So MANY times, I've seen a new person ask, "How do I do X?" And if X is hard in Linux, fourteen people will inevitably say, "You don't want to do X." And a lot of them won't even say, "You should do Y instead." They just stop at "don't do X."
It's not as bad as it used to be, because so many things are so much easier now than they were. But go browse hard questions on Linux fora, and watch... you will inevitably see "Doing X is stupid", or some variant, with no alternative offered.
That might be because they don't know the alternative. Those helping might just have tried to do such things before and decided that it was not worth it for most sane people- they didn't want others to go through their pain.
Often times I have helped people on a Linux forum and sometimes that "help" included telling people that what they want is pretty much not worth it. Is that so bad? Is it bad to admit when something is a bad idea? Is it better than silence, the only other alternative?
OKay.. I see what you're saying. But how will people know which releases are which. (meaning laypersons)
The Dapper quality releases will be strongly tied to future corporate plans. Plus in every release announcement they will clearly state that the Dapper quality releases get extra long support.
Yet the overall quality of the other Ubuntu releases will never hopefully lower to a point where they are unusable by lay persons. I would hope that the kinds of people that a Dapper release was made for (IT managers) would be able to figure out which releases to use where.
Also, I didn't realize that ONLY this release was going to have the extended support. I thought it was from now on they were making releases that would get the longer support. So the in-between, risky, releases will use the breezy support model?
Our current plan is that the Dapper Drake (Ubuntu 6.06 if we hit our June 2006 release date goal) will be the last of this first "set" of releases. So post-Dapper we have the opportunity to define a new "feel" or overarching theme. It would be unlikely to be... blue. But it might be substantially different to the current Human theme.
Each of these in between releases will get the same level of support as all the Ubuntus before Dapper.
I personally have been excited about Edgy long before it was announced. Once you get the hang of it, its easy to spot which Ubuntu releases are for you.
The first releases after the two year major releases will have changes in styles and will be very distinct and maybe a little crazy- just like Warty was when it hit back in the day. All the exciting things the major release had to skip during the year can be added to this release. Mark has already said that Edgy will bring a new color scheme- exciting!
The second release after the major release will be the best of the in betweens- the craziness of the previous release will be polished down some and the time when these releases will come (Spring) is after all the major releases at the end of the previous year. Hoary was really great for this reason.
The third release after a major release will be the most compromised- many new things might be dumped on this release so the Dapper quality release can use the release as development time for its more boring platform. Long before Breezy came out I was scared because it in a bad time of the year for a distro release (right before the new Open Office, Xorg and Firefox were released) and because it had to take on large bites (modular Xorg before Xorg was ready, GCC transition for PART of the system, etc.) to make life easier for Dapper. As a result Breezy seems to be the most buggy release (yet many of these problems - like floppies not working and an unstable OpenOffice- has been fixed post release).
Then we have another Dapper quality release and the IT managers of the world can pay attention again. Long live Ubuntu.
How modern are they? Can I go to the store and buy one?
Does suspend work without work? Does video acceration work without work? Does the internal wireless work without work?
I have searched for months, and I cannot find a (new) laptop that will support Linux 100%. Some get really close (aka wireless and video card will work) but then will fail in one area (aka perfect ACPI support) and I have to give up on the entire thing.
If you know some magic set of laptops that work 100% out of the box with Linux then please tell me, because I am tired of looking. I might just break down and buy a Mac....
(P.S. If any answer you give me has a freaking ATI card it in, please keep it to yourself. ATI might officially spport Linux, but not out of the box and not good enough for my needs. Intel is even better for me).
Now get Xgl working on AMD64 (or any of the other things broken on AMD64 for that matter) and see if you feel the same way.
Why would I want to do that? I run 32 bit Ubuntu on my 64 bit box to avoid that kind of pain.
Unless you need more than 4 gigs of RAM, why hurt yourself with the 64 bit version? Sure its a little faster, but not enough to warrent the lack of flash/java/xgl....
Won't that hurt your credibility, if you have different releases of different quality?
