No! MS Office is a decent product, but boy does it has its quirks. How come outlining is a PITA in Word, for example? Do we really need a clone of Access's backend when using a better database backend would do? Why do we need to emulate Visual Basic of Applications, of all programming languages, when Python could do the job much better? Where's Clippy? OpenOffice doesn't need to work exactly like MS Office; OpenOffice needs to work better than MS Office.
Let's learn from the success of Firefox (vs Mozilla).
Firefox succeeded because it didn't include every feature under the sun like the Seamonkey suite (Mozilla) did; it was because Firefox did its job (be a web browser), only its job, and did that job remarkably well. If you needed more functions and features, there are plenty of Firefox entensions and plugins.
OpenOffice seems to suffer from what Mozilla suffers; OpenOffice is huge, monolithic, and tries to include every feature under the sun. Say I needed a presentations program. I'm already pleased with AbiWord and Gnumeric (which seems to follow Firefox's model in terms of functionality), I just need a presentations program. I can't just download OpenOffice Impress, install it, and call it a day; I have to download the entire OpenOffice suite and install it (a hardship if you can't get a binary). Plus, there is no "GNUPresentation" or something like that that is PowerPoint compatible, I must fetch and install OpenOffice. I wish that each component of OpenOffice was split into separate applications, much like how MS Office is set up.
Still, though, I appreciate OpenOffice. I've used it a few times (not on my own machines, though) and it is pretty nice. The compatibility is near perfect, and the interface isn't annoying (unlike MS Office, don't get me started). Sometimes in the computer labs on campus, whenever somebody doesn't have MS Office and needs something cheap and compatible, I refer them to OpenOffice. Everybody that has used OpenOffice seems to be pleased with it. OpenOffice just need some more polish, better implementation of some features, and some modularity, that's all.
Out of all OSes, I feel the most productive in FreeBSD. FreeBSD has just about everything that I need in order to be productive. I use Window Maker as my window manager and applications such as the GIMP, Firefox, AbiWord, and Gnumeric every day. FreeBSD is also a superb development platform. It comes with all of the development tools that I need.
FreeBSD also comes with a very good package/port/dependency resolution system. Say I want to install the latest version of Firefox. All I have to do is cd into/usr/ports/www/firefox, type make install clean, and boom! Firefox is compiled and installed, dependencies included. Don't feel like compiling? Just type pkg_add -r firefox and it (as well as dependencies) will be fetched and installed as well). Just about everything (except for Java) is easy to install using ports and pacakges in FreeBSD.
Finally, FreeBSD has just about the best documentation there is. Anytime I am stuck with anything, I have the FreeBSD Handbook and other handbooks and articles on my computer. FreeBSD even comes with historical BSD documentation back from the days of 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD, which is also occasionally helpful. They are very thorough and in depth. The man pages are also very well written and one can actually learn from them.
I've used many OSes over the years: MS-DOS, Windows 95/98, Windows NT/2000/XP, Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, Slackware Linux, Red Hat Linux, and FreeBSD 5.x. I know how to use every one of them and I feel/felt productive in all of them (even DOS to an extent), but the one that I feel the most productive in is FreeBSD, even though I like Linux and I am very fond of Mac OS X (I wonder how Unix-like is OS X; I don't own a OS X-capable Mac). I'll probably be very productive in NetBSD or OpenBSD as well. As a aspiring computer science student, I find that learning FreeBSD has been a great experience, and it taught me a lot of things about computing in general that I would have never learned by sticking with Windows.
I agree; people believe that John Scully was the worst thing that happened to Apple. IMO, that's not true. Scully made his mistakes, but he was a decent CEO.
Now, if you want a horrible Apple CEO, look at Michael Spindler (1993-1995). Product quality went down the drain, Copland development never materialized, Apple couldn't defeat the Microsoft Windows juggernaut, and developers were starting to move to different platforms. Only good thing that he done was facilitate the change from Motorola 68K to PowerPC. Pretty much Spindler was to Apple as Fiorina was to HP. Gil Amelio (Spindler's replacement) tried to fix Spindler's mistakes, but he didn't do too well, either. Luckily, he ended up buying NeXT and Steve Jobs, and you know how the rest of the story goes....
...It was like, beep, beep, beep, and my report was all gone. Now you mean to tell me that you're willing to give me five dollars for that lost report?
The other? Software. There are still some tremendous voids in the software area. There is no equivalent to Visio (yes, I've tried Dia and it's cute, but it's not Visio), and the Gimp isn't Photoshop or even Paint Shop Pro. Linux needs more apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice that can really bridge the gap, and can offer clear advantages over Windows applications.
