There are several KDE-only distributions around (Xandros, Lycoris, Lindows), yet no GNOMErs seem to care all that much.
Xandros and Lindows come with heavily modified KDE desktops. It doesn't make sense for them to heavily modify another desktop in the same way. And IIRC, when Xandros first came out, when it was Corel LinuxOS, there was a minor firestorm over the lack of GNOME. Lycoris at least offers GNOME as an alternative.
Any distro that doesn't require a desktop of some sort for proper functioning of the system (which would be most distros) should include both GNOME and KDE, even if one or the other are not officially supported. And most of the others should as well if they haven't tied themselves too tightly to the interfaces of one or the other.
Userlinux, being a "metadistribution" of Debian, should be no different. They don't have to officially support KDE. But if they were smart, they should at least provide working and tested KDE packages.
I think they know it looks bad, that's why Plastik was made, and I'm pretty sure it will be the default in 3.2
Plastik was made because the author had an itch. It won't be the default KDE theme, but will be included in the set of "extra" stuff in the kdeartwork package.
I've got a rack of twenty servers. None of them have monitors or keyboards. If you need physical access to them (and ssh won't do), you hook up a monitor and keyboard to them. A KVM switch that handles twenty servers is going to be much more expensive than the monitor and keyboard, so you want a better solution.
In the past, the solution was the serial port. I connect my Wyse terminal the serial port and I'm set. That's because the serial port is hot-pluggable. But too many people are lobbying to get rid of serial ports. Enter USB.
Unless of course you want a keyboard or mouse, and the ones laying around happen to be of the USB variety. Hot-pluggable keyboards are quite handy for servers.
It's nearly instintive, but is actually taught in kindergarden.
Where I differ from the average "kindergarten teacher" is that I believe that enforced/coerced sharing strips the deed of any moral value. You should share because it is the right thing to do, not because there is a legal obligation to do so.
But you're talking as though you have a right to include that code, which the GPL is taking away.
I am not implying any such right. I do not equate convenience, wants, or wishful thinking with rights. For example, I clearly have no rights to trespass upon my neighbor's property. But that doesn't make it any less inconvenient to have to walk all the way around it to get to a store just on the other side. If I want to take a short cut I must get special permission.
However, if any of the code in the X libraries falls under this new license, then the FSF's interpretation of the GPL means that you wouldn't be able to link any GPLed program against the X libraries and distribute it.
Wrong. The "advertisement" clause only covers redistribution. If the linkage is runtime or dynamic, it doesn't apply. Only in the case of static linkage is there a problem.
However, I find the attitude of the BSD proponents on this subject somewhat strange.
As a BSD proponent, let me try to explain. The reality is quite different from the deluge of out-of-the-arse assumptions being thrown about.
I want to use the BSD license for my own code. The reasons are numerous, but at the top of the list is because I don't want to impose any restriction upon my users. I could care less what license you use, or your friend uses, or RMS uses, or even Bill Gates uses. All I care about is the freedom to make my code as unrestrictive as possible.
Enter the GPL. If it's an application that I am merely using, I could care less. If it's code that I would like to incorporate into my own work, I cannot, so I don't. Depending on how much I want to incorporate the code, this can range from a slight annoyance to a major peeve. The GPL is a brand that says "members only". For an unrestricted OS like FreeBSD or OpenBSD, great care must be taken that no necessary components are under the GPL or "infected" by the GPL, because the OS as a whole is no longer unrestricted.
I don't think GPL developers are any different in this attitude, if they would step outside their members only club and look around. What happens when a GPL developer runs across free software code that they wish to use, only to discover that it's not GPL-compatible? Same attitude. While the BSD license is compatible with the GPL, the GPL is not compatible with the BSD license.
Why, then, should any of them get mad that other developers would include BSD code in GPL'ed programs?
We don't. Or at least I don't. This has happened to me several times in the past. It doesn't bother me. However, as the original author, I do feel some small reverse consideration is in order. If the derivative code has some fixes that I would like to incorporate into the original, I have to ask for a special exception to do so. In all cases to date, this was unhesitatingly granted by the GPL authors. One some cases they were backported without me ever having to ask. Bless them!
