The statement "Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer" was overbroad. Gentoo does a very good job of this. I used to use amd64 Gentoo and a 32-bit Firefox with Flash, with no nspluginwrapper, no chroot, no problem.
Also I recall reading a review of 64-bit Mandriva which stated that it had a 32-bit Firefox and Flash. Some distributors put some work into this; apparently the author uses a distro that ignores this issue.
sshfs is truly pimp, but both deserve mention; AFAIK sshfs can't be used on a system where you don't have root that doesn't have FUSE installed.
Sourceforge recently locked down its Web hosting servers so that you can't log in to them anymore, although you can still transfer files in and out of them using sftp. Unfortunately it seems that this change also keeps sshfs from working. It also broke similar tools for network-transparent file usage, such as netrw in Vim (though Konqueror's fish ioslave still works.) This was enough of a pain for me to move my little-known project's web hosting off Sourceforge altogether (though I was getting no benefit from Sourceforge anymore anyway.)
From day 1 the democrats were labeling McCain as Bush Jr.. if that's not negativity, then I don't know what is.
How is that negativity, when McCain himself has said, forcefully and repeatedly, that he has voted with the Bush administration 90% of the time and has faithfully carried out Bush policies?
After reading and commenting on Slashdot for some time, I stopped reading it months ago due to dumb stories like this. I only came over here because Broadband Reports was making fun of Slashdot:
The article--no, make that rant--has nothing to do with the debate between Linus and Con. The author somehow thinks that this technical debate about the kernel's workings has something to do with "Linux" desktop usability. The author clearly does not understand that there is a difference between the Linux kernel, the thousands of programs that comprise a Linux distribution, and the distributors who glue all this stuff together. He says Linux shouldn't "go mainstream" (here I guess he means distributions) and ignores the fact that Ubuntu can go mainstream while Gentoo can stay geeky.
Total waste of time; prevalence of this crap on Digg is why I stopped reading it, and now Slashdot isn't too far behind it seems.
Woz bought TWENTY iPhones? So he spent twelve thousand ($12,000!!) on phones as gifts, and now he is complaining that the price has dropped $200 and he can't get his instant refund? I knew the price drop would spark complaining, but a rich guy who spent twelve thousand dollars on phones is complaining? I don't feel sorry for anybody who willingly paid $600 for a frilly gadget, but a rich man buying twenty phones inspires the LEAST sympathy.
The writer complains that Ubuntu does things one way, while Debian does things in a better way. He should instead install Debian and write an article about how great Debian is.
I didn't really understand what the problem was to begin with--that is, exactly what Apple did that was locking Linux et al out of iPod. I thought this article might help. Instead, it just claims that there was a fix developed in 30 minutes. It does not explain 1) the nature of the problem, 2) how it was fixed, or 3) when the fix will be available for end users. For all I know this was some people joking on IRC.
Agreed. I cheered when I saw that Python 3 won't have a print statement. I once looked at the Python reference manual on print, and it was so dense that I found it to be less trouble to simply ditch the statement entirely. For all tasks except those most trivial I use sys.stdout.write(). At least then I know what the interpreter is going to do, without the funny "print" business of "softspace" and such.
For a language that says "explicit is better than implicit", there is a lot of funky stuff going on with the print statement. Good riddance to it.
If there has to be "vigorous debate" about something like this, then it is not ready to be turned on by default, plain and simple. The article says the developers don't know how stable Compiz-Fusion is, because they don't have data, etc. But they have doubts, which is all that matters. It would be fine to go forward with turning it on by default if all the devs ran it and none experienced any problems. Instead, there are known problems (such as this Intel problem) and some of the devs acknowledge that the thing can crash once a DAY, which is consistent with other experiences I have read as well.
New users (Ubuntu's target, I believe) will try Ubuntu, see this thing crashing all the time, and think "why did my geek friend tell me this Linux is more stable than Windows? My XP doesn't crash once a day."
