...does that mean we're now going to have to design computers that are easy enough for a monkey to use?
The new distribution's name could be: Mandrill Linux 8.2 (also known as Red Butt Linux...)
Hmmm...I guess those Ximian guys have been on to this for a while...
Interconnect those Messenger Networks...
on
AOL vs. Trillian
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· Score: 1
Check out Gaim. It does AOL IM, Microsoft Messenger, Yahoo, etc. as long as you put the right plugin. I find it's an easy way to stay connected with friends even though they don't all use the same Messenger-type clients.
I wonder if the Gaim people ever had any problems with AOL...I sure hope they don't now that I've posted this message (although I figure their program is already quite well known in the Linux community...)
Actually...this has nothing to do with the fact that people don't use Linux. I personally haven't had to recompile my kernel yet, and don't plan to in the near future. I don't consider myself stupid. If I ever need to do it, I'll be able to easily find the instructions online.
The reason why 95% of the world uses MS Windows is a) the fact that people have a great inertia in changing their habits, b) the fact that Microsoft has a quasi-monopoly on Office software (and they won't publish it for Linux) and c) their awesome marketing machine.
The truth is that, once properly setup (which nowadays is as simple as booting with the install disk and sitting back), a Linux computer is as easy to use as a Windows box. In some cases, easier. Don't overestimate's Windows simplicity: as a resident "computer specialist" for my friends and family, I have to say that Windows can be quite obfuscating to the average user sometimes. And let's not talk about the dreaded Registry - how user friendly is that?!
Linux is making inroads in business and high-end computing (read about the recent HP/Dreamworks announcement), it's only a matter of time before it begins to infiltrate the home desktop as well.
...thank God for those guys! But I do have one request: could you PLEASE integrate OpenGL support in your RPMs? Everybody wants it anyway...Wine is a bit long to compile, and RPMs are easier to manage anyway.
You can also suspend the whole system with just about any OS that runs under VMware (Windows 9X/NT/2k, Linux, etc.) - though it seems that when I do it more than twice in a row it gets buggy...
As far as suspending processes, I don't think Windows can actually do that, and I haven't heard about other OSes who can actually do that...
Fortunately, my Cable provider here in Montreal allows NAT private networks. However, they don't allow servers on common ports (21, 80, etc.) but you can run them off higher ports if you like. Frankly, me and my girl both pay for Internet Access, it's only fair that we should be able to use it on both of our computers!
With the exception of "good memory management", those are bugs, not features. You have to make extreme performance sacrifices to get them natively.
Not true, you only get a performance hit running multiple consoles if you run multiple instances of X simultaneously, and even then it's not that dramatic with modern computers. As far as remote management goes.
Other than that, they're useless. And multiple desktop support is particularly useless. Download a shareware app to do it if you REALLY must have it.
On the contrary, I find them quite useful, especially when running a lot of apps. I especially like those who show me a thumbnail of what's in the window. As for multiple desktops under Windows, I did try a shareware or two, but I found them to be slow, buggy and not very well integrated.
As for memory management, I suppose you missed where Linux FINALLY got decent VM support recently? And it's still not up to the standards of Windows.
Yeah, right...The basic memory management in Linux has been superior to that of Windows until MS came out with Win2K...
As for anti-aliased fonts, take a look at how KDE and Gnome implement them. It's unbelievably crude, and not implemented at the low-level font rendering where it should be. Basically, they send pre-fab graphic images to the X server. Yeah, that's elegant. There are a lot of things to like about Linux, but GUIs are not one of them.
Guess what, I take a look at Gnome everyday now for six months, and I much prefer the GUI to that of Win2K (and I won't even talk about WinXP). I'm looking at Windows AA fonts right now (I'm at work) and I can't tell you there ain't much of a difference in quality with what I have at home.
Come on, Anonymous Coward, it's obvious you're another one of those MS employees who get paid to come spread your FUD all over the place! (Though I'd be curious to hear what are the lot of things to like about Linux that you mention...
Not Linux, young troll, Mozilla. Anti-aliased fonts have been available for quite a while in KDE and Gnome. Speaking of which...is it me, or does Netscape 6.2 already support anti-aliased fonts?
