This is really something I wanted to see for a long time: companies starting to offer commercial software for Linux. Linux can only become a serious alternative to Windows on the desktop if companies start to offer products and users start to buy those products. So it remains to be seen if Linux users simply expect to get everything open-source and free or if they accept to pay for things like on other OS' too. Linux needs to become an opportunity for people who want to earn money in order to become successful. That might be a sad or sobering insight to some, but in the world that we live in, it is an unavoidable fact.
Are you sure about that? I could not find a "free but limited" version anywhere - only a trial version that is limited to 30 days of use. And I also could not find any mention of limitations in the SuSE 9.1 product description (http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linu x/prof/office.html)
I read that first in a science magazine from 1949. We heard it every few years since then. I bet there will be no usable fusion technology in 2050. These people just want more money. Not that I am against giving it to them to do some weird reasearch and build strange looking apparatus...
The thing is that their laptops are not only extremely good hardware but most of them very usable with Linux. I have been running SuSE on several Thinkpad models without many problems (apart from Wlan and advanced power management). So they ARE ready, usable and practical. And it just sucks when you want to buy their hardware and then get forced to also buy MS Windows. Maybe if companies (not only IBM) would finally start to let people use Linux on the desktop it would get ready pretty fast?
They do not even let me have one of their Thinkpads without Windows, WITHOUT support. If you want to use one of their Thinkpads just to run Linux on it you have still to buy Windows.
I do not think this page and the ones referenced there anywhere tells how to buy a Thinkpad with Linux preinstalled or even just one WITHOUT Windows preinstalled. It just says that the hardware is supported to some extend (mostly by SuSE). Not fully, e.g. for my T40 they say (correctly) that the internal modem and Wlan adapter are not supported.
Have you ever tried to get a Thinkpad from IBM or one of their resellers without being forced to pay for MS Windows? It seems they simply do not let you have one.
Do they answer how to buy IBM computers without being forced to also buy a preinstalled Windows? Do they answer why they still "recommend Windows XP Professional" for their laptops? Do they answer where to get Linux support for their hardware - including wlan, power management etc.?
I though every schoolkid knows how to throw a coin: place it on the index finger so that the edge hangs over, place the thumb under the edge and snap the thumb forcefully up. This will make the coin fly up and at the same time spin rapidly around a horizontal axis. When I read the title I thought they found a bias in this, correct way which would have been extremely unlikely.
The new license looks perfectly reasonable to me. Why is it such a big problem to include the contributor list in the docs? What *exactly* makes the license incompatible with the GPL as have been claimed more than once now? What makes people *that* upset about the license? When I compare the two, version 1.1. still looks extremely fair and non-restrictive to me.
When I look at the two versions of the licenses at http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html I cannot really see what is so bad about the new license. And why would the new one be incompatible with the GPL? Why is it such a bad thing to modify the license like that?
Yes of course, but I was talking about a situation where people are used to Windows and used to being able of doing some things that are harder under Linux. Some of these things are just convenience or tradition or a result of the MS monopoly - e.g. the constant necessity to deal with MS Office documents. OpenOffice or StarOffice can be used in many, but not all of these situations. And my argument was exactly that if there are motivated departments that start to use Linux, others will soon find out about those things that are possible under Linux or more convenient under Linux and many of them who might now have a reservation will start to *demand* getting Linux installed on their computer too:)
I think it will lead to problems if people are forced to do the switch. There still *are* things that do not work as well under Linux as under Windows and if people are forced to adopt them, this will generate a lot of bad press and MS will give triumphant press statements. Instead, why not do it in steps and migrate those departments who want the change or are cooperative, let them work with it, learn from it, and maybe gradually cause some envy from the others? The switch is not easy and it will take some time. But I think it is a great opportunity to give developers who support Linux some additional motivation and finally make some more vendor-supported hardware drivers and commercial applications appear for Linux.
SVG support could be better, yes. But I think there is no other browser that has as good SVG support as Mozilla, is there (talking of the SVG-enabled builds now). And you can still use one of the plugins, if your favorite plugin provider has it available for the OS you are using.
