> Then Linux came along and said "let's do it the Microsoft way!"
More like the IBM/Microsoft/Novell/SCO/Sun way -- the partitioning was always seen as a feature of the hardware architecture and not some nefarious MS invention.
BSD slices exist due to VAX legacy or some reason, it's a totally uncommon design on PC hardware, and IMO a valid if not mostly unimportant complaint. If you go to Troll Point #2, a LVM would make the issue irrelevant.
FreeDOS is used by the diagnostics, so it's already been tested to a certain degree. I personally believe it is a terrible idea to ship an unsupported version of complex software like Linux, but even if they did it would add a little to the cost, which defeats the point of the box.
The 380n comes with a one-year RedHat Enterprise WS subscription.
Maybe there's no deal because shipping a supported version of Linux isn't free, and in fact could be more expensive due to economies of scale. (XP Pro includes patch support for 5 more years at the same price).
> Mac OS X is a consumer OS, and NT was never, ever marketed to home users.
How is this relevant? Microsoft Office is not marketed to home users and consumers (at least not the Windows version). I've never seen Windows ME in any sort of office enviornment.
Your own logic goes both ways -- Apple's PDF support Doesn't Count because it's only marketed to consumers and home users. Are you sure that's what you intended to argue?
You have to understand that is a fundemental issue of Mac faith and doctrine -- "We pay the Apple Tax, and in return we get Everything First."
If a sliver of doubt opens on this premise, then the Mac user may question his purchase, so any counter-examples are usually furiously denied or ignored. The reality is that there's places where both Windows and MacOS are "five to ten years behind", but the Mac users are willfully ignorant of the faults of their own OS. Ocassionally you even get some unintended hilarity where Mac users brag about a new feature that's actually been in Windows since 1997 or something.
It's more about the glass celings and invisible lines between management and 'labor'. Obviously management can have a very high upside in terms of "pre$tige", as well as open up a much broader range of possibilities for you, as well as making you less prone to skill obsolesence. That's not to say technical work can't be rewarding, but he enjoys an management role going to be a lot harder for him to go back if his last position was "network engineer" or something.
Anyway, you seem bitter about something... trapped in a dead-end technical job? Anyway, it's presumptuous to think that the poster got to be the Big Fish by punching the clock 9-5.
Re:Talking out both sides of out mouths.
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
Now that you mention it, I do have various GNU commandline tools installed. Thanks for reminding me.
I also work with a ton of open-source Java stuff. Another strong development community that isn't necessarily Linux-oriented.
Re:Talking out both sides of out mouths.
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
I have a fair amount of A/V freeware on my windows box and very little of it "comes from Linux". In fact none of the freeware I use has anything to do with Linux, except possibly VLC, and when I've tried such things as gimp or FreeCiv, I've found that the Linux-ported UI was just terrible.
Firefox and OpenOffice are both competitive applications that are designed in a cross-platform fashion, but both projects admit that their focus is on Windows because that's the competitive environment that matters. Neither "come from Linux" at all.
In fact, the experience with the Mozilla suite proved that it's easy to be complacient and win over Linux users just by showing up. But the inability to attract Windows users is why Firefox adopted the early slogan "The Best Windows Browser".
Re:how many people actually _like_ windows?
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
I would turn this question around, and ask why anyone would use Mac or Linux if they weren't totally in love with the enviornment. These OSes tend to attract people that are polarized to the point where their love outweighs the compatiblity and other costs associated with a minority platform.
(Actually that's not totally true, because Apple at least has a base of "ambivalent regular users" that are on Mac because that's What People Use For Graphic Design.)
Like Linux, the Windows lovers tend to be programmers, sysadmins, and other techies. They aren't sitting around jerking about the graphical shell like the Mac/Linux users, instead they are focusing on Visual Studio or ActiveDirectory and the other tools that let them get things done on Windows.
My observation is that maybe only 3% of users have any sort of computer platform love going at all -- and maybe 1% love Windows, 1% love Apple, 1% love Linux/Unix. Almost everyone else just runs Windows.
Maybe, but the point was that on Linux you have to manually compile and install the service manager, as well as write the startup scripts yourself, while on Windows it all works OOB.
Windows and Linux manage memory very differently and react differently depending on the location of the bad RAM. I see the opposite story (Linux stable, Windows crash) all the time here. The real moral of the story is to stop being a putz and buy real computers with ECC RAM.
> There's no good reason not to make X11 apps integrate cleanly into any new window system
The level of integration between X11 apps is already so poor, I wonder if anyone would notice. Quite likely, Gnome and KDE would switch over at once and the Penalty Box would only be used for legacy network apps.
