Same reason there's no $199 ultra-low-end Apple product... margins. Compete right in the middle (or at least not the low end) of the bell curve, where the market supports better margins.
What do you want more -- an Apple and the OS X OS, or a cheap laptop? You can get a desktop eMac NEW for $799. That's a steal. Order one through a school and it's $50 cheaper.
Powerbook for $600? Ha. Not even an iBook.
MAYBE you can find a 700MHz iBook on eBay, used -- or dealmac.com -- for $600. I've seen 500MHz ibooks for sub-500 some months back. These systems are suitable for UNIX or Mac development, which is what I use mine for.
If "windows" was a generic term commonly used to refer to windowing applications LONG BEFORE Microsoft even HAD a display manager capable of windowing... what would you say?
Well? We're waiting.
And with your example of "Winux", I think few people would assert it is a violation. Linux itself is a mix of "Linux" and "UNIX".
Usually when one builds from Source, they install it to wherever the original developer has it set to by default. Unless you did some heavy patching, the software will very likely be more "true" to the original software then many packages.
Correct me if I am wrong, but are you contridicting yourself here? Gentoo DOES use developer source, but they ALSO do what you call "heavy patching".
I interpret this "source vs package" debate to be something different: What is the NORM for your distribution, and are you using the OS in ways that were not tested by the vendor's SQA team
For example, ANY of these distros can get borked if you install Ximian on top of them and THEN go back to the vendor for updates. It wouldn't matter if you did it from source or packages.
Same with Alien packages on Debian, or "Redhat centric" rpms on Mandrake or SuSE.
Bottom line is don't mix oil and water.:-)
I agree with your comments about what is good with Gentoo. I happen to like Gentoo and FreeBSD for the very reason that there's a BAZILLION source packages that all have cross-testing against each other. Same for Debian I suppose.
Best thing RedHat ever did for their desktop distro was set it free. They NEVER wanted to be in the business of supporting user-borked desktops when they install random stuff from the net, and they never wanted to manage and QA a large repository. Now it looks like there's a Fedora community (two actually) addressing the package distribution issue. Good for them.
>Now the license is different. I often wish there was a small-business or starting-business license, but this is only pertanant if you are going commercial work. for GPL work it is completely free.
There's no reason a small business can't do commercial work and license it under the GPL.
Read what he said. It's quite clear. He IS wishing for a LOW COST PROPRIETARY Qt license.
Qt is good for completely free software developers also.
The Qt license is also perfect for Oracle/Borland/Novell who can plunk down thousands of dollars on a developer.
How widespread do you think Linux would be if it had the same license as Qt?
I support Troll tech's right to license as they see fit. The point is, there are LOTS of applications for Windows, and that's a major reason people stick with the platform right?
Well, SOME of those applications come from businesses too small to have an Oracle software budget. Innovation springs from the grass roots, and that means not only free-software but also SHAREWARE.
People don't have to LIKE Shareware, and I think it is a dying breed (maybe), but often folks have a great idea for a market too small for Novell, and too "un-cool" for Free Software authors who sometimes are too busy working on yet another media player or MP3 jukebox fork. That's not always true, but generally people write free code to scratch their own personal itch, and that's a pretty narrow field of view compared to what is out there.
Best to have competing platforms?? You do realize this is not the BSD page, right? (Just kidding, BSD'ers...:-)
Seriously, merging KDE and GNOME piece by piece will NOT remove choices. No one is going to put a gun to anyone's head, developer or user and force a switch.
It's strange that so many people cry out against desktop unification. I suspect the same people note with uncomfortable silence as freedesktop.org continues to take away "choice", by working out interoperability issues among free desktops.
You get innovation and ideas in development branches, and temporary forks.
People just want KDE and GNOME to "work" together. I don't mind a little software bloat in exchange for rapid development, but any GNOME/KDE user can tell you it's pretty slow firing up Konqueror/Evolution from the "other" desktop. You get two of everything that the "alien" app wanted. Yuck.
I'm sure it's a real pain in the ass for commercial developers also. Code for both?? No thank you! Of course, some users will see this as a big IBM/Novell/Microsoft-Mono-Ximian conspiracy.
>You can say oh with distro x my device Y works so anyone complaining that using distro X with any hardware is an idiot or using device Y with any distro is an idiot too.
Well, anyone who ISN'T qualified to fix their software... yet uses Slackware or Debian or Gentoo... IS an idiot. I think most of what you would call a "zealout" would agree. (NOTE: I like these 3 distros.. just never as a -desktop-). Next.
>I'm so sick of people chanting that linux is the greatest and easiest thing to use. That's an obvious distortion. No one used "Linux" and "easiest" in the same sentence. Next.
>If it were, then lots of OEMs would be putting it on their high end machines and not their lowest price pc's to save $40. You obviously don't know that Microsoft tends to push OEM's to sign license agreements that are per-CPU-shipped. It cost MORE to ship Linux because there's no savings in licensing, and now you have product duplication.
>I've tried a bunch of distros on a bunch of computers... I get sick and tired of it and I go back to windows..
Good for you. You don't need to feel you should defend your opinion. It's not a fact. Your needs are not everyone else's needs. Maybe the value of Linux's strength's (stability, programmability, cost, freedom) add up to a big fat ZERO to you. With no strengths to fall on, your evaluation of Linux will be biased.