Not really. From day one with Dapper Mark has planned for it to be a higher quality release. For example, he plans to support it longer than the rest. Why did he do this? Well for one many people don't like an upgrade every six months. I talk to some people that think that Windows upgrades (like SP2) come around too quickly. The Dapper release is for these people. If the corporate world wants, it can skip from Dapper quality release to Dapper quality release (as such will be released every two years) while being supported the entire way.
A problem with Dapper is that "higher quality" also means "more boring." Ubuntu is meant to be on the bleeding edge, but with Dapper less risks were taken. Edgy will fix this problem and bring Ubuntu back to the edge once more.
Wouldn't it be smarter to have a "risk team" playing around for the next release while the current release is being polished so that when the rest of the team starts working on the next release there's already been enough time on it to make sure it is production quality?
There are many things needed to make a production quality Linux OS. Ubuntu is a slave to its release cycle- if the programs are ready when Ubuntu releases then it will be a good release. Dapper is more "corporate worthy" than say Breezy because when it releases it will have many landmark pieces of software in it - a non buggy OpenOffice 2, Firefox 1.5, etc. Mark can't change the release dates for all software used in Ubuntu, so some releases will just have to be worse than others for this reason.
Plus, making every release of equal quality will cost a lot more....
Compatibility with Microsoft Office is not 100% and OpenOffice.org is a slow piece of shit even at the best of times.
True, but compatibility is high enough for the average home user- simple Word documents usually transfer perfectly.
The Java plugin is a pain in the hole to set up on Linux compared to Windows and the Flash plugin (yes, lots of people, myself included, like Flash movies) is absolutely terrible on Linux.
The difficulty here is fixed by something like Automatix.
KDE and GNOME both "feel" less snappy on this Duron 1.8GHz than Windows XP does on a P3 766MHz.
I disagree, but I have been using composite in Linux for almost a full year now so Windows seems sluggish to me. And boring (seeing as how it can't flip my applications across a 3D cube like Linux can).
And this isn't just uninformed trolling, I've tried Linux a lot of times and always gone back because nothing has improved.
It does improve, just at an incremental rate. Plus most of the things you list (Java, Flash) are third party pluggins, so they will only improve when the makers of them choose to improve them.
For some of us, its good enough today. Or last year. Or the year before. It comes down to what your needs are on the desktop. For the majority of people I have ever met (who treat their computers like glorified word processors and web browsers) its good enough right now. Its just not far better and has a learning curve so there is little reason for normal users to try it......
The mainstream is Windows, so "effortlessly" isn't an option. Maybe OSX is what you were thinking?
OSX is only a painless experience if you have a lot of money. It lacks many pieces of free software (decent Open Office anyone?) that pretty much requires you to spend more money on software then you would in Linuxland.
In many ways OSX is the opposite of Linux. In Linux everything is free (in a monetary sense), but the price is that few things work well together and you have to spend your own time working out problems. In OSX almost nothing is free, but if you stick with only buying (overpriced) Apple software and hardware then its a breeze.
Linux represents the lowest "class" of OSes. Windows is the middle class. OSX is the upper class.
Personally I prefer Linux despite its low class status because my time is pretty much worthless- it makes for a fun hobby. But one day I will have more money and less time so then I might use Macs....
Internet Explorer is what my boyfriend uses and since I'm a bottom, he's in charge. What can I say? I like having sex with men!
Then for your sake I hope that technical inadequacy is not a sexually transmitted disease.
Plus....you are the female in the relationship (apparently) - you should be calling the shots! Download some freaking Firefox and give him an ultimatum. Home use of Internet Explorer is a crime against humanity......
It seems that Linux proponents never want to even come close to the possibility that Linux might be less intuitive or suitable for newbies than Windows is.
Why would Linux zealots want to admit this? What do they gain? Humility?
Plus, Linux is very suitable for true computer newbies. It makes office documents and browses the web better then one could hope for considering the price. Its the middle of the road computer users (or "Windows Power Users") that have most of the problems because they come to Linux with very specific expectations ("It has to run this application, do this task and use this odd piece of hardware") yet lack the patience needed to overcome these obstacles.
In the long run, it might be better that snobs turn people off Linux. At least then they don't spread false hope....
I was sympathetic with you (aka did not believe you to be a troll) till you posted that. Internet Explorer? I hope you are at work.
