That said, ask yourself this: when society determines what it values (food, cars, housing) and pays money for it, isn't it prudent to attempt to push to supply that need? Drive for wealth helps the community.
I know what you're thinking, and I'm thinking the same thing. The folks that just go for money are a pretty sad group and hurt society as a whole in that there are ways to cheat any system, including capitalism or regulated capitalism.
But in the same breath, ivory tower scholars who dab in their own research for kicks aren't interested in helping anyone but themselves either. It's a quest for knowledge and the goal is to satisfy oneself. But often the fruits of this labor help society, so it is found that drive for knowledge helps the community.
In the end, both aspects accomplish the same goal. When it comes right down to it, the thing that matters philisophically is whether your drive is for yourself or for helping others. Both businessmen and scholars can choose to help others and regardless of your perceptions of Bad Big Business (which I do dislike), I think the proportions are fairly equal. [As a point, how many snooty professors do you know who use TAs to teach the class while they sit in the lab? How many of the ones who did teach wouldn't if they had the choice?]
Capitalism and Research generally both give back to the community. I don't see either one as worse than the other, but both sides often misunderstand their counterpart. Just something to think about.
Ugh. This is some pretty slanted and assuming stuff here.
First off, you're right to a large extent. The US is not a scientific community. You won't earn respect from everyone just by being smart. But this isn't the picture it's painted to be.
US culture emphasizes excelling on all fronts and being an individual, exercising your freedom. This means that you follow your own passions, go where you want to and be good at every facet in your chosen path and in life.
If you're smart, that's a large step to getting there. But you also need passion and individuality. Second, you need life skills. A scientist is a wonderful thing, but a scientist without the ability to effectively communicate with someone not in his field is only good in the lab. You have to have social skills to relate, business skills to sell yourself, mental skills to do a good job and passion to do it well on your own will. Standing on your own feet and presenting a good face on all sides is what we value here. Some do a decent job of faking it -- it sucks, I know some of them. But most off, it's trial by fire. Sink or swim.
Jealousy, envy, rejection of 'being-smart-is-good' mentality? Sure. That's life. Some people are stupid and you'll never get rid of them. Deal with it.
Drug-heads? Boozers? Party animals? Sure. I can't call you wrong here. A lot of our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', 'being a kid', etc. especially during the college years. That said, you can't blame your whole experience on this.
As for your comment about leaders, I believe that it is misplaced. Leaders do a great job at organizing things, but culture is what drives who an American is and what our country values. Leaders do not. If our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', which unfortunately it does in some circles, the leaders can hold all the meetings they want and (in the case of a politician) pass law after law, but it won't do a damn bit of good. The people make a country great, not its leaders.
And in respect to you not growing up here, the opinion of a foreigner is very valuable, as is asking your neighbor or a friend what he thinks of you. But in the end, with all due respect, people who grew up in our education system have more of a right to speak to its merits with a critical eye. You must live the life and be critical to be qualified to give a valuable opinion, but it is not possible to be critical and not live here yet do the same. I think perhaps some Americans would do well to think about who is really qualified to give an opinion on all things American.
For me personally, I've had a number of run-ins with people who hated the smart folks. One year I picked up the nickname 'brain'. I was always the kid walking in just before the bell so I could grab 5 minutes with my science and history teachers to discuss nuclear physics, quantum theory, the Nazi political machine and the like. I am a geek.
When I looked around me, though, nobody seemed to share my passion. Nobody seemed to value doing their best and knowing as much as possible. I felt like the only kid in the school who cared. It was quite disconcerting.
But when it came down to it, my perception was due to my focus on specific interests and my lack of a non-bitter social face. I was hard to approach and deal with -- skills that I spoke of above. My school was not a lab environment, my school was a people environment with folks from all walks of life, not just the upper crust. When I learned to present a more friendly and open social face and attempt to relate to others instead of expect them to join me in my shell, things got better and I saw that people really did care, just not in the way that I did.
I doubt that my post will hold much meaning for you, you appear fairly set in your take on the situation, but perhaps an alternate view from someone in a similar situation might shed some insight on your experience here. Regardless of all, my best of wishes to you, from geek to geek.:)
It's great that FreeType exists, but it's still missing the point. You shouldn't need to scour the web looking for plugins to make your program do the (simple) things you want it to do.
Very true. The problem with articles like this falls under not understanding the material under review (e.g. expecting it to be a Photoshop port to Linux) and not doing research before proudly exclaiming that "Gimp Sux0rs!"
A competant review includes things like "There was a plugin for it which I found eventually, but it's a bit silly that the default text tool is so poor."
