Meanwhile, I think we should innovate. Let's take advantage of Reiser4 and develop a set of utilities to make the most of extended attributes. Let's work on ZeroConf and IPv6, making our systems ready for painless networking. Let's integrate the shell and the programming language, so we can use functions from shared libraries in the shell and have sudo-like access control for function calls (no more running the whole program as r00t because it needs to do one priviliged thing). Or anything else you come up with.
You've got some really great ideas. If you need a moderately-skilled college programmer to help implement them, give me a call;)
That's true, but it still kinda sticks out like a sore thumb. The way I'd recommend doing it is hard-wrapping the text and using spaces at the end of each line past a certain column to encode the information. You could probably encode it in source code by selectively using a mix of tabs and spaces for indentation too;)
It really is good for math rendering, which is what I use it for too. It's not so hot at exact placement, because there's no really easy way to say "I want figure 2 right here, right aligned, and wrap the text around it." Before I get flamed by the hardcore LaTeX zealots, yes, there *are* facilities for it. However, it's strongly encouraged by every tutorial and book I've read to let TeX place everything and just "focus on the content."
If Dell shipped Linux as a serious option, I'm sure they'd write and include drivers for the parts that aren't already supported. Admittedly, Dell's drivers usually leave something to be desired, but they would exist. With enough demand, new hardware *would* be supported on Linux by the manufacturer/distributer.
The hardware on my Inspiron (about a year old) works perfectly with Linux, and probably would've a year ago if Dell had provided drivers for their hardware instead of relying on the open-source community to write them. The non-Dell parts (vid card, sound, touchpad) are quite well supported. I think Dell's lack of a Linux option on laptops has more to do with support and demand. If they offered it, the sales would most likely be so low that it wouldn't be worth the extra effort. Most people don't know how to install an OS or use Linux, so they pick the OS they know.
The only problem with that is that it's not a drop-in replacement for IE. It uses the same interface, but you can't throw it in your system dir and have all your mshtml-using programs use Gecko instead. You need to use a binary patching tool, which when I last tried it, didn't really work so well with the programs I used.
Hopefully if MS is forced to open their APIs a little more, things could be made *exactly* compatible.
You make that sound like it's illegal or somehow wrong. MS gives out no-cost copies of Windows and associated programs all the time. It's just a marketing tactic. Most likely, they collect names and data so they can send you product info and advertisements, not so they can watch you to see if you violate the license.
No one's forcing anybody to take software, and if you don't read the license when you get a free version of otherwise costly software, then you get what you deserve.
Yeah, technically JACK's a sound server, but it's much simpler than aRts or esound. All it does is provide low-latency software mixing without being tied to one desktop environment. It doesn't do network transparency or simulate a "complete analog synthesizer". aRts and esound are overkill for 99% of users out there, and the fact that most apps are hardcoded for one or the other hurts the usability of Linux for multimedia.
Does that use some builtin KDE ripper/encoder, or can I make it use cdparanoia and lame? I'd *kill* to be able to use Konqueror and drag-and-drop to rip with them.
I'm on a P4 1.8 Ghz with 368mb ram, and KDE isn't exactly speedy. Konqueror takes about 7 seconds to open a new window, and it goes unresponsive for about a second when I open a new tab. Nautilus opens new windows instantly.
Gnome is really strange with regards to their design... some of their UI is very good, and some just sucks. I really wish KDE would steal their code for shading the selection rectangle and shading icons when you're dragging something over them so you can actually *tell* whether you're over the icon or not.
As I said in my other reply, I can't really get a new sound card... that said, I do take exception to one of your statements. If Linux can't do proper mixing, why do I need a better sound card to do it? Windows (or my Intel drivers, not sure which) did software mixing just fine on this box.
I've tried DMIX. It's a mess. It took quite a bit of work to set up, and when I was done I could play in as many Alsaplayers as I wanted, but my KDE and Gnome apps still weren't supported. I'd love to get rid of both sound servers, but damn near every decent media player only supports one or the other, not ALSA or, as another poster mentioned, JACK. The only one that has a decent system for output plugins is XMMS, and that doesn't suit my needs.
This is something I hear all the time. You're correct in claiming that we won't beat MS by copying them. However, it's also true that as long as we purposefully avoid features and methods simply because they're used by MS, we won't even come close.
Integration features are extremely useful, and if done properly, could be big draw for potential users of Linux. "Loosely coupled" does not mean that components can't work together as much as possible. Lack of deep integration is not the "very basis of what makes GNU/Linux great." If what we need can't be done by traditional Unix tools, it's not right to write off the idea as "anti-Unix" and throw it away.
I agree completely. Part of the problem is that they *change* the driver interfaces pretty frequently, which is a big no-no. It's pretty hard to document a moving target, especially something that isn't particularly glamourous, like PCI interfaces. Nobody wants to write the documentation for it.
Linux needs something like MSDN, even if it means paying for a recent copy. I'd shell out for a subscription for up to date CDs or DVDs of high quality, accurate developer documentation for Linux. Even nicer would be having a website like MSDN that's constantly updated.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this with a bunch of comments saying "We should innovate instead of just copying MS!!!!1", but why do something intentionally wrong just because the right way happens to also be done by Microsoft?
