OpenBSDs plain text-based installer is one of the most simple to use tools
I know of. While the graphical installer of $CommercialLinuxDistro still
tries to detect the correct X settings before startup (it would just
have to ask, I'd tell it!), I already have my OpenBSD system installed by
answering some 5 simple questions, and am happily exploring the system
in my comfy shell.
How hard can it really be to understand that "colorful" doesn't mean
"easy"?
OK, then again, it might be more "Unix for dummies who know what a 'disklabel'
is".
Emacs may be powerful, but it needs a usability overhaul.
The "problem" with Emacs is that it is meant to be easy to use, not easy to learn. It just doesn't follow the idea of most "usability experts" that the users one should care about most are utter morons that are not able to read or write.
But I admit that a point-and-click GUI designer will probably not be part of Emacs' JDE in the near future;-)
Those who don't understand Emacs are doomed to reinvent it, badly.
I really wonder what is so great about the fact that Eclipse now makes it possible to rewrite all existing Emacs modules in Java, instead of simply using them. Then again, Eclipse seems to be just an IDE, so this critique should rather go to Gnome and KDE, which are more similar in scope with Emacs, just with a little less stability, functionality and comfort.
Re:Proprietary solutions will always lose
on
Eclipse 2.0 Released
·
· Score: 0, Troll
While I agree that the Java situation sucks (but hey - so does the language;-), I strongly doubt that.NET is a good alternative. I don't think there will ever be a fully functional, non-Microsoft, Free version. And, unfortunatly, S. Ballmer doesn't either, at least that's what he told the german computer magazine iX.
Not being configurable might make software easier to use for computer-illiterate people. However, there are quite a lot of UN*X users that can cope quite fine with complexity, and aren't afraid of options.
This whole "Linuxs on the desktop" thing is going in a very strange direction, IMHO. Why do people choose UN*X as a desktop system in the first place? I for one don't care about newbie-friendliness that much, all I want is a powerfull, efficient, open and stable system that is a pleasure to use and doesn't treat me like an idiot.
FreeBSD's goal is to create a reliable, free UNIX (it may not meet your definition of free, but that's another story)
I know it's probably unwise to make this up, but how exactly do you define "free" in a way it doesn't match FreeBSDs license?
The usual complaint from people favoring the GPL is that it's not Copyleft, so it's free even for people not interested in freedom for anyone but themselves, but I think nobody - from the FSF to Microsoft - would say it is not free itself.
After the introduction of the Google API, some people, especially from the REST camp, criticized the the use of SOAP, claiming it just adds superflous bloat and is generally "unwebby". What do you think about this?
What do you think about the Semantic Web initiative driven by the W3C and others?
Do you expect widespread usage of RDF/DAML/OWL/TopicMaps for explicit meta-data annotation of web resources, or will it be used only in small circles of specialized content providers like academia, or maybe not at all?
How will Google react? Do you plan to use meta-data provided by web resources if found, and how will you decide if it isn't just made up to get people on some bogus pr0n site (like with those <meta>-Tags today)? Will it someday render the brute-force approach of full-text-indexing obsolete?
Re:the only real windowmanager
on
Gnome 2.0 RC1
·
· Score: 1
Funny thing is: Even if you don't insist on an Aqua-like look, there's a reason to use them. Aqua-Themes are avaible for about every Toolkit/Desktop/skinnable app now, so it seems to be the best way to get some consitency on your Desktop.
Whoa, this has to be the worst piece of ugly bloatware I've ever seen. It
needs what, 6GB diskspace to build? The porters recommend to rebuild your
kernel and increase the maximum space a process may waste so it will run?
Heck, you need X to build it?
While it's amazing that the porters got this monster running (esp. since
Sun's idea of cross-platform boils down to "runs on every platform as long
as it's Windows, Solaris or Linux"), it's a pity that openoffice.org didn't
act like the other project dealing with a generous donation of "commercial
quality" code to the OS world (Mozilla): Throw that junk away, learn how
not to do it, and build real software.
It is rather sad that such a glorified troll is currently rated +5. All the companies you mention are trying to make money while giving you Free Software.
Um, so they are trying to make money of me by selling me stuff they got for free. How exactly does that make them heroic?
