I think you might not understand how these things work. There is simply no easy way for the OS to determine what actually happened from the fact that a program wrote to some memory it shouldn't have. It's not a matter of "anything at all goes slightly differently" - hell, you could say the same of any fatal error. As far as I know, it's the same on any operating system.
No, it isn't. Language "evolving" is about adding new words, or adding new meanings to existing words. Spelling and grammatical mistakes are just that - mistakes. You don't just do something wrong and then decide it's correct because that's the convenient thing to do.
"Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses." - Juvenal
The first sentence seems somewhat less applicable in current times, however.
So what you're saying is that Clinton made a bad moral judgement and lied about it, whereas the Bush administration was merely incompetent in matters of national security.
Re:Best wireless card for linux?
on
Linux Unwired
·
· Score: 1
I don't know if the ones I use are necessarily the "best" overall, but my post on this is here:
Re:which are the best of the....
on
Linux Unwired
·
· Score: 1
If it's best in terms of support, at the moment I am using all Netgear products. I have an MA311 (PCI), MA701 (CompactFlash) and MA401 (PC card) and all of them work well in Linux, mainly because they're based on Prism2 chips.
I just wish manufacturers would stop radically changing the product without changing the model number, as wireless card manufacturers seem to like doing. It only adds to confusion.
The way policies are displayed and edited is terrible - it's just one step up from the the registry. I know because I use them at work, and I get frustrated every time I have to go in there and find some setting.
I agree, Linux could do with some more GUI management tools. These are the sorts of things I believe you'll see coming out of Novell and others within the next year or so. However, "the masses" are not interested in these management tools - as long as they can change a few settings on their own home/office desktop, and they can find things in there easily, then they'll be happy. It's the administrators who need these tools.
Database frontend: for KDE, it's coming, and it's called Kexi. It looks pretty good so far. For groupware, there's Kontact.
Nobody's going to deny there were serious problems with the pace of development with XFree86. But when someone makes it truly difficult to work with them, then you just can't get any work done.
I believe the release of XOrg speaks for itself - the coding has resumed, the development process is more open, and things are humming along pretty smoothly. There's a stable branch (Xorg) and a development branch (fd.o). What more do you want?
I agree with the parent parent poster, but I don't think your anecdote is really applicable. Installing Windows over a previously set up version of Windows is painless (or it should be). Installing Windows from scratch is something else entirely and can be much harder, particularly if the driver for a piece of critical hardware isn't included with Windows. Then after that, you have to install all of your applications.
I'm not saying Linux is fantastically better in this regard, but let's try not to go too far the other way either.
Which browser have you tested with? Both Konqueror and Mozilla have somewhat slow-redrawing renderers which cause this. It is also made much worse by a badly coded or generic X driver. On my system at home with an ATI graphics card, proper drivers, XFree86 4.3 and KDE 3.2, for most non-browser windows tearing and aliasing is barely noticable - in fact I'm not sure that it's any different to Windows on the same machine.
I don't believe Linux is as user friendly as it could be. However I also don't believe the issue you brought up has anything to do with user friendliness - it's more about certain users being picky.
the day a decent interface gets slapped on the Linux base.
I'm sorry but that, my friend, is a troll. Or at the very least flamebait. You do have a point, but you turn your potential audience off by saying things like that.
Desktop interactivity is being worked on, though. A lot of the discussions on scheduling in the 2.6 kernel have mentioned it, and personally I think 2.6 has improved in terms of visible desktop performance in some areas.
You're right in that drivers are a problem. But just having the drivers doesn't give you a working setup - you need an easy front-end to install and configure them from. The open-sourcing of YaST2 should go a long way towards helping this, I think.
1) Yes, but there are still Linux advocates out there that haven't got it yet.
2) I'm sure a lot of them are, but some of them aren't.
3) Yes, it's being done, but I'm not sure that we all fully understand the user's perspective. That was the main point of my rant. For example, I haven't yet looked at the Mandrake 10 Community release, but in 9.2 the config tools were still buggy, confusing, and incomplete. This is the area I think needs to be concentrated on.
I'm a Linux developer (as in I write code for a Linux software package - nothing mainstream, and not really desktop, though it's designed to help build end-user interfaces). I apologise in advance for the length of this rant, but I've come to a few realisations lately.
I feel for you, I really do. And I think one of the previous posters is right - as Linux developers some of us spend so much time at the command line that we don't know how "normal" users expect to be able to do things. I've done a few installfests, and personally I feel embarrassed when I have to go to the command line in order to change or fix something, particularly when it's a feature that should be available from the GUI (or is but doesn't work). End users just don't "get" the command line like we do - they don't understand the power, and mostly they neither want nor need it. Like it or not, this isn't going to change.
