Thats a truth right round the world, but I suspect that you Americans have it a little worse than most, though no where near as bad as some countries (non first world at least).
/usability-wise, according to my view, it's Windows 7, OS X, KDE on top, GNOME 2 and others at the middle and GNOME 3, UNITY and Windows 8 at the bottom.
I've been using Unity in 12.04 and I switch between Gnome 2 in Debian and Explorer.exe in Windows 7 multiple times a day and I have to say that the more I use Unity the more I like it. I'd even go so far as to proclaim it the best desktop UI I've ever used. Oddly enough the things I like best are what most other people seem to hate. I'll mention a few and add the disclaimer that Ubuntu works perfectly on my hardware so I'm just going to focus on features.
Dual monitor support is perfect for me in Unity. I plug in the second monitor and immediately it just works. The second monitor gets its own dock and indicator bar at the top just like I would want. When I open an application from the respective docks it opens on the correct monitor. If you move the mouse below a certain speed threshold, it sticks just a little on the dock on the second screen making it easy to aim for despite essentially floating in space.
The dock is practically custom made for wide screen laptops that most people use these days. I naturally want it on the side so it doesn't take up precious vertical pixels. It can be set to stay visible or auto-hide. It's trivially easy to add Windows style "jumplists" to icons for added functionality, i.e., when I click the Show Desktop button I get the desktop but when I right click it I can select Invert Colors which does just what it says. It took a couple of minutes to add that. One thing about the dock some people might not like is if a window cannot be minimized by clicking it's icon only focused. I didn't like it at first but after a while I got to where I appreciated the consistency of clicking a button only doing one thing instead of it acting as some kind of ad-hoc toggle. For me it that's a part of the UI just getting out of my way. I don't have to map my brain away from what I'm concentrating on to worry about whether I want to click on another icon to focus or should I click on the current application's icon to reveal the application underneath. It's a small thing but it actually helps.
The top panel plugin system is a vast improvement over Gnome 2 IMHO. It is consistent, easy to develop for, and just looks nice. Being able to write a quick mail checker in Python and just running it automatically putting it in the panel is golden and much improved over the bonobo framework of old.
Obviously I like Unity and I think it's a step forward for Linux. It does require a bit of an adaptation and it's non-traditional in ways that will ruffle feathers but if you remember Gnome 2 ruffled feathers of the original Gnome diehards but now people sing its praises.
I too love Unity with a few good customisations and a few add ons, I get some thing I love and can use. Where as I could never get any where useful customising Gnome 3 aka Gnome shell I hate that thing, as for people who want something that's usable/perfect out of the box well I've never found that animal, I always want to considerably customise any environment, that's what I hate most about Gnome 3 they will not listen to their users, and arrogantly insist on a we know best philosophy well they can just see how they like having fewer users then.
Please rethink the vertical text that has infected KDE4 like so much ringworm. It's hard to read, hard to use, and completely unnecessary. Also, please stop aping Windows Vista and 7. Or at least stop copying their bad ideas.
Thanks.
I personally love vertical text and have no trouble reading it:D long live vertical text, but yeah don't copy windows or that OSX of apple their crap
Basically what you are saying is that if I say something insulting and demeaning about someone, and you agree, it is gravy. But if you disagree with me and find it indecent it is a completely different story.
yep why should we be allowed to defame anyone on the net or anywhere else the same rules for defamation that apply in general society should apply on the net and thats basically what the judge said. yah for a judge that got it right.
Watching PETA ads doesn't make me wanna become vegan. In fact, seeing those naked women just make me want to eat some meat, if you catch my drift.
As for me all I can say is what a load of crap, the Peta adds that is typical vego's trying to stop us eating meat, and using any Lie they can think up to do it.
I always liked my old universities mathematics and computing departments naming scheme, they used Tolkien names, (i.e aragorn, smaurg, bilbo), there are loads of good names in the average sci fi or fantasy series. My personal machine is Pern after the planet in Anne McCaffery's dragon riders of Pern series, but I hate works stupid server1 and syd1 scheme.
I've never understood why Christians are so afraid of finding life on other planets or why atheists are so adamant that it will prove the Christians wrong. The Bible doesn't say anywhere that there is only life on Earth. If you take the creation story in Genesis metaphorically (lots of Christians do), then life evolving on other planets doesn't clash with theology at all; unless of course I'm totally missing something, in which case please point it out because I'm curious. From what I see, religion and science aren't necessarily incompatible.
