I don't see exposure to the FOSS movement getting more widespread any time soon, on the Windows market. After all these years, the concept of being allowed to read, modify and sell the source code is still alien to most Windows users. As long as the Windows world is filled with commercial software, and people are still using Windows, it won't happen any time soon.
It's very simple: nobody reads the license. I made some money by selling an open source app (of which I am the maintainer). I also sell it, and include the source code. Yes I'm actually able to sell it, even though it can be downloaded for free.
The fact is, nobody reads the license. I include the source and the GPL. The GPL only gives the user more freedom. But nobody reads the GPL! Most don't even know they're allowed to distribute it, or even resell it.
Re:Whose task is copy&paste
on
The Power of X
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· Score: 4, Informative
Ehm... clipboardhandling already is part of X. It's called the "selection mechanism".
In fact, there is a standard. People used to misunderstand it but now it's documented clearly. http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/clipboards-sp ec
The X selection mechanism supports contents negotiation, which means that you can copy rich text and images from Mozilla and paste it in OpenOffice with the same markup. In fact, it already can. I tried it - it works. Even images are preserved. Try copying some tables in Gnumeric and paste them in Mozilla Composer. It works - the tables are preserved! The X selection mechanism is actually technically almost the same as MS Windows's. Unfortunately not all apps use content negotiation, I don't know why. Gimp is the worst example - it doesn't use the X selection mechanism *at all*, not even on Windows! It uses it's own internal clipboard. So you can copy & paste inside Gimp but not between multiple Gimp processes.
Geez why do I have to post this this over and over? Isn't it about time everybody on Slashdot knows about this?
Sigh, there we go again... First, get this: when you see a problem, there can be a whole bunch of causes. The only way to fix a problem is to correctly identify the cause.
Which you are not doing here. "X apps seem to be slower so X must be slow" may make sense from a non-technical user point of view, but that doesn't mean it's correct. In fact, it isn't. If you benchmark things and stuff, you'll see that the problem is not in X itself: it's in the toolkits. So if people listened to you and ditched X, we'd still have the same problems because the toolkits are still slow. Try using something like WindowMaker and some non-GTK non-QT apps. You'll find that they usually respond significantly faster (not on my machine though; Athlon 1.4 Ghz here, I don't find X apps slow). And try playing 3D games. Look at the high framerate (assuming you're using a good card and driver, like NVidia + vendor drivers). How's that possible for a windowing system that's slow? I've written several testing apps, for Windows and X. On both platforms, I get the same frame rate.
Expose events: Windows does pretty much the same thing. If I wrote an app that only responds to the paint event once, and I move a window above it, you'll see that the window won't be redrawn. Windows in fact uses the very same expose mechanism. X *does* in fact have a feature which allows you to save the content of the window. It's saved Backing Store and Save Under (I think). QT and GTK don't use it except when popping up a menu. Ask the toolkit authors why they don't, because I don't know.
Data copying: data is *not* copied when transferring pixmaps, which is about 90-95% of the traffic. On localhost, XFree86/XOrg uses shared memory for that. On localhost, normal X messages are transferred via unix domain sockets (not TCP sockets), which are almost as fast as shared memory (at least on Linux). Remember, this is small amount of data. No modern windowing system allows the app to touch the hardware directly. Not Windows, not MacOS X, not BeOS. In fact, Windows internally uses the same message-based communication system as X. Windows apps don't draw directly to the hardware.
It doesn't take up more bandwidth. It's been tested. With the old core fonts protocol, the client downloads x bytes of glyphs from the server. With Xft, the client uploads almost just as many bytes of glyphs to the server.
Re:Time for X11R7 or even X12
on
The Power of X
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
And how many modern X servers don't support modern popular extensions? Let's face it: XFree86 and X.org are the most popular X servers. Their codebases are compatible so the NVidia driver works on X.org too. Both of them support modern extensions like Xrender. Commercial X servers that don't support modern extensions will lose customers.
In order words: the free market will force other (commercial) X server vendors to support new, popular extensions.
