This is a me too reply:)) Both konqi and opera do fine on low-end hardware, konqi lags a bit behind opera in start-up time (because all the libs it loads) - but it is still much faster than firefox or other gecko based browsers (epiphany, galeon). And I don't think the problem is with images. Gecko is damn slow, that is the problem, and so is the interface under linux/bsd. Firefox works OK in win 98 (on pII 300Mhz machines with 64M ram) - until at least it eats up all the ram) while it is unusable on bsd/linux on the same box!
We need other free software alternatives (my choice for these low end machines is opera for now). Maybe when konqi is ported to qt4? KHTML runs circles around gecko when it comes to rendering speed, and so does the speed of the interface and the memory consumption.
Firefox alone, with only a few tabs open, can consume as much ram as xorg + kde (including amarok, kmail, and everything that loads up at startup on my box) + konqueror. Bloatware or what?
That's a distro problem, not a KDE problem. For years, I ran kde (till 3.4.x series) on a 700Mhz Duron with 256SDRAM and it was snappy. Start up time was reasonalbe as well (less than 20 secs).
I saw comments complaining about RAM hungryness of KDE. This is quite ironic, since at that time (Konqueror failing on some important sites I used) I used Firefox, and only when starting FF up did the OS begin swapping, especially with multiple tabs open. Now I wouldn't run KDE with 128, but 256 is enough if you don't use many GTK apps.
I maintain a small lab of computers. New ones run WinXP, old ones (old celerons and pIIs with ~64 Mb RAM) are used solely for browsing the net: gaim (also the only IM app on the XP machines), gftp, and webbrowsing. They run FreeBSD with blackbox and a simplified menu (only 5 apps, and a short description of how to operate them sticked on the wall above them). I installed Firefox - and it simply didn't work. Start up time was horrible (~minute), rendering time also, and the entire system came to a crawl if you opened up a couple of tabs. Same with epiphany and galeon. I tried konqueror as well, and it was actually faster, start up time included (which considering that it had to load all supporting libs at start time, is pretty impressive) and it used less ram than any of the above. But of course, the final solution was to use Opera.
I think KDE is pretty usable if you have >192 RAM. Now I have 512, which is better of course, for you can preload 4 instances of konqi for instant startup, and have all sorts of useful and useless apps loaded by default when KDE loads (amarok, kweather, kmail, kgpg, korganizer + kalarm, kcpuload, a fullscreen console instance, antialias for fonts, etc.) + lots of eyecandies. But if you switch off parts of the eyecandies (transparent menus, konqi background, content in moving windows, etc.) KDE is usable on a low-end computer as well (I seen it work pretty well on a 450Mhz celeron with 192 RAM and a TNT2 card).
I have to emphasize that in all these cases, I used vanilla kde (kde on slackware or kde on FreeBSD) - so you can be pretty sure that when you encounter 30 minutes startup (or even 1 minute startup - it didn't take that long on the 450Mhz machine) it is the distribution's fault: lack of proper Quality Control. They don't check if the supporting libraries are configured correctly, they don't test, don't integrate, well, don't do anything except for creating an.rpm once it finished building it seems.
Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot
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KDE 3.5 RC 1 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
This is how it looks like (I don't have a printer installed, so printer entry is missing). I don't see the same in gtk/gnome apps currently installed on my system (only the postscript option). I think print to pdf support might be available system wide via either cups or (more likely) ghostscript, but whether or not GNOME chose to implement it the same way across all print dialogs like KDE - I have no idea.
This is how the advanced settings look like (if you click properties in the print dialogue - normally you don't need that, for the defaults are sane, in fact, I never changed anything in those settings).
Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot
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KDE 3.5 RC 1 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Aha, I understand it now. GNOME might seem more confortable out of the box if you are coming from a Mac. On the other hand, KDE can look and behave just the way you want, and a big plus here is that configuration is easy. And when it comes to the application stack, you'll find more many many great tools that don't have free software equivalents.
