Uh, how is this cracking the big leagues? From what that article said, they had their first roll-out on the Twin Tier Times which seems to be a brand-new small time newspaper in a small town (region?). I'd say they are just cracking the minor leagues, but nowhere near the big leagues yet.
This is not to take away from Scribus, me and my fiancee used it to create our wedding invitations. It's a very capable program and fun to use -- even for a Gnome zealot like myself. But the Twin Tier Times is *not* the New York Times.
Seriously now. Replace "contact information" with "browser engine" or "media player engine" and you have the EXACT line of thought that embedded IE and MediaPlayer into Windows
Actually, they have already included a browser with Gnome -- Epiphany -- and it wouldn't surprise me to see the media player Totem included in a future release. Mozilla is available as a widget to 3rd party Gnome apps just as embedded IE is available to Win32 apps -- try it in Glade and see.
And how great a feckin' idea was THAT?!?
Slippery slope, friends...
The tradeoff is between having more dependencies and using more disk space vs increased interoperability -- not about what MS has done or not done. Like it or not we're already heading down that slipperly slope, dude.
do you not see a striking resembalence to Windows/Internet Explorer, as I stated?
No. Hey, you asked -- I just answered. They *do* share a commonality with dialogs that are designed to be clear and consise -- some Windows dialogs meet this criteria but others certainly do not.
There is a good reason why Evo is being included -- having the contact information centralized and standard in every Gnome installation means that other Gnome applications can use that data. This has implications for IM clients, browsers, file managers, and the interesting new fringe projects like Storage and Beagle and Dashboard. Without Evo's datastore built into Gnome, they would have to build an independant contact manager, and to me it makes sense to use the perfectly good one that Evolution already has.
And I'm not even an Evo user, I just understand the logic behind one of the reasons to include it. I'm sure there are other reasons too.
The main complaint the article highlighted was with changing between network connections, something that both Novell and Red Hat have been working on recently. If you follow Planet Gnome at at, you'd see that both companies have just released glimpses of their upcoming programs which address this very real annoyance with Linux on laptops.
The other complaint they had was with installing new applications, which shouldn't be a big deal with Red Carpet or Yum (especially if Red Hat/Fedora ever ships with a nice GUI front-end to that). Desktop Linux is rolling along rather nicely, good to see.
I think part of it might be that slashdotters in general are willing to sacrifice usability in order to gain advantages in speed and additional features. While I love my Gnome desktop, there are features I would love to see that KDE users enjoy, like fast user switching. And enough people have said that KDE is faster for me to suspect that it is true, though I've not tried it myself lately for comparison.
If slashdotters are indeed like that -- and I think it's reasonable to assume that on average they are -- then it stands to reason that they tend to use projects that haven't got the same focus on usability that Gnome does. And then they complain about the usability of those projects! Oh well.
Of course, Gnome seems to lose out on all these grounds. Whenever I'm forced to use it, I find myself grumbling that it's nearly as bad as its MS Windows prototype.
There are two possibilities here: (A) you are trying to bait me; or (B) you haven't used Gnome in a long time. Because anyone that seriously suggests that MS Windows is its prototype is _seriously_ misinformed. I suggest that you check out a more recent version, or try to bait other people.
Oh, and while I might be a proud Gnome zealot, I should also point out that xfce4 is a wonderful desktop environment and much more lightweight than a full Gnome installation.
Okay, a honest question for you: how do you manage to avoid Perl's reputation for write-only code? I've always thought that to use Perl in a large-scale project you would need so many guidlines to promote the "right" way to do it that would elimintate the flexibility of Perl. A large-scale project would (should?) have to lose all of the nifty tricks that make Perl so sweet to code in, because they are impossible to maintain when someone else wrote them. If so, why not just use Python which is cleaner and already pushes you towards doing it the right way?