I feel that Gimp has a long way to go, but with script-fu it has some serious potential and can already make a lot of sweet images. Photoshop is still better for professional work I'd venture, but Gimp surely does not suck.
And I still fail to see why the user interface is perplexing. Confusing for a new user, sure, but if you can't understand anything that isn't presented to you in the same fashion as every other app you use, I won't feel any pity, especially when you're dealing with such a powerful tool. Powerful tools can justify (and often require) a non-standard interface to be useful.
1) Stability is a big part, and I don't want to put words into your mouth, but other facets cannot be ignored. Performance. Ease of maintenance (service interruptions? reboot?). Remote administration. Batch-administration. Security. Lack of bloat (see Performance and Security as well). Available server applications. And lack of preparation or unique application training to accomplish these things. It's my personal observation that Linux beats out Windows in every area.
2) As far as I can see, most realistic people think Linux will take another 3-5 years to hit 10% on the desktop, including big Linux figures.
3) Administration is still the killer for Joe-user, but for companies with an IT department this isn't an issue. Considering Linux's put-your-home-and-usr-directories-on-NFS ability and how easy it is to mirror a box (no unaccessable 'files' on the filesystem), a company can roll out Linux without admin hassles. I honestly think this will be where it starts. People will use it at work and take it home (for work reasons or personal reasons). Companies will demand hardware support, user base will grow, and the snowball feeds itself.:)
I'm using Galeon 1.3.14 -- no problems using that page for me (clicked on one of the elements and it loaded). No popups (javascript enabled, popup blocking disabled).
I did catch a "If you have javascript disabled..." something or other for a flash of a second, but page content replaced it.
Thanks for the great reply! I just want to say a few things:
1) > > Gentoo's install guide is very detailed and geared towards novices. I'd change that to "step-by-step commands for people who know what 90% of these commands mean." So when they go wrong, you can go, "Ah... all I have to do is repeat step 15a." Correct -- I should have been more explicit. The instructions are, IMO, enough that the user will know what is going on (we're partitioning now -- this is what partitioning is for... etc) when he copies the commands and runs them.
If you run into problems, I am not trying to imply that a novice will know what to do (e.g. repeat step 15a) but will at least know where he stands. Then comes asking for help.
2) the fact the directions don't have/boot mounted by default, Maybe I'm not understanding you, but I found this in the install guide when describing/boot setup in fstab: "[/boot] shouldn't be mounted automatically (noauto) but..."
3) As someone else mentioned, it isn't surprising that it took so long for you to build KDE as you were only on a dual P2 450 (I'm thinking maybe about a P3 700 if multiple processors were used properly?). More 'modern' processors like a 2000+ or higher will generally achieve a full system in a weekend (from stage1, no binary builds).
4) Everything else you said I agree with 100%. Your observations on help you got, problems you ran into, etc. are all pretty fitting with my own.
I'm not sure what nforce2 patches you're looking for, but if it helps, I've been using Gentoo (2.4.2x gaming sources) on my A7N8X board (which is an nforce2 board) for over a year with no problems.
On board networking is fine (though I'm only using one eth port), UDMA, AGP, etc. all work. I'm not using my onboard sound, so that might be what you're having problems with?
There was a little heat back a few months ago with what drobbins was doing with Gentoo Games. Apparently he and another Gentoo Dev had agreed to do a for-profit venture and didn't tell anyone straight away. There was also concern that drobbins wasn't pushing Gentoo Inc. to non-profit status, concerns about the growing management overhead, etc.
I don't know how I feel about Daniel leaving. Reading some of the dissenters' stories (especially from the fork a few months back) and speaking with a Gentoo developer I know personally, I'm curious as to his real motives. But, in the end, this whole "Gentoo thing" was a brilliant idea and I owe him a lot for my last two years of computing. I'm happy to see the project take a more community oriented turn, but I am sad to see Daniel step down.
I want to avoid scaring people away from Gentoo, but I do want to make it clear to Slashdotters that this isn't just like falling off of a log.
In short, here are some negative things to keep in mind:
Gentoo is built from source code. This means it can take an entire weekend (Friday night included) to get a system built, or longer depending on your CPU/RAM/HDD. This also means your Mozilla install isn't a trivial event.;)
If you have problems, you're in a 'brave new world' so to speak. If you don't have a handle on the situation, it might require outside help and research to solve the problem.
Problems come up on their own. Since programs are compiled and linked against each other and many libraries, when versions change, problems can arise in certain setups, especially new ones. Sometimes an install will fail simply because someone @ Gentoo didn't dot their i. Normal solution: report it and/or just wait a few days and the problem is almost always resolved on their end.
