No, Xizzle is a fork of XFree86. KDrive is also a fork of XFree86. They both compile against the same DIX, as does the Cygwin X fork also housed on FD.o. The difference is Kdrive's been around for a longer time.;)
If you read the page, it even says it plain as day: 'the freedesktop.org project has a DIX and three DDXes - Kdrive, Xizzle, and XWin. That is all.'
It may be confusing, as many are used to just having a 'server' that combines everything, but the FD.o projects are highly module, so it can look a bit 'odd' if you don't read up on all that's happening.:)
Actually, only one of the Freedesktop.org trees has alpha-blending and shadows right now.
There are two servers: Xizzle and KDrive. KDrive is Keith's experimental X server, which has all the nifty eye candy and is in general a testing ground for extentions. Xizzle is a attempt to us the GNU autotools as the buildchain for the X server. (Both use automake/autoconf, but the Xizzle branch is more stock from 4.3-r2 right now then KDrive, for obvious reasons and also because KDrive is a bit older. I think. o_O)
Daniel Stone posted a great explination of all the trees going on to his blog here
Re:The whole streaming audio/video field's gone cr
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 1
You claim them as our 'cultural legacy' now, but how much of the first TV shows are archived? I don't mean from the 60s, I mean when it first started out as test paterns and morality plays. Most of it wasn't saved because it was made as 'make some money, move on.' A more recent example are game consoles - carts were never made to survive for centuries. Many have cheap contacts that'd slowly rub off when placed in the machines, eventually shorting out. CDs have around a 70 year shelf life. Less when exposed to water or child. They weren't made to be used forever - they exist to be used now, thrown away, and make room for more consumer goods.
VCRs weren't even around until ~(the 1980s). Paintings are one-of-a-kinds. The majority of out visual 'heritage' is proprietary, and always has been. It's only in the last few years that we've seen a push to preserve and comodify it.
Not that I disagree, but making these items 'preservable' or even ownable by the consumer is a realitivly new happening, and it will take more then just saying it's our 'cultural heritage' to change producers ideas on distribution.
On another angle, why did the U.S. and Europe bother suing Microsoft? If they didn't like Microsoft's monopoly abuses, all each of these governments had to do is leverage their buying power. "We demand you unbunndle, stop, etc, or we will take our business elsewhere."
Methinks you don't understand the meaning of 'monopoly.'
No, that just lets them say 'well, they aren't mad at us, they're just pirates.'
Stop watching it. It's just TV or movies. There are millions of other fun things to do with your time. Hell, there are indie movies and music. Check around where you live, there may be a entire world of quality entertain made by people who do it for the love of the craft that you've been missing out on because of these large corperations pushing all the art out of music and movies.
They're not water or air, they're fucking DVDs. The world will not end if you do not own the entire 12 season of the Simpsons in full digital with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. And they have made it crystal clear to me and I'd assume to you that they do not want our business. Why still give it to them?
You say 'well, if they can't compile, get the binary.' Which one? The RedHat one? The SuSE one? What if they use Mandrake, but there isn't a RPM? What then? They should be left out? Excluded because the software they want isn't popular enough to have a package yet?
I'm not talking about GAIM or Mozilla. I'm talking about new, lesser known stuff. I'm talking about stuff like what I write. Stuff that probably isn't going to be in a distro, ever, but that some people might want to use. Stuff I have no way in hell of ever making binaries for every distro for, and that I don't want to exclude people from being able to use just because they don't know how to compile software.
The other main problem with binaries is that most require root access to run. For that reason alone, 9/10ths of all GNU/Linux software will never be run, because people do not want to go to root just to try something out. Once it is popular enough, it will be available to them via their distro, so installing it by hand is no longer a problem at that point. Thought the fact they'd have to wait till that point to try the software is.
Security, here, is a non-issue. You've installed the software, the door for attack is now open, and your in the hands of the software's coder. Installing it as root is not less dangerous, it's even more dangerous. This is their home computer, if anything installing as a regular user is better because it keeps it from attacking the core OS componants. At least you can recover something if they do some nasty stuff. If you install a trojaned binary as root, how deep does that damage go? How deep if it were just your user account. In both cases, problems happened, but in one at least there's a chance of some recovery.
