Right, the topic poster should change it to"fedora sucks, because in order to dual boot, I have to first manually figure out what the partition geometry is, and tell the fedora installer explicitly what this number is, otherwise it will screw up the partition table, which I'm told by most geeks is, in general, a very, very bad thing to happen and usually leads to unrecoverable data loss".
Why would I change back from a decent, FREE, application like OpenOffice to WordPerfect?
Because WordPerfect 12 is probably waaaayyyy better than "decent". My wife uses OpenOffice, but only because she enjoys the other features of Linux, and the ease with which I can keep both our boxes updated. The first thing that she said when I told her that Corel was planning a Linux version was, "When can we get it?" I know others whose sole reason for staying with Windows is that they absolutely need WordPerfect. I've had others switch to Linux, only to switch back based largely on the inadequecy of OpenOffice.
Don't get me wrong, it's exactly for these reasons that I think OpenOffice is one of the most vital open source projects out there. I just think the/. crowd has too rosy a picture of its current capabilities. It still needs work on usability (ex. setting up numbered/bulleted lists) and speed (although I haven't updated to the 1.1.1 version to test its improvements).
Re:"Canada's national newspaper?"
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Linux in Canada
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· Score: 1
I'm guessing the poster is from Toronto.
Maybe not. It could be Conrad Black.
Re:I've set up a GNU/Linux machine for my kids too
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A Babe in Tuxland
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· Score: 1
but you can run Open Office, Mozilla on top of KDE/GNOME on a Pentium I and it'll work for kids quite well
On a Pentium I? You must have patient kids. Mozilla, maybe. KDE/Gnome, unlikely, even with recent speed improvements in KDE 3.2 (don't have much experience with Gnome). But I can assume you have them running on an older version. OpenOffice, forget it. My wife ran OpenOffice on a Celeron 900MHz w/ 128MB RAM, and it got to the point where I just had to go out and buy her more RAM. I have a buddy who runs it on an older machine (PI or PII w/ 64MB RAM) and he says OpenOffice 1.1 takes 10 minutes to open, literally. He's also given up on KDE because it's too slow on this old machine. Both my wife and buddy are running with kernel 2.6.3. I'm not saying that they could run Windows XP on their machines (although my wife used to, and never really complained about speed), I'm just saying modern linux distributions can be very resource-intensive.
KDE will overlay on Unix and Linux running many different flavors. How many OS's will the Windows desktop environment run on? Only one or one type from one vendor--the same one that makes both.
"KDE will install on multiple platforms, therefore KDE bundling Konqueror is different than Windows bundling Explorer" is a non sequitur. In both cases, the browser is installed by default, is integrated with the rest of the environment, and is not trivial to remove (in Windows' case, impossible, afaik). Just because KDE is capable of doing this across many platforms, doesn't change the fact that they do it. At this point, I'd like to reiterate that I have no problem with KDE doing this.
Please send me a link to the documentation provided on Microsoft that tells how you can either A) Install Windows without Explorer or B) Uninstall Explorer completely from an existing installation.
The grandparent (and myself in another post) was getting at the fact that you can use alternatives to Explorer, even if you couldn't uninstall it. You can remove it from the desktop, and make another browser your default browser. I admit that you probably can't prevent a user from using Explorer if they want to bad enough, but this is getting away from the central point: both KDE and Windows bundle a web browser which is non-trivial to NOT use. With KDE, I believe it is possible to remove Konqueror, but for Mandrake (with which I have the most experience), Konqueror comes part of the kdebase package, which is needed to install KDE at all. Now, this could just be a poor decision on the part of the people who built the package, but I envision that konqueror is used to do a host of things within KDE (open file dialogues in other applications and such), making it fundamentally necessary for KDE to run properly.
Heck, you can rewrite the entire codebase to KDE if you really want.
Yes, and more sensibly, you can install other programs which (potentially) do the same things as Konqueror, just like you can in Windows.
Microsoft integrates then refuses to let others onto the field to play. KDE does nothing of the sort.
How do they refuse to let others play in this domain? Do they prevent you from installing other browsers? No. Do they prevent you from making another browser your default browser? No. Is it impossible to remove Explorer? Yes, but I don't think it's easy to rip out Konq, either. I certainly wouldn't want to try it on my box, even though I don't use Konq. I wouldn't say it's "nothing of the sort".
