kerberos case.. but breaking laws is not the correct way to counter this.
English could use a good word for "free" as in free speech. In norwegian we have the word "fri", pronounced a bit like "free", and it isn't confused with "gratis".
Since you have the word "gratis" already, it may seem like it has been a distinction in the past, but it has been wiped away using the word "free" in a way too wide for it's original meaning.
I feel this discussion is rather like the digital/analog watch discussion.
Sometimes we geeks are rather quick at dismissing older technology. We've all heard it: - newspapers are dead - printed books are dead - analog watches are dead
Etc..
The truth I feel, is always somewhere in the middle. Searchable computer-manuals are great. But having to open up a browser to read instructions or references is not the same as just having it on paper. Not everyone has dual-head display, and I'd like to let my work have total focus on the desktop. Virtual desktops are OK, but I really like a printed manual. Besides, some things will always need separate manuals. How much good does a PDF-manual do you, when need help trying to get your OS to run properly?
That's great, I need the the PDF-manuals to get the OS working properly, but if I could read the PDF-manuals, I wouldn't need them. Talk about the chicken and the egg...
Printed manuals is much, much better for newbies. Some application could probably make it with just browsable manuals on disk, but not all of them. For now, a good printed manual is actually a reason why someone buys an application instead of just pirating it, or downloading it legally (when we're talking about OSS).
AMD is short because it is just sold out. Intel is sold out because it can't produce what it has promised.
Think about it. Intel releases a 1GHz PIII a few days after the release of the 1GHz Athlon Yet, AMD releases the 900 and 950 MHz at the same time, because the 1GHz is no abnormal stretch for them. Intel on the other hand, only releases the 1GHz PIII, with a gap from 800MHz to 1000MHz.. Why? Obviously, they really can't provide a 1GHz CPU.. they only "pretend" to, by taking incredibly good production CPUs (1 in a thousand), to market as 1GHz to keep up with AMD. They can't really provide them in mass production, and so they just now release the 833 and 866 MHz cpu's. Who is better off? AMD who has underestimated their sales, or Intel who just isn't able to provide what the market is asking, even if they try their best?
That is the names and identities of suspects, at least before they are arrested. I've heard people argue that "the public has a right to know". As far as I'm concerned, they don't. You could be under investigation for a crime you most certainly did not commit, and even the police agrees, but people still regard you differently, because you were a suspect. When the case goes to trial, you could release the necessary information.
I'm also very much against trials on tv. Reporters can be present, and take notes, and report later, but the TV-cameras makes the whole trial a farse.
It doesn't support OpenGL as far as I see. Only Glide and Direct3d. This means that cross-plattform development is much more difficult. We have Glide on Linux, but then the game would only be able to run with Voodoo-cards. The Quake2 engine is GPL isn't it? And the Crystal Space engine, also looks good.
How on earth, do they think they can get people to return this? This is all just a show, to let Sony escape the wrath of the MPAA. This extra-CD will probably exist on the Net, long after Sony stops shipping them.
By tweaking the PS2-specs, so that the old PS2 will be incompatible with newer Playstation2 -games, they could at least in theory force people to return their old ones, for the new. Of course. There will probably be black market modchips that makes the old PS2 maintain compatibility. As for the tweaking, Microsoft has done it for years, so why not Sony?
They must have coded exceptionally badly, and have to rewrite most about everything. It has been in development almost longer than Win2k, and is now almost forgotten, by all but the most die-hard-fans. It should have been out two years ago, and now it's delayed "yet again". This will be a serious fiasco, as games being in development for only a year will be released before this one.
stability can of course be achieved in other operating systems than Unix. And a system does not have to be stable to be called Unix. It is just a common trait for most Unixes, that they are very stable. Userexperience isn't everything either. It could be argued that MacOs X is a variant of Unix, because of the kernel, and Posix-compatibility. But the user experience would probably be very different. What makes Unix Unix, is probably conforming to standards (Posix), and the basic architecture. The philosophy ("everything is a file"). You could emulate the Unixinterface trough a sort of virtual machine in Windows NT. Windows NT would then feel like Unix, but it really isn't. The virtualOS probably IS:-)
This is just right out of the top of my memory, so I could be mistaken, but as far as I remember you have to pay someone (The Open Group?) for the right to call something Unix. It involves certification. I've heard that it needs to have evolved from the UNIX-codebase, but this doesn't make very much sense, as it would be impossible to write a new Unix from scratch, but still conforming to the Posix-standards, and being source-compatible with the tradional Unix-variants. Perhaps someone can enlighten me here, but would it be possible to pay that organization for certification of Linux? Not that I think it would matter, because Linux is now bigger than Unix anyway, and it seems very important for other Unixvariants to include some sort of compatibility layer to be able to run Linuxbinaries. I did think it mattered 2 years ago though.
