In South Africa there is already a company that turns the "press cake" waste that stays behind after making grape seed oil into logs that act as firewood: http://www.envirolog.co.za/about.html
It combines many of the benefits of both good firewood and charcoal. I guess it helps that we have a culture that loves to cook things on fires.
Gentoo really helped me learn some more advanced parts of a linux system. And I could learn it one bit at a time, because you install it step by step.
But it can still be a bit overwelming... and I have been using computers every day for most of my life.
I think that redhat and mandrake are two of the reasons why many people that try linux don't like it - it is too difficult to upgrade (try upgrading from gnome 2.0 to 2.2 or 2.4, for example) and it is generally too difficult to install things that come out afterwords that have many dependencies.
Gentoo does it all for you. I would use debian, but gentoo's desktop apps/packages are newer and more stable than debian unstable. They usually have things before other distros. But by all means - run debian on your server.
It is also a lot easier if you are developing, because there aren't separate *-devel packages. If you have the library you want to use, then you have anything you need. If you are writing a new app, then you obviously have to have the latest stuff, otherwise it is going to be outdated before you are done.
and the userbase is friendly and helpful. Yes - there are many 'noobs', but remember that we need new users and we need to help them learn linux so that linux can become successfull. All of them might not code, but they help a lot with testing and they provide valuable feedback to make things easier and better. They are the users, coders and sys-admins of tomorrow. You can't advocate linux and free software, but then shun new users.
Better let them use Gentoo where they will receive friendly help than leave them to ask "stupid" questions on elitist (you know the name of the distro) mailing lists.
Performance optimization is mostly a myth and not a reason why I use gentoo. Customisation is a valid reason, though.
You're right - gentoo really helped me learn some more advanced parts of a linux system. And I could learn it one bit at a time, because you install it step by step.
But it can still be a bit overwelming and I have been using computers every day for most of my life.
I think that redhat and mandrake are two of the reasons why many people that try linux don't like it - it is too difficult to upgrade (try upgrading from gnome 2.0 to 2.2 or 2.4, for example) and it is generally too difficult to install things that come out afterwords that have many dependencies.
gentoo does it all for you. I would use debian, but gentoo's desktop apps are newer and more stable than debian unstable. They usually have things before other distros.
It is also a lot easier if you are developing, because there aren't separate *-devel packages. If you have the library you want to use, then you have anything you need. If you are writing a new app, then you obviously have to have the latest stuff, otherwise it is going to be outdated before you are done.
and the userbase is friendly and helpful. Yes - there are many 'noobs', but remember that we need new users and we need to help them learn linux so that linux can become successfull. All of them might not code, but they help a lot with testing and they provide valuable feedback to make things easier and better. They are the users, coders and sys-admins of tomorrow.
Better let them use Gentoo where they will receive friendly help than leave them to ask "stupid" questions on elitist (you know the name of the distro) mailing lists.
I think copy-paste works fine on the X level. I think KDE and Gnome does something wrong. Especially when it comes to selecting regions of text using the mouse.
My biggest issue with using linux at the moment is when I try and select some text in a browser, x terminal, email client or whatever to copy it and paste it somewhere else, the selection just disappears while I drag or the starting position shifts to some random spot. This is very annoying, because I end up selecting the entire document, pasting it into a text editor and manually removing the bits I don't.
This is definitely not ideal. People shouldn't ever have to type things twice and I can't believe it hasn't annoyed anyone else enough to inspire them to do something about it.
Even windows had this sorted since forever. I don't know if the problem is application, Gnome/KDE or gtk/qt related.
and one or two cool ideas made popular by debian in the 90s gives you the right to be a close-minded, elitist, gentoo basher?
I use gentoo, but I realise that other distros also do/did cool things (especially debian - in many cases I would rather use it) and I don't mentally grep for their names and post hostile replies whenever I encounter them.
This might be more bad publicity for Microsoft, but look at the bigger picture.
Software patents are bad. We are now probably not allowed to embed just about anything anywhere. What about flash, java, pdf documents that open in your browser, mime attachments in your emails, stylesheets, etc?
What if someone patents the command-line interface, GUIs, icons, toolbars, media players, p2p technology, archiving, backups, compression, encryption, the way we interact with pcs, vector animations, etc. ?
Patents hurt society in the long run. One person might become rich, but it harms innovation and productivity.
Besides - mozilla-based browsers, konqueror, safari, etc all use plugins. What about them? Do we have to remove this functionality from these opensource browsers as well?
Why not just use a combination of all the mentioned ideas?
Link up everything in a big uber-grid, use solar panels for when the sun is shining, wind turbines for when the wind is blowing, tidal/wave generators (because the seawater never stops moving) and fuel cells/hidro-electricity for backup.
Hell - even nuclear power is not as bad as burning coal/gas.
