what other important features has OSX that Linux has not.
huh? Linux has quite a few journaling filing systems, in particular it has the rather fine ReiserFS. In the next kernel series, RFS 4 will be out, which seriously kicks ass from what I've been seeing. In particular it has very high performance, esp for small files. XFS has attributes too.
I am thinking about getting a Laptop with OSX so I was wondering how OXS compares to Linux.
A quick comparison:
OS X easy to use. Linux, not there yet, check back in a few years
OS X single vendor, Linux multivendor
OS X good hardware integration, but not much range in terms of machines you can buy, Linux will run on anything, not so good hardware integration.
OS X expensive, Linux cheap
OS X brand name software, usually high quality, most of the important stuff made by Microsoft, most software relatively expensive, Linux no branding at all, no MS software, practically all software is free speech/beer.
But the most important of all, OS X is proprietary and has all the lockin nastyness you'd associate with Windows, Linux is free. Nuff said.
If you can't find decent bands who are willing to let you broadcast their music for free, you probably shouldn't be running an Internet radio station.
You're assuming it's easy to find bands who'll let you do that. I've suggested it to a few, trying to find music for WOPN - they all said no, citing the perception that if they'd previously given away their music for free, it would be harder to get a record contract. They all dream of fame and fortune, and if they think supporting net radio will put that dream in jepoardy, they won't do it.
Microsoft really missed a trick here. The fact is, millions upon millions of people switched from the Mac to Windows, around the time Win95 came out. I think the Mac once had, what, 40% market share? Now it's 4% (barely, only 0.4% if you only count OSX machines)
Ohh, but that was years ago you say, Macs don't suck anymore. OK, fair point, but why should this stop MS Marketing? Bear in mind the Apple ads talk about stuff like blue screens (i think they have a whole ad devoted to them) despite the fact that if you go out and buy a brand name PC with XP preloaded (so you don't have dodgy hardware combos) you will never see a blue screen. I have XP at work, using it now, and have not seen a blue screen on it ever. That's a solved problem, yet Apple keep harping on about it.
Why? Because it's got a reputation. Marketing is about perceptions, and the perception is Windows == BSODs. Yet for many, many users, "Mac" reminds them of the POS that was System 8 or whatever it was called, and they "switched" to Windows for very good reasons.
Anyway, it's worth remembering the post in the earlier story by Dr Spork - Apple is not serious competition to Microsoft. I think something like 80% of computers are in business? Don't recall where I read that statistic, but Apple have practically zero business presence. Lockin is too strong, and Apple are on MS life support anyway - and even with Microsoft helping them to fix bugs in OS X they still need help from the open source movement too! If Apple were to become a threat, you are guaranteed Microsoft would not be pissing about with ridiculous web pages (not even a tv ad). They'd do something about it, like they did back in the days.
Gee, I wonder if Caroline Woodham, the model in the picture, knows she switched to XP or that she is now a Microsoft editor
Except Caroline Woodham is the photographer not the model. Try hovering over the link on that page. The model (who isn't hot btw;) doesn't seem to be named, surprise surprise.
When there are big world events, the amount of net traffic does increase overall, but not hugely, as instead of wasting time reading/working, we all go and look at news sites instead.
One way around this problem is bandwidth insurance. What is this? Large groups of averagely popular websites all get their bandwidth from certain sources. When there's a sudden move in traffic, those really big providers can simply deallocate the bandwidth from gardening.com and reallocate it to the BBC.
I might be talking out of my ass here, as the BBC already has peering agreements with Telehouse etc it's so big. Alternatively ISPs could implement decent caching systems. Otherwise, FreeNet released 0.5rc1 earlier:)
Not a single thing that you listed has been implemented as per their specs. There are still two different browsers, with each one only supporting the various technologies partially. There's no consistency between the brosers (still), and there's probably not going to be.
Only 2? There are loads of web browsers. IE and Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, iCab, gtk-html etc. Virtually all of them save IE and Opera implement the specs pretty well. IE just suffers from a lot of bugs - you'll notice in IE6 one of the "new features" was a modicum of standards compliance. Yes, there are bugs in browsers. Wowee, the programmers made some mistakes. It happens, these are not simple technologies. IE has more bugs than it should do, but they seem to be getting their act together to at least some extent.
