Well, this is slashdot, so we can expect lies, damn lies and FUD. But I do wish you knew what you were talking about.
Pauling did publish a proposed structure for DNA a few weeks before W&C's paper (in fact, it was his publication that drove them to have another shot at model building) - but Pauling's model was attrocious. Like W&C's first attempt, it was a triple helix with the phosphates on the inside, not on the outside (a fact which, incidentally, was demonstrated by Franklin a year before).
But, W&C or Pauling would have certainly figured it out much faster if they had access to her information.
I don't know what you're talking about here - W&C did have access to her data, without her knowledge or permission - and it was the only way they could propose a model. To put it simply, her oft-reprinted photo was the supreme evidence that the B-form of DNA was a helix.
And Rosalind Franklin (and Ray Gosling, her PhD student) were very, very close to solving the structure, not only of the B-form of DNA but also of the dehydrated A-form of the molecule. They had recognised that both forms were a double helix and had come close to recognising the significance of the the Chargraff ratios of base-pairs at the time of W&C's publication. Their only "failing" was that they wanted to make sure that any model they proposed was in fact the correct one by having X-ray crystallographic data to support it. W&C never cared about any of that, and never bothered to check whether their model was accurate. That's why they "figured it out faster"!
Watson rips on Franlin pretty hard in the book, but mainly because of personality conflicts.
Hmmm... you might be interested in reading what Brenda Maddox has to say about that in her biography of Rosalind Franklin, "Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA". I'm sorry, but Watson's portrayal of her was at best stupid and insensitive and at worst a cruel deliberate character assasination of someone who was not only dead and could not reply, but had also been a good friend of his in the years following the discovery of DNA's structure.
Maddox's only explanation is that Watson's remarks about Franklin were - whether conciously or unconciously - an attempt to justify the stealing of her results: by portraying her as someone who jealously guarded her data and yet could not interpret it (and nothing could be further from the truth), he thus implied that he was doing science a credit by obtaining her data and making use of it - even if he had to resort to doing it behind her back.
And if you still want to defend The Double Helix, I could also add that the book was refused publication by Watson's University (which was the first publisher he took it to) after a large number of complaints from the other scientists mentioned in it that it was grossly defamatory - not only of Rosalind Franklin but also of almost every other person who featured in the book short of Watson himself!
Well said... I was going to mention her myself, but you beat me to it! It's worth noting that Rosalind didn't propose a model herself because she wanted to be sure that she had all the empirical evidence first - and that included the fact that DNA formed two different (A and B) conformations depending on the amount of water present - a fact that Watson and Crick never concerned themselves with (actually, there's a third conformation as well, the really kinky (literally) Z-DNA... but nobody knew about that back then!)
So Watson and Crick did not do any experimental reseach, proposed a model based on Rosalind's unpublished results, never gave her any credit... and, in the end, there was no conclusive proof that their modal was the correct model (in fact, it was Rosalind who provided that proof and improved on their model in the weeks following W&C's publication). Not to mention the fact that Watson performed an utterly dastardly character assasination on her in his book The Double Helix.... If it wasn't so tragic it'd almost be funny...
But while we're at it, don't forget that along side Rosalind Franklin was Ray Gosling, a PhD student who did a lot of the work and never got any credit at all. Just like most PhD students, I might add:)
FWIW, the Brenda Maddox's bio of Rosalind Franklin is fantastic reading - probably the best biography of any scientist I have read. It is inspiring, moving and extremely well researched (especially when the author, AFAIK, had no science background before writing the book).
While I understand that there are reasons for not caching pages (as given in the FAQ), would it be too hard for story submitters and/or slashdot editors to check if there's a google cache for pages hosted on non-commercial sites?
By all means give the original link, but if there's a google cache entry then why not give that link first? (of course, stating that it's a cache of the page, may not reflect recent updates, etc).
This way slashdot would not be to blame if the cache was out-of-date (which seems to be a big issue in the FAQ) and wouldn't have to ask permission to cache the page either.
And for those who doubt the power of the google cache - here's the links from the story in cache form:
It used to be part of Microsoft's free font downloads; they've since pulled it from their website
You'll find all the Microsoft free web fonts (inc. Andale Mono) at corefonts.sourceforge.net - all perfectly legal, btw, and even with the option of an rpm package.