If your English is not good then you shouldn't rely on a computer to try to "fix" your problems for you. That's asking for trouble. It's like thinking you don't have to learn Chinese anymore because you have Babelfish.
This is only considered "news" because it's posted by BBC. But it's in fact nothing new. Dating simulation games have existed for years, especially in Japan. But they've never gained populairity in foreign markets. Most anime fans would know about the existance of such games.
Yes, I agree. While ReiserFS is faster than ext3, I choose ext3 because it doesn't leave junk behind in my files when my system crashes. ReiserFS 3 couldn't do that. It protects the metadata, but not the data.
With ReiserFS 4 that has changed, so I will seriously consider ReiserFS next time I format my harddisk.
Just look at the number of Apache servers vs IIS servers. By your reasoning, since Apache is the most popular web server it must also be the most hacked, right? Nope, that's IIS. There goes your logic.
"No one's bitching about GNOME's button ordering."
On the contrary, almost everybody complains it. GNOME's "we're right, you're wrong" attitude is aimed towards Slashdotters only. There is absolutely no way to please Slashdotters no matter what you do, they will always complain. So it is only logical be hostile against Slashdotters. And again, only against Slashdotters. Everybody else can be treated with respect, but not whining Slashdotters. Slashdot is not a news site. It's not a pro-OSS anti-MS site. It's an anti-OSS collection of trolls and flamers. It only makes sense to accuse Slashdotters when they complain again.
"As another post said, button order is like what side of the road you drive on."
Yet professional usability studies have shown that putting the best option on the lower right is the most efficient. Slashdotters always complain about that open source developers must listen to usability experts. GNOME did, and now Slashdotters complain again, even though the Slashdotters themselves are not usability experts.
The parent post should be modded Insightful, not funny.
The fact is, many, many OSS projects spend lots of efford into usability. But sadly, Slashdotters keep nailing the same thing from 2 years ago over and over!
Let's take a look: - The GNOME usability project. Anybody can discuss usability issues, or request a UI review of their app. - Ximian, Sun and RedHat have professional usability experts. Sun did professional usability researches. But ironically and sadly, Slashdotters keep bashing them for creating bad UIs and do not recognize them as usability experts... even though they are professionals, and it's the Slashdotters who have been whining about the need for professional usability experts in the first place.
In other words: Slashdotters kept coming with the same old crap over and over again, no matter what happens. It goes like this: 1. Slashdotters: "OSS interfaces suck! Programmers must be banned from UI design!" 2. RedHat/WhateverCompany hires usability expert and revamp UIs. 3. One of the following things could now happen:
A) Slashdotters: "OSS interfaces suck! Programmers must be banned from UI design!" (completely ignoring that usability experts revamped the interfaces of many programs).
-or-
B) Slashdotters: "OMG those UIs are designed by an idiot! Waaah!" (completely ignoring the fact that they are designed by a usability expert).
Bah, I'll get modded down for stating this since it goes against the common "all OSS apps suck at usability" Slashdot mentality, but heck, this is the truth. It's sad that Slashdotters don't see this and keep ignoring the huge amount of time that has been put into usability.
"1) They must communicate what action will be taken when the button is pressed.
Bad: Yes, No, Cancel. Good: Save, Don't Save, Cancel."
Which is exactly what GNOME is doing! Start gedit ("Text Editor" menu item). Type something, click Close. What do you see? "Don't Save, Cancel, Save"! The least harm button is focused by default. In fact, the HIG strongly recommends doing that. KDE is moving towards the same thing (using action verbs).
And guess what? People are still complaining about the button order dispite that we hardly use Yes/No or No/Yes anymore. What do you have to say about that?
"Spatial Nautilus? That gets in the way, having loads of windows to manage when all you want and need is one is not very usable."
But it's easier to understand and to learn for grandma. The decision was made because usability research proofed that! You only like the navigation style because you're a geek. And as the article says, we must stop designing for geeks and start designing for granma.
"GTK OK/Cancel being swapped around? Not only is that the exact opposite of other interfaces, it's also the opposite of previous versions. That turns users' expectations inside-out."
