I don't think you understand. Without GNU Linux is nothing. Linus didn't just wake up one morning and write a C compiler, C library, editor, debugger, etc. He wrote a kernel. And then he and others adapted the GNU system to run on his kernel. The GNU in GNU/Linux isn't about how much code GNU contributed; it is about giving credit to the GNU project that has spent that last twenty years working on writing a UNIX compatible OS. You can run GNU without the Linux--just grab the latest Debian Hurd images. The Hurd works today. Pure GNU may not work as well as GNU/Linux, but it works. Explain to me what you would call a system running the Solaris kernel but with all of the Sun tools replaced with GNU ones. Would that still be Solaris? Just think how you would feel if you were RMS and spent so long working on GNU, only to have Linus come along and not give your life's work any credit. RMS suggested Lignux before, I think that was perfectly reasonable. But Linus wouldn't agree to adding one silent letter...I also dislike the Open Source movement and just wish everyone would put their egos away (so now you'll call me a hypocrit).
(on a side note, today was the first time since I started reading/. three years ago I was moderated down, and I'm going to guess this comment will be moderated down too). I'm cold, wet, and tired. Don't take what I wrote the wrong way.
The title of the article is correct; remember that the kernel is Linux, and the OS is GNU/Linux. So this is a Linux configuration tool. So what you want is a universal GNU/Linux configuration tool (I know, I know, now you all hate me and want me to die). The problem with writing this universal tool is that every program uses a different configuration syntax, so you would have to write each sub-tool separately. Alternatively, all configuration done with the tool could be stored in a special format and translated to the real config format by a conversion program.
Not really...the discs have a physical watermark, so you could rip them with a sacd player (you can try to prevent ripping, but someone will always find away around it). The big thing is that you won't be able to burn SACDs because of the watermark. So, you'll be able to rip but not burn. Just get a portable ogg player whenever they get released (since vorbis supports an abitrary number of channels encoding those 5.1 streams should work, right?) or an mp3 player now. But then you'll lose the extra quality (mp3 can't use greater than 32-bits per sample, right? I have no idea). I really need to read more on what vorbis can do (it works for me now, so I don't have much of an urge to), but I bet it can (or will) be able to encode > 32-bits per sample (at least for input).
I don't have a zaurus, but I want to get one so I tracked down the ogg123 port to the zaurus: http://killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=201 . I don't know if it actually works, so I guess someone with a Zaurus should try it and tell all of us if it really works (please?).
Choosing Linux just because you're been told its the best by some RMS wannabe might well be a very bad business decision.
I met this guy last week at the last calug meeting and can tell you this: he is no RMS. If he were like RMS, he would use GNU/Linux and advocate Free Software. No, instead he is more like ESR; he advocates Open Source and doesn't care one bit about the Freedom that Free Software gives you. He's also been using GNU/Linux since December...so you are right about any corporation listening to him making a bad choice (come on, would you trust someone who has been using GNU/Linux for eight months? Hell, I wouldn't even trust me, who has been using it for three years). I'm not saying he doesn't have a few good points, I just think that he needs the help of more experienced people if he wants anyone to listen to him (and really, someone needs to emphasize the Freedom that GNU/Linux gives you).
If all the apps I'm running are GUI apps, and since I'm trying to use a projector this is likely to be the case, then restarting X and all the apps is inconsequentially better than rebooting the whole machine.
There is a little things called "session management"...most of the programs I use can do session management, and will automatically start after I restart X if they were running before I exited the windowmanager (windowmaker in my case).
Besides, one other nice feature of Winders is that it will ask "does this display setting work," and then revert if you don't answer YES. On X, the equivalent solution is to switch to a console, re-edit XF86config-4, (or not -4, depending), switch back to X, ctral-alt-backspace and hope.
When configuring X, stuff like dexconf will start X for a few seconds with a prompt "Does this display setting work" and will exit after 30 or so second if you don't hit ok, doing basically the same thing.
