and I quote "In MBE the components are deposited as pure gases in high vacuum at moderate temperatures under clean conditions."
Further "If it works, the cost should be on the same order of magnitude as traffic lights," Walukiewicz says. "Maybe less." Solar cells so efficient and so relatively cheap could revolutionize the use of solar power not just in space but on Earth."
What is there to ensure that the manfucaturer actually installed the OS voting software, rather than a slightly tweaked version?
You need open installation, open distribution, open setup, open guards, open data transmission/collection and open results. Otherwise there is no assurance.
Only having many eyeballs on the system all the way from start to finish will give a level of security sought by this sort of endevour.
if somebody would come out with a player that allowed you update the playable codecs by hooking it up to your computer or inserting a preloaded pcmcia card. Open up the plugin architecture and you would probably sell one to every/.er.
Then I wouldn't have to read about all the I wan't (insert favorite codec here) on it but its not available because *they* are out to get me.
fear my leet skilz (uhmmm substitute numbers n'stuff in the right places)
Seriously, I don't remember it being quite so easy to defeat. Have my gaming abilities really gotten that much better? It was fun for a minute, but how could you possibly play that for more than 10 minutes without solving it?
Iwas just talking to a friend about getting into some game programming under linux. I have been working with linux for years, but alway at a sysadmin or number crunching (molecular dynamics, etc) level. The fact that I always sent my data into something like povray and then rendered into animations seemed somewhat clunky.
Perhaps this will be my chance to make doing graphics directly a workable idea. Thanks to whoever posted this story and thanks to the author for making this free on the web. If it turns out to be the reference I hope it will be, they have just netted themselves another sale!
This is a critical review of Debian 3.0, but I want to say right from the start that I'm not trying to bait anyone. However I feel that reviewers often root for Debian as the open-source underdog, and give it marks which it doesn't deserve. If RedHat 8.0 came out with installation software like Debian 3.0 it would be savaged. I think it's time for an honest review, to spur the Debian developers into making the best possible distribution. I really want Debian to succeed. I want to use it daily, and recommend it to my friends. But I can't do that right now and I think it's important people understand why.
Installation My first experience of Linux came with a boxed version of SuSE 6.0, back in the middle of 1999 when Linux was starting to get noticed in a big way. The entire thing was a text-mode affair, powered by the venerable YaST version 1. I spent days just poring through the manual, trying to wrap my head around fdisk, and hoping it would all turn out okay. It did, and I never looked back. Six months later a version of RedHat (five point something or the other I think) was shipped with a magazine I bought, and I gave it a whirl. This too was backed with a text-based installer, but it was a lot easier to use than YaST. I didn't even bother with the documentation, I just slipped it in the CD drive and winged it. Shortly thereafter I tried the first version of Mandrake, which had pretty much the exact same installation process..
The point of all this reminiscing is to show that I'm not a complete neophyte (though I'm nowhere near being a guru for that matter). Since then I've tried the RedHat and Mandrake graphical installs, and while RedHat is the one I like best, Mandrake has been the distribution I've stuck with solely because of drakconf and it's associated tools, which make configuring a Linux system a breeze. However lately I've been aspiring to ascend to guru status, or at the very least PFY, so I gave Debian a whirl. I have to admit I was disappointed both with the installation procedure and the finished system. In all my time with Linux, Debian's is the worst installer I've ever had to use.
Setup
There is a lot wrong with it, but mainly the fact is that it's an awfully stupid piece of software. And I don't mean stupid as in bad, I mean as in not clever. It expects the user to know everything. So, for example, even though XFree86 has fully documented the branded names that each driver supports, Debian simply supplies a list of the driver names themselves. People with, say, a GeForce card packaged by Creative will have a hard time picking the "nv" driver. However they should be glad that they have a choice at all - a lot of screens only give highly technical examples and refer the users to documentation that hasn't even been installed yet! For example why couldn't a list of keyboards, e.g. "Irish Keyboard", "US Keyboard", "Sun US Keyboard" etc. be given instead of expecting the user to type in "xfree86", "pc105", "ie" with "uk" as alternative.
This is simple fundamental stuff, the kind of thing most other distros had sorted out back in '99 when everything was via textmode and the Linux GUI was new and exciting. However, in this day and age, I would expect far more from a distribution. There should be no need for me to enter in the same locale based settings over and over again. Once I'd selected Europe->Western->Dublin as the timezone, the system should have realised that the appropriate locale was en_IE@euro, that the keyboard should be set up with proper Euro support (it doesn't seem to be, AltGr is mapped as Alt so I can't easily print bars, the Euro symbol, or accents for stuff I write in Irish), that the Euro packages should be installed by default (they weren't) and a whole raft of other tiny stuff like KDE and Gnome localisation. Certainly people should be presented with the chance to confirm these options, but it should be a simple matter of hitting Enter most of the way. If they want to change the default, they should first be presented with a list of preconfigured settings for, e.g. keyboards, out of which they can then opt into the sort of technical "xfree86", "pc105", etc. settings.
This willfull stupidity of the installer extends to other aspects of the setup also - with so many kernels available, Debian should pick the most appropriate one to use for my system. It's not that hard to open up/proc/cpuinfo. Instead I was confronted with a maze of kernels once I got to the software selection stage, installed 2.4.18, and then belatedly realised that only 2.4.16 had the ALSA drivers I wanted. Why not offer two defaults in the final base install screen Kernel-2.2.20-$arch and Kernel-2.4.16-$arch (where $arch is the probed value of the most suitable CPU) with a third option to select the kernel yourself. And for the record, I have no idea what the point of the modules page was - was I meant to manually install each and every module?!