This is not a click-n-install, auto-magic-detection distro. You will be using the command line for most administration. Don't confuse me here, your desktop is very graphical (and quite nice!) and you've got all the good applications for email, browsing, etc. But administration is a command line task. This distro is not for you if you would rather drink curdled milk than use a command line.
In turn, here are some more (and some repeated from the parent post) good points from my view:
You can compile any program under the sun on your box, but for those that are offered by Gentoo you have some handy features available. All the information for available applications but the source code is stored on your computer. This means it's searchable. "emerge -s xmms" will give you a long list of plugins and other xmms (think WinAMP) related items.
Installing programs is one command. Want gaim? "emerge gaim" and come back in 5-10 minutes. Everything is downloaded, md5sum checked, and installed. No hunting for the latest versions of RPMs for your distro or grabbing a tarball yourself. Easy peasy.
Updating your system to the also a breeze. Update your local copy of all of the package installation files mentioned above (known as the Portage tree) with "emerge sync". In about 5 minutes, come back and run "emerge world -UD" and every package on your system will be upgraded to the latest available.
Community is there. Almost any problem can be found in the Gentoo Forums, and most all of them have solutions. I solve most of my problems with a quick search. Second to that, I check the bugzilla repository. Very rarely do I have a problem which isn't at least mentioned in either location, and most have a solution. But if you need interactive help, the IRC channel can be very helpful! I haven't spent much time in there, but when I do drop by there are generally at least two people getting help.
Gentoo's install guide is very detailed and geared towards novices. If you don't run into problems, for the most part you can just cut and paste commands to install.;)
Because of the way you install Gentoo, you become much more familiar with the way Linux works under the hood (GUI) and can, from there, be better able to solve any problems you run into. You also step into the realm of being able to install and maintain your own servers (www, ssh, ftp, mail, etc.) with your newfound systems knowledge. And it makes a good resume item.:)
Gentoo is bare bones, as mentioned in the parent. Nothing on the system you don't want there. This makes for a great feeling of 'having a handle on things.':)
Gentoo is for the computer user who likes to customize his environment and have control and know what is what. If you just want to 'use' your computer, go get Mandrake or Fedora or Windows. If you like
Half of software is marketing; half is engineering.
This fits for about any product. Make a product, then convince people to buy it. Without a product, you don't make money, without buyers, you don't make money. Basic.
But at this point in Microsoft's life, marketing will only go so far and this is where Microsoft is losing ground (but fighting back). Everyone knows MS and their software and its benefits and shortcomings. They have a long history of mediocre software with little attention to security, bugs, etc. And for a long time they could make it over with marketing.
But these days, with certain, keen business managers and CTOs, their colored foil wrapping isn't doing as much for the bad tasting stuff inside. Their products work and get the job done, but with huge costs and lack of real attention to quality, people are starting to look around. Microsoft's core business is turning into a commonality.
When someone steps up to the plate and can deliver a product of higher quality, people will consider migrating. If upgrades and fixes come quickly and the cost is $0 in monetary terms, the consideration becomes much more serious.
Any business requires lots of marketing. But when you're so commonplace as Microsoft is, the effectiveness of marketing can no longer cover up for long-held practices which piss off consumers and they'll start looking elsewhere.
With recent increases in stability, etc., Microsoft is staying in the game, but it remains to be seen how far they're willing to go.
Yeah, but we (perhaps instinctively?) developed aeons ago inexpensive utilities for augmenting long-term storage. Like writing.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but it's important to remember all of the problems we have working with that data. We can store petabytes of data in a computer, but the brain is a much more thorough search engine, able to relate items in a way a computer can't. And this (remembering information and relating it) isn't something you need a big 'cache' for...
This is why you get folks (like me) who can remember a conversation or paragraph verbatim and can recite fun knowledge from science, history, etc., but can't do math worth crap. All the data storage in the world is meaningless if you don't have the means to search it.
If it applies to network data transfer, is it wired or wireless only? Floppys and CDs are data transfer to... how specific is the method? Bah.
How about radio?
This is the problem with more legislation -- it can never be kept simple enough and it's a huge burden on both the parties involved and the court system to work out the bad decisions of career politicians.
I really think it's time for a third party to become an option. We need to get rid of our damn dogma and look at the issues.
They really don't care what the impact is. They just want more money.
No kidding. I'll make a disclaimer and mention that I didn't RTFA, but offhand it sounds like they're taxing private networks like they do public networks which were funded with public money.