In any case, I'm still waiting for important stuff, like multipe consoles and desktops, good memory management, remote graphical apps, etc. to be standard features on Windows...
So instead of letting go of your Windows apps, you let go of your money. VMware Workstation costs $300, and Windows 2000 Pro for VMware costs $200 [vmware.com] plus the connect time to download the service packs.
Actually, the VMware Express package is still available for download, and the license is a lot cheaper (around 50$, IIRC). Although it will only run Windows98 (and only one virtual machine at a time), that's enough for most Windows apps - and who doesn't have a copy of Windows98 lying around...
According to CodeWeavers' app database, most features of WinMX work
Still, I haven't talked to anyone who got it to work...I'd be interested!
VMware is a good solution for those windows apps you can't let go - although a Linux client would be great! I haven't tried to run WinMX with WINE yet. Has anyone?
It actually sounds kinda cool...I mean, Gnutella is kinda cool in principle (though the new Limewire superservers are sucky!), but in actuality it's not that efficient. I wonder if Furthur works well on an IP masqueraded machine?
I can't see this as being good for PS2 sales - fortunately they've sold a lot of consoles already - as some customers enjoy being able to play games that were not designed for their world region, or which did not have enough of an appeal in a specific market to warrant a full distribution. A sad day for nipponophile PS2 gamers.
That's true, but the Shrek and Harry Potter coins, IIRC, are a joint venture with Canada Post (or the Canada Mint, I'd have to check)...it's not as if they were advertising a line of Harry Potter toys sold at The Bay. What I mean is that all ads you'll find at a Postal Service in Canada are for products which are in part offered by it (i.e. it profits from their sale, not just from advertising revenues). There's a subtle difference, but it's an important one. It's not as if the USPS was getting a cut on every copy of Windows XP sold...
Wheter it be political (space exploration, women's causes, etc...), celebrational (Madonna stamps come to mind), or any number of other messages.... Stamps have always been an advertisement medium, whether you recognize it or not. Maybe that's the best part - you don't!
That's not quite true. Stamps have certainly not been used as a commercial advertisement medium (i.e. to sell a product, a real product). If there have been cases -- of which I've never heard -- then they are few and far between. You confuse commercial advertisement with awareness/recongition (women's causes, Madonna), national/patriotic endeavours (space exploration). The other messages fall in those categories, as well as artistic, historical, geographical, animal and fauna, symbols, and so on - but none of these have anything to do with a commercial product or service.
The Postal Service has never been "just" a business - otherwise it would have sunk long ago - it is a semi-private government service (it's the same here in Canada as in the U.S.). That's quite different, and if you don't understand this then you don't really understand what business is (not to mention the nature of capitalism).
As far the Microsoft ads goes, I don't know how it is in the states, but in Canada we don't have ads from major corporations, except in the rare cases when there are joint projects with the Postal Service. But plain ads, and from as big a company as Microsoft? No. I have to say, ads in a government service for a company (and not just any company, THE company) which the government is suing in Federal court? That does sound quite absurd, even for the U.S., famous for not doing things the same way as anyone else...:-)
Or perhaps he assumed from the lack of information that the Register had something to hide? For instance, they did not say what video drivers they were using (yes, this can make a huge difference), and as the previous poster mentioned, they said nothing of what else was running in the background.
Well, since the author said that he had just made a fresh install, we can assume that he put the latest drivers (or at least those that came with the software release/distribution). On the drivers question, the possibility is there (though a 10% performance hit would mean that WinXP built-in drivers are quite deprecated...). As far as applications running in the background, I think it's implied that there were none others than the bare minimum, i.e. those you can't turn off without making your machine stop. Sure, he didn't explicitly say it, it's one of these cases where you have to trust the journalist. As far as we know, there might have been more programs running on the Linux machine, not the WinXP, which means that its performance could have been even better, who knows? But bear in mind that, because of Linux memory management architecture, running multiple applications will be less of a performance hit than on a WinXP machine...
they claimed that they couldn't get X to do better than 16bpp or 1024x768. Could it be that Windows XP performed better in 32bpp?
