Yes, the screenshots are bad. They also chose the nastier of the two themes available for the screenshots. In real life, the desktop looks much better and there were no issues with seriously ugly fonts. As for using it, well I did try it on a clean install of RH 7.2 on a reasonably fast laptop (750Mhz, 190MB Ram, etc) and it works fairly well. For some odd reason it decided that my soundcard should have the gain all the way up with the mic on as well everytime I rebooted. The resulting feedback was loud enough to make my skin crawl and become borderline ill. Nothing I did would maintain my volume preferences so I ditched it. Not the politicaly correct thing to do of course, I should have tried to actually fix it but I do not feel the need to be bothered with that when it just works on other distros. Debian went back on and all was well. The other issue was purely a user interface one, and that is there is no intuitive way to close an application once you start it. No little X, no File > Exit or Close, no nothing. I ended up using xkill to close the included full screen apps. Performance was actually very similar to a default RH laptop install as far as memory usage and application feedback is concernec, though it is nowhere near the speed of something like Fluxbox. All in all I would not recommend it for anyone as it stands. KDE and Gnome are both more immediatly usable and intuitive for most I think. Your mileage may vary.
Apparently anyone who dares raise the question regarding the number of "we have plenty of lawyers so just bring it" type of responses in the article will be summarily modded as a troll. Look at the number of people bringing this up? Since when does might make right on/.? Notice how he never considers the possibility that one of their members might actually deserve to have their actions questioned. He simply replies with gems that extole the virtues of having a community of lawyers at your disposal and their ability to dissaude anyone from trying to pursue possible legal action. So post on regarding the army of lawyers angle, just be prepared to be modded as a troll in doing so.
Troll? Hardly. Read his response to the legal questions, that is his answer to everything. We have the most lawyers, therefore we will win and be proven just. Maybe the mods should try actually reading the articles.
our lawyers will beat you up good. You will get nowhere trying to bring the law against us, as we are all lawyers and we know the system. What a bunch of dirtbags. You sir, appear to have a user to scumbag ratio of 100% at your ISP.
Maybe they are tired of supporting Win2K? Who knows the reason for the switch, they did not provide much in the way of background. I think they are also barking up the wrong tree if they are asking this question on slashdot. Other things to consider would be removing setuid binaries (games especially fall into this category), mounting temp as noexec, and having a solid plan for security updates. Assuming they have their reasons, more power to them but the lack of a general idea as to where they will start with linux does not bode well in my mind.
My point again? I thought I made it clear the first time, obviously I have failed you. My point has little to do with Telstra or any other organization with serious technical resources available. My point has everything to do with presenting a viable Linux business solution to companies that do not have the time, expertise, or even desire to wade through the copious amounts of software that provide relatively similar capabilities. This is where the average/. Linux enthusiast becomes hopelessly lost trying to justify the incredible flexibility that linux affords us. What is a an awesome feature for freedom to do anything linux users *can* be a serious hindrance for corporate environments. If you do not understand that, maybe you will when you realize that the power and freedom of linux can be quite a handfull for those who wish to deploy a consistent configuration for their staff and do not have years of linux expertise to rely upon. Do I want to see linux kludged into one persons view of the ultimate desktop solution? Hell no, never. Is there a market for a consistent linux desktop? Maybe, if someone cares to put one together we just may find out. Until then, try to view the linux solutions from the point of an ill trained, ill advised corporate IT environment that just wants to deliver a consistent and reliable alternative to MS. That is, if you care about linux making inroads into the business desktop arena. I personally do not care in the least whether linux succeeds in the grey corporate towers of the world, but I can at least see why people are hesitant to deploy when confronted with so many available options that they do not understand. Geeks value freedom and flexibility greatly, your average IT manager just want to be presented with something that works and have many of the mundane choices made for them.
Please note that I in no way implied that even a corporate targeted Linux distro should be an avenue of "lock down" and incompatibility. As for competition, I fail to see how a distro targeted at business users would impede the ability of anyone else to compete in the same market. My point has nothing to do with why most of us love Linux, it has everything to do with why corporate environments find Linux to be a handfull. A big, bloated handfull at that that presents to many choices at the onset of deploying standard, supportable, configurations. There are many ways to realize effective configuration management of systems. You will find that in most progressive IT shops. For them, Linux as-is would not present a great barrier to deployment. They would test the images, hopefully strip them down to the essentials, and more than likely successfully deploy them. For the organization that is beginning to consider a linux solution, the amount of choices is a daunting factor. Take it for what it is worth.
Sounds like a bargaining chip deal to me, and yes, I am quite cynical. The company did recently choose a Sun Java solution over MS and IBM offerings recently though, so maybe they are trying to move away from MS. If they do go with linux, you can safely bet on the solution being provided by Sun as they appear to greatly admire Mr. McNealy.
