With a suitably sized heatsink made of this material, can we get rid of the noisy fan, or at least replace it with a slower, quieter fan.
This would be great for those of us with 1.4GHz Athlons rumbling away in the corner.
I expect that it will start of as some kind of heat spreader material on CPUs themselves, and possibly in the base plate of the heatsink. It is probably very expensive.
Good thought - BeOS started out on 66MHz PPCs, so a 206MHz StrongARM is a more than suitable replacement in my opinion.
PDAs are like desktop operating systems, except the apps run in a fullscreen window all of the time instead of a randomly sized window. A 206MHz StrongARM (or 400MHz XScale) will be easily able to emulate a Palm Pilot at full speed, so forget about API and binary compatibility.
Of course, I can't wait for the dual-processor PDAs.
Re:KDE/Qt Embedded won't fly on Linux handhelds
on
Palm OS Spinoff
·
· Score: 1
1) When was the last time your manager needed X11 remote display capabilities?
2) Why the need for different toolkits?
3) Why the need for different toolkits?
(aside) Argh, Konqueror has gone into slow-mode again in text boxes...
Anyway, there is nothing stopping someone from writing an Exceed like X11 manager for QT embedded anyway.
I want that QNX PDA interface - that looked damn good.
On a PDA, a single, integrated, interface is the way to go. Palm, WinCE, EPOC all have it. The other necessary thing is good applications - maybe someone can shrink KOffice down into a PDA format? Palm and PocketPC both have a myriad of good applications for the PDA display format. Linux programmers need to start programming apps for 320x240 displays, and QT/Embedded sounds like a good place to start.
So you guys, instead of starting up "yet another text editor" or "yet another mp3 player" on sourceforge, why not do something new, and have "PDA format document editor" and "PDA format mp3 player"? PDAs in a couple of years will probably have 480x320 hi-res displays and 128MB of RAM anyway...
The GBA gets all of its graphical power from a custom graphics unit in the GBA. The ARM just does calculations and stuff. The graphical chip does stuff like scrolling, tile and graphical modes, the 3D mode, sprites, etc. i.e., not a typical integrated LCD driver chip that you find in phones. And very proprietary.
Also a Z80 would be required for audio and GB compatibility. Timing would be a mess. The LCD panel is the least of your problems.
Maybe if Nokia worked together with Nintendo? This is the only way this will happen. Nintendo do not like to licence their hardware though, so to be honest, there is no chance.
1. Yes, already done.
2. Yes, see Japan
3. Yes, see Japan
4. Yes, see Nokia 9210/9220 communicator
5. Hmmm, is there a standard for micro-VGA outputs or mini-DV?
6. Nokia Communicator
7. Nokia Communicator if software is written to do this?
8. Motorola Timeport L7089 has this. The adapter is a rip off as usual though.:)
1. Create a fast bus near the processor for solid state storage - it is silly having to go through IDE, then PCI, then the NB to the CPU for data, even with an IDE solid state disk.
2. This bus could be HyperTransport from the NB to a HyperTransport enabled memory controller that can control up to 16GB of memory. This will give you massive bandwidth and low latency - the best of all worlds.
3. 16 DIMM slots in a drive bay somewhere, or whatever. connect to the memory controller. Battery connected to power DIMMs in case of power down. Use DDR DIMMs, as they use less power. A large laptop battery should power 16 DIMMs for well over a day on their own.
Alternatively, just set up a massive RAM drive and cache the HD into it... rewards uptimes of course!
I see in the article they are changing the spec of the CPU from 7.5x66.6MHz (500MHz) to 6.0x100MHz(600MHz). How about leaving the multiplier the same? Will the iBook run at 750MHz? How about 650 or 700MHz?
Because the latest and greatest costs a whole lotta money, whilst 10%
slower is half the price?
Buy the most RAM you can afford
Agreed.
Buy the fastest machine you can afford
Disagreed. Buy the fastest machine that will handle your needs for today
and the next year. After that time even the most modernest of machines today
will look like it was made by Ug the caveman anyway - lets not spend too
much money on it!
The iBook is a great buy for students and for general portable work.
However, I am still doing fine with a PII 266MHz laptop (HP Omnibook 4100)
and feel no need to upgrade it yet (still running Win 95 and Office 97 [and
Linux]). Hardware only needs upgrading when you buy the latest software for
marginal benefits!