Ahem... Let me say this again: They are taxing private networks built by private companies with their own money.
How can you justify that one? Seriously? That's like taxing me for writing a perl script to do nightly backups of some of my files, or taxing a company for developing internal middleware software.
Or taxing open source software a la the April 1st article here on Slashdot.
Are we sure this article isn't a couple weeks late?
Or instead of disconnecting you can run stalkd, the "Creepy Stalker Daemon" to monitor her process activity including unbuffered reads/writes and interprocess communication. But be careful, some processes like to call the hireLawyer() system routine which attempts to su to root and reapportion your quota to her UID as well as lock your login.
I was quite interested in the benchmarks for X2. I've been running an MSI GeForce Ti 4400 for about two years and have recently been reaching the point where scaling down games to 1024 x 768 and medium options is now necessary to run games at a good framerate. X2's HEAVY use of shaders and use of anti-aliasing absolutely kills my card in heavy scenes, so I was very interested to see what Tom's had for X2 benchmarks.
On a side note, my past two vid card upgrades were under $300, spaced about two years apart and IIRC both times the new card outperformed the old by a full 100%. I wonder if things are slowing down or if games are really starting to use features that much more? A month ago it was hard to find a card that reliably doubled the Ti 4400's performance. The price still isn't under $300 for one.
The difference here is that Google does not (as of yet) have a burning desire to add clutter. They're already searching images, newsgroups, news websites, the web, good deals (Froogle), and business locations. They make an IE toolbar for blocking popups and searching. I've seen a piece of searching hardware they sell. You can buy ads, too.
Google is huge.
And yet still, every piece of the puzzle is simple as can be. Google realizes that each piece is its own piece and should be used independantly of the others without sucking the user to a page he didn't intend to visit.
What's the primary complain about computers second to "It doesn't work?" "It takes up so much time!" Who wants to visit a website which requires drudging through links, ads and banners to do what you want? People want a simple interface and want to get their task done.
To illustrate the point: on Yahoo, you'll see distractions and clutter attempting to get you to spend more time at their website and use more of their utilities. Most people are annoyed by this. On Google, you won't find link upon link cluttering up the page trying to get you to go elsewhere. You won't find animated ads. You won't find banners. On the other hand, you WILL find what you need -- in a search or otherwise.
Google shoots for a great user experience -- and users come back. Google focuses on quality of product, not quality of marketing.
There's no reason that something this big can't be great. With the right management and the right motives, as Google has had on their very long journey thus far, this can work. These types of successes don't happen often, but Google is already a long way down that path and doesn't appear to be wandering off of it.
If you just want to use your computer, go for an 'easy' distro like Red Hat Fedora or Mandrake.
If you're a computer enthusiast who wants to get into Linux (not 'try', but you want to use it), installing from the ground up is a good idea. You get a solid foundation on what parts do what, who makes them and what your choices are. You're more likely to become a Linux guru sooner than if you go with an 'easy' distro which tempts you to stay in your comfy environment and not get your hands on stuff.;)
The truth here is important though: it isn't always "easy". My first ground-up install (Gentoo Linux) took about a week or week and a half of nightly tinkering (an hour or so every night or every other night) and time on the weekends. This was mainly due to hardware issues. I had also been using Red Hat 7.3 up until that time. Then again, I know people who have installed Gentoo in a weekend coming straight from Windows/Mac with only a few loose ends.
The BEST way, I think, to figure out if a custom build is for you is to read a guide on how to do it. Gentoo's is here. Skim it, it'll give you an easy idea of what you're looking at.
If anyone is interested in any other info I'd be more than happy to help, my scrambled email is in my profile.:)
However standards are greatly improving in the US, but this is only due to the threat imposed by legislation and civil lawsuits.
I'm all in favor of civil lawsuits, that's how the people back up their rights, but it saddens me that legislation is the only solution here.
Wouldn't it be nice if people would fight before signing a contract or do some more research instead of proxying their protection off to an inefficient, self-interested body known as The Government?
Everyone just signs blindly, running on autopilot, and as such contracts are typically not negotiated. Kinda sucks. It'd be nice if all the legislation happy people hoarding soapbox time everywhere would step down and start looking out for themselves instead of passing laws to govern everyone else.
I do agree with you, but it's interesting to note the difference of the internet. Books, radio (in the strict radio-network sense), TV, you can't shout back at any of these. The internet not only lets outside influences in, it also allows dissidents to communicate with each other.
The internet certainly won't bring down a regime on its own, but it can be more of an aid than anything before its time.
