I doubt Mono will be sufficient to run these applications. Unless you were referring about running these on a xbox 360...
C# runs on more than just windows.
Same issue as above.
Excel runs on more than just windows.
Excel 2007, the version stated only runs under Windows. The file format it uses is not supported in other office versions natively without a plugin which is not capable of displaying the exact formating and so on correctly.
So half of what you've listed is portable to a non-windows environment.
There are plenty of technologies used in Microsoft's.NET that are not quite portable as they require completely reimplementing (not porting) them in Mono to get them to work.
Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet. With Click n' Run, moving "edit the.conf file!" into a GUI, and other streamlining, it can be.
The only time I can recall currently when I/have/ to edit a.conf file is for servers.
I fear the day that Microsoft makes a "great" OS (by/. standards), because that's the day we lose our choice in the marketplace. Linux is making the right moves, but until there is a single, unified distribution, there's even arguments within the Linux community on which distro is best -- and how can a consumer decide?
Well, thanks to websites like distrowatch, which provides cons and pros for major Linux distributions it's not too bad. But you can't say Windows isn't doing the same as Linux is doing currently, current Windows offerings:
Windows XP home
Windows XP pro
Windows XP corporate pro
Windows XP media center
Vista home basic
Vista premium
Vista business
Vista Enterprise
Vista Ultimate
Windows 2003 server
Windows 2003 small business server
Windows 2003 enterprise server
(I know a few too many people who use Windows 2003 as a workstation OS) That's off the top of my head. Of course, the consumer could just go with the default distribution install provided on Linux computers of the time, just like they would with Windows.
I've had to reboot Ubuntu at least five times in the past five weeks.
Well, there haven't been any security updates since 2007-07-19 that required a restart, and if these issues didn't effect you, you wouldn't of needed to reboot.
It cannot, even if you love your push email you are lacking so much other stuff you need a notebook just to read the Web.
Eh? What's wrong with the opera browser again?
When you consider necessary features, a Web 2.0 browser comes in way ahead of GPS let's be real.
Web 2.0? What are you? Apple marketing?
Even audio/video Podcasts are more important than GPS.
I don't agree, it's important for business users to figure out their location and what's wrong with Movidity or BlackBerry Media Player's support for podcasts?
Never mind that any moment there will be a plug-on GPS for the iPod dock connector and then what?
If driver issues were a problem, why Linux and not Mac?
Because OS X will have even more driver issues on his hardware, it won't even install.
If using too many resources is a problem, why Linux and not Mac?
Other than the fact that OS X is rather poor at using a low amount of resources due to how every application has to have it's own libraries in a self contained package etc. OS X is known to have worse performance than Windows XP on even simple things like copy operations.
If an intuitive OS is the problem, why Linux and not Mac?
From my own usage of OS X and Linux, I found Linux more intuitive. It exposed options I wanted to change in a GUI. On OS X, I've had todo, hex editing to get dual monitor support on a older ibook. Editing of what seemed to be obfuscated XML configuration files to change simple settings, like font parameters, because OS X in all it's wisdom does not let me remove the subpixel hinting, anti-aliasing properly, which looks like crap on smaller fonts -- There is a option to disable hinting and so on in the font config, but most applications don't even honor it! Not even the application bar.
There is also the need to run tweaking utilities just so I could disable the majority of shadows (because of course, they can't all be disabled), so the latest OS X version would perform better on a single core system.
On Kubuntu, I can do all this from a GUI, no need to hex edit, edit obfuscated xml configuration files, run tweaking programs. Yet you call this intuitive?
Oh, because Linux is still a PC? Losing face is that much of an issue?
The Mac is a PC, it's also not giving you much choice. Many people would like something with the specs of a Mac mini with just a decent graphic card and extra USB ports (full bandwith), but this of course is not possible.
At least with Windows you have a bit of choice, you can choose your hardware, you can choice various windows versions, I personally don't think getting locked into a single vendor that provides everything from software to hardware is such a good idea.
It's not like the driver issues are any better than what you might randomly get on a PC. I've had a macbookpro that makes a high pitch noise, none of the patches from Apple fixed it. When upgrading 10.4.5 to 10.4.9, the internal wireless card in it stops working. Apple will silently delete posts reporting it off their forums.
