In all my own years haunting cubicles in this life, I have never met anyone haunting them in the next. I guess only people with souls can become ghosts.
Should loosening an AOL chat virus even be considered a crime? This is given that it sticks *only* to computers running AIM. Consider that there is virtually nothing on AIM but bots and script kiddies and cyber perverts, anyway, so, in fact, one might even be doing a public service knocking them all offline for a few hours. This is like if I hear somebody hacked a spam site and shut them down - Hooray! Vigilante Justice! Seems a great expenditure of effort going to waste, however, if AOL recovers from the attack.
Now, that's an idea for a Python script if ever I heard one! You could have lynx scrape the content from the discussion page into a file, parse through the file building data for a Markov-chain, and use curl to post the generated comment anonymously. And average IQs of ACs would rise, I don't doubt!
To the people defending this policy and insisting there's nothing wrong with it: ENJOY! Hey, if you're that happy about it, I hope they jack the price up to a million smackeroos a month, just so you'll be tha-a-a-at much happier! Saves you the trouble of raking your spare dollar bills into a pile and burning them at the end of the month. And oh, how burning money stinks, and the smoke is hell to get out of the curtains!
In this case, there are no people with swastikas running around the streets spreading hatred against the Jewish community. It's more like white people running around the streets with crosses and American flags spreading hatred against Arabs (is there any real difference?).
Yes. Swastikas are nicer than crosses (though I despise both). The swastika was merely a representation of a productive tool - the axe - arranged in a wheeled construction to suggest tireless work. The cross symbolizes an instrument of executing human beings in the most torturous fashion possible. If I see a swastika and a cross coming after me at the same time, I'll take my chances with the swastika.
What I see happening in the United States has no parallel in all of human history. The thing that comes closest to it is the European Dark Ages, but even at that time, Europe still hung on to some modicum of civilization. The United States is heading straight for barbarianism. Unlike the Roman Empire, we won't need to be sacked by invading gypsies; the United States will devolve into it's own angry mob. Even cannibalism is not too much to expect in another generation. Anarchy? That is without question. The US never DID actually lead the world in science, anyway. We borrowed a bunch of talent from Europe while we fought Hitler, one of our few shining moments. Science? Thank you, citizens of other countries, for keeping that torch lit.
The Uhg-mer-cains who will be flaming this post are a perfect example. People of other nations, when was the last time you had an intelligent debate with an American citizen? Like a pack animal, it's brain is hard-wired to snap at any desecration of what it believes to be it's territory, though it's peed there so much that it's spoiled the ground for anyone else, anyway. It calls this "patriotism". It has a psychopathic hatred, manifesting itself in continued savage acts of violence against all living creatures, which it justifies with the delusion that there is an invisible being in the sky who hates everyone as much as it does. It calls this "religion". It's sole other emotion - if it can be said, at all, to emote - is greed, which causes it to continue to be barely industrious enough to operate a cash register, push a button, or sponge off a relative - whichever is easiest - in order to obey the directive blasted out of every media source at it: "Consume! Consume! Consume!" The majority of them will not be able to make out this level of writing. My foreign friends, what does it say when you yourself, even if you come from a non-English-based nation, have a better command of English than Americans do? Before you point at me and say, "Well, you're an example that disproves the rule, aren't you?" - I'm a first generation immigrant. And my family and I are saving up and coordinating plans to immigrate right back out again. The US gave us the best fifty years of it's life, but it's over.
increasingly complex over the past several decades, which corresponds to an increase in average IQ scores in the U.S.
In other news, global warming has caused temperatures to soar into the 200's, which naturally means that humans grew a thick leathery hide to protect against burning, and all the crops have died, corresponding to human's recently developed ability to live without eating.
I was unimpressed with the attitude of what I call the zealots (those types that insist that if you won't compile your program you are a moron). You know the mentality. It is one of those things that I feel is killing linux. The Linux community should rid themselves of those souls permanently and without appeal.
Congratulations! Your wish came true! These days, every Linux system I can find (except for a dwindling few: Slackware, Debian, Linux From Scratch, Gentoo, and Rock) removes everything having to do with programming it can get away with, throws out every brain in sight, and makes Linux into a perfect I-can't-believe-it's-not-Windows(TM) clone. Continuing this trend, Linux will follow Windows down the shithole, since it's only another five years before it goes closed source (what the hell good is source code that your system can't fscking COMPILE???), since all the people like you do is bitch about it when you accidentally stumble upon source code in your system. Meanwhile, I'll be forced to go to BSD in another five-ten years when the stench of the corpse that was Linux gets too overpowering, and about five years after that when you've broken Linux's very last bone and it's not even fit to run your favorite malware application anymore, you'll barge into the middle of BSD demanding that somebody show you how to use portage, and we'll go all the way back around again.