OMG - an informed, intelligent opinion, and you even provide evidence to support your claim?? What on earth are you doing reading slashdot???
Thank you for taking the time to make screenshots and prove how utterly stupid and ill-informed most of the posters in this thread are.
(Although you might be interested to know that you actually are using MS-cleartype-style sub-pixel aa (which X does very well) in your second screenshot - just use xmag and you'll see. My guess is that your gripes with ClearType come from MS using the wrong model with your screen: RGB instead of BGR, perhaps?)
Just out of curiosity what versions of windows are you using?
Just out of curiosity, but what versions of linux are you using??:)
Seriously, these gripes about font rendering in X have not existed for at least six months. XFT2 and xfreetype >= 2.1.3 make for extremely easy configuration and some very, very convincing font rendering from where I'm typing! And if you want a stock-standard release to judge for yourself, try looking at the xft-enabled mozilla in the latest version (3.2) of Knoppix - the fonts are far superior to any fonts I've ever seen on WinXP.
That's not to say that X doesn't have its problems, but AFAICS X is substantially ahead of Windows in the area of font rendering. (I haven't used MacOS X so can't comment about that)
And don't forget the whole B-grade martial arts thing of the Matrix... Can't see Rufus Sewell turning on the Strangers saying, "I know Kung-Fu!":) Or for that matter, "We need guns. Lots of guns!"
(Actually, that bit in the Matrix where Keanu asks for the lots-of-guns always disappointed me. I mean, how intensely predictable! Now, if it had been MacGyver, he would have asked for a Swiss army knife, a roll of insulation tape and three bits of fishing line...)
I completely agree... just in case you couldn't tell that anyway from my slashdot username:)
The thing I really love about Dark City is its re-watchability - it was directed so well that it still manages to hold the tension even after numerous viewings... that opening shot of Rufus Sewell dropping the goldfish in the bath, the music, the atmosphere, the psi-battle and the final sunrise - fantastic stuff! Sends shivers down my spine...:) I have always thought of it as a "thinking man's" version of The Matrix...
I see your point, although I'm not sure about the whole pay-for-GPL'd software idea. I understand that you can charge for GPL'd software, although considering the fact that anyone who has a copy can distribute it as they wish I can't see such a business model working for long (this presumably applies to lindows as well, although in lindows case there may not be any copying since I don't think anyone actually uses it! or, for that matter, wants to...)
As someone who is currently writing some bioinformatics software which I imagine will be quite useful (the only equivalent programs are expensive, less accurate and - needless to say - closed source) and which I'm intending to release under the GPL, I can say from personal feeling that I do not want to be "rewarded" for writing it and giving it away for free. I've written it partly because I needed to, but mainly for enjoyment. I don't want money for it!!
I currently use Mandrake 9.0, but while I can see the virtues of the distro as far as others are concerned I'm unlikely to ever upgrade or pay for it. In fact, if I was to change distro I'd probably be a lot more inclined to switch to something like Crux (which is completely open and free, and makes my ancient P120 laptop fly: I admire it for its lack of bloat and for the fact that it's teaching me how to set up a linux system). As it stands, most of the software I use on my current Mandrake system has been compiled by me (from X toolkits upwards - the exceptions are the kernel (because I'm lazy), the GNU tools (no real advantage to compiling yourself AFAICS) and X (takes too long and uses up too much disk space)) so I can't say I'd really miss Mandrake if it suddenly collapsed.
For that matter, since all the Mandrake tools are GPL'd anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if Mandrake didn't continue to live on in some shape or form even if the company went bankrupt. The only thing I would expect to change would be that support would no longer be provided in the form of the Mandrake Club.
Drake doesn't offer anything to paying people at all. Except for, well... [Mandrake Club, etc]
Yes, that's all well and good - in fact that's Mandrake's business model. But that's not what the parent poster said. Admitedly he didn't phrase it in the nicest language, but I think he may have a point.
After all, what is the point of OpenSource software if not to be freely available to everyone? And once you make people feel that they have a moral obligation to pay anyway for something which is free, aren't you taking away that freedom? By all means donate money if you feel like it, but if someone choses not to, that shouldn't automatically make them "stupid and naieve", should it?
