Brenthaven makes really nice, highly padded bags, that have an extra, built-in, removeable sleeve in them. They make them for all the PowerBooks including the 17in ones. I got one about 6 months ago and have been very happy with it. (I've got the Deluxe Slim I think)
It was a bit on the pricey side compared to what I was thinking (about $100), but it's a really nice, well constructed bag and the padding will pay for itself if you ride the train like I do and would otherwise bang up your laptop.
These requirements are terrible. Requirements should not specify implementation details. While abstractly saying things like Object Oriented Design with good GUI tools that supports event handling and good error or exception handling is fine, saying we HAVE to be able to have ths syntax: object1 + object2 is ridiculous.
1) Advanced OO design.
Ok, I can understand wanting OOD/OO Programming constructs explicitly supported. Abstract classes (and/or) interfaces and inheritance, etc. are all good OO constructs. But REQUIRING multiple-inheritance? Why? There are many good OO languages that don't do multiple inheritence. And GC has nothing to do with OO - while it might be a good criterion on its own.
2) Operator overloading.
This is such a crock. Is there anything that can not be accomplished without Operator Overloading? There are many arguments against using operator overloading in fact even in languages that support it. (Non-intuitive nature of it sometimes, the failure to implement all operators including comparisons, etc.)
If you take out the 2 dumb requirements above, you open the door to all kinds of languages:
Java, Python, Smalltalk, etc.
Then you can truly evaluate them on the availble RADs for the language, performance and suitability to the end project requirements.
Most tech workers have this weird notion that they couldn't be union members for some reason. There's been this mis-information that if you went to college, or you don't come home from work dirty that you can't be a Union member.
But look at what you are doing - compare that to what a skilled worker in a factory does. It is virtually the same thing. But because one person wears jeans and a work shirt and the other wears a tie, they think they have nothing in common.
I'm serious about this. You are in the same postition as an average factory worker - where you are expected by the bosses to do things and not be compensated fairly. It's time for tech workers to get together and help each other out. It will make all of our lives better.
We don't hire people, or fire people, or make decisions on pay and raises. You're a worker, just the same as a person in a steel mill or a person making clothes. Your tools are computers instead of hammers or CAD/CAM driven lathes.
Ok, I'll get off the soap box now.:)
What do people think? Why no big tech union?
Everyone keeps saying that MacOS X is the OS for everyone else (i.e. not Unix users). Fine . . .
Those people WILL NEVER open a shell, go look for a config file and hack it with vi.
The people that will do that are the people that already know Unix. And remember the saying about Unix is that the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once. OS X would make us climb it again . . .
And I'm not just complaining becasue it's different. I truly believe that somethings work, and changing them does not have a positive benefit. There is a certain amount of knowledge about Unix and they way things work. If you are going to tout the fact that it's built on top of Unix, etc, etc. Then do it the Unix way. Moving configuration and startup files to different directories doesn't accomplish anything. They're still shell scripts and flat files - leave them be.
I was really rooting for OS X to be a great OS. Apple could still fix a lot of these things, but I doubt if they will.
Everything I hear from people is how much they love OS X. Where is everyone else?
I installed it on a G3 PowerBook with 128M of RAM. I liked it at first. But the more I used it and the more I got into the details, the less I like it.
GUI:
The thing is not fast by any means.
Just minimizing a window into the Dock would use 75% of my CPU.
They got rid of 'window shading'.
The menus - formerly one of the most consistent aspects of the MacOS - lose much of their consistency.
I think the whole Aqua thing is too 'bubbly and sweet' - of course that's just aesthetic, so I won't hold that against them.
Underneath:
It defaults to running inetd, nfsiod, portmap, and a couple of other things. To exacerbate this problem there is no GUI method of turning off these services, and the only command line method is 'kill'. To get these services to not start at boot required hacking config files (after 30 minutes of searching to find them).
They have discarded way to many Unix conventions for my liking. They have come up with their own method of 'controlling' services. They discarded the standard rc format.
They have added all kinds of odd directories like/Applications,/System and/Users. Application configuration files and resources all get bundled into one place for each App.
I could go on, but I think I made my point. I use Unix and Macs and like them both for different reasonse. OS X is not Mac enough nor Unix enough for me to like it at all.
I just don't think Apple get's it . . . hopefully they'll get a clue.
