Here's what I do after installing my distro (I use Fedora)...
1. Newer Up2date - Up2date now works as a client for Yum, Apt, RHN and local directory repositories. The betas I find from Rawhide are generally more stable than the final version, particularly for the non-Yum repository types. I use directory repositories a lot cause I can just save a package somewhere and then use it to satisfy dependencies without having to regenerate index files - this is really handy.
2. Synaptic - Up2date is nice, but it lacks a GUI, and Synaptic's got better search features.
3. Gimp 2 - Actually makes Gimp pleasant to use. Someday this will come with my distro. Firefox - Simple, uncluttered, yet packaged with features.
3. Evo 1.5 - Though its not really better than the older version. I keeping hoping for a three column view.
4. Multisync - To Sync Evo to my SonyEricsson mobile phone via Bluetooth.
5. Driftnet - I sometimes use my box as a router for other people - and I want to know what they're browsing with it.
6. Beep, and its mp3 plugins. A GTK 2 replacement for XMMS, which I'll then uninstall.
7. GtkPod, for my iPod. I'll use the automounter to handle the mounting.
8. K3B. Makes CD/DVD burning on Linux pleasant. Wish there was a Gnome workalike.
9. NX - X compression that's on par with Citrix. Makes my box a whole lot easier to work with remotely. www.nomachine.com.
The difference isn't so clear-cut. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat's revenue-generating product, unlike Fedora isn't so "up to date"
It comes out every 18 months - that's still faster than a lot of distros (it's supported for 5 years).
There are not just two distros, there are over a hundred, and many of the most used ones flourish enough to thrive.
Certainly, but I believe the parent poster was talking about two different, I guess, ideaologies. I'd still agree with you though - there's more similarities between Red Hat and Debian than differences, and as a Red Hat user I can clearly see its my preferred distro which is doing most of the changing... (this is a Good Thing)...
Within the first two hours of a Fedora or RHEL install, the Red Hat Netowrk services daemon will contact a server and begin flashing a red exclamation mark in the notification area of the desktop if there are updates available. If a user clicks it, they'll get updates - either free ones from a Fedora mirror if they're using Fedora or paid ones from Red Hat Network if they've brought EL.
SSH compression is about 12:1, and pretty poor for most purposes.
There's an Open Soruce X compression scheme from NoMachine that can do 60:1 compression and benchmarks well against Citrix. Check out the Freedesktop.org X server mailing lists from last month for more info/discussion.
I guess my question is, why is it possible to have a decent Linux distribution that runs within XP, but it's not possible to take a dual-drive Dell and easily make your system let you choose between XP and Linux atstartup?
It is possible. Most major distributions (eg, Red Hat, SuSE, stacks more) detect the presence of your Windows partition and simply add it to the boot menu.
User Mode Linux hacker and all-round-cool-dude Dan Shearer has previously mentioned he's interested in porting Linux to the JVM. This would enable you to run native Linux apps on anything than can run a JVM, and also allow you to have multiple OSs on those machines.
Its pretty hard tho - the JVM is nowhere near a complete hardware platform, but it would be possible.
fedora kills the network on a any laptop whose network is on a PC-card
Got any evidence? There's a bunch of laptops round here using pccard ethernet adapters fine. You may have found a bug, but its likely limited to a specific hardware combo. RHEL may also suffer from that bug, as well as other distros.
isnt supported by all those binary things I use (nvida, vmware)
These both work fine on Fedora. I've been using them regularly.
Besides, you could always download Whitebox. Same software, same 5 years of updates, sans RH branding and package building.
Maintain it yourself. If you feel like paying someone else - well, buy RHEL - that's what people who buy it pay for.
It's easy to ridicule the estimated 2006-or-2007 ship date for Longhorn, the next major release of Windows. But do you doubt for a moment that Longhorn will provide more improvements from Windows XP than desktop Linux will gain during the same period?
Of course I do. Linux moves more quickly than Windows and one of its busiest areas right now is end user stuff - there's no itches to be scratched. Historically every desktop Linux available when a new Windows comes out is an order of magnitude better than the versions available at the same time. Why should Longhorn be any different to XP, 2000, Me, 98SE, etc...
If you mean Red Hat, they compile all their packages with Pentium instruction ordering. On IA32, they also provide i586 / i686 / Athlon / SMP kernel and glibc packages (which use processor specific instructions) and install whichever is appropriate for your machine.
Anything more than that wouldn't make a difference. Since Red Hat don't ship many multimedia apps due to US patent problems, you'd get CPU optimized versions of those packages elsewhere.
there was a certain program that I could only get as source, so I compiled and installed it.
Sounds like a good idea, I do that all the time.
It turns out that it was required as a basis for other packages I wanted to install. But when I tried to install those, it didn't recognize the prerequisite programs
Why?
because they weren't installed via rpm.
That'd be your problem then. If you're smart enough to compile you're smart enough to package.
Usually when one builds from Source, they install it to wherever the original developer has it set to by default. Unless you did some heavy patching, the software will very likely be more "true" to the original software then many packages.
