I guess the problem is also that in many distributions SSH servers are configured to allow root logins, and if nobody looks at the log files these go totally unnoticed.
You're right! I have an up to date Fedora box at home with only sshd running, allowing root login. I also have it set up with DynDNS (dynamic IP from ISP). I just checked the logs and there are over 100k attempts at root login via ssh on port 22. Looks like nobody's gotten through, but I guess I need to change some things.
I'm running Fedora 7 now, and it is really nice. I think Fedora 8 (due in little over a month) will be a nice forward step since it includes things like "Codec Buddy" and the RPMFusion repository (a collaborative effort by formerly separate repositories) should be entering full swing. Fedora is a fast-moving distro though. Fedora 7 is finally settling down (fewer updates) and it has been out for quite a while.
Also, if you're considering running more OSes virtualized and are thinking of considering Xen, CentOS might be worth looking into. For VMWare it doesn't really matter if you run a Debian or RedHat/Fedora system, but CentOS's Xen integration is pretty solid.
I tried OpenSUSE 10.1 and there were a *lot* of things that rubbed me the wrong way. From what I've read 10.3 has addressed basically all of my concerns and I'm downloading the installation DVD now. Their Gnome setup looks nice in screenshots, will have to see how it handles in practice. I doubt it'll pull me away from my beloved Fedora & RHEL, but I feel compelled to give it an honest test.
C'mon guys, can't we discuss something interesting like that linux scheduler fiasco? I heard Con Kolivas might not maintain some patchset or something anymore. That's interesting too, right?
Oh, and I've heard the RIAA is really just a front for some record company or something and they're suing people!!one!1!
It might just be EVE, but I used to run EVE under Cedega and Wine at different points, even as recently as four months ago.
Performance was terrible. I mean really truly terrible. Now my system isn't top of the line, but if it can run Doom 3 (native) at near-full detail it should be able to run EVE as well.
This is not news. Give me a native client that performs worth a damn and I'll reinstate my subscription.
Microsoft's fud site claims that the most expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux version costs $2,499 per server per year for 24/7 premium phone and web support, unlimited users, no license restrictions, unlimited software upgrades, etc.
So how about we compare that to Windows Server 2003? - $3,999/server for the enterprise version of Windows Server 2003 R2 - have to repurchase it every ~5 years when a new version is made available - maximum of 25 users/workstations ($40 per extra user per Windows version)...and wait for it... - *NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER!*
And we're not even getting into the real savings such as comparing MS SQL Server with an equivalent Red Hat offer, desktop Linux cost comparisons (including Office/Productivity applications), scaling costs up to 5000 users...etc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running. But you have this exact same cost when using Windows Server as well! You pay Red Hat to provide support services to you - not for the actual product itself. If you go down the Microsoft path, you have to pay for the product AND the service (which Microsoft has conveniently ignored on their new fud website).
Their new website is self-damaging. If I was a potential Microsoft customer who was looking at the comparison between Linux and Windows, I'd instantly note Microsoft spreading fud and lies to make up for deficiencies in their offer. It is hardly reassuring that Microsoft is running scared at companies like Red Hat and feels the need to launch a big anti-Linux PR campaign based on lies and fud. The question I'd be asking myself is, "if Windows Server is so great, why can't Microsoft sell it to me based on features and facts?". And don't forget that with RHEL5, Red Hat provides support for up to four virtualized guests. RHEL5 is a supported guest. You get support for four server for the price of one. And Red Hat is very willing to work with you on price and not willing to limit client installations. If the opposite were true, we sure as hell wouldn't have seperate (virtualized) RHEL5 servers running IRC, email, subversion, etc. We have a seperate virtualized server for each individual service that we offer. And it is *very* affordable compared to the price of the hardware it runs on.
We actually used to have a Red Hat employee at our server site. Full time. Not on our payroll. Those days have passed, but their service is still top notch. They also don't bitch about our own private yum repo and are willing to work with us on getting some legacy apps working that they have never claimed to support.
How can "free" be this expensive? Red Hat's business is based on annual subscriptions for OS support--you pay a subscription for every server, every year. And, if you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more.
Did you know? Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced costs $2,499 per server per year without add-on features, like an application server and clustering.
It is a good deal compared to (the lack of) Microsoft support. People who want support comparable to what is offered by Microsoft can download CentOS (fully redhat compatible) or some other completely free distribution.