And the whole "pay for Mandrake even though it's a free download" concept worries me even more when you consider that Mandrake is not GNU or the FSF but rather a company that is out to make a profit. If they can make a profit through providing support and related services, then good luck to them - that's how RedHat's succeeding, after all! But I'm not sure whether they should become a pseudo-charity if this business model of theirs doesn't work...
Don't get me wrong, I'm really not too sure where I stand on this one; I only think that the situation isn't quite as black-and-white as you make out...
Who are these people to review anything, if their review consists of skimming the surface and focusing on their pet peeves?
Did you even bother to read the article? Or did you just read the slashdot summary and take that as gospel?
Because the thing is, if you had bothered to read the article, you'd have found that her review is really very favorable to Mandrake 9.1. Here's some direct quotes from her conclusion:
"With this release I see a very serious and very respectable effort from MandrakeSoft to create a better Mandrake Linux. It is just obvious that this is not 'just another release', it really feels that it had extra care...."
"I would urge everyone to download Mandrake 9.1 and give it a go when it is released. It is a worthy distribution and especially this version is a sincere effort from MandrakeSoft to create something better and competitive...."
And there's heaps more praise in the article. She also discusses hardware detection and the speed and usability of the system (two of your other uninformed criticisms, as I recall) and she doesn't (AFAICS) try to start a flame war over window managers.
Yes, she does point out some problems with the distro. But do you seriously expect a reviewer to give unconditional praise to a product?? Gee, I mean, I could just read what Mandrake's web site says about 9.1 if I wanted that! What's wrong with some constructive criticism?
(and FWIW, I've used Mandrake as my main distro since 2000 (I also play around with crux linux when I don't want bloat:) and have generally found it to be the best of the major distros)
Much as I hate to write comments that are anti-ROX (I've used ROX and IceWM together for about a year and a half now and love it)... I do think that ROX has problems with its philosophy of application-directories.
The idea is nice if, and only if, you do not use the command line, since these application-directory files are not in your path. Furthermore, since no other software (notably window managers) recognise application directories, a symlink to an app-directory in the window-manager's menu won't work either. (you could symlink to the binary, but if the app uses its own shared libraries then they won't be found and it won't work)
And while I agree that newbies aren't going to want to use the command line, using the command line is faster and more efficient for a lot of things (e.g. programming) In fact, I find it extremely odd that ROX tries to move applications away from the unix path, considering that it simultaneously provides the best interoperability with the command line that I have ever seen in a filemanager (it's simplicity itself to switch between a ROX window and a terminal and back again).
Perhaps its just familarity, but the windows system is easier to me. Your stuff goes into the program files directory, the dlls go into windows directory, and your registry gets lots of hard to spot entries.
Perhaps its just familarity, but the *nix system is easier to me. Your stuff goes into the/bin directory, the libraries go into/lib directory, and your home folder.config file gets lots of hard to spot entries.
Sorry, but it had to be done...:)
btw - I've never seen anything ever be installed into/opt without the user requesting it. That's what/opt is there for, after all!! And the only software I know that installs to/usr/apps is rox - which, although it's a wonderful piece of software, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its method of compiling and installing.
I do understand what you're saying about/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin, etc, but have you actually read the article we're supposedly discussing?? That's exactly what stow tries to prevent - each application, when using stow, gets its own directory in/usr/local/stow (you could just as easily use/Program_files, though:) and symlinks are created in/usr/local/bin and/usr/local/lib. It keeps the ease of having central/bin and/lib directories, while making the control of which apps and files are intalled on your system just as simple.
Am I missing something here, or is this really just like having a zip file throw things around into directories?
Yes, you're missing the following:
Stow has nothing to do with unzipping or any other form of decompressing files. Stow simply allows you to install all the files from a piece of software (i.e. what is copied during make-install) in it's own individual directory (which makes sense), and then it will automatically create symlinks in your path to every file within that directory.
