I don't consider it a failure when all of the intelligent people I know are at least pondering the use of linux, with many of them already invested.
Also consider that the majority of the "overall market" consists of people that leave their system infected and untended for weeks on time with things like sobig and blaster, while still connected to the cable network. It's why my service has been utter shit for the last month. These people shouldn't be using computers in the first place.
There's nothing inately 'difficult' about linux, as an OS, no more so than there is with Windows.
I have never done admin for a Windows server. I have, however, run a plethora of servers with linux. The absurdity of your comments is almost breath taking to me. I personally find Windows admin difficult and convoluted, with impractical GUI approaches to things that are so easily done in a command prompt. To say nothing of remote admin (for instance, two nights ago I migrated a RedHat system to debian - from 12 hours away).
It's all a matter of perspective. If you're too lazy to learn how to administer a linux system, don't talk out of your ass as how much of a "pain in the ass" it is compared to the "simplicity and stability" of Windows.
If there hadn't been a Microsoft and a Windows, there would be no where near as many computers in homes, there would have been no (or a much smaller) dotcom boom (and fall), and there wouldn't be nearly as many computing-related jobs available as there is even now.
Two ways to look at this: the world would be more standard, and there'd be more freedom of choice. Or: there'd be less computing use, less implimentations, and most certainly less hardware (because the market is smaller). I mean, seriously - how many people do you knwo that are confused simply by the use of Windows? Let alone half a dozen competing OSes all trying to impliment the same thing differently?
I'd argue that if it weren't windows and MS, it'd be someone else - IBM and OS/2 and/or apple, probably.
Well and good. About time for an X replacement, I'd say.
Once the basics are done, and it runs stably and fast, people will gain interest - and not until (for the most part). No doubt we'll soon see GTK and Qt ported to Y. Applications will be soon to follow.
Granted, I really don't know much about how X works. Would a simple port of a given X app be possible, maybe just a recompile, provided the toolkit was there and available?
What good is it, when the equipment is so expensive, and people's visual acuity isn't high enough to make it have any perceiveable difference?
I suspect that, at 6k scanlines, the cause of the nausia wasn't the quality, but the low FPS. 6k scanlines would be a lot to push, period. You'd need a very, very hardcore system (or set of systems) to get that to a screen at something sane. Many of the females I know were made ill by the first few generations of FPS games, due to how they pushed the hardware (low fps). Now that hardware is fast enough to put most FPS games at a dozen or so fps above 60 (or more) without a problem, most of these same people don't seem to have a problem with them (and sometimes even play them).
Um, if I only make mininum wage (or hell, $10 or $15 an hour), and a CD costs $20 (or $16, but it's been a while since that's been the case), then it takes you four hours (or more, after taxes, or somewhat less, if you make more...) to earn enough to purchase a CD. That's about half a day's work for an album of music that lasts for roughly 40 minutes, and maybe has one or two songs. Even if it takes two hours to find the CD, I'm saving my time and money. It has nothing to do with getting something for 'free' but for less. I buy indie CDs at shows all the time, but they only costs 3 - 5 bucks.
For a movie, it's pretty much the same way, except you're less likely to watch it as many times as you'll listen to a CD - unless it's a damned good film, ala The Boondock Saints, The Matrix or Office Space, etc. (YMMV).
My understanding is that they've designed 2.6 with specific interest and attention spent on speeding up the kernel for desktop users. They've decreased latency and such, so that 7% slower on a server-related task will likely not translate over to desktop use.
Go back, and try to count those reboots again. Add one to your count every time you perform a task that requires a reboot. That's probably 3 for the initial install (depending on whether or not it wants to play nice with your hardware), and then another 4+ (conservatively) for all the patches from Windows Update. And that's on an XP box. Double it for Win2k, etc. easily.
How about MS Office? DirectX? Etc. etc. You'll need to reboot for each of those.
We're talking about a day-long event to get a windows system back up and running, here. Not just the OS - that's a fairly trivial matter compared to the whole picture. I dread reinstalling my windows system - not because of the time investment of installing the OS, so much as the application reinstallation.
Install an app, reboot: wash, rinse, repeat. Sure, you can cheat and install two apps at a time, -sometimes-. But still, I find that I've forgotten (or neglected) to install one of my applications from CD. It takes freaking forever: enter serial, wait w/ the window forceably on top, reboot. sit. repeat. I'm sure that, in your case, this process takes less time, since you're not using the actual products.
Add all those things up, and then combine it with the fact that a fully-functional install of any distro is probably under 3G, while an average install of Windows 2k+ is over 7G, while a comparable install to that of a linux distro is over 10G (not including games), should tell you something about the time investment required. Especially when you consider the 'individual installation' requirements of most windows apps.
