"Meanwhile, even Linux has supported full GPU acceleration for years. That copy of XBMC that you didn't really try out had that available."
That's a lie. GPU acceleration totally depends on your driver. e.g. I ran a VIA system (more for NAS than for desktop use) that has a h264 decoder in the GPU, but the driver only does basic 2D display and you have to compile from SVN for that. I would need to use Windows 7 or 8 to get GPU acceleration (including basic OpenGL) If you run AMD open source driver : the feature has only very recently been ported to it (so, it will work in some future distro, or in a current one if you update the driver and whatever else in the near future)
With an Atom it might as well be a crap shoot (pray that you have Intel graphics and not PowerVR, then work up from that). Apparently here, XBMC supports the Intel Intel Atom, through Intel's API, but Flash does not, and the CPU is not powerful enough for youtube 480p, maybe not enough for 360p, maybe can manage to display some 240p.
They already killed Origin, the game developer. Guess who is to blame for Ultima IX, and even for Ultima VIII! Well, I never got to play earlier Ultimas (bought the VII in the early 00s, my PCI sound card needed EMM386 while the game needed it not there) so I never knew what I missed, actually.
Don't mount your other partitions in the/etc/fstab, and configure your file manager to not show unmounted partitions or automount them ; that should be enough. Disable sudo (in/etc/sudoers) if you wish to keep a weak user password but not having it give root privileges. If you're still concerned about your data, well you can try to really lock down the automounting feature (or don't install an environment that has it in the first place) but you're going down a weird path already.
Can't you at least secure that damn guest account? No execution right in the Windows equivalent of the/home/guest folders, or web browser that refuses to download executables, have all your windows updates and other patching done. UAC configured to not let user execute "TrojanFakeVLCsetup.exe" and "WatchLotsaPorn.exe" just by clicking "Yes" on the UAC prompt?
It's all too weird that a guest user account can't be secured. If it's so dire, even you and I shouldn't be using it at all, let alone guests.
The article is written in a way that implies the feature is turned on when you get the phone. Well it's still a problem, if you have unsuspecting users, and users who don't want to muck with settings. All people on slashdot know that these phones are computers but they are also marketed as just phones and importantly, many people will just finger-navigate their way to the music player or video player and play the files they put there with an USB cable or something.. Even knowledgeable people might do that, not willing to waste their time learning all the GUIs in their phones, or even changing the wallpaper etc.
I only looked at the default stuff, no any additional build system or 3rd party repo or downloadable rpm etc. I think they weren't many games and emulators at all, or even music players. It was opensuse 10.1 I think. Note that I don't tthink Ubuntu has quite enough software either, I've looked for NES emulators with apt-cache search, found only two and didn't make them work in a useful way. But in general Ubuntu has quite a lot of software in the default, out of the box repositories.
There are none available in the US. And outside the US they're running diesel, so it's not a valid comparison.
Actually there are gasoline cars that can get 50 mpg, you merely need to get a small, lightweight one with a small motor. Cars from the 80s came close. Peugeot 107, 208 and Toyota Aygo are two examples that come to my mind. Maybe something a bit more roomy is possible or will be with future cars, if use of composite materials is generalized. My ideal car for now (though I don't have one and advocate not having one) has a gasoline engine, no EV, no hybrid, no agrofuels and is used as little as possible - ideally you don't commute with it.
Diesel is more useful in trucks and boats, and in cars or utility trucks to carry or haul stuff, or in big cars that are used on long distances, but not so much for not polluting. In France there has been talk of increasing taxes on diesel fuel (which are artificially lower) because with modern oil refining we have a surplus of gasoline and a shortage of diesel, plus diesel does more local pollution.
Years ago, you didn't have to care, install vanilla Ubuntu 8.04 and you're done. Later, it was Ubuntu 10.04. Then maybe debian 6 (debian squeeze) which was good when new but has an ancient kernel and ancient web browser, so it sucks (you have to know how to replace Firefox 3.5 with a less ancient version)
Now Ubuntu went on a weird track. It makes us feel uncertain (and we fear it, and we're in doubt). Also, if you stay away from all 3D accelerated desktops then you won't have to deal with them not working when your 3D driver is wrong, misconfigured or unavailable for a given computer etc.
