It's called freedom. As long as KDE can run GTK apps and Gnome can run QT apps, there is no reason to change anything.
Yeah, I've heard this mantra for long now. The problem is that this kind of thinking values more a line of ideology than users, the ones that actually have to struggle with the system.
I've already given up on the hope that Linux might have only one toolkit, or even better, that it would be embeeded on the X Server (you know, you'd have one less application layer to go through to do stuff on the screen). Now, I'd be happy if at least we could have a standardized themeing for all tookits, as in you could use one theme for all toolkits. What most bother users on having N toolkits is that they don't have a consistent look between them. You may argue that this does happen on Windows too, but it certainly happens at a far lesser degree. And it mostly don't happen with MacOSX.
The grandparent was about how much songs you actually hear, not how many you carry. For me, 1Gb is quite enough, I could get around 200 songs (or ~ 700 minutes) on that space. I don't keep my entire MP3 collection on the player, that's what my little fileserver is for anyway, so if I get tired of hearing a few songs on the player I just replace them with stuff I fell like hearing.
But that's just me, I understand that there are people who hear music in a more diverse fashion, but even for these people I think 4~5Gb is enough... If you get more diverse than that, you should as well just hear music on Radio.
Tried it here too, and saw pretty much the same thing. After recovering...
[~]: $ ulimit -a
core file size (blocks, -c) unlimited
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
open files (-n) 256
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
stack size (kbytes, -s) 2043
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 63
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) 2097152
As you can see, maximum user processes is 63. I can't see why Windows/Cygwin isn't respecting these limits. Or it is, but Windows screams before reaching such a low limit. On Linux, this limit is usually "unlimited". On my Debian box here, setting a limit of 1024 makes the attack futile (less than 2 seconds before the script craps out because of lack of resources).
So I guess Windows is even more fragile than Linux on this...
I did run this on a Debian box (testing) that is idle here (it used to be our mailserver, but this funcion was transferred to another box). I knew, from posts above, that it could fork bomb it and bring it down, and sure enough, it did. No problem, the box isn't in use anyway, but I'd like to know what this really does. As I see it, it only works on a Bash shell, but I can't figure what it really does.
Unfortunately, in the case of dhtml layers, it *is* harder, as you said, to distinguish. Maybe someone could think up a solution though, that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.
I don't think so. Following the same logic you described that popup blockers use (block automatic popups), I think it wouldn't be hard to create a blocker that denies layer operations (like show/hide) just at the "onload" javascript event handler... That's how the automatic popups you work anyway. You would of course break some legitimate uses, but I can't think of a situation where these legitimate uses couldn't be rewritten to behave the same having a different algorithm. But my brain is a little slow today, so suggestions are welcome.
Java and Flash on Linux are at least as good as their Windows versions.
Not quite. Java works fine on Linux, but Flash works *almost* fine. It still has a long standing (since 6.x I think) problems with the "WMODE" attribute on the plugin embedding tags. This attribute is usually used with a value of "transparent", to set the background of the Flash movie as a Transparent area on the Browser. Just take a look at globo.com on a Linux box and then on a Windows box (that displays the menu correctly) and you'll understand what I mean. That's just an example, of course, the website of the enterprise I work for has a menu similar to this one, and it has the same problems on linux. But globo.com is a relatively popular brazilian website.
Minidiscs are magnetic-read drives, whereas the UMD is an optical drive.
Not quite. Minidiscs drives are optical for reading, just like your everyday CD player. The magnetic part is used for recording MD, which drains more energy on MDs (try recording for 1 hour straight and you'll see your battery go out in no time).
A regular user account will not have write permissions to the "Program Files" directory by default. Assuming extensions are written to "Program Files\Mozilla FireFox\blah" I don't see how anyone other than a power user or administrator could install an extension.
Note: I could be talking out my ass if Firefox stores extensions in the user profile directory on Windows.