It's for these very reasons that I program all my software in Python and Ruby and distribute them as AppDirs. So the user just drops it in and clicks without thinking. As they should be able to. They aren't running a network, so if they can't compile it doesn't matter. What does is that we stop treating them as and making them feel like lesser people just because we can.
Poor UI design creating a market for people to help aclimate them to poor UI design does not a rule make.;)
If a App is designed so that it fits in well with the rest of the desktop, and is intuitive to even a first-time user to use, then help files are unneeded.
Take RoxCD *shameless plug*, it's designed so that the first time you sit down you can easily understand what everything does without any help files. It's defaults are all set so most people should be able to just play and rip any CD they want to Ogg Vorbis. If someone wanted to do something deeper, documentation is there, but it's not needed. Eventually, even the documentation for that will be available next to the options, so at that point it will truely be rendered useless and removed. (Hey, it's a.4 release, I'm allowed to have some problems;) ) All this is done with the hope that there is nothing that leave the user going 'how does this work.' If they ask this, then I have a bug to fix, not documentation to write.
By the time a person would need to download help files, they would have already been upgrading their system, which implies they have some familiarity with it now, and should have a good idea of how to do things. Thus, negating the point of having help files for well designed apps. So at that point, IMHO, if a person needs help files it is not because they don't understand the app, but rather that the app itself is broken.
With APT, they don't have to. They just have to be able to double-click on the program they want. I've seen lots of Windows users who love the concept and wish Windows had it.
Your assuming that a deb was even made. This requires the programmer A) has debian, and B) wants to make a deb. Or that someone else will make one. Which brings us back to the original problem.
Isn't that true for installers as well? Somebody has to make those too.
But you only make one. With debs you have to make them for Debian, then a RPM for RedHat, another for Fedora, another for Mandrake, another for SuSE, another fo-
Regardles, AppDirs aren't installers. They are self-contained, and you just click on the AppDir to run it, regardless of where it is. Uninstalling is just a right-click, and delete. Most just check that it's compiled if it's C/C++/etc, and runs if it's compiled or just run if it is in Python/Ruby/etc.
That's not realistic either. The Dialup user would be downloading the app one way or another at some point assuming the distro they use didn't come with it in the cache already. If they're upgrading, they have a CD with a cache or would be downloading it anyways, so that point is equally untrue. The few updates they need to do would be quick and painless, without them even needing to think about it. Many current 0install users use dial-up.
Of course, my view is if your app needs help files, it's poorly designed to begin with, but still there's nothing about this that is prohibitive to dialup users.
Anyone who calls 'apt' a more apt installation structure has forgotten how most users use software.
Most people don't want to learn a new packaging system. Most don't want to wait for someone else to package a program into the repos, assuming they even want to package it. The problem with Apt is it relies on someone else saying 'oh, that's great, I'll make some debs.' And it only works for someone with Debian or a Debian-compatable system like Lindows, Xandros, Knoppix, et al. A AppDir works on any distro that has ROX installed, so there's no more bullshit with having to package programs for 20 distros, or 20 versions of a distro. No 'Well, your using RedHat 8.2, which had this RPM, so here's a recompiled copy that works with that version, but if you have 9.1 it uses THIS RPM, which needs this recompile, or if-.' You just drop the AppDir in, and it works. No muss, no fuss.
Additionally, to install a deb you need to be root. Most people don't want or need to use root. 0install fixes that, and AppDirs make it easy even without 0install.
With AppDirs and 0install, you no longer have any of the problems software on GNU/Linux does. (Packaging for a number of distros and pushing it to the user with dependancies seamlessly) Apt only fixes one of those problems.
If you mean 'remove app without the users knowledge,' no. 0install actually will store old versions of software you've cached even after you cache a new version until you yourself tell it to remove it.
Other then that, the potential to 'unpublish' a app is no greater then any other app on SourceForge.
To me, it would be better to have to package load onto the HDD, and if there are any missing libraries, have that go and fetch them as well.
That's what it does. That is what they mean when they say 'cache'.