No, it's developed by a company and distributed to an individual. Don't think of it in the abstract, think of it in the specific. You are working at $Corp and they write an app that uses the GPL'd MySQL or KDE libraries. Why do *you* not have the right to demand the source for the binaries that your employer provides you with? You're a person (well, at I assume so), and you've been distributed a binary-only copy -- who cares that you work for the company that wrote the application.
If you read closer, they are actually talking about a grey area that some people (read: me) perceive in the GPL. Let's say you develop a proprietary application that links to a GPL library. Say KDE or MySQL. If you don't _distribute_ your application you are fine, but lets say you deploy the application internally. In this case, under the terms of the GPL the employee who your app was _distributed_ to could demand the source to your application under the terms of the GPL, no?
If not, why not? MySQL seems to be suggesting, as does QT, that this is indeed the case while on the other hand MySQL and KDE zealots insist that it's not a problem. But please explain to me why it's not the case, why an employee cannot demand their GPL-derived rights to the source when a binary is distributed to them.
Well, what happens when all the nice bells and whistles are only added to the proprietary version of evolution? This version becomes much more appealing. As a result, there is a demand for it and users begin to leave the GPL version in drones.
What happens? I can't remember exactly, but I think it has to do with cutlery. Spoon, knife, ???
This is not an issue with the GPL at all, this is an issue with theoretical people not contributing to Evolution because their patches could someday potentially be used in proprietary software. Because Evolution is licensed under the GPL there is zero concern about the software itself. The issue is not "does this violate the GPL", this issue is "will people contribute patches if they (a) have a problem with the licensing, or (B) have to go through the hassle of signing Novell's forms".
It's too bad -- most modern distributions have nice user-friendly tools to set up file transfers between windows and linux. I'm using Fedora Core 2 and it's a snap to set the "workgroup", add users, and select a path to share. I'm sure Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, and Linspire all have similar tools -- perhaps you were using an unfriendly distribution, or else your guru wasn't aware of the tools available to help you configure things.
And a tip for you: a firewall isn't as important on Linux as it is on Windows. On linux you just want to make sure that only the network services (programs that run in the backgroup to communicate with other computers) are running, which again all the distributions I am aware of have a handy front-end to that.
That's a really good point. I must say the biggest reason why was that I just hadn't thought of trying that. I guess you could run into the problem where installing a new app would force the upgrade of libraries and so forth, but again you could schedule that for whatever time you want. As far as security updates go, again you can probably wait until you have time to do apply them if they break something.
Honestly though I think it would be hard to restrain myself. Oooooo, a new Firefox is available, gimme gimme gimme! But in combination with the apt-listbugs that a couple other people have mentioned, that could also be mitigated. Someone really ought to write up an article about how to use debian -- not just how to install it, but how to avoid the sort of pitfalls I and other users have had. It seems from the responses to my comment that there are good ways to run debian successfully -- they just aren't quite obvious to a user inexperienced with the Debian way.
Yeah, I've tried that too, and backports as well. It's just not the same, as a lot of modern packages have library requirements beyond what Woody can safely provide.
That sounds pretty useful -- if I had known about that at the time I might not have ditched Debian. Right now though it's just not enough to convince me to switch back to it. Thanks though.
Yeah, I've used Sid up until about eight months ago. Since you probably won't read it I'll paste in what I replied to another guy:
I used unstable for about a year, and in that time disabled X11, and another time it disabled Gnome. And one more than one occasion it broke FirePhoeFox. Those kind of problems can be worked around if you are willing to put in the time, but it's a hassle. I prefer the Fedora Core model of having a new stable platform every six months and doing a major upgrade at that time, so I can schedule and dedicate time to work out upgrading errors instead of having it happen when I need to get work done or just want to play a game or chat with my girlfriend or whatever.
Again, everyone is different and I'm sure there are a lot of people that don't mind the occasional failure and enjoy tinkering to get it all working. I just don't think that describes the average user though.
