The home user doesn't have any business using Linux.
Linux is first a tech-hobbyist OS, and second a server OS. It is emphatically not a desktop OS. It shouldn't be operated by people who don't know what they're doing.
The answer isn't to dumb down Linux so it can be used by people who shouldn't be using it in the first place.
I repeat: Linux is not a desktop OS, nor should it be. Linux has a niche that it fills almost perfectly, and there's no reason to turn it into something it isn't and shouldn't be for the sake of people that will be better off using something else.
Home users would be served far better with a Macintosh running OS X than they ever will be with Linux. And that's the way it should be--Mac OS X is a desktop OS with some hobbyist/server features, Linux is a hobbyist/server OS with some desktop-ish add-ons geared to non-desktop users. There's no reason to turn either one into something it's not. Keep them doing what they're supposed to be doing.
And if you've not done it already, emerge webmin (for easy firewall config) and get ALSA working. Gentoo's perfect documentation makes ALSA setup a breeze.
C++ has those dangerous pointers that invariably cause memory leaks.
If you don't want to use pointers, then just ignore them and don't use them. Why cripple yourself with a language that doesn't have them? It's better to keep them around and not use them, just in case you need to use them in the future.
Just something I forgot to mention in my above post: UTD set up the wireless in the apartments in the most asinine way possible. The access points were set up in the breezeways in the buildings and outside the apartments. This was made even worse because the access points had incredibly weak signals, and attempting to use the wireless in an apartment was a chore because the signal kept dropping, and when it was there, it was weak.
I don't think I ever got anything better than 35% signal strength, and that was if I was very lucky.
And in case that didn't make things clear, the ``it was down all the time'' in my above post was an exaggeration. It did work from time to time, but it was down as often as it was up (thank you, weak signal), and when it was up, it was incredibly spotty due to the ultra-weak signals. Then, my MAC address was blocked at random, which happened to many other people including my roommates (I was the last of my roommates that got blocked tho...guess I was just lucky), and that was around the time we decided to just screw the wireless and get cable.
Cable's better though. It's guaranteed to work with any Ethernet card, no ports are blocked, and we get a public IP address so we can run servers (ditching my hosting provider and setting up Apache was one of the best things I ever did). With UTD's wireless, hardware support is horrid, a large amount of ports are blocked (they even had IRC blocked, for Zod's sake), and there's no public IP.
Oh, and there's one thing I did notice about UTD's networking: in the brand-new School of Management, one of the lecture halls (maybe more...I've only been in one) has Ethernet jacks built into all of the desks (along with electric sockets, of course). Since I don't have a laptop, I can't verify if they work, but it does show that there's some hope that UTD will come to their senses and set up wired networks everywhere else on campus and in the apartments.
The wireless here is pathetic. When I first moved in, it was down all the time and MAC addresses were being randomly blocked.
To rub salt in the wound, they refused to provide support for Linux or any non-Orinoco or Intel card. I even heard somewhere that they've blocked all non-Orinoco/Intel MAC addresses (which, IMO, should be illegal as a form of collusion).
I never did get my Orinoco Silver USB adapter working on my Linux box, at the time running Mandrake 9.1.
My roommates and I very quickly gave up on the wireless here and got a cable modem. Comcast still sucks, but it's far better than UTD's wireless.
It's not hard at all. Well, no harder than upgrading to a newer 2.4. I just upgraded to 2.6.x other day, and it was easy. Just check to make sure everything you need is enabled in the config, and that's all you have to worry about.
I suppose it depends on your distro tho...I'm a Gentoo user, so I don't know how it's different on another distro.
FYI, on Gentoo it went something like:
$ su # emerge -v gentoo-dev-sources # cd/usr/src # rm -f linux # ln -s linux-2.6.5-gentoo linux # genkernel all --xconfig (insert configuration here) # nano -w/boot/grub/grub.conf (insert bootloader editing here)
Btw, the new Qt-based xconfig rules. I remember hating the old xconfig (and actually preferring menuconfig), but qconf is great.