It does. However, your idea is still interesting. After the installation of Firefox and proper configuration for the unprivileged user, the Admin could go to the user's Firefox profile directory (here it is "C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox") and set the ownership of the folder Mozilla and beyond to the Administrator, and deny write access to everyone else (the user, in this case). That should do the trick, unless there is a way for the user to override the profile directory (don't know about that).
I know there's a way for any user to start Firefox in "Manage profile" mode, but don't know how far the unprivileged user can go with this - I haven't even tested the above suggestion either.
...but you get the releases forever......you miss out on support, new releases...
Wtf?
Well, I believe you meant to say the code is free, so you always get the releases that way if you want, but without the subscription you don't get the binary releases.
Anyway, without the subscription, apart from the binary relases, you also don't get stuff that aren't open-sourced, like the safe-disc circunvention, and some DirectX/3D stuff, I believe (not sure about that one though).
Agreed, for the most part. Though I think you and most people replying to the grandparent missed the point when he told about writing your own IM client, but that's not important anyway, so I'll leave that aside to address an important point you raised.
If Google is going to get their IM network to take off, it's going to take something about existing IM networks that can similarly simultaneously annoy you and all your friends into switching. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but it'll probably have to be something stronger than the lure of having everyone code their own client.
Actually the top IMs out there doesn't have too many differences between them. They all allow Instant Messaging (duh), some kind of control of contact lists, File transfers, etc. Some 2 or 3 allow voice or video chat. MSN is one of those, I think Yahoo does that too. I don't know about Yahoo users (don't use for a long time now), but as for MSN users (at least the ones I know), they tend to praise Video/Voice chat as a great feature (to which I disagree - read below), along with other eye-candies - "skinned visual", avatars, etc. So, I think that the big "selling" point is Video/Voice chat, that's pretty much the only thing that would be missing on a Jabber-compliant IM, but then, adding this to an IM client would be (IMHO) bloat, as voice and/or video chat is supposed to be a job for another app (e.g. Skype, Netmetting (does that still exists?), etc.), not part of the IM Client (you know, "keep it simple"). A better solution would be to easily integrate the IM client to those kind of programs.
Then you'd have the user base. Google has it's name, so this alone should help some. If Google choose to really use Jabber, then there will be interoperability between other IM protocols. Last time I checked, Jabber supports interoperability between ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and maybe others I don't remember. And the neat thing is that this happens at the server-side, with server transports. That means that if Yahoo changes its protocols, users don't have to update their IM clients, just the Yahoo transport on the server needs to be updated, and the users can access Yahoo again without the need to do anything. Granted, the server transports offer limited interoperability between the various protocols, but then, this is intented to be a migration tool, not a full compatibility layer.
I've been using Debian Unstable for about 2 years now, and never had any major breakage.
There ARE problems with broken dependencies from time to time (usually happens during transitions/upgrades of essential packages), but people who use Debian Unstable are supposed to know that and also know how to handle these problems.
For the average user, it's a safer bet to stick with Sarge.
I do use XFCE too, plus the Rox pinboard - makes the perfect combo, and still keeps the environment lean and fast.
However, I beg to disagree with your last sentence. The "bloat" in gnome is something relative - it may be heavier on the system, but Gnome and its apps feels far more integrated than XFCE. XFCE is pretty much only the panel, an eye-candied window manager, and a taskbar, and while it comes with easy to use configuration tools, they are very limited in the sense that there aren't not much room for customizing - something that gnome surely wins. The taskbar, for instance, have no real meaningful configuration, and always lives separated from the panel - IMHO, it should be a plugin, so you could attach the taskbar to the panel, thus freeing desktop space.
I can live with that tough. My main beef with the state of desktop on Linux is the fragmented situation of the GUI Tookits (mainly QT vs. GTK, though there are lesser ones). The problem is not having many toolkits per se, but the fact that this leaves the desktop with an unconsistent appearance. I'm all for having toolkit choices, but I wish they'd unite to create a standard themeing format, so a theme could be used on both toolkits, thus leaving a more or less consistent appearance to the desktop (there's still the GUI guidelines).
Unless your kids are using Linux, the Shockwave plugin can be found here (Access this link with a Mozilla-compatible browser).