Both the name and the icons look as if adolescent nerds had made this decision. Maybe it is their intention to establish Firefox as the browser for young geeks and nerds only.
Look at their notebook products page and you will see they recommend MS Windows. Try to buy a Thinkpad and you will see you only can choose between Windows, Windows, and Windows. No chance to buy with Linux preconfigured. No chance even to buy with no OS at all. Until this does not chance I do not, ahem, buy their Linux sermon.
But now that the damage is done, why doesn't anyone hire one to come up with a decent response letter? IANAL, but I am sure they would be able to rephrase "fuck you too" in a decent, legally clean 10 page response letter, now wouldn't they?
It seems that accusing a software to be "bloated" is the best way to discredit it amont the/. crowd. But there are many out there, including me, that like the choice and freedom offered by KDE. I have used many other DMs/WMs (from TWM, Sun's CDE, MSWindwos, IceWM to KDE and Gnome) and I gradually ended up using KDE most of the time, because it lets me best do my work.
What I really do not understand: why are so many people bitching about how terrible KDE is when they have a wonderful *choice* of alternatives? Most of them free? If you think KDE is bloated and Gnome is not, fine, use Gnome. Or use TWM. Whatever.
the point is that the gui overhead is constant time (i.e. independent of the page viewed) and as I said, on modern computers not noticable. The relevant performance differences between browsers come from the rendering time which is dependent on many properties of the displayed page... and this is exactly the same for Mozilla and FB as both use Gecko.
Netscape was a spin-off of Mozilla, but never got updated that often as Mozilla. Mozilla has developed a lot since the version that was used for the last NS release and will continue to get developed and advance as many other Open source programs. The future of NS is not so clear and probably dim, thanks to AOL.
of course I meant that Mozilla still suppoerts W3C standards better... though there are some CSS things that work better in IE. MS is finally slowly catching up.
There are many users who prefer MozillaSuite for many good reasons (more features, several components nicely integrated, no need to download countless extensions,...). Apart from that, FB/TB are still "technology previews" with many problems.
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This is really something I wanted to see for a long time: companies starting to offer commercial software for Linux. Linux can only become a serious alternative to Windows on the desktop if companies start to offer products and users start to buy those products. So it remains to be seen if Linux users simply expect to get everything open-source and free or if they accept to pay for things like on other OS' too. Linux needs to become an opportunity for people who want to earn money in order to become successful. That might be a sad or sobering insight to some, but in the world that we live in, it is an unavoidable fact.
Are you sure about that? I could not find a "free but limited" version anywhere - only a trial version that is limited to 30 days of use. And I also could not find any mention of limitations in the SuSE 9.1 product description (http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linu x/prof/office.html)
thank you for the info - I was considering buying the software, but since I will upgrade my SUSE 8.2 pro to 9.1 soon I now know that I do not have to.
I read that first in a science magazine from 1949. We heard it every few years since then. I bet there will be no usable fusion technology in 2050. These people just want more money. Not that I am against giving it to them to do some weird reasearch and build strange looking apparatus ...
The thing is that their laptops are not only extremely good hardware but most of them very usable with Linux. I have been running SuSE on several Thinkpad models without many problems (apart from Wlan and advanced power management). So they ARE ready, usable and practical. And it just sucks when you want to buy their hardware and then get forced to also buy MS Windows. Maybe if companies (not only IBM) would finally start to let people use Linux on the desktop it would get ready pretty fast?
They do not even let me have one of their Thinkpads without Windows, WITHOUT support. If you want to use one of their Thinkpads just to run Linux on it you have still to buy Windows.
I do not think this page and the ones referenced there anywhere tells how to buy a Thinkpad with Linux preinstalled or even just one WITHOUT Windows preinstalled. It just says that the hardware is supported to some extend (mostly by SuSE). Not fully, e.g. for my T40 they say (correctly) that the internal modem and Wlan adapter are not supported. Have you ever tried to get a Thinkpad from IBM or one of their resellers without being forced to pay for MS Windows? It seems they simply do not let you have one.