The W3C specs are typically complex - they do pretty advanced stuff. A complete vector graphics language anybody? That's damn cool, but a lot of work. Yet it's getting done none the less, Moz has its own native svg implementation and Konqui supports it too.
There's clearly no kind of real, pressing reason for software developers to design according to the W3C specs. The W3C has no teeth. The best they can do is throw something out there, and cross their fingers.
Sure there is - interoperability. Hence the fact that all web browsers attempt to use the same technologies. Some manage better than others of course.
On top of that, I gotta say that from what I've read, these various technologies would have happened with or without the W3C. And, you didn't list the hundreds of other specifications that they wrote that are simple not implemented anywhere.
The point of the W3C is not to be a research institution. There was structured markup before XML, there was hypertext before HTTP, there was vector graphics before SVG. But people are using these specs regardless, because the value of interoperability is high. That last sentance is provably false, for a specification to reach "W3C Recommendation" status there must be at least one, often more than one implementation. Don't make the mistake of assuming that all their specs are meant for the web browser, or even the web.
... the W3C has been a group without any kind of power for a long time. They've been suggesting technical web standard since the Web began, but they've been largely ignored for at least the past 3-4 years.
What evidence do you have to support that statement? Let's see, specifications of the W3C that are widely used:
XML: uh, yeah. Ignored?
All the other bits that come with XML - XPath, XSLT, DOM and so on
HTML4 - yes, this is a standard, yes people frequently break its rules but html4 is a standard that allows for that to some extent. It's implemented in every major browser (ignoring bugs).
CSS - lots of sites use this
SOAP? No, it wasn't "invented" by the W3C, but the W3C accepts other peoples technologies as well as inventing its own, hence this story.
The W3C is producing some of the most thorough and powerful technical standards around. They are very readable and well organized (if you don't believe me try reading some specs from ECMA, or the IETF which still does not use rich text in its specs). They have a long term vision - the semantic web.
To be honest, the W3C is one of the most important standards bodies around, if they didn't exist and hadn't sorted out the browser wars, today the web would be totally screwed over. I'd like to say a huge thankyou to Bruce: anybody can sit back in their chair and write a new MP3 player but it takes real dedication and energy to travel the world sitting through meetings with corporate execs and fighting for our cause when all you have is the strength of your argument to back you up.
Yes! DocBook is becoming the standard format nowadays anyway, I believe all the KDE and GNOME docs are written in it. In fact I know the gnome2 docs are. You can customize the stylesheets and see the results in Yelp. What's really needed is for all the man/info pages to be switched to DocBook and a fast command line viewer to be written. DocBook is great, but I don't want to wait 5 secs to view the equivalent of a man page....
Config files : Yes! GConf can do a lot of cool stuff. It stores its configs in XML (thought it can do others as well I believe), and can even do app notification. I wish it was used more outside of gnome.
I think most distros are compliant these days. I know SuSE, RedHat and possibly Mandrake are. Debian is very close to compliant, a few minor issues left. Dunno about Gentoo. Compliance isn't so much of an issue these days.
A common clipboard, for copy and paste, would be wonderful.
There is one. A few apps don't work with it properly, but they are disappearing fast.
Another thing that would be great: common menu system. In fact, it would be great if the menu system was actually just a directory on disk with some subdirectories in it, each populated with links to various apps. That way, if a Window Manager or desktop tool didn't want to offer a menu system, you might still be able to navigate it. If that were in common for all or even many of the WMs out there (KDE, xfce, Gnome, IceWM, and so on), that would make things far easier.
Implemented, as least in KDE3 (redhat version, soon to be all versions) and GNOME2. Check out the vFolders spec - it doesn't use directories of symlinks, it's a little more sophisticated. But it's definately a step in the right direction.
Finally, common desktop icons (again, not that there have to be specific apps that must be there, just that if I create a link to Galeon on my desktop, it'd be swell if it appeared in KDE and Gnome (and other) desktops.
