"Average users simply do not protect themselves from crap like worms, viruses, popups and spyware, for whatever reasons. So you see, it's a perfectly valid reason to switch for many people."
And why wouldn't they rather install Ad-Aware, Norton AntiVirus, ZoneAlarm, etc. This is an honest question. So far all the people I know would rather either spent $$$ or pirate third-party virusscanners, firewalls and anti-spyware software for Windows.
For modern computers, yes. On modern computers you can notice the speed gains.
On older computers, not always. Nautilus 2 is definitely faster than Nautilus 1, even on older computers, but GTK 2 is noticeably slower than GTK 1 on older computers (even though GTK 2 seems faster on modern computers).
Performance increase is not always an absolute thing. In many cases it's also a RAM tradeoff.
You fail to understand why I have this kind of attitude. I have this kind of attitude because of people like you!
Average users don't complain all day and go around on Slashdot telling how open source sucks and that OSS developers have attitude problems. They either don't say anything or politely ask the authors to fix this. I have respect for this kind of people, but not to people like you!
You've never considered that people may be hostile to you because of *your* attitude, have you?
"but what about all of the other people who have the same or similar problems?"
Those people file bug reports to the K3b authors and upgrade when a new release is available. Really, can't think think of this yourself? This is how everything works. It works for other people but for some reason it doesn't work for you. You tell the authors that it doesn't work, they analyze the problem and fix it, and you upgrade. This is exactly how proprietary software communities work too! Except people from those communities don't go pitnicking on every single bug and claim that it's an "attitude" or "ego" problem.
For the vast majority of the users MP3 burning will Just Work(tm).
It's really sad how people like you always reverse the truth. Slashdot has become an anti-Linux pro-MS community yet you people don't want to admit it. Look at the previous Linux kernel vulnerability article for example. The *first post* questions open source's security (so it's definitely not pro-Linux anti-MS!) yet got modded up to +5! In fact, almost every single post that critisizes Linux gets modded up even if they're not true!
And by that time, proprietary software developers will be requiring two gigabytes... bla bla...
So? Everybody does that. This kind of thing is in no way limited to open source software.
If buying 2 GB of RAM for a mere 50 euro will allow my computer to speed up 3 times and do things that a modern computer is supposed to be able to do, then that money is not wasted. If you don't want modern features then stick with old software, it's that simple. The same is also true for proprietary software.
I don't know, you should ask a kernel developer or someone similar. I use the "resident minus shared" but I am told even that one isn't completely correct.
My advice is: you shouldn't care. My system runs fast and snappy and I don't care what the system monitor says about memory usage (it's wrong anyway).
Computers get faster and faster. More people are getting more and more RAM. It's only logical to use more RAM in order to make things faster. What's the point in having RAM if you don't use it?
And by the time Linux is popular on the desktop, everybody would already have 512+ MB RAM.
Average users don't visit Slashdot. And more specifically, you're not budhaboy. That comment was specifically meant to tell budhaboy how to solve his personal problem, not a general solution for all users. There's no point in getting upset about something that wasn't meant for you, or anybody else, at all!
I can't stand of all the "average user" obsession on Slashdot. Yeah it's great to make software usable for the average user, I'm all for that. But it gets rediculous when every single post that includes a command gets modded down in the name of "average users".
And according to the K3b website, you can directly burn MP3s. If the posters says it doesn't work for him somehow, then that's a bug and he should report it to the authors so they can fix it so he can get a new version that does work so he can move on. It's rediculous that people like you keep nitpicking on every single bug claiming that it's somehow an "arrogance" or "attitude problem".
Did you forget everything else? Antialiased fonts, a configuration system which supports multiple backends (XML or LDAP or anything you want; important for businesses), heavy use of graphics that have millions of colors, bigger screens, more advanced underlying architecture (important for third-party developers!), MIME type sniffing, etc.
Yes OS/2 Warp did some of that but it also looks bad by today's standards and isn't nearly as advanced or polished.
"That's the same argument Microsoft used to say that Windows 95 is faster than Windows 3.1"
No it isn't. I'm talking about 2.x and 1.4 on the same system! GNOME 2.x on an Athlon 1.4 Ghz + 390 MB RAM is faster than GNOME 1.4 on the very same system!
"But most people's experience with the hardware available at the time was that Win95 was much much slower, thrashing horribly with less than eight megabytes and still rather uncomfortable with less than sixteen."