The default is extremely important. Most people don't know how to change the default. That's one of the reasons why IE won the browser war, and why Windows Media Player is still used. If you want people to use your software, the majority should be able to use the defaults comfortably.
Maybe I'm not getting something about DVD-Audio, but why put a sub-cd-quality copy of the music on the disc?
First, is DVD-Audio DRM'ed so you can't rip and encode? Second, if somebody's going to spend the extra $$ to buy a disc with super extra high quality, are they going to care about a lossy stereo encoding?
Linux is making progress, but it's got a ways to go.
KDE and Gnome and whoever else have to get over their egos and decide on a single sound server too. Right now, I have arts routed to esd routed to ALSA routed to hardware, just so I can play sound in more than one application. Movies look like thy're dubbed over in some other language, because the audio is always out of sync.
If I want to play a game that isn't esd or arts aware, I have to "killall artsd;/etc/init.d/esound stop" as root. There is absolutely no reason why this should be necessary.
Of course, sound servers are just a kludge around something else that's wrong: ALSA needs decent mixing support! It claims to support software mixing, but you need to setup a config file with plugins, and even then it doesn't work with anything besides the simplest applications.
Sorry if this came off a bit rantish, but I've been fighting with this stuff for nearly a week, and it's really frustrating. That said, the upper-level software support on Linux really is good, and there are lots of good media players and free codecs coming out.
Before I installed Linux on my Inspiron, the suspend/resume worked perfectly. I never used the modem, so I wouldn't know if it worked, but my USB mouse and gamepad worked fine after resume. Haven't quite figured out how to get suspend working in Linux though... every time I put the screen down, I have to hit the "External Moniter/LCD" key to get my display back.
Gentoo's been really good to me in that regard. I installed it on my laptop, which has never had a Linux distro work properly on it before. Despite the fact that they manage to put releases in Portage the same day stuff becomes available, the quality is still remarkably good.
The install is a little hairy if you're not friendly with the command line. I'd recommend printing off the install guide or having another computer around, because reading the install instructiong with Links is a pain. If you compile from source it'll take a while, but you can also install the Gentoo Reference Platform, which is binaries of everything from bash to KDE/Gnome.
Now that I've quoted all the propaganda... Yes, Gentoo is pretty good with their configs. They don't provide the customized config tools of SuSE, but the combination of Webmin and kcontrol/gnome-control-center is pretty damn good.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true, but it still kinda sticks out like a sore thumb. The way I'd recommend doing it is hard-wrapping the text and using spaces at the end of each line past a certain column to encode the information. You could probably encode it in source code by selectively using a mix of tabs and spaces for indentation too ;)
It really is good for math rendering, which is what I use it for too. It's not so hot at exact placement, because there's no really easy way to say "I want figure 2 right here, right aligned, and wrap the text around it." Before I get flamed by the hardcore LaTeX zealots, yes, there *are* facilities for it. However, it's strongly encouraged by every tutorial and book I've read to let TeX place everything and just "focus on the content."
If Dell shipped Linux as a serious option, I'm sure they'd write and include drivers for the parts that aren't already supported. Admittedly, Dell's drivers usually leave something to be desired, but they would exist. With enough demand, new hardware *would* be supported on Linux by the manufacturer/distributer.
The hardware on my Inspiron (about a year old) works perfectly with Linux, and probably would've a year ago if Dell had provided drivers for their hardware instead of relying on the open-source community to write them. The non-Dell parts (vid card, sound, touchpad) are quite well supported. I think Dell's lack of a Linux option on laptops has more to do with support and demand. If they offered it, the sales would most likely be so low that it wouldn't be worth the extra effort. Most people don't know how to install an OS or use Linux, so they pick the OS they know.
The only problem with that is that it's not a drop-in replacement for IE. It uses the same interface, but you can't throw it in your system dir and have all your mshtml-using programs use Gecko instead. You need to use a binary patching tool, which when I last tried it, didn't really work so well with the programs I used.
Hopefully if MS is forced to open their APIs a little more, things could be made *exactly* compatible.
You make that sound like it's illegal or somehow wrong. MS gives out no-cost copies of Windows and associated programs all the time. It's just a marketing tactic. Most likely, they collect names and data so they can send you product info and advertisements, not so they can watch you to see if you violate the license.
No one's forcing anybody to take software, and if you don't read the license when you get a free version of otherwise costly software, then you get what you deserve.
Yeah, technically JACK's a sound server, but it's much simpler than aRts or esound. All it does is provide low-latency software mixing without being tied to one desktop environment. It doesn't do network transparency or simulate a "complete analog synthesizer". aRts and esound are overkill for 99% of users out there, and the fact that most apps are hardcoded for one or the other hurts the usability of Linux for multimedia.
Ok, I tried using Ctrl-N, and that's instant. Thanks for the tip! Why doesn't Konqueror do that when you open a copy from the K menu?
Does that use some builtin KDE ripper/encoder, or can I make it use cdparanoia and lame? I'd *kill* to be able to use Konqueror and drag-and-drop to rip with them.