Package Selection This brings me nicely along to package selection. Tasksel wasn't too bad, though I'd expect more options. For example, instead of X11 have "X11", "Typical Desktop (Gnome & KDE)" and "Esoteric Desktop (WindowMaker and Enlightenment)" and so on. I was mystified to see I could select Fortran and Tcl/Tk support, but not Perl, PHP, or Java - some of the most popular languages today. However nothing, not in all my 22 years on this Earth, could prepare me for the horrors of dselect. Sweet merciful divine!
Firstly the developers should check out Eugenia's comments on osnews.com about the new Yast2 package manager, as many of the same things apply. In the end it all boils down to the old KISS clich, keep it simple! Instead of giving a load of choices for dependency resolution with half a million optional packages thrown in, just give n + 1 choices, one for each of the n package/package-combinations that fixes the dependency, and one to install without resolving it. Similarly with conflict resolution it should be remove selected, remove conflicting or ignore.
Worse yet are the help screens that pop up at every opportunity, yet which don't actually explain everything (like the meaning of those EIOM headers at the top of the screen). At the end of the day, it should be fairly obvious what's going on. Leave complex package selection tools for the post install, at this stage people just want to get the damn thing working. It drove me nuts having to pass through that stupid help screen every time a dependency arose.
What's worst of all is that if, for example, dselect fails to download a package from the Internet, it prompts the user with a basic text mode question asking them if they want to cancel. I assumed this meant just cancel that particular package. It didn't, and I found myself dumped into the console on a base system. I knew enough to extricate myself, but this is hardly something the average newbie is going to be able to cope with.
The Installation Overall I want to make sure people realise I'm not trying to advocate a graphical installer. It would be a good move ahead, and should be available for Debian 4.0, but all the stuff I've mentioned here could be easily implemented in a text-mode installer written using ncurses. In fact, I would recommend a Model-View-Controller approach, with the Model, the bit that does all the actual work, being packed into a library, and two Views being created with, say, ncurses and Qt, each of which uses the Model library to do what's needed.
Debian's installer does have some redeeming features. For one thing it is rock solid. With several versions of Mandrake I have had problems setting up the mouse and getting the package selector to install all the selected packages. This didn't happen in Debian. Downloading updates from the web during the install is also a great idea (though I was a little aghast to find my 56K modem facing into 100M of updates). The provision of non-free sites is a great help, given the conflict between Debian's all-free stance and the wants of the average user.
The crucial factor is that the installer should be made as intelligent as possible, and to hide the actual details behind "Advanced" buttons. Guess as much as possible from initial locale data. Use branded names instead of driver names for hardware, be it keyboards, mice, graphics cards or soundcards. I hadn't mentioned this but Debian should aim to have sound working as a default in every new installation, prompting users for their soundcard make from a list in a similar in fashion to the XFree one. In this day and age, every OS should have sound support. By all means, let one of the brands on the list be "No Soundcard", but offer to install and configure it at any rate.
Dselect needs to be totally re-designed. I can appreciate its power, but it's far to complex and hard to use. Aim to replicate the way things work in graphical GUIs - have drop down lists and checkboxes which can be ticked to install items, even if said boxes are represented by [ ] and [X]. There is a case to be made for complex package installation software, but half way through an OS install isn't really the place.
The Configured System Having finally got everything installed, I was, I confess, pretty disappointed with the results. Bugs started appearing. Firstly, when selecting the Irish locale in KDE 2.2.2, I found KDE trying to tell me that the Irish currency was the pound, something which hasn't been the case since the Euro was introduced in 2000, two and a half years ago. Then kwrite decided it wouldn't display documents it opened and konqueror decided all pages should be 2000 pixels wide, even though the window was about 800.
Sound didn't work, and consequently the KDE bootup screen stalled for ages at the window manager stage while arts slowly died, then popped up a No Sound message box. None of the PPP connection tools worked when not used by root. None of the hard disk partitions were configured (even though they had been recognised by the piece of code that set up LILO). My CDRW at/dev/hdd wasn't set up, not even as a plain CD-ROM. The menus were all over the place. The fonts in GTK apps were hideously big. XftConfig wasn't set up to disable antialiasing for standard size fonts, nor were the workarounds for symbol and console fonts (mentioned here) included. Another bug.
It was a mess.
Firstly the menus. In Enlightenment and Gnome you have a special Debian menu included with the rest in the app launchers. These menus contain everything. Thus, when you're looking for a program, you just go to the Debian menu and it's all gravy. However the Debian menu wan't included in KDE, instead there were a load of Debian submenus, which didn't seem to include everything. What made this especially heinous was that if a Debian menu had been included in KDE, I could have made a launcher out of it. At this stage, though, I don't believe that's enough. Debian should follow the lead of every other major distro and offer the exact same menu layout throughout. All you need is for graphical packages to install an information file in, e.g./etc/debmenus, and in the post-install stage run a script which creates from it the necessary menu entries in all the window managers and environments.
