Yeah, I prefer the old way (currently using 3.4) - add the Storage Media applet to your kicker, and when you insert a DVD/ USB Pen etc it will appear as a small icon in the kicker, which is nice and unobtrusive. Unfortunately, all USB Mass Storage (include cameras, card-readers etc) devices have the "USB Pen" icon shown. I filed a bug report about this (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109260); if anyone else feels this would be a good idea, please chime in:)
I personally don't think it's too wise to ignore one DE based on its (easily and permanently, even across installs!) modifiable default setup; it's best to try both, preferably with someone who knows the good/ bad points of both to take you through it.
Personally, I've always found the resemblance to Windows to be entirely superficial, and KDE's excellent integration across a wide-range of apps and its nifty kio_slaves (along with a whole bunch of other reasons) made me fall in love with it. I'll let a GNOME fan argue the other side:)
The only possible things that could help with this are:
1) 100 programmers are hired full-time to reverse-engineer drivers;
2) More than a handful of manufacturers actually open up their specs;
3) Linux freezes its ABI, which I for one am not particularly in favour of.
None of these have happened, to my knowledge. Oh, and Linux Desktop has bigger problems than drivers, but those that can plausibly be solved via hard work are rapidly being addressed.
"Try installing from source" is also not an ideal solution, as it will (correct me if I'm wrong) take said application out from under the watchful eye of package management.
I think there is a solution to this in Debian called checkinstall
BUT one thing I have not figured out is how to play things like WMV files on my Linux box.
Which distro? Ubuntu has an excellent user guide (http://ubuntuguide.org/) that covers many common tasks - try the "How to install Multimedia Codecs?" section - it worked for me!
As for hardware, I've always been happy to buy hardware specifically for Linux compatibility (my PCI wireless card, for example, requires NO effort to get working, at all, whatsoever - I can browse the web from the first boot after install). This course can be pretty expensive, though, and is obviously not for everyone:)
Yes, I heard this exact argument a few years back on an article on a "laser" gun - it couldn't blow people up or anything, but it was very effective at causing permanent blindness. Chilling stuff, indeed.
Also, for KDE, Kompose (http://kompose.berlios.de/) is very nice but the grabbing/ scaling of windows is usually done completely in software (as the Composite extensions are still not fast/ stable for a lot of people - me for one:() - so is slow and not "live". The situation is rapidly improving (check out the Luminocity videos for examples of real-time thumbnailing of windows on unimpressive hardware), but probably won't be 100% mainstream until next year, I'd guess.
It's a shame xorg didn't split from Xfree much earlier - we'd probably have XGL as standard, by now:(
I'm sure that as I type a hundred people will have posted the reasons why IBM could not open the code even if they wanted to (Microsoft co-own it, etc), but I personally think opening it would not really benefit many people. The code-base is years old and an attempt to getting it running on newer hardware would probably be doomed to failure so, since a lot of the reasons people like it was the GUI design of the thing, why not just clone it and re-implement all the great ideas? I wouldn't be at all surprised if a re-write of the shell on top of Linux/ BSD wouldn't take a lot less time and effort than dragging an ancient code-base into the 21st century and torturing it into something that works well on current hardware.
I'm not wholly sure there's a direct analogue here, to be quite honest, due to the "black-box" nature of the development process. If Microsoft did pre-empt a vulnerability with a pro-active patch, though (as I'm sure they have) I like to think I would - I think zealotry and extremely slanted double-standards are something that one should do their best to avoid as it is not only mentally unhealthy, but can actually damage the reputation of the community you care about. Basically, even though I really dislike a lot of things about Microsoft, I try to give credit where it is due and applaud instances when they show signs of Doing The Right Thing.
Couldn't agree more - if you have a rapidly evolving product (i.e. you are not coding to a comprehensive, rigidly-defined spec), then you will introduce security vulnerabilities. Even if you create less than your contemporaries, this doesn't really help matters - all would-be exploiters need is one remote code execution, and it's all for naught.
The good thing, of course, is that malware tailored to a specific exploit takes time to craft and widely deploy, so very rapid patching can act as a deterrent (remember that story from a while back that stated that attacks on Linux are decreasing, despite its increasing market share?). Popularity of a platform is obviously a factor in targetting software (and yes, I firmly believe that Windows IE are targetted more than Firefox and Linux, although don't necessarily agree with the corollary that we'd have a comparable malware epidemic if the two switched places), but another is how easy a vulnerability is to exploit, and how long the malware purveyors can count on it being unpatched across a wide range of machines. If a platform offers little in the way of "low-hanging fruit", only the most ardent will persist - the rest will move on to greener pastures.