I wasn't trying to say that; I was just trying to say that restarting X isn't as much trouble as restarting the entire machine (to keep the stupid trolls from going "but you have to restart X, when I add a new monitor to my windows machine I don't have to reboot! X is hard to use!").
Yeah, I can crtl-alt-whichamafuckle until I get the right res, and hopefully the refresh rate is acceptable. But now, I have to be careful about banging the mouse against the side of the viewable area, to avoid shifting my presentation off-screen. I also have to manually, carefully, size and position windows to make them as large as possible on the projector display.
Actually, you can run X without modelines if you have a monitor that reports the modes it supports. The only thing you have to do is put the modes you want to use (e.g. "1024x768" "800x600"...) in the screen section where you already have them. If you want to hook up to a lcd projector (I did this before) or any other display device, just restart X and it will automatically configure the refresh rates and use the highest mode support by the projector (if the project reports its supported modes using vbe (? I forgot what the name is)). The invalid modes (e.g. if the projector can't do 1600x1200) are ignored (a warning is printed during startup). If Windows will automatically configure it, then XFree86 more than likely can. I don't think it is too much hassle to have to restart X because it isn't like Windows where you have to restart the entire machine.
I think some of you are expressing concern because you don't want the mass public using anything but Windows. When everyone starts moving in on your elite OS, it no longer is the cool thing to use, so you must find something else to move on to....
transgaming is awesome software! I've just been playing Warcraft 2 (Battle-net edition, the old one was DOS and needs Dosemu), Deus Ex, and Counter-strike. All without leaving linux, and all *with* the ability to change workspaces to talk in Gaim while I'm playing (in between rounds of counter-strike can get tedious, after all).
War2: BNE worked fine for me when I played it using regular WINE a year or so ago. Counter-strike also works fine with regular WINE. I don't know about Deus Ex (I think you can grab the beta version that Loki almost [or was it finally released? I know there was an issue with the unrealscript stuff...] released from one of the Loki ftp mirrors [check lokigames.com for a list]). Since I don't use proprietary software anymore (I run a completely Free machine...woo), I don't use WINE for gaming anymore. But WINE still has a use: I use it to run VTI (GPL) because gtktiemu can't emulate the Z80 based calculators (ti82, ti83[+|SE], ti86). I really should recompile that using libwine...(I know the calc rom is evil and proprietary...)
Once again, the technology takes ideas from Perl (foreach, anyone?), Java (VM, OO style) Visual Basic (properties done right this time). Best of all, it's designed to be able to integrate with existing code -- existing Gnome/KDE/console programs will be able to call a simple C library to invoke functions from a cross-platform.NET object file. I think this is far more complicit with UNIX's component-based design than Java's 'rewrite everything in Java' mantra.
Um, stealing from Perl and Java? You know Lisp (or really functional programming languages in general) has had for-each for a lot longer than Perl has even existed. The CLOS (first ANSI certified OO system) also predates Java by years (not to mention that Java is just copying what C++ is using is just copying what Simula used). Property lists are also not original in VB--Lisp also has had those since the beggining (read "Recursive functions symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I" by John McCarthy Volume 3, Issue 4 (April 1960) of CACM). That would be a paper on the implementation of the original Lisp system! Seeing as Microsoft didn't even exist in 1960...also I do belive that there have been VMs for a longgggg time before Java.
er... Apple has a beta version of gcc 3.1 with full objective C support AND altivec supprot.
GCC 3.0.4 also has full Objective-C support. You probably mean Objective-C++. Objective-C++ isn't really its name, but it gets the point across I guess (you can mix C++ and Objective-C code in the same file to gain the strengths of both...e.g. Objective-C's better class system + C++'s overloading support). I think that Apple recently (a few months ago) donated the C++ support to the Objective-C compiler to GNUStep.
I code computationally intensive number crunching code and I had to buy Intel's compiler for Intel and Compaq's compiler for Alpha just to get some performance. And I'm talking about 10-20% difference.
According to the SPECInt2000 results on an AMD Athlon CPU, the code generated by GCC 3.1 is 6% faster on the average (8.2% faster with profile feedback) compared to GCC 3.0. The code produced by GCC 3.0 is about 2.1% faster compared to 2.95.3. Tests were done using the -O2 -march=athlon command-line options.