One dev said "if we don't get it out there at some point it'll never get good enough." I don't see how foisting it on new users will help get it into shape. Are the Compiz-Fusion devs not busy enough already? There are apparently already KNOWN ISSUES that aren't being fixed, so how is turning it on by default going to improve anything? It surely will not generate better bug reports--new users will not know Compiz-Fusion is the problem; how are they going to bugreport it?
I hope Compiz-Fusion shapes up soon or that Ubuntu reverses itself; if not, this release will be a slide backward for many users--it will resemble Vista: a release with lots of paint, but with no improvements under the surface.
"Of course U-Verse was declared not to be cable, since it isn't cable."
Not so simple. What is cable? Is it merely coax? In that case, I could argue Comcast isn't cable either, since it is delivered over coax only for the last 50 feet or so to my apartment; the rest of it is fiber. Or is cable a bundle of television channels that are not delivered over the air?
The point of "what is cable" is not an academic one: Verizon is treating FiOS TV as though it is cable, so it is negotiating local franchise agreements. ATT says Uverse is not cable, so they are installing it without getting local approvals first.
I just wouldn't knock the submission as you did. The question of what constitutes "cable" is much more complex than you suggest it is.
Text editor: vim Yes, it is bigger than, say, nvi. But on most any machine, it usually runs lightning fast.
Shell: zsh. Not one of the smallest CLI shells, but very capable and well-documented. In many ways, easier to use than any GUI shell (and much lighter compared to any GUI shell.)
Finances: Ledger whips everything I have ever tried; I would never switch to a GUI program for this again.
Lists and databases: colon-delimeted plain text files. Search and get records with awk or grep. Quicker and easier than spreadsheets, and I could (should) easily encrypt them with GPG.
Photo sorting: just use GNOME's Nautilus and folders; all the photo album apps seem to be too much trouble. Wrote a zsh script to pull photos from memory cards, rename them so I know what camera they came from, rotate them, and dump them into a hard-drive folder so I can sort them out.
Light doesn't always pay: I got tired of trying to configure Fluxbox and Gentoo; now I'm on GNOME and Ubuntu. Light also doesn't pay for things done infrequently, as light often comes with a bigger learning curve. I usually resort to GUI tools to, for example, add users to the system.
I wish I could find a good CLI audio player--full featured, but CLI. MPD seems to come closest, but it can't get me away from Amarok. Similarly, GNUpod is pretty good for ipods, but I move stuff in and out of my iPod fairly rarely so I found Amarok is just easier to use.
Send the marshals around to freeze their bank accounts and padlock their doors for 30 days.
Yeah, the CEO goes to play golf for 30 days. The janitor doesn't get paid for 30 days. Small businesses supplying the company don't get paid for 30 days. The only ones hurt are those who can least afford it.
I think rebates are such a scam that I no longer figure them into purchase decisions. I assume they will never be redeemed. That is, if item X costs $50 with no rebate, and similar item Y costs $50.01 with a $30 rebate, I will buy item X.
Sometimes under this analysis I still end up buying the item with the rebate. Then I *might* send the forms in, depending on the value of the rebate and how much of a hassle it is (how much Xeroxing, cardboard-box cutting, writing on small slick pieces of paper is involved, etc.) After that I do not keep track of the rebate at all. I just don't want to deal with them at all, but I figure the odds of it getting redeemed are good enough that I will spend a few minutes on paperwork if there's enough money involved. But that few minutes is my limit.
I admire your tenacity, but I am just too jaded about rebates to ever give them more than a few minutes of my time.
Seems lots of folks get Ubuntu working on the Macs. I just wonder: why? The Mac already has Unix on it. The prominent open source packages have been ported with Fink. OS X is seamlessly integrated with the hardware.
With Linux on the other hand you'll have to screw around with it to make sure suspend works right, power-saving works right, and so on. I use Linux on my desktop and on my Dell laptop, and I still prefer Linux because of the package management and the huge repositories. But I don't prefer Linux enough that I would bother trying to get it installed on a Macbook.