Again it's been standardised over at freedesktop.org. I believe gnome and kde should start using it soon. They are also standardizing icon theming (if you want it), so the icon will look the same too.
Standards are great aren't they:) Kudos to Havoc Pennington for all the work he's been doing in this field.
In a sense he lived the life that the Gnu Manifesto envisages as the ideal state of affairs: a life in which everybody may modify and copy software for all of their friends.
And therein lies the problem with the GNU manifesto. It's a fundamental economic impossibility (at the moment), because we all exist within capitalism which forces us to restrict our creations in order to get back capital from it.
All software being free in both senses is just that - utopia. Maybe we can get there one day, but not in our lifetimes that's for sure. Until then, you either play by the rules that govern our society, or you don't, regardless of what your personal opinion of them is.
We all know that besides gaming, video editing is the big killer app.
Uhh, we do? Could somebody explain why please? I've heard it's more popular in the States than elsewhere, but I can count with one hand how many times I've seen (or even heard of) people editing their home movies on their computer: none.
Apple seem to make a big deal of this as well. Is this some kind of craze that never reached Europe, much like text messaging/sms never made the crossover to the US? Or is it just the latest round of tech industry hype, not actually backed up by substance?
I didn't really mean to pooh pooh what the SGI team had done, though as I've never used their X server I can and will take your word for it that it's very good.
However just because Solaris has good hardware integration and a bad X server doesn't mean SGI don't get an advantage from matching hardware with software. They just focus on different areas: Solaris can do stuff like hotswapping CPUs at runtime (i think), so they concentrated mainly on high end server stuff. The advantages they get from hardware/software integration aren't graphical, they're server based. SGI just chose to focus a lot on their X server, which is definately cool, but considering the challenges the XFree team face I think they do a pretty good job too.
Oh and finally, XScreensaver rocks, I love it and use it all the time:) Though I think it could do with fewer mathematical savers and more eyecandy ones, like atlantis (my favourite).
I was under the impression that America didn't use GSM for their mobile networks. Is this still correct? I'm going to Denver on Tuesday so I'll find out then whether my phone will work or not. Can anybody explain?
until false; do lynx -source http://oh, I don't know/ >/dev/null ; sleep $(( RANDOM / 1024 + 1 )); done
and then accidently hit enter in a Bash shell...
You do realize that this is probably classed as terrorism right? But no matter, I'm doing it, because people just hitting shift-reload get bored, whereas scripts can just be forked into the background. Right now, I should think Novak is a little pissed. If a few thousand people just ran that script when they got up in the morning, it would really start to cause him grief. Being vigilantism it's absolutely not legal or even morally correct - but it is quite good fun;)
Hey, I really would not suggest slashdot linking to Novak's website. As you know, the "slashdot effect" will bring his site to a crawl, losing potential customers. He'll also have a hefty bandwidth bill from his ISP.
Wow! It worked! I'm just getting connection refused. Heheh, this is fun, time to go set a shell script hammering his page for a few hours.
One of the most innovating things about the IRIX in the '90s were the vector icons it uses for its desktop and file/icon managers. IRIX had vector support by default in its desktop long before MacOSX ever existed.
Not sure what this is implying, but it seems to be a surprisingly common misconception that MacOSX has vector based artwork. Not so. GNOME can do, and I think KDE3.1 can as well, via SVG. MacOS icons though are just bitmaps in a variety of sizes, with some scaling/blending algorithms applied.
The SGI desktop is of course based on a heavily modified commercial X Server. And here I will stop for a second, get a big breath and say: 'wow'. I have never seen an X server being so fast, on a 5-year old machine (no matter if this is an SGI machine or not).
I'd kind of expect this given that IRIX comes as a bundle with the hardware. When you choose the hardware as well as the software you can of course optimize the drivers a lot, so you will get good speeds out of it. XFree has to deal with a lot of different hardware, and the driver manufacturers are sometimes less than helpful. Probably worth remember that IRIX won't have some of the newer X extensions like XRender.
