They issued a patch that crippled PS3, but no patch available to update graphics card driver on my Vaio. (Yes, they need to take it from Nvidia, re-brand it and put it up for download), It keeps BSOD-ing in video games. After giving their support a run for the money, their response was to "reset it to factory setting". Seems to be a universal response from all merchants when they are not capable of resolving a support issue.
In what way did the patch that removed the "Other OS" crippled the PS3?
I can still play PS1, PS2 (Fat first gen PS3 only) and PS3 games, BluRay (3D as well) , DVD's on my PS3 and access PSN. The only thing I cannot do is boot another OS which was never available on the "Slim PS3" in the first place. In fact many patches for the PS3 actually added extra functionality.
As for your problem with your "Vaio" (I assume that is a laptop) I would be contacting Sony or the place you purchased it from (best option) about the issue if you are still under warranty. Personally I would never play PC games (ie. "Games for Windows") on a laptop since most laptops don't run that well without some tweaking, however since I run a pure Linux OS the point is mute.
BTW. Resetting to factory settings is the standard response for all PC manufacturers not just Sony. You are right about support though.
"Nintendo's goal is an emotional experience." Is that what you call endless variations of Mario & Zelda?
While I still like the Zelda games I have never found the Mario games all that appealing but then million's of people who do like the Mario games would strongly disagree with me to the point of taking out a contract:)
Another Nintendo game series I liked was Metroid and going from a 2D side-scroller to first person (sort of) shooter was a change which IMHO actually worked. However later versions of Metroid like Zelda appear to be just IMHO a rehash in order to make money which Nintendo is very good at doing. It appears that if a particular game is successful then you end up seeing a follow-up game then if that is successful then version 3, 4, 5... etc until people loose interest which in case of Nintendo's Mario, Microsoft's Halo, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare and the variations of sport and racing games the interest and hence the money is there.
When playing a game one of the most useful features is haptic feedback which for a while has been the "rumble" of the controller. Having this feature allows one IMHO to interact more closely with the game in that when you fire a weapon (sword, gun, spell,.. etc) or you are hit you can actually feel something via your hands. Even slight slight rumble can actually set the mood of certain games. There were some quite elaborate haptic feedback devices which could provide a "rumble" feature to other parts of the body (ok keep this thread clean), however these devices were quite expensive so they never took off. Basically at the moment the cheapest haptic feedback devices is the hand controller, be it the Wii wand, Playstaion Move/Controller and the Xbox360 controller. Also there are haptic devices that will work with some PC games as well.
With the introduction of the connect you don't have any haptic feedback since and I quote "You are the controller". For many casual users this may be ok since most casual players don't really care or know about haptic feedback but for the more advance player haptic feedback can be very important which can make a mediocre game good and a good game very good.
As far as the new Kinect being able to read lips I don't know if this is going to be all that useful although there may be some types of games were this may work well, but then again only time will tell. Of course I would expect Nintendo and Sony to come out with something along the same lines as well.
Personally where I think the Kinect will shine is for the casual gamer and as an icebreaker at parties although you really do need a much larger room and also a large screen TV if you are going to have more than two players. In some respects this is not that much different for Wii and Playstation Move users (at least they do have haptic feedback) but when you are going to wave your arms or jump around then you need some room to do it. Of course with more than one person waving their arms you may have a few black-eyes, but unlike the Wii and Move you have less chance of someone breaking breaking your TV unless you have a really small room:)
At this moment, I cannot install fedora core 16 without it wiping my entire disk, because 'it does not recognize my partitions'. It wants to live on one big partition of type 'GPT' (Guid based partitioning), and damn everyone else !
Bullshit! I run Fedora 16 and with a considerable amount of applications installed (2097 packages to date) and I am using no more than 8GB.
With Fedora I normally set up a boot partition for "boot" and another partition for a logical volume group then add appropriate volumes such as "root", "usr" (you can combine the two if you want - say 12GB max) and some other volumes such as tmp (2GB), swap (2GB+) and var (2GB) or if you really want you can combine the lot and even put swap into a file if you want. Good grief even a 10 year old (although one that could read a HOWTO) could do this.
Even on my machine I don't allocate more than 20GB to Fedora 16 although what you allocate to your users, archive and other sundries is up to you and yes I only run Fedora on my machine and anything else I need as in MS Windows, Solaris, and other x86 *nix I run in a virtual machine.
