Yes you could have those features in a 4bit CPU. But you do not. If you run A64 in 32bits, you get only 8GPR's. Running it in full 64bit, give you substantial benefits. Yes I know that having those extra registers in not directly due to 64-bitness. But you can't have those in regural 32bit x86, since the x86-spec has just 8 GPR's.
Uh, I never mentioned MMX. All I said was that the CPU has some features that require the CPU to be operated in 64bit mode. And that is a fact.
But, to answer your question: since MMX is available in Pentium2 and up, you could say that it's a feature of 32bit processor. Of course, not all 32bit CPU's have MMX. Show me one 16bit CPU that has MMX.
And Athlon64 has 16 of those GPR's, compared to just 8 on regural x86. That alone should give considerable boost in performance. Of course, it also has double the number of SSE-registers.
Re:Stick with Windows and if you do...
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PC Annoyances
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Anyone with half a brain and/or access to someone that can take the time to teach them a bit will be perfectly safe from such things.
And anyone with a half a brain and/or access to someone that can take the time to teach them a bit can use Linux just fine. So what was your point again?
If you don't want any of that "garbage", feel free to turn it off. No-one is forcing you to run it. But in few years time we will have Linux competing with Longhorn and MacOSX. Compared to those, your standard Xfree would look ancient and obsolete. Hell, it would be like comparing Win3.11 to Windows2000!
While you can use those nifty features for "useless" things like transparency, they can also be used for things we really want. And let's face it, most of us want eye-candy. And it can be used to make the UI more productive or pleasant to work with. I loved chatting with Trillian on W2K, since I could make the chat-windows partially transparent. It was easy on my eyes.
I can hear you say it now... " But all that eye-candy will make my system slow!". Not if you can run it on the vid-card. Vid-cards these days have insane amounts of processing-power in 'em and they have at least 64 megs of RAM. Yes, you might need to upgrade your machine to use all that eye-candy. But then again, no-one is forcing you to turn that eye-candy on or let alone install the software in question! Feel free to run your standard Xfree! But there are lots and lots of people there with multi-gigaherts machines with more vid-RAM than you can shake a stick at. They would me more than willing to use that gorgerous UI.
If all people thought like you do, we would still be running TWM! I mean, that UI doesn't have any eye-candy, so it must be good, right?
The point is not that you can't fix it, the point is that someone who could fix it can't.
Fair enough. But then why does NVIDIA perform better on Linux and Ati on Linux does? Ati-drivers are open source, yet they can't match the closed NVIDIA-drivers. Open-source CAN and often does produce code that is superior to closed-source, but it's not certain that it will always be superior.
If the drivers were open-source, then they would work.
I run those dreaded NVIDIA-drivers on my Linux-system, and they work fine.
For example, it doesn't seem like nVidia is in a hurry to release drivers for new kernel versions, and just renaming their current driver doesn't work in Linux 2.6.
To my knowledge, there are plenty of Gentoo-folks using the NVIDIA-drivers with 2.6-kernel. I would assume there are users of other distros as well.
I personally can't do a thing with the code. And having the code available is not the Holy grail when it comes to quality. Ati-drivers are open-source, yet they seem to suck when compared to the closed NV-drivers. Performance of NVIDIA-cards on Linux is at least equal to their performance on Windows. Can you say the same for Ati on Linux?
Yes, I have. Lots of others have done this too. Being able to look up the source in case of network troubles is really a great help. The debug mode of the driver is very helpful, the source even better.
What about users like me? I'm not a coder. For me the source might as well be written in Hebrew. I get no benefits from having the code available. I can't debug it, I don't know what things do what. All I care is having a drivers that work. If I could choose between closed and open drivers that worked as well, I would choose the open drivers. But I don't get to make that choice, so I chooce the closed drivers, and use them instead.
I'm using a P3-550MHz, and it's fine for everything I do all day.
It might be suitable for what you do. But it's not suitable for many others. But hey, if all you do is to surf the net and read email, then 550Mhz P3 will be more than enough.
I have a 840Mhz Duron, and I seriously need to upgrade.
Anyhow, at that much per chip, that is clearly in line with Itanium2 pricing, and I2 is at least a little faster at a lot of tasks than Opteron.
Of course Opteron 800-series is expensive! It's the top-of-the-line AMD offers! And it is still cheaper than Itanium. And it runs about all software there is.
1. Be good on power...I don't want to power it down. (Does linux suspend well yet?)
Athlon64. It runs slower when it's idle, saving alot of power.
2. I want it to be quiet...I don't want to be able to hear it.
Well, all CPU's are completely silent, it's the fans that make noise:). But from what I know, the heatsink/fan that comes with boxed A64 is very quiet. And I have heard that it can work with just passive cooling as well.