Remember - RAM, HD and CPUs will be even cheaper in a year's time. By buying
cheap (but sensibly, don't buy an out-of-date platform like KT133 or i815!)
you can buy cheap again in a years time and double the performance of your
system (then sell the replaced parts on eBay). Whatever, always buy the best
motherboard possible! That is the most important part of the computer.
And now I see that Slashdot has messed up again and everything gets me onto
the front page without a login. I mean, none of the Slashdot bugs are being
fixed at all, and they have had plenty of time since the release of 2.2...
Maybe Transmeta will be writing a Z80/8051/6809/etc 8-bit code morphing engine for their processors. Then they could easily say that they had some kind of mega-beast of an embedded chip! Their processor is 256-bit VLIW, which is a tad overkill to emulate in hardware an 8-bit processor, but if that means a 500MHz Transmeta CPU equals a 10GHz Z80...:)
The reason that the VLIW architecture is not suitable on its own is problably due to non-standard address/data widths going into the core of the processor. This is fine when you are doing the entire system, but if you need to interface with 64-bit memory, etc, then you want standard word sizes. Hence 32-bit processors, not 38-bit or 44-bit processors even those could turn out to me more convenient for the particular ISA that processor might implement.
Sort of right. The 16bit Z8000 (Olivetti M1 in 1985?) came before the Z180 and all that though - it was Zilogs failed answer to the 68000 and 8086. It was too complex. Later they tried a Z800, but it was too late for that one.
The Z180, Z280 and Z380 are their current Z80 based chips. Also there is some kind of eZ80 which looks like a variant of the Z380. The Z380 is the top end, and runs at over 40MHz, perhaps 100's of MHz, but I don't know because the website is confusing.
Great choice for lots of applications though, especially if you have legacy Z80 code to support. The additional hardware support, as you mention, really makes the processor.
Re:Moans for casio...where's the decent graphics?
on
Info on the New iPAQ H3800
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's aging quite nicely -- the processor is only 133 MHz, but that's MIPS and not this cheap-slow-crunches-x86-code-easily StrongARM BS that looks nice on benchmarks but can't feed graphics to save its life
Erm, the StrongARM is not x86. It is ARM, an extremely nice and powerful RISC ISA. Typically graphics performance will depend on what graphics chip is used in a device, and how much 2D accelleration it has. I bet that a 206MHz StrongARM (old technology now as well) can crush a 133MHz embedded MIPs processor any day of the week...
The more pertinent question is: when will the iPaq and other devices start to use the even faster and lower power XScale processors that are ARM compatible?
This is great. You might think that the per-seat licensing requirement is a bit naff, but in the corporate world they will see this as proof that the OS is good. You know, "You get what you pay for" sort of thing.
If OpenLinux 3.2 comes out soon with the latest and greatest KDE, KOffice and Open/StarOffice integrated, it will be even more compelling for corporates. $60 instead of $200 for WinXP.
I wonder if Caldera do bulk-discounts on their fees? Purchasing 100 seats for $30/seat, say. That will make them even more attractive for those newly-cash-strapped companies.
The hardest part for Caldera is to get companies to think about upgrading(cross-grading) their systems. If the company is happy with the current Win2000/Win9X environment, then why will they cross-grade to Caldera? Microsoft have no problems getting users to upgrade however! They just make future licensing fees really harsh, giving you the option to "upgrade now, or pay a lot more later"...
In fact, Microsoft's licenses and business practices are positively anti-corporate now. Increasing prices, forcing corporates to upgrade sooner rather than later, etc. But I am getting off-track.
Personally, if I was an IT manager, I would look at the current computer network, and if the PCs were good enough, I would keep them the same. Hold off hardware upgrades and software upgrades for a year. There is little compelling reason to upgrade a network of PII 266s running '95 to P4 2000s running XP right at the moment. If they do the job, leave them doing the job!
Gawd, why don't corporates buy their computer systems to last more than 3 years? Suns last over 10 years in a company, Macs over 5 years. Is it just because the bog standard PC is so crapply built that it dies after 3 years?
The structs are the same. Same variable names, name comments in the same places. Just split into two header files and losing the license very neatly.
If this was developed independently, the ordering of the members of the struct would be different, and the names of the members of the struct would also be different.
I really must get around to installing KDE 2.2 so I can run that theme. Maybe I will have to wait for 2.2.1 just to get the latest version.
