Thanks for those informative comments. It doesnt sound like there is a whole deal of major issues. And i doubt the/proc/meminfo problem would be an issue to me as my usual method of finding out about memory usage is "cat/proc/meminfo" rather than using specific applets.
Good thing is you covered most of the areas which I thought may cause me problems. I think its time to get compiling;)
Is the 2.6 kernel "Usable" yet? By this I mean getting obscure hardware to work such as my USB Midi Interface, and what about proprietary drivers such as Nvidia's, will existing code compiled for 2.4 kernel work? or will you have to recompile stuff (IPTables for example). Im running a gentoo box. I've been toying with updating the kernel to 2.6 and I've been hearing that there are a lot of radical changes to the kernel, the performance enhancements are very exciting to say the least. But what kinds of headaches am I going to have with a real world (used as a desktop as well as a server) system?
LOL i thought it might raise a few eyebrows. The icon set i am using is called Aqua (surprisingly enough) you can get them here
Aqua Icons Although I cant be certain that is the full set. (you may need to do some hunting if it aint)
The rest of the stuff is just clever configuration. The KDE toolbar can be made transparent, and its easy to add and remove your favorite apps. Yes, that really is the KDE kicker! It doesnt animate quite as sexy as the OSX dock, but it looks good enough for me.
Other than that, Im running on a Athlon 1.4ghz dualie, with gentoo as the distro.
You can always look at themes.kde.org to get idea's download candy etc. Although Im still waiting for someone to do a Panther title bar.
Re:KDE 3.2 is a piece of crap
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
What bugs have you found? I've been using the last release candidate for several weeks and I havent come across one single bug or problem with it (maybe im not looking in the right places!). I've also found it to be quite nippy compared to 3.1 contrary to what some people have claimed here. I have the exact opposite opinion to you. I think that KDE 3.2 is an excellent piece of work and its a joy to use.
What would happen, if a small portion of the code got used in another game under a license for example the GPL. Microsoft would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
With more and more things like this being released into the public domain, with such restrictive licensing, Open Source developers are going to have to be more and more savvy to these licensing programs. It is an ideal way for microsoft to battle against the GPL. Release source code, but with very restrictive terms... Wait for some random GPL project to insert microsoft code... come down on project like a ton of bricks, discrediting GPL in the process.
Now consider what might happen if Microsoft were to release the source code to Windows in such a restrictive manner... Its going to be very tempting isnt it...
All I am saying is, we need to be really damn careful about stuff like this. Although it is nice that Microsoft are being a little more Open about things, beware of the beast.
Isnt it funny , or wonderful, or whatever, that this community , whatever you like to call it "Open Source Community" or "Linux Community" that when something happens, rather than write viruses or DDOS sites. We write emails and create on-line petitions etc, in a perfectly civil and democratic way? Look at what was achieved with the Verisign search thing. We can and do change things. Sometimes I wonder just how instrumental we are, in directly or indirectly affecting the IT industry in general. I dread to think what it would be like if we geeks just sat on our asses and let companies like Verisign, SCO and Microsoft abusing the system, letting them continue twisting the media with their campaigns of FUD.
Just look at the amount of people (myself included) who have written to the BBC informing them of our views on the subject. This alone should indicate to them that we are not, as the article suggests full of malice. But infact an intelligent community of reasonably law abiding people. It is people like us who drive change and without our views and hard work and efforts ordinary people would have no choices at all when it comes to software and related technologies.
Sometimes people dont realise just how lucky they are that others are out there fighting for a cause which benefits everyone to such an extent that they take it for granted.
I have found that running Linux on a 333mhz G3 runs a hell of a lot faster than OS9 on the same G3. Its also faster than Linux running on a x86 of the same speed.
The core of OSX is based on Darwin/BSD and as such I would expect similar speed improvements, but you'd better make sure that you get a powerbook with a nippy GPU because the GUI might mask the true speed of whats going on under the hood.
I'd go with the powerbook, they are lovely machines, I cant wait till I can afford one, all that unixy goodness in such a small package, and having apps such as iMovie etc, it would also be a fun purchase.
Please mod down , the tosser who comments *best-designed* and thinks he knows better than anyone else , because he is quite clearly a troll. and then goes on to comment in a positive light "What messrs Bell and Braben did was to code an innovative and thoughtful game , rather than just another bloat".
the guy obviously has a screwed up idea of what a classic game "Elite" is , expecially when you consider later on in his comment he states " I'd rather see the likes of Braben and Tresham designing games again than a new edition of Half-Life, or whatever".
