This isn't restricted to only Linux. How do you expect an accounting application to be "self-explaining"? Sure, QuickBooks is "self-explaining", if you write a lot of checks. As has been shown in the past, computer-based analogies to physical devices or methods works for about 15 seconds (unless you like your Faxmodem driver that pops up a virtual fax machine when you send or receive a fax).
Correct. However, the Linux desktop has to be better than other ones, not just "as good", else nobody will have a reason to switch.
Yes, it could be done better. But since Windows 2000, how many "installer standards" has MS come up with? Can they not make up their minds? Right now, to install.Net 2.0 Beta, I had to install Windows Installer 3.0. ??? Now, if InnoSetup could be ported to Linux, that would be cool.
This is quite irrelevant, since they all are operated and behave very similar. You are right with InnoSetup, I would also like to see NSIS ported.
Well, this sounds like a binary driver issue, not a Kernel issue. Right in-line with people who bought printers with their new Windows XP computers, where either the printer driver disk did not have an XP driver (you had to d/l it), the XP driver blue-screened the computer. Even better were those who had just bought printers before they "upgraded" to XP, only to find out that NO driver was ever going to be released for their printer for XP.
Good point there. I fully agree.
Setting up a network share? There are more than enough docs on-line that walk through how to do it. In reality, editing a text file like/etc/fstab is FAR, FAR safer than messing around in the Registry. It is really no worse to do 'nano/etc/fstab' than it is to do Start->Run, Notepad c:\windows\system\win.ini ever was. Sure, right-click on a folder, and selecting "Share..." is pretty easy, but remember, you only have 26 drive letters available to use (and at least 3 of them are already allocated).
No,no,no. This is flawed. NOBODY sets up shares with regedit. NOBODY. And even with all those docs the problem remains. No joe average will touch a config file. A simple "share" menu is a MUCH better way, and in Linux one is not restricted to 26 letters, so we have an improvement here.
You are wrong. I already mentioned the TwinkleCam example once. There are opensource drivers for this webcam (nw802), but there are NO packages for a 2.6 kernel, only for 2.4. So either you downgrade your kernel (often necessary if you use a desktop linux), which is NOT a good idea, or you start compiling. There the fun continues, since the code is not compatible with recent 2.6 kernels!
About the howto stuff: how about equipping a distro with some useful documentations? Why does everybody have to rely on howtos in the net? Its OK for obscure cases, but for common problems like setting up the nvidia drivers? A big fat "DOCUMENTATIONS" icon would be nice. With ALL official howtos for the distro (in Ubuntu, that would be the Wiki contents).
ah, the ultimate goal: Desktop Linux. He is right, its stalled. Distros like Ubuntu *almost* reach competitive usability. Almost because there is always some stuff that doesn't work properly. But this is rapidly being cured out.
Two potential reasons for the stall:
1. Lack of self-explaining software. Software should not require the user to read the manual for the most basic tasks, the user should be able to find them out easily. KDE apps usually are self-explaining, GNOME apps too, however most other opensource projects aren't.
2. Application installation. This is a nasty one. The immediate answer is usually that the distros all have such a nice package system. Yeah, but what if software XY isn't in the package database? Tough luck, have fun compiling (if its not a binary-only version). This is where Windows is lightyears ahead: setup screens all look the same, behave the same way, and are easy to install. Linux? ahem... The only ones who got it right were Loki, who created their Loki installer. It is dead easy to install UT2004 in Linux. ALL apps should have self-extracting graphical installers, and the installation system should be *DE*centralized.
3. Hardware support. Despite the advances in the last years, hardware support still sucks sometimes. Try to get a TwinkeCam to work with Ubuntu 5.04. Its impossible unless you want to downgrade the KERNEL to a 2.4 one. Compiling the driver is not possible because of broken code that is incompatible with the 2.6 kernel (even with the 2.6 patches to the Makefile).
4. The community. Look, if you want people to choose Linux instead of Windows, you have to change something. "RTFM" is intolerable. Questions like how to mount a network share should not end in some obscure/etc/fstab editing instructions, this should be possible with a nice graphical app. In fact, NOTHING regarding desktop usage should ever require xterm usage and/or configfiles editing.
To sum it up: People like stuff that "Just Works". Linux desktops rarely just work. The moments when they don't are far more frequent than with Windows and OSX desktops.