Just wanted to remind people: Dual-boot! Run both Windows and Linux on the same machine! I did this and it helped tremendously - everybody in the family could slowly adapt one application at a time, at their own speed.
The easiest possible way is to simply plug a second hard-drive into your computer's IDE cable (5 Gigs will be plenty. Pick one up at your local used-computer-parts bin. Bet for five buck's more they'll slap it in for you). Then do *nothing* to Windows, don't even tell it anything's changed. Next, get the CD install disks and only have them install to the second hard drive. When the boot options setup comes up, ignore Lilo and Grub - pick a floppy boot.
I advocate this as the simplest, cheapest, foolproof way to get Windows and Linux to co-operate on the same machine. (Of course, you can partition one hard drive and fool with Lilo configs if you feel you're 31337 enough!) You now have your regular Windows like you always had. Stick in the boot floppy and tell Windows to reboot: *poof* it's Linux. Pull out the floppy and reboot again - back to normal Windows. This has an advantage over running a live CD (also a good way to try Linux out!) in that you can change and customize it. Some live CDs allow a hard drive install, as well.
If you thought Johnny Cochran could name his price after the OJ trail, that'll be nothing compared to the demand for South Korean anti-trust lawyers. I'd sponsor one to the States right now, if I could.
(1) Security. About the millionth time my wife watched me stay up all night scraping viruses, malware, crap and crud out of Windows because it ground to a halt every time we tried to use the internet, and seeing me screaming in frustration and bashing the desk and miss a whole night's sleep, SHE prodded me a little closer to switching.
(2) Work. Linux lets me be as smart as I always was; Windows forces me to be slow and stupid. Linux comes out of the box with more tools (tools, I say. Not frou-frou doodads and games!) than you could buy for Windows if you had Bill Gates' bank account. Yes, I tried MS-Visual-Basic and Visual-C++. Say what you will. Say you love it. That's your opinion. My opinion is, they're retarded. My apologies to any retarded people offended by this.
(3) Innovation. Let me second the idea put forth by several others in this thread: the stupidest thing you can do with Linux is follow in Window's footsteps in the interest of getting more people to switch from Windows. Forget trying to make "I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Windows(TM)". Continue to blaze Linux's own trail as it has always been, and let everybody else catch up if they can.
So: innovation: Live CDs. Linux that can run from floppies, USBs, old computers, everywhere. A true multi-tasking system (new to me, anyway) able to compile in one desktop, render 3D images in a second, download in a third, and let me play a game in the fourth without a bit of lag - it's like being four people on four computers! The variety of having my choice of 1000 different distros, so I can have it my way, and choice of different desktops (Fluxbox is my favorite, and I had a chance to shop around for a while to get there).
(4) Free! Free forever! Hundreds and hundreds of distros to download free! All the software for it free! Read the source code for free! Roll your own for free! Release your own for free! Even the games are starting to improve - every time I find a Supertux, an ArmegaTron, a Tower Toppler, or a Metal Blob Solid, I'm doubly happy with it because I didn't have to pay $10-70 dollars for it.
PS Save the standard, flaming, aggravated responses this time, willyah? If you can't tolerate reading other people's opinions, you're at the wrong website. If you love Windows and hate Linux, good for you! But we're asking me.
As far as I can remember, my first GNU/Linux distro, Red Hat 5.1, had separate -devel packages
I had Red Hat as my training-wheel distro, too. I would hasten to point out that the -devel packages are *there* at least, on the disk, installable from the menu by selecting the "development" menu options. Even though Red Hat has no great shakes as a reputation for being a programmer's distro, at least my 9.0 came with as, gcc, eLisp, Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk, the makesystem, jcl, Glade, GTK/Qt/ncurses libs, and more. Try to find these on Mandriva? Ubuntu?
PS, I, too, tried Debian and hated it, for exactly your reasons. I was installing on an offline machine, and nothing kills a package-management system like being offline. "apt-get foo" becomes "scour the internet on your Red Hat machine for the right package, copy it to USB, port it to the Debian machine, discover that it needs x,y,z packages..."
