I read your stuff before. Very interesting. I hope they'll get implemented in Metacity. Do you know the current status of window manager support for that idea?
The thing is: I don't want taskbar grouping. I hate having to click twice to switch between document windows. I just want to be able to minimize all Gimp windows with one click, without task bar grouping.
And you say all that, while all the "BSD is freeer than GPL! GPL is communism! GPL is evil and viral!"-posts and "open source software (x) sucks, linux will never succeed on the desktop, give me better software for free or die, and if you don't listen to me then you are an elitist zealot"-posts get modded up to +5 Insightful.
Oh I forgot, Microsoft is never wrong, right? You can throw all the trash and crap you can find at Gimp and at open source, but not at Microsoft, right?
Well I've been using Gimp for 3-4 years, and I like the interface a lot. Just because YOU think it's unusable, doesn't mean everybody does! I HATE Photoshop's window-in-window interface. Alt+Tab is impossible, and to switch between image windows I have to click TWO TIMES (first the Window menu, then another menu item). Snapping windows is completely unheard of.
Besides, Photoshop on Mac behaves exactly like Gimp: floating windows. Why don't you complain about Photoshop on Mac too? Ooh, because Linux is the reincarnation of evil, right? Because Gimp is an open source progra, so it must suck, right? Because Microsoft is always right?
Geez stop talking as if OSS is the only thing at fault here. Have you ever heard of this thing called "limited manpower"? SOMEONE has to write all that stuff! Do you think code falls from the sky or something? You're nuts if you think they don't care about usability and looks, and you've obviously totally ignored the huge 1.2-2.0 improvements.
Unfortunately, utility windows suck in Metacity (or at least, not good enough)! If I click on the toolbox, it'll bring the utility window to front. That's good. But if I minimize the toolbox, the utility window is still visible, and there's no way to minimize it! If I click on a document window, it will not bring the toolbox to the front. If I set the toolbox as a utility window, then I lose the ability to minimize it! If Alt+Tab to the toolbox or other utility windows, they will now bring the rest of the utility window or the document window to front!
If you know a better window manager than Metacity, which supports EHWM hints properly, please tell me. Devils Pie will not do: it doesn't help.
"You can then minimize/maximize all GIMP windows in a single operation, move the window group to a different desktop or whatever else you want to do..."
How? Which window manager do you use? I am looking for a good window manager than can do this! - Metacity can't do this as far as I know. - People have suggested Devils Pie (a window matcher), but nothing in it's documentation suggests that it's possible to minimize all associated windows in one click. - Sawfish is unmaintained. Last release is from March 2003. - Everything else does not seem to support EHWM hints properly.
Yeah, because it's a sin to -gasp- actually care about free as in freedom, right? Everybody who cares more about freedom than about price is immoral, right?
How do they know it's more accurate than cesium clocks? You need to compare this new clock to something else in order to tell whether it's more accurate. But how do they know this clock is more accurate, if they don't have something which is already 100.0% accurate?
Uhm yeah and guess what? In 2000 people bragged about 2000 being the year of "the doom of Linux", and predicted that Linux will die within a year. A now, years later, Linux is still alive, and is stronger than ever.
"Only eight years later, but yup. An interesting product that still can't do what normal users want to do."
Only if you have been living in a shelter. Compare any modern desktop Linux distribution to the ones in 1996. If you didn't notice huge improvements in the usability area, then you are blind. Antialiased fonts, simpler user interface, much better hardware support and hardware autodetection, plug in your camera and an icon appears on the desktop, web browsers that surpass IE, a complete office suit which can replace MS Office for 99% of the people, strong focus on usability by popular projects, etc. etc.
My dad is a normal user. He uses Linux. I now have one example of an average user using Linux. And one example is all I need to debunk your statement.
My dad runs on Linux. He was certainly not let down. There, I have given one example of an average user using Linux. And one example is more than enough to debunk your "Linux is not ready for the average user" statement.
Then what business do you have to install games on your computer at work? Tell your boss that you want to install a game on his computer and see what his reaction is. Face it: the road to profit and success is road of the corporate world, not the gaming world. It's people like your boss who make big decisions, not Joe Gamer who likes to shoot people in FPS games.
Then you've obviously never looked at GNOME. GNOME 2's user interface is much simpler than GNOME 1's. Most configuration dialogs don't have any tabs and are very small, with only 5 or 6 config options.
GNOME didn't turn into a feature creep - it went to the opposite direction: they cleaned up the interface and removed options. And guess what? Slashdotters massively whine about it! They keep whining about config options being removed!
And this is exactly why removing options is bad. You may not like feature creep, but you have no choice! Stand still, and your product will never evolve. Everbody will go to the competition. Clean up the interface, and Slashdotters will whine. Add more features, and Slashdotters still whine.
