If Sun's releasing their own version of Linux I wonder if it will come with StarOffice, or if you'd have to pay for that too..
(And for the record, I think this is great. If you aren't happy with OO, then pay your $35 and get a supported version. As long as SO and OO use the same code base, like Mozilla and NS, I think it's a good move by Sun.)
Mozilla table support is great. I've never found it especially tricky to get tables looking correct between major browsers. (and smaller ones.)
Um, maybe instead of worrying about colours in the actual table you should investigate cascading stylesheets. It's a much cleaner way of dealing with minor formatting issues like this.
And yes, NS7 will be good. Myself, I'm looking forward to Mozilla 1.0. After using the daily builds since some time in early '99 it's great that Mozilla is finally able to be my default browser. (and has been for about 6 months, I guess.)
Actually, Potato with Ximian Gnome makes for a pretty decent desktop experience. It's what I run on my age-old laptop. (Well, I use the packages from Gnome, I run XFCE, as Gnome, even without running a file manager, seems quite a bit heavier.) It works great, and I see absolutely no reason to upgrade.
Plus, building packages as you need them for Potato isn't so bad. You can easily find XFree86 4.03 debs for Potato, along with 2.4 kernels. KDE's stuck at 2.1.2, but that's not so old. What more do you really need?
In that case what's the appeal of MS Windows? It's neither fast nor cheap. Then again, it isn't reliable either.
;)
Me, I'll take stability, reliability first, speed next, and then remote accessability and multi-user. Oh, and I guess with apt and/or red-carpet/up2date, I get self healing too. (Gasp, it's cheap too!)
I've read a post here asking why bother with a commercial Debian distro, let me explain:
I have been a Linux user for about 4 and a half years now. In this time I've run the gamut, bouncing from distribution to distribution. For the last year and a half I've stuck with Debian. Why? It's stable, fast, light, well integrated and, if you use Testing, Sid or Ximian with Potato, very up to date. After getting used to Debian's quirks there's no going back for me. I played with RH7.2 lately, but I miss being able to decide that I need a new compiler and then being able to apt-get it.
Great, so that's why to bother with Debian. If you want more reasons please see the links below.
Okay, so why a commercial Debian? For convenience. Libranet adds a really nice adminmenu that consolidates pretty much every aspect of system management, from kernel compilation to X setup, to adding new users, changing your clock or setting up a DSL connection. It's all there in one spot. In addition, the setup is a little simpler than Debian's. Personally, I don't have a huge problem With the Debian installer. What it lacks in looks and polish it more than makes up for in flexibility. It's a great base installer. What Libranet has done is slightly massage it, rather than completely replacing it. This makes the parts that normally trip up new users go away, but still retains much of the underlying flexibility.
Another reason for Libranet is the initial package selection. If you're new to Linux, Debian can be a little... stark. Libranet bundles packages into sections and asks you easy questions like: Do you need a web server? Or, Should I install Office Suites. It's a little thing, but it's nice.
Then there's their support. The small knowledge base succinctly answers 90% of all new questions. Things like "How do I set up ADSL?" or "How do I share my internet connection?" are there, with very simple step-by-step guides on how to accomplish each task. If you need to ask them a question they will get back to you pretty much within a day. It's a small operation (about 6 people, I think.) and they have a nice personal touch.
Finally, at least with 1.9.1, they have kept a solid base (Potato) and added to it. They added reiserfs support, Kernel 2.4, XFree86 4.x, KDE 2.1, and Ximian Gnome. All of this can be done with pure Debian Potato, but it means understanding apt, searching out unofficial apt lines, manually configuring or even compiling packages. Libranet took this all away.
In short, Libranet is important because it takes away the annoying details.
Pure Debian most definitely has it's place. I use it on a laptop with an old video card and no CD-ROM, and have used it for an Alpha and NetWinder that I own. However, for end users who either don't want to learn what each package does or who want to save a bunch of time by letting someone else make some pretty safe assumptions, a commercial Debian distro such as Libranet is the way to go.
Okay, here are some links:
A bunch of testimonials from Libranet customers:
http://www.libranet.com/testimonials.html
Here's a review of 1.9.0:
http://www.thedukeofurl.org/reviews/misc/librane t1 90/index.shtml
Debian for BeOS users:
http://tinyplanet.ca/pubs/debian/html/book1.html
Reasons I like Debian: (Shameless self-promotion)
http://www.moses.cx/reviews/debian/debian.php
Yeah, you're right. Nationalistic would have been more accurate.
Oh, and my post was _not_ flamebait. Just honest. As a Canadian (so not overseas but not American) I found that statement to be offensive. It was a poor, innacurate generalization.
"My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."
What an awful, unfounded, racist statement. You ought to be ashamed. The US is not the be-all and end-all of software development. Nor is it the center of the universe. I personally use many creative pieces of software that are produced overseas.
In fact, much of the great free software we all use has non-US origins. Sylpheed, KDE, Linux, and large portions of Gnome have started oversees and continue to be large, international efforts with significant non-US contributions. Many well respected and innovative Linux distributions such as SuSE and Mandrake are of non-US origins, and the newcomer ELX, from India, already offers more working code than the vaporous "Lindows." What an ignorant statement.
Hmm.. I don't consider myself an audiophile by any stretch, but give me a set of headphones and I'll be able to tell you the difference between a 128kbp MP3 and a 192...
I'd say of you really appreciate music you'll find low-quality MP3's unacceptable for any serious listening.
After finally getting tired of waiting for Mozilla , I had been using Konqueror all of the time up until about a month ago. Since then I've been using Galeon non-stop. I now think that it's the best browser option in Linux. Here's why:
1) It uses Gecko, so the rendering engine is pretty much second to none. I almost never have any problems viewing any webpages with it.