Yet Win95 won and all the critics were beaten down by the Win95-worshipping majority?
"Making a program twice as fast in CPU time but at the expense of using twice as much memory may not be a good trade-off."
Most modern games use this method to speed things up: they eat insanely amounts of memory in order to make the game itself run faster and smoother.
That's what X's network transparency is for! You run a big server which hosts applications and you connect cheap thin terminals to it. Not only does it saves businesses a lot of money, the hardware requirements for the thin clients are very low too.
"Let's be clear about this: the vast, VAST majority of machines on the planet, in homes and in businesses, have 32M, 64M (and occasionally 128M) RAM."
What are you talking about? Everywhere I look I see people with at least 128 MB RAM computers at home. 256 is not rare these days. And let's face it: Windows XP won't run quickly with less than 128 MB RAM. I've seen some XP boxes with 128 MB RAM and they are *horribly slow*. As Windows XP gains more and more market share, which means more and more people are using 128+ MB RAM machines.
To implement modern features you need lots of RAM. If you don't have that much RAM then don't use modern desktop environments or use minimalistic environments. It's that simple. If you complain at a Windows forum about WinXP needing so much memory you'll get flamed down. Even Windows people will tell you to buy more RAM because it's cheap.
"When will we start to see serious performance improvements?"
With GNOME 2.0 and 2.6. Nautilus 2.0 got a huge speed boost compared to 1.x. Nautilus 2.6 is spatial and has because even faster. Windows appear instantly.
"Linux is supposed to get us off the upgrade treadmill, but as far as I can see, GNOME just keeps getting bigger, slower and more complex."
Not true. GNOME (and KDE!) have only gotten faster and faster. The exceptions are KDE 2.0 (which is slower than 1.0; but 3.0 is faster than 2.0 and 3.2 is even faster than 3.0) and GTK (which has become a little slower but also smoother because of extensive double buffering). On this system (Athlon 1.4 Ghz 390 MB RAM) I can definitely say GNOME 2.x is faster than 1.4. And GTK 2 feels smoother than GTK 1.
"When gconfd is eating up 20 megs (resident), just for a configuration back-end, it's evident that we're getting sloppy."
OMG not this again. I will repeat it *again*. Don't trust memory reports! The 20 MB you read includes shared memory! In reality it uses a lot less than 20 MB, somewhere around 6 MB on my system. People who think software x is bloated by looking at the system monitor's memory report are just deceiving themselves.
And sometimes you need to use more resources in order to make things faster. Low memory usage doesn't always equal fast and high memory usage doesn't always equal slow!
"Wne a Linux vulnerability is patched, it is proof that open source software is wonderful."
Bah, here we go again, yet another "Slashdot is anti-MS pro-Linux yadda yadda bla bla". Look at the first comment in this story! It questions open source yet is modded up to +5!
"* The poor naming scheme that--despite close to five years of bitching--hasn't been changed in favor of something sane KDE will drop the 'k' when GNOME drops the 'g', Apple drops the 'i', and Microsoft drops the 'MS'. Remember, its "MS Word" not just "Word.""
What poor naming scheme? When I open my menu I see items like Text Editor, Web Browser, Calculator, Image Viewer. They launch gedit, epiphany, gcalctool and eog, but the menu don't mention anything about the app names. In KDE, you see menu items like "Kate (Text Editr)" and "Konqueror (Web Browser)". The function is included right in the menu.
"GIMP 2(third release) - 2D almost ready to topple paintshoppro"
To me, Gimp has already far surpassed Paint Shop Pro a looong time ago. Gimp is nicer, faster and more powerful than Paint Shop Pro (except simple vectors but I really don't need that).
Not everyone who has a CS degree and can program can get a programming job (or, more importantly, keep doing that job for a long time), proprietary or open source.
"giving software away will not bring you money."
Who says anything about giving it away? 1. All the BSD trolls always yell about how "viral" and "restrictive" the GPL is. 2. It's about freedom, not price. RedHat sells their distribution, not giving it away.
Slashdot Mirror
In that case, my apologies too.
It's just that there are far too many of that kind of people these days.
I stopped caring about speed issues when I spent $99 on 256 MB RAM.
"Average users simply do not protect themselves from crap like worms, viruses, popups and spyware, for whatever reasons. So you see, it's a perfectly valid reason to switch for many people."
And why wouldn't they rather install Ad-Aware, Norton AntiVirus, ZoneAlarm, etc.