If it performed better in 16 bpp, I don't see why it would not at 32 bpp...Are you saying that WinXP is more efficient at higher color depths?
Anyway, the point here is not that the previous poster automatically assumed the benchmarks were flawed because they went against XP, but that they were flawed because the Register declined to give as much information as possible about how the systems were set up (yes, they gave some info, but not much), why exactly they couldn't use 32bpp, or even what demo they were using to test Quake3.
Come on, he could have given a lot more information, and still the response would have been the same. Hey, I have an idea! Rather than assume that the reviewer was biased and that he rigged the benchmark in Linux's favor, why don't you run your own benchmark and prove him wrong? That way you'll know for sure, and you'll stop making allegations just because you don't like the results.
Well, I don't know about benchmarks, but Setiathome runs much faster on Linux than it does on Windows 2000 (my guess is that WinXP's performance is pretty similar to Win2k). We're talking about 60% faster, here...and that's on the exact same hardware (with graphics turned off in both cases)!
XP runs best on NTFS.
Not for games. NTFS is notoriously bad for gaming (although it does speed up defragmenting you HD considerably).
Most likely the author was running XP with all the visual goodies turned on, font smoothing, the spiffy new desktop, etc... (note: you can disable them very easily...) and running console and or IceWM on Linux.
How can you talk about bias! You don't even know the specs of the benchmark, and already you assume that they have been stacked against your personal favorite, i.e. it's simply impossible that WinXP would be slower, so the benchmark must have been rigged.
Ha! You're in no position to call anyone a zealot!
No. Many hardcore gamers play on consoles. I just got an xbox and it rocks. First-person shooters, however, are notoriously harder to control with the typical game controllers. Also, I have a small LAN at home, which means I can have local multi-player games. So I usually play FPS on computers. It so happens that my favorite FPS are all available on Linux (Half-Life, Quake III, RTCW).
You download it, get it working, say "this is cool I am gaming on Linux" and get back to work never to touch it again.
No, I install it, get it working, say "cool, I don't have to reboot to play this game" and then I proceed to beating the game over the course of a couple of days, then I take it online to beat the hell out of some Windows gamers...
Even if they did release for Linux, how many more units would they ship?
Actually, the idea (in the case of RTCW) is to release binaries that make the game playable on Linus, so people buy the same game. Which means that they do sell more units. Sure, the numbers will be marginal when compared to the Windows audience, but a sale is a sale! Also, I suspect the id people - being the technical geniuses that they are - of appreciating the fact that Linux is the superior OS...
So either the shoe bomber was a) an amateur, b) very stupid, or c) a government agent
Never mind, I just read the actual story...I thought it was his computer that had the encrypted files...it turns out it was in an al-Qaida box found in Kabul.
I'm reading Steven Levy's Crypto right now and he seems to indicate that Zimmerman's program was widely distributed when it came out...
So either the shoe bomber was a) an amateur, b) very stupid, or c) a government agent whose sole purpose is to give them an long-sought excuse to severely regulate crypto...Personnally I'd go for a) or b), as c) would be too much of a risk for the gov't to take at this time - but you never know!
Funny how record labels always say that they have their artist's right foremost in mind when they talk about copy-protection...yet they will copy-protect recordings of dead artists! Granted, the family of these artists often get a portion of the money, but still, it goes to show that the companies are worried about their steady flow of income, so that they can keep shareholders happy...
It's also ironic to see that the artists that do complain about music piracy are not the young, struggling ones (i.e. those who would be hit hardest by the piracy), but well-established, presumably stinking rich ones...I guess the payments on that third house in Malibu really are important...
Maybe the effort should go into producing a good, free implementation of a document editor to produce.doc documents, thereby using.doc against microsoft?
StarOffice 6.0 beta almost seamlessly imports and exports MicroSoft's.doc format. I've been using it for a while now and the few icompatibilities that remain are quite minor (and will probably disappear by the time the final release is out). Seriously, folks, forget about StarOffice 5.2 (which I really dislike): SO6b rocks - except for the long load time when you first start it...
Slashdot Mirror
...does that mean we're now going to have to design computers that are easy enough for a monkey to use?
The new distribution's name could be: Mandrill Linux 8.2 (also known as Red Butt Linux...)