2) Because it uses Gecko, I get a lot of great things from the mozilla project. I have all of the plugins I want, I have a browser engine that most webmasters have heard of, so they listen if I complain, I get great standards compliance
3) Because it is an actual gnome app it integrates very well with other GTK apps. Where Mozilla/NS6.x goes it's own way and as a result doesn't really integrate properly in any OS, Galeon looks and behaves just like all of the other great GTK apps I use (grip, sylpheed, j-pilot, gimp, abiword, gnumeric etc.)
4) When I really get surfing I often have >10+ browsing sessions open. With Galeon this is all within a single window, and is handled brilliantly. I really miss the browser tabs when using Konqueror, I get a better rendering engine than Opera, and the tabs are more configurable/faster than Mozilla. As a complete bonus, I keep all browsing sessions between uses of Galeon. As far as I know, Mozilla does not do this. Also, when I'm using many browser sessions I find Galeon to switch between them much faster than Mozilla (though this is getting better)
5) Fewer UI inconsistencies. Mozilla has many odd XUL-related UI bugs. (for instance, open preferences and expand out all of the options. The options go past the end of the dialog, but you can't scroll down, so some options are cut off.)
6) Galeon is very simple and stable. I've been using it exclusively for a while now and I've had exactly one crash in this time. This is by far the best stability I've seen in a browser more complex than lynx for some time.
7) It has many other nice extras. Bookmarklets are nice, the security and cookie options are easy to understand and change, the portal is great, the search tabs are handy, and everything is fast and integrated.
8) It's just a browser. It lets me easily use whatever mail client I want (sylpheed, kmail, evolution etc.) it lets me use an extrnal ftp/download manager if I want.
To sum up, I like Galeon because it's fast, stable, and has a ton of features that are either missing from Mozilla and other browsers, or are better implemented in Galeon (like tabs and cookie management.)
I ordered a Linux DA PDA on Sept. 22 and it finally arrived today (Nov 15). Their website gave me errors when trying to have it shipped to a different address than the billing address, so I had to put the shipping address in the special instructions field. Needless to say it was delivered to my old apartment. Thankfully I thought to go over there and check for it. Aside from the shipping annoyances, I really like this PDA, especially considering that it was under $100.
It's about twice as thick as my Palm Vx and comes with batteries, a data sync cable and a pretty decent case. It looks pretty nice too. There was a lame Linux DA sticker on the case that I peeled off right away, thinking it was just protecting the logo like the cover I peeled off the screen. Heh. Oops. The packaging was nice and it arrived in one piece.
But on to the important details - the PDA itself. I'm very happy with it. It's got a DragonBall EZ 16 MHz processor that you can apparently overclock up to 25 MHz, 8 MB RAM and 2 MB Flash Rom. The physical buttons are pretty much the same as a Palm and there's a backlight and contrast control. It comes with 7 games, 10 applications, and 4 system utilites. A lot of the features are similar to the Palm OS, but it has some cool differences. For one, you can change the keyboard to QWERTY or natural. I also like that you can choose whether or not you want small or large icons. I'm having a little trouble with the handwriting recognition because it's a little different than Palm's. One cool feature is that when you write something it pops up a box showing what you're writing.
My favorite application is the File Manager. It's cool to see where things are, and you can view the files in text and hexadecimal mode. I'm trying to figure out if you can actually do anything with the htdocs directory. It seems strange to have it but with no purpose. I also like the paint application. It's a basic application that lets you draw crude pictures and save them, but it's so fun coloring things in. The games are your basic free games - snake, mine, tetris, etc. Plus there's the standard applications like an Address Book, Expense, Email, Memo, Schedule, Clock, etc. There are some screenshots here.
Unfortunately the software that this comes with only works on Windohs. And it even seems to have problems with that. I'm using Win2k and I'm getting various sync connection errors (COM2 is using by the other program!, Communication error). The strange thing is when I press the sync button, the PC pops up an error and the PDA shows the sync screen but times out. So they're both recognizing the sync request but not connecting. I've tried both serial ports but have had no luck. There is a nice feature that lets me import my Palm addresses and memos. Hopefully I can actually sync them eventually.
Overall I'd say the Palm is easier to use, but if you're looking for a cheap PDA I'd highly recommend this one, assuming that the sync utility will eventually work. It definitely holds its own against the others that I've played with. The lack of software is an issue, however. I haven't found any other applications for it. You can download their development kit, complete with core dump, and try making your own though.
Here are the specs from the official site:
* Manufactured by Linux DA O/S Licensee
* Embedded with Linux DA O/S for PowerPlay III
* Palm IIIxe Hardware Compatible
* 2 MB Flash Upgradeable
* 8 MB RAM
* Motorola Dragonball CPU
* Battery Operated
* Color Available - GALAXY GREY
* 15 Days Technical Support by Email
* 6 Month Linux DA O/S Software Upgrade
* One Year Warranty
* DataSync Program Only Available in MS Windows Platform
* Includes: Carrying Case, 2 AAA Batteries, PC Sync Cable, CD with PC Sync Program, Quick-Start Manual, Handwriting Guide, Warranty Card, Registration Card
Pictures coming soon. Although the pictures on their site are accurate.
One problem is that the more packages you have installed the better the chances of there being security issues to exploit.
For instance, I installed Mandrake 6.0 onto a school network a few years ago. I was fairly new to Linux at the time, and the senior admin helped me out a lot WRT security checks. For instance, did you know that (at least in mdk 6.0) all of the Gnome and KDE games ran as setuid root just so that they could write a system-wide high score? On top of that there were _many_ other setuidroot programs installed by default.. Sure that's fine for the average home user, but in a (somewhat hostile..) networked environment this is just asking for trouble. And yes.. these were installed by default..