Hmmmm you make the mistake of thinking that a few noisy folks make a majority just because they are so noisy, I for one have no problem with God creating loads of aliens or even that all those aliens might also have been created in his image, God is rather big so big that you could make an infinite number of images of him all different, all showing different aspects of him.
I find many of my brothers and sisters think like wise, when I talk to them.
As for taking Genesis metaphorically what relevance has that to the issue one way or the other?
I find the debates about which OSS license is "most free" to be rather silly, because:
1. All the "major" OSS licenses (GPL, BSD, Apache, etc.) are awesome, in my opinion. They all do great things and greatly help free software. So debating about which one is "the best" seems counter-productive because it obscures the fact that they are all good.
2. The debates usually have an implicit assumption that "freedom" is a one-dimensional axis, and we are trying to maximize the amount of "freedom." Occasionally someone will insightfully explain how freedom is more complex: one person's freedom may come at the expense of another; you need to distinguish between user freedom, developer freedom, distributor freedom; etc. Overall I prefer to think of "freedom" as being multi-dimensional.* A particular license may maximize along one freedom-axis, while not being maximal along another freedom-axis. And there may not be any license which simultaneously maximizes along every axis. Hence no such thing as the "most free" license. (But there may still be ways to rank things; e.g. most proprietary licenses are less free along every axis.) In other words (and you would think this would be obvious): the "best" license depends very much on the particular situation and one's particular priorities.
(* I believe this multi-dimensionality applies to many "wavy-gravy" human concepts/principles/emotions. Too frequently we argue about things as if they were binary or 1-dimensional, when even a cursory analysis shows them to be more complex than that.)
V V V true the place I most often notice this is in politics where people often view view points as ranging along a one dimensional axis of left to right, in my opinion extreme left and right wing are basically the same thing look at so called left wing soviet Russia and so called right wing Nazi Germany, look at what they did murder concentration camps etc so close to each other give or take a little political flavor, so I would say that left and right wing are circular hence there must be at least 2 dimensions of political opinion, in actual fact I would say there are many dimensions involved
fuck, now i have to go to the fucking state house and tell Sanford and all the other asshole to gtfo. Who's with me! Imagine, a bunch of Slashdotters holding up signs that say Get the Fuck out. I hate living in this state with these fucking retards.
Fuck!
Hmmm I hate profanity, but I really cannot see how I or anyone else has the right to enforce that on anyone else.
Americans leave out the "u" in colour, armour, neighbour, etc. We no longer pronounce "night" as [ni:xt] or [ni:t] (IPA). We could come up with a huge number of examples, but why bother? Language evolves over time, words lose or gain meaning. It's a natural process. You'd think an academic institution would understand this simple concept, but I guess grabbing headlines is more important than practicing proper academia.
Emoticons are just an evolution of a new language. It's actually quite extraordinary. We have now created symbols that can represent simple meanings cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, and these symbols are popularized in large part by the youth of the world. They are creating a whole new language right before our eyes. I wouldn't be surprised if we would soon be able to communicate simple messages between different cultures that speak different languages via symbols (some would argue we already can). It's a shame that institutions such as this one and the "get off my damn lawn" crowd are ridiculing such an extraordinary example of the human ability to adapt and break down communicative barriers.
Lake Superior State University what a bunch of mindless jerks
lets hope their first to the wall when the revolution comes
I think Apple can come up with enough "prior artwork" for this one.
Changing "prior art" to "prior artwork" paints an interesting picture of a potential courtroom exchange...
"I would like to present Exhibit A, "Motherboard Descending a Staircase" by Ed Picasso, painted in January 2006. Despite its neo-cubist style, this work shows an example of "client hardware architecture" much more clearly than the patent troll--I mean, defendant's patent documents.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but Firefox 3.0.3 sucks on my three XP machines. Version 3.0.2 worked just fine. I let Firefox upgrade itself to 3.0.3 and it immediately started crashing. It crashed so much that I actually had to use IE to download a copy of 3.0.2 to downgrade Firefox on those machines. And Firefox 3.0.3 crashes on my Ubuntu machine far far more often that earlier versions ever did (although I'm still using 3.0.3 on Ubuntu).