Give KDE a try sometime (when 3.5 comes out?) if you have the means... you might be pleasently surprised. Consider the time you spend configuring it to your liking as an investment in productivity. It might take ours if you are absolutely new, but that is time well spent (and a one time job only - once you find out what suits your needs best, you don't have to do it again). I read a review of KDE from an MacOS X user (or more a like a comparison) some time ago. It is a two year old review, and if you know the pace of development of KDE, you must know that it has improved tremendously in that time, but it is still an interesting read I guess. You'll find it here.
Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot
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KDE 3.5 RC 1 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot
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KDE 3.5 RC 1 Released
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· Score: 3, Insightful
That is just silly. His screenshot is awful, but not because that is how KDE looks like. It is awful because you (or me for that matter) would not feel confortable using it. But that is how he configured it, that is what probably fits his way of doing things.
Essentially, you compared your preferred way of organizing the desktop with his preferred way of organizing the desktop, and concluded that GNOME is better. Congrats.
You can pretty much configure anything in KDE. You can make it plain and simple (by default, it is pretty plain and simple) - you can even lock it down with kiosk and associated tools (read why the Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrated 1000 desktops to KDE to limit it's functionality to accessing one page on the internet and 4 apps if you wish to. And configuring it is rather easy via kcontrol. When I switched to linux 5 years ago, the first thing I really felt comfortable with was kcontrol. I knew that I can't screw up anything with a desktop config utility, and playing with it for a week or so got me accustomed to using it (of course I tried a few apps as well, but the inevitable "now what" question that comes up after installing a new and different operating system is best answered by providing harmless customization tools. At least, that's a good way for noobs to get confortable. Since than, I spend ~10-30 minutes (depending on the amount of new features) with configuration when a major release happens, and I am really glad that I can customize the hell out of it. I won't use something like parent's desktop, but I'm also glad for his ability to use KDE the way he wants without the need to edit obscure values in the registry or download 3rd party apps to do that more easily;)
Seriously - KDE has become soo good, that I couldn't work without it. I became so accustomed to its excellent apps, both for my admin work and my desktop usage.
Scribus for newsletters from one of my sites, (is there any other Desktop Publishing software with similar quality and standards support?)
Krita (part of Koffice) - in scribus, the edit image default app was gimp until koffice 1.4.1 - now krita begins to become a viable replacement for gimp.
Quanta - YES!
kdissert for my dissertation (yeah, a week ago I began using it, and I found it really helpful).
Kmail - I didn't know it was missing imap support, I use pop access with my gmail accounts. But it is stable, fast, easy to use, feature rich.
And the whole integration thing: kaddressbook with kmail with korganizer with kalarm with the rest of the desktop. It is simply amazing.
Lisa to browse network shares in konqi sidebar - no more mounting/unmounting of samba shares, it works much much better than winxp's network neighborhood...
Amarok for my music needs: is there such a feature complete player out there? Not just providing one or two features of amarok, but all - wikipedia, lyrics, easy tag editing, ipod support, dynamic playlists, visuals, and first and formost easy to use. I think amarok is the prime example against the "an app must be simple and dumbed down to be easy to use" philosophy.
kmplayer
KONSOLE! I tried replacements like mrxvt for puters where kde is not installed, and they don't come even close.
Konqueror. And I miss the up button from every other browser:))). What I like about Konqi is its stability - there are some pages where firefox simply bails out (some flash pages) - and I don't see a separate process to kill. With konqi on the same pages (to tell the truth, there aren't that many) I can kill the offending process (usually nspluginviewer) without taking out the entire browser (and all my opened tabs).
Lots and lots of other apps I couldn't live without - the list goes on.
I'm really really thankful for the work these people do.
I like the binary clock icon on your screenshot... At first I thought it doesn't have an icon at all (and almost switched to rant mode to complain about it) when I realized that it is just perfect for the kind of app it represents.
