Wishful thinking. With the acquisition of the company come all the patents and technologies associated with the Google brand. They'd have to reimplement everything, from scratch, without infringing upon any of Microsoft's newly-acquired patents.
See, now that's the problem right there. It's not that we care so much about what's on the White House website, since obviously none of it is going to be unbiased, objective reporting in the slightest and thus it has no significance to any of us who are doing real research rather than kissing ass to the President and Dale Earnhardt (because if you don't respect #3, you're unpatriotic and un-American). What we are concerned with is the ability for them to change their wording of things to save themselves from public scrutiny, and deny us the ability to say "Hey, what's going on? I could have sworn that was different a few days ago" and go check Google's cache or the Wayback Machine to determine that, yes, that quote is entirely different than the one that was initially posted.
I was of the same camp, for some time. Last year, I thought it would be five years before Linux/BSD would be ready for the desktop. Mucking around with KDE 2.2, Gnome 1.4, and all the ever-ugly applications and ill-designed crap soured my taste for Linux for awhile. Mplayer wouldn't compile. Xine was sloppy. VLC just sucked.
But you know what? This past August, I tried Linux again, and it's come far enough in just the year or so since I last used it where I've switched over all three of my desktops to Linux. Gnome 2.4 is beautiful. Evolution 1.4 is a very attractive piece of groupware software (I never faulted the design and intuitiveness of Outlook, which it obviously copied, but having Outlook on an operating system that doesn't cost $200 and isn't riddled with security holes is excellent). Xine is an excellent media player with an assload of different frontends like gxine and Totem to choose from. Pan beats the pants off of any Usenet news reader on Windows. For Web browsing, you can go with Mozilla/Firebird, or any of the native Gecko-based browsers like Epiphany or Galeon. Gaim exceeds AIM and Trillian in nearly every respect. Gnumeric implements every Excel worksheet function, in addition to some of its own. AbiWord's feature set is growing rapidly. And if you don't like the last two options, how about OpenOffice.org?
Switching screen resolutions under Gnome 2.4 is as easy as it is on Windows. There are very good tools for user and group management, even outside the scope of distribution-specific utilities like ConfigDrake.
We're getting there.
So Gimp isn't a suitable replacement for Photoshop yet? Who cares? Photoshop works just fine for me under Wine. So do games like Jedi Knight II, Diablo 2 and Starcraft. In fact, the only game I haven't gotten to run properly under Wine yet is Morrowind, and I suspect it's largely due to its very thorough use of DirectX 8.1 features like pixel shaders. Somehow I get the distinct feeling that this will be implemented correctly in the very near future. So what's left?
Of course, it's probably still easier to just use Windows. But what it boils down to, for me at least, is "is it easier enough to use Windows to justify me paying $200 for a license?" Not for me. Your mileage may vary, and I have no problem with that. I am not a zealot, just an advocate.
Face it, you're not going to be rendering in Maya, encoding DVDs to XviD/OGM or editing 60,000x20,000 pixel images in Photoshop on a 900 MHz CPU; Unreal Tournament 2003 isn't going to suck up all that memory running at 12 FPS on the integrated Intel graphics. And given the screen size, your ability to multitask is limited, since only so much will fit at once, so unless you feel like leaving open 70 minimized windows for some reason, that won't be an issue either.
With some services disabled, Windows XP will run fine on 96 MB of memory and Linux/BSD will do with the same or less depending on your WM du jour. I can't see why this much memory would be needed on a machine designed with productivity and groupware in mind. The default 256MB should be plenty.
What would be the point of putting in a 32-bit, 33 MHz gigabit NIC? The PCI bus itself couldn't saturate it, much less Linux. Do they even make those? But alas, I'm nitpicking and avoiding the real issue.:)
I absolutely agree, the BSD networking stack has been the de facto standard of TCP/IP for years, proven by the fact that even Microsoft jacked it for the TCP/IP implementation in Windows NT. But seeing as how Linux was built from the ground-up as a desktop Unix[-like] OS, it makes sense that I would be using it as such, am I wrong?
Gnome has many additional layers of abstraction, and you know it. I'm talking about things like the Bonobo activation server, gconfd, gnome-settings-daemon, and all sorts of other processes that consume system resources and slow things down for the purpose of ease of development and maintenance.
Compared to XFce4, CDE, Fluxbox, Openbox, WindowMaker, IceWM, or any of the countless other window managers I've tried, I'd say Gnome is pretty heavy.
FreeBSD handles resources more efficiently than GNU/Linux to the point that I can compile two programs at once, listen to MP3s and work on my website all at the same time without any significant slowdown. On the same computer using Gentoo or RedHat with either the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel, the system slows to a crawl under the same conditions. And comparing the speed and efficiency of FreeBSD to Windows is like comparing a cheetah to an armadillo.