If you create a human, you don't have to make the source public, unless you DISTRIBUTE it. Either selling it, renting it, or giving it away. This probably means we need the source for hookers, slaves, or married couples. Perhaps also media-prostitutes, consultants, and adopted children. But you don't have to give away YOUR copy, just let other people clone you.
I can hear all the "anonymous cowards" screaming: "I want my copy of Natalie Portman, and hot grits down my pants".
One of the BIG advantages of the consoles, is that games-creators know excactly what kind of platform they are working with. The playstation is a playstation. For the PC-platform, you have to consider a lot, even with good APIs. You have to decide between everyone being able to play it, or being really cutting edge.
I actually DO have an SMP-box, which I have run most nightly releases since M13 on. (dual celeron on BP6) It works very well, it's still not ready for release, and it isn't even ready for beta. However, it WILL be ready for beta when it ships as beta.
You have obviously not tried any of the later nightly releases. It is already on par with Netscape 4.72 when it comes to stability, and it isn't even beta yet. It is _very_ usable, and you somehow imply that Mozilla/netscape 6.0 won't comply with the standards. This is just plain wrong. AND... this is an announcement of a "beta". If you do truly mission-critical stuff, you would never use a beta. The whole concept of beta, means not finished. It is allowed to contain bugs. However... beta means a very usable, if not incredible stable release, and Netscape 4.72 is neither, so Netscape 6.0 beta would probably be A LOT better for us Linuxusers. When it comes to windowsusers: stick with your IE 5.x for now, but when Netscape 6.0 is finished, upgrade. The standars-complience will be better, and the browser faster and lighter.
I appreciate your "cold shower" kind of thinking, but it just goes to far, and ends up being something that could have come out of Microsoft.
I agree that the hype has been great, but the progress made by the mozilla team is incredible. The only thing that keeps Netscape 4.72 on my harddrive right now, is that Mozilla still doesn't support java. It should be included well before release though.
Slashdot Mirror
You say:
"All the great GUIs in the world will not
make Linux easy to use. "
Then you go on to list a number of GUI-advantages
that BeOS, Windows and Mac has.
All those wizards and the likes, are just GUI-frontends for more complex stuff, and Linux
can have them as well.
Eazel is adressing one concern (poor filemanager).
Helix is adressing others (poor mail/productivity
-clients).
Both gives the user an easy and good GUI-frontend
to something that can already be done.
The Gnome-project adresses even more concerns,
and if you've seen the wizard for Palm-connectivity, you'll se how far Gnome has
progressed.
Gnome 2.0 will be powerful, flexible and easy to use.
That the car-analogy is not good when it comes
to software.
Even though you might be able to figure out
how a car operates, it is still very expensive
to copy it.
Besides, it is also much easier to find out
if your competitor uses your copyrighted work.
By releasing the source code, what's to stop
a competitor of from using it in their closed
source-project?
It will be rather impossible to prove it.
Because of this, open source is not always the
right decision.
If you are afraid of other people stealing your
ideas, open source is not for you.
And now for something completely different:
the introduction seemed to talk about
open APIs. Open APIs is _not_ the same as
"open source".
Microsoft should be forced to open up all their
APIs to give competitors a fair chance.
It would however be difficult to know wether
MS has opened all of their APIs, or just some.
It is like saying: "give me all your cash", and
then _not_ strip search the person afterwards.
And if what you say is correct, they
haven't done it the "proper" way.
I still think they will..
if it runs through emulation right now,
it's just normal (bad) corporate policy
to get something out the door.
AFAIK Corel Word Perfect Office 2000 is
in fact "native".
Wine has two ways of operating:
1. The way most people know of, running as an emulator.
2. Operating as a library for native compilation
of programs originally written for the win32 api.
The whole point of wine, isn't point 1. That
is just sort of a side effect.
Wine is written as an API to act as a drop
in replacement for MS's closed source win32-api.
Corel has modified their officesuite to allow
for native compilation with the wine libraries.
If someone creates a program for the wine-api
instead of the original win32-api, the application
should work on windows, and all platforms with
the winelib available.
It will be Linuxnative, and Wine will be more
like GTK and QT, than an emulator.
I made some remarks, stating that the original
poster didn't have a clue, concerning OO-programming.
OO is _not_ directly connected to not being compiled. (Although java sortof is).
I also made a comment about java being an interpreted language, and that this was a problem.
Is this _really_ worth a minus one, redundant?
I'm disappointed by this. As a former javaprogrammer, still enjoying the language, I feel it is fair to state that having it as a
compiled language would make it much more usable
as a generic programming language.
The native-compilers that exist for Linux seem
promising, but not at all finished yet.
Will the patch for 2.3.99-pre5 work for this one?
..that further standardization is a must?
I'm not talking about ditching either KDE
or Gnome, although I'm more in favor of Gnome.