It seemed like a sour note in the middle of a riff. 60,000 employees? Seems kind of low, when you're bent on world domination. So, I went over to www.hoovers.com and dug up their fact sheets:(2004 numbers,unless noted)
Walt Disney Company: 129,000
International Business Machines(IBM): 369,277
Samsung Group(2003): 195,000
Citigroup, Inc: 294,000
Sun Microsystems: 35,000
Apple Computer, Inc: 13,426
Google, inc: 3,021
Electronic Arts: 6,100
Novell: 6,186
Dell Computers: 55,200
Hewlett-Packard Company: 151,000
Canon, Inc: 108,257
Oracle Corporation: 41,658
By the way, the same site lists Microsoft Corporation as having 57,000. So either they've hired 3,000 this year, or somebody mis-counted. I find it amusing that Microsoft is making such a fuss over Google, a company 1/20th it's size. Kind of like a lion roaring at a mouse!
And consider that it would only take a 20,000 people to leave Microsoft to join Oracle to make Oracle bigger than Microsoft.
Anyway, these numbers aren't meant to prove anything. It's just that I somehow thought Microsoft was bigger than that. Just some morning number-punching while my brain wakes up.
Are you suggesting here that software can't benefit from usability testing?
No, I was talking about the key-binding business - vi/m specifically. But come on, are we saying that *nobody* but programmers ever use the software? Every time a beta release hits Sourceforge, it gets downloaded worldwide and at least some of those people (a) are not programmers, and (b) feed back in comments, bug reports, etc, which all get taken into account by the designer for the next release.
I am most definitely saying that - and anybody with a grain of common sense can see it - no programmer starts out saying "heh, heh, heh, I'm going to make my program as difficult to use as I possibly can!" Every program has the simplest possible interface on it for what it does. Please, anybody differs with me on this one: design an interface yourself, and you'll see what I mean. Testing is still a good thing, but it's more for weeding out bugs, technical problems, and seeing what features need to be added and removed. Conventions are followed - slavishly. In the GUIs, the File menu's still the first on the left, still has "Open, close, save, save as...,", blah blah blah blah. I'm so sick of hearing people complain about interfaces that are IDENTICALLY the same as all the other interfaces on the programs that they like, I could barf thumbtacks. And when you're talking about programs that have a really different interface, like Emacs and vi, the extra complication is there because the program has 100 times the functionality; coming back to my life motto: "Stealth Bombers are more difficult to operate than tricycles BECAUSE THEY CAN FLY."
I could go on and on and on and on, and not get to one tenth what I see on Slashdot. The Gimp is more difficult to use than Windows Paintbrush. Emacs is more difficult to use than Windows Notepad. Bash is harder than DOS. C++ is more difficult to program in than Apple II Basic. A nuclear power plant is more difficult to build than a birdhouse. A Thanksgiving turkey dinner with all the trimmings for eight people is more difficult to make than two slices of toast. Shakespeare is more difficult to understand than The Little Engine That Could. James Michener's Alaska takes more concentration to read than a Spiderman comic book. The Mona Lisa was more difficult to paint than a Sesame Street color-by-number picture of Bert and Earnie playing with their fire truck. Handel's Messiah is more difficult to play than Jingle Bells. It's harder to perform brain surgury than it is to apply a band-aid to a skinned knee. It is harder to successfully negotiate the top five Kama Sutra positions in a foursome than it is to jerk off while drunk. I'm not even scratching the surface, here!
Hasn't anybody ever heard of the expression "Form follows function?" And if you care ONLY about the interface and don't give a damn what's under the hood, then who do you think they're building all those Macs for? Go get one and be happy!
And thank you, zsau, for expanding! (*pointing at zsau's post*) Yes, folks, that is what I'm talking about. This kind of stuff isn't even in the average user's field of consideration. So doubtless, the average user must be perplexed when they hear the developers whine and moan; probably thinking: "What's wrong with these silly people? Mandriva has games and the internet, doesn't it?"
What bothers me is the increasing balkanization between user-land and developer-land. It's all sliding towards EZ-use and low-maintenence, while we can count the distros that make a good developer's platform on one hand. Linux used to be "by programmers, for programmers", and that, inconvenient as it is for low-hassle casual users, is *how* Linux *thrived*! It is WHY you run Linux, now. Because it was easy for a Linux distro to make more distros, reproducing symbiotically through developers.
More than that, the side benefit of putting that power to create and release in the hands of the public is that it makes *more* developers. If the casual user has the tools on the system and doesn't use them, they're only out a half-gig of storage space. If the casual user - at *just* *one* point in their whole long lives - gets curious about programming and wants to try it, and the tools are *not* there, then the world is poorer by one programmer. That was one less developer propagating Linux and keeping the culture alive.
