"Your complaint is that there is no pre-built binary for your sound-card. This is not a fault of Linux"
Fault? I used to think that when linux apologists said this they knew it was bullshit[...]
I think I understood you just fine.
The whole point is that no one cares whose fault it is.
I tell you what. The next time your car breaks down go and scream at your dentist about it and blame him/her for the problem. Then tell him that you're blaming him because you don't care whose fault it is.
So you think that if a piece of Windows software, that Microsoft didn't write, is broken it's necessarily Microsoft's fault?
I don't think you understand what the difference is between a device driver and an operating system. I'll give you a hand here. Only the person who makes the hardware can understand how to write the device driver. Got it? Hardware doesn't magically work on your computer because Windows understands everything. It's because the people who made the hardware decided to write the driver that it work under Windows.
I certainly don't sit around with broken tools because I make sure what I buy is compatible for my system. But I guess according to you that makes me an apologist.
+5? wow... I gotta say theres a whole crew on Slashdot with an axe to grind. You didn't even post the model of your laptop, much less the make of this 'video/soundcard' child of evil.
Anyways, before you tried those distributions did you check the hardware compatability? Did you consider that there just wasn't support from the manufacturer for this chipset in Linux? Just blindly installing various distros is silly. You wouldn't buy hardware for your mac without first checking if it supported macs would you?
You don't like compiling stuff but you tried Gentoo????????? Maybe you want to enlighten me on that.
"Every single time I've tried Linux I've wound up having to dink with crap that I have absolutely no love for dinking with"
I haven't. Every time I've installed Linux it's been flawless. But then again, I check the HCLs before I buy. Linux users have to cherry-pick on their hardware because otherwise you get burned by crap out there that just doesn't support Linux.
Anyways, you don't care. So you bought a machine where the manufacturer cherry-picks the hardware for you. Congratulations.
"Long story short, I found out that in order to get Linux to work with the laptop's (proprietary) soundcard, I would have had to recompile the freaking kernel." You found out wrong. Drivers don't have to be part of the kernel. They can also be loaded as modules. You don't have to recompile your kernel.
I am so sick and tired of reading un-informed 'insightful' posts like this.
Your complaint is that there is no pre-built binary for your sound-card. This is not a fault of Linux. It is either the fault of the distribution for not including the driver (if the source is available) or the fault of the manufacturer for not supporting Linux.
Who the hell do you think builds the drivers for Windows? Microsoft? NO. That Windows runs so much hardware is simply the result of the fact that manufacturers all support it. It has nothing to do with the technical merits of Windows and everything to do with its market share.
Hear hear. Blowhards venting about how something "sucks" when in reality they are feeling threatened and just lashing out. Ever do a search for graphics and imaging programs? I don't think any other category of software has so many different products posturing for a piece of the pie left over from Adobe. Leaves me wondering how many of the "it sucks" posts are truly dis-interested in their opinions.
Rule #1: if a criticism isn't also acompangnied with a useful suggestion on how to make it better it isn't worth much. If all you have to say is "it sucks" then all I have to say is "don't use it".
"The USA is supposed to be a country based on the Constitution, and was founded with the belief that every individual has natural rights that need to be protected [...]"
It's an ideal lost to some it seems. When I saw this story I was greatly disheartened. Can anyone now not wonder now at what really goes on in Guantanamo?
Not only is kde-look sponsored by Linspire (they pay a large chunk of the bandwidth), I distinctly remember when kde-look was going to the toilet because they couldn't afford their bandwidth. They were saved by the sponsorship of Linspire.
kde-look is appreciated and actively used by users of KDE for enhancing the look of their KDE desktop. Many theme writers and icon developers use it exclusively to post their KDE material.
It should also be made clear that a lot of the art of kde-look is given under a free license, not a none-commercial license.
Unless I see a post from the artist complaining about the use of his art, I'm going to consider this article a troll because of the weak tie-in to the Microsoft trademark dispute.
Command Prompt: I use it daily with my work. However, I've improved my experience with it a hundred fold by also making use of cygwin.
"You may have all your programs in one directory and think it's simple doing DOS commands, but get with the future. I have multiple directories under my program files directory[...]" Here are some cool command line tips: - use tab completion. Get MS power tools to configure it. - avoid the use of spaces in filenames and directories. - symbolic links (using cygwin)
I have no problem navigating directories like this at the command line: C:\work\stuff\vnmm\boost 1.31\boost_1_31_0\libs\regex\build\vc71
"As for what someone else said about haivng to pay to get binaries, that's obviously wrong [...] If I can't get a binary of Linux without paying for it, that's just lazy open source developers [...]." No. It's not. Nobody owes you anything-- unless you pay for it. The only guarantee you will find with all GPL software is that you will get the source. That is all. Anything more is either good will or support you pay for.