I'm talking about:
1. Making KDE and GNOME work together, being
able to drag and drop to eachother, and sharing
objects.
2. Making KDE-apps look like Gnome-apps when
run under Gnome, and vica versa.
Some sort of QT 2.0/GTK theming-schema, that contains information about what QT-theme corresponds to what GTK theme.
This would make it possible to make the fact that
they aren't really the same transparent to the
user.
Think about being able to mix and match KDE and
Gnome apps as you want, without sacrificing much
of the interoperability.
This is truly necessary, IMHO, because both
DE's have some great applications, that I want
to use without loosing funcionality, and without
switching DE.
I have heard something about 1. at least. Which
is good, but do you have any further information
as a GNOME-developer?
.. than the NVidia-cards.
Sure, you can get the NVidia Quadro's, but
it still is pretty middle-range.
Think about a big 8x + CPU workstation from SUN
with a rackmountet 3dfx graphics system from
Quantum.
It may not sell in large quantities, but the
margins sure are enormous on these beasts.
Perhaps 3dfx should realize that their current offerings cannot compete with NVidias in the middle-range market, and keep the Voodoo4 and 5
as low-end, ditch the Voodoo6, and consentrate
on really large grahical systems, with 10+ VSA-chips. That's Voodoo Scalable Arcitecture alright.
I hope 3dfx can regain some of their momentum, as
I have a rather nostalgic feel about them.
NVidia's offerings are _much_ better though, and
ATI is looking good.
If VSA had reach products 1/2 year ago, they might
have been a success in the home and OEM-market.
Now it'll probably still stay afloat in the low-end market, but get killed in the mid-end.
This is not a matter of free speech.
It is a different law altogether.
If someone reproduced a book,
in it's entirety here at Slashdot, most authors
would be pretty pissed off. And rightly so.
Free speech is about everyones right to comment
something, not about everyones right to _copy_
something.
That I feel, is the place where most free-speech-zealots go the wrong direction.
I _do_ agree with almost everything they stand for, but not with this particular point.
Besides, I've always felt that if you go just a
tiny bit too far, your otherwise legitimate claims
will have much less chance of being heard.
Please Andover... remove the selected postings.
Microsoft may be "the big bad wolf", but
copyright infringement is not the way to go.
Slashdot has always (at least partially) been
a big defender of the GPL.
The danger is that this infringement, ironically
endangers the GPL, because it would be NULL and
void if copyright-laws are not upheld.
Microsoft has done some distasteful things when
you look at the kerberos case.. but breaking
laws is not the correct way to counter this.
English could use a good word for
"free" as in free speech.
In norwegian we have the word "fri",
pronounced a bit like "free", and it
isn't confused with "gratis".
Since you have the word "gratis" already,
it may seem like it has been a distinction
in the past, but it has been wiped away using
the word "free" in a way too wide for it's
original meaning.
I feel this discussion is rather like
the digital/analog watch discussion.
Sometimes we geeks are rather quick at
dismissing older technology.
We've all heard it:
- newspapers are dead
- printed books are dead
- analog watches are dead
Etc..
The truth I feel, is always somewhere in the middle.
Searchable computer-manuals are great.
But having to open up a browser to read instructions or references is not the same
as just having it on paper.
Not everyone has dual-head display, and I'd like
to let my work have total focus on the desktop.
Virtual desktops are OK, but I really like a
printed manual.
Besides, some things will always need separate
manuals.
How much good does a PDF-manual do you, when
need help trying to get your OS to run properly?
That's great, I need the the PDF-manuals to
get the OS working properly, but if I could read
the PDF-manuals, I wouldn't need them.
Talk about the chicken and the egg...
Printed manuals is much, much better for newbies.
Some application could probably make it with
just browsable manuals on disk, but not all of them.
For now, a good printed manual is actually a reason why someone buys an application instead of
just pirating it, or downloading it legally (when we're talking about OSS).
AMD is short because it is just sold out.
Intel is sold out because it can't produce
what it has promised.
Think about it.
Intel releases a 1GHz PIII a few days after
the release of the 1GHz Athlon
Yet, AMD releases the 900 and 950 MHz at the same
time, because the 1GHz is no abnormal stretch for them.
Intel on the other hand, only releases the 1GHz PIII, with a gap from 800MHz to 1000MHz..
Why? Obviously, they really can't provide a 1GHz CPU.. they only "pretend" to, by taking incredibly
good production CPUs (1 in a thousand), to market
as 1GHz to keep up with AMD. They can't really
provide them in mass production, and so they
just now release the 833 and 866 MHz cpu's.
Who is better off? AMD who has underestimated their sales, or Intel who just isn't able to provide what the market is asking, even if they try their best?
That is the names and identities of suspects, at least before they are arrested.
I've heard people argue that "the public has a right to know".
As far as I'm concerned, they don't.