And the less programming power in the hands of the people, the more rests in the hands of proprietary interests. That's all I'm saying is, Linux needs to keep it's "free as in speech" side as well as it's "free as in beer" side. If it loses the former, it becomes shareware instead of Open Source.
I recently found MediainLinux, a Live CD that's a one-stop toolbox for media content creators of graphics, audio, and video. I use it all the time. Now, all we need is the same concept for developers. Perhaps, the next time I play with Linux-from-Scratch, I'll see if I can't get that going. Somebody's going to have to, or we can all get back in line for Borg re-programming.
If you mean things like rounding up every programmer who has ever coded their beast to demand "are yuh sy-u-u-ure?" at every user keypress, and chopping off their finger one at a time with no anesthesia, I'm with you there.
Label each program with a name that describes what it does.
You do have some sound ideas, here. I wrote out a didly shell script once I called "411" and you typed "411 foo" to find out any docs on your system about foo at all. The important feature was, it listed the docs and you selected one with a single key and it popped that doc open for reading - regardless of what format it was in! If it was an HTML doc, it loaded it in Lynx, if it was a man page, it manned it, Emacs for source code files, etc. Did it when I was a noob, but still use it to this day. But your idea seems more like the BSD "WTF" program, only for program names. That'd be trivial to write, but how to be sure it's updated for every single program you have or add to a system?
Sorry, but we CANNOT expand "fdisk" to "fix disk" or "man" to "manual page viewer". That would kill the command line. The command line is also what Unix programs use to talk to *each* *other* as well as what humans type in an xterm. Kill the command line and you kill Linux with it.
Usabilty testing by non programmers.
Oh, God, not you too! You started off sounding so bright. Over and over and over again, it must be explained that what's easy to use depends on what you were used to before. Explain to me what's so intuitive about "Control-V" to mean "copy the text I just highlighted and cut here" in a Windows environment, and I'll explain why the commands in vi and Emacs make sense. vi is a tool for programmers. Non-programmers have kwrite. vi can do thousands of things. YOU try binding every one of those thousands of things to a key sequence, and make sure *every* *function* is bound to an intuitive keystroke. At some point, you have to decide between "print" or "paste" for the P key. Which function gets the C key, "copy" or "cut"? Only people who've never sweated out a key-binding chart complain about key-bindings.
Welcome your users.
That *would* be nice, wouldn't it? A couple distros (Knoppix and ?) at least do a splash screen with links to info, with an option to turn it off. Sadly, some distro authors out there really don't care much, and it would be cumbersome to come up with a general-purpose one. But we should try something, here. We're standing by for you to head the sourceforge project!
Jesus Christ! As compared to WHAT?!?!? Link me the screen-shot of this mythical, glorious, ravagingly breath-taking OS that blows away the best Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, Window-Maker, Enlightenment, etc has to offer. WTF IS the standard that I keep hearing Linux falls short of? What, is the "x" close-window button shaped like Marylin Monroe's titty? What's the goods? Show me!
Oh, look at the idiots jump all over it!
on
Fighting FUD with Humor
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"people aren't stupid", well, what about the people who scream, "I REFUSE TO LEARN ANYTHING!!!!!" ? You *can* be stupid if you absolutely devote every fibre of your being to completely attaining that state.
Well, stop and think about it. I gather from your little point-by-point refutation that your favorite distro is Ubuntu. Well, when Ubuntu is the only distro left in the world, who will program more Linux for you?
Let's put it this way: I'll start with Slackware and create a new Ubuntu release from scratch, and you start with Ubuntu and create a new Slackware release from scratch. Anybody place any bets who finishes first? Or at all?
The biggest player in the Windows to Linux movment will be "can I learn this easy, and use it easy" not "how much can I fsck with it".
You're right as rain - but there's a problem. See, 99% of the distros are now "dumbed down" so much that they're useless for a power-user. To make a NEW Linux distribution, or write a NEW Linux program or make an update/bugfix/patch for existing examples of same - guess what? - you need one of those distros you can "fsck with" because that's the only system you can program on. Right now, that's down to Slackware, Debian (allegedly), Gentoo, and Linux From Scratch. Now, when the Great Steamroller of Group Opinion has flattened Linux out into One Big Ubuntu - where will we get more Linux? And what will be the difference between Linux and a proprietary, closed-source system?
I'm looking to keep my Slackware disks in a safe in a secret location. So that if present trends continue, I'll eventually own the only free development platform left on Earth. And I promise to make an insufferable dictator!
