I was always running 2 monitors, and that seemed to be a never-ending battle re-configuring X.
You've had problems running dual monitors? I won't be doing it right away but when I can afford a new monitor I'll set it up as a second monitor. My main goal doing so is I want to do some development, graphics work, and photo editing. I'll use the big new monitor for what I'm working on and use an old monitor or the built in display on my laptop to hold all the pallets and tools.
If there's a problem do you know if it's with Ubuntu or KDE? I plan to install and run both Gnome and KDE. With KDE I want try Krita for photo editing, GIMP just doesn't cut it, to see if it can do what I'll want. Otherwise I want to try both desktops to see which I prefer.
i'm guessing they are aiming at something like mobileme rather than dropbox. i have 3 ubuntu desktops right now and it would be truly fantastic if i had a way to automatically sync my settings and or home folders across all three...
I don't know about settings but home folders can be synced using rsync. Using cron a schedule to run rsync can then be created. Mind you, I don't know how to use either one but I came across them when researching and preparing to install Ubuntu on my Mac.
Bulldozing houses is not the same as putting people in gas chambers and executing them. One is property damage, the other is murder. Conflating the two is ridiculous and offensive.
I never said they were, but if you're going to put words into my mouth I didn't say I see no reason to continue.
No, if you do a full re-install, you're much better off backing up your home directory, then doing a full re-install and copying the files over that you want. Or, as I do, you just keep two partitions around, one with the old OS+home, and one with the new OS+home (after all, as you say, disks are huge these days), and just copy from one to the other on a major OS upgrade.
You ask why use a separate/home partition but them admit you use two yourself. Now why would you copy/home from one partition to another? If you use a separate/home partition you don't need to copy over old documents when upgrading.
you still haven't explained the advantages of putting/home on a separate partition.
I was able to easily clone my/home partition. With a separate/home partition I can nuke the OS partition and not worry I'll lose all the data. There's another reason to have a separate/home partition. Currently I have the hard disk in my laptop set up with 3 partitions. The first partition has OS X installed on it. I'll install Ubuntu on the 3rd partition. And I use the 2nd partition for/home. Once I install Ubuntu I will be able to use the user files in both OS X and Ubuntu.
suddenly you have to guess how much space you'll want in / and/home, and if you underestimate, you find yourself having to resize filesystems.
Why? With disks sufficiently large these day, just allocate 10GB for Ubuntu and take the rest for/home. For basic usage 10GB is overkill for applications, logs, etc...
Disks for desktop and tower PCs may be big enough for most uses but it different for laptops as well as special uses. When I got my laptop I got the biggest hard disk Apple offered, 160GiB. I replaced it with the biggest drive I found at that tyme, a 320GiB drive. As of right now I have the disk divided into 3 partitions, 2 30GB partitions for OS X and Ubuntu and the rest for/home. The user partition will fill quickly once I start scanning the photos I have on film. Some pro, even amateur, photographers have RAIDs setup with terabytes of photos.
If you don't trust that, simply use LVM. Really, this is childsplay.
For gurus and geeks perhaps but how many know what LVM is? I certainly don't.
Sorry but this, "this is childsplay", elitist attitude turns many off.
It would be nice if the Ubuntu installer by default created a seperate/home partition.
The problem with defaults is different people want different defaults. My preferred default is to be asked if I want a separate/home partition or want to use one that is already created.
I am typing this on my Mac currently running Leopard. I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard, do a clean install that is, then install Ubuntu to dual boot. Yy hard disk is already partitioned into 3 partitions, one for OS X, one for/home, and one for Ubuntu. I have Leopard installed on it's appropriate partition, my users are on the/home partition and I'll install Ubuntu on it's partition. When I do install it I want it to ask where to put/home. This would be easier than it would be for me to edit fstab, I've never done it before and would be pissed if I screwed up. Of course I'll have to use chmod, which again I've never done, and edit permissions so the user files can used in both OSes.
But it sure does make it easier to keep your data..