Besides, even when you find the DESKTOP distribution that's AS easy (for you) as Windows... most people won't switch. There's inertia in re-learning things.
>the command line always comes up in some way or another on linux installs, I don't care what you say.
Fine. Don't. I'm a junior developer and software QA on Windows and Linux. I can tell you from my experience that on the latest (shipping or beta) versions of Mandrake, Red Hat... even SuSE, I *never* need to go to the shell during an INSTALL.
The hardware I'm using is a grab-bag of old desktop rejects, servers etc. running the gamut: ISA/PCI boards, K6 CPUs, Slot 1, Socket370... old stuff that inherently does not have great PNP support.
In fact, I have a BOX of 3dfx video cards and generic TV tuner cards that *only* work in Linux, or Windows 98 because the manufacturer doesn't feel obligated to provide XP drivers (or they're a dead manufacturer... who cares why it doesn't work).
I can't tell you how many times I've used regedit. I call THAT a "command line" (accurate or not).
Wait a minute... you're talking about USABILITY during an INSTALL? The "system restore" CD that came with your Windows PC is NOT an OS installer.
Try doing XP installs from SCRATCH on a GENERIC PC, and compare it to installing Lindows 4 or Mandrake 9.x, and then tell me which has the easier install.
I don't think the point is so much "which API", but "which API is going to allow a boatload of new applications developed quickly".
The points are: 1) C development is SLOW. 2) Scripting languages (ANY of them) are (naturally!) slower than C. 3) It's the applications, stupid 4) Microsoft is patenting everything they can, even in cases where prior art exists (XML, ClearType for examples)
#3 trumps #1. SURE, C programs are less bloated and they'll run faster (unless they are the kind of program that just sits there waiting for input)
The end-user does not care about C. They care about availability of featureful applications that run respectably on THEIR computer.
I don't think people here are REALLY worried about slower aplications becoming popular... by definition slow applications are never accepted.
People are elevating the "performance" issue as a mask for what really troubles them. It's ridiculous to talk about 4 way Xeons and gigs of memory to back up issues with non-C development.
Every few years this SAME argument gets taken up, with a new costume. Yes, Mono/Java/Python are slower than C.
FACT. There's also a dearth of programs that people want.
Logically, if folks want to stick to C they can... they'll just have to work harder to get same feature throughput as the guy who adopts interpreted languages. That's evolution.:-)
I suspect GNOME-Core will be continued in C for a very long time (longer than it matters).
One thing I've noticed is, oftentimes the person with the SLOWEST computer IS the techie. They KNOW how software works, and resent being forced to upgrade because software they like now has higher hardware requirements. They are proud of the PC they built, and question why it's no longer targeted by new code. But then they're not willing to accept that the new code allows more work to be done (or otherwise pick up the slack to offer the same pace development in C).
Free/Open software is a democratic model.. don't like what someone did in Mono in just 8 hours.. spend 40 hours and rewrite it in C! Don't begrudge everyone else to wait until your upgrade is driven by hardware failure.
It's the same thing when everyone moved from DOS to Windows, or Console to X11.
> I don't think the key to Linux will be a games based distro. The key will be my mom being able to plug in her digital camera and having all the picutres show up in a window.
Lets not compare Windows XP to RedHat 6.2 shall we?
Digital cameras work fine. Find a valid example. Most people dismiss Linux because: a) Windows came with their computer. They already paid for it. WHat's the point?? b) Lack of warez for Linux. A shamefully low percentage of Windows users have totally-legal software installs. c) usability DOES factor in, but the average person just needs a Lindows-like PC.. email,. web, office app, and oh yeah support for USB cameras and pen drives. Linux does that with great ease of use.
I can't see involving the "command line" in any of those activities... not anymore than the same job requiring regedit.exe use on Windows.
Not that I'm saying Linux is as easy for mom as XP (it's not... but it's not a huge leap).
> I hear you, but i disagree. I always reccomend Gentoo to linux newbies.
You must hate newbies.
You would do these users less of a disservice if you simply directed them to an InstallFest and let them hear less biased opinions.
Just like the BEST BEER in the world is a free beer:-), the BEST distro for a newbie is one where he has SUPPORT. For that reason I usually recommend Red Hat because it is the more common Linux (at least in the USA) and it seems to have above average hardware detection. Personally, I always liked Debian best.
If the bar for Linux is learning it without the GUI, then there are a lot of people you don't want running Linux.
Where all the Linux seem to break down is when you go off the beaten path, and mix source and packaging (all too common). For this and some other reasons, I am starting to appreciate FreeBSD more.
I can see how people like Gentoo. I just can't see how they would suggest it to Joe Sixpack The Newbie.
The people who would complain about this are the same who complain about automated speed 'traps'.
It's basically a mindset issue. They feel that some things are against the law, and yes.. those people should get busted for it.
Actually, although I am the parent poster and I saw nothing wrong with catching tax cheats, I disagree strongly with "speed traps". Massachusetts has no such "speed trap" protection law, so towns are posting unreasonable speed limits (Route 113 in Dunstable, MA varies 4 times from 45 to *25* inside of a 5 mile stretch).
Speeding tickets are not a tax, yet there are obvious and strong financial incentives for cash-strapped states and towns to ticket.