Interesting I have FF 3.0.3 on my Ubuntu box (at home) and my Windows Xp box at work no problems
There was no one search engine that I used until somebody at work told me about Google (early 2001). Lycos, Dogpile, AltaVista, Yahoo, etc and so on all come to mind. There was no "loyalty" until Google. Google set the standard. Let's hope it doesn't grow too big for it's breeches.
same here except it was some what earlier for me 1998 or 1999 not sure which
You only need look as far as what passes for entertainment on television in the USA to figure out that you should be considered special if you have an 8th grade education!
Have you ever watched TV in other countries? If it's not reruns of old stuff from the US, It's knock-offs like [insert country here] Idol. Entertainment is bad on a global scale.
The bulk of stuff you will find in basic programming is going to suck everywhere for a long time to come, because, well, it has to cater to the 50% of us who are under average.
This is true of commercial channels here in Oz (Australia) but not of our government channels, abc1 & abc2, and the SBS (multicultural channel) they carry a lot of great stuff documentaries, comedy and lots more.
I don't believe a word of this, these are the same morons who keep coming out with stuff like BSD is dead etc... just ignore them their full of bullshit
I've been using KDE 4 for months and while it isnt perfect, the glitches are minor.
My biggest complaint is the rendering of the date and taskbar is...quirky (for me anyway on 4.0).
The pros outweigh the cons for me.
Dolphin is absolutely brilliant and Kwrite's tweaks are fantastic.
I'd die without Okular as well.
KDE 3.5 looks so old fashioned now.:)
Hmmmm I'm basically a gnome user but I have KDE 4.0.5 installed and I like it, sure it's a bit rough around the edges, but nothing that cannot be fixed, I veiw it as a work in progress.
Slashdot Mirror
a knife that's pretty old tech
oh no a computer that eats it's own wiring
I was reading that as a shot to everyone who hates Unity.
You know, Everyone.
That is complete rubbish there are many of us that love unity, it's time you unity haters got over it, if you don't like it install another desktop.
Thats a truth right round the world, but I suspect that you Americans have it a little worse than most, though no where near as bad as some countries (non first world at least).
Does the House GOP caucus have a minimum stupidity requirement?
Of course and their not alone our liberal/nationals here in Australia clearly have somthing simlar going on. :D
/usability-wise, according to my view, it's Windows 7, OS X, KDE on top, GNOME 2 and others at the middle and GNOME 3, UNITY and Windows 8 at the bottom.
I've been using Unity in 12.04 and I switch between Gnome 2 in Debian and Explorer.exe in Windows 7 multiple times a day and I have to say that the more I use Unity the more I like it. I'd even go so far as to proclaim it the best desktop UI I've ever used. Oddly enough the things I like best are what most other people seem to hate. I'll mention a few and add the disclaimer that Ubuntu works perfectly on my hardware so I'm just going to focus on features.
Dual monitor support is perfect for me in Unity. I plug in the second monitor and immediately it just works. The second monitor gets its own dock and indicator bar at the top just like I would want. When I open an application from the respective docks it opens on the correct monitor. If you move the mouse below a certain speed threshold, it sticks just a little on the dock on the second screen making it easy to aim for despite essentially floating in space.
The dock is practically custom made for wide screen laptops that most people use these days. I naturally want it on the side so it doesn't take up precious vertical pixels. It can be set to stay visible or auto-hide. It's trivially easy to add Windows style "jumplists" to icons for added functionality, i.e., when I click the Show Desktop button I get the desktop but when I right click it I can select Invert Colors which does just what it says. It took a couple of minutes to add that. One thing about the dock some people might not like is if a window cannot be minimized by clicking it's icon only focused. I didn't like it at first but after a while I got to where I appreciated the consistency of clicking a button only doing one thing instead of it acting as some kind of ad-hoc toggle. For me it that's a part of the UI just getting out of my way. I don't have to map my brain away from what I'm concentrating on to worry about whether I want to click on another icon to focus or should I click on the current application's icon to reveal the application underneath. It's a small thing but it actually helps.
The top panel plugin system is a vast improvement over Gnome 2 IMHO. It is consistent, easy to develop for, and just looks nice. Being able to write a quick mail checker in Python and just running it automatically putting it in the panel is golden and much improved over the bonobo framework of old.
Obviously I like Unity and I think it's a step forward for Linux. It does require a bit of an adaptation and it's non-traditional in ways that will ruffle feathers but if you remember Gnome 2 ruffled feathers of the original Gnome diehards but now people sing its praises.