Linux Mint 13 is the go-to choice, because it's 99.9% Ubuntu 12.04 underneath. It IS Ubuntu 12.04 for all intents and purpose. I can recommend the Xfce edition since it has the simplest and leanest GUI of all official edition. Mate is more flexible (it's easier to move stuff around in the panels) but Xfce is more actively developed (next versions gain a few features) and you may try other small GUIs on the side (openbox, fluxbox etc.)
Don't deal with bugs, and don't deal with GUI crap, concentrate on learning the classical command line instead (ls, mkdir, chmod, chown, grep, less, piping stuff into head, tail or cut, sort.. also ps, top, kill, kill -9, killall ; ifconfig, lspci, lsusb, nano/etc/X11/xorg.conf, ctrl+alt+F1, chvt, service your-display-manager stop.. and for a newbie why not look at/etc/network/interfaces,/etc/hosts,/etc/hostname,/etc/default/grub) Learn to get info from the system without googling constantly : man pages, your-command --help, apt-cache search, apt-cache show,/usr/share/doc.. Pipe your output into something so that you can actually read it. Have fun trying to read/usr/share/doc/foo/Changelog.gz
Also, debian vs ubuntu is irrelevant. It's mostly the same stuff. Other distros have a bad rep (redhat/Cent OS is a dinosaur, fedora crashes) or aren't used by many people or don't have much software (I tried OpenSuse once and there was just little software compared to the very high amount in ubuntu) Arch linux or Gentoo or something else may be great, I don't really know, but maybe try it after one year of linux experience.
wow You're a professional sysadmin, and you don't know that your remote server doesn't need to have X installed? It's the whole point. No graphics stack installed on your server, no desktops, yet you can still use a GUI app if you really need it or for convenience (run nedit or graphical emacs if you feel like it. or dillo to access a web interface on localhost..)
In another life, Mrs Richards would have worked for the Stasi or the local committee of the Communist Party. In bad old times, your neighbor might be secretly spying on you and report any suspicious or deviant activities or conversations. Utterly bad consequences ensued for the "guilty" persons, with or without public shaming.
That people will do this to you with their cell phones is scary.. And in this case, the message with assorted photograph was posted to an actual worldwide audience without a second thought. Not even to "friends" or "friends or friends". I didn't know Twitter messages contained sneaked pictures, nowadays ; that made the story a lot worse. I'm glad to have no Facebook account yet most every one has one.. In a few years, and years after that there will be a terrifying amount of Facebook and Twitter data for you to datamine and pinpoint what everyone does or think. If dictatorships arise in Europe or Northern America there will then be little hope of putting them down.
I am more than glad that Google has become a music label, and that they signed Delete, they make very fine punk rock. Also, naming their recording and artists's lair "The Keep" is mighty fun.
Stacked DRAM is not cold fusion or holographic storage or flying cars. What they've announced is similar to Intel Haswell GT3e, which is a real product that runs today, awaiting commercial launch. "Silicon Interposer" or "2.5D stacking" are maybe a more useful term. It will become an industry standard, the memory bandwith wall can't be written away like you do. AMD APUs are really crippled by their bandwith for instance, and using quad channel or gddr5 as system memory is an expensive proposition.
This is stuff that is thrown at the user the first time they log in to KDE. It's like the dev team plays games with me and it reminds of flash pop-ups on mouse over, on certain web pages. I could probably disable that effect - and have either the controls permanently displayed or permanently hidden, for instance. But I'm a potential new user, willing to give it a try, and I don't know yet where's KDE's control panel or config files. So I close the widgets. Then, the animation on minimize/maximize windows hurt my eyes more than anything else, and the whole experience is too much gray and blue overall, so I log out before spending hours learning the beast. This has happened to me every time I've had a look at KDE 4 (about once every two years).
There's a workaround by downgrading Xorg that you may try This is linked to in linuxmint 14's release notes, which are almost immediately reached from the front page when you when to get to the distro.. That's why I can provide you with this link even though I don't have ATI or AMD cards.
It's just about AMD saving money and resources. Blame them, and/or yourself because every one know only nvidia does fast and long term linux/unix drivers.
Just tell people the new Ubuntu is Linux Mint. Same thing under another name but it's the better variant you'd better use, just like the OpenOffice to LibreOffice migration.
I've just installed an updated driver for my 7600GT. Granted it's on legacy support (till 2017). Nvidia supports their cards for really long. Their are two issues with your post : it's hard telling users who want to run a game they should live with 20 to 30% of the performance for the hardware they paid for, and less 3D features, more bugs etc. I can run some Steam games brilliantly on that now ancient card, I think a 9500GT with nouveau would be significantly worse (nor do I want to waste precious CPU cycles in the driver) The other is there's no Intel graphics card to buy.