I'm fairly sure Linux has a generic 802.11 stack, and I have not idea why it would behave in a significantly different manner. Starting drivers in BSD I would guess is to avoid GPL issues
You know the source is available for you to check this if you want.
Windows beats Linux because, however crappy it often is, it's crappy in entirely consistent ways.
No! MS Windows beats Linux because of the "Microsoft Tax".
Or - to rephrase - as nice as Mac's BSD under the skin OS is, how much has it actually improved the BSD experience of anyone else?
The problem with the BSD license is the fact that any company can take the code and make it their own without giving anything back so it is impossible to determine how much of Apple's code is BSD or not since their code is propitiatory.
Personally I don't object to people putting their code under a BSD license however what we are now seeing are some of those people discriminating against the GPL in that they are actually stating that while their code is under a BSD license they will not allow anyone to take their code and GPL it which seems a contradiction of the BSD license.
You don't normally use "rpm" much less "deb" packages as is unless you know what the package dependences are. This is why you use "yum" for managing "rpm" packages and "apt-get" for managing "deb" packages and if you want you can use "alien" to translate between "deb" and "rpm". Of course you can always download the source and try to compile it. if you don't like that then MS Windows will welcome you back with "All is forgiven, just don't do it again" and promptly give you a blue (green if you have Win 8) screen of death.:)
Cloud computing is only remote storage and access and has been around in many different forms since at least the 1960's. Of course "Cloud Computing" sounds so much better (ie. shiny) to the "unwashed masses" or the corporate "pointy haired manager", who's attitude is "But the Cloud takes care of all of that so we don't have to think about it".
It is surprisingly easy to do a fresh installation of Fedora over a previous Fedora (takes about an hour). In fact if you have your file-system laid out properly (ie./boot,/,/usr,/var,/tmp and swap) with separate file-systems for/home and other file-systems such as say/archive or others that are not system related then if you are using LVM you only need to format the system file-systems. Personally I only have two partitions for my system disk the first being/boot and the other an LVM group (in my case I call it vg_machine_name) with appropriately named volumes such as lv_root, lv_usr, lv_var, lv... well you get the picture. Of course a backup should be performed first but you will only need this if you stuff up the new installation by clobbering your non system logical volumes.
As for your extras it is very important to document them prior to doing the install. Once you do this you need only use the "yum install {package}" command or GUI if you wish. In addition as far as users go you should not have that many so it is best to manually (UID's have changed) add them but don't recreate their directories since they should already be in/home (or wherever you put them) . Then when you finish adding your users, as root change the user's ownership and group of their home directories (ie. "chown -R"). Also add any groups that may be required. In most cases Fedora user's use DHCP which is the default however if you need routes then you should have documented them. This is why I backup my root file-system to somewhere where I can quickly access it in case I have forgotten something.
Of course you can always do an upgrade but this does take a few hours, however this I would only recommend for novices and even then you may find some packages fail because they could have come form different repos and don't work with the updated packages.
Yeah, because it's REALLY hard to type "yum install kde-desktop" (package spelling might be a bit off on this release, but it's as simple as that) and get a coffee.
Well if you got the DVD (3.7GB - best if you have two or more machines to upgrade) you could just tick the KDE check-box if you want and install both. Of course if you don't want Gnome you can un-tick the Gnome check-box. As for creating a DVD I normally create a boot-able install USB which is very portable, does not scratch and I can reuse it again for the next release or even other things.
Even if you do a DVD/USB install you will still need to type "yum update" (as root of course) or the use the GUI update tool and since you are using presto most downloads are going to be Delta RPM's (ie. drpm) which are considerably smaller than the full package.
Give me one that doesn't suck and I won't hate it.
My current ire is directed toward Google for its new Gmail interface. What a joke.
You do know that you can use a mail client that hopefully you like to access your Google Mail? It is well explained on their web page how to use a different mail client.
I actually use a mail client at home and the gmail web interface when I am working since port 993 is blocked by the corporate firewall.
I mean, we're coming up on two DECADES of desktop Linux, and I really think it's time that we faced this very important reality. Joe Sixpack isn't coming to the Linux party; and he's not bringing any of his free asian beer. Period.