Thinkpads are simply the most solid laptops money can buy. Undeniably number-one support. Also they're a lot more durable than macs. And the included IBM software is really very useful (like Active Protection System for your hard drives) unlike usual OEM crap.
Any change since Lenovo took it over? I wanted to get a Thinkpad; they have a good reputation, and a reputation for having good Linux support. The Lenovo website was having trouble for days. Once, prices were clearly wrong ($600 for an X-series!) Then, for a week at least, any time I tried to add something to a shopping cart, it would say "session expired." A quick Google revealed I was not alone. I figured it was a very bad sign if a computer company could not even run a website without it having problems for DAYS at a time.
I went straight to the Apple store, got a Macbook, and am very happy. A Unix system, without my having to install it as I would with any Windows laptop. I figured, why buy a computer and throw away the operating system, when the Mac comes with Unix already? But I would have been willing to put Linux on the Thinkpad, if Lenovo's website was working...
weird, non upgradeable components that basically mean your box is worthless after a couple of years
That's true for Dells too, which has me wondering if it is true for all systems from vendors of any size.
I had a Dell desktop. The motherboard was made just for Dell. The motherboard connectors for the USB, front-panel sound, hard-disk LED, etc. were all non-standard. Instead of having separate little pinouts and wires for each one, the system used a single ribbon cable to connect all these ports and LEDs to the case. So, forget about getting a replacement mobo from anyone but Dell.
Similarly, the power supply was nonstandard. A standard ATX power supply has a power switch on the back; a Dell PSU does not. This would not be a terribly big deal, but the case does not have a cutout for a power switch on the PSU, making it impossible to put anything but a Dell PSU in there.
I used to curse Dell for this. Then I built my own system. The case has at least a dozen wires coming out of it--power LED, power switch, reset switch, USB front panel, front-panel audio, etc. All these connect to various places on the mobo. It would be pointless for Dell factory workers to plug in a dozen little wires when they can just get their own, custom-made ribbon cable. That's one less opportunity for the factory worker to screw up. Then, consider the power supply. You and I both know to check that switch on the back of the standard PSU. But the average computer user won't know that. His kid will flip it off, then he'll call Dell and say his computer is busted. Tech support will have to go through one more step on the phone, and for what? So geeks like you and I won't complain that the PSU is non-standard?
Don't get me wrong, I would never buy another Dell desktop. But I think the parts are nonstandard for good reason. They don't seem to make things nonstandard just for the sake of making them nonstandard--for instance, hard drives and optical drives are perfectly standard on Dell machines and readily replaced. If Dells, Compaqs, and Gateways all have nonstandard parts, it's probably a safe bet that any big vendor uses nonstandard parts--and for the same good reasons.
The only cure I can think of is to change standards like ATX so that PSUs have no switch and so that everyone is shoehorned into the same ribbon cable--a cure that's worse than the disease. For now, those who know can just stick to Newegg. Everybody wins.
I used Gentoo for over a year, but it was sucking up too much time. The final straw is that Gentoo is often out of date (ironic) so I switched away from it.
Gentoo fans often claim Gentoo compiling gets you a faster machine. That was not my experience. My Gentoo box started up and shut down more quickly, but that was because it didn't have a bunch of unnecessary services starting up. The individual application speeds were no better than with any binary distro--which is what one would expect in this age of superfast processors.
If compiling was done once, fine. But whenever an update comes along, it's compile time all over again. How many packages might a typical user have? Maybe 1000? And how often is a typical package updated? Maybe 4 times a year? So, looking at perhaps 4000 updates per year, which comes to more than 10 per day. And how long does installation take? 1 minute per package?
Heh, that's optimistic. The problem with Gentoo is that there is no incremental patch mechanism. You have to reinstall the whole package any time there is a security update. The real stinger is that the packages often do not work. I'd say roughly 1 in 50 emerges quits due to some compile error. That's a lot of breakage on a typical system, which may have nearly a thousand packages--all of which often must be reemerged for security updates and for upgrades. Fixing broken emerges takes some time--"hmm, let me try unmasking the testing version to see if that works. Hmm, let me try changing the USE flags. Hmm..."