I might be a snob for saying this, but in non work situations the use of Internet Explorer implies very strongly to me "I am not very good with computers." Even if you don't like Firefox, Opera is free nowadays.
Welcome to the 21st century, I hope you join us soon.......
The phrase "Sorry, Linux can't do that" has never crossed a Linux fanatic's lips.
That is because such a generalization is often wrong. There are very few things that Linux can not do what so ever.
There ARE many things that requires tons of command line hacking and compiling and other nasty things to get done though. So I guess the true statement would be "Sorry, Linux can't do that easily," but since easy is a relative term I don't expect anyone who considers themselves to be elitist to state such a thing.
The worst thing Linux zealots do is create such a hype (such as a "replace everything with Linux and it will work better") in the first place.
Intel ships out more graphics cards with PCs than Nvidia or ATI do- they are the leader in the market. Right now they have decent open source drives for their cards. In fact I believe that their newest graphics chipset (the one in the Mac mini) might be the only card with open drivers that has modern pixel shaders (or "directx 9 compatible") in the world.
The open graphics project exists and its very successful. Its just called "Intel Graphics."
You are a very knowledgeable person Mr. Smirl when it comes to graphics so I must ask you- why does everyone ignore Intel?
If all the Intel laptops (with Intel chipsets) work well out of the box, this is larger than the overall Mac market. Why doesn't someone sell it on an AGP board? Why don't more people talk about it? Why is not more work done on the Intel driver?
Please, I hope that is does scare people like you away. I run GNU/Linux because I am free to modify every part of my system. A 'Free' system that relies on proprietary drivers is no longer Free. Users like you help to destroy my freedom.
Too bad. When you give away things for free and go on about freedom you have to expect some people to do things with it you never wanted. Thats what true freedom is.
If you OSS people didn't have so much great free (as in beer) software then maybe pragmatic leeches like myself will go away.
You can just go back to using Windows or OS X. You are not welcome in our community (what a crazy idea! A community where everyone contributes!).
Or option three- I can blow you off and continue to use Linux.
The party is over. From now till the time Linux is no more a trend will occur: the percentage of users of Linux who care about FSF and RMS style freedoms will become less and less. At one time people like yourself who valued freedom over everything were the majority but I think that is no longer the case. You all messed up and made a great system that practical people like myself can use as well.
So as much as it might hurt your feelings people like myself and the parent poster aren't going anywhere. Instead you will find youself to be a minority in the community.
To rub a little salt in the wound, I will now admit that in the past two months I have bought 10 Nvidia cards JUST FOR THEIR CLOSED DRIVERS. I want to spread XGL and its wonderful effects to my friends and family so I outfitted all of their computers with these cards so that they could try it out. Personally I gave open source drivers a chance - I bought a ATI 9200 which has the best open source graphics drivers on the earth - and I was really disappointed. The features were never there to a point I wanted, nor was the performance. I replaced that card with a 6600 GT (and its closed driver) and now I can do everything I want.
Is it shortsighted to favor a company with closed drivers just for some eye candy? Of course. But in the grand scheme of things, my life is in the short term so screw it. There is always the ability for fork for people like yourself- make a new Linux free from leeches like myself if you want.
Just don't pretend you can tell me what to do.....or that I will listen.
Anychance this would make it's way to mainstream distros like Ubuntu?
Not really. Gobo is cool, but the way "Linux" (as in the OS, not the kernel) is its actually harder to use than an Ubuntu for most users. If the Linux community actually wanted the OSX like packages then by that merit alone Gobo would have become a major distro (just as Ubuntu came out of nowhere recently to claim the top place). What we actually want is to have as many software packages as possible.
That's why Ubuntu got popular- it forked the distro with (maybe) the most amount of software "released" for it. Package managers work great if the software you want can easily be installed by them. If you can't then most of the time the software is not "released" for you distro anyway and YET ANOTHER PACKAGE FORMAT (YAPF) won't solve that problem alone.
Things like apt-get control the chaos that is the Linux desktop. Projects like Autopackage have looked at making a universal OSX type installer for the Linux desktop, only to find that its basically too hard.
Repositories and package managers do an ok job. The main problem people have with them is if they lack new enough packages or certain packages. In each case a better way to install software does not matter- if people refuse to support a distro then YAPF will not convince them. If someone wants to support Ubuntu (and many developers do now) they will make debs which hopefully in the next version users will be able to install with a double click.
