Hell, I've never seen any install that asks as many questions as Debian!! I would have to say that installing Debian was the single worst experience I have ever had with linux... compared to that, I'd gladly watch ads:)
The Logitech Optical mouse is generally available at $15-20 in retail stores.
It's funny - there's even companies out there pirating the Logitech optical mouse! I recently bought a new computer system from the local dodgy-bros store, and it came with an optical mouse. It's called "Logistar", not "Logitech" (subtle, huh?)... and the body shape is 100% identical to the Logitech mouse - it's as if they made a mould out of a Logitech one (which they probably did:)
However, the desktop libraries do provide useful features. In GNOME's case, you have gconf (for awesome config management, for both users and developers), gnome-vfs (so you can open stuff over a network), gnome-db (for easy database access), bonobo (for embedding), and gnomeui (for displaying help, parsing config files, using i18n, and other utility functions). All of these are useful, and none are very big or bloated by themselves.
I guess I just strongly believe in applications being as "stand-alone" as possible - I don't really want to be fiddling around with heaps of libraries just to compile a simple app that in most cases doesn't even use the libraries in any significant way. That said, if GNOME/KDE provided a single tarball of the basic library source code without any added cruft, and this was less than 10 Meg in size, I'd happily compile it and have it on my system. But I know that GNOME certainly doesn't do this and I doubt that KDE does either.
Although of course they can run on either desktop, all three of those apps are GTK-based, and gaim is quit heavily GNOME-integrated.
Another point to note is that by staying "desktop neutral" they are also usable by those of us who don't use either GNOME or KDE! I find the concept of installing either GNOME or KDE-specific libraries anathema, even though I easily have the diskspace to do so - I simply do not want heaps of unwanted cruft running on my system which seems to be the end result of any app that uses KDE/GNOME. And I don't really understand why either should be required: the only important aspect of either is the file-open/save dialogue, and that should be provided by the toolkit, not the desktop, IMHO.
but when I installed several versions of it on my home network (the 0.6.1 release and nightly builds over a period of ten days, with fresh profiles every time) it adamantly refused to give me a "Back" button.
Whoa! That's wierd... certainly it's not behaviour I've ever seen, and I've used recent builds of Firebird on Linux, Win2k, WinXP and even Win95(!).
One major suggestion: Did you try deleting/moving your profile folder (so that Firebird creates a completely new profile)? (on Linux, that folder is ~/.phoenix and on Win2k (and XP?) it's in c:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Phoenix (heh, who ever said the Win directory structure was easier!)). I do recall a change in the way profiles were managed around the time of the 0.5 release, meaning that if you had ever tried Firebird before this time it would have left a completely incompatible profile behind and that could well be messing things up for you.
If that doesn't work, consider reporting it as a bug (or seeing if it's ever been reported as such) - it's only by people reporting these things that Firebird will ever improve (although, please note that I'm not even remotely involved in the development of MozFirebird so I can't speak for them... but I'd be very surprised if they felt otherwise!)
There is nothing stopping anybody from building their own Mozilla without the mail/news/composer/chatzilla/kitchensink.
... except that in the not-too-distant-future, Mozilla is supposedly going to split into Firebird/Thunderbird/etc. So you might not have a choice:)
Personally, I just find Firebird a much *friendlier* version of Mozilla - the default interface is a lot nicer. btw - if you're going to give Firebird a fair chance, try using the latest nightly rather than 0.6.1 (which is old and very buggy, as you say) - it's got more features, is faster, and much more stable.
I can't imagine him watching this commercial and giving a rat's ass about Linux. Anecdotal I realize, but I can't imagine this appealing to anybody but those who are already informed.
I think there's two points you're missing:
First, that a lot more people know about linux today than did a year ago - anyone who's ever read the computer section of a newspaper will have heard the name. That said, many of those still wouldn't have the faintest idea what Linux is... BUT...