1) The KDE team Produces a desktop environment overlayed on an existing operating system, not an entire turnkey solution as MS does.
What does this have to do with the KDE + Konqueror vs. Windows + IE? Just because KDE doesn't include the kernel, it's not an "entire turnkey solution"? It's practically everything the user interacts with!
2) You can pick and choose which components of KDE you want to use. It is my understanding that you don't even have to have Konquerer installed to use KDE, but I could be wrong.
Oh, well, I must not be typing this in in Firefox, while my email is open in Thunderbird, while Gaim is sitting in my system tray, all in Windows 2000. I don't know if it's possible to run KDE without the default file browser (the RPM packages for Mandrake make it part of kdebase, so you have to install it in that case), but it's certainly not easy. This isn't to say you can't just install Konq and ignore it. You can choose to use whatever you want as the web browser, but you have to reconfigure other KDE programs to let it know (ex. links in KMail, by default, open in Konqueror when clicked on).
3) and 4) are irrelevant to Win+IE vs. KDE+Konq. Just because it is free and open, and they've never strong-armed OEMs, doesn't change the fact that they bundle a browser with their desktop environment, and configure other KDE applications, by default, to run smoothly with it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing that, I'm just saying that the grandparent's post was valid.
OK, I don't have much experience with C++, but my development speed in Eclipse is waaayyy faster than with syntax-highlighting vim or whatever. Package layout on the left and method layout on the right is something that I can't imagine doing without. Ctrl-click to jump to a class saves tons of time, as does Ctrl-space to finish syntax for me (Eclipse is really good at guessing what syntax I want even if I don't start the syntax for it, by only giving me type-compliant options). Also, CVS or VSS (my work makes me use it) integration saves lots of time. Just a few points.
Does it also have the other features I was talking about? It's unclear from your post, and I can't find specific info on the PathFinder website. Does it change directories in the GUI when you cd in the terminal, and vice-versa? Can I 'ls [aA]*' in the terminal, and get a list of everything that begins with 'a' or 'A' in the GUI?
It sounds pretty annoying from the article. The dude basically says, "it's this new way of file browsing, where you have just have to get used to double clicking the middle mouse, and then figure out how to go back up the hierarchy, and then hit Ctrl-L if you want to navigate anywhere quickly". Um, yeah, and how is this better than a hierarchical view along the left hand side, with the contents of the selected directory in the right, and a toolbar that auto-completes along the top (i.e. what konqueror defaults to)? It has window memory? Great, that totally makes up for the hours of frustration I would spend learning this great new way of file-browsing.
Do you know what file-browsing needs that it doesn't have? A connected command prompt. That's it. I know I can bring up a command prompt in Konqueror. What I want is for that command prompt to follow the actions I take when I click on gui directories, and for the gui to follow the actions I take at the command prompt. This, for me, would achieve file-browsing nirvana.
My definition is a distro suitable for newbies to install and maintain
That sounds like a good definition to me. I would add that this does not mean it's unsuitable for non-newbies. I started off on Slackware, and had good guru friends around to teach me how to write bash scripts and hack at config files in vi, but now that I'm comfortable with that stuff, I just want a Linux that I can work with with a minimum of fuss. That's why I use Mandrake, and if I click some drop-down boxes, and hit Apply, and my X server doesn't boot, well then I'll crack open my XF86Config-4 file and have at it.
I can't think of anything that I did with Slackware that I can't do with Mandrake. In fact, I do more with Mandrake thanks to urpmi (I know, Slackware recently got a comparable package management system, and these are all just poor substitutes for apt-get, but I like it). I want to recommend Linux to my friends, and I can't recommend something that I don't think they can use, and I can't recommend something that I don't use myself. I'm glad to see Mandrake is back on track
Anecdotal evidence is not not necessarily proof. Here's a counter-anecdote: My wife's been using Linux for the past few weeks. KDE still does not have a nice way of copying to/from a CD. You either have to open two Konqueror windows or open one Konq window to root, and drag and drop from/home/username to/mnt/cdrom. And once she does get the files off of her cdrom, they're all read-only. Try explaining to a former Windows user why she has to highlight a bunch of files, right-click, go to permissions, and select the "Write" check box every time she copies documents from cdrom.