Its obviously clear that he recognises David Braben as a seminal figure in the league of Game-Programmer Heroes, just as he ought to be. Of course there are many classic games in the brewery, and "Elite" holds the ranking and justification that it deserves. Only someone who has never actually played the game to any great length would make such blase comments.... down boy... down....
better still get a console, decide what types of games you like to play and pick the console which best serves your tastes. Not thing beats the simplicity of use of a console! Let your PC/Mac stick to what it does best.
Basically, the answer to that is that the expansive universe was generated algorythmically. In fact when Braben eventually sold the game to firebird he had to reduce the sheer size of the universe because it was too big...
Prediction showing the irony of the Half-Life 2 project cycle.
This graph shows the number of lines of code left in development for half-life 2 and gives you an indication of how long it will until it is actually release...
If Linux looks completely foreign to your normal, average end user, you'll have a very hard time getting them to use it.
Someone finally said this... I havent used a windows box for any great length of time for 3 or 4 years. I always find the windows gui to be unfamiliar and confusing. I dont really think that a well-configured gui (my preference is kde gnome still feels ropey to me), on Linux is every bit as good as a windows one, in some ways KDE is better (from a configuration standpoint).
I was using a win2k machine only yesterday, and was disturbed by the fact that IE crashed and bought the whole machine down needing a reboot... no chance of running a killall -9 IEXPLORE.EXE is there ?
The Zaurus appeals to me mainly because i'm a Linux freak, but the ability to be able to compile your own stuff (or other open source stuff) easily for your handheld is also a huge bonus. I also like the micro keyboard feature. I also like the clamshell version, which sports an incredibly high resolution display for such a small unit.
My question is thus... With these new Linux handheld distributions, is there a case for getting an ipaq or other compatible pda?
What do people think? Get an Zaurus or swallow my pride and get an ipaq and a distro? which is cheaper ? which is better?
VMWare does not need to "emulate" the x86 (am I correct) the only thing it emulates is the hardware eg graphics cards etc. This is great for speed on x86 machines. But means that its not possible to port to ppc or other architectures without building an x86 emulation componont.
Is there an open-source PC emulator (not plex) that works in a similar way?
That... Is a perfectly valid point. I wish it were true.
Why is it though, that we havent seen projects such as GIMP for example being ported to KDE? Its not that it would be so difficult to do. Time-consuming , yes but not difficult.The only application I can really think of at this moment in time is MPlayer(there may be others!), and the only reason it has been ported to gnome (gmplayer) and kde (kmplayer) is because it wasnt built with a particular windowing toolkit in mind.
This, I beleive is part of where the whole Linux Unified desktop thing is screwed. Most of the software we have is open souce, but its kind rare that some of these apps get ported to multiple toolkits. Also, many of the commercial applications we do see tend to use some ancient toolkit like motif.
I really wish O/S developers would tie there code into different GUI's but it doesnt really happen enough. Gnome and KDE are so busy building there own tools for there own WM's which is destroying any unification that might be possible. The Gnome and KDE wars are all very well, but there are some "Great Apps" like GIMP (which could do with having a native KDE port) and Konqueror etc, which would be great to port to Gnome. The whole linux/open source thing, is about sharing and democracy, but I think there are times when we forget what it is all about. Gnome / KDE both have virtues, but if we are going to have different desktop environments, lest not forget that we still want our favorite apps , but for them to look right too.
nick (slightly inebriated, but hopefully intelligible & intelligent comment!)..
This is a really weird one, and it is difficult to say how fast or slow it might be.
Many of the core Win32 api's and DLL's have been re-implemented as Linux native equivalents as part of the wine project. If these are compiled as linux ppc versions, and you have an x86 emulator running the non-ppc bits, you get a really bizarre hybrid of code executing. It will be really interesting to see how this works. Its also pretty difficult to say how fast or slow this thing is going to be, due to the strange architecture. My brain is having a confusing time trying to figure out how they would string these components together.
Nonetheless, good luck to them, its an ambitious project and probably has some far reaching implications for the future.
While I agree with much of what you are saying regarding phonetically similar words I think / suspect that there is more at issue here than just the name.
The website is quite clearly designed to look like the google site, and additionally may look like it is affiliated in some way to google (eg froogle and similar google tools). Add that to the nature and content of the site its pretty easy to see that google would be rather annoyed about it.
Contrary to what you are saying I believe people while they may not accidentally go to booble, I do think that the design is so similar it could easily be assumed that it was part of the google repertoire.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for those informative comments. It doesnt sound like there is a whole deal of major issues. And i doubt the /proc/meminfo problem would be an issue to me as my usual method of finding out about memory usage is "cat /proc/meminfo" rather than using specific applets.
;)
...
Good thing is you covered most of the areas which I thought may cause me problems. I think its time to get compiling
nick
A girlfriend, a real flesh and blood one.