I've got most of the sound and KDE stuff off my chest, though frankly its deeply disappointing. It's the first time I've experienced functional bugs in any KDE version, and I started with 0.99. The only other time I've seen a major bug was a cosmetic issue with KDE 2.1 (?) in SuSE 7.3 which caused vertical stripes to appear on widget backgrounds.
Again I've dealt with the appalling foul up of Euro-support. The support packages should have been installed by default when I selected en_IE@euro. The AltGr-4 keymap should have been set up. As far as I'm concerned these are functional bugs.
The PPP tools could definitely have been set up better. The default setting is only an invitation to newbies to use root for web-browsing. They could be set up using sudo, or else set up them with rwsr-sr-- permissions and root.pppusers ownership. That way, at the user creation screen you could ask if people should have permission to connect to the net, and make them members of the pppaccess group if permission was granted.
GTK, and consequently Mozilla, looked atrocious due to the oversized fonts (look at Windows, MacOS, BeOS, other Linux distros - they all have fonts around 11px), and changing the default font in GTK is a bit of a struggle for newbies (how obvious is Theme Selector after all). I changed it to Helvetica at 12, and now things look okay.
The fact is, I'm going to have to invest a considerable amount of time just to get things to the same level that Mandrake and RedHat give straight out of the default install. This is not something that will attract new people. Otherwise the system seems reasonable. I'll have to wait a while before I can make any pronouncements with regard to stability. Anecdotal evidence is extremely positive, but my initial experience hasn't matched. I was a little disappointed with the way files were arranged. I had hoped Debian would lead the world away from RedHat's madness and stick KDE and Gnome in their own subdirectories, e.g./usr/kde2 ->/usr/kde-2.2.2 and/usr/gnome1 ->/usr/gnome-1.4.1. The fact is, that given what I've had, and will probably get when RedHat 8.0 inevitably starts going around the magazines, it's hard to be upbeat about the Debian desktop.
Conclusions I'm sure you're aware that this isn't going to be glowing. Debian's installer is several years out of date, and needs a serious overhaul. It's not fit for commercial consumption, and is only good enough for established Debian users and poor wannabe PFYs like myself. This is not a sustainable situation. Apt-get is good, but RPM has caught up with it for the most part thanks to apt-rpm and urpmi. I'll take everyone's word for it and say that Debian is, for the most part, stable. I like the fact that the packagers are willing to hold back and patch existing stable software to get a decent system, and not one that seems to be in permanent beta. This is why I went for it in the first place.
But people who chose Debian aren't rewarded. Installation and post-install configuration is a bit of a nightmare. Debian should organise people to collect code from the Webmin, Linuxconf and Mandrake configuration programs and create Debian's own configuration framework. At this stage of Linux development it's compulsory, even RedHat has finally copped on to this. Indeed, I would recommend following RedHat in several arenas. I believe Bluecurve is free, Debian should package it - it gives everything a nice polished look. People can then change things if they want to. Having worked in MIS a bit, I know that people will always find a way to muck about with display settings, even if word-processors give them palpitations.
I think people should get together and form a DebianDesktop group, committed to creating a package which will install several different themes, configurations and menus. People can be asked near the end of the install if they would like their desktop customised - if they answer yes, this package could be installed. Similarly work should be done on intelligent installers and hardware auto-detection (though the latter is obviously going to be especially difficult for a multi-platform system). The priority should be the simple installer though, hardware detection can wait.
The inspiration for this article was an article I saw on this site a while back bemoaning Debian's loss of mindshare, attributing it in part due to the lack of attention in the media. Most of the pertinent points were made in the article and accompanying comments. An open-source distribution needs mindshare to survive, but the media won't cover distros which don't have the latest whiz-bang desktop software. If Debian formally released a distribution based on the Test tree compiled with GCC 3.2 for 686mmx, its marketshare would explode. Just look at Gentoo, a hideous installation process, but a system equivalent to a Honda Civic with added spoiler, exhausts, alloy wheels and, of course, go-fast stripes. In other words, something for the lads to show off.
Such a system would have the benefit of bringing a lot more bug-reports into the system, giving a better stable distro. Mandrake are sucking a lot of the talent Debian needs through cooker. They've openly thought about making the distribution packaging process totally open and building a value-added distro around it like Progeny. If this were to happen it would place Debian into a very tough place.
The new Debian needs to blow people away. It needs to be Granny-proof. It needs an installer that people can bluff their way through, with an attractive, well configured desktop on the other side. Debian maintainers should check out the competition now and again, to see where they can improve. Because if they don't, Debian will lose developers, and become less and less of a force in the Linux world.
I have to maintain a dozen RH boxes and a half dozen mandrake boxes, it sucks compared to keeping a Debian system up.
Further trying to build a dedicated server from RH of Mandrake is terrible. For security reasons a minimal install is best, but its just plain hard to get with "we know what you want" distros.
debian is also getting a complete overhaul in the installer dept. remade from scratch with a modular interface (you want gui? ok, you want dialog, ok you want webmin that will be there also) that will be able to interface with any installer layout you choose (if the interface module exists, or yo uwrite one;-).
Want to play with multiple distros? but you don't want to trash your setup? wait until the next major kernel release, you will be able to play with this with out even rebooting! The new VM in the latest kernel is touted as being able to run multiple installations. LINUX ROCKS!