This means you have all the advantages of the unix path environment with/usr,/lib, etc; while still retaining each application's files within a single directory that you can easily find, modify or delete as necessary. Compare this to doing a normal make-install, where you have little idea what's been installed, let alone where, and certainly won't be able to uninstall it six months later unless you've been clever enough to keep the souce makefiles and they support "make-uninstall".
Note - and this may be part of your confusion - Stow is not designed to be a replacement "package-management" software in the style of rpm or apt-get: Stow simply aids in managing software that you have compiled yourself, and it does this extremely well. But that's all it does:)
We (the Tcl core developers) have had problems in the past with Stow, mainly because it relies on being able to specify the installation process at 'make-install' time instead of normal 'make' time, leading to messed up baked-in paths...:^/
Yes, but that's only a problem with the stow documentation. Use "--prefix=" during configure and you'll have no worries at all (except that the "baked-in" package names will be '/usr/local/stow/yourpackage/etc...', but that has never mattered to me and I have about fifty stow packages installed on my system, with everything from gtk-2.2 to lyx to rxvt).
I have used stow for the past year and absolutely love it. It allows me to have complete control over all the software I compile by had, as opposed to the base system installed by my distro. And since I have a bash alias to./configure to include an automatic prefix assignment based on the directory name I'm configuring from (which is almost always based on the name and version number of the software), I can compile a new version and
stow -D/usr/local/stow/foo-1.2
stow/usr/local/stow/foo-1.3
... without losing my old version that I know works. (so, if my new version segfaults, I can "install" the old one simply by reversing the above process)
And... I can do a simple "du" command in the/usr/local/stow directory to see exactly how much disk-space each package is using and I can easily find, modify or delete a part of a package I compiled months ago!
Stow is one of the most fantastic pieces of software, and it's simplicity itself as well. It reports conflicts and only installs sym-links. The scary thing is that this is the first and only time I have ever seen it reach "mainstream" coverage - like most of the best linux software, it seems to be unheard of and unused.
Haven't used Opera for years, although I give them credit for being the first (IIRC) to introduce a form of tabs.
But most of the features you listed are present in Moz 1.3b:
Integrated email with spam filtering: yep, that's in Moz (with the Bayesian model that supposedly gives the best spam filtering)
Button themes for skins: yep, got that one too...
Renders stuff that IE chokes on: Check again, (although you've gotta admit that both Opera and Moz have their share of choker pages too)
Moz doesn't have this small screen rendering, AFAIK (although it will shrink images to fit) and I'm not sure about PIM stuff.
But then Moz also has no popups, more advanced tabbed browsing, no Opera adds, super extensibility, hell, even a fairly decent web-page composer... and it's Open Source. To me, there's no competition.
However, if you give them a compelling enough reason to switch, they will. Everyone who has ever complained to me about popup ads I've showed them Mozilla or Phoenix.
Hmmm.... don't know about that. I work in a scientific laboratory, so my coworkers are not exactly stupid, but it has taken a year for even one to consider Mozilla. Now that he has, others are starting to follow, but most persist in using IE despite the fact that they can't block popups and don't have tabbed browsing. Not that I really care (I use phoenix, anyway:), but I have on occasions asked people - when they're swearing at three hundred popup adds jumping up at them from the screen - why they don't consider Mozilla. They're response is simply "Uh, I dunno, I just don't want to. I'm used to Internet Explorer."
It's strange, the resistance to change amongst most users is enormous, and I can only think that it comes down to this great fear people have with computers - they seem completely and utterly scared to do anything that they haven't learnt before, and having to "learn" a new program (even one so insanely simple as a web browser) is just too frightening for them.
Very, very neat! Thanks!... only the --shadow option isn't working for me:( (perl 5.8.0, from Mandrake 9.0) Is this normally a bug, or should it work?
btw - you might want to add in a note to the effect that foo.curxptheme is actually a zip file - I spent half an hour trying to work out where "Scheme.ini" was until I did a "#less foo.curxptheme"...
The author's argument that KDE apps automatically gain from having standardized components like the file picker is also bogus, because GNOME applications benefit from the same thing. Does he really think that every GNOME application writer implements their own file dialog?