As a civil punishment, tickets must be handed out fairly and without prejudice by the officer. They almost never are, and result in much higher insurance rates for men when the evidence clearly shows that sex plays no role in speeding. Speeding is speeding.
Automated tickets remove the officer from the equation at least, and hopefully allow the city to focus on SECONDARY priorities like gangs and such (joking, but its true. Anyone in Lowell, MA can tell you where the drug dealers are. They don't hide).
Even with camera tickets, there are a lot of zones that jump from 45MPH to 30MPH within short distances and no advisory posting. There's just too much monkey-business to be reasonable and fair. Just add another penny to the gas tax, get the extra money, and focus on real problems like driving to endanger, or providing a presence in a high-risk neighborhood.
Furthermore there are a lot of illegal speed limits in the state of Massachusetts. POSTED Speed limits are legally required to be based on Engineering studies, which have to take place every 5 years and during fair weather. Often they do not take place at all.
WAYyyy off topic here, but more information can be found at Motorists.org http://www.motorists.org. Know your rights.
Someone please tell me how this is a violation of my rights? Seriously. I am normally protective of my liberties but I do not see the connection.
Should the poster feel violated that he may get caught cheating on tobacco taxes?
By the very act of taxing tobacco, hasn't the government been already GRANTED (by the people) this power? I'm assuming that data existed before for people who did NOT cheat, and made some kind of non-cash transaction that required paperwork.
Tax cheating is not a "questionable accounting practice" -- it's shirking your societal obligations and shafting your neighbor with your bill. It's a crime and obviously the penalties are a joke. Forget fining them... send them to Texas for 12 months, so they can make blue jeans and sneakers in the state jails.
Or does the poster feel 'violated' because the government "knows" he purchased tobacco? Woopie. It's a taxable item.
It's not as bad as say, the government illegally tapping your telephone because you buy cous-cous and goat cheeze, violating due-process, Geneva convention un-enforcement, or even FCC censorship crackdowns for the public display of a female nipple.
They let you share bandwidth. You sign yourself as accountable so you might want to create a legal entity to hide behind (corporation or nonprofit).
They'll even take care of the "billing" for you. You could charge everyone actual-cost, with a higher bill for the guy who consistently "forgets" to turn off P2P filesharing to/from the outside..
> I'm happy with my Linux system right now. It supports all my hardware and gives me a nice desktop. Why, beyond standard geek curiosity, should I switch to *BSD?
I can't answer that question without advocating a platform I am not sure of yet.
I've been running Linux for almost 9 years -- I've loved it. I still do.
I used to run my Linux box as "desktop -and- server". But these days I find my needs are being pulled in two different directions:
1) cool UNIX desktop 2) cool server (by "cool" I mean useful, and something that works for me). It'd rather have these on different boxes, so an experiment on one does not kill the other.
Today I installed FreeBSD 5.2 on an old K63-450. I'm a total noob BSD user, but I can see myself possibly sticking with it for the server.
Why? Ever add rpm's to a Redhat system, and have it break things? Sure, it's the *packages* fault (or mine, it could be argued). But Red Hat is not interested in hosting tons of UNIX code... just what they ship. With Redhat it would be common to mix in source tarball compiles. Bye bye rpm database. It gets messy.
Of course, Debian does a much finer job QA-ing packages between another. They also provide a central repository for packages. I stopped using Debian back when I used 1 PC for my desktop -and- server needs, and the lust for the latest goodies meant I'd break my system mixing packages from unstable tree. That's my fault I know.
I don't know if Debian is slower than FreeBSD. I could try Debian again for my server. I was leaning towards using Gentoo actually, until the FreeBSD 5.2 release caught my eye.
I actually have to QA different applications on both Linux and FreeBSD anyways, and whenever I used BSD I found myself cursing it because I'd memorized Linux style switches for ps, netstat etc. I'd have to make corrections to Linux-centric Makefiles, etc. All that fun.
I see I could also run it as my desktop. I don't think that I will just because I don't see the benefit.
In short, FreeBSD I think will round out some holes in my UNIX experience, and I'm already seeing better performance on the BSD box just from basic testing.
So, I wouldn't dream of advocating BSD to anyone (especially given my inexperience!). But if you setup another server and have a few days to play with a variant OS, give it a try...
>Care to substantiate that is not _currently_ the dominant desktop?
That was not my intent, but...
Substantiate? That's impossible to do for either desktop. There is no registration or accounting mechanism.
We can use circumstantial evidence: *) most users run the distro's default desktop. *) Red Hat is not just the leading distro, but also the the majority distro.
That's not perfect science, but I'll wager on it anyways. I don't give much weight to how loud any particular demographic/group is.. the minority factions in life are always trying to compensate for size.;-)
(NOTE: Light sarcasm is meant to be humorous. By no means would I intend disrespect to the general KDE community, and especially not to hardworking, generous developers./. moderators with an agenda only hurt the forum, not me.)
>Call me crazy, but I'm glad we've got a choice of desktop environments.
Except for a few "journalists" and controversial posters, I would bet that most people agree.
>Not to knock the KDE folks, but I happen to prefer GNOME. If desktops were to somehow "unify," and that meant all we had left was KDE, I'd be more than a bit peeved.
KDE will never be the dominant desktop. No offense to anyone pro-KDE. By the time this all works out, we'll have a KDE and GNOME that is so different from today's that we will not remember what the API wars were about.
