I already have a better machine than this one, but I can't switch our main computer over to Linux because my wife uses that one. I'm trying out Linux and don't feel there should be a need to buy a new computer for it when right now its a spare time, curiosity thing for me. From reading this thread I have been introduced to a few more light window managers that do what I'm looking for. All the screen shots I'd seen before didn't have the taskbar and start menu turned on I guess because most people who use those window managers don't like them. I just need to try out a couple of these tonight and then I'll be able to see which of those I like. It sounds like one of those should run just fine. I just wish the main distros would have had options in the install that offered some of those lighter window managers as an option.
Heh, thank you. That was one of the things that bothered me about several Linux distros I tried. They automatically set your display at the largest screen resolution supported by your video card at install, and it is usually not a simple thing to change that in most distros. My 15" monitor isn't too happy with that.
Compiling kernels, tuning ATA performance and so on are beyond either the ability or inclination of most users, even reasonably technically savvy ones. And the more likely someone is to want to use a computer as a tool for non-computer-related tasks -- word processing, email, IM, games, booking plane tickets, etc[1] -- the less likely they're going to be willing to spend time "tuning" their system (let alone spend hours and hours building an entire system from source code).
Not to mention that this is freakin' Mandrake! Mandrake users are probably not going to know how to do any of that. I think that is why Mandrake should have most of the services turned off by default.
In my experience (limited as it may be) this is due to the very bloated and inefficient stock kernel that's shipped with the distro. Go in and compile a finely tuned kernel, and you'll be amazed.
OK, so what kind of optimizations can be done with re-compiling, and how does one turn things off in a re-compile?
This is what you guys get when you keep preaching that linux is just as friendly as windows so everyone should switch. You get the same kind of bloat windows has.
WAKE UP! If you read the editorial, you totally did not grasp what he was talking about. It's WAY beyond "the same kind of bloat". It's much worse. Systems that can fly with Win98 or WinNT are barely usable with newer Linux distros. This isn't about being "as bad" as Windows. This is about dropping off the cliff beyond that. It used to be that people not using Linux was because they haven't tried it, or couldn't learn to use it. Now, you're getting people who want to use it, have tried it, and had to abandon it and go back to Windows because their machine couldn't handle Linux. That is the inexusable part.
I'm trying to adapt to Linux, but it's painfully slow. I've got a 300MHz K6-2 with 192MB RAM, but I'm going to have to try a slim window manager because KDE bogs everything down. My complaint is that it seems there aren't many window managers that are in a middle ground. I've looked at several of the smaller window managers, and they seem way too spartan. They're barely better than a straight Xserver. Can't you get wallpaper, desktop icons, a Start menu, and taskbar without the thing sucking resources like a sponge? That right click program menu is a waste of time because you have to minimize the apps you're running to right click for that menu.
If your goal is a dual boot with Linux and Windows, but the NTFS support isn't there for Linux yet, why do you have to use XP? If you still have a copy, use Win98SE with ZoneAlarm or something to protect it. That will have a FAT32 partition your Linux distro can read and write to. If it's for running games, Win98 should work fine for that, and even use less resources if your machine isn't really fast.
Yeah, I think there is way too much importance placed on desktop appearance over functionality here. I keep hearing anti-Windows people refer to Windows as "ugly". That strikes me along the same lines as comments about race/color and are irrelevent to ability to do the job. Please don't go off on the wrong tangent here about usability. That's a different topic than "ugliness", like colors and smooth edges, etc.
I have looked at Xandros because I don't have much experience with Linux yet, and it has some features in its proprietary file manager that other distos lack. I want Windows/SMB shares to be found automatically. I want them browsable and integrated with the file manager. I want the kind of right-click functionality that Windows has had forever, like mapping network drives and sharing folders. I am just not willing to pay for it before I get a chance to try it. This seems like a good chance to do that, which is why I'm interested.
"self-updating"??? I certainly hope that most self-respecting companies wouldn't rely on self-updating systems to manage things. I would actually hope that they just wouldn't use self-updating at all. That just isn't safe to install ??? without testing it or even knowing what is going to be installed. Get a clue here that sys admins are necessary to make sure upgrades and patches are tested and applied properly and at appropriate times.
Yeah, I guess it has made it into print. I was thinking of when his book gets published, but he's posted so many excerpts that it's in print already.
I think Linus speaking for the Linux community is fine, as he is a somewhat recognized voice of Linux in general. Same for ESR about Gnu. What I was referring to is the other way around though. Linus personally is getting attacked, and I don't think it's the place of the Linux community to defend the individual.