Ok, I'm a sucker for faster computers and all, but think:
Sure, a computer crashes now and you get pissed, maybe lose some data.
When your computer is a microscopic black hole or a mini-fusion plant, a GPF could mean the end of the Universe.
I think you are looking at the problem backwards. Rather than look for computer related tasks that will go to charities - look for the charity and see if they have computer related work that needs to be done.
In this day and age, almost every charitable orginization has an online presence. Most use computers in their offices too I'm sure. It seems to me the best thing to do is find a charity that you like/agree with and then go to them asking if they need anything done. That way you know that you are working for a cause that you believe in.
What about setting up an ecommerce package so that they can take donations on the web? Who knows what they need - they do, but chances are that most will gladly take your help and work with you to come up with a good project if they don't have something immediate in mind.
That's what I think . . . of course if your real motivation is to help, it's possible that you could be the most help doing something else. Are you open to that possibility?
Choice my man:) That's the beauty of Linux (I'll include the *BSDs in this also). If you want to run totally CLI, go for it. If you want to run X with just a lightweight window manager, go for it. If you want to run GNOME and KDE at the same time . . . go for it.:)
That's the beauty behind the system that we love so much is that everything is replaceable. You can get a different SMTP program and a different mail client if you want. You can install as much or as little as you like. Of course, that goes for your user interface as well.
Some days I run GNOME, some days I turn it off and just run a Window Manager. So, I get to decide how much 'bloat' I wan't to be running at the time. And since I'm always right about what I want for me . . . it's perfect. (Just like you are always right about what you want.)
Thanks, I did not know that. I agree, it should be widely advertised. I guess SMP is still not very widely used, so it doesn't effect very many people.
I'd moderate this way up if I could:) Thanks again.
One more thing that I noticed is that when I run mozilla, I get this error:
modprobe: can't locate module net-pf-10
Maybe that's related? I'm running a stock 2.2.12-smp kernel that came from Red Hat (after having some problems with 2.2.14 - I reverted to see if it would help). But, I saw the same error when I was running 2.2.14.
Don't know exactly what it is as I could only find references to net-pf-3,4,5 (IPX and appletalk related).
Huh - maybe that's my problem? Anyone else seen this? Lets see if there is a correlation. Check/var/log/messages - that's where it shows up in my logs.
I do run Red Hat 6.1 - so I doubt it is that bug (which IIRC had something to do with glibc 2.0). I don't know what all the libraries that it depends on are, but I'm pretty up to date with my system:
gtk+ 1.2.6 glibc 2.1.2 XFree86 3.3.6
I sincerly hope that it's just a quirk of my setup that someone will know what it is, and that I will fix it and never run anything but Mozilla again:)
Any ideas along those lines would be greatly appreciated. Or, how do I get it to dump core so that I can use gdb to find out where the problems are? Anyone know?
So, I downloaded the M14 for Linux (with Talkback support). All I can say is - huh? I ran it for maybe 15 minutes and have had it crash already a dozen times - even on pages that are supposed to be verified (like www.cnn.com).
I know that this is alpha software, but my impression of the road to M14 was supposed to make it so that people could use it as their full time browser - and thus squash more bugs.
It crashed the first time I loaded it before getting through the profile creation process.
I've been rooting for Mozilla for a long time now and have been apologetic - I keep telling people to give them a month or two, to wait for the next Milestone. I was very disappointed with it as I had had high hopes for this release (which has been much touted as the push for stability). Am I the only one? Was it built against different shared libraries than what I'm running? Is it better than Netscape 4.7 for anyone (which I've heard before)?
Well, I give up for now - I'll wait until the official launch and see how it is then . . .
I'm not going to say not to download it, but if you can afford to buy it, please do. We need to support these companies that are doing a lot of work to make installing and using Linux on all kinds of different platforms really easy to do. They are also the companies that are funding development of the kernel and user space packages that make Linux (the best OS) even better. I've already ordered my copy. . .
I for one am going to start buying all my distributions (now that I have a good job:)). I encourage others to do the same. Prove the pundits wrong - make Linux profitable:)
I work at home (telecommuting). All I can say, is that I think that I would go nuts not being able to leave my house AT ALL. I make a point to get out everyday, usually by eating lunch out. I live in a small enough town, that I can walk to an area that has a dozen or so restraunts. If it wasn't for these daily jaunts out, I'd go stir crazy that's for sure.