What happens is the software is cached first. Then, all dependancies are listed as 0install directories, so if you have it already it'll use the cached version, but if not it'll pull a copy and cache that. This is nice because if, say, you don't use the help files, it won't pull them until you ask for them, so you don't have them clutering up your HDD or being downloaded. You just point the ROX-Filer at the 0install AppDir, click on it, and without you even needing to think about it everything is installed and the program runs.
It also has a way to quickly update all apps, or if you just want one upgraded, open it in the Filer and hit 'reload.' Simple, easy, and intuitive. In general, I'd say this is even easier then the Windows Update and installers combo.
Linux is a kernel. It copies POSIX specs, if anything. If anything, GNU are the ones who "copied" UNIX, and did so over a decades ago, but even that is a false argument.
At the heart, we have to ask 'what is UNIX?' Is it the core userspace tools? Then "copying" UNIX has already been shown to be OK, as BSD "copied" (read that "replaced") UNIX bit-by-bit while AT&T had it available to the schools.
Is it a kernel? If so, then SCO's claim of Linux 'copying' UNIX is meritless, as all it does is impliment POSIX calls so UNIX programs can compile and run on it. Behind the scenes they differ immensly, hammered home by the fact that SCO talked of adding a Linux compatibility layer to their UNIX product a few years back, but dropped it because it just would have been too difficult to impliment IIRC.
If UNIX is everything that runs on the 'UNIX' kernel, then there's never been a UNIX. Ever. Because each 'UNIX'(AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Sun OS) has been so drastically different that it has been the major reason UNIX never hit it big until someone came who didn't trying to block other vendors out and prevented others from using it to in turn block other vendors. (Namely, GNU/Linux) Had HURD pushed forward and been the default GNU kernel, perhaps they would have some theoretical merit, but HURD is also drastically different, being a mircokernel design and all the spiffy stuff that comes with that.
To say "Linux copies UNIX" is to say "Timex copies sundials." They have a common ancestory, serve similar roles, but vary greatly in implimentation.
Not to be a ass, but how is a Usenet group less exclusive then a mailing list? Both have a rather high geek level, and really keep many people from joining(for different reasons, mailinglists because of the volume, Usenet because most ISPs don't include free access).
If anything, Debian should be like Gentoo and have a official forum. Most people, no matter how new to computers, seem to get along OK with webforums. Hell, Yahoo! has them on news stories.
It would also take away the problem of high-volume mailing lists, and could give a nice email when someone replies to your question.
Of course there will never be a situation where there won't be an x86 platform that can't run Linux,
I'd be careful. Quotes like that always have a way of biting people in the arse after a few years.
That said, why should we care if x86 runs GNU/Linux? Linus has a G5, IBM could make cheap hardware based on PowerPC chips, why not start the grass-roots call for PowerPC-based computers on every desktop? Let MS play in their legacy x86 world, and give the Free software people a light, efficient processor to push to it's full potential without any of the DRM concerns?
"W... What is that thing?!?" "I... I think it's the blogosphere... And it's headed straight towards us!" *various extras scatter. Camera pans to a model of the city being rolled over with a bowling ball* "Oh no! It's Godzil-er... Ah damnit, I knew I should have came to rehersals."
Clusters making reboots 'hardly even noticed' is not good enough. That's the problem. There's no excuse for rebooting in the first place. The fact that you have redundant systems does not negate the fact that you are rebooting.
In a proper system, the only time one should need to reboot is if the kernel itself needs to be replaced in memory. That's it. Everything else should be a service which can be independantly stoped and started. That they have bundled things so 'tightly' for 'intergration' that they can't even update their web browser without rebooting speaks volumes IMHO.
Actually, assuming you were caught, the store actually gains money.
At least in Michigan. The law states that those caught of shoplifting have to pay a 'fine' to the store of 10 times the item's price. So the item becomes 150$, you don't get a CD, and you get jail time.
Well, is it really any suprise? Look at movie ratings; tons of death and murders? PG-13. Show some skin? R or NC-17.
Kids watching grown men run at each other and violently push one another around or tackle eachother into the ground for hours? Perfectly fine. Show a nipple for 2 seconds? Public outrage and a exploritory commision.
There seems to be a very large, unnatural fear of sex.
