This is where I explain to you there is more to life than computers.
I run a Linux based OS because i needed something that would collect my data and let me run applications. I can't run the latest and greatest FPS. Which is fine, because there is more to life than computers. Giving in and handing MSFT money and buying games from people who don't respect my freedoms just seems really counter productive. I accept that the vendors don't seem to care about the ever growing minority and pursue other things that make me happy.
1. Portage solves dependencies a lot nicer than rpm ever did. Though yum is better than rpm it's not better than Portage.
2. Gentoo follows the projects more closely than Fedora. You stand a better chance of getting recently released software on your Gentoo box than your Fedora box.
3. USE flags can tweak features.
For me, I used to just use Knoppix, "cuz it worked." Until I tried to manipulate some tiff files and learned that my tools [Gimp, tetex] wouldn't work for them. One USE flag later and Gentoo was working just fine.
Fair enough. And can I write to Blizzard support when the game stops working in Wine? (actually, I have no idea how good their support is so that's a half-genuine question). Point is, if I'm buying your software, paying for support and maintenance, I should be the one who gets to decide how to use it.
And when you have games like WoW, which aren't really making any technical use of a feature that Linux or BSD can't reproduce, there is no reason why they would hinder their product as to only work on one platform.
At anyrate, I'm not a WoW player so I won't be installing Wine anytime soon.
Well actually they already do, usually though for pub performers since there is usually money involved.
Fortunately (unfortunately?) for me, I'm not good enough to play to an audience without chicken mesh. That is, unless they're into conservatory pieces (I don't play pop music that often).
So if your only tie to Windows is to play WoW, why not demand that WoW be ported to your OS?
Not like Linux distro's aren't popular.
And frankly, for WoW, the value is in the content (art, models, textures, sound, music) and the servers, not the code. If they opened the code, people could do source builds on their platforms, saving Blizzard from having to do the port.
Worse, I'm in Canada, where we have but one GSM provider. And they are sure to remind you about that fact every month when you see your bill.
Yeah, I know the EU has some nice competition, but things aren't perfect there either. In the end, it would be nice if they stopped trying to make sales from one quarter to the other by making people think they have to upgrade their phones.
I don't get where this "bigger badder better" business strategy comes from but it's a loser one. You end up spending so much on advertisement, product design, etc, every quarter that the phones end up being either super costly, or subsidized through corruption (re: telcos disabling all useful features).
I'd gladly pay $50 for a decent quadband phone with a useful battery life and nothing more. Why should I pay $350 to subsidize the advertisement, design, testing, documentation and rollout of this weeks model of phone? When all it is is the same quad-band I want with a bunch of poorly implemented strap-ons included "for my benefit."
In general, I disagree with the all-in-one idea because it isn't practical. A mp3/video/phone/etc player would have to be larger than my cell, have to have a larger battery to be useful (hey standby time of 45 minutes!!! that's awesome!), would cost more, and more likely to be stolen.
I'm not strictly saying C is more efficient, I'm saying it's more explicit.
If, for example, you see
mp_init_multi(&a, &b, &c, NULL);
You know that we're initializing three variables. In the case of my math libs you can d
mp_mul(&a, &b, &c);// c == a * b
Which doesn't create temporary instances and is simpler than
mp_assign(&a, &c); mp_mul(&b, &c);
As you had written.
Again, my point isn't to knock C++ or OOP, it's to say that it's not the best for an OS development. You want clear, simple, explicit and concise tools.
I never claimed that Gentoo was for complete newcomers. And it is an alternative to Vista, just not the easiest one. For instance, I run Gentoo as opposed to other distros [and Windows]. It's my alternative.
And yes, I agree that upon occasion Gentoo admins fark up updates. Doesn't happen too often, and sometimes it's my fault for not reading the update messages [heheheh]. This is why backups are a good idea. From a system tarball I can have my machine back in working order in under 10 minutes.
Piano: "You seem to be playing a nice Minuet, please insert your RIAA approved USB dongle to continue." Me: "I don't have a dongle, it's sheet music I bought, I'm playing it myself!!!" Piano: "Pirate!!! You're stealing the artists hard music, this piano will now self destruct."... uh oh...
I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, I'm saying it won't be implemented without a huge amount of greed.
I should also point out an entire host of other misfeatures that are ONLY A COST
1. Shitty cameras 2. 22KHz sound drivers 3. Limited storage 4. Features disabled by the telco (file movement, bluetooth) 5. Limited CPU performance (re: 10fps videos)
Granted some of that is getting better, they are certainly dragging their feet as slow as possible to milk every last nickle and dime they can. And for those of us who just want a 'phone phone' we're often stuck with a phone that has absolutely no features (like say tri or quadband).