I agree with you. I have used Visio for my flowcharting assignments in my programming classes for about a few months. I use Visio at my school's computer lab. Visio, IMO, is probably the best program that Microsoft offers (other than Excel and Visual Studio.NET). Making flowcharts with Visio is a piece of cake. On the other hand, just a few days ago, I tried Dia. Dia is decent, but currently is doesn't hold a candle to Visio; Dia, to me, just doesn't work very well. It is just too bad that Visio is expensive (I can't afford it) and that there seems to be no real open source alternative (or even closed-source alternative; I wonder how OmniGraffle for OS X stacks up to Visio?).
On the other hand, I tried programs such as Firefox and Gnumeric. They are exactly the type of good applications that you are talking about. They not only do their job, but they do their job exceptionally well. Firefox is just about the best browser currently available, and Gnumeric can compete with Excel in many places; some even say that Gnumeric's statistical abilities are superior to Excel's.
If only I were an advanced C/C++ programmer and not just a beginner....
Tell me about it. I just had to install a driver for a HP scanner/fax/printer. It took an hour to download the driver (it was 15MB, and I have dialup), and the software that comes with the driver is annoying. For example, because the printer is low on black ink, every time the computer restarts (common on Windows 95), a blue dialog box says "Low on black ink." Then, there is some annoying blinking icon on the system tray warning the same thing to me. Finally, everytime I print a document, another blue dialog box comes up telling me that the document is printing, and stays on the screen until the document is finished printing. Um, hello? What if I want to type another document while another document is printing? I have to deal with that stupid dialog box.
And, that isn't even the worst of drivers. I've heard of some Windows drivers that come with spyware installed.
On the flipside, *nix drivers do their job, and only their job. Plus, I normally don't have to hunt for *nix drivers on the web, unless I have a specialized piece of hardware (like a high-end graphics card); *nix drivers, for the most part, come with the distribution. At the worst, configuring things such as sound cards and USB might require a kernel recompilation, but that isn't difficult at all. Windows, on the other hand, requires that I install third-party drivers, which are usually very bloated and very annoying.
The only advantage that Windows drivers have compared to *nix drivers is that Windows seems to have better support for "modems" and "printers" (there in quotes because these "modems" and "printers" are controlled by software, not by hardware; you'll need a real serial-port modem and a real PostScript printer if you expect them to work flawlessly with *nix).
Who uses Firefox? Only Linux zealots, hippies, and Mac users.
I'm a FreeBSD user who occasionally uses a Windows box, yet I'm a Firefox user. Hmmm, what does that make me? According to your logic, Netcraft confirmed that I'm a dying, Microsoft shill.
Real computer users use IE. Us real computer users that actually have jobs will not deal with third-class software like Firefox.
Real computer users use the best tools available. Us real computer users that actually have jobs will not waste their time and efforts with insecure, buggy, non-standards compliant software like Internet Exploder.
Have fun cleaning out your machine for spyware for the umpteenth time.
But fortunately, I've got 1GB of RAM, and there's barely any spyware, so I'm ok with it now. I just wish I didn't have to put either Dillo for Linux or IE6 on Win98 for those old late Pentium Is / early Pentium IIs I fix up for people in my spare time, since Firefox is a nice browser despite its flaws. Too bad it won't run decently on anything less than a Pentium III with 256MB of RAM.
Not quite. I have Firefox running on three very low end machines: a 475MHz K6-2 with FreeBSD, a 266MHz Pentium II with Windows 98se (which I'm typing this comment on now), and (get a load of this) an old junker 120MHz Pentium with Windows 95 that somebody gave to me a few weeks ago, all with 64MB RAM. Firefox runs quite well on all of them; it may take about 10-15 seconds for it to load, but once it is loaded, the brower's speed is pretty well.
Firefox might not run on an old 386 (has anyone tried yet?), but Firefox seems to take care of old PCs very well, as far as my experieces go.
I don't understand how companies can sell printers that don't support Postscript
For the exact reason why compaines can sell software modems (Winmodems) rather than the real thing. It is just something to watch out for as a *nix user.
I agree, too. Judging by the screenshots, the Mac OS X port looks very attractive and, to my knowledge, follows the Apple Human Interface Guidelines completely. Heck, it looks just as good as the Mail.app bundled with Mac OS X. The GNUstep version, on the other hand, doesn't look as attractive. Assuming that GNUstep applications follow the design of NEXTSTEP applications, it needs some work. The toolbar should look like buttons, not like an Internet Explorer 3.0-esque design. I also don't really like the arrangement of some of the widgets.
This is an example of the NEXTSTEP Mail.app program. You can see that the GNUMail.app application got many parts right, but its interface still needs some cleaning up to do.
I was just looking at OpenStep/GNUstep/Cocoa stuff before browsing Slashdot today, and I came here to search for old GNUstep articles. Interesting....
Anyways, GNUstep sounds like a very interesting platform. I have always been fond of NEXTSTEP and Mac OS X, and I have been curious about Objective-C and Cocoa. GNUstep gives me an opportunity to learn Objective-C and the OpenStep specification, before I switch to Mac OS X. I seem very impressed by the development environment, and as soon as I build up my C programming skills and learn Objective-C, I'll be developing programs, too.