The last straw for me was when Gnome broke on me, KDE refused to install because of dependancy errors, and my laptop was in for repairs so I was stuck with nothing. I mean, I could have installed an alternate window manager, but it was just too much for me -- I just wanted to use my computer and not fight with it any longer. Now I have that and I'm a lot happier. If Debian would stabilize their platform every 6 months to a year I would probably switch back, since they have such a wonderful range of packages to choose from... but that's just not going to happen anytime soon I think.
By the way, I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to stop using Debian -- I'm just trying to explain why I don't anymore. If it works for you that's awesome.
I used unstable for about a year, and in that time disabled X11, and another time it disabled Gnome. And one more than one occasion it broke FirePhoeFox. Those kind of problems can be worked around if you are willing to put in the time, but it's a hassle. I prefer the Fedora Core model of having a new stable platform every six months and doing a major upgrade at that time, so I can schedule and dedicate time to work out upgrading errors instead of having it happen when I need to get work done or just want to play a game or chat with my girlfriend or whatever.
Again, everyone is different and I'm sure there are a lot of people that don't mind the occasional failure and enjoy tinkering to get it all working. I just don't think that describes the average user though.
I think Debian is a fine project, but to be fair you have to admit that the unstable and testing distributions break far too often to use on a production machine. Of course, I've heard that Lindows^H^H^H^Hare and Xandros do a fine job of producing a quality stable release from those packages, but that's not really the same as pure Debian. Using pure Debian is great if you like to tinker and don't mind when things stop working all of a sudden. But for a primary desktop machine it is too unstable and just doesn't cut it for me anymore since I fully ditched mswindows and rely on my linux installation for everyday work.
This isn't to say that Debian sucks -- it really doesn't suck at all and I love using stable for servers. It's just not a "fine desktop" for people who just want to get work or play done without applications suddenly failing on them.
Re:Ugh. More morally ambiguous asshole characters.
on
Primer
·
· Score: 2, Informative
and that film shot in Edmonton about office workers living and working in a mall/office complex who bet they can stay indoors for 100 days, (and which I forget the name of.)
I do believe that the name of the you are thinking of is "waydowntown".
Bad guys aren't any fun to watch. They make me feel ill, and that's not why I pay the price of admission.
I must disagree with you, I thought the self-absorbed characters in waydowntown are a lot more realistic than most movies and thus their internal conflicts seem a more interesting to me. If a character is stereotyped as a "good guy" you know they will eventually make the "right" decision... just another fairy tale, and how interesting is that for adults?
It really depends on how you watch movies -- if you just want fun, I guess morality tales are an empty but pleasant way to spend a few hours. I do like a little bit more meat though, and flawed characters always make the plot more compelling -- especially in retrospect. There is certainly a legitimate place for both types of films, no doubt.
Put an "Expert mode" in. Default it to OFF. Let me turn it on. Let me configure whether I feel spatial navigation is right for me or not.
In Gnome settings for "expert mode" are configured via gconf-editor and you can turn spatial mode off - not easy for newbies but quite easily for experts. If you are justified in calling yourself an expert you should have no problem with it.
Let ME determine what programs play MP3s if I choose to do so.
Determining what applications open files is pretty simple. Right click on any MP3 file and choose "open with other application" and manage the list through the GUI quite easily. There is also a menu option under preferences for "file types and programs" to manage all of the file types instead of hunting down an MP3 file if that is too tedious.
So your two given examples are pretty much bunk -- one of them even had a user friendly interface to it. To my eyes, Gnome has sensible defaults and the ability for experts to alter the behaviour, which seems to be exactly what you are asking for.
Actually, there are two problems -- one problem is that there are certain users who behave like ignorant children, and the other problem is that there are certain IT techs who behave like condescending jerks. You can't condemn one without the other, because the problem is a team act, and the IT techs are quite obviously provoked. I know this because one of the hats I wear is an occasional support tech (amongst many others).
If a user acts like a child they should expect to be treated in a condescending manner. These users expect IT techs to be magicians, just to wave their wand and the problem will go away. If they actually stopped and tried to to think about what the tech might need to know to help diagnose and correct the problem, that would be enough to avoid a condescending response even from the worst of IT techs.