The second point is this: IBM releases a big ad in prime time to a huge audience which demonstrates that whatever Linux is, IBM thinks that it's a damn good thing and they think it's the way of the future (the ad slogan is "The future is open"). So it's not unlikely that the people who have previously heard the word "Linux" without really being interested in it will start trying to find out what Linux is. And this is the power of this type of advertising - you don't bore people with facts, rather, you make them both interested and extremely curious and wanting to know more.
I would counter that the big problem facing many other linux video players is the fact that they were developed as great "frameworks" but no one really worried about whether they actually played files.
Well, I don't know when you last tried mplayer, but it can't have been in the last six months that I've been using it, or else you're trying to play a really obscure file format. In my experience, mplayer works so well that I don't have a DVD player - I just use the TV-out on my graphics card connected to my TV (connected with 20m of A/V cable:) I've watched a lot of DVDs/DivXs with it and I find it close to perfect.
I thought that these days the DVD-ROM firmware controls the number of available region changes, not OS or the playback software.
Well, I can tell you that I have successfully used my Liteon 16x DVD-ROM with discs from Region 4, Region 1 and Region 2 (in that order of frequency) under linux without problems. But then I don't know whether this drive has any region setting (I live in Australia, and I think there might be some anti-region legislation here or something, since many DVD players are sold region-free?) The main thing is, the drive just works and doesn't prevent me watching DVDs from different regions - and that's all I care about:)
(I've only ever used it under Windows once so can't comment on what it's like under that OS)
I know what you mean, and I used to whinge about the same thing. BUT... OOo is getting better - give v1.1 a try and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's still not MS Office speed, but it leaves v1.0 in its dust...
What you need to do is download Firebird, and Thunderbird.... Eventually they are going to take over from the Mozilla suite.
I thought that the "takeover" was supposed to be from Mozilla 1.5 onwards?? I see no mention of this in the 1.5b release notes, yet the roadmap still states (point 3):
Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6. The major changes after 1.4 involve switching to Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird, and working aggressively on the next two items. [my emphasis]
Does anyone know what's happened with this? How come 1.5b still seems (judging from the release notes - I haven't downloaded it) to be a monolithic application? Or has has Mozilla now switched to Firebird and Thunderbird and just not said anything?
Not to sure which codec you mean by "DivX PRO" - do you mean DivX 5.0.5? All I can say is that our experiences differ if that is the case - in my experience I did not notice such a speed difference between DivX and XviD, but then I should add that I optimise all my compiled software for my machine (e.g. -O2 -march=athlon-xp -ffast-math) which I can't do with the closed-source DivX codec - perhaps that could acount for the difference? (although I find this unlikely...) How long does it take for a single pass using your DivX PRO codec, and how fast is your machine? On my Athlon-XP 2000 system, using transcode, XviD and with fast-resize on, encoding a movie to 2CDs is approx. real-time (usually a few minutes faster) per pass.
(If you don't mean DivX 5.0.5, please send a link - I'd be interested in trying it out...)
Sure XviD is open source. So what? As an end-user I don't do anything with the source.
Well, you gain the assurance that you won't have adware coupled with your codec, for a start (which is what this article was all about)! Then there's the faster squashing of bugs, faster updates (I notice there's a new release of XviD out this month) and the knowledge that the code can be compiled to run on any platform. Personally I value all of these things, and I would have thought many others would as well... *shrug*
DivX 5.0.5 is still available for Linux here, no adware attached. Actually, it would be quite funny if adware was included as that would be the first case of linux adware afaik.
Of course, you could always use a better MPEG-4 codec that happens to be open source, like XviD, or ffmpeg. When I started ripping DVDs, I compared DivX 5.0.5 to XviD to ffmpeg, and IMO XviD provided the best quality (although all three are very close together... ffmpeg was the fastest but lost some quality compared to the other two).
When you consider that XviD and ffmpeg are open sourced, why would anyone use DivX 5?? (of course, this is using *nix as your OS, but according to the ffmpeg homepage you can use ffmpeg under Win32 as well...)
So, to sum up what you've said: pronouncing linux as LINN-ucks is OK if you're Finnish, but not if you're not?