You are missing the point. We love Firefox, and we want to improve it.
More like "I love Firefox so I want other people to spend their time to improve it for me." Or do you have a patch posted somewhere thats fixes this problem for you that I do not know about?
You are not a Firefox "customer." Either pull your weight or save your complaints for helpful bug reports. Discussion on/. never helps anything.
Too many people in the open source community dismisses these people as morons or worse. That's fine, I suppose. It's not like the "morons" care on way or the other. The problem is that a lot of people really want to affect lasting change, making users switch from MS to free stuff. And if one wants that, that attitude simply won't cut it.
The essential problem is not a problem with the OSS community. Its a problem with the fact that the OSS community is so diverse that it is not possible to label it in a way that does not avoid contradictions. One such contradiction you pointed out is the simple one that many OSS projects are not friendly enough to pull in converts yet many in the OSS community want everyone to convert from closed source software. But this falls apart when you don't try to apply a label to THE ENTIRE OSS COMMUNITY as a whole and focus on what each faction within the OSS community wants. And that sucks, because human nature prefers simple labels for everything.
What do I mean by that? Simple- some factions of the OSS community care about certain things more than other factions do. For example, maybe those in the GIMP community couldn't give a damn about converting another single user from Photoshop. Who could blame them- for years they have been assaulted by those demanding that GIMP do "this thing" or "this feature" exactly like Photoshop does. So maybe they don't care about spreading OSS to the professional crowd. I can tell you after a year of using desktop Linux I no longer push it with others like I normally would because I am sick of hearing people gripe about not getting their games to play like they want. This can also apply to other parts of life- my father quit offering a cosmetic procedure in his private medical practice just because he was tired of hearing people gripe about the side effects he told people they would have before he did anything. Sometime you get sick of complaining.
Yet those in another OSS group the goals might be very different. Those people supporting Firefox for example probably DO want to switch over most of the world because the higher marketshare Firefox has the less chance web designers will make pages that work only with IE. They obviously care because that group has things like "Spread Firefox" combined with an emphasis on marketing (full page Firefox ad in NYT). So for these people the gripes of ex-IE users matters a lot more.
The biggest problem with OSS community is that you can't tie together the GIMP people and the Firefox people and the Ubuntu people with a common label. EACH OSS COMMUNITY has its own priorities...each has its own wants and needs. This is a very bad situation for those of us who DEMAND simple labels for everything, and who are used to a software industry that DOES have a common label and purpose (to please customers to make money). What is even worse is when some takes this traditional perspective on software development ("you are doing this for me the user and no other reason") to the OSS communities and finds that a particular community could not give a damn about its potential "customers."
Some look to the OSS community and do not see the factions and believe the community has many contradictions. It doesn't. Its more complicated than that. Yes that sucks for many people who demand simplicity, and it is part of the reason OSS fans backlash against the "morons" that do not understand them or their cause.
There is a BIG difference between being mildly offensive (aka calling black people black instead of African Americans) and being outright racist (calling them niggers). The acceptability of the first example (and the one that people attack when they call something PC) is up for debate but the second is not. Racism does not belong anywhere in the modern world, and all of us who are embarrassed by it can't wait for all of these racist people to die so we can move on as a species.
I don't think an article about dead niggers is appropriate, and I get modded offtopic?:/
You think that's bad? What till this question of yours is marked to be the flamebait it is. The article is very important because now we know almost exactly how long slavery lasted in the New World. Your vocabulary implies to me why you do not care.
On a slow news day, I would prefer/. share such things with me instead of dupes.
Microsoft trashed all Itanium plans for the small and mid segment. They will support Itanium only where it makes sense in their product line, just Windows Server,.Net Framework 64-bit and Sql Server 2005. (Not in Exchange Server, Biztalk Server etc. Earlier we even had Windows XP running on Itanium. Sigh!).
Which is why I think Intel gives THE best hardware support to Linux out of all the major hardware makers (Intel PAYS people to make open source drivers for their hardware often times- at most many of the others just give out specs). Intel has the only Directx 9 compatible video cards with open drivers and they have the best open wireless drivers.