You do know that technological advances may lead to less power consumption, too? What about the nice 3D graphics chipsets in laptops? 5-10 years ago their functionality was possible, but with MUCH higher energy requirements. Or cars! A modern car needs less gas than an old one. (Comparing equal car classes here - of course a modern taxi and an old SUV cannot be compared.)
Moller lost almost all of his credibility by now. If he wants people to believe him, then he should provide test drives for anyone. Show us the skycars!
You are right with aRts. Unfortunately, there are little alternatives. esd has serious sync problems (just ask the Ubuntu devs). dmix is nowhere near stable. I hope something better comes, like a new sound daemon, or a stable dmix.
About streaming capabilities: a desktop absolutely NEEDS a multimedia infrastructure like gstreamer. OK, its not KDEs job to install it, nor handling the infrastructe (after all, gstreamer already exists). It doesn't even have to be an integral part of the desktop.
But what is actually needed? A way to configure the damn thing! I mean something like an easy way to change the sources & sinks with the control center, having a list of all installed codecs, maybe with an "Install new codec" button for easy install and so on. This would actually be a BIG advantage of a Linux desktop over Windows, since DirectShow isn't easy to configure, and if it gets messed up with broken codecs, you better get prepared for a full Windows reinstall. gstreamer is in many ways better than DirectShow (except seeking, this works more reliable with DShow), so we shouldn't miss the chance of using this advantage. In a Nutshell: KDE shouldn't require gstreamer, but it should include optional support, with autodetection for gstreamer presence, thus enabling all gstreamer-related stuff when its there.
Why gstreamer? Why not xine or mplayer? gxine is very nice, and xine-based Kaffeine rocks, yeah. But there are legal problems. Anybody remembers the MPEG-4 license problems? gstreamer is much safer, since the plugins can be binary, closed-source (useful! for example, DivX could exist as a binary codec, and Cyberlink could create a DVD decoder - finally, watching DVDs without cracking them).
The problem with most package managers is that its not easy to find out what codecs are needed. Hell, most users don't even know what a codec is. In Windows, the media player automatically tries to download a suitable codec, and if there isn't any, it prints out an error message (which is not very helpful:) ). What I would like to see: for example, User X gets a MPEG-4 AVI. gstreamer doesn't know how to handle this, so it starts to look for a codec with the matching FOURCC. It doesn't find one. Result: gstreamer-based Kaffeine shows a message box "couldn't play video because playback software is missing." And then, under "Details": "no installed codec is able to play video with the FOURCC 'DIVX'." Yes, thats Kaffeine and not KDE itself, but Kaffeine is often bundled with KDE desktops, so this setup would be very nice.
I was a little frustrated with Gnome when I saw the "use Gnome"-answer from the gp poster. Gnome is nice sometimes, and sometimes it sucks. Which desktop doesn't? However, my experience with GNOME and KDE always led me to prefer KDE in the past. Maybe its because of the work I do (I browse often with a file manager in my fileserver, and so far Konqueror always outperformed Nautilus). Also, I always felt Gnome to be more sluggish than KDE, as if the latency was higher. But yeah, I should have written an "IMO" there.
Of course it does has something to do with KDE. You do know what arts is? And how does a user configure his sound card? With vi editing some alsa config files? No, he wants to configure it USING THE DESKTOP. Multimedia streaming capabilities are part of a desktop, too. The codecs aren't, thats correct, but they should be easy to install; if they aren't in synaptic, things get really hard for an average user. And installing a codec from source using configure, make & make install is neither easy nor pleasant, since the user has to install a lot of dev libs first (and gcc of course). Not user friendly at all. Easy-to-install binary codecs are rare.
1) is correct, but also pretty ironic, given that there are so much zealots who say exactly this (too much prefs stuff in the control center) and then say "edit bla.conf" when anyone asks how to get sound working (provided the zealots don't quit with a "RTFM"). The advanced options shouldn't disappear completely (like GNOME did). Instead, they should be hidden behind an "Advanced options...." button. For example, the Windows desktop settings behave this way; the most common options are visible immediately, but for editing graphics driver options or setting the monitor refresh rate etc. one has to go to the Advanced Options part.
2) There is already something for GNOME/KDE integration: a GTK theme engine based on Qt. Thus, GTK apps look like Qt/KDE ones. Of course, its only useful if you use KDE...
