Date based release names actually make the most sense, as at least they tell you something relevant about the release (how new it is).
I agree with you that releases should be tagged with the release-date but I don't think the Date tells you anything about the state of the project, so we need version-numbers as well.
The Date just tells you when it was released, it carries no information about the time spent on the project before this release, about missing features, unfixed bugs. A Project might have a newest release from 3 years ago which is feature complete and there were no releases in between since nobody found a bug.
I bet this study - financed by MS or not - used Microsofts Times for bug "detection" date instead of the one from the 3rd-Party-Site first mentioning the Bug.
I was a Windows Admin in a big Company (~3000 PCs)for a couple of months after School. I would estimate half of the Problems with the PCs there were due to Printers, Printer-Drivers, Printer-Cables, Printer/Fax/Scanner-Combination-Bullshit.
Even though MSFT was to blame for some of these Problems I could trace most of them to some part - Hardware or Software - supplied by the Printer-Manufacturer.
Gentoo is a lot less work since you can configure more things at once and let the computer calculate a lot after that. With LFS and similar approaches you have to do ./configure
make
make install
almost every five minutes at some points of the installation. I went from an installation like that to Gentoo to save me lots of repetive work when I have to install newer version due to securtiy holes.
It was however an experience that teached me a lot about the inner workings of a Linux System and at the same time was not as hard as some Slashdot-Posts want to make you believe.
Gentoo should be mentioned as well, since it suits those who like to micro manage every detail of their system,
Thats funny. I went from my old system (everythin installed manually, based on Core Linux) to Gentoo when I was tired of micromanaging every little aspect.
Now I only micromanage the programs I use the whole day and when I need something else I just emerge it, wait a while and I have a usable install (compared to just *.conf.sample as in most tarballs).
But you are right about one thing, I want to simply edit config files instead of learning a different config-tool for every distro I encounter. Editing config-files is much simpler and straightforward anyway. If you want to call that micromanagement, editing config-files when the reasonable default config misses something I need, yes, then I like to micromanage everything.
Any halfway decent OS should not have to reboot for anything except updating the Kernel or Hardware/Power-Failures. I don't really see why Windows-Users are so happy to blame 3rd-Party-Software that should in a worst-case-scenario be unable to run or crash itself but never take the OS with it.
This would mean that a 24/7-On PC whose Admin installs newer versions/bugfixes of parts of the OS that require a reboot once a week has a worse "failure rate" than one that is turned off every day and never updated and crashes 6 out of 7 days a week.
The real difference between Windows and Linux is this:
With Windows there is no way to determine the real cause of an Application Crash and so you have no way of fixing the issue without a reboot.
With Linux you have a distinctive Error-Message for most failures and even if you do not know what it means you can always google for the Error Message and search for others with the same problem that might already have found more intelligent fix that rebooting.
Failures in the NT/2k/XP-Line of OS are not always the fault of MSFT but the poor Error-Reporting with nearly no Information about the real cause of the failure at all is their fault. Most Bluescreen-Error-Messages are used for dozens of different failures.
You should try XFCE. It is a full Desktop Environment but has not the amounts of Eyecandy-Bloat KDE or Gnome have. I installed it (with Gentoo) on a PII 300 MHz Laptop with 64 MB recently and while naturally some Apps take some time to open on that machine it is perfectly useable.
You would probably end up typing your order anyway. Speech Recognition is slow and Errorprone and will be that way for a very long time. 1 Million $ won't change that.
Could you give an example where this would be useful?
I use "killall" on Linux almost everytime I kill any process due to the added convenience of killing by name instead of looking up the PID in the ps-Output. Why would I want to kill all running processes?
You don't need Java on a typical desktop system.
Except for Java-Development-Tools and some Cross-Platform-P2P-Apps I know of no useful Java-Applications for a non-Corporate-Desktop and those will most likely maintain their own Company Standard Base.
Solar cells don't use energy at all (except in the production process). He was talking about the theoretical energy of the sun rays compared to the energy current solar cells can "extract" from it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Date just tells you when it was released, it carries no information about the time spent on the project before this release, about missing features, unfixed bugs. A Project might have a newest release from 3 years ago which is feature complete and there were no releases in between since nobody found a bug.