I won't hold my breath to see how this pans out. Because I know it'll take 10 years before we can get todays technology in tomorrows phones.
Perhaps, but Gentoo grants me more useful freedoms. Like the ability to build from source more recent software (like the most recent fedora is still ways behind on Gnome for instance), or configure it how I want (like to have MP3 playback).
The other distros serve their purpose, but if the price I pay to use Gentoo how I want is that I have to do an initial install that takes a night, then it's worth it.
I should point out though that out of the box, Fedora Core 5 takes a while to update and get usable (e.g. not vulnerable to a million and a half bugs/exploits/etc).
If you buy a $150 OS just to play WoW... Well, you tell me who is the sheep.
Why not demand that Blizzard port it to OpenGL and other OSes so that you can have the freedom to run your computer how you see fit? Oh right, because you're their bitch.
I'll pocket the $150 and use it to buy two months worth of private piano lessons. Much more enjoyable.
That and WoW is just lame. It's an excuse not to socialize with others in an environment of repeated "hack and magic slash." ooh ooh gotta level up, my life isn't complete unless my paladin can cast +8 fireballs.... ooooo....
I can install Gentoo without the manual. Once you do it a couple times it just makes sense...
OMG do I fdisk first or format? Well think about what you're trying to do... etc...
Granted, I agree that USE flag changes are annoying [and not always properly announced] they're not as bad as you seem to making it out. First off, why would you disable tk? If you don't want tk, tcl, etc, you don't have to install it. Putting -$THING in your USE flag is not how to not install things. It's to disable functionality in builds.
As for the config files, tip: Always run etc-update after each emerge. I use Gnome on all of my Gentoo boxes (and laptop) and it works just fine. Setting up X.org only took a minute to add the mouse definitions and what not.
In general, Gentoo is not meant to be "my first Linux distro (tm)," especially for the impatient types. You're probably better off with Fedora, or some Debian distro at first, learn the environment and then try it out.
Um, I can use my computer while it updates software. Maybe not during the initial install, but I did that in September (when I bought this box) of last year. I don't get your point. Are you trying to be smart?
So different? In the sense that people can't trivially figure it out?
1. Click on foot 2. Go to Internet option 3. Click on firefox.
OMG THAT's HARDZOR!
At the point that you can't just browse a menu for 5 seconds and find what you want, chances are you shouldn't be using a computer. What happens when you encounter a road you haven't driven on before? Or an airport you haven't been to before? Do you shutdown and cry?
I can't wait to not buy this. Been waiting my whole life.
Granted real-time google maps + GPS does sound fantastically neato, you know for a fact that the data plan will be lik $100/mo or some shit. So while it may seem like a good idea, it's not going to be fiscally practical. In the end, people will have to resort to good old fashion, planning and asking strangers for directions.
Yeah zactly. It's funny what people will put up with because they think they have to. If they only knew that if they organized they could wield power...
Put Gentoo CD in drive, install, no need for license key bullshit. When I get bored I play the piano, or if music isn't my fancy I turn on the xbox and play something. No need to pay the Vista tax to play video games.
Simple, moderate the damn thing. It'll also cut down on the rampantly stupid "kids try to kill themselves" stunt videos [*]. Thus cleaning up the scene.
[*] They should package those up and sell them as a premium package or something.
Classes call the constructor/deconstructor/etc automatically, for instance,
class bignum... blah blah.
int main(void) { bignum a; return 0; }
That function can call a constructor. Even though it doesn't look like there is a function call in it. Functions can return new instances, which also override the existing one, e.g.
bignum a, b, c;// constructor called
a = b * c;// value of b*c held in temporary instance, could be copied into a, or simply overwrite the instance of a, thereby calling the deconstructor.
etc, etc, etc. Multiply that by a million lines of code and voila. Not a big problem when you got cycles and memory to burn, but can be a problem if you're running in a low memory scenario (hint: kernels use locked pages of which you try to have few) or low latency (hint interrupts).
Yes, you can tame C++, but from a glance at the code it's not obvious all that is going on underneath.
That's not C++, that's some derivative of C++ with a few tweaks to the language. C compilers exist on pretty much every 32 and 64-bit platform. They [any worth talking about] compile C89 and a decent subset of C99. The majority of the Linux kernel, including device drivers is in the form of C source code. Your PCI network card, for instance, works the same regardless of what CPU is actually driving the system, why should the code change?