Therefore I should pronounce "Xouvert" as "ZOO-vert", and someone from France should pronounce "Xouvert" as "zoo-VAIR"? Possible if you're a Kalihari Bushman you could get some clicks and glottal stops in there as well? Seems a lot easier in my mind to pronounce things the way their creator intended them to be pronouced...
I have an nVidia GeForce2 Ultra, and recently upgraded my kernel to 2.5.75. It caused my X graphics to become unbelievably slow -- like 2400 baud modem slow when doing a directory listing or anything where text was scrolling.
That's wierd - I haven't noticed any lag in performance using my nVidia GF4 440 MX card under 2.5.73...
I would like to see a Gnome that is less heavy on resources. Is that happening?
Yeah, and it's called IceWM + ROX, as you've already found out:) Personally I consider that to be a far better combination as a desktop user interface than Gnome + Nautilus - especially since Gnome started using things like gconfd which is - AFAICS - little more than the hideous Microsoft Registry reborn into the OSS world:(
BTW - you can get ROX to manage your desktop icons as well, you know - use the -p=(pinboard) option.
Used RAM also increases (at a reduced rate) when I use a lighter file manager
To which file manager are you referring? I can't say I've ever noticed any problems with ROX which is one of the lightest *usable* filemanagers I've seen... (not that I pay much attention to memory since I've never, ever run out of it with 512Mb - if you've got problems with 576Mb I hate to think what you're using it for!!)
FYI the amount of RAM doesn't increase like that in my Windows 98, which is also immune to the Blaster Worm.
Ah, yes, but Win98 doesn't need the Blaster Worm - it manages to crash routinely all by itself!:)
Have you ever tried to program using the perl bindings?
Yes, and personally I find it a joy to use, especially when compared to other perl GUI solutions. I have not found anything to be broken except remote DND drops under X.
But the big revelation for me was taking a highly complex perl/Tk gui I had written under linux and running that code on a Win2K system which had a default ActivePerl install... and it worked perfectly!
100% cross-platform compatibility without changing a single line of code... I happen to think that rather impressive.
Yeah, this Gateway player is nothing new - it probably uses the same SigmaTel chip that just about every other player on the market uses. It's still USB 1.1 which is pathetic, and 128Mb - while much better than 64Mb - is similarly ridiculous when you consider that USB 2.0 512Mb flash-drives are both cheap and readily available.
What I'd really like to see is a mp3 playing module that doesn't contain any memory, but allows usb flash-drives to plug into it. That way you could keep upgrading the usb flash-drives as storage becomes cheaper, and not have to pay for the mp3 decoding part again...
... which I guess is the reason why no company will ever produce such a device:(
NiMH batteries are great but they have the downside of losing charge very quickly "on the shelf" so you can't keep a bunch of charged MiMH batteries ready to use.
This is not the case in my experience. I have used 650mAh AAA NiMH batteries with my Palm IIIx for about three years now. I have two sets of batteries (so one can recharge while still using the old set) and when travelling for long periods of time (several months) I've just charged both sets and used the second set a month later. There was a small loss of charge, but it wasn't a big deal.
Sure, you can't charge the things up and leave them for half a year. But when are you ever going to need to do that? In the very worst case scenario, you could always pack a travel charger - they're small and light.
I don't think I could begin to count the money I've saved by not having to change two sets of Alkaline AAAs each month (well, actually I could - it's several hundred dollars as opposed to an initial outlay of $40 for the batteries and the charger). And the capacity of NiMH batteries keeps getting better - you can now get 650mAh AAAs and 1850mAh AAs just about everywhere, which is a huge improvement on rechargables five or ten years ago
I'd be interested in knowing if there're any more or less mature open-sourced alternatives for me out there -heck, if need be, I can even put in some work on it:P
Hmmm, well, there's always Dillo if you're after lean, clean and fast. But Dillo doesn't yet have https support and - while probably at least 95% functional for everyday use - the rendering engine does have difficulties with complex sites. But the browser is ultra-tiny and rocket-fast - oh, and from what they say on the website, it sounds like they could use some help!
