with the GPL you're stating what you want to do with other people's code.
Not at all. The GPL states what other people can do with my code that I wrote. It is not a giveaway, it is not a free-for-all, it is not public domain. You want X, I want Y. If you're not willing to Y, then I'm not willing to X. It's a license, that's how it works.
"This is not 'Nam, Donnie. This is bowling. There are rules."
Christ, man, I just want to launch an app, and occasionally glance down at the laucher to see how much battery life I have. I don't want a "framework" that can do everything.
You don't want a desktop environment. You want Fluxbox. It's out there.
I'm not going to argue DEs with you, but I can report that the panel complaints you raise are fixed in 4.2.
Okay, maybe I'll argue a little. What the hell, it's Slashdot.
I use KDE 4 not for what it could be, but for what it is. Better. Kwin alone is so improved, so much faster, so much more feature-rich, that I'd be using KDE 4 if that were the only improvement. But it's not.
Plasma is a giant leap forward into the future of the desktop metaphor. It's light-years beyond anything anyone else is doing, and already more functional than kicker and kdesktop were. Koffice 2, bugs, weird layout and all, is the only place where any innovation is happening in office suites at all, anywhere by anyone.
On a more general level, the whole desktop just feels faster than KDE 3 ever was on this hardware. Yeah, really precise and objective measurement there, I know, but there it is. And it seems to get faster with every update, which God knows wasn't the case with KDE 3.
Do I have problems? Hell yes. Kontact likes to hang on start, and damned if I've figured it out yet. Last week something in my plasmarc was causing the entire desktop to hang on login, I never figured it out, had to blow away kontactrc since which it seems to be running fine. Amarok...well, I think you covered that.
I could go on with both pros and cons, but it's been hashed out to death around here already. Ultimately, my position is this: Yeah, there's problems. Some fairly glaring ones, still, that frustrate the hell out of me every day. But the pros are totally worth it. There have been "Goddammit" moments, but there have way more "Holy crap, that's awesome!" moments. Worth it.
And for cryin' out loud, somebody's got to take some risks here. Somebody's got to try to move forward even if hurts a little bit. God knows it ain't Gnome.
There are several other options for that functionality. For instance, I use the AWN dock in Gnome. I could also use Gimme or any one of several other solutions. I do not need a Gnome panel. I want it to go the hell away. I formerly had this option. This functionality has been removed. I'm working around it presently by having one panel in the upper-right corner that only contains the user switch applet and having it auto-hide. But I want it gone. Removing the gnome-panel package would presumably work but is not an option for me because this is a multi-user machine.
I can remove the panel in KDE 3 and 4. I can remove the panel in Fluxbox. I can't in Gnome because it insists on babysitting me. I find this to be abysmally stupid.
Dude, if my desktop won't let me remove panels, it is in the way. (Really, try it yourself. You cannot remove the last Gnome panel, which to my knowledge has long been the case. But in the version of Gnome that ships with Ubuntu 8.10, you can't even remove it from the startup programs.) Super lame.
And pc repair shops that know about linux and try to push it to their customers.... But this is unlikely to happen, because these shops make their money repairing broken windows installs, and linux would significantly decrease their revenue stream.
Not me. I make my about half my money converted b0rk3n Windows boxes to Ubuntu. I work with home users pretty much exclusively, and between "XP keeps getting pwnt" and "Vista is slow and ugly" I've been doing better and better.
Does it pinch my revenue stream? No, and I'll tell you why. First, I can charge more to convert a box than I can to fix a Windows install, both because it's typically more hours (converting files, custom setups, etc.) and because I'm actually adding value rather than simply fixing a problem. And second, word of mouth has been phenomenal, every customer feeds me one more.
What it does mean is that I have to have fairly high customer turnover, because once the job is done, it's pretty rare for the client to have another major problem. I don't have a problem with that, because god knows we're not running out of broken Windows boxes anytime soon.
It's pretty common in big box retailing to place a low-price product beneath or next to a higher-end product. There's a name for the practice but damned if I can remember it. Anyway, long story short, Wal Mart has never given a shit about moving those Linux boxes. They're on the shelf to help sell Wal Mart's other products.
Unlike Linux, where you spend more time trying to manage the damn thing than actually using it.
Maybe you do, buddy. Read a book on it or something, it's not hard.
last I checked Photoshop still ruled, and it doesn't run natively on Linux.