(disclaimer, this is only an opinion, not actually based on first hand experience)
Taking time off was arguably the best thing I ever did. I left "high" school at 16 with a GED and much angst against the educational system. Knocked around in various jobs until I realized that every time I finished learning a new trade I got itchy feet and had to try another. Finally wound up back in academics and am now in my second year as a grad student on track for a Ph.D.
What I found out was that higher Ed. is nothing like K-12. There have been no problems due to my extended departure, but I am on track to becoming a professional academic. Other jobs may not be so forgiving, I don't know.
I can't believe how close to home this topic strikes for me. I am a grad student in Physics and have been considering a project just like this. I wanted to build an open source service for delivering structered content oriented around physics and math. What follows are some of the ideas I have been pondering.
First, the backend of this software would be a database server of cross referenced topics so that the presentation of material could be presented as a static idea flow (read text book) that would allow for dynamic, interactive exploration. Some benifits this would have over standard textbooks is that presentation could include video, interactive function graphing, and any other dynamic content that can be handled by a computer. The frontend would be basically a web client that could present and store the information and exploration history for future use by the student as a reference.Perhaps when you complete the course you would get a CD containing all of the material you covered and in the order you covered it, including an index/keyword search ability. However you would loose access to the dynamic content unless the "owners" decided to grant you permission to further access.
Second, While delivery mechanism would be open source, the content could still be controlled in house via a peer reviewed submission validation model. This could eventually allow growth into a colaborative effort of experts all over the world. Allowing group development expidites the elimination of informational voids as the topic coverage expands. There could multiple levels of trusted users, ie. at the lowest level would be the student who only has read access, slightly higher up would be outside material developers that could place topics into an incomming review queue, and highest would be the content owners and reviewers who would carry the burden of topic submission review and overall structure maintenance.
Third presentation of material would follow the same strategy as a class room. Both audio, graphics, and text (math) would be streamed concurrently so that the topic is "developed" to the student rather than presented en masse like a text book (So many web based methods fail to provide the teaching environment that a classroom has shown to be so sucsessful at). As an avid student, I find that material much easier to understand when I see it and hear it as it is presented, in essence following the thought process of the instructor as they present their understanding of the topic.
Fourth, any topic can be interrupted for a more in depth development or alternate explanation, if none was available a request for expansion of that area could be sent to the administrators. For math this could be the ability to define terms both rigorously and semantically, as well as, an algebraic expansion of derivations. I believe that there is a web site that employs the semantic portion of this method, although I can't think of it offhand.
On a philosophical note, I really don't believe that ideas can be property, so the student would be able to freely keep any informational content that they are presented with. However, I do believe that the structure of the presentation is unique and and therefor the dynamic structure of delivery could be restricted to developing "owners".
Pro and cons, On the pro side, you could create an automated interactive learning experiance that would allow for dynamic exploration of the material utilizing tried and trusted methods found in classrooms.
CONtrarilly, development of the course would be an in depth work that could take years to properly create, since you would in esence be attempting to create an expert system with the data/knowledge of an experienced academic professional.
I am throwing this idea out to the public ingeneral, because I think it is an idea whos time has come. If you decide to produce this I would appreciate some form of acknowledgement of the originating ideas and a chance to help codevelop it.
Frisco Rose email (no underbars) r_o_s_e_f(at)e_o_u.e_d_u GPG fingerprint 81E2 194B 6F74 389E DE90 9A55 C8FD 9738 E17F 6508
DAMN!, I should always preview. That should be, Well, DUH! Its as clear as mud, Windows considers user as a glitch, this is the root of all the problems
From the article:
Chris Riggall, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, attributed the problems to errors by poll workers, a glitch in the Windows operating system that runs the machines and problems with electronic cards that replace paper ballots and ballot boxes.
Well, DUH! Its as clear as mud, Windows is the root of all the problems;-)
This notice posted as a friendly trollish reminder.
Wow, yes, definately. This is exactly the kind of info I was hoping to find by posting to slashdot, thanks. And yes, I consider myself a newbie in the academic world, and will continue to do so until I stop taking classes and start teaching them:-)
Hmmm, yes you are definately right about that. I have had an HP-48G since my first year, however it is a pain to enter text or anything other than algebraic mathematics. I was hoping for somthing like the eqn editer crossed with the handwritting recognition in most PDA's. Another poster further down has pointed out a GPL'd bit of software that I would love to see on a PDA.
I have a friend that has a Ti-92, its a sweet device, except for one thing. I am an RPN junkie, infix just hurts after using postfix for so long. I don't know if there any ways to make the Ti talk RPN, but if there were then I might have to reconsider them.
Only studying the predictable change in entropy would follow from your suppositions. ie. HOW predicatble entropic changes in any given system is the study of intelligence itself...
You have obviously never lived in a house with children. They will immediately get around the rule you empty it, you replace by simply leaving a miniscule amount of whatever the rule applies to, thereby leaving the next person in the original predicament, since in most cases and this one in particular, to little is definately not enough!
Slashdot Mirror
Two dupes within a half hour of each other. Your last excuse was you hadn't had your coffee. I suggest you move to something a bit stronger ;-)
vaporware!
and I quote
"In MBE the components are deposited as pure gases in high vacuum at moderate temperatures under clean conditions."
Further
"If it works, the cost should be on the same order of magnitude as traffic lights," Walukiewicz says. "Maybe less." Solar cells so efficient and so relatively cheap could revolutionize the use of solar power not just in space but on Earth."