If you want a nice easy Linux experience buy a full release from Mandrake or Suse (their next one is looking promising). If you want a 'mom & pop' experience you should buy a pre-installed computer from Lindows.
I'm glad you're happy with Mozilla. Just about everyone I know who uses it is. But the real point in open source and Free software is not necessarily about making things easier for you to do, although it's nice when they do (gimp 2.x), the point is you've been given the right and the ability to choose who you do business with to help you get your job done-- nothing welded shut and no 'if you open this you will go to jail and the license is void' clauses.
"What are you talking about? Word does have it, and always has IIRC. Click the paragraph icon on the toolbar or go to Tools->Options and set exactly which codes you want to see."
Obviously you've never used Wordperfect or you would realize that it has far superior code markup viewing. Word perfect codes are similar to HTML markup to a certain extent: they have a start and end tag and can be deleted and moved as well. It is very easy to figure out a formatting problem by just looking at the codes.
The entire kernel is GPLed. No, this is most likely to avoid having the "this driver taints the kernel" message when it is loaded. The message is basically first a warning that the driver is not GPL and then a warning about potential problems that ensue from binary drivers that only work with specific kernel versions (are you reading this realtek?).
As mentionned in other threads, the kernel developers aren't very interested in debugging kernel problems associated with binary only drivers. It's basic quid pro quo. Linus has said binary only drivers are allowed but that people who produce such things are completely and uterly on their own: basically don't come crying if your binary driver is broken by a newer kernel rev.
Didn't say poor. I said they weren't rich. The poverty line varies on a per-state basis, but nobody can honestly say anyone living on 20k a year in the US is _RICH_
Oh yeah, I forgot, we're rich because we no longer live in the miserable squalor that people existed in during the Industrial Revolution.
This is just excuse legislation meant to standardise and legalize the IT-slave-labor conditions that employers previously had to give away options and stock to justify. Forget that now, you're just a peon and if you complain you're a communist.
It looks like your making a joke, but I figured I'd mention this anyways as people seem to get confused at times about what the GPL demands of distributors.
The GPL states their obligation for supplying the code is to those who receive their products and by inferrence to whom they have distributed the imbedded Linux binaries to.
It looks like to get the code you're going to have to buy a traffic meter from them or ask for it from one of their current customers.
My Audigy works very nicely in Linux. Thanks. In fact all my hardware works nicely except the wifi card with the Realtek chip.
NVidia support rocks too. I love their approach to supporting different kernels. I'll be upgrading to one for my next machine you can bet on it. Dido for Creative.
Windows isn't an OS for newbies either. Regular Joes rely on manufacturers to put toghether systems for them and support them. They don't do it themselves. Why do you think computer stores charge $$$ an hour for service? Why do you think people line up at them and pay for it?
Second, nobody who actually cares about Linux wants it to be an 'OS for newbies'. This is left to the producers of well-supported products who want to target that market.
In Linux, people make money through services. If you want to have your hand held, you're going to have to buy a product from somebody where that kind of support is offered.
"...a wake up call to the slashdot croud who perpetually fool themselves as to how good linux is [...] i've been reading slashdot for the last 5 years"
You may have been reading Slashdot but it doesn't sound like you know much about Linux.
Linux has _dramatically_ improved the underlying sound system over the supposed time you've been following Slashdot. ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture), which is now part of the 2.6 kernel series, resolves many of the criticims directed at OSS that a user _might_ have noticed in the past.
Personally I've tried a number of sound cards over the years; the only issue I've ever run into was the lack of support from the manufacturer.
Making it 'easy for mom and pop' doesn't exist in Windows land either. Mom and Pop get their drivers installed for them when they buy their PC and _never_ know how to do a driver upgrade unless they get their hands held by a technical support person. I'm always seeing people in the service lines of the multitude of computer stores of my city for getting help to update/install new devices in their computer.
"You need freeze the work geared up towards developers."
LOL... if you want user-friendly 'I don't want to think about my PC' Linux buy a computer from Lindows or pay for support from somebody.
Re:Trolltechs license is great
on
A Taste of Qt 4
·
· Score: 1
The problem most people complain about is that there is no 'open' license on the Windows platform.
