Could I please be pointed to the reasons of these comments? I've used a lot of Linux distros in the past, and Kubuntu -that I use at work since 6.04- always seemed to me the best in terms of both usability, simplicity and functionality. It also seems to me it has the best thought KDE desktop I've always seen. It's both simple and fully powerful. What is wrong in the Kubuntu interface?
Hey, you should know that the -OMGPONIES flag makes all apps and libs shine gorgeously with GLITTER!!!! Every seasoned Unix admin knows that. Isn't it the beauty of Free Software?
From watching people actually use file management systems (I actually design GUIs at my job) the average Joe wants to drag files from one window to another, not use a tabbed file management system.
- The venerable X11 buffer - select and middle click. This works great BUT if you happen to select something by mistake whatever you had in the clipboard before has gone. This is especially annoying if you select a link from somewhere and want to *replace* the URL in the address bar of Firefox.
That's intended behaviour, not a bug. Select = copy. Middle click = paste. How do you think the clipboard can know that the *second* selection is not a copy?
- Then there is the Gnome Clipboard (I believe that's what it is called). This is the Control-C, Control-V clipboard which works like in Windows - with one subtle difference. If you close the program you have cut/copied from, the content of the clipboard is *gone*.
I heard of this bug, and it *is* a bug, but what the hell is the purpose of closing a program after you copied info from that? It's a sane measure to wait until you pasted, just to check if you copied-and-pasted what you really wanted to paste, for example. Yes, it's formally a bug, and I agree it has to be fixed (it makes sense to have the intact clipboard if the ctrl-c app crashes, for example) but every sane user should almost never have seen it.
As for emacs and vim, I don't use them, so I trust you about the issues.
What Linux needs is ONE universal clipboard. Just ONE. It shouldn't be part of Gnome, KDE, Xfce or even X11. It should be a system service. So you can copy and paste LIKE A SANE PERSON in ALL PROGRAMS. Just like on Windows. Or a Mac.
You could throw in persistence across reboots. And maybe across different sessions (say, local X11 and remote SSH). Then it would even be better than everything else. I'm actually thinking of implementing something like that - maybe even with X11 and Gnome clipboard bindings to "unify" them finally.
Ok, I surely agree with that and it would be damn cool. It would be really good. What I'm saying may be corrected this way: today, for Joe User using mostly desktop apps, the issue is practically solved. But I endorse what you say.
KDE has shortcomings, but its printer management is the best I've ever seen so far on any OS. I remember having my XP-using collegues struggling to install the new network printer, while I've done it on Kubuntu with 4 clicks. Really.
There is NO solution for everyone. So -I think- they are bypassing the "flexibility VS confusion" problem by building a desktop that basically has two possible interfaces: a "simple" one with simple apps and an "expert" one with complex apps. To each one for its needs. But keeping the same desktop and communication process behind, so that switching from Dolphin to Konqueror is not a revolution as switching from Gnome to KDE. You still use the same desktop, you just bring it to another level.
To me it seems damn clever. What's wrong with that?
You are trolling. I've seen no file manager that is easier to use, richer of features and slick as a GUI as Konqueror, for example. Wake me up when the Windows file manager has tabs for example (maybe Vista has, I don't know: but Konqueror had that for ages). Or split view activable by clicking a button. Or text editor and word processor integration.
When I started using Linux, after years and years of Windows, I almost screamed at how good was Konqueror. I think it's one of my Linux "killer apps". And still when rarely forced to use Windows at work I scream at not having that file manager available. It will be nice to have Konqueror at work on the Windows machines, with KDE 4.
Boy, they are doing it. I've seen a screenshot of SVN Konqueror running under Windows. You can look for it on google.
It's surely not easy, but it's close to working.
As a current Linux user that mixes everyday Gnome, KDE, and desktop-agnostic apps at home and work, I can assure you the "clipboard hell" issue has been fixed long ago.
Right! They should behave like the serious folks in Microsoft calling everything with the full beautiful "Windows" before the app name instead of a little "K": Windows Mail, Windows Firewall, Windows Media Player. Or Apple, using a slick, minuscule "i" instead of a boasting "K": iPod, iTunes, etc. True, big companies really HAVE grown the fuck up!
The difference is that the code is not running on my machine. I'm just submitting data to an external machine and fetching results. It's a BIG difference.
Imagine that in the future, Microsoft makes a web version of Office. There'd be nothing preventing them from using GPL code in their product without releasing their own code.
They would have the full right to do so, IMHO. Who cares if it's Microsoft, Google or me.
A web app on a website is a source code usage, not distribution. The code runs on the web server and never leaves it. So why should I bother about it? In what sense it's different from me modifying a GPL program on my machine only and having my friends using it on my machine?
I have a number of friends on Citizendium, I like the concept behind your project, but I'm not thinking about joining, currently. I still believe in the "bazaar" approach of Wikipedia, although I'm well aware of its shortcomings.
What I'd want is your project to act as a peer review of Wikipedia, and I'd want Wikipedia to honour that peer-review by 1)using the peer-reviewed version, if existing, as the current article version, with the fluid version being the "unstable", editable one 2)having admins reject edits that go against the peer-reviewed version. But I don't like the idea of forking Wikipedia at all -waste of resources for both projects.