I'd love this too, problem is that only maybe 10 people would watch it.:/
Don't underestimate geeks. We've got enough folks out there in the OSS movement to run a handful of enterprise level operating systems and all the related software with almost no support from hardware vendors and relatively little misc. corporate support.
There are TONS of geeks out there who would love nothing better than to spend endless hours learning and soaking up info.
How do the internals of a hard drive work? How do you protect a network from DDOS? What are the latest viruses, who's coming out with new technologies, when will my flying car and nano-clothes be here?
Geek would eat this up left and right. The discovery channel covers a lot of this and geeks are obsessed with it. Put a more geeky spin on it with a little humor and more computers and you've got yourself a network nobody seems to have tried yet. The person who figures this out will be rich.
Slashdot Mirror
Sad, isn't it? :-\
That said, ask yourself this: when society determines what it values (food, cars, housing) and pays money for it, isn't it prudent to attempt to push to supply that need? Drive for wealth helps the community.
I know what you're thinking, and I'm thinking the same thing. The folks that just go for money are a pretty sad group and hurt society as a whole in that there are ways to cheat any system, including capitalism or regulated capitalism.
But in the same breath, ivory tower scholars who dab in their own research for kicks aren't interested in helping anyone but themselves either. It's a quest for knowledge and the goal is to satisfy oneself. But often the fruits of this labor help society, so it is found that drive for knowledge helps the community.
In the end, both aspects accomplish the same goal. When it comes right down to it, the thing that matters philisophically is whether your drive is for yourself or for helping others. Both businessmen and scholars can choose to help others and regardless of your perceptions of Bad Big Business (which I do dislike), I think the proportions are fairly equal. [As a point, how many snooty professors do you know who use TAs to teach the class while they sit in the lab? How many of the ones who did teach wouldn't if they had the choice?]
Capitalism and Research generally both give back to the community. I don't see either one as worse than the other, but both sides often misunderstand their counterpart. Just something to think about.
Cheers
Ugh. This is some pretty slanted and assuming stuff here.
:)
First off, you're right to a large extent. The US is not a scientific community. You won't earn respect from everyone just by being smart. But this isn't the picture it's painted to be.
US culture emphasizes excelling on all fronts and being an individual, exercising your freedom. This means that you follow your own passions, go where you want to and be good at every facet in your chosen path and in life.
If you're smart, that's a large step to getting there. But you also need passion and individuality. Second, you need life skills. A scientist is a wonderful thing, but a scientist without the ability to effectively communicate with someone not in his field is only good in the lab. You have to have social skills to relate, business skills to sell yourself, mental skills to do a good job and passion to do it well on your own will. Standing on your own feet and presenting a good face on all sides is what we value here. Some do a decent job of faking it -- it sucks, I know some of them. But most off, it's trial by fire. Sink or swim.
Jealousy, envy, rejection of 'being-smart-is-good' mentality? Sure. That's life. Some people are stupid and you'll never get rid of them. Deal with it.
Drug-heads? Boozers? Party animals? Sure. I can't call you wrong here. A lot of our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', 'being a kid', etc. especially during the college years. That said, you can't blame your whole experience on this.
As for your comment about leaders, I believe that it is misplaced. Leaders do a great job at organizing things, but culture is what drives who an American is and what our country values. Leaders do not. If our culture emphasizes 'having a good time', which unfortunately it does in some circles, the leaders can hold all the meetings they want and (in the case of a politician) pass law after law, but it won't do a damn bit of good. The people make a country great, not its leaders.
And in respect to you not growing up here, the opinion of a foreigner is very valuable, as is asking your neighbor or a friend what he thinks of you. But in the end, with all due respect, people who grew up in our education system have more of a right to speak to its merits with a critical eye. You must live the life and be critical to be qualified to give a valuable opinion, but it is not possible to be critical and not live here yet do the same. I think perhaps some Americans would do well to think about who is really qualified to give an opinion on all things American.
For me personally, I've had a number of run-ins with people who hated the smart folks. One year I picked up the nickname 'brain'. I was always the kid walking in just before the bell so I could grab 5 minutes with my science and history teachers to discuss nuclear physics, quantum theory, the Nazi political machine and the like. I am a geek.
When I looked around me, though, nobody seemed to share my passion. Nobody seemed to value doing their best and knowing as much as possible. I felt like the only kid in the school who cared. It was quite disconcerting.
But when it came down to it, my perception was due to my focus on specific interests and my lack of a non-bitter social face. I was hard to approach and deal with -- skills that I spoke of above. My school was not a lab environment, my school was a people environment with folks from all walks of life, not just the upper crust. When I learned to present a more friendly and open social face and attempt to relate to others instead of expect them to join me in my shell, things got better and I saw that people really did care, just not in the way that I did.