Well my point was that you don't have to do any kernel hacking, if you're willing to wait a few weeks. I have the nVidia drivers, and didn't have to compile anything. The SuSE setup just gave me instructions for how to download the drivers, I clicked on the RPM and it went ahead and installed. The whole thing was entirely graphical if I remember rightly. I had to reboot, but apart from that no problems. The days when kernel hacking was needed are over (thankfully)
Apple has pursued those who create an Aqua style theme for other computers because the LOOK and FEEL does belong to them. They paid artists and graphic designers to come up with it. Using it elsewhere is like using the Apple logo elsewhere, and Apple has the right to keep what's theirs theirs.
A slight correction, Apple does not own Aqua, because their own court case made it legal precedent that you cannot own a "look and feel". Yes, Apple act like they own it, but this is because the law is not the same as justice. They have no legal right to send threatening letters to theme creators, if it went to court they'd lose. But of course, nobody wants to go to court, do they?
Well, I've just been playing with RedHat 8, in VMware unfortunately so it was a bit slow, but I thought I'd write some comments on the new UI stuff anyway.
Firstly, I think once again RedHat are clearly setting trends here. Mark my words, BlueCurve is good stuff and the other distros will be doing something similar soon. Actually, the credits for giving Linux a serious facelist first should really go to Connectiva, who sponsored the Crystal icon themes and a truckload of artwork for KDE, but that's beside the point.
One thing you realise pretty quickly using Psyche though is that the method BlueCurve uses to make things look the same is the wrong way. By wrong way, I don't mean to criticize RedHat, as right now it's the only way. However, the stock RedHat install places for instance the OpenOffice icons on the panel. Click them, and you're greeted with a Windows 98 style theme. Where did BlueCurve go? Well obviously we know that OOo uses its own widget toolkit, which there isn't a version of BlueCurve for. What's really needed then is some kind of standardised theming system, so you can write a theme once and have it run on many different widget toolkits. FreeDesktop.org would be an ideal place to do this.
The second thing that strikes you is that, at least on the surface, KDE and GNOME are so similar that there is little point having both. I pretty quickly reset GNOME2 to its default layout with a menu panel, and I think it's a shame that RedHat uses the KDE layout. For new users at least, KDE and GNOME compete based on their desktop interfaces. By making them the same, you remove a reason for having them both there.
To sum up, I think RH8 is a step in the right direction, but in some cases they went overboard. Using the same themes is a good idea. Making the inital setups identical isn't such a hot idea, even though it is easy to change them around.
Finally, there is a comment way up at the top that criticizes the layout of the preferences/settings. Yeah, that sucks it's true, but really it's about the only thing I can think of that does UI wise in Psyche. Really, don't knock it until you've tried it. Overall, it's very easy to use indeed, and there are GUI applets for virtually everything. As a long time SuSE user, I must admit I'm being seriously tempted to switch. Perhaps I'd rearrange the menus slightly, change the installed apps a bit, but I'd have no hesitation in showing this to people and having pride in it - look, this is Linux, see what we can do.
And that's why Linux isn't more popular with Mr Average;)
Come on, be fair. For those who can't see the above post, it's a list of commands to type to install the nVidia drivers or something.
If nVidia hadn't released their drivers for the latest update of Windows, what could you do? Nothing. You'd have to wait. My goodness, you can wait with Linux too and get them in a nice easy RPM.... but you don't have to.
I see you have a mac.com account. For you it's simple. When something new comes, you must wait for Apple to do it for you, then you must usually pay for it too. Give the guys above a break, they were just swapping tips because they like the bleeding edge, you're not forced to be like they are anymore.
Not at all, that's what I thought until I realised I wasn't using them properly. A quick guide to the Mozilla pie menus:
1) Hold down the right mouse button. I can't stress this enough. Don't click once, then move the mouse, then click again.
2) Use the tooltips.
3) Don't feel you need to use the pie menu for everything, just a few things like switching tabs, refreshing a page etc is good. Keep doing it, and after a few times you'll find it comes naturally.
4) Throw the mouse around. If you're wondering why the pie menus follow you around, it's so you can be very vicious with them. Hold down right, throw the mouse to the top left, the throw it to the right and let go. You can do this very quickly, because you don't have to aim, and the movements can be very vague indeed. Then let go.