Until the Microsoft Tax is scraped desktop Linux usage in first world countries is going to be small although it is much greater than the 1% the ill informed journalists have being saying for the last 10 years. In fact the only way desktop Linux will become main-steam is if Government bodies mandate it and this is happening (you guessed it) in India, China and other Asian countries.
As for joe Sixpack being invited to the Linux party, well I for one did not invite him since he always likes to big name himself and usually throws up after the first round. I am also getting annoyed at cleaning up the toilet seat after he has gone.:)
Try downloading a good window manager, I use Winsplit Revolution at work. Easily manage windows between two monitors, vertical and horizontal splits, even corner placements are a keystroke away. I can organize a dozen windows in seconds barely even thinking about it.
Depends what you mean by "a good window manager". Basically what you have described is what I can already do (and have done) in Fedora under KDE. I don't mind admitting that when KDE 4.0 came out I persevered with it for about 2 weeks but my wife was pissed with it so I switched her to Gnome and a few days later I switched as well. Of course once KDE came out with 4.3 we switched back.
Actually a a good window manager is purely subjective. What one person likes another may dislike and prefer different Window manager which other people may not like in return. In many respects having a choice of window/session managers gives greater flexibility to the user and in this Linux distributions have well and truly succeeded.
I buy only mp3 for this very reason. Once I have it, it's MINE. Just like the CD, cassette, or record I used to buy. I can play it on whatever player I want: car stereo, computer, whatever.
While I don't buy music my wife and sons do. To make sure we keep that music we have paid for I rip it to flac. Once I have music files in that format as far as I am concerned they are mine and will last forever as long as I make sure to do backups and have a player that will play them. The problem with DVD and CD media is they are easily scratched so you need to be careful hence my reason for ripping to a good quality format such as flac but you do need more space to do this, however from flac it is easy to convert to mp3 (most players will play this), wav, aac or ogg.
Once I have a master copy format it only takes seconds per track to translate to a popular and acceptable (ie. mp3) but not as good quality format.
There isn't a space-saving methodology in the world that's more cost effective than slapping another terabyte into the rack.
Provided you have a rack. Adding another terabyte to a laptop or tablet means carrying around a relatively bulky USB hard drive and powering it somehow.
On my laptop (2 x 650GB 2.5in drives) I can replace them with 2 x 1TB drives and the weight of my laptop won't increase. Granted it will cost but it is very easy to replace a modern laptop 2.5in disk with a larger capacity 2.5in disk and for some this can be very cost effective.
The one thing that baffles my mind is that Linux filesystems still don't offer compression of specific folders or files.
If you need to do this why not try a compressed, gzip'd or bzip2 tar, rar or zip file. You can even use your a graphical explorer to actually create and manage your archives (yes you can have more than one). When I say manage you can easily (ie. point and click) display, extract and even insert specific files.
Windows has had this for over a decade.
Well you could do this in Unix for over 20 years.
Why doesn't Linux have such a simple but important filesystem feature? And no, I don't want to make an archive file, because I want to access those files and folders while they are compressed.
Linux does, I think I already explained this above.
Too many people think that because CentOS is basically a clone of the Redhat distribution they don't really need support or they have enough technical people who can provide support. This is fine until something goes wrong and it is very hard explaining management that there no need for software support when many software applications and other OS's do require support contacts (at least in the eyes of management).
Personally I don't have any issues with using CentOS in none critical environments, however if you have as an example a production Linux database server running Oracle then I would be pushing for Redhat support since in the majority of cases you would have an Oracle Support contact in place which is normally very much more than paying for a Redhat subscription. If you as the IT manager push for a CentOS solution on production machines then you are really risking your career, but if you are directed to get CentOS then get CentOS, however make sure you get this in writing otherwise you could be the one that gets the blame if something goes wrong and your people cannot fix the issue.
To sum up, in a Linux solution production environment it is always the best policy to choose a solution that is supported at the hardware, OS and application level. Choosing not to have OS support should a a senior management decision and all the IT manager can do is point of the pros and cons. It is not a matter of "spending other people's money" it is doing what is best for the company.
He might, you might,and I might be able to. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of consumers don't. Some are lucky if they manage to get an Office Suite installed without help. Walled gardens and lots of hand holding are appropriate for those folks. Linux which has a near 100% guarantee of having to go to a command line to fix something is not.