I doubt that my post will hold much meaning for you, you appear fairly set in your take on the situation, but perhaps an alternate view from someone in a similar situation might shed some insight on your experience here. Regardless of all, my best of wishes to you, from geek to geek.
Cheers
It's great that FreeType exists, but it's still missing the point. You shouldn't need to scour the web looking for plugins to make your program do the (simple) things you want it to do.
:)
Very true. The problem with articles like this falls under not understanding the material under review (e.g. expecting it to be a Photoshop port to Linux) and not doing research before proudly exclaiming that "Gimp Sux0rs!"
A competant review includes things like "There was a plugin for it which I found eventually, but it's a bit silly that the default text tool is so poor."
I feel that Gimp has a long way to go, but with script-fu it has some serious potential and can already make a lot of sweet images. Photoshop is still better for professional work I'd venture, but Gimp surely does not suck.
And I still fail to see why the user interface is perplexing. Confusing for a new user, sure, but if you can't understand anything that isn't presented to you in the same fashion as every other app you use, I won't feel any pity, especially when you're dealing with such a powerful tool. Powerful tools can justify (and often require) a non-standard interface to be useful.
That's my rant.
Cheers
I figure most will be installing Linux over existing Windows installations. That's what's happening to a portion of the server market right now.
Cheers
I'm in agreement, but a few points:
:)
1) Stability is a big part, and I don't want to put words into your mouth, but other facets cannot be ignored. Performance. Ease of maintenance (service interruptions? reboot?). Remote administration. Batch-administration. Security. Lack of bloat (see Performance and Security as well). Available server applications. And lack of preparation or unique application training to accomplish these things. It's my personal observation that Linux beats out Windows in every area.
2) As far as I can see, most realistic people think Linux will take another 3-5 years to hit 10% on the desktop, including big Linux figures.
3) Administration is still the killer for Joe-user, but for companies with an IT department this isn't an issue. Considering Linux's put-your-home-and-usr-directories-on-NFS ability and how easy it is to mirror a box (no unaccessable 'files' on the filesystem), a company can roll out Linux without admin hassles. I honestly think this will be where it starts. People will use it at work and take it home (for work reasons or personal reasons). Companies will demand hardware support, user base will grow, and the snowball feeds itself.
Cheers
I'm using Galeon 1.3.14 -- no problems using that page for me (clicked on one of the elements and it loaded). No popups (javascript enabled, popup blocking disabled).
I did catch a "If you have javascript disabled..." something or other for a flash of a second, but page content replaced it.
Thanks for the great reply! I just want to say a few things:
/boot mounted by default, /boot setup in fstab: ..."
:)
1)
> > Gentoo's install guide is very detailed and geared towards novices.
I'd change that to "step-by-step commands for people who know what 90% of these commands mean." So when they go wrong, you can go, "Ah... all I have to do is repeat step 15a."
Correct -- I should have been more explicit. The instructions are, IMO, enough that the user will know what is going on (we're partitioning now -- this is what partitioning is for... etc) when he copies the commands and runs them.
If you run into problems, I am not trying to imply that a novice will know what to do (e.g. repeat step 15a) but will at least know where he stands. Then comes asking for help.
2) the fact the directions don't have
Maybe I'm not understanding you, but I found this in the install guide when describing
"[/boot] shouldn't be mounted automatically (noauto) but
3) As someone else mentioned, it isn't surprising that it took so long for you to build KDE as you were only on a dual P2 450 (I'm thinking maybe about a P3 700 if multiple processors were used properly?). More 'modern' processors like a 2000+ or higher will generally achieve a full system in a weekend (from stage1, no binary builds).
4) Everything else you said I agree with 100%. Your observations on help you got, problems you ran into, etc. are all pretty fitting with my own.
Cheers
I'm not sure what nforce2 patches you're looking for, but if it helps, I've been using Gentoo (2.4.2x gaming sources) on my A7N8X board (which is an nforce2 board) for over a year with no problems.
On board networking is fine (though I'm only using one eth port), UDMA, AGP, etc. all work. I'm not using my onboard sound, so that might be what you're having problems with?
Cheers
There was a little heat back a few months ago with what drobbins was doing with Gentoo Games. Apparently he and another Gentoo Dev had agreed to do a for-profit venture and didn't tell anyone straight away. There was also concern that drobbins wasn't pushing Gentoo Inc. to non-profit status, concerns about the growing management overhead, etc.