What is there to ensure that the manfucaturer actually installed the OS voting software, rather than a slightly tweaked version?
You need open installation, open distribution, open setup, open guards, open data transmission/collection and open results. Otherwise there is no assurance.
Only having many eyeballs on the system all the way from start to finish will give a level of security sought by this sort of endevour.
if somebody would come out with a player that allowed you update the playable codecs by hooking it up to your computer or inserting a preloaded pcmcia card. Open up the plugin architecture and you would probably sell one to every /.er.
Then I wouldn't have to read about all the I wan't (insert favorite codec here) on it but its not available because *they* are out to get me.
fear my leet skilz
(uhmmm substitute numbers n'stuff in the right places)
Seriously, I don't remember it being quite so easy to defeat. Have my gaming abilities really gotten that much better? It was fun for a minute, but how could you possibly play that for more than 10 minutes without solving it?
Iwas just talking to a friend about getting into some game programming under linux. I have been working with linux for years, but alway at a sysadmin or number crunching (molecular dynamics, etc) level. The fact that I always sent my data into something like povray and then rendered into animations seemed somewhat clunky.
Perhaps this will be my chance to make doing graphics directly a workable idea. Thanks to whoever posted this story and thanks to the author for making this free on the web. If it turns out to be the reference I hope it will be, they have just netted themselves another sale!
This is a critical review of Debian 3.0, but I want to say right from the start that I'm not trying to bait anyone. However I feel that reviewers often root for Debian as the open-source underdog, and give it marks which it doesn't deserve. If RedHat 8.0 came out with installation software like Debian 3.0 it would be savaged. I think it's time for an honest review, to spur the Debian developers into making the best possible distribution. I really want Debian to succeed. I want to use it daily, and recommend it to my friends. But I can't do that right now and I think it's important people understand why.
/proc/cpuinfo. Instead I was confronted with a maze of kernels once I got to the software selection stage, installed 2.4.18, and then belatedly realised that only 2.4.16 had the ALSA drivers I wanted. Why not offer two defaults in the final base install screen Kernel-2.2.20-$arch and Kernel-2.4.16-$arch (where $arch is the probed value of the most suitable CPU) with a third option to select the kernel yourself. And for the record, I have no idea what the point of the modules page was - was I meant to manually install each and every module?!
/dev/hdd wasn't set up, not even as a plain CD-ROM. The menus were all over the place. The fonts in GTK apps were hideously big. XftConfig wasn't set up to disable antialiasing for standard size fonts, nor were the workarounds for symbol and console fonts (mentioned here) included. Another bug.
/etc/debmenus, and in the post-install stage run a script which creates from it the necessary menu entries in all the window managers and environments.
/usr/kde2 -> /usr/kde-2.2.2 and /usr/gnome1 -> /usr/gnome-1.4.1. The fact is, that given what I've had, and will probably get when RedHat 8.0 inevitably starts going around the magazines, it's hard to be upbeat about the Debian desktop.
Installation
My first experience of Linux came with a boxed version of SuSE 6.0, back in the middle of 1999 when Linux was starting to get noticed in a big way. The entire thing was a text-mode affair, powered by the venerable YaST version 1. I spent days just poring through the manual, trying to wrap my head around fdisk, and hoping it would all turn out okay. It did, and I never looked back. Six months later a version of RedHat (five point something or the other I think) was shipped with a magazine I bought, and I gave it a whirl. This too was backed with a text-based installer, but it was a lot easier to use than YaST. I didn't even bother with the documentation, I just slipped it in the CD drive and winged it. Shortly thereafter I tried the first version of Mandrake, which had pretty much the exact same installation process..
The point of all this reminiscing is to show that I'm not a complete neophyte (though I'm nowhere near being a guru for that matter). Since then I've tried the RedHat and Mandrake graphical installs, and while RedHat is the one I like best, Mandrake has been the distribution I've stuck with solely because of drakconf and it's associated tools, which make configuring a Linux system a breeze. However lately I've been aspiring to ascend to guru status, or at the very least PFY, so I gave Debian a whirl. I have to admit I was disappointed both with the installation procedure and the finished system. In all my time with Linux, Debian's is the worst installer I've ever had to use.
Setup
There is a lot wrong with it, but mainly the fact is that it's an awfully stupid piece of software. And I don't mean stupid as in bad, I mean as in not clever. It expects the user to know everything. So, for example, even though XFree86 has fully documented the branded names that each driver supports, Debian simply supplies a list of the driver names themselves. People with, say, a GeForce card packaged by Creative will have a hard time picking the "nv" driver. However they should be glad that they have a choice at all - a lot of screens only give highly technical examples and refer the users to documentation that hasn't even been installed yet! For example why couldn't a list of keyboards, e.g. "Irish Keyboard", "US Keyboard", "Sun US Keyboard" etc. be given instead of expecting the user to type in "xfree86", "pc105", "ie" with "uk" as alternative.
