Now I'm not trying to start a flame war here, nor am I saying that Dell are evil (every machine I've ever bought prebuilt, including this laptop are Dell and I'd recommend them to anyone), but I imagine it may have just a tiny bit to do with the what I see as adware that comes installed on the machines by default.
A Optiplex I recently booted up for the first time was splashed with Yahoo and that evil search bar thing in IE (no I don't use IE, I was just looking:P), I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. My laptop came with "AOL setup" slapped all over the desktop, and I dare say there are other "gifts" however innocent and non-privacy threating they are, just adverts for companies willing to spend millions getting an icon to their website slapped on every Dell machine shipped.
Maybe I'm being unfair, I'm not dissing Dell for it at all. I've never had a Dell machine with software installed that's been harmful, but I've definantly had several that have had adverts to other companies that I'm guessing Dell make quite a bit in the back pocket from. Obviously shipping a OS-less machine stops Dell making money through that.
So in 5 years time everyone just slaps on some soft skin lotion and hey presto, protected against wrinkles, UV and now bird flu. Oh and you look 20 years younger.
Skimming over the existing comments, I don't think anyone's posted anything along these lines:
I use Linux, I have done for years, and my view of Vista is that it's got NOTHING new that Linux hasn't already.
Now before the flames start grilling over this, read on first...
I say this in the following sense: I used to use DOS, then I used Win 3.11 (pretty revolutionary), then 95 (big UI jump), then 98 (much more stable, better networking), then I changed to RedHat, wobbled over a few distributions until I learnt the way of Linux and now much prefer it over Windows.
Now I know I'm not a "casual" PC user. I'm not. I'm a geek. I code for fun, I'm doing a BSc in Computer Science, I fix people's computers whenever I can, however long it takes, you know, without going off on one, I really am NOT a casual user. But that's my viewpoint. (So don't flame on about "well what about my granny" or "what about gamers" or whatever... I'm talking about MY SITUATION.)
Now to me, Linux makes sense. Well Unix and KDE specifically. Directory structure, security, file permissions. The kernel and it's modules. XOrg. KDE (not for it's glitter, but for it's features, like my beloved kate, the ability to just sftp:// a remote box, add "applets" in a consistent manner to the kicker bar, things like that). Now again, don't flame on about "well KDE is unstable" or "Such and such isn't consistent in KDE". I never said ALL of KDE was consistent. And neither am I dissing Gnome. I just prefer KDE, this isn't a desktop war post.
Now to me personally, I look at Vista and what I see is DRM (a bad thing IMO), I see flash desktops (not important to me, although I have played with Beryl at recent, it's quite an innovation, but I'll wait until it's stable), I see DirectX 10 - which is impressive, but personally I can put up with booting XP for the sole purpose of HL2 or I can just go and by a XBOX360, it's just me but I hardly play games at all (and when I do I have a handful of _playable_ games on Linux), I see improved security (hello... had that in Linux for years) and I see stability (again, I hardly ever reboot...).
So to me, personally, as someone who finds Linux more intuitive _for_my_needs_, I don't see Vista as that amazing at all. I've got all that I need already. OK, so there's arguments of "well MS Office doesn't run natively", but then that's the point isn't it. IT DOESN'T RUN NATIVELY! Sure there's hacks, but I don't _use_ Office. I use OpenOffice. It does it for me.
OK, I'm finished ranting. My point is this: for those who flame / bash / murder on all the time about Vista/Linux, believe it or not, there are people who just prefer Unix because Unix is Unix. They find it better for their use. To me, there's no feature in Vista that makes me want to change to it. But then I would say the same about XP... *shrug*.
I'm not against Vista, it has it's place. I just wanted to set the score straight for those of us who do, just prefer (for legitimate reasons), Linux.
Thanks.
Everyone's that's making a huge fuss about this new style (I'm not saying it's a BAD idea redesigning it at all, I just mean those who're so 100% against it becase it-won't-be-slashdot-any-more), what are you ultimately interested? The design or the content?
Slashdot is slashdot because of the admins, the stories and the community.
Firstly, the fan control I have no idea about. You said it's a bios issue(?), I've not got that problem afaik. The fans fire up as soon as it gets under load and starts warming up and I've never had it shut off on me. I got this laptop about 1 and a half years ago, maybe I've got something you havn't. Tried the Dell support site?
As for the ACPI, yeah, I've got exactly the same. Best distro I've had for those (on this particular laptop) was SuSE 10.0. That worked beautifully as I remember. The power button I've kinda gotten used to not using (force of habbit to go System/Log Out/Hibernate now), but something else I've noticed (which is apart of ACPI afaik) is CPU scaling, which worked in Gentoo (with my own compiled kernel) and SuSE, so I'm guessing a kernel recompile would fix this.