Anyway, there's no indication that this "consortium" would set a standard for plugins in that they would be cross-platform. That would be the ideal situation, otherwise it would not bring many benefits to this effort.
I'm a[nother] Linux user, and I wanted a good reason to use FreeBSD. I've installed it twice, but after realizing that I didn't have a good reason to keep using it, as its maintenance was too time-consuming, I ended up removing it. But I still would like to use it, it feels very consistent, and the fact that it doesn't suffer from the "distributions" disease adds up to that.
Coming from a Debian background, my main complaint (and reason that I resist using it) is that, AFAIK, it doesn't have a large repository of binary packages for installation. I know about the wonders of Ports, but I feel like it is something for users with time and resources on their hands, which I do not have - I don't like the idea of having to wait sometimes hours for something to compile, so I can use it. This time could be better spent actually doing something useful with my computer, rather than it sitting there and compiling stuff.
I'm aware that Debian has two BSDs ports (NetBSD and FreeBSD), but they are far from maturity right now. For myself, I think that an automated system for installation/upgrading of software packages are a must for desktop installations, so FreeBSD is already out of the game here. For server installations, however, I could go without, although it would still be useful. So I'd like to know if there's a reliable and updated repository (i.e. packages website a la linuxpackages.net, for slackware) that FreeBSD users use to get binary packages.
Don't take this post as a troll, I'm really interested on FreeBSD and would like to have some solid reasons to use it.
I recently emailed Mozilla's licensing department about using derivative works of their icons. The response I received included this: "the image files are not under the same open source license as the rest of Mozilla. The reason for this is that it helps us preserve the clarity of our trademark."
Wouldn't that mean that Debian's issue with it is moot?
Fine with me; I can GIMP up the icons on the web site and use them myself as fair use. You should consider doing the same.
I thought about that, but then I could save time and just grab someone else's work - Actually I prefer the Firefox original icon, but the ones on that link are still way better than the ones distributed by Debian, to this date. BTW, this link was posted on Debian's maillist as a sugestion for the icon to replace the official one, and though the License is DFSG-Free (except maybe for the "firefox_old" icon, which is clearly derivative work), Debian is still sticking with that blue-globe crap icon. Go figure...
Too bad these also are trademarked. Debian can't use it because apparently it would violate the DFSG (Some threads about it) , so I have to stick with Debian's build of Firefox and Thunderbird that has crappy icons and logos.
Hey, cool down man... My comment wasn't supposed to be Insightful, just funny... I may have failed miserably at that, but I do agree with the grandparent, I just pointed out the similarity with his disclaimer and another popular one:-)
Lame MP3 Writer plugin for Winamp is what you're looking for, it seems. It uses the Lame dll (lame_enc.dll) to encode anything you play through Winamp to MP3.
You're saying that probably because you were expecting a MDI interface like Photoshop's. GIMP will nerver have this, because of a GTK limitation/stand.
"Limitation" as in GTK doesn't implement a MDI-like interface. "Stand" as in they won't never implement it, because of their opinion on this - they think MDI is evil, and while at first I didn't agree, after working with GIMP for awhile (and the new interface *IS* better, but you have to use it to understand why), I've came to belive that MDI is not necessarily the best answer.
For Photoshop guys going to GIMP, maybe an MDI interface would be more friendly, but that's another matter
First, complementing what the other poster said (though I don't completely agree with him), this is good for enterprises, especially because the IM server is open-source and available for free, and if you want to create your own server implementation, you can do it, and even extend it to your content.
Second - I don't know if the official proposed standard includes this, but the Jabber implementation allows interoperability between the most popular IMs (ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, etc.), and best of all, this is implemented in the server side. The nice thing about this is that when a protocol changes (MSN for example, that did this months ago), you don't have to update the clients (or client plugins, on some cases), just the protocol gateway on the server.