Slashdot Mirror
No, Xizzle is a fork of XFree86. KDrive is also a fork of XFree86. They both compile against the same DIX, as does the Cygwin X fork also housed on FD.o. The difference is Kdrive's been around for a longer time. ;)
:)
If you read the page, it even says it plain as day:
'the freedesktop.org project has a DIX and three DDXes - Kdrive, Xizzle, and XWin. That is all.'
It may be confusing, as many are used to just having a 'server' that combines everything, but the FD.o projects are highly module, so it can look a bit 'odd' if you don't read up on all that's happening.
After her mom says that, are you going to take the chance and dump her?
He has no choice now but to marry, or move and get extensive plasic surgery. (Jury is out on which is more expensive)
Actually, only one of the Freedesktop.org trees has alpha-blending and shadows right now.
There are two servers: Xizzle and KDrive. KDrive is Keith's experimental X server, which has all the nifty eye candy and is in general a testing ground for extentions. Xizzle is a attempt to us the GNU autotools as the buildchain for the X server. (Both use automake/autoconf, but the Xizzle branch is more stock from 4.3-r2 right now then KDrive, for obvious reasons and also because KDrive is a bit older. I think. o_O)
Daniel Stone posted a great explination of all the trees going on to his blog here
You claim them as our 'cultural legacy' now, but how much of the first TV shows are archived? I don't mean from the 60s, I mean when it first started out as test paterns and morality plays. Most of it wasn't saved because it was made as 'make some money, move on.' A more recent example are game consoles - carts were never made to survive for centuries. Many have cheap contacts that'd slowly rub off when placed in the machines, eventually shorting out. CDs have around a 70 year shelf life. Less when exposed to water or child. They weren't made to be used forever - they exist to be used now, thrown away, and make room for more consumer goods.
VCRs weren't even around until ~(the 1980s). Paintings are one-of-a-kinds. The majority of out visual 'heritage' is proprietary, and always has been. It's only in the last few years that we've seen a push to preserve and comodify it.
Not that I disagree, but making these items 'preservable' or even ownable by the consumer is a realitivly new happening, and it will take more then just saying it's our 'cultural heritage' to change producers ideas on distribution.
Methinks you don't understand the meaning of 'monopoly.'
No, that just lets them say 'well, they aren't mad at us, they're just pirates.'
Stop watching it. It's just TV or movies. There are millions of other fun things to do with your time. Hell, there are indie movies and music. Check around where you live, there may be a entire world of quality entertain made by people who do it for the love of the craft that you've been missing out on because of these large corperations pushing all the art out of music and movies.
Well, here's a idea.
Stop buying DVDs.
They're not water or air, they're fucking DVDs. The world will not end if you do not own the entire 12 season of the Simpsons in full digital with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. And they have made it crystal clear to me and I'd assume to you that they do not want our business. Why still give it to them?
You say 'well, if they can't compile, get the binary.' Which one? The RedHat one? The SuSE one? What if they use Mandrake, but there isn't a RPM? What then? They should be left out? Excluded because the software they want isn't popular enough to have a package yet?
I'm not talking about GAIM or Mozilla. I'm talking about new, lesser known stuff. I'm talking about stuff like what I write. Stuff that probably isn't going to be in a distro, ever, but that some people might want to use. Stuff I have no way in hell of ever making binaries for every distro for, and that I don't want to exclude people from being able to use just because they don't know how to compile software.
The other main problem with binaries is that most require root access to run. For that reason alone, 9/10ths of all GNU/Linux software will never be run, because people do not want to go to root just to try something out. Once it is popular enough, it will be available to them via their distro, so installing it by hand is no longer a problem at that point. Thought the fact they'd have to wait till that point to try the software is.
Security, here, is a non-issue. You've installed the software, the door for attack is now open, and your in the hands of the software's coder. Installing it as root is not less dangerous, it's even more dangerous. This is their home computer, if anything installing as a regular user is better because it keeps it from attacking the core OS componants. At least you can recover something if they do some nasty stuff. If you install a trojaned binary as root, how deep does that damage go? How deep if it were just your user account. In both cases, problems happened, but in one at least there's a chance of some recovery.