[Just a little warning...this post has nothing to do with the author's theme, so it's not on-topic with this sub-thread. It is, however, on topic with the article..it's about a rather cool feature of KDE that the author didn't mention]
Posting my above post csused me to remember another cool feature of KDE that I don't recall seeing in the screenshots: the ability to force the titlebar button order the way you want to regardless of the current window decoration.
For example, I used to use Laptop window decorations. It had an esoteric button order that I grew to really like--IMO, it was very intuitive (for one, the close button was on the far left, not the right). Then, I switched to Glow, which had the common Windows-like button order, which I now dislike. What did I do? I set KDE to force the titlebar buttons into the same order as Laptop.
It worked seamlessly--I'm still using the forced button order, and there's no way to tell it's not the normal button order for my window decoration.
Can I do this in any other GUI, even other Linux GUIs? I don't think so. I like my close button on the far left--in KDE, if it's on the right, I can just shunt it over to the left and it'll act like that's the way it was always supposed to be. Can I do that in Gnome? In Windows? Don't make me laugh.
And some people actually like minimalist, gray themes. I'm one of them:P
To be fair tho, I don't really care for his theme--for one, it's way too dark.
It looks like, for his screenshots, he's using KDE's Next colour scheme and Light Style 3rd Revision widgets, with Quartz window decorations. I use KDE's Pale Gray colour scheme and Light Style 2nd Revision widgets, with Glow window decorations (I used to use Laptop, but then they changed it with 3.2, so I switched).
Basically, my theme is similar, but the gray is lighter, and the widgets and window decorations are a bit sleeker and less blocky, yet still minimalist.
IMO, such a theme is best complemented with Slick icons, which I use. The author, however, appears to be using KDE's ugly default Crystal icons, which are made worse because they conflict badly with his theme.
I have to agree, but which would be the optimal algorithm here? Bubble sort, shell sort, merge sort or maybe a heap sort? Of course when Darl ultimately goes to the big house, he may find himself facing (or about facing) an insertion sort.
Considering how bogus Darl's claims are, the bogo sort appears to be the most fitting algorithm.
kernel.org uses Apache2 also -- these guys sure know their stuff too. although I don't think they use PHP.
Anyway, I'll stick with Apache2--it works perfectly for me (and, no, I'll not give out my DDNS name here...I'd rather not stress-test it with a Slashdotting).
I'm currently a freshman in college and a Computer Science major.
I have been worried about the state of the tech industry...I'm worried that when I get out of college, I'll not be able to get a job anywhere.
But then another thought comes to me, namely: ``What the bloody hell else am I going to do with my life?''. Computers are among the few things I have any passion for.
So I've got a choice between doing something I'm good at and I love, but possibly not being able to get a job, or doing something I'm not good at and/or I hate, but making money. Neither one is desirable, one is inevitable. I'll go with the former--I'd rather not be one of the people I see all the time who are successful but miserable because they have no passion for what they do for a living, and are stuck doing it.
And you've never seen, in five thousand posts, an ad for Google on slashdot? Wow. I thought I was a real slashdotter for not reading the articles, but you've shown me the way: shut your eyes and touch-type.
Actually, I use AdBlock on Firefox. It eliminates all those pesky ads. So I've not seen an ad on/. for a long time. And before I used Firefox, I don't think I've seen a Google ad. Plenty of ads for webhosting companies and the like, but no Google ads.
FWIW, I'm still a Google fan, but am finding that Teoma (which uses the same engine as Jeeves, but I like Teoma's presentation better) is delivering results where Google fails.
Except that Jeeves/Teoma uses some really nasty crawling tactics. One day, it decided to crawl me and hammered the hell out of my server. 782 hits from it in one day. I'll add that one of the things on my server is a blog using Coranto, with iSay as the comment system. Not only did the crawler hit every single comment page, going back months in my archives, but it hit every single Submit, Login, Logout, and Register link on every single comments pages.