IIRC (and correct me if I'm wrong - I don't use GNOME), all GNOME applications simply use the GTK file picker... which is due to be upgraded to something a lot more saner when the backwardly-compatible GTK 2.4 is released. So it's even better than KDE since you can write a GTK, non-GNOME application and it will look and feel almost identical to any GNOME app.
The problem with each application it's own file is, that they aren't sharing common settings.
As someone who doesn't use either GNOME or KDE, but is quite happy with a whole variety of non-GNOME, non-KDE applications, I'm genuinely curious:
What possible common settings could be shared??
Default font settings, colours, etc, are generally provided just fine through the.Xdefaults file. What other common settings are there that would be useful?
Alpha blended cursors.
Not true transparency yet (waiting on Keith Packard's tranparency server for 5,0), but cursors can be colored, shadowed, animated, and themed.
Hmmm... I'm only using 4.2.99, but the default cursor set (redglass) definitly has transparency... and alphablending (i.e. transparency just with a different name) works fine too... *shrug*
However, IMO, the shadows suck. They look like a really cheap ripoff of Windows 2K/XP's shadowed cursors. The alpha-blendedness is pretty, but not much else.
You might want to have a look at these cursors - Jimmac doesn't seem to be working on them anymore, or at least the last update was last October and there's no package. But you can use any of the other cursor themes as a template and just copy the images from the web page (no scalability, though).
Personally I couldn't stand either the redglass or whiteglass themes; Jimmac's cursors, OTOH, are pretty close to perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
Pauling did publish a proposed structure for DNA a few weeks before W&C's paper (in fact, it was his publication that drove them to have another shot at model building) - but Pauling's model was attrocious. Like W&C's first attempt, it was a triple helix with the phosphates on the inside, not on the outside (a fact which, incidentally, was demonstrated by Franklin a year before).
But, W&C or Pauling would have certainly figured it out much faster if they had access to her information.
I don't know what you're talking about here - W&C did have access to her data, without her knowledge or permission - and it was the only way they could propose a model. To put it simply, her oft-reprinted photo was the supreme evidence that the B-form of DNA was a helix.
And Rosalind Franklin (and Ray Gosling, her PhD student) were very, very close to solving the structure, not only of the B-form of DNA but also of the dehydrated A-form of the molecule. They had recognised that both forms were a double helix and had come close to recognising the significance of the the Chargraff ratios of base-pairs at the time of W&C's publication. Their only "failing" was that they wanted to make sure that any model they proposed was in fact the correct one by having X-ray crystallographic data to support it. W&C never cared about any of that, and never bothered to check whether their model was accurate. That's why they "figured it out faster"!
Hmmm ... you might be interested in reading what Brenda Maddox has to say about that in her biography of Rosalind Franklin, "Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA". I'm sorry, but Watson's portrayal of her was at best stupid and insensitive and at worst a cruel deliberate character assasination of someone who was not only dead and could not reply, but had also been a good friend of his in the years following the discovery of DNA's structure.
Maddox's only explanation is that Watson's remarks about Franklin were - whether conciously or unconciously - an attempt to justify the stealing of her results: by portraying her as someone who jealously guarded her data and yet could not interpret it (and nothing could be further from the truth), he thus implied that he was doing science a credit by obtaining her data and making use of it - even if he had to resort to doing it behind her back.
And if you still want to defend The Double Helix, I could also add that the book was refused publication by Watson's University (which was the first publisher he took it to) after a large number of complaints from the other scientists mentioned in it that it was grossly defamatory - not only of Rosalind Franklin but also of almost every other person who featured in the book short of Watson himself!
So Watson and Crick did not do any experimental reseach, proposed a model based on Rosalind's unpublished results, never gave her any credit ... and, in the end, there was no conclusive proof that their modal was the correct model (in fact, it was Rosalind who provided that proof and improved on their model in the weeks following W&C's publication). Not to mention the fact that Watson performed an utterly dastardly character assasination on her in his book The Double Helix .... If it wasn't so tragic it'd almost be funny ...
But while we're at it, don't forget that along side Rosalind Franklin was Ray Gosling, a PhD student who did a lot of the work and never got any credit at all. Just like most PhD students, I might add :)
FWIW, the Brenda Maddox's bio of Rosalind Franklin is fantastic reading - probably the best biography of any scientist I have read. It is inspiring, moving and extremely well researched (especially when the author, AFAIK, had no science background before writing the book).