It's for these very reasons that I program all my software in Python and Ruby and distribute them as AppDirs. So the user just drops it in and clicks without thinking. As they should be able to. They aren't running a network, so if they can't compile it doesn't matter. What does is that we stop treating them as and making them feel like lesser people just because we can.
Poor UI design creating a market for people to help aclimate them to poor UI design does not a rule make. ;)
.4 release, I'm allowed to have some problems ;) ) All this is done with the hope that there is nothing that leave the user going 'how does this work.' If they ask this, then I have a bug to fix, not documentation to write.
If a App is designed so that it fits in well with the rest of the desktop, and is intuitive to even a first-time user to use, then help files are unneeded.
Take RoxCD *shameless plug*, it's designed so that the first time you sit down you can easily understand what everything does without any help files. It's defaults are all set so most people should be able to just play and rip any CD they want to Ogg Vorbis. If someone wanted to do something deeper, documentation is there, but it's not needed. Eventually, even the documentation for that will be available next to the options, so at that point it will truely be rendered useless and removed. (Hey, it's a
By the time a person would need to download help files, they would have already been upgrading their system, which implies they have some familiarity with it now, and should have a good idea of how to do things. Thus, negating the point of having help files for well designed apps. So at that point, IMHO, if a person needs help files it is not because they don't understand the app, but rather that the app itself is broken.
Your assuming that a deb was even made. This requires the programmer A) has debian, and B) wants to make a deb. Or that someone else will make one. Which brings us back to the original problem.
But you only make one. With debs you have to make them for Debian, then a RPM for RedHat, another for Fedora, another for Mandrake, another for SuSE, another fo-
Regardles, AppDirs aren't installers. They are self-contained, and you just click on the AppDir to run it, regardless of where it is. Uninstalling is just a right-click, and delete. Most just check that it's compiled if it's C/C++/etc, and runs if it's compiled or just run if it is in Python/Ruby/etc.
That's not realistic either. The Dialup user would be downloading the app one way or another at some point assuming the distro they use didn't come with it in the cache already. If they're upgrading, they have a CD with a cache or would be downloading it anyways, so that point is equally untrue. The few updates they need to do would be quick and painless, without them even needing to think about it. Many current 0install users use dial-up.
Of course, my view is if your app needs help files, it's poorly designed to begin with, but still there's nothing about this that is prohibitive to dialup users.
It compiles it when you click on it the first time.
How does that not fix the problem?
You make the assumtion someone knows how to compile software. The massive, overwelming majority do not.
Most just want to grab a binary, or a AppDir that will compile itself without you even needing to know how, and run it.
Let's stop pretending it's the user's fault for not knowing how to compile software, and move to something that works across the board already.
Anyone who calls 'apt' a more apt installation structure has forgotten how most users use software.
Most people don't want to learn a new packaging system. Most don't want to wait for someone else to package a program into the repos, assuming they even want to package it. The problem with Apt is it relies on someone else saying 'oh, that's great, I'll make some debs.' And it only works for someone with Debian or a Debian-compatable system like Lindows, Xandros, Knoppix, et al. A AppDir works on any distro that has ROX installed, so there's no more bullshit with having to package programs for 20 distros, or 20 versions of a distro. No 'Well, your using RedHat 8.2, which had this RPM, so here's a recompiled copy that works with that version, but if you have 9.1 it uses THIS RPM, which needs this recompile, or if-.' You just drop the AppDir in, and it works. No muss, no fuss.
Additionally, to install a deb you need to be root. Most people don't want or need to use root. 0install fixes that, and AppDirs make it easy even without 0install.
With AppDirs and 0install, you no longer have any of the problems software on GNU/Linux does. (Packaging for a number of distros and pushing it to the user with dependancies seamlessly) Apt only fixes one of those problems.
If you mean 'remove app without the users knowledge,' no. 0install actually will store old versions of software you've cached even after you cache a new version until you yourself tell it to remove it.
Other then that, the potential to 'unpublish' a app is no greater then any other app on SourceForge.
That's what it does. That is what they mean when they say 'cache'.
