For example, having a good, it's-all-legal-everywhere media player that can handle all types of media would be a definite advantage to Linux
How do you suggest that we implement this in a world of software patents? It simply cannot be done. And besides, being open source, much software developed for Linux make their way onto Windows and Mac. In time, they will no longer be advantages of using Linux.
At that point, the other UIs need to become hobbies, and shed the wasted development resources that could be used by the kernel and or drivers.
Do you realize that those "resources" that you would like to reassign from the "other UIs" to kernel and driver development might not really be proficient in that kind of work. Userland programming is quite different from kernel programming, and it is improbable that all of those excessive UI programmers can make the transition. Of course this discussion is purely academic, since nobody is in charge of the community to make such a decision and enforce it.
Or at the very least, stop trying to push their interface to the top.
Are you serious? This is called competition. And competition ensures continued innovation and development. Just look at Internet Explorer, and the stagnated development it has seen for several years. It is only quite recenly, since Firefox started picking up speed, that development has been restarted.
People use Windows because it's familiar and it's simple.
You don't think it is related to the fact that it comes preinstalled on almost all PC's?
at least you don't have to prove to your computer that you own it
No, but you have to prove to Microsoft that your copy is legitimate every once in a while. By the way, the UAC feature of Windows Vista will require proving to the computer that you are the system administrator before being allowed to touch important system folders, just like in Linux.
Yes, it is more vulnerable to attack, but so would be any other OS if it had that many users.
I disagree. I don't think that Linux would ever reach the vulnerability level of Windows XP, regardless of its market share. The privilege separation system, among others, is an important security barrier that would prevent that from happening. This isn't Linux-specific. I think that the Vista UAC has an opportunity to significantly increase security in Windows, unless the users find a way to disable the "stupid admin password dialog" that is.
I tried using Totem to watch a DVD I burned and same thing, in order to get the application that is implicitly the "DVD" player I had to use CLI to install more codecs and libraries, etc. What a pain!
The primary reason is called software patents. Patent licenses are included in the price for your Windows license, but cannot really be included with Linux distributions that you get for free. The distributor would have to pay the license fee, but where would they get the money for that?
Show them anything else, then they are just as helpless as the beginners.
And not just helpless. Anything that does not work just like in Windows is plain and simply wrong, call it bad design, stupid implementation, or whatever. They cannot accept that different can be fine too.
And i guess that you mean everyone can do this on Windows. Wrong! I have been asked by several computer newbies to install applications on Windows, regardless of the simplicity of the installation program.
If Linux really wants to take off (i.e More then like 15% desktop space), they will cut the distro down to 2-3 Major distros
Linux is a kernel, and does not have a mind of its own. In other words, it does not want anything. And the F/OSS communities does not have one steering committee that can decide about cutting the number of distros. If anyone want to make another distro, they are free to do so, and nobody can stop them. It is actually one of the great things with this community. No single person or committee is able to tell everyone else what to do. People can suggest various solutions to perceived problems (such as these), but nobody can decide that this and that distro is superfluous and has to be discontinued.
Ping times? Why do they matter in Bittorrent? It isn't a game you know. I'd say bandwith is a much more important metric, ping times just measure network latency.
I may be the exception to your rule: I wear glasses (with heavy correction) and I severely dislike ClearType. I tried it once on my laptop, but it was an eyesore to read. It was quickly turned off.
Some computers seem to be factory-preset with ClearType enabled, even if ClearType is disabled in vanilla Windows. I also heard ClearType is automatically turned on in Internet Explorer 7, although by a separate setting (it does not turn on ClearType for all Windows-applications, just IE7).
You're joking, right? Cleartype looks blurry and awful.
It really does. And you know what? Every question on every forum I have read that mentioned ClearType, except the parent poster, have been questions about how to turn it off. Is there anyone, again except the parent, that like ClearType?
AFAIK, XGL is not in Fedora, but AIGLX is. They provide roughly the same features, that is enabling 3D effects on the desktop. AIGLX is integrated in X.org 7.1 and later.
I downloaded the i386 DVD yesterday night, and it took just a few hours. I was consistently getting between 200 and 300 kb/s, which I would consider quite good. I really don't understand why you would want separate trackers, since that would create disjoint swarms that wouldn't take advantage of each other.