But remember - the ultimate best solution will be to just use less electricity/energy. And I don't mean save fuel - just manufacturing new things (a new car every 2 years, new trendy clothes, new pc parts, new containers, etc.) also wastes energy/resources.
And try to use solar energy as far possible, because (and I don't think I have to mention this) energy from the sun is the only real source of energy for earth. Everything else is just stored energy. Seems very counter-productive to burn things that took thousands of years to form in the first place.
true. It is always funny reading what 1st world citizens have to say when things start to go a little bit less wonderfull for them. At least some of the money now trickles down to the other "impoverished" 96% of the world.
Globalisation is biting America in the ass. What's America's unemployment rate now? 6.5%? 12%? Try living in a country where the (official) unemployment rate is 39%. Real figures are much more. And climbing.
And that's only South Africa - shining jewel of an entire continent.
My point is that you shouldn't have a popular commercial distro as the standard. RedHat has been known to implement things their own way, to shift them around and to even change things like Gnome and KDE. If they are the standard, then they will steer things their way.
They contribute a lot to the linux community, yes, but its all to benefit redhat.
Maybe the Debian people are right with one thing, though - the reference platform should probably be something older. Otherwise the distros will have a hard time to keep up. But if its too old (like debian stable) then it might counter innovation.
I should just shut up and enjoy gentoo. Its everything I need. And I respect that others might want/need something else. Thats why different distros exist.
I think gentoo can more easily become the reference implementation. Thats because things are closest to how the individual developers intended them. No redhat/mandrake/debian branding, backports or modified packages.
Besides - apt is old. portage is a new and innovative system. Yes - Gentoo is currently a source-based distro, but they are moving to a reference platform and it is possible to use pre-compiled binary packages.
Many gentoo users are ex-debian users. It might not be as stable as debian stable, but it is more stable than mandrake, redhat and debian unstable. (and more up to date as well)
no gas stations selling cleaner fuel because you live in America. The rest of the world is complying with new Regulations (often brought out by Americans) while America only thinks about themselves and whats good for their pockets.
Take the Irak thing for example: America feels like war (somehow good for their Economy) and decides that Saddam is the best target economically (they have oil) while there are currently worse villains out there (Mugabe or any of the dictators/rebel leaders in Central/West africa). They leave the others alone, because they don't have resources America wants top control.
Small wonder so many countries produce terrorists that hate America/Israel....
Slashdot Mirror
In South Africa there is already a company that turns the "press cake" waste that stays behind after making grape seed oil into logs that act as firewood: http://www.envirolog.co.za/about.html
It combines many of the benefits of both good firewood and charcoal. I guess it helps that we have a culture that loves to cook things on fires.
Gentoo really helped me learn some more advanced parts of a linux system. And I could learn it one bit at a time, because you install it step by step.
But it can still be a bit overwelming... and I have been using computers every day for most of my life.
I think that redhat and mandrake are two of the reasons why many people that try linux don't like it - it is too difficult to upgrade (try upgrading from gnome 2.0 to 2.2 or 2.4, for example) and it is generally too difficult to install things that come out afterwords that have many dependencies.
Gentoo does it all for you. I would use debian, but gentoo's desktop apps/packages are newer and more stable than debian unstable. They usually have things before other distros. But by all means - run debian on your server.
It is also a lot easier if you are developing, because there aren't separate *-devel packages. If you have the library you want to use, then you have anything you need. If you are writing a new app, then you obviously have to have the latest stuff, otherwise it is going to be outdated before you are done.
and the userbase is friendly and helpful. Yes - there are many 'noobs', but remember that we need new users and we need to help them learn linux so that linux can become successfull. All of them might not code, but they help a lot with testing and they provide valuable feedback to make things easier and better. They are the users, coders and sys-admins of tomorrow. You can't advocate linux and free software, but then shun new users.
Better let them use Gentoo where they will receive friendly help than leave them to ask "stupid" questions on elitist (you know the name of the distro) mailing lists.
Performance optimization is mostly a myth and not a reason why I use gentoo. Customisation is a valid reason, though.
You're right - gentoo really helped me learn some more advanced parts of a linux system. And I could learn it one bit at a time, because you install it step by step.
But it can still be a bit overwelming and I have been using computers every day for most of my life.
I think that redhat and mandrake are two of the reasons why many people that try linux don't like it - it is too difficult to upgrade (try upgrading from gnome 2.0 to 2.2 or 2.4, for example) and it is generally too difficult to install things that come out afterwords that have many dependencies.
gentoo does it all for you. I would use debian, but gentoo's desktop apps are newer and more stable than debian unstable. They usually have things before other distros.
It is also a lot easier if you are developing, because there aren't separate *-devel packages. If you have the library you want to use, then you have anything you need. If you are writing a new app, then you obviously have to have the latest stuff, otherwise it is going to be outdated before you are done.
and the userbase is friendly and helpful. Yes - there are many 'noobs', but remember that we need new users and we need to help them learn linux so that linux can become successfull. All of them might not code, but they help a lot with testing and they provide valuable feedback to make things easier and better. They are the users, coders and sys-admins of tomorrow.