The compiler now supports MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, and SSE2 instructions. Options -mmmx, -m3dnow, -msse, and -msse2 will enable the respective instruction sets. Intel C++ compatible MMX/3DNow!/SSE intrics are implemented. SSE2 intrics will be added in next major release.
Following those improvements, targets for Pentium MMX, K6-2, K6-3, Pentium III, Pentium 4, and Athlon 4 Mobile/XP/MP were added. Refer to the documentation on -march= and -mcpu= options for details.
For those targets that support it, -mfpmath=sse will cause the compiler to generate SSE/SSE2 instructions for floating point math instead of x87 instructions. Usually, this will lead to quicker code -- especially on the Pentium 4. Note that only scalar floating point instructions are used and GCC does not exploit SIMD features yet.
Prefetch support has been added to the Pentium III, Pentium 4, K6-2, K6-3, and Athlon series.
Code generated for floating point to integer converisons has been improved leading to better performance of many 3D applications.
There is also AltiVec support for the PowerPC now. You can also trying using -fprofile-arcs, run your program once, then recompile with -fbranch-probabilities to help GCC predict branches (but then again if all your code does is crunch large numbers, there might not be too many branches in the first place).
Java has only some of C's problems while being totally platform-antisocial (platform neutral would imply that it plays nicely with all platforms which is patently untrue). I will say that Java has one of the best object models of any language out there, but 1) that will change when Perl6 hits the streets and 2) it's somewhat overshadowed by the failure of the Java libraries to live up to the promise.
I wonder how X/QT/Gtk will keep up with this next round of WIMP: WIMP-3D. Perhaps the Gnome Canvas could be hardware-accelerated using GLX. Rasterman is working (supposedly) on EVAS, a 3D-assisted rendering mechanism for X.
"Supposedly" eh? Check the evas module from enlightenment CVS. It looks fairly complete.
Re:Am I the only one who never had any problems?
on
Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 2
Which Radeon card? Also, just out of interest, seeing as you've had no problems, what exactly is your card? 3dfx voodoo3, but with how much memory? AGP or PCI? Is the memory SDR or DDR?
My voodoo3 is a Voodoo3 3000 PCI with 16MB of
SGRAM (it is a late model). Mike's Radeon was (he
has an 8500 now, that bastard) the original Radeon
64MB DDR (running @ 4x AGP). It was really easy
to get working. Just compiled X (which is easy if
you download the entire thing, just uncommented
'-fno-string-reduce' and added -march=i686 (for better optimization)
in one of the makefiles and typed make World && make
install), did the above configuring (change vesa
to ati), and restarted X. Ran legacy doom at too
many FPS.
Am I the only one who never had any problems?
on
Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 2
I swear, I've never had any problems with OpenGL.
My XF86Config-4 already had the DRI stuff in it (I
was using XF3 until I got my v3, and the Debian
default config has the DRI section in there). I
just copied my modelines over, set my driver to tdfx,
set up XF4 as the default X server and installed the
card. Worked perfectly the first time. No hassles.
It took 10 minutes to set it up.
Onto the games I have purchased: (loki)
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Solider of Fortune
Sim City 3000
Quake 3 Arena
Descent 3
Heretic II
Every one except for Sim City (it needed a quick
update to work with my graphics card) worked right,
the first time I installed it. All of them. What
the hell are all these problems you people are having?
I also have Q3A:TA, Quake I and II, and UT running
fine. QuakeII took a bit of work (libc5 binaries...),
but with the q2hack it runs ok (except for crashing on
exit...and I don't use the source because it is a
lot slower than the id binaries).
I'm wondering why my hobbled together box (most
of it is second hand, including the motherboard
and processor that I got from timothy...yes,
that timothy). My only issue now is that
that voodoo3 drivers are slow. Or maybe it is
my processor (Q3A runs fine, but Q3A:TA runs at 10fps).