Do they answer how to buy IBM computers without being forced to also buy a preinstalled Windows? Do they answer why they still "recommend Windows XP Professional" for their laptops? Do they answer where to get Linux support for their hardware - including wlan, power management etc.?
I though every schoolkid knows how to throw a coin: place it on the index finger so that the edge hangs over, place the thumb under the edge and snap the thumb forcefully up. This will make the coin fly up and at the same time spin rapidly around a horizontal axis. When I read the title I thought they found a bias in this, correct way which would have been extremely unlikely.
The website is not accessible to anyone without the flash plugin. The flash is used for a totally unnecessary things like navigation. This sucks.
The new license looks perfectly reasonable to me. Why is it such a big problem to include the contributor list in the docs? What *exactly* makes the license incompatible with the GPL as have been claimed more than once now? What makes people *that* upset about the license? When I compare the two, version 1.1. still looks extremely fair and non-restrictive to me.
When I look at the two versions of the licenses at http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html I cannot really see what is so bad about the new license. And why would the new one be incompatible with the GPL? Why is it such a bad thing to modify the license like that?
Yes of course, but I was talking about a situation where people are used to Windows and used to being able of doing some things that are harder under Linux. Some of these things are just convenience or tradition or a result of the MS monopoly - e.g. the constant necessity to deal with MS Office documents. OpenOffice or StarOffice can be used in many, but not all of these situations. And my argument was exactly that if there are motivated departments that start to use Linux, others will soon find out about those things that are possible under Linux or more convenient under Linux and many of them who might now have a reservation will start to *demand* getting Linux installed on their computer too :)
I think it will lead to problems if people are forced to do the switch. There still *are* things that do not work as well under Linux as under Windows and if people are forced to adopt them, this will generate a lot of bad press and MS will give triumphant press statements. Instead, why not do it in steps and migrate those departments who want the change or are cooperative, let them work with it, learn from it, and maybe gradually cause some envy from the others? The switch is not easy and it will take some time. But I think it is a great opportunity to give developers who support Linux some additional motivation and finally make some more vendor-supported hardware drivers and commercial applications appear for Linux.
SVG support could be better, yes. But I think there is no other browser that has as good SVG support as Mozilla, is there (talking of the SVG-enabled builds now). And you can still use one of the plugins, if your favorite plugin provider has it available for the OS you are using.
Both the name and the icons look as if adolescent nerds had made this decision. Maybe it is their intention to establish Firefox as the browser for young geeks and nerds only.
I think this would be the natural reaction when you get a letter like that: why didn't more companies respond this way?
Look at their notebook products page and you will see they recommend MS Windows. Try to buy a Thinkpad and you will see you only can choose between Windows, Windows, and Windows. No chance to buy with Linux preconfigured. No chance even to buy with no OS at all. Until this does not chance I do not, ahem, buy their Linux sermon.
But now that the damage is done, why doesn't anyone hire one to come up with a decent response letter? IANAL, but I am sure they would be able to rephrase "fuck you too" in a decent, legally clean 10 page response letter, now wouldn't they?
What I really do not understand: why are so many people bitching about how terrible KDE is when they have a wonderful *choice* of alternatives? Most of them free? If you think KDE is bloated and Gnome is not, fine, use Gnome. Or use TWM. Whatever.
the point is that the gui overhead is constant time (i.e. independent of the page viewed) and as I said, on modern computers not noticable. The relevant performance differences between browsers come from the rendering time which is dependent on many properties of the displayed page ... and this is exactly the same for Mozilla and FB as both use Gecko.
yenc support would be essential. Unfortunately, no one of the many who demand it seems to be able to contribute some constructive work ...
Netscape was a spin-off of Mozilla, but never got updated that often as Mozilla. Mozilla has developed a lot since the version that was used for the last NS release and will continue to get developed and advance as many other Open source programs. The future of NS is not so clear and probably dim, thanks to AOL.
of course I meant that Mozilla still suppoerts W3C standards better ... though there are some CSS things that work better in IE. MS is finally slowly catching up.
There are many users who prefer MozillaSuite for many good reasons (more features, several components nicely integrated, no need to download countless extensions, ...). Apart from that, FB/TB are still "technology previews" with many problems.