I think the reason is because Windows 8 to me seems more like a tablet OS instead of a PC OS.
Win8 is neither. Win8 is a compromise which forces the users to do some tasks under Metro and others under the classic GUI. Metro is crappy without touchscreens, classic UI is crappy with touchscreens.
That means that >90% of gaming happens on other platforms anyway (consoles, smartphones) and for those users gaming is not what's keeping them on Windows. From my experience with Windows users, many have a completely irrational attachment to Windows. They use it because they "know" it and they don't want Linux because they "don't know" it, even though their Windows installations are full of crapware and they could be fooled by any random Linux distribution with a Windows-themed splash screen.
You do seem indicative of a lot of the KDE users I've met. The general feeling is that KDE shouldn't be used by developers.
As if that single option was a requirement by all developers and not a niche... KDE software is developed by developers and seems like they can live just fine without the option, just like ALL Windows, OSX, etc. developers can since forever.
I really cannot understand why there is not more interest in this.
Because Win8 is not yet in stores, along with all those x86 tablets coming with it. Don't know about KPA3 but KPA1&2 required patched kdelibs, making it very complicated for Linux distributors to package it. I usually like KDE but their patch requirement in KPA1&2 was totally retarded. Hopefully KPA3 relies only on stock SC 4.9.
All these new features into KDE and the developers still won't (can't?) fix a 4+ year old bug that is about basic functionality -- that of honoring the -geometry command line option.
That is basic functionality for you? WTF? This is advanced functionality only a tiny niche audience cares about and of that niche audience most would use KWin rules for the same feature.
Hatred towards Nokia on Slashdot... Why not failing HTC, patent troll Motorola Mobility (nobody in Europe buys that Chinese crap btw)...
I wouldn't count the article as hatred. At least in Europe until a few years ago Nokia was synonymous with mobile phone. When the leader in a major industry is falling steep in a short time, it is worthy to discuss it.
I only know a handful of US beers but the ones I know are rather bad. At least in Germany it's very hard to even get US beers -- only in American restaurants or fast food chains.
Meanwhile we're discussing Google Maps. The one with the navigation capability.
Google Maps for iOS never had full-blown navigation. It was about as capable as Google Earth. Google Maps is in most cases just a subset of Google Earth.
Good point. But I'm just saying that their entire approach is the problem. They're trying to reconstruct photo-realistic scenes from geospatial data that will never be absolutely perfect. Why not just use actual photos? That approach has far less intrinsic data distortion, and delivers exactly what the map-user needs.
(Not that the "Street View" van doesn't produce its own strange photo artifacts, but generally these don't play havoc with the entire scene.)
Google does pretty much the same with Google Earth (also available on iOS, btw). Another commenter wrote that Google Earth also has similar deformations in its 3D view.
Because the old app has to be extracted from the iOS 5 disk image first and then copied onto iOS 6. That's not supported officially and therefore requires some trickery.
Android is no different if you try to get Google apps on a phone without "Google Experience" certification.
As an OSM contributor myself, I agree that a few misplaced points of interest are not so incredibly bad as internet trolls say it is. Sure it's not great but as long as there is a committed team working on the data, the kinks will be sorted out rather quickly. Apple should've stayed with OSM data for countries with good OSM coverage instead of licensing (broken?) data from TomTom.
What you are wrong about, though, is the claim that Apple Maps is the first with 3D maps. Google Maps has a very similar feature since quite a while. Check out the first screenshot: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-earth/id293622097
"Apple's problem is primarily with the data, not the actual mapping application."
Yes and no. There does appear to be problems with the data (left/right geocoding attributes appear to be way, way off), but issues like having roads go through a lake or (my personal favorite) an airport having the topography of a small mountain range screams someone fucked up defining (or even taking into consideration) the geographic projections of each layer on Apple's end.
This "Apple's end" is still the data on Apple's servers, not the app itself.
I respectfully disagree that the primary problem is the data. (...) Flyover looks nice for certain scenes, but others are full of bizarre Dali-esque digital artifacts and distortions.
It really isn't. I mean come on, a distro as large as Ubuntu is gonna need revenue from places other than donations.
