Remember Loki? That was a funny company. You know, I still have my copy of their port of Tribes 2 on my computer. And evertime I upgrade I pop that disk in and install the software, no matter what distro I'm playing with. So the argument about not being able to support different distributions is a little confusing (I mean that, like if there is a good reason this works and that doesn't I want to know).
Sure, it really does work better then I'd imagined. I'm going to install a blank hard drive this weekend and go through the whole thing, taking step-by-step notes as I go. I'll send you a ruff.
Forgive my ignorance, but if Direct TV works like regular cable (with a pci TV tuner card) then you are describing MythTV which is a Linux software base PVR project.
It doesn't play WMA (which is a downside for those of you not rabidly anti M$) but has a plugin (Mythmusic) to play OGG.
It pauses live TV.
It has AWESOME recording and scheduling feature (including features like "record this program when ever it plays anywhere" "on this channel" "only this time" and recording conflict fixer).
It has a great TV guide list.
It displays information on current programs on demand.
It shows local weather forecasts.
It will display photographs.
It will play videos from you local hard drive.
It supports multiple TV tuner cards! (if you want to watch a different program then the one your recording, record more then one program, etc)
Its supports Picture in Picture.
Now that I've got it working (took a little work, mostly because perl module Tk::MMutil wasn't installed or listed in the dependencies) I understand why people get so worked up about it.
I just dropped my digital cable and moved over to extended basic and was missing the extra features with the digital box. But MythTV does EVERYTHING it did, but better and with a lot of better features (ever the GUI is easier to use).
Anyhow, I'm probably preaching to the choir. Anyone who's been thinking about doing it should really stop making excuses and get it working, it one of those rare instances where something works pretty much like you imagine it *should*, but then you notice something you'd never thought of, and it works right too!
Anyhow, I'm thinking of doing a step-by-step on a clean install of Mandrake 9.1 this weekend, would anyone be interested?
And DirecTV DSL rocked. It really sucked that they went under. Rock solid connection and an SLA that stated that you can do whatever you want with *your* bandwidth! And a static IP.
I was with them from the Telocity buyout. Their customer service was awesome too. Now I'm using Earthlink and sure miss the good service!
However, if you get in the habit of providing better solutions, they may start asking you to find a solution to begin with.
Um, yep. Just make sure you do what they want in the end and you cover both sides (made a suggestion that might have helped and complied with the clients wishes, sounds like a callback!).
Your right. But the cinemagraphic story telling and percision camera work in the Matrix raised the bar for technical story telling, despite a few scenes with not-so-hot stunt work.
I suggest if they can't do it without resorting to the cg they work around it. The first episode improved the state of the art of cinematography and this gave it a particularly rich look. If the second episode is going to focus on cg tricks it will probably be a disappointment to a lot of us. Unnatural movement is an eyesore.
But you know, Slashdot wouldn't be Slashdot without the wild speculation.
Thank you. I've been working on my new HTPC for weeks, involving custom scripts and custom gui pop-up and LOADS of open source software. Its awesome, but really time consuming. Half the time I end up feeling like a mechanic with my cordless keyboard trying to fix something so we can watch a movie (Xine's dvdnav pluggin isn't doing css right now, have to set up ogle, etc).
Anyhow, when I hear someone say "well we've got that!" and blithely dismiss some for profit project, I cringe. Prefab is good and right now Mythtv is for hackers (and debian users?).
No. Whats funny is Windows is like the low water mark. And people don't expect everything to work the same as it did on Windows, they expect it to work at least as well as it did in Windows. Its an important distinction.
Exacty. After using Windows and Macs and every other computer system out there your left with a pretty good sense of what can and can not be done.Then when you find yourself in a situation that you've seen handled seamlessly 1000's of times suddenly come to a grinding halt, well, that pisses me off.
I wish she HAD installed more distributions, but it would have just increased her level of frustration after seeing each distribution getting different parts wrong and right. Its a mess. Funny think is "Linux" really is technically superior and every problem she had has already been solved, just never in one place.
I feel like the usability issue gets confused a lot. Its not about "stupid user" or "dumbing" linux down. Its a technical issue and one of the biggest technical shortcomings of Linux distributions. Period.
Linux has a lot of strengths but this is the biggest hurdle left to jump. We need to start equating smart with usable; ic if Linux (and associated software) is so smart why isn't it simple to use.