Wrappers, unification API's, and freedesktop.org are bringing the two sides together where it makes sense. It makes sense in a LOT of places that aren't talking yet, but I say in time it will work out.
I'd LOVE to see KDE and GNOME use "common API's" for file dialogs. Why the hell NOT? An application should just say "file_dialog_common()" and then the user/desktop/distro settings determine WHO draws it. It doesn't matter. Desktop-specific features are EXTENSIONS. Granted, a lot of people thought GTK 2.2 and 2.4 file dialog was sub-optimal. Hopefully in the future with GTK 2.6, there will be some interest in at least standardizing the function calls, if not the actual code itself.
People won't shut up about which API "rules" until much of what the API's provide has been turned into a commodity, as in this example. The revolution will not be televised.;-)
For example, if the file is like one page long and has more than one bullet list then the file won't save properly...oh, it'll save, but when you re-open it, forget about having it look like it did when you saved it. Freakin bullets changed to numbers, bullets moved around, deleted, added to things that shouldn't have bullets. WTF.
That sounds pretty rough. You don't mention it's a known bug, so it's a short step to assume you have not searched for and filed a bug report. Too bad... because it sounds like you can reproduce it quite well.
I use OO on both Windows and Linux. It works well for me, and my docs are heavily structured testplans. I -do- have to explain to people (several times) that the formatting changes they or I see are due to their using stupid fonts I don't have (like Comic) and vice versa.
Nope, I didn't misread - you assume I did, but my post was deliberate.
My logic: (Problem) Using film, I took a bad shot... and KNEW it. This happens.
(Solution) "take another".
In this case, being digital, the cost of a second shot is effectively $0. Yay.
I'll grant that without an LCD you have no PROOF that the shot is bad.
That said, but there's a big stretch between proof OF a bad shot and "[value of] NONE" (and as some other posters claimed, "No way of knowing...").
Exaggerated posts are not helpful. I'm not a great photograpgher but I work just fine using a viewfinder. Some people WILL rely so heavily on the LCD that they feel crippled using a mere viewfinder. This is not less or more true if the format is film or digital. Same thing.
How do you know you need to erase it if you can't see it???
Have you ever used a film camera?
Did you ever take a shot you knew was bad? What did you do - take another?
*Exactly*
Considering the "I-Opener" risk, they were pretty smart to make these without LCD's. Adding a LCD would *double* cost and RISK for a product with an uncertain future (esp. now!!)
> Of course it would be sad if tasks only got done because of bounties...
Would it, truly?
Sure, it would be "great" if there were coders out there who *wanted* these tedious/unglamourous/etc. tasks. This is the advantage of commercial development ("I am your boss - you do your job").
Humans are individualistic, and appreciate recognition. These tasks are important but - once implimented - users will never think twice about the feature and whoever made it possible.
If these tasks only get done because of the bounties, so what? Think of it as getting paid to work on free software. For many folks, this is a dream job.
> Am I the only one who notices pixelation even on todays MPEG2 DVD standard?
>Kinda makes the purist pine for the days of the Lasedisc.
Sure, I see this all the time... but I wouldn't go back to Laserdisc.
There are two causes for seeing this in DVD's: 1) Lousy DVD encode work. Laserdisc had media *transferred* to it. They would (hopefully) clean the negatives, get everything aligned, and record to laserdisc. Everything was done at once.
By contrast, DVD is *captured* as uncompressed video, then (perhaps) shipped off to a *different* service bureau for MPEG-2 encoding.
Either -- or neither! -- shop might be responsible for "cleanup" on the video, such as scratch removal, etc.
Next MPEG encoding can be done "realtime" (lower quality) or as software-encoding with all the fine-tune (and slow!) knobs cranked up. Even on the fastest systems, this is an overnight job.
Lastly, the "customer" (movie owner) does not always know what they want. Will this be a DVD-5 disc? If so, the movie needs to be kept at about 4 gigs, and even that leaves little room for alternate soundtracks, languages, and "extras". DVD-5 is cheaper to manufacture so not everyone assumes DVD-9 is in the cards.
With DVD-9, you can pad the bits so a 2hr movie gets 5-6 GB. This makes a HUUGE difference in quality... less compromises, less pixelation and less chroma artifacts. The difference is like 800MB DivX video compared with 1.5 Divx video.
Its pretty easy to catch artifact noise on animated, of computer generated video. Even allowing for that, the overall quality still blows away Laserdisc.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps now he can't send his kids to college.
You've just glossed over one of the key reasons that other countries have been successful at winning US jobs: affordable education.
Industries are not heridetary. If you "threaten" kids with $40,000 in college debt then a good many smart-but-poor kids will be dissuaded from it.
This ultimately leads to less competition for higher paying jobs -- which for the "less government" crowd that is "fine with them"...
How this same crowd of politically-active people can hurt their country so much, yet wrap themselves in the flag, is beyond comprehension.
Same reason there's no $199 ultra-low-end Apple product... margins. Compete right in the middle (or at least not the low end) of the bell curve, where the market supports better margins.
What do you want more -- an Apple and the OS X OS, or a cheap laptop? You can get a desktop eMac NEW for $799. That's a steal. Order one through a school and it's $50 cheaper.
Powerbook for $600? Ha. Not even an iBook.