I know a lot of it is about Linux in general, such as that "hybrid source" nonsense. I think the innacuracies about the interviews may be best addressed by those involved.
I used to see this complaint about Linux. It would shortly be followed up by, "Geez, you just extract it,./configure, make, make install" It seemed a little complex, but doable, so I thought, "Yeah, that doesn't seem too bad." Then I actually had to do it. Hmm, those steps don't bother to mention that you have to have developer packages installed to compile it. Huh? I don't write code, so I didn't put in the programming environment. OK, I'll try the one that's the pre-compiled binary. After extracting, how do you install a binary? No file called setup or install, so you discover there's a script file that's named after the program that is supposed to install it. It of course is not executable, though, so I have to set the property on the file to do that first.
Anyway, people try to explain that away, but I know what a freaking pain that is now.
I notice that you didn't really get many answers to this question, and I'm disappointed because it's the same question I've had. I really want to switch to Linux, and I've been trying it out for about the last year. I have to leave our main machine(PIII) alone because my wife uses it, but I have been trying several distros on our second computer(K6-2 300MHz with 192MB SDRAM). I have never tried XP on this machine because I'm sure it would crawl, and I don't want to buy another license anyway. It runs Win98SE very quickly, so that's what I have to compare these Linux distros with. Every one I've tried is just pathetically slow. I always heard about "not as bloated" and such, so where is that? 2.4 vs 2.6 kernel versions didn't make any difference. Turning off most of the display eye candy didn't make much difference either. What really bugged me was that Win98SE ran just fine with my S3 2MB video card. Most of the Linux distros wouldn't even install with that. I got a better video card now, so I could at least try them. Do I have to use a barebones window manager? I like having a start/kicker menu and taskbar, so I don't want to go too basic. Any good window managers to recommend that might be faster? I've got Mandrake 10 with KDE right now, so I could try a different window manager to see if it helps.
Please don't take this as a slam against Linux in general. I'm sure on faster machines, it's fine, but I would like to see something that could work as well as Win98 on this computer. What kind of stuff did people use when this was the fastest computer people had?
This isn't about Linus - it's about GPL software, "hybrid source", and make no mistake, he's trying to kill adoption and funding of it by painting its promoters as immoral.
I'm fully aware that that is his intention. I'm not as naive as that; I just don't think it stands much of a chance of accomplishing anything in that regard. Right now, though, specific people are being accused, and I think they are doing a very competent job of speaking for themselves. I am pretty disappointed, though, that none of the rebuttals have addressed what I think is the worst issue. I understand his definition of "hybrid source", and it is an unsubstantiated falsehood for him to refer to Linux as such instead of open source. That needs to be contested and soon. He should not be allowed to continue that.
No, we don't need a formal group response to this. Are you the one being accused of code theft? Is he putting words in your mouth? Are you being interviewed with false motives and then being quoted out of context with wrong interpretation? No? Neither am I.
The people being slandered are responding, and I think the rest of us should stay out of it. When it gets into print, it will become libel, and then it will be more serious. Those involved can pursue it at that point if they wish, but until then, they might prefer to speak for themselves, rather than be defended by spokespeople they have no control of. We've already seen that Ken Brown made use of other people referring to Linus as an "inventor" and then implying Linus did something wrong by allowing that. Even if it's well meaning, let's not give him any more ammunition like that.
"The Samizdat report recommends that the U.S. government should invest $5 billion in research and development efforts that produce true open source products, such as BSD and MIT license-based open source."
Interesting, his choice of BSD, considering that Microsoft has used BSD code in Windows before. Getting the U.S. government to pay for research that will benefit Microsoft ($60 billion in the bank) is nothing short of corporate welfare, especially when said corporation pays so little tax to the U.S. Government with the exception of campaign contributions for the Capitol Hill gang.
Then the author (similar to SCO) shoots his own foot with the following statement:
"The disturbing reality is that the hybrid source model depends heavily upon sponging talent from U.S. corporations and/or U.S. proprietary software."
How is the *hybrid source* of Linux being more of a sponge than BSD? Linux requires the community to give back improvements so the entire Linux community profits. Anyone can use BSD without giving anything back (thankfully some companies like Apple do, and unlike MSFT). So how does BSD get a free sponging pass in this guy's logic?
