The very fact that you have to even defend against such issues ever occurring speaks volumes to me...
Plus, you do know that the default behaviour post-W2K is to re-boot instead of blue screen? My dad someone had rebooted his machine when it happened to him.
Standardising on file placement, etc. for installation is a good idea, but I see the benefit as mainly being for the distro developers themselves, not the users. Similarly, most of the program demands are largely common sense i.e. what most existing users expect anyway.
I may be missing something here but:
-- Installation on Windows
-- I have to find the website and download the program or buy it on a CD or whatever
-- I then have to work out how to turn what I have in to something I can install. It may sound easy from someone like yourself, who seems to find installing on Windows easy, but there are plenty of people for which this is not the case. You still have to specify file paths and such, so there is no standard location here, either. It may be installed in 'Program Files' or whatever by default, but the user could kick it into C:/foobar.
-- When it comes to upgrading, in most cases, this rigmarole has to start all over again. I also have to work out when updates are available, and get the new versions myself (or in most cases, buy them).
-- On my Debian GNU/Linux system
- If I want a program, I can just load up Synaptic, and pick what I want from a list. This is categorized with descriptions, so I can look in, say, Games for something to play. - Synaptic will check for upgrades and apply them FOR ALL THE SOFTWARE IT MANAGES (which is basically, everything on my system)
When I choose something, the latest version is automatically downloaded and installed. It seems you're looking at this less from a simplistic user's point of view, than as from an entrenched Windows user's point of view. I don't see how the Windows way is easier in any way. IMO, it's much more hassle and inconvienance.
The whole point of GNU/Linux having distributions is the provision of such tools. In my experience, there is no equivalent on a Windows system of something that manages things in this way. Things are different on a per-app basis, even if there is nowadays more standardisation in installers (which there hasn't been until recently, except by chance use of the same creation software -- needed because they are so overly complex).
I'm no uber-geek. I'm just someone who wants to use my computer to get my work done, without getting bogged down in admin. tasks. My GNU/Linux system allows me to do this much more easily than Windows ever did.
Except Java's generics are nowhere near as powerful as C++ templates. They bottled out and implemented them using type erasure. The main advantage of the generic-based collections is that the compiler does the cast for you -- the bytecode produced is still the same, and the collections are full of objects and implictly cast coming out.
The version of Word in Office XP doesn't even allow you to type a document without IE 4 or later installed -- the entire thing is uneditable. 'Nuff said.
Microsoft are actually doing the right thing here. What's unbelievable is that so many applications rely on open ports to work. Assuming the MS firewall doesn't block loopback connections, this would seem to be a fairly major problem for the application developers to me.
What is annoying is all these stories about SP2. It seems every day a new one is posted -- can MS not sneeze without it becoming news?
Agreed -- the buttons don't really bother me. It's the file select dialog that's keeping me on GNOME 2.4 -- there's no way I'm going to use one without text input. The old dialog had it working so well, especially as you could tab and get completion. I don't see why they had to change this to something that looks ugly and would be a pain to use. It wouldn't have been difficult to add a text entry box in and it can fit quite nicely (although the dialog still doesn't look as nice). In fact:
filename = gtk_entry_new();
gtk_file_chooser_set_extra_widget(file_selector, filename);
will add the entry box -- it just needs connecting in. The spatial dialog would also annoy me if I used Nautilus, but when I moved to GNU/Linux, I long ago found ls and co. to be far more efficient.
Personally, I feel its a case of using the best language for the job. For example, scripts are better with bash or Perl. Java's not even in the ballpark here, as there is a lot of UNIX-specific stuff that it can't do (well, without native methods anyway) -- things like chmod, signals, forking, etc. Java has its niche too -- servlets come to mind. I think its more or less lost the advantage it once had of web-based applets, if just because of the size of current Sun versions.
The licensing of current Sun implementations of Java means that it can't be distributed with a GNU/Linux distribution. There is a DFSG implementation of Java -- see GNU Classpath which is licensed under the GPL with a licensing exception. This is coming on in leaps and bounds, and is now starting to run basic Swing applications. Eclipse is even starting to work, to a degree. There are plenty of Free JVMs to go with this, such as SableVM, Kaffe and gcj (how these merge with Classpath varies, however).
Full links are on http://classpath.wildebeest.org/planet/
Debian testing and even stable has some of these. Currently, the existing Java packages in Debian are being moved towards main as they are tested with Free implementations (http://java.debian.net/index.php/MovingJavaToMain )
There is certainly room for plenty more contributions! Depending on Sun to release an implementation is a bad idea -- even if it happens, it will be on their own terms.