I guess it would be a small consolation that friends could come to your place - at least then you probably wouldn't talk to yourself. And being able to go into the backyard would prevent you from turning into a mushroom . . . but your human interaction would be severly limited. And unless you already had a (very understanding) significant other . . . (you get my drift:))
But still, lets think of all of the social and cultural things that you can not participate in without leaving home. Theater, movies, concerts, parties, going to a bar with friends . . . these are just a few of the things that I do at least once a week. Without them I'm pretty sure that most people would become hopelessly depressed (at least I would).
Anyway, I don't think I'd do it. One thing we've learned in the tech world - lots of money can't make up for having no life:)
CSS is a big thing - it has the ability to define EXACTLY how things are layed out on a page, etc. This is where the problems lie, becasue current browsers don't support this precision.
That being said, CSS is still GREAT for defining fonts, body colors, etc. All it requires to make changes across an antire site (that might be 200+ html files) is changing it in a single place. CSS also has the ability to do relative font sizes based on the user defined prefered size - That is great becasue it still allows people to control their text so that people with bad eyesite can still read the web page.
So, you're right - I could make webpages that are totally unreadable by people who use browsers that don't support the STANDARD. But, they can be used in a controlled manner to make the maintanence of sites much easier and not impede people whose browsers don't support them.
The Style Sheet support is FANTASTIC! (I'm a web developer, so I've seen the havoc that trying to support different browsers can reak!) For a really good CSS test, check out: http://style.verso.com/boxacidtest/
It renders horribly in Netscape 4.x series, but in Mozilla, it is EXACTLY the same as the reference picture. It got me pretty excited:)
What I would like to see happen is a group of the big name Linux vendors (Since they have money) get together and pay for the lawyers that it would take to fight these guys.
Red Hat, Caldera, VA Linux - Those are three big companies that ought to think about footing the bill to protect this stuff. What's good for Linux in general will be good for all of them. The Linux community is about working together, why not work together here?
There are a few emerging technologies that Linux needs if it is going to be a big success outside of servers and embeded systems. USB is one, DVD is probably another. (We've got a good start on USB which will probably be stable and real usable by 2.4) It looks like DVD is emerging as a technology that will be widely adopted. Without it, Linux will be a weak platform for desktop users.
There are lots of desktop computers out there, lets not give up on them. (Give me an excuse to buy a DVD player:))
This ruling has a chance to finally level the playing field.
Many of us are Linux and/or *BSD users. We've known for quite a while that we have a technically superior OS in many ways. There are also others like BeOS that are trying to compete on the ease of use of their OS.
All I would like to see is enough change instituted so that the playing field can finally be leveled, so that all users can chooses the operating systems and applications that suit their needs and tastes. (Thinking in terms of punishment is the right thing, because that doesn't necessarily change their future behaviour.)
Hopefully we can also see a movement to better embrace ISO, IETF, W3C, etc standards so that me using Linux, and you using Be, and someone else using Windows2005 can all share info, etc.
Now's the time to push for real positive change and not just see how much money we can bleed away from MS (although I'm sure that will happen too).
This is the worst kind of joke! The one that isn't a joke.
This page has been around for quite some time (I remember seeing it months ago) and they really have no products. They have a couple of repackaged distributions, none of which are doing anything new or inovative. They claim to be a 'leading-edge developer of Linux software' but no one has ever heard of them.
This seems to be a total ploy to cash in on unsuspecting people, both users and people who would buy stock.
The Register reported that they reported to the SEC that they had $17,000 in expenses and no income last quarter. What kind of business is even CONSIDERING an IPO with no revenue AT ALL?
The question was asked by someone who was looking for a computing solution for a complete newbie (probably with no interest in actually learning how things work). So we want to find the best solution. Is it Linux? If so, with what setup?
You have not suggested a better alternative, so I assume you would suggest Windows or a Mac. If that's the case, you need to state why! Is it becasue they are the most widely used? If so, that's a bad awnser. We are looking for the RIGHT solution, not the popular one.
From experience, most computer users can tell you that using a new system is hardly ever intuitive. No matter what OS is used, the Grandpa will require some 'training.' The suggest that I made was Window Maker with all the apps that Gramps will need as docked so he can just double click them to launch. Is that harder than Windows or Mac?
