Well actually it is that fanaticism that started gnu in the first place and is still a driving force behind it, Many of the people involved would rather have an open system that works less well (you see these are not just things as you see them now but also as they will potentially grow in the future).
Binary only drivers could potenialy take effective control of the linux operating system out of the communities hands. A lot of people out there still remember what happened to unix.
Binary only drivers also cause lots of everyday mundane problems with kernel development too. It is impossible to properly debug a kernel running binary only modules, or to guarantee security.
Having said that - I don't think the current players are trying to take control of the kernel or anything like that. I would not be that grateful if binary only modules where completley removed. There are a whole bunch of practical reasons why opensource drivers work better under linux... In the current situation opensource drivers ultimately take less work from the user, products based on opensource drivers (or standard hardware drivers) have a much longer lifespan.
Ultimately I would like to see a carrot rather than stick approach. Having opensource drivers *Is* a big selling point for me. I would like to see in the future boxes with *open driver quality assurance* written on them. This would be the second largest selling point for me after - will the device perform the job that it needs to.
I think I am done ranting
Why Care about Ogg???
Some of us are linux users. Open Codecs work with most tools out of the box. Because of Licensing issues MP3 does not work out of the box for most of us. AAC and WMA are now supported by some software and services but ogg is supported by every linux tool I have come across so far. Ogg offers better size/quality than MP3 though is probably comparable to ACC. I also care who owns the data format I keep my data files in - This may be hard for people to understand as it does not provide any short term benefits. In the long term however it safeguards you against things like vendor lockin.
What I am more interested in is support for non lossy codecs such as flac. Particularly being able to record in these formats.
Also being a linux user - I simply do not have access to iTunes - but have a large collection of Music that I have ripped from my CD collection and purchased online in Ogg Vorbis and Flac format. I understand why the majority of users may want to stick with the Apple firmware. But something like Rockbox makes the Ipod look more attractive to somebody like me.
I understand that some companies could have legitimate uses for this technology. If thats what these companies had in mind why is this technology being pushed onto all PCs.
I don't mind these features but it looks as if the consumer is not going to have the right to choose whether they want these features or not. Like most people here I can see much potential for abuse by hardware and software companies. The two most ugly forms of abuse potentially are using a persons documents as ransom to make sure they buy subscriptions to the software they use and deliberately making documents uninteroperable between different tools.
No this is accurate
You wouldn't believe how many times requests to make gimp MDI go through the gimp lists and everytime it is brought up on the web.
It appears that there are a lot of people out there who have only used the PC version of Photoshop.
What needs to happen is either it goes MDI or the SDI becomes as smart as it is for Photoshop on the Mac.
I am somewhat of a graphic professional and a Gimp user. While the GIMP does not match Photoshop feature for feature neither does it cost $1400 (the local cost).
I have long had difficulties regarding other designers and photoshop. I am self taught Photoshop was purhaps the 3rd graphics app I learnt, for most I suspect it is the first and last. It is not just the gimp that suffers from this it is just about every graphics app out there. For instance I read a magazine review of the latest version of Paint Shop Pro the only negative thing they could say about it was "it's not photoshop". I have known users who stubbornly have waited years for photoshop to gain a feature rather than use another tool which is built for the job they are trying to do. I will admit however there are some jobs where photoshop *is* the best choice.
Finally if you really could see yourself using linux but for photoshop. Write a letter to Adobe - Adobe wants to see that there is a market before they port. I don't think much else is going to convince them.
Ok I just did an exmap test on OOo Writer - I am getting ~50mb of effective memory usage. That is still the heaviest thing on my system apart from (x.org)...
I haven't actually got any document open (its a blank page) and I have disabled Java. I would love to test Microsoft Office but I have neither the money to waste nor a system to run it on:p
My first contact with Linux was in 1997. I was learning Java at University at the time and really wanted to test my java on another platform... I had also heard about the gimp and wanted to try another graphics program. I ran Linux as a secondary operating system for a few years...