Excel is known for considering year 1900 as a leap year even though it's not, but I don't know if this historical bug (carried over from Lotus 1-2-3 according to wikipedia) is still respected. So consider Excel usable to year 1901 to a date I don't know. Likewise the Y2K38 problem with Unix is that time, if represented with 32 bits, doesn't go before a certain 20th century date as well as ending abruptingly on a certain date and time in 2038 - causing the end of the world. Both examples mean that you have to pay attention to the usable time range - be it usable length, absolute minimum date, absolute maximum date, with hopefully some time standards offering infinite range (like A.D. / C.E. year numbering?)
Leap seconds is another infuriating problem and relativity in general and I have to wonder if we have to consider Mars's time, Earth's time, Sun's time, Voyager 2's time etc. in any relevant way. Have fun!
There's a nice association in southern France that serves as a museum, called Silicium.
Their site is under heavy rewriting but you can check their inventory, full of nice computers and not so nice or terribles ones, each with an article. Here's the French stuff specifically:), you may check out the Matra Alice as an example of a terrible computer with almost no software, and maybe learn a few derogatory terms in French. Some stuff looks pretty classy such as the Exelvision and Goupil. And, there's an entry on the minitel.
It was possible to successfully connect and use it with Microsoft Hyper Terminal (and get garbage if you got one configuration parameter wrong) The main issue with it is the phone directory was free (as long as you stayed less than three minutes on it) but everything else would be a commercial service that costs the equivalent of $0.45 per minute, or $0.72 per minute or even more.
So, there's no way you would random browse stuff for a hour, nor have the general population use some e-mail system even though the terminal itself was very widespread ; in my family it was pretty much used for looking up phone numbers or addresses only then further usage was once-in-a-year stuff like a train reservation or something.
Slashdot Mirror
"Meanwhile, even Linux has supported full GPU acceleration for years. That copy of XBMC that you didn't really try out had that available."
That's a lie. GPU acceleration totally depends on your driver. e.g. I ran a VIA system (more for NAS than for desktop use) that has a h264 decoder in the GPU, but the driver only does basic 2D display and you have to compile from SVN for that. I would need to use Windows 7 or 8 to get GPU acceleration (including basic OpenGL)
If you run AMD open source driver : the feature has only very recently been ported to it (so, it will work in some future distro, or in a current one if you update the driver and whatever else in the near future)
With an Atom it might as well be a crap shoot (pray that you have Intel graphics and not PowerVR, then work up from that). Apparently here, XBMC supports the Intel Intel Atom, through Intel's API, but Flash does not, and the CPU is not powerful enough for youtube 480p, maybe not enough for 360p, maybe can manage to display some 240p.
They already killed Origin, the game developer. Guess who is to blame for Ultima IX, and even for Ultima VIII!
Well, I never got to play earlier Ultimas (bought the VII in the early 00s, my PCI sound card needed EMM386 while the game needed it not there) so I never knew what I missed, actually.
Don't mount your other partitions in the /etc/fstab, and configure your file manager to not show unmounted partitions or automount them ; that should be enough. /etc/sudoers) if you wish to keep a weak user password but not having it give root privileges. If you're still concerned about your data, well you can try to really lock down the automounting feature (or don't install an environment that has it in the first place) but you're going down a weird path already.
Disable sudo (in
Can't you at least secure that damn guest account? /home/guest folders, or web browser that refuses to download executables, have all your windows updates and other patching done. UAC configured to not let user execute "TrojanFakeVLCsetup.exe" and "WatchLotsaPorn.exe" just by clicking "Yes" on the UAC prompt?
No execution right in the Windows equivalent of the
It's all too weird that a guest user account can't be secured. If it's so dire, even you and I shouldn't be using it at all, let alone guests.
Sound cards have both inputs and outputs? Oh, the horror!
Because your company (the one that employs you, or the one you've created) will buy that paid version.
The article is written in a way that implies the feature is turned on when you get the phone.
Well it's still a problem, if you have unsuspecting users, and users who don't want to muck with settings. All people on slashdot know that these phones are computers but they are also marketed as just phones and importantly, many people will just finger-navigate their way to the music player or video player and play the files they put there with an USB cable or something.. Even knowledgeable people might do that, not willing to waste their time learning all the GUIs in their phones, or even changing the wallpaper etc.