The happy marriage between Intel and MS of the 1990's is long gone I think after the whole Itanic thing.
Wouldn't it be a waste of money to buy a top-end 64bit processor if all the programs I have run 32bit?
Not really, because with the dual core AMD CPUs the 64 bit part is "free." Since these CPUs are faster than Intel's 32 bit processors (with 80%+ of applications) then you pay no premium for 64bitness. Its there if you want to use it though...
I just installed Ubuntu to one of those laptops the other day. The only thing that only worked so-so was the wireless, but that was only until I installed network- manager. Then I would scan and whatever like XP.
In fact in the newest Ubuntu, thats one of the best wireless cards to have....I would love to find an external version for my own use.
In a very real way, for a number of people, Vista's compositing stuff works now, too. In fact, I'd not be at all surprised if there were comparable numbers of people running the Vista/WPF betas and XGL.
Now. Check out all 3 drivers. They not only work, but they work incredibly well. In fact they are faster and more stable than ATI's drivers, except for in some key areas... usually areas where more documentation is required.
I mean...its cool that at least one set of cards with decent 3D hardware has open driver, but those drivers are not for gamers to use. Its for me to use to get EXA.
It won't. The Xegl has been dead ever since Jon Smirl quit working on it. Development will begin again (it seems) when EXA is ready for primetime. So.... years.
Slashdot Mirror
That might be because they don't know the alternative. Those helping might just have tried to do such things before and decided that it was not worth it for most sane people- they didn't want others to go through their pain.
Often times I have helped people on a Linux forum and sometimes that "help" included telling people that what they want is pretty much not worth it. Is that so bad? Is it bad to admit when something is a bad idea? Is it better than silence, the only other alternative?
The Dapper quality releases will be strongly tied to future corporate plans. Plus in every release announcement they will clearly state that the Dapper quality releases get extra long support.
Yet the overall quality of the other Ubuntu releases will never hopefully lower to a point where they are unusable by lay persons. I would hope that the kinds of people that a Dapper release was made for (IT managers) would be able to figure out which releases to use where.
Also, I didn't realize that ONLY this release was going to have the extended support. I thought it was from now on they were making releases that would get the longer support. So the in-between, risky, releases will use the breezy support model?
Every two years will bring a Dapper quality release. The way Mark has described it before, its as if the releases in between those two years are basically building up to these Dapper quality releases:
Our current plan is that the Dapper Drake (Ubuntu 6.06 if we hit our June 2006 release date goal) will be the last of this first "set" of releases. So post-Dapper we have the opportunity to define a new "feel" or overarching theme. It would be unlikely to be... blue. But it might be substantially different to the current Human theme.
Each of these in between releases will get the same level of support as all the Ubuntus before Dapper.
I personally have been excited about Edgy long before it was announced. Once you get the hang of it, its easy to spot which Ubuntu releases are for you.
The first releases after the two year major releases will have changes in styles and will be very distinct and maybe a little crazy- just like Warty was when it hit back in the day. All the exciting things the major release had to skip during the year can be added to this release. Mark has already said that Edgy will bring a new color scheme- exciting!
The second release after the major release will be the best of the in betweens- the craziness of the previous release will be polished down some and the time when these releases will come (Spring) is after all the major releases at the end of the previous year. Hoary was really great for this reason.
The third release after a major release will be the most compromised- many new things might be dumped on this release so the Dapper quality release can use the release as development time for its more boring platform. Long before Breezy came out I was scared because it in a bad time of the year for a distro release (right before the new Open Office, Xorg and Firefox were released) and because it had to take on large bites (modular Xorg before Xorg was ready, GCC transition for PART of the system, etc.) to make life easier for Dapper. As a result Breezy seems to be the most buggy release (yet many of these problems - like floppies not working and an unstable OpenOffice- has been fixed post release).
Then we have another Dapper quality release and the IT managers of the world can pay attention again. Long live Ubuntu.
How modern are they? Can I go to the store and buy one?
Does suspend work without work? Does video acceration work without work? Does the internal wireless work without work?
I have searched for months, and I cannot find a (new) laptop that will support Linux 100%. Some get really close (aka wireless and video card will work) but then will fail in one area (aka perfect ACPI support) and I have to give up on the entire thing.