I only wish, though, that GNUstep was a bit more popular among developers. GNUstep seems to lack programs such as web browsers, word processors, and spreadsheets. Porting applications such as Firefox, Abiword, and Gnumeric, for example, would be difficult because those applications are written in C++, not in C. (GNUstep still doesn't support Objective-C++, because of some difficulties that Apple and GCC has with Apple's Objective-C++ implementation). Even so, I feel that GNUstep has the potential to become a very powerful and influential platform for developers. If it can build its developer base and developers start building applications that are just as good, or better, than what NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP offered, just imagine the possibilities....
To add, the Performa x200 and x300 lines simply sucked. After reading this, you'll know why. I actually own a Performa 6220; it is a decent machine, as long as you are not connected to the Internet....
To be fair, not all Performas were bad. A Performa, after all, was a rebranded and repackaged Quadra or Power Mac bundled with software designed for home and education use. However, two reasons why the Performa line was bad was the confusing array of numbers (see parent post), duplication (what is really the difference between a Power Mac 6500 and a Performa 6500?) and the Performa x200 and x300 series (which gave the Performa and the PowerPC 603 chip bad names).
Because releasing something under a BSD license will result in a big corporation taking your hard work, smack a logo on it and after having made it incompatible with your version, charge YOU for it.
Yeah, but the big corporation cannot control the source code that they used in their project. The original project released under the BSD license would still be available for developers to study and develop from.
But, hey, everybody has a different definition of freedom. The GPL license says "You may use our code as long as any derivative of our projects are also under the GPL." The BSD license practically says "Do whatever you want with it." The former places freedom into the hands of the source code, meaning that the source code would always be free, while the latter places freedom to the hands of the developers and users, meaning that they are free to do what they like with the code.
I personally like both licenses, but because of the provisions of the GPL, it is more popular with developers, meaning that Linux, for example, is much more popular in the open source community than *BSD is. But hey, even though Linux gets a lot of the spotlight, *BSD benefits from nearly everything that Linux and the GPL has to offer.
Why don't they just fix the damn crappy software, instead of putting buckets under the leaks??
Because it would cut Microsoft's profits, that's why. Fixing Windows's security issues would practically mean rebuilding the entire operating system minus the NT kernel. To get rid of many of the security issues would mean writing a new shell (without Internet Exploder), getting rid of old, insecure backwards compatibility cruft and replacing them with new APIs, and enforcing the user-administrator model that all Unix-based operating systems have (and that Windows is supposed to have, but Microsoft doesn't enforce it, and many developers still develop toward single-user, DOS-based Windows, rather than multi-user, NT-based Windows.) To get rid of or change Internet Explorer and its other software integrated into the OS (Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, MS Office) would mean giving up its monopoly, too. Microsoft isn't changing its OS soon; if it does this, Windows will be more secure, but many users would have to deal with lesser backwards compatibility and dealing with a new way of working with Windows. They might start thinking, "Why should I buy Windows XtremelySecure Edition when I might as well get a Mac or use Linux?"
Put it like this; it is in Microsoft's best interest to continue "putting buckets under the leaks" rather than outright replacing the levee with a much stronger one.
Read your history before you start trolling. Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating system, derived from NEXTSTEP. The command line is included so that way Unix users and former NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP users can feel comfortable in Mac OS X.
When Apple bought out NeXT Computer, they realized that not only they need to keep the interface of the OS Mac-like, but they also need to make the OS Unix-like, too; what would have been the point of buying a Unix-based operating system if the resulting product wasn't going to take advantage of what Unix offers, anyways?
It wasn't Microsoft, that actually delivered the GUI to millions of people, that revolutionized computers.
Your post sounds like Microsoft distributed Windows to everyone by themselves. Microsoft didn't deliver anything without the help of OEM manufacturers. Microsoft allowed PC manufacturers such as Gateway and Dell to deliver its OS, and gave them huge incentives to only deliver Microsoft OSes. Where do most people buy their PCs from? That, plus the whole episode known as 1995 (PC prices lowering, Microsoft's marketing of Windows 95, Windows's integration with DOS [hurting other DOSes such as DR-DOS and PC-DOS], and Apple's problems with Copland and hardware issues such as the PowerBook 5300, and the Power Mac/Performa x200) is what led to Windows being on nearly every computer there is.
I strongly agree. Snide comments such as "BSD isn't for you," especially if the person trying to install it seems interested in learning about it, isn't going to help the Unix installed base grow. Such trolls hurt the *nix community in general because they are turning away prospective users.
If anything, us Unix users should be trying to convert as many people as we can to our OS, not turning them off and turning them away.