I can too, but the only application I could use would be notepad. Sad, that you don't have to compile the system, none of the apps are installed, you have to reboot half a dozen times for the changes to take effect, AND you have to tend the foul beast the entire time; contrast that to (say) debian (a 'difficult' non-source distro), from scratch (netinst), with only a little tending at the beginning, with a full compliment of applications, getting installed in roughly half the time (depending on how fast your disk is, how much ram you have, and the speed of your proc. mainly disk and network speed, though). I do that fairly regularly on a 550MHz athlon w/ 386M and an IBM Deskstar (13G).
If only apt were able to concurrently download and install packages, the time would be significantly less.
You really should check out the Dana AlphaSmart. It's got PalmOS 4.1-something on it, has a decent sized display (it's about 4 palm-icons deep, and three palm screens wide), and it's quite useable. You can use all the basic palmOS options, too: graffiti, address book, web browser, etc. They've got quite a few nice features, too: wifi, pc connectivity, connect directly to USB printers, and the like. It's only got 16M of internal memory, but I imagine you could use the USB slot for one of the USB token cards w/ 32M - 1024M capacities.
With about 8hr of battery life, cool things like perl for palmos available, it begins looking like a fairly viable laptop replacement. Unfortunately, the 400$-ish price tag is a bit steep for something that runs at under 100MHz.
They're (basically) Palm Pilots with full-sized keyboard functionality, w/o any irritating clip-on devices, etc. Their "word processor" is quite minimalistic with basic features such as spellcheck. Definately a nice tool for the mobile geek writer.
You weren't intended to "format" your writing at the same time as you wrote it, at least for a large part. Format things -after- you're done writing, if you find you tinker too much with formatting to get it "just right".
Despite being on my computer for 4+ hours a day, I find that I rely on the old steadfasts for my writing; that is, when I want to compile some serious literature, I go out back and piss on the driveway.
Ok, you might be correct. But then - what happened to EFM? It was quite useable for a while there, and they scrapped it. I know they went for a structural change, but couldn't they at least reuse some of the code?
I gave up on E16. It just ran too slow, and I was tired of it lagging X's performance after several days of use. So now I use KDE3, which is a suitable replacement for the time being.
I recall when I was able to afford, and purchased my own system (K6-2 233MHz, baby! raw powerrrr!), that many of the people I knew that used Intel hardware said I would encounter stability problems. I never did (as a result of the processor). I had some memory die, but that was it.
They also claimed that their performance was better (on idenically clocked/marketed 233MHz systems). On quite a few occasions I was able to prove them wrong by being able to functionally run programs they couldn't. The other hardware was quite similar, too. Not sure I understand why it worked that way (due to the limitations of the K6-2), but it did, despite all logic.
Re:Let me see if i can understand this
on
Is Prescott 64-bit?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
i've seen virtually *nothing* worth noting from an interface perspective.
You should check out Enlightenment, then, if you've not already heard of it. E16 is old hat, sure. It was quite 'innovative' 4 years or so back. E17's CVS has been innovative, several times, but those innovations no longer exist. The fuckers seem to think that rewriting is somehow productive and a good idea. They'd have had an awesome desktop environment that runs quickly, has superior graphics, has an interesting new UI, etc. etc. time and time again if they'd not started over a dozen or so times, on individual components and the entire project.
Someone (that can program, which leaves me out) needs to accumilate all the CVS from the last 4 years from that project, combine them, and fork the project. It's rediculous how long it's taking.:(
Hrm. I odn't recall the specifics about Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, and what the implications of clones and a republic war fleed would do to it. I might have to find those books again, I recall them being pretty decent.
That site's a tool of the rich, employed to make all of the wage earners and people currently out of work to think that they're really getting a deal - hey look, you're in the top 1% of wage earners in the -world-! You should be -grateful-! - instead of the reality: $10k dollars annually is not enough to pay the bills and feed a family of 3, let alone take care of things such as health care, etc.
Working 40 hours a week, at $6 dollars an hour, 51 weeks a year, you still only make 12k. Thus, it requires both adult members of a family to be out working, while their children go uncared for (aditional child care cost). The child doesn't get the upbringing that they need to be well rounded, and the process perpetuates itself.
Slashdot Mirror
No, "free as in beer, not speech" is why there is hardly anyone that actually pays for their 'license' from Microsoft that knows how to not do so.
I don't consider it a failure when all of the intelligent people I know are at least pondering the use of linux, with many of them already invested.
Also consider that the majority of the "overall market" consists of people that leave their system infected and untended for weeks on time with things like sobig and blaster, while still connected to the cable network. It's why my service has been utter shit for the last month. These people shouldn't be using computers in the first place.