On the other hand, I fully agree with you that IT techs should remain professional even when users are at their most unprofessional. As you point out, it's their job to do this.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, how is this cracking the big leagues? From what that article said, they had their first roll-out on the Twin Tier Times which seems to be a brand-new small time newspaper in a small town (region?). I'd say they are just cracking the minor leagues, but nowhere near the big leagues yet.
This is not to take away from Scribus, me and my fiancee used it to create our wedding invitations. It's a very capable program and fun to use -- even for a Gnome zealot like myself. But the Twin Tier Times is *not* the New York Times.
Seriously now. Replace "contact information" with "browser engine" or "media player engine" and you have the EXACT line of thought that embedded IE and MediaPlayer into Windows
Actually, they have already included a browser with Gnome -- Epiphany -- and it wouldn't surprise me to see the media player Totem included in a future release. Mozilla is available as a widget to 3rd party Gnome apps just as embedded IE is available to Win32 apps -- try it in Glade and see.
And how great a feckin' idea was THAT?!?
Slippery slope, friends...
The tradeoff is between having more dependencies and using more disk space vs increased interoperability -- not about what MS has done or not done. Like it or not we're already heading down that slipperly slope, dude.
do you not see a striking resembalence to Windows/Internet Explorer, as I stated?
No. Hey, you asked -- I just answered. They *do* share a commonality with dialogs that are designed to be clear and consise -- some Windows dialogs meet this criteria but others certainly do not.
There is a good reason why Evo is being included -- having the contact information centralized and standard in every Gnome installation means that other Gnome applications can use that data. This has implications for IM clients, browsers, file managers, and the interesting new fringe projects like Storage and Beagle and Dashboard. Without Evo's datastore built into Gnome, they would have to build an independant contact manager, and to me it makes sense to use the perfectly good one that Evolution already has.
And I'm not even an Evo user, I just understand the logic behind one of the reasons to include it. I'm sure there are other reasons too.
The main complaint the article highlighted was with changing between network connections, something that both Novell and Red Hat have been working on recently. If you follow Planet Gnome at at, you'd see that both companies have just released glimpses of their upcoming programs which address this very real annoyance with Linux on laptops.
The other complaint they had was with installing new applications, which shouldn't be a big deal with Red Carpet or Yum (especially if Red Hat/Fedora ever ships with a nice GUI front-end to that). Desktop Linux is rolling along rather nicely, good to see.
I think part of it might be that slashdotters in general are willing to sacrifice usability in order to gain advantages in speed and additional features. While I love my Gnome desktop, there are features I would love to see that KDE users enjoy, like fast user switching. And enough people have said that KDE is faster for me to suspect that it is true, though I've not tried it myself lately for comparison.
If slashdotters are indeed like that -- and I think it's reasonable to assume that on average they are -- then it stands to reason that they tend to use projects that haven't got the same focus on usability that Gnome does. And then they complain about the usability of those projects! Oh well.
Of course, Gnome seems to lose out on all these grounds. Whenever I'm forced to use it, I find myself grumbling that it's nearly as bad as its MS Windows prototype.
There are two possibilities here: (A) you are trying to bait me; or (B) you haven't used Gnome in a long time. Because anyone that seriously suggests that MS Windows is its prototype is _seriously_ misinformed. I suggest that you check out a more recent version, or try to bait other people.
Oh, and while I might be a proud Gnome zealot, I should also point out that xfce4 is a wonderful desktop environment and much more lightweight than a full Gnome installation.
Gee, it's too bad that there are no OSS projects that focus on usability. I wonder what such a product would look like if the OSS community ever tried to focus on that.
Okay, a honest question for you: how do you manage to avoid Perl's reputation for write-only code? I've always thought that to use Perl in a large-scale project you would need so many guidlines to promote the "right" way to do it that would elimintate the flexibility of Perl. A large-scale project would (should?) have to lose all of the nifty tricks that make Perl so sweet to code in, because they are impossible to maintain when someone else wrote them. If so, why not just use Python which is cleaner and already pushes you towards doing it the right way?