Well, Windows Explorer is very unstable, and sucks a lot of memory, but it is VERY usable. It *reacts* quickly, thats a crucial point. With Nautilus, sometimes I select a bunch of files I want to move, and want to drag, and - nothing happens! Then after an eternity the drag&drop icon appears. Annoying stuff like this happens with Explorer too sometimes, but not as often as with Nautilus.
In Windows I use TortoiseCVS/SVN. It absolutely rocks. Using Cervisia after using Tortoise is anything but pleasant. I don't want to offend the Cervisia devs with this, but I would be glad if a new Cervisia release would integrate in Konqueror like Tortoise does with Explorer.
Wrong. The desktop should provide easy access to sound configuration. It should NOT involve some config file editing as root.
As for videos, desktop linux distros should play them flawlessly, shouldn't they? As the parent poster correctly stated this is not the case. mplayer crashes often, gxine is fine, but is often installed with little codec support (because of the damn licences). gstreamer works, but usually comes with very few plugins installed. O.K., its a license thing with gstreamer too, thats why the USER has to install the ffmpeg plugin, but wouldn't a messagebox with a "you have to agree to take responsibility blabla...." and an OK button to start the install be adequate? Instead the user has to install the package through synaptic or a terminal. And no, it is NOT intuitive that one has to search for the ffmpeg gst plugin just to watch some AVIs!
But your comment on the Macs really pulls the last straw. There are problems with linux desktops, so - don't correct them but use Macs. Brilliant!
And Gnome is no alternative. Its big, has some serious latency problems sometimes (especially with Nautilus), has some screwed understanding of DPI usage, its very easy to screw it up....
And, where is the problem with writing a wrapper for a C frontend? You do know that there are C wrappers for DirectX, for ODE....? No need to switch the ENTIRE PROJECT to C.
Did you ever consider that modern IDEs also may have um.... advantages? Ever used Visual C? Eclipse? IDEA? Ever seen IDEA's refactoring capabilities?
Your first paragraph is pointless, unfortunately it is still widespread among Unix hackers. See, if everything thats new is "l4m3" and only emacs+terminal is "l33t", then why not stopping progress altogether? By the way, why using a mouse? How l4m3! A monitor! Ha, in the old days l33t programmers stuck with their printers! Why using modern OS with multitasking and that fancy stuff! Why electricity! Dude, this fire thing is overrated, right?
Of course the new IDEs won't magically make better code, of course I don't need them for a hello world, but they sure as hell help a LOT when writing code, especially when writing larger projects.
I for one like Visual C. Yeah, call me heretic or whatever, I don't care. VC doesn't make some magical shiny code, I have to do that (and often enough its neither magical nor shiny:) ), but VC makes writing projects with hundreds of subprojects and files less painful than with a simple vi. And no, I'm not talking about RAD here (although its one of the greatest advantages of an IDE).
Sounds like the usual exaggerated UML designing. To be honest, while "drawing" the structures is of course useful, people either tend to skip that completely or they tend to design an extremely complicated mess by putting every single variable into the UML graph. The latter is often done by self-proclaimed professionals and is then shown as "THE solution".
Linux desktops are almost ready for the average user. The problem is the "almost" part.
Example: Ubuntu. Excellent distro, with a few flaws in its GNOME Desktop:
I can browse a SMB network with nautilus, nice. However, I cannot access the data I see in nautilus with another program since the SMB folders arent actually mounted. Now that may confuse people. In Windows is simple network sharing REALLY simple. Click on folder, press "share", set the permissions, click OK. In Ubuntu, once I actually want to *mount* an SMB share, I have to use the terminal and edit/etc/fstab, or smbmount it myself - anyway I need a terminal. Now isn't this a bit average-user-UNfriendly? Here's an idea: just like/media/ exists for removable media, make/network/ or/shares/ or such for SMB shares. Once you start browsing the SMB network in nautilus, and open a share, have it automatically mounted. Then, to umount, simply right-click the folder in/media/, press "Disconnect" or "Unmount" or whatever. Easy & intuitive filesystem integration, and even easier than in windows.
Also: I wanted to start downloading a trailer, but then I noticed how BIG it actually list. Having a traffic volumen, I quickly decided to abort download. Ok, aborted, but the default settings in Firefox is to always download to ~/Desktop, thus the partially downloaded video arrived there. Now Nautilus tried to create a preview thumbnail out of the partially downloaded api! As a result, nautilus hung up, eating hundreds of MB, then the swapdisk started to work, only solution hard reset - pretty, huh?