I wouldn't be at all suprised if we got onto the Ubuntu developers with as much information as possible (i.e. if we can get the ubuntu kernel sources and figure out what they need to do to the binaries they provide to make it work), they may well sort it out. In the meantime, mine goes into standby automagically after a while of inactivity when running on battery and the BIOS handles dimming the backlight when it's unplugged, typically I get a couple of good solid hours wireless surfing off it without the AC plugged in.
Sorry I can't be of more help, if you drop me an email I'll see if I can figure anything better out.
I wanna know what happens when (if) they run out of letters! Zippy Zebra covers Z, but ones like V and J are a bit harder! Jumping something? I dunno any animals with a J.
dapper has been worked on for a long time, infact since last year (Breezy release), and then was delayed by a few months from it's origional expected release date... just to make it "that little bit extra".
Also, remember much of the software in Dapper is software that's been written, rewritten, improved, rewritten again and lastly rewritten once more, many many times over.
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong saying this!!
I think you've misunderstood the term enterprise, in this contex.
Ubuntu Dapper is 100% free, open source software. No propriety 'enterprise' ties (in that sense of the word). It's stable (like Debian Sarge), reliable and comes with everything you'd need, and it's gunna be supported for 5 years, much like RHEL does, which is VERY important to enterprises/businesses etc.
I dunno about you, but I don't see how that can really be a bad thing?
Yeah likewise. I'm on a Dell Inspirion 1150, totally seamless install and use. It's strange, I've actually had a hard time getting away from the terminal! (I've been using Linux for quite a while).
Amazing distribution, really is. Excellent hardware support too (in my case, I know that it's all relative). Next major release is said to be more experimental / bleeding edge, XGL / NetworkManager etc. Honestly can't wait!
1st of July, although you can download and install breezy now, dist-upgrade to dapper and then dist-upgrade on the day (I think you can even get a flight-5 dapper ISO right now...?)
Really? It handles *that much slower*? Excuse me for thinking maybe they're just not spent so much time making their XML libs as efficient as they have their own propriety stuff...
And besides, XML has major advantages, like there's already *loads* of libaries for it, and to an extent it's even human readable... Unlike a binary file
I don't think it'd be a bad idea for some of these 'open user-friendly, "we're not going to use your information for anything bad"' companies/organisations to blog their changes openly, to both reassure their users that any changes arn't bad and to ensure everyone understand exactly what's happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Now I'm not trying to start a flame war here, nor am I saying that Dell are evil (every machine I've ever bought prebuilt, including this laptop are Dell and I'd recommend them to anyone), but I imagine it may have just a tiny bit to do with the what I see as adware that comes installed on the machines by default.
:P), I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. My laptop came with "AOL setup" slapped all over the desktop, and I dare say there are other "gifts" however innocent and non-privacy threating they are, just adverts for companies willing to spend millions getting an icon to their website slapped on every Dell machine shipped.
A Optiplex I recently booted up for the first time was splashed with Yahoo and that evil search bar thing in IE (no I don't use IE, I was just looking
Maybe I'm being unfair, I'm not dissing Dell for it at all. I've never had a Dell machine with software installed that's been harmful, but I've definantly had several that have had adverts to other companies that I'm guessing Dell make quite a bit in the back pocket from. Obviously shipping a OS-less machine stops Dell making money through that.
But you do read Slashdot?
So in 5 years time everyone just slaps on some soft skin lotion and hey presto, protected against wrinkles, UV and now bird flu. Oh and you look 20 years younger.
I guess it was always gunna happen at some point. They've had such a hit with iTunes and the iPod with their own audio format...
Skimming over the existing comments, I don't think anyone's posted anything along these lines: I use Linux, I have done for years, and my view of Vista is that it's got NOTHING new that Linux hasn't already. Now before the flames start grilling over this, read on first... I say this in the following sense: I used to use DOS, then I used Win 3.11 (pretty revolutionary), then 95 (big UI jump), then 98 (much more stable, better networking), then I changed to RedHat, wobbled over a few distributions until I learnt the way of Linux and now much prefer it over Windows. Now I know I'm not a "casual" PC user. I'm not. I'm a geek. I code for fun, I'm doing a BSc in Computer Science, I fix people's computers whenever I can, however long it takes, you know, without going off on one, I really am NOT a casual user. But that's my viewpoint. (So don't flame on about "well what about my granny" or "what about gamers" or whatever... I'm talking about MY SITUATION.) Now to me, Linux makes sense. Well Unix and KDE specifically. Directory structure, security, file permissions. The kernel and it's modules. XOrg. KDE (not for it's glitter, but for it's features, like my beloved kate, the ability to just sftp:// a remote box, add "applets" in a consistent manner to the kicker bar, things like that). Now again, don't flame on about "well KDE is unstable" or "Such and such isn't consistent in KDE". I never said ALL of KDE was consistent. And neither am I dissing Gnome. I just prefer KDE, this isn't a desktop war post. Now to me personally, I look at Vista and what I see is DRM (a bad thing IMO), I see flash desktops (not important to me, although I have played with Beryl at recent, it's quite an innovation, but I'll wait until it's stable), I see DirectX 10 - which is impressive, but personally I can put up with booting XP for the sole purpose of HL2 or I can just go and by a XBOX360, it's just me but I hardly play games at all (and when I do I have a handful of _playable_ games on Linux), I see improved security (hello... had that in Linux for years) and I see stability (again, I hardly ever reboot...). So to me, personally, as someone who finds Linux more intuitive _for_my_needs_, I don't see Vista as that amazing at all. I've got all that I need already. OK, so there's arguments of "well MS Office doesn't run natively", but then that's the point isn't it. IT DOESN'T RUN NATIVELY! Sure there's hacks, but I don't _use_ Office. I use OpenOffice. It does it for me. OK, I'm finished ranting. My point is this: for those who flame / bash / murder on all the time about Vista/Linux, believe it or not, there are people who just prefer Unix because Unix is Unix. They find it better for their use. To me, there's no feature in Vista that makes me want to change to it. But then I would say the same about XP... *shrug*. I'm not against Vista, it has it's place. I just wanted to set the score straight for those of us who do, just prefer (for legitimate reasons), Linux. Thanks.