What happens is the software is cached first. Then, all dependancies are listed as 0install directories, so if you have it already it'll use the cached version, but if not it'll pull a copy and cache that. This is nice because if, say, you don't use the help files, it won't pull them until you ask for them, so you don't have them clutering up your HDD or being downloaded. You just point the ROX-Filer at the 0install AppDir, click on it, and without you even needing to think about it everything is installed and the program runs.
It also has a way to quickly update all apps, or if you just want one upgraded, open it in the Filer and hit 'reload.' Simple, easy, and intuitive. In general, I'd say this is even easier then the Windows Update and installers combo.
Linux is a kernel. It copies POSIX specs, if anything. If anything, GNU are the ones who "copied" UNIX, and did so over a decades ago, but even that is a false argument.
At the heart, we have to ask 'what is UNIX?' Is it the core userspace tools? Then "copying" UNIX has already been shown to be OK, as BSD "copied" (read that "replaced") UNIX bit-by-bit while AT&T had it available to the schools.
Is it a kernel? If so, then SCO's claim of Linux 'copying' UNIX is meritless, as all it does is impliment POSIX calls so UNIX programs can compile and run on it. Behind the scenes they differ immensly, hammered home by the fact that SCO talked of adding a Linux compatibility layer to their UNIX product a few years back, but dropped it because it just would have been too difficult to impliment IIRC.
If UNIX is everything that runs on the 'UNIX' kernel, then there's never been a UNIX. Ever. Because each 'UNIX'(AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Sun OS) has been so drastically different that it has been the major reason UNIX never hit it big until someone came who didn't trying to block other vendors out and prevented others from using it to in turn block other vendors. (Namely, GNU/Linux) Had HURD pushed forward and been the default GNU kernel, perhaps they would have some theoretical merit, but HURD is also drastically different, being a mircokernel design and all the spiffy stuff that comes with that.
To say "Linux copies UNIX" is to say "Timex copies sundials." They have a common ancestory, serve similar roles, but vary greatly in implimentation.
Not to be a ass, but how is a Usenet group less exclusive then a mailing list? Both have a rather high geek level, and really keep many people from joining(for different reasons, mailinglists because of the volume, Usenet because most ISPs don't include free access).
If anything, Debian should be like Gentoo and have a official forum. Most people, no matter how new to computers, seem to get along OK with webforums. Hell, Yahoo! has them on news stories.
It would also take away the problem of high-volume mailing lists, and could give a nice email when someone replies to your question.
They already have one. It's called the DMCA.
I'd be careful. Quotes like that always have a way of biting people in the arse after a few years.
That said, why should we care if x86 runs GNU/Linux? Linus has a G5, IBM could make cheap hardware based on PowerPC chips, why not start the grass-roots call for PowerPC-based computers on every desktop? Let MS play in their legacy x86 world, and give the Free software people a light, efficient processor to push to it's full potential without any of the DRM concerns?
"W... What is that thing?!?"
"I... I think it's the blogosphere... And it's headed straight towards us!"
*various extras scatter. Camera pans to a model of the city being rolled over with a bowling ball*
"Oh no! It's Godzil-er... Ah damnit, I knew I should have came to rehersals."
Clusters making reboots 'hardly even noticed' is not good enough. That's the problem. There's no excuse for rebooting in the first place. The fact that you have redundant systems does not negate the fact that you are rebooting.
In a proper system, the only time one should need to reboot is if the kernel itself needs to be replaced in memory. That's it. Everything else should be a service which can be independantly stoped and started. That they have bundled things so 'tightly' for 'intergration' that they can't even update their web browser without rebooting speaks volumes IMHO.
Actually, assuming you were caught, the store actually gains money.
At least in Michigan. The law states that those caught of shoplifting have to pay a 'fine' to the store of 10 times the item's price. So the item becomes 150$, you don't get a CD, and you get jail time.
I believe most states have similar laws.
Espectally when we all know vi is much better.
... What?
/it's funny, laugh
Well, is it really any suprise? Look at movie ratings; tons of death and murders? PG-13. Show some skin? R or NC-17.
Kids watching grown men run at each other and violently push one another around or tackle eachother into the ground for hours? Perfectly fine. Show a nipple for 2 seconds? Public outrage and a exploritory commision.
There seems to be a very large, unnatural fear of sex.