Maybe the problems everyone is having has something
to do with the nVidias evil drivers. Everyone I know
who has a geforce anything has issues. A lot of them.
But, my friend Mike got his Radeon working with X/DRI
(I was there to help) in 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes.
All he had to do was install XF4.1 and he was playing
OpenGL games at amazing speed. And this was back
around July.
People use what they know and are taught what is in the marketplace.
So, if you teach people Free Software, they will use Free Software. And when they use Free Software, their kids will be taught Free Software. Or, you can continue the vicous cycle where you learn MS Office because that is what is used in the world, and because you know it you use it, and because that is what is used in the world your kids learn it...
I am part of the back room "bench tech" team at my high school. It is part of the tech research class. We set up new machines when they come in, service broken ones, and install new software while we aren't working on our research projects. The only thing we aren't allowed to do is open the cases, the county techs have to do that. Of course, I don't do much work because Windows and the Mac OS confuse the hell out of me. I am so used to just popping in, editing a text file, and reloading a daemon that pressing graphical buttons (the fun part is finding the buttons you need to click) and rebooting five or six times before it works is impossible. The other people (that actually use Windows at home) do a lot of "bench teching" though.
I believe you Nurgle. RMS is a man of his ethics--he sticks to them. All software must be Free, including games. Why people call RMS stupid for this...RMS would be stupid if he said "All software must be Free except for games" or something like that. He is simply strong-willed. The fact that he doesn't back down when he believes something is admirable. More people need to say something, and then stand behind that belief instead of backing down at the first attack.
Re:QT forces non standard c++ use
on
GTK-- vs. QT
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· Score: 2
When it comes to QString it is far superior to std::string since it is unicode
which is really a boon when writing internationalized application.
std::wstring is generally (?) Unicode. And, you can always write your own char_traits for Unicode if you want.
Large software packages must not use a direct subdirectory under the/usr hierarchy
Yes, X is in violation of this. The FHS also says that binaries go into/usr/bin./usr is for the package manager,/usr/local is for you. Get over it. If you don't like it, roll your own distro. I myself subvert it a little...(i.e. i compiled XF4.1 on my own and overwrote the files in/usr/X11R6 until the debs came out, same with guile 1.7). Oh yes, I am evil.
C++, Java, and Perl are low-level like my dog is a cat. C is low-level (or with better libraries, mid-level). Anything that supports objects or runs in a virtual machine cannot by definition be low-level because there's too much abstraction of system functionality between the source and object code. Just because C++ still lets you twiddle with bits, doesn't mean you HAVE to.
What! For one, C++ is almost 100% compatible with C89 (just some type stuff, C99 also has some other stuff like restrict and _Imaginary and stuff). C++ is horribly low level, when compared to LISP. I tried to implement an "abstract" plugin model for a media player (shut up! Everyone thinks the world needs a 10,001st console media player) in C++. I failed. Why? The details. The damn little details. To achieve the abstractness that C++ programs are supposed to have, I had to bend over backwards. Now, after learning Scheme (and GOOPS) and some clisp, I relized how easily the same thing could be done with GOOPS or CLOS. Sure, I would have to write some wrappers (oh wait, SWIG can do this for me) to access available libraries, but the time that would be saved in the long run would offset that. Now, if only I could find something that wouldn't piss people off when I released it (not even I need another media player!). Now, Java and perl might be a bit higher level, but in C++ you almost always have to deal with low level things. Now, there are some libraries (i.e. the STL or Qt) that can save you from some of the low level stuff, but I doubt that you will go through an entire program without dealing with something like, say, memory managment (which you can ignore in most LISP dialects).
Easy solution: X-render. Aren't there true-transparancy and alpha-blending parts in there? Sure, the Xft part gets all the attention (I believe it is the most stable and easiest to access from a user point of view). All it would take is a rewrite of the most common toolkits (Gtk, Qt, and Athena/Xt?) to use it. Maybe use some display resources to turn on transparancy (i.e. [Xt|Qt|Gdk]*render_trans = 80)? That would cover most applications. For Gtk, they could make GDK use this value to make all of its drawing operations use less opacity. Maybe just have xlib do this--every drawing operation could be done with less opacity (is this possible?). Just an idea.