If you know some magic set of laptops that work 100% out of the box with Linux then please tell me, because I am tired of looking. I might just break down and buy a Mac....
(P.S. If any answer you give me has a freaking ATI card it in, please keep it to yourself. ATI might officially spport Linux, but not out of the box and not good enough for my needs. Intel is even better for me).
Software engineering is an art in its own right. It takes a lot of creativity to program well.....
Why would I want to do that? I run 32 bit Ubuntu on my 64 bit box to avoid that kind of pain.
Unless you need more than 4 gigs of RAM, why hurt yourself with the 64 bit version? Sure its a little faster, but not enough to warrent the lack of flash/java/xgl....
Not really. From day one with Dapper Mark has planned for it to be a higher quality release. For example, he plans to support it longer than the rest. Why did he do this? Well for one many people don't like an upgrade every six months. I talk to some people that think that Windows upgrades (like SP2) come around too quickly. The Dapper release is for these people. If the corporate world wants, it can skip from Dapper quality release to Dapper quality release (as such will be released every two years) while being supported the entire way.
A problem with Dapper is that "higher quality" also means "more boring." Ubuntu is meant to be on the bleeding edge, but with Dapper less risks were taken. Edgy will fix this problem and bring Ubuntu back to the edge once more.
Wouldn't it be smarter to have a "risk team" playing around for the next release while the current release is being polished so that when the rest of the team starts working on the next release there's already been enough time on it to make sure it is production quality?
There are many things needed to make a production quality Linux OS. Ubuntu is a slave to its release cycle- if the programs are ready when Ubuntu releases then it will be a good release. Dapper is more "corporate worthy" than say Breezy because when it releases it will have many landmark pieces of software in it - a non buggy OpenOffice 2, Firefox 1.5, etc. Mark can't change the release dates for all software used in Ubuntu, so some releases will just have to be worse than others for this reason.
Plus, making every release of equal quality will cost a lot more....
True, but compatibility is high enough for the average home user- simple Word documents usually transfer perfectly.
The Java plugin is a pain in the hole to set up on Linux compared to Windows and the Flash plugin (yes, lots of people, myself included, like Flash movies) is absolutely terrible on Linux.
The difficulty here is fixed by something like Automatix.
KDE and GNOME both "feel" less snappy on this Duron 1.8GHz than Windows XP does on a P3 766MHz.
I disagree, but I have been using composite in Linux for almost a full year now so Windows seems sluggish to me. And boring (seeing as how it can't flip my applications across a 3D cube like Linux can).
And this isn't just uninformed trolling, I've tried Linux a lot of times and always gone back because nothing has improved.
It does improve, just at an incremental rate. Plus most of the things you list (Java, Flash) are third party pluggins, so they will only improve when the makers of them choose to improve them.
For some of us, its good enough today. Or last year. Or the year before. It comes down to what your needs are on the desktop. For the majority of people I have ever met (who treat their computers like glorified word processors and web browsers) its good enough right now. Its just not far better and has a learning curve so there is little reason for normal users to try it......
OSX is only a painless experience if you have a lot of money. It lacks many pieces of free software (decent Open Office anyone?) that pretty much requires you to spend more money on software then you would in Linuxland.
In many ways OSX is the opposite of Linux. In Linux everything is free (in a monetary sense), but the price is that few things work well together and you have to spend your own time working out problems. In OSX almost nothing is free, but if you stick with only buying (overpriced) Apple software and hardware then its a breeze.
Linux represents the lowest "class" of OSes. Windows is the middle class. OSX is the upper class.
Personally I prefer Linux despite its low class status because my time is pretty much worthless- it makes for a fun hobby. But one day I will have more money and less time so then I might use Macs....
Then for your sake I hope that technical inadequacy is not a sexually transmitted disease.
Plus....you are the female in the relationship (apparently) - you should be calling the shots! Download some freaking Firefox and give him an ultimatum. Home use of Internet Explorer is a crime against humanity......
Why would Linux zealots want to admit this? What do they gain? Humility?