Yes you can go to the command line if you want but you can also do that on an Apple machine. Installing software on a Linux distribution can be a command line exercise if you want or you can run a graphical tool to do just this. In fact you have been able to run a graphical update and install interlace for a few years now.
Actually I would go as far as to say that the majority of people have no idea how to compile code but given the package nature of a Linux distribution and the ability to use a GUI or even use the command line why would you.
The many-eyes reviewing the code theory is also bunk.
Bullshit! You don't seem to understand what makes open-source so powerful. Yes the majority of people would not have a clue on how to configure, compile and install software much less understand the source code and why should they. However it is possible for a company or even an individual to hire a constant/programmer to fix, modify and possibly extend open-source software. Of course you will have to pay for this. As for many eyes you only need one person who has the requisite skills to find a bug and/or mall-ware in the open code and alarms start to ring normally within the geek community first but very rapidly to the wider community. The same does not happen to propriety software.
I bet there are fewer than 100 people who know enough about the linux kernel to be able to contribute meaningfully to its development. Probably even fewer whom would be considered trusted enough to be allowed to contribute.
You are right in that only a few people would have the direct input in contributing to the Linux kernel much less packages however there are tools that allow anyone to send information back to the developers and they are normally graphical and very easy to use. In fact if you have a support subscription to companies like Redhat the customer feedback from crashes and bugs does go directly to the developers. This means that all Linux distribution users have an input to the developers.
A modern MacBook has no mouse buttons since it is multitouch. They are simply the best mouse pad on any laptop currently available
I found out very quickly that the best use of the touchpad on a laptop is to actually turn it off since it is so easy to brush against it when typing. I find an external mouse the best solution for a laptop and considering you can get wireless mice transmitter/receivers that have a very small form factor there is no issues with using it.
Pull that rug out from underneath, and the ones unable to survive will simply die.
I think that applies to all things.
as most people in the western world have no conception of how to survive even a plane crash
Fortunately plane crashes don't happen too often considering the number of plane flights that occur on a daily basis. Still a plane crash is a great leveller between first and third world travellers very few actually survive.
let alone the crash of civilization as they know it
Actually people in third world countries have a better chance of surviving a civilization crash since they (the third world) don't have so far to fall.
I've often wondered if anyone has ever thought about splitting libre into a personal and a professional version.
Why? They both cost the same (ie. free) and if you as a user don't want to use the more professional features then you don't need to use them. In addition creating so called personal and profession versions is counter productive since you will require more people to do this and like anything of this nature who is going to decide what is "personal" and what is "professional"? It would be "pass the popcorn" if you attend when the two committees meet.
The full LibreOffice is approx 101MB (part of the latest distribution media) however adding all language packs can blow this out to 600 plus MB (also on the latest distribution media). Updates, at least under Linux can vary from a few MB to approx 40MB.
Sort of like what firefox was to mozilla when it first started, back when it was under a 10mb download, not the near 30mb it is today.
For Linux the full version of Firefox is approximately 17MB and usually comes with the distribution media, with updates normally of the order of a few MB. Even under MS Windows Firefox updates are still of the order of a few MB.
LibreOffice and OpenOffice both still seem really heavy. Java probably has something to do with it, but they just aren't nice to use. On top of that the UI starts to get kind of old.. I started using Office 2010 just lately and I have to say I love the Ribbon interface. It keeps useless stuff out of the screen and is fast and pleasant to use. It takes some time to get used to, but once you do there's no going back to the old clumsy interfaces.
Yes I know this is bordering on flame-bait and is ill-informed at best but for those people who don't know and want to counter comments like this:
From the Fedora 15 DVD (size is in kB):
[root@XXXX Packages]# ls libreoffice* | grep -v libreoffice-langpack | xargs du -sk
7548 libreoffice-calc-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
79896 libreoffice-core-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
653 libreoffice-draw-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm>br>
220 libreoffice-graphicfilter-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
996 libreoffice-impress-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
66 libreoffice-kde-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
1074 libreoffice-math-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
167 libreoffice-opensymbol-fonts-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.noarch.rpm
483 libreoffice-pdfimport-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
619 libreoffice-presenter-screen-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
2399 libreoffice-ure-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
5778 libreoffice-writer-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
198 libreoffice-xsltfilter-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
All up approx 101MB. Of course if you are going to add all the language packs then you will get over 600MB.