But if you want *all* the bells-and-whistles (we're talking javascript, CSS, and full internet standards compatibility here) then I can't see how this is going to happen without at least some code-bloat and a slow-down. MozillaFirebird isn't that bad when you think about it - it's *quite* fast without being outstanding, but when you consider that I can (and regularly do) have more than 50 tabs open at once I think it doesn't do a bad job.
I also can't help thinking that the current MozFirebird default theme is pretty decent - it's certainly streets ahead of the old Mozilla 1.0 default/modern looks. In fact, I'd say the look-and-feel of Firebird is the one other area apart from speed in which I really can see a big improvement - while Mozilla was only ever a power-users browser the Firebird developers seem to have taken some pains to simplify the interface and make it more friendly to the computer-illiterate, whilst still retaining the power-user capabilities.
-Tho a cynical person might say it lengthens the film by 15 minutes so makes it difficult to fit a decent rip onto a 700MB disk;)
You can get a decent rip on a single 700Mb disk??!! From a two hour film?? I'd love to know how...
My rule of thumb is at least one disc/hour or two discs/movie, whichever is greater. I've generally found one-CD rips might be OK through TV-out, but they look shocking on a computer screen...
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Hell, I've never seen any install that asks as many questions as Debian!! I would have to say that installing Debian was the single worst experience I have ever had with linux ... compared to that, I'd gladly watch ads :)
It's funny - there's even companies out there pirating the Logitech optical mouse! I recently bought a new computer system from the local dodgy-bros store, and it came with an optical mouse. It's called "Logistar", not "Logitech" (subtle, huh?) ... and the body shape is 100% identical to the Logitech mouse - it's as if they made a mould out of a Logitech one (which they probably did :)
I guess I just strongly believe in applications being as "stand-alone" as possible - I don't really want to be fiddling around with heaps of libraries just to compile a simple app that in most cases doesn't even use the libraries in any significant way. That said, if GNOME/KDE provided a single tarball of the basic library source code without any added cruft, and this was less than 10 Meg in size, I'd happily compile it and have it on my system. But I know that GNOME certainly doesn't do this and I doubt that KDE does either.
Another point to note is that by staying "desktop neutral" they are also usable by those of us who don't use either GNOME or KDE! I find the concept of installing either GNOME or KDE-specific libraries anathema, even though I easily have the diskspace to do so - I simply do not want heaps of unwanted cruft running on my system which seems to be the end result of any app that uses KDE/GNOME. And I don't really understand why either should be required: the only important aspect of either is the file-open/save dialogue, and that should be provided by the toolkit, not the desktop, IMHO.
Whoa! That's wierd ... certainly it's not behaviour I've ever seen, and I've used recent builds of Firebird on Linux, Win2k, WinXP and even Win95(!).
One major suggestion: Did you try deleting/moving your profile folder (so that Firebird creates a completely new profile)? (on Linux, that folder is ~/.phoenix and on Win2k (and XP?) it's in c:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Phoenix (heh, who ever said the Win directory structure was easier!)). I do recall a change in the way profiles were managed around the time of the 0.5 release, meaning that if you had ever tried Firebird before this time it would have left a completely incompatible profile behind and that could well be messing things up for you.
If that doesn't work, consider reporting it as a bug (or seeing if it's ever been reported as such) - it's only by people reporting these things that Firebird will ever improve (although, please note that I'm not even remotely involved in the development of MozFirebird so I can't speak for them ... but I'd be very surprised if they felt otherwise!)
Personally, I just find Firebird a much *friendlier* version of Mozilla - the default interface is a lot nicer. btw - if you're going to give Firebird a fair chance, try using the latest nightly rather than 0.6.1 (which is old and very buggy, as you say) - it's got more features, is faster, and much more stable.
I think there's two points you're missing:
First, that a lot more people know about linux today than did a year ago - anyone who's ever read the computer section of a newspaper will have heard the name. That said, many of those still wouldn't have the faintest idea what Linux is ... BUT ...