The best thing I think would be to provide more "whole system" examples/help rather than help for each individual command. Take some nice simple topics [how to add many users, how to determine network utilization programatically, how to determine open ports and what process is using them...] which are painful to do on windows and use a variety of unix tools to solve them.
The closest thing that I know of that you described is FreeBSD's included documentation, which includes a handbook, FAQ, articles, howtos, and manpages.
I started out with ZipSlack (a mini-version of Slackware that can be installed on a DOS partition alongside Windows) about nine months ago to get used to *nix before removing my Windows partition. ZipSlack didn't come with too much documentation other than manpages, but I found many resources on the Internet such as Linux Questions and the The Linux Documentation Project. Slackware also had some nice tutorials on their website, too, and I checked out Unix books from the library. Within months, I mastered some of the basics of Unix, and I was ready to get rid of Windows. Only things holding me back were a dial-up connection and a Winmodem.
Then, in September, I bit the bullet and deleted my Windows partition to install FreeBSD. My professor gave me a FreeBSD disk with some ports, too, so I decided to install that rather than downloading a Linux distribution (I have dialup, so that would take a long time). FreeBSD has a very good handbook that comes installed with the system. The handbook teaches a new user how to do things with FreeBSD, such as adding users, configuring a network, recompiling a kernel, etc. FreeBSD not only comes with the handbook, but it also comes with FAQs, howtos, and articles. FreeBSD's manpages are actually very readable. FreeBSD's mailing lists are also very helpful, too.
One of the advantages of free, open-source *nix is that there are tons of free resources on the Internet. I found so many tutorials on the Internet, from learning basic commands such as ls to learning Perl, that I cannot read them all. The Linux and FreeBSD communities are also very nice and very helpful. They want more people to move to their platforms, so they're willing to help those who are new to it.
Still, I wish there was a guide for Unix newbies (especially Windows-using non-geeks) that expressed the strengths of Unix over Windows, and show some of the non-geek types that Unix isn't that bad; yes, there is the command line, but you don't need to know every command (or even everything about a specific command), and that there are plenty of programs available that make Unix much more accessible (such as GNOME/KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla/Firefox, and other great applications).
....there has been a large jump in computers being turned into spam zombies, servers hosting warez, pr0n and other things, and malware installations.
This isn't flamebait, but I notice that a lot of the Joe Average-type of users don't know how to secure their machines. They are usually very ignorant about the Internet. The majority of them don't know what a firewall is, use a browser that resembles swiss cheese (cough*Internet Explorer*cough), and do other dangerous things such as going on any random site to download some spyware-infested game or opening attachments in Outlook.
Combine this ignorance about computers in general with a broadband connection, and they're an attacker's delight. With a broadband connection, most users wouldn't know that somebody is silently doing weird things with their computer, since their Internet connection is so fast, they wouldn't really notice a reduction in speed. Besides, broadband connections are always-on connections, further adding to the user's complete obliviousness to what's going on.
It's kind of sad, because all these users need is a firewall (preferably external), secure browser, and, most importantly, some education. However, the latter approach is really hard to accomplish, and in order for the users to find out about firewalls and secure browsers, they would need to be educated about them, anyways. Maybe we need a commercial that tells the public to install firewalls and install Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/insert-your-favorite-browser -here, and to be actively preventing malware and other nasties from being installed on the computer.
He didn't do that because he wanted to find a new use for his old laptop he received. He wanted to do it because he was impressed with some of the other laptop-monitor picture frames that he've seen before, and wanted to do the same.
A portable DVD player with pictures on a DVD might had been an easier approach, but the poster showed that with an old laptop, a remote control, and some software, one can achieve the same effect.
Besides, these projects are cool. Taking a device and using it differently than what is originally intended is very interesting.
Can someone show me the way to an OS with no security issues, please?
Try MS-DOS. No remote root exploits in over 23 years. No new viruses in a decade. No malware. No worms.
Of course, you have other options. You have the classic Mac OS, CP/M, Apple DOS, etc.
My point? Every OS that provides services to the Internet isn't 100% secure. Sure, Linux and *BSD may be more secure than Windows, but Linux and *BSD aren't perfect.
IE was added to Windows as an afterthought, and it really shows. M$ wanted to jump in on this Internet thing that Bill Gates, himself, said would never take off.
Just one minor correction:
:s/IE was added to Windows as/Security in IE was/g
IE was added to Windows to kill Netscape. When Bill Gates saw that Netscape was making lots of money on the Internet and saw that the Internet and cross-platform standards might threaten the existance of Windows, MS bought Moziac Spyglass, molded it into IE, ordered PC vendors not to bundle Netscape, gave it out for free (browsers weren't free at the time), and finally soldered it into Windows 98 and subsequent Windows releases, which led to the death of Netscape.
The reason why he should dump IE is because IE is soldered into Windows's shell. If there are any holes in SP2's IE, an exploit would do more damage if he is using IE as a browser than if he were using some other browser.