> I'm looking at you, Apple.
Well, I understand Apple's POV. Integrating things like the clipboard and printing with X11's would be very difficult, and considering the amount of interest in the userbase it's probably a low dev priority for them. OTOH, a replacement for Unix workstations would need to be much more seamless.
> since toolkits are what free UNIX GUI developers from much of the legacy horror faced by win32 coders
I'm curious what "horrors" these are. There's numerous Windows toolkits that bypass the "policy" and send straight drawing commands, yet still are quite integrated into the desktop. Mozilla Firefox XUL for example.
The real problem with the Unix Desktop, in my book, is that there's no standardized layer between the base OS and the toolkits. What does exist (XResources etc) is ignored. And that creates a lot of unnecessary incompatibilities between applications as wheels are reinvented over and over again.
Naw, the protocol sucks. It's an order of magnitude slower than commercial solutions and the security is poop. Solutions to both these problems usually involve keeping X11 off the wire. And you are left with a situation where it's mediocre both locally and on the network.
> Your complaint is most likely with the toolkits
The only reason X11 exists is to run GUI toolkits. Since apparently the only toolkit that really is right for X11 after 20 years is Athena, that's a pretty damning indictment.
"Network Transparancy" and "Toolkits" are just the standard Linux-Zealot excuses for X11. At least you point out that the legacy compatibility issues run very very deep. And of course, it's usually very difficult and expensive to solve legacy issues while maintaining compatibility, compared to starting from a clean slate.
Ultimately, my prediction is that nothing much will be done with X11. Eventually a new windowing system will appear, and X11 will run in a "penalty box" much like classic applications under OS X or how X11 is handled under Windows.
I think you're full of shit. There's a wide range of common server tasks such as File+Print or Directory Services, where the knowledge and experiece of Windows admins run pretty deep, but yet are considered expert configuration on Linux. True that an truely top-notch enterprise Windows administrator does not come cheap, but most Windows networks are not in need of Expert knowledge, or can easily bring in consultants to meet the rare needs.
And I'd certainly never hire a sysadmin for "concepts" -- he'd better know the platform and the applications and how to support them. A guy who spent the last 5 years rooting around the IIS metabase is of little use for Apache and visa-versa.
The install and config process was also detailed and even the speaker mentioned it wasnt for the faint of heart comparatively.
Except this problem is hardly limited to ERP systems and applies to a broad range of software.
Forex, Apache Tomcat is a simple double-click install and comes with a GUI service manager on Windows, while the Linux install is loads of manual fun. In general, once you get outside of vendor's packages it's Terra Incognito on Linux, and even with the vendor packaging you get far less handholding than the equivilant on Windows.
The only people who like this situation are the $100+/hr sysadmins looking for work. (And since RedHat and IBM make their money by renting these sysads, it's not a big priority to fix.)
All true, but it makes no attempt to explain why. I suppose a big factor is that Apple products are often sold on sex-appeal value rather than pure functionality. When the TiBook came out, I'm sure that many owners headed right for the nearest coffee shop just to show it off.
But the biggest factor is that the Apple ecosystem is very much Love It Or Leave It. I've had crappy Dells and wished I had an IBM. No big deal. But with Apple, the decision point is much greater -- it means leaving the platform. And therefore when there's a doggy model like the TiBook, it puts the userbase in a much higher state of consternation.
> Now, has this happened on such a large scale with Sony, Dell, or HP laptops?
I've never seen a Sony, Dell or HP laptop that was painted at all. Much less painted in a way where two inch long strips peel off the thing. This was a problem very particular to that model of computer.
Yes Apple users tend to view Macs as luxury goods, and therefore are picky, but painted titanium just turned out to be a lousy idea for a laptop shell.
On a powerbook that would be Cmd + Fn + F2 for the three key vulcan deathgrip combo. On Windows it is simply ALT. So that might explain some switchers' frustrations.
(Love my powerbook but sorely miss the navigation keys found on PC keyboards.)
That didn't popup for me, but I have seen similar on other sites. What's happening is the site owner adds javascript code which acts "onClick". FF can't block these because it would catch most legitimate popups as well.
What I did was add the PrefButtons extension which gives you a JavaScript on/off button on your toolbar.
There's still popup code out there that gets past both Firefox and GoogleToolbar -- sfgate.com runs it for example.
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> Then Linux came along and said "let's do it the Microsoft way!"
More like the IBM/Microsoft/Novell/SCO/Sun way -- the partitioning was always seen as a feature of the hardware architecture and not some nefarious MS invention.
BSD slices exist due to VAX legacy or some reason, it's a totally uncommon design on PC hardware, and IMO a valid if not mostly unimportant complaint. If you go to Troll Point #2, a LVM would make the issue irrelevant.