Doing something similar for "Java" you get about 50MB, so all up baring language packs you would install approx 152MB. To the Microsoft apologist, "Have you looked at the size of Microsoft Office recently and have you or your work paid for it?".
Liking/loving an interface is purely dependent on the person's perception so this is a reasonable comment. As for LibreOffice being clumsy well that's your opinion, many including me would disagree, especially those people who have to fight with 100 plus page documents which has been mangled by a variety of users actually running Microsoft Office.
Another counter to Microsoft apologists is to look at the size of the updates. Most packages in Linux use ether "apt-get" or "yum" and most updates use what is called "delta's" so the total size of an update would most likely be in the order of 20MB to 30MB. MS Windows updates for LibreOffice are much bigger. Also in the majority of cases LibreOffice can read most Microsoft formats and is getting better all the time. And now the clincher - it's legally free and supports ISO standards.
You don't appear to have used LibreOffice recently. I work in what many perceive as a Microsoft exclusive environment yet I don't have any issues with using LibreOffice. As for buying Office 2003 for $40 on EBay you do realise that most Microsoft products are tied to the original purchaser so in many ways you would $40 better off by just joining the green parrot brigade.:)
Also Office 2003 is something like 8 years older than the latest release of LibreOffice. Of course if you like the old MS Office then fine by me.
I have a similar setup. Four programs sounds excessive, though:)
The only program I start on a regular basis from the GUI is xterm, and I have one of the windows keys set up to do that. Firefox is usually running in a virtual screen, so it is started rarely. Editors, etc are generally most easily started from an xterm in order to provide them with a filename. Everything else needs an xterm to run.
In KDE I try to limit my favourites to about 10 in the Kickoff Launcher while programs that I use regularly I put in my Desktop Folder. What's the difference? Well it depends on what I want to do and either way I can be running an GUI application in about 2 to 5 seconds. Command searches normally take me anything from 5 to 10 seconds.
I rarely use xterm any-more since I find it better to use Konsole rather then have six to ten xterm windows cluttering up my sessions. If I connect to a "jump host" as I do in my work I normally use putty and then run an application called screen which is over 23 years old but allows me to toggle/maintain multiple virtual screens all within one terminal window. Using screen is very useful when connecting to other machines via a "jump host" in that if your connection drops out you don't loose what you are doing and you can easily reconnect and continue with your work when you log back in. You can use screen on your Linux PC running an xterm but I find Konsole works just as well and IMHO is excellent for the average person who wants multiple windows in the same window.
As for using vi (vim on Linux) you can use "gvim" if editing from your file-manager but I like your self just run "vi" from the command line an the relevant file(s). For those who like "emacs" (lets not start a flame war) yes this is an excellent editor however on most Linux/Unix machines "emacs" is an add-on while "vi" is installed by default.
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This is exactly analogous to purchasing a microwave which, two years later, has its firmware updated to remove the defrost feature.
As the judge said in the case "Another flawed analogy".
They issued a patch that crippled PS3, but no patch available to update graphics card driver on my Vaio. (Yes, they need to take it from Nvidia, re-brand it and put it up for download), It keeps BSOD-ing in video games. After giving their support a run for the money, their response was to "reset it to factory setting". Seems to be a universal response from all merchants when they are not capable of resolving a support issue.
In what way did the patch that removed the "Other OS" crippled the PS3?
I can still play PS1, PS2 (Fat first gen PS3 only) and PS3 games, BluRay (3D as well) , DVD's on my PS3 and access PSN. The only thing I cannot do is boot another OS which was never available on the "Slim PS3" in the first place. In fact many patches for the PS3 actually added extra functionality.
As for your problem with your "Vaio" (I assume that is a laptop) I would be contacting Sony or the place you purchased it from (best option) about the issue if you are still under warranty. Personally I would never play PC games (ie. "Games for Windows") on a laptop since most laptops don't run that well without some tweaking, however since I run a pure Linux OS the point is mute.
BTW. Resetting to factory settings is the standard response for all PC manufacturers not just Sony. You are right about support though.
"Nintendo's goal is an emotional experience." Is that what you call endless variations of Mario & Zelda?