Besides that, IE is outdated. Aside from some security changes in the SP2 version of IE, it is still the same-old browser that is was back in 2001. The world of webpages has changed dramatically since then. The usage of technologies, such as CSS and XHTML, has grown over the years. IE isn't standards compliant; I've heard horror stories from web developers trying to write modern pages that look the same on Mozilla-based browsers, KHTML-based broswers, and IE.
Finally, this may be flamebait, but I'll take the karma hit; IE simply sucks from a usability standpoint. Unlike the Mozilla browser and Firefox, IE doesn't have features such as search toolbars (unless you download a third-party one) and tabbed browsing. The Mozilla browsers are also very extendable; extensions such as Adblock have been very helpful to me. I have a much easier time using broswers such as the Mozilla suite, Firefox, and Safari than using Internet Explorer. The browser doesn't get in the way of what I want to do; the browser just sits there and wait for my instructions. Those broswers have been the easiest, most intuitive browsers that I've ever used. These browsers make browsing safe again. I cannot fathom using IE again.
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No! MS Office is a decent product, but boy does it has its quirks. How come outlining is a PITA in Word, for example? Do we really need a clone of Access's backend when using a better database backend would do? Why do we need to emulate Visual Basic of Applications, of all programming languages, when Python could do the job much better? Where's Clippy? OpenOffice doesn't need to work exactly like MS Office; OpenOffice needs to work better than MS Office.
Firefox succeeded because it didn't include every feature under the sun like the Seamonkey suite (Mozilla) did; it was because Firefox did its job (be a web browser), only its job, and did that job remarkably well. If you needed more functions and features, there are plenty of Firefox entensions and plugins.
OpenOffice seems to suffer from what Mozilla suffers; OpenOffice is huge, monolithic, and tries to include every feature under the sun. Say I needed a presentations program. I'm already pleased with AbiWord and Gnumeric (which seems to follow Firefox's model in terms of functionality), I just need a presentations program. I can't just download OpenOffice Impress, install it, and call it a day; I have to download the entire OpenOffice suite and install it (a hardship if you can't get a binary). Plus, there is no "GNUPresentation" or something like that that is PowerPoint compatible, I must fetch and install OpenOffice. I wish that each component of OpenOffice was split into separate applications, much like how MS Office is set up.
Still, though, I appreciate OpenOffice. I've used it a few times (not on my own machines, though) and it is pretty nice. The compatibility is near perfect, and the interface isn't annoying (unlike MS Office, don't get me started). Sometimes in the computer labs on campus, whenever somebody doesn't have MS Office and needs something cheap and compatible, I refer them to OpenOffice. Everybody that has used OpenOffice seems to be pleased with it. OpenOffice just need some more polish, better implementation of some features, and some modularity, that's all.
Out of all OSes, I feel the most productive in FreeBSD. FreeBSD has just about everything that I need in order to be productive. I use Window Maker as my window manager and applications such as the GIMP, Firefox, AbiWord, and Gnumeric every day. FreeBSD is also a superb development platform. It comes with all of the development tools that I need.
FreeBSD also comes with a very good package/port/dependency resolution system. Say I want to install the latest version of Firefox. All I have to do is cd into /usr/ports/www/firefox, type make install clean, and boom! Firefox is compiled and installed, dependencies included. Don't feel like compiling? Just type pkg_add -r firefox and it (as well as dependencies) will be fetched and installed as well). Just about everything (except for Java) is easy to install using ports and pacakges in FreeBSD.
Finally, FreeBSD has just about the best documentation there is. Anytime I am stuck with anything, I have the FreeBSD Handbook and other handbooks and articles on my computer. FreeBSD even comes with historical BSD documentation back from the days of 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD, which is also occasionally helpful. They are very thorough and in depth. The man pages are also very well written and one can actually learn from them.
I've used many OSes over the years: MS-DOS, Windows 95/98, Windows NT/2000/XP, Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, Slackware Linux, Red Hat Linux, and FreeBSD 5.x. I know how to use every one of them and I feel/felt productive in all of them (even DOS to an extent), but the one that I feel the most productive in is FreeBSD, even though I like Linux and I am very fond of Mac OS X (I wonder how Unix-like is OS X; I don't own a OS X-capable Mac). I'll probably be very productive in NetBSD or OpenBSD as well. As a aspiring computer science student, I find that learning FreeBSD has been a great experience, and it taught me a lot of things about computing in general that I would have never learned by sticking with Windows.
I agree; people believe that John Scully was the worst thing that happened to Apple. IMO, that's not true. Scully made his mistakes, but he was a decent CEO.