I'm on a P4 1.8 Ghz with 368mb ram, and KDE isn't exactly speedy. Konqueror takes about 7 seconds to open a new window, and it goes unresponsive for about a second when I open a new tab. Nautilus opens new windows instantly.
Gnome is really strange with regards to their design... some of their UI is very good, and some just sucks. I really wish KDE would steal their code for shading the selection rectangle and shading icons when you're dragging something over them so you can actually *tell* whether you're over the icon or not.
They should completely dump the sound servers and use JACK. It's a lot faster, and isn't tied to one or the other.
I've been running the betas for about a week, and the spatial file manager is surprisingly good :)
How hard would it be to convert my whole system to JACK? If the interface isn't too hard, I'd try my hand at writing an Arts plugin to connect to it.
As I said in my other reply, I can't really get a new sound card... that said, I do take exception to one of your statements. If Linux can't do proper mixing, why do I need a better sound card to do it? Windows (or my Intel drivers, not sure which) did software mixing just fine on this box.
I've tried DMIX. It's a mess. It took quite a bit of work to set up, and when I was done I could play in as many Alsaplayers as I wanted, but my KDE and Gnome apps still weren't supported. I'd love to get rid of both sound servers, but damn near every decent media player only supports one or the other, not ALSA or, as another poster mentioned, JACK. The only one that has a decent system for output plugins is XMMS, and that doesn't suit my needs.
I have a laptop. I'm pretty much stuck with my Intel AC97. How's the support for those silly external USB "sound cards"?
This is something I hear all the time. You're correct in claiming that we won't beat MS by copying them. However, it's also true that as long as we purposefully avoid features and methods simply because they're used by MS, we won't even come close.
Integration features are extremely useful, and if done properly, could be big draw for potential users of Linux. "Loosely coupled" does not mean that components can't work together as much as possible. Lack of deep integration is not the "very basis of what makes GNU/Linux great." If what we need can't be done by traditional Unix tools, it's not right to write off the idea as "anti-Unix" and throw it away.
I agree completely. Part of the problem is that they *change* the driver interfaces pretty frequently, which is a big no-no. It's pretty hard to document a moving target, especially something that isn't particularly glamourous, like PCI interfaces. Nobody wants to write the documentation for it.
Linux needs something like MSDN, even if it means paying for a recent copy. I'd shell out for a subscription for up to date CDs or DVDs of high quality, accurate developer documentation for Linux. Even nicer would be having a website like MSDN that's constantly updated.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this with a bunch of comments saying "We should innovate instead of just copying MS!!!!1", but why do something intentionally wrong just because the right way happens to also be done by Microsoft?
The default is extremely important. Most people don't know how to change the default. That's one of the reasons why IE won the browser war, and why Windows Media Player is still used. If you want people to use your software, the majority should be able to use the defaults comfortably.
Maybe I'm not getting something about DVD-Audio, but why put a sub-cd-quality copy of the music on the disc?
First, is DVD-Audio DRM'ed so you can't rip and encode? Second, if somebody's going to spend the extra $$ to buy a disc with super extra high quality, are they going to care about a lossy stereo encoding?
Linux is making progress, but it's got a ways to go.
/etc/init.d/esound stop" as root. There is absolutely no reason why this should be necessary.
KDE and Gnome and whoever else have to get over their egos and decide on a single sound server too. Right now, I have arts routed to esd routed to ALSA routed to hardware, just so I can play sound in more than one application. Movies look like thy're dubbed over in some other language, because the audio is always out of sync.
If I want to play a game that isn't esd or arts aware, I have to "killall artsd;
Of course, sound servers are just a kludge around something else that's wrong: ALSA needs decent mixing support! It claims to support software mixing, but you need to setup a config file with plugins, and even then it doesn't work with anything besides the simplest applications.
Sorry if this came off a bit rantish, but I've been fighting with this stuff for nearly a week, and it's really frustrating. That said, the upper-level software support on Linux really is good, and there are lots of good media players and free codecs coming out.
I have a iFP-340, and you can choose between supporting MP3 and Vorbis or MP3 and WMA.
I'd register loves.sex and wants.sex and start selling email addresses as fast as I could...
Before I installed Linux on my Inspiron, the suspend/resume worked perfectly. I never used the modem, so I wouldn't know if it worked, but my USB mouse and gamepad worked fine after resume. Haven't quite figured out how to get suspend working in Linux though... every time I put the screen down, I have to hit the "External Moniter/LCD" key to get my display back.
Gentoo's been really good to me in that regard. I installed it on my laptop, which has never had a Linux distro work properly on it before. Despite the fact that they manage to put releases in Portage the same day stuff becomes available, the quality is still remarkably good.
The install is a little hairy if you're not friendly with the command line. I'd recommend printing off the install guide or having another computer around, because reading the install instructiong with Links is a pain. If you compile from source it'll take a while, but you can also install the Gentoo Reference Platform, which is binaries of everything from bash to KDE/Gnome.
Now that I've quoted all the propaganda... Yes, Gentoo is pretty good with their configs. They don't provide the customized config tools of SuSE, but the combination of Webmin and kcontrol/gnome-control-center is pretty damn good.