Should not use TeX as an intermediate format. TeX creates nice output, but it needs a complete rewrite to get rid of static data structures, and make the error messages human readable. Everyone who has used TeX for something useful has made major modifications to TeX to make it processes his/her particular document (changed 20 constants in a config file or recompiled the package). It amazes me that Donald Knuth has kept his guru status, when the second most known piece of work he has done is TeX... It certainly tells something about how excellent his most known work is (yes, it is excellent, this is not a flame).
You are right, this is not a flame, this is a troll (and a semi-offtopic one for that matter).
Your first mistake: you are using TeX. It sounds like you want LaTeX. And no, not everyone (not even a small fraction) that has used TeX for something "useful" has had to change it. In fact, if you had to change TeX, you were doing something awfully wrong. TeX is not a wordprocessor, and most of the people who "have a problem with TeX" can't seem to get over that fact.
It's about porting all the stuff that is not the game, map and level editors mentioned explicitly.
I was actually hoping the author would point out what this VC++ extensions are, it sounded more like stuff that has to do with the nightmarish template support in gcc.
Xfce is going to face a uphill battle winning users over
This is your problem, you think someone wants to dominate the market, get more users, stablish itself as the standard and all the other usual crap. Has someone ever told you that programming is fun? That you scratch an itch you are feeling? That no everything has has to be determined in terms of corporate acceptance.
Had I moderator points, would have marked the original post as "troll".
The problem is not the kernel. The problem is the xfs code. It just won't compile with 2.95.2. Breaks with some nice "I have no idea what to do with this" messages.
Since I haven't read the book, I rather rate the review...
Uninteresting. Shallow. Tries too hard to look "profesional" and fails. Provides very little insight into the author's style or performance.
That said, the reviews found and/or linked from the author's homepage are much intriguing and do raise some interest on the book. The author links to an excerpt from the book which is certainly interesting but doesn't really want to make me go out and buy the book right this minute.
Logged in as root for the first time. Started dselect. Went to [S]elect, but chose nothing. Instead, immediately left the package selection menu with [Q] (*).
I'm not sure I understand you when you say "logged in as root for the first time". You mean after installing the packages pointed to by the task-* packages? As someone explained, those are empty packages that provide only dependencies. If you select "Install" without a prior "Select" in this state, only whatever the task-* packages point to will be installed. After you enter "Select" for the first time, dselect will automatically select the "required" packages. (Look at the priority field). Emacs is autoselected for this reason.
One thing I don't like about dpkg is that it doesn't index files; if you're
used to doing rpm -qf a lot, then you'll have to switch to dpkg -S and waiting for the package manager to search for which package the file
belongs to, usually taking a few seconds (whereas rpm does it instantly).
Use dlocate -S instead. It builds indexes out of dpkg's databases. Yes, it can go out of sync. Yes, the indexes are rebuilt automatically. Yes, you can do that, too, even if your box isn't up 24x7: install anacron.
Even with perfect negatives, as you increase scanning resultion beyond a certain point, you still get more information out of
the negative, but you also image a lot of film artifacts (grain, etc.).
I'm sure astronomers can think of other uses for something the article referred to as being "the most sensitive astronomical instrument yet built".
Shush! Shut up! How the heck do you think such an instrument will get funding if it's not approved by the general public... Oh... you really thought this thing is going to be build to conduct (only) extraterrestrial intelligence searches...
Timothy, with all due respect, your quickies-fu sucks!
You just mixed a couple interesting stories and the end result is noise. I don't know (or care) if the/. editorial policies have changed lately, but could you care to explain what's wrong with giving the stories their own post? I really can't picture someone coming to/. for news anymore, the real "value" now is the comments. Everybody else and their dog is doing better than/. at keeping people current on Linux events, but everybody else's (and their dog's) forums suck. Slashdot sucks, but just a mutt, it sucks less. You have it right there: news for nerds. stuff that matters. Don't try to be a news agency, you are not.
Therefore I think it is only fair that we have some degree of control over which language is the standard for the Internet.
And since the world wide web was invented at CERN, I think it's appropiate that every single web page is written in English, French, German, Italian and whatever those dialects they speak in Switzerland are called. Sounds stupid, no?
You download it... and what exactly do you intent to do with it? I mean, this is the sample implementation, and even if some stuff there is not present even on the XFree86 4.0 tree, unless you intent to merge the changes between R6.4 and R6.5 with XFree86 overnight... well you get the idea...