Funny that you say this, because this button order is EXACTLY like MacOS X's! MacOS X has a right-to-left button order -> people praise MacOS X for being usable. GNOME does the same thing -> people flame GNOME down. Slashdotters have a double standard.
In fact, using ldd is the wrong way. ldd displays the entire dependancy tree - meaning it displays the dependancies of the dependancies. Use objdump -p foo | grep NEEDED
But if you flip everything on top of OpenGL, and the video driver doesn't support accelerated 3D graphics, then things can turn out to be *slower* than what we already have, because now you have to emulate OpenGL with software.
"The Netscape name is still recognizable in the business world."
Why do people say this? At every computer-related forum I know, almost everybody complains (or used to complain) about how slow and bloated and unstable Netscape 4.x and 6.0 was. When 6.5 and 7.x were out, people didn't even bother to try it. Netscape kept it's repuation of being slow, bloated and unstable. And these days, almost nobody knows Netscape anymore. Most people who do fall in the "I-hate-Netscape" category.
Re:GNU/Linux is not ready for "vs. Windows"
on
Linux vs. Windows
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· Score: 1
Not able to run MSN? 1. Click "Start"->Internet->Gaim Internet Messenger 2. Setup MSN account. 3. Done.
Let's compare this to Windows: 1. Click Start->Programs->MSN Messenger. 2. Setup account. 3. Done.
Exactly the same steps! How's Linux's way a "hack"?
It's not just the technical stuff that have changed. You've been sleeping in a cave if you think Linux's market share has not changed. Where have you been to have missed all the major switches to Linux? Let me name a few: City of Largo, Munich, Unilever, Homeland Security, etc.
In fact, I've been hearing since 1999 (when I was first introduced to Linux) that Linux will "go nowhere" or "will soon die". And now, years later, Linux has only improved and grown stronger compared to the past. Linux on the server is already a reality - for quite some time now. This is a fact - if you deny this then you are ignorant to reality. Ok, Linux is not widely used on the desktop. BUT, Linux on the desktop has definitely not stalled, nor did it lose market share. If anything, it has only gained market share. No matter how small the gain is, it is a gain. And let me ask you: what other non-MS operating system has "succeeded" on the desktop? BeOS died before it took off, OS/2 is dead, MacOS is still not used by more than a few % of the market. If you've got the energy to flame Linux for not owning more than a few % of the desktop market, then why don't you go flame down MacOS too? (The only reason I can think of is that you zealously hate Linux.)
You've got to be kidding. Linux has made amazing progress since 1997. Let's take a look at the technical improvements: - Huge usability and feature improvements in GNOME and KDE. Too much to list here so I'm not gonna. - Anti-aliased fonts. - Hardware accelerated OpenGL support. - Much, much more device drivers. - Excellent web browsers, all superior to MS Internet Explorer. - An excellent office suit, comparable to MS Office. - Multimedia players. mplayer for example can play almost anything you throw at - DivX, XviD, other MPEG4, AVI, MKV, Ogm, Ogg, MP3, MP2/MPG, WMV, WMA, QuickTime, RealVideo,... - out of the box! - An open compiler which can produce code that's comparable or faster than MSVC++/Intel C++. - An excellent personal information manager, comparable to MS Outlook. - Many desktop distributions ship with excellent graphical configuration tools. - Much improved automatic hardware detection in the desktop distros. Most hardware is correctly autodetected. This is a huge improvement compared to 1997, when autodetection was almost nonexistant. - Etc. etc. etc.
You're one of those people who make grand statements about Linux with no proof to back them up. That is an indication of zealous hate. And guess what, I've got two friends who are now happily using Linux. My parents have also been using Linux for years. Don't think Linux is absolutely unusable for everybody just because you and the people you know don't use it.
Saying that Linux isn't there yet, ok. But saying that there have been absolutely no improvements is a blantant lie. I can't believe someone modded your post up.
"Riight. Yet another case of "well, it worked for _me_, so surely everyone has the _exact_ _same_ hardware and software config.""