Here is mirror for your jpeg. Send me (email) more (preferably less compressed ones, or even png) if you wish, and I'll put them up there:)
Besides, half the apps on your list are toys... nice toys for a home desktop (yes, amarok and k3b is lovely) but where are the more "serious" apps like scribus? Is there an gtk equivalent? Edutainment? I mention this last because linux might become more and more important in education, and only KDE offers a nice, integrated solution. In fact, I just read about a specific case where schools (in Germany) used KDE because of the edutainment package (was in one of the blogs on kdeplanet).
Which leads me to what I wanted to say originally: marketing. KDE did no or very little marketing, and almost no research of KDE deployment. That's where the "other" project excelled: marketing, case studies, success stories, etc... This way, it was relatively easy for ximian's people to convince Novell's management that they should standardize on GNOME. It was at this year's academy that they decided to form the KDE Marketing Working Group. And in just a few days, oh look: Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to KDE on Novell Linux Desktop that's bye bye for 1000 customers when the next upgrade cycle comes, if Novell standardized on GNOME. They use kiosk mode and the associated admin tools to lock the features - which seems to be a mature feature. In fact, here is an "enterprise ready" praise if there is any:"
At the moment, almost all shops in The Netherlands and Belgium already use the KDE Desktop. After that phase is complete, the migration team will go to Norway and Finland to migrate the PCs used by the Free Record Shop and Bravo chains. "It's a fun project" says Arrachart, "We can show that you can save costs with ICT, while at the same time allowing greater possibilities in the way the shops are organised."
on my right was a fellow who works for a company that makes linux based satelite t.v. transmission software (sky t.v. is amongst their clientelle) and they use qt for their in-house engineering tools. on my left were three men from a vienese company that writes kde software for a group of five private hospitals. these hospitals all run kde on the desktop and everything from patient records to x-rays is handled on them.
So someone (quess who) misrepresented KDE's readiness or usefulness - and the demand for it - in corporate environments. But the damage is already done. Who would trust novell on this now? I think most of the users in the past days were looking at distrowatch (or at the Kubuntu site)... some of them would stay to watch and see. Others will make the switch - why stay indeed?
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Indeed. Check out koffice kids part 1 and part 2. I don't think GNOME has something even similar!
Unfortunately, I can't read source code (yet - I'm learning programming in small steps, php/python as of now, otherwise, I study literature/culture - and incidentally, doing my dissertation on gift economy:))
I thought FFMpeg wasn't a codec but a compilation of programs to encode audio and video.
Indeed. I should have said ffmpeg's mpeg4 codec - because it isn't a compilation in the sense codec-packs are. Every encoding algorithm they support is developed by them (and they support a lot!).
Also, it seems to be that whatever they are doing this time is legit - for a change.
They have no idea what they are talking about actually:
"The Flash Video files created by the Zentu encoder use the open source library FFMPEG which is a derivative of MPEG 4."
ffmpeg is not a derivative of mpeg4. mpeg4 is an iso standard, with various open source (xvid, ffmpeg) and closed source (divx above 4.x) implementations. Incidentally, ffmpeg also supports sorenson v3 codec, (from the mplayer documentation, from ~ 6 months ago ):
"The most recent codec deserving credit is the Sorenson 3 (SVQ3) codec. This is the first, completely opensource implementation. It's even faster than the original. Be sure to prefer this instead of the binary codec!"
"How many mature, open-source codecs are out there? XviD is the only one that comes to mind..."
ffmpeg is as mature as xvid, and is actively developed (xvid is not). Of course ffmpeg is not just mpeg4 like xvid, but its mpeg4 encoding is as good if not better as xvid in quality (and its performance is definitely much better).
Although it's not related, but if you want good quality h.264 codec, you have that area covered as well with an open source implementation: x264. Which is better than most other proprietary implementations, including APPLE's (the only exception is NERO-AVC, which might be ahead of x264, but not by much).