I would prefer that derivative works use the same license I placed on the original. But I will not demand it. I do not believe I have any moral rights to the derivative bits. I think this is the biggest difference between the GPL and BSD license.
Having once been in sales, I can attest to that. And they want you to be absolutely sincere while lying to them. It's not that they demand you actually lie, so much as they want you to affirm their own erroneous misconceptions. If you tell them they can't get unlimited access, they'll take their business to a place that will promise them that. If you somehow manage to demonstrably prove to them that the other guys are lying, they'll be insulted and leave.
Customer: "I want to see your stain proof carpet."
Salesman: "Sorry, ma'am, all I have are stain resistant carpets."
Customer: "Then I'll go down the street to that other store that does."
Salesman: "Pardon me, is that one of their samples?"
Customer: "Yes it is. It's a stain proof carpet."
Salesman proceeds to stain the sample with permanent marker, burgundy wine, and tincture of merthiolate.
It's definitely mentioned in the book that Saruman may have created his special big super h4xx0r orcs by crossing them with humans. They're portrayed as quite different to Mordor's top breeds; compare the descriptions of Ugluk and Grishnakh.
Well, to spoil it for you, there ARE Uruk Hai in Mordor. Just as in the book, they're at Cirith Ungol. Identical in appearance to Saruman's Uruk Hai.
It does get confusing in the books. Saruman's army is obviously composed of orcs (plus others). Some are specifically mentioned as Uruk Hai. But the half orcs are so similar in appearance to humans that they can pass as them (as in Bree). So did Saruman create/breed some orcs and hire others? Or was there a huge variety of appearnce in the half orcs, so that only a few were useful as spies? Or are Uruk Hai a kind of half orc?
There's a difference. Bloopers and other errors can be funny. Like the car in the background of the Shire.
But this was all nitpicking. Nit: a louse egg; Nitpick: to remove lice eggs from one's hair, an activity requiring an obsession to trivial details. These aren't errors like bloopers are errors. They're errors only become some anal obsessive proclaims them to be errors.
I mean, who gives a rat's ass that Jackson didn't mention Frodo's birthday? Geez!
the burning of the shire becoming a dream sequence
What book did you read? Because the burning of the shire isn't in any copy of ROTK that I own. Are you thinking instead of the "scouring" of the shire? A big difference. A lot of trees get needlessly cut down, and a lot of ugly brick buildings go up, but there's nothing even close to resembling the dream sequence of the movie. No mass panic. No invading armies. No orcs whipping hobbits (and especially no orcs whipping Sam). Just some uppity humans (only hinted at being possible half orcs) trying to "improve" things with bureaucracy.
As a reknowned Tolkien scholar told me last year, "people should at least read the books before they nitpick the movies to death."
You're thinking of the advantages of centrally standardized PCs, but none of the disadvantages.
Dump the serial port? Then what do I plug my external modem into? Or do you expect me to buy a new one just so your precious sensibilities aren't offended? (just one example...)
If Intel (or Microsoft, or anyone else) where in charge of what hardware I could use, I would be royally screwed. I've got an Intel motherboard that considers USB 1.1 to be "legacy" hardware. Legacy! If Intel had its way, I couldn't upgrade individual pieces of hardware, but would have to wait until I could afford an entire new system. Use your existing parallel ATA drives in a new system? Sorry, only SATA is supported. Your old PCI ethernet card? Sorry, we're going to PCIX, and besides which, wouldn't you rather use the cheapass onboard ethernet?
And apropos this article, go buy a new goddam monitor you freaking cheapskate! You want us to support D-Sub forever?
Then there's the software side. Every year throw away all the Windows, Linux, and BSD drivers, and write new ones. Microsoft has the clear advantage here, because we all know how difficult it is to get hardware specs. "My brand new system is already a week old, and Linux STILL doesn't support it? I'm going back to Windows..."
ways of viewing filesystems with user-decidable hierarchal tree views could be useful.