Maybe the categories set up by the FSF are not those relevant to all people.
IMHO, freedom is not all about licenses. The GPL is basically all about granting rights for consumers, and doesn't care a bit about programmers rights. One of the major reasons for the "geek pride" going with the success of Free Software before the hype came over us was the feeling of "See, we actually can build cooler stuff without marketing drones telling us what to do". That is about freedom as in freedom to do the Right Thing, without caring about marketability, deadlines, or shareholder value.
In that sense, it doesn't really matter if you code for Microsoft or SuSE or Ximian. Maybe the attitude towards nerf guns is different, but still you have to shit out potentially sucky software because some clueless moron tells you so. And all experience shows that this software will suck, as well as the life of it's programmers.
Then again, the companies engaged in United Linux do produce proprietary software, even in the GNU sense, and any other imaginable. Try forking Yast (whyever one would want to), I'm confident SuSEs lawyers will explain.
SuSE is the distro the German government are using
...as well as about everybody else in Germany. SuSE is pretty much the "default distro" here, and the only one you see in the window of about every bigger bookstore (where Linux distros usually are sold) when a new release comes out. Not to mention that a lot of books on advanced Linux topics are from SuSEPress, and I'd say they even have a better stand in the consulting market than their competitors. Sure, RedHat is well-known too, and Debian has it's share among both hackers and ISPs, but they are nowhere as big as SuSE.
Given that Germany is one of the more Linux-friendly countries, and hence an attractive market, SuSE is not likely to go anywhere - even if they fail badly in, say, the US market (IIRC they did - didn't they have to close their US dependency recently because it fucked up, even so that Dirk(?) Hohndel (of XFree86 fame, one of the founders) had to quit?), they still have the german one as a comfortable home-ground.
Any one who programs their sites with a message saying (and I have seen this many times) "This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer" has to be a novice...
Anyone who talks about "programming" web sites should be banned from publishing anything on the web.
It's the number one clear sign that this person didn't understand the first thing about markup.
You misunderstood. SUSEconfig actually was the reason to me to try Debian. I don't know if SuSE fixed anything, but the SUSEconfig shipped with 6.4 just shouted "Play by my rules or use another distro" a bit too loud for me.
Why do people think that because more modern distros offer people the choice of GUI tools they somehow limit those who wish to edit text files? The only GUI tool I know of that eats hand configured text files this is Linuxconf, which is due more to bugs than design
You obviously never had SUSEconfig re-generate your carefully handcrafter sendmail.cf. I just wondered if the guy who wrote it was being paid by Microsoft or a Debian nut when it first happened to me.
Then again, luckily SUSEconfig isn't installed by default in most recent distros, either.
Dump propreitary formats, standardize on something even bigger and widespread.
What should that standard be that NN4-created "HTML" documents adhere to? I hope you don't talk about HTML, try feeding one of your documents to a HTML validator.
... given there is a freeze for the ports tree scheduled friday, due to the upcoming 4.6 release.
Imagine how many it could be if it wouldn't take so darn long until ports made by non-commiters make it in CVS. There are a lot of open "New Port:" pr's in GNATS, and I strongly doubt that they are all problematic in any way, problably nobody found the time to look at them in most cases. This is quite annoying, if you created a port and it sits there uncommited for months.
However, congrats to all porters! Keep on the good work.
I don't care if you can make windows "roll up" into the title bar and you think it looks cool - what problem does that solve that wouldn't be handled better by minimising the window and showing it in the taskbar? Really, I'd be interested if someone could tell me the advantage.
It moves the window out of your way while keeping it easily accessible, and where you want it. Usually, it's quite a long way down to a "task-bar", even if you chose to have one eating you screen real-estate.
Slashdot Mirror
OpenBSDs plain text-based installer is one of the most simple to use tools I know of. While the graphical installer of $CommercialLinuxDistro still tries to detect the correct X settings before startup (it would just have to ask, I'd tell it!), I already have my OpenBSD system installed by answering some 5 simple questions, and am happily exploring the system in my comfy shell.
How hard can it really be to understand that "colorful" doesn't mean "easy"?
OK, then again, it might be more "Unix for dummies who know what a 'disklabel' is".