Installation is one of the things that I think Linux has a leg up on. I think the average user can make it through a Mandrake or RedHat install. Configuration is still a problem, though, you're right.
Right, because we've really toed the line on marijuana (decriminalized), same-sex marriage (legal in Ontario before Massachusetts), war in Iraq (refused to go, despite the resulting tension in US-Canada relations), and music swapping (downloading legal).
Right, we're real worried about the US invading it's most important trading partner.
I guess you don't have any encrypted DVDs, then. Out of the box, Mandrake does not include libdvdcss, which is needed by mplayer, xine, ogle, and totem to play encrypted DVDs. It may be different now, but I remember that mplayer used to only play quicktime files if you compiled it with special Windows codec support. By default, Mandrake would include a precompiled version without this support.
SD/MMC have been out for a LONG time, and they still only go up to 512MB (and are 1.5 - 2 times as expensive as CF). 1 GB ones now exist, but they're rare and expensive, from what I can find. CompactFlash should have won this battle by now, dammit! I want a sub-$100 1 GB card, already! And yes, xD sucks, although my very nice Olympus Stylus 400 takes xD (wedding present, what can you do).
I've been using Mandrake Cooker for a few weeks now, and I think kernel 2.6 + kde 3.2 is awesome. My computer feels way faster. There are some problems (I haven't updated in a few days, so these may have gotten fixed):
1) My HP PSC 2210 USB printer doesn't work (worked in 9.2). 2) My wife's Sony Vaio has a problem loading the agpgart module on bootup. When I get to the console, I modprobe agpgart and startx, and everything's fine (again, worked in 9.2). 3) OpenOffice hasn't made any advances in the last couple months (still at 1.1). Not Mandrake's fault, I realize, just a general complaint. OpenOffice is still soooooo slow.
Anyone know how cooker relates to this version? I'm assuming this is just a snapshot of cooker.
OpenOffice is not as good. It is the weakest link in the open source proposition. Specifically, OpenOffice writer. It is slower, has less features, and is less intuitive to use then either WordPerfect or Word. I have converted Windows users to Linux, and office software is the #1 complaint. Try to switch a user who uses a word processor as part of their occupation, and you'll likely hear the same thing.
There already is a good IDE for Java: Eclipse. And it's a simple matter to have two jdk's installed. Eclipse has a drop-down list for you to choose which one you want to use. So a Linux distribution could include Eclipse and Open Source jdk, and if it's not suiting my needs, I can go out and get proprietary jdk, install it alongside OS jdk, and toggle between them if I want. Are you listening Mandrake/SuSE/Fedora? I want a jpackage section of your install wizards!
The main news is that there's a new version of AppleSeed, which is news to me. AppleSeed is probably the biggest let-down in the history of anime. How many newbie anime fans have seen it on the shelf of their local Blockbuster and said, "I loved GitS! This is by the same guy as GitS! I will rent it." They then waste 5 bucks and an hour and a half.
For me it's USB devices, like my printer (HP PSC 2210, I know, pos), that give me trouble. Even since I upgraded to 2.6.X, I haven't gotten my printer to work... I am using the Mandrake cooker rpms to do the upgrading (it's up to 2.6.3 now).
You might find it easiest to practice while not in the store. Just buy a few and take them home. Get the knack for the angle, and it isn't that hard to pull off without looking like a huge tool.
Now I'll need a comparison between this and Mandrake 10.0 Beta 2. Maybe I'll try Fedora Core 2 on my wife's comuter and Mandrake 10.0 Beta 2 on my computer. Anyone know where the package specification is for FC2? I assume kernel 2.6.2, and the versions of KDE and GNOME mentioned, but what about XFree? 4.4pre or 4.3? Too... many... distros... to try!
I'm always concerned with the reliability of these cards. I think their ability to keep their state wanes over time, although I don't know what that time period is. With the Type II cards, battery life is also an issue, as they suck much more juice than the Type I. The article says that they have a 5 GB Type I card, which would bring my Nex IIe up to the storage capacity of a Mini iPod, if I could afford either:). I'll just have to wait a year or two for these cards to be in the hundreds instead of thousands.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, the topic poster should change it to"fedora sucks, because in order to dual boot, I have to first manually figure out what the partition geometry is, and tell the fedora installer explicitly what this number is, otherwise it will screw up the partition table, which I'm told by most geeks is, in general, a very, very bad thing to happen and usually leads to unrecoverable data loss".