Re:A great example of an RMS witch-hunt
on
Five Years of KDE
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· Score: 1
Wrong. The Qt license was incompatible with the GPL. It violated the GPL to use GPL code with the Qt libraries. Once you violate the GPL, you give up all rights to distrubute the software. You must then seek "forgiveness" to regain those rights. RMS officially re-granted the KDE project the right to distribute FSF code again. They had to. The GPL mandates it.
Slashdot Mirror
(on a side note, today was the first time since I started reading /. three years ago I was moderated down, and I'm going to guess this comment will be moderated down too). I'm cold, wet, and tired. Don't take what I wrote the wrong way.
The title of the article is correct; remember that the kernel is Linux, and the OS is GNU/Linux. So this is a Linux configuration tool. So what you want is a universal GNU/Linux configuration tool (I know, I know, now you all hate me and want me to die). The problem with writing this universal tool is that every program uses a different configuration syntax, so you would have to write each sub-tool separately. Alternatively, all configuration done with the tool could be stored in a special format and translated to the real config format by a conversion program.
Not really...the discs have a physical watermark, so you could rip them with a sacd player (you can try to prevent ripping, but someone will always find away around it). The big thing is that you won't be able to burn SACDs because of the watermark. So, you'll be able to rip but not burn. Just get a portable ogg player whenever they get released (since vorbis supports an abitrary number of channels encoding those 5.1 streams should work, right?) or an mp3 player now. But then you'll lose the extra quality (mp3 can't use greater than 32-bits per sample, right? I have no idea). I really need to read more on what vorbis can do (it works for me now, so I don't have much of an urge to), but I bet it can (or will) be able to encode > 32-bits per sample (at least for input).
I don't have a zaurus, but I want to get one so I tracked down the ogg123 port to the zaurus: http://killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=201 . I don't know if it actually works, so I guess someone with a Zaurus should try it and tell all of us if it really works (please?).
Choosing Linux just because you're been told its the best by some RMS wannabe might well be a very bad business decision.
I met this guy last week at the last calug meeting and can tell you this: he is no RMS. If he were like RMS, he would use GNU/Linux and advocate Free Software. No, instead he is more like ESR; he advocates Open Source and doesn't care one bit about the Freedom that Free Software gives you. He's also been using GNU/Linux since December...so you are right about any corporation listening to him making a bad choice (come on, would you trust someone who has been using GNU/Linux for eight months? Hell, I wouldn't even trust me, who has been using it for three years). I'm not saying he doesn't have a few good points, I just think that he needs the help of more experienced people if he wants anyone to listen to him (and really, someone needs to emphasize the Freedom that GNU/Linux gives you).
If all the apps I'm running are GUI apps, and since I'm trying to use a projector this is likely to be the case, then restarting X and all the apps is inconsequentially better than rebooting the whole machine.
There is a little things called "session management"...most of the programs I use can do session management, and will automatically start after I restart X if they were running before I exited the windowmanager (windowmaker in my case).
Besides, one other nice feature of Winders is that it will ask "does this display setting work," and then revert if you don't answer YES. On X, the equivalent solution is to switch to a console, re-edit XF86config-4, (or not -4, depending), switch back to X, ctral-alt-backspace and hope.
When configuring X, stuff like dexconf will start X for a few seconds with a prompt "Does this display setting work" and will exit after 30 or so second if you don't hit ok, doing basically the same thing.
I wasn't trying to say that; I was just trying to say that restarting X isn't as much trouble as restarting the entire machine (to keep the stupid trolls from going "but you have to restart X, when I add a new monitor to my windows machine I don't have to reboot! X is hard to use!").
Yeah, I can crtl-alt-whichamafuckle until I get the right res, and hopefully the refresh rate is acceptable. But now, I have to be careful about banging the mouse against the side of the viewable area, to avoid shifting my presentation off-screen. I also have to manually, carefully, size and position windows to make them as large as possible on the projector display.
