A great cross-platform GUI is MyCC, available at www.mysql.com. It's pretty stable and has friendly stuff like inline editing. Not all that mature, but worth a look. It's what I use:).
While this article paints a pretty bleak picture of Linux, why should we care? Obviously the author doesn't know anything about it. Evolution is NOT a clone of the Windows desktop, and OpenOffice does NOT have an e-mail client.
And saying Linux means to "clone" the Windows environment... the nerve! I use it for precisely the opposite reason.
First time I saw a quicktime movie in fullscreen was through xine.
Re:Can it compete with KDE?
on
Gnome 2.0 RC1
·
· Score: 1
KDE seems, to me, like a "single product". It's huge, I can see why it's nice for some people and how newbies can benefit since everybody has the same programs... but it's big, clunky and slow.
I view GNOME as a collection of libraries and tools. GTK and GLib are much, much, much faster than QT, and so most GNOME apps are faster than their KDE counterparts. The downside is, of course, that they aren't as consistent as KDE apps (which, in my eyes, are even more consistent in design than Microsoft programs).
I like KDE. I think it's great. But I'm not going to install it on my computer. I'd uninstall QT if it weren't for one program. Heck, I don't use the GNOME desktop either (I use blackbox) but I use plenty of GNOME tools (i.e., Galeon) since they're the best stuff out there.
Though some GNOME developers wouldn't agree, I'd say KDE and GNOME don't compete... nor should they.
As it says on the link in the review, $_GET, $_POST & co. were implemented in PHP 4.1.0 and not 4.2.0. Just in case anyone wants to compile a history;).
As for the book... personally I wouldn't have found it useful (based on this review) at any stage of my PHP education. The online manual is simply too good. I really don't see what else is needed - good coding practice can be figured out with common sense - a mix and match from Perl, C, and (more and more these days, especially with Zend 2) Java.
The function reference is superb - not to mention the user-contributed notes, which as often as not have the answer to your specific question. My Galeon is, not surprisingly, outfitted with a Smart Bookmark to the function reference. Beats a book any day.
Anyone willing to try out the Hurd can download some.ISO's at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/iso/hurd-H4/. They're based on Debian, and so apt-get and all that works in them.
As mentioned before, this version of Mach is about to be dropped in favor of OSKit-Mach. I don't know what the H4 CD's have (I haven't installed 'em yet) but the H3's didn't use OSKit-Mach. OSKit Mach has all the drivers that Linux 2.2 has, which is better than Mach 1.3, which iirc only has Linux 2.0's drivers.
In my brief experience with the HURD (you can only have so much fun without network card drivers) I liked it even more than Linux - using servers instead of using the kernel itself makes it more logical to, say, integrate an FTP directory into your filesystem (and indeed, this server has already been set up). settrans is lots of fun.
It's got X. It has pretty much everything you need - I could convert to the Hurd and barely lose productivity. What it's missing mostly are drivers (though OSKit should help with that, I haven't tried it).
Anyway, if you have a weekend to kill, it's a lot of fun.
Work on e17 certainly hasn't stopped. It's just always slow because they're a bunch of people working in their spare time for free, yadda yadda.
I tested it out about a month ago and it was freakin' incredible. If what I poked around with is any indication, it's going to have the best themeability of the lot (and a great theme-writing program, too!). It has a lot of great things going for it. But it's quite a ways off, I wouldn't expect even a beta this year.
On the other hand,/. has probably been one of the biggest DoS mechanisms on the 'net, in a manner of speaking. Can you think of anything more bandwidth-destructive than being slashdotted?:)
OS makers NEED TO USE FILE NAMES THAT ARE MORE DESCRIPTIVE.
Normal users should not have to remember ANY directory names except the ones they make up -- system directories should be transparent.
System administrators prefer a fast, simple, and all-encompassing directory structure.
Why on EARTH would I type "c:\Documents and Settings\noda\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst" when I could put it where I wanted: somewhere like "/home/noda/mail"? Windows path: 92 characters. Linux: 15. And before you go on about ~1's: I could probably type in/home/no before you typed in ~1 alone. And it's useless in c:\progra~1, since there are tons of micros~'s.
I think "Documents and Settings" is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to computers. "Local Settings" and "Application Data" aren't far behind.
Add to that the fact that the backspace key is in a different spot on every different keyboard....
I begin to wonder if these horribly long directory structures were implemented to force people to double-click. Or maybe to show off that it's not DOS. Or to discourage newbies from fooling around with the filesystem. Because I'm sure it's not because it's easier.
Re:Little content, little meaning...