And guess what? That's not what cusumers want! It's only want geeks like you want. Consumers WANT neat features. If you don't provide a more and more advanced feature set, they'll go to the competition, end of story. Average users don't care enough about better stability and performance. They want eye candy, they want new features.
A good example is GNOME. GNOME 2 has *less* features than GNOME 1. They cleaned up all the dialogs. Everything became simpler. And guess what? Slashdotters kept whining and whining. And this is exactly why removing features is a bad thing: you Slashdotters keep whining about it whenever an option is removed.
"In the West, people respect intellectual property."
So you say, while probably running a pirated copy of Windows XP. Even if you don't, take a look at your teenage son. He's probably download "kewl warez" from Kazaa all day.
That's great, but what if the seller is not a company? Like me, I don't have a company, and I can't accept credit cards directly. I HAVE to use Paypal. Besides, not everybody has a credit card (this is especially true outside the US). Paypal makes it possible to use bank transfer.
You're also wrong. The GPL explictly allows you to charge money for software. The GPL FAQ explicitly states that you can charge as much as you want for the software. The point is freedom, not price. In fact, I'm making money on selling Free Software myself.
Fedora since version 1 offers ExecShield, which also protects against buffer overflows. Mandrake has used libsafe for as long as I can remember. Not sure about other distros.
People always mod the "open source sucks because apps use undescriptive names" posts up. They should take responsibility for what they say and what they mod up.
"I opened it with "Spreadsheet" (offtopic aside - part of me wishes the OO.o guys had more clever names for their components"
What the... everybody on Slashdot is always whining that open source apps use weird and undescriptive names, and now people whine that OpenOffice uses a highly descriptive name?!?! This just proofs that nobody should ever listen to Slashdot criticism, ever.
Paypal isn't exactly known as the most reliable company. But are there any better alternatives out there, that have a good reputation? Are there any similar companies that also accept money from Asia countries (such as Malaysia and Phillippines), and don't charge $30 to transfer to an international bank account (I live in Europe, not US)?
GConf-editor is supposed to be only used by advanced users. The kind of people who don't fear editing text files. Average users don't even care about the option that was removed. Really, which average users care about the "Use FVWM window manager hints" checkbox (or whatever it was called) from the GNOME 1.x days? Or the "Display icons on desktop" checkbox (average user: click, disable, "Oh my god, my desktop is gone! How do I get it back?!?! HEEEELP!!!!!").
Slashdot Mirror
I read your stuff before. Very interesting. I hope they'll get implemented in Metacity. Do you know the current status of window manager support for that idea?
The thing is: I don't want taskbar grouping. I hate having to click twice to switch between document windows. I just want to be able to minimize all Gimp windows with one click, without task bar grouping.
And you say all that, while all the "BSD is freeer than GPL! GPL is communism! GPL is evil and viral!"-posts and "open source software (x) sucks, linux will never succeed on the desktop, give me better software for free or die, and if you don't listen to me then you are an elitist zealot"-posts get modded up to +5 Insightful.
Oh I forgot, Microsoft is never wrong, right? You can throw all the trash and crap you can find at Gimp and at open source, but not at Microsoft, right?
Well I've been using Gimp for 3-4 years, and I like the interface a lot. Just because YOU think it's unusable, doesn't mean everybody does! I HATE Photoshop's window-in-window interface. Alt+Tab is impossible, and to switch between image windows I have to click TWO TIMES (first the Window menu, then another menu item). Snapping windows is completely unheard of.
Besides, Photoshop on Mac behaves exactly like Gimp: floating windows. Why don't you complain about Photoshop on Mac too? Ooh, because Linux is the reincarnation of evil, right? Because Gimp is an open source progra, so it must suck, right? Because Microsoft is always right?
Geez stop talking as if OSS is the only thing at fault here. Have you ever heard of this thing called "limited manpower"? SOMEONE has to write all that stuff! Do you think code falls from the sky or something? You're nuts if you think they don't care about usability and looks, and you've obviously totally ignored the huge 1.2-2.0 improvements.
Unfortunately, utility windows suck in Metacity (or at least, not good enough)! If I click on the toolbox, it'll bring the utility window to front. That's good. But if I minimize the toolbox, the utility window is still visible, and there's no way to minimize it!
If I click on a document window, it will not bring the toolbox to the front. If I set the toolbox as a utility window, then I lose the ability to minimize it! If Alt+Tab to the toolbox or other utility windows, they will now bring the rest of the utility window or the document window to front!
If you know a better window manager than Metacity, which supports EHWM hints properly, please tell me. Devils Pie will not do: it doesn't help.
"You can then minimize/maximize all GIMP windows in a single operation, move the window group to a different desktop or whatever else you want to do..."
How? Which window manager do you use? I am looking for a good window manager than can do this!
- Metacity can't do this as far as I know.
- People have suggested Devils Pie (a window matcher), but nothing in it's documentation suggests that it's possible to minimize all associated windows in one click.