Yeap, I agree bigtime. I'll go ahead and clone the/home partition before installing Snow Leopard and Ubuntu, I've already cloned Leopard and made an external boot disk just in case, but it'd be nice if I could install them without nuking the data. One problem I've come across is that OS X adds metadata to files that Ubuntu doesn't have.
Fair point, but it still does not provide an explanation as to why businesses have not switched en masse to open office; which based on your most recent point alone should have happened as a result of the interface changes between office 2003 and 2007.
How many people know about Open Office? How many of them have no say in what they use? All too frequently it's some PHB that says what will be used. Now if you have the choice then it's easier. If you're not going to upgrade Office because of cost why switch to Open Office? I say if something works for you use it. You should only upgrade or switch if what you have doesn't work. Then when that tyme comes look into alternatives to see if they will work. Before I switched, to Linux for my desktop (tower I'll use as a server really) and then Mac OS X for my laptop, I made a list of what I wanted to do, then I looked for apps that could do that.
Whenever someone brings up switching to Linux, people frequently claim they can't make the switch because doesn't run on Linux. Photoshop, the latest DirectX games, etc.
Of course, most people get computers to perform tasks such as editing photos or playing games not to play with the OS.
What ethnic cleansing? There's no evidence of that whatsoever.
tell that to those who had their homes destroyed by Bulldozer Sharon. An American protester protecting a home was bulldozed years ago.
What land have they stolen? Gaza strip? West bank? Those are spoils of war. In case you don't remember, Israel was attacked by the combined armies of all their neighbors back in the 60s.
Oh, Palestinians attacked Israelis without provocation? Palestinians not Syrians, Egyptians, or Jordanians?
It's not Israel's fault that the Palestinians don't live in a single, contiguous piece of land. That's just the result of history.
Oh so the lines just appeared on a map of the Middle East as if by magic? No Jews drew them. Ask those British who served in the British Mandate of Palestine during the 1920, '30s, and '40s who the terrorists were. Ask about the Lehi or Stern Gang and others. Members of Lehi were even trained by NAZIs.
All monotheistic religions are bloodthirsty and intolerant. The question is of degree. The Christians haven't as a group been very violent towards "unbelievers" for a few hundred years now.
The Holocaust didn't happen less than 100 years ago? Christians didn't persecute American Indians? If there are any survivor left ask those Indians who were forcibly removed from their parents and sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School and other boarding schools where they were beaten for speaking their own languages and forced to attend Christian churches.
I don't see any examples of extremely bad group behavior on their part since they had Jesus crucified (regardless of whether he was who he claimed he was, he hadn't really done anything criminal, but they all cried for crucifixion)
Not all Jews cried for Jesus's crucifixion (if such a person lived), it was mainly the Pharisees.
I'm not too worried about Jews or Christians murdering me, but I would have to worry about being murdered by a Muslim today if I were to go to the wrong places.
There are just as radical Christians as there are Muslims. They come under various headings or titles such as Dominionists, Christian Reconstructionists, and others. When Rev. Jerry Falwell wrote an article criticizing Christian Reconstructionism many got upset because he said they "support for laws 'mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards.'" The leader Rev. Rushdoony wrote back they didn't intend to "put drunkards to death."
Fact is is there are fundamentalist Christians in the US as bad as the worst Taliban. I even suggest googling Christian Taliban and reading some of the results.
Ubuntu has lacked a lot of what desktop users expect and the inconsistencies are something that turn off a lot of users.
Windows has two items this user was glad to get rid of, instability and spyware. I switched from Windows to Linux then OS X because of these two problems. As for new things, the day I can't or don't want to learn new things is the day I want to die.
Have you ever seen what happens when you take an average, non tech-savvy expert microsoft office user and then tell them that they have to use open office instead? they can't find anything! File formats can be an effective method of lock-in, but having a large base of users who are completely accustomed to using your product as the standard can be as well.
Just as there's training moving from MS Office to Open Office, there's training moving from MS Office 2003 to 2007 and there will be expenses upgrading to MS Office 2010. I could write a book on the complaints I've heard from Office users upgrading. Some of those complaints were about Office 2007 new Ribbon UI. A simply google turned up this article from last year, Arrogance or efficiency? Why Microsoft redesigned the Office user interface.
