I'm seriously considering closing my Facebook. Free service hemorraging privacy by the day = Mistake. Facebook is definitely past its prime.
In order to delete your account, you need to DELETE every detail on your account, every mini feed, every friend, every picture, everything. Then you can e-mail facebook and request your account to be deleted. They will not delete your account until you have deleted everything in it.
Another poster (when the Beacon article was on Slashdot previously) said that the facebook belief was that "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission". Definitely the case here...
I have hunted for DAYS looking for documentation for some parts of Linux, only to find cryptic notes, or worse "This help section needs to be added".
All I can say is that I haven't had that problem. Can you give some examples?
I have had plenty of issues with Windows documentation not giving me information on error messages created by Microsoft software displayed in the windows event viewer. I have also had a tonne of problems with Microsoft office's documentation, whereby I just cannot find the information on how to do things in there, despite the fact knowing there is way.
and finally calling MS for help.
The last time I was on the phone with Microsoft, it took them litterally two hours to answer and they had a stupid telephone-radio DJ giving traffic reports and the person I was talking to did not know anything and could not help me - AND THEY WERE BEING PAID TO SUPPORT ME - Seriously, no, I am not impressed.
You haven't needed the command line? I guess you have not had to add a module
Yes I have, restricted-manager handled that automatically for me.
work with wireless networking
Wireless networking works for me out of the box, unlike Windows XP sp2, where I needed to insert a CD first, then reboot, then suffer bluescreens because the drivers were incompatible, requiring me to go into safe mode, then trying to uninstall the drivers but the drivers would not uninstall because the uninstaller didn't work in safemode, where I needed to go and then manually remove the.inf files that contain the drivers. Then reboot the system, get into windows, download the latest version of the drivers, install them, and use wireless.
But I digress, I've had plenty of issues with hardware that is "designed for windows XP" on Windows XP more so than hardware on Linux
configure iptables
The only time I've needed to really mess with iptables was when setting up a server and even then. I didn't mess with the command line, I used something called firewall builder - Something that windows has equivalent of in GUI and iptables functionality.
fix a file system
When one of my harddrives was dying a few years back, Mandriva was automatically repairing the file system for me. So, no.. No issues there either.
I will believe that when I don't have to use NDIS wrapper to get a wireless card working.
I simply don't.
You want to talk GUI? Two words: Transparent windows.
Fully supported under compiz/beryl.
Oh, and compbiz/beryl still run on top of X, which is a crappy windowing system that is a good 7 years behind the times.
X is not a windowing system.
Eye candy doesn't make a good GUI.
But it does help.
The biggest problem people have with Vista and Aero is that Aero is a resource hog, just like Beryl, and the user access controls.
Actually, I've noticed people getting confused with the back/forward buttons in Vista in weird places like installers. The concept of having games stored in a sort of control panel than the traditional organized menus.
Considering the fact I can run Beryl normally on my HP XE4400 ("Designed for Windows XP" -- despite the fact the latest drivers are terribly broken on Windows XP SP2 for it) which has a very crappy graphic card chipset "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY", it really runs very well and I am not noticing any resource hogging from Beryl. Aero with it's graphical features isn't even capable of running on this hardware.
You don't think the Linux user community is hostile? You need to dig your head out of your ass. I can't count the number of times I have seen simple questions in forums answered with "RTFM n00b!" and those are the polite one
Tell me how borked binary packages or ten days of compiling with Gentoo are superior to having an OS ready to go with all applications loaded in an hour.
I don't know of any OEMs who ship Gentoo. I know of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, SuSE Linux, Mandriva and so on... Which don't require any compiling at all.
Tell me how running Office and Photoshop in VMware is superior to running it on Windows itself.
Older versions of Photoshop run out of the box on Ubuntu as is the same with Microsoft Office.
That said, there are alternatives one can use, such as Krita or Gimp for Photoshop or Openoffice, Gnome-office, Lotus Symphony, Staroffice etc. for Microsoft Office.
Hell, tell me where to get a non-ass-ugly and functionally bloated mp3 player for Linux. Tell me even that, and I'll give you some credit.
If you want winamp style, there is xmms and beepmediaplayer. If you want iTunes style, there is Amarok and Banshee. There are also other mp3 players, but I haven't used them.