But it makes a great desktop OS for its very niche userbase.
Yeah, that's a puzzle to me, too. It's the only distro for my home box. It can do anything every other distro can. But in the mind of Random Luser, any distro that lets you compile a tarball is automatically a server distro for admins only. Like the window manager must somehow vanish if there's a header file on the same hard drive.
Slackware is not only adequate for the desktop, it becomes one of maybe three distros left standing for your choice if you actually use a computer to do some productive work on it.
Can somebody please explain why every single Linux review has to spend so much time on installation?
Aw, it's peer pressure plain and simple. Every reviewer feels compelled to walk the reader through the install process for all the chirping lusers out there chanting, "too hard! too hard! too hard!" What I say to anybody bemoaning the difficulty of installing Linux - don't talk until you've installed Windows starting from a bare hard drive and a Windows CD. I've done that, and actually found Linux to be less hassle by comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
gee, thanks. Just write everybody a recipee, why don't you?
In all my own years haunting cubicles in this life, I have never met anyone haunting them in the next. I guess only people with souls can become ghosts.
Should loosening an AOL chat virus even be considered a crime? This is given that it sticks *only* to computers running AIM. Consider that there is virtually nothing on AIM but bots and script kiddies and cyber perverts, anyway, so, in fact, one might even be doing a public service knocking them all offline for a few hours. This is like if I hear somebody hacked a spam site and shut them down - Hooray! Vigilante Justice! Seems a great expenditure of effort going to waste, however, if AOL recovers from the attack.
Yeah, and they didst bow their heads and think of KDE, and were enlightened...
*grinning, ducking, and running while MOONING at the same time...*
Now, that's an idea for a Python script if ever I heard one! You could have lynx scrape the content from the discussion page into a file, parse through the file building data for a Markov-chain, and use curl to post the generated comment anonymously. And average IQs of ACs would rise, I don't doubt!
If I am ever driven to murder in pure rage, it's a 50% chance that it will be a door-to-door salesman. No matter WHAT they're selling.
And for everybody else who has better uses for their cash (like groceries):
http://www.linuxlookup.com/html/main/iso.html Get Linux.
http://www.linuxiso.org/ Get Linux.
http://distrowatch.com/ Get Linux (or BSD).
http://www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org/ Learn more about alternatives.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/ Ask a Linux pro.
http://madpenguin.org/cms/ Read reviews of Linux.
Yes. Swastikas are nicer than crosses (though I despise both). The swastika was merely a representation of a productive tool - the axe - arranged in a wheeled construction to suggest tireless work. The cross symbolizes an instrument of executing human beings in the most torturous fashion possible. If I see a swastika and a cross coming after me at the same time, I'll take my chances with the swastika.
What I see happening in the United States has no parallel in all of human history. The thing that comes closest to it is the European Dark Ages, but even at that time, Europe still hung on to some modicum of civilization. The United States is heading straight for barbarianism. Unlike the Roman Empire, we won't need to be sacked by invading gypsies; the United States will devolve into it's own angry mob. Even cannibalism is not too much to expect in another generation. Anarchy? That is without question. The US never DID actually lead the world in science, anyway. We borrowed a bunch of talent from Europe while we fought Hitler, one of our few shining moments. Science? Thank you, citizens of other countries, for keeping that torch lit.
The Uhg-mer-cains who will be flaming this post are a perfect example. People of other nations, when was the last time you had an intelligent debate with an American citizen? Like a pack animal, it's brain is hard-wired to snap at any desecration of what it believes to be it's territory, though it's peed there so much that it's spoiled the ground for anyone else, anyway. It calls this "patriotism". It has a psychopathic hatred, manifesting itself in continued savage acts of violence against all living creatures, which it justifies with the delusion that there is an invisible being in the sky who hates everyone as much as it does. It calls this "religion". It's sole other emotion - if it can be said, at all, to emote - is greed, which causes it to continue to be barely industrious enough to operate a cash register, push a button, or sponge off a relative - whichever is easiest - in order to obey the directive blasted out of every media source at it: "Consume! Consume! Consume!" The majority of them will not be able to make out this level of writing. My foreign friends, what does it say when you yourself, even if you come from a non-English-based nation, have a better command of English than Americans do? Before you point at me and say, "Well, you're an example that disproves the rule, aren't you?" - I'm a first generation immigrant. And my family and I are saving up and coordinating plans to immigrate right back out again. The US gave us the best fifty years of it's life, but it's over.