However, I'm using Mdk as a server right now, and it's working quite well.. (though I have to restart the adsl service every few weeks.. rather annoying, but not enough for me to do anything about it..)
As always, any system can be made relatively secure, it just takes some effort. Some distro's trade off security for flexibility. Whatever..
Try checking your mail with Opera or Knoqueror. As some who have posted here suggested, this story is just news because it's MS.
Me, I want it all: I want to be able to browse to any website using a good, standards-compliant web browser and see the content. I have done corporate web development before too. Yup, it's tricky supporting all of the new browsers while maintaining compatibility with the dinosaurs like NS4.x. Such is life. Get over it.
Oh, and MS and Netscape are not the only offenders. I sent a polite letter to ATI a few months back when I was trying to decide on my next video card and found out that ATI shut Mozilla/NS6 out. They left Konqueror though, so I was able to browse the site. Man was it broken..
My bank, PC Financial, has had on and off support for alternate browsers. It had always worked with Mozilla/NS6 and they that stopped for a while. It seems to be working again, and now works under Konqueror too, so at least they aren't all bad...
Finally, I went to www.ea.com a while ago. As usual, I tried with both Mozilla and Konqueror. Again, no good. They blocked them out, and suggested "upgrading" to IE.
I can understand wanting to let NS4 go, as it really is showing its age, but that some major sites don't support NS6/Mozilla is baffling to me. It's not _that_ hard to get right.
Oh yeah, one more thing: msn.com is a _very_ popular domain. Don't forget that it is set as the default start page for IE users. Back in its day home.netscape.com had over 40million hits a day for this reason. Now msn.com has this going for it. (But yeah, the content isn't too hot..)
As of October 1,2001 Progeny has ceased development on its Progeny Debian product; there will be no further releases of the product, and all direct sales of the product will end October 15, 2001. (For a limited time, Progeny Debian will continue to be available for purchase from select distributors. Visit http://www.progeny.com/archive/debian/sales/ for more information.) For recent purchasers of the Progeny Debian boxed product, the 30-day free telephone and 90-day free email support included with the product will remain available until December 31, 2001; for all users of Progeny Debian, a migration path to Debian woody will be provided by the end of October, and support for Progeny Debian will continue to be available from Progeny on a per-incident and contract basis, just as it is today for Debian and other variants (e.g., Corel Linux).
The primary motivation for this decision is our desire for convergence with Debian proper. From a technical perspective, nearly all of the features we introduced in Progeny Debian have found or are finding their way into Debian, and it is thus becoming increasingly unnecessary for us to continue investing the resources required to maintain a separate "Progeny enhanced" version.
From a business perspective, our customers consistently ask for Debian, not Progeny Debian, and while Progeny Debian is technically just a "release" of Debian (akin to "potato" or "woody" from the Debian project), the appearance of maintaining a separate or "forked" version is a liability given our company's shift away from a mass-market product and service focus and toward consulting and other professional services.
Progeny will continue to help further the development and adoption of Debian in commercial settings, and we will continue to contribute enhancements to Debian that help Debian become a more viable platform for commercial users. This announcement only affects Progeny Debian the product; it in no way affects Progeny's ongoing commitment to the Debian project or its Debian deployment, custom development, and support services for commercial users.
For more information about migrating from Progeny Debian to Debian woody, or about support for Debian or Progeny Debian after December 31, 2001, please visit our technical support Web page. For more general questions, please contact Steve Schafer.
Ian Murdock
Chairman
Progeny Linux Systems
Steve Schafer
President and CEO
Progeny Linux Systems
Re:Awaiting the Arrival of AmigaOS x86
on
An Amiga Round-up
·
· Score: 1
Ah yes, but I can run:
VMWare with Win2k while ripping a CD while listening to an ogg file and burning a disk
I do this all at the same time under Debian Testing in KDE with my Athlon 900/768MB PC133 SDRAM/40GB 5400RPM UDMA33 drive...
The music never skips. Not once. Maybe the hardware isn't your problem..
(Now, having said all of that, th NT4 GUI is MUCH faster than Linux/X11 on my P233MMX laptop with 64MB RAM..)
wxWindows gives you a single, easy-to-use API for writing GUI applications on multiple platforms. Link with the appropriate library for your platform (Windows/Unix/Mac) and compiler (almost any popular C++ compiler), and your application will adopt the look and feel appropriate to that platform. On top of great GUI functionality, wxWindows gives you: online help, network programming, streams, clipboard and drag and drop, multithreading, image loading and saving in a variety of popular formats, database support, HTML viewing and printing, and much much more.
wxPython is the same thing with Python bindings.
You're more than able to do all of this in your favorite text editor like Vim or Emacs, but since you're into fancy IDE's, they sell whDesigner
For Linux:
Gnometoaster
(http://gnometoaster.rulez.org)
kisocd
(http://kisocd.sourceforge.net)
Or cdrecord directly for Win32, Linux, Mac, BeOS, Solaris and more.
Hey, for those of you not following, Andy (the developer for Gnometoaster) has released a 1.0Beta1 of the excellent Gnometoaster burning app.
One of the nifty new features is the ability to DnD.ogg files into the track window and have them burn out to normal CD Audio files. Is this the first burning app to offer this feature?
I use IE 5.5 at work all day long on my WinNT PIII 450 w/256MB RAM.
Among other things, I do some web development, so the browser is running pretty much all day long.
Every so often IE goes "funny" and sucks up 100% of the CPU. At this point I have to kill iexplorer.exe. Then, because it does other thing to my taskbar etc., I have to restart Windows.