FreeDOS is used by the diagnostics, so it's already been tested to a certain degree. I personally believe it is a terrible idea to ship an unsupported version of complex software like Linux, but even if they did it would add a little to the cost, which defeats the point of the box.
> so where is the deal?
The 380n comes with a one-year RedHat Enterprise WS subscription.
Maybe there's no deal because shipping a supported version of Linux isn't free, and in fact could be more expensive due to economies of scale. (XP Pro includes patch support for 5 more years at the same price).
No, it means that the support costs of Linux would eat any savings you would see.
> Mac OS X is a consumer OS, and NT was never, ever marketed to home users.
How is this relevant? Microsoft Office is not marketed to home users and consumers (at least not the Windows version). I've never seen Windows ME in any sort of office enviornment.
Your own logic goes both ways -- Apple's PDF support Doesn't Count because it's only marketed to consumers and home users. Are you sure that's what you intended to argue?
> Who. Cares.
:)
Obviously the Mac users care.
You have to understand that is a fundemental issue of Mac faith and doctrine -- "We pay the Apple Tax, and in return we get Everything First."
If a sliver of doubt opens on this premise, then the Mac user may question his purchase, so any counter-examples are usually furiously denied or ignored. The reality is that there's places where both Windows and MacOS are "five to ten years behind", but the Mac users are willfully ignorant of the faults of their own OS. Ocassionally you even get some unintended hilarity where Mac users brag about a new feature that's actually been in Windows since 1997 or something.
It's more about the glass celings and invisible lines between management and 'labor'. Obviously management can have a very high upside in terms of "pre$tige", as well as open up a much broader range of possibilities for you, as well as making you less prone to skill obsolesence. That's not to say technical work can't be rewarding, but he enjoys an management role going to be a lot harder for him to go back if his last position was "network engineer" or something.
... trapped in a dead-end technical job? Anyway, it's presumptuous to think that the poster got to be the Big Fish by punching the clock 9-5.
Anyway, you seem bitter about something
Now that you mention it, I do have various GNU commandline tools installed. Thanks for reminding me.
I also work with a ton of open-source Java stuff. Another strong development community that isn't necessarily Linux-oriented.
I have a fair amount of A/V freeware on my windows box and very little of it "comes from Linux". In fact none of the freeware I use has anything to do with Linux, except possibly VLC, and when I've tried such things as gimp or FreeCiv, I've found that the Linux-ported UI was just terrible.
Firefox and OpenOffice are both competitive applications that are designed in a cross-platform fashion, but both projects admit that their focus is on Windows because that's the competitive environment that matters. Neither "come from Linux" at all.
In fact, the experience with the Mozilla suite proved that it's easy to be complacient and win over Linux users just by showing up. But the inability to attract Windows users is why Firefox adopted the early slogan "The Best Windows Browser".
I would turn this question around, and ask why anyone would use Mac or Linux if they weren't totally in love with the enviornment. These OSes tend to attract people that are polarized to the point where their love outweighs the compatiblity and other costs associated with a minority platform.
(Actually that's not totally true, because Apple at least has a base of "ambivalent regular users" that are on Mac because that's What People Use For Graphic Design.)
Like Linux, the Windows lovers tend to be programmers, sysadmins, and other techies. They aren't sitting around jerking about the graphical shell like the Mac/Linux users, instead they are focusing on Visual Studio or ActiveDirectory and the other tools that let them get things done on Windows.
My observation is that maybe only 3% of users have any sort of computer platform love going at all -- and maybe 1% love Windows, 1% love Apple, 1% love Linux/Unix. Almost everyone else just runs Windows.
At the time jpackage wasn't an option because it's Java 1.5.
PS: I love how you all l33t Linux guys immediately go into full dickhead mode. Really makes your case.
Maybe, but the point was that on Linux you have to manually compile and install the service manager, as well as write the startup scripts yourself, while on Windows it all works OOB.
A badge I would wear with pride, as "Score 5, Insightful" plans such as SAP on FreeBSD would get you laughed out of the room or fired IRL.
Windows and Linux manage memory very differently and react differently depending on the location of the bad RAM. I see the opposite story (Linux stable, Windows crash) all the time here. The real moral of the story is to stop being a putz and buy real computers with ECC RAM.
> There's no good reason not to make X11 apps integrate cleanly into any new window system
The level of integration between X11 apps is already so poor, I wonder if anyone would notice. Quite likely, Gnome and KDE would switch over at once and the Penalty Box would only be used for legacy network apps.
> I'm looking at you, Apple.