Hmmm...I guess those Ximian guys have been on to this for a while...
Check out Gaim. It does AOL IM, Microsoft Messenger, Yahoo, etc. as long as you put the right plugin. I find it's an easy way to stay connected with friends even though they don't all use the same Messenger-type clients.
I wonder if the Gaim people ever had any problems with AOL...I sure hope they don't now that I've posted this message (although I figure their program is already quite well known in the Linux community...)
Actually...this has nothing to do with the fact that people don't use Linux. I personally haven't had to recompile my kernel yet, and don't plan to in the near future. I don't consider myself stupid. If I ever need to do it, I'll be able to easily find the instructions online.
The reason why 95% of the world uses MS Windows is a) the fact that people have a great inertia in changing their habits, b) the fact that Microsoft has a quasi-monopoly on Office software (and they won't publish it for Linux) and c) their awesome marketing machine.
The truth is that, once properly setup (which nowadays is as simple as booting with the install disk and sitting back), a Linux computer is as easy to use as a Windows box. In some cases, easier. Don't overestimate's Windows simplicity: as a resident "computer specialist" for my friends and family, I have to say that Windows can be quite obfuscating to the average user sometimes. And let's not talk about the dreaded Registry - how user friendly is that?!
Linux is making inroads in business and high-end computing (read about the recent HP/Dreamworks announcement), it's only a matter of time before it begins to infiltrate the home desktop as well.
...thank God for those guys! But I do have one request: could you PLEASE integrate OpenGL support in your RPMs? Everybody wants it anyway...Wine is a bit long to compile, and RPMs are easier to manage anyway.
You can also suspend the whole system with just about any OS that runs under VMware (Windows 9X/NT/2k, Linux, etc.) - though it seems that when I do it more than twice in a row it gets buggy...
As far as suspending processes, I don't think Windows can actually do that, and I haven't heard about other OSes who can actually do that...
...we don't see too many Anonymous Cowards claiming that Linux is a "toy" operating system in this particular discussion.
I guess 400k$ is a little expensive for a toy!
Fortunately, my Cable provider here in Montreal allows NAT private networks. However, they don't allow servers on common ports (21, 80, etc.) but you can run them off higher ports if you like. Frankly, me and my girl both pay for Internet Access, it's only fair that we should be able to use it on both of our computers!
With the exception of "good memory management", those are bugs, not features. You have to make extreme performance sacrifices to get them natively.
Not true, you only get a performance hit running multiple consoles if you run multiple instances of X simultaneously, and even then it's not that dramatic with modern computers. As far as remote management goes.
Other than that, they're useless. And multiple desktop support is particularly useless. Download a shareware app to do it if you REALLY must have it.
On the contrary, I find them quite useful, especially when running a lot of apps. I especially like those who show me a thumbnail of what's in the window. As for multiple desktops under Windows, I did try a shareware or two, but I found them to be slow, buggy and not very well integrated.
As for memory management, I suppose you missed where Linux FINALLY got decent VM support recently? And it's still not up to the standards of Windows.
Yeah, right...The basic memory management in Linux has been superior to that of Windows until MS came out with Win2K...
As for anti-aliased fonts, take a look at how KDE and Gnome implement them. It's unbelievably crude, and not implemented at the low-level font rendering where it should be. Basically, they send pre-fab graphic images to the X server. Yeah, that's elegant. There are a lot of things to like about Linux, but GUIs are not one of them.
Guess what, I take a look at Gnome everyday now for six months, and I much prefer the GUI to that of Win2K (and I won't even talk about WinXP). I'm looking at Windows AA fonts right now (I'm at work) and I can't tell you there ain't much of a difference in quality with what I have at home.
Come on, Anonymous Coward, it's obvious you're another one of those MS employees who get paid to come spread your FUD all over the place! (Though I'd be curious to hear what are the lot of things to like about Linux that you mention...
Not Linux, young troll, Mozilla. Anti-aliased fonts have been available for quite a while in KDE and Gnome. Speaking of which...is it me, or does Netscape 6.2 already support anti-aliased fonts?