The most popular encoding algorhytms (mpeg4, h.264, mp3) are ISO standards. They have both proprietary and open source implementations, and the open source implementations win in almost all instances - or at least the most important one: mpeg4. So, one can easily reverse your question: how many mature, proprietary codecs are out there?:)) Nero-AVC, yes (for h.264), but mpeg4? DivX was a joke till 6.x, which was only good because it caught up with its open source competitors (xvid, ffmpeg).
Thanks for the information:) It would be interesting to see if gorm can accelerate developments of WMs based on gnustep. I understand now that gnustep is not a wm, but those WMs that are described as "based on gnustep" saw very little development in the past few years. At least that was my impression while trying out afterstep and windowmaker.
You made the mistake to judge something by its superficial impression, not its power.
Yeah, I admit that - the problem is, that most WMs I saw that were based on gnustep's concepts weren't much different (afterstep, wmaker). Now I can accept that there is a possibility to make something as beautiful as e17 with gorm, I just don't see it. Well, we have to wait and see... Also, I used wmaker for a while, and although it was intriguing (it was different afterall) I don't share the apparently common view that it was something revolutionary, or more advanced than $your_desktop_of_choice UIwise.
Then the guy must have a very good sense of irony;) It is interesting to see how (at the moment) slashdot tries to decide whether it was a joke or not:)) I wonder which reading of this story will win out:) Currently I can't decide - but yeah, at first sight, it didn't occur to me that it was a joke:)
I'm not a developer - but follow the development of various desktop closely (mainly KDE and enlightenment). I'm also a thinkerer, and I like to try out alternative desktops once in a while, including Afterstep, windowmaker, and the likes (that follow the same UI paradigm seen in gnustep) - and I noticed that there was very little or no development at all of these desktops in the past few (3-4) years. I have to admit that both wmaker and afterstep are different from other desktopts, but I won't apostrophize that difference as revolutionary. And I don't see where it would take (even with rapid development tools) the current desktop paradigms (or how it compares to future ones, like plasma). In short: I don't see the vision, the why this is soo cool aspect. You wrote: "From a usability perspective, I think it's much more intelligently designed than Gnome or KDE." - yeah, but whose usability? It is really really difficult to define an objective usability perspective. I don't dispute your claim, I just don't understand it:))
"They GNUStep guy announcing this was just trying to have some fun, why the hell to people get some riled up"
Because, incidentally, this is also a good way to create publicity for your pet project. Some would argue that this is page hit "whoring". Not that it is not a legitimate way of creating interest, but I understand those who have issues with this kind of "humor". In all honesty, you have to attribute a very good sense of irony (self-parody?) to the author to take the "joke" - and I don't know him enough to do just that. I don't exclude the possibility that what he said was in jest, but I understand those who get "riled up".
Yeah - I don't know which is worse: 1) making such claims just for publicity (flamebait?) 2) or truly believing in it. In either case, the first screenshot you bump into will discredit their claim immediately. Compare it with anything trolltech has to offer with qt4 (or kde4's plasma efforts, koffice kids, etc.) and their development tools... I don't mention GNOME development tools because I'm not familiar with them, but I don't think they will be "obsoleted" either.
Your problem is that you didn't take a look at its permutations. I think that is what makes this logo so cool! The author took into consideration the many ways a logo can be displayed - on t-shirts, boxes, CD, etc.; in different colors (see postcard in the above link), representing different topics (see the secure logo), and so on.
In other words, what makes this logo great is its adaptability - it remains easily recognizable while suitable for a range of products (be it advocacy products like tshirts or postcards, or books and CDs).
Oh yes, and don't confuse this logo with beastie btw - beastie remains the mascot of the FreeBSD project, while this is their new logo.
I don't think that's what the parent reffered to - he spoke about uninstalling packages. BTW, make install clean won't leave anything in the work directory (will delete the work directory in fact after installation). portsclean -CD solves the problem of keeping the ports tree clean.
