I recently installed the Xft/Gtk2-enabled Mozilla build from this site, it works well with Debian (at least once you have found out that having some non-world-readable TTF fonts crashes Mozilla/Xft...). Probably mozilla.org lists them somewhere too.
Freeloaders are not supported. Either you pay with your code, or with your money.
No objection here. It's just that for example UserLinux brought this kind of "KDE's unfreeness" into discussion. Personally I also think that it's great enough to have a commercially developed and supported toolkit GPL'ed, that's more than you can ask for. And if you're going to sell your software, you hopefully have some money to spend on licenses anyway.
Uh... as long as a DCC server has enough bandwidth, it can send files at several mb/s. If you know the right channels and are a bit patient, new releases can be downloaded way faster than via filesharing programs - just wait some hours in a queue, then get the whole file at once, at a decent speed. Nothing beats a friend's FTP server, of course.
It wasn't much of an OS either. Pretty much all functionality of user programs was achieved by directly programming the hardware through minimalist APIs (if there were any). No multitasking, even TSR programs (terminate and stay resident) were more of a hack than a design feature. Of course you're right, it had its high points, being for example very low resource usage and an easy to remember command line syntax.
I occasionally use Knoppix to do work on a notebook that's not mine and has only Windows 98 (pre-)installed on its small HD. It works remarkably well and I just need to keep some config scripts on the HD (ie for LAN setup).
IMHO there's nothing wrong with Debians installer, but it requires some Linux knowledge and is therefore unsuited for newbies. A graphical installer which installs a complete ready-to-use system (KDE, Gnome, Apache, Office apps etc.) with some mouseclicks would certainly give Debian a nice boost. Btw, there exists a very nice Debian-based Live Linux Filesystem named Knoppix (in German). Its hardware auto-detection is better than what I experienced with Mandrake, so maybe whoever wants to build a Debian installer might want to have a look at it.
In my (university) environment I noticed that most start with Mandrake, Red Hat or SuSE and sooner or later realize that RPM is a nightmare for keeping a system up-to-date. Then they try Debian and are blown away by its ease of use (me included).
The fact that you had problems with Win2k doesn't make Linux easier to use. If you want to install a new display/scanner/printer driver in Win2k, you insert the cd or click on a link on the manufacturer's website, and the driver gets installed. There is no unified driver architecture for Linux, which makes every manufacturer go his own way (if there are official linux drivers at all). Without some basic OS and editing knowledge you're lost when you want to install software or drivers on linux. For the average user who's happy to know the difference between directories and files that's a bit too much to ask for.
Remember people Windows Explorer (e.g. start menu, desktop etc) is an application that uses API's. Until Linux can support Windows API's seamlessly (daunting task, I know, especially when Microsoft is not open source) then Linux on the desktop is doomed. There are thousands upon thousands of Windows applications that need to be supported in the short term, at least until they can be webified in their entirety, in which case the OS question is moot as a browser is basically open source.
For most windows applications there are very capable replacements for linux, so I don't think Win32 emulation is crucial for Linux' success on the desktop.
Imho the biggest obstacle for most people switching from Windows to Linux is MS Office. Until Linux has a fast, competitive office suite it can't win against MS on the desktop. I don't really see how this could change in the next two years - KOffice still has a long way to go, StarOffice is slow, AbiWord and Gnumeric are fast but still too buggy. I tried to do a simple diagram (just a column of about 30 numbers) in KSpread and Gnumeric, and ended up booting win2k and doing the job in Excel in 5 minutes (ok, I'm used to it, but KSpread didn't allow to change rows/columns and crashed when editing the data by hand, Gnumeric didn't start the diagram creation wizard).
I appreciate the hard work done by linux developers, but one has to acknowledge that it takes time to catch up with Microsoft Office.
True, but then the next problem arises: the Windows version of Tribes 2 was sold everywhere for a reasonable price, the linux version was much harder to find and usually with a hefty price tag.
Another issue specific to Tribes 2 was that development didn't stop after the release - and Linux patches usually lag behind because Loki just needs some time (and manpower) to convert a (finished) patch. This isn't too much of an issue for single player games, but with Tribes 2 you were locked out from the servers with an outdated version.