Now, if you want a horrible Apple CEO, look at Michael Spindler (1993-1995). Product quality went down the drain, Copland development never materialized, Apple couldn't defeat the Microsoft Windows juggernaut, and developers were starting to move to different platforms. Only good thing that he done was facilitate the change from Motorola 68K to PowerPC. Pretty much Spindler was to Apple as Fiorina was to HP. Gil Amelio (Spindler's replacement) tried to fix Spindler's mistakes, but he didn't do too well, either. Luckily, he ended up buying NeXT and Steve Jobs, and you know how the rest of the story goes....
...It was like, beep, beep, beep, and my report was all gone. Now you mean to tell me that you're willing to give me five dollars for that lost report?
I agree with you. I have used Visio for my flowcharting assignments in my programming classes for about a few months. I use Visio at my school's computer lab. Visio, IMO, is probably the best program that Microsoft offers (other than Excel and Visual Studio .NET). Making flowcharts with Visio is a piece of cake. On the other hand, just a few days ago, I tried Dia. Dia is decent, but currently is doesn't hold a candle to Visio; Dia, to me, just doesn't work very well. It is just too bad that Visio is expensive (I can't afford it) and that there seems to be no real open source alternative (or even closed-source alternative; I wonder how OmniGraffle for OS X stacks up to Visio?).
On the other hand, I tried programs such as Firefox and Gnumeric. They are exactly the type of good applications that you are talking about. They not only do their job, but they do their job exceptionally well. Firefox is just about the best browser currently available, and Gnumeric can compete with Excel in many places; some even say that Gnumeric's statistical abilities are superior to Excel's.
If only I were an advanced C/C++ programmer and not just a beginner....
And, that isn't even the worst of drivers. I've heard of some Windows drivers that come with spyware installed.
On the flipside, *nix drivers do their job, and only their job. Plus, I normally don't have to hunt for *nix drivers on the web, unless I have a specialized piece of hardware (like a high-end graphics card); *nix drivers, for the most part, come with the distribution. At the worst, configuring things such as sound cards and USB might require a kernel recompilation, but that isn't difficult at all. Windows, on the other hand, requires that I install third-party drivers, which are usually very bloated and very annoying.
The only advantage that Windows drivers have compared to *nix drivers is that Windows seems to have better support for "modems" and "printers" (there in quotes because these "modems" and "printers" are controlled by software, not by hardware; you'll need a real serial-port modem and a real PostScript printer if you expect them to work flawlessly with *nix).
I'm a FreeBSD user who occasionally uses a Windows box, yet I'm a Firefox user. Hmmm, what does that make me? According to your logic, Netcraft confirmed that I'm a dying, Microsoft shill.
Real computer users use the best tools available. Us real computer users that actually have jobs will not waste their time and efforts with insecure, buggy, non-standards compliant software like Internet Exploder.
Have fun cleaning out your machine for spyware for the umpteenth time.
Not quite. I have Firefox running on three very low end machines: a 475MHz K6-2 with FreeBSD, a 266MHz Pentium II with Windows 98se (which I'm typing this comment on now), and (get a load of this) an old junker 120MHz Pentium with Windows 95 that somebody gave to me a few weeks ago, all with 64MB RAM. Firefox runs quite well on all of them; it may take about 10-15 seconds for it to load, but once it is loaded, the brower's speed is pretty well.
Firefox might not run on an old 386 (has anyone tried yet?), but Firefox seems to take care of old PCs very well, as far as my experieces go.
For the exact reason why compaines can sell software modems (Winmodems) rather than the real thing. It is just something to watch out for as a *nix user.
I agree, too. Judging by the screenshots, the Mac OS X port looks very attractive and, to my knowledge, follows the Apple Human Interface Guidelines completely. Heck, it looks just as good as the Mail.app bundled with Mac OS X. The GNUstep version, on the other hand, doesn't look as attractive. Assuming that GNUstep applications follow the design of NEXTSTEP applications, it needs some work. The toolbar should look like buttons, not like an Internet Explorer 3.0-esque design. I also don't really like the arrangement of some of the widgets.
This is an example of the NEXTSTEP Mail.app program. You can see that the GNUMail.app application got many parts right, but its interface still needs some cleaning up to do.
I was just looking at OpenStep/GNUstep/Cocoa stuff before browsing Slashdot today, and I came here to search for old GNUstep articles. Interesting....
Anyways, GNUstep sounds like a very interesting platform. I have always been fond of NEXTSTEP and Mac OS X, and I have been curious about Objective-C and Cocoa. GNUstep gives me an opportunity to learn Objective-C and the OpenStep specification, before I switch to Mac OS X. I seem very impressed by the development environment, and as soon as I build up my C programming skills and learn Objective-C, I'll be developing programs, too.
I only wish, though, that GNUstep was a bit more popular among developers. GNUstep seems to lack programs such as web browsers, word processors, and spreadsheets. Porting applications such as Firefox, Abiword, and Gnumeric, for example, would be difficult because those applications are written in C++, not in C. (GNUstep still doesn't support Objective-C++, because of some difficulties that Apple and GCC has with Apple's Objective-C++ implementation). Even so, I feel that GNUstep has the potential to become a very powerful and influential platform for developers. If it can build its developer base and developers start building applications that are just as good, or better, than what NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP offered, just imagine the possibilities....