This is a massive fallacy if ever I've heard one. On my Gentoo system, a 1.3 GHz Duron (which far from even mid-end these days), I'm running Gnome 2.4 (bloated as it is), chatting with friends in Gaim, compiling kde-libs/k3b and The Gimp in my F1/F2 terminals, browsing the Web in Firebird, reading email in Evolution, while another xnested Gnome session sits in the background burning a CD image from an NFS mount (too lazy to add my user to the cd-recording group, sue me) in gcombust and a Windows server at work defragments in tsclient. Thanks to the preemptive kernel scheduler patch which Gentoo distributes in their genkernel, this system is still entirely responsive.
Besides, I think Gentoo's ports system is more robust than BSD's.
When is the last time a vulnerability in the windows kernel was found?
How about that bug that let you inject code into any running process with a window handle to use that process's logon/user credentials? This, of course, is just one humorous testament to why window management and GUI code should not be integrated into the kernel. It's not a big deal on a desktop system, but there really ought to be a good layer of separation in a "serious" server environment.
Or how about the kernel message boundary checking bug from April?
You did just give me a pretty cool idea for a distributed webpage network. It could be peer-to-peer like BitTorrent, but integrated into the web browser via some plugin or something to make browsing seamless. Add another tally to the list of shit that would be cool that I would never, ever work on due to my overwhelming laziness.
And, to nitpick, the.torrent is not the file you're downloading with BitTorrent.
Why the hell do I want to drag an 800x600 window around? This is not something I do on a daily basis.
I was making a point that X redraws windows faster and more smoothly than Win32 does, not saying "HAY GUYZ ISN'T THIS COOL?" Have you even used XFree86 4.3.0? It's way faster than Windows, much less 4.2.1 and under. If you have an issue with a certain toolkit, like Qt/KDE, then that's not at all dependent on the windowing system, like is stated in the original poster's argument.
Sure, KDE can do that, but only from utilities built in to KDE.
I think the XSETTINGS specification from FreeDesktop.org may cover this, and once it's finalized, shouldn't take very long at all to be implemented by most DEs.
I agree, printing is one thing that on Unix/Linux still needs a good bit of work. KDE makes it easy to configure printers, but it's going to take a lot more than one desktop environment to make it stick. I just hope Gnome adds something like this soon, as does Xfce (my other favorite WM/DE).
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, but it would be running on Linux.
Wishful thinking. With the acquisition of the company come all the patents and technologies associated with the Google brand. They'd have to reimplement everything, from scratch, without infringing upon any of Microsoft's newly-acquired patents.
I command you to stop that.
You know, Rod Roddy from The Price is Right is also dead, at 66.
See, now that's the problem right there. It's not that we care so much about what's on the White House website, since obviously none of it is going to be unbiased, objective reporting in the slightest and thus it has no significance to any of us who are doing real research rather than kissing ass to the President and Dale Earnhardt (because if you don't respect #3, you're unpatriotic and un-American). What we are concerned with is the ability for them to change their wording of things to save themselves from public scrutiny, and deny us the ability to say "Hey, what's going on? I could have sworn that was different a few days ago" and go check Google's cache or the Wayback Machine to determine that, yes, that quote is entirely different than the one that was initially posted.
I was of the same camp, for some time. Last year, I thought it would be five years before Linux/BSD would be ready for the desktop. Mucking around with KDE 2.2, Gnome 1.4, and all the ever-ugly applications and ill-designed crap soured my taste for Linux for awhile. Mplayer wouldn't compile. Xine was sloppy. VLC just sucked.
But you know what? This past August, I tried Linux again, and it's come far enough in just the year or so since I last used it where I've switched over all three of my desktops to Linux. Gnome 2.4 is beautiful. Evolution 1.4 is a very attractive piece of groupware software (I never faulted the design and intuitiveness of Outlook, which it obviously copied, but having Outlook on an operating system that doesn't cost $200 and isn't riddled with security holes is excellent). Xine is an excellent media player with an assload of different frontends like gxine and Totem to choose from. Pan beats the pants off of any Usenet news reader on Windows. For Web browsing, you can go with Mozilla/Firebird, or any of the native Gecko-based browsers like Epiphany or Galeon. Gaim exceeds AIM and Trillian in nearly every respect. Gnumeric implements every Excel worksheet function, in addition to some of its own. AbiWord's feature set is growing rapidly. And if you don't like the last two options, how about OpenOffice.org?