There's nothing inately 'difficult' about linux, as an OS, no more so than there is with Windows.
I have never done admin for a Windows server. I have, however, run a plethora of servers with linux. The absurdity of your comments is almost breath taking to me. I personally find Windows admin difficult and convoluted, with impractical GUI approaches to things that are so easily done in a command prompt. To say nothing of remote admin (for instance, two nights ago I migrated a RedHat system to debian - from 12 hours away).
It's all a matter of perspective. If you're too lazy to learn how to administer a linux system, don't talk out of your ass as how much of a "pain in the ass" it is compared to the "simplicity and stability" of Windows.
If there hadn't been a Microsoft and a Windows, there would be no where near as many computers in homes, there would have been no (or a much smaller) dotcom boom (and fall), and there wouldn't be nearly as many computing-related jobs available as there is even now.
Two ways to look at this: the world would be more standard, and there'd be more freedom of choice. Or: there'd be less computing use, less implimentations, and most certainly less hardware (because the market is smaller). I mean, seriously - how many people do you knwo that are confused simply by the use of Windows? Let alone half a dozen competing OSes all trying to impliment the same thing differently?
I'd argue that if it weren't windows and MS, it'd be someone else - IBM and OS/2 and/or apple, probably.
Well and good. About time for an X replacement, I'd say.
Once the basics are done, and it runs stably and fast, people will gain interest - and not until (for the most part). No doubt we'll soon see GTK and Qt ported to Y. Applications will be soon to follow.
Granted, I really don't know much about how X works. Would a simple port of a given X app be possible, maybe just a recompile, provided the toolkit was there and available?
What good is it, when the equipment is so expensive, and people's visual acuity isn't high enough to make it have any perceiveable difference?
I suspect that, at 6k scanlines, the cause of the nausia wasn't the quality, but the low FPS. 6k scanlines would be a lot to push, period. You'd need a very, very hardcore system (or set of systems) to get that to a screen at something sane. Many of the females I know were made ill by the first few generations of FPS games, due to how they pushed the hardware (low fps). Now that hardware is fast enough to put most FPS games at a dozen or so fps above 60 (or more) without a problem, most of these same people don't seem to have a problem with them (and sometimes even play them).
Um, if I only make mininum wage (or hell, $10 or $15 an hour), and a CD costs $20 (or $16, but it's been a while since that's been the case), then it takes you four hours (or more, after taxes, or somewhat less, if you make more...) to earn enough to purchase a CD. That's about half a day's work for an album of music that lasts for roughly 40 minutes, and maybe has one or two songs. Even if it takes two hours to find the CD, I'm saving my time and money. It has nothing to do with getting something for 'free' but for less. I buy indie CDs at shows all the time, but they only costs 3 - 5 bucks.
For a movie, it's pretty much the same way, except you're less likely to watch it as many times as you'll listen to a CD - unless it's a damned good film, ala The Boondock Saints, The Matrix or Office Space, etc. (YMMV).
My understanding is that they've designed 2.6 with specific interest and attention spent on speeding up the kernel for desktop users. They've decreased latency and such, so that 7% slower on a server-related task will likely not translate over to desktop use.
Go back, and try to count those reboots again. Add one to your count every time you perform a task that requires a reboot. That's probably 3 for the initial install (depending on whether or not it wants to play nice with your hardware), and then another 4+ (conservatively) for all the patches from Windows Update. And that's on an XP box. Double it for Win2k, etc. easily.
How about MS Office? DirectX? Etc. etc. You'll need to reboot for each of those.
We're talking about a day-long event to get a windows system back up and running, here. Not just the OS - that's a fairly trivial matter compared to the whole picture. I dread reinstalling my windows system - not because of the time investment of installing the OS, so much as the application reinstallation.
Install an app, reboot: wash, rinse, repeat. Sure, you can cheat and install two apps at a time, -sometimes-. But still, I find that I've forgotten (or neglected) to install one of my applications from CD. It takes freaking forever: enter serial, wait w/ the window forceably on top, reboot. sit. repeat. I'm sure that, in your case, this process takes less time, since you're not using the actual products.
Add all those things up, and then combine it with the fact that a fully-functional install of any distro is probably under 3G, while an average install of Windows 2k+ is over 7G, while a comparable install to that of a linux distro is over 10G (not including games), should tell you something about the time investment required. Especially when you consider the 'individual installation' requirements of most windows apps.
A "fix" to the problem might be to not use slackware in the first place? What's wrong with gentoo?
If manually fixing deps isn't your thing, and dealing with broken packages isn't either, then slack probably isn't the right distro for you.