Gentoo would perhaps be acceptable if it worked a greater percentage of the time. Unfortunately it often breaks, and the response from other users is "oh, you shouldn't have upgraded your system" or "oh, any user should be able to fix that." True enough, so I have left Gentoo so that I don't need to bother fixing these things. No problem here.
Use Bluetooth. It would have been even more stylish. Maybe they want to sell upgrades, or maybe they don't want people thinking they can use the keyboard from fifteen feet away.
Exactly--anyone who wants an open social network can set up a webpage, with profile and all the rest, on his ISP's webserver. Typically they have tools for this, so it's easy. For others to contact him, he can post his email address. That's the ultimate open social network. There is also an even easier way to do this. They are called "blogs" with "comments" and "profile pages." Any moron can get one on Blogger.
The whole point of social networking sites is that they are closed off from the rest of the Web. If the users do not like this, they will not use them (I don't use them, precisely because checking one email box is enough; I see no point in getting emails from myspace saying "you got an email, come log in to our slow, awful site just to read it.")
Has any one actually shelled out money to buy works?
Yeah, I did, but it was ten years ago...back then, if you bought Works, it came with a copy of Word 97, and some other stuff that was good, like Streets and Trips (this was before Google Maps.)
Wait, that might have been "Works Suite." Works by itself was total crud. Of course it came with the Works Suite, but I never even touched it once.
Slashdot Mirror
The statement "Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer" was overbroad. Gentoo does a very good job of this. I used to use amd64 Gentoo and a 32-bit Firefox with Flash, with no nspluginwrapper, no chroot, no problem.
http://www.gentoo-portage.com/Search?search=emul-linux-x86
Also I recall reading a review of 64-bit Mandriva which stated that it had a 32-bit Firefox and Flash. Some distributors put some work into this; apparently the author uses a distro that ignores this issue.
sshfs is truly pimp, but both deserve mention; AFAIK sshfs can't be used on a system where you don't have root that doesn't have FUSE installed.
Sourceforge recently locked down its Web hosting servers so that you can't log in to them anymore, although you can still transfer files in and out of them using sftp. Unfortunately it seems that this change also keeps sshfs from working. It also broke similar tools for network-transparent file usage, such as netrw in Vim (though Konqueror's fish ioslave still works.) This was enough of a pain for me to move my little-known project's web hosting off Sourceforge altogether (though I was getting no benefit from Sourceforge anymore anyway.)
From day 1 the democrats were labeling McCain as Bush Jr.. if that's not negativity, then I don't know what is.
How is that negativity, when McCain himself has said, forcefully and repeatedly, that he has voted with the Bush administration 90% of the time and has faithfully carried out Bush policies?
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/06/mccain-2005-vs.html
Quite clearly Obama and McCain simply agree that McCain is a fervent backer of Bush. It's not negative of Obama to point this out.
Interesting that Ubuntu will make Symphony available. It is not Free Software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Symphony
Currently the Ubuntu Philosophy allows non-free software only for drivers.
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/philosophy
After reading and commenting on Slashdot for some time, I stopped reading it months ago due to dumb stories like this. I only came over here because Broadband Reports was making fun of Slashdot:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Slashdot-Keeps-Rediscovering-Comcast-Powerboost-91976
kdawson continually posts garbage like this. s/he clearly has no clue. Get rid of kdawson and maybe I'll come back here.
The article--no, make that rant--has nothing to do with the debate between Linus and Con. The author somehow thinks that this technical debate about the kernel's workings has something to do with "Linux" desktop usability. The author clearly does not understand that there is a difference between the Linux kernel, the thousands of programs that comprise a Linux distribution, and the distributors who glue all this stuff together. He says Linux shouldn't "go mainstream" (here I guess he means distributions) and ignores the fact that Ubuntu can go mainstream while Gentoo can stay geeky.
Total waste of time; prevalence of this crap on Digg is why I stopped reading it, and now Slashdot isn't too far behind it seems.