This is an honest question. So far all the people I know would rather either spent $$$ or pirate third-party virusscanners, firewalls and anti-spyware software for Windows.
For modern computers, yes. On modern computers you can notice the speed gains.
On older computers, not always. Nautilus 2 is definitely faster than Nautilus 1, even on older computers, but GTK 2 is noticeably slower than GTK 1 on older computers (even though GTK 2 seems faster on modern computers).
Performance increase is not always an absolute thing. In many cases it's also a RAM tradeoff.
You fail to understand why I have this kind of attitude. I have this kind of attitude because of people like you!
Average users don't complain all day and go around on Slashdot telling how open source sucks and that OSS developers have attitude problems. They either don't say anything or politely ask the authors to fix this. I have respect for this kind of people, but not to people like you!
You've never considered that people may be hostile to you because of *your* attitude, have you?
"but what about all of the other people who have the same or similar problems?"
Those people file bug reports to the K3b authors and upgrade when a new release is available. Really, can't think think of this yourself?
This is how everything works. It works for other people but for some reason it doesn't work for you. You tell the authors that it doesn't work, they analyze the problem and fix it, and you upgrade. This is exactly how proprietary software communities work too! Except people from those communities don't go pitnicking on every single bug and claim that it's an "attitude" or "ego" problem.
For the vast majority of the users MP3 burning will Just Work(tm).
It's really sad how people like you always reverse the truth. Slashdot has become an anti-Linux pro-MS community yet you people don't want to admit it. Look at the previous Linux kernel vulnerability article for example. The *first post* questions open source's security (so it's definitely not pro-Linux anti-MS!) yet got modded up to +5! In fact, almost every single post that critisizes Linux gets modded up even if they're not true!
And by that time, proprietary software developers will be requiring two gigabytes... bla bla...
So? Everybody does that. This kind of thing is in no way limited to open source software.
If buying 2 GB of RAM for a mere 50 euro will allow my computer to speed up 3 times and do things that a modern computer is supposed to be able to do, then that money is not wasted. If you don't want modern features then stick with old software, it's that simple. The same is also true for proprietary software.
I don't know, you should ask a kernel developer or someone similar. I use the "resident minus shared" but I am told even that one isn't completely correct.
My advice is: you shouldn't care. My system runs fast and snappy and I don't care what the system monitor says about memory usage (it's wrong anyway).
Computers get faster and faster. More people are getting more and more RAM. It's only logical to use more RAM in order to make things faster. What's the point in having RAM if you don't use it?
And by the time Linux is popular on the desktop, everybody would already have 512+ MB RAM.
"So what are any of the "average users""
Average users don't visit Slashdot. And more specifically, you're not budhaboy. That comment was specifically meant to tell budhaboy how to solve his personal problem, not a general solution for all users. There's no point in getting upset about something that wasn't meant for you, or anybody else, at all!
I can't stand of all the "average user" obsession on Slashdot. Yeah it's great to make software usable for the average user, I'm all for that. But it gets rediculous when every single post that includes a command gets modded down in the name of "average users".
And according to the K3b website, you can directly burn MP3s. If the posters says it doesn't work for him somehow, then that's a bug and he should report it to the authors so they can fix it so he can get a new version that does work so he can move on. It's rediculous that people like you keep nitpicking on every single bug claiming that it's somehow an "arrogance" or "attitude problem".
Did you forget everything else? Antialiased fonts, a configuration system which supports multiple backends (XML or LDAP or anything you want; important for businesses), heavy use of graphics that have millions of colors, bigger screens, more advanced underlying architecture (important for third-party developers!), MIME type sniffing, etc.
Yes OS/2 Warp did some of that but it also looks bad by today's standards and isn't nearly as advanced or polished.
"That's the same argument Microsoft used to say that Windows 95 is faster than Windows 3.1"
No it isn't. I'm talking about 2.x and 1.4 on the same system! GNOME 2.x on an Athlon 1.4 Ghz + 390 MB RAM is faster than GNOME 1.4 on the very same system!
"But most people's experience with the hardware available at the time was that Win95 was much much slower, thrashing horribly with less than eight megabytes and still rather uncomfortable with less than sixteen."
Yet Win95 won and all the critics were beaten down by the Win95-worshipping majority?
"Making a program twice as fast in CPU time but at the expense of using twice as much memory may not be a good trade-off."