When I create a complicated spreadsheet (I work np business) I don't write a note at the bottom that says RTFM. I create very complicated spreadsheets and the best ones never ever show it.
Cute. Now use Linux for 3 or 4 years. You'll figure out where the ruff spots are sooner or later.
Linux distributions strengths are in part because of the technical strengths in Linux and the associated software, which also happens to be its weakness. Usability has been looked at as a dirty word and it seems it still is.
There's a pretty big divide with technical elitism and desktop dominance. But I've got hope after hearing Jon "Maddog" Hall speak a couple year ago at our local LUG. He said he used Suse, because some days he just wanted his computer to work. As more of the original Linux hackers get older and busier I suspect they'll loss some of that hard edge too. I mean we've got kids now.
These discussions aren't going to go away until we either give up on Linux as a desktop alternative or someone listens. I love these discussion, because I think a lot of good *will* come from them.
Think of this type of article as a sign of Linux's momentum.
Or better yet, think of this as an area that Linux distributions are technically inferior to many of their commercial counter-parts. Maybe we should start looking at usability as a technical issue and stop bragging about how surperior our favorite *nix is. I mean at the end of the day we just need a computer that works right, the rest of this stuff is icing.
Whats the point of benchmarks if you can't get it all to work.
(Btw, Mandrake +/- 9.1 lets you store passwords for its configuration tools, so my girlfriend doesn't have to bitch!);-)
You will *never* be able to control what OSS developers do. Ever. You *know* most of them are doing it to satisfy a personal itch and they aren't going to stop and ask you what you want. Period.
So this whole line about whether it makes since for OSS developers to "reinvent" the wheel is frustratingly rhetorical.
I think what we should be discussing is how to encourage *feasible payment models* in the OSS community. Free (beer) software is great, but I think we are asking our community to move a little beyond that, but we still aren't paying them a living wage. Its time to pony up.
I like to keep things simple. Open Source programmers are like musicians and artists. Stroke their ego (they deserve it) and never expect you can demand things of them.
I'm with the above author. Mplayer beats the pants off any other media player, bar none. Except at DVD playback (because of the DVDNAV) where XINE is *perfect*.
I've had a lot of gripes about Linux usability, but this is not one of those areas. If your having trouble with either project I'd suggest either installing from source with all depenancies or installing Mandrake 9.1 +/- and using urpmi and the available PLF binaries (easy as apt-get!).
I'd have to whole heartedly agree with that. I've been very interested in one particular project lately, a project that's been part of every major distribution I've seen. Its a xmms plugin called paranormal (fully programmable, it makes amazing vis). This project has shown NO activity in 18 months. Its dead. But the software is NOT DEAD.
If you want to monitor something, how about downloads? Or site hits?
I think 50% of the usabily trouble with Linux on the desktop is 100% the distro makers faults. The technology is there (KDE 3.1 is sweet! Openoffice is looking good, X works great). But the distro makers still tend to throw everything into it in a sort of willy-nilly way. KDE works nicely, but the menus are usually cumbersome, or the install script doesn't recognize hardware (use Kudzu!) or something similar, software installation can be a real bitch, libraries, etc.
Lets (*I'm volunteering you*) define a base install that could be standard, including useful (sanely named) tools for system management and basic desktop necessities. The simpler the better.
I agree with the choice issue. Linux distros biggest single strength is the panorama of choices available.
But I also believe that they offer too much, too much in the base installs. Choice should not be hoisted at the user.
I think thats the key to dealing with the trouble. As for the OSS developers shouldn't reinvent the wheel? Thats crap. Let them go at it, I think its wonderful.
I agree with just about everything you say. The "Linux" crowd still has a lot of loud cowboys, relics from the bad old RTFM! days. But their numbers are shrinking.
This power/usability dichodomy is no longer accurate. The power and flexability of Linux doesn't need to come at a cost. Gentoo has started to show us that.
Good design is the key to power and I think Linux is ready for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember Loki? That was a funny company. You know, I still have my copy of their port of Tribes 2 on my computer. And evertime I upgrade I pop that disk in and install the software, no matter what distro I'm playing with. So the argument about not being able to support different distributions is a little confusing (I mean that, like if there is a good reason this works and that doesn't I want to know).
Thats right. What is it? Beautity is in the eye..?