I ended up firewalling off the IP address of Jeeves/Teoma's crawler (I love iptables). If I didn't cut it off then, it could've made hundreds more hits on my server. I'd imagine many other servers have firewalled them off due to their unethical crawling tactics.
I run Apache off the same box I'm posting this from--I really don't want to know if I can take the traffic, nor do I want to attract my ISP's attention. The latter problem is probably worse than the former. Google is at least nice about crawling--it'll hit a couple of pages a day, and it seems to avoid links to CGI scripts.
After this incident, the idea of using Jeeves or Teoma for anything turns my stomach.
and maybe then trying KDevelop and the KDE libraries.
Actually, I'd recommend that if he has KDevelop 3, he should use it to create a new Qt app--specifically, the one with the menus/toolbars/text editor. Why? It'll generate a good amount of code, specifically, it'll create a bare-bones text editor. He can then look through the code, compile and run the app, and see how it works, then playing around with it and making changes, seeing how those changes affect the app.
Pardon me for gushing, but the combination of Qt and KDevelop was a truly empowering tool in my hands and I strongly recommend it to anyone in the same boat.
I fully agree with you here. Add Qt Designer to the mix as well--it'll really help with interface design. Though I would still recommend learning how to create widgets without Qt Designer first, in order to better learn how they work. After learning that, he should then use Qt Designer to set up the design of his apps.
I'd say you're probably ready. I've just started dabbling in Qt now, and that's after taking a year of AP C++ in high school, and a semester of C++ in college, plus some self-study.
Tutorial 1 is easy to follow, and should give you an idea of how things are done in Qt. The Whitepaper is a more general overview of Qt. Those should help you get started, and will let you determine if you're ready to delve into GUI.
If having things run slightly slower is the price I have to pay for having a mature, feature-rich environment, then so be it.
I'll not use a barebones desktop and sacrifice so many useful features just to save a couple of seconds of load time here and there.
Besides, having a feature-rich desktop saves me far more time than slightly decreased load/response speed costs me. I'm a KDE 3.2 user and bloody proud of it.
I don't think this is sufficient. Sun should force everyone who runs its JVM to pay a license fee (much like Microsoft does with Windows now, after tolerating years of illegal copying).
Then you'll just get people switching to a different JVM. Sun's isn't the only one, and if they try to screw people over, people will go to the competition.
Except that it depends on your area. I'd get Speakeasy if I could, except that where I live (Richardson, TX), they only offer IDSL. I'm not paying around $90/month for 144kbps, especially considering I live with three roommates.
Right now I'm stuck with Comcast and their horrible service. The only alternatives where I live are AOL and SBC/Yahoo DSL, which are both worse.
Ooh...I completely forgot to mention a few things, such as the ergonomics.
Not only is it just plain great to use, but my trackball is very comfortable. I just rest my hand on it, move my thumb around on the ball, click with my index, middle, or fourth fingers (for left, middle, and right buttons, respectively) when needed, and I scroll by moving my middle finger up and down the wheel. It's far less stressful than moving your entire arm around dragging a mouse.
Space is another thing I forgot to mention. I've a relatively small desk. In addition to my computer, monitor, keyboard, trackball, speakers, and printer, I've also got some clutter on it. I'd never be able to move a mouse on my desk--the fact that I can keep a trackball in a fixed position and never have to move it is great.
I also save money by not buying mouse pads, too, since I don't need them (makes up for the rather high price of my trackball).
Slashdot Mirror
I just pulled every JPEG on my server and converted them to PNG.
Half of my images were already in PNG, which made that a bit easier.
The home user doesn't have any business using Linux.
Linux is first a tech-hobbyist OS, and second a server OS. It is emphatically not a desktop OS. It shouldn't be operated by people who don't know what they're doing.