Err, what about the Mac LC III? And considered a pretty good machine, too.
To add, the Performa x200 and x300 lines simply sucked. After reading this, you'll know why. I actually own a Performa 6220; it is a decent machine, as long as you are not connected to the Internet....
To be fair, not all Performas were bad. A Performa, after all, was a rebranded and repackaged Quadra or Power Mac bundled with software designed for home and education use. However, two reasons why the Performa line was bad was the confusing array of numbers (see parent post), duplication (what is really the difference between a Power Mac 6500 and a Performa 6500?) and the Performa x200 and x300 series (which gave the Performa and the PowerPC 603 chip bad names).
Yeah, but the big corporation cannot control the source code that they used in their project. The original project released under the BSD license would still be available for developers to study and develop from.
But, hey, everybody has a different definition of freedom. The GPL license says "You may use our code as long as any derivative of our projects are also under the GPL." The BSD license practically says "Do whatever you want with it." The former places freedom into the hands of the source code, meaning that the source code would always be free, while the latter places freedom to the hands of the developers and users, meaning that they are free to do what they like with the code.
I personally like both licenses, but because of the provisions of the GPL, it is more popular with developers, meaning that Linux, for example, is much more popular in the open source community than *BSD is. But hey, even though Linux gets a lot of the spotlight, *BSD benefits from nearly everything that Linux and the GPL has to offer.
This isn't Netscape who doesn't know anything about UI. The interface more than likely is AOL's idea.
Because it would cut Microsoft's profits, that's why. Fixing Windows's security issues would practically mean rebuilding the entire operating system minus the NT kernel. To get rid of many of the security issues would mean writing a new shell (without Internet Exploder), getting rid of old, insecure backwards compatibility cruft and replacing them with new APIs, and enforcing the user-administrator model that all Unix-based operating systems have (and that Windows is supposed to have, but Microsoft doesn't enforce it, and many developers still develop toward single-user, DOS-based Windows, rather than multi-user, NT-based Windows.) To get rid of or change Internet Explorer and its other software integrated into the OS (Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, MS Office) would mean giving up its monopoly, too. Microsoft isn't changing its OS soon; if it does this, Windows will be more secure, but many users would have to deal with lesser backwards compatibility and dealing with a new way of working with Windows. They might start thinking, "Why should I buy Windows XtremelySecure Edition when I might as well get a Mac or use Linux?"
Put it like this; it is in Microsoft's best interest to continue "putting buckets under the leaks" rather than outright replacing the levee with a much stronger one.
Read your history before you start trolling. Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating system, derived from NEXTSTEP. The command line is included so that way Unix users and former NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP users can feel comfortable in Mac OS X.
When Apple bought out NeXT Computer, they realized that not only they need to keep the interface of the OS Mac-like, but they also need to make the OS Unix-like, too; what would have been the point of buying a Unix-based operating system if the resulting product wasn't going to take advantage of what Unix offers, anyways?
Your post sounds like Microsoft distributed Windows to everyone by themselves. Microsoft didn't deliver anything without the help of OEM manufacturers. Microsoft allowed PC manufacturers such as Gateway and Dell to deliver its OS, and gave them huge incentives to only deliver Microsoft OSes. Where do most people buy their PCs from? That, plus the whole episode known as 1995 (PC prices lowering, Microsoft's marketing of Windows 95, Windows's integration with DOS [hurting other DOSes such as DR-DOS and PC-DOS], and Apple's problems with Copland and hardware issues such as the PowerBook 5300, and the Power Mac/Performa x200) is what led to Windows being on nearly every computer there is.
I strongly agree. Snide comments such as "BSD isn't for you," especially if the person trying to install it seems interested in learning about it, isn't going to help the Unix installed base grow. Such trolls hurt the *nix community in general because they are turning away prospective users.
If anything, us Unix users should be trying to convert as many people as we can to our OS, not turning them off and turning them away.
The closest thing that I know of that you described is FreeBSD's included documentation, which includes a handbook, FAQ, articles, howtos, and manpages.
I started out with ZipSlack (a mini-version of Slackware that can be installed on a DOS partition alongside Windows) about nine months ago to get used to *nix before removing my Windows partition. ZipSlack didn't come with too much documentation other than manpages, but I found many resources on the Internet such as Linux Questions and the The Linux Documentation Project. Slackware also had some nice tutorials on their website, too, and I checked out Unix books from the library. Within months, I mastered some of the basics of Unix, and I was ready to get rid of Windows. Only things holding me back were a dial-up connection and a Winmodem.