The problem is, people will always go with the default. That's why they're using Windows to begin with! What makes you think they'll sit, engage their brain cells, and do something other than the default filesystem view? The number of Windows users who will actually use this functionality is exactly equal to the number of Windows users who reorganize their menus: approximately six worldwide.
I had to use MSWord for the first time today. Well, I didn't really *have* to, but I figured I might as well use the tool that everyone says is the easiest thing since apple pie.
What a joke! My first stumbling block was fields. After some poking about various dialogs, and reading up on the internet, I discovered how to set custom fields beyond the defaults. It's really a pain to use. To insert one custom field you have to either go through three dialog boxes, or manually type in the code. What good's a template without easy to find and use fields?
OpenOffice is slightly better in terms of fields, but neither Word nor OO.org come close to the power and flexibility of Framemaker.
Using DEPRECATED compilers is just as stupid as using DEPRECATED kernels(2.4, just to name one)
Reason number 27 that I switched from Linux to FreeBSD. I got sick and tired of being treated like a lame poser just because I was still using last week's kernel.
Maybe I can't create an executable from Qt sourcecode without MOC, but if you stop to think about if for a couple of seconds, you'll realize I can't create the executable without the libqt.so library either! Since MOC comes with every copy of Qt, it's no big deal.
You can't create a GTK+ application without the non-standard tool called GTK+. Why should Qt be held to a different standard?
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There are several KDE-only distributions around (Xandros, Lycoris, Lindows), yet no GNOMErs seem to care all that much.
Xandros and Lindows come with heavily modified KDE desktops. It doesn't make sense for them to heavily modify another desktop in the same way. And IIRC, when Xandros first came out, when it was Corel LinuxOS, there was a minor firestorm over the lack of GNOME. Lycoris at least offers GNOME as an alternative.
Any distro that doesn't require a desktop of some sort for proper functioning of the system (which would be most distros) should include both GNOME and KDE, even if one or the other are not officially supported. And most of the others should as well if they haven't tied themselves too tightly to the interfaces of one or the other.
Userlinux, being a "metadistribution" of Debian, should be no different. They don't have to officially support KDE. But if they were smart, they should at least provide working and tested KDE packages.
I think they know it looks bad, that's why Plastik was made, and I'm pretty sure it will be the default in 3.2
Plastik was made because the author had an itch. It won't be the default KDE theme, but will be included in the set of "extra" stuff in the kdeartwork package.
Another reason might be his photo on the back cover of "C++ GUI Programming with Qt", a part of the Bruce Perens Open Source Series.
Funny, the more GNOME moves towards a Windows-style desktop, the more people say it's less like Windows. Why is this?
KDE has become a usability nightmare with hundreds of configuration options exposed in menus.
Oh horrors! Someone forgot to weld the car's hood shut!
My Linux experience, currently is limited to Cygwin
:-)
Which isn't saying much. It's like saying your experience with Chinese culture is limited to ordering dim sum
WTF are you talking about?
I've got a rack of twenty servers. None of them have monitors or keyboards. If you need physical access to them (and ssh won't do), you hook up a monitor and keyboard to them. A KVM switch that handles twenty servers is going to be much more expensive than the monitor and keyboard, so you want a better solution.
In the past, the solution was the serial port. I connect my Wyse terminal the serial port and I'm set. That's because the serial port is hot-pluggable. But too many people are lobbying to get rid of serial ports. Enter USB.
We're not talking about what the FSF believes, but what the XFree86 1.1 license says. The "advertisement" clause only applies to distribution.
USB support only maters for desktop usage.
Unless of course you want a keyboard or mouse, and the ones laying around happen to be of the USB variety. Hot-pluggable keyboards are quite handy for servers.
It's nearly instintive, but is actually taught in kindergarden.
Where I differ from the average "kindergarten teacher" is that I believe that enforced/coerced sharing strips the deed of any moral value. You should share because it is the right thing to do, not because there is a legal obligation to do so.
But you're talking as though you have a right to include that code, which the GPL is taking away.