MAYBE you can find a 700MHz iBook on eBay, used -- or dealmac.com -- for $600. I've seen 500MHz ibooks for sub-500 some months back. These systems are suitable for UNIX or Mac development, which is what I use mine for.
Refurbs are great if you have a warranty.
If "windows" was a generic term commonly used to refer to windowing applications LONG BEFORE Microsoft even HAD a display manager capable of windowing... what would you say?
Well?
We're waiting.
And with your example of "Winux", I think few people would assert it is a violation. Linux itself is a mix of "Linux" and "UNIX".
Usually when one builds from Source, they install it to wherever the original developer has it set to by default. Unless you did some heavy patching, the software will very likely be more "true" to the original software then many packages.
:-)
Correct me if I am wrong, but are you contridicting yourself here? Gentoo DOES use developer source, but they ALSO do what you call "heavy patching".
I interpret this "source vs package" debate to be something different: What is the NORM for your distribution, and are you using the OS in ways that were not tested by the vendor's SQA team
For example, ANY of these distros can get borked if you install Ximian on top of them and THEN go back to the vendor for updates. It wouldn't matter if you did it from source or packages.
Same with Alien packages on Debian, or "Redhat centric" rpms on Mandrake or SuSE.
Bottom line is don't mix oil and water.
I agree with your comments about what is good with Gentoo. I happen to like Gentoo and FreeBSD for the very reason that there's a BAZILLION source packages that all have cross-testing against each other. Same for Debian I suppose.
Best thing RedHat ever did for their desktop distro was set it free. They NEVER wanted to be in the business of supporting user-borked desktops when they install random stuff from the net, and they never wanted to manage and QA a large repository. Now it looks like there's a Fedora community (two actually) addressing the package distribution issue. Good for them.
>Now the license is different. I often wish there was a small-business or starting-business license, but this is only pertanant if you are going commercial work. for GPL work it is completely free.
There's no reason a small business can't do commercial work and license it under the GPL.
Read what he said. It's quite clear.
He IS wishing for a LOW COST PROPRIETARY Qt license.
Qt is good for completely free software developers also.
The Qt license is also perfect for Oracle/Borland/Novell who can plunk down thousands of dollars on a developer.
How widespread do you think Linux would be if it had the same license as Qt?
I support Troll tech's right to license as they see fit. The point is, there are LOTS of applications for Windows, and that's a major reason people stick with the platform right?
Well, SOME of those applications come from businesses too small to have an Oracle software budget. Innovation springs from the grass roots, and that means not only free-software but also SHAREWARE.
People don't have to LIKE Shareware, and I think it is a dying breed (maybe), but often folks have a great idea for a market too small for Novell, and too "un-cool" for Free Software authors who sometimes are too busy working on yet another media player or MP3 jukebox fork. That's not always true, but generally people write free code to scratch their own personal itch, and that's a pretty narrow field of view compared to what is out there.
Best to have competing platforms?? You do realize this is not the BSD page, right? :-)
(Just kidding, BSD'ers...
Seriously, merging KDE and GNOME piece by piece will NOT remove choices. No one is going to put a gun to anyone's head, developer or user and force a switch.
It's strange that so many people cry out against desktop unification. I suspect the same people note with uncomfortable silence as freedesktop.org continues to take away "choice", by working out interoperability issues among free desktops.
You get innovation and ideas in development branches, and temporary forks.
People just want KDE and GNOME to "work" together. I don't mind a little software bloat in exchange for rapid development, but any GNOME/KDE user can tell you it's pretty slow firing up Konqueror/Evolution from the "other" desktop. You get two of everything that the "alien" app wanted. Yuck.
I'm sure it's a real pain in the ass for commercial developers also. Code for both?? No thank you! Of course, some users will see this as a big IBM/Novell/Microsoft-Mono-Ximian conspiracy.
>You can say oh with distro x my device Y works so anyone complaining that using distro X with any hardware is an idiot or using device Y with any distro is an idiot too.
... I get sick and tired of it and I go back to windows..
Well, anyone who ISN'T qualified to fix their software... yet uses Slackware or Debian or Gentoo... IS an idiot. I think most of what you would call a "zealout" would agree. (NOTE: I like these 3 distros.. just never as a -desktop-). Next.
>I'm so sick of people chanting that linux is the greatest and easiest thing to use.
That's an obvious distortion. No one used "Linux" and "easiest" in the same sentence. Next.
>If it were, then lots of OEMs would be putting it on their high end machines and not their lowest price pc's to save $40.
You obviously don't know that Microsoft tends to push OEM's to sign license agreements that are per-CPU-shipped. It cost MORE to ship Linux because there's no savings in licensing, and now you have product duplication.
>I've tried a bunch of distros on a bunch of computers
Good for you. You don't need to feel you should defend your opinion. It's not a fact. Your needs are not everyone else's needs. Maybe the value of Linux's strength's (stability, programmability, cost, freedom) add up to a big fat ZERO to you. With no strengths to fall on, your evaluation of Linux will be biased.
Besides, even when you find the DESKTOP distribution that's AS easy (for you) as Windows... most people won't switch. There's inertia in re-learning things.
>the command line always comes up in some way or another on linux installs, I don't care what you say.
Fine. Don't. I'm a junior developer and software QA on Windows and Linux. I can tell you from my experience that on the latest (shipping or beta) versions of Mandrake, Red Hat... even SuSE, I *never* need to go to the shell during an INSTALL.