Without starting a war, I think that in order for linux to be deployed successfully in a corporate envrironment, someone is going to have to build a highly functional, standardized desktop environment. Gnome and KDE are the obvious choices, but what kills linux (for the newcomer) is the overabundance of choice! Abiword, Kword, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Applix (if they are still around). Pick one! Now do that for the multitudes of packages that provide duplicate functionality. This is the only way that someone is going to get Linux in the front of the day to day workers in any corp. Choice is great for geeks, but not for the standard fare business environment. Someone will ship a distro with one shell, one office package, one browser, one mail client, and they will be the company that puts linux over in the workplace.
Aye! I tried to configure a laptop just today and found it impossible to get rid of the silly MS Office cruft as well as the OS. Hint to Dell: I do not want, need, or in any way care about using MS software. Nor do I intend to support any company that tries to fore-configure anything on me. So guess what Dude? I am getting a Powerbook .
Why not let the kid figure out how he is going to spend the weekends himself? If he makes a stupid decision, he won't have his precious games to play, and he will be forced to do something more interesting than frag his day away. Go to the zoo, find a museuem, try to get laid, go to a show at a club, anything but sit in some hotel room and play games all night. At least rent something good on spankovision if you insist on avoiding human contact. And you Pops, I am sure you are an awesome father, but you really should let go a bit at 17. Let the kid mess up now! Let him pay the price for mixed up priorities now or he is never going to learn.
Computer:Citizen! Why have you concealed your brainwaves?
Citezen: Oh merciful and great computer, I have concealed nothing from you...
Computer: Citizen, I know that you have not concealed your brainwaves from me, that would
not be possible. Please report to summary interrogation in level Purple.
Citizen: But great Computer, I am only a Red level citizen and thus unable to venture into the Purple levels.
Computer: Citizen, level Red is currently undergoing clean up after an "incident". Please report for summary execution in level Blue.
--Microsoft officials said it makes sense for the operating system to provide cryptographic services to any application that needs it, instead of each application having to include its own cryptographic technology.--
Right, because it is so much easier to patch the entire OS instead of one app. If I were a windows user, I could do without running IE until a patch was released, I could not however go without running the OS until a patch came out. BTW, there is no expected release date for the patch. The quote above from MS was in repsonse to being informed that Konqueror fixed a similar problem in 90 minutes. MS does have a point concerning the reuse of crypto services in the OS. I think for something as widely used as a web browser, it may be best to let it handle it's own crypto transactions and not tie it to the success or failure of the entire OS. What do you think?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the screenshots are bad. They also chose the nastier of the two themes available for the screenshots. In real life, the desktop looks much better and there were no issues with seriously ugly fonts. As for using it, well I did try it on a clean install of RH 7.2 on a reasonably fast laptop (750Mhz, 190MB Ram, etc) and it works fairly well. For some odd reason it decided that my soundcard should have the gain all the way up with the mic on as well everytime I rebooted. The resulting feedback was loud enough to make my skin crawl and become borderline ill. Nothing I did would maintain my volume preferences so I ditched it. Not the politicaly correct thing to do of course, I should have tried to actually fix it but I do not feel the need to be bothered with that when it just works on other distros. Debian went back on and all was well. The other issue was purely a user interface one, and that is there is no intuitive way to close an application once you start it. No little X, no File > Exit or Close, no nothing. I ended up using xkill to close the included full screen apps. Performance was actually very similar to a default RH laptop install as far as memory usage and application feedback is concernec, though it is nowhere near the speed of something like Fluxbox. All in all I would not recommend it for anyone as it stands. KDE and Gnome are both more immediatly usable and intuitive for most I think. Your mileage may vary.
Apparently anyone who dares raise the question regarding the number of "we have plenty of lawyers so just bring it" type of responses in the article will be summarily modded as a troll. Look at the number of people bringing this up? Since when does might make right on /.? Notice how he never considers the possibility that one of their members might actually deserve to have their actions questioned. He simply replies with gems that extole the virtues of having a community of lawyers at your disposal and their ability to dissaude anyone from trying to pursue possible legal action. So post on regarding the army of lawyers angle, just be prepared to be modded as a troll in doing so.
Troll? Hardly. Read his response to the legal questions, that is his answer to everything. We have the most lawyers, therefore we will win and be proven just. Maybe the mods should try actually reading the articles.
our lawyers will beat you up good. You will get nowhere trying to bring the law against us, as we are all lawyers and we know the system. What a bunch of dirtbags. You sir, appear to have a user to scumbag ratio of 100% at your ISP.
Maybe they are tired of supporting Win2K? Who knows the reason for the switch, they did not provide much in the way of background. I think they are also barking up the wrong tree if they are asking this question on slashdot. Other things to consider would be removing setuid binaries (games especially fall into this category), mounting temp as noexec, and having a solid plan for security updates. Assuming they have their reasons, more power to them but the lack of a general idea as to where they will start with linux does not bode well in my mind.