The final question that I will pose is: What system, once it is nicely and properly setup requires the least amount of maintanence? In my experience it is Linux. Which makes Linux the perfect choice. The grandson sets it up, gives it to grandpa, tells him how to log in, launch the applications and shutdown properly . . . that's it.
So don't be so quick to dismiss this solution, unless you are prepared to offer REASONS to why it would be bad and another solution would be better.
This is also what I would suggest. It is simple to explain to someone how to use it. Just create dock launchers for the programs that he wants to use and then all you have to do is say 'Grandpa, when you want to get online click this button, then click this button to launch Netscape . ..". It can't be any easier than that.
The only advantage KDE or GNOME would have is if the person was coming from a Windows background because they are familiar with the 'start menu' metaphor. But with Window Maker you can put everything right out there. There is nothing to remember becasue it can all be right in front of you.
As for people who would suggest Windows, why? If the grandson is going to set up the machine, he can do it in such a way that will be much easier to use than Windows would. That along with the added advantage that Grandpa won't have to deal with many undesireable Windows 'features'.
I got the clean 2.2.12 sources from a kernel.org mirror. I copied the.config file over that I had used to attempt to build from the sources installed by the RH rpm. I used the same proceedure to make and install the kernel and modules. (I tried it 3 times with the kernel sources from 6.1)
It worked flawlesly this time. Problem with the rpm sources? I don't know for sure, but you might want to look into it it (you still there Michael?, let me know and I'll try and give better feedback/ QA).
OK, don't mean to be petty, but: That was real helpful (please note sarcasm). . . I was working under the assumption that 'make modules' and 'make modules_install' took care of that (yes I did do make menuconfig, dep, clean and bzImage).
And custom kernels might "work fine" for you, that doesn't mean they "work fine" for me . . . at least not in this release, they have in all the previous ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Brenthaven makes really nice, highly padded bags, that have an extra, built-in, removeable sleeve in them. They make them for all the PowerBooks including the 17in ones. I got one about 6 months ago and have been very happy with it. (I've got the Deluxe Slim I think)
It was a bit on the pricey side compared to what I was thinking (about $100), but it's a really nice, well constructed bag and the padding will pay for itself if you ride the train like I do and would otherwise bang up your laptop.
http://www.brenthaven.com/products/index.html
These requirements are terrible. Requirements should not specify implementation details. While abstractly saying things like Object Oriented Design with good GUI tools that supports event handling and good error or exception handling is fine, saying we HAVE to be able to have ths syntax: object1 + object2 is ridiculous.
1) Advanced OO design.
Ok, I can understand wanting OOD/OO Programming constructs explicitly supported. Abstract classes (and/or) interfaces and inheritance, etc. are all good OO constructs. But REQUIRING multiple-inheritance? Why? There are many good OO languages that don't do multiple inheritence. And GC has nothing to do with OO - while it might be a good criterion on its own.
2) Operator overloading.
This is such a crock. Is there anything that can not be accomplished without Operator Overloading? There are many arguments against using operator overloading in fact even in languages that support it. (Non-intuitive nature of it sometimes, the failure to implement all operators including comparisons, etc.)
If you take out the 2 dumb requirements above, you open the door to all kinds of languages:
Java, Python, Smalltalk, etc.
Then you can truly evaluate them on the availble RADs for the language, performance and suitability to the end project requirements.
Fire your boss!
Most tech workers have this weird notion that they couldn't be union members for some reason. There's been this mis-information that if you went to college, or you don't come home from work dirty that you can't be a Union member.
:)
But look at what you are doing - compare that to what a skilled worker in a factory does. It is virtually the same thing. But because one person wears jeans and a work shirt and the other wears a tie, they think they have nothing in common.
I'm serious about this. You are in the same postition as an average factory worker - where you are expected by the bosses to do things and not be compensated fairly. It's time for tech workers to get together and help each other out. It will make all of our lives better.
We don't hire people, or fire people, or make decisions on pay and raises. You're a worker, just the same as a person in a steel mill or a person making clothes. Your tools are computers instead of hammers or CAD/CAM driven lathes.
Ok, I'll get off the soap box now.
What do people think? Why no big tech union?
You know that's why they cracked the DB, so they could post with +1 for everything.