I too love Unity with a few good customisations and a few add ons, I get some thing I love and can use. Where as I could never get any where useful customising Gnome 3 aka Gnome shell I hate that thing, as for people who want something that's usable/perfect out of the box well I've never found that animal, I always want to considerably customise any environment, that's what I hate most about Gnome 3 they will not listen to their users, and arrogantly insist on a we know best philosophy well they can just see how they like having fewer users then.
Dear KDE devs,
Please rethink the vertical text that has infected KDE4 like so much ringworm. It's hard to read, hard to use, and completely unnecessary. Also, please stop aping Windows Vista and 7. Or at least stop copying their bad ideas.
Thanks.
I personally love vertical text and have no trouble reading it :D long live vertical text, but yeah don't copy windows or that OSX of apple their crap
Basically what you are saying is that if I say something insulting and demeaning about someone, and you agree, it is gravy. But if you disagree with me and find it indecent it is a completely different story.
yep why should we be allowed to defame anyone on the net or anywhere else the same rules for defamation that apply in general society should apply on the net and thats basically what the judge said. yah for a judge that got it right.
Hmmm as an Australian cit I'd love to hope that the Crackers got stung and that the system they got was a dummy, but well thats probably naive sigh
Watching PETA ads doesn't make me wanna become vegan. In fact, seeing those naked women just make me want to eat some meat, if you catch my drift.
As for me all I can say is what a load of crap, the Peta adds that is typical vego's trying to stop us eating meat, and using any Lie they can think up to do it.
I always liked my old universities mathematics and computing departments naming scheme, they used Tolkien names, (i.e aragorn, smaurg, bilbo), there are loads of good names in the average sci fi or fantasy series. My personal machine is Pern after the planet in Anne McCaffery's dragon riders of Pern series, but I hate works stupid server1 and syd1 scheme.
But I'm Alergic to coffee
you insensitive clod
I've never understood why Christians are so afraid of finding life on other planets or why atheists are so adamant that it will prove the Christians wrong. The Bible doesn't say anywhere that there is only life on Earth. If you take the creation story in Genesis metaphorically (lots of Christians do), then life evolving on other planets doesn't clash with theology at all; unless of course I'm totally missing something, in which case please point it out because I'm curious. From what I see, religion and science aren't necessarily incompatible.
Hmmmm you make the mistake of thinking that a few noisy folks make a majority just because they are so noisy, I for one have no problem with God creating loads of aliens or even that all those aliens might also have been created in his image, God is rather big so big that you could make an infinite number of images of him all different, all showing different aspects of him.
I find many of my brothers and sisters think like wise, when I talk to them.
As for taking Genesis metaphorically what relevance has that to the issue one way or the other?
Even more literally..!
$ ls -i /usr/bin/less
3603778 /usr/bin/less
$ ls -i /usr/bin/more
3603778 /usr/bin/more
hmm
$ ls -Flahi /usr/bin/less /bin/more
1099939 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 30K 2008-09-25 23:08 /bin/more*
763939 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 119K 2008-02-02 14:51 /usr/bin/less*
$ ls -i /usr/bin/more
ls: cannot access /usr/bin/more: No such file or directory
lol:-P
If you'll indulge a tangent here...
the Apache license is MUCH more free than the GPL
I find the debates about which OSS license is "most free" to be rather silly, because: 1. All the "major" OSS licenses (GPL, BSD, Apache, etc.) are awesome, in my opinion. They all do great things and greatly help free software. So debating about which one is "the best" seems counter-productive because it obscures the fact that they are all good. 2. The debates usually have an implicit assumption that "freedom" is a one-dimensional axis, and we are trying to maximize the amount of "freedom." Occasionally someone will insightfully explain how freedom is more complex: one person's freedom may come at the expense of another; you need to distinguish between user freedom, developer freedom, distributor freedom; etc. Overall I prefer to think of "freedom" as being multi-dimensional.* A particular license may maximize along one freedom-axis, while not being maximal along another freedom-axis. And there may not be any license which simultaneously maximizes along every axis. Hence no such thing as the "most free" license. (But there may still be ways to rank things; e.g. most proprietary licenses are less free along every axis.) In other words (and you would think this would be obvious): the "best" license depends very much on the particular situation and one's particular priorities. (* I believe this multi-dimensionality applies to many "wavy-gravy" human concepts/principles/emotions. Too frequently we argue about things as if they were binary or 1-dimensional, when even a cursory analysis shows them to be more complex than that.)