Red Hat includes the Yum update tool to help you download packages and software updates, but doesn't address IT professionals' broader needs--managing applications and workloads, like mail and collaboration, database and business applications.
Thats funny, because I have built rpms for my own applications. and I use custom yum repositories to keep track of, and distribute new versions of this software. I hope they are not trying to compare this to the customization built into windows update. Don't forget: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/virtualization/
Red Hat Enterprise Linux server subscriptions provide support for up to four virtualized guest environments. We recently dropped about $65000 on a storage system that will be running RHEL5+virtualization. And Red Hat is *very* good at working with customers that want to run many different servers. It doesn't really cost $2500 per server. If it did, we sure as hell wouldn't have seperate RHEL5 servers for email, irc, subversion, etc etc.
Get yourself in contact with a RedHat salesperson, don't quote the prices on their website. They're a good company, with good support; very willing to work with you on price and deployment.
I'm a happy Opera user, and I really like Opera's built in content blocker. I understand that some sites I visit survive due to ad-generated revenue, and i can deal with that. I use Opera's blocker to block intrusive ads. And anything that blinks or flashes or covers real content. Most sane websites display ads in a way that isn't invasive and I'm OK with that.
While I like adblock-enabled Firefox more than non-adblock-enabled Firefox, I think it causes some websites and/or advertisers to use more invasive and irritating ways to show ads. In my opinion, Opera's content blocker is a happier compromise.
Ooooh... what a bold statement! The GIMP is *NOT* user-focused. Don't tell me.
Clearly you haven't read their awesome tutorials!
Here's my favourite: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Straight_Line/
I agree with this completely. RedHat has marketing team that gets them tons of exposure, but they're a different market.
I'm glad Ubuntu is gaining marketshare, but I wish they'd drop the six-month release cycle or at least try to squash more bugs. I've all but eliminated Ubuntu as a viable option on any of my systems over Debian if I'm looking to apt-get my way to nirvana.
I'm afraid that as Ubuntu gets *really* popular that it will be on the receiving end of more and more criticism and less praise, and there is quite a bit to criticize.
Not that Slackware is a viable option for many Linux desktop users, but if Ubuntu had the quality control and stability of Slackware with its current feature set and user base... Wow, that would be cause for some noise.
No XGL, but if you need it it shouldn't be as difficult now that Slackware ships with X.org 7.2.
That being said, the new X.org comes with AIGLX which I prefer (but doesn't support all cards) and yes, compiz is officially a part of the Slackware distribution now although only with kde-window-decorator by default.
If you need gtk-window-decorator (for xfce), check out http://slackware.com/~rworkman/compiz. Does not include gconf support, so you'll want to be starting compiz and {kde,gtk}-window-decorator via CLI or a script to load with your DE of choice.
I've been running AIGLX+compiz+xfce on slackware-current in the weeks leading up to this release using rworkman's packages and it has been dead stable.
Slackware releases get news coverage for the same reasons Debian, RedHat, SuSE, and these days *buntu do: Releases are a big deal. They mean changes to the core components of the system as well as the "desktop" if one is provided.
Gentoo (and Arch for that matter) aren't less newsworthy really, its just that their system is more of a moving target without clear and defined releases that really stand for a stable set of packages tested and designed to work as advertised within the scope of the release.
I know what you're going through with the ACPI related stuff. The problem isn't just Slackware though. There's no default ACPI handler for the LID switch event on my laptop as well, and this happens to exist in *every* distribution I've used with the exception of OpenSUSE.
You'll likely have the same ACPI "issues" with latest versions of Slackware and many other distros, but if you buckle down and learn to write proper ACPI event handlers for all the little things that should be handled via ACPI you can use those scripts on ANY semi-standardized distro.
There's a lot of info about this via google, linuxquestions.org, and gentoo's documentation & wiki.
I actually work for a university and administer a bunch of RHEL boxes via ssh. I really, really, wish they were Slackware boxes. It irritates me to no end when I read official httpd or svn documentation and when I'm using this knowledge to make changes to the RHEL server providing these services I realize that almost NONE of the configuration files are in the same place or have the same contents as the documentation specifies. Yes, RedHat has good documentation for their system, no it is not as good as the *official* documentation for the software I'm using.
It also irritates me to no end how they use -devel packages. I end up doing a LOT of custom software installation, making my own (S)RPMs, maintaining a Yum repo, the whole nine yards. It is supremely irritating when software fails to build on a RedHat system vs a Slackware system (yay for vanilla sources). I also have yet to find any benefit to using the RHN service.