Canonical wants to generate from Unity to develop Unity and nothing else. Canonical simply has no programmers who develop drivers like Red Hat has. Red Hat (and SUSE and so on) develop software that benefits the entire ecosystem, including Ubuntu. Unity OTOH is written in a way to make porting to other Linux flavors as difficult as possible. I am also sure that this these ads are why Canonical demands signing a CLA from outside Unity contributors. The CLA allows that Canonical can produce closed source variants of Unity. How long now 'till we see OEM variants of Ubuntu with non-removable ads?
Sure, Canonical has the legal and moral right to do so, but I prefer Red Hat's approach without any attempt at vendor lock-in and without revenue generation at the expense of community-based FOSS projects (as Canonical did by modifying a Banshee plugin).
Yeah, how is KMyMoney, or Skrooge, or any other financial software package? How short are they of something like QuickBooks?
No idea. QuickBooks was not the topic but tax and financial software in general. Germany's official ELSTER software is written in Java and runs on every platform with JRE, including Linux. No mass migration to Linux happened. That's a fact.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the reason is because Windows 8 to me seems more like a tablet OS instead of a PC OS.
Win8 is neither. Win8 is a compromise which forces the users to do some tasks under Metro and others under the classic GUI. Metro is crappy without touchscreens, classic UI is crappy with touchscreens.
This may work if the real plan of Valve is to release a Linux based console having Steam. From there supporting Linux is a no brainer.
No it's not. It's for powerful "livingroom hardware" (probably smart TVs) with Linux as option to run on them. See http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/ncis3o/gt-tv-valve (after 3 minutes). LG is already said to announce a shift from their NetCast smart TV platform to webOS (Linux) next CES: http://www.webosnation.com/gram-working-lg-open-webos-tv
Valve's lower end games (TF2, Portal1, L4D) could easily run on platforms powerful enough for full HD video decoding and playback.
The only thing tying a lot of people (myself included) to Windows is gaming.
A lot? According to this interview with Ubisoft representatives, only 7% of Ubi's 2011 revenue was generated on PC and 5% of Activision's revenue:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/
That means that >90% of gaming happens on other platforms anyway (consoles, smartphones) and for those users gaming is not what's keeping them on Windows.
From my experience with Windows users, many have a completely irrational attachment to Windows. They use it because they "know" it and they don't want Linux because they "don't know" it, even though their Windows installations are full of crapware and they could be fooled by any random Linux distribution with a Windows-themed splash screen.
Work still in progress: https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/base/plasma-mobile/activity
You do seem indicative of a lot of the KDE users I've met. The general feeling is that KDE shouldn't be used by developers.
As if that single option was a requirement by all developers and not a niche...
KDE software is developed by developers and seems like they can live just fine without the option, just like ALL Windows, OSX, etc. developers can since forever.
Thanks for proving my point: It's a feature for a tiny niche audience.
I like KDE but I've encountered stability problems in Fedora 15 & 16.
Stability problems in a cutting edge distributions... News at 11...
I really cannot understand why there is not more interest in this.
Because Win8 is not yet in stores, along with all those x86 tablets coming with it.
Don't know about KPA3 but KPA1&2 required patched kdelibs, making it very complicated for Linux distributors to package it.
I usually like KDE but their patch requirement in KPA1&2 was totally retarded. Hopefully KPA3 relies only on stock SC 4.9.
All these new features into KDE and the developers still won't (can't?) fix a 4+ year old bug that is about basic functionality -- that of honoring the -geometry command line option.
That is basic functionality for you? WTF? This is advanced functionality only a tiny niche audience cares about and of that niche audience most would use KWin rules for the same feature.
Hatred towards Nokia on Slashdot... Why not failing HTC, patent troll Motorola Mobility (nobody in Europe buys that Chinese crap btw)...
I wouldn't count the article as hatred. At least in Europe until a few years ago Nokia was synonymous with mobile phone. When the leader in a major industry is falling steep in a short time, it is worthy to discuss it.
Thus proving the fallacy of "Argumentum ad ignorantum" of which you were accused.
I were accused of nothing. You confuse me of someone else.
False, but you go on being ignorant.