Most modern games use this method to speed things up: they eat insanely amounts of memory in order to make the game itself run faster and smoother.
That's what X's network transparency is for! You run a big server which hosts applications and you connect cheap thin terminals to it. Not only does it saves businesses a lot of money, the hardware requirements for the thin clients are very low too.
"Let's be clear about this: the vast, VAST majority of machines on the planet, in homes and in businesses, have 32M, 64M (and occasionally 128M) RAM."
What are you talking about? Everywhere I look I see people with at least 128 MB RAM computers at home. 256 is not rare these days.
And let's face it: Windows XP won't run quickly with less than 128 MB RAM. I've seen some XP boxes with 128 MB RAM and they are *horribly slow*.
As Windows XP gains more and more market share, which means more and more people are using 128+ MB RAM machines.
To implement modern features you need lots of RAM. If you don't have that much RAM then don't use modern desktop environments or use minimalistic environments. It's that simple. If you complain at a Windows forum about WinXP needing so much memory you'll get flamed down. Even Windows people will tell you to buy more RAM because it's cheap.
"When will we start to see serious performance improvements?"
With GNOME 2.0 and 2.6. Nautilus 2.0 got a huge speed boost compared to 1.x. Nautilus 2.6 is spatial and has because even faster. Windows appear instantly.
"Linux is supposed to get us off the upgrade treadmill, but as far as I can see, GNOME just keeps getting bigger, slower and more complex."
Not true. GNOME (and KDE!) have only gotten faster and faster. The exceptions are KDE 2.0 (which is slower than 1.0; but 3.0 is faster than 2.0 and 3.2 is even faster than 3.0) and GTK (which has become a little slower but also smoother because of extensive double buffering). On this system (Athlon 1.4 Ghz 390 MB RAM) I can definitely say GNOME 2.x is faster than 1.4. And GTK 2 feels smoother than GTK 1.
"When gconfd is eating up 20 megs (resident), just for a configuration back-end, it's evident that we're getting sloppy."
OMG not this again. I will repeat it *again*. Don't trust memory reports! The 20 MB you read includes shared memory! In reality it uses a lot less than 20 MB, somewhere around 6 MB on my system.
People who think software x is bloated by looking at the system monitor's memory report are just deceiving themselves.
And sometimes you need to use more resources in order to make things faster. Low memory usage doesn't always equal fast and high memory usage doesn't always equal slow!
But that suggestion wasn't meant for normal users! It was meant for Slashdotters. Or actually, to specifically help out budhaboy to solve his problem.
"Wne a Linux vulnerability is patched, it is proof that open source software is wonderful."
Bah, here we go again, yet another "Slashdot is anti-MS pro-Linux yadda yadda bla bla".
Look at the first comment in this story! It questions open source yet is modded up to +5!
"* The poor naming scheme that--despite close to five years of bitching--hasn't been changed in favor of something sane
KDE will drop the 'k' when GNOME drops the 'g', Apple drops the 'i', and Microsoft drops the 'MS'. Remember, its "MS Word" not just "Word.""
What poor naming scheme? When I open my menu I see items like Text Editor, Web Browser, Calculator, Image Viewer. They launch gedit, epiphany, gcalctool and eog, but the menu don't mention anything about the app names.
In KDE, you see menu items like "Kate (Text Editr)" and "Konqueror (Web Browser)". The function is included right in the menu.
I don't see the problem.
"GIMP 2(third release) - 2D almost ready to topple paintshoppro"
To me, Gimp has already far surpassed Paint Shop Pro a looong time ago. Gimp is nicer, faster and more powerful than Paint Shop Pro (except simple vectors but I really don't need that).
Not everyone who has a CS degree and can program can get a programming job (or, more importantly, keep doing that job for a long time), proprietary or open source.
"giving software away will not bring you money."
Who says anything about giving it away?
1. All the BSD trolls always yell about how "viral" and "restrictive" the GPL is.
2. It's about freedom, not price. RedHat sells their distribution, not giving it away.
"How are we supposed to eat in the meantime?"
By... *gasp* you didn't think of that did you... doing a non-pogramming-related job in the mean time?
There is no law that requires me to either work 100% on proprietary or 100% on open source software. I can always do both.
Ximian, RedHat, etc. Do you think people like Owen Tylor or Havoc Pennington aren't getting paid?
So far no one has explained to me why books shouldn't be "free" and humans should.
The X Consortium decides the standard protocol. It has always been like this.