Is the 2.6 kernel "Usable" yet? By this I mean getting obscure hardware to work such as my USB Midi Interface, and what about proprietary drivers such as Nvidia's, will existing code compiled for 2.4 kernel work? or will you have to recompile stuff (IPTables for example). Im running a gentoo box. I've been toying with updating the kernel to 2.6 and I've been hearing that there are a lot of radical changes to the kernel, the performance enhancements are very exciting to say the least. But what kinds of headaches am I going to have with a real world (used as a desktop as well as a server) system?
Your results would be about in line with mine, since im running a AthlonMP dualie @1.4ghz , maybe the guy with the 2200 has something weird going on.
LOL i thought it might raise a few eyebrows. The icon set i am using is called Aqua (surprisingly enough) you can get them here
Aqua Icons Although I cant be certain that is the full set. (you may need to do some hunting if it aint)
The rest of the stuff is just clever configuration. The KDE toolbar can be made transparent, and its easy to add and remove your favorite apps. Yes, that really is the KDE kicker! It doesnt animate quite as sexy as the OSX dock, but it looks good enough for me.
Other than that, Im running on a Athlon 1.4ghz dualie, with gentoo as the distro.
You can always look at themes.kde.org to get idea's download candy etc. Although Im still waiting for someone to do a Panther title bar.
What bugs have you found? I've been using the last release candidate for several weeks and I havent come across one single bug or problem with it (maybe im not looking in the right places!). I've also found it to be quite nippy compared to 3.1 contrary to what some people have claimed here. I have the exact opposite opinion to you. I think that KDE 3.2 is an excellent piece of work and its a joy to use.
My Screenie
...
kde3.2
nick
but the three day compile to update KDE is starting to kill me.
My, you must have a sloooow box.. I managed to get it built in a few hours (say 5 or 6)...
This source code is going to have a lot of useful information for the transgaming guys.
What would happen, if a small portion of the code got used in another game under a license for example the GPL. Microsoft would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
With more and more things like this being released into the public domain, with such restrictive licensing, Open Source developers are going to have to be more and more savvy to these licensing programs. It is an ideal way for microsoft to battle against the GPL. Release source code, but with very restrictive terms... Wait for some random GPL project to insert microsoft code... come down on project like a ton of bricks, discrediting GPL in the process.
Now consider what might happen if Microsoft were to release the source code to Windows in such a restrictive manner... Its going to be very tempting isnt it...
All I am saying is, we need to be really damn careful about stuff like this. Although it is nice that Microsoft are being a little more Open about things, beware of the beast.
Isnt it funny , or wonderful, or whatever, that this community , whatever you like to call it "Open Source Community" or "Linux Community" that when something happens, rather than write viruses or DDOS sites. We write emails and create on-line petitions etc, in a perfectly civil and democratic way? Look at what was achieved with the Verisign search thing. We can and do change things. Sometimes I wonder just how instrumental we are, in directly or indirectly affecting the IT industry in general. I dread to think what it would be like if we geeks just sat on our asses and let companies like Verisign, SCO and Microsoft abusing the system, letting them continue twisting the media with their campaigns of FUD.
Just look at the amount of people (myself included) who have written to the BBC informing them of our views on the subject. This alone should indicate to them that we are not, as the article suggests full of malice. But infact an intelligent community of reasonably law abiding people. It is people like us who drive change and without our views and hard work and efforts ordinary people would have no choices at all when it comes to software and related technologies.
Sometimes people dont realise just how lucky they are that others are out there fighting for a cause which benefits everyone to such an extent that they take it for granted.
I have found that running Linux on a 333mhz G3 runs a hell of a lot faster than OS9 on the same G3. Its also faster than Linux running on a x86 of the same speed.
The core of OSX is based on Darwin/BSD and as such I would expect similar speed improvements, but you'd better make sure that you get a powerbook with a nippy GPU because the GUI might mask the true speed of whats going on under the hood.
I'd go with the powerbook, they are lovely machines, I cant wait till I can afford one, all that unixy goodness in such a small package, and having apps such as iMovie etc, it would also be a fun purchase.
Please mod down , the tosser who comments *best-designed* and thinks he knows better than anyone else , because he is quite clearly a troll. and then goes on to comment in a positive light "What messrs Bell and Braben did was to code an innovative and thoughtful game , rather than just another bloat" .
....
the guy obviously has a screwed up idea of what a classic game "Elite" is , expecially when you consider later on in his comment he states "
I'd rather see the likes of Braben and Tresham designing games again than a new edition of Half-Life, or whatever".
Its obviously clear that he recognises David Braben as a seminal figure in the league of Game-Programmer Heroes, just as he ought to be.