Then, in September, I bit the bullet and deleted my Windows partition to install FreeBSD. My professor gave me a FreeBSD disk with some ports, too, so I decided to install that rather than downloading a Linux distribution (I have dialup, so that would take a long time). FreeBSD has a very good handbook that comes installed with the system. The handbook teaches a new user how to do things with FreeBSD, such as adding users, configuring a network, recompiling a kernel, etc. FreeBSD not only comes with the handbook, but it also comes with FAQs, howtos, and articles. FreeBSD's manpages are actually very readable. FreeBSD's mailing lists are also very helpful, too.
One of the advantages of free, open-source *nix is that there are tons of free resources on the Internet. I found so many tutorials on the Internet, from learning basic commands such as ls to learning Perl, that I cannot read them all. The Linux and FreeBSD communities are also very nice and very helpful. They want more people to move to their platforms, so they're willing to help those who are new to it.
Still, I wish there was a guide for Unix newbies (especially Windows-using non-geeks) that expressed the strengths of Unix over Windows, and show some of the non-geek types that Unix isn't that bad; yes, there is the command line, but you don't need to know every command (or even everything about a specific command), and that there are plenty of programs available that make Unix much more accessible (such as GNOME/KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla/Firefox, and other great applications).
....there has been a large jump in computers being turned into spam zombies, servers hosting warez, pr0n and other things, and malware installations.
This isn't flamebait, but I notice that a lot of the Joe Average-type of users don't know how to secure their machines. They are usually very ignorant about the Internet. The majority of them don't know what a firewall is, use a browser that resembles swiss cheese (cough*Internet Explorer*cough), and do other dangerous things such as going on any random site to download some spyware-infested game or opening attachments in Outlook.
Combine this ignorance about computers in general with a broadband connection, and they're an attacker's delight. With a broadband connection, most users wouldn't know that somebody is silently doing weird things with their computer, since their Internet connection is so fast, they wouldn't really notice a reduction in speed. Besides, broadband connections are always-on connections, further adding to the user's complete obliviousness to what's going on.
It's kind of sad, because all these users need is a firewall (preferably external), secure browser, and, most importantly, some education. However, the latter approach is really hard to accomplish, and in order for the users to find out about firewalls and secure browsers, they would need to be educated about them, anyways. Maybe we need a commercial that tells the public to install firewalls and install Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/insert-your-favorite-browser -here, and to be actively preventing malware and other nasties from being installed on the computer.
He didn't do that because he wanted to find a new use for his old laptop he received. He wanted to do it because he was impressed with some of the other laptop-monitor picture frames that he've seen before, and wanted to do the same.
A portable DVD player with pictures on a DVD might had been an easier approach, but the poster showed that with an old laptop, a remote control, and some software, one can achieve the same effect.
Besides, these projects are cool. Taking a device and using it differently than what is originally intended is very interesting.
Try MS-DOS. No remote root exploits in over 23 years. No new viruses in a decade. No malware. No worms.
Of course, you have other options. You have the classic Mac OS, CP/M, Apple DOS, etc.
My point? Every OS that provides services to the Internet isn't 100% secure. Sure, Linux and *BSD may be more secure than Windows, but Linux and *BSD aren't perfect.
Just one minor correction:
:s/IE was added to Windows as/Security in IE was/g
IE was added to Windows to kill Netscape. When Bill Gates saw that Netscape was making lots of money on the Internet and saw that the Internet and cross-platform standards might threaten the existance of Windows, MS bought Moziac Spyglass, molded it into IE, ordered PC vendors not to bundle Netscape, gave it out for free (browsers weren't free at the time), and finally soldered it into Windows 98 and subsequent Windows releases, which led to the death of Netscape.
The reason why he should dump IE is because IE is soldered into Windows's shell. If there are any holes in SP2's IE, an exploit would do more damage if he is using IE as a browser than if he were using some other browser.
Besides that, IE is outdated. Aside from some security changes in the SP2 version of IE, it is still the same-old browser that is was back in 2001. The world of webpages has changed dramatically since then. The usage of technologies, such as CSS and XHTML, has grown over the years. IE isn't standards compliant; I've heard horror stories from web developers trying to write modern pages that look the same on Mozilla-based browsers, KHTML-based broswers, and IE.
Finally, this may be flamebait, but I'll take the karma hit; IE simply sucks from a usability standpoint. Unlike the Mozilla browser and Firefox, IE doesn't have features such as search toolbars (unless you download a third-party one) and tabbed browsing. The Mozilla browsers are also very extendable; extensions such as Adblock have been very helpful to me. I have a much easier time using broswers such as the Mozilla suite, Firefox, and Safari than using Internet Explorer. The browser doesn't get in the way of what I want to do; the browser just sits there and wait for my instructions. Those broswers have been the easiest, most intuitive browsers that I've ever used. These browsers make browsing safe again. I cannot fathom using IE again.