Of course, this doesn't mean that user John Doe will switch to it overnight, there's just no practical reason for him to do it. It will have to be pushed, and by some company/trademark that has influence, e.g. Netscape distributing a Jabber-compatible IM client along with their browser suite. Though it wouldn't be likely that Netscape would do it, as they are tied to AOL/AOLIM. So it's more likely that this will be a enterprise-only adopted standard, at least for some time.
I've been wanting to run the 2.6 on my Debian-unstable box, but I've been scared off by some of the negative reports I've heard so far. Some of them I've seen on comments from this article.
Most notably (for me) is devfs not being actively supported anymore (being shifted in favor of udev). That's sad, at least for me, because I've been using devfs since the early versions of the 2.4 kernel, it always worked well for me, and from what I've heard about udev so far, devfs seems like a more elegant and mature solution.
Then there are problems with USB devices, and others that, being narrowed down, comes down to problems on the APIC interface. From what I've heard so far, it doesn't look stable, so why ship it on linux 2.6?
There's also this problem with Kernel Preemption. I'm using it on my 2.4, and I don't want to go without it on 2.6. Of course I might just be lucky to no stumble on this problem, but the fact that it can trigger an oops on someone just scares the hell out of me.
Finally, there's a problem I've experienced myself, but didn't care to report at the time. It's quite old by now (I think it was around version 2.5.65~2.5.70). It has to do with software-raid. I've got a RAID-0 array with 3 SCSI Disks (6gb + 2x4gb = ~14Gb). The disks are old, I know, just like the controller (Adaptec AIC-7xxx). But they work just fine on the 2.4 kernel. So, at the time I decided to give 2.5 a try, just to find out that my array wasn't being detected/mounted. Googled around, found some similar reports and some possible workarounds, but none worked, so I switched back to the 2.4 kernel and haven't touched the development kernels since. It might just be resolved by now, I don't know... Anyway, I will soon replace these disks by a couple of IDEs, with no RAIDing, to save some CPU cycles, so this will not be such a big problem.
So, anyone care to give me one (or more) reason s to try 2.6 again?
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It's called freedom. As long as KDE can run GTK apps and Gnome can run QT apps, there is no reason to change anything.
Yeah, I've heard this mantra for long now. The problem is that this kind of thinking values more a line of ideology than users, the ones that actually have to struggle with the system.
I've already given up on the hope that Linux might have only one toolkit, or even better, that it would be embeeded on the X Server (you know, you'd have one less application layer to go through to do stuff on the screen). Now, I'd be happy if at least we could have a standardized themeing for all tookits, as in you could use one theme for all toolkits. What most bother users on having N toolkits is that they don't have a consistent look between them. You may argue that this does happen on Windows too, but it certainly happens at a far lesser degree. And it mostly don't happen with MacOSX.
This is not the story I'm looking for.
* Moves along *
The grandparent was about how much songs you actually hear, not how many you carry. For me, 1Gb is quite enough, I could get around 200 songs (or ~ 700 minutes) on that space. I don't keep my entire MP3 collection on the player, that's what my little fileserver is for anyway, so if I get tired of hearing a few songs on the player I just replace them with stuff I fell like hearing.
But that's just me, I understand that there are people who hear music in a more diverse fashion, but even for these people I think 4~5Gb is enough... If you get more diverse than that, you should as well just hear music on Radio.
Tried it here too, and saw pretty much the same thing. After recovering...
[~]: $ ulimit -a
core file size (blocks, -c) unlimited
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
open files (-n) 256
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
stack size (kbytes, -s) 2043
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 63
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) 2097152
As you can see, maximum user processes is 63. I can't see why Windows/Cygwin isn't respecting these limits. Or it is, but Windows screams before reaching such a low limit. On Linux, this limit is usually "unlimited". On my Debian box here, setting a limit of 1024 makes the attack futile (less than 2 seconds before the script craps out because of lack of resources).
So I guess Windows is even more fragile than Linux on this...
Very obfuscated indeed... As I see it, you can stop it by using a lower limit on ulimit -u...
Thanks for the explanation...