:)
Maybe that ought to be a rule - anyone that cracks the DB and does no damage gets automatic GOD karma rating.
Everyone keeps saying that MacOS X is the OS for everyone else (i.e. not Unix users). Fine . . .
Those people WILL NEVER open a shell, go look for a config file and hack it with vi.
The people that will do that are the people that already know Unix. And remember the saying about Unix is that the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once. OS X would make us climb it again . . .
And I'm not just complaining becasue it's different. I truly believe that somethings work, and changing them does not have a positive benefit. There is a certain amount of knowledge about Unix and they way things work. If you are going to tout the fact that it's built on top of Unix, etc, etc. Then do it the Unix way. Moving configuration and startup files to different directories doesn't accomplish anything. They're still shell scripts and flat files - leave them be.
I was really rooting for OS X to be a great OS. Apple could still fix a lot of these things, but I doubt if they will.
Everything I hear from people is how much they love OS X. Where is everyone else?
/Applications, /System and /Users. Application configuration files and resources all get bundled into one place for each App.
I installed it on a G3 PowerBook with 128M of RAM. I liked it at first. But the more I used it and the more I got into the details, the less I like it.
GUI:
The thing is not fast by any means.
Just minimizing a window into the Dock would use 75% of my CPU.
They got rid of 'window shading'.
The menus - formerly one of the most consistent aspects of the MacOS - lose much of their consistency.
I think the whole Aqua thing is too 'bubbly and sweet' - of course that's just aesthetic, so I won't hold that against them.
Underneath:
It defaults to running inetd, nfsiod, portmap, and a couple of other things. To exacerbate this problem there is no GUI method of turning off these services, and the only command line method is 'kill'. To get these services to not start at boot required hacking config files (after 30 minutes of searching to find them).
They have discarded way to many Unix conventions for my liking. They have come up with their own method of 'controlling' services. They discarded the standard rc format.
They have added all kinds of odd directories like
I could go on, but I think I made my point. I use Unix and Macs and like them both for different reasonse. OS X is not Mac enough nor Unix enough for me to like it at all.
I just don't think Apple get's it . . . hopefully they'll get a clue.
Ok, I'm a sucker for faster computers and all, but think:
Sure, a computer crashes now and you get pissed, maybe lose some data.
When your computer is a microscopic black hole or a mini-fusion plant, a GPF could mean the end of the Universe.
I think you are looking at the problem backwards. Rather than look for computer related tasks that will go to charities - look for the charity and see if they have computer related work that needs to be done.
In this day and age, almost every charitable orginization has an online presence. Most use computers in their offices too I'm sure. It seems to me the best thing to do is find a charity that you like/agree with and then go to them asking if they need anything done. That way you know that you are working for a cause that you believe in.
What about setting up an ecommerce package so that they can take donations on the web? Who knows what they need - they do, but chances are that most will gladly take your help and work with you to come up with a good project if they don't have something immediate in mind.
That's what I think . . . of course if your real motivation is to help, it's possible that you could be the most help doing something else. Are you open to that possibility?
Choice my man :) :)
:)
That's the beauty of Linux (I'll include the *BSDs in this also). If you want to run totally CLI, go for it. If you want to run X with just a lightweight window manager, go for it. If you want to run GNOME and KDE at the same time . . . go for it.
That's the beauty behind the system that we love so much is that everything is replaceable. You can get a different SMTP program and a different mail client if you want. You can install as much or as little as you like. Of course, that goes for your user interface as well.
Some days I run GNOME, some days I turn it off and just run a Window Manager. So, I get to decide how much 'bloat' I wan't to be running at the time. And since I'm always right about what I want for me . . . it's perfect. (Just like you are always right about what you want.)
Man I'm in Love with Linux!
Thanks, I did not know that. I agree, it should be widely advertised. I guess SMP is still not very widely used, so it doesn't effect very many people.
:)
I'd moderate this way up if I could
Thanks again.
One more thing that I noticed is that when I run mozilla, I get this error:
/var/log/messages - that's where it shows up in my logs.
modprobe: can't locate module net-pf-10
Maybe that's related? I'm running a stock 2.2.12-smp kernel that came from Red Hat (after having some problems with 2.2.14 - I reverted to see if it would help). But, I saw the same error when I was running 2.2.14.
Don't know exactly what it is as I could only find references to net-pf-3,4,5 (IPX and appletalk related).