Superior? Linux is slowly becoming 'viable'. Another few months, it'll probably be there.
Both operating systems have certain features that are better than the other. The sad thing is that the only thing that seems to be going for Windows most of the time is the support for running Windows applications - and Windows Vista isn't doing too well in that department.
So is Windows. It comes with every computer people buy (people consider it free). When people need to update windows, or some new software like Photoshop. It's always free.
What do I mean by free? Everyone has that friend or that friend of a friend who can install, give them any software they want for free.
Why should they use open-source alternatives when in the majority of cases, it doesn't give 100% of the software's capability?
Sure, if they had to pay 600USD for their new software, they might suddenly consider open-source alternatives. But most people do not.
So it really dumbfounds and amuses me at the same time when people can sit with a straight face and claim Microsoft is some evil Monopoly.
Microsoft is a Monopoly because they constantly try to hurt every alternative. Back in the 90s, we had so many investors in technology, every new technology that came out, Microsoft crushed each one in various ways. Buying them out, announcing they are releasing a product in that area without releasing it, giving things away for free, killing another company's profit areas, embracing and extending, OEM deals like requiring windows licenses for every computer sold (including those that don't run Windows).
These days: They still do the OEM thing in countries that they can escape with it, they still buy out companies that compete with them, they try to thort competition like ODF by paying off people to say certain things, they spread rumors that their competition violates their patents but don't produce any evidence, they make threats that if people use alternative software that they will be liable unless they pay them...
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Remember, this is just the things we found out about, there is certainly a lot of things we don't know Microsoft is doing. Microsoft in my opinion have done more damage than good to the software industry these past two decades.
Now the only people who seem to be able to compete with them, are a bunch of people who believe in free software, not for profit... And that is just because Microsoft does not have the ability to crush them decisively yet.
A lot of unix source code runs on OS X with minimal changes
The BSD subsystem in OS X has many issues, it cannot do signaling properly. The core libraries for POSIX usage do non-standard things which breaks things in.. odd ways.
I would like to add that fink is known to be unstable (my own personal experiences include having many applications segfault just randomly), the installation is difficult, the software is on it is often outdated in comparison with Linux distributions like Ubuntu.
In fact, from the command-line OS X is just like Linux/UNIX from a general usability standpoint.
Not true, it's actually not as user friendly, as a example, I can type 'sudo apt-get install fluxb*tab key*' and Linux distributions will automatically complete the package name. There are no good aliases setup in fink's Bash, which makes using certain core utilities more annoying.
The only major thing I believe that is locked up is the implementation of the graphical interface (i.e., all the eye-candy).
Actually, you can use X11 on OS X, unfortunately it has many issues. There is no drag and drop support, the clipboard is limited in length and doesn't translate often between applications, causing incomplete copy/pastes or copy/pastes not working at all. X11 applications in OS X appear as a single application (x11). Really quite annoying.
Why use windows? It's cheaper than Apple, gives me more options, and i don't have to manually do everything like I would with linux.
On Linux:
I plug in a device, it usually works out of the box. No drivers required (this includes tablets, bluetooth, wireless cards etc)
On the off chance a device doesn't work after I plugged it in, I start restricted-manager, which automatically downloads the required (proprietary) drivers and sets up the system for me. Working immediately after that (exception is graphical drivers where you will need to logout and back in, or simply restart).
I do not need to defragment my drives or invest in expensive software to maintain for me (while many people do not under Windows, I do because I notice the performance difference -- Hell, it's so bad that Valve even had to add a defragmenter to Steam). Linuxs' file systems just do not require it.
I do not need to manually go around to websites, download the applications, install them. The distribution's repositories contains the majority of notable software.
I do not need to constantly visit websites to find updates for my preferred software, the package managers in my distribution inform of updates and let me install them automatically if I so wish
There are probably other examples of automation on Linux that Windows doesn't have but... That was just the ones at the top of my head.
I use windows because out of the box I can play games with my friends, I can connect it to my 360, I can use 100% of the software that I WANT to use.
I think you should continue using it. You are obviously pleased with your windows experience. Linux distributions don't seem to be interested so much in making them connect to your 360 and while many games work out of the box in Ubuntu (because Wine is preinstalled -- I play a lot of games on Steam using it), a lot do not and require a few tweaks to get them working. Usability wise, I would suggest you stay with Windows as you are obviously happy with the platform.