5) Don't think about it. If you constantly look at the menu while using it, you lose the speed advantage. If anything, just defocus for a moment while you start, that way you remember the motion rather than what's on the screen.
To be honest after getting used to them, I love them. I wish GTK/Qt had an option to do this. It's one of those cool hacks you want to do but never have time for....
RedHat announce that they won't have DRM in their OS anytime soon.
Not to be left behind, all the other distros made similar proclamations, except Debian, which is late and expected to follow suit sometime next year.
Pretty shortly, the OS/2 development team will make a similar announcement, as will the FreeBSD teams, as will the QNX team, as will that guy down the road who wrote his own OS in assembler.
..... seriously, get a grip guys. Firstly, Palladium is so far vapourware. I haven't seen a Palladium computer. Have you?
Secondly, this is a non story. Apple HAVEN'T made an announcement! Incredible. I haven't made an announcement today either, can I get a story on slashdot? In fact, the ONLY people who have announced their intention to support DRM are the one company that do in fact have a monopoly and can therefore do such an unpopular thing.
Finally, all those people who've posted things like "Wow, Apple you are clearly sticking up for my rights, I'll buy a Mac" are talking rubbish. Apple are famous for abusing the legal system whenever it suits them. They are a corporation, and know all about legal pressure points. If it turns out that this mystical all encompassing DRM strategy isn't working because the pirates are using Macs, then the RIAA will have a quick chat with Jobs, who will see where his best interests lie, and bingo suddenly QuickTime has DRM.
There is in fact only 1 type of OS that will never have DRM, guaranteed. Say no more.
Slashdot Mirror
huh? Linux has quite a few journaling filing systems, in particular it has the rather fine ReiserFS. In the next kernel series, RFS 4 will be out, which seriously kicks ass from what I've been seeing. In particular it has very high performance, esp for small files. XFS has attributes too.
I am thinking about getting a Laptop with OSX so I was wondering how OXS compares to Linux.
A quick comparison:
But the most important of all, OS X is proprietary and has all the lockin nastyness you'd associate with Windows, Linux is free. Nuff said.
You're assuming it's easy to find bands who'll let you do that. I've suggested it to a few, trying to find music for WOPN - they all said no, citing the perception that if they'd previously given away their music for free, it would be harder to get a record contract. They all dream of fame and fortune, and if they think supporting net radio will put that dream in jepoardy, they won't do it.
Ohh, but that was years ago you say, Macs don't suck anymore. OK, fair point, but why should this stop MS Marketing? Bear in mind the Apple ads talk about stuff like blue screens (i think they have a whole ad devoted to them) despite the fact that if you go out and buy a brand name PC with XP preloaded (so you don't have dodgy hardware combos) you will never see a blue screen. I have XP at work, using it now, and have not seen a blue screen on it ever. That's a solved problem, yet Apple keep harping on about it.
Why? Because it's got a reputation. Marketing is about perceptions, and the perception is Windows == BSODs. Yet for many, many users, "Mac" reminds them of the POS that was System 8 or whatever it was called, and they "switched" to Windows for very good reasons.
Anyway, it's worth remembering the post in the earlier story by Dr Spork - Apple is not serious competition to Microsoft. I think something like 80% of computers are in business? Don't recall where I read that statistic, but Apple have practically zero business presence. Lockin is too strong, and Apple are on MS life support anyway - and even with Microsoft helping them to fix bugs in OS X they still need help from the open source movement too! If Apple were to become a threat, you are guaranteed Microsoft would not be pissing about with ridiculous web pages (not even a tv ad). They'd do something about it, like they did back in the days.
Except Caroline Woodham is the photographer not the model. Try hovering over the link on that page. The model (who isn't hot btw ;) doesn't seem to be named, surprise surprise.
When there are big world events, the amount of net traffic does increase overall, but not hugely, as instead of wasting time reading/working, we all go and look at news sites instead.
One way around this problem is bandwidth insurance. What is this? Large groups of averagely popular websites all get their bandwidth from certain sources. When there's a sudden move in traffic, those really big providers can simply deallocate the bandwidth from gardening.com and reallocate it to the BBC .