Complaining that switching to another app has costs without acknowledging MS upgrades has training costs as well is MS FUD.
A laptop needs to be set up differently than a laptop, doesn't it?
How is a laptop different from a laptop?
The "Desktop" disk is exactly that - desktop.
I was going to install Jaunty Jackalope on my laptop, both Gnome and KDE desktops. Now I may install Karmic on it instead. Or I may install Jaunty then upgrade, I'm not sure. I want to see a how-to for my laptop first.
Myself, I'd far prefer *not* to have physical access to my data. If I can have secure access to my data without having to worry about messy, space-consuming, power-consuming, attention hogging hardware, I'll take that thanks.
Me, I prefer control and high availability. To me that means local physical access.
That is not competitive behavior, competitive behavior does not limit competition which is what Rockefeller's behavior did. Competitive behavior is making a better product not using obstructions making it hard for competitors to compeat.
The track record was that Standard Oil drove down consumer prices.
The track record is that Standard Oil reduced choices. And free markets are about making choices.
Reading you is sounds like you're prefer FDR over Teddy Roosevelt, while FDR was friendly to trusts, Teddy was a Trust Buster. A Democrat over a Republican?
Yes, I know. That doesn't mean it doesn't try to associate itself with OSS for marketing purposes while witholding source code.
Google may hide other code but the only one I know they hide is the algorithm for search results. Since Google is a business that survives on it's search I understand them not wanting to give away that secret sauce.
I disagree; there is a lot of lock-in when you consider how different the interfaces between different applications are, and how much effort it would take to switch an entire organization from one to the other
I don't know about you but I don't consider that as lock-in. Lock-in is when because you've used a proprietary file format you are locked into using a proprietary software to create, edit, and read documents using said formats. Lock-in is when the user is dependent on one vendor and can not change to another one, at least not easily.
Also, there always seem to be slight and annoying differences in the way a word document opens in open office vs. how it opens in word.
ie because of a proprietary format users are locked into one vendor's software.
Well, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently about where it was during March of 1999. Yet people are still investing "for the long term" in the stock market. You tell me how long people put up with money losing investments.
People invest for the long term, mutual finds may or may not but hedge funds do not.
The only thing wrong with Israel's activities is that they aren't working more quickly to just sever their ties to the Palestinians
The only thing wrong? Ethnic cleansing isn't wrong? Stealing other's land isn't wrong? Fact is is Palestinians have been made to pay for what the NAZIs did.
and let them have their own separate country.
And where is this land? Little bits scattered helter skelter?
It simply isn't possible for them to live together in peace as long as the Islamic religion exists.
Ah, I see. Jews can do no wrong whereas Muslims can only do wrong. Read the Torah, Old Testament, sometime. Jews were pretty blood thirsty, as were Christians.
Or do you simply mean that Microsoft made contractual obligations with its clients? How is that equivalent to destruction, or even force? It's a requirement for the delivery and sale of a product, and violates no rights.
And would you say the same if your grocery store said you could only buy from them instead of competitors? If so then what would you do if the other stores didn't carry what you wanted?
It's fine when you talk like this when you have a free market but there is no free market.
Slashdot Mirror
I was always running 2 monitors, and that seemed to be a never-ending battle re-configuring X.
You've had problems running dual monitors? I won't be doing it right away but when I can afford a new monitor I'll set it up as a second monitor. My main goal doing so is I want to do some development, graphics work, and photo editing. I'll use the big new monitor for what I'm working on and use an old monitor or the built in display on my laptop to hold all the pallets and tools.
If there's a problem do you know if it's with Ubuntu or KDE? I plan to install and run both Gnome and KDE. With KDE I want try Krita for photo editing, GIMP just doesn't cut it, to see if it can do what I'll want. Otherwise I want to try both desktops to see which I prefer.