The answer isn't to dumb down Linux so it can be used by people who shouldn't be using it in the first place.
I repeat: Linux is not a desktop OS, nor should it be. Linux has a niche that it fills almost perfectly, and there's no reason to turn it into something it isn't and shouldn't be for the sake of people that will be better off using something else.
Home users would be served far better with a Macintosh running OS X than they ever will be with Linux. And that's the way it should be--Mac OS X is a desktop OS with some hobbyist/server features, Linux is a hobbyist/server OS with some desktop-ish add-ons geared to non-desktop users. There's no reason to turn either one into something it's not. Keep them doing what they're supposed to be doing.
This is part of the reason I love Gentoo...
# emerge -v xmms licq iptables
And if you've not done it already, emerge webmin (for easy firewall config) and get ALSA working. Gentoo's perfect documentation makes ALSA setup a breeze.
C++ has those dangerous pointers that invariably cause memory leaks.
If you don't want to use pointers, then just ignore them and don't use them. Why cripple yourself with a language that doesn't have them? It's better to keep them around and not use them, just in case you need to use them in the future.
Just something I forgot to mention in my above post: UTD set up the wireless in the apartments in the most asinine way possible. The access points were set up in the breezeways in the buildings and outside the apartments. This was made even worse because the access points had incredibly weak signals, and attempting to use the wireless in an apartment was a chore because the signal kept dropping, and when it was there, it was weak.
I don't think I ever got anything better than 35% signal strength, and that was if I was very lucky.
And in case that didn't make things clear, the ``it was down all the time'' in my above post was an exaggeration. It did work from time to time, but it was down as often as it was up (thank you, weak signal), and when it was up, it was incredibly spotty due to the ultra-weak signals. Then, my MAC address was blocked at random, which happened to many other people including my roommates (I was the last of my roommates that got blocked tho...guess I was just lucky), and that was around the time we decided to just screw the wireless and get cable.
Cable's better though. It's guaranteed to work with any Ethernet card, no ports are blocked, and we get a public IP address so we can run servers (ditching my hosting provider and setting up Apache was one of the best things I ever did). With UTD's wireless, hardware support is horrid, a large amount of ports are blocked (they even had IRC blocked, for Zod's sake), and there's no public IP.
Oh, and there's one thing I did notice about UTD's networking: in the brand-new School of Management, one of the lecture halls (maybe more...I've only been in one) has Ethernet jacks built into all of the desks (along with electric sockets, of course). Since I don't have a laptop, I can't verify if they work, but it does show that there's some hope that UTD will come to their senses and set up wired networks everywhere else on campus and in the apartments.
The wireless here is pathetic. When I first moved in, it was down all the time and MAC addresses were being randomly blocked.
To rub salt in the wound, they refused to provide support for Linux or any non-Orinoco or Intel card. I even heard somewhere that they've blocked all non-Orinoco/Intel MAC addresses (which, IMO, should be illegal as a form of collusion).
I never did get my Orinoco Silver USB adapter working on my Linux box, at the time running Mandrake 9.1.
My roommates and I very quickly gave up on the wireless here and got a cable modem. Comcast still sucks, but it's far better than UTD's wireless.
It's not hard at all. Well, no harder than upgrading to a newer 2.4. I just upgraded to 2.6.x other day, and it was easy. Just check to make sure everything you need is enabled in the config, and that's all you have to worry about.
/usr/src /boot/grub/grub.conf
I suppose it depends on your distro tho...I'm a Gentoo user, so I don't know how it's different on another distro.
FYI, on Gentoo it went something like:
$ su
# emerge -v gentoo-dev-sources
# cd
# rm -f linux
# ln -s linux-2.6.5-gentoo linux
# genkernel all --xconfig
(insert configuration here)
# nano -w
(insert bootloader editing here)
Btw, the new Qt-based xconfig rules. I remember hating the old xconfig (and actually preferring menuconfig), but qconf is great.