Ken tries a subtle technique to discredit Linux, by hiding the difference between code writing process vs. publication license. Very early in the article, he says, "Its purpose is to provide U.S. leadership with a researched presentation on attribution and intellectual property problems with the hybrid source code model, particularly Linux." In just a quick phrase--"including Linux"--he implies that Linux uses a "hybrid source code model", which he defines later as combining stolen proprietary code with original code. That is a completely false statement that Linux was developed using this hybrid model. However, now that he has slipped in that association, he can now (rightly) criticize the hybrid model as being unethical, and we have to agree somewhat. People in the know about Linux' code writing process will understand that Linux has dropped from the discussion when he began talking about the hybrid source code model, but he is counting on the less-informed to be nodding along, unaware that he's not really talking about Linux anymore.
As to your reply on his "sponging" comment, you misunderstand what he meant. He is referring to the creation of code using the hybrid source model he has been talking about, which incorporates illegally obtained proprietary code. That does include an aspect of "sponging" off of someone else's talent. By giving only two choices--BSD and similar style licenses or "hybrid source", he has created a false dichotomy. Linux is not published under a BSD-style license, so...what? It's created with hybrid source? He is trying to promote this idea that only BSD style licensing, where you can copy/take/hide/etc. is truly free, and the GPL, with its additional restrictions is not free.
I also see the goal they are shooting for with that. Being funded by Microsoft, they are not in favor of all source code to be proprietary. Rather, he mentions they should push for "open source" code in the form of BSD style so that it can be incorporated and used in MS closed-source products, as allowed in the BSD license. They are trying to gain benefit by having others do their work for them and legally picking the fruit.
As others have said, that's the One True Position for the control key. (Check Sun keyboards, for example.)
I think typing BLOCKQUOTE is about the only use I have for caps lock now.:) Really though, you mention the Sun keyboard thing, but Sun wasn't consistent with that. When I was in college, there were two UNIX labs next door to each other in one of the engineering buildings. Apparently one of them was a little newer than the other. The machines were about the same, but Sun had apparently made a keyboard switch during that time interval, so one lab had keyboards with the Control key next to A, and the other had the Caps Lock key next to A. That drove me crazy not being able to form a habit on either one. I couldn't always go to the same one because they would sometimes schedule one or the other lab for classes to use, so we couldn't always get in to work there. We were mainly using them for VHDL simulation programming, so there was a lot of Caps Lock usage. I don't remember if it was strictly case-necessary, or just for style.
At work, it is very frustrating, too that I have a switchable monitor hooked up to a Sun Solaris workstation and a Windows PC. One keyboard is on the desk and the other on a slide-out tray underneath. Having the Control and Caps Lock keys opposite on those two keyboards keeps me from getting used to either way.
Yeah, that's not the same thing, is it? That is everything off, or everything on, or you have to change them one by one, like I was mentioning. KDE has more settings with that slider. There are about 5-6 levels of display flashiness to choose from, and it makes pretty intelligent choices of which ones are generally useless and which ones are pretty good, so that when you turn it mostly down, it is still leaving the good stuff in there 'til last.
Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you. Dr. Peter Venkman: What? Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams. Dr. Peter Venkman: Why? Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad. Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean "bad"? Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. Dr. Raymond Stantz: Total protonic reversal. Dr. Peter Venkman: That's bad. Okay. Alright, important safety tip, thanks Egon.
I know it's in 3.1. I've just put Mandrake 10 on, so I haven't checked for it in 3.2 yet. KDE has a display setup wizard with several steps you can go through--monitor type, etc. That slider is one of the steps, but you may be able to run it by itself.
Sorry, I didn't think XP had that. I thought each one had to be turned off because I hadn't found that slider. I use XP, but hadn't gotten around to turning that stuff off yet because the performance hasn't been slow enough to bother me yet.
I've just started using Linux some, but it's on a 300MHz machine, so the KDE performance is really dragging on it, so I had to turn it off.
Something I like about KDE (and Gnome may do this too--I've just never used it) in this area over Windows is their performance/eye candy slider. You don't have to go through finding which settings are the eye candy and turning them off one by one. KDE has a slider that you can drag toward features or performance, and it shows below that the settings that are being turned on or off.
I think this is a really tough issue because there are two different paradigms as far as applications being used, and the two types of edit commands are separately suited to the two application types.
For graphical applications, the Ctrl commands are more convenient. They copy when you want them to, you can highlight text to replace before you paste over it, you can keep something in the clipboard for a while without worrying about losing it if you accidentally "drag" your mouse a little while placing the cursor, etc.
That doesn't work well at all in terminal windows. Ctrl-C is an actual command there, so it can't be used. Also, your cursor is always at a fixed location, so as soon as you select your text, it's a given where it is going to be pasted, so a middle click anywhere will put it where the cursor is--very convenient.
Two very specifically tailored solutions that don't work well together, and I think that you would get a very high correlation between mouse-edit fans being command line jockeys, and Ctrl-edit fans mostly using graphical apps.