Distros patch their apps to use the FHS. Sorry developer, you have no right to rape my system and put binaries in/var because that's What You Want.
Having this fixed is yet another reason to use packages. Hopefully the developer gets the idea and fixes his program.
Both the poster and his friend seem to have missed a very important point: building from source should result in packages, and it it doesn't, you're not doing it properly.
RPM has macros that make it possible to package anything using GNU autoconf (configure; make; make install) in about five minutes. I bet dpkg would too. Anything else is generally pretty simple too (cpan2rpm for perl modules, make and archive and don't bother filling out the %build section for binary onmly apps, etc).
Yes, Gnome has IOSlaves. They're called Gnome VFS modules, and, just like KIOSlaves, they're limited to programs written for their desktop environment with no good reason why this is the case.
LUFS works with any program - KDE, Gnome, the shell, or whatever else, and allows you to mount shares via SSH, HTTP, or whatever else.
If I were a Linux distributor I'd actually cut out the desktop-specific IOSlave / VFS crap and use this instead, thereby providing a consistent experience for my users.
So what makes KDE and Gnome different anyway? The developers of both are aiming to look and function, well, exactly like each other in most cases.
A panel at the bottom of screen
Various panel applets
One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps
Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
A clock over on the right
Icons on the desktop
A file manager
A web browser
An email app
What makes KDE and Gnome different for end users? Certainly not anything most people cares about. KDE has a better save dialog, Gnome will in its next release. And Gnome puts questions suggesting the negative first, because some Apple researcher said that was a good idea ages ago.
Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.
'we' all lament what has happened to the Internet since 'they' finally found out about it
I don't. Decent web browsers, HTML that finally seperates content from presentations, cheaper more readily available bandwidth, cheaper hardware, more people to connect to, more ways to connect to them, and less 31337 geeks ranting about the good old days of the internet.
Apple has nowhere near %5 desktop market share, and Linux, according to a few people, already has more (do your own research if you like, i can't be arsed).
Slashdot Mirror
Last I checked, you can just buy the CD at the store that contains no DRM at all.
Check again. Most new albums aren't released on CDs anymore, but rather DRMed discs that look exactly like them.
Or am I clueless and is iTunes wine-able?
It works fine using any Linux web browser and PhpTunes
Here's what I do after installing my distro (I use Fedora)...
1. Newer Up2date - Up2date now works as a client for Yum, Apt, RHN and local directory repositories. The betas I find from Rawhide are generally more stable than the final version, particularly for the non-Yum repository types. I use directory repositories a lot cause I can just save a package somewhere and then use it to satisfy dependencies without having to regenerate index files - this is really handy.
2. Synaptic - Up2date is nice, but it lacks a GUI, and Synaptic's got better search features.
3. Gimp 2 - Actually makes Gimp pleasant to use. Someday this will come with my distro.
Firefox - Simple, uncluttered, yet packaged with features.
3. Evo 1.5 - Though its not really better than the older version. I keeping hoping for a three column view.
4. Multisync - To Sync Evo to my SonyEricsson mobile phone via Bluetooth.
5. Driftnet - I sometimes use my box as a router for other people - and I want to know what they're browsing with it.
6. Beep, and its mp3 plugins. A GTK 2 replacement for XMMS, which I'll then uninstall.
7. GtkPod, for my iPod. I'll use the automounter to handle the mounting.
8. K3B. Makes CD/DVD burning on Linux pleasant. Wish there was a Gnome workalike.
9. NX - X compression that's on par with Citrix. Makes my box a whole lot easier to work with remotely. www.nomachine.com.
10. Nvidia driver packages from rpm.livna.org.
The difference isn't so clear-cut. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat's revenue-generating product, unlike Fedora isn't so "up to date"
It comes out every 18 months - that's still faster than a lot of distros (it's supported for 5 years).
There are not just two distros, there are over a hundred, and many of the most used ones flourish enough to thrive.
Certainly, but I believe the parent poster was talking about two different, I guess, ideaologies. I'd still agree with you though - there's more similarities between Red Hat and Debian than differences, and as a Red Hat user I can clearly see its my preferred distro which is doing most of the changing... (this is a Good Thing)...
Within the first two hours of a Fedora or RHEL install, the Red Hat Netowrk services daemon will contact a server and begin flashing a red exclamation mark in the notification area of the desktop if there are updates available. If a user clicks it, they'll get updates - either free ones from a Fedora mirror if they're using Fedora or paid ones from Red Hat Network if they've brought EL.
This is default behavior.
SSH compression is about 12:1, and pretty poor for most purposes.
There's an Open Soruce X compression scheme from NoMachine that can do 60:1 compression and benchmarks well against Citrix. Check out the Freedesktop.org X server mailing lists from last month for more info/discussion.
Yes, its fast, but the fastest horse doesn't compare very well to a decent car.
Running Linux in a VM running as an application simply won't be as fast as running Linux as an application.
I guess my question is, why is it possible to have a decent Linux distribution that runs within XP, but it's not possible to take a dual-drive Dell and easily make your system let you choose between XP and Linux atstartup?