What we need to do is start listening to the users. Believe it or not, some of their complaints are actually genuine. Of course, sometimes we also need to educate them in the new ways that Linux offers of doing things. There needs to be a balance between these two, and this is not a balance that is always struck in the Linux community.
Linux usability needs work. I never realised how much until I started to think about how much time I spend just getting things to work in Linux. The other day I needed to scan and print a few photographs. I had had it working properly before, but when I tried it this time, neither XSANE nor Kooka (which I believe relies on SANE anyway) would play ball. In the end I realised I didn't have enough time to screw around figuring out why the scanner didn't work, let alone the printer which I had previously set up fine in Windows. I rebooted into Win2K and did the work in a snap. Me! A dyed in the wool Linux person, full-time home Linux desktop user and Linux developer, who nearly lives Linux, had to reboot to Windows because he couldn't be bothered to set something up. I am truly ashamed.
Personally I don't believe XPde is really going to solve anything. Sure, it might attract a few more users, but to get lots more and get them to stay I believe we have to improve in the following three areas:
1) Help people, and don't try to push them into something that they're not comfortable with. Don't get them to try installing Gentoo if they'd be better off with something like Mandrake (as examples). Learn how to use the GUI tools yourself instead of the command line, so you can show users the right way. Show them the good things in Linux. DO NOT MENTION how crappy you think Windows is. Listen when they complain about something - try to work out the message they've got, and if it's worth considering, see if you can pass it on to the right people (eg. if it's KDE, file a proper bug report at bugs.kde.org).
2) Stop the infighting. There's no need for it, and it only hurts. If you're an XYZ user, don't go to the ABC forums (or comment on an article that's solely about ABC) blathering on about how much better XYZ is, or even worse, how crappy you think ABC is.
3) For developers, follow up on #1. As creators of end-user software, we need to seek out these things that are hard and make them easy. I'm not saying nobody's doing this - you only have to look at the latest releases of both GNOME and KDE to see that people really are taking notice. We just need more people, and we need them focussing on solving the right problems.
For my part, when I have gotten a little further ahead on my project I hope to be able to have time to contribute more to desktop Linux projects. For now, I try to write clear, concise and non-duplicate bug reports if I find a problem, help new Linux users where I can, and make a few donations here and there.
Re:By the time SP2 comes out...
on
Gates on Winsecurity
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Where are we going to be at in 2006? KDE 3.5 and GNOME 2.8, with the same old XFree86 technology running beneath
You know, there's a flipside to that coin: if it ain't broke (which it mostly isn't), don't fix it. Unlike Microsoft, "we" don't have to do buzzword-laden feature releases on a regular basis.
Free software isn't perfect by any means, but it's steadily improving. Besides, nobody really knows where we'll be at in 2006 - not even Microsoft can give you any guarantees on where they'll be then.
I'm trying to build one using the Shuttle ST62K, as it has an external fanless PSU and a very quiet internal fan, thus making it almost perfect for a PVR. However the Linux support isn't as great with it as its ATI chipset is very new. I'm currently in the early stages of trying to get it sorted out.
One of the more serious problems with the iPAQs (and possibly other handhelds) running PocketPC is that they store all of their user data in RAM. If the battery goes flat, your data has to be restored from elsewhere, and the battery doesn't last very long due to the high current drain of the screen.
Considering the amount of flash memory these devices have, it was a rather bizarre decision to store user data in RAM instead. Perhaps they felt that the limited number of write cycles would be an issue.
In Linux most software is written such that it works with the permissions it has - ie, the permissions of the unprivileged user. Under Windows (as mentioned by the parent poster) this is quite often not the case. I had huge headaches just trying to set up my home machine under Windows 2000 so that the rest of my family were normal users and not administrators. Not only did quite a few applications not work, they didn't even have the courtesy to display an error message. In the end I gave up because quite a few things just refused to work. No wonder most Windows users run as administrators - it's too difficult to do otherwise for most people.
Granted, there have been exploits in Linux software that are most likely to be installed SUID root - which is why SUID/SGID executables are to be kept to a minimum on a secure system. Most user-level applications, I mean the kind that desktop users would be using, will not be SUID/SGID because they don't need to be.
Minutes to restore files from installation CDs? How are you supposed to know which files to restore? Even assuming the user is capable of this, what if the software completely hoses the system? Wouldn't you rather your system at least stayed running? I struggle to understand people who try to take the stance in this case that no protection at all is somehow better than limiting the damage.
You have to take into account that today's KDE has a lot more applications and components than the 2.x series. KDE has made huge leaps and bounds in functionality since then.
Personally I'd rather they spent plenty of time on releases making sure they are stable and polished, rather than release something that is buggy or incomplete.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you might not understand how these things work. There is simply no easy way for the OS to determine what actually happened from the fact that a program wrote to some memory it shouldn't have. It's not a matter of "anything at all goes slightly differently" - hell, you could say the same of any fatal error. As far as I know, it's the same on any operating system.
