Good article. I know Singer from one of his books and from several magazine articles about the things that happended to him (he sure shook things up, especially in Germany a while ago), and I think this man is doing the right thing.
I wish to argue the point that there is not enough freedom. I think the problem is that there is not enough of the right freedom and too much of the wrong freedom. I think a limit on freedom is necessary for a civilisation, because it would otherwise fall apart. Too much freedom would inspire - or even require, for consistency of the system - the rule of the jungle to regulate it all: the fittest survive and the rest (should) die. Now, most civilised people will find that a gruesome world to live in.
I have a rule of thumb that keeps me realising that too much freedom is just, well, too much. I think it will be especially popular in the United States, which seem to have one of the keywords written all over their national flag, but I don't wish to offend the Americans. It goes (drum roll): DEmocracy leads to DEcandence. It's really short and the parts that make it easy to remember are capitalised. Watch commercial television for a few hours and you know what I mean.
Enlightenment sure looks cool. And, as a former Amiga user (and actually wannabe future Amiga user), I like the detail about the overlapping desktops. That is how it should be. The GUI in general (on Mac, Windows, Unix, Linux, etc) has been focussed around windows (I mean the things on your screen, not the 'other OS') so long people have forgotten that windows actually suck. I hate scroll bars and I hate windows, because they are only needed because you cannot see everything at once. But there are more elegant methods and one of them is to stop using windows for every application an instead giving them an entire screen each. The Amiga did it and it works better. So thumbs up, you guys at Enlightenment!
But enough about Amiga. I was asking where the desktop OS was. Really, where is it? Making cool looking GUI things is ok, but what are you going to put it onto? Linux sure needs a lot of work before it can become a desktop operating system, so why not focus on that, instead of on the cool looking GFX. I know, it's probably a lot more boring, but who IS making Linux better suited for the desktop at the moment? It needs to be a lot faster (booting, GUI-feedback, that kind of areas). I hope it is not going to be just forgotten, or we'll end up with something of a Microsoft taste: fat, sluggish and narrow-focussed. We don't want that, now do we?
NT vs. Linux shows Slashdot readers' myopism
on
NT vs. Linux: Again
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· Score: 1
Despite the facts and fiction that have been said about the comparison of Linux to NT, something else has surfaced: most Slashdot readers seem te be reading only Slashdot. It is so strange to see how people seem to depend only on this otherwise fantastic source of info. It is only ONE source. (But it's OPEN! harr harr.) A few days ago I read an article in a German computer magazine - sorry, THE German computer magazine - and in it they showed that the tests Mindcraft (what a stupid name BTW) were everything but real-life. And because the guys at PC Week Lab's did the same tests, their tests suffer from equal non-life-realism (does this word exist in English? Nah, don't matter.). In the German article, Linux did pretty well (on a 4CPU / 2GB RAM / RAID-5 server). Even SMP wasn't bad all the time. I realise that German magazines, especially the dead-tree variants, are not as accessible to most Slashdot readers. But I still get the feeling that if I were to say "BOO!" on slashdot, ten minutes later all hell would have broken loose.
Now, the moral of the story: - The Linux-NT comparisons of both Mindcraft and PC Week Labs lack realism. - Slashdot readers: think before you send comments.
Slashdot Mirror
Good article. I know Singer from one of his books and from several magazine articles about the things that happended to him (he sure shook things up, especially in Germany a while ago), and I think this man is doing the right thing.
I wish to argue the point that there is not enough freedom. I think the problem is that there is not enough of the right freedom and too much of the wrong freedom. I think a limit on freedom is necessary for a civilisation, because it would otherwise fall apart. Too much freedom would inspire - or even require, for consistency of the system - the rule of the jungle to regulate it all: the fittest survive and the rest (should) die. Now, most civilised people will find that a gruesome world to live in.
I have a rule of thumb that keeps me realising that too much freedom is just, well, too much. I think it will be especially popular in the United States, which seem to have one of the keywords written all over their national flag, but I don't wish to offend the Americans. It goes (drum roll): DEmocracy leads to DEcandence. It's really short and the parts that make it easy to remember are capitalised. Watch commercial television for a few hours and you know what I mean.
Enlightenment sure looks cool. And, as a former Amiga user (and actually wannabe future Amiga user), I like the detail about the overlapping desktops. That is how it should be. The GUI in general (on Mac, Windows, Unix, Linux, etc) has been focussed around windows (I mean the things on your screen, not the 'other OS') so long people have forgotten that windows actually suck. I hate scroll bars and I hate windows, because they are only needed because you cannot see everything at once. But there are more elegant methods and one of them is to stop using windows for every application an instead giving them an entire screen each. The Amiga did it and it works better. So thumbs up, you guys at Enlightenment!
But enough about Amiga. I was asking where the desktop OS was. Really, where is it? Making cool looking GUI things is ok, but what are you going to put it onto? Linux sure needs a lot of work before it can become a desktop operating system, so why not focus on that, instead of on the cool looking GFX. I know, it's probably a lot more boring, but who IS making Linux better suited for the desktop at the moment? It needs to be a lot faster (booting, GUI-feedback, that kind of areas). I hope it is not going to be just forgotten, or we'll end up with something of a Microsoft taste: fat, sluggish and narrow-focussed. We don't want that, now do we?
Despite the facts and fiction that have been said about the comparison of Linux to NT, something else has surfaced: most Slashdot readers seem te be reading only Slashdot. It is so strange to see how people seem to depend only on this otherwise fantastic source of info. It is only ONE source. (But it's OPEN! harr harr.) A few days ago I read an article in a German computer magazine - sorry, THE German computer magazine - and in it they showed that the tests Mindcraft (what a stupid name BTW) were everything but real-life. And because the guys at PC Week Lab's did the same tests, their tests suffer from equal non-life-realism (does this word exist in English? Nah, don't matter.).
In the German article, Linux did pretty well (on a 4CPU / 2GB RAM / RAID-5 server). Even SMP wasn't bad all the time.
I realise that German magazines, especially the dead-tree variants, are not as accessible to most Slashdot readers. But I still get the feeling that if I were to say "BOO!" on slashdot, ten minutes later all hell would have broken loose.
Now, the moral of the story:
- The Linux-NT comparisons of both Mindcraft and PC Week Labs lack realism.
- Slashdot readers: think before you send comments.