So why did Linux become my primary operating system. It was the day I discovered a version of Linux that supported my scanner. Unlike anything I had used under Windows the scanner drivers did not lock up my graphics program while it was scanning. Which means I could start work touching up one image while the next one was being scanned - instead of sitting there twiddling my thumbs. Pure Genious
These Days I use a KDE Desktop its the little things I enjoy - the ability to stick windows so that they stay above others - is absolutely essential to my workflow. I love K3B, Amarok, Digikam. To have Software that could do what the opensource software can do would literally cost me thousands and while I am happy to spend money on my primary tools - I am not so happy forking out big bucks for an application I might only use once a month. Piracy is not an option for me, I have an alternative - theres no way I can justify it to myself (well after I have learn't the software anyways).
Re:Children, grow up and admit that OSS isn't perf
on
OpenOffice Bloated?
·
· Score: 1
Except for one thing. The OSS world also has software that is not Slow and bloated. This software does not necessarily play well with Microsoft Office and is not necessarily available for non free OS's at this point. So some of us have to deal with Microsoft Office users - using OSS software we can have either light/fast or MS Compatible at the moment - Not Both.
On my box (Mepis Linux, 2.5gig Athlon, 1 Gig ram) (I just switched java off - thanks for the Heads up) OOo 2.0 loads in an acceptable time frame. I haven't got any particularly large documents to test the file loading/saving slowness. But I am happy to report that one of the big speed bugbears from OOo 1.1 series is gone - loading charts into Calc. The generally editing is quite snappy too.
Would I like to OOo to be faster and use less memory. Yes I would. For the 2.0 release was it more important than having better MS Office compatibility. No it wasn't (not for me anyways).
The aim of this standard is for vendor's to be able to release a single binary and have it run on any LSB for Desktop compliant system.
the important parts are
Reference releases of important graphical libraries. definately Qt and GTK not sure what others... Other libaries are going to have to be statically linked. So choosing the balance here is important
A standard place for launching app, meaning a standardised menu system. So people can launch app
Standardisation of part of the desktop that deal with interface with a running program. File dialogs,Printing,Etc
Stock Iconsets are not out of the question
The standard is to be based on work of freedesktop.org, It will almost certain it will not include specifying which desktop environment is used - It will just specify the behaviour of the desktop when it comes to running a binary application
You need hydrogen
Its a midi based drum designer. Its very nice to use - you can find a tutorial about getting it to sync with Ardour here...
http://ardour.org/manual/synchronizing_ardour_with _hydrogen?DokuWiki=672b889b7ba37d1ac7edcc198f034a8 e
note the connection step is done on MacOSX in the example - you can do the same job with in the connect part of QJackctl under linux. I think once you can save restore whole Jack sessions Including apps that this whole setup will work a lot better. But at the momemnt it is quite serviceable
I get your point about the integration thing - but I think in the linux example Jack is the application and all the sequencers midi editors etc are the plugins if you like. Hopefully the whole set up will become more mature over time but I sincerely believe that this is better in the long run than having everything under the one roof
yeah unfortunately Yahoo and other IM services go to some lengths to make sure that third party messengers have great difficulty with compatibility. Which means that IM Clients frequently need to be updated. A gtk upgrade could be painful over Dialup I suppose though.
MP3 encoding is often not shipped with Linux Distrobutions - The reason being Intellectual property - I think it is (or was) a 40,000 license fee to ship systems that can encode MP3. From memory - though It might of changed - all that K3B needs to encode MP3s is a copy of lame installed on the system.
Mepis is an excellent starting point for Debian Unstable (what I am using)... Theres is still some setup required (upgrade to KDE 3.4 - set up device automounting - I am pretty sure this won't be necessary in the next version). But other than that everything pretty much works out of the box (for me at least).
firstly Klik does pretty much what your asking.... http://klik.atekon.de/?from=profile Its quite hackish at the moment - But is under heavy development and works well - for me at least. Its probably a little easier than the Mac approach even. You click once answer one question in one dialog box - the program is downloaded to your desktop as a compressed filesystem image and run. A menu item is put in your menu.