Exceptions are a runtime concept, and generally not very ideal for things like an interrupt handler (hint: stack space, timing, latency).
As to general question as to why people still use C in 2007...
1. Highly optimizing compilers exist for it 2. It's pretty easy to go low level 3. It's high level enough to organize code easily 4. It has functionality required to do hardware control 5. It's ubiquitous. Compilers exist everywhere for all sorts of processors/platforms 6. Lots of existing legacy code is available in C
Believe it or not, but not every application benefits from the overhead of runtime checks, and the like.
Your argument makes no sense, for what you are talking about is doctor-patient confidentiality. As far as I know, there is no such thing as Google-searchee confidentiality.
Look, it's this simple. If you transmit your queries, host strings and other info, over plaintext, to a private server, with whom you have no contract, don't assume that the information you transmit is not being seen by other peoples eyes.
To add to this, "test, verify, and audit." Testing just ensures that the function conforms to vectors, meets efficiency requirements, etc. Verification ensures the function behaves properly and try to prove it correct. (e.g. with malicious inputs, over a wider range, corner cases, etc).
Generally, when I write a test or verification routine, if I don't uncover at least one bug in new code (that I'm testing) I don't think I've accomplished much. On the days where I uncover weird cases of errors I'm most happy. Knowing that your test software is capable of exposing bugs is a really good thing;-)
Auditing is something that doesn't always happen sadly. That's where you have other people who didn't write the code, or the test code, wade through the functions and discern what they do and how they handle all of the use cases. Basically, a fresh pair of eyes. This step is usually omitted because it's either hard to find someone who hasn't touched the code, or the company is too busy to go over the code with yet another person. Overall fresh eyes are a good idea. Usually all of the low hanging fruit type bugs can be found within moments of handing code over for an audit.
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This is where I explain to you there is more to life than computers.
I run a Linux based OS because i needed something that would collect my data and let me run applications. I can't run the latest and greatest FPS. Which is fine, because there is more to life than computers. Giving in and handing MSFT money and buying games from people who don't respect my freedoms just seems really counter productive. I accept that the vendors don't seem to care about the ever growing minority and pursue other things that make me happy.
I think those represent the minority of WoW players. Most just play their characters and go about their business.
Tom
1. Portage solves dependencies a lot nicer than rpm ever did. Though yum is better than rpm it's not better than Portage.
2. Gentoo follows the projects more closely than Fedora. You stand a better chance of getting recently released software on your Gentoo box than your Fedora box.
3. USE flags can tweak features.
For me, I used to just use Knoppix, "cuz it worked." Until I tried to manipulate some tiff files and learned that my tools [Gimp, tetex] wouldn't work for them. One USE flag later and Gentoo was working just fine.
Tom
Fair enough. And can I write to Blizzard support when the game stops working in Wine? (actually, I have no idea how good their support is so that's a half-genuine question). Point is, if I'm buying your software, paying for support and maintenance, I should be the one who gets to decide how to use it.
And when you have games like WoW, which aren't really making any technical use of a feature that Linux or BSD can't reproduce, there is no reason why they would hinder their product as to only work on one platform.
At anyrate, I'm not a WoW player so I won't be installing Wine anytime soon.
Hehehe, nice. Give it time, they'll try.
Well actually they already do, usually though for pub performers since there is usually money involved.
Fortunately (unfortunately?) for me, I'm not good enough to play to an audience without chicken mesh. That is, unless they're into conservatory pieces (I don't play pop music that often).
Tom
So if your only tie to Windows is to play WoW, why not demand that WoW be ported to your OS?
Not like Linux distro's aren't popular.
And frankly, for WoW, the value is in the content (art, models, textures, sound, music) and the servers, not the code. If they opened the code, people could do source builds on their platforms, saving Blizzard from having to do the port.
Just saying...
Tom
Worse, I'm in Canada, where we have but one GSM provider. And they are sure to remind you about that fact every month when you see your bill.
Yeah, I know the EU has some nice competition, but things aren't perfect there either. In the end, it would be nice if they stopped trying to make sales from one quarter to the other by making people think they have to upgrade their phones.
I don't get where this "bigger badder better" business strategy comes from but it's a loser one. You end up spending so much on advertisement, product design, etc, every quarter that the phones end up being either super costly, or subsidized through corruption (re: telcos disabling all useful features).
