Don't assume that because somebody expresses an opinion that it's automatically the opinion of all linux users.
The opinions that are expressed are the ones paid attention to. The Linux users who will gladly buy proprietary commercial software need to make theirs heard.
Supposition: Mac users actually buy software, Linux users demand stuff for free. Every platform has its user quirks. I think Linux's is that they all want everything gratis.
Who wants to port to Linux only to have hordes of advocates screaming "it's not Free Software!"
I used it for quite a while. I even ran it on an 8086, even though the specs said I couldn't. Even as late as 1998 I was using it in a shop I worked at on some old 386's, for basic office productivity stuff. At $79 it was a heck of a lot cheaper than a new system plus Windows.
For a while it was going head to head with Windows, and doing well. Even preinstalled on some systems. What ultimately killed it was the lack of a good SDK. No one developed for it, so the only apps available were pretty much what came with it.
I heard a few years ago that it was still being sold under the name "New Deal Office", by New Deal, Inc. It was targetting churches and schools, and anyone else who had donations of old computers that couldn't run Windows.
If we're touting OSS as better, shouldn't it have the option to do everything Windows does, plus?
That's assuming that the Windows way is best. The jury is still out on that one.
If there is something good in Windows, we should implement it. But not everything there is good. For someone who is most familiar with Windows, it's hard to determine what's good or bad. You need to take a step outside of Windows and evaluate it objectively.
Offtopic: everytime someone bitches about how KDE and GNOME are too much like Windows, and why can't be please be original, someone else is requesting yet another feature to duplicate something in Windows.
Ontopic: You don't want clueless users to be able to trivially export their personal data with a single mouse click.
I don't get you problem. Windows doesn't have any text mode editors, and no one bitches about. It comes with cheesy notepad.exe and people think it's awesome.
So what's your problem? Use kwrite, gedit, or whatever is in your desktop menu. Both blow the pants off of notepad. I can somewhat understand the intimidation factor of having to choose something during install time. Is this worse than Windows that doesn't let you choose between ANYTHING?
Does it really need to support XSL? Remove all of the hype, and think about it for a while.
All XSL does is transform your XML into HTML/CSS (or another format). It's a meta-markup language. Look at the stylesheet at your link. This isn't some new standard, it's plain old HTML and CSS in disguise.
My problem is here overlapping divs, which internet explorer cannot. So I should stop using divs?
Don't stop using divs, but stop using overlapping divs.
This kind of problem has been around for a long time. If you're a C++ programmer do you use member templates if you're the only one in the shop who knows how? Do you use exceptions in your code if neither the backend or front end do? You have to make the decision to stay away from the cutting edge.
If you're coding a site for an intranet, and know every client is going to be Mozilla, then code to Mozilla. Otherwise you're going to have to go with the lowest common denominator, no matter how distasteful it may be to your sense of aesthetics.
Best viewed with......320x200 resolution...a 21" flat panel display...Microsoft Snotvision(tm) goggles...my workstation. I'm not going to tell you what OS, browser, monitor, screen resolution, color depth, or gamma I am using, so if you want to see this site the way it was meant to be seen, come over to my place and bring some beer.
Keep coding to XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.0. But code to the subset of features that all the major rendering engines (moz, khtml, ie, opera) support. You'll be much better off.
Because at that point, it's easier for the 5% to change.
Are your HTML skills so utterly lacking that you can't even write compliant markup? You're not going to get your site looking absolutely identical on every browser, so don't even try. But you can easily determine the subset of HTML/CSS that is fully supported under all major browsers, and code to that.
Sure you can do that. But why deliberately make your site ugly or unusable for the remaining 5%? In other words, don't put up a sign saying "whites only" if 95% of your customers are caucasian.
What specific browser to code for? Well, since you can't possibly code for all of them, code for NONE of them! I hate going into a store that has a sign saying "whites only", so why should I put up with the equivalent on the web?
If you can put in stuff for one browser and still have it look good on the others, then do it. At the minimum, the site should be fully functional and not ugly under any browser. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it should be navigable without damaging the users' eyes. If you start querying what browser the client is using, you're heading down the wrong path.
But you still have to test on all of them. At least IE, Mozilla/Netscape, Safari/Konqueror, and Opera, at the minimum.
Unlike most of the Slashdot crowd, I'm old enough to remember twenty years ago very clearly. IBM was *NOT* considered an evil empire. It was big, it was a monopoly of sorts, and it was incredibly difficult to compete against, but it was not seen as evil.
The difference with Microsoft is not its size or monopoly position, but rather its inane mediocrity. IBM innovated. Microsoft does not. IBM produced quality products, Microsoft produces shoddy products. IBM made computing available to the masses, while Microsoft merely dumbed computing down. We consider Microsoft to be an "evil empire" because it could be so so much better. It's like a Wolfgang Puck selling hotdogs, or a Shakespeare writing Hallmark greeting cards.
Instead of FreeBSD ports (which I love by the way), I think it would be more appropriate for Linux distros to get behind the OpenPackages project. It's goal is already to provide an OS-neutral ports tree. It seems to be languishing as a project, but the intention is still worthwhile.
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Don't assume that because somebody expresses an opinion that it's automatically the opinion of all linux users.
The opinions that are expressed are the ones paid attention to. The Linux users who will gladly buy proprietary commercial software need to make theirs heard.
Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros
Fedora, SuSE
Slackware, Debian, FreeBSD
Gentoo, NetBSD
OpenBSD, Debian
Gentoo
Supposition: Mac users actually buy software, Linux users demand stuff for free. Every platform has its user quirks. I think Linux's is that they all want everything gratis.
Who wants to port to Linux only to have hordes of advocates screaming "it's not Free Software!"
might as well buy a new computer with win95 than pay for what they were asking for.