In other news, global warming has caused temperatures to soar into the 200's, which naturally means that humans grew a thick leathery hide to protect against burning, and all the crops have died, corresponding to human's recently developed ability to live without eating.
Congratulations! Your wish came true! These days, every Linux system I can find (except for a dwindling few: Slackware, Debian, Linux From Scratch, Gentoo, and Rock) removes everything having to do with programming it can get away with, throws out every brain in sight, and makes Linux into a perfect I-can't-believe-it's-not-Windows(TM) clone. Continuing this trend, Linux will follow Windows down the shithole, since it's only another five years before it goes closed source (what the hell good is source code that your system can't fscking COMPILE???), since all the people like you do is bitch about it when you accidentally stumble upon source code in your system. Meanwhile, I'll be forced to go to BSD in another five-ten years when the stench of the corpse that was Linux gets too overpowering, and about five years after that when you've broken Linux's very last bone and it's not even fit to run your favorite malware application anymore, you'll barge into the middle of BSD demanding that somebody show you how to use portage, and we'll go all the way back around again.
Isn't this fun? See you next time!
The easiest possible way is to simply plug a second hard-drive into your computer's IDE cable (5 Gigs will be plenty. Pick one up at your local used-computer-parts bin. Bet for five buck's more they'll slap it in for you). Then do *nothing* to Windows, don't even tell it anything's changed. Next, get the CD install disks and only have them install to the second hard drive. When the boot options setup comes up, ignore Lilo and Grub - pick a floppy boot.
I advocate this as the simplest, cheapest, foolproof way to get Windows and Linux to co-operate on the same machine. (Of course, you can partition one hard drive and fool with Lilo configs if you feel you're 31337 enough!) You now have your regular Windows like you always had. Stick in the boot floppy and tell Windows to reboot: *poof* it's Linux. Pull out the floppy and reboot again - back to normal Windows. This has an advantage over running a live CD (also a good way to try Linux out!) in that you can change and customize it. Some live CDs allow a hard drive install, as well.
If you thought Johnny Cochran could name his price after the OJ trail, that'll be nothing compared to the demand for South Korean anti-trust lawyers. I'd sponsor one to the States right now, if I could.
(2) Work. Linux lets me be as smart as I always was; Windows forces me to be slow and stupid. Linux comes out of the box with more tools (tools, I say. Not frou-frou doodads and games!) than you could buy for Windows if you had Bill Gates' bank account. Yes, I tried MS-Visual-Basic and Visual-C++. Say what you will. Say you love it. That's your opinion. My opinion is, they're retarded. My apologies to any retarded people offended by this.
(3) Innovation. Let me second the idea put forth by several others in this thread: the stupidest thing you can do with Linux is follow in Window's footsteps in the interest of getting more people to switch from Windows. Forget trying to make "I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Windows(TM)". Continue to blaze Linux's own trail as it has always been, and let everybody else catch up if they can.
So: innovation: Live CDs. Linux that can run from floppies, USBs, old computers, everywhere. A true multi-tasking system (new to me, anyway) able to compile in one desktop, render 3D images in a second, download in a third, and let me play a game in the fourth without a bit of lag - it's like being four people on four computers! The variety of having my choice of 1000 different distros, so I can have it my way, and choice of different desktops (Fluxbox is my favorite, and I had a chance to shop around for a while to get there).
(4) Free! Free forever! Hundreds and hundreds of distros to download free! All the software for it free! Read the source code for free! Roll your own for free! Release your own for free! Even the games are starting to improve - every time I find a Supertux, an ArmegaTron, a Tower Toppler, or a Metal Blob Solid, I'm doubly happy with it because I didn't have to pay $10-70 dollars for it.
PS Save the standard, flaming, aggravated responses this time, willyah? If you can't tolerate reading other people's opinions, you're at the wrong website. If you love Windows and hate Linux, good for you! But we're asking me.
I had Red Hat as my training-wheel distro, too. I would hasten to point out that the -devel packages are *there* at least, on the disk, installable from the menu by selecting the "development" menu options. Even though Red Hat has no great shakes as a reputation for being a programmer's distro, at least my 9.0 came with as, gcc, eLisp, Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk, the makesystem, jcl, Glade, GTK/Qt/ncurses libs, and more. Try to find these on Mandriva? Ubuntu?
PS, I, too, tried Debian and hated it, for exactly your reasons. I was installing on an offline machine, and nothing kills a package-management system like being offline. "apt-get foo" becomes "scour the internet on your Red Hat machine for the right package, copy it to USB, port it to the Debian machine, discover that it needs x,y,z packages..."