And I need XFree86 4.1 for work because of the crappy ATI graphics chip that doesn't do anti-aliasing in 4.0.3...
Have to go into work today anyway, so if I get the time I will try and attack ports and try and get them both to compile and install.
Oh yeah, on topic anyway - I hope that the new themes.org can rate themes based upon speed, looks and functionality. Also, I might just want to have native (coded) themes shown, not the slower pixmap themes.
Urgh, I bet it will have an XP theme database as well... nasty stuff, that horrible plastic tonka-toy interface that XP defaults to...
Anyway, MacOSX was meant to be themeable - are there any themes for it apart from Aqua and Platinum?
The sad thing is, companies store CC information openly on servers (whether in a DB or in a file). They claim a secure site, but they are lying (misleading the consumer - an illegal activity in most countries I believe) because the whole process (customer to delivery) is not secure, only the customer to website part is.
Sadly, even simple, 10 minute code jobs like PGP encrypting the customer's payment details before storing them on the server are beyond most online sites. And that is very sad. My company PGP encrypts all online payments before saving them on the server, and they are only decrypted on a computer that is not connected to the Internet (even though this is not as easy as getting an email with all the details in plain text (which other sites do after the https part of the deal anyway!)). After processing, the details are deleted.
SPAM has got much worse this year. Last year I got very few, this year I also get 10 or so a day on my personal email account, despite always having it spam-proofed one way or another. Action needs to be taken against spammers.
Anyway, the companies T&Cs will give them the right to sell on the information you provide if they so desire.
To compare 10 servers to 100 servers with content mirroring at all major ISPs is silly.
To compare dynamic real-time content to static content is silly.
Give up slashdot, you haven't got a hope! You only got 80 pages a second, CNN was dead at 50000. Now if Slashdot was scaled... (60*10 = 600(server advantage), 10*600(static advantage) = 6000, 100*6000=600000(mirroring advantage))
Now the only IDEA that I can give the Slashdot team is to have a network of Slashdot servers - sort of like newsgroups and IRC and whatnot. People connect to their local slashdot (uk.slashdot.org, etc), and their posts get sent over to the central slashdot for redistribution to the other nodes in the new global mirrored slashdot.
Re:/.ers: Don't get too cocky...
on
Handling the Loads
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
And CNN.com is served from a single PII 533MHz server! Totally amazing.
Honestly, CNN's website will be composed of more than 10 times the servers that house Slashdot, possibly 100 times. The web server software will be serving static content, which is a lot easier than serving non-static content, even if the static content is larger (images, video). So 100x the servers plus 1/10th the work of Slashdot sounds fair to me...
Well, a circle of n buildings would have n turbines, all in slightly different directions so that there would always be several turbines aimed pretty well into the wind.
The engineers say 1 turbine (column between buildings) can cater for 20% (overall) of those two buildings energy. With a ring of buildings, you can generate 40% (overall) of the energy required.
The picture depicted what looked like a 60 storey building, which ain't bad for the UK, where the tallest building is only about 800ft. A circle of 8 of them (The Octagon), with fatter buildings than those depicted in the pictures could hold nearly 50,000 workers, possibly more.
50,000 workers, each of whom uses up 1kW/h, means that the 8 turbine columns could generate 10 - 20MW/h.
Well, if the pigeons are so stupid as to fly into a slowly rotating blade, then I think they deserve to die. It is evolution (Kansas: God's will).
The wind turbines are not going to be spinning around at 200RPM, maybe 20RPM on a reasonable windy day.
Best thing is the nice, gentle woosh as the blade swings around outside the window of the office or apartment. As batteries can store up the power generated overnight to make the building even more efficient.
Getting annoyed with Mozilla textarea cursor bug. Cursor wrap to beginning of textarea if you press the right arrow key at the end of the text area...
Would it be possible to have a permanent setting for "no animations" and also "don't download flash animations"? That would really improve Konqueror (which I use daily for hours, it is rock solid, and this is on FreeBSD with KDE 2.1.2).
Also, Konqueror does also crash randomly and suddenly for no reason on some sites. Also, I get a lot of "cannot do the http://www.blah.com/ protocol" messages now, which I didn't used to get...
Sounds like you have an ATI graphics card. AA is only supported with ATI graphics cards from XFree86 4.1 and above. I have wonderful anti-aliased fonts with KDE on 4.0.3 on FreeBSD at home (Voodoo 4500), but at work with the same setup, I don't (ATI Mach 64 naffness).