I'd gladly pay $50 for a decent quadband phone with a useful battery life and nothing more. Why should I pay $350 to subsidize the advertisement, design, testing, documentation and rollout of this weeks model of phone? When all it is is the same quad-band I want with a bunch of poorly implemented strap-ons included "for my benefit."
In general, I disagree with the all-in-one idea because it isn't practical. A mp3/video/phone/etc player would have to be larger than my cell, have to have a larger battery to be useful (hey standby time of 45 minutes!!! that's awesome!), would cost more, and more likely to be stolen.
Tom
I'm not strictly saying C is more efficient, I'm saying it's more explicit.
// c == a * b
If, for example, you see
mp_init_multi(&a, &b, &c, NULL);
You know that we're initializing three variables. In the case of my math libs you can d
mp_mul(&a, &b, &c);
Which doesn't create temporary instances and is simpler than
mp_assign(&a, &c);
mp_mul(&b, &c);
As you had written.
Again, my point isn't to knock C++ or OOP, it's to say that it's not the best for an OS development. You want clear, simple, explicit and concise tools.
Tom
I never claimed that Gentoo was for complete newcomers. And it is an alternative to Vista, just not the easiest one. For instance, I run Gentoo as opposed to other distros [and Windows]. It's my alternative.
And yes, I agree that upon occasion Gentoo admins fark up updates. Doesn't happen too often, and sometimes it's my fault for not reading the update messages [heheheh]. This is why backups are a good idea. From a system tarball I can have my machine back in working order in under 10 minutes.
Tom
My bad.
... uh oh ...
Piano: "You seem to be playing a nice Minuet, please insert your RIAA approved USB dongle to continue."
Me: "I don't have a dongle, it's sheet music I bought, I'm playing it myself!!!"
Piano: "Pirate!!! You're stealing the artists hard music, this piano will now self destruct."
Tom
I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, I'm saying it won't be implemented without a huge amount of greed.
I should also point out an entire host of other misfeatures that are ONLY A COST
1. Shitty cameras
2. 22KHz sound drivers
3. Limited storage
4. Features disabled by the telco (file movement, bluetooth)
5. Limited CPU performance (re: 10fps videos)
Granted some of that is getting better, they are certainly dragging their feet as slow as possible to milk every last nickle and dime they can. And for those of us who just want a 'phone phone' we're often stuck with a phone that has absolutely no features (like say tri or quadband).
I won't hold my breath to see how this pans out. Because I know it'll take 10 years before we can get todays technology in tomorrows phones.
Tom
Perhaps, but Gentoo grants me more useful freedoms. Like the ability to build from source more recent software (like the most recent fedora is still ways behind on Gnome for instance), or configure it how I want (like to have MP3 playback).
The other distros serve their purpose, but if the price I pay to use Gentoo how I want is that I have to do an initial install that takes a night, then it's worth it.
I should point out though that out of the box, Fedora Core 5 takes a while to update and get usable (e.g. not vulnerable to a million and a half bugs/exploits/etc).
If you buy a $150 OS just to play WoW ... Well, you tell me who is the sheep.
Why not demand that Blizzard port it to OpenGL and other OSes so that you can have the freedom to run your computer how you see fit? Oh right, because you're their bitch.
I'll pocket the $150 and use it to buy two months worth of private piano lessons. Much more enjoyable.
That and WoW is just lame. It's an excuse not to socialize with others in an environment of repeated "hack and magic slash." ooh ooh gotta level up, my life isn't complete unless my paladin can cast +8 fireballs.... ooooo....
I can install Gentoo without the manual. Once you do it a couple times it just makes sense...
OMG do I fdisk first or format? Well think about what you're trying to do... etc...
Granted, I agree that USE flag changes are annoying [and not always properly announced] they're not as bad as you seem to making it out. First off, why would you disable tk? If you don't want tk, tcl, etc, you don't have to install it. Putting -$THING in your USE flag is not how to not install things. It's to disable functionality in builds.
As for the config files, tip: Always run etc-update after each emerge. I use Gnome on all of my Gentoo boxes (and laptop) and it works just fine. Setting up X.org only took a minute to add the mouse definitions and what not.
In general, Gentoo is not meant to be "my first Linux distro (tm)," especially for the impatient types. You're probably better off with Fedora, or some Debian distro at first, learn the environment and then try it out.
Tom
Um, I can use my computer while it updates software. Maybe not during the initial install, but I did that in September (when I bought this box) of last year. I don't get your point. Are you trying to be smart?
Tom
So different? In the sense that people can't trivially figure it out?
1. Click on foot
2. Go to Internet option
3. Click on firefox.
OMG THAT's HARDZOR!