I don't know how I feel about Daniel leaving. Reading some of the dissenters' stories (especially from the fork a few months back) and speaking with a Gentoo developer I know personally, I'm curious as to his real motives. But, in the end, this whole "Gentoo thing" was a brilliant idea and I owe him a lot for my last two years of computing. I'm happy to see the project take a more community oriented turn, but I am sad to see Daniel step down.
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In short, here are some negative things to keep in mind:
In turn, here are some more (and some repeated from the parent post) good points from my view:
Gentoo is for the computer user who likes to customize his environment and have control and know what is what. If you just want to 'use' your computer, go get Mandrake or Fedora or Windows. If you like
Half of software is marketing; half is engineering.
This fits for about any product. Make a product, then convince people to buy it. Without a product, you don't make money, without buyers, you don't make money. Basic.
But at this point in Microsoft's life, marketing will only go so far and this is where Microsoft is losing ground (but fighting back). Everyone knows MS and their software and its benefits and shortcomings. They have a long history of mediocre software with little attention to security, bugs, etc. And for a long time they could make it over with marketing.
But these days, with certain, keen business managers and CTOs, their colored foil wrapping isn't doing as much for the bad tasting stuff inside. Their products work and get the job done, but with huge costs and lack of real attention to quality, people are starting to look around. Microsoft's core business is turning into a commonality.
When someone steps up to the plate and can deliver a product of higher quality, people will consider migrating. If upgrades and fixes come quickly and the cost is $0 in monetary terms, the consideration becomes much more serious.
Any business requires lots of marketing. But when you're so commonplace as Microsoft is, the effectiveness of marketing can no longer cover up for long-held practices which piss off consumers and they'll start looking elsewhere.
With recent increases in stability, etc., Microsoft is staying in the game, but it remains to be seen how far they're willing to go.
Isn't competition great?
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Yeah, but we (perhaps instinctively?) developed aeons ago inexpensive utilities for augmenting long-term storage. Like writing.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but it's important to remember all of the problems we have working with that data. We can store petabytes of data in a computer, but the brain is a much more thorough search engine, able to relate items in a way a computer can't. And this (remembering information and relating it) isn't something you need a big 'cache' for...
This is why you get folks (like me) who can remember a conversation or paragraph verbatim and can recite fun knowledge from science, history, etc., but can't do math worth crap. All the data storage in the world is meaningless if you don't have the means to search it.
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If it applies to network data transfer, is it wired or wireless only? Floppys and CDs are data transfer to... how specific is the method? Bah.
How about radio?
This is the problem with more legislation -- it can never be kept simple enough and it's a huge burden on both the parties involved and the court system to work out the bad decisions of career politicians.
I really think it's time for a third party to become an option. We need to get rid of our damn dogma and look at the issues.
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According to the Wall Street Journal (which my respect for is questionable, nevertheless...) and related to me by Clark Howard, it appears that Florida is one of the best states for a business tax-wise.
I don't know that I'd ever move a business to Florida, but at least it's not California or New York.
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They really don't care what the impact is. They just want more money.
No kidding. I'll make a disclaimer and mention that I didn't RTFA, but offhand it sounds like they're taxing private networks like they do public networks which were funded with public money.
Ahem... Let me say this again:
They are taxing private networks built by private companies with their own money.
How can you justify that one? Seriously? That's like taxing me for writing a perl script to do nightly backups of some of my files, or taxing a company for developing internal middleware software.
Or taxing open source software a la the April 1st article here on Slashdot.
Are we sure this article isn't a couple weeks late?
Or instead of disconnecting you can run stalkd, the "Creepy Stalker Daemon" to monitor her process activity including unbuffered reads/writes and interprocess communication. But be careful, some processes like to call the hireLawyer() system routine which attempts to su to root and reapportion your quota to her UID as well as lock your login.
I was quite interested in the benchmarks for X2. I've been running an MSI GeForce Ti 4400 for about two years and have recently been reaching the point where scaling down games to 1024 x 768 and medium options is now necessary to run games at a good framerate. X2's HEAVY use of shaders and use of anti-aliasing absolutely kills my card in heavy scenes, so I was very interested to see what Tom's had for X2 benchmarks.
On a side note, my past two vid card upgrades were under $300, spaced about two years apart and IIRC both times the new card outperformed the old by a full 100%. I wonder if things are slowing down or if games are really starting to use features that much more? A month ago it was hard to find a card that reliably doubled the Ti 4400's performance. The price still isn't under $300 for one.