Of course Windows isnt free of cases like these; however, to actually prevail against Windows Linux has to be *better*, not just "as good". So, Linux also has to avoid the errors that plague XP.
How is this meant with the boiled water? That it boiled because of the greenhouse effect? I read several times that Venus would be habitable (although surely not very pleasant, and mostly a desert world) if the greenhouse gases weren't there, and a earth-like atmosphere would be in their place.
Spelling error, sorry. I meant that sometimes, you HAVE to edit config files to get stuff running, no matter whether you actually want or not.
As for the camera: it was just a _general_ example. Yes, modern distros handle cameras pretty well. However, I mentioned other examples where one still has to edit some configfiles to get stuff running.
My AMD Athlon takes 6 seconds to show/usr/bin with 2112 files without having opened it before. After it has been cached it takes 2 seconds. This is with 2.10, not 2.12.
For the record: I use gnome 2.10, so yes I USE the newest stable nautilus. So much for "obvious".
On my P4 2.4 GHz with Serial ATA HD and my laptop with an AMD Athlon XP-M 2600, konqueror, rox, xfe etc. always have been much faster than nautilus. The real nightmare are the samba shares with the large directories - nautilus takes AGES to read the contents, the other filemanagers are ready pretty soon (coding folder with 6500 directories and files: konqueror 5 seconds, rox 6 seconds, nautilus more than one minute).
Showing huge directories is also an incredible borderline case that hardly defines the operation of the file manager (and now PLEASE don't ignore the previous paragraph just because I wrote this).
An incredible borderline case, eh? A pretty lame excuse, just have a look at a big software project, more than 2k files in one folder are achieved pretty quickly. In fact, you proved yourself wrong by mentioning/usr/bin, which is NOT a borderline case.
Re:nautilus, file browsers and other stuff
on
GNOME 2.12 Released
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· Score: 1
Hey now that i mention it, how long does it take WE to display a 2000 file folder?
I answered that in my original post.
Try browsing a large directory with thousands of files with nautilus, konqueror and windows explorer. The latter ones scan the directory MUCH faster.
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This isn't restricted to only Linux. How do you expect an accounting application to be "self-explaining"? Sure, QuickBooks is "self-explaining", if you write a lot of checks. As has been shown in the past, computer-based analogies to physical devices or methods works for about 15 seconds (unless you like your Faxmodem driver that pops up a virtual fax machine when you send or receive a fax).
.Net 2.0 Beta, I had to install Windows Installer 3.0. ??? Now, if InnoSetup could be ported to Linux, that would be cool.
/etc/fstab is FAR, FAR safer than messing around in the Registry. It is really no worse to do 'nano /etc/fstab' than it is to do Start->Run, Notepad c:\windows\system\win.ini ever was. Sure, right-click on a folder, and selecting "Share..." is pretty easy, but remember, you only have 26 drive letters available to use (and at least 3 of them are already allocated).
Correct. However, the Linux desktop has to be better than other ones, not just "as good", else nobody will have a reason to switch.
Yes, it could be done better. But since Windows 2000, how many "installer standards" has MS come up with? Can they not make up their minds? Right now, to install
This is quite irrelevant, since they all are operated and behave very similar.
You are right with InnoSetup, I would also like to see NSIS ported.
Well, this sounds like a binary driver issue, not a Kernel issue. Right in-line with people who bought printers with their new Windows XP computers, where either the printer driver disk did not have an XP driver (you had to d/l it), the XP driver blue-screened the computer. Even better were those who had just bought printers before they "upgraded" to XP, only to find out that NO driver was ever going to be released for their printer for XP.
Good point there. I fully agree.
Setting up a network share? There are more than enough docs on-line that walk through how to do it. In reality, editing a text file like
No,no,no. This is flawed. NOBODY sets up shares with regedit. NOBODY. And even with all those docs the problem remains. No joe average will touch a config file. A simple "share" menu is a MUCH better way, and in Linux one is not restricted to 26 letters, so we have an improvement here.
You are wrong. I already mentioned the TwinkleCam example once. There are opensource drivers for this webcam (nw802), but there are NO packages for a 2.6 kernel, only for 2.4. So either you downgrade your kernel (often necessary if you use a desktop linux), which is NOT a good idea, or you start compiling. There the fun continues, since the code is not compatible with recent 2.6 kernels!