There are however a couple of people working on Firefox 2 rpms for FC6 (and 5) which will install into/usr/local and will work alongside v1.5 so everyone's happy.
Sounds good to me. Do you know which repository they will be in (so I know where to look)?
How can you write off something that was released today (FC6) or hasn't even been released yet (Ubuntu 6.10)? This means that you must have been using beta software. Did you really thing Vista Beta 1 was that good? I heard it contained an awful lot of bugs...
You can do this in FC6, since the installer supports fetching packages from third-party repositories. Just click add repository and type http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/6/[arch]/ into the text box. Substitute [arch] with the proper architecture, such as i386 or x86_64. Voilà, the packages can be installed just as if they were on the install DVD (theoretically, at least, I haven't tried yet).
Give them a few weeks and it should probably appear as an update. Firefox 1.0 was released shortly after FC3, and was provided as an update (FC3 shipped with Firefox 0.10).
I'm sure they will update Firefox to 2.0 for FC6, but probably not for FC5. History speaks for itself here. FC4 never got Firefox updated to 1.5, which was released quite a long time after FC4 was released. FC3 though, were shipped with Firefox 0.10, and updates to 1.0 were issued as the release came shortly after FC3.
Sounds like you haven't even tried it, or looked into it. That's fine...but you do have some misconceptions.
Actually, I looked into it after I posted, since I was curious. Most of it was cleared up, but I'd still like to know what encryption is used. And by the way it only runs in Firefox 1.5, while I'm still using 1.0 on my laptop (Fedora Core 4) even though that might not be for very long. FC6 is due for release any day.
What about security? I understand that it can handle saved passwords (and possibly certificates as well). Will Google have access to those, or are they sent in encrypted form so that they remain unavailable to Google?
Until such questions are cleared up, Google Browser Sync is out of question.
I keep being amazed by these people who advocate Mozilla by naming stuff Opera had 5 years ago. Accept it, it's the better browser. But apparently people prefer using Netscape...
Maybe, just maybe, because Opera is closed-source.
Why should the U.S. allow foreign companies to suck money out of the U.S. economy, and then not even pay taxes back to the U.S.?
Good question. One could also wonder why the rest of the world should allow US companies to suck money out of the local economies and evade local taxes in the process. A certain company that is frequently mentioned on Slashdot comes to mind, namely Microsoft. I heard they had some 40 billion dollars in revenue last year, and most of those money has to come from outside the US. I'd gladly shut that stream off.
As I understand, the US has a trade imbalance in that it is receiving more foreign money than it is spending abroad, so asking to further escalate this imbalance by disallowing foreign companies to "suck money out of the US economy" seems more than a little bit hypocritical, in that US companies already "suck out" more money from foreign economies than foreign companies "suck out" of the US.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you suggest that we implement this in a world of software patents? It simply cannot be done. And besides, being open source, much software developed for Linux make their way onto Windows and Mac. In time, they will no longer be advantages of using Linux.
Do you realize that those "resources" that you would like to reassign from the "other UIs" to kernel and driver development might not really be proficient in that kind of work. Userland programming is quite different from kernel programming, and it is improbable that all of those excessive UI programmers can make the transition. Of course this discussion is purely academic, since nobody is in charge of the community to make such a decision and enforce it.
Are you serious? This is called competition. And competition ensures continued innovation and development. Just look at Internet Explorer, and the stagnated development it has seen for several years. It is only quite recenly, since Firefox started picking up speed, that development has been restarted.
You don't think it is related to the fact that it comes preinstalled on almost all PC's?
No, but you have to prove to Microsoft that your copy is legitimate every once in a while. By the way, the UAC feature of Windows Vista will require proving to the computer that you are the system administrator before being allowed to touch important system folders, just like in Linux.
I disagree. I don't think that Linux would ever reach the vulnerability level of Windows XP, regardless of its market share. The privilege separation system, among others, is an important security barrier that would prevent that from happening. This isn't Linux-specific. I think that the Vista UAC has an opportunity to significantly increase security in Windows, unless the users find a way to disable the "stupid admin password dialog" that is.
The primary reason is called software patents. Patent licenses are included in the price for your Windows license, but cannot really be included with Linux distributions that you get for free. The distributor would have to pay the license fee, but where would they get the money for that?
And not just helpless. Anything that does not work just like in Windows is plain and simply wrong, call it bad design, stupid implementation, or whatever. They cannot accept that different can be fine too.