Walt Disney Company: 129,000
International Business Machines(IBM): 369,277
Samsung Group(2003): 195,000
Citigroup, Inc: 294,000
Sun Microsystems: 35,000
Apple Computer, Inc: 13,426
Google, inc: 3,021
Electronic Arts: 6,100
Novell: 6,186
Dell Computers: 55,200
Hewlett-Packard Company: 151,000
Canon, Inc: 108,257
Oracle Corporation: 41,658
By the way, the same site lists Microsoft Corporation as having 57,000. So either they've hired 3,000 this year, or somebody mis-counted. I find it amusing that Microsoft is making such a fuss over Google, a company 1/20th it's size. Kind of like a lion roaring at a mouse! And consider that it would only take a 20,000 people to leave Microsoft to join Oracle to make Oracle bigger than Microsoft.
Anyway, these numbers aren't meant to prove anything. It's just that I somehow thought Microsoft was bigger than that. Just some morning number-punching while my brain wakes up.
No, I was talking about the key-binding business - vi/m specifically. But come on, are we saying that *nobody* but programmers ever use the software? Every time a beta release hits Sourceforge, it gets downloaded worldwide and at least some of those people (a) are not programmers, and (b) feed back in comments, bug reports, etc, which all get taken into account by the designer for the next release.
I am most definitely saying that - and anybody with a grain of common sense can see it - no programmer starts out saying "heh, heh, heh, I'm going to make my program as difficult to use as I possibly can!" Every program has the simplest possible interface on it for what it does. Please, anybody differs with me on this one: design an interface yourself, and you'll see what I mean. Testing is still a good thing, but it's more for weeding out bugs, technical problems, and seeing what features need to be added and removed. Conventions are followed - slavishly. In the GUIs, the File menu's still the first on the left, still has "Open, close, save, save as...,", blah blah blah blah. I'm so sick of hearing people complain about interfaces that are IDENTICALLY the same as all the other interfaces on the programs that they like, I could barf thumbtacks. And when you're talking about programs that have a really different interface, like Emacs and vi, the extra complication is there because the program has 100 times the functionality; coming back to my life motto: "Stealth Bombers are more difficult to operate than tricycles BECAUSE THEY CAN FLY."
I could go on and on and on and on, and not get to one tenth what I see on Slashdot. The Gimp is more difficult to use than Windows Paintbrush. Emacs is more difficult to use than Windows Notepad. Bash is harder than DOS. C++ is more difficult to program in than Apple II Basic. A nuclear power plant is more difficult to build than a birdhouse. A Thanksgiving turkey dinner with all the trimmings for eight people is more difficult to make than two slices of toast. Shakespeare is more difficult to understand than The Little Engine That Could. James Michener's Alaska takes more concentration to read than a Spiderman comic book. The Mona Lisa was more difficult to paint than a Sesame Street color-by-number picture of Bert and Earnie playing with their fire truck. Handel's Messiah is more difficult to play than Jingle Bells. It's harder to perform brain surgury than it is to apply a band-aid to a skinned knee. It is harder to successfully negotiate the top five Kama Sutra positions in a foursome than it is to jerk off while drunk. I'm not even scratching the surface, here!
Hasn't anybody ever heard of the expression "Form follows function?" And if you care ONLY about the interface and don't give a damn what's under the hood, then who do you think they're building all those Macs for? Go get one and be happy!
What bothers me is the increasing balkanization between user-land and developer-land. It's all sliding towards EZ-use and low-maintenence, while we can count the distros that make a good developer's platform on one hand. Linux used to be "by programmers, for programmers", and that, inconvenient as it is for low-hassle casual users, is *how* Linux *thrived*! It is WHY you run Linux, now. Because it was easy for a Linux distro to make more distros, reproducing symbiotically through developers.
More than that, the side benefit of putting that power to create and release in the hands of the public is that it makes *more* developers. If the casual user has the tools on the system and doesn't use them, they're only out a half-gig of storage space. If the casual user - at *just* *one* point in their whole long lives - gets curious about programming and wants to try it, and the tools are *not* there, then the world is poorer by one programmer. That was one less developer propagating Linux and keeping the culture alive.
And the less programming power in the hands of the people, the more rests in the hands of proprietary interests. That's all I'm saying is, Linux needs to keep it's "free as in speech" side as well as it's "free as in beer" side. If it loses the former, it becomes shareware instead of Open Source.