Don't get me started on installation numbers, I know why they exist and I understand RedHat's insistance on using them, but I just happen to be completely capable of managing my boxes without having to have pre-specified package sets laid out in front of me.
All that being said, RHEL4 and 5 have been perfectly stable in our environment, but I get the distinct impression that I spend way to much time working around RedHat-specific issues.
Its been on standby for a day or two now and it isn't any warmer... it is sitting on top of a little three-shelf stand in the vertical stand, so it is has plenty of room to dissipate heat, ambient temps in the house are around 70 F
I've only restarted my Wii for firmware updates, I bought it in early January. Since then it has probably been "off" maybe two hours. I always leave it in "standby" (with WiiConnect24 or whatever its called enabled).
I just got done playing Zelda: Wind Waker (GC) about three hours ago, right now it is *barely* warm to the touch.
The question is deterioration. Not that I'm proud of it, but I've spilled everything from water to whiskey on an old Acer 737TLV laptop that I use as a NFS-reading jukebox. It has happened time and time again. In each instance I've *properly* powered the laptop down before it shit itself, and in each instance, after about 4 days drying time I clean the stains with q-tips and isopropyl alcohol.
Little laptop still runs... the keyboard is a mess, the screen has more burnt out pixels than my retinas after measuring the width of the sun in millimeters from my POV, but the bottom line is that the hardware has neither burned out nor faulted on me yet.
Anyone who read this that is questioning the relevance to TFA, there is very little... To satisfy you I present One Memorex "spill proof" $12 keyboard. It has seen seven years of abuse that no keyboard should experience, and every last key works like it is brand new. Of course if you can't touch-type you're gonna be screwed, because the only keys that have readable print on them anymore are the F1 -> F12 and prntscrn keys.
I really like some of the features of the new Navigator, but one of the integration with the Netscape.com portal things that I had to get rid of right away is the "Share" button in the navigation bar.
You can do so by heading to about:config and changing "extensions.netscape.vote.disabled" to "true"
Actually I've been playing with this "new" Netscape Navigator for a few hours now. I really like it; I think the theme is pleasant, and some of the features are "why didn't I think of that" type stuff I actually find myself using instead of disabling. I'm sure most if what it offers could be replicated via FF+extensions, but it is also nice to have it all in one package.
I'm going to give this browser an honest run. For me, like many people (from what I hear), FF 2.0 wasn't a big step in the right direction from FF 1.5. Navigator 9.0b really offers some neat functionality and I have yet to find any big showstoppers or extra cruft. In my mind, what FF 2.0 should have been if they were going to add features to FF 1.5.
Fedora always has been and (looking like) always will be a fast-moving distribution. For servers, if you want the Fedora/RedHat style without putting up the RedHat money, use CentOS. CentOS 5 is also plenty usable as a desktop and there are as many addon repos for RHEL/CentOS as there are for Fedora.
While generally true, I'm much more influenced by a page's layout than its loading time.
Case in point: I used to use Yahoo TV for TV listings and used to play a few Yahoo games from time to time. Main reason I used Yahoo over any other site was because their TV listings were presented in a clear, simple, and concise grid. Also, despite the large number of games they have on their games site, the pages were simple and navigable.
I don't know who the hell Yahoo has in their usability and interface design deparments, but good lord is their site an over the top glitzy pile of shit these days. I don't care how long it takes to load, if I see more than one thing on the page moving, flashing, scrolling, or trying to look overly "cool" I put that site in my mental list of "do not visits".
Now for TV listings I use a heavily ad-blocked AOL TV listings page because it was the only one that had hope of not being terrible. It is powered by Zap2It, and their actual listings page is as horrible as Yahoo's.
Just because you can script it to look "fab", "hip", or like it is "pushing the edge" doesn't mean you should. One of the reasons Google is so damn popular is because it is simple, effective, and easy to navigate.
If I see one more "professional" website that looks like it was designed by a 13-year old MySpace fiend on Ritalin I'm going on a booze-fueled developer-beating road trip.
My Dell Inspiron with i915 video gets on average about 10% longer battery life with AIGLX enabled. Maybe its "cheaper" for the GPU to do direct rendering and save CPU cycles?
I'd like to pretend to know how this works, but I'm not going to. So, um, does that mean I must be new here?