Huh - maybe that's my problem? Anyone else seen this? Lets see if there is a correlation. Check
I do run Red Hat 6.1 - so I doubt it is that bug (which IIRC had something to do with glibc 2.0).
:)
I don't know what all the libraries that it depends on are, but I'm pretty up to date with my system:
gtk+ 1.2.6
glibc 2.1.2
XFree86 3.3.6
I sincerly hope that it's just a quirk of my setup that someone will know what it is, and that I will fix it and never run anything but Mozilla again
Any ideas along those lines would be greatly appreciated. Or, how do I get it to dump core so that I can use gdb to find out where the problems are? Anyone know?
I did delete my old .mozilla directory.
:)
But I couldn't find c:\windows no matter how hard I looked
(I run Linux as I stated in the original post.)
So, I downloaded the M14 for Linux (with Talkback support). All I can say is - huh? I ran it for maybe 15 minutes and have had it crash already a dozen times - even on pages that are supposed to be verified (like www.cnn.com).
:^\
I know that this is alpha software, but my impression of the road to M14 was supposed to make it so that people could use it as their full time browser - and thus squash more bugs.
It crashed the first time I loaded it before getting through the profile creation process.
I've been rooting for Mozilla for a long time now and have been apologetic - I keep telling people to give them a month or two, to wait for the next Milestone. I was very disappointed with it as I had had high hopes for this release (which has been much touted as the push for stability). Am I the only one? Was it built against different shared libraries than what I'm running? Is it better than Netscape 4.7 for anyone (which I've heard before)?
Well, I give up for now - I'll wait until the official launch and see how it is then . . .
I'm jaded
I'm not going to say not to download it, but if you can afford to buy it, please do. We need to support these companies that are doing a lot of work to make installing and using Linux on all kinds of different platforms really easy to do. They are also the companies that are funding development of the kernel and user space packages that make Linux (the best OS) even better. I've already ordered my copy. . .
:)). I encourage others to do the same. Prove the pundits wrong - make Linux profitable :)
I for one am going to start buying all my distributions (now that I have a good job
I work at home (telecommuting). All I can say, is that I think that I would go nuts not being able to leave my house AT ALL. I make a point to get out everyday, usually by eating lunch out. I live in a small enough town, that I can walk to an area that has a dozen or so restraunts. If it wasn't for these daily jaunts out, I'd go stir crazy that's for sure.
:))
:)
I guess it would be a small consolation that friends could come to your place - at least then you probably wouldn't talk to yourself. And being able to go into the backyard would prevent you from turning into a mushroom . . . but your human interaction would be severly limited. And unless you already had a (very understanding) significant other . . . (you get my drift
But still, lets think of all of the social and cultural things that you can not participate in without leaving home. Theater, movies, concerts, parties, going to a bar with friends . . . these are just a few of the things that I do at least once a week. Without them I'm pretty sure that most people would become hopelessly depressed (at least I would).
Anyway, I don't think I'd do it. One thing we've learned in the tech world - lots of money can't make up for having no life
A late reply, so it might nat get read :)
CSS is a big thing - it has the ability to define EXACTLY how things are layed out on a page, etc. This is where the problems lie, becasue current browsers don't support this precision.
That being said, CSS is still GREAT for defining fonts, body colors, etc. All it requires to make changes across an antire site (that might be 200+ html files) is changing it in a single place. CSS also has the ability to do relative font sizes based on the user defined prefered size - That is great becasue it still allows people to control their text so that people with bad eyesite can still read the web page.
So, you're right - I could make webpages that are totally unreadable by people who use browsers that don't support the STANDARD. But, they can be used in a controlled manner to make the maintanence of sites much easier and not impede people whose browsers don't support them.
The Style Sheet support is FANTASTIC! (I'm a web developer, so I've seen the havoc that trying to support different browsers can reak!)
:)
For a really good CSS test, check out:
http://style.verso.com/boxacidtest/
It renders horribly in Netscape 4.x series, but in Mozilla, it is EXACTLY the same as the reference picture. It got me pretty excited
What I would like to see happen is a group of the big name Linux vendors (Since they have money) get together and pay for the lawyers that it would take to fight these guys.
:))
Red Hat, Caldera, VA Linux - Those are three big companies that ought to think about footing the bill to protect this stuff. What's good for Linux in general will be good for all of them. The Linux community is about working together, why not work together here?