;-)
Like for instance Star Trek, wasn't really much of an internet to blame back then was there?
[ducks]
Oh, you pornographers!
;-)
Sure, it really does work better then I'd imagined. I'm going to install a blank hard drive this weekend and go through the whole thing, taking step-by-step notes as I go. I'll send you a ruff.
- It doesn't play WMA (which is a downside for those of you not rabidly anti M$) but has a plugin (Mythmusic) to play OGG.
- It pauses live TV.
- It has AWESOME recording and scheduling feature (including features like "record this program when ever it plays anywhere" "on this channel" "only this time" and recording conflict fixer).
- It has a great TV guide list.
- It displays information on current programs on demand.
- It shows local weather forecasts.
- It will display photographs.
- It will play videos from you local hard drive.
- It supports multiple TV tuner cards! (if you want to watch a different program then the one your recording, record more then one program, etc)
- Its supports Picture in Picture.
Now that I've got it working (took a little work, mostly because perl module Tk::MMutil wasn't installed or listed in the dependencies) I understand why people get so worked up about it.I just dropped my digital cable and moved over to extended basic and was missing the extra features with the digital box. But MythTV does EVERYTHING it did, but better and with a lot of better features (ever the GUI is easier to use).
Anyhow, I'm probably preaching to the choir. Anyone who's been thinking about doing it should really stop making excuses and get it working, it one of those rare instances where something works pretty much like you imagine it *should*, but then you notice something you'd never thought of, and it works right too!
Anyhow, I'm thinking of doing a step-by-step on a clean install of Mandrake 9.1 this weekend, would anyone be interested?
I gotta agree with you there!
And DirecTV DSL rocked. It really sucked that they went under. Rock solid connection and an SLA that stated that you can do whatever you want with *your* bandwidth! And a static IP.
I was with them from the Telocity buyout. Their customer service was awesome too. Now I'm using Earthlink and sure miss the good service!
Not much more to say there.
However, if you get in the habit of providing better solutions, they may start asking you to find a solution to begin with.
Um, yep. Just make sure you do what they want in the end and you cover both sides (made a suggestion that might have helped and complied with the clients wishes, sounds like a callback!).
Your right. But the cinemagraphic story telling and percision camera work in the Matrix raised the bar for technical story telling, despite a few scenes with not-so-hot stunt work.
I suggest if they can't do it without resorting to the cg they work around it. The first episode improved the state of the art of cinematography and this gave it a particularly rich look. If the second episode is going to focus on cg tricks it will probably be a disappointment to a lot of us. Unnatural movement is an eyesore.
But you know, Slashdot wouldn't be Slashdot without the wild speculation.
Thank you. I've been working on my new HTPC for weeks, involving custom scripts and custom gui pop-up and LOADS of open source software. Its awesome, but really time consuming. Half the time I end up feeling like a mechanic with my cordless keyboard trying to fix something so we can watch a movie (Xine's dvdnav pluggin isn't doing css right now, have to set up ogle, etc).
Anyhow, when I hear someone say "well we've got that!" and blithely dismiss some for profit project, I cringe. Prefab is good and right now Mythtv is for hackers (and debian users?).
One too many episodes of X Files? Government isn't evil. Is big, bureaucratic, stupid, greedy, lazy, short sighted, competitive, naive and idealistic.
Sound familiar? For better and for worse we are the government and I'm, like 75% sure your not evil.
to keep the average joe from going cross-eyed by reading the article...
Or bored. The details that we find so important don't really matter to the rest of the world.
No. Whats funny is Windows is like the low water mark. And people don't expect everything to work the same as it did on Windows, they expect it to work at least as well as it did in Windows. Its an important distinction.
Exacty. After using Windows and Macs and every other computer system out there your left with a pretty good sense of what can and can not be done.Then when you find yourself in a situation that you've seen handled seamlessly 1000's of times suddenly come to a grinding halt, well, that pisses me off.
I wish she HAD installed more distributions, but it would have just increased her level of frustration after seeing each distribution getting different parts wrong and right. Its a mess. Funny think is "Linux" really is technically superior and every problem she had has already been solved, just never in one place.
Thank you. Well put.
I feel like the usability issue gets confused a lot. Its not about "stupid user" or "dumbing" linux down. Its a technical issue and one of the biggest technical shortcomings of Linux distributions. Period.