Section 8 of the Non-Commercial License: 8. Licensee is as an individual granted a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license, in a non-commercial setting, to....
As you can see, one cannot develop a Windows program in a commercial environment with QT, even if you will open up all your source, because you are using it in a commercial setting. You have to buy a license for every single developer working on a Windows app based on QT. This means, for instance, that things like in-house utilities using QT are incredibly hard to justify budget wise.
Anyways, it's their product and I don't begrudge them the right to do what they want with it; but those license costs make it really difficult to sell switching from MFC + a 400$ widget toolkit. Especially if you're a small company where 50,000$ is a big deal.
When I last asked QT about this policy I received the reply that 'we need to eat'. Translation: we make most of our money from Windows licensing.
So what do I see happening? People are switching to java and C# on Windows. Not QT by any stretch.
"Why did so many people settle? Because they were GUILTY...."
You may be factually correct that people are using these devices most often for copyright infringement, but the assertion they must be guilty because they settled is dead-wrong.
Individual people and, indeed also, corporations will often settle because the legal costs of fighting a cause in court are too high. Examples of this are so prevalent that it's quite telling to see this claim still trumpeted as proof of guilt by some people.
'the incentive to hide source code would be gone, since anyone could freely copy and distribute your binaries, and freely reverse engineer them'
Reverse engineering is legal now. The only thing that potentially restricts this activity is the EULA you agree to when you install a piece of commercial software.
The point of the GPL is to ensure code is always available to those interested in modifying it. It's about keeping the source Free.
Slashdot Mirror
"Your complaint is that there is no pre-built binary for your sound-card. This is not a fault of Linux"
Fault? I used to think that when linux apologists said this they knew it was bullshit[...]
I think I understood you just fine.
The whole point is that no one cares whose fault it is.
I tell you what. The next time your car breaks down go and scream at your dentist about it and blame him/her for the problem. Then tell him that you're blaming him because you don't care whose fault it is.
So you think that if a piece of Windows software, that Microsoft didn't write, is broken it's necessarily Microsoft's fault?
I don't think you understand what the difference is between a device driver and an operating system. I'll give you a hand here. Only the person who makes the hardware can understand how to write the device driver. Got it? Hardware doesn't magically work on your computer because Windows understands everything. It's because the people who made the hardware decided to write the driver that it work under Windows.
I certainly don't sit around with broken tools because I make sure what I buy is compatible for my system. But I guess according to you that makes me an apologist.
+5? wow... I gotta say theres a whole crew on Slashdot with an axe to grind. You didn't even post the model of your laptop, much less the make of this 'video/soundcard' child of evil.
Anyways, before you tried those distributions did you check the hardware compatability? Did you consider that there just wasn't support from the manufacturer for this chipset in Linux? Just blindly installing various distros is silly. You wouldn't buy hardware for your mac without first checking if it supported macs would you?
You don't like compiling stuff but you tried Gentoo????????? Maybe you want to enlighten me on that.
"Every single time I've tried Linux I've wound up having to dink with crap that I have absolutely no love for dinking with"
I haven't. Every time I've installed Linux it's been flawless. But then again, I check the HCLs before I buy. Linux users have to cherry-pick on their hardware because otherwise you get burned by crap out there that just doesn't support Linux.
Anyways, you don't care. So you bought a machine where the manufacturer cherry-picks the hardware for you. Congratulations.
"Long story short, I found out that in order to get Linux to work with the laptop's (proprietary) soundcard, I would have had to recompile the freaking kernel."
You found out wrong. Drivers don't have to be part of the kernel. They can also be loaded as modules. You don't have to recompile your kernel.
I am so sick and tired of reading un-informed 'insightful' posts like this.
Your complaint is that there is no pre-built binary for your sound-card. This is not a fault of Linux. It is either the fault of the distribution for not including the driver (if the source is available) or the fault of the manufacturer for not supporting Linux.
Who the hell do you think builds the drivers for Windows? Microsoft? NO. That Windows runs so much hardware is simply the result of the fact that manufacturers all support it. It has nothing to do with the technical merits of Windows and everything to do with its market share.
Because everyone always tells the truth to the police: ... you musta clocked that other car.."
"Yes sir, officer, I was thought I was doing 55mph
It doesn't excuse her, of course, but the hypocrisy of everyone flaming her for lying is getting to me.
Trying to cover up a stupidity is something not many people can honestly claim to never have done.