Of course there are many classic games in the brewery, and "Elite" holds the ranking and justification that it deserves. Only someone who has never actually played the game to any great length would make such blase comments.... down boy... down
better still get a console, decide what types of games you like to play and pick the console which best serves your tastes. Not thing beats the simplicity of use of a console! Let your PC/Mac stick to what it does best.
Junior ... Your father was a mouse.
Its So Wrong !
Basically, the answer to that is that the expansive universe was generated algorythmically. In fact when Braben eventually sold the game to firebird he had to reduce the sheer size of the universe because it was too big...
Prediction showing the irony of the Half-Life 2 project cycle.
This graph shows the number of lines of code left in development for half-life 2 and gives you an indication of how long it will until it is actually release...
Nah ... The best game ever made is David Brabens "Elite", anyone who knows anything about gaming knows that.
I just noticed this rather interesting rock formation on one of the latest mars pictures..
;)
...
I get the impression someone got there first
nick
If Linux looks completely foreign to your normal, average end user, you'll have a very hard time getting them to use it.
... I havent used a windows box for any great length of time for 3 or 4 years. I always find the windows gui to be unfamiliar and confusing. I dont really think that a well-configured gui (my preference is kde gnome still feels ropey to me), on Linux is every bit as good as a windows one, in some ways KDE is better (from a configuration standpoint).
Someone finally said this
I was using a win2k machine only yesterday, and was disturbed by the fact that IE crashed and bought the whole machine down needing a reboot... no chance of running a killall -9 IEXPLORE.EXE is there ?
nick
The Zaurus appeals to me mainly because i'm a Linux freak, but the ability to be able to compile your own stuff (or other open source stuff) easily for your handheld is also a huge bonus. I also like the micro keyboard feature.
...
I also like the clamshell version, which sports an incredibly high resolution display for such a small unit.
My question is thus... With these new Linux handheld distributions, is there a case for getting an ipaq or other compatible pda?
What do people think? Get an Zaurus or swallow my pride and get an ipaq and a distro? which is cheaper ? which is better?
nick
VMWare Question ...
VMWare does not need to "emulate" the x86 (am I correct) the only thing it emulates is the hardware eg graphics cards etc. This is great for speed on x86 machines. But means that its not possible to port to ppc or other architectures without building an x86 emulation componont.
Is there an open-source PC emulator (not plex) that works in a similar way?
nick...
That... Is a perfectly valid point. I wish it were true.
..
Why is it though, that we havent seen projects such as GIMP for example being ported to KDE? Its not that it would be so difficult to do. Time-consuming , yes but not difficult.The only application I can really think of at this moment in time is MPlayer(there may be others!), and the only reason it has been ported to gnome (gmplayer) and kde (kmplayer) is because it wasnt built with a particular windowing toolkit in mind.
This, I beleive is part of where the whole Linux Unified desktop thing is screwed. Most of the software we have is open souce, but its kind rare that some of these apps get ported to multiple toolkits. Also, many of the commercial applications we do see tend to use some ancient toolkit like motif.
I really wish O/S developers would tie there code into different GUI's but it doesnt really happen enough. Gnome and KDE are so busy building there own tools for there own WM's which is destroying any unification that might be possible. The Gnome and KDE wars are all very well, but there are some "Great Apps" like GIMP (which could do with having a native KDE port) and Konqueror etc, which would be great to port to Gnome. The whole linux/open source thing, is about sharing and democracy, but I think there are times when we forget what it is all about. Gnome / KDE both have virtues, but if we are going to have different desktop environments, lest not forget that we still want our favorite apps , but for them to look right too.
nick (slightly inebriated, but hopefully intelligible & intelligent comment!)
This is a really weird one, and it is difficult to say how fast or slow it might be.
Many of the core Win32 api's and DLL's have been re-implemented as Linux native equivalents as part of the wine project. If these are compiled as linux ppc versions, and you have an x86 emulator running the non-ppc bits, you get a really bizarre hybrid of code executing. It will be really interesting to see how this works. Its also pretty difficult to say how fast or slow this thing is going to be, due to the strange architecture. My brain is having a confusing time trying to figure out how they would string these components together.
Nonetheless, good luck to them, its an ambitious project and probably has some far reaching implications for the future.
While I agree with much of what you are saying regarding phonetically similar words I think / suspect that there is more at issue here than just the name.
The website is quite clearly designed to look like the google site, and additionally may look like it is affiliated in some way to google (eg froogle and similar google tools). Add that to the nature and content of the site its pretty easy to see that google would be rather annoyed about it.
Contrary to what you are saying I believe people while they may not accidentally go to booble, I do think that the design is so similar it could easily be assumed that it was part of the google repertoire.
nick...