Actually, you can run X without modelines if you have a monitor that reports the modes it supports. The only thing you have to do is put the modes you want to use (e.g. "1024x768" "800x600" ...) in the screen section where you already have them. If you want to hook up to a lcd projector (I did this before) or any other display device, just restart X and it will automatically configure the refresh rates and use the highest mode support by the projector (if the project reports its supported modes using vbe (? I forgot what the name is)). The invalid modes (e.g. if the projector can't do 1600x1200) are ignored (a warning is printed during startup). If Windows will automatically configure it, then XFree86 more than likely can. I don't think it is too much hassle to have to restart X because it isn't like Windows where you have to restart the entire machine.
I think some of you are expressing concern because you don't want the mass public using anything but Windows. When everyone starts moving in on your elite OS, it no longer is the cool thing to use, so you must find something else to move on to....
Maybe now people will start using the Hurd :)
transgaming is awesome software! I've just been playing Warcraft 2 (Battle-net edition, the old one was DOS and needs Dosemu), Deus Ex, and Counter-strike. All without leaving linux, and all *with* the ability to change workspaces to talk in Gaim while I'm playing (in between rounds of counter-strike can get tedious, after all).
War2: BNE worked fine for me when I played it using regular WINE a year or so ago. Counter-strike also works fine with regular WINE. I don't know about Deus Ex (I think you can grab the beta version that Loki almost [or was it finally released? I know there was an issue with the unrealscript stuff...] released from one of the Loki ftp mirrors [check lokigames.com for a list]). Since I don't use proprietary software anymore (I run a completely Free machine...woo), I don't use WINE for gaming anymore. But WINE still has a use: I use it to run VTI (GPL) because gtktiemu can't emulate the Z80 based calculators (ti82, ti83[+|SE], ti86). I really should recompile that using libwine...(I know the calc rom is evil and proprietary...)
Once again, the technology takes ideas from Perl (foreach, anyone?), Java (VM, OO style) Visual Basic (properties done right this time). Best of all, it's designed to be able to integrate with existing code -- existing Gnome/KDE/console programs will be able to call a simple C library to invoke functions from a cross-platform .NET object file. I think this is far more complicit with UNIX's component-based design than Java's 'rewrite everything in Java' mantra.
Um, stealing from Perl and Java? You know Lisp (or really functional programming languages in general) has had for-each for a lot longer than Perl has even existed. The CLOS (first ANSI certified OO system) also predates Java by years (not to mention that Java is just copying what C++ is using is just copying what Simula used). Property lists are also not original in VB--Lisp also has had those since the beggining (read "Recursive functions symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I" by John McCarthy Volume 3, Issue 4 (April 1960) of CACM). That would be a paper on the implementation of the original Lisp system! Seeing as Microsoft didn't even exist in 1960...also I do belive that there have been VMs for a longgggg time before Java.
er... Apple has a beta version of gcc 3.1 with full objective C support AND altivec supprot.
GCC 3.0.4 also has full Objective-C support. You probably mean Objective-C++. Objective-C++ isn't really its name, but it gets the point across I guess (you can mix C++ and Objective-C code in the same file to gain the strengths of both...e.g. Objective-C's better class system + C++'s overloading support). I think that Apple recently (a few months ago) donated the C++ support to the Objective-C compiler to GNUStep.
GCC code is slow.
I code computationally intensive number crunching code and I had to buy Intel's compiler for Intel and Compaq's compiler for Alpha just to get some performance. And I'm talking about 10-20% difference.
Then you should like GCC 3.1. Here is a snippet from the changelog (you can see the entire list of changes at http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.1/changes.html):
- According to the SPECInt2000 results on an AMD Athlon CPU, the code generated by GCC 3.1 is 6% faster on the average (8.2% faster with profile feedback) compared to GCC 3.0. The code produced by GCC 3.0 is about 2.1% faster compared to 2.95.3. Tests were done using the -O2 -march=athlon command-line options.