People who like UNIX find the fink project indispensable when using a mac. By the way, Fink uses Debian package management.
So, you might in fact say, that Apple owes its popularity amongst UNIX folk to the Fink and to GNU.
Hear hear. Blowhards venting about how something "sucks" when in reality they are feeling threatened and just lashing out. Ever do a search for graphics and imaging programs? I don't think any other category of software has so many different products posturing for a piece of the pie left over from Adobe.
Leaves me wondering how many of the "it sucks" posts are truly dis-interested in their opinions.
Rule #1: if a criticism isn't also acompangnied with a useful suggestion on how to make it better it isn't worth much. If all you have to say is "it sucks" then all I have to say is "don't use it".
"The USA is supposed to be a country based on the Constitution, and was founded with the belief that every individual has natural rights that need to be protected [...]"
It's an ideal lost to some it seems. When I saw this story I was greatly disheartened. Can anyone now not wonder now at what really goes on in Guantanamo?
Not only is kde-look sponsored by Linspire (they pay a large chunk of the bandwidth), I distinctly remember when kde-look was going to the toilet because they couldn't afford their bandwidth. They were saved by the sponsorship of Linspire.
kde-look is appreciated and actively used by users of KDE for enhancing the look of their KDE desktop. Many theme writers and icon developers use it exclusively to post their KDE material.
It should also be made clear that a lot of the art of kde-look is given under a free license, not a none-commercial license.
Unless I see a post from the artist complaining about the use of his art, I'm going to consider this article a troll because of the weak tie-in to the Microsoft trademark dispute.
Command Prompt: I use it daily with my work. However, I've improved my experience with it a hundred fold by also making use of cygwin.
"You may have all your programs in one directory and think it's simple doing DOS commands, but get with the future. I have multiple directories under my program files directory[...]"
Here are some cool command line tips:
- use tab completion. Get MS power tools to configure it.
- avoid the use of spaces in filenames and directories.
- symbolic links (using cygwin)
I have no problem navigating directories like this at the command line:
C:\work\stuff\vnmm\boost 1.31\boost_1_31_0\libs\regex\build\vc71
"As for what someone else said about haivng to pay to get binaries, that's obviously wrong [...] If I can't get a binary of Linux without paying for it, that's just lazy open source developers [...]."
No. It's not. Nobody owes you anything-- unless you pay for it. The only guarantee you will find with all GPL software is that you will get the source. That is all. Anything more is either good will or support you pay for.
If you want a nice easy Linux experience buy a full release from Mandrake or Suse (their next one is looking promising). If you want a 'mom & pop' experience you should buy a pre-installed computer from Lindows.
I'm glad you're happy with Mozilla. Just about everyone I know who uses it is. But the real point in open source and Free software is not necessarily about making things easier for you to do, although it's nice when they do (gimp 2.x), the point is you've been given the right and the ability to choose who you do business with to help you get your job done-- nothing welded shut and no 'if you open this you will go to jail and the license is void' clauses.
"What are you talking about? Word does have it, and always has IIRC. Click the paragraph icon on the toolbar or go to Tools->Options and set exactly which codes you want to see."
Obviously you've never used Wordperfect or you would realize that it has far superior code markup viewing. Word perfect codes are similar to HTML markup to a certain extent: they have a start and end tag and can be deleted and moved as well. It is very easy to figure out a formatting problem by just looking at the codes.
"I've never used a makefile in my life. I have no idea how they work."
Then you will be relying on vendors to supply you with supported versions of Linux to take care of things for you. This won't be free($) however.
"Nor do I wish to go back to the days of dos where I have to type commands in. Nor do I wish to have to compile every app I download."
You do realize that Windows has a command line right? A lot of things are done more effectively in the command line of Windows than through the GUIs.
Don't confuse being accustomed to the use of a tool with 'ease of use'.
An expert understands the command line. Windows is no different there.
The entire kernel is GPLed. No, this is most likely to avoid having the "this driver taints the kernel" message when it is loaded. The message is basically first a warning that the driver is not GPL and then a warning about potential problems that ensue from binary drivers that only work with specific kernel versions (are you reading this realtek?).
As mentionned in other threads, the kernel developers aren't very interested in debugging kernel problems associated with binary only drivers. It's basic quid pro quo. Linus has said binary only drivers are allowed but that people who produce such things are completely and uterly on their own: basically don't come crying if your binary driver is broken by a newer kernel rev.