While I still like the Zelda games I have never found the Mario games all that appealing but then million's of people who do like the Mario games would strongly disagree with me to the point of taking out a contract :)
... etc until people loose interest which in case of Nintendo's Mario, Microsoft's Halo, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare and the variations of sport and racing games the interest and hence the money is there.
Another Nintendo game series I liked was Metroid and going from a 2D side-scroller to first person (sort of) shooter was a change which IMHO actually worked. However later versions of Metroid like Zelda appear to be just IMHO a rehash in order to make money which Nintendo is very good at doing. It appears that if a particular game is successful then you end up seeing a follow-up game then if that is successful then version 3, 4, 5
When playing a game one of the most useful features is haptic feedback which for a while has been the "rumble" of the controller. Having this feature allows one IMHO to interact more closely with the game in that when you fire a weapon (sword, gun, spell, .. etc) or you are hit you can actually feel something via your hands. Even slight slight rumble can actually set the mood of certain games. There were some quite elaborate haptic feedback devices which could provide a "rumble" feature to other parts of the body (ok keep this thread clean), however these devices were quite expensive so they never took off. Basically at the moment the cheapest haptic feedback devices is the hand controller, be it the Wii wand, Playstaion Move/Controller and the Xbox360 controller. Also there are haptic devices that will work with some PC games as well.
:)
With the introduction of the connect you don't have any haptic feedback since and I quote "You are the controller". For many casual users this may be ok since most casual players don't really care or know about haptic feedback but for the more advance player haptic feedback can be very important which can make a mediocre game good and a good game very good.
As far as the new Kinect being able to read lips I don't know if this is going to be all that useful although there may be some types of games were this may work well, but then again only time will tell. Of course I would expect Nintendo and Sony to come out with something along the same lines as well.
Personally where I think the Kinect will shine is for the casual gamer and as an icebreaker at parties although you really do need a much larger room and also a large screen TV if you are going to have more than two players. In some respects this is not that much different for Wii and Playstation Move users (at least they do have haptic feedback) but when you are going to wave your arms or jump around then you need some room to do it. Of course with more than one person waving their arms you may have a few black-eyes, but unlike the Wii and Move you have less chance of someone breaking breaking your TV unless you have a really small room
FC16 is not Linux, you mewling ninny.
You are right FC16 does not exist it is actually called Fedora 16 although it does have a 3.1.1-2 Linux Kernel :)
At this moment, I cannot install fedora core 16 without it wiping my entire disk, because 'it does not recognize my partitions'. It wants to live on one big partition of type 'GPT' (Guid based partitioning), and damn everyone else !
Bullshit! I run Fedora 16 and with a considerable amount of applications installed (2097 packages to date) and I am using no more than 8GB.
With Fedora I normally set up a boot partition for "boot" and another partition for a logical volume group then add appropriate volumes such as "root", "usr" (you can combine the two if you want - say 12GB max) and some other volumes such as tmp (2GB), swap (2GB+) and var (2GB) or if you really want you can combine the lot and even put swap into a file if you want. Good grief even a 10 year old (although one that could read a HOWTO) could do this.
Even on my machine I don't allocate more than 20GB to Fedora 16 although what you allocate to your users, archive and other sundries is up to you and yes I only run Fedora on my machine and anything else I need as in MS Windows, Solaris, and other x86 *nix I run in a virtual machine.
I'm fairly sure Linux has a generic 802.11 stack, and I have not idea why it would behave in a significantly different manner. Starting drivers in BSD I would guess is to avoid GPL issues
You know the source is available for you to check this if you want.
Windows beats Linux because, however crappy it often is, it's crappy in entirely consistent ways.
No! MS Windows beats Linux because of the "Microsoft Tax".
Or - to rephrase - as nice as Mac's BSD under the skin OS is, how much has it actually improved the BSD experience of anyone else?
The problem with the BSD license is the fact that any company can take the code and make it their own without giving anything back so it is impossible to determine how much of Apple's code is BSD or not since their code is propitiatory.
Personally I don't object to people putting their code under a BSD license however what we are now seeing are some of those people discriminating against the GPL in that they are actually stating that while their code is under a BSD license they will not allow anyone to take their code and GPL it which seems a contradiction of the BSD license.
rpm = really poor package management.