Secondly the database approach is actually quite a good one. On my debian based desktop I relie quite heavily on third party apt repositories. These can be added very easily once you know how. It has the added advantage of letting you know when new versions of that software are available and gives you a universal interface for uninstalling the software. What I think is missing (on the systems I have tried at least) is an easy to use front end. I use Synaptic and while it is good for somebody who knows what they are doing its not something I would throw in front of a new user. I Think such an interface should look something like http://www.kde-apps.org/ and allow for easy adding of third party repositiories.
Fortunately this situation is improving all the time.... It is up to individual software projects to make sure that Drag and Drop works properly and I am glad that more projects are taking this seriously.
1. Scan a picture, create a new document and write something about the picture.
Open Up Kooka (or xsane, or quiteinsane)- scan picture save picture to disk.
Open Up Inkscape - import picture, Resize to desired size on document (use drag handles)
Use Text tool to type text
you could quite easily do the same with openoffice, kword, scribus or whatever
2. Move the pictures of your camera to the place where you save your pictures in the computer.
Plug in camera
Wait for USB Device Camera to pop up on desktop - click on it navigate to folder on camera where photos are stored. Drag and drop files to any folder you have write access to. (choose move if you want to keep files on the camera, move otherwise)
or if your camera is not USB Mass Storage device Install Digikam (in fact do this anyways - Its a great little photo management app) Go to Camera->Add Camera You can try to autodetect camera or select add and choose your camera from the list. you can then access the camera from the Camera List
3. Engage in a multimedia chat with some friend (micrphone+webcam+text)
admittedly this one is tricky - there are apps that can do each. Skype and Gizmo - do voice chat very well. Gaim and Kopete do a good job with text chat. Gnome Meeting will do Webcam. (I don't have a webcam so this is all still theoretical to me. But will purhaps purchase one in the near future). There is a plugin for Kopete which will call gnome-meeting if you want to webcam (It is not switched on by default). But that is about the best I can do for now. ( Kopete SVN already has inbuilt support for Webcams and Skype so we are very close. But not there yet on this one.....)
I hope that can be of some service - The first to tasks I do routinely - Scanning has worked for me very well under linux. And I have had a digital camera since the beginning of the year. I the third one is interesting to me and I admit I have yet to find a thoroughly satisfying answer yet.
I am an ACTUAL DESIGNER and I DON'T think the GIMP is an ugly piece of shit, I am well aware of its limitations and it could definately be improved.
But quite frankly most designers won't touch anything that is not photoshop and if photoshop doesn't do it well they don't seem to think its worth doing - until photoshop finally gets the feature that is and then they won't stop raving about it.
Online and Magazine polls of there readership. I Think Linux Magazine had a big one recently. Not a thoroughly accurate method of measuring mind you - but I am pretty sure that is where these claims come from.
Personally I found that OSX in a lot of cases employs one or two options too few. I have yet to find out - how to change the default workgroup, remove a user account or figure out why the hell the system help keeps crashing when it opens or why the mouse just feels too slow. The launcher bar works well but gets very cumbersome if you use more than a few programs
Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of good things about OSX and it does look very cool. But from experience users often say bad interface when they mean something else
The desision to move away from the k's was made recently. I am not sure that existing components will be renamed but new components will have a different naming methodology. Examples of new components are Oxygen & Plasma.
Things that I am interested in / hope will make it into KDE4
Although the KDE project has had usability people for a while KDE 4 will be the first time they have had a chance to work on the bigger usability issues.
First movements away from traditional file managing system. I personally Think this is a very good move - This is a very difficult concept to teach new users especially casual users who always forget what they called a file or where they put it. I am confident at least that the KDE people working on this know the issue and am very interested to see what comes out. Now if they could just figure out how to run all applications without the need to manually save files
maybe the potential for GPU accelerated graphics on the desktop. I don't know how far this one will go but it seems a shame to let all that power go untapped.