You could be under investigation for a crime you most certainly did not commit,
and even the police agrees, but people still regard you differently, because you were
a suspect. When the case goes to trial, you could release the necessary information.
I'm also very much against trials on tv. Reporters can be present, and take notes, and
report later, but the TV-cameras makes the whole trial a farse.
It doesn't support OpenGL as far as I see.
Only Glide and Direct3d.
This means that cross-plattform development
is much more difficult.
We have Glide on Linux, but then the game
would only be able to run with Voodoo-cards.
The Quake2 engine is GPL isn't it?
And the Crystal Space engine, also looks good.
How on earth, do they think they can get people
to return this?
This is all just a show, to let Sony escape
the wrath of the MPAA.
This extra-CD will probably exist on the Net,
long after Sony stops shipping them.
By tweaking the PS2-specs, so that the old
PS2 will be incompatible with newer Playstation2
-games, they could at least in theory force
people to return their old ones, for the new.
Of course. There will probably be black market
modchips that makes the old PS2 maintain
compatibility.
As for the tweaking, Microsoft has done it for
years, so why not Sony?
This slashdotposting is totally inappropriate then...
It seemed like a BIG deal, but really wasn't.
They must have coded exceptionally badly,
and have to rewrite most about everything.
It has been in development almost longer
than Win2k, and is now almost forgotten, by
all but the most die-hard-fans.
It should have been out two years ago, and
now it's delayed "yet again".
This will be a serious fiasco, as games being
in development for only a year will be released
before this one.
stability can of course be achieved in other :-)
operating systems than Unix.
And a system does not have to be stable to
be called Unix.
It is just a common trait for most Unixes, that
they are very stable.
Userexperience isn't everything either.
It could be argued that MacOs X is a variant
of Unix, because of the kernel, and Posix-compatibility.
But the user experience would probably be very
different.
What makes Unix Unix, is probably conforming
to standards (Posix), and the basic architecture.
The philosophy ("everything is a file").
You could emulate the Unixinterface trough a sort
of virtual machine in Windows NT.
Windows NT would then feel like Unix, but it
really isn't. The virtualOS probably IS
This is just right out of the top of my memory,
so I could be mistaken, but as far as I remember
you have to pay someone (The Open Group?)
for the right to call something Unix.
It involves certification.
I've heard that it needs to have evolved from
the UNIX-codebase, but this doesn't make very
much sense, as it would be impossible to
write a new Unix from scratch, but still conforming to the Posix-standards, and being
source-compatible with the tradional Unix-variants.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me here, but
would it be possible to pay that organization
for certification of Linux?
Not that I think it would matter, because Linux
is now bigger than Unix anyway, and it seems very
important for other Unixvariants to include some
sort of compatibility layer to be able to run
Linuxbinaries.
I did think it mattered 2 years ago though.
If you create a human, you don't have to make
the source public, unless you DISTRIBUTE it.
Either selling it, renting it, or giving it away.
This probably means we need the source for
hookers, slaves, or married couples.
Perhaps also media-prostitutes, consultants,
and adopted children.
But you don't have to give away YOUR copy, just
let other people clone you.
I can hear all the "anonymous cowards" screaming:
"I want my copy of Natalie Portman, and hot grits down my pants".
One of the BIG advantages of the consoles,
is that games-creators know excactly what kind
of platform they are working with.
The playstation is a playstation.
For the PC-platform, you have to consider a lot,
even with good APIs.
You have to decide between everyone being able
to play it, or being really cutting edge.
I actually DO have an SMP-box, which I have
run most nightly releases since M13 on.
(dual celeron on BP6)
It works very well, it's still not
ready for release, and it isn't even ready
for beta. However, it WILL be ready for beta
when it ships as beta.
You have obviously not tried any of the
later nightly releases. It is already
on par with Netscape 4.72 when it comes to
stability, and it isn't even beta yet.
It is _very_ usable, and you somehow imply that
Mozilla/netscape 6.0 won't comply with the standards.
This is just plain wrong.
AND... this is an announcement of a "beta".
If you do truly mission-critical stuff, you
would never use a beta.
The whole concept of beta, means not finished.
It is allowed to contain bugs.
However... beta means a very usable, if not
incredible stable release, and Netscape 4.72
is neither, so Netscape 6.0 beta would probably
be A LOT better for us Linuxusers.
When it comes to windowsusers:
stick with your IE 5.x for now, but when Netscape
6.0 is finished, upgrade.
The standars-complience will be better, and the
browser faster and lighter.
I appreciate your "cold shower" kind of thinking,
but it just goes to far, and ends up being something that could have come out of Microsoft.
I agree that the hype has been great, but the
progress made by the mozilla team is incredible.
The only thing that keeps Netscape 4.72 on my
harddrive right now, is that Mozilla still doesn't
support java. It should be included well before
release though.