Re:Don't compare Mac OS Finder to Windows Explorer
on
The Captains of Nautilus
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· Score: 2, Interesting
... and the 11th time:) is when you want to view thumbnails of images!
The solution (which so few people seem to be aware of) is ROX. It is blindingly fast (opens directories instantaneously on my P120 laptop!!), good looking, highly customisable... and... it integrates near perfectly with the command line.
For example: say I want to cd from my home directory to/usr/local/foo/bar/... I type "/" (which I've made the command to bring up the change directory line on the status bar), then type "[del] [del] u [tab] l [tab] f [tab] b [tab]" (the [del] is to change to the parent directory). Hey, even the pointer warps as I type so that the window stays focussed! Not quite as fast as the command line, but fast if I want to use a filer view.
And if I want to use the CLI (which I do, frequently!) then I just press [ctrl]-x and up springs an E-term (or xterm or whatever) at the directory you're working with. Then say you're using the CLI and you want a filer view... just type "rox" and up springs a ROX filer window at the directory. It's just beautiful, and it means that I actually use filer windows these days for the tasks for which they're more useful (before I found ROX I used to be 100% CLI).
The best thing that could happen to GNOME, imho, would be to ditch Nautilus and adopt ROX, just as they ditched GMC for Nautilus a few years ago...
(Oh, and did I mention the best thing about ROX? It doesn't try to be a web browser:)
I'm sure you're right in that Mandrake needs more money, but my point was that if enough users got involved in the beta tests and reported bugs then Mandrake wouldn't need to buy more hardware. Get enough users with wierd esoteric configurations beta-testing and it won't cost Mandrake a cent, yet it will provide valuable information about bugs that have obviously gone unnoticed, despite the three betas and three RCs.
I'm regretting that I didn't try the betas, not because of I'm unhappy with Mandrake 9.0 - on the contrary, as I said before, I'm extremely happy with it! But rather because I know how I felt as a new user being frustrated at simple things that for some unknown reason just didn't work, and how sad it seems that such a generally great distro can only get a mediocre review because of some silly glitches that would surely have been noticed with a greater population of users trying the betas.
I should say that I upgrade my linux distro but rarely (I skipped 8.2 entirely), mainly because I know it's going to take me a week to reconfigure everything exactly how I want it, and rebuild much of the software that I use from source. I therefore don't expect to be able to stick a fresh distro in the CD-ROM drive and have the "best linux ever" smiling back at me half an hour later. And I should say that if I went to re-install windows (at least Win98 which is the "latest" version of windows that I personally have experience with - I haven't used windows for years:) I wouldn't expect to have everything working first off either.
What I can say is that - having spent a week tweaking and re-compiling - Mandrake 9.0 is a big improvement for me. It's fast (yay gcc3.2!!) and seems extremely stable for the most part. While I have encountered some bugs - not the ones mentioned in the article, mind you - they've only been fairly minor ones. The only major problem I had was that the new drakfont didn't like installing some Windows fonts that I had extracted to a folder... but I just got drakfont from my old Mandrake 8.1 and it works fine:)
It seems that there are always bugs in new releases, especially the.0 releases (redhat 7.0 anyone? and what about this recent story on RedHat 8.0). BUT... the thing that's different with this particular Mandrake release is that it had no less than four Release Candidates, not to mention (I think) about three betas. Why weren't these problems picked up?
And the only answer to that, I think, is that a lot more people need to get involved in these beta releases and report these bugs. All of those complaining now (and I guess that includes me:) should have tried out the betas and made sure that the newbies - who don't instinctively know how to make things work - weren't faced with these silly, needless bugs.
Try IceWM together with the ROX desktop. You'll find you've got an ultrafast desktop environment that retains a lot of KDE functionality (multiple desktops, taskbar, tray, "start" menu, etc) together with one of the best file-manager applications ever written, for any platform.
I was in a similar situation a year ago to you - I loved having a taskbar (which is what originally converted me from a steadfast Enlightenment user) but hated the horrible overhead of KDE, coupled with it's long start time and the pain of using Konqueror. I found that I never used Konqueror for file management - I still used an xterm as I had always done before. But ROX has completely converted me - I've been using it for a year and find it indispensible.