They are not sueing downloaders they are suing thoses who make the files available. Even if you had purchased the CD/record that would be illegal.
Not in Canada.
Why would I change back from a decent, FREE, application like OpenOffice to WordPerfect?
/. crowd has too rosy a picture of its current capabilities. It still needs work on usability (ex. setting up numbered/bulleted lists) and speed (although I haven't updated to the 1.1.1 version to test its improvements).
Because WordPerfect 12 is probably waaaayyyy better than "decent". My wife uses OpenOffice, but only because she enjoys the other features of Linux, and the ease with which I can keep both our boxes updated. The first thing that she said when I told her that Corel was planning a Linux version was, "When can we get it?" I know others whose sole reason for staying with Windows is that they absolutely need WordPerfect. I've had others switch to Linux, only to switch back based largely on the inadequecy of OpenOffice.
Don't get me wrong, it's exactly for these reasons that I think OpenOffice is one of the most vital open source projects out there. I just think the
I'm guessing the poster is from Toronto.
Maybe not. It could be Conrad Black.
but you can run Open Office, Mozilla on top of KDE/GNOME on a Pentium I and it'll work for kids quite well
On a Pentium I? You must have patient kids. Mozilla, maybe. KDE/Gnome, unlikely, even with recent speed improvements in KDE 3.2 (don't have much experience with Gnome). But I can assume you have them running on an older version. OpenOffice, forget it. My wife ran OpenOffice on a Celeron 900MHz w/ 128MB RAM, and it got to the point where I just had to go out and buy her more RAM. I have a buddy who runs it on an older machine (PI or PII w/ 64MB RAM) and he says OpenOffice 1.1 takes 10 minutes to open, literally. He's also given up on KDE because it's too slow on this old machine. Both my wife and buddy are running with kernel 2.6.3. I'm not saying that they could run Windows XP on their machines (although my wife used to, and never really complained about speed), I'm just saying modern linux distributions can be very resource-intensive.
KDE will overlay on Unix and Linux running many different flavors. How many OS's will the Windows desktop environment run on? Only one or one type from one vendor--the same one that makes both.
"KDE will install on multiple platforms, therefore KDE bundling Konqueror is different than Windows bundling Explorer" is a non sequitur. In both cases, the browser is installed by default, is integrated with the rest of the environment, and is not trivial to remove (in Windows' case, impossible, afaik). Just because KDE is capable of doing this across many platforms, doesn't change the fact that they do it. At this point, I'd like to reiterate that I have no problem with KDE doing this.
Please send me a link to the documentation provided on Microsoft that tells how you can either A) Install Windows without Explorer or B) Uninstall Explorer completely from an existing installation.
The grandparent (and myself in another post) was getting at the fact that you can use alternatives to Explorer, even if you couldn't uninstall it. You can remove it from the desktop, and make another browser your default browser. I admit that you probably can't prevent a user from using Explorer if they want to bad enough, but this is getting away from the central point: both KDE and Windows bundle a web browser which is non-trivial to NOT use. With KDE, I believe it is possible to remove Konqueror, but for Mandrake (with which I have the most experience), Konqueror comes part of the kdebase package, which is needed to install KDE at all. Now, this could just be a poor decision on the part of the people who built the package, but I envision that konqueror is used to do a host of things within KDE (open file dialogues in other applications and such), making it fundamentally necessary for KDE to run properly.
Heck, you can rewrite the entire codebase to KDE if you really want.
Yes, and more sensibly, you can install other programs which (potentially) do the same things as Konqueror, just like you can in Windows.
Microsoft integrates then refuses to let others onto the field to play. KDE does nothing of the sort.
How do they refuse to let others play in this domain? Do they prevent you from installing other browsers? No. Do they prevent you from making another browser your default browser? No. Is it impossible to remove Explorer? Yes, but I don't think it's easy to rip out Konq, either. I certainly wouldn't want to try it on my box, even though I don't use Konq. I wouldn't say it's "nothing of the sort".