Reworking of the sound system. The latest is that arts will still be used by default but will be totally replacable. A simple API for KDE apps will be built on top. IMHO this is the single most annoying part of KDE
Well no strictly speaking this is not the job of the desktop. It is the job of the operating system. The Desktop in this case is not tied particularly to one operating system (currently it is tied to xwindows but that dependecy will be going in the next version)... what would be really smashing though would be a KDE-Linux Project aimed at making KDE+Linux an easy combination to use.
Xine works good for me as far as video usage goes. The main issue is that not everything is installed by default. The two big ones that aren't included are the Win32 codecs and the dvd decryption libraries. The windows libraries are just that - they come directly from a windows installation - the code needed to use these objects has been reverse engineered. Users who have a windows license are currently entitled to use these libraries. It would be extremely foolish to ship systems with this package as you open yourself to a lot of legal nasties. It would be possible to license the libraries but it wouldn't make sense to do that then give away the product for free would it. A much better LONG TERM solution is to encourage providers of video content to provide Linux friendly formats - I am sure that many of them already do this for Mac
Man have you seen a real new user try to use a windows installation package. They get to about the second or third next and freeze... You would be suprised at how many times I get asked to do this task or how many (real) mum and dad users don't install because it is too complicated. The interface for most Linux installers is way too intimidating.. I use synaptic and its great for experts but I would not put in front of a new user. From an interface perspective its hard to go past klik (or the MacOSX disk image packages) It is a very promising technology that I am sure will catch on in the near future. Also the Khotstuff mentioned in the article is very cool...
As for QuakeIII: I seriously don't remember having to do any of this when I installed Quake3... Except for making the installer executable. But you have identified a few key issues.
I would go a little further and say what is natural and easy to Windows users is definately not what regular people concider easy and natural. Its probably easier and more natural than linux but it is not easy and natural by any stretch of the imagination. It's something that most users have difficulty realising you were taught windows at school or from friends. Yes I am a linux zealot. I also take teach people who have had NO contact with computers before.
According to this link http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000743.htm l MS's XML looks very much like OpenDoc's XML. The main difference I suspect is that Microsoft owns their format and by the licensing restrictions are the only party who can make changes to it ie the only ones who can innovate.
Like opendocument 3rd parties will be free to implement MS XML. Currently no software implements this. The first software will be office 12
If Microsoft are willing to hand control of the format over to a standards orginisation AND create a mechanism whereby parties other than microsoft can partisipate in future revisions of the format they might have a valid point here.
Yeah thats fairly insightful... In for these cases you could use Mindmapping tools.
Since Kdissert http://freshmeat.net/projects/kdissert/ became mature I have not needed to touch a word processor. It is a lot easier to play with the structure of a piece of information in a mind mapping tool than when using a wordprocessor.
I can output everything to Latex, OOo or HTML. The only place I can see myself using a word processor is to pretty up a document for hard copy and thanks to the fact that Kdissert generates styles this job becomes very easy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well actually it is that fanaticism that started gnu in the first place and is still a driving force behind it, Many of the people involved would rather have an open system that works less well (you see these are not just things as you see them now but also as they will potentially grow in the future). Binary only drivers could potenialy take effective control of the linux operating system out of the communities hands. A lot of people out there still remember what happened to unix. Binary only drivers also cause lots of everyday mundane problems with kernel development too. It is impossible to properly debug a kernel running binary only modules, or to guarantee security. Having said that - I don't think the current players are trying to take control of the kernel or anything like that. I would not be that grateful if binary only modules where completley removed. There are a whole bunch of practical reasons why opensource drivers work better under linux... In the current situation opensource drivers ultimately take less work from the user, products based on opensource drivers (or standard hardware drivers) have a much longer lifespan. Ultimately I would like to see a carrot rather than stick approach. Having opensource drivers *Is* a big selling point for me. I would like to see in the future boxes with *open driver quality assurance* written on them. This would be the second largest selling point for me after - will the device perform the job that it needs to. I think I am done ranting
Why Care about Ogg??? Some of us are linux users. Open Codecs work with most tools out of the box. Because of Licensing issues MP3 does not work out of the box for most of us. AAC and WMA are now supported by some software and services but ogg is supported by every linux tool I have come across so far. Ogg offers better size/quality than MP3 though is probably comparable to ACC. I also care who owns the data format I keep my data files in - This may be hard for people to understand as it does not provide any short term benefits. In the long term however it safeguards you against things like vendor lockin. What I am more interested in is support for non lossy codecs such as flac. Particularly being able to record in these formats. Also being a linux user - I simply do not have access to iTunes - but have a large collection of Music that I have ripped from my CD collection and purchased online in Ogg Vorbis and Flac format. I understand why the majority of users may want to stick with the Apple firmware. But something like Rockbox makes the Ipod look more attractive to somebody like me.