I bet this study - financed by MS or not - used Microsofts Times for bug "detection" date instead of the one from the 3rd-Party-Site first mentioning the Bug.
Can you please post an URL for this
General Linux
you are talking about. I seem to have missed it's release.
It is nice to read there are other people out there who refer to text files as simple and distro-specific configuration-"helper"-tools as complicated.
I was a Windows Admin in a big Company (~3000 PCs)for a couple of months after School. I would estimate half of the Problems with the PCs there were due to Printers, Printer-Drivers, Printer-Cables, Printer/Fax/Scanner-Combination-Bullshit. Even though MSFT was to blame for some of these Problems I could trace most of them to some part - Hardware or Software - supplied by the Printer-Manufacturer.
Gentoo is a lot less work since you can configure more things at once and let the computer calculate a lot after that. With LFS and similar approaches you have to do
./configure
make
make install
almost every five minutes at some points of the installation. I went from an installation like that to Gentoo to save me lots of repetive work when I have to install newer version due to securtiy holes.
It was however an experience that teached me a lot about the inner workings of a Linux System and at the same time was not as hard as some Slashdot-Posts want to make you believe.
Now I only micromanage the programs I use the whole day and when I need something else I just emerge it, wait a while and I have a usable install (compared to just *.conf.sample as in most tarballs).
But you are right about one thing, I want to simply edit config files instead of learning a different config-tool for every distro I encounter. Editing config-files is much simpler and straightforward anyway. If you want to call that micromanagement, editing config-files when the reasonable default config misses something I need, yes, then I like to micromanage everything.
Any halfway decent OS should not have to reboot for anything except updating the Kernel or Hardware/Power-Failures. I don't really see why Windows-Users are so happy to blame 3rd-Party-Software that should in a worst-case-scenario be unable to run or crash itself but never take the OS with it.
This would mean that a 24/7-On PC whose Admin installs newer versions/bugfixes of parts of the OS that require a reboot once a week has a worse "failure rate" than one that is turned off every day and never updated and crashes 6 out of 7 days a week.
The real difference between Windows and Linux is this:
With Windows there is no way to determine the real cause of an Application Crash and so you have no way of fixing the issue without a reboot.
With Linux you have a distinctive Error-Message for most failures and even if you do not know what it means you can always google for the Error Message and search for others with the same problem that might already have found more intelligent fix that rebooting.
Failures in the NT/2k/XP-Line of OS are not always the fault of MSFT but the poor Error-Reporting with nearly no Information about the real cause of the failure at all is their fault. Most Bluescreen-Error-Messages are used for dozens of different failures.
Anyone remember that Voodoo Ad:
"We have a chip that could save lives[...] but we decided to use it for Games"
Would be a good idean for any Browser to show a (big red)
Your Browser is Out-of-Date. For Update click here.
even if the Start-Page was not set to Default.
Java is to blame for both itself AND .NET
You should try XFCE. It is a full Desktop Environment but has not the amounts of Eyecandy-Bloat KDE or Gnome have. I installed it (with Gentoo) on a PII 300 MHz Laptop with 64 MB recently and while naturally some Apps take some time to open on that machine it is perfectly useable.
Please tell me you don't use Windows for this.
You would probably end up typing your order anyway. Speech Recognition is slow and Errorprone and will be that way for a very long time. 1 Million $ won't change that.
RPM doesn't work very well with binaries neither.
Could you give an example where this would be useful?
I use "killall" on Linux almost everytime I kill any process due to the added convenience of killing by name instead of looking up the PID in the ps-Output. Why would I want to kill all running processes?
You don't need Java on a typical desktop system. Except for Java-Development-Tools and some Cross-Platform-P2P-Apps I know of no useful Java-Applications for a non-Corporate-Desktop and those will most likely maintain their own Company Standard Base.
And of what use would that be? The Pirates would just share the full version once any one of them would get their hands on it.
Solar cells don't use energy at all (except in the production process). He was talking about the theoretical energy of the sun rays compared to the energy current solar cells can "extract" from it.