duke nukem
Slashdot is slashdot because of the admins, the stories and the community.
Firstly, the fan control I have no idea about. You said it's a bios issue(?), I've not got that problem afaik. The fans fire up as soon as it gets under load and starts warming up and I've never had it shut off on me. I got this laptop about 1 and a half years ago, maybe I've got something you havn't. Tried the Dell support site?
As for the ACPI, yeah, I've got exactly the same. Best distro I've had for those (on this particular laptop) was SuSE 10.0. That worked beautifully as I remember. The power button I've kinda gotten used to not using (force of habbit to go System/Log Out/Hibernate now), but something else I've noticed (which is apart of ACPI afaik) is CPU scaling, which worked in Gentoo (with my own compiled kernel) and SuSE, so I'm guessing a kernel recompile would fix this.
I wouldn't be at all suprised if we got onto the Ubuntu developers with as much information as possible (i.e. if we can get the ubuntu kernel sources and figure out what they need to do to the binaries they provide to make it work), they may well sort it out. In the meantime, mine goes into standby automagically after a while of inactivity when running on battery and the BIOS handles dimming the backlight when it's unplugged, typically I get a couple of good solid hours wireless surfing off it without the AC plugged in.
Sorry I can't be of more help, if you drop me an email I'll see if I can figure anything better out.
I wanna know what happens when (if) they run out of letters! Zippy Zebra covers Z, but ones like V and J are a bit harder! Jumping something? I dunno any animals with a J.
Ty, my bad memory!!
dapper has been worked on for a long time, infact since last year (Breezy release), and then was delayed by a few months from it's origional expected release date... just to make it "that little bit extra".
Also, remember much of the software in Dapper is software that's been written, rewritten, improved, rewritten again and lastly rewritten once more, many many times over.
Even better, it's 5 years :P
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong saying this!! I think you've misunderstood the term enterprise, in this contex. Ubuntu Dapper is 100% free, open source software. No propriety 'enterprise' ties (in that sense of the word). It's stable (like Debian Sarge), reliable and comes with everything you'd need, and it's gunna be supported for 5 years, much like RHEL does, which is VERY important to enterprises/businesses etc. I dunno about you, but I don't see how that can really be a bad thing?
Yeah likewise. I'm on a Dell Inspirion 1150, totally seamless install and use. It's strange, I've actually had a hard time getting away from the terminal! (I've been using Linux for quite a while). Amazing distribution, really is. Excellent hardware support too (in my case, I know that it's all relative). Next major release is said to be more experimental / bleeding edge, XGL / NetworkManager etc. Honestly can't wait!
I like my hair.
1st of July, although you can download and install breezy now, dist-upgrade to dapper and then dist-upgrade on the day (I think you can even get a flight-5 dapper ISO right now...?)
Really? It handles *that much slower*? Excuse me for thinking maybe they're just not spent so much time making their XML libs as efficient as they have their own propriety stuff... And besides, XML has major advantages, like there's already *loads* of libaries for it, and to an extent it's even human readable... Unlike a binary file
And all of those will be in flashy DirectX 9.0 graphics.
"they want to see the effects that high radiation levels will have on various pieces of military and civilian hardware."
lol, apparently they proved that right. Military Robots don't survive 90 minutes in there!
Yeah but to me I'd buy a screwdriver for it's price. I'll always use Google because it's more open.
It already has! Google!
They just copy good ideas (TM).
http://www.minix3.org/index.html seems to be down :( I think a message like "407" or "403.5 - Page slashdotted" would be better.
Yeah, pretty much! I like to see Google took my advice onboard so quickly...
I don't think it'd be a bad idea for some of these 'open user-friendly, "we're not going to use your information for anything bad"' companies/organisations to blog their changes openly, to both reassure their users that any changes arn't bad and to ensure everyone understand exactly what's happening.
;P
But maybe I'm just an idealist