Well, but where the hell is 3D acceleration - the thing my G400 was bought for? And why the @#$% to use this beta driver when it is possible to grab Utah-GLX, which is rock stable and provides accelerated OpenGL?
Look at the DRI Project website, read the docs. Read them again. Then come back and complain. OpenGL hardware acceleration works. You just have to read the documentation to get it going. Or if you don't want to upgrade to XFree86 4.0 just yet, keep using the Utah drivers, they are just as good.
There was a press release that Precision Insight will do DRI drivers for G400 (most probably under the GPL), and they promised them for this summer. Wonder what happened to them.
Download the source from Matrox, download the source from DRI's CVS. Run diff. Modulo the HAL, these are just about the same drivers.
Hopefully they will allow their source to be publicly modified, as video drivers can make or break a graphics card.
Look at the DRI project website (yes, I know, I have said this a gazillion times already). They developed these drivers, and the license is the XFree86 license, i.e., you can't get more free than that.
There is a binary-only *.a library in there which actually drives the new features their driver actually adds. So this driver looks not to be open source to me.:-)
Look at the DRI project's developer mailing list archives. There's a message from Jeff Hartmann hinting that the source for the HAL will be relesed eventually, too. (Wait for the archive to be updated, the message is fairly recent, that's the reason I can't provide a direct link to it)
The one bit they haven't released is the documentation for the WARP engine, they have provided microcode that can be uploaded to the card instead. Other than that, the specs are there, and the source is there. Look at the DRI project pages for more info.
So, do we think the driver will be open source or not?
Please look at the CVS tree of the DRI project, Matrox had worked together with Precision Insight to develop this drivers and the source is there. This particular release seems to be mising one bit (the HAL), but it looks like that will be released, too. Look at the DRI mailing list archives if you want more info about the current status of the DRI.
Keep up the good work Precision Insight! These drivers are developed by Presicion Insight, and other than the HAL, what Matrox released is more or less what's already available at DRI's CVS.
Nevertheless, Matrox is to praise for releasing specifications that allowed people to write drivers for their hardware, including but not limited to the Utah GLX drivers, as well as for releasing source code (not all of it, mind you, but information comming reliable sources suggests it will be there eventually) along with this "beta" driver. So, go, Matrox, go!
For anybody out there tired of open source "almost working" GL implementation, there is great solution for this problem available from xig. AcceleratedX people sell complete , hardware accelerated implementation of OpenGL for Linux. In same cases the price is only $29 !
What's this? The back side of Linux Journal? If you haven't tried it lately, the Utah drivers are awesome and stable (modulo the NVidia ones). Then there's PI's DRI drivers, which are also spectacular (or at least the G400 ones, the card I have, and it looks the 3dfx ones are also quite good), but take longer to build;-), and if you chose to buy an NVidia card, there's their drivers, too.
For those of you that don't understand the LJ reference, go dig a LJ from January or something close. If you haven't got one, it's not really that important, you are only missing some fud...
Moderators: please think twice before marking something as "interesting" without doing some research first.
Slashdot Mirror
approximately... yes, impressed indeed!
You are right, this is not a flame, this is a troll (and a semi-offtopic one for that matter).
Your first mistake: you are using TeX. It sounds like you want LaTeX. And no, not everyone (not even a small fraction) that has used TeX for something "useful" has had to change it. In fact, if you had to change TeX, you were doing something awfully wrong. TeX is not a wordprocessor, and most of the people who "have a problem with TeX" can't seem to get over that fact.
You didn't bother to read the article, did you?
It's about porting all the stuff that is not the game, map and level editors mentioned explicitly.
I was actually hoping the author would point out what this VC++ extensions are, it sounded more like stuff that has to do with the nightmarish template support in gcc.
This is your problem, you think someone wants to dominate the market, get more users, stablish itself as the standard and all the other usual crap. Has someone ever told you that programming is fun? That you scratch an itch you are feeling? That no everything has has to be determined in terms of corporate acceptance.
Had I moderator points, would have marked the original post as "troll".
The problem is not the kernel. The problem is the xfs code. It just won't compile with 2.95.2. Breaks with some nice "I have no idea what to do with this" messages.
Since I haven't read the book, I rather rate the review...
Uninteresting. Shallow. Tries too hard to look "profesional" and fails. Provides very little insight into the author's style or performance.
That said, the reviews found and/or linked from the author's homepage are much intriguing and do raise some interest on the book. The author links to an excerpt from the book which is certainly interesting but doesn't really want to make me go out and buy the book right this minute.