I might be talking out of my ass here, as the BBC already has peering agreements with Telehouse etc it's so big. Alternatively ISPs could implement decent caching systems. Otherwise, FreeNet released 0.5rc1 earlier :)
I was thinking mainly of the DOM wrt Opera, but yes, point taken.
Only 2? There are loads of web browsers. IE and Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, iCab, gtk-html etc. Virtually all of them save IE and Opera implement the specs pretty well. IE just suffers from a lot of bugs - you'll notice in IE6 one of the "new features" was a modicum of standards compliance. Yes, there are bugs in browsers. Wowee, the programmers made some mistakes. It happens, these are not simple technologies. IE has more bugs than it should do, but they seem to be getting their act together to at least some extent.
The W3C specs are typically complex - they do pretty advanced stuff. A complete vector graphics language anybody? That's damn cool, but a lot of work. Yet it's getting done none the less, Moz has its own native svg implementation and Konqui supports it too.
There's clearly no kind of real, pressing reason for software developers to design according to the W3C specs. The W3C has no teeth. The best they can do is throw something out there, and cross their fingers.
Sure there is - interoperability. Hence the fact that all web browsers attempt to use the same technologies. Some manage better than others of course.
On top of that, I gotta say that from what I've read, these various technologies would have happened with or without the W3C. And, you didn't list the hundreds of other specifications that they wrote that are simple not implemented anywhere.
The point of the W3C is not to be a research institution. There was structured markup before XML, there was hypertext before HTTP, there was vector graphics before SVG. But people are using these specs regardless, because the value of interoperability is high. That last sentance is provably false, for a specification to reach "W3C Recommendation" status there must be at least one, often more than one implementation. Don't make the mistake of assuming that all their specs are meant for the web browser, or even the web.
What evidence do you have to support that statement? Let's see, specifications of the W3C that are widely used:
XML: uh, yeah. Ignored?
All the other bits that come with XML - XPath, XSLT, DOM and so on
HTML4 - yes, this is a standard, yes people frequently break its rules but html4 is a standard that allows for that to some extent. It's implemented in every major browser (ignoring bugs).
CSS - lots of sites use this
SOAP? No, it wasn't "invented" by the W3C, but the W3C accepts other peoples technologies as well as inventing its own, hence this story.
The W3C is producing some of the most thorough and powerful technical standards around. They are very readable and well organized (if you don't believe me try reading some specs from ECMA, or the IETF which still does not use rich text in its specs). They have a long term vision - the semantic web.
To be honest, the W3C is one of the most important standards bodies around, if they didn't exist and hadn't sorted out the browser wars, today the web would be totally screwed over. I'd like to say a huge thankyou to Bruce: anybody can sit back in their chair and write a new MP3 player but it takes real dedication and energy to travel the world sitting through meetings with corporate execs and fighting for our cause when all you have is the strength of your argument to back you up.
Config files : Yes! GConf can do a lot of cool stuff. It stores its configs in XML (thought it can do others as well I believe), and can even do app notification. I wish it was used more outside of gnome.
I think most distros are compliant these days. I know SuSE, RedHat and possibly Mandrake are. Debian is very close to compliant, a few minor issues left. Dunno about Gentoo. Compliance isn't so much of an issue these days.
There is one. A few apps don't work with it properly, but they are disappearing fast.
Another thing that would be great: common menu system. In fact, it would be great if the menu system was actually just a directory on disk with some subdirectories in it, each populated with links to various apps. That way, if a Window Manager or desktop tool didn't want to offer a menu system, you might still be able to navigate it. If that were in common for all or even many of the WMs out there (KDE, xfce, Gnome, IceWM, and so on), that would make things far easier.
Implemented, as least in KDE3 (redhat version, soon to be all versions) and GNOME2. Check out the vFolders spec - it doesn't use directories of symlinks, it's a little more sophisticated. But it's definately a step in the right direction.
Finally, common desktop icons (again, not that there have to be specific apps that must be there, just that if I create a link to Galeon on my desktop, it'd be swell if it appeared in KDE and Gnome (and other) desktops.
Again it's been standardised over at freedesktop.org. I believe gnome and kde should start using it soon. They are also standardizing icon theming (if you want it), so the icon will look the same too.