I think the parent is simply clueless, especially when he states that you need to hunt down runtime/builtime dependencies, or that it is easier to build deb than tgz packages. Everything is handled automatically via portupgrade. To build a binary packages (that will have all the runtime dependencies automatically registered) is as simple as passing -p to portinstall: portinstall -p mplayer will create a binary package that is capable of resolving all dependencies automatically, and it will put that packages is/usr/ports/packages if it exists, or in the ports directory. What makes his post really funny, that he claims that: "Although building Debian packages can be a bit overwhelming especially for newcomers, it really shines especially if you have installed debhelper, dh-make, dbs, dpatch, and lintian." WTF? I guess compared to passing -p to portinstall/upgrade anything is a little bit overwhelming:))) Not only that, but FreeBSD lets me create a package with a simple command (pkg_create -b pkgname) from an installed program regardless of how it was installed. That package, for all intents and purposes, will be similar to a deb package (knows about dependencies, can automatically resolve them if needed packages are in the same directory, can pull packages from the net if you install with pkg_add -r or from your private repo, in other words, it knows everything.deb knows).
To put it simply: the parent has absolutely no idea of what he talks about (and he does it at +5 insightful). To sum up, in freebsd:
Create binary packages during installation of new progs: portinstall -p fooo* (resulting packages will be in/usr/ports/packages, nicelly categorized, ready for exporting the directory as an nfs or sharing it via an ftp).
Create a binary package during upgrade: portupgrade -pa
Create a package from a program that is installed (regardless of how it was installed: from source using ports or binary packages): pkg_create -b packagename
Can it be any easier than that? And such mechanism would not be working very well if it wasn't for the accurate tracking of every single file the port installs - which means, clean uninstalling of any package.
Slashdot Mirror
We need other free software alternatives (my choice for these low end machines is opera for now). Maybe when konqi is ported to qt4? KHTML runs circles around gecko when it comes to rendering speed, and so does the speed of the interface and the memory consumption.
Firefox alone, with only a few tabs open, can consume as much ram as xorg + kde (including amarok, kmail, and everything that loads up at startup on my box) + konqueror. Bloatware or what?
I saw comments complaining about RAM hungryness of KDE. This is quite ironic, since at that time (Konqueror failing on some important sites I used) I used Firefox, and only when starting FF up did the OS begin swapping, especially with multiple tabs open. Now I wouldn't run KDE with 128, but 256 is enough if you don't use many GTK apps.
I maintain a small lab of computers. New ones run WinXP, old ones (old celerons and pIIs with ~64 Mb RAM) are used solely for browsing the net: gaim (also the only IM app on the XP machines), gftp, and webbrowsing. They run FreeBSD with blackbox and a simplified menu (only 5 apps, and a short description of how to operate them sticked on the wall above them). I installed Firefox - and it simply didn't work. Start up time was horrible (~minute), rendering time also, and the entire system came to a crawl if you opened up a couple of tabs. Same with epiphany and galeon. I tried konqueror as well, and it was actually faster, start up time included (which considering that it had to load all supporting libs at start time, is pretty impressive) and it used less ram than any of the above. But of course, the final solution was to use Opera.
I think KDE is pretty usable if you have >192 RAM. Now I have 512, which is better of course, for you can preload 4 instances of konqi for instant startup, and have all sorts of useful and useless apps loaded by default when KDE loads (amarok, kweather, kmail, kgpg, korganizer + kalarm, kcpuload, a fullscreen console instance, antialias for fonts, etc.) + lots of eyecandies. But if you switch off parts of the eyecandies (transparent menus, konqi background, content in moving windows, etc.) KDE is usable on a low-end computer as well (I seen it work pretty well on a 450Mhz celeron with 192 RAM and a TNT2 card).
I have to emphasize that in all these cases, I used vanilla kde (kde on slackware or kde on FreeBSD) - so you can be pretty sure that when you encounter 30 minutes startup (or even 1 minute startup - it didn't take that long on the 450Mhz machine) it is the distribution's fault: lack of proper Quality Control. They don't check if the supporting libraries are configured correctly, they don't test, don't integrate, well, don't do anything except for creating an .rpm once it finished building it seems.