- Sawfish is unmaintained. Last release is from March 2003.
- Everything else does not seem to support EHWM hints properly.
Sooo, what window managers are left?
Until you see a game failing to load in XP SP 2, no matter what you try.
Yeah, because it's a sin to -gasp- actually care about free as in freedom, right? Everybody who cares more about freedom than about price is immoral, right?
How do they know it's more accurate than cesium clocks? You need to compare this new clock to something else in order to tell whether it's more accurate. But how do they know this clock is more accurate, if they don't have something which is already 100.0% accurate?
Uhm yeah and guess what? In 2000 people bragged about 2000 being the year of "the doom of Linux", and predicted that Linux will die within a year. A now, years later, Linux is still alive, and is stronger than ever.
"Only eight years later, but yup. An interesting product that still can't do what normal users want to do."
Only if you have been living in a shelter. Compare any modern desktop Linux distribution to the ones in 1996. If you didn't notice huge improvements in the usability area, then you are blind. Antialiased fonts, simpler user interface, much better hardware support and hardware autodetection, plug in your camera and an icon appears on the desktop, web browsers that surpass IE, a complete office suit which can replace MS Office for 99% of the people, strong focus on usability by popular projects, etc. etc.
My dad is a normal user. He uses Linux. I now have one example of an average user using Linux. And one example is all I need to debunk your statement.
My dad runs on Linux. He was certainly not let down. There, I have given one example of an average user using Linux. And one example is more than enough to debunk your "Linux is not ready for the average user" statement.
Then what business do you have to install games on your computer at work? Tell your boss that you want to install a game on his computer and see what his reaction is. Face it: the road to profit and success is road of the corporate world, not the gaming world. It's people like your boss who make big decisions, not Joe Gamer who likes to shoot people in FPS games.
Then you've obviously never looked at GNOME. GNOME 2's user interface is much simpler than GNOME 1's. Most configuration dialogs don't have any tabs and are very small, with only 5 or 6 config options.
GNOME didn't turn into a feature creep - it went to the opposite direction: they cleaned up the interface and removed options. And guess what? Slashdotters massively whine about it! They keep whining about config options being removed!
And this is exactly why removing options is bad. You may not like feature creep, but you have no choice! Stand still, and your product will never evolve. Everbody will go to the competition. Clean up the interface, and Slashdotters will whine. Add more features, and Slashdotters still whine.
And guess what? That's not what cusumers want! It's only want geeks like you want. Consumers WANT neat features. If you don't provide a more and more advanced feature set, they'll go to the competition, end of story. Average users don't care enough about better stability and performance. They want eye candy, they want new features.
A good example is GNOME. GNOME 2 has *less* features than GNOME 1. They cleaned up all the dialogs. Everything became simpler. And guess what? Slashdotters kept whining and whining. And this is exactly why removing features is a bad thing: you Slashdotters keep whining about it whenever an option is removed.
Why do people call it tabbed browsing? It was, and stil is, just window-in-window MDI with a task list.
"In the West, people respect intellectual property."
So you say, while probably running a pirated copy of Windows XP. Even if you don't, take a look at your teenage son. He's probably download "kewl warez" from Kazaa all day.
That's great, but what if the seller is not a company? Like me, I don't have a company, and I can't accept credit cards directly. I HAVE to use Paypal. Besides, not everybody has a credit card (this is especially true outside the US). Paypal makes it possible to use bank transfer.
You're also wrong. The GPL explictly allows you to charge money for software. The GPL FAQ explicitly states that you can charge as much as you want for the software. The point is freedom, not price. In fact, I'm making money on selling Free Software myself.
Fedora since version 1 offers ExecShield, which also protects against buffer overflows.
Mandrake has used libsafe for as long as I can remember.
Not sure about other distros.
People always mod the "open source sucks because apps use undescriptive names" posts up. They should take responsibility for what they say and what they mod up.
"I opened it with "Spreadsheet" (offtopic aside - part of me wishes the OO.o guys had more clever names for their components"
What the... everybody on Slashdot is always whining that open source apps use weird and undescriptive names, and now people whine that OpenOffice uses a highly descriptive name?!?! This just proofs that nobody should ever listen to Slashdot criticism, ever.
Paypal isn't exactly known as the most reliable company. But are there any better alternatives out there, that have a good reputation? Are there any similar companies that also accept money from Asia countries (such as Malaysia and Phillippines), and don't charge $30 to transfer to an international bank account (I live in Europe, not US)?
GConf-editor is supposed to be only used by advanced users. The kind of people who don't fear editing text files. Average users don't even care about the option that was removed. Really, which average users care about the "Use FVWM window manager hints" checkbox (or whatever it was called) from the GNOME 1.x days? Or the "Display icons on desktop" checkbox (average user: click, disable, "Oh my god, my desktop is gone! How do I get it back?!?! HEEEELP!!!!!").