By all means give the original link, but if there's a google cache entry then why not give that link first? (of course, stating that it's a cache of the page, may not reflect recent updates, etc).
This way slashdot would not be to blame if the cache was out-of-date (which seems to be a big issue in the FAQ) and wouldn't have to ask permission to cache the page either.
And for those who doubt the power of the google cache - here's the links from the story in cache form:
Susan Kare's homepage,
The original mac icons ... and ...
The windows 3.0 icons
There - was that so hard, now?
You'll find all the Microsoft free web fonts (inc. Andale Mono) at corefonts.sourceforge.net - all perfectly legal, btw, and even with the option of an rpm package.
Thank you for taking the time to make screenshots and prove how utterly stupid and ill-informed most of the posters in this thread are.
(Although you might be interested to know that you actually are using MS-cleartype-style sub-pixel aa (which X does very well) in your second screenshot - just use xmag and you'll see. My guess is that your gripes with ClearType come from MS using the wrong model with your screen: RGB instead of BGR, perhaps?)
Just out of curiosity, but what versions of linux are you using?? :)
Seriously, these gripes about font rendering in X have not existed for at least six months. XFT2 and xfreetype >= 2.1.3 make for extremely easy configuration and some very, very convincing font rendering from where I'm typing! And if you want a stock-standard release to judge for yourself, try looking at the xft-enabled mozilla in the latest version (3.2) of Knoppix - the fonts are far superior to any fonts I've ever seen on WinXP.
That's not to say that X doesn't have its problems, but AFAICS X is substantially ahead of Windows in the area of font rendering. (I haven't used MacOS X so can't comment about that)
(Actually, that bit in the Matrix where Keanu asks for the lots-of-guns always disappointed me. I mean, how intensely predictable! Now, if it had been MacGyver, he would have asked for a Swiss army knife, a roll of insulation tape and three bits of fishing line ...)
The thing I really love about Dark City is its re-watchability - it was directed so well that it still manages to hold the tension even after numerous viewings ... that opening shot of Rufus Sewell dropping the goldfish in the bath, the music, the atmosphere, the psi-battle and the final sunrise - fantastic stuff! Sends shivers down my spine ... :) I have always thought of it as a "thinking man's" version of The Matrix ...
Oh ... and Jennifer Connelly is pretty cute, too :)
As someone who is currently writing some bioinformatics software which I imagine will be quite useful (the only equivalent programs are expensive, less accurate and - needless to say - closed source) and which I'm intending to release under the GPL, I can say from personal feeling that I do not want to be "rewarded" for writing it and giving it away for free. I've written it partly because I needed to, but mainly for enjoyment. I don't want money for it!!
I currently use Mandrake 9.0, but while I can see the virtues of the distro as far as others are concerned I'm unlikely to ever upgrade or pay for it. In fact, if I was to change distro I'd probably be a lot more inclined to switch to something like Crux (which is completely open and free, and makes my ancient P120 laptop fly: I admire it for its lack of bloat and for the fact that it's teaching me how to set up a linux system). As it stands, most of the software I use on my current Mandrake system has been compiled by me (from X toolkits upwards - the exceptions are the kernel (because I'm lazy), the GNU tools (no real advantage to compiling yourself AFAICS) and X (takes too long and uses up too much disk space)) so I can't say I'd really miss Mandrake if it suddenly collapsed.
For that matter, since all the Mandrake tools are GPL'd anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if Mandrake didn't continue to live on in some shape or form even if the company went bankrupt. The only thing I would expect to change would be that support would no longer be provided in the form of the Mandrake Club.
Yes, that's all well and good - in fact that's Mandrake's business model. But that's not what the parent poster said. Admitedly he didn't phrase it in the nicest language, but I think he may have a point.
After all, what is the point of OpenSource software if not to be freely available to everyone? And once you make people feel that they have a moral obligation to pay anyway for something which is free, aren't you taking away that freedom? By all means donate money if you feel like it, but if someone choses not to, that shouldn't automatically make them "stupid and naieve", should it?