So, okay what about support then?
They have a legacy of never acknowledging issues until perhaps months or years later when they've fixed it. You can send Mac hardware with obvious defects, if they aren't going to going to acknowledge a certain problem exists, they'll just send it back saying it's working fine.
Now, you wonder why the article writer is mentioning switching to Linux? Microsoft sees Linux as a competitor. Infact, I have rarely heard about Microsoft making FUD about Apple, trying to crush them and so on within the last five years. It's all been attacking Linux -- Linux is the major competitor.
Now what do most people do when they have issues with a product/service? They threaten to goto the competitor.
If the ISPs had properly implemented multicast in the first place, they could have saved themselves a lot of the bandwidth that Bittorrent is using now.
Excellent idea, with this we can DoS all IPs in the world with a good cable account. I like your thinking.
What I recall from when I was younger that others had said: "Army commando!" "Secret agent/spy" "Flouriest" "Princess/supermodel" "Computer hacker" "Mechanic" "Policeman"
I have high doubts the majority of them would of picked the 'right' path.
Nope, it started off using StarOffice's and OpenOffice's (they both adopted the format at the same time to my knowledge) open XML format as a basis and then was developed/improved continuously under a Technical Committee, known as the OASIS industry consortium.
For one thing, gcj can compile Java source and bytecodes to native code, which AFAIK works for those architectures even in the complete absence of a Sun JVM. But then, wherever that runs, so does gij. It's not as good as Sun's, but it does work for a lot of applications.
Unfortunately it does not work with many applications you have the source to, like Azureus, Freenet.
In many cases, I do not have the sourcecode to the application I want to use either, so gcj really isn't all that useful for unsupported platforms. Every JRE I have encountered, seems more of a joke. I have tried really hard in making something that works across multiple JREs -- The end result is that I have had to resort to writing everything for Java 1.1, compile the binaries for 1.1 (as well as using deprecated functions which are only supported in 1.1).
Sorry, it's just a big mess, there isn't a solution right now.
Do you have even the slightest idea of how brutal it is compared to Java with Swing or SWT?
Not as brutal as not having a Sun JVM for Linux on PPC, ARM, m68k, Sparc etc. and expecting to write a java application that will work on those platforms which don't have any Sun JVMs available.
You just said it yourself: resource-intensive anti-virus software. Java is an alternative to that because the JVM's security architecture has anti-virus capabilities built-in, without needing to be resource-intensive.
One could write a virus in Java too.
The anti-virus software that everyone runs these days has a major impact on performance
Not quite, but certain very common anti-virus software is quite intensive.
and it's trying to do the same thing Java does with its sandbox architecture.
Most resident scanners scan for patterns against their virus databases in active memory. It's rare that heuristic scanning picks up unique viruses.
The difference is that anti-virus software is not nearly as protective as the JVM is
The anti-virus scanner can block known viruses. The Sun JVM doesn't have such functionality. In theory Java is great, because the user gets a dialog on applets/webstart applications to run the application. However, there have been many certificate vulnerabilities with the JVM, there have been vulnerabilities related to executing unsigned java code by the use of certain java bytecode etc.
and compiled executable + anti-virus is a lot slower than a Java app.
Well, this isn't a direct comparison since the code in both of these programs is substantially different but, just looking at some well known programs like utorrent + anti-virus verses Sun JVM + Azuerus, kdevelop (the recent kde related port) verses Sun JVM + netbeans etc. I find the java applications slower responding.
In what cases can I see it's slower? I can see the UIs redrawing, I can see the mouse clicks aren't being handled instantly, I can see the application just freezes somewhat unlike my other applications.
That said, I have seen benchmarks that show reads and writes are faster in Java compared to a C application, but in reality, that's just a small thing for me.
If I find that I can run things like utorrent, kdevelop (with all those kde libs) and anti-virus software without noticing these issues verses the java applications alone, with the anti-virus software disabled... I still notice all the redrawing, latency in my clicks. That in my opinion is not good enough.