Holy Jebus, Batman... that was rated +4 Insightful?
Your answer: the next official release of your favourite commercial distro will probably include KDE 3.3 -- So uh, yeah. Hope that helps.
No, it's developed by a company and distributed to an individual. Don't think of it in the abstract, think of it in the specific. You are working at $Corp and they write an app that uses the GPL'd MySQL or KDE libraries. Why do *you* not have the right to demand the source for the binaries that your employer provides you with? You're a person (well, at I assume so), and you've been distributed a binary-only copy -- who cares that you work for the company that wrote the application.
If you read closer, they are actually talking about a grey area that some people (read: me) perceive in the GPL. Let's say you develop a proprietary application that links to a GPL library. Say KDE or MySQL. If you don't _distribute_ your application you are fine, but lets say you deploy the application internally. In this case, under the terms of the GPL the employee who your app was _distributed_ to could demand the source to your application under the terms of the GPL, no?
If not, why not? MySQL seems to be suggesting, as does QT, that this is indeed the case while on the other hand MySQL and KDE zealots insist that it's not a problem. But please explain to me why it's not the case, why an employee cannot demand their GPL-derived rights to the source when a binary is distributed to them.
uh, dude.
An interface is *so* much more than widgets and icons.
And I'm a Gnome zealot, for crying out loud.
dude.
Well, what happens when all the nice bells and whistles are only added to the proprietary version of evolution? This version becomes much more appealing. As a result, there is a demand for it and users begin to leave the GPL version in drones.
What happens? I can't remember exactly, but I think it has to do with cutlery. Spoon, knife, ???
This is not an issue with the GPL at all, this is an issue with theoretical people not contributing to Evolution because their patches could someday potentially be used in proprietary software. Because Evolution is licensed under the GPL there is zero concern about the software itself. The issue is not "does this violate the GPL", this issue is "will people contribute patches if they (a) have a problem with the licensing, or (B) have to go through the hassle of signing Novell's forms".
It's too bad -- most modern distributions have nice user-friendly tools to set up file transfers between windows and linux. I'm using Fedora Core 2 and it's a snap to set the "workgroup", add users, and select a path to share. I'm sure Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, and Linspire all have similar tools -- perhaps you were using an unfriendly distribution, or else your guru wasn't aware of the tools available to help you configure things.
And a tip for you: a firewall isn't as important on Linux as it is on Windows. On linux you just want to make sure that only the network services (programs that run in the backgroup to communicate with other computers) are running, which again all the distributions I am aware of have a handy front-end to that.
That's a really good point. I must say the biggest reason why was that I just hadn't thought of trying that. I guess you could run into the problem where installing a new app would force the upgrade of libraries and so forth, but again you could schedule that for whatever time you want. As far as security updates go, again you can probably wait until you have time to do apply them if they break something.
Honestly though I think it would be hard to restrain myself. Oooooo, a new Firefox is available, gimme gimme gimme! But in combination with the apt-listbugs that a couple other people have mentioned, that could also be mitigated. Someone really ought to write up an article about how to use debian -- not just how to install it, but how to avoid the sort of pitfalls I and other users have had. It seems from the responses to my comment that there are good ways to run debian successfully -- they just aren't quite obvious to a user inexperienced with the Debian way.
Yeah, I've tried that too, and backports as well. It's just not the same, as a lot of modern packages have library requirements beyond what Woody can safely provide.
That sounds pretty useful -- if I had known about that at the time I might not have ditched Debian. Right now though it's just not enough to convince me to switch back to it. Thanks though.
The last straw for me was when Gnome broke on me, KDE refused to install because of dependancy errors, and my laptop was in for repairs so I was stuck with nothing. I mean, I could have installed an alternate window manager, but it was just too much for me -- I just wanted to use my computer and not fight with it any longer. Now I have that and I'm a lot happier. If Debian would stabilize their platform every 6 months to a year I would probably switch back, since they have such a wonderful range of packages to choose from... but that's just not going to happen anytime soon I think.