If they do (as they doubtless will), you can simply say that this is an optional extension used by a minority of Firefox users (and since not even Firefox is fully "mainstream", this puts it about as far from the mainstream as you can get:P), and there are currently no exploits in the wild. You can also add that it was found by a white-hat, and so is a validation of the "many-eyes" theory, if you want. Spin works both ways;)
I'm not sure if this applies to Zeta or not, but to make a point about this argument that crops up whenever someone forks a project or appears to re-tread old ground: Programmers are not interchangeable, especially if they are programming for free, and in their spare time. Such programmers will tackle the projects that interest them, and if deprived of such projects, may well opt to not tackle anything at all rather than help with an (to them) uninteresting project.
I wouldn't want to sacrifice my right-mouse button (this would be a *huge* change - just think how many apps depend on it!), but mapping additional buttons to this kind of thing would be neat - a sort of "uber-contextual-menu" could spring up around the mouse, and you can add whatever you want to it - some kind of taskbar representation so you can change apps with a quick mouse click and then a small movement (perhaps just the scroll wheel, like the Firefox All-In-One-Gestures menu?); your favourite list of apps that you can start; the sky's the limit. I'm really keen on the idea of getting as many people to suggest ideas as we can get, no matter how far-out, whacky, or at first glance, useless (if someone told me that tabs and gestures in a Web Browser would eventually become indispensable to me a year ago, I'd have laughed in their face!) - necessity is the mother of invention, so a userbase's wishes should be the wellspring of innovation.
And to the OP - the beauty of open-source is that we are not reliant on the KDE team to do all this for us - people very frequently write desktop mods. Write them yourself (or suggest it to someone else who is looking for a project), get it out there, see what people think of it and, if it turns out to be a good idea, eventually it will probably be absorbed into KDE itself (like Karamba into Plasma, for example).
Everyone who thinks they have a good idea - go on, and suggest away! F/OSS has already proven it can create good quality code by harnessing the collective IQs of thousands of people around the planet, but so far has a poor reputation for innovation. I see no reason why this open, collaborative framework couldn't be extended to harness the enormous pools of creativity out there, also.
What would constitue "a deep way", in your opinion? Examples would be nice. I've always been of the opinion that a lot of good ideas and innovations could come from the user base, where the people who have to use the thing have good ideas about what they'd like to see, and what would make their lives easier. Plus, there's a hell of a lot more users than developers, so a bigger pool of ideas to draw from - Open Source should not just be about adding code. So let's get some brain-storming going!
Ha - well said!:) As the saying goes, "One man's 'bloat' is another man's 'essential feature'". As long as it is well-programmed and optimised, I always welcome this kind of bloat with open arms.
Try (K)Ubuntu (neither vanilla Debian nor Gentoo are really aimed at a user-friendly Linux experience) and if you get a problem, ask in the relevant part of the forums. The Ubuntu denizens are very friendly and helpful (and the "RFTM n00b" attitude really doesn't fly; if someone hits you with this, they'll probably end up being banned!). The only bad thing I've found about Kubuntu is that the implementation of KDE is very buggy, but nothing show-stopping.
Oh, and read ubuntuguide.org first - there's a wealth of helpful info and FAQs there - should be more than enough to get you on your feet!
I doubt many people will specifically rush out to buy Longhorn when it arrives (I mean, look at the dwindling list of technologies that will be exclusive to Longhorn - it's a very poor prospect indeed), but you can guarantee that damn-near every pre-built computer on the market will have it pre-installed. In a situation such as this, where most consumers would either not know where to begin with building their own, not know that it is even an option, or view it as the simplest path (not knowing about DRM and how it can be used to wrest control of things they have paid for away from them), the phrase "vote with your wallet" is largely meaningless.
In short - don't count on hardware DRM going the way of the dodo due to the public not liking it. And also, to the "Pah - it will be cracked in 5 minuntes!" crew - almost certainly not. It took ages to crack CSS, and even then it was only through a sheer, blind fluke. People coming up with DRM schemes learn from their past mistakes, and their progress will likely far out-strip that of those you produce the counter-measures.