The second point is this: IBM releases a big ad in prime time to a huge audience which demonstrates that whatever Linux is, IBM thinks that it's a damn good thing and they think it's the way of the future (the ad slogan is "The future is open"). So it's not unlikely that the people who have previously heard the word "Linux" without really being interested in it will start trying to find out what Linux is. And this is the power of this type of advertising - you don't bore people with facts, rather, you make them both interested and extremely curious and wanting to know more.
Well, I don't know when you last tried mplayer, but it can't have been in the last six months that I've been using it, or else you're trying to play a really obscure file format. In my experience, mplayer works so well that I don't have a DVD player - I just use the TV-out on my graphics card connected to my TV (connected with 20m of A/V cable :) I've watched a lot of DVDs/DivXs with it and I find it close to perfect.
Well, I can tell you that I have successfully used my Liteon 16x DVD-ROM with discs from Region 4, Region 1 and Region 2 (in that order of frequency) under linux without problems. But then I don't know whether this drive has any region setting (I live in Australia, and I think there might be some anti-region legislation here or something, since many DVD players are sold region-free?) The main thing is, the drive just works and doesn't prevent me watching DVDs from different regions - and that's all I care about :)
(I've only ever used it under Windows once so can't comment on what it's like under that OS)
I know what you mean, and I used to whinge about the same thing. BUT ... OOo is getting better - give v1.1 a try and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's still not MS Office speed, but it leaves v1.0 in its dust ...
I thought that the "takeover" was supposed to be from Mozilla 1.5 onwards?? I see no mention of this in the 1.5b release notes, yet the roadmap still states (point 3):
Does anyone know what's happened with this? How come 1.5b still seems (judging from the release notes - I haven't downloaded it) to be a monolithic application? Or has has Mozilla now switched to Firebird and Thunderbird and just not said anything?Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6. The major changes after 1.4 involve switching to Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird, and working aggressively on the next two items. [my emphasis]
Not to sure which codec you mean by "DivX PRO" - do you mean DivX 5.0.5? All I can say is that our experiences differ if that is the case - in my experience I did not notice such a speed difference between DivX and XviD, but then I should add that I optimise all my compiled software for my machine (e.g. -O2 -march=athlon-xp -ffast-math) which I can't do with the closed-source DivX codec - perhaps that could acount for the difference? (although I find this unlikely ...) How long does it take for a single pass using your DivX PRO codec, and how fast is your machine? On my Athlon-XP 2000 system, using transcode, XviD and with fast-resize on, encoding a movie to 2CDs is approx. real-time (usually a few minutes faster) per pass.
(If you don't mean DivX 5.0.5, please send a link - I'd be interested in trying it out ...)
Sure XviD is open source. So what? As an end-user I don't do anything with the source.
Well, you gain the assurance that you won't have adware coupled with your codec, for a start (which is what this article was all about)! Then there's the faster squashing of bugs, faster updates (I notice there's a new release of XviD out this month) and the knowledge that the code can be compiled to run on any platform. Personally I value all of these things, and I would have thought many others would as well ... *shrug*
Of course, you could always use a better MPEG-4 codec that happens to be open source, like XviD, or ffmpeg. When I started ripping DVDs, I compared DivX 5.0.5 to XviD to ffmpeg, and IMO XviD provided the best quality (although all three are very close together ... ffmpeg was the fastest but lost some quality compared to the other two).
When you consider that XviD and ffmpeg are open sourced, why would anyone use DivX 5?? (of course, this is using *nix as your OS, but according to the ffmpeg homepage you can use ffmpeg under Win32 as well ...)
Thanks for that - I've often wondered! :) Colour, and people's perception of colour, is such a fascinating thing!
In the cases where "most people see two colors and I only see one", what colour do you see? Red or Green? Or neither?
And if you generate a graphic with two layers, one red, one green, intermixed, does your perception noticably change when you hide one of the layers?
Therefore I should pronounce "Xouvert" as "ZOO-vert", and someone from France should pronounce "Xouvert" as "zoo-VAIR"? Possible if you're a Kalihari Bushman you could get some clicks and glottal stops in there as well? Seems a lot easier in my mind to pronounce things the way their creator intended them to be pronouced ...