This exact proceedure (and many other amusing anecdotes) is described in "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood" by Oliver Sacks. (London, Picador, 2001). Sacks bought "a good-sized lump of it - about three pounds" and chucked it into Highgate Ponds in Hampstead Heath, London. He relates:
"It took fire instantly and sped around and around on the surface like a demented meteor, with a huge sheet of yellow flame about it. We all exulted - this was chemistry with a vengeance!" (p.123)
Sacks also played around with throwing all of the alkali metals (up to Cesium) into water:
"... cesium, I found, exploded when it hit the water, shattering its glass container. One never forgot the properties of the alkali metals after this." (ibid)
There used to be a rule-of-thumb that said "never, never, never try a RedHat x.0 release unless you wanted a broken computer...":) (witness the broken gcc"2.96" that RedHat supplied with 7.0, not to mention the bizare installation (by default) of kernel 2.4 headers on my machine that was running (by default) kernel 2.2... !!)
By the sounds of the newbie's article, RedHat is maintaining their excellent form (that said, I haven't used RedHat since that hideous 7.0 release). But a decent distro shouldn't create such a terrible mess... and although others have suggested what part of the problem should be, a default installation should not require editing text files just to bring GNOME up to speed.
Personally I'd suggest Mandrake - I recently installed 9.0 and it worked fine "out-of-the-box"... I was especially impressed by the hardware configuration (didn't need to do a single thing!) and in particular the printer configuration (click on "Add printer", turn on your printer and... presto!... it tells me what my printer is and asks if I want to install the default drivers!! Fantastic!!)
Oh, and if you want a blindingly fast desktop (even on my P120 laptop) that still looks elegant, try ROX, possibly with IceWM. Windows open instantly. You'll never want to touch Nautilus or Konqueror again!
In many ways, the Linux community, despite the propaganda, is a lot less interested in freedom than it wishes it was. If you want to sell Linux to me and those like me (read: the vast, vast majority), you will do it on my terms, not yours.
I think you've highlighted a big misconception when people first start looking at linux, namely, that it is a product that is directly competing with windows and needs to copy it feature for feature to be "sold" to people like you. This is not helped by products like Lindows, that are obviously trying to do just that and turn linux into a poor-man's copy of Windows.
But when people ask me why I use linux, and why should they use it, I simply tell them "Linux is different". I explain that things do not work the same as in windows, any more than you would expect MacOS to work the same as Windows. I explain that there is a lack of decent software in some areas, and that the software I use - while faster and easier in the long run - has a steep learning curve and is very frustrating and difficult to master. I further explain that one of the reasons I love linux is the ease with which you can programme in it, which probably won't appeal to them. And also that the other main reason I use it is the ease of customising everything to look and work the way you want it to - a process that requires editing configuration files and making graphics and writing scripts and generally getting your hands dirty. (I also try explaining the whole GPL philosophy and the wonderful feeling that anyone can contribute to code and make a difference, however small, but that usually flies right over their heads)
In short, I tell them to by all means try linux - it's free, after all - but that they will probably be better off with Windows. Indeed, I doubt that Linux will ever become an mainstream OS, unless somebody releases a version that dumbs it down considerably. It simply allows the user too much power to destroy their system - and for most people that's a very frightening thing.
So no, I don't wish to sell linux to you, and by the sounds of it you wouldn't appreciate it anyway if I did. It is an OS that appeals to some because they are free to hack/customise/modify/programme as they want... but this comes at a price, in that not everything will work exactly as it does in Windows. As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy with the advantages of linux and the disadvantages don't bother me. Obviously this doesn't apply to you, so you have two options: Don't use linux and stick with Windows (and why not, if it does everything you want and you're happy with it? there's nothing smart about changing OS simply for the sake of it!), or, if you really like linux and just hate a few things like copy and paste, see what you can do to change this!! Only don't expect anyone to change a system they like simply so that they can "sell" it to you "on your terms"... rather, point out that having these added features would make everyone's life easier.
As someone who uses Photoshop now and then, I can't get the GIMP. It all just feels wrong. I'm sure it contains almost all the functionality ('the hard part') of Photoshop, but the UI is so completely different.