I am not implying any such right. I do not equate convenience, wants, or wishful thinking with rights. For example, I clearly have no rights to trespass upon my neighbor's property. But that doesn't make it any less inconvenient to have to walk all the way around it to get to a store just on the other side. If I want to take a short cut I must get special permission.
However, if any of the code in the X libraries falls under this new license, then the FSF's interpretation of the GPL means that you wouldn't be able to link any GPLed program against the X libraries and distribute it.
Wrong. The "advertisement" clause only covers redistribution. If the linkage is runtime or dynamic, it doesn't apply. Only in the case of static linkage is there a problem.
However, I find the attitude of the BSD proponents on this subject somewhat strange.
As a BSD proponent, let me try to explain. The reality is quite different from the deluge of out-of-the-arse assumptions being thrown about.
I want to use the BSD license for my own code. The reasons are numerous, but at the top of the list is because I don't want to impose any restriction upon my users. I could care less what license you use, or your friend uses, or RMS uses, or even Bill Gates uses. All I care about is the freedom to make my code as unrestrictive as possible.
Enter the GPL. If it's an application that I am merely using, I could care less. If it's code that I would like to incorporate into my own work, I cannot, so I don't. Depending on how much I want to incorporate the code, this can range from a slight annoyance to a major peeve. The GPL is a brand that says "members only". For an unrestricted OS like FreeBSD or OpenBSD, great care must be taken that no necessary components are under the GPL or "infected" by the GPL, because the OS as a whole is no longer unrestricted.
I don't think GPL developers are any different in this attitude, if they would step outside their members only club and look around. What happens when a GPL developer runs across free software code that they wish to use, only to discover that it's not GPL-compatible? Same attitude. While the BSD license is compatible with the GPL, the GPL is not compatible with the BSD license.
Why, then, should any of them get mad that other developers would include BSD code in GPL'ed programs?
We don't. Or at least I don't. This has happened to me several times in the past. It doesn't bother me. However, as the original author, I do feel some small reverse consideration is in order. If the derivative code has some fixes that I would like to incorporate into the original, I have to ask for a special exception to do so. In all cases to date, this was unhesitatingly granted by the GPL authors. One some cases they were backported without me ever having to ask. Bless them!
I would prefer that derivative works use the same license I placed on the original. But I will not demand it. I do not believe I have any moral rights to the derivative bits. I think this is the biggest difference between the GPL and BSD license.
Consumers demand to be lied to.
Having once been in sales, I can attest to that. And they want you to be absolutely sincere while lying to them. It's not that they demand you actually lie, so much as they want you to affirm their own erroneous misconceptions. If you tell them they can't get unlimited access, they'll take their business to a place that will promise them that. If you somehow manage to demonstrably prove to them that the other guys are lying, they'll be insulted and leave.
Customer: "I want to see your stain proof carpet."
Salesman: "Sorry, ma'am, all I have are stain resistant carpets."
Customer: "Then I'll go down the street to that other store that does."
Salesman: "Pardon me, is that one of their samples?"
Customer: "Yes it is. It's a stain proof carpet."
Salesman proceeds to stain the sample with permanent marker, burgundy wine, and tincture of merthiolate.
Customer: [indignant] "Well I never!"
Saleman: "I'm sure you haven't!"
At the bottom of the page there is a picture of Dubya wearing the ring. How come he is visible?
For the same reason that my friend with an identical movie replica ring doesn't turn invisible when she puts hers on.
Geez, slashdotters are getting dumber every day...
It's definitely mentioned in the book that Saruman may have created his special big super h4xx0r orcs by crossing them with humans. They're portrayed as quite different to Mordor's top breeds; compare the descriptions of Ugluk and Grishnakh.
Well, to spoil it for you, there ARE Uruk Hai in Mordor. Just as in the book, they're at Cirith Ungol. Identical in appearance to Saruman's Uruk Hai.