And by the way, I do most of my work in a 100% Java GUI (Swing) app, which is NetBeans, a large, complicated, powerful IDE, on a regular PC, and it is just as responsive as any other desktop app,
Can't say the experience has been the same for me. I've messed with Java since 1.1 to 6, I've used various jdks, messed with native java compilers (including those that convert java source to.net bytecode). The alternatives to Sun JDK are always too far behind to run the best/popular java applications I've come across... Freenet, Azureus, Netbeans (although notably, netbeans doesn't run too bad on Sun JVM -- I just notice the UI redrawing).
and it uses less memory. It runs in less than 100mb, all the time.
Memory arguments are somewhat pointless, I could write software to compress data in memory to keep the memory usage smaller, but the side effect is that the application could behave much slower due to this. While unnecessary things shouldn't be in memory, responsiveness on consumer hardware from the interface is far more important.
Too often I see other Java developers, who tell users that their applications are not slow and there is nothing wrong with them, they get these results on their beefed up machine (quite normal for a developer, but bad for testing certain cases if your end user are common people who have 256MB ram, windows xp, crappy intensive anti-virus and who knows what else).
Even now, I look at one of my little side projects under the latest Sun jvm6, verses Sun jvm1.4... I can see clearly there is a lower framerate with i
Let me know when Java applications under the Sun JRE will run as responsive as C, Delphi, C++ applications do or better on the current people's commodity hardware -- WinXP + 256MB RAM + Resource intensive anti-virus software.
And before anyone mentions, no, I'm not interested on benchmarks done on multicore, 12GB RAM machines.
And as long as this is true, Linux will not be ready for the desktop.
It isn't true actually. Many people use Linux distributions without ever knowing mount options.
I don't want to have to dick around with how my filesystems are mounted any more than I want to dick around with how the wheel camber on my car is set up.
Speaking of cars. I find it annoying when the car doesn't start, it gives me warning lights for low fuel, battery low, oil low etc. When infact, none of these are the case.
I find cars really not user friendly, hell, you need to have a license after training to even use one, this isn't the case with computers.
nor do they want to have to deal with the intricacies of file system mounting.
Honestly, I haven't seen anyone who actually needed to mess with those options except in very specialized situations (servers etc).
Slashdot Mirror
The response to them was the same as the response to the wine/cedega issue.Linux had fewer issues, so I don't understand your complaint.
- Windows XP home
- Windows XP pro
- Windows XP corporate pro
- Windows XP media center
- Vista home basic
- Vista premium
- Vista business
- Vista Enterprise
- Vista Ultimate
- Windows 2003 server
- Windows 2003 small business server
- Windows 2003 enterprise server
(I know a few too many people who use Windows 2003 as a workstation OS) That's off the top of my head. Of course, the consumer could just go with the default distribution install provided on Linux computers of the time, just like they would with Windows.Am I the only one who didn't particularly find any interesting projects in the article?
Of course the IT department can install a ODF plugin for Microsoft Office and set it as the default 'save as' function.
I doubt the boss will be going out of his way to select Microsoft's ooxml format.
There are odf plugins for Microsoft Office however.
I don't see this being a big issue to even install since Joe user has had no problem installing quicktime, real player, divx etc. in the past.
There is also the need to run tweaking utilities just so I could disable the majority of shadows (because of course, they can't all be disabled), so the latest OS X version would perform better on a single core system.
On Kubuntu, I can do all this from a GUI, no need to hex edit, edit obfuscated xml configuration files, run tweaking programs. Yet you call this intuitive?The Mac is a PC, it's also not giving you much choice. Many people would like something with the specs of a Mac mini with just a decent graphic card and extra USB ports (full bandwith), but this of course is not possible.
At least with Windows you have a bit of choice, you can choose your hardware, you can choice various windows versions, I personally don't think getting locked into a single vendor that provides everything from software to hardware is such a good idea.
It's not like the driver issues are any better than what you might randomly get on a PC. I've had a macbookpro that makes a high pitch noise, none of the patches from Apple fixed it. When upgrading 10.4.5 to 10.4.9, the internal wireless card in it stops working. Apple will silently delete posts reporting it off their forums.
So, okay what about support then?
They have a legacy of never acknowledging issues until perhaps months or years later when they've fixed it. You can send Mac hardware with obvious defects, if they aren't going to going to acknowledge a certain problem exists, they'll just send it back saying it's working fine.