Actually, I used Photoshop (v. 4.0) for years before discovering the GIMP, and the GIMP immeadiately became one of the few reasons I'd boot my dual-boot box into Linux. Hell, I'd design windows skins using linux and the GIMP!! I find the interface extremely intuitive and I know where everything is. Photoshop (when I'm forced to use it) I just can't get my brain around. The only advantage of Photoshop is that it can handle CMYK colour in the rare instances I need it, and for that God created Corel Photopaint (free download for linux, although sadly not open source).
Well, Galeon requires GNOME for a start... And gnome = many packages that I have neither disk-space nor time to be bothered with. If Galeon could compile without gnome, then I'd try it out.
Worst of all, memos are still limited to 4096 bytes. Unbelievable. I don't like having to shell out for a third party product to rectify such a ridiculous limitation.
Not necessary - at least in the shelling-out-money side of things... try WordSmith instead. Yes, it does cost money to use as a wordprocessor, but the extended memo/doc reader functions are free. And it gives you bold, italics and underlining in your memos, too...
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The solution (which so few people seem to be aware of) is ROX. It is blindingly fast (opens directories instantaneously on my P120 laptop!!), good looking, highly customisable ... and ... it integrates near perfectly with the command line.
For example: say I want to cd from my home directory to /usr/local/foo/bar/ ... I type "/" (which I've made the command to bring up the change directory line on the status bar), then type "[del] [del] u [tab] l [tab] f [tab] b [tab]" (the [del] is to change to the parent directory). Hey, even the pointer warps as I type so that the window stays focussed! Not quite as fast as the command line, but fast if I want to use a filer view.
And if I want to use the CLI (which I do, frequently!) then I just press [ctrl]-x and up springs an E-term (or xterm or whatever) at the directory you're working with. Then say you're using the CLI and you want a filer view ... just type "rox" and up springs a ROX filer window at the directory. It's just beautiful, and it means that I actually use filer windows these days for the tasks for which they're more useful (before I found ROX I used to be 100% CLI).
The best thing that could happen to GNOME, imho, would be to ditch Nautilus and adopt ROX, just as they ditched GMC for Nautilus a few years ago ...
(Oh, and did I mention the best thing about ROX? It doesn't try to be a web browser :)
I'm regretting that I didn't try the betas, not because of I'm unhappy with Mandrake 9.0 - on the contrary, as I said before, I'm extremely happy with it! But rather because I know how I felt as a new user being frustrated at simple things that for some unknown reason just didn't work, and how sad it seems that such a generally great distro can only get a mediocre review because of some silly glitches that would surely have been noticed with a greater population of users trying the betas.
I should say that I upgrade my linux distro but rarely (I skipped 8.2 entirely), mainly because I know it's going to take me a week to reconfigure everything exactly how I want it, and rebuild much of the software that I use from source. I therefore don't expect to be able to stick a fresh distro in the CD-ROM drive and have the "best linux ever" smiling back at me half an hour later. And I should say that if I went to re-install windows (at least Win98 which is the "latest" version of windows that I personally have experience with - I haven't used windows for years :) I wouldn't expect to have everything working first off either.
What I can say is that - having spent a week tweaking and re-compiling - Mandrake 9.0 is a big improvement for me. It's fast (yay gcc3.2!!) and seems extremely stable for the most part. While I have encountered some bugs - not the ones mentioned in the article, mind you - they've only been fairly minor ones. The only major problem I had was that the new drakfont didn't like installing some Windows fonts that I had extracted to a folder ... but I just got drakfont from my old Mandrake 8.1 and it works fine :)
It seems that there are always bugs in new releases, especially the .0 releases (redhat 7.0 anyone? and what about this recent story on RedHat 8.0). BUT ... the thing that's different with this particular Mandrake release is that it had no less than four Release Candidates, not to mention (I think) about three betas. Why weren't these problems picked up?
And the only answer to that, I think, is that a lot more people need to get involved in these beta releases and report these bugs. All of those complaining now (and I guess that includes me :) should have tried out the betas and made sure that the newbies - who don't instinctively know how to make things work - weren't faced with these silly, needless bugs.
I was in a similar situation a year ago to you - I loved having a taskbar (which is what originally converted me from a steadfast Enlightenment user) but hated the horrible overhead of KDE, coupled with it's long start time and the pain of using Konqueror. I found that I never used Konqueror for file management - I still used an xterm as I had always done before. But ROX has completely converted me - I've been using it for a year and find it indispensible.