At the point that you can't just browse a menu for 5 seconds and find what you want, chances are you shouldn't be using a computer. What happens when you encounter a road you haven't driven on before? Or an airport you haven't been to before? Do you shutdown and cry?
My god people...
Tom
I can't wait to not buy this. Been waiting my whole life.
Granted real-time google maps + GPS does sound fantastically neato, you know for a fact that the data plan will be lik $100/mo or some shit. So while it may seem like a good idea, it's not going to be fiscally practical. In the end, people will have to resort to good old fashion, planning and asking strangers for directions.
Tom
Piano doesn't come with WGA. And I don't need a DRM key to play pieces out of a book :-)
That automatically tips the favour to the piano.
Tom
Yeah zactly. It's funny what people will put up with because they think they have to. If they only knew that if they organized they could wield power...
Put Gentoo CD in drive, install, no need for license key bullshit. When I get bored I play the piano, or if music isn't my fancy I turn on the xbox and play something. No need to pay the Vista tax to play video games.
Tom
Simple, moderate the damn thing. It'll also cut down on the rampantly stupid "kids try to kill themselves" stunt videos [*]. Thus cleaning up the scene.
[*] They should package those up and sell them as a premium package or something.
Tom
Classes call the constructor/deconstructor/etc automatically, for instance,
... blah blah.
// constructor called
// value of b*c held in temporary instance, could be copied into a, or simply overwrite the instance of a, thereby calling the deconstructor.
class bignum
int main(void) { bignum a; return 0; }
That function can call a constructor. Even though it doesn't look like there is a function call in it. Functions can return new instances, which also override the existing one, e.g.
bignum a, b, c;
a = b * c;
etc, etc, etc. Multiply that by a million lines of code and voila. Not a big problem when you got cycles and memory to burn, but can be a problem if you're running in a low memory scenario (hint: kernels use locked pages of which you try to have few) or low latency (hint interrupts).
Yes, you can tame C++, but from a glance at the code it's not obvious all that is going on underneath.
Tom
That's not C++, that's some derivative of C++ with a few tweaks to the language. C compilers exist on pretty much every 32 and 64-bit platform. They [any worth talking about] compile C89 and a decent subset of C99. The majority of the Linux kernel, including device drivers is in the form of C source code. Your PCI network card, for instance, works the same regardless of what CPU is actually driving the system, why should the code change?
Exceptions are a runtime concept, and generally not very ideal for things like an interrupt handler (hint: stack space, timing, latency).
As to general question as to why people still use C in 2007...
1. Highly optimizing compilers exist for it
2. It's pretty easy to go low level
3. It's high level enough to organize code easily
4. It has functionality required to do hardware control
5. It's ubiquitous. Compilers exist everywhere for all sorts of processors/platforms
6. Lots of existing legacy code is available in C
Believe it or not, but not every application benefits from the overhead of runtime checks, and the like.
Tom
You go to Google for medical treatment?
Your argument makes no sense, for what you are talking about is doctor-patient confidentiality. As far as I know, there is no such thing as Google-searchee confidentiality.
Look, it's this simple. If you transmit your queries, host strings and other info, over plaintext, to a private server, with whom you have no contract, don't assume that the information you transmit is not being seen by other peoples eyes.
Tom
To add to this, "test, verify, and audit." Testing just ensures that the function conforms to vectors, meets efficiency requirements, etc. Verification ensures the function behaves properly and try to prove it correct. (e.g. with malicious inputs, over a wider range, corner cases, etc).
;-)
Generally, when I write a test or verification routine, if I don't uncover at least one bug in new code (that I'm testing) I don't think I've accomplished much. On the days where I uncover weird cases of errors I'm most happy. Knowing that your test software is capable of exposing bugs is a really good thing
Auditing is something that doesn't always happen sadly. That's where you have other people who didn't write the code, or the test code, wade through the functions and discern what they do and how they handle all of the use cases. Basically, a fresh pair of eyes. This step is usually omitted because it's either hard to find someone who hasn't touched the code, or the company is too busy to go over the code with yet another person. Overall fresh eyes are a good idea. Usually all of the low hanging fruit type bugs can be found within moments of handing code over for an audit.
MSFT supports *reading* FAT partitions, just not *making* them. Hmm, I wonder why. It can't be to cut down on code bloat. Vista is larger than XP.
Oh, I know, OSS operating systems can read it. *dawns conspiracy hat*, maybe MSFT wants to make it even harder to work with OSS?
Tom