Does anyone know if the GTK anti-aliasing uses the X11 RENDER extension, or if it does it all itself in some horrific Macrosoftian bloat copy?
Also, anti-aliased fonts should be made to just work on Linux/FreeBSD/KDE/Gnome. Better fonts management tools are required (MacOS/Windows has this kind of stuff down to a tee, and the Amiga had this all done 10 years ago with its font installers), not any of this mkfontdir, mkttfontdir and all that malarky.
I think that in a year's time, Linux will be truly ready for the desktop. We need a full screen XDM/GDM/KDM that looks sexy for multiple users (with their photos and all that stuff), no text based boot up (user defined picture instead), and KDE/Gnome/etc friendlyness (when I install a Gnome app via RPM/DEB I want it to show up in the correct menu on my KDE desktop, with the proper icon, etc).
Still, things are getting there. Now just to rename/usr,/sbin,/tmp,/var, etc to meaningful names...:)
Slashdot Mirror
This would be great for those of us with 1.4GHz Athlons rumbling away in the corner.
I expect that it will start of as some kind of heat spreader material on CPUs themselves, and possibly in the base plate of the heatsink. It is probably very expensive.
Itanium will need a tonne of the stuff... :)
PDAs are like desktop operating systems, except the apps run in a fullscreen window all of the time instead of a randomly sized window. A 206MHz StrongARM (or 400MHz XScale) will be easily able to emulate a Palm Pilot at full speed, so forget about API and binary compatibility.
Of course, I can't wait for the dual-processor PDAs.
2) Why the need for different toolkits?
3) Why the need for different toolkits?
(aside) Argh, Konqueror has gone into slow-mode again in text boxes...
Anyway, there is nothing stopping someone from writing an Exceed like X11 manager for QT embedded anyway.
I want that QNX PDA interface - that looked damn good.
On a PDA, a single, integrated, interface is the way to go. Palm, WinCE, EPOC all have it. The other necessary thing is good applications - maybe someone can shrink KOffice down into a PDA format? Palm and PocketPC both have a myriad of good applications for the PDA display format. Linux programmers need to start programming apps for 320x240 displays, and QT/Embedded sounds like a good place to start.
So you guys, instead of starting up "yet another text editor" or "yet another mp3 player" on sourceforge, why not do something new, and have "PDA format document editor" and "PDA format mp3 player"? PDAs in a couple of years will probably have 480x320 hi-res displays and 128MB of RAM anyway...
The GBA gets all of its graphical power from a custom graphics unit in the GBA. The ARM just does calculations and stuff. The graphical chip does stuff like scrolling, tile and graphical modes, the 3D mode, sprites, etc. i.e., not a typical integrated LCD driver chip that you find in phones. And very proprietary.
Also a Z80 would be required for audio and GB compatibility. Timing would be a mess. The LCD panel is the least of your problems.
Maybe if Nokia worked together with Nintendo? This is the only way this will happen. Nintendo do not like to licence their hardware though, so to be honest, there is no chance.
1. Yes, already done. :)
2. Yes, see Japan
3. Yes, see Japan
4. Yes, see Nokia 9210/9220 communicator
5. Hmmm, is there a standard for micro-VGA outputs or mini-DV?
6. Nokia Communicator
7. Nokia Communicator if software is written to do this?
8. Motorola Timeport L7089 has this. The adapter is a rip off as usual though.
2. This bus could be HyperTransport from the NB to a HyperTransport enabled memory controller that can control up to 16GB of memory. This will give you massive bandwidth and low latency - the best of all worlds.
3. 16 DIMM slots in a drive bay somewhere, or whatever. connect to the memory controller. Battery connected to power DIMMs in case of power down. Use DDR DIMMs, as they use less power. A large laptop battery should power 16 DIMMs for well over a day on their own.
Alternatively, just set up a massive RAM drive and cache the HD into it... rewards uptimes of course!
No, you mean it will be called:
CLOSED~1\GATES\WINDOWS
Prefix with a C:\ if you want...
I see in the article they are changing the spec of the CPU from 7.5x66.6MHz (500MHz) to 6.0x100MHz(600MHz). How about leaving the multiplier the same? Will the iBook run at 750MHz? How about 650 or 700MHz?
Because the latest and greatest costs a whole lotta money, whilst 10% slower is half the price?
Buy the most RAM you can afford
Agreed.