This is how the advanced settings look like (if you click properties in the print dialogue - normally you don't need that, for the defaults are sane, in fact, I never changed anything in those settings).
Give KDE a try sometime (when 3.5 comes out?) if you have the means ... you might be pleasently surprised. Consider the time you spend configuring it to your liking as an investment in productivity. It might take ours if you are absolutely new, but that is time well spent (and a one time job only - once you find out what suits your needs best, you don't have to do it again). I read a review of KDE from an MacOS X user (or more a like a comparison) some time ago. It is a two year old review, and if you know the pace of development of KDE, you must know that it has improved tremendously in that time, but it is still an interesting read I guess. You'll find it here.
First.
Second.
Thanks :)
Essentially, you compared your preferred way of organizing the desktop with his preferred way of organizing the desktop, and concluded that GNOME is better. Congrats.
You can pretty much configure anything in KDE. You can make it plain and simple (by default, it is pretty plain and simple) - you can even lock it down with kiosk and associated tools (read why the Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrated 1000 desktops to KDE to limit it's functionality to accessing one page on the internet and 4 apps if you wish to. And configuring it is rather easy via kcontrol. When I switched to linux 5 years ago, the first thing I really felt comfortable with was kcontrol. I knew that I can't screw up anything with a desktop config utility, and playing with it for a week or so got me accustomed to using it (of course I tried a few apps as well, but the inevitable "now what" question that comes up after installing a new and different operating system is best answered by providing harmless customization tools. At least, that's a good way for noobs to get confortable. Since than, I spend ~10-30 minutes (depending on the amount of new features) with configuration when a major release happens, and I am really glad that I can customize the hell out of it. I won't use something like parent's desktop, but I'm also glad for his ability to use KDE the way he wants without the need to edit obscure values in the registry or download 3rd party apps to do that more easily ;)
Seriously - KDE has become soo good, that I couldn't work without it. I became so accustomed to its excellent apps, both for my admin work and my desktop usage.
- Scribus for newsletters from one of my sites, (is there any other Desktop Publishing software with similar quality and standards support?)
- Krita (part of Koffice) - in scribus, the edit image default app was gimp until koffice 1.4.1 - now krita begins to become a viable replacement for gimp.
- Quanta - YES!
- kdissert for my dissertation (yeah, a week ago I began using it, and I found it really helpful).
- Kmail - I didn't know it was missing imap support, I use pop access with my gmail accounts. But it is stable, fast, easy to use, feature rich.
- And the whole integration thing: kaddressbook with kmail with korganizer with kalarm with the rest of the desktop. It is simply amazing.
- Lisa to browse network shares in konqi sidebar - no more mounting/unmounting of samba shares, it works much much better than winxp's network neighborhood...
- Amarok for my music needs: is there such a feature complete player out there? Not just providing one or two features of amarok, but all - wikipedia, lyrics, easy tag editing, ipod support, dynamic playlists, visuals, and first and formost easy to use. I think amarok is the prime example against the "an app must be simple and dumbed down to be easy to use" philosophy.
kmplayer
- KONSOLE! I tried replacements like mrxvt for puters where kde is not installed, and they don't come even close.
- Konqueror. And I miss the up button from every other browser
:))). What I like about Konqi is its stability - there are some pages where firefox simply bails out (some flash pages) - and I don't see a separate process to kill. With konqi on the same pages (to tell the truth, there aren't that many) I can kill the offending process (usually nspluginviewer) without taking out the entire browser (and all my opened tabs).
- Lots and lots of other apps I couldn't live without - the list goes on.
I'm really really thankful for the work these people do.Here is mirror for your jpeg. Send me (email) more (preferably less compressed ones, or even png) if you wish, and I'll put them up there :)
Besides, half the apps on your list are toys ... nice toys for a home desktop (yes, amarok and k3b is lovely) but where are the more "serious" apps like scribus? Is there an gtk equivalent? Edutainment? I mention this last because linux might become more and more important in education, and only KDE offers a nice, integrated solution. In fact, I just read about a specific case where schools (in Germany) used KDE because of the edutainment package (was in one of the blogs on kdeplanet).