You are uninformed. It runs faster in Crossover Office than it does on Windows. I wouldn't know about Macs, as spending $1200 to get $500 worth of computer is just not my thing.
That's asinine. Every time a Linux user buys a computer with Windows with the express intent of blowing it away, they are buying MS without wanting to. I mean seriously, wtf do you even mean by that?
Or maybe it's that most of the cool stuff going on right now is happening in KOffice. Yes, it's a bloody mess, it's impossible to get around in because it's not laid out like any other office suite anybody's used, but at least somebody's trying to do something. I mean god damn, is it OOo's destiny to poorly reimplement every poor design decision the MS Office team five years ago?
So what you're saying here is that they took most of a decade and billions of dollars to deliver features that the free desktop has had since roughly the turn of the century. Color me unimpressed.
KDE delivered a real upgrade with real features that could run on real hardware that real people have, they did it on time, with total transparency about what potential pain the upgrade may bring users.
Microsoft delivered a steaming shitpile with zero compelling new features for users, they lied about what hardware could run it, and they delivered it six fucking years late. Fail, and fail, and fail.
If it takes fifteen minutes to boot and ten to shut down (Pentium Dual Core, 2Gb RAM, with the usual array of HP OEM bundleware bullshit), I don't care how "stable" or "supported" it is, it's a piece of shit. Of course you haven't had an issue with it, I bet you're still waiting for the mouse to respond.
Slashdot Mirror
[citation needed]
with the GPL you're stating what you want to do with other people's code.
Not at all. The GPL states what other people can do with my code that I wrote. It is not a giveaway, it is not a free-for-all, it is not public domain. You want X, I want Y. If you're not willing to Y, then I'm not willing to X. It's a license, that's how it works.
"This is not 'Nam, Donnie. This is bowling. There are rules."
I agree. Unfortunately, there's no good adjective form of "liberty."
Is this what you wanted?
Hell yes.
Well, fucking happy day. Good on you, now take your goddamn Playskool My 1st Computer and GTFO. The grown-ups are talking.
Christ, man, I just want to launch an app, and occasionally glance down at the laucher to see how much battery life I have. I don't want a "framework" that can do everything.
You don't want a desktop environment. You want Fluxbox. It's out there.
I'm not going to argue DEs with you, but I can report that the panel complaints you raise are fixed in 4.2.
Okay, maybe I'll argue a little. What the hell, it's Slashdot.
I use KDE 4 not for what it could be, but for what it is. Better. Kwin alone is so improved, so much faster, so much more feature-rich, that I'd be using KDE 4 if that were the only improvement. But it's not.
Plasma is a giant leap forward into the future of the desktop metaphor. It's light-years beyond anything anyone else is doing, and already more functional than kicker and kdesktop were. Koffice 2, bugs, weird layout and all, is the only place where any innovation is happening in office suites at all, anywhere by anyone.
On a more general level, the whole desktop just feels faster than KDE 3 ever was on this hardware. Yeah, really precise and objective measurement there, I know, but there it is. And it seems to get faster with every update, which God knows wasn't the case with KDE 3.
Do I have problems? Hell yes. Kontact likes to hang on start, and damned if I've figured it out yet. Last week something in my plasmarc was causing the entire desktop to hang on login, I never figured it out, had to blow away kontactrc since which it seems to be running fine. Amarok...well, I think you covered that.
I could go on with both pros and cons, but it's been hashed out to death around here already. Ultimately, my position is this: Yeah, there's problems. Some fairly glaring ones, still, that frustrate the hell out of me every day. But the pros are totally worth it. There have been "Goddammit" moments, but there have way more "Holy crap, that's awesome!" moments. Worth it.
And for cryin' out loud, somebody's got to take some risks here. Somebody's got to try to move forward even if hurts a little bit. God knows it ain't Gnome.
There are several other options for that functionality. For instance, I use the AWN dock in Gnome. I could also use Gimme or any one of several other solutions. I do not need a Gnome panel. I want it to go the hell away. I formerly had this option. This functionality has been removed. I'm working around it presently by having one panel in the upper-right corner that only contains the user switch applet and having it auto-hide. But I want it gone. Removing the gnome-panel package would presumably work but is not an option for me because this is a multi-user machine.