I understand that some companies could have legitimate uses for this technology. If thats what these companies had in mind why is this technology being pushed onto all PCs. I don't mind these features but it looks as if the consumer is not going to have the right to choose whether they want these features or not. Like most people here I can see much potential for abuse by hardware and software companies. The two most ugly forms of abuse potentially are using a persons documents as ransom to make sure they buy subscriptions to the software they use and deliberately making documents uninteroperable between different tools.
No this is accurate You wouldn't believe how many times requests to make gimp MDI go through the gimp lists and everytime it is brought up on the web. It appears that there are a lot of people out there who have only used the PC version of Photoshop. What needs to happen is either it goes MDI or the SDI becomes as smart as it is for Photoshop on the Mac.
I am somewhat of a graphic professional and a Gimp user. While the GIMP does not match Photoshop feature for feature neither does it cost $1400 (the local cost).
I have long had difficulties regarding other designers and photoshop. I am self taught Photoshop was purhaps the 3rd graphics app I learnt, for most I suspect it is the first and last. It is not just the gimp that suffers from this it is just about every graphics app out there. For instance I read a magazine review of the latest version of Paint Shop Pro the only negative thing they could say about it was "it's not photoshop". I have known users who stubbornly have waited years for photoshop to gain a feature rather than use another tool which is built for the job they are trying to do. I will admit however there are some jobs where photoshop *is* the best choice.
Finally if you really could see yourself using linux but for photoshop. Write a letter to Adobe - Adobe wants to see that there is a market before they port. I don't think much else is going to convince them.
Ok I just did an exmap test on OOo Writer - I am getting ~50mb of effective memory usage. That is still the heaviest thing on my system apart from (x.org)...
:p
I haven't actually got any document open (its a blank page) and I have disabled Java. I would love to test Microsoft Office but I have neither the money to waste nor a system to run it on
My first contact with Linux was in 1997. I was learning Java at University at the time and really wanted to test my java on another platform... I had also heard about the gimp and wanted to try another graphics program. I ran Linux as a secondary operating system for a few years...
So why did Linux become my primary operating system. It was the day I discovered a version of Linux that supported my scanner. Unlike anything I had used under Windows the scanner drivers did not lock up my graphics program while it was scanning. Which means I could start work touching up one image while the next one was being scanned - instead of sitting there twiddling my thumbs. Pure Genious
These Days I use a KDE Desktop its the little things I enjoy - the ability to stick windows so that they stay above others - is absolutely essential to my workflow. I love K3B, Amarok, Digikam. To have Software that could do what the opensource software can do would literally cost me thousands and while I am happy to spend money on my primary tools - I am not so happy forking out big bucks for an application I might only use once a month. Piracy is not an option for me, I have an alternative - theres no way I can justify it to myself (well after I have learn't the software anyways).
Except for one thing. The OSS world also has software that is not Slow and bloated. This software does not necessarily play well with Microsoft Office and is not necessarily available for non free OS's at this point. So some of us have to deal with Microsoft Office users - using OSS software we can have either light/fast or MS Compatible at the moment - Not Both. On my box (Mepis Linux, 2.5gig Athlon, 1 Gig ram) (I just switched java off - thanks for the Heads up) OOo 2.0 loads in an acceptable time frame. I haven't got any particularly large documents to test the file loading/saving slowness. But I am happy to report that one of the big speed bugbears from OOo 1.1 series is gone - loading charts into Calc. The generally editing is quite snappy too. Would I like to OOo to be faster and use less memory. Yes I would. For the 2.0 release was it more important than having better MS Office compatibility. No it wasn't (not for me anyways).