Falcon
i'm guessing they are aiming at something like mobileme rather than dropbox. i have 3 ubuntu desktops right now and it would be truly fantastic if i had a way to automatically sync my settings and or home folders across all three...
I don't know about settings but home folders can be synced using rsync. Using cron a schedule to run rsync can then be created. Mind you, I don't know how to use either one but I came across them when researching and preparing to install Ubuntu on my Mac.
Falcon
Bulldozing houses is not the same as putting people in gas chambers and executing them. One is property damage, the other is murder. Conflating the two is ridiculous and offensive.
I never said they were, but if you're going to put words into my mouth I didn't say I see no reason to continue.
Falcon
No, if you do a full re-install, you're much better off backing up your home directory, then doing a full re-install and copying the files over that you want. Or, as I do, you just keep two partitions around, one with the old OS+home, and one with the new OS+home (after all, as you say, disks are huge these days), and just copy from one to the other on a major OS upgrade.
You ask why use a separate /home partition but them admit you use two yourself. Now why would you copy /home from one partition to another? If you use a separate /home partition you don't need to copy over old documents when upgrading.
Falcon
you still haven't explained the advantages of putting /home on a separate partition.
I was able to easily clone my /home partition. With a separate /home partition I can nuke the OS partition and not worry I'll lose all the data. There's another reason to have a separate /home partition. Currently I have the hard disk in my laptop set up with 3 partitions. The first partition has OS X installed on it. I'll install Ubuntu on the 3rd partition. And I use the 2nd partition for /home. Once I install Ubuntu I will be able to use the user files in both OS X and Ubuntu.
Falcon
suddenly you have to guess how much space you'll want in / and /home, and if you underestimate, you find yourself having to resize filesystems.
Why? With disks sufficiently large these day, just allocate 10GB for Ubuntu and take the rest for /home. For basic usage 10GB is overkill for applications, logs, etc...
Disks for desktop and tower PCs may be big enough for most uses but it different for laptops as well as special uses. When I got my laptop I got the biggest hard disk Apple offered, 160GiB. I replaced it with the biggest drive I found at that tyme, a 320GiB drive. As of right now I have the disk divided into 3 partitions, 2 30GB partitions for OS X and Ubuntu and the rest for /home. The user partition will fill quickly once I start scanning the photos I have on film. Some pro, even amateur, photographers have RAIDs setup with terabytes of photos.
If you don't trust that, simply use LVM. Really, this is childsplay.
For gurus and geeks perhaps but how many know what LVM is? I certainly don't.
Sorry but this, "this is childsplay", elitist attitude turns many off.
Falcon
It would be nice if the Ubuntu installer by default created a seperate /home partition.
The problem with defaults is different people want different defaults. My preferred default is to be asked if I want a separate /home partition or want to use one that is already created.
I am typing this on my Mac currently running Leopard. I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard, do a clean install that is, then install Ubuntu to dual boot. Yy hard disk is already partitioned into 3 partitions, one for OS X, one for /home, and one for Ubuntu. I have Leopard installed on it's appropriate partition, my users are on the /home partition and I'll install Ubuntu on it's partition. When I do install it I want it to ask where to put /home. This would be easier than it would be for me to edit fstab, I've never done it before and would be pissed if I screwed up. Of course I'll have to use chmod, which again I've never done, and edit permissions so the user files can used in both OSes.
But it sure does make it easier to keep your data..
Yeap, I agree bigtime. I'll go ahead and clone the /home partition before installing Snow Leopard and Ubuntu, I've already cloned Leopard and made an external boot disk just in case, but it'd be nice if I could install them without nuking the data. One problem I've come across is that OS X adds metadata to files that Ubuntu doesn't have.
Falcon
Fair point, but it still does not provide an explanation as to why businesses have not switched en masse to open office; which based on your most recent point alone should have happened as a result of the interface changes between office 2003 and 2007.