And i guess that you mean everyone can do this on Windows. Wrong! I have been asked by several computer newbies to install applications on Windows, regardless of the simplicity of the installation program.
Linux is a kernel, and does not have a mind of its own. In other words, it does not want anything. And the F/OSS communities does not have one steering committee that can decide about cutting the number of distros. If anyone want to make another distro, they are free to do so, and nobody can stop them. It is actually one of the great things with this community. No single person or committee is able to tell everyone else what to do. People can suggest various solutions to perceived problems (such as these), but nobody can decide that this and that distro is superfluous and has to be discontinued.
Ping times? Why do they matter in Bittorrent? It isn't a game you know. I'd say bandwith is a much more important metric, ping times just measure network latency.
I may be the exception to your rule: I wear glasses (with heavy correction) and I severely dislike ClearType. I tried it once on my laptop, but it was an eyesore to read. It was quickly turned off.
Some computers seem to be factory-preset with ClearType enabled, even if ClearType is disabled in vanilla Windows. I also heard ClearType is automatically turned on in Internet Explorer 7, although by a separate setting (it does not turn on ClearType for all Windows-applications, just IE7).
It really does. And you know what? Every question on every forum I have read that mentioned ClearType, except the parent poster, have been questions about how to turn it off. Is there anyone, again except the parent, that like ClearType?
AFAIK, XGL is not in Fedora, but AIGLX is. They provide roughly the same features, that is enabling 3D effects on the desktop. AIGLX is integrated in X.org 7.1 and later.
I downloaded the i386 DVD yesterday night, and it took just a few hours. I was consistently getting between 200 and 300 kb/s, which I would consider quite good. I really don't understand why you would want separate trackers, since that would create disjoint swarms that wouldn't take advantage of each other.
Sounds good to me. Do you know which repository they will be in (so I know where to look)?
How can you write off something that was released today (FC6) or hasn't even been released yet (Ubuntu 6.10)? This means that you must have been using beta software. Did you really thing Vista Beta 1 was that good? I heard it contained an awful lot of bugs...
YDRC (You Don't Recall Correctly). X.org replaced XFree86 in FC2. In FC5 X.org 7.0 replaced X.org 6.9.
You can do this in FC6, since the installer supports fetching packages from third-party repositories. Just click add repository and type http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/6/[arch]/ into the text box. Substitute [arch] with the proper architecture, such as i386 or x86_64. Voilà, the packages can be installed just as if they were on the install DVD (theoretically, at least, I haven't tried yet).
Give them a few weeks and it should probably appear as an update. Firefox 1.0 was released shortly after FC3, and was provided as an update (FC3 shipped with Firefox 0.10).
I'm sure they will update Firefox to 2.0 for FC6, but probably not for FC5. History speaks for itself here. FC4 never got Firefox updated to 1.5, which was released quite a long time after FC4 was released. FC3 though, were shipped with Firefox 0.10, and updates to 1.0 were issued as the release came shortly after FC3.
Actually, I looked into it after I posted, since I was curious. Most of it was cleared up, but I'd still like to know what encryption is used. And by the way it only runs in Firefox 1.5, while I'm still using 1.0 on my laptop (Fedora Core 4) even though that might not be for very long. FC6 is due for release any day.
I wonder why Evince won't print it. Does it really support Acrobat DRM?
What about security? I understand that it can handle saved passwords (and possibly certificates as well). Will Google have access to those, or are they sent in encrypted form so that they remain unavailable to Google?
Until such questions are cleared up, Google Browser Sync is out of question.
Maybe, just maybe, because Opera is closed-source.
Good question. One could also wonder why the rest of the world should allow US companies to suck money out of the local economies and evade local taxes in the process. A certain company that is frequently mentioned on Slashdot comes to mind, namely Microsoft. I heard they had some 40 billion dollars in revenue last year, and most of those money has to come from outside the US. I'd gladly shut that stream off.
As I understand, the US has a trade imbalance in that it is receiving more foreign money than it is spending abroad, so asking to further escalate this imbalance by disallowing foreign companies to "suck money out of the US economy" seems more than a little bit hypocritical, in that US companies already "suck out" more money from foreign economies than foreign companies "suck out" of the US.
It's spelled Uppsala.
I'm not a spelling nazi usually, but the (sp?) indicated that you wanted a spell check. :)