And that's exactly your attitude problem. You're making up stuff like that. All I'm saying is that not everybody has the same problems as you do, so you shouldn't try to generalize it and act as if it's broken for everybody.
You're kidding right? Everybody here says "Windows rulez, Linux will never succeed on the desktop". NOBODY critisizes people for using Windows. I'd even argue some people get critisized for being happy with Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm saying it doesn't use the native clipboard by default.
I don't see exposure to the FOSS movement getting more widespread any time soon, on the Windows market. After all these years, the concept of being allowed to read, modify and sell the source code is still alien to most Windows users. As long as the Windows world is filled with commercial software, and people are still using Windows, it won't happen any time soon.
It's very simple: nobody reads the license. I made some money by selling an open source app (of which I am the maintainer). I also sell it, and include the source code. Yes I'm actually able to sell it, even though it can be downloaded for free.
The fact is, nobody reads the license. I include the source and the GPL. The GPL only gives the user more freedom. But nobody reads the GPL! Most don't even know they're allowed to distribute it, or even resell it.
Ehm... clipboardhandling already is part of X. It's called the "selection mechanism".
p ec
In fact, there is a standard. People used to misunderstand it but now it's documented clearly. http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/clipboards-s
The X selection mechanism supports contents negotiation, which means that you can copy rich text and images from Mozilla and paste it in OpenOffice with the same markup. In fact, it already can. I tried it - it works. Even images are preserved. Try copying some tables in Gnumeric and paste them in Mozilla Composer. It works - the tables are preserved!
The X selection mechanism is actually technically almost the same as MS Windows's.
Unfortunately not all apps use content negotiation, I don't know why. Gimp is the worst example - it doesn't use the X selection mechanism *at all*, not even on Windows! It uses it's own internal clipboard. So you can copy & paste inside Gimp but not between multiple Gimp processes.
Geez why do I have to post this this over and over? Isn't it about time everybody on Slashdot knows about this?
Sigh, there we go again...
First, get this: when you see a problem, there can be a whole bunch of causes. The only way to fix a problem is to correctly identify the cause.
Which you are not doing here. "X apps seem to be slower so X must be slow" may make sense from a non-technical user point of view, but that doesn't mean it's correct. In fact, it isn't.
If you benchmark things and stuff, you'll see that the problem is not in X itself: it's in the toolkits. So if people listened to you and ditched X, we'd still have the same problems because the toolkits are still slow.
Try using something like WindowMaker and some non-GTK non-QT apps. You'll find that they usually respond significantly faster (not on my machine though; Athlon 1.4 Ghz here, I don't find X apps slow).
And try playing 3D games. Look at the high framerate (assuming you're using a good card and driver, like NVidia + vendor drivers). How's that possible for a windowing system that's slow?
I've written several testing apps, for Windows and X. On both platforms, I get the same frame rate.
Expose events: Windows does pretty much the same thing. If I wrote an app that only responds to the paint event once, and I move a window above it, you'll see that the window won't be redrawn. Windows in fact uses the very same expose mechanism.
X *does* in fact have a feature which allows you to save the content of the window. It's saved Backing Store and Save Under (I think). QT and GTK don't use it except when popping up a menu. Ask the toolkit authors why they don't, because I don't know.
Data copying: data is *not* copied when transferring pixmaps, which is about 90-95% of the traffic. On localhost, XFree86/XOrg uses shared memory for that.
On localhost, normal X messages are transferred via unix domain sockets (not TCP sockets), which are almost as fast as shared memory (at least on Linux). Remember, this is small amount of data.
No modern windowing system allows the app to touch the hardware directly. Not Windows, not MacOS X, not BeOS. In fact, Windows internally uses the same message-based communication system as X. Windows apps don't draw directly to the hardware.
It doesn't take up more bandwidth. It's been tested. With the old core fonts protocol, the client downloads x bytes of glyphs from the server. With Xft, the client uploads almost just as many bytes of glyphs to the server.
And how many modern X servers don't support modern popular extensions? Let's face it: XFree86 and X.org are the most popular X servers. Their codebases are compatible so the NVidia driver works on X.org too. Both of them support modern extensions like Xrender. Commercial X servers that don't support modern extensions will lose customers.