Switching screen resolutions under Gnome 2.4 is as easy as it is on Windows. There are very good tools for user and group management, even outside the scope of distribution-specific utilities like ConfigDrake.
We're getting there.
So Gimp isn't a suitable replacement for Photoshop yet? Who cares? Photoshop works just fine for me under Wine. So do games like Jedi Knight II, Diablo 2 and Starcraft. In fact, the only game I haven't gotten to run properly under Wine yet is Morrowind, and I suspect it's largely due to its very thorough use of DirectX 8.1 features like pixel shaders. Somehow I get the distinct feeling that this will be implemented correctly in the very near future. So what's left?
Of course, it's probably still easier to just use Windows. But what it boils down to, for me at least, is "is it easier enough to use Windows to justify me paying $200 for a license?" Not for me. Your mileage may vary, and I have no problem with that. I am not a zealot, just an advocate.
Thanks for the insightful plan, buddy!
Most people think that Windows programs will run in Linux.
;)
Oh wait...
...that by "tabs" you mean "tits."
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.
I don't understand the mplayer reference.
Go back to bashing objectivismn and dressing up like Sephiroth, you Hot Topic fag.
I can't think of anything tougher or more manly than reading your email on a sleek and slim computer at an 802.11 hotspot, can you?
Face it, you're not going to be rendering in Maya, encoding DVDs to XviD/OGM or editing 60,000x20,000 pixel images in Photoshop on a 900 MHz CPU; Unreal Tournament 2003 isn't going to suck up all that memory running at 12 FPS on the integrated Intel graphics. And given the screen size, your ability to multitask is limited, since only so much will fit at once, so unless you feel like leaving open 70 minimized windows for some reason, that won't be an issue either.
With some services disabled, Windows XP will run fine on 96 MB of memory and Linux/BSD will do with the same or less depending on your WM du jour. I can't see why this much memory would be needed on a machine designed with productivity and groupware in mind. The default 256MB should be plenty.
Must be a pretty broad misconception -- thanks for bringing this to light and proving my ignorance. :)
I think you need to take some Ritalin, or something.
What would be the point of putting in a 32-bit, 33 MHz gigabit NIC? The PCI bus itself couldn't saturate it, much less Linux. Do they even make those? But alas, I'm nitpicking and avoiding the real issue. :)
I absolutely agree, the BSD networking stack has been the de facto standard of TCP/IP for years, proven by the fact that even Microsoft jacked it for the TCP/IP implementation in Windows NT. But seeing as how Linux was built from the ground-up as a desktop Unix[-like] OS, it makes sense that I would be using it as such, am I wrong?
Please, stop being a trolling dipshit.
Gnome has many additional layers of abstraction, and you know it. I'm talking about things like the Bonobo activation server, gconfd, gnome-settings-daemon, and all sorts of other processes that consume system resources and slow things down for the purpose of ease of development and maintenance.
Compared to XFce4, CDE, Fluxbox, Openbox, WindowMaker, IceWM, or any of the countless other window managers I've tried, I'd say Gnome is pretty heavy.
This is a massive fallacy if ever I've heard one. On my Gentoo system, a 1.3 GHz Duron (which far from even mid-end these days), I'm running Gnome 2.4 (bloated as it is), chatting with friends in Gaim, compiling kde-libs/k3b and The Gimp in my F1/F2 terminals, browsing the Web in Firebird, reading email in Evolution, while another xnested Gnome session sits in the background burning a CD image from an NFS mount (too lazy to add my user to the cd-recording group, sue me) in gcombust and a Windows server at work defragments in tsclient. Thanks to the preemptive kernel scheduler patch which Gentoo distributes in their genkernel, this system is still entirely responsive.
Besides, I think Gentoo's ports system is more robust than BSD's.
In the corporate world, isn't this generally regarded as "not a whole lot of money?"
Or how about the kernel message boundary checking bug from April?
You did just give me a pretty cool idea for a distributed webpage network. It could be peer-to-peer like BitTorrent, but integrated into the web browser via some plugin or something to make browsing seamless. Add another tally to the list of shit that would be cool that I would never, ever work on due to my overwhelming laziness.
.torrent is not the file you're downloading with BitTorrent.
And, to nitpick, the
And the page has already been removed.
Well, now, this sure is disappointing.
I think the XSETTINGS specification from FreeDesktop.org may cover this, and once it's finalized, shouldn't take very long at all to be implemented by most DEs.
Synaptic?
I agree, printing is one thing that on Unix/Linux still needs a good bit of work. KDE makes it easy to configure printers, but it's going to take a lot more than one desktop environment to make it stick. I just hope Gnome adds something like this soon, as does Xfce (my other favorite WM/DE).