[Just a little warning...this post has nothing to do with the author's theme, so it's not on-topic with this sub-thread. It is, however, on topic with the article..it's about a rather cool feature of KDE that the author didn't mention]
Posting my above post csused me to remember another cool feature of KDE that I don't recall seeing in the screenshots: the ability to force the titlebar button order the way you want to regardless of the current window decoration.
For example, I used to use Laptop window decorations. It had an esoteric button order that I grew to really like--IMO, it was very intuitive (for one, the close button was on the far left, not the right). Then, I switched to Glow, which had the common Windows-like button order, which I now dislike. What did I do? I set KDE to force the titlebar buttons into the same order as Laptop.
It worked seamlessly--I'm still using the forced button order, and there's no way to tell it's not the normal button order for my window decoration.
Can I do this in any other GUI, even other Linux GUIs? I don't think so. I like my close button on the far left--in KDE, if it's on the right, I can just shunt it over to the left and it'll act like that's the way it was always supposed to be. Can I do that in Gnome? In Windows? Don't make me laugh.
And some people actually like minimalist, gray themes. I'm one of them :P
To be fair tho, I don't really care for his theme--for one, it's way too dark.
It looks like, for his screenshots, he's using KDE's Next colour scheme and Light Style 3rd Revision widgets, with Quartz window decorations. I use KDE's Pale Gray colour scheme and Light Style 2nd Revision widgets, with Glow window decorations (I used to use Laptop, but then they changed it with 3.2, so I switched).
Basically, my theme is similar, but the gray is lighter, and the widgets and window decorations are a bit sleeker and less blocky, yet still minimalist.
IMO, such a theme is best complemented with Slick icons, which I use. The author, however, appears to be using KDE's ugly default Crystal icons, which are made worse because they conflict badly with his theme.
I have to agree, but which would be the optimal algorithm here? Bubble sort, shell sort, merge sort or maybe a heap sort? Of course when Darl ultimately goes to the big house, he may find himself facing (or about facing) an insertion sort.
Considering how bogus Darl's claims are, the bogo sort appears to be the most fitting algorithm.
kernel.org uses Apache2 also -- these guys sure know their stuff too. although I don't think they use PHP.
Anyway, I'll stick with Apache2--it works perfectly for me (and, no, I'll not give out my DDNS name here...I'd rather not stress-test it with a Slashdotting).
Did anyone else misread the headline as saying that the ``seeing eye computer guides'' were blind?
I'm currently a freshman in college and a Computer Science major.
I have been worried about the state of the tech industry...I'm worried that when I get out of college, I'll not be able to get a job anywhere.
But then another thought comes to me, namely: ``What the bloody hell else am I going to do with my life?''. Computers are among the few things I have any passion for.
So I've got a choice between doing something I'm good at and I love, but possibly not being able to get a job, or doing something I'm not good at and/or I hate, but making money. Neither one is desirable, one is inevitable. I'll go with the former--I'd rather not be one of the people I see all the time who are successful but miserable because they have no passion for what they do for a living, and are stuck doing it.
That would really be vile.
And you've never seen, in five thousand posts, an ad for Google on slashdot? Wow. I thought I was a real slashdotter for not reading the articles, but you've shown me the way: shut your eyes and touch-type.
/. for a long time. And before I used Firefox, I don't think I've seen a Google ad. Plenty of ads for webhosting companies and the like, but no Google ads.
Actually, I use AdBlock on Firefox. It eliminates all those pesky ads. So I've not seen an ad on
FWIW, I'm still a Google fan, but am finding that Teoma (which uses the same engine as Jeeves, but I like Teoma's presentation better) is delivering results where Google fails.
Except that Jeeves/Teoma uses some really nasty crawling tactics. One day, it decided to crawl me and hammered the hell out of my server. 782 hits from it in one day. I'll add that one of the things on my server is a blog using Coranto, with iSay as the comment system. Not only did the crawler hit every single comment page, going back months in my archives, but it hit every single Submit, Login, Logout, and Register link on every single comments pages.