In order words: the free market will force other (commercial) X server vendors to support new, popular extensions.
If your English is not good then you shouldn't rely on a computer to try to "fix" your problems for you. That's asking for trouble. It's like thinking you don't have to learn Chinese anymore because you have Babelfish.
This is only considered "news" because it's posted by BBC. But it's in fact nothing new. Dating simulation games have existed for years, especially in Japan. But they've never gained populairity in foreign markets. Most anime fans would know about the existance of such games.
Yes, I agree. While ReiserFS is faster than ext3, I choose ext3 because it doesn't leave junk behind in my files when my system crashes. ReiserFS 3 couldn't do that. It protects the metadata, but not the data.
With ReiserFS 4 that has changed, so I will seriously consider ReiserFS next time I format my harddisk.
Just look at the number of Apache servers vs IIS servers. By your reasoning, since Apache is the most popular web server it must also be the most hacked, right? Nope, that's IIS. There goes your logic.
On the contrary, almost everybody complains it.
GNOME's "we're right, you're wrong" attitude is aimed towards Slashdotters only. There is absolutely no way to please Slashdotters no matter what you do, they will always complain. So it is only logical be hostile against Slashdotters.
And again, only against Slashdotters. Everybody else can be treated with respect, but not whining Slashdotters. Slashdot is not a news site. It's not a pro-OSS anti-MS site. It's an anti-OSS collection of trolls and flamers. It only makes sense to accuse Slashdotters when they complain again.
Yet professional usability studies have shown that putting the best option on the lower right is the most efficient. Slashdotters always complain about that open source developers must listen to usability experts. GNOME did, and now Slashdotters complain again, even though the Slashdotters themselves are not usability experts.
The parent post should be modded Insightful, not funny.
The fact is, many, many OSS projects spend lots of efford into usability. But sadly, Slashdotters keep nailing the same thing from 2 years ago over and over!
Let's take a look:
- The GNOME usability project. Anybody can discuss usability issues, or request a UI review of their app.
- Ximian, Sun and RedHat have professional usability experts. Sun did professional usability researches. But ironically and sadly, Slashdotters keep bashing them for creating bad UIs and do not recognize them as usability experts... even though they are professionals, and it's the Slashdotters who have been whining about the need for professional usability experts in the first place.
In other words: Slashdotters kept coming with the same old crap over and over again, no matter what happens. It goes like this:
1. Slashdotters: "OSS interfaces suck! Programmers must be banned from UI design!"
2. RedHat/WhateverCompany hires usability expert and revamp UIs.
3. One of the following things could now happen:
A) Slashdotters: "OSS interfaces suck! Programmers must be banned from UI design!" (completely ignoring that usability experts revamped the interfaces of many programs).
-or-
B) Slashdotters: "OMG those UIs are designed by an idiot! Waaah!" (completely ignoring the fact that they are designed by a usability expert).
Bah, I'll get modded down for stating this since it goes against the common "all OSS apps suck at usability" Slashdot mentality, but heck, this is the truth. It's sad that Slashdotters don't see this and keep ignoring the huge amount of time that has been put into usability.
Which is exactly what GNOME is doing!
Start gedit ("Text Editor" menu item). Type something, click Close. What do you see? "Don't Save, Cancel, Save"! The least harm button is focused by default. In fact, the HIG strongly recommends doing that. KDE is moving towards the same thing (using action verbs).
And guess what? People are still complaining about the button order dispite that we hardly use Yes/No or No/Yes anymore. What do you have to say about that?
But when GNOME does the same thing it's suddenly the work of the devil? That doesn't make sense.
But it's easier to understand and to learn for grandma. The decision was made because usability research proofed that! You only like the navigation style because you're a geek. And as the article says, we must stop designing for geeks and start designing for granma.
Funny that you say this, because this button order is EXACTLY like MacOS X's!
MacOS X has a right-to-left button order -> people praise MacOS X for being usable.
GNOME does the same thing -> people flame GNOME down.