And the whole "pay for Mandrake even though it's a free download" concept worries me even more when you consider that Mandrake is not GNU or the FSF but rather a company that is out to make a profit. If they can make a profit through providing support and related services, then good luck to them - that's how RedHat's succeeding, after all! But I'm not sure whether they should become a pseudo-charity if this business model of theirs doesn't work ...
Don't get me wrong, I'm really not too sure where I stand on this one; I only think that the situation isn't quite as black-and-white as you make out ...
Did you even bother to read the article? Or did you just read the slashdot summary and take that as gospel?
Because the thing is, if you had bothered to read the article, you'd have found that her review is really very favorable to Mandrake 9.1. Here's some direct quotes from her conclusion:
"With this release I see a very serious and very respectable effort from MandrakeSoft to create a better Mandrake Linux. It is just obvious that this is not 'just another release', it really feels that it had extra care ...."
"I would urge everyone to download Mandrake 9.1 and give it a go when it is released. It is a worthy distribution and especially this version is a sincere effort from MandrakeSoft to create something better and competitive ...."
And there's heaps more praise in the article. She also discusses hardware detection and the speed and usability of the system (two of your other uninformed criticisms, as I recall) and she doesn't (AFAICS) try to start a flame war over window managers.
Yes, she does point out some problems with the distro. But do you seriously expect a reviewer to give unconditional praise to a product?? Gee, I mean, I could just read what Mandrake's web site says about 9.1 if I wanted that! What's wrong with some constructive criticism?
(and FWIW, I've used Mandrake as my main distro since 2000 (I also play around with crux linux when I don't want bloat :) and have generally found it to be the best of the major distros)
The idea is nice if, and only if, you do not use the command line, since these application-directory files are not in your path. Furthermore, since no other software (notably window managers) recognise application directories, a symlink to an app-directory in the window-manager's menu won't work either. (you could symlink to the binary, but if the app uses its own shared libraries then they won't be found and it won't work)
And while I agree that newbies aren't going to want to use the command line, using the command line is faster and more efficient for a lot of things (e.g. programming) In fact, I find it extremely odd that ROX tries to move applications away from the unix path, considering that it simultaneously provides the best interoperability with the command line that I have ever seen in a filemanager (it's simplicity itself to switch between a ROX window and a terminal and back again).
Perhaps its just familarity, but the *nix system is easier to me. Your stuff goes into the /bin directory, the libraries go into /lib directory, and your home folder .config file gets lots of hard to spot entries.
Sorry, but it had to be done ... :)
btw - I've never seen anything ever be installed into /opt without the user requesting it. That's what /opt is there for, after all!! And the only software I know that installs to /usr/apps is rox - which, although it's a wonderful piece of software, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its method of compiling and installing.
I do understand what you're saying about /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, etc, but have you actually read the article we're supposedly discussing?? That's exactly what stow tries to prevent - each application, when using stow, gets its own directory in /usr/local/stow (you could just as easily use /Program_files, though :) and symlinks are created in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/lib. It keeps the ease of having central /bin and /lib directories, while making the control of which apps and files are intalled on your system just as simple.
Yes, you're missing the following:
Stow has nothing to do with unzipping or any other form of decompressing files. Stow simply allows you to install all the files from a piece of software (i.e. what is copied during make-install) in it's own individual directory (which makes sense), and then it will automatically create symlinks in your path to every file within that directory.
This means you have all the advantages of the unix path environment with /usr, /lib, etc; while still retaining each application's files within a single directory that you can easily find, modify or delete as necessary. Compare this to doing a normal make-install, where you have little idea what's been installed, let alone where, and certainly won't be able to uninstall it six months later unless you've been clever enough to keep the souce makefiles and they support "make-uninstall".
Note - and this may be part of your confusion - Stow is not designed to be a replacement "package-management" software in the style of rpm or apt-get: Stow simply aids in managing software that you have compiled yourself, and it does this extremely well. But that's all it does :)
Yes, but that's only a problem with the stow documentation. Use "--prefix=" during configure and you'll have no worries at all (except that the "baked-in" package names will be '/usr/local/stow/yourpackage/etc ...', but that has never mattered to me and I have about fifty stow packages installed on my system, with everything from gtk-2.2 to lyx to rxvt).