It's brief, but it fairly states the differences between Windows & Linux. Those are: integration vs. flexibility
Is it just me, or is this something of a false dichotomy? For example, let's pick, say, KDE. Now, here we have an absurdly flexible environment (there's a kind of joke that is sometimes crops up whenever someone asks which DE he should choose out of GNOME or KDE: roughly paraphrased, it goes like: "Imagine a taskbar clock that has four tabs worth of configuration options. If you think this is a good idea, use KDE; otherwise, use GNOME"), but, it is also astonishingly well-integrated. K3B not only has the familiar Konqueror file manager KPart (with all the options for file-management, detailed/ thumbnail view, etc) embedded into it, but also integrates well with Konqueror itself (i.e. right-click on an.iso file, get a "Burn Image with K3B" pop-up option). The Kwallet password manager can be used by any app (e.g. Zack Rusin was going to integrate it into Firefox as part of the Firefox KDE integration, which sadly has yet to see the light of day). KGPG is integrated into Konqueror and presumably KMail also. The Konsole KPart (providing a complete UNIX shell) has been dropped into text editors like e.g. Kile.
I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the "K" desktop environment could well be (or at least, has the potential to be) more integrated than Windows is, whose legendary integration tends to be confined to integration between the few Microsoft apps, whereas with KDE (and open-source software in general), "third-party" apps tend to become integrated better. I'm not fully sure why this is, but I suspect that it is due to a) use of open standards; b) "automagic" enforcement at the API level [KDE's APIs evolve far more rapidly than those of Windows) and c) the fact that it is harder to "orphan" F/OSS apps - if the maintainer dies (or something!) before some new "integration enabler" becomes part of the API, someone can pick up and incorporate this new feature, binding the app further to the other apps so that they work together more seamlessly. If the maintainer of a project isn't interested in taking advantage of new opportunities for integration, someone else can write a patch which can be added by the distro packagers, etc.
And of course, through open protocols, Linux can "integrate" with other UNIX-y based operating systems, unlike Microsoft who, for all their touting of "interoperability", remain resolutely an outsider in may ways.
Anyway, there's just a few random and ill-researched thoughts that occurred to me:)
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Yeah, I prefer the old way (currently using 3.4) - add the Storage Media applet to your kicker, and when you insert a DVD/ USB Pen etc it will appear as a small icon in the kicker, which is nice and unobtrusive. Unfortunately, all USB Mass Storage (include cameras, card-readers etc) devices have the "USB Pen" icon shown. I filed a bug report about this (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109260); if anyone else feels this would be a good idea, please chime in :)
Personally, I've always found the resemblance to Windows to be entirely superficial, and KDE's excellent integration across a wide-range of apps and its nifty kio_slaves (along with a whole bunch of other reasons) made me fall in love with it. I'll let a GNOME fan argue the other side :)
1) 100 programmers are hired full-time to reverse-engineer drivers;
2) More than a handful of manufacturers actually open up their specs;
3) Linux freezes its ABI, which I for one am not particularly in favour of.
None of these have happened, to my knowledge. Oh, and Linux Desktop has bigger problems than drivers, but those that can plausibly be solved via hard work are rapidly being addressed.
Yes, I heard this exact argument a few years back on an article on a "laser" gun - it couldn't blow people up or anything, but it was very effective at causing permanent blindness. Chilling stuff, indeed.
It's a shame xorg didn't split from Xfree much earlier - we'd probably have XGL as standard, by now :(
Oops - cheerfully withdrawn :)
I'm sure that as I type a hundred people will have posted the reasons why IBM could not open the code even if they wanted to (Microsoft co-own it, etc), but I personally think opening it would not really benefit many people. The code-base is years old and an attempt to getting it running on newer hardware would probably be doomed to failure so, since a lot of the reasons people like it was the GUI design of the thing, why not just clone it and re-implement all the great ideas? I wouldn't be at all surprised if a re-write of the shell on top of Linux/ BSD wouldn't take a lot less time and effort than dragging an ancient code-base into the 21st century and torturing it into something that works well on current hardware.
I'm not wholly sure there's a direct analogue here, to be quite honest, due to the "black-box" nature of the development process. If Microsoft did pre-empt a vulnerability with a pro-active patch, though (as I'm sure they have) I like to think I would - I think zealotry and extremely slanted double-standards are something that one should do their best to avoid as it is not only mentally unhealthy, but can actually damage the reputation of the community you care about. Basically, even though I really dislike a lot of things about Microsoft, I try to give credit where it is due and applaud instances when they show signs of Doing The Right Thing.