That's wierd - I haven't noticed any lag in performance using my nVidia GF4 440 MX card under 2.5.73 ...
Yeah, and it's called IceWM + ROX, as you've already found out :) Personally I consider that to be a far better combination as a desktop user interface than Gnome + Nautilus - especially since Gnome started using things like gconfd which is - AFAICS - little more than the hideous Microsoft Registry reborn into the OSS world :(
BTW - you can get ROX to manage your desktop icons as well, you know - use the -p=(pinboard) option.
To which file manager are you referring? I can't say I've ever noticed any problems with ROX which is one of the lightest *usable* filemanagers I've seen ... (not that I pay much attention to memory since I've never, ever run out of it with 512Mb - if you've got problems with 576Mb I hate to think what you're using it for!!)
FYI the amount of RAM doesn't increase like that in my Windows 98, which is also immune to the Blaster Worm.
Ah, yes, but Win98 doesn't need the Blaster Worm - it manages to crash routinely all by itself! :)
Yes, and personally I find it a joy to use, especially when compared to other perl GUI solutions. I have not found anything to be broken except remote DND drops under X.
But the big revelation for me was taking a highly complex perl/Tk gui I had written under linux and running that code on a Win2K system which had a default ActivePerl install ... and it worked perfectly!
100% cross-platform compatibility without changing a single line of code ... I happen to think that rather impressive.
What I'd really like to see is a mp3 playing module that doesn't contain any memory, but allows usb flash-drives to plug into it. That way you could keep upgrading the usb flash-drives as storage becomes cheaper, and not have to pay for the mp3 decoding part again ...
... which I guess is the reason why no company will ever produce such a device :(
This is not the case in my experience. I have used 650mAh AAA NiMH batteries with my Palm IIIx for about three years now. I have two sets of batteries (so one can recharge while still using the old set) and when travelling for long periods of time (several months) I've just charged both sets and used the second set a month later. There was a small loss of charge, but it wasn't a big deal.
Sure, you can't charge the things up and leave them for half a year. But when are you ever going to need to do that? In the very worst case scenario, you could always pack a travel charger - they're small and light.
I don't think I could begin to count the money I've saved by not having to change two sets of Alkaline AAAs each month (well, actually I could - it's several hundred dollars as opposed to an initial outlay of $40 for the batteries and the charger). And the capacity of NiMH batteries keeps getting better - you can now get 650mAh AAAs and 1850mAh AAs just about everywhere, which is a huge improvement on rechargables five or ten years ago
Ever considered PINE?? ;)
Seriously, it's still my mail reader of choice - and I can even edit my mails in VIM ...
Hmmm, well, there's always Dillo if you're after lean, clean and fast. But Dillo doesn't yet have https support and - while probably at least 95% functional for everyday use - the rendering engine does have difficulties with complex sites. But the browser is ultra-tiny and rocket-fast - oh, and from what they say on the website, it sounds like they could use some help!
But if you want *all* the bells-and-whistles (we're talking javascript, CSS, and full internet standards compatibility here) then I can't see how this is going to happen without at least some code-bloat and a slow-down. MozillaFirebird isn't that bad when you think about it - it's *quite* fast without being outstanding, but when you consider that I can (and regularly do) have more than 50 tabs open at once I think it doesn't do a bad job.
I also can't help thinking that the current MozFirebird default theme is pretty decent - it's certainly streets ahead of the old Mozilla 1.0 default/modern looks. In fact, I'd say the look-and-feel of Firebird is the one other area apart from speed in which I really can see a big improvement - while Mozilla was only ever a power-users browser the Firebird developers seem to have taken some pains to simplify the interface and make it more friendly to the computer-illiterate, whilst still retaining the power-user capabilities.
You can get a decent rip on a single 700Mb disk??!! From a two hour film?? I'd love to know how ...
My rule of thumb is at least one disc/hour or two discs/movie, whichever is greater. I've generally found one-CD rips might be OK through TV-out, but they look shocking on a computer screen ...