X *does* need a change
on
XFree86 Politics
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· Score: 1, Insightful
XFree is an excellent system. For 80% of desktop work, thin clients etc it's great and I use it every day. But whatever anyone says, it is *slow*.
Try it yourself - open an X application over a browser window and resize it. See the ghosts left behind? The weird way the contents of the window redraw at a different speed to the window resizing? Change workspaces and I can see the windows redrawing.
This happens on even the fastest systems - mine is a 1.53ghz processor with a geforce2 graphics card. I would expect instantaneous redraws on a system that fast. Windows *feels* faster on a much slower machine. Of course, Windows sucks in so many other ways, but at least its graphics code is fast.
If Linux is truly moving onto the desktop, perhaps it really is time for a new look at the graphics situation.
Of course it's not OK to steal *any* content. Getting PPV from the cable company without paying is the same as walking into a video store and walking off with an armload of videos.
I think most peple hate the **AA because of their idiotic attempts to control content that damage fair use rights. And the fact that none of the money goes to the artists. And their manipulative practices. And the fact that modern music is so bland and dull..and...(that's enough)
So, people who develop for windows only use windows, while multi-platform people use several different platforms? No exactly a deep comment.
Of course there are plenty of money-making Linux projects. Google, for example. An engineering software company I do work for develops most of their back-end stuff on linux and finds it far easier than windows.
You're confusing inconsistency with choice. Have you used KDE3.1? It's easy to use, it looks good, it doesn't tie you in to any specific OS underneath. It's more configurable than pretty much any commercial GUI. People call windows easy to use because they are used to it. I do agree though that the MacOS X interface is pretty damn good.
I regularly see non-expert users do the rename/double click thing by mistake and panic. The sub-menu popup thing has improved a little by slowing down the menu popup: see here for what I mean. This is implemented in KDE3/macos.
Windows XP has added its own problems too. The default start menu is nasty.
To some extent, I agree with you. But: a) Continuing storylines are often used as a replacement for decent writing - the writers get lazy, I guess. b) Having an ongoing storyline means you lose all your 'occasional' viewers, as they don't know what's going on. c) There is a danger of turning your programme into a soap.
Look at ER. There are some storylines that last entire series, yet each episode is cleverly written enough that it doesn't matter - you can just start watching any episode and it's good. I don't think that the epic story arcs of series like Farscape and Babylon 5 work. Too much of each episode is sacrificed to servicing the overall plot and not enough is left to make each show on its own entertaining.
Why do so many people think that the Windows GUI is so good? It's awful from a usability perspective. For example:
1)Fitt's law violations - start button on Win2k doesn't stretch to the bottom left hand corner, context menus popup just to the right of the mouse cursor etc. 2)sub menus pop-up - sub menus are unusable on windows compared to KDE3/MacOS due to the annoyingly narrow region in which the sub menu remains activated 3)Maximize/close buttons right next to each other and tiny. Why? 4)Double-click on a file too slowly and suddenly you're renaming the file. Huh?
I could keep going. The way to get Windows users is surely to show them a better GUI under Linux, rather than copying the terrible Windows GUI.
I watched most of the first series and thought it was pretty good, in a fun sci-fi early-evening watching way.
But, as with so many shows, the writers stopped concentrating on each episode and instead went for the long-term storyline thing. It happens to so many shows, and it generally means they've outlived their useful lives. If you've run out of ideas to write a decent storyline for each show, stretching the storyline out over n seasons isn't going to help.
Look at Babylon 5 - it started out pretty good, then I stopped watching for a bit and suddenly you had to have watched the last 32 episodes to understand what was going on. Or Buffy - the first few series had simple ongoing plots which could be summed up in 20 seconds of "previously on Buffy...". From the series with Adam onwards, the "previously" bit was almost a whole programme on its own. Or look at any Friends series after Ross and Rachel got together (shudder).
Makers of shows like this should realise when their horse is dead.
The current 4Gb limit is pretty easy to hit: 4 1 gb dimms would only be around $1200 or so. Maybe ten years ago memory was, what, $100 for 4mb or something? Continuing that trend means that 1Tb will only cost $3600 in ten years.
If you're going to make an architecture change you might as well make sure you don't have to do it again for a while. Nobody wants to be caught saying "640kb should be enough" any more!
Personally, I prefer emacs, but I can see the need for a dreamweaver replacement. Of course Dreamweaver MX currently costs $399 and has a few years lead in WYSIWYG editing of HTML, so it's perhaps a bit disingnenuous to give up on linux just yet.
The diagonal drag thing for submenus is implemented in KDE3.1 - I don't know how long it's been there. I actually thought it wasn't until I read this article and tried it - I guess it really is that intuitive and subtle.
The pointer hiding works in kde3.1 as well. I don't know about Gnome, but I do know that the windows UI is seriously behind KDE/MacOS classic/MacOS X.