Now, you wonder why the article writer is mentioning switching to Linux? Microsoft sees Linux as a competitor. Infact, I have rarely heard about Microsoft making FUD about Apple, trying to crush them and so on within the last five years. It's all been attacking Linux -- Linux is the major competitor.
Now what do most people do when they have issues with a product/service? They threaten to goto the competitor.
What I recall from when I was younger that others had said:
"Army commando!"
"Secret agent/spy"
"Flouriest"
"Princess/supermodel"
"Computer hacker"
"Mechanic"
"Policeman"
I have high doubts the majority of them would of picked the 'right' path.
In my opinion, people with bad spelling and grammar do not tend to be intellectuals.
Nope, it started off using StarOffice's and OpenOffice's (they both adopted the format at the same time to my knowledge) open XML format as a basis and then was developed/improved continuously under a Technical Committee, known as the OASIS industry consortium.
Google pack has Firefox, the licensing for Firefox isn't too different.
This gives openoffice the clipart from http://www.openclipart.org/
As for templates, there are some in OpenOffice, just not many.
In many cases, I do not have the sourcecode to the application I want to use either, so gcj really isn't all that useful for unsupported platforms. Every JRE I have encountered, seems more of a joke. I have tried really hard in making something that works across multiple JREs -- The end result is that I have had to resort to writing everything for Java 1.1, compile the binaries for 1.1 (as well as using deprecated functions which are only supported in 1.1).
Sorry, it's just a big mess, there isn't a solution right now.
One could write a virus in Java too.
Not quite, but certain very common anti-virus software is quite intensive.
Most resident scanners scan for patterns against their virus databases in active memory. It's rare that heuristic scanning picks up unique viruses.
The anti-virus scanner can block known viruses. The Sun JVM doesn't have such functionality. In theory Java is great, because the user gets a dialog on applets/webstart applications to run the application. However, there have been many certificate vulnerabilities with the JVM, there have been vulnerabilities related to executing unsigned java code by the use of certain java bytecode etc.
Well, this isn't a direct comparison since the code in both of these programs is substantially different but, just looking at some well known programs like utorrent + anti-virus verses Sun JVM + Azuerus, kdevelop (the recent kde related port) verses Sun JVM + netbeans etc. I find the java applications slower responding.
In what cases can I see it's slower? I can see the UIs redrawing, I can see the mouse clicks aren't being handled instantly, I can see the application just freezes somewhat unlike my other applications.
That said, I have seen benchmarks that show reads and writes are faster in Java compared to a C application, but in reality, that's just a small thing for me.
If I find that I can run things like utorrent, kdevelop (with all those kde libs) and anti-virus software without noticing these issues verses the java applications alone, with the anti-virus software disabled... I still notice all the redrawing, latency in my clicks. That in my opinion is not good enough.
Can't say the experience has been the same for me. I've messed with Java since 1.1 to 6, I've used various jdks, messed with native java compilers (including those that convert java source to .net bytecode). The alternatives to Sun JDK are always too far behind to run the best/popular java applications I've come across... Freenet, Azureus, Netbeans (although notably, netbeans doesn't run too bad on Sun JVM -- I just notice the UI redrawing).
Memory arguments are somewhat pointless, I could write software to compress data in memory to keep the memory usage smaller, but the side effect is that the application could behave much slower due to this. While unnecessary things shouldn't be in memory, responsiveness on consumer hardware from the interface is far more important.
Too often I see other Java developers, who tell users that their applications are not slow and there is nothing wrong with them, they get these results on their beefed up machine (quite normal for a developer, but bad for testing certain cases if your end user are common people who have 256MB ram, windows xp, crappy intensive anti-virus and who knows what else).
Even now, I look at one of my little side projects under the latest Sun jvm6, verses Sun jvm1.4... I can see clearly there is a lower framerate with i
Let me know when Java applications under the Sun JRE will run as responsive as C, Delphi, C++ applications do or better on the current people's commodity hardware -- WinXP + 256MB RAM + Resource intensive anti-virus software.
And before anyone mentions, no, I'm not interested on benchmarks done on multicore, 12GB RAM machines.
I find cars really not user friendly, hell, you need to have a license after training to even use one, this isn't the case with computers.Honestly, I haven't seen anyone who actually needed to mess with those options except in very specialized situations (servers etc).