Slashdotters have a double standard.
In fact, using ldd is the wrong way. ldd displays the entire dependancy tree - meaning it displays the dependancies of the dependancies.
Use objdump -p foo | grep NEEDED
But if you flip everything on top of OpenGL, and the video driver doesn't support accelerated 3D graphics, then things can turn out to be *slower* than what we already have, because now you have to emulate OpenGL with software.
Neither of them. Non-techies these days have never heard of Netscape.
Why do people say this? At every computer-related forum I know, almost everybody complains (or used to complain) about how slow and bloated and unstable Netscape 4.x and 6.0 was. When 6.5 and 7.x were out, people didn't even bother to try it. Netscape kept it's repuation of being slow, bloated and unstable.
And these days, almost nobody knows Netscape anymore. Most people who do fall in the "I-hate-Netscape" category.
Not able to run MSN?
1. Click "Start"->Internet->Gaim Internet Messenger
2. Setup MSN account.
3. Done.
Let's compare this to Windows:
1. Click Start->Programs->MSN Messenger.
2. Setup account.
3. Done.
Exactly the same steps! How's Linux's way a "hack"?
(OK I pressed Submit too soon, sigh...)
It's not just the technical stuff that have changed. You've been sleeping in a cave if you think Linux's market share has not changed. Where have you been to have missed all the major switches to Linux? Let me name a few: City of Largo, Munich, Unilever, Homeland Security, etc.
In fact, I've been hearing since 1999 (when I was first introduced to Linux) that Linux will "go nowhere" or "will soon die". And now, years later, Linux has only improved and grown stronger compared to the past.
Linux on the server is already a reality - for quite some time now. This is a fact - if you deny this then you are ignorant to reality.
Ok, Linux is not widely used on the desktop. BUT, Linux on the desktop has definitely not stalled, nor did it lose market share. If anything, it has only gained market share. No matter how small the gain is, it is a gain. And let me ask you: what other non-MS operating system has "succeeded" on the desktop? BeOS died before it took off, OS/2 is dead, MacOS is still not used by more than a few % of the market. If you've got the energy to flame Linux for not owning more than a few % of the desktop market, then why don't you go flame down MacOS too? (The only reason I can think of is that you zealously hate Linux.)
You've got to be kidding. Linux has made amazing progress since 1997. Let's take a look at the technical improvements: ... - out of the box!
- Huge usability and feature improvements in GNOME and KDE. Too much to list here so I'm not gonna.
- Anti-aliased fonts.
- Hardware accelerated OpenGL support.
- Much, much more device drivers.
- Excellent web browsers, all superior to MS Internet Explorer.
- An excellent office suit, comparable to MS Office.
- Multimedia players. mplayer for example can play almost anything you throw at - DivX, XviD, other MPEG4, AVI, MKV, Ogm, Ogg, MP3, MP2/MPG, WMV, WMA, QuickTime, RealVideo,
- An open compiler which can produce code that's comparable or faster than MSVC++/Intel C++.
- An excellent personal information manager, comparable to MS Outlook.
- Many desktop distributions ship with excellent graphical configuration tools.
- Much improved automatic hardware detection in the desktop distros. Most hardware is correctly autodetected. This is a huge improvement compared to 1997, when autodetection was almost nonexistant.
- Etc. etc. etc.
You're one of those people who make grand statements about Linux with no proof to back them up. That is an indication of zealous hate.
And guess what, I've got two friends who are now happily using Linux. My parents have also been using Linux for years. Don't think Linux is absolutely unusable for everybody just because you and the people you know don't use it.
Saying that Linux isn't there yet, ok. But saying that there have been absolutely no improvements is a blantant lie. I can't believe someone modded your post up.
And that's exactly your attitude problem. You're making up stuff like that.
All I'm saying is that not everybody has the same problems as you do, so you shouldn't try to generalize it and act as if it's broken for everybody.
You're kidding right? Everybody here says "Windows rulez, Linux will never succeed on the desktop". NOBODY critisizes people for using Windows. I'd even argue some people get critisized for being happy with Linux.