I did run this on a Debian box (testing) that is idle here (it used to be our mailserver, but this funcion was transferred to another box). I knew, from posts above, that it could fork bomb it and bring it down, and sure enough, it did. No problem, the box isn't in use anyway, but I'd like to know what this really does. As I see it, it only works on a Bash shell, but I can't figure what it really does.
Unfortunately, in the case of dhtml layers, it *is* harder, as you said, to distinguish. Maybe someone could think up a solution though, that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.
I don't think so. Following the same logic you described that popup blockers use (block automatic popups), I think it wouldn't be hard to create a blocker that denies layer operations (like show/hide) just at the "onload" javascript event handler... That's how the automatic popups you work anyway. You would of course break some legitimate uses, but I can't think of a situation where these legitimate uses couldn't be rewritten to behave the same having a different algorithm. But my brain is a little slow today, so suggestions are welcome.
Java and Flash on Linux are at least as good as their Windows versions.
Not quite. Java works fine on Linux, but Flash works *almost* fine. It still has a long standing (since 6.x I think) problems with the "WMODE" attribute on the plugin embedding tags. This attribute is usually used with a value of "transparent", to set the background of the Flash movie as a Transparent area on the Browser. Just take a look at globo.com on a Linux box and then on a Windows box (that displays the menu correctly) and you'll understand what I mean. That's just an example, of course, the website of the enterprise I work for has a menu similar to this one, and it has the same problems on linux. But globo.com is a relatively popular brazilian website.
Minidiscs are magnetic-read drives, whereas the UMD is an optical drive.
Not quite. Minidiscs drives are optical for reading, just like your everyday CD player. The magnetic part is used for recording MD, which drains more energy on MDs (try recording for 1 hour straight and you'll see your battery go out in no time).
A regular user account will not have write permissions to the "Program Files" directory by default. Assuming extensions are written to "Program Files\Mozilla FireFox\blah" I don't see how anyone other than a power user or administrator could install an extension.
Note: I could be talking out my ass if Firefox stores extensions in the user profile directory on Windows.
It does. However, your idea is still interesting. After the installation of Firefox and proper configuration for the unprivileged user, the Admin could go to the user's Firefox profile directory (here it is "C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox") and set the ownership of the folder Mozilla and beyond to the Administrator, and deny write access to everyone else (the user, in this case). That should do the trick, unless there is a way for the user to override the profile directory (don't know about that).
I know there's a way for any user to start Firefox in "Manage profile" mode, but don't know how far the unprivileged user can go with this - I haven't even tested the above suggestion either.
Wtf?
Well, I believe you meant to say the code is free, so you always get the releases that way if you want, but without the subscription you don't get the binary releases.
Anyway, without the subscription, apart from the binary relases, you also don't get stuff that aren't open-sourced, like the safe-disc circunvention, and some DirectX/3D stuff, I believe (not sure about that one though).
Agreed, for the most part. Though I think you and most people replying to the grandparent missed the point when he told about writing your own IM client, but that's not important anyway, so I'll leave that aside to address an important point you raised.
If Google is going to get their IM network to take off, it's going to take something about existing IM networks that can similarly simultaneously annoy you and all your friends into switching. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but it'll probably have to be something stronger than the lure of having everyone code their own client.
Actually the top IMs out there doesn't have too many differences between them. They all allow Instant Messaging (duh), some kind of control of contact lists, File transfers, etc. Some 2 or 3 allow voice or video chat. MSN is one of those, I think Yahoo does that too. I don't know about Yahoo users (don't use for a long time now), but as for MSN users (at least the ones I know), they tend to praise Video/Voice chat as a great feature (to which I disagree - read below), along with other eye-candies - "skinned visual", avatars, etc. So, I think that the big "selling" point is Video/Voice chat, that's pretty much the only thing that would be missing on a Jabber-compliant IM, but then, adding this to an IM client would be (IMHO) bloat, as voice and/or video chat is supposed to be a job for another app (e.g. Skype, Netmetting (does that still exists?), etc.), not part of the IM Client (you know, "keep it simple"). A better solution would be to easily integrate the IM client to those kind of programs.