Standards are great aren't they :) Kudos to Havoc Pennington for all the work he's been doing in this field.
And therein lies the problem with the GNU manifesto. It's a fundamental economic impossibility (at the moment), because we all exist within capitalism which forces us to restrict our creations in order to get back capital from it.
All software being free in both senses is just that - utopia. Maybe we can get there one day, but not in our lifetimes that's for sure. Until then, you either play by the rules that govern our society, or you don't, regardless of what your personal opinion of them is.
Uhh, we do? Could somebody explain why please? I've heard it's more popular in the States than elsewhere, but I can count with one hand how many times I've seen (or even heard of) people editing their home movies on their computer: none.
Apple seem to make a big deal of this as well. Is this some kind of craze that never reached Europe, much like text messaging/sms never made the crossover to the US? Or is it just the latest round of tech industry hype, not actually backed up by substance?
However just because Solaris has good hardware integration and a bad X server doesn't mean SGI don't get an advantage from matching hardware with software. They just focus on different areas: Solaris can do stuff like hotswapping CPUs at runtime (i think), so they concentrated mainly on high end server stuff. The advantages they get from hardware/software integration aren't graphical, they're server based. SGI just chose to focus a lot on their X server, which is definately cool, but considering the challenges the XFree team face I think they do a pretty good job too.
Oh and finally, XScreensaver rocks, I love it and use it all the time :) Though I think it could do with fewer mathematical savers and more eyecandy ones, like atlantis (my favourite).
It should be noted that as far as I know slashdot disable pings (or they had done when I last checked). Best to ping google or somebody like that.
until false; do lynx -source http://oh, I don't know/ > /dev/null ; sleep $(( RANDOM / 1024 + 1 )); done
and then accidently hit enter in a Bash shell...
You do realize that this is probably classed as terrorism right? But no matter, I'm doing it, because people just hitting shift-reload get bored, whereas scripts can just be forked into the background. Right now, I should think Novak is a little pissed. If a few thousand people just ran that script when they got up in the morning, it would really start to cause him grief. Being vigilantism it's absolutely not legal or even morally correct - but it is quite good fun ;)
Wow! It worked! I'm just getting connection refused. Heheh, this is fun, time to go set a shell script hammering his page for a few hours.
Not sure what this is implying, but it seems to be a surprisingly common misconception that MacOSX has vector based artwork. Not so. GNOME can do, and I think KDE3.1 can as well, via SVG. MacOS icons though are just bitmaps in a variety of sizes, with some scaling/blending algorithms applied.
The SGI desktop is of course based on a heavily modified commercial X Server. And here I will stop for a second, get a big breath and say: 'wow'. I have never seen an X server being so fast, on a 5-year old machine (no matter if this is an SGI machine or not).
I'd kind of expect this given that IRIX comes as a bundle with the hardware. When you choose the hardware as well as the software you can of course optimize the drivers a lot, so you will get good speeds out of it. XFree has to deal with a lot of different hardware, and the driver manufacturers are sometimes less than helpful. Probably worth remember that IRIX won't have some of the newer X extensions like XRender.
Well my point was that you don't have to do any kernel hacking, if you're willing to wait a few weeks. I have the nVidia drivers, and didn't have to compile anything. The SuSE setup just gave me instructions for how to download the drivers, I clicked on the RPM and it went ahead and installed. The whole thing was entirely graphical if I remember rightly. I had to reboot, but apart from that no problems. The days when kernel hacking was needed are over (thankfully)
A slight correction, Apple does not own Aqua, because their own court case made it legal precedent that you cannot own a "look and feel". Yes, Apple act like they own it, but this is because the law is not the same as justice. They have no legal right to send threatening letters to theme creators, if it went to court they'd lose. But of course, nobody wants to go to court, do they?
Firstly, I think once again RedHat are clearly setting trends here. Mark my words, BlueCurve is good stuff and the other distros will be doing something similar soon. Actually, the credits for giving Linux a serious facelist first should really go to Connectiva, who sponsored the Crystal icon themes and a truckload of artwork for KDE, but that's beside the point .