Woz bought TWENTY iPhones? So he spent twelve thousand ($12,000!!) on phones as gifts, and now he is complaining that the price has dropped $200 and he can't get his instant refund? I knew the price drop would spark complaining, but a rich guy who spent twelve thousand dollars on phones is complaining? I don't feel sorry for anybody who willingly paid $600 for a frilly gadget, but a rich man buying twenty phones inspires the LEAST sympathy.
The writer complains that Ubuntu does things one way, while Debian does things in a better way. He should instead install Debian and write an article about how great Debian is.
I didn't really understand what the problem was to begin with--that is, exactly what Apple did that was locking Linux et al out of iPod. I thought this article might help. Instead, it just claims that there was a fix developed in 30 minutes. It does not explain 1) the nature of the problem, 2) how it was fixed, or 3) when the fix will be available for end users. For all I know this was some people joking on IRC.
Agreed. I cheered when I saw that Python 3 won't have a print statement. I once looked at the Python reference manual on print, and it was so dense that I found it to be less trouble to simply ditch the statement entirely. For all tasks except those most trivial I use sys.stdout.write(). At least then I know what the interpreter is going to do, without the funny "print" business of "softspace" and such.
For a language that says "explicit is better than implicit", there is a lot of funky stuff going on with the print statement. Good riddance to it.
If there has to be "vigorous debate" about something like this, then it is not ready to be turned on by default, plain and simple. The article says the developers don't know how stable Compiz-Fusion is, because they don't have data, etc. But they have doubts, which is all that matters. It would be fine to go forward with turning it on by default if all the devs ran it and none experienced any problems. Instead, there are known problems (such as this Intel problem) and some of the devs acknowledge that the thing can crash once a DAY, which is consistent with other experiences I have read as well.
New users (Ubuntu's target, I believe) will try Ubuntu, see this thing crashing all the time, and think "why did my geek friend tell me this Linux is more stable than Windows? My XP doesn't crash once a day."
One dev said "if we don't get it out there at some point it'll never get good enough." I don't see how foisting it on new users will help get it into shape. Are the Compiz-Fusion devs not busy enough already? There are apparently already KNOWN ISSUES that aren't being fixed, so how is turning it on by default going to improve anything? It surely will not generate better bug reports--new users will not know Compiz-Fusion is the problem; how are they going to bugreport it?
I hope Compiz-Fusion shapes up soon or that Ubuntu reverses itself; if not, this release will be a slide backward for many users--it will resemble Vista: a release with lots of paint, but with no improvements under the surface.
"Of course U-Verse was declared not to be cable, since it isn't cable."
Not so simple. What is cable? Is it merely coax? In that case, I could argue Comcast isn't cable either, since it is delivered over coax only for the last 50 feet or so to my apartment; the rest of it is fiber. Or is cable a bundle of television channels that are not delivered over the air?
The point of "what is cable" is not an academic one: Verizon is treating FiOS TV as though it is cable, so it is negotiating local franchise agreements. ATT says Uverse is not cable, so they are installing it without getting local approvals first.
I just wouldn't knock the submission as you did. The question of what constitutes "cable" is much more complex than you suggest it is.
CD ripping: abcde. Easy to control and customize.
Text editor: vim Yes, it is bigger than, say, nvi. But on most any machine, it usually runs lightning fast.
Shell: zsh. Not one of the smallest CLI shells, but very capable and well-documented. In many ways, easier to use than any GUI shell (and much lighter compared to any GUI shell.)
Calculator: command-line wcalc
Finances: Ledger whips everything I have ever tried; I would never switch to a GUI program for this again.
Lists and databases: colon-delimeted plain text files. Search and get records with awk or grep. Quicker and easier than spreadsheets, and I could (should) easily encrypt them with GPG.
Nutrition tracking: see sig (immodestly)
Task tracking: todo.txt
Photo sorting: just use GNOME's Nautilus and folders; all the photo album apps seem to be too much trouble. Wrote a zsh script to pull photos from memory cards, rename them so I know what camera they came from, rotate them, and dump them into a hard-drive folder so I can sort them out.