"Because Dell's systems are based on Oracle, and Oracle is available to both the Sun Solaris and Red Hat Linux environments, Mott says that Dell looked into switching to Linux. The company determined that such move would yield a configuration 89 percent faster and 41 less expensive."
Before all the people who don't RTFA (or only read the first paragraph, he means "Old-style" Unix, not Linux. Carry on.
Yeah, just read a description of copyright on the form and I'd mixed up patents with copyrights - I maintain the patent rights to the idea if I want them (and patenting ideas developed at the public's expense is just plain wrong).
So why the hell do these companies care so much about redistributing ROMs?
But the ROM and the licence are not the same thing. For example, when I write a paper for publication in a journal, I sign a copyright form. This gives the publisher copyright over the manuscript, but the ideas contained within it remain mine. This is similar I think - let people distribute the ROM (it maintains interest in the game for when you do release an updated version), but keep the intellectual property rights to the idea.
I used to work for my university magazine. We had one guy doing layout for the whole magazine. The magazine always looked like awful, with weirdly aligned columns everywhere. Eventually it got to the point where we collectively asked the layout guy to leave.
When we asked him why he made the magazine look so bad he said "But that's the way Wired does it. It must be cool".
This came up in a thermodynamics lecture I was dozing in once. I think the conclusion was that the upper limit is when the speed of the molecules reaches the speed of light. Of course, relativistic effects make it increasingly hard to heat the material as you reach this point.
I don't know how you work out the actual temperature though, as my knowledge of relativity isn't too hot.
That changing menu feature annoys me so much. I'm sure it's great for people who only use their computer occaisonally and then have to re-work out how to do everything every time they do it.
But for users who know what they are doing, activating menu items is more of a muscle memory thing. I don't read all the items in a menu and then decide what to click - I know that (for example) "configure Konqueror" is the last option on the Settings menu. Don't mess around with that by shifting menus around purely based on what I've been doing recently.
"...compiling and linking it into the executable and other components that make up a Windows CD is a 12 to 13 hour process that is done every day of the week
So they rebuild Windows from scratch every day? Somebody send them a copy of make, please.
Slashdot Mirror
XFree is an excellent system. For 80% of desktop work, thin clients etc it's great and I use it every day. But whatever anyone says, it is *slow*.
Try it yourself - open an X application over a browser window and resize it. See the ghosts left behind? The weird way the contents of the window redraw at a different speed to the window resizing? Change workspaces and I can see the windows redrawing.
This happens on even the fastest systems - mine is a 1.53ghz processor with a geforce2 graphics card. I would expect instantaneous redraws on a system that fast. Windows *feels* faster on a much slower machine. Of course, Windows sucks in so many other ways, but at least its graphics code is fast.
If Linux is truly moving onto the desktop, perhaps it really is time for a new look at the graphics situation.
Of course, as slashdot has something like a quarter of a million readers, it could be different people that are posting in each story.
The Slashcode groupthink module is still a bit buggy, so you will occasionally see expressions of individual ideas like this.
Of course it's not OK to steal *any* content. Getting PPV from the cable company without paying is the same as walking into a video store and walking off with an armload of videos.
I think most peple hate the **AA because of their idiotic attempts to control content that damage fair use rights. And the fact that none of the money goes to the artists. And their manipulative practices. And the fact that modern music is so bland and dull..and...(that's enough)
The people buying these filters are clearly :
1) Trying to break the law by stealing cable content
2) Complete morons
Why is anyone spending time and money taking out adverts on Ebay to warn them?
So, people who develop for windows only use windows, while multi-platform people use several different platforms? No exactly a deep comment.
Of course there are plenty of money-making Linux projects. Google, for example. An engineering software company I do work for develops most of their back-end stuff on linux and finds it far easier than windows.
You're confusing inconsistency with choice. Have you used KDE3.1? It's easy to use, it looks good, it doesn't tie you in to any specific OS underneath. It's more configurable than pretty much any commercial GUI.
People call windows easy to use because they are used to it. I do agree though that the MacOS X interface is pretty damn good.
I regularly see non-expert users do the rename/double click thing by mistake and panic. The sub-menu popup thing has improved a little by slowing down the menu popup: see here for what I mean. This is implemented in KDE3/macos.
Windows XP has added its own problems too. The default start menu is nasty.
To some extent, I agree with you. But:
a) Continuing storylines are often used as a replacement for decent writing - the writers get lazy, I guess.
b) Having an ongoing storyline means you lose all your 'occasional' viewers, as they don't know what's going on.
c) There is a danger of turning your programme into a soap.
Look at ER. There are some storylines that last entire series, yet each episode is cleverly written enough that it doesn't matter - you can just start watching any episode and it's good.
I don't think that the epic story arcs of series like Farscape and Babylon 5 work. Too much of each episode is sacrificed to servicing the overall plot and not enough is left to make each show on its own entertaining.
Why do so many people think that the Windows GUI is so good? It's awful from a usability perspective. For example:
1)Fitt's law violations - start button on Win2k doesn't stretch to the bottom left hand corner, context menus popup just to the right of the mouse cursor etc.