I don't know much about Loki internals, but their approach to linux gaming was sub-optimal to say the least. Two examples:
Unreal Tournament: it's great Loki ported this to linux and offered the binary on their webpage. The port itself worked well but I doubt Loki made real money with it - despite UT being a huge success.
Tribes 2: How can you expect people to buy a game TWICE - one version for Windows, one for Linux? I'd rather boot up Win2k than spending another 40 just for a linux binary of probably 3 megs (especially since Tribes 2 relies heavily on patching).
The only way I see convincing regular gamers to using Linux as their primary gaming platform is to combine Linux and Win32 versions in a box. Windows is a safe bet for gamers because the games were designed to run on it, so they stick with it.
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Just found this interesting tool that analyzes text contrast for websites, based on a W3C algorithm: Contrast Analyser (Windows EXE, works with Wine)
I recently installed the Xft/Gtk2-enabled Mozilla build from this site, it works well with Debian (at least once you have found out that having some non-world-readable TTF fonts crashes Mozilla/Xft...). Probably mozilla.org lists them somewhere too.
Uh ... as long as a DCC server has enough bandwidth, it can send files at several mb/s. If you know the right channels and are a bit patient, new releases can be downloaded way faster than via filesharing programs - just wait some hours in a queue, then get the whole file at once, at a decent speed. Nothing beats a friend's FTP server, of course.
Does anyone know how long they can survive on the space station without help from earth?
It wasn't much of an OS either. Pretty much all functionality of user programs was achieved by directly programming the hardware through minimalist APIs (if there were any). No multitasking, even TSR programs (terminate and stay resident) were more of a hack than a design feature. Of course you're right, it had its high points, being for example very low resource usage and an easy to remember command line syntax.
"The Hurd is a set of servers running on top of the GNU Mach microkernel."
I occasionally use Knoppix to do work on a notebook that's not mine and has only Windows 98 (pre-)installed on its small HD. It works remarkably well and I just need to keep some config scripts on the HD (ie for LAN setup).
You're free to use the old installer. The graphical installer should be aimed at newbies, not pros.
In my (university) environment I noticed that most start with Mandrake, Red Hat or SuSE and sooner or later realize that RPM is a nightmare for keeping a system up-to-date. Then they try Debian and are blown away by its ease of use (me included).
It's van Eck Phreaking, check whatis or google.
daniel
The fact that you had problems with Win2k doesn't make Linux easier to use. If you want to install a new display/scanner/printer driver in Win2k, you insert the cd or click on a link on the manufacturer's website, and the driver gets installed. There is no unified driver architecture for Linux, which makes every manufacturer go his own way (if there are official linux drivers at all). Without some basic OS and editing knowledge you're lost when you want to install software or drivers on linux. For the average user who's happy to know the difference between directories and files that's a bit too much to ask for.
Imho the biggest obstacle for most people switching from Windows to Linux is MS Office. Until Linux has a fast, competitive office suite it can't win against MS on the desktop. I don't really see how this could change in the next two years - KOffice still has a long way to go, StarOffice is slow, AbiWord and Gnumeric are fast but still too buggy. I tried to do a simple diagram (just a column of about 30 numbers) in KSpread and Gnumeric, and ended up booting win2k and doing the job in Excel in 5 minutes (ok, I'm used to it, but KSpread didn't allow to change rows/columns and crashed when editing the data by hand, Gnumeric didn't start the diagram creation wizard).
I appreciate the hard work done by linux developers, but one has to acknowledge that it takes time to catch up with Microsoft Office.
Another issue specific to Tribes 2 was that development didn't stop after the release - and Linux patches usually lag behind because Loki just needs some time (and manpower) to convert a (finished) patch. This isn't too much of an issue for single player games, but with Tribes 2 you were locked out from the servers with an outdated version.
The only way I see convincing regular gamers to using Linux as their primary gaming platform is to combine Linux and Win32 versions in a box. Windows is a safe bet for gamers because the games were designed to run on it, so they stick with it.