Come on! The price was $99! A bit more expensive than the earlier GeoWorks Ensemble, but hardly prohibitive.
I used it for quite a while. I even ran it on an 8086, even though the specs said I couldn't. Even as late as 1998 I was using it in a shop I worked at on some old 386's, for basic office productivity stuff. At $79 it was a heck of a lot cheaper than a new system plus Windows.
For a while it was going head to head with Windows, and doing well. Even preinstalled on some systems. What ultimately killed it was the lack of a good SDK. No one developed for it, so the only apps available were pretty much what came with it.
I heard a few years ago that it was still being sold under the name "New Deal Office", by New Deal, Inc. It was targetting churches and schools, and anyone else who had donations of old computers that couldn't run Windows.
If we're touting OSS as better, shouldn't it have the option to do everything Windows does, plus?
That's assuming that the Windows way is best. The jury is still out on that one.
If there is something good in Windows, we should implement it. But not everything there is good. For someone who is most familiar with Windows, it's hard to determine what's good or bad. You need to take a step outside of Windows and evaluate it objectively.
Offtopic: everytime someone bitches about how KDE and GNOME are too much like Windows, and why can't be please be original, someone else is requesting yet another feature to duplicate something in Windows.
Ontopic: You don't want clueless users to be able to trivially export their personal data with a single mouse click.
Maybe Windows should have a tutorial pop up each time I type "ls" in the command shell.
I don't get you problem. Windows doesn't have any text mode editors, and no one bitches about. It comes with cheesy notepad.exe and people think it's awesome.
So what's your problem? Use kwrite, gedit, or whatever is in your desktop menu. Both blow the pants off of notepad. I can somewhat understand the intimidation factor of having to choose something during install time. Is this worse than Windows that doesn't let you choose between ANYTHING?
If you want an OS totally optimized for your CPU, use Gentoo.
Or any other OS that allows you a complete source build, such as FreeBSD.
Does it really need to support XSL? Remove all of the hype, and think about it for a while.
All XSL does is transform your XML into HTML/CSS (or another format). It's a meta-markup language. Look at the stylesheet at your link. This isn't some new standard, it's plain old HTML and CSS in disguise.
Or next to calm and rational Dean...
Anything's better than the guy who bought an LED display for his case, then kept the server on the top shelf of his closet...
Right! We don't need cheesy airhead boothbabes, we need average normal women in business clothing with knowledge of the product.
My problem is here overlapping divs, which internet explorer cannot. So I should stop using divs?
Don't stop using divs, but stop using overlapping divs.
This kind of problem has been around for a long time. If you're a C++ programmer do you use member templates if you're the only one in the shop who knows how? Do you use exceptions in your code if neither the backend or front end do? You have to make the decision to stay away from the cutting edge.
If you're coding a site for an intranet, and know every client is going to be Mozilla, then code to Mozilla. Otherwise you're going to have to go with the lowest common denominator, no matter how distasteful it may be to your sense of aesthetics.
Best viewed with... ...320x200 resolution ...a 21" flat panel display ...Microsoft Snotvision(tm) goggles ...my workstation. I'm not going to tell you what OS, browser, monitor, screen resolution, color depth, or gamma I am using, so if you want to see this site the way it was meant to be seen, come over to my place and bring some beer.
Keep coding to XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.0. But code to the subset of features that all the major rendering engines (moz, khtml, ie, opera) support. You'll be much better off.
Because at that point, it's easier for the 5% to change.
Are your HTML skills so utterly lacking that you can't even write compliant markup? You're not going to get your site looking absolutely identical on every browser, so don't even try. But you can easily determine the subset of HTML/CSS that is fully supported under all major browsers, and code to that.
Sure you can do that. But why deliberately make your site ugly or unusable for the remaining 5%? In other words, don't put up a sign saying "whites only" if 95% of your customers are caucasian.
What specific browser to code for? Well, since you can't possibly code for all of them, code for NONE of them! I hate going into a store that has a sign saying "whites only", so why should I put up with the equivalent on the web?
If you can put in stuff for one browser and still have it look good on the others, then do it. At the minimum, the site should be fully functional and not ugly under any browser. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it should be navigable without damaging the users' eyes. If you start querying what browser the client is using, you're heading down the wrong path.
But you still have to test on all of them. At least IE, Mozilla/Netscape, Safari/Konqueror, and Opera, at the minimum.
So point me to some sites done by this "designer", so I can post screen shots of them in green text on purple background...
I am extremely opposed to mocking masterpieces, but always heartily encourage the mocking of assholes.
made only proprietary systems.
Twenty years ago, everyone made proprietary hardware. Even today it's pretty damned rare to find open hardware.
The stateless web browser is a *really* crappy platform for networked applications
The web browser was never intended to be a platform!
Unlike most of the Slashdot crowd, I'm old enough to remember twenty years ago very clearly. IBM was *NOT* considered an evil empire. It was big, it was a monopoly of sorts, and it was incredibly difficult to compete against, but it was not seen as evil.
The difference with Microsoft is not its size or monopoly position, but rather its inane mediocrity. IBM innovated. Microsoft does not. IBM produced quality products, Microsoft produces shoddy products. IBM made computing available to the masses, while Microsoft merely dumbed computing down. We consider Microsoft to be an "evil empire" because it could be so so much better. It's like a Wolfgang Puck selling hotdogs, or a Shakespeare writing Hallmark greeting cards.
Instead of FreeBSD ports (which I love by the way), I think it would be more appropriate for Linux distros to get behind the OpenPackages project. It's goal is already to provide an OS-neutral ports tree. It seems to be languishing as a project, but the intention is still worthwhile.