Slashdot Mirror
You're right!I guess the problem is also that in many distributions SSH servers are configured to allow root logins, and if nobody looks at the log files these go totally unnoticed.
I have an up to date Fedora box at home with only sshd running, allowing root login. I also have it set up with DynDNS (dynamic IP from ISP). I just checked the logs and there are over 100k attempts at root login via ssh on port 22. Looks like nobody's gotten through, but I guess I need to change some things.
I'm running Fedora 7 now, and it is really nice. I think Fedora 8 (due in little over a month) will be a nice forward step since it includes things like "Codec Buddy" and the RPMFusion repository (a collaborative effort by formerly separate repositories) should be entering full swing. Fedora is a fast-moving distro though. Fedora 7 is finally settling down (fewer updates) and it has been out for quite a while.
Also, if you're considering running more OSes virtualized and are thinking of considering Xen, CentOS might be worth looking into. For VMWare it doesn't really matter if you run a Debian or RedHat/Fedora system, but CentOS's Xen integration is pretty solid.
I tried OpenSUSE 10.1 and there were a *lot* of things that rubbed me the wrong way. From what I've read 10.3 has addressed basically all of my concerns and I'm downloading the installation DVD now. Their Gnome setup looks nice in screenshots, will have to see how it handles in practice. I doubt it'll pull me away from my beloved Fedora & RHEL, but I feel compelled to give it an honest test.
Everything is a rumour until it is posted to the LKML.
Everybody knows that.
There is only one true Bob !!
Slack on my brethren...
Yes there is a wikipedia article. No I won't link to it.
Some say believers were never meant for mass consumption. Too weird to live, too rare to die.
I'm tired of reading about the iPhone.
C'mon guys, can't we discuss something interesting like that linux scheduler fiasco? I heard Con Kolivas might not maintain some patchset or something anymore. That's interesting too, right?
Oh, and I've heard the RIAA is really just a front for some record company or something and they're suing people!!one!1!
It might just be EVE, but I used to run EVE under Cedega and Wine at different points, even as recently as four months ago.
Performance was terrible. I mean really truly terrible. Now my system isn't top of the line, but if it can run Doom 3 (native) at near-full detail it should be able to run EVE as well.
This is not news. Give me a native client that performs worth a damn and I'll reinstate my subscription.
Dude, it was called the "Rainbow Warrior". Everyone knew it was going to go down.
So how about we compare that to Windows Server 2003?
- $3,999/server for the enterprise version of Windows Server 2003 R2
- have to repurchase it every ~5 years when a new version is made available
- maximum of 25 users/workstations ($40 per extra user per Windows version)
- *NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER!*
And we're not even getting into the real savings such as comparing MS SQL Server with an equivalent Red Hat offer, desktop Linux cost comparisons (including Office/Productivity applications), scaling costs up to 5000 users...etc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running. But you have this exact same cost when using Windows Server as well! You pay Red Hat to provide support services to you - not for the actual product itself. If you go down the Microsoft path, you have to pay for the product AND the service (which Microsoft has conveniently ignored on their new fud website).
Their new website is self-damaging. If I was a potential Microsoft customer who was looking at the comparison between Linux and Windows, I'd instantly note Microsoft spreading fud and lies to make up for deficiencies in their offer. It is hardly reassuring that Microsoft is running scared at companies like Red Hat and feels the need to launch a big anti-Linux PR campaign based on lies and fud. The question I'd be asking myself is, "if Windows Server is so great, why can't Microsoft sell it to me based on features and facts?". And don't forget that with RHEL5, Red Hat provides support for up to four virtualized guests. RHEL5 is a supported guest. You get support for four server for the price of one. And Red Hat is very willing to work with you on price and not willing to limit client installations. If the opposite were true, we sure as hell wouldn't have seperate (virtualized) RHEL5 servers running IRC, email, subversion, etc. We have a seperate virtualized server for each individual service that we offer. And it is *very* affordable compared to the price of the hardware it runs on.
We actually used to have a Red Hat employee at our server site. Full time. Not on our payroll. Those days have passed, but their service is still top notch. They also don't bitch about our own private yum repo and are willing to work with us on getting some legacy apps working that they have never claimed to support.
Did you know? Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced costs $2,499 per server per year without add-on features, like an application server and clustering.
It is a good deal compared to (the lack of) Microsoft support. People who want support comparable to what is offered by Microsoft can download CentOS (fully redhat compatible) or some other completely free distribution.