How many people know about Open Office? How many of them have no say in what they use? All too frequently it's some PHB that says what will be used. Now if you have the choice then it's easier. If you're not going to upgrade Office because of cost why switch to Open Office? I say if something works for you use it. You should only upgrade or switch if what you have doesn't work. Then when that tyme comes look into alternatives to see if they will work. Before I switched, to Linux for my desktop (tower I'll use as a server really) and then Mac OS X for my laptop, I made a list of what I wanted to do, then I looked for apps that could do that.
Falcon
Whenever someone brings up switching to Linux, people frequently claim they can't make the switch because doesn't run on Linux. Photoshop, the latest DirectX games, etc.
Of course, most people get computers to perform tasks such as editing photos or playing games not to play with the OS.
Falcon
What ethnic cleansing? There's no evidence of that whatsoever.
tell that to those who had their homes destroyed by Bulldozer Sharon. An American protester protecting a home was bulldozed years ago.
What land have they stolen? Gaza strip? West bank? Those are spoils of war. In case you don't remember, Israel was attacked by the combined armies of all their neighbors back in the 60s.
Oh, Palestinians attacked Israelis without provocation? Palestinians not Syrians, Egyptians, or Jordanians?
It's not Israel's fault that the Palestinians don't live in a single, contiguous piece of land. That's just the result of history.
Oh so the lines just appeared on a map of the Middle East as if by magic? No Jews drew them. Ask those British who served in the British Mandate of Palestine during the 1920, '30s, and '40s who the terrorists were. Ask about the Lehi or Stern Gang and others. Members of Lehi were even trained by NAZIs.
All monotheistic religions are bloodthirsty and intolerant. The question is of degree. The Christians haven't as a group been very violent towards "unbelievers" for a few hundred years now.
The Holocaust didn't happen less than 100 years ago? Christians didn't persecute American Indians? If there are any survivor left ask those Indians who were forcibly removed from their parents and sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School and other boarding schools where they were beaten for speaking their own languages and forced to attend Christian churches.
I don't see any examples of extremely bad group behavior on their part since they had Jesus crucified (regardless of whether he was who he claimed he was, he hadn't really done anything criminal, but they all cried for crucifixion)
Not all Jews cried for Jesus's crucifixion (if such a person lived), it was mainly the Pharisees.
I'm not too worried about Jews or Christians murdering me, but I would have to worry about being murdered by a Muslim today if I were to go to the wrong places.
There are just as radical Christians as there are Muslims. They come under various headings or titles such as Dominionists, Christian Reconstructionists, and others. When Rev. Jerry Falwell wrote an article criticizing Christian Reconstructionism many got upset because he said they "support for laws 'mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards.'" The leader Rev. Rushdoony wrote back they didn't intend to "put drunkards to death."
Fact is is there are fundamentalist Christians in the US as bad as the worst Taliban. I even suggest googling Christian Taliban and reading some of the results.
Ubuntu has lacked a lot of what desktop users expect and the inconsistencies are something that turn off a lot of users.
Windows has two items this user was glad to get rid of, instability and spyware. I switched from Windows to Linux then OS X because of these two problems. As for new things, the day I can't or don't want to learn new things is the day I want to die.
Falcon
Have you ever seen what happens when you take an average, non tech-savvy expert microsoft office user and then tell them that they have to use open office instead? they can't find anything! File formats can be an effective method of lock-in, but having a large base of users who are completely accustomed to using your product as the standard can be as well.
Just as there's training moving from MS Office to Open Office, there's training moving from MS Office 2003 to 2007 and there will be expenses upgrading to MS Office 2010. I could write a book on the complaints I've heard from Office users upgrading. Some of those complaints were about Office 2007 new Ribbon UI. A simply google turned up this article from last year, Arrogance or efficiency? Why Microsoft redesigned the Office user interface.
Complaining that switching to another app has costs without acknowledging MS upgrades has training costs as well is MS FUD.
Falcon
MSI - Wind Netbook with Intel® Atom(TM) Processor w/ 2GB RAM and 6-Cell Battery - Black. That was the first result googling 2gig netbook.
Falcon
A laptop needs to be set up differently than a laptop, doesn't it?
How is a laptop different from a laptop?