Buy the fastest machine you can afford
Disagreed. Buy the fastest machine that will handle your needs for today and the next year. After that time even the most modernest of machines today will look like it was made by Ug the caveman anyway - lets not spend too much money on it!
The iBook is a great buy for students and for general portable work. However, I am still doing fine with a PII 266MHz laptop (HP Omnibook 4100) and feel no need to upgrade it yet (still running Win 95 and Office 97 [and Linux]). Hardware only needs upgrading when you buy the latest software for marginal benefits!
Remember - RAM, HD and CPUs will be even cheaper in a year's time. By buying cheap (but sensibly, don't buy an out-of-date platform like KT133 or i815!) you can buy cheap again in a years time and double the performance of your system (then sell the replaced parts on eBay). Whatever, always buy the best motherboard possible! That is the most important part of the computer.
And now I see that Slashdot has messed up again and everything gets me onto the front page without a login. I mean, none of the Slashdot bugs are being fixed at all, and they have had plenty of time since the release of 2.2...
What would be ideal is some form of native Transmeta HotSpot JIT for Java bytecode being converted to the native Transmeta ISA as it runs.
The reason that the VLIW architecture is not suitable on its own is problably due to non-standard address/data widths going into the core of the processor. This is fine when you are doing the entire system, but if you need to interface with 64-bit memory, etc, then you want standard word sizes. Hence 32-bit processors, not 38-bit or 44-bit processors even those could turn out to me more convenient for the particular ISA that processor might implement.
The Z180, Z280 and Z380 are their current Z80 based chips. Also there is some kind of eZ80 which looks like a variant of the Z380. The Z380 is the top end, and runs at over 40MHz, perhaps 100's of MHz, but I don't know because the website is confusing.
Great choice for lots of applications though, especially if you have legacy Z80 code to support. The additional hardware support, as you mention, really makes the processor.
Erm, the StrongARM is not x86. It is ARM, an extremely nice and powerful RISC ISA. Typically graphics performance will depend on what graphics chip is used in a device, and how much 2D accelleration it has. I bet that a 206MHz StrongARM (old technology now as well) can crush a 133MHz embedded MIPs processor any day of the week...
The more pertinent question is: when will the iPaq and other devices start to use the even faster and lower power XScale processors that are ARM compatible?
This is great. You might think that the per-seat licensing requirement is a bit naff, but in the corporate world they will see this as proof that the OS is good. You know, "You get what you pay for" sort of thing.
If OpenLinux 3.2 comes out soon with the latest and greatest KDE, KOffice and Open/StarOffice integrated, it will be even more compelling for corporates. $60 instead of $200 for WinXP.
I wonder if Caldera do bulk-discounts on their fees? Purchasing 100 seats for $30/seat, say. That will make them even more attractive for those newly-cash-strapped companies.
The hardest part for Caldera is to get companies to think about upgrading(cross-grading) their systems. If the company is happy with the current Win2000/Win9X environment, then why will they cross-grade to Caldera? Microsoft have no problems getting users to upgrade however! They just make future licensing fees really harsh, giving you the option to "upgrade now, or pay a lot more later"...
In fact, Microsoft's licenses and business practices are positively anti-corporate now. Increasing prices, forcing corporates to upgrade sooner rather than later, etc. But I am getting off-track.
Personally, if I was an IT manager, I would look at the current computer network, and if the PCs were good enough, I would keep them the same. Hold off hardware upgrades and software upgrades for a year. There is little compelling reason to upgrade a network of PII 266s running '95 to P4 2000s running XP right at the moment. If they do the job, leave them doing the job!
Gawd, why don't corporates buy their computer systems to last more than 3 years? Suns last over 10 years in a company, Macs over 5 years. Is it just because the bog standard PC is so crapply built that it dies after 3 years?
You didn't look at the source code, did you?
The structs are the same. Same variable names, name comments in the same places. Just split into two header files and losing the license very neatly.
If this was developed independently, the ordering of the members of the struct would be different, and the names of the members of the struct would also be different.
I really must get around to installing KDE 2.2 so I can run that theme. Maybe I will have to wait for 2.2.1 just to get the latest version.
And I need XFree86 4.1 for work because of the crappy ATI graphics chip that doesn't do anti-aliasing in 4.0.3...
Have to go into work today anyway, so if I get the time I will try and attack ports and try and get them both to compile and install.