The hardware I'm using is a grab-bag of old desktop rejects, servers etc. running the gamut: ISA/PCI boards, K6 CPUs, Slot 1, Socket370... old stuff that inherently does not have great PNP support.
In fact, I have a BOX of 3dfx video cards and generic TV tuner cards that *only* work in Linux, or Windows 98 because the manufacturer doesn't feel obligated to provide XP drivers (or they're a dead manufacturer... who cares why it doesn't work).
I can't tell you how many times I've used regedit. I call THAT a "command line" (accurate or not).
Wait a minute... you're talking about USABILITY during an INSTALL? The "system restore" CD that came with your Windows PC is NOT an OS installer.
Try doing XP installs from SCRATCH on a GENERIC PC, and compare it to installing Lindows 4 or Mandrake 9.x, and then tell me which has the easier install.
I don't think the point is so much "which API", but "which API is going to allow a boatload of new applications developed quickly".
:-)
The points are:
1) C development is SLOW.
2) Scripting languages (ANY of them) are (naturally!) slower than C.
3) It's the applications, stupid
4) Microsoft is patenting everything they can, even in cases where prior art exists (XML, ClearType for examples)
#3 trumps #1. SURE, C programs are less bloated and they'll run faster (unless they are the kind of program that just sits there waiting for input)
The end-user does not care about C. They care about availability of featureful applications that run respectably on THEIR computer.
I don't think people here are REALLY worried about slower aplications becoming popular... by definition slow applications are never accepted.
People are elevating the "performance" issue as a mask for what really troubles them. It's ridiculous to talk about 4 way Xeons and gigs of memory to back up issues with non-C development.
Every few years this SAME argument gets taken up, with a new costume. Yes, Mono/Java/Python are slower than C.
FACT. There's also a dearth of programs that people want.
Logically, if folks want to stick to C they can... they'll just have to work harder to get same feature throughput as the guy who adopts interpreted languages. That's evolution.
I suspect GNOME-Core will be continued in C for a very long time (longer than it matters).
One thing I've noticed is, oftentimes the person with the SLOWEST computer IS the techie. They KNOW how software works, and resent being forced to upgrade because software they like now has higher hardware requirements. They are proud of the PC they built, and question why it's no longer targeted by new code. But then they're not willing to accept that the new code allows more work to be done (or otherwise pick up the slack to offer the same pace development in C).
Free/Open software is a democratic model.. don't like what someone did in Mono in just 8 hours.. spend 40 hours and rewrite it in C! Don't begrudge everyone else to wait until your upgrade is driven by hardware failure.
It's the same thing when everyone moved from DOS to Windows, or Console to X11.
> I don't think the key to Linux will be a games based distro. The key will be my mom being able to plug in her digital camera and having all the picutres show up in a window.
Lets not compare Windows XP to RedHat 6.2 shall we?
Digital cameras work fine. Find a valid example. Most people dismiss Linux because:
a) Windows came with their computer. They already paid for it. WHat's the point??
b) Lack of warez for Linux. A shamefully low percentage of Windows users have totally-legal software installs.
c) usability DOES factor in, but the average person just needs a Lindows-like PC.. email,. web, office app, and oh yeah support for USB cameras and pen drives. Linux does that with great ease of use.
I can't see involving the "command line" in any of those activities... not anymore than the same job requiring regedit.exe use on Windows.
Not that I'm saying Linux is as easy for mom as XP (it's not... but it's not a huge leap).
> I hear you, but i disagree. I always reccomend Gentoo to linux newbies.
:-), the BEST distro for a newbie is one where he has SUPPORT. For that reason I usually recommend Red Hat because it is the more common Linux (at least in the USA) and it seems to have above average hardware detection. Personally, I always liked Debian best.
You must hate newbies.
You would do these users less of a disservice if you simply directed them to an InstallFest and let them hear less biased opinions.
Just like the BEST BEER in the world is a free beer
If the bar for Linux is learning it without the GUI, then there are a lot of people you don't want running Linux.
Where all the Linux seem to break down is when you go off the beaten path, and mix source and packaging (all too common). For this and some other reasons, I am starting to appreciate FreeBSD more.
I can see how people like Gentoo. I just can't see how they would suggest it to Joe Sixpack The Newbie.
The people who would complain about this are the same who complain about automated speed 'traps'.
It's basically a mindset issue. They feel that some things are against the law, and yes.. those people should get busted for it.
Actually, although I am the parent poster and I saw nothing wrong with catching tax cheats, I disagree strongly with "speed traps". Massachusetts has no such "speed trap" protection law, so towns are posting unreasonable speed limits (Route 113 in Dunstable, MA varies 4 times from 45 to *25* inside of a 5 mile stretch).
Speeding tickets are not a tax, yet there are obvious and strong financial incentives for cash-strapped states and towns to ticket.
As a civil punishment, tickets must be handed out fairly and without prejudice by the officer. They almost never are, and result in much higher insurance rates for men when the evidence clearly shows that sex plays no role in speeding. Speeding is speeding.
Automated tickets remove the officer from the equation at least, and hopefully allow the city to focus on SECONDARY priorities like gangs and such (joking, but its true. Anyone in Lowell, MA can tell you where the drug dealers are. They don't hide).