In any case, I'm still waiting for important stuff, like multipe consoles and desktops, good memory management, remote graphical apps, etc. to be standard features on Windows...
So instead of letting go of your Windows apps, you let go of your money. VMware Workstation costs $300, and Windows 2000 Pro for VMware costs $200 [vmware.com] plus the connect time to download the service packs.
Actually, the VMware Express package is still available for download, and the license is a lot cheaper (around 50$, IIRC). Although it will only run Windows98 (and only one virtual machine at a time), that's enough for most Windows apps - and who doesn't have a copy of Windows98 lying around...
According to CodeWeavers' app database, most features of WinMX work
Still, I haven't talked to anyone who got it to work...I'd be interested!
VMware is a good solution for those windows apps you can't let go - although a Linux client would be great! I haven't tried to run WinMX with WINE yet. Has anyone?
It actually sounds kinda cool...I mean, Gnutella is kinda cool in principle (though the new Limewire superservers are sucky!), but in actuality it's not that efficient. I wonder if Furthur works well on an IP masqueraded machine?
Don't know it's not better known...Check it out here.
I can't see this as being good for PS2 sales - fortunately they've sold a lot of consoles already - as some customers enjoy being able to play games that were not designed for their world region, or which did not have enough of an appeal in a specific market to warrant a full distribution. A sad day for nipponophile PS2 gamers.
I don't think so, however there are other benchmarks here.
That's true, but the Shrek and Harry Potter coins, IIRC, are a joint venture with Canada Post (or the Canada Mint, I'd have to check)...it's not as if they were advertising a line of Harry Potter toys sold at The Bay. What I mean is that all ads you'll find at a Postal Service in Canada are for products which are in part offered by it (i.e. it profits from their sale, not just from advertising revenues). There's a subtle difference, but it's an important one. It's not as if the USPS was getting a cut on every copy of Windows XP sold...
Wheter it be political (space exploration, women's causes, etc...), celebrational (Madonna stamps come to mind), or any number of other messages.... Stamps have always been an advertisement medium, whether you recognize it or not. Maybe that's the best part - you don't!
:-)
That's not quite true. Stamps have certainly not been used as a commercial advertisement medium (i.e. to sell a product, a real product). If there have been cases -- of which I've never heard -- then they are few and far between. You confuse commercial advertisement with awareness/recongition (women's causes, Madonna), national/patriotic endeavours (space exploration). The other messages fall in those categories, as well as artistic, historical, geographical, animal and fauna, symbols, and so on - but none of these have anything to do with a commercial product or service.
The Postal Service has never been "just" a business - otherwise it would have sunk long ago - it is a semi-private government service (it's the same here in Canada as in the U.S.). That's quite different, and if you don't understand this then you don't really understand what business is (not to mention the nature of capitalism).
As far the Microsoft ads goes, I don't know how it is in the states, but in Canada we don't have ads from major corporations, except in the rare cases when there are joint projects with the Postal Service. But plain ads, and from as big a company as Microsoft? No. I have to say, ads in a government service for a company (and not just any company, THE company) which the government is suing in Federal court? That does sound quite absurd, even for the U.S., famous for not doing things the same way as anyone else...
Or perhaps he assumed from the lack of information that the Register had something to hide? For instance, they did not say what video drivers they were using (yes, this can make a huge difference), and as the previous poster mentioned, they said nothing of what else was running in the background.
Well, since the author said that he had just made a fresh install, we can assume that he put the latest drivers (or at least those that came with the software release/distribution). On the drivers question, the possibility is there (though a 10% performance hit would mean that WinXP built-in drivers are quite deprecated...). As far as applications running in the background, I think it's implied that there were none others than the bare minimum, i.e. those you can't turn off without making your machine stop. Sure, he didn't explicitly say it, it's one of these cases where you have to trust the journalist. As far as we know, there might have been more programs running on the Linux machine, not the WinXP, which means that its performance could have been even better, who knows? But bear in mind that, because of Linux memory management architecture, running multiple applications will be less of a performance hit than on a WinXP machine...
they claimed that they couldn't get X to do better than 16bpp or 1024x768. Could it be that Windows XP performed better in 32bpp?
