Linux is years ahead of MS in 64 bit support. Most distros have 64 bit versions along with the 32 bit ones. I have the AMD64 version of Feisty on my laptop (along with Vista Ultimate--32bit) and support is excellent.
This seems to be the most common complaint here on/. and I have to say I just don't see it in Vista. None of my thousands of gigs of music, movies, documents, or CD images of games and apps have failed to work. If there's some sort of DRM nightmare hidden in Vista, I can't find it. I guess you could say that the "features" exist to implement DRM on content (they're there in XP too), but does anyone think there's a threat of one day waking up and finding that an update has restricted all of your media? It's just not going to happen, guys.
Have you tried Ubuntu? It's probably the most refreshing experience with Linux I've ever had, everything really is done just as well if not better than with Windows. That's not to say that it doesn't have it's hiccups every now and then, but honestly so does Windows. I'm probably more capable of fixing problems on Windows, but the support from the experienced Ubuntu user base is amazing, and fast.
They've been doing that in Germany, 3 separate branches for different levels of academic skill, but guess what, they're slowly switching over to our 1 track system. Go figure, I personally think we should switch over to something similar to the German system, but our education system now is based on empty threats and second chances the shock to reality would probably be too great--for the students and teachers.
I guess it's a commentary on a problem with society at large then. Shame that we seem to spend so much of our time these days worrying about what might offend other people, it's a wonder our educational system can get anything done at all. It's made even more laughable when I think about a parent suing a school when their kid does something he (she?) is probably doing at home anyway. The parents of such a kid could probably have done a better job defining boundaries of appropriate behavior BEFORE it became a problem also. The school system is the last place any blame should be placed.
Does everyone approach this assuming pornography is actually a problem? As long as it's not encouraged outright, porn "usage" at school is fairly self limiting given the general lack of privacy needed to enjoy it properly. I guess they could still use the laptop/notebook to STORE their porn, but I just don't see how it's a problem. Once you admit to yourself that everyone who wants to see porn is already seeing it these issues of restriction quickly fade away from relevance.
Having just spent the better half of a night getting Beryl to run on my brand new Feisty install (On an AMD64 notebook, an Acer Aspire 5100), I'm going to have to disagree. It's also responsible for turning what is otherwise the most rock solid OS I've ever installed into the most buggy, temperamental, crash-happy OS since the horrid days of WindowsME.
When it DOES work it looks absolutely beautiful, and completely blows away anything that Windows or OSX has to offer. Is it going to stay on my machine? No, it's not, but It's a project I'm going to keep a very close eye on. OSS developers are just as capable as the proprietary vendors in creating useless eye candy, I've probably spent 20 minutes rotating that cube.
I dual boot with Feisty and Vista (ultimate) and the battery problem IS real. Ubuntu gets about a half hour of extra battery life on this laptop than when I boot into Vista (even with Vista in feature cutting power saving mode, although I'm not using Beryl for the Ubuntu comparison, I'm not sure what things would look like with all the eye candy turned on.)
My experience has been the opposite. All my attempts with Linux have been a constant uphill fight to get anything to work correctly (or even acceptably). I recieved a free copy of Vista Ultimate, loaded it onto one of my laptops and EVERYTHING worked right away. Even XP didn't recognize all the hardware by default with a fresh SP2 installation. The last distro I tried was Ubuntu on that same laptop--this was just a couple weeks ago. I had problems with the display, sound, and network (the last two were entirely non-functional).
Vista was pretty bloated by default, but 9 hours is a bit excessive. Maybe 30 minutes of actual work seems more like it. You're right about one thing though, I was spending most of my time removing stuff I didn't want, and if you bought your laptop from any of the big OEMs I'm sure it had all kinds of wonderful software running at start up to add to the windows clutter you needed to remove. With linux I usually find myself adding features that were missing to begin with. Either way, I wouldn't use Vista for anything serious right now; there's no real reason to upgrade from XP--and I'll probably end up putting XP back on that laptop soon too.