Then you'd have the user base. Google has it's name, so this alone should help some. If Google choose to really use Jabber, then there will be interoperability between other IM protocols. Last time I checked, Jabber supports interoperability between ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and maybe others I don't remember. And the neat thing is that this happens at the server-side, with server transports. That means that if Yahoo changes its protocols, users don't have to update their IM clients, just the Yahoo transport on the server needs to be updated, and the users can access Yahoo again without the need to do anything. Granted, the server transports offer limited interoperability between the various protocols, but then, this is intented to be a migration tool, not a full compatibility layer.
I've been using Debian Unstable for about 2 years now, and never had any major breakage.
There ARE problems with broken dependencies from time to time (usually happens during transitions/upgrades of essential packages), but people who use Debian Unstable are supposed to know that and also know how to handle these problems.
For the average user, it's a safer bet to stick with Sarge.
I do use XFCE too, plus the Rox pinboard - makes the perfect combo, and still keeps the environment lean and fast.
However, I beg to disagree with your last sentence. The "bloat" in gnome is something relative - it may be heavier on the system, but Gnome and its apps feels far more integrated than XFCE. XFCE is pretty much only the panel, an eye-candied window manager, and a taskbar, and while it comes with easy to use configuration tools, they are very limited in the sense that there aren't not much room for customizing - something that gnome surely wins. The taskbar, for instance, have no real meaningful configuration, and always lives separated from the panel - IMHO, it should be a plugin, so you could attach the taskbar to the panel, thus freeing desktop space.
I can live with that tough. My main beef with the state of desktop on Linux is the fragmented situation of the GUI Tookits (mainly QT vs. GTK, though there are lesser ones). The problem is not having many toolkits per se, but the fact that this leaves the desktop with an unconsistent appearance. I'm all for having toolkit choices, but I wish they'd unite to create a standard themeing format, so a theme could be used on both toolkits, thus leaving a more or less consistent appearance to the desktop (there's still the GUI guidelines).
Well, not gonna happen anytime soon, tough... :-(
Unless your kids are using Linux, the Shockwave plugin can be found here (Access this link with a Mozilla-compatible browser).
Anyway, there's no indication that this "consortium" would set a standard for plugins in that they would be cross-platform. That would be the ideal situation, otherwise it would not bring many benefits to this effort.
I'm a[nother] Linux user, and I wanted a good reason to use FreeBSD. I've installed it twice, but after realizing that I didn't have a good reason to keep using it, as its maintenance was too time-consuming, I ended up removing it. But I still would like to use it, it feels very consistent, and the fact that it doesn't suffer from the "distributions" disease adds up to that.
Coming from a Debian background, my main complaint (and reason that I resist using it) is that, AFAIK, it doesn't have a large repository of binary packages for installation. I know about the wonders of Ports, but I feel like it is something for users with time and resources on their hands, which I do not have - I don't like the idea of having to wait sometimes hours for something to compile, so I can use it. This time could be better spent actually doing something useful with my computer, rather than it sitting there and compiling stuff.
I'm aware that Debian has two BSDs ports (NetBSD and FreeBSD), but they are far from maturity right now. For myself, I think that an automated system for installation/upgrading of software packages are a must for desktop installations, so FreeBSD is already out of the game here. For server installations, however, I could go without, although it would still be useful. So I'd like to know if there's a reliable and updated repository (i.e. packages website a la linuxpackages.net, for slackware) that FreeBSD users use to get binary packages.
Don't take this post as a troll, I'm really interested on FreeBSD and would like to have some solid reasons to use it.
I recently emailed Mozilla's licensing department about using derivative works of their icons. The response I received included this: "the image files are not under the same open source license as the rest of Mozilla. The reason for this is that it helps us preserve the clarity of our trademark."
Wouldn't that mean that Debian's issue with it is moot?
Fine with me; I can GIMP up the icons on the web site and use them myself as fair use. You should consider doing the same.