The good thing, of course, is that malware tailored to a specific exploit takes time to craft and widely deploy, so very rapid patching can act as a deterrent (remember that story from a while back that stated that attacks on Linux are decreasing, despite its increasing market share?). Popularity of a platform is obviously a factor in targetting software (and yes, I firmly believe that Windows IE are targetted more than Firefox and Linux, although don't necessarily agree with the corollary that we'd have a comparable malware epidemic if the two switched places), but another is how easy a vulnerability is to exploit, and how long the malware purveyors can count on it being unpatched across a wide range of machines. If a platform offers little in the way of "low-hanging fruit", only the most ardent will persist - the rest will move on to greener pastures.
If they do (as they doubtless will), you can simply say that this is an optional extension used by a minority of Firefox users (and since not even Firefox is fully "mainstream", this puts it about as far from the mainstream as you can get :P), and there are currently no exploits in the wild. You can also add that it was found by a white-hat, and so is a validation of the "many-eyes" theory, if you want. Spin works both ways ;)
I'm not sure if this applies to Zeta or not, but to make a point about this argument that crops up whenever someone forks a project or appears to re-tread old ground: Programmers are not interchangeable, especially if they are programming for free, and in their spare time. Such programmers will tackle the projects that interest them, and if deprived of such projects, may well opt to not tackle anything at all rather than help with an (to them) uninteresting project.
For what it's worth, I think you were completely in the right. They way people rallied round that other chap was depressing.
And to the OP - the beauty of open-source is that we are not reliant on the KDE team to do all this for us - people very frequently write desktop mods. Write them yourself (or suggest it to someone else who is looking for a project), get it out there, see what people think of it and, if it turns out to be a good idea, eventually it will probably be absorbed into KDE itself (like Karamba into Plasma, for example).
Everyone who thinks they have a good idea - go on, and suggest away! F/OSS has already proven it can create good quality code by harnessing the collective IQs of thousands of people around the planet, but so far has a poor reputation for innovation. I see no reason why this open, collaborative framework couldn't be extended to harness the enormous pools of creativity out there, also.
What would constitue "a deep way", in your opinion? Examples would be nice. I've always been of the opinion that a lot of good ideas and innovations could come from the user base, where the people who have to use the thing have good ideas about what they'd like to see, and what would make their lives easier. Plus, there's a hell of a lot more users than developers, so a bigger pool of ideas to draw from - Open Source should not just be about adding code. So let's get some brain-storming going!
Ha - well said! :) As the saying goes, "One man's 'bloat' is another man's 'essential feature'". As long as it is well-programmed and optimised, I always welcome this kind of bloat with open arms.
Oh, and read ubuntuguide.org first - there's a wealth of helpful info and FAQs there - should be more than enough to get you on your feet!
"Space Mutiny", if I recall. "Ugh! She's presenting like a Mandril!". One of the classic episodes :)
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109179
Woo - I take it all back! Thanks for the good tidings :)
In short - don't count on hardware DRM going the way of the dodo due to the public not liking it. And also, to the "Pah - it will be cracked in 5 minuntes!" crew - almost certainly not. It took ages to crack CSS, and even then it was only through a sheer, blind fluke. People coming up with DRM schemes learn from their past mistakes, and their progress will likely far out-strip that of those you produce the counter-measures.
I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the "K" desktop environment could well be (or at least, has the potential to be) more integrated than Windows is, whose legendary integration tends to be confined to integration between the few Microsoft apps, whereas with KDE (and open-source software in general), "third-party" apps tend to become integrated better. I'm not fully sure why this is, but I suspect that it is due to a) use of open standards; b) "automagic" enforcement at the API level [KDE's APIs evolve far more rapidly than those of Windows) and c) the fact that it is harder to "orphan" F/OSS apps - if the maintainer dies (or something!) before some new "integration enabler" becomes part of the API, someone can pick up and incorporate this new feature, binding the app further to the other apps so that they work together more seamlessly. If the maintainer of a project isn't interested in taking advantage of new opportunities for integration, someone else can write a patch which can be added by the distro packagers, etc.
And of course, through open protocols, Linux can "integrate" with other UNIX-y based operating systems, unlike Microsoft who, for all their touting of "interoperability", remain resolutely an outsider in may ways.
Anyway, there's just a few random and ill-researched thoughts that occurred to me :)
IIRC - "IsNot". It is a "shallow" test for inequality, much like comparing two pointers.