What I hate about people who complain about this is that they don't even know for sure what they're missing. You'd have to have experienced living both cut and uncut to know what was better, and men who get it done later in life don't count for various reasons. I'd suggest you don't spend so much time thinking about a rather insignificant fold of skin (previously) attached to your penis; the amount of fervor (on BOTH sides) amazes me.
These chips are one of those technologies that would serve an amazing purpose to better humanity as as whole if it were not for the inherent flaw that they would used by a species that is inherently flawed. Imagine being able to tell instantly what medication a patient is on, their complete medical history, drug allergies, and conditions. That information could save lives. Or imagine never seeing another story of a missing/abducted child in the news. Less important things to, you could pay for goods simply by walking out of the store with you items. Now, a lot of these things can be done now with alternative technologies, but if these chips could be implemented as part of a national (or global) system the changes would be immense (although not all for the better).
But we'll never see the benefits, and if we do they'll come with so many trade offs to our freedom and privacy it wont be worth it.
Haha, oh yeah...those were the days. Wait, what's changed? Well, besides the law that says now girls my age can legally have sex with me, they're still not!
Sierra Sierra, Delta Delta (same shit, different day)
Shame that society as a whole (and by "society as a whole" I mean the tyrannous Christian moral majority) turns a consensual act between two people of the same age into a crime. I've never heard a fellow Atheist claim that we need to legislate human sexuality.
It might not be much of an improvement for you, but if you can stand to use Winamp5 (or use it already anyway) there is a plugin that allows it to sync with the iPod. It works a lot better and has more features than iTunes, including the ability to take songs off an iPod. Still short of true drag and drop compatibility, but that's all Apples doing trying to tie iTunes and the iPod together (thus getting more market penetration for their ITMS).
Slashdot Mirror
We need both, even better that we're getting both types from one entity.
At least someone is standing up against censorship and government control and regulation of the internet. I applaud their efforts on all fronts.
This just in! There's child porn on the internets! Shut 'em down boys, all of them!
Wondering? Who's wondering? I thought we all knew why already.
Hey, it's been working for me for 20 years :P
Well, I bet that was awkward.
Linux is years ahead of MS in 64 bit support. Most distros have 64 bit versions along with the 32 bit ones. I have the AMD64 version of Feisty on my laptop (along with Vista Ultimate--32bit) and support is excellent.
Are we allowed to even quote the rules?
This seems to be the most common complaint here on /. and I have to say I just don't see it in Vista. None of my thousands of gigs of music, movies, documents, or CD images of games and apps have failed to work. If there's some sort of DRM nightmare hidden in Vista, I can't find it. I guess you could say that the "features" exist to implement DRM on content (they're there in XP too), but does anyone think there's a threat of one day waking up and finding that an update has restricted all of your media? It's just not going to happen, guys.
I don't think there will be anyone left to vote for.
You made my morning, sir. Thank you.
Bingo. And yes, I know about the driver situation, do you think the average end user will accept that as an excuse?
Have you tried Ubuntu? It's probably the most refreshing experience with Linux I've ever had, everything really is done just as well if not better than with Windows. That's not to say that it doesn't have it's hiccups every now and then, but honestly so does Windows. I'm probably more capable of fixing problems on Windows, but the support from the experienced Ubuntu user base is amazing, and fast.
I hear they're selling it to Google.
They've been doing that in Germany, 3 separate branches for different levels of academic skill, but guess what, they're slowly switching over to our 1 track system. Go figure, I personally think we should switch over to something similar to the German system, but our education system now is based on empty threats and second chances the shock to reality would probably be too great--for the students and teachers.
I guess it's a commentary on a problem with society at large then. Shame that we seem to spend so much of our time these days worrying about what might offend other people, it's a wonder our educational system can get anything done at all. It's made even more laughable when I think about a parent suing a school when their kid does something he (she?) is probably doing at home anyway. The parents of such a kid could probably have done a better job defining boundaries of appropriate behavior BEFORE it became a problem also. The school system is the last place any blame should be placed.