1) The KDE team Produces a desktop environment overlayed on an existing operating system, not an entire turnkey solution as MS does.
What does this have to do with the KDE + Konqueror vs. Windows + IE? Just because KDE doesn't include the kernel, it's not an "entire turnkey solution"? It's practically everything the user interacts with!
2) You can pick and choose which components of KDE you want to use. It is my understanding that you don't even have to have Konquerer installed to use KDE, but I could be wrong.
Oh, well, I must not be typing this in in Firefox, while my email is open in Thunderbird, while Gaim is sitting in my system tray, all in Windows 2000. I don't know if it's possible to run KDE without the default file browser (the RPM packages for Mandrake make it part of kdebase, so you have to install it in that case), but it's certainly not easy. This isn't to say you can't just install Konq and ignore it. You can choose to use whatever you want as the web browser, but you have to reconfigure other KDE programs to let it know (ex. links in KMail, by default, open in Konqueror when clicked on).
3) and 4) are irrelevant to Win+IE vs. KDE+Konq. Just because it is free and open, and they've never strong-armed OEMs, doesn't change the fact that they bundle a browser with their desktop environment, and configure other KDE applications, by default, to run smoothly with it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing that, I'm just saying that the grandparent's post was valid.
OK, I don't have much experience with C++, but my development speed in Eclipse is waaayyy faster than with syntax-highlighting vim or whatever. Package layout on the left and method layout on the right is something that I can't imagine doing without. Ctrl-click to jump to a class saves tons of time, as does Ctrl-space to finish syntax for me (Eclipse is really good at guessing what syntax I want even if I don't start the syntax for it, by only giving me type-compliant options). Also, CVS or VSS (my work makes me use it) integration saves lots of time. Just a few points.
Does it also have the other features I was talking about? It's unclear from your post, and I can't find specific info on the PathFinder website. Does it change directories in the GUI when you cd in the terminal, and vice-versa? Can I 'ls [aA]*' in the terminal, and get a list of everything that begins with 'a' or 'A' in the GUI?
It sounds pretty annoying from the article. The dude basically says, "it's this new way of file browsing, where you have just have to get used to double clicking the middle mouse, and then figure out how to go back up the hierarchy, and then hit Ctrl-L if you want to navigate anywhere quickly". Um, yeah, and how is this better than a hierarchical view along the left hand side, with the contents of the selected directory in the right, and a toolbar that auto-completes along the top (i.e. what konqueror defaults to)? It has window memory? Great, that totally makes up for the hours of frustration I would spend learning this great new way of file-browsing.
Do you know what file-browsing needs that it doesn't have? A connected command prompt. That's it. I know I can bring up a command prompt in Konqueror. What I want is for that command prompt to follow the actions I take when I click on gui directories, and for the gui to follow the actions I take at the command prompt. This, for me, would achieve file-browsing nirvana.
My definition is a distro suitable for newbies to install and maintain
That sounds like a good definition to me. I would add that this does not mean it's unsuitable for non-newbies. I started off on Slackware, and had good guru friends around to teach me how to write bash scripts and hack at config files in vi, but now that I'm comfortable with that stuff, I just want a Linux that I can work with with a minimum of fuss. That's why I use Mandrake, and if I click some drop-down boxes, and hit Apply, and my X server doesn't boot, well then I'll crack open my XF86Config-4 file and have at it.
I can't think of anything that I did with Slackware that I can't do with Mandrake. In fact, I do more with Mandrake thanks to urpmi (I know, Slackware recently got a comparable package management system, and these are all just poor substitutes for apt-get, but I like it). I want to recommend Linux to my friends, and I can't recommend something that I don't think they can use, and I can't recommend something that I don't use myself. I'm glad to see Mandrake is back on track
1,2,3,7 and 9?!? I have enough trouble getting it to believe I want 1,2,3,some text,1,2,3.
Anecdotal evidence is not not necessarily proof. Here's a counter-anecdote: My wife's been using Linux for the past few weeks. KDE still does not have a nice way of copying to/from a CD. You either have to open two Konqueror windows or open one Konq window to root, and drag and drop from /home/username to /mnt/cdrom. And once she does get the files off of her cdrom, they're all read-only. Try explaining to a former Windows user why she has to highlight a bunch of files, right-click, go to permissions, and select the "Write" check box every time she copies documents from cdrom.