This is simple fundamental stuff, the kind of thing most other distros had sorted out back in '99 when everything was via textmode and the Linux GUI was new and exciting. However, in this day and age, I would expect far more from a distribution. There should be no need for me to enter in the same locale based settings over and over again. Once I'd selected Europe->Western->Dublin as the timezone, the system should have realised that the appropriate locale was en_IE@euro, that the keyboard should be set up with proper Euro support (it doesn't seem to be, AltGr is mapped as Alt so I can't easily print bars, the Euro symbol, or accents for stuff I write in Irish), that the Euro packages should be installed by default (they weren't) and a whole raft of other tiny stuff like KDE and Gnome localisation. Certainly people should be presented with the chance to confirm these options, but it should be a simple matter of hitting Enter most of the way. If they want to change the default, they should first be presented with a list of preconfigured settings for, e.g. keyboards, out of which they can then opt into the sort of technical "xfree86", "pc105", etc. settings.
This willfull stupidity of the installer extends to other aspects of the setup also - with so many kernels available, Debian should pick the most appropriate one to use for my system. It's not that hard to open up
Package Selection
This brings me nicely along to package selection. Tasksel wasn't too bad, though I'd expect more options. For example, instead of X11 have "X11", "Typical Desktop (Gnome & KDE)" and "Esoteric Desktop (WindowMaker and Enlightenment)" and so on. I was mystified to see I could select Fortran and Tcl/Tk support, but not Perl, PHP, or Java - some of the most popular languages today. However nothing, not in all my 22 years on this Earth, could prepare me for the horrors of dselect. Sweet merciful divine!
Firstly the developers should check out Eugenia's comments on osnews.com about the new Yast2 package manager, as many of the same things apply. In the end it all boils down to the old KISS clich, keep it simple! Instead of giving a load of choices for dependency resolution with half a million optional packages thrown in, just give n + 1 choices, one for each of the n package/package-combinations that fixes the dependency, and one to install without resolving it. Similarly with conflict resolution it should be remove selected, remove conflicting or ignore.
Worse yet are the help screens that pop up at every opportunity, yet which don't actually explain everything (like the meaning of those EIOM headers at the top of the screen). At the end of the day, it should be fairly obvious what's going on. Leave complex package selection tools for the post install, at this stage people just want to get the damn thing working. It drove me nuts having to pass through that stupid help screen every time a dependency arose.
What's worst of all is that if, for example, dselect fails to download a package from the Internet, it prompts the user with a basic text mode question asking them if they want to cancel. I assumed this meant just cancel that particular package. It didn't, and I found myself dumped into the console on a base system. I knew enough to extricate myself, but this is hardly something the average newbie is going to be able to cope with.
The Installation Overall
I want to make sure people realise I'm not trying to advocate a graphical installer. It would be a good move ahead, and should be available for Debian 4.0, but all the stuff I've mentioned here could be easily implemented in a text-mode installer written using ncurses. In fact, I would recommend a Model-View-Controller approach, with the Model, the bit that does all the actual work, being packed into a library, and two Views being created with, say, ncurses and Qt, each of which uses the Model library to do what's needed.
Debian's installer does have some redeeming features. For one thing it is rock solid. With several versions of Mandrake I have had problems setting up the mouse and getting the package selector to install all the selected packages. This didn't happen in Debian. Downloading updates from the web during the install is also a great idea (though I was a little aghast to find my 56K modem facing into 100M of updates). The provision of non-free sites is a great help, given the conflict between Debian's all-free stance and the wants of the average user.
The crucial factor is that the installer should be made as intelligent as possible, and to hide the actual details behind "Advanced" buttons. Guess as much as possible from initial locale data. Use branded names instead of driver names for hardware, be it keyboards, mice, graphics cards or soundcards. I hadn't mentioned this but Debian should aim to have sound working as a default in every new installation, prompting users for their soundcard make from a list in a similar in fashion to the XFree one. In this day and age, every OS should have sound support. By all means, let one of the brands on the list be "No Soundcard", but offer to install and configure it at any rate.
Dselect needs to be totally re-designed. I can appreciate its power, but it's far to complex and hard to use. Aim to replicate the way things work in graphical GUIs - have drop down lists and checkboxes which can be ticked to install items, even if said boxes are represented by [ ] and [X]. There is a case to be made for complex package installation software, but half way through an OS install isn't really the place.
The Configured System
Having finally got everything installed, I was, I confess, pretty disappointed with the results. Bugs started appearing. Firstly, when selecting the Irish locale in KDE 2.2.2, I found KDE trying to tell me that the Irish currency was the pound, something which hasn't been the case since the Euro was introduced in 2000, two and a half years ago. Then kwrite decided it wouldn't display documents it opened and konqueror decided all pages should be 2000 pixels wide, even though the window was about 800.
Sound didn't work, and consequently the KDE bootup screen stalled for ages at the window manager stage while arts slowly died, then popped up a No Sound message box. None of the PPP connection tools worked when not used by root. None of the hard disk partitions were configured (even though they had been recognised by the piece of code that set up LILO). My CDRW at
It was a mess.
Firstly the menus. In Enlightenment and Gnome you have a special Debian menu included with the rest in the app launchers. These menus contain everything. Thus, when you're looking for a program, you just go to the Debian menu and it's all gravy. However the Debian menu wan't included in KDE, instead there were a load of Debian submenus, which didn't seem to include everything. What made this especially heinous was that if a Debian menu had been included in KDE, I could have made a launcher out of it. At this stage, though, I don't believe that's enough. Debian should follow the lead of every other major distro and offer the exact same menu layout throughout. All you need is for graphical packages to install an information file in, e.g.