But I admit that a point-and-click GUI designer will probably not be part of Emacs' JDE in the near future ;-)
I really wonder what is so great about the fact that Eclipse now makes it possible to rewrite all existing Emacs modules in Java, instead of simply using them. Then again, Eclipse seems to be just an IDE, so this critique should rather go to Gnome and KDE, which are more similar in scope with Emacs, just with a little less stability, functionality and comfort.
So, how about creating great stuff ourselves?
How's that not "news for nerds, stuff that matters?"
This whole "Linuxs on the desktop" thing is going in a very strange direction, IMHO. Why do people choose UN*X as a desktop system in the first place? I for one don't care about newbie-friendliness that much, all I want is a powerfull, efficient, open and stable system that is a pleasure to use and doesn't treat me like an idiot.
Um, you do realize that a patch is available?
The usual complaint from people favoring the GPL is that it's not Copyleft, so it's free even for people not interested in freedom for anyone but themselves, but I think nobody - from the FSF to Microsoft - would say it is not free itself.
After the introduction of the Google API, some people, especially from the REST camp, criticized the the use of SOAP, claiming it just adds superflous bloat and is generally "unwebby". What do you think about this?
Do you expect widespread usage of RDF/DAML/OWL/TopicMaps for explicit meta-data annotation of web resources, or will it be used only in small circles of specialized content providers like academia, or maybe not at all?
How will Google react? Do you plan to use meta-data provided by web resources if found, and how will you decide if it isn't just made up to get people on some bogus pr0n site (like with those <meta>-Tags today)? Will it someday render the brute-force approach of full-text-indexing obsolete?
Funny thing is: Even if you don't insist on an Aqua-like look, there's a reason to use them. Aqua-Themes are avaible for about every Toolkit/Desktop/skinnable app now, so it seems to be the best way to get some consitency on your Desktop.
And people got angry when they announced not to release Solaris 9 for Intel!
While it's amazing that the porters got this monster running (esp. since Sun's idea of cross-platform boils down to "runs on every platform as long as it's Windows, Solaris or Linux"), it's a pity that openoffice.org didn't act like the other project dealing with a generous donation of "commercial quality" code to the OS world (Mozilla): Throw that junk away, learn how not to do it, and build real software.
IMHO, freedom is not all about licenses. The GPL is basically all about granting rights for consumers, and doesn't care a bit about programmers rights. One of the major reasons for the "geek pride" going with the success of Free Software before the hype came over us was the feeling of "See, we actually can build cooler stuff without marketing drones telling us what to do". That is about freedom as in freedom to do the Right Thing, without caring about marketability, deadlines, or shareholder value.
In that sense, it doesn't really matter if you code for Microsoft or SuSE or Ximian. Maybe the attitude towards nerf guns is different, but still you have to shit out potentially sucky software because some clueless moron tells you so. And all experience shows that this software will suck, as well as the life of it's programmers.
Then again, the companies engaged in United Linux do produce proprietary software, even in the GNU sense, and any other imaginable. Try forking Yast (whyever one would want to), I'm confident SuSEs lawyers will explain.
Given that Germany is one of the more Linux-friendly countries, and hence an attractive market, SuSE is not likely to go anywhere - even if they fail badly in, say, the US market (IIRC they did - didn't they have to close their US dependency recently because it fucked up, even so that Dirk(?) Hohndel (of XFree86 fame, one of the founders) had to quit?), they still have the german one as a comfortable home-ground.
It's the number one clear sign that this person didn't understand the first thing about markup.
You misunderstood. SUSEconfig actually was the reason to me to try Debian. I don't know if SuSE fixed anything, but the SUSEconfig shipped with 6.4 just shouted "Play by my rules or use another distro" a bit too loud for me.
Then again, luckily SUSEconfig isn't installed by default in most recent distros, either.
Imagine how many it could be if it wouldn't take so darn long until ports made by non-commiters make it in CVS. There are a lot of open "New Port:" pr's in GNATS, and I strongly doubt that they are all problematic in any way, problably nobody found the time to look at them in most cases. This is quite annoying, if you created a port and it sits there uncommited for months.
However, congrats to all porters! Keep on the good work.
In one word: moc