- The compiler now supports MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, and SSE2 instructions. Options -mmmx, -m3dnow, -msse, and -msse2 will enable the respective instruction sets. Intel C++ compatible MMX/3DNow!/SSE intrics are implemented. SSE2 intrics will be added in next major release.
- Following those improvements, targets for Pentium MMX, K6-2, K6-3, Pentium III, Pentium 4, and Athlon 4 Mobile/XP/MP were added. Refer to the documentation on -march= and -mcpu= options for details.
- For those targets that support it, -mfpmath=sse will cause the compiler to generate SSE/SSE2 instructions for floating point math instead of x87 instructions. Usually, this will lead to quicker code -- especially on the Pentium 4. Note that only scalar floating point instructions are used and GCC does not exploit SIMD features yet.
- Prefetch support has been added to the Pentium III, Pentium 4, K6-2, K6-3, and Athlon series.
- Code generated for floating point to integer converisons has been improved leading to better performance of many 3D applications.
There is also AltiVec support for the PowerPC now. You can also trying using -fprofile-arcs, run your program once, then recompile with -fbranch-probabilities to help GCC predict branches (but then again if all your code does is crunch large numbers, there might not be too many branches in the first place).Java has only some of C's problems while being totally platform-antisocial (platform neutral would imply that it plays nicely with all platforms which is patently untrue). I will say that Java has one of the best object models of any language out there, but 1) that will change when Perl6 hits the streets and 2) it's somewhat overshadowed by the failure of the Java libraries to live up to the promise.
Umm, CLOS...
I wonder how X/QT/Gtk will keep up with this next round of WIMP: WIMP-3D. Perhaps the Gnome Canvas could be hardware-accelerated using GLX. Rasterman is working (supposedly) on EVAS, a 3D-assisted rendering mechanism for X.
"Supposedly" eh? Check the evas module from enlightenment CVS. It looks fairly complete.
Which Radeon card? Also, just out of interest, seeing as you've had no problems, what exactly is your card? 3dfx voodoo3, but with how much memory? AGP or PCI? Is the memory SDR or DDR?
My voodoo3 is a Voodoo3 3000 PCI with 16MB of SGRAM (it is a late model). Mike's Radeon was (he has an 8500 now, that bastard) the original Radeon 64MB DDR (running @ 4x AGP). It was really easy to get working. Just compiled X (which is easy if you download the entire thing, just uncommented '-fno-string-reduce' and added -march=i686 (for better optimization) in one of the makefiles and typed make World && make install), did the above configuring (change vesa to ati), and restarted X. Ran legacy doom at too many FPS.
I swear, I've never had any problems with OpenGL. My XF86Config-4 already had the DRI stuff in it (I was using XF3 until I got my v3, and the Debian default config has the DRI section in there). I just copied my modelines over, set my driver to tdfx, set up XF4 as the default X server and installed the card. Worked perfectly the first time. No hassles. It took 10 minutes to set it up.
Onto the games I have purchased: (loki)
- Heroes of Might and Magic III
- Solider of Fortune
- Sim City 3000
- Quake 3 Arena
- Descent 3
- Heretic II
Every one except for Sim City (it needed a quick update to work with my graphics card) worked right, the first time I installed it. All of them. What the hell are all these problems you people are having? I also have Q3A:TA, Quake I and II, and UT running fine. QuakeII took a bit of work (libc5 binaries...), but with the q2hack it runs ok (except for crashing on exit...and I don't use the source because it is a lot slower than the id binaries).I'm wondering why my hobbled together box (most of it is second hand, including the motherboard and processor that I got from timothy...yes, that timothy). My only issue now is that that voodoo3 drivers are slow. Or maybe it is my processor (Q3A runs fine, but Q3A:TA runs at 10fps). Maybe the problems everyone is having has something to do with the nVidias evil drivers. Everyone I know who has a geforce anything has issues. A lot of them. But, my friend Mike got his Radeon working with X/DRI (I was there to help) in 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes. All he had to do was install XF4.1 and he was playing OpenGL games at amazing speed. And this was back around July.
People use what they know and are taught what is in the marketplace.