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
Furthermore, I'd imagine everyone who's been working in computers for awhile has watched the Windows GUI break, and then need the command prompt to fix it.
Yes, it's truly lovely. Ever had win2k die on you? The only solution I've found (since safe mode doesn't work about 7 times out of 10) is to boot to the CD (which most of the time involves changing your BIOS to do that); wait for the entire setup to load; get through the rather annoying setup which could REALLY use a "back" feature (I'm sure I'm not the only one who tries stuff to quickly after the 5 minutes of loading); and getting to a console, which takes even more time to load.
And each time you want to try it out you have to reboot once to try out the GUI and again to reboot to the prompt when it doesn't work -- the whole 15-minute eXPerience over again!
And for those who say "use Safe Mode Command Prompt" -- try it. It boots the GUI and sticks the command prompt on top. Which won't boot if your GUI doesn't work.
I was in front of a new computer when the heat sink simply snapped off one of the weak plastic tabs that holds it. It lasted less than a second and that was that.
One second simply isn't enough time to associate the "ping!" with a fan falling off and cut the power. And so a beautiful Athlon 1.4 was rendered useless. And what a smell....
I think a lot of people have some incorrect assumptions about any non-MS software, particularly *nix; simply because people with high computer skills use the software doesn't mean it's inaccessible to an ordinary user.
A few months ago I inspired myself with a "test" to see how far Linux had progressed and if it was going to catch up with Windows for ease-of-use any time soon. I download Linux-Mandrake 8 and installed modifying the defaults as little as possible.
To me it seems like a much more logical and easy-to-learn desktop than Windows. The KDE menu is much more intuitive than the Start Menu and takes fewer clicks (and less searching!) to find programs. The KDE Control Panel is much easier to use than the Windows one. Help files are everywhere. Most icons look logical and do what I'd expect. (i.e., I look at my panel and know which one opens E-mail, which is more than you can say for Outlook).
I think everybody, including (and maybe even especially) the *nix community, thinks it's hard to learn a new operating system and so goes overboard with helpfiles and coding for ease of use. The end result? A much easier operating system to use than Windows.
I regret that it's kind of impossible to test this any farther since everybody who uses computers at all is biased one way or another. There's no way around it. However, as someone who's used Windows all my life I found it incredibly easy to use Linux. It's much easier to set up and use than Windows.
I can't wait until GNOME 2.0. I'm going to try to migrate my home computer over permanently.
Slashdot Mirror
A great cross-platform GUI is MyCC, available at www.mysql.com. It's pretty stable and has friendly stuff like inline editing. Not all that mature, but worth a look. It's what I use :).
MySQL 4.0 supports rollbacks. Even the alpha is very stable.
While this article paints a pretty bleak picture of Linux, why should we care? Obviously the author doesn't know anything about it. Evolution is NOT a clone of the Windows desktop, and OpenOffice does NOT have an e-mail client.
And saying Linux means to "clone" the Windows environment... the nerve! I use it for precisely the opposite reason.
At least it'll play fullscreen.
First time I saw a quicktime movie in fullscreen was through xine.
KDE seems, to me, like a "single product". It's huge, I can see why it's nice for some people and how newbies can benefit since everybody has the same programs... but it's big, clunky and slow. I view GNOME as a collection of libraries and tools. GTK and GLib are much, much, much faster than QT, and so most GNOME apps are faster than their KDE counterparts. The downside is, of course, that they aren't as consistent as KDE apps (which, in my eyes, are even more consistent in design than Microsoft programs). I like KDE. I think it's great. But I'm not going to install it on my computer. I'd uninstall QT if it weren't for one program. Heck, I don't use the GNOME desktop either (I use blackbox) but I use plenty of GNOME tools (i.e., Galeon) since they're the best stuff out there. Though some GNOME developers wouldn't agree, I'd say KDE and GNOME don't compete... nor should they.
As it says on the link in the review, $_GET, $_POST & co. were implemented in PHP 4.1.0 and not 4.2.0. Just in case anyone wants to compile a history ;).
As for the book... personally I wouldn't have found it useful (based on this review) at any stage of my PHP education. The online manual is simply too good. I really don't see what else is needed - good coding practice can be figured out with common sense - a mix and match from Perl, C, and (more and more these days, especially with Zend 2) Java.
The function reference is superb - not to mention the user-contributed notes, which as often as not have the answer to your specific question. My Galeon is, not surprisingly, outfitted with a Smart Bookmark to the function reference. Beats a book any day.
.mp3 stands for MPEG-3...
Anyone willing to try out the Hurd can download some .ISO's at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/iso/hurd-H4/. They're based on Debian, and so apt-get and all that works in them.