It does get confusing in the books. Saruman's army is obviously composed of orcs (plus others). Some are specifically mentioned as Uruk Hai. But the half orcs are so similar in appearance to humans that they can pass as them (as in Bree). So did Saruman create/breed some orcs and hire others? Or was there a huge variety of appearnce in the half orcs, so that only a few were useful as spies? Or are Uruk Hai a kind of half orc?
There's a difference. Bloopers and other errors can be funny. Like the car in the background of the Shire.
But this was all nitpicking. Nit: a louse egg; Nitpick: to remove lice eggs from one's hair, an activity requiring an obsession to trivial details. These aren't errors like bloopers are errors. They're errors only become some anal obsessive proclaims them to be errors.
I mean, who gives a rat's ass that Jackson didn't mention Frodo's birthday? Geez!
the burning of the shire becoming a dream sequence
What book did you read? Because the burning of the shire isn't in any copy of ROTK that I own. Are you thinking instead of the "scouring" of the shire? A big difference. A lot of trees get needlessly cut down, and a lot of ugly brick buildings go up, but there's nothing even close to resembling the dream sequence of the movie. No mass panic. No invading armies. No orcs whipping hobbits (and especially no orcs whipping Sam). Just some uppity humans (only hinted at being possible half orcs) trying to "improve" things with bureaucracy.
As a reknowned Tolkien scholar told me last year, "people should at least read the books before they nitpick the movies to death."
Or the differences between our US division and our German corporate masters. Talk about culture shock!
This was really more of a problem a year or two ago...
So exactly how often do you expect me to upgrade my video, and who's going to pay for it?
You're thinking of the advantages of centrally standardized PCs, but none of the disadvantages.
Dump the serial port? Then what do I plug my external modem into? Or do you expect me to buy a new one just so your precious sensibilities aren't offended? (just one example...)
If Intel (or Microsoft, or anyone else) where in charge of what hardware I could use, I would be royally screwed. I've got an Intel motherboard that considers USB 1.1 to be "legacy" hardware. Legacy! If Intel had its way, I couldn't upgrade individual pieces of hardware, but would have to wait until I could afford an entire new system. Use your existing parallel ATA drives in a new system? Sorry, only SATA is supported. Your old PCI ethernet card? Sorry, we're going to PCIX, and besides which, wouldn't you rather use the cheapass onboard ethernet?
And apropos this article, go buy a new goddam monitor you freaking cheapskate! You want us to support D-Sub forever?
Then there's the software side. Every year throw away all the Windows, Linux, and BSD drivers, and write new ones. Microsoft has the clear advantage here, because we all know how difficult it is to get hardware specs. "My brand new system is already a week old, and Linux STILL doesn't support it? I'm going back to Windows..."
ways of viewing filesystems with user-decidable hierarchal tree views could be useful.
The problem is, people will always go with the default. That's why they're using Windows to begin with! What makes you think they'll sit, engage their brain cells, and do something other than the default filesystem view? The number of Windows users who will actually use this functionality is exactly equal to the number of Windows users who reorganize their menus: approximately six worldwide.
I had to use MSWord for the first time today. Well, I didn't really *have* to, but I figured I might as well use the tool that everyone says is the easiest thing since apple pie.
What a joke! My first stumbling block was fields. After some poking about various dialogs, and reading up on the internet, I discovered how to set custom fields beyond the defaults. It's really a pain to use. To insert one custom field you have to either go through three dialog boxes, or manually type in the code. What good's a template without easy to find and use fields?
OpenOffice is slightly better in terms of fields, but neither Word nor OO.org come close to the power and flexibility of Framemaker.
I'm going to try to figure out tables tomorrow...
Using DEPRECATED compilers is just as stupid as using DEPRECATED kernels(2.4, just to name one)
Reason number 27 that I switched from Linux to FreeBSD. I got sick and tired of being treated like a lame poser just because I was still using last week's kernel.
Maybe I can't create an executable from Qt sourcecode without MOC, but if you stop to think about if for a couple of seconds, you'll realize I can't create the executable without the libqt.so library either! Since MOC comes with every copy of Qt, it's no big deal.
You can't create a GTK+ application without the non-standard tool called GTK+. Why should Qt be held to a different standard?