Red Hat includes the Yum update tool to help you download packages and software updates, but doesn't address IT professionals' broader needs--managing applications and workloads, like mail and collaboration, database and business applications.
Thats funny, because I have built rpms for my own applications. and I use custom yum repositories to keep track of, and distribute new versions of this software.
I hope they are not trying to compare this to the customization built into windows update. Don't forget:
http://www.redhat.com/rhel/virtualization/ Red Hat Enterprise Linux server subscriptions provide support for up to four virtualized guest environments. We recently dropped about $65000 on a storage system that will be running RHEL5+virtualization. And Red Hat is *very* good at working with customers that want to run many different servers. It doesn't really cost $2500 per server. If it did, we sure as hell wouldn't have seperate RHEL5 servers for email, irc, subversion, etc etc.
Get yourself in contact with a RedHat salesperson, don't quote the prices on their website. They're a good company, with good support; very willing to work with you on price and deployment.
I'm a happy Opera user, and I really like Opera's built in content blocker. I understand that some sites I visit survive due to ad-generated revenue, and i can deal with that. I use Opera's blocker to block intrusive ads. And anything that blinks or flashes or covers real content. Most sane websites display ads in a way that isn't invasive and I'm OK with that.
While I like adblock-enabled Firefox more than non-adblock-enabled Firefox, I think it causes some websites and/or advertisers to use more invasive and irritating ways to show ads. In my opinion, Opera's content blocker is a happier compromise.
Best not bad mouth the U.S.A., or we'll bring democracy to your country!
Clearly you haven't read their awesome tutorials!
Here's my favourite: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Straight_Line/
I agree with this completely. RedHat has marketing team that gets them tons of exposure, but they're a different market.
I'm glad Ubuntu is gaining marketshare, but I wish they'd drop the six-month release cycle or at least try to squash more bugs. I've all but eliminated Ubuntu as a viable option on any of my systems over Debian if I'm looking to apt-get my way to nirvana.
I'm afraid that as Ubuntu gets *really* popular that it will be on the receiving end of more and more criticism and less praise, and there is quite a bit to criticize.
Not that Slackware is a viable option for many Linux desktop users, but if Ubuntu had the quality control and stability of Slackware with its current feature set and user base... Wow, that would be cause for some noise.
No XGL, but if you need it it shouldn't be as difficult now that Slackware ships with X.org 7.2.
That being said, the new X.org comes with AIGLX which I prefer (but doesn't support all cards) and yes, compiz is officially a part of the Slackware distribution now although only with kde-window-decorator by default.
If you need gtk-window-decorator (for xfce), check out http://slackware.com/~rworkman/compiz. Does not include gconf support, so you'll want to be starting compiz and {kde,gtk}-window-decorator via CLI or a script to load with your DE of choice.
I've been running AIGLX+compiz+xfce on slackware-current in the weeks leading up to this release using rworkman's packages and it has been dead stable.
Slackware releases get news coverage for the same reasons Debian, RedHat, SuSE, and these days *buntu do: Releases are a big deal. They mean changes to the core components of the system as well as the "desktop" if one is provided.
Gentoo (and Arch for that matter) aren't less newsworthy really, its just that their system is more of a moving target without clear and defined releases that really stand for a stable set of packages tested and designed to work as advertised within the scope of the release.
I know what you're going through with the ACPI related stuff. The problem isn't just Slackware though. There's no default ACPI handler for the LID switch event on my laptop as well, and this happens to exist in *every* distribution I've used with the exception of OpenSUSE. You'll likely have the same ACPI "issues" with latest versions of Slackware and many other distros, but if you buckle down and learn to write proper ACPI event handlers for all the little things that should be handled via ACPI you can use those scripts on ANY semi-standardized distro. There's a lot of info about this via google, linuxquestions.org, and gentoo's documentation & wiki.
I actually work for a university and administer a bunch of RHEL boxes via ssh. I really, really, wish they were Slackware boxes. It irritates me to no end when I read official httpd or svn documentation and when I'm using this knowledge to make changes to the RHEL server providing these services I realize that almost NONE of the configuration files are in the same place or have the same contents as the documentation specifies. Yes, RedHat has good documentation for their system, no it is not as good as the *official* documentation for the software I'm using.
It also irritates me to no end how they use -devel packages. I end up doing a LOT of custom software installation, making my own (S)RPMs, maintaining a Yum repo, the whole nine yards. It is supremely irritating when software fails to build on a RedHat system vs a Slackware system (yay for vanilla sources). I also have yet to find any benefit to using the RHN service.