That's th astiest. More often, it GPF's when browsing or relaoding. I'd say it does this about 3 times a day, and that it does the CPU trick once or twice a week. If I'm using IE heavily I have to reboot several times a day just to keep the machine running nicely.
Now, Mozilla still isn't quite as stable as IE 5.5 for me, but I NEVER have to reboot the OS when it goes down, and it isn't _that_ much slower than IE 5 when up and runnning. I'll admit that IE 5.5 is a better browser _now_, but it is by no means perfect. Given how much Mozilla has improved WRT speed and stability on both Lnux and Win in the last month or two I'm no longer so sure that IE will remain the undisputed champ even on Windows.
And then there's non-MS platforms. Yeah, well Mozilla ought to take over on those systems pretty quickly..
Anyway, it ain't prefect, but neither's IE. I don't like either AOL or MS much, but at least we get the code with Mozilla...
Hey, whatever happedned to the attempt to GPL Mozilla?
What all of the different daily builds for Linux do.
What's the difference between the following:
mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-sea.tar.gz
mozilla-gcc295-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
Not to mention the various embed-* versions?
I alternate between the sea and not sea versions and notice no difference. I'm assuming they use gcc295 to compile the -gcc295 version, but what do they use to compile the other versions, and why is a gcc295 version needed? Also, what do and don't the embedded versions give you?
My thanks go out to the person that clarifies all of this.
So far, webmin is the ONLY admin system (short of modifying config files by hand) that comes close to doing everything it should. Linuxconf? nice try, but it's too linux-centric and buggy.
WebMin is sweet. It's all Perl, and it gives me a consistent way to admin Debian, RedHat, FreeBSD or Solaris (and more) boxes.
What's the easiest way to setup printing in Debian (or FreeBSD)? Install webmin. Want to know how to change the IP address of your NIC on an unfamiliar unix variant? Try webmin.
Seriously, other than sound setup it gives you everything. Really.
WebMin is the best, most underrated Unix admin program I've met. The best part is that it works on almost every unix out there!
Oh, and I'll second Quanta as being the best HTML editor too. Unless you've spent the three years needed to master Emacs, it's the best way to go. (Sorry, no WYSIWYG. Still, what self respecting web designer uses WYSIWYG anyway?)
Oh, I've got one: MP3CD Players occasionally play WMAs and never play Ogg files. Yeah, and you can't DnD.ogg files and have them converted to CDA files. Yet.
> Linux has caught up in PnP and USB in 2.4,
> Linux's 2.4 VM may be somewhat faster
I think Linux is great. I use Debian on my main desktop. But MAN!!! When have I heard this argument before?
Seriously, when 2.2 came out everyone said "Now Linux is faster/more stable.. " than BSD, even the VM is better with 2.2.
Now, it's the same deal with 2.4. Come on...
Linux is great, FreeBSD is great. Both are almost identical from an end-user poitn of view. Linux gets things first, and is generally more supported by corporations, but can anyone seriously argue that Linux is more stable than FreeBSD?
I run BSD on my servers and about half the time on my desktops. It may not always have the newest bells and whistles, but it's always rock-solid stable. I also personally feel that it's faster under heavy loads.
What really gets me is that despite the similarities there's such a nattering back and forth between BSD and Linux.
AbiWord is great. I use often, as I frequently need documents that can go between Solaris, Linux and Windows. (Yes, OO can do that too, and I use it sometimes as well, but Abi's much nicer for smaller docs.)
One thing I don't understand is how little recognition Siag Office gets. I know it doesn't use GTK or Qt, but it is widely ported throughout various Unix systems, and it does a lot of the things that people complain are lacking from Abi.
Personally, I use Abi as a cross-platform WordPad that has most of the nice features I miss(spelling, better formatting, XP, etc.)
Abi's a fun tool and an excellent project to follow, but we shouldn't be so blinded by the StarOffice's and KOffice/Gnome Offices of the world that we miss the "other" free suites. Siag has been around for quite a while and offers some pretty decent features.
Check it out:
http://siag.nu/
(Yeah, Pathetic Word isn't much of a name, but it is better than the name suggests..)
At my work we're having to rewrite large portions of out (windows) code because of its lack of remote administration. If it were unix, it wouldn't be an issue. SSH in and go.
Yes, you can set up ssh on Windows, but the OS still isn't set up as nicely to be able to manage your system from the console.
I walk away, I come back 15 minutes later and I've just done something that can't be easily duplicated by most existing GUI cdr software.
GUIs are great. I used a GUI burning tool under Linux almost exclusively until I read the man page. The great thing with Unix is that most of the GUI tools are written on top of console-based tools, and it uses flat files almost exclusively. This gives me ease of use when I want it, but power and flexibility when I need it.
I'm 99.99% sure that everything they're doing is GPL'd. I've been following them for a while and I'm sure that I'd read that.
Check out debianplanet.org for interviews/reviews/discussuins with respect to Progeny.
Personally, I think that Progeny's slick install/distro is a real boon for widespread Debian acceptance, but I hope they stick with a console-based install. Out of all of the fancy distro's available for my aging Alpha (It's an old picky 233) Debian's was the only one that went through without a hitch.
Slashdot Mirror
(And for the record, I think this is great. If you aren't happy with OO, then pay your $35 and get a supported version. As long as SO and OO use the same code base, like Mozilla and NS, I think it's a good move by Sun.)
This is a joke, right?
Mozilla table support is great. I've never found it especially tricky to get tables looking correct between major browsers. (and smaller ones.)
Um, maybe instead of worrying about colours in the actual table you should investigate cascading stylesheets. It's a much cleaner way of dealing with minor formatting issues like this.