This is simply not true. In 2001, the US spent about $10 billion in foreign aid, out of $50b worldwide. However, as a fraction of our GDP, our contributions are the smallest of any of the OECD countries, and as little as a tenth of the northern european countries.
And don't forget, USA gives Israel (a modern nation of just 5 million people) more money than they (the USA) gives to entire sub-Saharan Africa!
I didn't know the whole world consisted of the US, France, Germany, and Russia. We have more support with the war on terror than any previous War in WORLD HISTORY.
I remember seeing the list of nations that supported US's "war on terrorism". I remember laughing because that list included every frigging micro-nation that had uttered a good word or two regarding USA. It had such superpowers like Israel (Israel will say whatever it takes to please USA), Bulgaria, Romania, Palau, Marshall Islands, Tonga, etc. etc.
Heh, and the funny thing is that it is GNOME who are pushing the "usability" big time. They have SUN working on it and everyone thinks that good things will automatically come from that collaboration. And then we notice that those SUN-guys come up with stuff like this... And temember: those SUN-guys that now work on GNOME used to work on CDE. A rininging endorsement, isn't it:)?
You mean like USA where the government likes to keep it's eye on what you borrow from the library? Where the FBI can search your home at whim? Something like that?
nothing worth watching
Funny, I remember BBC producing some kick-ass shows, that were then aped by americans. For some reason, americans don't like to watch foreign-made series, they have to make their own versions of 'em (which usually suck when compared to the original).
You don't get it, do you. It's not about "locking down" the desktop. It's called "747 syndrome". A 747, even the latest computerized versions, has over 500 switches and controls. They are logically organized. Someone who is familiar with the aircraft has no problem working the many controls. Now imagine your grandmother walking in and flying that 747.
I have seen people who have never touched Linux use KDE for the first time. It takes them usually about 5 minutes to find the settings they want to change. It's NOT that hard. But I guess you think that removing configurability is same as "ease of use". In other words: you prefer some to tell you how you should set up your UI because "usability-experts say this is the best way". But here's a little nugget of information to you: People are not identical! My desktop is different from my girlfriends (who is not a Linux-guru, far from it) desktop. Reason being that my style of working is different from her style of working. Luckily KDE allows us to change the desktop to suit our needs. But, according to you, that's a big no-no? we should just stick to what the "usability-experts" decide is best for us? What you get is a bunch of compromises that satisfyes no-one.
Those usability-experts that now work on GNOME, used to work on CDE. Hardly a ringing endorsement in my book.
- Naming. No, really. The whole "k" thing (and, similarly the "g" thing with GNOME) is unprofessional. Also, names should be descriptive. Microsoft "Word". "Notepad". "Internet Explorer". Most people don't know what Konqueror is.
Yeah, luckily EVERYONE knows what "Nautilus" or "Galeon" are, right? Or how about Evolution? Everyone knows "Evolotion" means "email", right?
And in many cases, the naming IS convenient in KDE. Usually the K-menu has the apps listed as "Email - Kmail" or something like that. Or is that "too confusing" as well?
You used MS apps as an example. How does "Outlook" tell me that it's an email-app? How does "PowerPoint" tell me it's an presentation-app?
- Professionalism. This really shows through in the configuration wizard.
Such as?
- That whole startup wizard. People don't want to be assulted with choices when they log in
How do you know? Because some "usability expert" told you so? I for one think that the UI-wizard is a convenient way to set the desktops primary functionality up. Details can then be set up later.
The Linux community will never be able to make an impact on the desktop until they realize that what is usable for them is not necessarily usable for everyone else.
Like I said, I have seen first-time users use KDE with zero (well, close to zero) problems. You make it sound like KDE is a usability-nightmare which is completely un-usable to mere mortals. Reality is that it's perfectly usable.
I guess what you want is a dumbed-down desktop that targets the lowest common nominator. I guess your ideal desktop is one which has no settings or tweakables. You have to accept the default look & feel because everything else would be "confusing". Should GNOME then be renamed to "GNOME: The Desktop for morons"? I don't think so, but your comments make it sound like you want GNOME to be the "moron-desktop".
- You may not like the lack of preferences, but corporations (and inexperienced users) do. MSN is the default home page on millions of systems because users are too lazy to change it. You may like a control center with 40 pages (and multiple tabs per page), but such a thing flies in the face of usability. Users are so overwhelmed by options that they don't find the ones that really matter.
Uh, KDE has the Kiosk-framework which allows admins to lock down the desktop. Hell, the users couldn't even change their desktop-background or close full-screen Konqueror if the admin decided so! And the number of configuration-options is not THAT bad in KDE! Everything is in logical places, and it's not like you need to go through them every single day! And besides, no-one forces you to touch the settings. But at least KDE gives you the possibility to do so.