Linux has a lot of strengths but this is the biggest hurdle left to jump. We need to start equating smart with usable; ic if Linux (and associated software) is so smart why isn't it simple to use.
When I create a complicated spreadsheet (I work np business) I don't write a note at the bottom that says RTFM. I create very complicated spreadsheets and the best ones never ever show it.
Cute. Now use Linux for 3 or 4 years. You'll figure out where the ruff spots are sooner or later.
Linux distributions strengths are in part because of the technical strengths in Linux and the associated software, which also happens to be its weakness. Usability has been looked at as a dirty word and it seems it still is.
There's a pretty big divide with technical elitism and desktop dominance. But I've got hope after hearing Jon "Maddog" Hall speak a couple year ago at our local LUG. He said he used Suse, because some days he just wanted his computer to work. As more of the original Linux hackers get older and busier I suspect they'll loss some of that hard edge too. I mean we've got kids now.
Right, but then thats not how it happens.
Curious users get a disk from somewhere. Probably just like you did.
These discussions aren't going to go away until we either give up on Linux as a desktop alternative or someone listens. I love these discussion, because I think a lot of good *will* come from them.
;-)
Think of this type of article as a sign of Linux's momentum.
Or better yet, think of this as an area that Linux distributions are technically inferior to many of their commercial counter-parts. Maybe we should start looking at usability as a technical issue and stop bragging about how surperior our favorite *nix is. I mean at the end of the day we just need a computer that works right, the rest of this stuff is icing.
Whats the point of benchmarks if you can't get it all to work.
(Btw, Mandrake +/- 9.1 lets you store passwords for its configuration tools, so my girlfriend doesn't have to bitch!)
No. Your reasoning is bad.
You will *never* be able to control what OSS developers do. Ever. You *know* most of them are doing it to satisfy a personal itch and they aren't going to stop and ask you what you want. Period.
So this whole line about whether it makes since for OSS developers to "reinvent" the wheel is frustratingly rhetorical.
I think what we should be discussing is how to encourage *feasible payment models* in the OSS community. Free (beer) software is great, but I think we are asking our community to move a little beyond that, but we still aren't paying them a living wage. Its time to pony up.
I like to keep things simple. Open Source programmers are like musicians and artists. Stroke their ego (they deserve it) and never expect you can demand things of them.
Live long and prosper.
I'm with the above author. Mplayer beats the pants off any other media player, bar none. Except at DVD playback (because of the DVDNAV) where XINE is *perfect*.
I've had a lot of gripes about Linux usability, but this is not one of those areas. If your having trouble with either project I'd suggest either installing from source with all depenancies or installing Mandrake 9.1 +/- and using urpmi and the available PLF binaries (easy as apt-get!).
Really, two amazing projects.
I'd have to whole heartedly agree with that. I've been very interested in one particular project lately, a project that's been part of every major distribution I've seen. Its a xmms plugin called paranormal (fully programmable, it makes amazing vis). This project has shown NO activity in 18 months. Its dead. But the software is NOT DEAD.
If you want to monitor something, how about downloads? Or site hits?
I think 50% of the usabily trouble with Linux on the desktop is 100% the distro makers faults. The technology is there (KDE 3.1 is sweet! Openoffice is looking good, X works great). But the distro makers still tend to throw everything into it in a sort of willy-nilly way. KDE works nicely, but the menus are usually cumbersome, or the install script doesn't recognize hardware (use Kudzu!) or something similar, software installation can be a real bitch, libraries, etc.
Lets (*I'm volunteering you*) define a base install that could be standard, including useful (sanely named) tools for system management and basic desktop necessities. The simpler the better.
Viva Linux!
I agree with the choice issue. Linux distros biggest single strength is the panorama of choices available.
But I also believe that they offer too much, too much in the base installs. Choice should not be hoisted at the user.
I think thats the key to dealing with the trouble. As for the OSS developers shouldn't reinvent the wheel? Thats crap. Let them go at it, I think its wonderful.
I agree with just about everything you say. The "Linux" crowd still has a lot of loud cowboys, relics from the bad old RTFM! days. But their numbers are shrinking.
This power/usability dichodomy is no longer accurate. The power and flexability of Linux doesn't need to come at a cost. Gentoo has started to show us that.
Good design is the key to power and I think Linux is ready for it.