No, it isn't. Language "evolving" is about adding new words, or adding new meanings to existing words. Spelling and grammatical mistakes are just that - mistakes. You don't just do something wrong and then decide it's correct because that's the convenient thing to do.
You don't happen to have a tomographic imaging scanner on board, do you?
"Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses." - Juvenal
The first sentence seems somewhat less applicable in current times, however.
So what you're saying is that Clinton made a bad moral judgement and lied about it, whereas the Bush administration was merely incompetent in matters of national security.
I don't know if the ones I use are necessarily the "best" overall, but my post on this is here:
7 &c id=9447856
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11129
If it's best in terms of support, at the moment I am using all Netgear products. I have an MA311 (PCI), MA701 (CompactFlash) and MA401 (PC card) and all of them work well in Linux, mainly because they're based on Prism2 chips.
I just wish manufacturers would stop radically changing the product without changing the model number, as wireless card manufacturers seem to like doing. It only adds to confusion.
He wants his cache memory back.
The way policies are displayed and edited is terrible - it's just one step up from the the registry. I know because I use them at work, and I get frustrated every time I have to go in there and find some setting.
I agree, Linux could do with some more GUI management tools. These are the sorts of things I believe you'll see coming out of Novell and others within the next year or so. However, "the masses" are not interested in these management tools - as long as they can change a few settings on their own home/office desktop, and they can find things in there easily, then they'll be happy. It's the administrators who need these tools.
Database frontend: for KDE, it's coming, and it's called Kexi. It looks pretty good so far. For groupware, there's Kontact.
Nobody's going to deny there were serious problems with the pace of development with XFree86. But when someone makes it truly difficult to work with them, then you just can't get any work done.
I believe the release of XOrg speaks for itself - the coding has resumed, the development process is more open, and things are humming along pretty smoothly. There's a stable branch (Xorg) and a development branch (fd.o). What more do you want?
I agree with the parent parent poster, but I don't think your anecdote is really applicable. Installing Windows over a previously set up version of Windows is painless (or it should be). Installing Windows from scratch is something else entirely and can be much harder, particularly if the driver for a piece of critical hardware isn't included with Windows. Then after that, you have to install all of your applications.
I'm not saying Linux is fantastically better in this regard, but let's try not to go too far the other way either.
Which browser have you tested with? Both Konqueror and Mozilla have somewhat slow-redrawing renderers which cause this. It is also made much worse by a badly coded or generic X driver. On my system at home with an ATI graphics card, proper drivers, XFree86 4.3 and KDE 3.2, for most non-browser windows tearing and aliasing is barely noticable - in fact I'm not sure that it's any different to Windows on the same machine.
I don't believe Linux is as user friendly as it could be. However I also don't believe the issue you brought up has anything to do with user friendliness - it's more about certain users being picky.
the day a decent interface gets slapped on the Linux base.
I'm sorry but that, my friend, is a troll. Or at the very least flamebait. You do have a point, but you turn your potential audience off by saying things like that.
Desktop interactivity is being worked on, though. A lot of the discussions on scheduling in the 2.6 kernel have mentioned it, and personally I think 2.6 has improved in terms of visible desktop performance in some areas.
You're right in that drivers are a problem. But just having the drivers doesn't give you a working setup - you need an easy front-end to install and configure them from. The open-sourcing of YaST2 should go a long way towards helping this, I think.
1) Yes, but there are still Linux advocates out there that haven't got it yet.
2) I'm sure a lot of them are, but some of them aren't.
3) Yes, it's being done, but I'm not sure that we all fully understand the user's perspective. That was the main point of my rant. For example, I haven't yet looked at the Mandrake 10 Community release, but in 9.2 the config tools were still buggy, confusing, and incomplete. This is the area I think needs to be concentrated on.
I'm a Linux developer (as in I write code for a Linux software package - nothing mainstream, and not really desktop, though it's designed to help build end-user interfaces). I apologise in advance for the length of this rant, but I've come to a few realisations lately.
I feel for you, I really do. And I think one of the previous posters is right - as Linux developers some of us spend so much time at the command line that we don't know how "normal" users expect to be able to do things. I've done a few installfests, and personally I feel embarrassed when I have to go to the command line in order to change or fix something, particularly when it's a feature that should be available from the GUI (or is but doesn't work). End users just don't "get" the command line like we do - they don't understand the power, and mostly they neither want nor need it. Like it or not, this isn't going to change.
What we need to do is start listening to the users. Believe it or not, some of their complaints are actually genuine. Of course, sometimes we also need to educate them in the new ways that Linux offers of doing things. There needs to be a balance between these two, and this is not a balance that is always struck in the Linux community.