Konqueror has button after buuton, and menu after menu. There are pages of preferences. There are so many things to click and choose from that many users are overwhelmed.
The menus and buttons are cleaned up in KDE3.2. And I for one LIKE the fact that I'm given the possibility to tweak the desktop to my liking. I do not like it when I'm forced to use certain kind of desktop just because some "usability-expert" decided that it would be the best for me. I'm my own usability expert when it comes to the UI I use!
- The "look and feel" of GNOME, in my opinion, is far superior to KDE.
Matter of taste. I prefer KDE's look and feel. GNOME looks bland and boring. And there are lots and lots of great themes for KDE as well.
Oh yes, the almighty HIG. "Should "cancel" be on the right or on the left? No, I think it should be two pixels up". KDE does conform to a set of guidelines. Maybe they haven't gone as overboard with this as GNOME has, but they have their guidelines.
no integration fo core apps other than what konq can do
Bullshit! Kmail, Korganizer, Kaddressbook, Knotes etc. etc. integrate with each other really well. Kdevelop uses Kate as it's editor (or any other KDE-compliant editor) etc. etc. Clearly, you are clueless on this issue.
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Yes you could have those features in a 4bit CPU. But you do not. If you run A64 in 32bits, you get only 8GPR's. Running it in full 64bit, give you substantial benefits. Yes I know that having those extra registers in not directly due to 64-bitness. But you can't have those in regural 32bit x86, since the x86-spec has just 8 GPR's.
Uh, I never mentioned MMX. All I said was that the CPU has some features that require the CPU to be operated in 64bit mode. And that is a fact.
But, to answer your question: since MMX is available in Pentium2 and up, you could say that it's a feature of 32bit processor. Of course, not all 32bit CPU's have MMX. Show me one 16bit CPU that has MMX.
You have to run the CPU in 64bit mode in order to use those extra GPR's and SSE-registers.
It's a bit longer than P800 but it's thinner.
And Athlon64 has 16 of those GPR's, compared to just 8 on regural x86. That alone should give considerable boost in performance. Of course, it also has double the number of SSE-registers.
And anyone with a half a brain and/or access to someone that can take the time to teach them a bit can use Linux just fine. So what was your point again?
If you don't want any of that "garbage", feel free to turn it off. No-one is forcing you to run it. But in few years time we will have Linux competing with Longhorn and MacOSX. Compared to those, your standard Xfree would look ancient and obsolete. Hell, it would be like comparing Win3.11 to Windows2000!
While you can use those nifty features for "useless" things like transparency, they can also be used for things we really want. And let's face it, most of us want eye-candy. And it can be used to make the UI more productive or pleasant to work with. I loved chatting with Trillian on W2K, since I could make the chat-windows partially transparent. It was easy on my eyes.
I can hear you say it now... " But all that eye-candy will make my system slow!". Not if you can run it on the vid-card. Vid-cards these days have insane amounts of processing-power in 'em and they have at least 64 megs of RAM. Yes, you might need to upgrade your machine to use all that eye-candy. But then again, no-one is forcing you to turn that eye-candy on or let alone install the software in question! Feel free to run your standard Xfree! But there are lots and lots of people there with multi-gigaherts machines with more vid-RAM than you can shake a stick at. They would me more than willing to use that gorgerous UI.
If all people thought like you do, we would still be running TWM! I mean, that UI doesn't have any eye-candy, so it must be good, right?
We don't complain about X, we complain about Xfree.
Fair enough. But then why does NVIDIA perform better on Linux and Ati on Linux does? Ati-drivers are open source, yet they can't match the closed NVIDIA-drivers. Open-source CAN and often does produce code that is superior to closed-source, but it's not certain that it will always be superior.
I run those dreaded NVIDIA-drivers on my Linux-system, and they work fine.
To my knowledge, there are plenty of Gentoo-folks using the NVIDIA-drivers with 2.6-kernel. I would assume there are users of other distros as well.
I personally can't do a thing with the code. And having the code available is not the Holy grail when it comes to quality. Ati-drivers are open-source, yet they seem to suck when compared to the closed NV-drivers. Performance of NVIDIA-cards on Linux is at least equal to their performance on Windows. Can you say the same for Ati on Linux?
What about users like me? I'm not a coder. For me the source might as well be written in Hebrew. I get no benefits from having the code available. I can't debug it, I don't know what things do what. All I care is having a drivers that work. If I could choose between closed and open drivers that worked as well, I would choose the open drivers. But I don't get to make that choice, so I chooce the closed drivers, and use them instead.
It might be suitable for what you do. But it's not suitable for many others. But hey, if all you do is to surf the net and read email, then 550Mhz P3 will be more than enough.