2)sub menus pop-up - sub menus are unusable on windows compared to KDE3/MacOS due to the annoyingly narrow region in which the sub menu remains activated
3)Maximize/close buttons right next to each other and tiny. Why?
4)Double-click on a file too slowly and suddenly you're renaming the file. Huh?
I could keep going. The way to get Windows users is surely to show them a better GUI under Linux, rather than copying the terrible Windows GUI.
I watched most of the first series and thought it was pretty good, in a fun sci-fi early-evening watching way.
But, as with so many shows, the writers stopped concentrating on each episode and instead went for the long-term storyline thing. It happens to so many shows, and it generally means they've outlived their useful lives. If you've run out of ideas to write a decent storyline for each show, stretching the storyline out over n seasons isn't going to help.
Look at Babylon 5 - it started out pretty good, then I stopped watching for a bit and suddenly you had to have watched the last 32 episodes to understand what was going on. Or Buffy - the first few series had simple ongoing plots which could be summed up in 20 seconds of "previously on Buffy...". From the series with Adam onwards, the "previously" bit was almost a whole programme on its own. Or look at any Friends series after Ross and Rachel got together (shudder).
Makers of shows like this should realise when their horse is dead.
The current 4Gb limit is pretty easy to hit: 4 1 gb dimms would only be around $1200 or so. Maybe ten years ago memory was, what, $100 for 4mb or something? Continuing that trend means that 1Tb will only cost $3600 in ten years.
If you're going to make an architecture change you might as well make sure you don't have to do it again for a while. Nobody wants to be caught saying "640kb should be enough" any more!
Motherboards aren't really '32-bit'. On most x86 systems the memory bus is 64 bits (or greater?) wide already.
>and I pay by the min for incomming and out going calls
Huh? You pay for incoming calls? What kind of crazy idea is that? I think you need a new phone contract.
Personally, I prefer emacs, but I can see the need for a dreamweaver replacement. Of course Dreamweaver MX currently costs $399 and has a few years lead in WYSIWYG editing of HTML, so it's perhaps a bit disingnenuous to give up on linux just yet.
For judges that don't have time to read the whole article:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." -- Carl Sagan.
The diagonal drag thing for submenus is implemented in KDE3.1 - I don't know how long it's been there. I actually thought it wasn't until I read this article and tried it - I guess it really is that intuitive and subtle.
The pointer hiding works in kde3.1 as well. I don't know about Gnome, but I do know that the windows UI is seriously behind KDE/MacOS classic/MacOS X.
"Because Dell's systems are based on Oracle, and Oracle is available to both the Sun Solaris and Red Hat Linux environments, Mott says that Dell looked into switching to Linux. The company determined that such move would yield a configuration 89 percent faster and 41 less expensive."
Before all the people who don't RTFA (or only read the first paragraph, he means "Old-style" Unix, not Linux. Carry on.Yeah, just read a description of copyright on the form and I'd mixed up patents with copyrights - I maintain the patent rights to the idea if I want them (and patenting ideas developed at the public's expense is just plain wrong).
So why the hell do these companies care so much about redistributing ROMs?
But the ROM and the licence are not the same thing. For example, when I write a paper for publication in a journal, I sign a copyright form. This gives the publisher copyright over the manuscript, but the ideas contained within it remain mine. This is similar I think - let people distribute the ROM (it maintains interest in the game for when you do release an updated version), but keep the intellectual property rights to the idea.
Dutch weather unpredictable? I suppose there is such a huge range; everything from rain to torrential downpour.
I used to work for my university magazine. We had one guy doing layout for the whole magazine. The magazine always looked like awful, with weirdly aligned columns everywhere. Eventually it got to the point where we collectively asked the layout guy to leave.
When we asked him why he made the magazine look so bad he said "But that's the way Wired does it. It must be cool".
This came up in a thermodynamics lecture I was dozing in once. I think the conclusion was that the upper limit is when the speed of the molecules reaches the speed of light. Of course, relativistic effects make it increasingly hard to heat the material as you reach this point.
I don't know how you work out the actual temperature though, as my knowledge of relativity isn't too hot.
That changing menu feature annoys me so much. I'm sure it's great for people who only use their computer occaisonally and then have to re-work out how to do everything every time they do it.
But for users who know what they are doing, activating menu items is more of a muscle memory thing. I don't read all the items in a menu and then decide what to click - I know that (for example) "configure Konqueror" is the last option on the Settings menu. Don't mess around with that by shifting menus around purely based on what I've been doing recently.
You can change the windowmanager. Just:
$killall metacity
$sawfish&
then save session.
It's still a horible work environment though IMHO.
"...compiling and linking it into the executable and other components that make up a Windows CD is a 12 to 13 hour process that is done every day of the week
So they rebuild Windows from scratch every day? Somebody send them a copy of make, please.