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I already have a better machine than this one, but I can't switch our main computer over to Linux because my wife uses that one. I'm trying out Linux and don't feel there should be a need to buy a new computer for it when right now its a spare time, curiosity thing for me. From reading this thread I have been introduced to a few more light window managers that do what I'm looking for. All the screen shots I'd seen before didn't have the taskbar and start menu turned on I guess because most people who use those window managers don't like them. I just need to try out a couple of these tonight and then I'll be able to see which of those I like. It sounds like one of those should run just fine. I just wish the main distros would have had options in the install that offered some of those lighter window managers as an option.
Heh, thank you. That was one of the things that bothered me about several Linux distros I tried. They automatically set your display at the largest screen resolution supported by your video card at install, and it is usually not a simple thing to change that in most distros. My 15" monitor isn't too happy with that.
I'm trying to adapt to Linux, but it's painfully slow. I've got a 300MHz K6-2 with 192MB RAM, but I'm going to have to try a slim window manager because KDE bogs everything down. My complaint is that it seems there aren't many window managers that are in a middle ground. I've looked at several of the smaller window managers, and they seem way too spartan. They're barely better than a straight Xserver. Can't you get wallpaper, desktop icons, a Start menu, and taskbar without the thing sucking resources like a sponge? That right click program menu is a waste of time because you have to minimize the apps you're running to right click for that menu.
If your goal is a dual boot with Linux and Windows, but the NTFS support isn't there for Linux yet, why do you have to use XP? If you still have a copy, use Win98SE with ZoneAlarm or something to protect it. That will have a FAT32 partition your Linux distro can read and write to. If it's for running games, Win98 should work fine for that, and even use less resources if your machine isn't really fast.
Yeah, I think there is way too much importance placed on desktop appearance over functionality here. I keep hearing anti-Windows people refer to Windows as "ugly". That strikes me along the same lines as comments about race/color and are irrelevent to ability to do the job. Please don't go off on the wrong tangent here about usability. That's a different topic than "ugliness", like colors and smooth edges, etc.
I have looked at Xandros because I don't have much experience with Linux yet, and it has some features in its proprietary file manager that other distos lack. I want Windows/SMB shares to be found automatically. I want them browsable and integrated with the file manager. I want the kind of right-click functionality that Windows has had forever, like mapping network drives and sharing folders. I am just not willing to pay for it before I get a chance to try it. This seems like a good chance to do that, which is why I'm interested.
"self-updating"??? I certainly hope that most self-respecting companies wouldn't rely on self-updating systems to manage things. I would actually hope that they just wouldn't use self-updating at all. That just isn't safe to install ??? without testing it or even knowing what is going to be installed. Get a clue here that sys admins are necessary to make sure upgrades and patches are tested and applied properly and at appropriate times.
Yeah, I guess it has made it into print. I was thinking of when his book gets published, but he's posted so many excerpts that it's in print already.
I think Linus speaking for the Linux community is fine, as he is a somewhat recognized voice of Linux in general. Same for ESR about Gnu. What I was referring to is the other way around though. Linus personally is getting attacked, and I don't think it's the place of the Linux community to defend the individual.
I know a lot of it is about Linux in general, such as that "hybrid source" nonsense. I think the innacuracies about the interviews may be best addressed by those involved.
"1) makes it easy to install/remove programs,..."
./configure, make, make install"
I used to see this complaint about Linux. It would shortly be followed up by, "Geez, you just extract it,
It seemed a little complex, but doable, so I thought, "Yeah, that doesn't seem too bad." Then I actually had to do it. Hmm, those steps don't bother to mention that you have to have developer packages installed to compile it. Huh? I don't write code, so I didn't put in the programming environment. OK, I'll try the one that's the pre-compiled binary. After extracting, how do you install a binary? No file called setup or install, so you discover there's a script file that's named after the program that is supposed to install it. It of course is not executable, though, so I have to set the property on the file to do that first.
Anyway, people try to explain that away, but I know what a freaking pain that is now.
I notice that you didn't really get many answers to this question, and I'm disappointed because it's the same question I've had. I really want to switch to Linux, and I've been trying it out for about the last year. I have to leave our main machine(PIII) alone because my wife uses it, but I have been trying several distros on our second computer(K6-2 300MHz with 192MB SDRAM). I have never tried XP on this machine because I'm sure it would crawl, and I don't want to buy another license anyway. It runs Win98SE very quickly, so that's what I have to compare these Linux distros with. Every one I've tried is just pathetically slow. I always heard about "not as bloated" and such, so where is that? 2.4 vs 2.6 kernel versions didn't make any difference. Turning off most of the display eye candy didn't make much difference either. What really bugged me was that Win98SE ran just fine with my S3 2MB video card. Most of the Linux distros wouldn't even install with that. I got a better video card now, so I could at least try them. Do I have to use a barebones window manager? I like having a start/kicker menu and taskbar, so I don't want to go too basic. Any good window managers to recommend that might be faster? I've got Mandrake 10 with KDE right now, so I could try a different window manager to see if it helps.