If it performed better in 16 bpp, I don't see why it would not at 32 bpp...Are you saying that WinXP is more efficient at higher color depths?
Anyway, the point here is not that the previous poster automatically assumed the benchmarks were flawed because they went against XP, but that they were flawed because the Register declined to give as much information as possible about how the systems were set up (yes, they gave some info, but not much), why exactly they couldn't use 32bpp, or even what demo they were using to test Quake3.
Come on, he could have given a lot more information, and still the response would have been the same. Hey, I have an idea! Rather than assume that the reviewer was biased and that he rigged the benchmark in Linux's favor, why don't you run your own benchmark and prove him wrong? That way you'll know for sure, and you'll stop making allegations just because you don't like the results.
Well, I don't know about benchmarks, but Setiathome runs much faster on Linux than it does on Windows 2000 (my guess is that WinXP's performance is pretty similar to Win2k). We're talking about 60% faster, here...and that's on the exact same hardware (with graphics turned off in both cases)!
XP runs best on NTFS.
Not for games. NTFS is notoriously bad for gaming (although it does speed up defragmenting you HD considerably).
Most likely the author was running XP with all the visual goodies turned on, font smoothing, the spiffy new desktop, etc... (note: you can disable them very easily...) and running console and or IceWM on Linux.
How can you talk about bias! You don't even know the specs of the benchmark, and already you assume that they have been stacked against your personal favorite, i.e. it's simply impossible that WinXP would be slower, so the benchmark must have been rigged.
Ha! You're in no position to call anyone a zealot!
ALL hardcore gamers use Windows for gaming.
No. Many hardcore gamers play on consoles. I just got an xbox and it rocks. First-person shooters, however, are notoriously harder to control with the typical game controllers. Also, I have a small LAN at home, which means I can have local multi-player games. So I usually play FPS on computers. It so happens that my favorite FPS are all available on Linux (Half-Life, Quake III, RTCW).
You download it, get it working, say "this is cool I am gaming on Linux" and get back to work never to touch it again.
No, I install it, get it working, say "cool, I don't have to reboot to play this game" and then I proceed to beating the game over the course of a couple of days, then I take it online to beat the hell out of some Windows gamers...
Even if they did release for Linux, how many more units would they ship?
Actually, the idea (in the case of RTCW) is to release binaries that make the game playable on Linus, so people buy the same game. Which means that they do sell more units. Sure, the numbers will be marginal when compared to the Windows audience, but a sale is a sale! Also, I suspect the id people - being the technical geniuses that they are - of appreciating the fact that Linux is the superior OS...
So either the shoe bomber was a) an amateur, b) very stupid, or c) a government agent
Never mind, I just read the actual story...I thought it was his computer that had the encrypted files...it turns out it was in an al-Qaida box found in Kabul.
I'm reading Steven Levy's Crypto right now and he seems to indicate that Zimmerman's program was widely distributed when it came out...
So either the shoe bomber was a) an amateur, b) very stupid, or c) a government agent whose sole purpose is to give them an long-sought excuse to severely regulate crypto...Personnally I'd go for a) or b), as c) would be too much of a risk for the gov't to take at this time - but you never know!
You can use a Japanese-style smiley (like this) ^_^
Jimi Hendrix
Funny how record labels always say that they have their artist's right foremost in mind when they talk about copy-protection...yet they will copy-protect recordings of dead artists! Granted, the family of these artists often get a portion of the money, but still, it goes to show that the companies are worried about their steady flow of income, so that they can keep shareholders happy...
It's also ironic to see that the artists that do complain about music piracy are not the young, struggling ones (i.e. those who would be hit hardest by the piracy), but well-established, presumably stinking rich ones...I guess the payments on that third house in Malibu really are important...
Maybe the effort should go into producing a good, free implementation of a document editor to produce .doc documents, thereby using .doc against microsoft?
.doc format. I've been using it for a while now and the few icompatibilities that remain are quite minor (and will probably disappear by the time the final release is out). Seriously, folks, forget about StarOffice 5.2 (which I really dislike): SO6b rocks - except for the long load time when you first start it...
StarOffice 6.0 beta almost seamlessly imports and exports MicroSoft's