And yes, NS7 will be good. Myself, I'm looking forward to Mozilla 1.0. After using the daily builds since some time in early '99 it's great that Mozilla is finally able to be my default browser. (and has been for about 6 months, I guess.)
Actually, Potato with Ximian Gnome makes for a pretty decent desktop experience. It's what I run on my age-old laptop. (Well, I use the packages from Gnome, I run XFCE, as Gnome, even without running a file manager, seems quite a bit heavier.) It works great, and I see absolutely no reason to upgrade.
Plus, building packages as you need them for Potato isn't so bad. You can easily find XFree86 4.03 debs for Potato, along with 2.4 kernels. KDE's stuck at 2.1.2, but that's not so old. What more do you really need?
In that case what's the appeal of MS Windows? It's neither fast nor cheap. Then again, it isn't reliable either.
;)
Me, I'll take stability, reliability first, speed next, and then remote accessability and multi-user. Oh, and I guess with apt and/or red-carpet/up2date, I get self healing too. (Gasp, it's cheap too!)
I've read a post here asking why bother with a commercial Debian distro, let me explain:
e t1 90/index.shtml
l
I have been a Linux user for about 4 and a half years now. In this time I've run the gamut, bouncing from distribution to distribution. For the last year and a half I've stuck with Debian. Why? It's stable, fast, light, well integrated and, if you use Testing, Sid or Ximian with Potato, very up to date. After getting used to Debian's quirks there's no going back for me. I played with RH7.2 lately, but I miss being able to decide that I need a new compiler and then being able to apt-get it.
Great, so that's why to bother with Debian. If you want more reasons please see the links below.
Okay, so why a commercial Debian? For convenience. Libranet adds a really nice adminmenu that consolidates pretty much every aspect of system management, from kernel compilation to X setup, to adding new users, changing your clock or setting up a DSL connection. It's all there in one spot. In addition, the setup is a little simpler than Debian's. Personally, I don't have a huge problem With the Debian installer. What it lacks in looks and polish it more than makes up for in flexibility. It's a great base installer. What Libranet has done is slightly massage it, rather than completely replacing it. This makes the parts that normally trip up new users go away, but still retains much of the underlying flexibility.
Another reason for Libranet is the initial package selection. If you're new to Linux, Debian can be a little... stark. Libranet bundles packages into sections and asks you easy questions like: Do you need a web server? Or, Should I install Office Suites. It's a little thing, but it's nice.
Then there's their support. The small knowledge base succinctly answers 90% of all new questions. Things like "How do I set up ADSL?" or "How do I share my internet connection?" are there, with very simple step-by-step guides on how to accomplish each task. If you need to ask them a question they will get back to you pretty much within a day. It's a small operation (about 6 people, I think.) and they have a nice personal touch.
Finally, at least with 1.9.1, they have kept a solid base (Potato) and added to it. They added reiserfs support, Kernel 2.4, XFree86 4.x, KDE 2.1, and Ximian Gnome. All of this can be done with pure Debian Potato, but it means understanding apt, searching out unofficial apt lines, manually configuring or even compiling packages. Libranet took this all away.
In short, Libranet is important because it takes away the annoying details.
Pure Debian most definitely has it's place. I use it on a laptop with an old video card and no CD-ROM, and have used it for an Alpha and NetWinder that I own. However, for end users who either don't want to learn what each package does or who want to save a bunch of time by letting someone else make some pretty safe assumptions, a commercial Debian distro such as Libranet is the way to go.
Okay, here are some links:
A bunch of testimonials from Libranet customers:
http://www.libranet.com/testimonials.html
Here's a review of 1.9.0:
http://www.thedukeofurl.org/reviews/misc/libran
Debian for BeOS users:
http://tinyplanet.ca/pubs/debian/html/book1.htm
Reasons I like Debian: (Shameless self-promotion)
http://www.moses.cx/reviews/debian/debian.php
Yeah, you're right. Nationalistic would have been more accurate.
Oh, and my post was _not_ flamebait. Just honest. As a Canadian (so not overseas but not American) I found that statement to be offensive. It was a poor, innacurate generalization.
What an awful, unfounded, racist statement. You ought to be ashamed. The US is not the be-all and end-all of software development. Nor is it the center of the universe. I personally use many creative pieces of software that are produced overseas.
In fact, much of the great free software we all use has non-US origins. Sylpheed, KDE, Linux, and large portions of Gnome have started oversees and continue to be large, international efforts with significant non-US contributions. Many well respected and innovative Linux distributions such as SuSE and Mandrake are of non-US origins, and the newcomer ELX, from India, already offers more working code than the vaporous "Lindows." What an ignorant statement.
Speakinsawhich, I just went over to id software's FTP site and found the RTCW Linux binary, presumably for the retail version in stores..
f mp -linux-1.0.b2.x86.run
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/wolf/linux/wol
Hmm.. I don't consider myself an audiophile by any stretch, but give me a set of headphones and I'll be able to tell you the difference between a 128kbp MP3 and a 192...
I'd say of you really appreciate music you'll find low-quality MP3's unacceptable for any serious listening.
After finally getting tired of waiting for Mozilla , I had been using Konqueror all of the time up until about a month ago. Since then I've been using Galeon non-stop. I now think that it's the best browser option in Linux. Here's why:
1) It uses Gecko, so the rendering engine is pretty much second to none. I almost never have any problems viewing any webpages with it.
2) Because it uses Gecko, I get a lot of great things from the mozilla project. I have all of the plugins I want, I have a browser engine that most webmasters have heard of, so they listen if I complain, I get great standards compliance
3) Because it is an actual gnome app it integrates very well with other GTK apps. Where Mozilla/NS6.x goes it's own way and as a result doesn't really integrate properly in any OS, Galeon looks and behaves just like all of the other great GTK apps I use (grip, sylpheed, j-pilot, gimp, abiword, gnumeric etc.)