However I always keep an eye on CZ and I can always change my mind.
Shouldn't in this case Citizendium "just" be a collection of "peer-reviewed" Wikipedia articles? A "stable" (in the software sense) Wikipedia? Why completely forking an encyclopaedia doing Citizendium articles on subjects where the Citizendium process offers no advantage on the Wikipedia one?
Really nice, and I mostly agree. Basically, you are asking for peer review for Wikipedia, that's something I really want.
I see three main problems:
- A.edu address is not a good technical solution. I am a Ph.D. student in Italy, and we don't have.edu addresses (my university address is @unibo.it). OTOH, I don't know if ALL.edu addresses come from respectable institutions (I remember I heard that some diploma mills had.edu addresses)
- There are subjects that are basically hard to be covered by academic institutions. Internet fads, TV series, web comics, urbant legends... What kind of academic peer review can be done on these articles? (Yes, they are important articles IMHO. They make of Wikipedia a resource that a traditional encyclopaedia cannot be).
- On the other hand, sometimes someone doesn't need to be a Ph.D. to be autoritative on a subject. A 16-y.o. hacker can be more autoritative on some software details than an informatics professor.
Probably not the TFA particular case, but I have seen keyboards apparently not working on Linux due to software issues.
In the specific case, I had some subtle hardware glitch that made my parents keyboard bbbbbeehhhhhaaavvvvveeeeeeee llliiiiikkkkeeee ttttttttthhhiiiiiiiisss with Kubuntu quite randomly. I was to blame the keyboard, but the box had dual boot, and with Windows XP it worked perfectly. After a lot of quite deep Google mining, I found I could solve the problem by adding "clock=rtc" or something similar to the kernel command line in GRUB.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, XFCE and Firefox are both GTK based, so it's like KDE+Konqueror. Using GTK apps makes a single toolkit solution under XFCE.
One important point: with such a small screen, it's unlikely the users will want to keep too many apps open at once.
There are virtual desktops.
KDe takes less RAM iff you use Konqueror iso FireFox, and KEdit iso OpenOffice. Mixed suites eats RAM.
Gold truth, but I'd have settled for something XFCE based maybe (Xubuntu comes to mind).
Yes but CDs become digital files so easily and so often today that the division between the two realms is pretty much senseless.
It made the entire movement look like they wanted to buy one CD and then "back it up" among the entire population of the planet.
Well, that's what I'd want to do.
Yes, and that's a problem
It's not a problem. It's a wonderful opportunity.
I remember a nice bug in Civilization I for DOS. If you had a settler modifying a terrain, you could have every terrain improvement in one turn by:
while not improved {
make the settler improve (e.g. pressing "i" for irrigation)
re-activate the settler by clicking on it
}
The number of cycles is equal to the number of turns it would have required to build the improvement. Too bad in FreeCiv they fixed that...
Oh, you're right. I am Italian, not of English mother language, sorry.
Could I please be pointed to the reasons of these comments? I've used a lot of Linux distros in the past, and Kubuntu -that I use at work since 6.04- always seemed to me the best in terms of both usability, simplicity and functionality. It also seems to me it has the best thought KDE desktop I've always seen. It's both simple and fully powerful. What is wrong in the Kubuntu interface?
Isn't it the IT equivalent of a mandala? I bet some cyber-mystic could use it as a ritual...
Hey, you should know that the -OMGPONIES flag makes all apps and libs shine gorgeously with GLITTER!!!! Every seasoned Unix admin knows that. Isn't it the beauty of Free Software?
You can't get irony, isn't it?
From watching people actually use file management systems (I actually design GUIs at my job) the average Joe wants to drag files from one window to another, not use a tabbed file management system.
You can do it on Konqueror every day.
- The venerable X11 buffer - select and middle click. This works great BUT if you happen to select something by mistake whatever you had in the clipboard before has gone. This is especially annoying if you select a link from somewhere and want to *replace* the URL in the address bar of Firefox.
That's intended behaviour, not a bug. Select = copy. Middle click = paste. How do you think the clipboard can know that the *second* selection is not a copy?
- Then there is the Gnome Clipboard (I believe that's what it is called). This is the Control-C, Control-V clipboard which works like in Windows - with one subtle difference. If you close the program you have cut/copied from, the content of the clipboard is *gone*.
I heard of this bug, and it *is* a bug, but what the hell is the purpose of closing a program after you copied info from that? It's a sane measure to wait until you pasted, just to check if you copied-and-pasted what you really wanted to paste, for example. Yes, it's formally a bug, and I agree it has to be fixed (it makes sense to have the intact clipboard if the ctrl-c app crashes, for example) but every sane user should almost never have seen it.
As for emacs and vim, I don't use them, so I trust you about the issues.