Better let them use Gentoo where they will receive friendly help than leave them to ask "stupid" questions on elitist (you know the name of the distro) mailing lists.
>Overall, though, this sounds like a good way to attract more people to the Linux community.
:)
or devive it further
I think copy-paste works fine on the X level. I think KDE and Gnome does something wrong. Especially when it comes to selecting regions of text using the mouse.
My biggest issue with using linux at the moment is when I try and select some text in a browser, x terminal, email client or whatever to copy it and paste it somewhere else, the selection just disappears while I drag or the starting position shifts to some random spot. This is very annoying, because I end up selecting the entire document, pasting it into a text editor and manually removing the bits I don't.
This is definitely not ideal. People shouldn't ever have to type things twice and I can't believe it hasn't annoyed anyone else enough to inspire them to do something about it.
Even windows had this sorted since forever. I don't know if the problem is application, Gnome/KDE or gtk/qt related.
But it is probably not a problem on the X level.
and one or two cool ideas made popular by debian in the 90s gives you the right to be a close-minded, elitist, gentoo basher?
I use gentoo, but I realise that other distros also do/did cool things (especially debian - in many cases I would rather use it) and I don't mentally grep for their names and post hostile replies whenever I encounter them.
This might be more bad publicity for Microsoft, but look at the bigger picture.
Software patents are bad. We are now probably not allowed to embed just about anything anywhere. What about flash, java, pdf documents that open in your browser, mime attachments in your emails, stylesheets, etc?
What if someone patents the command-line interface, GUIs, icons, toolbars, media players, p2p technology, archiving, backups, compression, encryption, the way we interact with pcs, vector animations, etc. ?
Patents hurt society in the long run. One person might become rich, but it harms innovation and productivity.
Besides - mozilla-based browsers, konqueror, safari, etc all use plugins. What about them? Do we have to remove this functionality from these opensource browsers as well?
Where will it stop?
Why not just use a combination of all the mentioned ideas?
Link up everything in a big uber-grid, use solar panels for when the sun is shining, wind turbines for when the wind is blowing, tidal/wave generators (because the seawater never stops moving) and fuel cells/hidro-electricity for backup.
Hell - even nuclear power is not as bad as burning coal/gas.
But remember - the ultimate best solution will be to just use less electricity/energy. And I don't mean save fuel - just manufacturing new things (a new car every 2 years, new trendy clothes, new pc parts, new containers, etc.) also wastes energy/resources.
And try to use solar energy as far possible, because (and I don't think I have to mention this) energy from the sun is the only real source of energy for earth. Everything else is just stored energy. Seems very counter-productive to burn things that took thousands of years to form in the first place.
Outlook Express is the only microsoft app I ever liked. Now I'll be forced to use the Outlook that comes with office....
true. It is always funny reading what 1st world citizens have to say when things start to go a little bit less wonderfull for them. At least some of the money now trickles down to the other "impoverished" 96% of the world.
Globalisation is biting America in the ass. What's America's unemployment rate now? 6.5%? 12%? Try living in a country where the (official) unemployment rate is 39%. Real figures are much more. And climbing.
And that's only South Africa - shining jewel of an entire continent.
I can't believe some people are complaining.
My point is that you shouldn't have a popular commercial distro as the standard. RedHat has been known to implement things their own way, to shift them around and to even change things like Gnome and KDE. If they are the standard, then they will steer things their way.
They contribute a lot to the linux community, yes, but its all to benefit redhat.
Maybe the Debian people are right with one thing, though - the reference platform should probably be something older. Otherwise the distros will have a hard time to keep up. But if its too old (like debian stable) then it might counter innovation.
I should just shut up and enjoy gentoo. Its everything I need. And I respect that others might want/need something else. Thats why different distros exist.
I think gentoo can more easily become the reference implementation. Thats because things are closest to how the individual developers intended them. No redhat/mandrake/debian branding, backports or modified packages.
Besides - apt is old. portage is a new and innovative system. Yes - Gentoo is currently a source-based distro, but they are moving to a reference platform and it is possible to use pre-compiled binary packages.
Many gentoo users are ex-debian users. It might not be as stable as debian stable, but it is more stable than mandrake, redhat and debian unstable. (and more up to date as well)
no gas stations selling cleaner fuel because you live in America. The rest of the world is complying with new Regulations (often brought out by Americans) while America only thinks about themselves and whats good for their pockets.
Take the Irak thing for example: America feels like war (somehow good for their Economy) and decides that Saddam is the best target economically (they have oil) while there are currently worse villains out there (Mugabe or any of the dictators/rebel leaders in Central/West africa). They leave the others alone, because they don't have resources America wants top control.
Small wonder so many countries produce terrorists that hate America/Israel....