Slashdot Mirror
No; just need to check for typos like that...
The very fact that you have to even defend against such issues ever occurring speaks volumes to me... Plus, you do know that the default behaviour post-W2K is to re-boot instead of blue screen? My dad someone had rebooted his machine when it happened to him.
Standardising on file placement, etc. for installation is a good idea, but I see the benefit as mainly being for the distro developers themselves, not the users. Similarly, most of the program demands are largely common sense i.e. what most existing users expect anyway.
I may be missing something here but:
-- Installation on Windows
-- I have to find the website and download the program or buy it on a CD or whatever
-- I then have to work out how to turn what I have in to something I can install. It may sound easy from someone like yourself, who seems to find installing on Windows easy, but there are plenty of people for which this is not the case. You still have to specify file paths and such, so there is no standard location here, either. It may be installed in 'Program Files' or whatever by default, but the user could kick it into C:/foobar.
-- When it comes to upgrading, in most cases, this rigmarole has to start all over again. I also have to work out when updates are available, and get the new versions myself (or in most cases, buy them).
-- On my Debian GNU/Linux system
- If I want a program, I can just load up Synaptic, and pick what I want from a list. This is categorized with descriptions, so I can look in, say, Games for something to play.
- Synaptic will check for upgrades and apply them FOR ALL THE SOFTWARE IT MANAGES (which is basically, everything on my system)
When I choose something, the latest version is automatically downloaded and installed. It seems you're looking at this less from a simplistic user's point of view, than as from an entrenched Windows user's point of view. I don't see how the Windows way is easier in any way. IMO, it's much more hassle and inconvienance.
The whole point of GNU/Linux having distributions is the provision of such tools. In my experience, there is no equivalent on a Windows system of something that manages things in this way. Things are different on a per-app basis, even if there is nowadays more standardisation in installers (which there hasn't been until recently, except by chance use of the same creation software -- needed because they are so overly complex).
I'm no uber-geek. I'm just someone who wants to use my computer to get my work done, without getting bogged down in admin. tasks. My GNU/Linux system allows me to do this much more easily than Windows ever did.
Except Java's generics are nowhere near as powerful as C++ templates. They bottled out and implemented them using type erasure. The main advantage of the generic-based collections is that the compiler does the cast for you -- the bytecode produced is still the same, and the collections are full of objects and implictly cast coming out.
The version of Word in Office XP doesn't even allow you to type a document without IE 4 or later installed -- the entire thing is uneditable. 'Nuff said.
Microsoft are actually doing the right thing here. What's unbelievable is that so many applications rely on open ports to work. Assuming the MS firewall doesn't block loopback connections, this would seem to be a fairly major problem for the application developers to me. What is annoying is all these stories about SP2. It seems every day a new one is posted -- can MS not sneeze without it becoming news?
Agreed -- the buttons don't really bother me. It's the file select dialog that's keeping me on GNOME 2.4 -- there's no way I'm going to use one without text input. The old dialog had it working so well, especially as you could tab and get completion. I don't see why they had to change this to something that looks ugly and would be a pain to use. It wouldn't have been difficult to add a text entry box in and it can fit quite nicely (although the dialog still doesn't look as nice). In fact: filename = gtk_entry_new(); gtk_file_chooser_set_extra_widget(file_selector, filename); will add the entry box -- it just needs connecting in. The spatial dialog would also annoy me if I used Nautilus, but when I moved to GNU/Linux, I long ago found ls and co. to be far more efficient.
Personally, I feel its a case of using the best language for the job. For example, scripts are better with bash or Perl. Java's not even in the ballpark here, as there is a lot of UNIX-specific stuff that it can't do (well, without native methods anyway) -- things like chmod, signals, forking, etc. Java has its niche too -- servlets come to mind. I think its more or less lost the advantage it once had of web-based applets, if just because of the size of current Sun versions. The licensing of current Sun implementations of Java means that it can't be distributed with a GNU/Linux distribution. There is a DFSG implementation of Java -- see GNU Classpath which is licensed under the GPL with a licensing exception. This is coming on in leaps and bounds, and is now starting to run basic Swing applications. Eclipse is even starting to work, to a degree. There are plenty of Free JVMs to go with this, such as SableVM, Kaffe and gcj (how these merge with Classpath varies, however). Full links are on http://classpath.wildebeest.org/planet/ Debian testing and even stable has some of these. Currently, the existing Java packages in Debian are being moved towards main as they are tested with Free implementations (http://java.debian.net/index.php/MovingJavaToMain )
There is certainly room for plenty more contributions! Depending on Sun to release an implementation is a bad idea -- even if it happens, it will be on their own terms.