My point again? I thought I made it clear the first time, obviously I have failed you. My point has little to do with Telstra or any other organization with serious technical resources available. My point has everything to do with presenting a viable Linux business solution to companies that do not have the time, expertise, or even desire to wade through the copious amounts of software that provide relatively similar capabilities. This is where the average /. Linux enthusiast becomes hopelessly lost trying to justify the incredible flexibility that linux affords us. What is a an awesome feature for freedom to do anything linux users *can* be a serious hindrance for corporate environments. If you do not understand that, maybe you will when you realize that the power and freedom of linux can be quite a handfull for those who wish to deploy a consistent configuration for their staff and do not have years of linux expertise to rely upon. Do I want to see linux kludged into one persons view of the ultimate desktop solution? Hell no, never. Is there a market for a consistent linux desktop? Maybe, if someone cares to put one together we just may find out. Until then, try to view the linux solutions from the point of an ill trained, ill advised corporate IT environment that just wants to deliver a consistent and reliable alternative to MS. That is, if you care about linux making inroads into the business desktop arena. I personally do not care in the least whether linux succeeds in the grey corporate towers of the world, but I can at least see why people are hesitant to deploy when confronted with so many available options that they do not understand. Geeks value freedom and flexibility greatly, your average IT manager just want to be presented with something that works and have many of the mundane choices made for them.
Please note that I in no way implied that even a corporate targeted Linux distro should be an avenue of "lock down" and incompatibility. As for competition, I fail to see how a distro targeted at business users would impede the ability of anyone else to compete in the same market. My point has nothing to do with why most of us love Linux, it has everything to do with why corporate environments find Linux to be a handfull. A big, bloated handfull at that that presents to many choices at the onset of deploying standard, supportable, configurations. There are many ways to realize effective configuration management of systems. You will find that in most progressive IT shops. For them, Linux as-is would not present a great barrier to deployment. They would test the images, hopefully strip them down to the essentials, and more than likely successfully deploy them. For the organization that is beginning to consider a linux solution, the amount of choices is a daunting factor. Take it for what it is worth.
Sounds like a bargaining chip deal to me, and yes, I am quite cynical. The company did recently choose a Sun Java solution over MS and IBM offerings recently though, so maybe they are trying to move away from MS. If they do go with linux, you can safely bet on the solution being provided by Sun as they appear to greatly admire Mr. McNealy.
Without starting a war, I think that in order for linux to be deployed successfully in a corporate envrironment, someone is going to have to build a highly functional, standardized desktop environment. Gnome and KDE are the obvious choices, but what kills linux (for the newcomer) is the overabundance of choice! Abiword, Kword, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Applix (if they are still around). Pick one! Now do that for the multitudes of packages that provide duplicate functionality. This is the only way that someone is going to get Linux in the front of the day to day workers in any corp. Choice is great for geeks, but not for the standard fare business environment. Someone will ship a distro with one shell, one office package, one browser, one mail client, and they will be the company that puts linux over in the workplace.
Aye! I tried to configure a laptop just today and found it impossible to get rid of the silly MS Office cruft as well as the OS. Hint to Dell: I do not want, need, or in any way care about using MS software. Nor do I intend to support any company that tries to fore-configure anything on me. So guess what Dude? I am getting a Powerbook .
Why not let the kid figure out how he is going to spend the weekends himself? If he makes a stupid decision, he won't have his precious games to play, and he will be forced to do something more interesting than frag his day away. Go to the zoo, find a museuem, try to get laid, go to a show at a club, anything but sit in some hotel room and play games all night. At least rent something good on spankovision if you insist on avoiding human contact. And you Pops, I am sure you are an awesome father, but you really should let go a bit at 17. Let the kid mess up now! Let him pay the price for mixed up priorities now or he is never going to learn.
Computer:Citizen! Why have you concealed your brainwaves?
Citezen: Oh merciful and great computer, I have concealed nothing from you...
Computer: Citizen, I know that you have not concealed your brainwaves from me, that would not be possible. Please report to summary interrogation in level Purple.
Citizen: But great Computer, I am only a Red level citizen and thus unable to venture into the Purple levels.
Computer: Citizen, level Red is currently undergoing clean up after an "incident". Please report for summary execution in level Blue.
The game paranoia is closer than you think.
Right, because it is so much easier to patch the entire OS instead of one app. If I were a windows user, I could do without running IE until a patch was released, I could not however go without running the OS until a patch came out. BTW, there is no expected release date for the patch. The quote above from MS was in repsonse to being informed that Konqueror fixed a similar problem in 90 minutes. MS does have a point concerning the reuse of crypto services in the OS. I think for something as widely used as a web browser, it may be best to let it handle it's own crypto transactions and not tie it to the success or failure of the entire OS. What do you think?