A MANDRAKE HOWTO - The Condensed Version
1) Insert CD.
2) Click.
3) Click.
4) Click.
5) Click.
6) Click.
7) Take CD out and reboot.
Welcome to the pinacle of Western culture! This is what we have become. Amazing.
I think it's time for the monguls and huns to run us over and pilliage our cities.
sweet mother mary! what a troll.
I can too, but the only application I could use would be notepad. Sad, that you don't have to compile the system, none of the apps are installed, you have to reboot half a dozen times for the changes to take effect, AND you have to tend the foul beast the entire time; contrast that to (say) debian (a 'difficult' non-source distro), from scratch (netinst), with only a little tending at the beginning, with a full compliment of applications, getting installed in roughly half the time (depending on how fast your disk is, how much ram you have, and the speed of your proc. mainly disk and network speed, though). I do that fairly regularly on a 550MHz athlon w/ 386M and an IBM Deskstar (13G).
If only apt were able to concurrently download and install packages, the time would be significantly less.
You really should check out the Dana AlphaSmart. It's got PalmOS 4.1-something on it, has a decent sized display (it's about 4 palm-icons deep, and three palm screens wide), and it's quite useable. You can use all the basic palmOS options, too: graffiti, address book, web browser, etc. They've got quite a few nice features, too: wifi, pc connectivity, connect directly to USB printers, and the like. It's only got 16M of internal memory, but I imagine you could use the USB slot for one of the USB token cards w/ 32M - 1024M capacities.
With about 8hr of battery life, cool things like perl for palmos available, it begins looking like a fairly viable laptop replacement. Unfortunately, the 400$-ish price tag is a bit steep for something that runs at under 100MHz.
AlphaSmart 3000
AlphaSmart Dana
They're (basically) Palm Pilots with full-sized keyboard functionality, w/o any irritating clip-on devices, etc. Their "word processor" is quite minimalistic with basic features such as spellcheck. Definately a nice tool for the mobile geek writer.
You weren't intended to "format" your writing at the same time as you wrote it, at least for a large part. Format things -after- you're done writing, if you find you tinker too much with formatting to get it "just right".
Despite being on my computer for 4+ hours a day, I find that I rely on the old steadfasts for my writing; that is, when I want to compile some serious literature, I go out back and piss on the driveway.
Ok, you might be correct. But then - what happened to EFM? It was quite useable for a while there, and they scrapped it. I know they went for a structural change, but couldn't they at least reuse some of the code?
I gave up on E16. It just ran too slow, and I was tired of it lagging X's performance after several days of use. So now I use KDE3, which is a suitable replacement for the time being.
"me too!"
I recall when I was able to afford, and purchased my own system (K6-2 233MHz, baby! raw powerrrr!), that many of the people I knew that used Intel hardware said I would encounter stability problems. I never did (as a result of the processor). I had some memory die, but that was it.
They also claimed that their performance was better (on idenically clocked/marketed 233MHz systems). On quite a few occasions I was able to prove them wrong by being able to functionally run programs they couldn't. The other hardware was quite similar, too. Not sure I understand why it worked that way (due to the limitations of the K6-2), but it did, despite all logic.
"back in the day"? You must be, what, 15, 16?
i've seen virtually *nothing* worth noting from an interface perspective.
:(
You should check out Enlightenment, then, if you've not already heard of it. E16 is old hat, sure. It was quite 'innovative' 4 years or so back. E17's CVS has been innovative, several times, but those innovations no longer exist. The fuckers seem to think that rewriting is somehow productive and a good idea. They'd have had an awesome desktop environment that runs quickly, has superior graphics, has an interesting new UI, etc. etc. time and time again if they'd not started over a dozen or so times, on individual components and the entire project.
Someone (that can program, which leaves me out) needs to accumilate all the CVS from the last 4 years from that project, combine them, and fork the project. It's rediculous how long it's taking.
Hrm. I odn't recall the specifics about Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, and what the implications of clones and a republic war fleed would do to it. I might have to find those books again, I recall them being pretty decent.
I wasn't contesting this train of logic, but vb.warrior's lack of any logic at all.
That site's a tool of the rich, employed to make all of the wage earners and people currently out of work to think that they're really getting a deal - hey look, you're in the top 1% of wage earners in the -world-! You should be -grateful-! - instead of the reality: $10k dollars annually is not enough to pay the bills and feed a family of 3, let alone take care of things such as health care, etc.
Working 40 hours a week, at $6 dollars an hour, 51 weeks a year, you still only make 12k. Thus, it requires both adult members of a family to be out working, while their children go uncared for (aditional child care cost). The child doesn't get the upbringing that they need to be well rounded, and the process perpetuates itself.