I can remove the panel in KDE 3 and 4. I can remove the panel in Fluxbox. I can't in Gnome because it insists on babysitting me. I find this to be abysmally stupid.
Dude, if my desktop won't let me remove panels, it is in the way. (Really, try it yourself. You cannot remove the last Gnome panel, which to my knowledge has long been the case. But in the version of Gnome that ships with Ubuntu 8.10, you can't even remove it from the startup programs.) Super lame.
And pc repair shops that know about linux and try to push it to their customers.... But this is unlikely to happen, because these shops make their money repairing broken windows installs, and linux would significantly decrease their revenue stream.
Not me. I make my about half my money converted b0rk3n Windows boxes to Ubuntu. I work with home users pretty much exclusively, and between "XP keeps getting pwnt" and "Vista is slow and ugly" I've been doing better and better.
Does it pinch my revenue stream? No, and I'll tell you why. First, I can charge more to convert a box than I can to fix a Windows install, both because it's typically more hours (converting files, custom setups, etc.) and because I'm actually adding value rather than simply fixing a problem. And second, word of mouth has been phenomenal, every customer feeds me one more.
What it does mean is that I have to have fairly high customer turnover, because once the job is done, it's pretty rare for the client to have another major problem. I don't have a problem with that, because god knows we're not running out of broken Windows boxes anytime soon.
No. Period. Not end of story. Period.
It's pretty common in big box retailing to place a low-price product beneath or next to a higher-end product. There's a name for the practice but damned if I can remember it. Anyway, long story short, Wal Mart has never given a shit about moving those Linux boxes. They're on the shelf to help sell Wal Mart's other products.
Period.
On the day that there is free, all-pervasive wifi access across the nation, the desktop may become irrelevant. Not before.
But just as Bush's approval rating has been at ridiculously low levels
Neat metaphor, I wish I had mod points. I'm gonna use this in the future.
Unlike Linux, where you spend more time trying to manage the damn thing than actually using it.
Maybe you do, buddy. Read a book on it or something, it's not hard.
last I checked Photoshop still ruled, and it doesn't run natively on Linux.
You are uninformed. It runs faster in Crossover Office than it does on Windows. I wouldn't know about Macs, as spending $1200 to get $500 worth of computer is just not my thing.
Okay, I replied to your initial "nobody buys MS that doesn't want to" post, but now I'm pretty convinced you're just a troll.
business also don't continue to throw good money after bad
Are you aware of the subprime mortgage crisis? The auto industry crisis? The bank bailout? Have you read a newspaper this year?
Nobody buys MS that doesn't want to.
That's asinine. Every time a Linux user buys a computer with Windows with the express intent of blowing it away, they are buying MS without wanting to. I mean seriously, wtf do you even mean by that?
Or maybe it's that most of the cool stuff going on right now is happening in KOffice. Yes, it's a bloody mess, it's impossible to get around in because it's not laid out like any other office suite anybody's used, but at least somebody's trying to do something. I mean god damn, is it OOo's destiny to poorly reimplement every poor design decision the MS Office team five years ago?
Yup, Grandma's got the same thing as Lucy all right. A botnet zombie. Merry Christmas, Grandma!
So what you're saying here is that they took most of a decade and billions of dollars to deliver features that the free desktop has had since roughly the turn of the century. Color me unimpressed.
KDE delivered a real upgrade with real features that could run on real hardware that real people have, they did it on time, with total transparency about what potential pain the upgrade may bring users.
Microsoft delivered a steaming shitpile with zero compelling new features for users, they lied about what hardware could run it, and they delivered it six fucking years late. Fail, and fail, and fail.
That sounds like a pain in the ass. To contrast, my Debian server has gone through four motherboards and several HDD swaps. cp works for me.
Unimpressive. The free desktop has had that for years.
I like to believe that they were embarrassed that Ubuntu's "Add/Remove Programs" could actually add AND remove programs, so they had to rename it.
If it takes fifteen minutes to boot and ten to shut down (Pentium Dual Core, 2Gb RAM, with the usual array of HP OEM bundleware bullshit), I don't care how "stable" or "supported" it is, it's a piece of shit. Of course you haven't had an issue with it, I bet you're still waiting for the mouse to respond.
Wow! This is TOTALLY different from Microsoft's "I'm a PC". Campaign!
Really? I didn't know, haven't seen them.
And Firefox is an IE clone, huh? Silly troll.