"It took fire instantly and sped around and around on the surface like a demented meteor, with a huge sheet of yellow flame about it. We all exulted - this was chemistry with a vengeance!" (p.123)
Sacks also played around with throwing all of the alkali metals (up to Cesium) into water:
" ... cesium, I found, exploded when it hit the water, shattering its glass container. One never forgot the properties of the alkali metals after this." (ibid)
By the sounds of the newbie's article, RedHat is maintaining their excellent form (that said, I haven't used RedHat since that hideous 7.0 release). But a decent distro shouldn't create such a terrible mess ... and although others have suggested what part of the problem should be, a default installation should not require editing text files just to bring GNOME up to speed.
Personally I'd suggest Mandrake - I recently installed 9.0 and it worked fine "out-of-the-box" ... I was especially impressed by the hardware configuration (didn't need to do a single thing!) and in particular the printer configuration (click on "Add printer", turn on your printer and ... presto! ... it tells me what my printer is and asks if I want to install the default drivers!! Fantastic!!)
Oh, and if you want a blindingly fast desktop (even on my P120 laptop) that still looks elegant, try ROX, possibly with IceWM. Windows open instantly. You'll never want to touch Nautilus or Konqueror again!
I think you've highlighted a big misconception when people first start looking at linux, namely, that it is a product that is directly competing with windows and needs to copy it feature for feature to be "sold" to people like you. This is not helped by products like Lindows, that are obviously trying to do just that and turn linux into a poor-man's copy of Windows.
But when people ask me why I use linux, and why should they use it, I simply tell them "Linux is different". I explain that things do not work the same as in windows, any more than you would expect MacOS to work the same as Windows. I explain that there is a lack of decent software in some areas, and that the software I use - while faster and easier in the long run - has a steep learning curve and is very frustrating and difficult to master. I further explain that one of the reasons I love linux is the ease with which you can programme in it, which probably won't appeal to them. And also that the other main reason I use it is the ease of customising everything to look and work the way you want it to - a process that requires editing configuration files and making graphics and writing scripts and generally getting your hands dirty. (I also try explaining the whole GPL philosophy and the wonderful feeling that anyone can contribute to code and make a difference, however small, but that usually flies right over their heads)
In short, I tell them to by all means try linux - it's free, after all - but that they will probably be better off with Windows. Indeed, I doubt that Linux will ever become an mainstream OS, unless somebody releases a version that dumbs it down considerably. It simply allows the user too much power to destroy their system - and for most people that's a very frightening thing.
So no, I don't wish to sell linux to you, and by the sounds of it you wouldn't appreciate it anyway if I did. It is an OS that appeals to some because they are free to hack/customise/modify/programme as they want ... but this comes at a price, in that not everything will work exactly as it does in Windows. As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy with the advantages of linux and the disadvantages don't bother me. Obviously this doesn't apply to you, so you have two options: Don't use linux and stick with Windows (and why not, if it does everything you want and you're happy with it? there's nothing smart about changing OS simply for the sake of it!), or, if you really like linux and just hate a few things like copy and paste, see what you can do to change this!! Only don't expect anyone to change a system they like simply so that they can "sell" it to you "on your terms" ... rather, point out that having these added features would make everyone's life easier.
Actually, I used Photoshop (v. 4.0) for years before discovering the GIMP, and the GIMP immeadiately became one of the few reasons I'd boot my dual-boot box into Linux. Hell, I'd design windows skins using linux and the GIMP!! I find the interface extremely intuitive and I know where everything is. Photoshop (when I'm forced to use it) I just can't get my brain around. The only advantage of Photoshop is that it can handle CMYK colour in the rare instances I need it, and for that God created Corel Photopaint (free download for linux, although sadly not open source).
Well, Galeon requires GNOME for a start ... And gnome = many packages that I have neither disk-space nor time to be bothered with. If Galeon could compile without gnome, then I'd try it out.
Not necessary - at least in the shelling-out-money side of things ... try WordSmith instead. Yes, it does cost money to use as a wordprocessor, but the extended memo/doc reader functions are free. And it gives you bold, italics and underlining in your memos, too ...