I thought about that, but then I could save time and just grab someone else's work - Actually I prefer the Firefox original icon, but the ones on that link are still way better than the ones distributed by Debian, to this date. BTW, this link was posted on Debian's maillist as a sugestion for the icon to replace the official one, and though the License is DFSG-Free (except maybe for the "firefox_old" icon, which is clearly derivative work), Debian is still sticking with that blue-globe crap icon. Go figure...
Too bad these also are trademarked. Debian can't use it because apparently it would violate the DFSG (Some threads about it) , so I have to stick with Debian's build of Firefox and Thunderbird that has crappy icons and logos.
Hey, cool down man... My comment wasn't supposed to be Insightful, just funny... I may have failed miserably at that, but I do agree with the grandparent, I just pointed out the similarity with his disclaimer and another popular one :-)
"Right now, speeds are fast enough..."
"640Kb ought to be enough for everyone..."
Lame MP3 Writer plugin for Winamp is what you're looking for, it seems. It uses the Lame dll (lame_enc.dll) to encode anything you play through Winamp to MP3.
You're saying that probably because you were expecting a MDI interface like Photoshop's. GIMP will nerver have this, because of a GTK limitation/stand.
"Limitation" as in GTK doesn't implement a MDI-like interface. "Stand" as in they won't never implement it, because of their opinion on this - they think MDI is evil, and while at first I didn't agree, after working with GIMP for awhile (and the new interface *IS* better, but you have to use it to understand why), I've came to belive that MDI is not necessarily the best answer.
For Photoshop guys going to GIMP, maybe an MDI interface would be more friendly, but that's another matter
First, complementing what the other poster said (though I don't completely agree with him), this is good for enterprises, especially because the IM server is open-source and available for free, and if you want to create your own server implementation, you can do it, and even extend it to your content.
Second - I don't know if the official proposed standard includes this, but the Jabber implementation allows interoperability between the most popular IMs (ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, etc.), and best of all, this is implemented in the server side. The nice thing about this is that when a protocol changes (MSN for example, that did this months ago), you don't have to update the clients (or client plugins, on some cases), just the protocol gateway on the server.
Of course, this doesn't mean that user John Doe will switch to it overnight, there's just no practical reason for him to do it. It will have to be pushed, and by some company/trademark that has influence, e.g. Netscape distributing a Jabber-compatible IM client along with their browser suite. Though it wouldn't be likely that Netscape would do it, as they are tied to AOL/AOLIM. So it's more likely that this will be a enterprise-only adopted standard, at least for some time.
I've been wanting to run the 2.6 on my Debian-unstable box, but I've been scared off by some of the negative reports I've heard so far. Some of them I've seen on comments from this article.
Most notably (for me) is devfs not being actively supported anymore (being shifted in favor of udev). That's sad, at least for me, because I've been using devfs since the early versions of the 2.4 kernel, it always worked well for me, and from what I've heard about udev so far, devfs seems like a more elegant and mature solution.
Then there are problems with USB devices, and others that, being narrowed down, comes down to problems on the APIC interface. From what I've heard so far, it doesn't look stable, so why ship it on linux 2.6?
There's also this problem with Kernel Preemption. I'm using it on my 2.4, and I don't want to go without it on 2.6. Of course I might just be lucky to no stumble on this problem, but the fact that it can trigger an oops on someone just scares the hell out of me.
Finally, there's a problem I've experienced myself, but didn't care to report at the time. It's quite old by now (I think it was around version 2.5.65~2.5.70). It has to do with software-raid. I've got a RAID-0 array with 3 SCSI Disks (6gb + 2x4gb = ~14Gb). The disks are old, I know, just like the controller (Adaptec AIC-7xxx). But they work just fine on the 2.4 kernel. So, at the time I decided to give 2.5 a try, just to find out that my array wasn't being detected/mounted. Googled around, found some similar reports and some possible workarounds, but none worked, so I switched back to the 2.4 kernel and haven't touched the development kernels since. It might just be resolved by now, I don't know... Anyway, I will soon replace these disks by a couple of IDEs, with no RAIDing, to save some CPU cycles, so this will not be such a big problem.
So, anyone care to give me one (or more) reason s to try 2.6 again?
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