4) When I really get surfing I often have >10+ browsing sessions open. With Galeon this is all within a single window, and is handled brilliantly. I really miss the browser tabs when using Konqueror, I get a better rendering engine than Opera, and the tabs are more configurable/faster than Mozilla. As a complete bonus, I keep all browsing sessions between uses of Galeon. As far as I know, Mozilla does not do this. Also, when I'm using many browser sessions I find Galeon to switch between them much faster than Mozilla (though this is getting better)
5) Fewer UI inconsistencies. Mozilla has many odd XUL-related UI bugs. (for instance, open preferences and expand out all of the options. The options go past the end of the dialog, but you can't scroll down, so some options are cut off.)
6) Galeon is very simple and stable. I've been using it exclusively for a while now and I've had exactly one crash in this time. This is by far the best stability I've seen in a browser more complex than lynx for some time.
7) It has many other nice extras. Bookmarklets are nice, the security and cookie options are easy to understand and change, the portal is great, the search tabs are handy, and everything is fast and integrated.
8) It's just a browser. It lets me easily use whatever mail client I want (sylpheed, kmail, evolution etc.) it lets me use an extrnal ftp/download manager if I want.
To sum up, I like Galeon because it's fast, stable, and has a ton of features that are either missing from Mozilla and other browsers, or are better implemented in Galeon (like tabs and cookie management.)
I ordered a Linux DA PDA on Sept. 22 and it finally arrived today (Nov 15). Their website gave me errors when trying to have it shipped to a different address than the billing address, so I had to put the shipping address in the special instructions field. Needless to say it was delivered to my old apartment. Thankfully I thought to go over there and check for it. Aside from the shipping annoyances, I really like this PDA, especially considering that it was under $100.
It's about twice as thick as my Palm Vx and comes with batteries, a data sync cable and a pretty decent case. It looks pretty nice too. There was a lame Linux DA sticker on the case that I peeled off right away, thinking it was just protecting the logo like the cover I peeled off the screen. Heh. Oops. The packaging was nice and it arrived in one piece.
But on to the important details - the PDA itself. I'm very happy with it. It's got a DragonBall EZ 16 MHz processor that you can apparently overclock up to 25 MHz, 8 MB RAM and 2 MB Flash Rom. The physical buttons are pretty much the same as a Palm and there's a backlight and contrast control. It comes with 7 games, 10 applications, and 4 system utilites. A lot of the features are similar to the Palm OS, but it has some cool differences. For one, you can change the keyboard to QWERTY or natural. I also like that you can choose whether or not you want small or large icons. I'm having a little trouble with the handwriting recognition because it's a little different than Palm's. One cool feature is that when you write something it pops up a box showing what you're writing.
My favorite application is the File Manager. It's cool to see where things are, and you can view the files in text and hexadecimal mode. I'm trying to figure out if you can actually do anything with the htdocs directory. It seems strange to have it but with no purpose. I also like the paint application. It's a basic application that lets you draw crude pictures and save them, but it's so fun coloring things in. The games are your basic free games - snake, mine, tetris, etc. Plus there's the standard applications like an Address Book, Expense, Email, Memo, Schedule, Clock, etc. There are some screenshots here.
Unfortunately the software that this comes with only works on Windohs. And it even seems to have problems with that. I'm using Win2k and I'm getting various sync connection errors (COM2 is using by the other program!, Communication error). The strange thing is when I press the sync button, the PC pops up an error and the PDA shows the sync screen but times out. So they're both recognizing the sync request but not connecting. I've tried both serial ports but have had no luck. There is a nice feature that lets me import my Palm addresses and memos. Hopefully I can actually sync them eventually.
Overall I'd say the Palm is easier to use, but if you're looking for a cheap PDA I'd highly recommend this one, assuming that the sync utility will eventually work. It definitely holds its own against the others that I've played with. The lack of software is an issue, however. I haven't found any other applications for it. You can download their development kit, complete with core dump, and try making your own though.
Here are the specs from the official site:
* Manufactured by Linux DA O/S Licensee
* Embedded with Linux DA O/S for PowerPlay III
* Palm IIIxe Hardware Compatible
* 2 MB Flash Upgradeable
* 8 MB RAM
* Motorola Dragonball CPU
* Battery Operated
* Color Available - GALAXY GREY
* 15 Days Technical Support by Email
* 6 Month Linux DA O/S Software Upgrade
* One Year Warranty
* DataSync Program Only Available in MS Windows Platform
* Includes: Carrying Case, 2 AAA Batteries, PC Sync Cable, CD with PC Sync Program, Quick-Start Manual, Handwriting Guide, Warranty Card, Registration Card
Pictures coming soon. Although the pictures on their site are accurate.
One problem is that the more packages you have installed the better the chances of there being security issues to exploit.
For instance, I installed Mandrake 6.0 onto a school network a few years ago. I was fairly new to Linux at the time, and the senior admin helped me out a lot WRT security checks. For instance, did you know that (at least in mdk 6.0) all of the Gnome and KDE games ran as setuid root just so that they could write a system-wide high score? On top of that there were _many_ other setuidroot programs installed by default.. Sure that's fine for the average home user, but in a (somewhat hostile..) networked environment this is just asking for trouble. And yes.. these were installed by default..
However, I'm using Mdk as a server right now, and it's working quite well.. (though I have to restart the adsl service every few weeks.. rather annoying, but not enough for me to do anything about it..)
As always, any system can be made relatively secure, it just takes some effort. Some distro's trade off security for flexibility. Whatever..
Try checking your mail with Opera or Knoqueror. As some who have posted here suggested, this story is just news because it's MS.