I use a command line program called, you guessed it, "rot13".
I only looked at the default stuff, no any additional build system or 3rd party repo or downloadable rpm etc. I think they weren't many games and emulators at all, or even music players. It was opensuse 10.1 I think. Note that I don't tthink Ubuntu has quite enough software either, I've looked for NES emulators with apt-cache search, found only two and didn't make them work in a useful way. But in general Ubuntu has quite a lot of software in the default, out of the box repositories.
There are none available in the US. And outside the US they're running diesel, so it's not a valid comparison.
Actually there are gasoline cars that can get 50 mpg, you merely need to get a small, lightweight one with a small motor. Cars from the 80s came close. Peugeot 107, 208 and Toyota Aygo are two examples that come to my mind. Maybe something a bit more roomy is possible or will be with future cars, if use of composite materials is generalized.
My ideal car for now (though I don't have one and advocate not having one) has a gasoline engine, no EV, no hybrid, no agrofuels and is used as little as possible - ideally you don't commute with it.
Diesel is more useful in trucks and boats, and in cars or utility trucks to carry or haul stuff, or in big cars that are used on long distances, but not so much for not polluting. In France there has been talk of increasing taxes on diesel fuel (which are artificially lower) because with modern oil refining we have a surplus of gasoline and a shortage of diesel, plus diesel does more local pollution.
Years ago, you didn't have to care, install vanilla Ubuntu 8.04 and you're done. Later, it was Ubuntu 10.04. Then maybe debian 6 (debian squeeze) which was good when new but has an ancient kernel and ancient web browser, so it sucks (you have to know how to replace Firefox 3.5 with a less ancient version)
Now Ubuntu went on a weird track. It makes us feel uncertain (and we fear it, and we're in doubt). Also, if you stay away from all 3D accelerated desktops then you won't have to deal with them not working when your 3D driver is wrong, misconfigured or unavailable for a given computer etc.
Linux Mint 13 is the go-to choice, because it's 99.9% Ubuntu 12.04 underneath. It IS Ubuntu 12.04 for all intents and purpose.
I can recommend the Xfce edition since it has the simplest and leanest GUI of all official edition. Mate is more flexible (it's easier to move stuff around in the panels) but Xfce is more actively developed (next versions gain a few features) and you may try other small GUIs on the side (openbox, fluxbox etc.)
Don't deal with bugs, and don't deal with GUI crap, concentrate on learning the classical command line instead (ls, mkdir, chmod, chown, grep, less, piping stuff into head, tail or cut, sort.. also ps, top, kill, kill -9, killall ; ifconfig, lspci, lsusb, nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf, ctrl+alt+F1, chvt, service your-display-manager stop.. and for a newbie why not look at /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, /etc/default/grub) /usr/share/doc.. Pipe your output into something so that you can actually read it. Have fun trying to read /usr/share/doc/foo/Changelog.gz
Learn to get info from the system without googling constantly : man pages, your-command --help, apt-cache search, apt-cache show,
Also, debian vs ubuntu is irrelevant. It's mostly the same stuff.
Other distros have a bad rep (redhat/Cent OS is a dinosaur, fedora crashes) or aren't used by many people or don't have much software (I tried OpenSuse once and there was just little software compared to the very high amount in ubuntu)
Arch linux or Gentoo or something else may be great, I don't really know, but maybe try it after one year of linux experience.
wow
You're a professional sysadmin, and you don't know that your remote server doesn't need to have X installed?
It's the whole point. No graphics stack installed on your server, no desktops, yet you can still use a GUI app if you really need it or for convenience (run nedit or graphical emacs if you feel like it. or dillo to access a web interface on localhost..)
In another life, Mrs Richards would have worked for the Stasi or the local committee of the Communist Party. In bad old times, your neighbor might be secretly spying on you and report any suspicious or deviant activities or conversations. Utterly bad consequences ensued for the "guilty" persons, with or without public shaming.
That people will do this to you with their cell phones is scary.. And in this case, the message with assorted photograph was posted to an actual worldwide audience without a second thought. Not even to "friends" or "friends or friends". I didn't know Twitter messages contained sneaked pictures, nowadays ; that made the story a lot worse.
I'm glad to have no Facebook account yet most every one has one.. In a few years, and years after that there will be a terrifying amount of Facebook and Twitter data for you to datamine and pinpoint what everyone does or think. If dictatorships arise in Europe or Northern America there will then be little hope of putting them down.