What Linux needs is ONE universal clipboard. Just ONE. It shouldn't be part of Gnome, KDE, Xfce or even X11. It should be a system service. So you can copy and paste LIKE A SANE PERSON in ALL PROGRAMS. Just like on Windows. Or a Mac. You could throw in persistence across reboots. And maybe across different sessions (say, local X11 and remote SSH). Then it would even be better than everything else. I'm actually thinking of implementing something like that - maybe even with X11 and Gnome clipboard bindings to "unify" them finally.
Ok, I surely agree with that and it would be damn cool. It would be really good. What I'm saying may be corrected this way: today, for Joe User using mostly desktop apps, the issue is practically solved. But I endorse what you say.
KDE has shortcomings, but its printer management is the best I've ever seen so far on any OS. I remember having my XP-using collegues struggling to install the new network printer, while I've done it on Kubuntu with 4 clicks. Really.
There is NO solution for everyone. So -I think- they are bypassing the "flexibility VS confusion" problem by building a desktop that basically has two possible interfaces: a "simple" one with simple apps and an "expert" one with complex apps. To each one for its needs. But keeping the same desktop and communication process behind, so that switching from Dolphin to Konqueror is not a revolution as switching from Gnome to KDE. You still use the same desktop, you just bring it to another level.
To me it seems damn clever. What's wrong with that?
You are trolling. I've seen no file manager that is easier to use, richer of features and slick as a GUI as Konqueror, for example. Wake me up when the Windows file manager has tabs for example (maybe Vista has, I don't know: but Konqueror had that for ages). Or split view activable by clicking a button. Or text editor and word processor integration.
When I started using Linux, after years and years of Windows, I almost screamed at how good was Konqueror. I think it's one of my Linux "killer apps". And still when rarely forced to use Windows at work I scream at not having that file manager available. It will be nice to have Konqueror at work on the Windows machines, with KDE 4.
Boy, they are doing it. I've seen a screenshot of SVN Konqueror running under Windows. You can look for it on google.
It's surely not easy, but it's close to working.
As a current Linux user that mixes everyday Gnome, KDE, and desktop-agnostic apps at home and work, I can assure you the "clipboard hell" issue has been fixed long ago.
Right! They should behave like the serious folks in Microsoft calling everything with the full beautiful "Windows" before the app name instead of a little "K": Windows Mail, Windows Firewall, Windows Media Player. Or Apple, using a slick, minuscule "i" instead of a boasting "K": iPod, iTunes, etc. True, big companies really HAVE grown the fuck up!
[sarcasm mode off]The difference is that the code is not running on my machine. I'm just submitting data to an external machine and fetching results. It's a BIG difference.
Imagine that in the future, Microsoft makes a web version of Office. There'd be nothing preventing them from using GPL code in their product without releasing their own code.
They would have the full right to do so, IMHO. Who cares if it's Microsoft, Google or me.
And I've never understood why this is bad.
A web app on a website is a source code usage, not distribution. The code runs on the web server and never leaves it. So why should I bother about it? In what sense it's different from me modifying a GPL program on my machine only and having my friends using it on my machine?
I have a number of friends on Citizendium, I like the concept behind your project, but I'm not thinking about joining, currently. I still believe in the "bazaar" approach of Wikipedia, although I'm well aware of its shortcomings.
What I'd want is your project to act as a peer review of Wikipedia, and I'd want Wikipedia to honour that peer-review by 1)using the peer-reviewed version, if existing, as the current article version, with the fluid version being the "unstable", editable one 2)having admins reject edits that go against the peer-reviewed version. But I don't like the idea of forking Wikipedia at all -waste of resources for both projects.
However I always keep an eye on CZ and I can always change my mind.
Shouldn't in this case Citizendium "just" be a collection of "peer-reviewed" Wikipedia articles? A "stable" (in the software sense) Wikipedia? Why completely forking an encyclopaedia doing Citizendium articles on subjects where the Citizendium process offers no advantage on the Wikipedia one?
Really nice, and I mostly agree. Basically, you are asking for peer review for Wikipedia, that's something I really want.
I see three main problems: .edu address is not a good technical solution. I am a Ph.D. student in Italy, and we don't have .edu addresses (my university address is @unibo.it). OTOH, I don't know if ALL .edu addresses come from respectable institutions (I remember I heard that some diploma mills had .edu addresses)
- A
- There are subjects that are basically hard to be covered by academic institutions. Internet fads, TV series, web comics, urbant legends... What kind of academic peer review can be done on these articles? (Yes, they are important articles IMHO. They make of Wikipedia a resource that a traditional encyclopaedia cannot be).
- On the other hand, sometimes someone doesn't need to be a Ph.D. to be autoritative on a subject. A 16-y.o. hacker can be more autoritative on some software details than an informatics professor.
Probably not the TFA particular case, but I have seen keyboards apparently not working on Linux due to software issues. In the specific case, I had some subtle hardware glitch that made my parents keyboard bbbbbeehhhhhaaavvvvveeeeeeee llliiiiikkkkeeee ttttttttthhhiiiiiiiisss with Kubuntu quite randomly. I was to blame the keyboard, but the box had dual boot, and with Windows XP it worked perfectly. After a lot of quite deep Google mining, I found I could solve the problem by adding "clock=rtc" or something similar to the kernel command line in GRUB.