About the howto stuff: how about equipping a distro with some useful documentations? Why does everybody have to rely on howtos in the net? Its OK for obscure cases, but for common problems like setting up the nvidia drivers? A big fat "DOCUMENTATIONS" icon would be nice. With ALL official howtos for the distro (in Ubuntu, that would be the Wiki contents).
Err, I meant four potential reasons :)
ah, the ultimate goal: Desktop Linux. He is right, its stalled. Distros like Ubuntu *almost* reach competitive usability. Almost because there is always some stuff that doesn't work properly. But this is rapidly being cured out.
/etc/fstab editing instructions, this should be possible with a nice graphical app. In fact, NOTHING regarding desktop usage should ever require xterm usage and/or configfiles editing.
Two potential reasons for the stall:
1. Lack of self-explaining software.
Software should not require the user to read the manual for the most basic tasks, the user should be able to find them out easily. KDE apps usually are self-explaining, GNOME apps too, however most other opensource projects aren't.
2. Application installation. This is a nasty one. The immediate answer is usually that the distros all have such a nice package system. Yeah, but what if software XY isn't in the package database? Tough luck, have fun compiling (if its not a binary-only version). This is where Windows is lightyears ahead: setup screens all look the same, behave the same way, and are easy to install. Linux? ahem... The only ones who got it right were Loki, who created their Loki installer. It is dead easy to install UT2004 in Linux. ALL apps should have self-extracting graphical installers, and the installation system should be *DE*centralized.
3. Hardware support. Despite the advances in the last years, hardware support still sucks sometimes. Try to get a TwinkeCam to work with Ubuntu 5.04. Its impossible unless you want to downgrade the KERNEL to a 2.4 one. Compiling the driver is not possible because of broken code that is incompatible with the 2.6 kernel (even with the 2.6 patches to the Makefile).
4. The community. Look, if you want people to choose Linux instead of Windows, you have to change something. "RTFM" is intolerable. Questions like how to mount a network share should not end in some obscure
To sum it up: People like stuff that "Just Works". Linux desktops rarely just work. The moments when they don't are far more frequent than with Windows and OSX desktops.
You do know that technological advances may lead to less power consumption, too?
What about the nice 3D graphics chipsets in laptops? 5-10 years ago their functionality was possible, but with MUCH higher energy requirements. Or cars! A modern car needs less gas than an old one. (Comparing equal car classes here - of course a modern taxi and an old SUV cannot be compared.)
Moller lost almost all of his credibility by now. If he wants people to believe him, then he should provide test drives for anyone. Show us the skycars!
You are right with aRts. Unfortunately, there are little alternatives. esd has serious sync problems (just ask the Ubuntu devs). dmix is nowhere near stable. I hope something better comes, like a new sound daemon, or a stable dmix.
:) ). What I would like to see: for example, User X gets a MPEG-4 AVI. gstreamer doesn't know how to handle this, so it starts to look for a codec with the matching FOURCC. It doesn't find one. Result: gstreamer-based Kaffeine shows a message box "couldn't play video because playback software is missing." And then, under "Details": "no installed codec is able to play video with the FOURCC 'DIVX'." Yes, thats Kaffeine and not KDE itself, but Kaffeine is often bundled with KDE desktops, so this setup would be very nice.
About streaming capabilities: a desktop absolutely NEEDS a multimedia infrastructure like gstreamer. OK, its not KDEs job to install it, nor handling the infrastructe (after all, gstreamer already exists). It doesn't even have to be an integral part of the desktop.
But what is actually needed? A way to configure the damn thing! I mean something like an easy way to change the sources & sinks with the control center, having a list of all installed codecs, maybe with an "Install new codec" button for easy install and so on. This would actually be a BIG advantage of a Linux desktop over Windows, since DirectShow isn't easy to configure, and if it gets messed up with broken codecs, you better get prepared for a full Windows reinstall. gstreamer is in many ways better than DirectShow (except seeking, this works more reliable with DShow), so we shouldn't miss the chance of using this advantage.
In a Nutshell: KDE shouldn't require gstreamer, but it should include optional support, with autodetection for gstreamer presence, thus enabling all gstreamer-related stuff when its there.
Why gstreamer? Why not xine or mplayer? gxine is very nice, and xine-based Kaffeine rocks, yeah. But there are legal problems. Anybody remembers the MPEG-4 license problems? gstreamer is much safer, since the plugins can be binary, closed-source (useful! for example, DivX could exist as a binary codec, and Cyberlink could create a DVD decoder - finally, watching DVDs without cracking them).