One thing you realise pretty quickly using Psyche though is that the method BlueCurve uses to make things look the same is the wrong way. By wrong way, I don't mean to criticize RedHat, as right now it's the only way. However, the stock RedHat install places for instance the OpenOffice icons on the panel. Click them, and you're greeted with a Windows 98 style theme. Where did BlueCurve go? Well obviously we know that OOo uses its own widget toolkit, which there isn't a version of BlueCurve for. What's really needed then is some kind of standardised theming system, so you can write a theme once and have it run on many different widget toolkits. FreeDesktop.org would be an ideal place to do this.
The second thing that strikes you is that, at least on the surface, KDE and GNOME are so similar that there is little point having both. I pretty quickly reset GNOME2 to its default layout with a menu panel, and I think it's a shame that RedHat uses the KDE layout. For new users at least, KDE and GNOME compete based on their desktop interfaces. By making them the same, you remove a reason for having them both there.
To sum up, I think RH8 is a step in the right direction, but in some cases they went overboard. Using the same themes is a good idea. Making the inital setups identical isn't such a hot idea, even though it is easy to change them around.
Finally, there is a comment way up at the top that criticizes the layout of the preferences/settings. Yeah, that sucks it's true, but really it's about the only thing I can think of that does UI wise in Psyche. Really, don't knock it until you've tried it. Overall, it's very easy to use indeed, and there are GUI applets for virtually everything. As a long time SuSE user, I must admit I'm being seriously tempted to switch. Perhaps I'd rearrange the menus slightly, change the installed apps a bit, but I'd have no hesitation in showing this to people and having pride in it - look, this is Linux, see what we can do.
Come on, be fair. For those who can't see the above post, it's a list of commands to type to install the nVidia drivers or something.
If nVidia hadn't released their drivers for the latest update of Windows, what could you do? Nothing. You'd have to wait. My goodness, you can wait with Linux too and get them in a nice easy RPM.... but you don't have to.
I see you have a mac.com account. For you it's simple. When something new comes, you must wait for Apple to do it for you, then you must usually pay for it too. Give the guys above a break, they were just swapping tips because they like the bleeding edge, you're not forced to be like they are anymore.
1) Hold down the right mouse button. I can't stress this enough. Don't click once, then move the mouse, then click again.
2) Use the tooltips.
3) Don't feel you need to use the pie menu for everything, just a few things like switching tabs, refreshing a page etc is good. Keep doing it, and after a few times you'll find it comes naturally.
4) Throw the mouse around. If you're wondering why the pie menus follow you around, it's so you can be very vicious with them. Hold down right, throw the mouse to the top left, the throw it to the right and let go. You can do this very quickly, because you don't have to aim, and the movements can be very vague indeed. Then let go.
5) Don't think about it. If you constantly look at the menu while using it, you lose the speed advantage. If anything, just defocus for a moment while you start, that way you remember the motion rather than what's on the screen.
To be honest after getting used to them, I love them. I wish GTK/Qt had an option to do this. It's one of those cool hacks you want to do but never have time for....
Not to be left behind, all the other distros made similar proclamations, except Debian, which is late and expected to follow suit sometime next year.
Pretty shortly, the OS/2 development team will make a similar announcement, as will the FreeBSD teams, as will the QNX team, as will that guy down the road who wrote his own OS in assembler.
Secondly, this is a non story. Apple HAVEN'T made an announcement! Incredible. I haven't made an announcement today either, can I get a story on slashdot? In fact, the ONLY people who have announced their intention to support DRM are the one company that do in fact have a monopoly and can therefore do such an unpopular thing.
Finally, all those people who've posted things like "Wow, Apple you are clearly sticking up for my rights, I'll buy a Mac" are talking rubbish. Apple are famous for abusing the legal system whenever it suits them. They are a corporation, and know all about legal pressure points. If it turns out that this mystical all encompassing DRM strategy isn't working because the pirates are using Macs, then the RIAA will have a quick chat with Jobs, who will see where his best interests lie, and bingo suddenly QuickTime has DRM.
There is in fact only 1 type of OS that will never have DRM, guaranteed. Say no more.