There are a few emerging technologies that Linux needs if it is going to be a big success outside of servers and embeded systems. USB is one, DVD is probably another. (We've got a good start on USB which will probably be stable and real usable by 2.4) It looks like DVD is emerging as a technology that will be widely adopted. Without it, Linux will be a weak platform for desktop users.
There are lots of desktop computers out there, lets not give up on them. (Give me an excuse to buy a DVD player
This ruling has a chance to finally level the playing field.
Many of us are Linux and/or *BSD users. We've known for quite a while that we have a technically superior OS in many ways. There are also others like BeOS that are trying to compete on the ease of use of their OS.
All I would like to see is enough change instituted so that the playing field can finally be leveled, so that all users can chooses the operating systems and applications that suit their needs and tastes. (Thinking in terms of punishment is the right thing, because that doesn't necessarily change their future behaviour.)
Hopefully we can also see a movement to better embrace ISO, IETF, W3C, etc standards so that me using Linux, and you using Be, and someone else using Windows2005 can all share info, etc.
Now's the time to push for real positive change and not just see how much money we can bleed away from MS (although I'm sure that will happen too).
This is the worst kind of joke! The one that isn't a joke.
This page has been around for quite some time (I remember seeing it months ago) and they really have no products. They have a couple of repackaged distributions, none of which are doing anything new or inovative. They claim to be a 'leading-edge developer of Linux software' but no one has ever heard of them.
This seems to be a total ploy to cash in on unsuspecting people, both users and people who would buy stock.
The Register reported that they reported to the SEC that they had $17,000 in expenses and no income last quarter. What kind of business is even CONSIDERING an IPO with no revenue AT ALL?
This is a ridiculous scam . . .
The question was asked by someone who was looking for a computing solution for a complete newbie (probably with no interest in actually learning how things work). So we want to find the best solution. Is it Linux? If so, with what setup?
You have not suggested a better alternative, so I assume you would suggest Windows or a Mac. If that's the case, you need to state why! Is it becasue they are the most widely used? If so, that's a bad awnser. We are looking for the RIGHT solution, not the popular one.
From experience, most computer users can tell you that using a new system is hardly ever intuitive. No matter what OS is used, the Grandpa will require some 'training.' The suggest that I made was Window Maker with all the apps that Gramps will need as docked so he can just double click them to launch. Is that harder than Windows or Mac?
The final question that I will pose is: What system, once it is nicely and properly setup requires the least amount of maintanence? In my experience it is Linux. Which makes Linux the perfect choice. The grandson sets it up, gives it to grandpa, tells him how to log in, launch the applications and shutdown properly . . . that's it.
So don't be so quick to dismiss this solution, unless you are prepared to offer REASONS to why it would be bad and another solution would be better.
This is also what I would suggest. It is simple to explain to someone how to use it. Just create dock launchers for the programs that he wants to use and then all you have to do is say 'Grandpa, when you want to get online click this button, then click this button to launch Netscape . . .". It can't be any easier than that.
The only advantage KDE or GNOME would have is if the person was coming from a Windows background because they are familiar with the 'start menu' metaphor. But with Window Maker you can put everything right out there. There is nothing to remember becasue it can all be right in front of you.
As for people who would suggest Windows, why? If the grandson is going to set up the machine, he can do it in such a way that will be much easier to use than Windows would. That along with the added advantage that Grandpa won't have to deal with many undesireable Windows 'features'.
Ok, one more, then I promise to quit.
.config file over that I had used to attempt to build from the sources installed by the RH rpm. I used the same proceedure to make and install the kernel and modules. (I tried it 3 times with the kernel sources from 6.1)
I got the clean 2.2.12 sources from a kernel.org mirror. I copied the
It worked flawlesly this time. Problem with the rpm sources? I don't know for sure, but you might want to look into it it (you still there Michael?, let me know and I'll try and give better feedback/ QA).
OK, don't mean to be petty, but: That was real helpful (please note sarcasm). . . I was working under the assumption that 'make modules' and 'make modules_install' took care of that (yes I did do make menuconfig, dep, clean and bzImage).
And custom kernels might "work fine" for you, that doesn't mean they "work fine" for me . . . at least not in this release, they have in all the previous ones.