Does everyone approach this assuming pornography is actually a problem? As long as it's not encouraged outright, porn "usage" at school is fairly self limiting given the general lack of privacy needed to enjoy it properly. I guess they could still use the laptop/notebook to STORE their porn, but I just don't see how it's a problem. Once you admit to yourself that everyone who wants to see porn is already seeing it these issues of restriction quickly fade away from relevance.
Having just spent the better half of a night getting Beryl to run on my brand new Feisty install (On an AMD64 notebook, an Acer Aspire 5100), I'm going to have to disagree. It's also responsible for turning what is otherwise the most rock solid OS I've ever installed into the most buggy, temperamental, crash-happy OS since the horrid days of WindowsME.
When it DOES work it looks absolutely beautiful, and completely blows away anything that Windows or OSX has to offer. Is it going to stay on my machine? No, it's not, but It's a project I'm going to keep a very close eye on. OSS developers are just as capable as the proprietary vendors in creating useless eye candy, I've probably spent 20 minutes rotating that cube.
I dual boot with Feisty and Vista (ultimate) and the battery problem IS real. Ubuntu gets about a half hour of extra battery life on this laptop than when I boot into Vista (even with Vista in feature cutting power saving mode, although I'm not using Beryl for the Ubuntu comparison, I'm not sure what things would look like with all the eye candy turned on.)
My experience has been the opposite. All my attempts with Linux have been a constant uphill fight to get anything to work correctly (or even acceptably). I recieved a free copy of Vista Ultimate, loaded it onto one of my laptops and EVERYTHING worked right away. Even XP didn't recognize all the hardware by default with a fresh SP2 installation. The last distro I tried was Ubuntu on that same laptop--this was just a couple weeks ago. I had problems with the display, sound, and network (the last two were entirely non-functional).
Vista was pretty bloated by default, but 9 hours is a bit excessive. Maybe 30 minutes of actual work seems more like it. You're right about one thing though, I was spending most of my time removing stuff I didn't want, and if you bought your laptop from any of the big OEMs I'm sure it had all kinds of wonderful software running at start up to add to the windows clutter you needed to remove. With linux I usually find myself adding features that were missing to begin with. Either way, I wouldn't use Vista for anything serious right now; there's no real reason to upgrade from XP--and I'll probably end up putting XP back on that laptop soon too.
Or they could maybe use...a drinking straw.
What I hate about people who complain about this is that they don't even know for sure what they're missing. You'd have to have experienced living both cut and uncut to know what was better, and men who get it done later in life don't count for various reasons. I'd suggest you don't spend so much time thinking about a rather insignificant fold of skin (previously) attached to your penis; the amount of fervor (on BOTH sides) amazes me.
These chips are one of those technologies that would serve an amazing purpose to better humanity as as whole if it were not for the inherent flaw that they would used by a species that is inherently flawed. Imagine being able to tell instantly what medication a patient is on, their complete medical history, drug allergies, and conditions. That information could save lives. Or imagine never seeing another story of a missing/abducted child in the news. Less important things to, you could pay for goods simply by walking out of the store with you items. Now, a lot of these things can be done now with alternative technologies, but if these chips could be implemented as part of a national (or global) system the changes would be immense (although not all for the better).
But we'll never see the benefits, and if we do they'll come with so many trade offs to our freedom and privacy it wont be worth it.
Haha, oh yeah...those were the days. Wait, what's changed? Well, besides the law that says now girls my age can legally have sex with me, they're still not!
Sierra Sierra, Delta Delta
(same shit, different day)
Shame that society as a whole (and by "society as a whole" I mean the tyrannous Christian moral majority) turns a consensual act between two people of the same age into a crime. I've never heard a fellow Atheist claim that we need to legislate human sexuality.
It might not be much of an improvement for you, but if you can stand to use Winamp5 (or use it already anyway) there is a plugin that allows it to sync with the iPod. It works a lot better and has more features than iTunes, including the ability to take songs off an iPod. Still short of true drag and drop compatibility, but that's all Apples doing trying to tie iTunes and the iPod together (thus getting more market penetration for their ITMS).
http://www.mlipod.com/
For record; I just don't care.