Even with camera tickets, there are a lot of zones that jump from 45MPH to 30MPH within short distances and no advisory posting. There's just too much monkey-business to be reasonable and fair. Just add another penny to the gas tax, get the extra money, and focus on real problems like driving to endanger, or providing a presence in a high-risk neighborhood.
Furthermore there are a lot of illegal speed limits in the state of Massachusetts. POSTED Speed limits are legally required to be based on Engineering studies, which have to take place every 5 years and during fair weather. Often they do not take place at all.
WAYyyy off topic here, but more information can be found at Motorists.org http://www.motorists.org. Know your rights.
Someone please tell me how this is a violation of my rights? Seriously. I am normally protective of my liberties but I do not see the connection.
Should the poster feel violated that he may get caught cheating on tobacco taxes?
By the very act of taxing tobacco, hasn't the government been already GRANTED (by the people) this power? I'm assuming that data existed before for people who did NOT cheat, and made some kind of non-cash transaction that required paperwork.
Tax cheating is not a "questionable accounting practice" -- it's shirking your societal obligations and shafting your neighbor with your bill. It's a crime and obviously the penalties are a joke. Forget fining them... send them to Texas for 12 months, so they can make blue jeans and sneakers in the state jails.
Or does the poster feel 'violated' because the government "knows" he purchased tobacco? Woopie. It's a taxable item.
It's not as bad as say, the government illegally tapping your telephone because you buy cous-cous and goat cheeze, violating due-process, Geneva convention un-enforcement, or even FCC censorship crackdowns for the public display of a female nipple.
Please find a real issue to complain about.
Speakeasy.net
They let you share bandwidth. You sign yourself as accountable so you might want to create a legal entity to hide behind (corporation or nonprofit).
They'll even take care of the "billing" for you. You could charge everyone actual-cost, with a higher bill for the guy who consistently "forgets" to turn off P2P filesharing to/from the outside..
> I'm happy with my Linux system right now. It supports all my hardware and gives me a nice desktop. Why, beyond standard geek curiosity, should I switch to *BSD?
I can't answer that question without advocating a platform I am not sure of yet.
I've been running Linux for almost 9 years -- I've loved it. I still do.
I used to run my Linux box as "desktop -and- server". But these days I find my needs are being pulled in two different directions:
1) cool UNIX desktop
2) cool server
(by "cool" I mean useful, and something that works for me). It'd rather have these on different boxes, so an experiment on one does not kill the other.
Today I installed FreeBSD 5.2 on an old K63-450. I'm a total noob BSD user, but I can see myself possibly sticking with it for the server.
Why? Ever add rpm's to a Redhat system, and have it break things? Sure, it's the *packages* fault (or mine, it could be argued). But Red Hat is not interested in hosting tons of UNIX code... just what they ship. With Redhat it would be common to mix in source tarball compiles. Bye bye rpm database. It gets messy.
Of course, Debian does a much finer job QA-ing packages between another. They also provide a central repository for packages. I stopped using Debian back when I used 1 PC for my desktop -and- server needs, and the lust for the latest goodies meant I'd break my system mixing packages from unstable tree. That's my fault I know.
I don't know if Debian is slower than FreeBSD. I could try Debian again for my server. I was leaning towards using Gentoo actually, until the FreeBSD 5.2 release caught my eye.
I actually have to QA different applications on both Linux and FreeBSD anyways, and whenever I used BSD I found myself cursing it because I'd memorized Linux style switches for ps, netstat etc. I'd have to make corrections to Linux-centric Makefiles, etc. All that fun.
I see I could also run it as my desktop. I don't think that I will just because I don't see the benefit.
In short, FreeBSD I think will round out some holes in my UNIX experience, and I'm already seeing better performance on the BSD box just from basic testing.
So, I wouldn't dream of advocating BSD to anyone (especially given my inexperience!). But if you setup another server and have a few days to play with a variant OS, give it a try...
> The only unification that I really want is unification of the copy/paste.
Do you even mix KDE and GNOME applications.
IF you do, then your statement can be read as you desire inconsistent look and feel.
Most users consider inconsistency to be a bug.
I hope we see eventual modularity for all code that overlaps:
KDE folks can run Evolution with a near-complete Qt look&feel and rendering
or
GNOME folks run KDE apps with near-complete integration. I install KDE apps, like k3b CD burning (killer app!) atop GNOME.
Bluecurve was only a start, but the success of it indicates many people DO care that different API bases work together transparent to the user.
>> KDE will never be the dominant desktop.
;-)
/. moderators with an agenda only hurt the forum, not me.)
>Care to substantiate that is not _currently_ the dominant desktop?
That was not my intent, but...
Substantiate? That's impossible to do for either desktop. There is no registration or accounting mechanism.
We can use circumstantial evidence:
*) most users run the distro's default desktop.
*) Red Hat is not just the leading distro, but also the the majority distro.
That's not perfect science, but I'll wager on it anyways. I don't give much weight to how loud any particular demographic/group is.. the minority factions in life are always trying to compensate for size.
(NOTE: Light sarcasm is meant to be humorous. By no means would I intend disrespect to the general KDE community, and especially not to hardworking, generous developers.
>Call me crazy, but I'm glad we've got a choice of desktop environments.
;-)
Except for a few "journalists" and controversial posters, I would bet that most people agree.
>Not to knock the KDE folks, but I happen to prefer GNOME. If desktops were to somehow "unify," and that meant all we had left was KDE, I'd be more than a bit peeved.