Light doesn't always pay: I got tired of trying to configure Fluxbox and Gentoo; now I'm on GNOME and Ubuntu. Light also doesn't pay for things done infrequently, as light often comes with a bigger learning curve. I usually resort to GUI tools to, for example, add users to the system.
I wish I could find a good CLI audio player--full featured, but CLI. MPD seems to come closest, but it can't get me away from Amarok. Similarly, GNUpod is pretty good for ipods, but I move stuff in and out of my iPod fairly rarely so I found Amarok is just easier to use.
Send the marshals around to freeze their bank accounts and padlock their doors for 30 days.
Yeah, the CEO goes to play golf for 30 days. The janitor doesn't get paid for 30 days. Small businesses supplying the company don't get paid for 30 days. The only ones hurt are those who can least afford it.
Better to just go for the CEO.
Wow, that is crazy meticulous.
I think rebates are such a scam that I no longer figure them into purchase decisions. I assume they will never be redeemed. That is, if item X costs $50 with no rebate, and similar item Y costs $50.01 with a $30 rebate, I will buy item X.
Sometimes under this analysis I still end up buying the item with the rebate. Then I *might* send the forms in, depending on the value of the rebate and how much of a hassle it is (how much Xeroxing, cardboard-box cutting, writing on small slick pieces of paper is involved, etc.) After that I do not keep track of the rebate at all. I just don't want to deal with them at all, but I figure the odds of it getting redeemed are good enough that I will spend a few minutes on paperwork if there's enough money involved. But that few minutes is my limit.
I admire your tenacity, but I am just too jaded about rebates to ever give them more than a few minutes of my time.
Apple again leaves its competitors, such as MS Zune, in the dust.
Today I mentioned this to my girlfriend. "Zune?" she said. "Never heard of it."
Seems lots of folks get Ubuntu working on the Macs. I just wonder: why? The Mac already has Unix on it. The prominent open source packages have been ported with Fink. OS X is seamlessly integrated with the hardware.
With Linux on the other hand you'll have to screw around with it to make sure suspend works right, power-saving works right, and so on. I use Linux on my desktop and on my Dell laptop, and I still prefer Linux because of the package management and the huge repositories. But I don't prefer Linux enough that I would bother trying to get it installed on a Macbook.
Thinkpads are simply the most solid laptops money can buy. Undeniably number-one support. Also they're a lot more durable than macs. And the included IBM software is really very useful (like Active Protection System for your hard drives) unlike usual OEM crap.
Any change since Lenovo took it over? I wanted to get a Thinkpad; they have a good reputation, and a reputation for having good Linux support. The Lenovo website was having trouble for days. Once, prices were clearly wrong ($600 for an X-series!) Then, for a week at least, any time I tried to add something to a shopping cart, it would say "session expired." A quick Google revealed I was not alone. I figured it was a very bad sign if a computer company could not even run a website without it having problems for DAYS at a time.
I went straight to the Apple store, got a Macbook, and am very happy. A Unix system, without my having to install it as I would with any Windows laptop. I figured, why buy a computer and throw away the operating system, when the Mac comes with Unix already? But I would have been willing to put Linux on the Thinkpad, if Lenovo's website was working...
weird, non upgradeable components that basically mean your box is worthless after a couple of years
That's true for Dells too, which has me wondering if it is true for all systems from vendors of any size.
I had a Dell desktop. The motherboard was made just for Dell. The motherboard connectors for the USB, front-panel sound, hard-disk LED, etc. were all non-standard. Instead of having separate little pinouts and wires for each one, the system used a single ribbon cable to connect all these ports and LEDs to the case. So, forget about getting a replacement mobo from anyone but Dell.
Similarly, the power supply was nonstandard. A standard ATX power supply has a power switch on the back; a Dell PSU does not. This would not be a terribly big deal, but the case does not have a cutout for a power switch on the PSU, making it impossible to put anything but a Dell PSU in there.