I have used stow for the past year and absolutely love it. It allows me to have complete control over all the software I compile by had, as opposed to the base system installed by my distro. And since I have a bash alias to ./configure to include an automatic prefix assignment based on the directory name I'm configuring from (which is almost always based on the name and version number of the software), I can compile a new version and
stow -D /usr/local/stow/foo-1.2
stow /usr/local/stow/foo-1.3
... without losing my old version that I know works. (so, if my new version segfaults, I can "install" the old one simply by reversing the above process)
And ... I can do a simple "du" command in the /usr/local/stow directory to see exactly how much disk-space each package is using and I can easily find, modify or delete a part of a package I compiled months ago!
Stow is one of the most fantastic pieces of software, and it's simplicity itself as well. It reports conflicts and only installs sym-links. The scary thing is that this is the first and only time I have ever seen it reach "mainstream" coverage - like most of the best linux software, it seems to be unheard of and unused.
But most of the features you listed are present in Moz 1.3b:
Integrated email with spam filtering: yep, that's in Moz (with the Bayesian model that supposedly gives the best spam filtering)
Button themes for skins: yep, got that one too ...
Renders stuff that IE chokes on: Check again, (although you've gotta admit that both Opera and Moz have their share of choker pages too)
Moz doesn't have this small screen rendering, AFAIK (although it will shrink images to fit) and I'm not sure about PIM stuff.
But then Moz also has no popups, more advanced tabbed browsing, no Opera adds, super extensibility, hell, even a fairly decent web-page composer ... and it's Open Source. To me, there's no competition.
Hmmm .... don't know about that. I work in a scientific laboratory, so my coworkers are not exactly stupid, but it has taken a year for even one to consider Mozilla. Now that he has, others are starting to follow, but most persist in using IE despite the fact that they can't block popups and don't have tabbed browsing. Not that I really care (I use phoenix, anyway :), but I have on occasions asked people - when they're swearing at three hundred popup adds jumping up at them from the screen - why they don't consider Mozilla. They're response is simply "Uh, I dunno, I just don't want to. I'm used to Internet Explorer."
It's strange, the resistance to change amongst most users is enormous, and I can only think that it comes down to this great fear people have with computers - they seem completely and utterly scared to do anything that they haven't learnt before, and having to "learn" a new program (even one so insanely simple as a web browser) is just too frightening for them.
Well, I know I do:
I pulled one of those "designed for Windows98" stickers off a box years ago and stuck it on my kitchen bin ...
Only it's not a very fair comparison - my bin has never crashed in over three years of continuous operation, which is more than I can say for Win98 :)
btw - you might want to add in a note to the effect that foo.curxptheme is actually a zip file - I spent half an hour trying to work out where "Scheme.ini" was until I did a "#less foo.curxptheme" ...
IIRC (and correct me if I'm wrong - I don't use GNOME), all GNOME applications simply use the GTK file picker ... which is due to be upgraded to something a lot more saner when the backwardly-compatible GTK 2.4 is released. So it's even better than KDE since you can write a GTK, non-GNOME application and it will look and feel almost identical to any GNOME app.
As someone who doesn't use either GNOME or KDE, but is quite happy with a whole variety of non-GNOME, non-KDE applications, I'm genuinely curious:
What possible common settings could be shared??
Default font settings, colours, etc, are generally provided just fine through the .Xdefaults file. What other common settings are there that would be useful?
Not true transparency yet (waiting on Keith Packard's tranparency server for 5,0), but cursors can be colored, shadowed, animated, and themed.
Hmmm ... I'm only using 4.2.99, but the default cursor set (redglass) definitly has transparency ... and alphablending (i.e. transparency just with a different name) works fine too ... *shrug*
You might want to have a look at these cursors - Jimmac doesn't seem to be working on them anymore, or at least the last update was last October and there's no package. But you can use any of the other cursor themes as a template and just copy the images from the web page (no scalability, though).
Personally I couldn't stand either the redglass or whiteglass themes; Jimmac's cursors, OTOH, are pretty close to perfect.
I'm using the nvidia 3123 drivers (fairly old) with Xfree86 4.2.99 and they work just fine ...