Which leads me to what I wanted to say originally: marketing. KDE did no or very little marketing, and almost no research of KDE deployment. That's where the "other" project excelled: marketing, case studies, success stories, etc... This way, it was relatively easy for ximian's people to convince Novell's management that they should standardize on GNOME. It was at this year's academy that they decided to form the KDE Marketing Working Group. And in just a few days, oh look: Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to KDE on Novell Linux Desktop that's bye bye for 1000 customers when the next upgrade cycle comes, if Novell standardized on GNOME. They use kiosk mode and the associated admin tools to lock the features - which seems to be a mature feature. In fact, here is an "enterprise ready" praise if there is any:"
And oh look, another two more cases (you have to scroll down). Quote:
So someone (quess who) misrepresented KDE's readiness or usefulness - and the demand for it - in corporate environments. But the damage is already done. Who would trust novell on this now? I think most of the users in the past days were looking at distrowatch (or at the Kubuntu site)
Indeed. Check out koffice kids part 1 and part 2. I don't think GNOME has something even similar!
Unfortunately, I can't read source code (yet - I'm learning programming in small steps, php/python as of now, otherwise, I study literature/culture - and incidentally, doing my dissertation on gift economy :))
Patents (concerning abstract ideas, algorythms, etc.) are unfair. Stealing other people's is also unfair. So this is not a pot/kettle situation.
Indeed. I should have said ffmpeg's mpeg4 codec - because it isn't a compilation in the sense codec-packs are. Every encoding algorithm they support is developed by them (and they support a lot!).
Also, it seems to be that whatever they are doing this time is legit - for a change.
"The Flash Video files created by the Zentu encoder use the open source library FFMPEG which is a derivative of MPEG 4." ffmpeg is not a derivative of mpeg4. mpeg4 is an iso standard, with various open source (xvid, ffmpeg) and closed source (divx above 4.x) implementations. Incidentally, ffmpeg also supports sorenson v3 codec, (from the mplayer documentation, from ~ 6 months ago ):
"The most recent codec deserving credit is the Sorenson 3 (SVQ3) codec. This is the first, completely opensource implementation. It's even faster than the original. Be sure to prefer this instead of the binary codec!"
ffmpeg is as mature as xvid, and is actively developed (xvid is not). Of course ffmpeg is not just mpeg4 like xvid, but its mpeg4 encoding is as good if not better as xvid in quality (and its performance is definitely much better).
Although it's not related, but if you want good quality h.264 codec, you have that area covered as well with an open source implementation: x264. Which is better than most other proprietary implementations, including APPLE's (the only exception is NERO-AVC, which might be ahead of x264, but not by much).
The most popular encoding algorhytms (mpeg4, h.264, mp3) are ISO standards. They have both proprietary and open source implementations, and the open source implementations win in almost all instances - or at least the most important one: mpeg4. So, one can easily reverse your question: how many mature, proprietary codecs are out there? :)) Nero-AVC, yes (for h.264), but mpeg4? DivX was a joke till 6.x, which was only good because it caught up with its open source competitors (xvid, ffmpeg).
Thanks for the information :) It would be interesting to see if gorm can accelerate developments of WMs based on gnustep. I understand now that gnustep is not a wm, but those WMs that are described as "based on gnustep" saw very little development in the past few years. At least that was my impression while trying out afterstep and windowmaker.
Yeah, I admit that - the problem is, that most WMs I saw that were based on gnustep's concepts weren't much different (afterstep, wmaker). Now I can accept that there is a possibility to make something as beautiful as e17 with gorm, I just don't see it. Well, we have to wait and see... Also, I used wmaker for a while, and although it was intriguing (it was different afterall) I don't share the apparently common view that it was something revolutionary, or more advanced than $your_desktop_of_choice UIwise.
Logos, by definition, don't have to be described in words - that's why they are logos!