If these things are even possible with your alternatives, you have done a pathetic job of making that information available to the non-geek inclined public.
I don't believe the opensource community advertises, they just do. But a quick Google search generally gives you all the information you need (although for windows application support, you should use WineHQ's Application database to check information and consider the alternative Codeweavers).
It has better documentation than Windows. I have spent hours looking for things in Window help with no avail, MSDN not being helpful either.
still command line focus
I haven't needed to use the command line as a user in years.
hardware compatibility issues
Linux supports more hardware than any specific version of Windows. It is also not a big problem for users since they can buy Linuxsupportedhardwareanywhere.
outdated GUI
Thinking about Windows' new GUI enhancements, considering the fact Beryl contains more effects and features than Aero and works on more hardware properly. No, I don't agree here either.
Considering the fact that the desktop environments are constantly looking to improve their GUIs. Such as KDE going to great lengths to make sure everything has a modern GUI including games, whereby Microsoft hasn't even bothered to fix up the classical windows games, no.
Since many people are having problems using Windows Vista's GUI - I don't call that a modern GUI, I call it a broken GUI.
hostile user community
I don't agree with this, but even if that was the case, I doubt this does anything to adoption.
server-centric makes for a crappy average home user experience
Modern Linux desktop operating systems are not server-centric.
Oh, and lots of choice is not a good thing if 99% of what one can choose from is crap.
Agreed. Fortunately I don't have that problem on Linux.
I see a debate going on there. One is that the hard drive manufacturers are not making the hardware correctly, the other is that Ubuntu should fix it because it unacceptable to have these problems even though the hardware is at fault because it hurts some end users.
I would like to state a few points about this article:
It is not a purely software issue, like it is with the Mac issue on topic at the moment.
Many people were arguing from different sides, not a majority on one side, unlike the great grand parent post was suggesting.
Ubuntu cannot be blamed in this case because they do not design the software specifically for that set of hardware (like Apple does with their Macs). Unknown hardware that does not follow standard specifications is obviously going to cause problems.
It's much better these days, but messing with packages outside your system's default repositories can still screw things up very easily.
Honestly, it is very difficult for packages that follow the LSB to mess up the system.
There is STILL important software that require./configure && make && make install.
What packages does Ubuntu not have, requiring you to do that?
I'll try getting it into Ubuntu's repositories.
I miss screwing around with Linux quite a bit, but I don't have time to dick with custom kernels and never, ever get 100% of my hardware working at the same time.
LOL, I don't think most people have had to run a custom kernel in years.
Why is it that when Ubuntu starts physically destroying laptop hard drives at an unprecedented rate, everyone blames the hardware?
Can't find the Slashdot article mentioning that. But looking at Launchpad, I know this is not the case.
Why is it that when Apple fucks something up and breaks lots of stuff, everyone says that the users should've known better?
Actually, I find another issue, many users refuse to acknowledge the issue and dismiss it as nothing. Such as, in my case the macbookpro I had:
Wireless drivers broke in 10.4.9 update, in order to keep wireless working I had to use 10.4.5
The Macbookpro kept emitting high pitch noises that hurt my ears.
Apple's support on the mess was horrible, losing the laptop for months then sending it back claiming there is no problem.
The story does go on and there are plenty of others who have had similar issues (Google searches reveal quite a few angry users) - yet average Mac user will refuse to acknowledge this even happens - despite the fact I may later learn they had similar issues and they just did [easy workaround that is not a easy workaround or even a acceptable workaround].
Look, kids. Broken software is broken software. Publishing software that bricks phones, trashes drives, or makes desktop PCs unbootable (if not technically bricked) is a big deal, no matter who it was that released the software responsible.
Thanks for the URL, but a link to those tiny Linux distros sort of misses the point of my post, which was that a computer that ran XP (as well as several earlier Linux distros using KDE or Gnome windows managers) at a usable speed was unable to handle the burden of Ubuntu.
I've ran (this was at a company, could only give me a crappy laptop) Kubuntu Dapper (koffice+krita+konqueror) on a P3 laptop with 256MB RAM which handled multitasking between applications better than Windows XP (Microsoft Office+Photoshop+IE).