I only know a handful of US beers but the ones I know are rather bad. At least in Germany it's very hard to even get US beers -- only in American restaurants or fast food chains.
How lovely.
Meanwhile we're discussing Google Maps. The one with the navigation capability.
Google Maps for iOS never had full-blown navigation. It was about as capable as Google Earth. Google Maps is in most cases just a subset of Google Earth.
Thing is, Android is for hackers.
No, it's not.
I thought Apple's slogan was "It just works"?
Apple has no slogan. Don't know where you got that idea.
Good point. But I'm just saying that their entire approach is the problem. They're trying to reconstruct photo-realistic scenes from geospatial data that will never be absolutely perfect. Why not just use actual photos? That approach has far less intrinsic data distortion, and delivers exactly what the map-user needs.
(Not that the "Street View" van doesn't produce its own strange photo artifacts, but generally these don't play havoc with the entire scene.)
Google does pretty much the same with Google Earth (also available on iOS, btw). Another commenter wrote that Google Earth also has similar deformations in its 3D view.
Why is "a little trickery" needed
Because the old app has to be extracted from the iOS 5 disk image first and then copied onto iOS 6. That's not supported officially and therefore requires some trickery.
Android is no different if you try to get Google apps on a phone without "Google Experience" certification.
As an OSM contributor myself, I agree that a few misplaced points of interest are not so incredibly bad as internet trolls say it is. Sure it's not great but as long as there is a committed team working on the data, the kinks will be sorted out rather quickly. Apple should've stayed with OSM data for countries with good OSM coverage instead of licensing (broken?) data from TomTom.
What you are wrong about, though, is the claim that Apple Maps is the first with 3D maps. Google Maps has a very similar feature since quite a while. Check out the first screenshot: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-earth/id293622097
Making it not possible to use Google Maps, when in fact the Apple app sucks balls and the Google App is pretty awesome is what the problem is.
Google Earth is on the App Store since ages: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-earth/id293622097
You can go online and install it right now.
Perhaps because Apple is bullying Android producers, so Google decided that enough is enough.
That's why there's Google Earth for iOS since ages (and hasn't gone anywhere) and Google has just released its own YouTube app for iOS...
"Apple's problem is primarily with the data, not the actual mapping application."
Yes and no. There does appear to be problems with the data (left/right geocoding attributes appear to be way, way off), but issues like having roads go through a lake or (my personal favorite) an airport having the topography of a small mountain range screams someone fucked up defining (or even taking into consideration) the geographic projections of each layer on Apple's end.
This "Apple's end" is still the data on Apple's servers, not the app itself.
I respectfully disagree that the primary problem is the data. (...) Flyover looks nice for certain scenes, but others are full of bizarre Dali-esque digital artifacts and distortions.
And Flyover data is not data?
So as for Google maps, why hasn't Google released a stand alone app yet?
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-earth/id293622097
Has been there since ages.
Citation on Unity being hard to port.
Too stupid to ever read Unity's Wikipedia article? It has plenty of citations on that topic.
It really isn't. I mean come on, a distro as large as Ubuntu is gonna need revenue from places other than donations.
Canonical wants to generate from Unity to develop Unity and nothing else. Canonical simply has no programmers who develop drivers like Red Hat has. Red Hat (and SUSE and so on) develop software that benefits the entire ecosystem, including Ubuntu. Unity OTOH is written in a way to make porting to other Linux flavors as difficult as possible.
I am also sure that this these ads are why Canonical demands signing a CLA from outside Unity contributors. The CLA allows that Canonical can produce closed source variants of Unity. How long now 'till we see OEM variants of Ubuntu with non-removable ads?
Sure, Canonical has the legal and moral right to do so, but I prefer Red Hat's approach without any attempt at vendor lock-in and without revenue generation at the expense of community-based FOSS projects (as Canonical did by modifying a Banshee plugin).
Yeah, how is KMyMoney, or Skrooge, or any other financial software package? How short are they of something like QuickBooks?
No idea. QuickBooks was not the topic but tax and financial software in general. Germany's official ELSTER software is written in Java and runs on every platform with JRE, including Linux. No mass migration to Linux happened. That's a fact.