So, if you teach people Free Software, they will use Free Software. And when they use Free Software, their kids will be taught Free Software. Or, you can continue the vicous cycle where you learn MS Office because that is what is used in the world, and because you know it you use it, and because that is what is used in the world your kids learn it...
I am part of the back room "bench tech" team at my high school. It is part of the tech research class. We set up new machines when they come in, service broken ones, and install new software while we aren't working on our research projects. The only thing we aren't allowed to do is open the cases, the county techs have to do that. Of course, I don't do much work because Windows and the Mac OS confuse the hell out of me. I am so used to just popping in, editing a text file, and reloading a daemon that pressing graphical buttons (the fun part is finding the buttons you need to click) and rebooting five or six times before it works is impossible. The other people (that actually use Windows at home) do a lot of "bench teching" though.
I believe you Nurgle. RMS is a man of his ethics--he sticks to them. All software must be Free, including games. Why people call RMS stupid for this...RMS would be stupid if he said "All software must be Free except for games" or something like that. He is simply strong-willed. The fact that he doesn't back down when he believes something is admirable. More people need to say something, and then stand behind that belief instead of backing down at the first attack.
When it comes to QString it is far superior to std::string since it is unicode which is really a boon when writing internationalized application.
std::wstring is generally (?) Unicode. And, you can always write your own char_traits for Unicode if you want.
Large software packages must not use a direct subdirectory under the /usr hierarchy
Yes, X is in violation of this. The FHS also says that binaries go into /usr/bin. /usr is for the package manager, /usr/local is for you. Get over it. If you don't like it, roll your own distro. I myself subvert it a little...(i.e. i compiled XF4.1 on my own and overwrote the files in /usr/X11R6 until the debs came out, same with guile 1.7). Oh yes, I am evil.
C++, Java, and Perl are low-level like my dog is a cat. C is low-level (or with better libraries, mid-level). Anything that supports objects or runs in a virtual machine cannot by definition be low-level because there's too much abstraction of system functionality between the source and object code. Just because C++ still lets you twiddle with bits, doesn't mean you HAVE to.
What! For one, C++ is almost 100% compatible with C89 (just some type stuff, C99 also has some other stuff like restrict and _Imaginary and stuff). C++ is horribly low level, when compared to LISP. I tried to implement an "abstract" plugin model for a media player (shut up! Everyone thinks the world needs a 10,001st console media player) in C++. I failed. Why? The details. The damn little details. To achieve the abstractness that C++ programs are supposed to have, I had to bend over backwards. Now, after learning Scheme (and GOOPS) and some clisp, I relized how easily the same thing could be done with GOOPS or CLOS. Sure, I would have to write some wrappers (oh wait, SWIG can do this for me) to access available libraries, but the time that would be saved in the long run would offset that. Now, if only I could find something that wouldn't piss people off when I released it (not even I need another media player!). Now, Java and perl might be a bit higher level, but in C++ you almost always have to deal with low level things. Now, there are some libraries (i.e. the STL or Qt) that can save you from some of the low level stuff, but I doubt that you will go through an entire program without dealing with something like, say, memory managment (which you can ignore in most LISP dialects).
Easy solution: X-render. Aren't there true-transparancy and alpha-blending parts in there? Sure, the Xft part gets all the attention (I believe it is the most stable and easiest to access from a user point of view). All it would take is a rewrite of the most common toolkits (Gtk, Qt, and Athena/Xt?) to use it. Maybe use some display resources to turn on transparancy (i.e. [Xt|Qt|Gdk]*render_trans = 80)? That would cover most applications. For Gtk, they could make GDK use this value to make all of its drawing operations use less opacity. Maybe just have xlib do this--every drawing operation could be done with less opacity (is this possible?). Just an idea.
Wrong. The Qt license was incompatible with the GPL. It violated the GPL to use GPL code with the Qt libraries. Once you violate the GPL, you give up all rights to distrubute the software. You must then seek "forgiveness" to regain those rights. RMS officially re-granted the KDE project the right to distribute FSF code again. They had to. The GPL mandates it.