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Local exploits allow in-company users to crack things. Here you get rootkits and the like as a result.
But with remote exploits, anyone can get in. Here you get automated rootkit scripts, viruses/worms/trojans, etc.
Which has done more damage in the past 3 years?
Local exploits are very important... but to put them on the level with remote exploits is inane.
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If the vendor isn't fixing the problem, details (DETAILS) about the hole need to be released so the community can.
That's how this whole, weird 'open source' thingy works.
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The difference here is that Google does not (as of yet) have a burning desire to add clutter. They're already searching images, newsgroups, news websites, the web, good deals (Froogle), and business locations. They make an IE toolbar for blocking popups and searching. I've seen a piece of searching hardware they sell. You can buy ads, too.
Google is huge.
And yet still, every piece of the puzzle is simple as can be. Google realizes that each piece is its own piece and should be used independantly of the others without sucking the user to a page he didn't intend to visit.
What's the primary complain about computers second to "It doesn't work?" "It takes up so much time!" Who wants to visit a website which requires drudging through links, ads and banners to do what you want? People want a simple interface and want to get their task done.
To illustrate the point: on Yahoo, you'll see distractions and clutter attempting to get you to spend more time at their website and use more of their utilities. Most people are annoyed by this. On Google, you won't find link upon link cluttering up the page trying to get you to go elsewhere. You won't find animated ads. You won't find banners. On the other hand, you WILL find what you need -- in a search or otherwise.
Google shoots for a great user experience -- and users come back. Google focuses on quality of product, not quality of marketing.
There's no reason that something this big can't be great. With the right management and the right motives, as Google has had on their very long journey thus far, this can work. These types of successes don't happen often, but Google is already a long way down that path and doesn't appear to be wandering off of it.
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You must work for a hard drive manufacturer.
Hehe.
I agree, but it generally depends on who you are.
;)
:)
If you just want to use your computer, go for an 'easy' distro like Red Hat Fedora or Mandrake.
If you're a computer enthusiast who wants to get into Linux (not 'try', but you want to use it), installing from the ground up is a good idea. You get a solid foundation on what parts do what, who makes them and what your choices are. You're more likely to become a Linux guru sooner than if you go with an 'easy' distro which tempts you to stay in your comfy environment and not get your hands on stuff.
The truth here is important though: it isn't always "easy". My first ground-up install (Gentoo Linux) took about a week or week and a half of nightly tinkering (an hour or so every night or every other night) and time on the weekends. This was mainly due to hardware issues. I had also been using Red Hat 7.3 up until that time.
Then again, I know people who have installed Gentoo in a weekend coming straight from Windows/Mac with only a few loose ends.
The BEST way, I think, to figure out if a custom build is for you is to read a guide on how to do it. Gentoo's is here. Skim it, it'll give you an easy idea of what you're looking at.
If anyone is interested in any other info I'd be more than happy to help, my scrambled email is in my profile.
Cheers
However standards are greatly improving in the US, but this is only due to the threat imposed by legislation and civil lawsuits.
I'm all in favor of civil lawsuits, that's how the people back up their rights, but it saddens me that legislation is the only solution here.
Wouldn't it be nice if people would fight before signing a contract or do some more research instead of proxying their protection off to an inefficient, self-interested body known as The Government?
Everyone just signs blindly, running on autopilot, and as such contracts are typically not negotiated. Kinda sucks. It'd be nice if all the legislation happy people hoarding soapbox time everywhere would step down and start looking out for themselves instead of passing laws to govern everyone else.
Just my opinion.
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I do agree with you, but it's interesting to note the difference of the internet. Books, radio (in the strict radio-network sense), TV, you can't shout back at any of these. The internet not only lets outside influences in, it also allows dissidents to communicate with each other.
The internet certainly won't bring down a regime on its own, but it can be more of an aid than anything before its time.
Cheers
I'd love this too, problem is that only maybe 10 people would watch it. :/
Don't underestimate geeks. We've got enough folks out there in the OSS movement to run a handful of enterprise level operating systems and all the related software with almost no support from hardware vendors and relatively little misc. corporate support.
There are TONS of geeks out there who would love nothing better than to spend endless hours learning and soaking up info.
How do the internals of a hard drive work? How do you protect a network from DDOS? What are the latest viruses, who's coming out with new technologies, when will my flying car and nano-clothes be here?
Geek would eat this up left and right. The discovery channel covers a lot of this and geeks are obsessed with it. Put a more geeky spin on it with a little humor and more computers and you've got yourself a network nobody seems to have tried yet. The person who figures this out will be rich.
Cheers