As mentioned before, this version of Mach is about to be dropped in favor of OSKit-Mach. I don't know what the H4 CD's have (I haven't installed 'em yet) but the H3's didn't use OSKit-Mach. OSKit Mach has all the drivers that Linux 2.2 has, which is better than Mach 1.3, which iirc only has Linux 2.0's drivers.
In my brief experience with the HURD (you can only have so much fun without network card drivers) I liked it even more than Linux - using servers instead of using the kernel itself makes it more logical to, say, integrate an FTP directory into your filesystem (and indeed, this server has already been set up). settrans is lots of fun.
It's got X. It has pretty much everything you need - I could convert to the Hurd and barely lose productivity. What it's missing mostly are drivers (though OSKit should help with that, I haven't tried it).
Anyway, if you have a weekend to kill, it's a lot of fun.
Work on e17 certainly hasn't stopped. It's just always slow because they're a bunch of people working in their spare time for free, yadda yadda.
I tested it out about a month ago and it was freakin' incredible. If what I poked around with is any indication, it's going to have the best themeability of the lot (and a great theme-writing program, too!). It has a lot of great things going for it. But it's quite a ways off, I wouldn't expect even a beta this year.
On the other hand, /. has probably been one of the biggest DoS mechanisms on the 'net, in a manner of speaking. Can you think of anything more bandwidth-destructive than being slashdotted? :)
- Normal users should not have to remember ANY directory names except the ones they make up -- system directories should be transparent.
- System administrators prefer a fast, simple, and all-encompassing directory structure.
Why on EARTH would I type "c:\Documents and Settings\noda\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst" when I could put it where I wanted: somewhere like "/home/noda/mail"? Windows path: 92 characters. Linux: 15. And before you go on about ~1's: I could probably type inI think "Documents and Settings" is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to computers. "Local Settings" and "Application Data" aren't far behind.
Add to that the fact that the backspace key is in a different spot on every different keyboard....
I begin to wonder if these horribly long directory structures were implemented to force people to double-click. Or maybe to show off that it's not DOS. Or to discourage newbies from fooling around with the filesystem. Because I'm sure it's not because it's easier.
Furthermore, I'd imagine everyone who's been working in computers for awhile has watched the Windows GUI break, and then need the command prompt to fix it.
Yes, it's truly lovely. Ever had win2k die on you? The only solution I've found (since safe mode doesn't work about 7 times out of 10) is to boot to the CD (which most of the time involves changing your BIOS to do that); wait for the entire setup to load; get through the rather annoying setup which could REALLY use a "back" feature (I'm sure I'm not the only one who tries stuff to quickly after the 5 minutes of loading); and getting to a console, which takes even more time to load.
And each time you want to try it out you have to reboot once to try out the GUI and again to reboot to the prompt when it doesn't work -- the whole 15-minute eXPerience over again!
And for those who say "use Safe Mode Command Prompt" -- try it. It boots the GUI and sticks the command prompt on top. Which won't boot if your GUI doesn't work.
I was in front of a new computer when the heat sink simply snapped off one of the weak plastic tabs that holds it. It lasted less than a second and that was that.
One second simply isn't enough time to associate the "ping!" with a fan falling off and cut the power. And so a beautiful Athlon 1.4 was rendered useless. And what a smell....
I think a lot of people have some incorrect assumptions about any non-MS software, particularly *nix; simply because people with high computer skills use the software doesn't mean it's inaccessible to an ordinary user.
A few months ago I inspired myself with a "test" to see how far Linux had progressed and if it was going to catch up with Windows for ease-of-use any time soon. I download Linux-Mandrake 8 and installed modifying the defaults as little as possible.
To me it seems like a much more logical and easy-to-learn desktop than Windows. The KDE menu is much more intuitive than the Start Menu and takes fewer clicks (and less searching!) to find programs. The KDE Control Panel is much easier to use than the Windows one. Help files are everywhere. Most icons look logical and do what I'd expect. (i.e., I look at my panel and know which one opens E-mail, which is more than you can say for Outlook).
I think everybody, including (and maybe even especially) the *nix community, thinks it's hard to learn a new operating system and so goes overboard with helpfiles and coding for ease of use. The end result? A much easier operating system to use than Windows.
I regret that it's kind of impossible to test this any farther since everybody who uses computers at all is biased one way or another. There's no way around it. However, as someone who's used Windows all my life I found it incredibly easy to use Linux. It's much easier to set up and use than Windows.
I can't wait until GNOME 2.0. I'm going to try to migrate my home computer over permanently.