To summarize exactly what I mean by multitasking, I could switch to applications windows almost immediately under Kubuntu and use them without too much UI redrawing/freezes which I experienced under Windows XP on the same hardware..
That would tend to rule Ubuntu out as an alternative to Vista for a lot of people.
Considering the superior hardware you get with Windows Vista machines (and yet the OS still does stupid stuff like thrash the disk for ages despite all that power). I don't think there will be too much of an issue running Ubuntu. Personally, I prefer Kubuntu.
If all ISP's essentially "NAT'ted" every residential subscriber with no port forwarding. Receiving data on a TCP stream would work just fine, since you would initiate that, as would receiving data via UDP when it's on a port that the host computer made a previous recent request on (and most likely also only from the same IP).
Doesn't stop hole punching and any decent NAT system these days has something similar to uPnP.
Subscribers that need "direct net" connections would have to pay commercial rates, which would probably radically cut into how much P2P sharing goes on.
Not that you would need "direct net" connections for peer to peer connections.
It wouldn't totally stop it, of course, but it would probably take a big bite out of it,
I guess it would take a month for all the bittorent software to all implement hole punching...
I can use my cell phone for free at home because it includes WiFi. I can make VoIP calls, read RSS feeds, check my mail, etc. without paying my wireless provider, or without even a SIM card.
But I am not interested in Wi-fi, I am interested in Evdo, which is the 3G network deployed all over Europe.
The problem with the Kindle is not that they charge for EVDO, it is that the system deliberately was designed to lack means of conveniently accessing content through other channels.
The USB support is sufficient as another channel and honestly, including lots of different wireless devices in my opinion is going to make it more expensive.
A second problem is that, while I can pick a different provider with my phone, you can't even pick a different provider.
Most of the time people change providers for bad service, bad support, costs. Knowing mobile networks as well as I do, there is not a single mobile provider here which does 3G that has really poor support for delivering content like Wikipedia.
Saying "we have to charge for EVDO because nobody gives EVDO access away for free" is a bogus excuse because Amazon could have put WiFi and Bluetooth on there for almost no extra cost.
They're not charging for using Evdo to use their website or Wikipedia. Again, spending 399USD on a device that can access something that is like the "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" with real time updates anywhere (since 3g is so prevalent here) for the rest of your lifetime is not what I consider a bad deal.
The fact they didn't put wifi or bluetooth doesn't bother me. If I'm at home, I'm not too lazy to simply plug it in.
Heck, even the iPhone has WiFi.
the iPhone is a phone, mp3 player, movie player and a bunch of other crap. It's like a proprietary swiss knife which I'm not so interested in, especially due to it's contracts and costs.
There are enough alternatives you can get.
So I ask you again, what alternatives let me use the mobile phone network to access Wikipedia for free without having to pay some sort of fees for another service?
You get that easily on several other devices costing around the same. You also get it from any decent cell phone.
None of my cell phones will give me that unless I actually buy a plan from a provider myself and pay for it. Nor do I know of other devices that use the cell phone network, without fees at all that provide me such access.
Generate a custom newspaper with RSS feeds and synchroinize it via USB with Cybook
From
http://www.irextechnologies.com/
It uses wi-fi, but not EVDO.
Both of those run Linux and are programmable! They can download and render PDF, blogs, and HTML on their own, free.
I don't know if the Kindle can do that for free over USB, but I assume they do. EVDO being a mobile phone network technology costs money. I doubt the carriers would give Amazon users 100% free use of their network.
It's not clear that the Kindle can even do that; does it even read standard formats without a separate "conversion step"?
I know it reads.txt,.png,.gif.. according to some comparison charts, but, it's not clear if it supports more.
The Kindle seems like a giant step backwards.
399USD for lifetime free access with your little tablet-like thing to Wikipedia? I don't know... I think I would get it just for that alone (provided it actually worked in the UK).
Slashdot Mirror
Something that windows has no equivalent of in GUI and iptables functionality.
And my rtfm noobs link got broken some how, should of been this
All I can say is that I haven't had that problem. Can you give some examples?