Then the guy must have a very good sense of irony ;) It is interesting to see how (at the moment) slashdot tries to decide whether it was a joke or not :)) I wonder which reading of this story will win out :) Currently I can't decide - but yeah, at first sight, it didn't occur to me that it was a joke :)
I'm not a developer - but follow the development of various desktop closely (mainly KDE and enlightenment). I'm also a thinkerer, and I like to try out alternative desktops once in a while, including Afterstep, windowmaker, and the likes (that follow the same UI paradigm seen in gnustep) - and I noticed that there was very little or no development at all of these desktops in the past few (3-4) years. I have to admit that both wmaker and afterstep are different from other desktopts, but I won't apostrophize that difference as revolutionary. And I don't see where it would take (even with rapid development tools) the current desktop paradigms (or how it compares to future ones, like plasma). In short: I don't see the vision, the why this is soo cool aspect. You wrote: "From a usability perspective, I think it's much more intelligently designed than Gnome or KDE." - yeah, but whose usability? It is really really difficult to define an objective usability perspective. I don't dispute your claim, I just don't understand it :))
Because, incidentally, this is also a good way to create publicity for your pet project. Some would argue that this is page hit "whoring". Not that it is not a legitimate way of creating interest, but I understand those who have issues with this kind of "humor". In all honesty, you have to attribute a very good sense of irony (self-parody?) to the author to take the "joke" - and I don't know him enough to do just that. I don't exclude the possibility that what he said was in jest, but I understand those who get "riled up".
Hopefully never! As long as it lasts, there is competition, meaning rapid pace of development, choice, etc..
Yeah - I don't know which is worse: 1) making such claims just for publicity (flamebait?) 2) or truly believing in it. In either case, the first screenshot you bump into will discredit their claim immediately. Compare it with anything trolltech has to offer with qt4 (or kde4's plasma efforts, koffice kids, etc.) and their development tools... I don't mention GNOME development tools because I'm not familiar with them, but I don't think they will be "obsoleted" either.
In other words, what makes this logo great is its adaptability - it remains easily recognizable while suitable for a range of products (be it advocacy products like tshirts or postcards, or books and CDs). Oh yes, and don't confuse this logo with beastie btw - beastie remains the mascot of the FreeBSD project, while this is their new logo.
I think the parent is simply clueless, especially when he states that you need to hunt down runtime/builtime dependencies, or that it is easier to build deb than tgz packages. Everything is handled automatically via portupgrade. To build a binary packages (that will have all the runtime dependencies automatically registered) is as simple as passing -p to portinstall: portinstall -p mplayer will create a binary package that is capable of resolving all dependencies automatically, and it will put that packages is /usr/ports/packages if it exists, or in the ports directory. What makes his post really funny, that he claims that: "Although building Debian packages can be a bit overwhelming especially for newcomers, it really shines especially if you have installed debhelper, dh-make, dbs, dpatch, and lintian." WTF? I guess compared to passing -p to portinstall/upgrade anything is a little bit overwhelming :))) Not only that, but FreeBSD lets me create a package with a simple command (pkg_create -b pkgname) from an installed program regardless of how it was installed. That package, for all intents and purposes, will be similar to a deb package (knows about dependencies, can automatically resolve them if needed packages are in the same directory, can pull packages from the net if you install with pkg_add -r or from your private repo, in other words, it knows everything .deb knows).
To put it simply: the parent has absolutely no idea of what he talks about (and he does it at +5 insightful). To sum up, in freebsd:
- Create binary packages during installation of new progs: portinstall -p fooo* (resulting packages will be in
/usr/ports/packages, nicelly categorized, ready for exporting the directory as an nfs or sharing it via an ftp).
- Create a binary package during upgrade: portupgrade -pa
- Create a package from a program that is installed (regardless of how it was installed: from source using ports or binary packages): pkg_create -b packagename
Can it be any easier than that? And such mechanism would not be working very well if it wasn't for the accurate tracking of every single file the port installs - which means, clean uninstalling of any package.