The "Desktop" disk is exactly that - desktop.
I was going to install Jaunty Jackalope on my laptop, both Gnome and KDE desktops. Now I may install Karmic on it instead. Or I may install Jaunty then upgrade, I'm not sure. I want to see a how-to for my laptop first.
Falcon
A lesson for Windows Engineers. Aim for 256MB, not 2GB. The era of Netbooks is upon us, and it looks like Microsoft will miss the bus.
More netbooks come with Windows than with Linux. This is old but Study: Windows clobbers Linux on netbooks with over 90% share.
Falcon
Myself, I'd far prefer *not* to have physical access to my data. If I can have secure access to my data without having to worry about messy, space-consuming, power-consuming, attention hogging hardware, I'll take that thanks.
Me, I prefer control and high availability. To me that means local physical access.
Falcon
They are pretty much still too expensive.
Only if you use MS software. Most of the software that did not come with my Mac I downloaded and installed free. And I didn't pirate it.
Falcon
Sounds like competitive behavior to me
That is not competitive behavior, competitive behavior does not limit competition which is what Rockefeller's behavior did. Competitive behavior is making a better product not using obstructions making it hard for competitors to compeat.
The track record was that Standard Oil drove down consumer prices.
The track record is that Standard Oil reduced choices. And free markets are about making choices.
Reading you is sounds like you're prefer FDR over Teddy Roosevelt, while FDR was friendly to trusts, Teddy was a Trust Buster. A Democrat over a Republican?
Falcon
Yes, I know. That doesn't mean it doesn't try to associate itself with OSS for marketing purposes while witholding source code.
Google may hide other code but the only one I know they hide is the algorithm for search results. Since Google is a business that survives on it's search I understand them not wanting to give away that secret sauce.
Falcon
I disagree; there is a lot of lock-in when you consider how different the interfaces between different applications are, and how much effort it would take to switch an entire organization from one to the other
I don't know about you but I don't consider that as lock-in. Lock-in is when because you've used a proprietary file format you are locked into using a proprietary software to create, edit, and read documents using said formats. Lock-in is when the user is dependent on one vendor and can not change to another one, at least not easily.
Also, there always seem to be slight and annoying differences in the way a word document opens in open office vs. how it opens in word.
ie because of a proprietary format users are locked into one vendor's software.
Falcon
Once again, I recommend you actually read my arguments rather than complain about people who don't know economics.
And I recommend you actually read my argument.
Falcon
1) I never said we've had a free market since then. I said we've chosen competitive markets over free markets.
Reread what I said, which was that free markets need competitive markets. If a market is not competitive it is not free.
2) Read Brian's posts. He is using free market as a synonym for unregulated markets, so I used competitive markets as a counter to that.
Ah, I get it, because someone else uses a wrong definition, thinking two wrongs make a right you also use a wrong definition.
Falcon
Well, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently about where it was during March of 1999. Yet people are still investing "for the long term" in the stock market. You tell me how long people put up with money losing investments.
People invest for the long term, mutual finds may or may not but hedge funds do not.
Falcon
The only thing wrong with Israel's activities is that they aren't working more quickly to just sever their ties to the Palestinians
The only thing wrong? Ethnic cleansing isn't wrong? Stealing other's land isn't wrong? Fact is is Palestinians have been made to pay for what the NAZIs did.
and let them have their own separate country.
And where is this land? Little bits scattered helter skelter?
It simply isn't possible for them to live together in peace as long as the Islamic religion exists.
Ah, I see. Jews can do no wrong whereas Muslims can only do wrong. Read the Torah, Old Testament, sometime. Jews were pretty blood thirsty, as were Christians.
Falcon
Or do you simply mean that Microsoft made contractual obligations with its clients? How is that equivalent to destruction, or even force? It's a requirement for the delivery and sale of a product, and violates no rights.
And would you say the same if your grocery store said you could only buy from them instead of competitors? If so then what would you do if the other stores didn't carry what you wanted?
It's fine when you talk like this when you have a free market but there is no free market.
Falcon