The problem with most package managers is that its not easy to find out what codecs are needed. Hell, most users don't even know what a codec is. In Windows, the media player automatically tries to download a suitable codec, and if there isn't any, it prints out an error message (which is not very helpful
I was a little frustrated with Gnome when I saw the "use Gnome"-answer from the gp poster. Gnome is nice sometimes, and sometimes it sucks. Which desktop doesn't? However, my experience with GNOME and KDE always led me to prefer KDE in the past. Maybe its because of the work I do (I browse often with a file manager in my fileserver, and so far Konqueror always outperformed Nautilus). Also, I always felt Gnome to be more sluggish than KDE, as if the latency was higher. But yeah, I should have written an "IMO" there.
Of course it does has something to do with KDE. You do know what arts is? And how does a user configure his sound card? With vi editing some alsa config files? No, he wants to configure it USING THE DESKTOP. Multimedia streaming capabilities are part of a desktop, too. The codecs aren't, thats correct, but they should be easy to install; if they aren't in synaptic, things get really hard for an average user. And installing a codec from source using configure, make & make install is neither easy nor pleasant, since the user has to install a lot of dev libs first (and gcc of course). Not user friendly at all. Easy-to-install binary codecs are rare.
1) is correct, but also pretty ironic, given that there are so much zealots who say exactly this (too much prefs stuff in the control center) and then say "edit bla.conf" when anyone asks how to get sound working (provided the zealots don't quit with a "RTFM"). The advanced options shouldn't disappear completely (like GNOME did). Instead, they should be hidden behind an "Advanced options...." button. For example, the Windows desktop settings behave this way; the most common options are visible immediately, but for editing graphics driver options or setting the monitor refresh rate etc. one has to go to the Advanced Options part.
2) There is already something for GNOME/KDE integration: a GTK theme engine based on Qt. Thus, GTK apps look like Qt/KDE ones. Of course, its only useful if you use KDE...
Well, Windows Explorer is very unstable, and sucks a lot of memory, but it is VERY usable. It *reacts* quickly, thats a crucial point. With Nautilus, sometimes I select a bunch of files I want to move, and want to drag, and - nothing happens! Then after an eternity the drag&drop icon appears. Annoying stuff like this happens with Explorer too sometimes, but not as often as with Nautilus.
In Windows I use TortoiseCVS/SVN. It absolutely rocks. Using Cervisia after using Tortoise is anything but pleasant. I don't want to offend the Cervisia devs with this, but I would be glad if a new Cervisia release would integrate in Konqueror like Tortoise does with Explorer.
Wrong. The desktop should provide easy access to sound configuration. It should NOT involve some config file editing as root.
As for videos, desktop linux distros should play them flawlessly, shouldn't they? As the parent poster correctly stated this is not the case. mplayer crashes often, gxine is fine, but is often installed with little codec support (because of the damn licences). gstreamer works, but usually comes with very few plugins installed. O.K., its a license thing with gstreamer too, thats why the USER has to install the ffmpeg plugin, but wouldn't a messagebox with a "you have to agree to take responsibility blabla...." and an OK button to start the install be adequate? Instead the user has to install the package through synaptic or a terminal. And no, it is NOT intuitive that one has to search for the ffmpeg gst plugin just to watch some AVIs!
But your comment on the Macs really pulls the last straw. There are problems with linux desktops, so - don't correct them but use Macs. Brilliant!
And Gnome is no alternative. Its big, has some serious latency problems sometimes (especially with Nautilus), has some screwed understanding of DPI usage, its very easy to screw it up....
And, where is the problem with writing a wrapper for a C frontend?
You do know that there are C wrappers for DirectX, for ODE....?
No need to switch the ENTIRE PROJECT to C.
No! For christs sake, no! KDE is nice being C++- and Qt-based. Switching to GTK, that would be horrible....
You do know what WYSIWYG means, right?
Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed this.
Thumbs up!
Did you ever consider that modern IDEs also may have um.... advantages? Ever used Visual C? Eclipse? IDEA? Ever seen IDEA's refactoring capabilities?
:) ), but VC makes writing projects with hundreds of subprojects and files less painful than with a simple vi. And no, I'm not talking about RAD here (although its one of the greatest advantages of an IDE).