The aim of this standard is for vendor's to be able to release a single binary and have it run on any LSB for Desktop compliant system.
the important parts are
The standard is to be based on work of freedesktop.org, It will almost certain it will not include specifying which desktop environment is used - It will just specify the behaviour of the desktop when it comes to running a binary application
The KDE team is largely in agreeance with this. New components have dropped the K Monica. They have names like Oxygen, Plasma.
You need hydrogen Its a midi based drum designer. Its very nice to use - you can find a tutorial about getting it to sync with Ardour here... http://ardour.org/manual/synchronizing_ardour_with _hydrogen?DokuWiki=672b889b7ba37d1ac7edcc198f034a8 e
note the connection step is done on MacOSX in the example - you can do the same job with in the connect part of QJackctl under linux. I think once you can save restore whole Jack sessions Including apps that this whole setup will work a lot better. But at the momemnt it is quite serviceable
I get your point about the integration thing - but I think in the linux example Jack is the application and all the sequencers midi editors etc are the plugins if you like. Hopefully the whole set up will become more mature over time but I sincerely believe that this is better in the long run than having everything under the one roof
yeah unfortunately Yahoo and other IM services go to some lengths to make sure that third party messengers have great difficulty with compatibility. Which means that IM Clients frequently need to be updated. A gtk upgrade could be painful over Dialup I suppose though.
MP3 encoding is often not shipped with Linux Distrobutions - The reason being Intellectual property - I think it is (or was) a 40,000 license fee to ship systems that can encode MP3. From memory - though It might of changed - all that K3B needs to encode MP3s is a copy of lame installed on the system.
Mepis is an excellent starting point for Debian Unstable (what I am using)... Theres is still some setup required (upgrade to KDE 3.4 - set up device automounting - I am pretty sure this won't be necessary in the next version). But other than that everything pretty much works out of the box (for me at least).
firstly Klik does pretty much what your asking.... http://klik.atekon.de/?from=profile Its quite hackish at the moment - But is under heavy development and works well - for me at least. Its probably a little easier than the Mac approach even. You click once answer one question in one dialog box - the program is downloaded to your desktop as a compressed filesystem image and run. A menu item is put in your menu.
Secondly the database approach is actually quite a good one. On my debian based desktop I relie quite heavily on third party apt repositories. These can be added very easily once you know how. It has the added advantage of letting you know when new versions of that software are available and gives you a universal interface for uninstalling the software. What I think is missing (on the systems I have tried at least) is an easy to use front end. I use Synaptic and while it is good for somebody who knows what they are doing its not something I would throw in front of a new user. I Think such an interface should look something like http://www.kde-apps.org/ and allow for easy adding of third party repositiories.
Fortunately this situation is improving all the time.... It is up to individual software projects to make sure that Drag and Drop works properly and I am glad that more projects are taking this seriously.
1. Scan a picture, create a new document and write something about the picture.
you could quite easily do the same with openoffice, kword, scribus or whatever
2. Move the pictures of your camera to the place where you save your pictures in the computer.
3. Engage in a multimedia chat with some friend (micrphone+webcam+text)
admittedly this one is tricky - there are apps that can do each. Skype and Gizmo - do voice chat very well. Gaim and Kopete do a good job with text chat. Gnome Meeting will do Webcam. (I don't have a webcam so this is all still theoretical to me. But will purhaps purchase one in the near future). There is a plugin for Kopete which will call gnome-meeting if you want to webcam (It is not switched on by default). But that is about the best I can do for now. ( Kopete SVN already has inbuilt support for Webcams and Skype so we are very close. But not there yet on this one.....)
I hope that can be of some service - The first to tasks I do routinely - Scanning has worked for me very well under linux. And I have had a digital camera since the beginning of the year. I the third one is interesting to me and I admit I have yet to find a thoroughly satisfying answer yet.