I have had plenty of issues with Windows documentation not giving me information on error messages created by Microsoft software displayed in the windows event viewer. I have also had a tonne of problems with Microsoft office's documentation, whereby I just cannot find the information on how to do things in there, despite the fact knowing there is way.
The last time I was on the phone with Microsoft, it took them litterally two hours to answer and they had a stupid telephone-radio DJ giving traffic reports and the person I was talking to did not know anything and could not help me - AND THEY WERE BEING PAID TO SUPPORT ME - Seriously, no, I am not impressed.
Yes I have, restricted-manager handled that automatically for me.
Wireless networking works for me out of the box, unlike Windows XP sp2, where I needed to insert a CD first, then reboot, then suffer bluescreens because the drivers were incompatible, requiring me to go into safe mode, then trying to uninstall the drivers but the drivers would not uninstall because the uninstaller didn't work in safemode, where I needed to go and then manually remove the .inf files that contain the drivers. Then reboot the system, get into windows, download the latest version of the drivers, install them, and use wireless.
But I digress, I've had plenty of issues with hardware that is "designed for windows XP" on Windows XP more so than hardware on Linux
The only time I've needed to really mess with iptables was when setting up a server and even then. I didn't mess with the command line, I used something called firewall builder - Something that windows has equivalent of in GUI and iptables functionality.
When one of my harddrives was dying a few years back, Mandriva was automatically repairing the file system for me. So, no.. No issues there either.
I simply don't.
Fully supported under compiz/beryl.
X is not a windowing system.
But it does help.
Actually, I've noticed people getting confused with the back/forward buttons in Vista in weird places like installers. The concept of having games stored in a sort of control panel than the traditional organized menus.
Considering the fact I can run Beryl normally on my HP XE4400 ("Designed for Windows XP" -- despite the fact the latest drivers are terribly broken on Windows XP SP2 for it) which has a very crappy graphic card chipset "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY", it really runs very well and I am not noticing any resource hogging from Beryl. Aero with it's graphical features isn't even capable of running on this hardware.
That said, there are alternatives one can use, such as Krita or Gimp for Photoshop or Openoffice, Gnome-office, Lotus Symphony, Staroffice etc. for Microsoft Office.If you want winamp style, there is xmms and beepmediaplayer. If you want iTunes style, there is Amarok and Banshee. There are also other mp3 players, but I haven't used them.Both operating systems have certain features that are better than the other. The sad thing is that the only thing that seems to be going for Windows most of the time is the support for running Windows applications - and Windows Vista isn't doing too well in that department.
What do I mean by free? Everyone has that friend or that friend of a friend who can install, give them any software they want for free.
Why should they use open-source alternatives when in the majority of cases, it doesn't give 100% of the software's capability?
Sure, if they had to pay 600USD for their new software, they might suddenly consider open-source alternatives. But most people do not.Microsoft is a Monopoly because they constantly try to hurt every alternative. Back in the 90s, we had so many investors in technology, every new technology that came out, Microsoft crushed each one in various ways. Buying them out, announcing they are releasing a product in that area without releasing it, giving things away for free, killing another company's profit areas, embracing and extending, OEM deals like requiring windows licenses for every computer sold (including those that don't run Windows).
These days: They still do the OEM thing in countries that they can escape with it, they still buy out companies that compete with them, they try to thort competition like ODF by paying off people to say certain things, they spread rumors that their competition violates their patents but don't produce any evidence, they make threats that if people use alternative software that they will be liable unless they pay them...
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Remember, this is just the things we found out about, there is certainly a lot of things we don't know Microsoft is doing. Microsoft in my opinion have done more damage than good to the software industry these past two decades.
Now the only people who seem to be able to compete with them, are a bunch of people who believe in free software, not for profit... And that is just because Microsoft does not have the ability to crush them decisively yet.
The BSD subsystem in OS X has many issues, it cannot do signaling properly. The core libraries for POSIX usage do non-standard things which breaks things in.. odd ways.I would like to add that fink is known to be unstable (my own personal experiences include having many applications segfault just randomly), the installation is difficult, the software is on it is often outdated in comparison with Linux distributions like Ubuntu.Not true, it's actually not as user friendly, as a example, I can type 'sudo apt-get install fluxb*tab key*' and Linux distributions will automatically complete the package name. There are no good aliases setup in fink's Bash, which makes using certain core utilities more annoying.Actually, you can use X11 on OS X, unfortunately it has many issues. There is no drag and drop support, the clipboard is limited in length and doesn't translate often between applications, causing incomplete copy/pastes or copy/pastes not working at all. X11 applications in OS X appear as a single application (x11). Really quite annoying.