By the way, I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to stop using Debian -- I'm just trying to explain why I don't anymore. If it works for you that's awesome.
I used unstable for about a year, and in that time disabled X11, and another time it disabled Gnome. And one more than one occasion it broke FirePhoeFox. Those kind of problems can be worked around if you are willing to put in the time, but it's a hassle. I prefer the Fedora Core model of having a new stable platform every six months and doing a major upgrade at that time, so I can schedule and dedicate time to work out upgrading errors instead of having it happen when I need to get work done or just want to play a game or chat with my girlfriend or whatever.
Again, everyone is different and I'm sure there are a lot of people that don't mind the occasional failure and enjoy tinkering to get it all working. I just don't think that describes the average user though.
I think Debian is a fine project, but to be fair you have to admit that the unstable and testing distributions break far too often to use on a production machine. Of course, I've heard that Lindows^H^H^H^Hare and Xandros do a fine job of producing a quality stable release from those packages, but that's not really the same as pure Debian. Using pure Debian is great if you like to tinker and don't mind when things stop working all of a sudden. But for a primary desktop machine it is too unstable and just doesn't cut it for me anymore since I fully ditched mswindows and rely on my linux installation for everyday work.
This isn't to say that Debian sucks -- it really doesn't suck at all and I love using stable for servers. It's just not a "fine desktop" for people who just want to get work or play done without applications suddenly failing on them.
and that film shot in Edmonton about office workers living and working in a mall/office complex who bet they can stay indoors for 100 days, (and which I forget the name of.)
I do believe that the name of the you are thinking of is "waydowntown".
Bad guys aren't any fun to watch. They make me feel ill, and that's not why I pay the price of admission.
I must disagree with you, I thought the self-absorbed characters in waydowntown are a lot more realistic than most movies and thus their internal conflicts seem a more interesting to me. If a character is stereotyped as a "good guy" you know they will eventually make the "right" decision... just another fairy tale, and how interesting is that for adults?
It really depends on how you watch movies -- if you just want fun, I guess morality tales are an empty but pleasant way to spend a few hours. I do like a little bit more meat though, and flawed characters always make the plot more compelling -- especially in retrospect. There is certainly a legitimate place for both types of films, no doubt.
Put an "Expert mode" in. Default it to OFF. Let me turn it on. Let me configure whether I feel spatial navigation is right for me or not.
In Gnome settings for "expert mode" are configured via gconf-editor and you can turn spatial mode off - not easy for newbies but quite easily for experts. If you are justified in calling yourself an expert you should have no problem with it.
Let ME determine what programs play MP3s if I choose to do so.
Determining what applications open files is pretty simple. Right click on any MP3 file and choose "open with other application" and manage the list through the GUI quite easily. There is also a menu option under preferences for "file types and programs" to manage all of the file types instead of hunting down an MP3 file if that is too tedious.
So your two given examples are pretty much bunk -- one of them even had a user friendly interface to it. To my eyes, Gnome has sensible defaults and the ability for experts to alter the behaviour, which seems to be exactly what you are asking for.
I would just love File Types to work properly.
Then you will be happy with this.
Actually, there are two problems -- one problem is that there are certain users who behave like ignorant children, and the other problem is that there are certain IT techs who behave like condescending jerks. You can't condemn one without the other, because the problem is a team act, and the IT techs are quite obviously provoked. I know this because one of the hats I wear is an occasional support tech (amongst many others).
If a user acts like a child they should expect to be treated in a condescending manner. These users expect IT techs to be magicians, just to wave their wand and the problem will go away. If they actually stopped and tried to to think about what the tech might need to know to help diagnose and correct the problem, that would be enough to avoid a condescending response even from the worst of IT techs.
On the other hand, I fully agree with you that IT techs should remain professional even when users are at their most unprofessional. As you point out, it's their job to do this.