I've got most of the sound and KDE stuff off my chest, though frankly its deeply disappointing. It's the first time I've experienced functional bugs in any KDE version, and I started with 0.99. The only other time I've seen a major bug was a cosmetic issue with KDE 2.1 (?) in SuSE 7.3 which caused vertical stripes to appear on widget backgrounds.
Again I've dealt with the appalling foul up of Euro-support. The support packages should have been installed by default when I selected en_IE@euro. The AltGr-4 keymap should have been set up. As far as I'm concerned these are functional bugs.
The PPP tools could definitely have been set up better. The default setting is only an invitation to newbies to use root for web-browsing. They could be set up using sudo, or else set up them with rwsr-sr-- permissions and root.pppusers ownership. That way, at the user creation screen you could ask if people should have permission to connect to the net, and make them members of the pppaccess group if permission was granted.
GTK, and consequently Mozilla, looked atrocious due to the oversized fonts (look at Windows, MacOS, BeOS, other Linux distros - they all have fonts around 11px), and changing the default font in GTK is a bit of a struggle for newbies (how obvious is Theme Selector after all). I changed it to Helvetica at 12, and now things look okay.
The fact is, I'm going to have to invest a considerable amount of time just to get things to the same level that Mandrake and RedHat give straight out of the default install. This is not something that will attract new people. Otherwise the system seems reasonable. I'll have to wait a while before I can make any pronouncements with regard to stability. Anecdotal evidence is extremely positive, but my initial experience hasn't matched. I was a little disappointed with the way files were arranged. I had hoped Debian would lead the world away from RedHat's madness and stick KDE and Gnome in their own subdirectories, e.g.
Conclusions
I'm sure you're aware that this isn't going to be glowing. Debian's installer is several years out of date, and needs a serious overhaul. It's not fit for commercial consumption, and is only good enough for established Debian users and poor wannabe PFYs like myself. This is not a sustainable situation. Apt-get is good, but RPM has caught up with it for the most part thanks to apt-rpm and urpmi. I'll take everyone's word for it and say that Debian is, for the most part, stable. I like the fact that the packagers are willing to hold back and patch existing stable software to get a decent system, and not one that seems to be in permanent beta. This is why I went for it in the first place.
But people who chose Debian aren't rewarded. Installation and post-install configuration is a bit of a nightmare. Debian should organise people to collect code from the Webmin, Linuxconf and Mandrake configuration programs and create Debian's own configuration framework. At this stage of Linux development it's compulsory, even RedHat has finally copped on to this. Indeed, I would recommend following RedHat in several arenas. I believe Bluecurve is free, Debian should package it - it gives everything a nice polished look. People can then change things if they want to. Having worked in MIS a bit, I know that people will always find a way to muck about with display settings, even if word-processors give them palpitations.
I think people should get together and form a DebianDesktop group, committed to creating a package which will install several different themes, configurations and menus. People can be asked near the end of the install if they would like their desktop customised - if they answer yes, this package could be installed. Similarly work should be done on intelligent installers and hardware auto-detection (though the latter is obviously going to be especially difficult for a multi-platform system). The priority should be the simple installer though, hardware detection can wait.
The inspiration for this article was an article I saw on this site a while back bemoaning Debian's loss of mindshare, attributing it in part due to the lack of attention in the media. Most of the pertinent points were made in the article and accompanying comments. An open-source distribution needs mindshare to survive, but the media won't cover distros which don't have the latest whiz-bang desktop software. If Debian formally released a distribution based on the Test tree compiled with GCC 3.2 for 686mmx, its marketshare would explode. Just look at Gentoo, a hideous installation process, but a system equivalent to a Honda Civic with added spoiler, exhausts, alloy wheels and, of course, go-fast stripes. In other words, something for the lads to show off.
Such a system would have the benefit of bringing a lot more bug-reports into the system, giving a better stable distro. Mandrake are sucking a lot of the talent Debian needs through cooker. They've openly thought about making the distribution packaging process totally open and building a value-added distro around it like Progeny. If this were to happen it would place Debian into a very tough place.
The new Debian needs to blow people away. It needs to be Granny-proof. It needs an installer that people can bluff their way through, with an attractive, well configured desktop on the other side. Debian maintainers should check out the competition now and again, to see where they can improve. Because if they don't, Debian will lose developers, and become less and less of a force in the Linux world.
what they want!
;-).
I have to maintain a dozen RH boxes and a half dozen mandrake boxes, it sucks compared to keeping a Debian system up.
Further trying to build a dedicated server from RH of Mandrake is terrible. For security reasons a minimal install is best, but its just plain hard to get with "we know what you want" distros.
debian is also getting a complete overhaul in the installer dept. remade from scratch with a modular interface (you want gui? ok, you want dialog, ok you want webmin that will be there also) that will be able to interface with any installer layout you choose (if the interface module exists, or yo uwrite one
Reminds me of this urban legend.
They ought to plenty hot for any but the most hardcore;-)
Atomic
One stumbling block to major acceptance of ssh outside the admin community is the ability to resume downloads. I wish they would add this.
Want to play with multiple distros? but you don't want to trash your setup? wait until the next major kernel release, you will be able to play with this with out even rebooting! The new VM in the latest kernel is touted as being able to run multiple installations.
LINUX ROCKS!