KDE will never be the dominant desktop. No offense to anyone pro-KDE. By the time this all works out, we'll have a KDE and GNOME that is so different from today's that we will not remember what the API wars were about.
Wrappers, unification API's, and freedesktop.org are bringing the two sides together where it makes sense. It makes sense in a LOT of places that aren't talking yet, but I say in time it will work out.
I'd LOVE to see KDE and GNOME use "common API's" for file dialogs. Why the hell NOT? An application should just say "file_dialog_common()" and then the user/desktop/distro settings determine WHO draws it. It doesn't matter. Desktop-specific features are EXTENSIONS. Granted, a lot of people thought GTK 2.2 and 2.4 file dialog was sub-optimal. Hopefully in the future with GTK 2.6, there will be some interest in at least standardizing the function calls, if not the actual code itself.
People won't shut up about which API "rules" until much of what the API's provide has been turned into a commodity, as in this example. The revolution will not be televised.
For example, if the file is like one page long and has more than one bullet list then the file won't save properly...oh, it'll save, but when you re-open it, forget about having it look like it did when you saved it. Freakin bullets changed to numbers, bullets moved around, deleted, added to things that shouldn't have bullets. WTF.
That sounds pretty rough. You don't mention it's a known bug, so it's a short step to assume you have not searched for and filed a bug report. Too bad... because it sounds like you can reproduce it quite well.
I use OO on both Windows and Linux. It works well for me, and my docs are heavily structured testplans. I -do- have to explain to people (several times) that the formatting changes they or I see are due to their using stupid fonts I don't have (like Comic) and vice versa.
cheers
Also:
(Problem) Using film, I took a bad shot... and KNEW it. This happens.
By this I mean "KNEW or suspected" it was a bad shot.
Nope, I didn't misread - you assume I did, but my post was deliberate.
My logic:
(Problem) Using film, I took a bad shot... and KNEW it. This happens.
(Solution) "take another".
In this case, being digital, the cost of a second shot is effectively $0. Yay.
I'll grant that without an LCD you have no PROOF that the shot is bad.
That said, but there's a big stretch between proof OF a bad shot and "[value of] NONE" (and as some other posters claimed, "No way of knowing...").
Exaggerated posts are not helpful. I'm not a great photograpgher but I work just fine using a viewfinder. Some people WILL rely so heavily on the LCD that they feel crippled using a mere viewfinder. This is not less or more true if the format is film or digital. Same thing.
How do you know you need to erase it if you can't see it???
Have you ever used a film camera?
Did you ever take a shot you knew was bad?
What did you do - take another?
*Exactly*
Considering the "I-Opener" risk, they were pretty smart to make these without LCD's. Adding a LCD would *double* cost and RISK for a product with an uncertain future (esp. now!!)
> What's the point of digital without an LCD?
Well, sonny take a seat on my lap and let me tell you about the dark days of photography when we had no LCD displays. I think the year was 1995...
Back then, we walked to school through waist-high snow for two miles.
A digital camera is no less crippled without an LCD display, than a film camera is. You use the viewfinder.
Of course, if you're the type that puts your index finger over the aperature when you shoot, this won't help you...
For me, this camera will be something I take where it might get damaged or lost. Like a toga party, for example..
> Of course it would be sad if tasks only got done because of bounties...
Would it, truly?
Sure, it would be "great" if there were coders out there who *wanted* these tedious/unglamourous/etc. tasks. This is the advantage of commercial development ("I am your boss - you do your job").
Humans are individualistic, and appreciate recognition. These tasks are important but - once implimented - users will never think twice about the feature and whoever made it possible.
If these tasks only get done because of the bounties, so what? Think of it as getting paid to work on free software. For many folks, this is a dream job.
It sounds like YOU read the article...
are you new here or something?
> Am I the only one who notices pixelation even on todays MPEG2 DVD standard?
>Kinda makes the purist pine for the days of the Lasedisc.
Sure, I see this all the time... but I wouldn't go back to Laserdisc.
There are two causes for seeing this in DVD's:
1) Lousy DVD encode work.
Laserdisc had media *transferred* to it. They would (hopefully) clean the negatives, get everything aligned, and record to laserdisc. Everything was done at once.
By contrast, DVD is *captured* as uncompressed video, then (perhaps) shipped off to a *different* service bureau for MPEG-2 encoding.
Either -- or neither! -- shop might be responsible for "cleanup" on the video, such as scratch removal, etc.
Next MPEG encoding can be done "realtime" (lower quality) or as software-encoding with all the fine-tune (and slow!) knobs cranked up. Even on the fastest systems, this is an overnight job.
Lastly, the "customer" (movie owner) does not always know what they want. Will this be a DVD-5 disc? If so, the movie needs to be kept at about 4 gigs, and even that leaves little room for alternate soundtracks, languages, and "extras". DVD-5 is cheaper to manufacture so not everyone assumes DVD-9 is in the cards.
With DVD-9, you can pad the bits so a 2hr movie gets 5-6 GB. This makes a HUUGE difference in quality... less compromises, less pixelation and less chroma artifacts. The difference is like 800MB DivX video compared with 1.5 Divx video.
Its pretty easy to catch artifact noise on animated, of computer generated video. Even allowing for that, the overall quality still blows away Laserdisc.