It is possible. Most major distributions (eg, Red Hat, SuSE, stacks more) detect the presence of your Windows partition and simply add it to the boot menu.
And colinux would compile your app faster.
User Mode Linux hacker and all-round-cool-dude Dan Shearer has previously mentioned he's interested in porting Linux to the JVM. This would enable you to run native Linux apps on anything than can run a JVM, and also allow you to have multiple OSs on those machines.
Its pretty hard tho - the JVM is nowhere near a complete hardware platform, but it would be possible.
Cause its fun!
Red Hat / Fedora packages at Dag's apt repository
fedora kills the network on a any laptop whose network is on a PC-card
Got any evidence? There's a bunch of laptops round here using pccard ethernet adapters fine. You may have found a bug, but its likely limited to a specific hardware combo. RHEL may also suffer from that bug, as well as other distros.
isnt supported by all those binary things I use (nvida, vmware)
These both work fine on Fedora. I've been using them regularly.
Besides, you could always download Whitebox. Same software, same 5 years of updates, sans RH branding and package building.
Maintain it yourself. If you feel like paying someone else - well, buy RHEL - that's what people who buy it pay for.
He has some good points. He also has this:
It's easy to ridicule the estimated 2006-or-2007 ship date for Longhorn, the next major release of Windows. But do you doubt for a moment that Longhorn will provide more improvements from Windows XP than desktop Linux will gain during the same period?
Of course I do. Linux moves more quickly than Windows and one of its busiest areas right now is end user stuff - there's no itches to be scratched. Historically every desktop Linux available when a new Windows comes out is an order of magnitude better than the versions available at the same time. Why should Longhorn be any different to XP, 2000, Me, 98SE, etc...
Some distro's (sic) still build for 386
If you mean Red Hat, they compile all their packages with Pentium instruction ordering. On IA32, they also provide i586 / i686 / Athlon / SMP kernel and glibc packages (which use processor specific instructions) and install whichever is appropriate for your machine.
Anything more than that wouldn't make a difference. Since Red Hat don't ship many multimedia apps due to US patent problems, you'd get CPU optimized versions of those packages elsewhere.
there was a certain program that I could only get as source, so I compiled and installed it.
Sounds like a good idea, I do that all the time.
It turns out that it was required as a basis for other packages I wanted to install. But when I tried to install those, it didn't recognize the prerequisite programs
Why?
because they weren't installed via rpm.
That'd be your problem then. If you're smart enough to compile you're smart enough to package.
Usually when one builds from Source, they install it to wherever the original developer has it set to by default. Unless you did some heavy patching, the software will very likely be more "true" to the original software then many packages.
/var because that's What You Want.
Distros patch their apps to use the FHS. Sorry developer, you have no right to rape my system and put binaries in
Having this fixed is yet another reason to use packages. Hopefully the developer gets the idea and fixes his program.
Both the poster and his friend seem to have missed a very important point: building from source should result in packages, and it it doesn't, you're not doing it properly.
RPM has macros that make it possible to package anything using GNU autoconf (configure; make; make install) in about five minutes. I bet dpkg would too. Anything else is generally pretty simple too (cpan2rpm for perl modules, make and archive and don't bother filling out the %build section for binary onmly apps, etc).
We wouldn't. Chances are:
The system also runs a GPL version of MythTV - anyone else see any licensing issues?
Commercial does not mean proprietary. Selling commercial products using Open Source is great - it often helps pay OSS programmers rent.
Why on earth do the Slashbots immediately assume anyone selling OSS is a) violating the GPL and b) evil ?
Yes, Gnome has IOSlaves. They're called Gnome VFS modules, and, just like KIOSlaves, they're limited to programs written for their desktop environment with no good reason why this is the case.
LUFS works with any program - KDE, Gnome, the shell, or whatever else, and allows you to mount shares via SSH, HTTP, or whatever else.
If I were a Linux distributor I'd actually cut out the desktop-specific IOSlave / VFS crap and use this instead, thereby providing a consistent experience for my users.
So what makes KDE and Gnome different anyway? The developers of both are aiming to look and function, well, exactly like each other in most cases.
What makes KDE and Gnome different for end users? Certainly not anything most people cares about. KDE has a better save dialog, Gnome will in its next release. And Gnome puts questions suggesting the negative first, because some Apple researcher said that was a good idea ages ago.
Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.
Because Sun Java Desktop is a modified version of SuSE Linux.
I think a better rule would be not to make excuses for badly written tools.
GUI config tools should follow three simple rules:
Otherwise they are useless.
'we' all lament what has happened to the Internet since 'they' finally found out about it
I don't. Decent web browsers, HTML that finally seperates content from presentations, cheaper more readily available bandwidth, cheaper hardware, more people to connect to, more ways to connect to them, and less 31337 geeks ranting about the good old days of the internet.
Apple has nowhere near %5 desktop market share, and Linux, according to a few people, already has more (do your own research if you like, i can't be arsed).