I'm not sure I understand you when you say "logged in as root for the first time". You mean after installing the packages pointed to by the task-* packages? As someone explained, those are empty packages that provide only dependencies. If you select "Install" without a prior "Select" in this state, only whatever the task-* packages point to will be installed. After you enter "Select" for the first time, dselect will automatically select the "required" packages. (Look at the priority field). Emacs is autoselected for this reason.
Use dlocate -S instead. It builds indexes out of dpkg's databases. Yes, it can go out of sync. Yes, the indexes are rebuilt automatically. Yes, you can do that, too, even if your box isn't up 24x7: install anacron.
*nod*
But I want grain!
Shush! Shut up! How the heck do you think such an instrument will get funding if it's not approved by the general public... Oh... you really thought this thing is going to be build to conduct (only) extraterrestrial intelligence searches...
Timothy, with all due respect, your quickies-fu sucks!
You just mixed a couple interesting stories and the end result is noise. I don't know (or care) if the /. editorial policies have changed lately, but could you care to explain what's wrong with giving the stories their own post? I really can't picture someone coming to /. for news anymore, the real "value" now is the comments. Everybody else and their dog is doing better than /. at keeping people current on Linux events, but everybody else's (and their dog's) forums suck. Slashdot sucks, but just a mutt, it sucks less. You have it right there: news for nerds. stuff that matters. Don't try to be a news agency, you are not.
Hmmm... looks like TrollTech as a twisted sense of humour:
emphasis mine. Since April has 30 days, I guess this one is an April's Fools, no?
Com'on! I'm joking! Wait! No... no! Arrrgggh!!!
And since the world wide web was invented at CERN, I think it's appropiate that every single web page is written in English, French, German, Italian and whatever those dialects they speak in Switzerland are called. Sounds stupid, no?
Just out of curiosity, Hemos:
You download it... and what exactly do you intent to do with it? I mean, this is the sample implementation, and even if some stuff there is not present even on the XFree86 4.0 tree, unless you intent to merge the changes between R6.4 and R6.5 with XFree86 overnight... well you get the idea...
Look at the DRI Project website, read the docs. Read them again. Then come back and complain. OpenGL hardware acceleration works. You just have to read the documentation to get it going. Or if you don't want to upgrade to XFree86 4.0 just yet, keep using the Utah drivers, they are just as good.
Download the source from Matrox, download the source from DRI's CVS. Run diff. Modulo the HAL, these are just about the same drivers.
Look at the DRI project website (yes, I know, I have said this a gazillion times already). They developed these drivers, and the license is the XFree86 license, i.e., you can't get more free than that.
Look at the DRI project's developer mailing list archives. There's a message from Jeff Hartmann hinting that the source for the HAL will be relesed eventually, too. (Wait for the archive to be updated, the message is fairly recent, that's the reason I can't provide a direct link to it)
Look at the DRI project website. The source is available via CVS.
The one bit they haven't released is the documentation for the WARP engine, they have provided microcode that can be uploaded to the card instead. Other than that, the specs are there, and the source is there. Look at the DRI project pages for more info.
Please look at the CVS tree of the DRI project, Matrox had worked together with Precision Insight to develop this drivers and the source is there. This particular release seems to be mising one bit (the HAL), but it looks like that will be released, too. Look at the DRI mailing list archives if you want more info about the current status of the DRI.
Keep up the good work Precision Insight! These drivers are developed by Presicion Insight, and other than the HAL, what Matrox released is more or less what's already available at DRI's CVS.
Nevertheless, Matrox is to praise for releasing specifications that allowed people to write drivers for their hardware, including but not limited to the Utah GLX drivers, as well as for releasing source code (not all of it, mind you, but information comming reliable sources suggests it will be there eventually) along with this "beta" driver. So, go, Matrox, go!
Bad, Taco, bad! Now go to the blackboard and write 1000 times: I should not buy from strongholders!
What's this? The back side of Linux Journal? If you haven't tried it lately, the Utah drivers are awesome and stable (modulo the NVidia ones). Then there's PI's DRI drivers, which are also spectacular (or at least the G400 ones, the card I have, and it looks the 3dfx ones are also quite good), but take longer to build ;-), and if you chose to buy an NVidia card, there's their drivers, too.
For those of you that don't understand the LJ reference, go dig a LJ from January or something close. If you haven't got one, it's not really that important, you are only missing some fud...
Moderators: please think twice before marking something as "interesting" without doing some research first.