I have a 840Mhz Duron, and I seriously need to upgrade.
Of course Opteron 800-series is expensive! It's the top-of-the-line AMD offers! And it is still cheaper than Itanium. And it runs about all software there is.
Athlon64. It runs slower when it's idle, saving alot of power.
Well, all CPU's are completely silent, it's the fans that make noise
I assume you haven't watched Monty Python alot?
reference
And don't forget, USA gives Israel (a modern nation of just 5 million people) more money than they (the USA) gives to entire sub-Saharan Africa!
They brought peace
I remember seeing the list of nations that supported US's "war on terrorism". I remember laughing because that list included every frigging micro-nation that had uttered a good word or two regarding USA. It had such superpowers like Israel (Israel will say whatever it takes to please USA), Bulgaria, Romania, Palau, Marshall Islands, Tonga, etc. etc.
Heh, and the funny thing is that it is GNOME who are pushing the "usability" big time. They have SUN working on it and everyone thinks that good things will automatically come from that collaboration. And then we notice that those SUN-guys come up with stuff like this... And temember: those SUN-guys that now work on GNOME used to work on CDE. A rininging endorsement, isn't it :)?
I read The Hobbit after I had read Lord of The Rings. And I think The Hobbit is a wonderful book. I have read it several times since.
You mean like USA where the government likes to keep it's eye on what you borrow from the library? Where the FBI can search your home at whim? Something like that?
Funny, I remember BBC producing some kick-ass shows, that were then aped by americans. For some reason, americans don't like to watch foreign-made series, they have to make their own versions of 'em (which usually suck when compared to the original).
I have seen people who have never touched Linux use KDE for the first time. It takes them usually about 5 minutes to find the settings they want to change. It's NOT that hard. But I guess you think that removing configurability is same as "ease of use". In other words: you prefer some to tell you how you should set up your UI because "usability-experts say this is the best way". But here's a little nugget of information to you: People are not identical! My desktop is different from my girlfriends (who is not a Linux-guru, far from it) desktop. Reason being that my style of working is different from her style of working. Luckily KDE allows us to change the desktop to suit our needs. But, according to you, that's a big no-no? we should just stick to what the "usability-experts" decide is best for us? What you get is a bunch of compromises that satisfyes no-one.
Those usability-experts that now work on GNOME, used to work on CDE. Hardly a ringing endorsement in my book.
Yeah, luckily EVERYONE knows what "Nautilus" or "Galeon" are, right? Or how about Evolution? Everyone knows "Evolotion" means "email", right?
And in many cases, the naming IS convenient in KDE. Usually the K-menu has the apps listed as "Email - Kmail" or something like that. Or is that "too confusing" as well?
You used MS apps as an example. How does "Outlook" tell me that it's an email-app? How does "PowerPoint" tell me it's an presentation-app?
Such as?
How do you know? Because some "usability expert" told you so? I for one think that the UI-wizard is a convenient way to set the desktops primary functionality up. Details can then be set up later.
Like I said, I have seen first-time users use KDE with zero (well, close to zero) problems. You make it sound like KDE is a usability-nightmare which is completely un-usable to mere mortals. Reality is that it's perfectly usable.
I guess what you want is a dumbed-down desktop that targets the lowest common nominator. I guess your ideal desktop is one which has no settings or tweakables. You have to accept the default look & feel because everything else would be "confusing". Should GNOME then be renamed to "GNOME: The Desktop for morons"? I don't think so, but your comments make it sound like you want GNOME to be the "moron-desktop".
Uh, KDE has the Kiosk-framework which allows admins to lock down the desktop. Hell, the users couldn't even change their desktop-background or close full-screen Konqueror if the admin decided so! And the number of configuration-options is not THAT bad in KDE! Everything is in logical places, and it's not like you need to go through them every single day! And besides, no-one forces you to touch the settings. But at least KDE gives you the possibility to do so.
The menus and buttons are cleaned up in KDE3.2. And I for one LIKE the fact that I'm given the possibility to tweak the desktop to my liking. I do not like it when I'm forced to use certain kind of desktop just because some "usability-expert" decided that it would be the best for me. I'm my own usability expert when it comes to the UI I use!
Matter of taste. I prefer KDE's look and feel. GNOME looks bland and boring. And there are lots and lots of great themes for KDE as well.
Oh yes, the almighty HIG. "Should "cancel" be on the right or on the left? No, I think it should be two pixels up". KDE does conform to a set of guidelines. Maybe they haven't gone as overboard with this as GNOME has, but they have their guidelines.
Bullshit! Kmail, Korganizer, Kaddressbook, Knotes etc. etc. integrate with each other really well. Kdevelop uses Kate as it's editor (or any other KDE-compliant editor) etc. etc. Clearly, you are clueless on this issue.