Plus, Linux is very suitable for true computer newbies. It makes office documents and browses the web better then one could hope for considering the price. Its the middle of the road computer users (or "Windows Power Users") that have most of the problems because they come to Linux with very specific expectations ("It has to run this application, do this task and use this odd piece of hardware") yet lack the patience needed to overcome these obstacles.
In the long run, it might be better that snobs turn people off Linux. At least then they don't spread false hope....
I might be a snob for saying this, but in non work situations the use of Internet Explorer implies very strongly to me "I am not very good with computers." Even if you don't like Firefox, Opera is free nowadays.
Welcome to the 21st century, I hope you join us soon.......
That is because such a generalization is often wrong. There are very few things that Linux can not do what so ever.
There ARE many things that requires tons of command line hacking and compiling and other nasty things to get done though. So I guess the true statement would be "Sorry, Linux can't do that easily," but since easy is a relative term I don't expect anyone who considers themselves to be elitist to state such a thing.
The worst thing Linux zealots do is create such a hype (such as a "replace everything with Linux and it will work better") in the first place.
The open graphics project exists and its very successful. Its just called "Intel Graphics."
You are a very knowledgeable person Mr. Smirl when it comes to graphics so I must ask you- why does everyone ignore Intel?
If all the Intel laptops (with Intel chipsets) work well out of the box, this is larger than the overall Mac market. Why doesn't someone sell it on an AGP board? Why don't more people talk about it? Why is not more work done on the Intel driver?
Too bad. When you give away things for free and go on about freedom you have to expect some people to do things with it you never wanted. Thats what true freedom is.
If you OSS people didn't have so much great free (as in beer) software then maybe pragmatic leeches like myself will go away.
You can just go back to using Windows or OS X. You are not welcome in our community (what a crazy idea! A community where everyone contributes!).
Or option three- I can blow you off and continue to use Linux.
The party is over. From now till the time Linux is no more a trend will occur: the percentage of users of Linux who care about FSF and RMS style freedoms will become less and less. At one time people like yourself who valued freedom over everything were the majority but I think that is no longer the case. You all messed up and made a great system that practical people like myself can use as well.
So as much as it might hurt your feelings people like myself and the parent poster aren't going anywhere. Instead you will find youself to be a minority in the community.
To rub a little salt in the wound, I will now admit that in the past two months I have bought 10 Nvidia cards JUST FOR THEIR CLOSED DRIVERS. I want to spread XGL and its wonderful effects to my friends and family so I outfitted all of their computers with these cards so that they could try it out. Personally I gave open source drivers a chance - I bought a ATI 9200 which has the best open source graphics drivers on the earth - and I was really disappointed. The features were never there to a point I wanted, nor was the performance. I replaced that card with a 6600 GT (and its closed driver) and now I can do everything I want.
Is it shortsighted to favor a company with closed drivers just for some eye candy? Of course. But in the grand scheme of things, my life is in the short term so screw it. There is always the ability for fork for people like yourself- make a new Linux free from leeches like myself if you want.
Just don't pretend you can tell me what to do.....or that I will listen.
Not really. Gobo is cool, but the way "Linux" (as in the OS, not the kernel) is its actually harder to use than an Ubuntu for most users. If the Linux community actually wanted the OSX like packages then by that merit alone Gobo would have become a major distro (just as Ubuntu came out of nowhere recently to claim the top place). What we actually want is to have as many software packages as possible.
That's why Ubuntu got popular- it forked the distro with (maybe) the most amount of software "released" for it. Package managers work great if the software you want can easily be installed by them. If you can't then most of the time the software is not "released" for you distro anyway and YET ANOTHER PACKAGE FORMAT (YAPF) won't solve that problem alone.
Things like apt-get control the chaos that is the Linux desktop. Projects like Autopackage have looked at making a universal OSX type installer for the Linux desktop, only to find that its basically too hard.
Repositories and package managers do an ok job. The main problem people have with them is if they lack new enough packages or certain packages. In each case a better way to install software does not matter- if people refuse to support a distro then YAPF will not convince them. If someone wants to support Ubuntu (and many developers do now) they will make debs which hopefully in the next version users will be able to install with a double click.
More like "I love Firefox so I want other people to spend their time to improve it for me." Or do you have a patch posted somewhere thats fixes this problem for you that I do not know about?