I ended up firewalling off the IP address of Jeeves/Teoma's crawler (I love iptables). If I didn't cut it off then, it could've made hundreds more hits on my server. I'd imagine many other servers have firewalled them off due to their unethical crawling tactics.
I run Apache off the same box I'm posting this from--I really don't want to know if I can take the traffic, nor do I want to attract my ISP's attention. The latter problem is probably worse than the former. Google is at least nice about crawling--it'll hit a couple of pages a day, and it seems to avoid links to CGI scripts.
After this incident, the idea of using Jeeves or Teoma for anything turns my stomach.
Who wants to see Darl go to Gitmo?
<kiddieVoice>Oooh! Me! Me!</kiddieVoice>
and maybe then trying KDevelop and the KDE libraries.
Actually, I'd recommend that if he has KDevelop 3, he should use it to create a new Qt app--specifically, the one with the menus/toolbars/text editor. Why? It'll generate a good amount of code, specifically, it'll create a bare-bones text editor. He can then look through the code, compile and run the app, and see how it works, then playing around with it and making changes, seeing how those changes affect the app.
Pardon me for gushing, but the combination of Qt and KDevelop was a truly empowering tool in my hands and I strongly recommend it to anyone in the same boat.
I fully agree with you here. Add Qt Designer to the mix as well--it'll really help with interface design. Though I would still recommend learning how to create widgets without Qt Designer first, in order to better learn how they work. After learning that, he should then use Qt Designer to set up the design of his apps.
I'd say you're probably ready. I've just started dabbling in Qt now, and that's after taking a year of AP C++ in high school, and a semester of C++ in college, plus some self-study.
You might want to check out Trolltech's documentation site. Particularly, the How to Learn Qt, The Qt Whitepaper, Tutorial 1, and Examples
Tutorial 1 is easy to follow, and should give you an idea of how things are done in Qt. The Whitepaper is a more general overview of Qt. Those should help you get started, and will let you determine if you're ready to delve into GUI.
If having things run slightly slower is the price I have to pay for having a mature, feature-rich environment, then so be it.
I'll not use a barebones desktop and sacrifice so many useful features just to save a couple of seconds of load time here and there.
Besides, having a feature-rich desktop saves me far more time than slightly decreased load/response speed costs me. I'm a KDE 3.2 user and bloody proud of it.
Except, in Wikipedia, you can use the page history feature to view any changes that have been removed.
Then you'll just get people switching to a different JVM. Sun's isn't the only one, and if they try to screw people over, people will go to the competition.
Except that it depends on your area. I'd get Speakeasy if I could, except that where I live (Richardson, TX), they only offer IDSL. I'm not paying around $90/month for 144kbps, especially considering I live with three roommates.
Right now I'm stuck with Comcast and their horrible service. The only alternatives where I live are AOL and SBC/Yahoo DSL, which are both worse.
According to Mandrake's website, LG released firmware updates to their drives back in November. So you should be safe if you download those.
It's nice to see someone agrees with me.
Ooh...I completely forgot to mention a few things, such as the ergonomics.
Not only is it just plain great to use, but my trackball is very comfortable. I just rest my hand on it, move my thumb around on the ball, click with my index, middle, or fourth fingers (for left, middle, and right buttons, respectively) when needed, and I scroll by moving my middle finger up and down the wheel. It's far less stressful than moving your entire arm around dragging a mouse.
Space is another thing I forgot to mention. I've a relatively small desk. In addition to my computer, monitor, keyboard, trackball, speakers, and printer, I've also got some clutter on it. I'd never be able to move a mouse on my desk--the fact that I can keep a trackball in a fixed position and never have to move it is great.
I also save money by not buying mouse pads, too, since I don't need them (makes up for the rather high price of my trackball).