Didn't say poor. I said they weren't rich. The poverty line varies on a per-state basis, but nobody can honestly say anyone living on 20k a year in the US is _RICH_
I dare you to go to New York city and tell people living on 20k a year that they are rich.
If you have a reference to your quoted Democrat classification, please post it.
21k a year is rich????
Not in my country.
Oh yeah, I forgot, we're rich because we no longer live in the miserable squalor that people existed in during the Industrial Revolution.
This is just excuse legislation meant to standardise and legalize the IT-slave-labor conditions that employers previously had to give away options and stock to justify. Forget that now, you're just a peon and if you complain you're a communist.
"Where is the source code? I searched"
It looks like your making a joke, but I figured I'd mention this anyways as people seem to get confused at times about what the GPL demands of distributors.
The GPL states their obligation for supplying the code is to those who receive their products and by inferrence to whom they have distributed the imbedded Linux binaries to.
It looks like to get the code you're going to have to buy a traffic meter from them or ask for it from one of their current customers.
My Audigy works very nicely in Linux. Thanks.
In fact all my hardware works nicely except the wifi card with the Realtek chip.
NVidia support rocks too. I love their approach to supporting different kernels. I'll be upgrading to one for my next machine you can bet on it. Dido for Creative.
Windows isn't an OS for newbies either. Regular Joes rely on manufacturers to put toghether systems for them and support them. They don't do it themselves. Why do you think computer stores charge $$$ an hour for service? Why do you think people line up at them and pay for it?
Second, nobody who actually cares about Linux wants it to be an 'OS for newbies'. This is left to the producers of well-supported products who want to target that market.
In Linux, people make money through services. If you want to have your hand held, you're going to have to buy a product from somebody where that kind of support is offered.
"...a wake up call to the slashdot croud who perpetually fool themselves as to how good linux is [...] i've been reading slashdot for the last 5 years"
... if you want user-friendly 'I don't want to think about my PC' Linux buy a computer from Lindows or pay for support from somebody.
You may have been reading Slashdot but it doesn't sound like you know much about Linux.
Linux has _dramatically_ improved the underlying sound system over the supposed time you've been following Slashdot. ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture), which is now part of the 2.6 kernel series, resolves many of the criticims directed at OSS that a user _might_ have noticed in the past.
Personally I've tried a number of sound cards over the years; the only issue I've ever run into was the lack of support from the manufacturer.
Making it 'easy for mom and pop' doesn't exist in Windows land either. Mom and Pop get their drivers installed for them when they buy their PC and _never_ know how to do a driver upgrade unless they get their hands held by a technical support person. I'm always seeing people in the service lines of the multitude of computer stores of my city for getting help to update/install new devices in their computer.
"You need freeze the work geared up towards developers."
LOL
The problem most people complain about is that there is no 'open' license on the Windows platform.
....
Section 8 of the Non-Commercial License:
8. Licensee is as an individual granted a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license, in a non-commercial setting, to
As you can see, one cannot develop a Windows program in a commercial environment with QT, even if you will open up all your source, because you are using it in a commercial setting. You have to buy a license for every single developer working on a Windows app based on QT. This means, for instance, that things like in-house utilities using QT are incredibly hard to justify budget wise.
Anyways, it's their product and I don't begrudge them the right to do what they want with it; but those license costs make it really difficult to sell switching from MFC + a 400$ widget toolkit. Especially if you're a small company where 50,000$ is a big deal.
When I last asked QT about this policy I received the reply that 'we need to eat'. Translation: we make most of our money from Windows licensing.
So what do I see happening? People are switching to java and C# on Windows. Not QT by any stretch.
"Why did so many people settle? Because they were GUILTY...."
You may be factually correct that people are using these devices most often for copyright infringement, but the assertion they must be guilty because they settled is dead-wrong.
Individual people and, indeed also, corporations will often settle because the legal costs of fighting a cause in court are too high. Examples of this are so prevalent that it's quite telling to see this claim still trumpeted as proof of guilt by some people.
Communism, slavery... wow.. at least you didn't also make a reference to nazism.
Sorry, I'm not terribly inclined to make the effort to rebut your demagoguery.
Let me suggest this question then:
If it becomes a standard, is it in society's interest to let the patent last so long?
'the incentive to hide source code would be gone, since anyone could freely copy and distribute your binaries, and freely reverse engineer them'
Reverse engineering is legal now. The only thing that potentially restricts this activity is the EULA you agree to when you install a piece of commercial software.
The point of the GPL is to ensure code is always available to those interested in modifying it. It's about keeping the source Free.