V V V true the place I most often notice this is in politics where people often view view points as ranging along a one dimensional axis of left to right, in my opinion extreme left and right wing are basically the same thing look at so called left wing soviet Russia and so called right wing Nazi Germany, look at what they did murder concentration camps etc so close to each other give or take a little political flavor, so I would say that left and right wing are circular hence there must be at least 2 dimensions of political opinion, in actual fact I would say there are many dimensions involved
fuck, now i have to go to the fucking state house and tell Sanford and all the other asshole to gtfo. Who's with me! Imagine, a bunch of Slashdotters holding up signs that say Get the Fuck out. I hate living in this state with these fucking retards. Fuck!
Hmmm I hate profanity, but I really cannot see how I or anyone else has the right to enforce that on anyone else.
Americans leave out the "u" in colour, armour, neighbour, etc. We no longer pronounce "night" as [ni:xt] or [ni:t] (IPA). We could come up with a huge number of examples, but why bother? Language evolves over time, words lose or gain meaning. It's a natural process. You'd think an academic institution would understand this simple concept, but I guess grabbing headlines is more important than practicing proper academia.
Emoticons are just an evolution of a new language. It's actually quite extraordinary. We have now created symbols that can represent simple meanings cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, and these symbols are popularized in large part by the youth of the world. They are creating a whole new language right before our eyes. I wouldn't be surprised if we would soon be able to communicate simple messages between different cultures that speak different languages via symbols (some would argue we already can). It's a shame that institutions such as this one and the "get off my damn lawn" crowd are ridiculing such an extraordinary example of the human ability to adapt and break down communicative barriers.
Lake Superior State University what a bunch of mindless jerks lets hope their first to the wall when the revolution comes
The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us
Hi from Canada !
What's so special about a white Christmas ? ;-)
Joyeux Noel !!!
Hi from Australia whats a white Christmas :-p
Changing "prior art" to "prior artwork" paints an interesting picture of a potential courtroom exchange...
"I would like to present Exhibit A, "Motherboard Descending a Staircase" by Ed Picasso, painted in January 2006. Despite its neo-cubist style, this work shows an example of "client hardware architecture" much more clearly than the patent troll--I mean, defendant's patent documents.
You sir are a sick puppy lol :-P
I don't know about the rest of the world, but Firefox 3.0.3 sucks on my three XP machines. Version 3.0.2 worked just fine. I let Firefox upgrade itself to 3.0.3 and it immediately started crashing. It crashed so much that I actually had to use IE to download a copy of 3.0.2 to downgrade Firefox on those machines. And Firefox 3.0.3 crashes on my Ubuntu machine far far more often that earlier versions ever did (although I'm still using 3.0.3 on Ubuntu).
Interesting I have FF 3.0.3 on my Ubuntu box (at home) and my Windows Xp box at work no problems
There was no one search engine that I used until somebody at work told me about Google (early 2001). Lycos, Dogpile, AltaVista, Yahoo, etc and so on all come to mind. There was no "loyalty" until Google. Google set the standard. Let's hope it doesn't grow too big for it's breeches.
same here except it was some what earlier for me 1998 or 1999 not sure which
You only need look as far as what passes for entertainment on television in the USA to figure out that you should be considered special if you have an 8th grade education!
Have you ever watched TV in other countries? If it's not reruns of old stuff from the US, It's knock-offs like [insert country here] Idol. Entertainment is bad on a global scale.
The bulk of stuff you will find in basic programming is going to suck everywhere for a long time to come, because, well, it has to cater to the 50% of us who are under average.
This is true of commercial channels here in Oz (Australia) but not of our government channels, abc1 & abc2, and the SBS (multicultural channel) they carry a lot of great stuff documentaries, comedy and lots more.
I walk lots Dr's Orders :(
I don't believe a word of this, these are the same morons who keep coming out with stuff like BSD is dead etc... just ignore them their full of bullshit
I dont see what people are complaining about.
I've been using KDE 4 for months and while it isnt perfect, the glitches are minor. My biggest complaint is the rendering of the date and taskbar is...quirky (for me anyway on 4.0).
The pros outweigh the cons for me. Dolphin is absolutely brilliant and Kwrite's tweaks are fantastic. I'd die without Okular as well.
KDE 3.5 looks so old fashioned now. :)
Hmmmm I'm basically a gnome user but I have KDE 4.0.5 installed and I like it, sure it's a bit rough around the edges, but nothing that cannot be fixed, I veiw it as a work in progress.