I am an ACTUAL DESIGNER and I DON'T think the GIMP is an ugly piece of shit, I am well aware of its limitations and it could definately be improved. But quite frankly most designers won't touch anything that is not photoshop and if photoshop doesn't do it well they don't seem to think its worth doing - until photoshop finally gets the feature that is and then they won't stop raving about it.
Online and Magazine polls of there readership. I Think Linux Magazine had a big one recently. Not a thoroughly accurate method of measuring mind you - but I am pretty sure that is where these claims come from.
Would you care to give concrete examples.
Personally I found that OSX in a lot of cases employs one or two options too few. I have yet to find out - how to change the default workgroup, remove a user account or figure out why the hell the system help keeps crashing when it opens or why the mouse just feels too slow. The launcher bar works well but gets very cumbersome if you use more than a few programs
Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of good things about OSX and it does look very cool. But from experience users often say bad interface when they mean something else
The desision to move away from the k's was made recently. I am not sure that existing components will be renamed but new components will have a different naming methodology. Examples of new components are Oxygen & Plasma.
Well no strictly speaking this is not the job of the desktop. It is the job of the operating system. The Desktop in this case is not tied particularly to one operating system (currently it is tied to xwindows but that dependecy will be going in the next version)... what would be really smashing though would be a KDE-Linux Project aimed at making KDE+Linux an easy combination to use.
Xine works good for me as far as video usage goes. The main issue is that not everything is installed by default. The two big ones that aren't included are the Win32 codecs and the dvd decryption libraries. The windows libraries are just that - they come directly from a windows installation - the code needed to use these objects has been reverse engineered. Users who have a windows license are currently entitled to use these libraries. It would be extremely foolish to ship systems with this package as you open yourself to a lot of legal nasties. It would be possible to license the libraries but it wouldn't make sense to do that then give away the product for free would it. A much better LONG TERM solution is to encourage providers of video content to provide Linux friendly formats - I am sure that many of them already do this for Mac
Man have you seen a real new user try to use a windows installation package. They get to about the second or third next and freeze... You would be suprised at how many times I get asked to do this task or how many (real) mum and dad users don't install because it is too complicated. The interface for most Linux installers is way too intimidating.. I use synaptic and its great for experts but I would not put in front of a new user. From an interface perspective its hard to go past klik (or the MacOSX disk image packages) It is a very promising technology that I am sure will catch on in the near future. Also the Khotstuff mentioned in the article is very cool... As for QuakeIII: I seriously don't remember having to do any of this when I installed Quake3... Except for making the installer executable. But you have identified a few key issues. I would go a little further and say what is natural and easy to Windows users is definately not what regular people concider easy and natural. Its probably easier and more natural than linux but it is not easy and natural by any stretch of the imagination. It's something that most users have difficulty realising you were taught windows at school or from friends. Yes I am a linux zealot. I also take teach people who have had NO contact with computers before.
kubuntu is the kde users version of Kubuntu... If you need a Debian based distro that is a little bit more mature - I also reccommend Mepis
According to this link http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000743.htm l MS's XML looks very much like OpenDoc's XML. The main difference I suspect is that Microsoft owns their format and by the licensing restrictions are the only party who can make changes to it ie the only ones who can innovate.
Like opendocument 3rd parties will be free to implement MS XML. Currently no software implements this. The first software will be office 12
If Microsoft are willing to hand control of the format over to a standards orginisation AND create a mechanism whereby parties other than microsoft can partisipate in future revisions of the format they might have a valid point here.
Yeah thats fairly insightful... In for these cases you could use Mindmapping tools.
Since Kdissert http://freshmeat.net/projects/kdissert/ became mature I have not needed to touch a word processor. It is a lot easier to play with the structure of a piece of information in a mind mapping tool than when using a wordprocessor.
I can output everything to Latex, OOo or HTML. The only place I can see myself using a word processor is to pretty up a document for hard copy and thanks to the fact that Kdissert generates styles this job becomes very easy.