Oh yeah, on topic anyway - I hope that the new themes.org can rate themes based upon speed, looks and functionality. Also, I might just want to have native (coded) themes shown, not the slower pixmap themes.
Urgh, I bet it will have an XP theme database as well... nasty stuff, that horrible plastic tonka-toy interface that XP defaults to...
Anyway, MacOSX was meant to be themeable - are there any themes for it apart from Aqua and Platinum?
Sadly, even simple, 10 minute code jobs like PGP encrypting the customer's payment details before storing them on the server are beyond most online sites. And that is very sad. My company PGP encrypts all online payments before saving them on the server, and they are only decrypted on a computer that is not connected to the Internet (even though this is not as easy as getting an email with all the details in plain text (which other sites do after the https part of the deal anyway!)). After processing, the details are deleted.
SPAM has got much worse this year. Last year I got very few, this year I also get 10 or so a day on my personal email account, despite always having it spam-proofed one way or another. Action needs to be taken against spammers.
Anyway, the companies T&Cs will give them the right to sell on the information you provide if they so desire.
like I say - sort of like newsgroups.
WITHOUT the 3 - 12 hours delay that Usenet has propagating posts.
Yeah, to compare slashdot to cnn is silly.
To compare 10 servers to 100 servers with content mirroring at all major ISPs is silly.
To compare dynamic real-time content to static content is silly.
Give up slashdot, you haven't got a hope! You only got 80 pages a second, CNN was dead at 50000. Now if Slashdot was scaled... (60*10 = 600(server advantage), 10*600(static advantage) = 6000, 100*6000=600000(mirroring advantage))
Now the only IDEA that I can give the Slashdot team is to have a network of Slashdot servers - sort of like newsgroups and IRC and whatnot. People connect to their local slashdot (uk.slashdot.org, etc), and their posts get sent over to the central slashdot for redistribution to the other nodes in the new global mirrored slashdot.
Honestly, CNN's website will be composed of more than 10 times the servers that house Slashdot, possibly 100 times. The web server software will be serving static content, which is a lot easier than serving non-static content, even if the static content is larger (images, video). So 100x the servers plus 1/10th the work of Slashdot sounds fair to me...
The engineers say 1 turbine (column between buildings) can cater for 20% (overall) of those two buildings energy. With a ring of buildings, you can generate 40% (overall) of the energy required.
The picture depicted what looked like a 60 storey building, which ain't bad for the UK, where the tallest building is only about 800ft. A circle of 8 of them (The Octagon), with fatter buildings than those depicted in the pictures could hold nearly 50,000 workers, possibly more.
50,000 workers, each of whom uses up 1kW/h, means that the 8 turbine columns could generate 10 - 20MW/h.
The wind turbines are not going to be spinning around at 200RPM, maybe 20RPM on a reasonable windy day.
Best thing is the nice, gentle woosh as the blade swings around outside the window of the office or apartment. As batteries can store up the power generated overnight to make the building even more efficient.
Getting annoyed with Mozilla textarea cursor bug. Cursor wrap to beginning of textarea if you press the right arrow key at the end of the text area...
In the UK, a keg of beer usually holds 80 - 200 pints of beer. Nitrokegs hold 80 - 200 pints of fizzy beer, btw - buy cask ale instead.
50 kegs of beer would indicate an illegal brewery! No wonder it was confiscated!
Also, Konqueror does also crash randomly and suddenly for no reason on some sites. Also, I get a lot of "cannot do the http://www.blah.com/ protocol" messages now, which I didn't used to get...
Does anyone know if the GTK anti-aliasing uses the X11 RENDER extension, or if it does it all itself in some horrific Macrosoftian bloat copy?
Also, anti-aliased fonts should be made to just work on Linux/FreeBSD/KDE/Gnome. Better fonts management tools are required (MacOS/Windows has this kind of stuff down to a tee, and the Amiga had this all done 10 years ago with its font installers), not any of this mkfontdir, mkttfontdir and all that malarky. I think that in a year's time, Linux will be truly ready for the desktop. We need a full screen XDM/GDM/KDM that looks sexy for multiple users (with their photos and all that stuff), no text based boot up (user defined picture instead), and KDE/Gnome/etc friendlyness (when I install a Gnome app via RPM/DEB I want it to show up in the correct menu on my KDE desktop, with the proper icon, etc).
Still, things are getting there. Now just to rename /usr, /sbin, /tmp, /var, etc to meaningful names... :)