Your first paragraph is pointless, unfortunately it is still widespread among Unix hackers. See, if everything thats new is "l4m3" and only emacs+terminal is "l33t", then why not stopping progress altogether? By the way, why using a mouse? How l4m3! A monitor! Ha, in the old days l33t programmers stuck with their printers! Why using modern OS with multitasking and that fancy stuff! Why electricity! Dude, this fire thing is overrated, right?
Of course the new IDEs won't magically make better code, of course I don't need them for a hello world, but they sure as hell help a LOT when writing code, especially when writing larger projects.
I for one like Visual C. Yeah, call me heretic or whatever, I don't care. VC doesn't make some magical shiny code, I have to do that (and often enough its neither magical nor shiny
Sounds like the usual exaggerated UML designing. To be honest, while "drawing" the structures is of course useful, people either tend to skip that completely or they tend to design an extremely complicated mess by putting every single variable into the UML graph. The latter is often done by self-proclaimed professionals and is then shown as "THE solution".
Linux desktops are almost ready for the average user. The problem is the "almost" part.
/etc/fstab, or smbmount it myself - anyway I need a terminal. Now isn't this a bit average-user-UNfriendly? Here's an idea: just like /media/ exists for removable media, make /network/ or /shares/ or such for SMB shares. Once you start browsing the SMB network in nautilus, and open a share, have it automatically mounted. Then, to umount, simply right-click the folder in /media/, press "Disconnect" or "Unmount" or whatever. Easy & intuitive filesystem integration, and even easier than in windows.
Example: Ubuntu. Excellent distro, with a few flaws in its GNOME Desktop:
I can browse a SMB network with nautilus, nice. However, I cannot access the data I see in nautilus with another program since the SMB folders arent actually mounted. Now that may confuse people. In Windows is simple network sharing REALLY simple. Click on folder, press "share", set the permissions, click OK. In Ubuntu, once I actually want to *mount* an SMB share, I have to use the terminal and edit
Also: I wanted to start downloading a trailer, but then I noticed how BIG it actually list. Having a traffic volumen, I quickly decided to abort download. Ok, aborted, but the default settings in Firefox is to always download to ~/Desktop, thus the partially downloaded video arrived there. Now Nautilus tried to create a preview thumbnail out of the partially downloaded api! As a result, nautilus hung up, eating hundreds of MB, then the swapdisk started to work, only solution hard reset - pretty, huh?
Of course Windows isnt free of cases like these; however, to actually prevail against Windows Linux has to be *better*, not just "as good". So, Linux also has to avoid the errors that plague XP.
How is this meant with the boiled water? That it boiled because of the greenhouse effect? I read several times that Venus would be habitable (although surely not very pleasant, and mostly a desert world) if the greenhouse gases weren't there, and a earth-like atmosphere would be in their place.
Spelling error, sorry. I meant that sometimes, you HAVE to edit config files to get stuff running, no matter whether you actually want or not.
As for the camera: it was just a _general_ example. Yes, modern distros handle cameras pretty well. However, I mentioned other examples where one still has to edit some configfiles to get stuff running.
I considered answering this nonsense.
Then I noticed that you obviously were unable to actually read and understand what I wrote.
So, please comment only when you know what you are writing. Pulling parts of my post out of context is not very bright, you know.
My AMD Athlon takes 6 seconds to show /usr/bin with 2112 files without having opened it before. After it has been cached it takes 2 seconds. This is with 2.10, not 2.12.
/usr/bin, which is NOT a borderline case.
For the record: I use gnome 2.10, so yes I USE the newest stable nautilus. So much for "obvious".
On my P4 2.4 GHz with Serial ATA HD and my laptop with an AMD Athlon XP-M 2600, konqueror, rox, xfe etc. always have been much faster than nautilus. The real nightmare are the samba shares with the large directories - nautilus takes AGES to read the contents, the other filemanagers are ready pretty soon (coding folder with 6500 directories and files: konqueror 5 seconds, rox 6 seconds, nautilus more than one minute).
Showing huge directories is also an incredible borderline case that hardly defines the operation of the file manager (and now PLEASE don't ignore the previous paragraph just because I wrote this).
An incredible borderline case, eh? A pretty lame excuse, just have a look at a big software project, more than 2k files in one folder are achieved pretty quickly. In fact, you proved yourself wrong by mentioning
Hey now that i mention it, how long does it take WE to display a 2000 file folder?
I answered that in my original post.
Try browsing a large directory with thousands of files with nautilus, konqueror and windows explorer. The latter ones scan the directory MUCH faster.