Please don't take this as a slam against Linux in general. I'm sure on faster machines, it's fine, but I would like to see something that could work as well as Win98 on this computer. What kind of stuff did people use when this was the fastest computer people had?
No, we don't need a formal group response to this. Are you the one being accused of code theft? Is he putting words in your mouth? Are you being interviewed with false motives and then being quoted out of context with wrong interpretation? No? Neither am I.
The people being slandered are responding, and I think the rest of us should stay out of it. When it gets into print, it will become libel, and then it will be more serious. Those involved can pursue it at that point if they wish, but until then, they might prefer to speak for themselves, rather than be defended by spokespeople they have no control of. We've already seen that Ken Brown made use of other people referring to Linus as an "inventor" and then implying Linus did something wrong by allowing that. Even if it's well meaning, let's not give him any more ammunition like that.
It's just like crack, except the first hit is really expensive!
As to your reply on his "sponging" comment, you misunderstand what he meant. He is referring to the creation of code using the hybrid source model he has been talking about, which incorporates illegally obtained proprietary code. That does include an aspect of "sponging" off of someone else's talent. By giving only two choices--BSD and similar style licenses or "hybrid source", he has created a false dichotomy. Linux is not published under a BSD-style license, so...what? It's created with hybrid source? He is trying to promote this idea that only BSD style licensing, where you can copy/take/hide/etc. is truly free, and the GPL, with its additional restrictions is not free.
I also see the goal they are shooting for with that. Being funded by Microsoft, they are not in favor of all source code to be proprietary. Rather, he mentions they should push for "open source" code in the form of BSD style so that it can be incorporated and used in MS closed-source products, as allowed in the BSD license. They are trying to gain benefit by having others do their work for them and legally picking the fruit.
At work, it is very frustrating, too that I have a switchable monitor hooked up to a Sun Solaris workstation and a Windows PC. One keyboard is on the desk and the other on a slide-out tray underneath. Having the Control and Caps Lock keys opposite on those two keyboards keeps me from getting used to either way.
Yeah, that's not the same thing, is it? That is everything off, or everything on, or you have to change them one by one, like I was mentioning. KDE has more settings with that slider. There are about 5-6 levels of display flashiness to choose from, and it makes pretty intelligent choices of which ones are generally useless and which ones are pretty good, so that when you turn it mostly down, it is still leaving the good stuff in there 'til last.
From IMDB:
Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: That's bad. Okay. Alright, important safety tip, thanks Egon.
I know it's in 3.1. I've just put Mandrake 10 on, so I haven't checked for it in 3.2 yet. KDE has a display setup wizard with several steps you can go through--monitor type, etc. That slider is one of the steps, but you may be able to run it by itself.
Sorry, I didn't think XP had that. I thought each one had to be turned off because I hadn't found that slider. I use XP, but hadn't gotten around to turning that stuff off yet because the performance hasn't been slow enough to bother me yet.
I've just started using Linux some, but it's on a 300MHz machine, so the KDE performance is really dragging on it, so I had to turn it off.
Something I like about KDE (and Gnome may do this too--I've just never used it) in this area over Windows is their performance/eye candy slider. You don't have to go through finding which settings are the eye candy and turning them off one by one. KDE has a slider that you can drag toward features or performance, and it shows below that the settings that are being turned on or off.
I think this is a really tough issue because there are two different paradigms as far as applications being used, and the two types of edit commands are separately suited to the two application types.
For graphical applications, the Ctrl commands are more convenient. They copy when you want them to, you can highlight text to replace before you paste over it, you can keep something in the clipboard for a while without worrying about losing it if you accidentally "drag" your mouse a little while placing the cursor, etc.
That doesn't work well at all in terminal windows. Ctrl-C is an actual command there, so it can't be used. Also, your cursor is always at a fixed location, so as soon as you select your text, it's a given where it is going to be pasted, so a middle click anywhere will put it where the cursor is--very convenient.
Two very specifically tailored solutions that don't work well together, and I think that you would get a very high correlation between mouse-edit fans being command line jockeys, and Ctrl-edit fans mostly using graphical apps.