Linux usability needs work. I never realised how much until I started to think about how much time I spend just getting things to work in Linux. The other day I needed to scan and print a few photographs. I had had it working properly before, but when I tried it this time, neither XSANE nor Kooka (which I believe relies on SANE anyway) would play ball. In the end I realised I didn't have enough time to screw around figuring out why the scanner didn't work, let alone the printer which I had previously set up fine in Windows. I rebooted into Win2K and did the work in a snap. Me! A dyed in the wool Linux person, full-time home Linux desktop user and Linux developer, who nearly lives Linux, had to reboot to Windows because he couldn't be bothered to set something up. I am truly ashamed.
Personally I don't believe XPde is really going to solve anything. Sure, it might attract a few more users, but to get lots more and get them to stay I believe we have to improve in the following three areas:
1) Help people, and don't try to push them into something that they're not comfortable with. Don't get them to try installing Gentoo if they'd be better off with something like Mandrake (as examples). Learn how to use the GUI tools yourself instead of the command line, so you can show users the right way. Show them the good things in Linux. DO NOT MENTION how crappy you think Windows is. Listen when they complain about something - try to work out the message they've got, and if it's worth considering, see if you can pass it on to the right people (eg. if it's KDE, file a proper bug report at bugs.kde.org).
2) Stop the infighting. There's no need for it, and it only hurts. If you're an XYZ user, don't go to the ABC forums (or comment on an article that's solely about ABC) blathering on about how much better XYZ is, or even worse, how crappy you think ABC is.
3) For developers, follow up on #1. As creators of end-user software, we need to seek out these things that are hard and make them easy. I'm not saying nobody's doing this - you only have to look at the latest releases of both GNOME and KDE to see that people really are taking notice. We just need more people, and we need them focussing on solving the right problems.
For my part, when I have gotten a little further ahead on my project I hope to be able to have time to contribute more to desktop Linux projects. For now, I try to write clear, concise and non-duplicate bug reports if I find a problem, help new Linux users where I can, and make a few donations here and there.
Where are we going to be at in 2006? KDE 3.5 and GNOME 2.8, with the same old XFree86 technology running beneath
You know, there's a flipside to that coin: if it ain't broke (which it mostly isn't), don't fix it. Unlike Microsoft, "we" don't have to do buzzword-laden feature releases on a regular basis.
Free software isn't perfect by any means, but it's steadily improving. Besides, nobody really knows where we'll be at in 2006 - not even Microsoft can give you any guarantees on where they'll be then.
Yes, and it will make sure you're at your computer 24/7. That way you'll never have to pay any of the new tax.
:)
Then again, some of us here won't even need the client
Well, reading your post I'm sure there was a bottle of something involved...
You hope.
It's a shame when the very piece of software you set up to protect your system turns out to be your system's destruction :(
You don't need to reinstall. That's half the point - just do the same thing you normally do to upgrade to the latest packages.
I'm trying to build one using the Shuttle ST62K, as it has an external fanless PSU and a very quiet internal fan, thus making it almost perfect for a PVR. However the Linux support isn't as great with it as its ATI chipset is very new. I'm currently in the early stages of trying to get it sorted out.
One of the more serious problems with the iPAQs (and possibly other handhelds) running PocketPC is that they store all of their user data in RAM. If the battery goes flat, your data has to be restored from elsewhere, and the battery doesn't last very long due to the high current drain of the screen.
Considering the amount of flash memory these devices have, it was a rather bizarre decision to store user data in RAM instead. Perhaps they felt that the limited number of write cycles would be an issue.
To reply to several of your posts:
In Linux most software is written such that it works with the permissions it has - ie, the permissions of the unprivileged user. Under Windows (as mentioned by the parent poster) this is quite often not the case. I had huge headaches just trying to set up my home machine under Windows 2000 so that the rest of my family were normal users and not administrators. Not only did quite a few applications not work, they didn't even have the courtesy to display an error message. In the end I gave up because quite a few things just refused to work. No wonder most Windows users run as administrators - it's too difficult to do otherwise for most people.
Granted, there have been exploits in Linux software that are most likely to be installed SUID root - which is why SUID/SGID executables are to be kept to a minimum on a secure system. Most user-level applications, I mean the kind that desktop users would be using, will not be SUID/SGID because they don't need to be.
Minutes to restore files from installation CDs? How are you supposed to know which files to restore? Even assuming the user is capable of this, what if the software completely hoses the system? Wouldn't you rather your system at least stayed running? I struggle to understand people who try to take the stance in this case that no protection at all is somehow better than limiting the damage.
You have to take into account that today's KDE has a lot more applications and components than the 2.x series. KDE has made huge leaps and bounds in functionality since then.
Personally I'd rather they spent plenty of time on releases making sure they are stable and polished, rather than release something that is buggy or incomplete.