I recently found MediainLinux, a Live CD that's a one-stop toolbox for media content creators of graphics, audio, and video. I use it all the time. Now, all we need is the same concept for developers. Perhaps, the next time I play with Linux-from-Scratch, I'll see if I can't get that going. Somebody's going to have to, or we can all get back in line for Borg re-programming.
If you mean things like rounding up every programmer who has ever coded their beast to demand "are yuh sy-u-u-ure?" at every user keypress, and chopping off their finger one at a time with no anesthesia, I'm with you there.
Label each program with a name that describes what it does.
You do have some sound ideas, here. I wrote out a didly shell script once I called "411" and you typed "411 foo" to find out any docs on your system about foo at all. The important feature was, it listed the docs and you selected one with a single key and it popped that doc open for reading - regardless of what format it was in! If it was an HTML doc, it loaded it in Lynx, if it was a man page, it manned it, Emacs for source code files, etc. Did it when I was a noob, but still use it to this day. But your idea seems more like the BSD "WTF" program, only for program names. That'd be trivial to write, but how to be sure it's updated for every single program you have or add to a system?
Sorry, but we CANNOT expand "fdisk" to "fix disk" or "man" to "manual page viewer". That would kill the command line. The command line is also what Unix programs use to talk to *each* *other* as well as what humans type in an xterm. Kill the command line and you kill Linux with it.
Usabilty testing by non programmers.
Oh, God, not you too! You started off sounding so bright. Over and over and over again, it must be explained that what's easy to use depends on what you were used to before. Explain to me what's so intuitive about "Control-V" to mean "copy the text I just highlighted and cut here" in a Windows environment, and I'll explain why the commands in vi and Emacs make sense. vi is a tool for programmers. Non-programmers have kwrite. vi can do thousands of things. YOU try binding every one of those thousands of things to a key sequence, and make sure *every* *function* is bound to an intuitive keystroke. At some point, you have to decide between "print" or "paste" for the P key. Which function gets the C key, "copy" or "cut"? Only people who've never sweated out a key-binding chart complain about key-bindings.
Welcome your users.
That *would* be nice, wouldn't it? A couple distros (Knoppix and ?) at least do a splash screen with links to info, with an option to turn it off. Sadly, some distro authors out there really don't care much, and it would be cumbersome to come up with a general-purpose one. But we should try something, here. We're standing by for you to head the sourceforge project!
Jesus Christ! As compared to WHAT?!?!? Link me the screen-shot of this mythical, glorious, ravagingly breath-taking OS that blows away the best Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, Window-Maker, Enlightenment, etc has to offer. WTF IS the standard that I keep hearing Linux falls short of? What, is the "x" close-window button shaped like Marylin Monroe's titty? What's the goods? Show me!
"people aren't stupid", well, what about the people who scream, "I REFUSE TO LEARN ANYTHING!!!!!" ? You *can* be stupid if you absolutely devote every fibre of your being to completely attaining that state.
Let's put it this way: I'll start with Slackware and create a new Ubuntu release from scratch, and you start with Ubuntu and create a new Slackware release from scratch. Anybody place any bets who finishes first? Or at all?
You're right as rain - but there's a problem. See, 99% of the distros are now "dumbed down" so much that they're useless for a power-user. To make a NEW Linux distribution, or write a NEW Linux program or make an update/bugfix/patch for existing examples of same - guess what? - you need one of those distros you can "fsck with" because that's the only system you can program on. Right now, that's down to Slackware, Debian (allegedly), Gentoo, and Linux From Scratch. Now, when the Great Steamroller of Group Opinion has flattened Linux out into One Big Ubuntu - where will we get more Linux? And what will be the difference between Linux and a proprietary, closed-source system?
I'm looking to keep my Slackware disks in a safe in a secret location. So that if present trends continue, I'll eventually own the only free development platform left on Earth. And I promise to make an insufferable dictator!
Yeah, that's a puzzle to me, too. It's the only distro for my home box. It can do anything every other distro can. But in the mind of Random Luser, any distro that lets you compile a tarball is automatically a server distro for admins only. Like the window manager must somehow vanish if there's a header file on the same hard drive.
Slackware is not only adequate for the desktop, it becomes one of maybe three distros left standing for your choice if you actually use a computer to do some productive work on it.
Aw, it's peer pressure plain and simple. Every reviewer feels compelled to walk the reader through the install process for all the chirping lusers out there chanting, "too hard! too hard! too hard!" What I say to anybody bemoaning the difficulty of installing Linux - don't talk until you've installed Windows starting from a bare hard drive and a Windows CD. I've done that, and actually found Linux to be less hassle by comparison.