You are not a Firefox "customer." Either pull your weight or save your complaints for helpful bug reports. Discussion on /. never helps anything.
The essential problem is not a problem with the OSS community. Its a problem with the fact that the OSS community is so diverse that it is not possible to label it in a way that does not avoid contradictions. One such contradiction you pointed out is the simple one that many OSS projects are not friendly enough to pull in converts yet many in the OSS community want everyone to convert from closed source software. But this falls apart when you don't try to apply a label to THE ENTIRE OSS COMMUNITY as a whole and focus on what each faction within the OSS community wants. And that sucks, because human nature prefers simple labels for everything.
What do I mean by that? Simple- some factions of the OSS community care about certain things more than other factions do. For example, maybe those in the GIMP community couldn't give a damn about converting another single user from Photoshop. Who could blame them- for years they have been assaulted by those demanding that GIMP do "this thing" or "this feature" exactly like Photoshop does. So maybe they don't care about spreading OSS to the professional crowd. I can tell you after a year of using desktop Linux I no longer push it with others like I normally would because I am sick of hearing people gripe about not getting their games to play like they want. This can also apply to other parts of life- my father quit offering a cosmetic procedure in his private medical practice just because he was tired of hearing people gripe about the side effects he told people they would have before he did anything. Sometime you get sick of complaining.
Yet those in another OSS group the goals might be very different. Those people supporting Firefox for example probably DO want to switch over most of the world because the higher marketshare Firefox has the less chance web designers will make pages that work only with IE. They obviously care because that group has things like "Spread Firefox" combined with an emphasis on marketing (full page Firefox ad in NYT). So for these people the gripes of ex-IE users matters a lot more.
The biggest problem with OSS community is that you can't tie together the GIMP people and the Firefox people and the Ubuntu people with a common label. EACH OSS COMMUNITY has its own priorities...each has its own wants and needs. This is a very bad situation for those of us who DEMAND simple labels for everything, and who are used to a software industry that DOES have a common label and purpose (to please customers to make money). What is even worse is when some takes this traditional perspective on software development ("you are doing this for me the user and no other reason") to the OSS communities and finds that a particular community could not give a damn about its potential "customers."
Some look to the OSS community and do not see the factions and believe the community has many contradictions. It doesn't. Its more complicated than that. Yes that sucks for many people who demand simplicity, and it is part of the reason OSS fans backlash against the "morons" that do not understand them or their cause.
There is a BIG difference between being mildly offensive (aka calling black people black instead of African Americans) and being outright racist (calling them niggers). The acceptability of the first example (and the one that people attack when they call something PC) is up for debate but the second is not. Racism does not belong anywhere in the modern world, and all of us who are embarrassed by it can't wait for all of these racist people to die so we can move on as a species.
You think that's bad? What till this question of yours is marked to be the flamebait it is. The article is very important because now we know almost exactly how long slavery lasted in the New World. Your vocabulary implies to me why you do not care.
On a slow news day, I would prefer /. share such things with me instead of dupes.
Which is why I think Intel gives THE best hardware support to Linux out of all the major hardware makers (Intel PAYS people to make open source drivers for their hardware often times- at most many of the others just give out specs). Intel has the only Directx 9 compatible video cards with open drivers and they have the best open wireless drivers.
The happy marriage between Intel and MS of the 1990's is long gone I think after the whole Itanic thing.
Not really, because with the dual core AMD CPUs the 64 bit part is "free." Since these CPUs are faster than Intel's 32 bit processors (with 80%+ of applications) then you pay no premium for 64bitness. Its there if you want to use it though...
In fact in the newest Ubuntu, thats one of the best wireless cards to have....I would love to find an external version for my own use.
Just in case you did not know, there is a way to get (mostly) stable composite effects in Linux without Xgl.
I use Xcompmgr daily with no problems since the last Nvidia driver.
Really? Everything I read tells me that the crappy closed ATI drivers are still faster when it comes to 3D than the open source drivers.
I mean...its cool that at least one set of cards with decent 3D hardware has open driver, but those drivers are not for gamers to use. Its for me to use to get EXA.
It won't. The Xegl has been dead ever since Jon Smirl quit working on it. Development will begin again (it seems) when EXA is ready for primetime. So.... years.