- I plug in a device, it usually works out of the box. No drivers required (this includes tablets, bluetooth, wireless cards etc)
- On the off chance a device doesn't work after I plugged it in, I start restricted-manager, which automatically downloads the required (proprietary) drivers and sets up the system for me. Working immediately after that (exception is graphical drivers where you will need to logout and back in, or simply restart).
- I do not need to defragment my drives or invest in expensive software to maintain for me (while many people do not under Windows, I do because I notice the performance difference -- Hell, it's so bad that Valve even had to add a defragmenter to Steam). Linuxs' file systems just do not require it.
- I do not need to manually go around to websites, download the applications, install them. The distribution's repositories contains the majority of notable software.
- I do not need to constantly visit websites to find updates for my preferred software, the package managers in my distribution inform of updates and let me install them automatically if I so wish
There are probably other examples of automation on Linux that Windows doesn't have but... That was just the ones at the top of my head.I think you should continue using it. You are obviously pleased with your windows experience. Linux distributions don't seem to be interested so much in making them connect to your 360 and while many games work out of the box in Ubuntu (because Wine is preinstalled -- I play a lot of games on Steam using it), a lot do not and require a few tweaks to get them working. Usability wise, I would suggest you stay with Windows as you are obviously happy with the platform.I don't believe the opensource community advertises, they just do. But a quick Google search generally gives you all the information you need (although for windows application support, you should use WineHQ's Application database to check information and consider the alternative Codeweavers).Considering the fact that the desktop environments are constantly looking to improve their GUIs. Such as KDE going to great lengths to make sure everything has a modern GUI including games, whereby Microsoft hasn't even bothered to fix up the classical windows games, no.
Since many people are having problems using Windows Vista's GUI - I don't call that a modern GUI, I call it a broken GUI.I don't agree with this, but even if that was the case, I doubt this does anything to adoption.Modern Linux desktop operating systems are not server-centric.Agreed. Fortunately I don't have that problem on Linux.
I would like to state a few points about this article:
I'll try getting it into Ubuntu's repositories.LOL, I don't think most people have had to run a custom kernel in years.
By the way, I've had more issues with Mac hardware and software than with Kubuntu with Linux OEM hardware.
- Wireless drivers broke in 10.4.9 update, in order to keep wireless working I had to use 10.4.5
- The Macbookpro kept emitting high pitch noises that hurt my ears.
- Apple's support on the mess was horrible, losing the laptop for months then sending it back claiming there is no problem.
The story does go on and there are plenty of others who have had similar issues (Google searches reveal quite a few angry users) - yet average Mac user will refuse to acknowledge this even happens - despite the fact I may later learn they had similar issues and they just did [easy workaround that is not a easy workaround or even a acceptable workaround].Agreed.Definitely in this case, it is the software.To summarize exactly what I mean by multitasking, I could switch to applications windows almost immediately under Kubuntu and use them without too much UI redrawing/freezes which I experienced under Windows XP on the same hardware..Considering the superior hardware you get with Windows Vista machines (and yet the OS still does stupid stuff like thrash the disk for ages despite all that power). I don't think there will be too much of an issue running Ubuntu. Personally, I prefer Kubuntu.
The fact they didn't put wifi or bluetooth doesn't bother me. If I'm at home, I'm not too lazy to simply plug it in.the iPhone is a phone, mp3 player, movie player and a bunch of other crap. It's like a proprietary swiss knife which I'm not so interested in, especially due to it's contracts and costs.So I ask you again, what alternatives let me use the mobile phone network to access Wikipedia for free without having to pay some sort of fees for another service?
Feel free to show me though.
FromIt uses wi-fi, but not EVDO.I don't know if the Kindle can do that for free over USB, but I assume they do. EVDO being a mobile phone network technology costs money. I doubt the carriers would give Amazon users 100% free use of their network.I know it reads
For lifetime access to Wikipedia over mobile networks on it, it doesn't seem that bad for the price.