Me, I want it all: I want to be able to browse to any website using a good, standards-compliant web browser and see the content. I have done corporate web development before too. Yup, it's tricky supporting all of the new browsers while maintaining compatibility with the dinosaurs like NS4.x. Such is life. Get over it.
Oh, and MS and Netscape are not the only offenders. I sent a polite letter to ATI a few months back when I was trying to decide on my next video card and found out that ATI shut Mozilla/NS6 out. They left Konqueror though, so I was able to browse the site. Man was it broken..
My bank, PC Financial, has had on and off support for alternate browsers. It had always worked with Mozilla/NS6 and they that stopped for a while. It seems to be working again, and now works under Konqueror too, so at least they aren't all bad...
Finally, I went to www.ea.com a while ago. As usual, I tried with both Mozilla and Konqueror. Again, no good. They blocked them out, and suggested "upgrading" to IE.
I can understand wanting to let NS4 go, as it really is showing its age, but that some major sites don't support NS6/Mozilla is baffling to me. It's not _that_ hard to get right.
Oh yeah, one more thing: msn.com is a _very_ popular domain. Don't forget that it is set as the default start page for IE users. Back in its day home.netscape.com had over 40million hits a day for this reason. Now msn.com has this going for it. (But yeah, the content isn't too hot..)
Well, there's my rambling..
Karma... Here's the announcememnt:
Progeny Debian
As of October 1,2001 Progeny has ceased development on its Progeny Debian product; there will be no further releases of the product, and all direct sales of the product will end October 15, 2001. (For a limited time, Progeny Debian will continue to be available for purchase from select distributors. Visit http://www.progeny.com/archive/debian/sales/ for more information.) For recent purchasers of the Progeny Debian boxed product, the 30-day free telephone and 90-day free email support included with the product will remain available until December 31, 2001; for all users of Progeny Debian, a migration path to Debian woody will be provided by the end of October, and support for Progeny Debian will continue to be available from Progeny on a per-incident and contract basis, just as it is today for Debian and other variants (e.g., Corel Linux).
The primary motivation for this decision is our desire for convergence with Debian proper. From a technical perspective, nearly all of the features we introduced in Progeny Debian have found or are finding their way into Debian, and it is thus becoming increasingly unnecessary for us to continue investing the resources required to maintain a separate "Progeny enhanced" version.
From a business perspective, our customers consistently ask for Debian, not Progeny Debian, and while Progeny Debian is technically just a "release" of Debian (akin to "potato" or "woody" from the Debian project), the appearance of maintaining a separate or "forked" version is a liability given our company's shift away from a mass-market product and service focus and toward consulting and other professional services.
Progeny will continue to help further the development and adoption of Debian in commercial settings, and we will continue to contribute enhancements to Debian that help Debian become a more viable platform for commercial users. This announcement only affects Progeny Debian the product; it in no way affects Progeny's ongoing commitment to the Debian project or its Debian deployment, custom development, and support services for commercial users.
For more information about migrating from Progeny Debian to Debian woody, or about support for Debian or Progeny Debian after December 31, 2001, please visit our technical support Web page. For more general questions, please contact Steve Schafer.
Ian Murdock
Chairman
Progeny Linux Systems
Steve Schafer
President and CEO
Progeny Linux Systems
Ah yes, but I can run:
VMWare with Win2k while ripping a CD while listening to an ogg file and burning a disk
I do this all at the same time under Debian Testing in KDE with my Athlon 900/768MB PC133 SDRAM/40GB 5400RPM UDMA33 drive...
The music never skips. Not once. Maybe the hardware isn't your problem..
(Now, having said all of that, th NT4 GUI is MUCH faster than Linux/X11 on my P233MMX laptop with 64MB RAM..)
Hey there.
.http://www.roebling.de/buy.html
From the website:
wxWindows gives you a single, easy-to-use API for writing GUI applications on multiple platforms. Link with the appropriate library for your platform (Windows/Unix/Mac) and compiler (almost any popular C++ compiler), and your application will adopt the look and feel appropriate to that platform. On top of great GUI functionality, wxWindows gives you: online help, network programming, streams, clipboard and drag and drop, multithreading, image loading and saving in a variety of popular formats, database support, HTML viewing and printing, and much much more.
wxPython is the same thing with Python bindings.
You're more than able to do all of this in your favorite text editor like Vim or Emacs, but since you're into fancy IDE's, they sell whDesigner
Here's the link:
The pricing is quite reasonable:
Product Price
Student licence US$ 19
Single-user licence US$ 89
10-user licence US$ 299
Oh, and they're working on Perl bindings too:http://wxperl.sourceforge.net/
For Windows:
.ogg files into the track window and have them burn out to normal CD Audio files. Is this the first burning app to offer this feature?
Beginner: NTI's software (http://www.nticdmaker.com/index.cfm)
Advanced: Nero
http://www.ahead.de/en/index2.htm
For Linux:
Gnometoaster
(http://gnometoaster.rulez.org)
kisocd
(http://kisocd.sourceforge.net)
Or cdrecord directly for Win32, Linux, Mac, BeOS, Solaris and more.
Hey, for those of you not following, Andy (the developer for Gnometoaster) has released a 1.0Beta1 of the excellent Gnometoaster burning app.
One of the nifty new features is the ability to DnD
Ben
I use IE 5.5 at work all day long on my WinNT PIII 450 w/256MB RAM.
Among other things, I do some web development, so the browser is running pretty much all day long.
Every so often IE goes "funny" and sucks up 100% of the CPU. At this point I have to kill iexplorer.exe. Then, because it does other thing to my taskbar etc., I have to restart Windows.