Well, I understand Apple's POV. Integrating things like the clipboard and printing with X11's would be very difficult, and considering the amount of interest in the userbase it's probably a low dev priority for them. OTOH, a replacement for Unix workstations would need to be much more seamless.
> since toolkits are what free UNIX GUI developers from much of the legacy horror faced by win32 coders
I'm curious what "horrors" these are. There's numerous Windows toolkits that bypass the "policy" and send straight drawing commands, yet still are quite integrated into the desktop. Mozilla Firefox XUL for example.
The real problem with the Unix Desktop, in my book, is that there's no standardized layer between the base OS and the toolkits. What does exist (XResources etc) is ignored. And that creates a lot of unnecessary incompatibilities between applications as wheels are reinvented over and over again.
> The protocol is great,
Naw, the protocol sucks. It's an order of magnitude slower than commercial solutions and the security is poop. Solutions to both these problems usually involve keeping X11 off the wire. And you are left with a situation where it's mediocre both locally and on the network.
> Your complaint is most likely with the toolkits
The only reason X11 exists is to run GUI toolkits. Since apparently the only toolkit that really is right for X11 after 20 years is Athena, that's a pretty damning indictment.
"Network Transparancy" and "Toolkits" are just the standard Linux-Zealot excuses for X11. At least you point out that the legacy compatibility issues run very very deep. And of course, it's usually very difficult and expensive to solve legacy issues while maintaining compatibility, compared to starting from a clean slate.
Ultimately, my prediction is that nothing much will be done with X11. Eventually a new windowing system will appear, and X11 will run in a "penalty box" much like classic applications under OS X or how X11 is handled under Windows.
Maybe I should point out that costs time and money which someone eventually has to pay for. I'm sorry I had to spell it out that way for you.
I think you're full of shit. There's a wide range of common server tasks such as File+Print or Directory Services, where the knowledge and experiece of Windows admins run pretty deep, but yet are considered expert configuration on Linux. True that an truely top-notch enterprise Windows administrator does not come cheap, but most Windows networks are not in need of Expert knowledge, or can easily bring in consultants to meet the rare needs.
And I'd certainly never hire a sysadmin for "concepts" -- he'd better know the platform and the applications and how to support them. A guy who spent the last 5 years rooting around the IIS metabase is of little use for Apache and visa-versa.
A blue screen of death is a "STOP" kernel error, system halt, never recoverable. Maybe you are thinking of Win98 or something.
The install and config process was also detailed and even the speaker mentioned it wasnt for the faint of heart comparatively.
Except this problem is hardly limited to ERP systems and applies to a broad range of software.
Forex, Apache Tomcat is a simple double-click install and comes with a GUI service manager on Windows, while the Linux install is loads of manual fun. In general, once you get outside of vendor's packages it's Terra Incognito on Linux, and even with the vendor packaging you get far less handholding than the equivilant on Windows.
The only people who like this situation are the $100+/hr sysadmins looking for work. (And since RedHat and IBM make their money by renting these sysads, it's not a big priority to fix.)
Whatever. FreeBSD has absolutely zero support from enterprise vendors like SAP. The GP was "Funny", you are just "Offtopic".
All true, but it makes no attempt to explain why. I suppose a big factor is that Apple products are often sold on sex-appeal value rather than pure functionality. When the TiBook came out, I'm sure that many owners headed right for the nearest coffee shop just to show it off.
But the biggest factor is that the Apple ecosystem is very much Love It Or Leave It. I've had crappy Dells and wished I had an IBM. No big deal. But with Apple, the decision point is much greater -- it means leaving the platform. And therefore when there's a doggy model like the TiBook, it puts the userbase in a much higher state of consternation.
> Now, has this happened on such a large scale with Sony, Dell, or HP laptops?
I've never seen a Sony, Dell or HP laptop that was painted at all. Much less painted in a way where two inch long strips peel off the thing. This was a problem very particular to that model of computer.
Yes Apple users tend to view Macs as luxury goods, and therefore are picky, but painted titanium just turned out to be a lousy idea for a laptop shell.
On a powerbook that would be Cmd + Fn + F2 for the three key vulcan deathgrip combo. On Windows it is simply ALT. So that might explain some switchers' frustrations.
(Love my powerbook but sorely miss the navigation keys found on PC keyboards.)
That didn't popup for me, but I have seen similar on other sites. What's happening is the site owner adds javascript code which acts "onClick". FF can't block these because it would catch most legitimate popups as well.
What I did was add the PrefButtons extension which gives you a JavaScript on/off button on your toolbar.
There's still popup code out there that gets past both Firefox and GoogleToolbar -- sfgate.com runs it for example.