Installation is one of the things that I think Linux has a leg up on. I think the average user can make it through a Mandrake or RedHat install. Configuration is still a problem, though, you're right.
Right, because we've really toed the line on marijuana (decriminalized), same-sex marriage (legal in Ontario before Massachusetts), war in Iraq (refused to go, despite the resulting tension in US-Canada relations), and music swapping (downloading legal).
Right, we're real worried about the US invading it's most important trading partner.
I guess you don't have any encrypted DVDs, then. Out of the box, Mandrake does not include libdvdcss, which is needed by mplayer, xine, ogle, and totem to play encrypted DVDs. It may be different now, but I remember that mplayer used to only play quicktime files if you compiled it with special Windows codec support. By default, Mandrake would include a precompiled version without this support.
SD/MMC have been out for a LONG time, and they still only go up to 512MB (and are 1.5 - 2 times as expensive as CF). 1 GB ones now exist, but they're rare and expensive, from what I can find. CompactFlash should have won this battle by now, dammit! I want a sub-$100 1 GB card, already! And yes, xD sucks, although my very nice Olympus Stylus 400 takes xD (wedding present, what can you do).
I've been using Mandrake Cooker for a few weeks now, and I think kernel 2.6 + kde 3.2 is awesome. My computer feels way faster. There are some problems (I haven't updated in a few days, so these may have gotten fixed):
1) My HP PSC 2210 USB printer doesn't work (worked in 9.2).
2) My wife's Sony Vaio has a problem loading the agpgart module on bootup. When I get to the console, I modprobe agpgart and startx, and everything's fine (again, worked in 9.2).
3) OpenOffice hasn't made any advances in the last couple months (still at 1.1). Not Mandrake's fault, I realize, just a general complaint. OpenOffice is still soooooo slow.
Anyone know how cooker relates to this version? I'm assuming this is just a snapshot of cooker.
OpenOffice is not as good. It is the weakest link in the open source proposition. Specifically, OpenOffice writer. It is slower, has less features, and is less intuitive to use then either WordPerfect or Word. I have converted Windows users to Linux, and office software is the #1 complaint. Try to switch a user who uses a word processor as part of their occupation, and you'll likely hear the same thing.
There already is a good IDE for Java: Eclipse. And it's a simple matter to have two jdk's installed. Eclipse has a drop-down list for you to choose which one you want to use. So a Linux distribution could include Eclipse and Open Source jdk, and if it's not suiting my needs, I can go out and get proprietary jdk, install it alongside OS jdk, and toggle between them if I want. Are you listening Mandrake/SuSE/Fedora? I want a jpackage section of your install wizards!
The main news is that there's a new version of AppleSeed, which is news to me. AppleSeed is probably the biggest let-down in the history of anime. How many newbie anime fans have seen it on the shelf of their local Blockbuster and said, "I loved GitS! This is by the same guy as GitS! I will rent it." They then waste 5 bucks and an hour and a half.
For me it's USB devices, like my printer (HP PSC 2210, I know, pos), that give me trouble. Even since I upgraded to 2.6.X, I haven't gotten my printer to work... I am using the Mandrake cooker rpms to do the upgrading (it's up to 2.6.3 now).
You might find it easiest to practice while not in the store. Just buy a few and take them home. Get the knack for the angle, and it isn't that hard to pull off without looking like a huge tool.
Yeah, for that you need a website about it...
Now I'll need a comparison between this and Mandrake 10.0 Beta 2. Maybe I'll try Fedora Core 2 on my wife's comuter and Mandrake 10.0 Beta 2 on my computer. Anyone know where the package specification is for FC2? I assume kernel 2.6.2, and the versions of KDE and GNOME mentioned, but what about XFree? 4.4pre or 4.3? Too... many... distros... to try!
I'm always concerned with the reliability of these cards. I think their ability to keep their state wanes over time, although I don't know what that time period is. With the Type II cards, battery life is also an issue, as they suck much more juice than the Type I. The article says that they have a 5 GB Type I card, which would bring my Nex IIe up to the storage capacity of a Mini iPod, if I could afford either :). I'll just have to wait a year or two for these cards to be in the hundreds instead of thousands.
Hugh Jackman could out-hack them all.