That's th astiest. More often, it GPF's when browsing or relaoding. I'd say it does this about 3 times a day, and that it does the CPU trick once or twice a week. If I'm using IE heavily I have to reboot several times a day just to keep the machine running nicely.
Now, Mozilla still isn't quite as stable as IE 5.5 for me, but I NEVER have to reboot the OS when it goes down, and it isn't _that_ much slower than IE 5 when up and runnning. I'll admit that IE 5.5 is a better browser _now_, but it is by no means perfect. Given how much Mozilla has improved WRT speed and stability on both Lnux and Win in the last month or two I'm no longer so sure that IE will remain the undisputed champ even on Windows.
And then there's non-MS platforms. Yeah, well Mozilla ought to take over on those systems pretty quickly..
Anyway, it ain't prefect, but neither's IE. I don't like either AOL or MS much, but at least we get the code with Mozilla...
Hey, whatever happedned to the attempt to GPL Mozilla?
Ben
What all of the different daily builds for Linux do.
What's the difference between the following:
mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-sea.tar.gz
mozilla-gcc295-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
Not to mention the various embed-* versions?
I alternate between the sea and not sea versions and notice no difference. I'm assuming they use gcc295 to compile the -gcc295 version, but what do they use to compile the other versions, and why is a gcc295 version needed? Also, what do and don't the embedded versions give you?
My thanks go out to the person that clarifies all of this.
>Try: http://www.webmin.com/webmin/
I'll second that!
So far, webmin is the ONLY admin system (short of modifying config files by hand) that comes close to doing everything it should. Linuxconf? nice try, but it's too linux-centric and buggy.
WebMin is sweet. It's all Perl, and it gives me a consistent way to admin Debian, RedHat, FreeBSD or Solaris (and more) boxes.
What's the easiest way to setup printing in Debian (or FreeBSD)? Install webmin. Want to know how to change the IP address of your NIC on an unfamiliar unix variant? Try webmin.
Seriously, other than sound setup it gives you everything. Really.
WebMin is the best, most underrated Unix admin program I've met. The best part is that it works on almost every unix out there!
Oh, and I'll second Quanta as being the best HTML editor too. Unless you've spent the three years needed to master Emacs, it's the best way to go. (Sorry, no WYSIWYG. Still, what self respecting web designer uses WYSIWYG anyway?)
On Linux:
.ogg files and have them converted to CDA files. Yet.
Ripper: Grip
Player: Xmms (with plugin)
On Windows:
Ripper: CD-Ex (untested)
Player: Sonique, WinAmp(with Plugin)
What's the next excuse?
Oh, I've got one: MP3CD Players occasionally play WMAs and never play Ogg files. Yeah, and you can't DnD
Ogg Vorbis is a great format. I wish it luck.
> Linux has caught up in PnP and USB in 2.4,
.. " than BSD, even the VM is better with 2.2.
> Linux's 2.4 VM may be somewhat faster
I think Linux is great. I use Debian on my main desktop. But MAN!!! When have I heard this argument before?
Seriously, when 2.2 came out everyone said "Now Linux is faster/more stable
Now, it's the same deal with 2.4. Come on...
Linux is great, FreeBSD is great. Both are almost identical from an end-user poitn of view. Linux gets things first, and is generally more supported by corporations, but can anyone seriously argue that Linux is more stable than FreeBSD?
I run BSD on my servers and about half the time on my desktops. It may not always have the newest bells and whistles, but it's always rock-solid stable. I also personally feel that it's faster under heavy loads.
What really gets me is that despite the similarities there's such a nattering back and forth between BSD and Linux.
Hi,
AbiWord is great. I use often, as I frequently need documents that can go between Solaris, Linux and Windows. (Yes, OO can do that too, and I use it sometimes as well, but Abi's much nicer for smaller docs.)
One thing I don't understand is how little recognition Siag Office gets. I know it doesn't use GTK or Qt, but it is widely ported throughout various Unix systems, and it does a lot of the things that people complain are lacking from Abi.
Personally, I use Abi as a cross-platform WordPad that has most of the nice features I miss(spelling, better formatting, XP, etc.)
Abi's a fun tool and an excellent project to follow, but we shouldn't be so blinded by the StarOffice's and KOffice/Gnome Offices of the world that we miss the "other" free suites. Siag has been around for quite a while and offers some pretty decent features.
Check it out:
http://siag.nu/
(Yeah, Pathetic Word isn't much of a name, but it is better than the name suggests..)
At my work we're having to rewrite large portions of out (windows) code because of its lack of remote administration. If it were unix, it wouldn't be an issue. SSH in and go.
Yes, you can set up ssh on Windows, but the OS still isn't set up as nicely to be able to manage your system from the console.
Also, scripting the command-line is DEAD SIMPLE!
I often run the following command:
cdrecord -v -dev=0,0,0 -speed=10 -blank=fast && cdrecord -v -dev=0,0,0 -speed=10 -eject yourISOhere.iso
I walk away, I come back 15 minutes later and I've just done something that can't be easily duplicated by most existing GUI cdr software.
GUIs are great. I used a GUI burning tool under Linux almost exclusively until I read the man page. The great thing with Unix is that most of the GUI tools are written on top of console-based tools, and it uses flat files almost exclusively. This gives me ease of use when I want it, but power and flexibility when I need it.
Both have their place.
Hi.
I'm 99.99% sure that everything they're doing is GPL'd. I've been following them for a while and I'm sure that I'd read that.
Check out debianplanet.org for interviews/reviews/discussuins with respect to Progeny.
Personally, I think that Progeny's slick install/distro is a real boon for widespread Debian acceptance, but I hope they stick with a console-based install. Out of all of the fancy distro's available for my aging Alpha (It's an old picky 233) Debian's was the only one that went through without a hitch.