I am more than glad that Google has become a music label, and that they signed Delete, they make very fine punk rock.
Also, naming their recording and artists's lair "The Keep" is mighty fun.
Stacked DRAM is not cold fusion or holographic storage or flying cars.
What they've announced is similar to Intel Haswell GT3e, which is a real product that runs today, awaiting commercial launch. "Silicon Interposer" or "2.5D stacking" are maybe a more useful term.
It will become an industry standard, the memory bandwith wall can't be written away like you do. AMD APUs are really crippled by their bandwith for instance, and using quad channel or gddr5 as system memory is an expensive proposition.
I'm sure recording fish brain is awesome, but I can't comment on it. I've forgotten what the news blurb said.
This is stuff that is thrown at the user the first time they log in to KDE. It's like the dev team plays games with me and it reminds of flash pop-ups on mouse over, on certain web pages. I could probably disable that effect - and have either the controls permanently displayed or permanently hidden, for instance.
But I'm a potential new user, willing to give it a try, and I don't know yet where's KDE's control panel or config files. So I close the widgets. Then, the animation on minimize/maximize windows hurt my eyes more than anything else, and the whole experience is too much gray and blue overall, so I log out before spending hours learning the beast.
This has happened to me every time I've had a look at KDE 4 (about once every two years).
There's a workaround by downgrading Xorg that you may try
This is linked to in linuxmint 14's release notes, which are almost immediately reached from the front page when you when to get to the distro.. That's why I can provide you with this link even though I don't have ATI or AMD cards.
http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/10/how-to-install-amd-catalyst-legacy.html
It's just about AMD saving money and resources. Blame them, and/or yourself because every one know only nvidia does fast and long term linux/unix drivers.
What's the support policy? If it's still three years, then Ubuntu LTS now has longer support than debian stable : five years for all uses.
Castilian is what we usually refer to as "Spanish", I think.
Just tell people the new Ubuntu is Linux Mint. Same thing under another name but it's the better variant you'd better use, just like the OpenOffice to LibreOffice migration.
I've just installed an updated driver for my 7600GT. Granted it's on legacy support (till 2017). Nvidia supports their cards for really long.
Their are two issues with your post : it's hard telling users who want to run a game they should live with 20 to 30% of the performance for the hardware they paid for, and less 3D features, more bugs etc. I can run some Steam games brilliantly on that now ancient card, I think a 9500GT with nouveau would be significantly worse (nor do I want to waste precious CPU cycles in the driver)
The other is there's no Intel graphics card to buy.
Excel is known for considering year 1900 as a leap year even though it's not, but I don't know if this historical bug (carried over from Lotus 1-2-3 according to wikipedia) is still respected. So consider Excel usable to year 1901 to a date I don't know.
Likewise the Y2K38 problem with Unix is that time, if represented with 32 bits, doesn't go before a certain 20th century date as well as ending abruptingly on a certain date and time in 2038 - causing the end of the world. Both examples mean that you have to pay attention to the usable time range - be it usable length, absolute minimum date, absolute maximum date, with hopefully some time standards offering infinite range (like A.D. / C.E. year numbering?)
Leap seconds is another infuriating problem and relativity in general and I have to wonder if we have to consider Mars's time, Earth's time, Sun's time, Voyager 2's time etc. in any relevant way. Have fun!
There's a nice association in southern France that serves as a museum, called Silicium.
Their site is under heavy rewriting but you can check their inventory, full of nice computers and not so nice or terribles ones, each with an article. :), you may check out the Matra Alice as an example of a terrible computer with almost no software, and maybe learn a few derogatory terms in French. Some stuff looks pretty classy such as the Exelvision and Goupil. And, there's an entry on the minitel.
Here's the French stuff specifically
http://silicium.org/site/index.php/Table/Catalogue/France/
It was possible to successfully connect and use it with Microsoft Hyper Terminal (and get garbage if you got one configuration parameter wrong)
The main issue with it is the phone directory was free (as long as you stayed less than three minutes on it) but everything else would be a commercial service that costs the equivalent of $0.45 per minute, or $0.72 per minute or even more.
So, there's no way you would random browse stuff for a hour, nor have the general population use some e-mail system even though the terminal itself was very widespread ; in my family it was pretty much used for looking up phone numbers or addresses only then further usage was once-in-a-year stuff like a train reservation or something.