(disclaimer, this is only an opinion, not actually based on first hand experience)
$ su /bin/rm /trash /bin/rm /trash /bin/rm
# rm
# mkdir
# cat >
mv $1 $2
^D
# chmod a+x
Taking time off was arguably the best thing I ever did. I left "high" school at 16 with a GED and much angst against the educational system. Knocked around in various jobs until I realized that every time I finished learning a new trade I got itchy feet and had to try another. Finally wound up back in academics and am now in my second year as a grad student on track for a Ph.D.
What I found out was that higher Ed. is nothing like K-12. There have been no problems due to my extended departure, but I am on track to becoming a professional academic. Other jobs may not be so forgiving, I don't know.
Yes, yes, See see, Here here
On on, Slashdot shlashdot
I can't believe how close to home this topic strikes for me. I am a grad student in Physics and have been considering a project just like this. I wanted to build an open source service for delivering structered content oriented around physics and math. What follows are some of the ideas I have been pondering.
First, the backend of this software would be a database server of cross referenced topics so that the presentation of material could be presented as a static idea flow (read text book) that would allow for dynamic, interactive exploration. Some benifits this would have over standard textbooks is that presentation could include video, interactive function graphing, and any other dynamic content that can be handled by a computer. The frontend would be basically a web client that could present and store the information and exploration history for future use by the student as a reference.Perhaps when you complete the course you would get a CD containing all of the material you covered and in the order you covered it, including an index/keyword search ability. However you would loose access to the dynamic content unless the "owners" decided to grant you permission to further access.
Second, While delivery mechanism would be open source, the content could still be controlled in house via a peer reviewed submission validation model. This could eventually allow growth into a colaborative effort of experts all over the world. Allowing group development expidites the elimination of informational voids as the topic coverage expands. There could multiple levels of trusted users, ie. at the lowest level would be the student who only has read access, slightly higher up would be outside material developers that could place topics into an incomming review queue, and highest would be the content owners and reviewers who would carry the burden of topic submission review and overall structure maintenance.
Third presentation of material would follow the same strategy as a class room. Both audio, graphics, and text (math) would be streamed concurrently so that the topic is "developed" to the student rather than presented en masse like a text book (So many web based methods fail to provide the teaching environment that a classroom has shown to be so sucsessful at). As an avid student, I find that material much easier to understand when I see it and hear it as it is presented, in essence following the thought process of the instructor as they present their understanding of the topic.
Fourth, any topic can be interrupted for a more in depth development or alternate explanation, if none was available a request for expansion of that area could be sent to the administrators. For math this could be the ability to define terms both rigorously and semantically, as well as, an algebraic expansion of derivations. I believe that there is a web site that employs the semantic portion of this method, although I can't think of it offhand.
On a philosophical note, I really don't believe that ideas can be property, so the student would be able to freely keep any informational content that they are presented with. However, I do believe that the structure of the presentation is unique and and therefor the dynamic structure of delivery could be restricted to developing "owners".
Pro and cons,
On the pro side, you could create an automated interactive learning experiance that would allow for dynamic exploration of the material utilizing tried and trusted methods found in classrooms.
CONtrarilly, development of the course would be an in depth work that could take years to properly create, since you would in esence be attempting to create an expert system with the data/knowledge of an experienced academic professional.
I am throwing this idea out to the public ingeneral, because I think it is an idea whos time has come. If you decide to produce this I would appreciate some form of acknowledgement of the originating ideas and a chance to help codevelop it.
Frisco Rose email (no underbars) r_o_s_e_f(at)e_o_u.e_d_u GPG fingerprint 81E2 194B 6F74 389E DE90 9A55 C8FD 9738 E17F 6508
DAMN!, I should always preview. That should be, Well, DUH! Its as clear as mud, Windows considers user as a glitch, this is the root of all the problems
wish I could always be witty the first time.
From the article:
;-)
Chris Riggall, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, attributed the problems to errors by poll workers, a glitch in the Windows operating system that runs the machines and problems with electronic cards that replace paper ballots and ballot boxes.
Well, DUH! Its as clear as mud, Windows is the root of all the problems
This notice posted as a friendly trollish reminder.
Thanks for the info, if I do indeed decide to try a palm device I will give this a whirl.
Wow, yes, definately. :-)
This is exactly the kind of info I was hoping to find by posting to slashdot, thanks. And yes, I consider myself a newbie in the academic world, and will continue to do so until I stop taking classes and start teaching them
Hmmm, yes you are definately right about that. I have had an HP-48G since my first year, however it is a pain to enter text or anything other than algebraic mathematics. I was hoping for somthing like the eqn editer crossed with the handwritting recognition in most PDA's. Another poster further down has pointed out a GPL'd bit of software that I would love to see on a PDA.
Thanks for the laugh!
;-)
Although it might be more appropriately aimed at a Chemist
Thanks for telling me what I want :-)
I have a friend that has a Ti-92, its a sweet device, except for one thing. I am an RPN junkie, infix just hurts after using postfix for so long. I don't know if there any ways to make the Ti talk RPN, but if there were then I might have to reconsider them.
Only studying the predictable change in entropy would follow from your suppositions. ie.
HOW predicatble entropic changes in any given system is the study of intelligence itself...
You have obviously never lived in a house with children. They will immediately get around the rule you empty it, you replace by simply leaving a miniscule amount of whatever the rule applies to, thereby leaving the next person in the original predicament, since in most cases and this one in particular, to little is definately not enough!