Don't get me started on installation numbers, I know why they exist and I understand RedHat's insistance on using them, but I just happen to be completely capable of managing my boxes without having to have pre-specified package sets laid out in front of me.
All that being said, RHEL4 and 5 have been perfectly stable in our environment, but I get the distinct impression that I spend way to much time working around RedHat-specific issues.
Its been on standby for a day or two now and it isn't any warmer... it is sitting on top of a little three-shelf stand in the vertical stand, so it is has plenty of room to dissipate heat, ambient temps in the house are around 70 F
I've only restarted my Wii for firmware updates, I bought it in early January. Since then it has probably been "off" maybe two hours. I always leave it in "standby" (with WiiConnect24 or whatever its called enabled). I just got done playing Zelda: Wind Waker (GC) about three hours ago, right now it is *barely* warm to the touch.
Bingo.
The question is deterioration. Not that I'm proud of it, but I've spilled everything from water to whiskey on an old Acer 737TLV laptop that I use as a NFS-reading jukebox. It has happened time and time again. In each instance I've *properly* powered the laptop down before it shit itself, and in each instance, after about 4 days drying time I clean the stains with q-tips and isopropyl alcohol.
Little laptop still runs... the keyboard is a mess, the screen has more burnt out pixels than my retinas after measuring the width of the sun in millimeters from my POV, but the bottom line is that the hardware has neither burned out nor faulted on me yet.
Anyone who read this that is questioning the relevance to TFA, there is very little... To satisfy you I present One Memorex "spill proof" $12 keyboard. It has seen seven years of abuse that no keyboard should experience, and every last key works like it is brand new. Of course if you can't touch-type you're gonna be screwed, because the only keys that have readable print on them anymore are the F1 -> F12 and prntscrn keys.
I really like some of the features of the new Navigator, but one of the integration with the Netscape.com portal things that I had to get rid of right away is the "Share" button in the navigation bar.
You can do so by heading to about:config and changing "extensions.netscape.vote.disabled" to "true"
Actually I've been playing with this "new" Netscape Navigator for a few hours now. I really like it; I think the theme is pleasant, and some of the features are "why didn't I think of that" type stuff I actually find myself using instead of disabling. I'm sure most if what it offers could be replicated via FF+extensions, but it is also nice to have it all in one package.
I'm going to give this browser an honest run. For me, like many people (from what I hear), FF 2.0 wasn't a big step in the right direction from FF 1.5. Navigator 9.0b really offers some neat functionality and I have yet to find any big showstoppers or extra cruft. In my mind, what FF 2.0 should have been if they were going to add features to FF 1.5.
Release Notes are here: http://browser.netscape.com/releasenotes/
Fedora always has been and (looking like) always will be a fast-moving distribution. For servers, if you want the Fedora/RedHat style without putting up the RedHat money, use CentOS. CentOS 5 is also plenty usable as a desktop and there are as many addon repos for RHEL/CentOS as there are for Fedora.
While generally true, I'm much more influenced by a page's layout than its loading time.
Case in point: I used to use Yahoo TV for TV listings and used to play a few Yahoo games from time to time. Main reason I used Yahoo over any other site was because their TV listings were presented in a clear, simple, and concise grid. Also, despite the large number of games they have on their games site, the pages were simple and navigable.
I don't know who the hell Yahoo has in their usability and interface design deparments, but good lord is their site an over the top glitzy pile of shit these days. I don't care how long it takes to load, if I see more than one thing on the page moving, flashing, scrolling, or trying to look overly "cool" I put that site in my mental list of "do not visits".
Now for TV listings I use a heavily ad-blocked AOL TV listings page because it was the only one that had hope of not being terrible. It is powered by Zap2It, and their actual listings page is as horrible as Yahoo's.
Just because you can script it to look "fab", "hip", or like it is "pushing the edge" doesn't mean you should. One of the reasons Google is so damn popular is because it is simple, effective, and easy to navigate.
If I see one more "professional" website that looks like it was designed by a 13-year old MySpace fiend on Ritalin I'm going on a booze-fueled developer-beating road trip.
My Dell Inspiron with i915 video gets on average about 10% longer battery life with AIGLX enabled. Maybe its "cheaper" for the GPU to do direct rendering and save CPU cycles?
I'd like to pretend to know how this works, but I'm not going to. So, um, does that mean I must be new here?