I used to curse Dell for this. Then I built my own system. The case has at least a dozen wires coming out of it--power LED, power switch, reset switch, USB front panel, front-panel audio, etc. All these connect to various places on the mobo. It would be pointless for Dell factory workers to plug in a dozen little wires when they can just get their own, custom-made ribbon cable. That's one less opportunity for the factory worker to screw up. Then, consider the power supply. You and I both know to check that switch on the back of the standard PSU. But the average computer user won't know that. His kid will flip it off, then he'll call Dell and say his computer is busted. Tech support will have to go through one more step on the phone, and for what? So geeks like you and I won't complain that the PSU is non-standard?
Don't get me wrong, I would never buy another Dell desktop. But I think the parts are nonstandard for good reason. They don't seem to make things nonstandard just for the sake of making them nonstandard--for instance, hard drives and optical drives are perfectly standard on Dell machines and readily replaced. If Dells, Compaqs, and Gateways all have nonstandard parts, it's probably a safe bet that any big vendor uses nonstandard parts--and for the same good reasons.
The only cure I can think of is to change standards like ATX so that PSUs have no switch and so that everyone is shoehorned into the same ribbon cable--a cure that's worse than the disease. For now, those who know can just stick to Newegg. Everybody wins.
I used Gentoo for over a year, but it was sucking up too much time. The final straw is that Gentoo is often out of date (ironic) so I switched away from it.
Gentoo fans often claim Gentoo compiling gets you a faster machine. That was not my experience. My Gentoo box started up and shut down more quickly, but that was because it didn't have a bunch of unnecessary services starting up. The individual application speeds were no better than with any binary distro--which is what one would expect in this age of superfast processors.
If compiling was done once, fine. But whenever an update comes along, it's compile time all over again. How many packages might a typical user have? Maybe 1000? And how often is a typical package updated? Maybe 4 times a year? So, looking at perhaps 4000 updates per year, which comes to more than 10 per day. And how long does installation take? 1 minute per package?
Heh, that's optimistic. The problem with Gentoo is that there is no incremental patch mechanism. You have to reinstall the whole package any time there is a security update. The real stinger is that the packages often do not work. I'd say roughly 1 in 50 emerges quits due to some compile error. That's a lot of breakage on a typical system, which may have nearly a thousand packages--all of which often must be reemerged for security updates and for upgrades. Fixing broken emerges takes some time--"hmm, let me try unmasking the testing version to see if that works. Hmm, let me try changing the USE flags. Hmm..."
Gentoo would perhaps be acceptable if it worked a greater percentage of the time. Unfortunately it often breaks, and the response from other users is "oh, you shouldn't have upgraded your system" or "oh, any user should be able to fix that." True enough, so I have left Gentoo so that I don't need to bother fixing these things. No problem here.
Use Bluetooth. It would have been even more stylish. Maybe they want to sell upgrades, or maybe they don't want people thinking they can use the keyboard from fifteen feet away.
Any support for OpenDocument in that new iWork? Website doesn't mention it at all.
Exactly--anyone who wants an open social network can set up a webpage, with profile and all the rest, on his ISP's webserver. Typically they have tools for this, so it's easy. For others to contact him, he can post his email address. That's the ultimate open social network. There is also an even easier way to do this. They are called "blogs" with "comments" and "profile pages." Any moron can get one on Blogger.
The whole point of social networking sites is that they are closed off from the rest of the Web. If the users do not like this, they will not use them (I don't use them, precisely because checking one email box is enough; I see no point in getting emails from myspace saying "you got an email, come log in to our slow, awful site just to read it.")
Even better, Google now has a repository for its software:
http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/
Has any one actually shelled out money to buy works?
Yeah, I did, but it was ten years ago...back then, if you bought Works, it came with a copy of Word 97, and some other stuff that was good, like Streets and Trips (this was before Google Maps.)
Wait, that might have been "Works Suite." Works by itself was total crud. Of course it came with the Works Suite, but I never even touched it once.