You don't normally use "rpm" much less "deb" packages as is unless you know what the package dependences are. This is why you use "yum" for managing "rpm" packages and "apt-get" for managing "deb" packages and if you want you can use "alien" to translate between "deb" and "rpm". Of course you can always download the source and try to compile it. if you don't like that then MS Windows will welcome you back with "All is forgiven, just don't do it again" and promptly give you a blue (green if you have Win 8) screen of death. :)
Cloud computing is only remote storage and access and has been around in many different forms since at least the 1960's. Of course "Cloud Computing" sounds so much better (ie. shiny) to the "unwashed masses" or the corporate "pointy haired manager", who's attitude is "But the Cloud takes care of all of that so we don't have to think about it".
It is surprisingly easy to do a fresh installation of Fedora over a previous Fedora (takes about an hour). In fact if you have your file-system laid out properly (ie. /boot, /, /usr, /var, /tmp and swap) with separate file-systems for /home and other file-systems such as say /archive or others that are not system related then if you are using LVM you only need to format the system file-systems. Personally I only have two partitions for my system disk the first being /boot and the other an LVM group (in my case I call it vg_machine_name) with appropriately named volumes such as lv_root, lv_usr, lv_var, lv... well you get the picture. Of course a backup should be performed first but you will only need this if you stuff up the new installation by clobbering your non system logical volumes.
/home (or wherever you put them) . Then when you finish adding your users, as root change the user's ownership and group of their home directories (ie. "chown -R"). Also add any groups that may be required. In most cases Fedora user's use DHCP which is the default however if you need routes then you should have documented them. This is why I backup my root file-system to somewhere where I can quickly access it in case I have forgotten something.
As for your extras it is very important to document them prior to doing the install. Once you do this you need only use the "yum install {package}" command or GUI if you wish. In addition as far as users go you should not have that many so it is best to manually (UID's have changed) add them but don't recreate their directories since they should already be in
Of course you can always do an upgrade but this does take a few hours, however this I would only recommend for novices and even then you may find some packages fail because they could have come form different repos and don't work with the updated packages.
Yeah, because it's REALLY hard to type "yum install kde-desktop" (package spelling might be a bit off on this release, but it's as simple as that) and get a coffee.
Well if you got the DVD (3.7GB - best if you have two or more machines to upgrade) you could just tick the KDE check-box if you want and install both. Of course if you don't want Gnome you can un-tick the Gnome check-box. As for creating a DVD I normally create a boot-able install USB which is very portable, does not scratch and I can reuse it again for the next release or even other things.
Even if you do a DVD/USB install you will still need to type "yum update" (as root of course) or the use the GUI update tool and since you are using presto most downloads are going to be Delta RPM's (ie. drpm) which are considerably smaller than the full package.
Give me one that doesn't suck and I won't hate it.
My current ire is directed toward Google for its new Gmail interface. What a joke.
You do know that you can use a mail client that hopefully you like to access your Google Mail? It is well explained on their web page how to use a different mail client.
I actually use a mail client at home and the gmail web interface when I am working since port 993 is blocked by the corporate firewall.
I mean, we're coming up on two DECADES of desktop Linux, and I really think it's time that we faced this very important reality. Joe Sixpack isn't coming to the Linux party; and he's not bringing any of his free asian beer. Period.
Until the Microsoft Tax is scraped desktop Linux usage in first world countries is going to be small although it is much greater than the 1% the ill informed journalists have being saying for the last 10 years. In fact the only way desktop Linux will become main-steam is if Government bodies mandate it and this is happening (you guessed it) in India, China and other Asian countries.
:)
As for joe Sixpack being invited to the Linux party, well I for one did not invite him since he always likes to big name himself and usually throws up after the first round. I am also getting annoyed at cleaning up the toilet seat after he has gone.
Try downloading a good window manager, I use Winsplit Revolution at work. Easily manage windows between two monitors, vertical and horizontal splits, even corner placements are a keystroke away. I can organize a dozen windows in seconds barely even thinking about it.
Depends what you mean by "a good window manager". Basically what you have described is what I can already do (and have done) in Fedora under KDE. I don't mind admitting that when KDE 4.0 came out I persevered with it for about 2 weeks but my wife was pissed with it so I switched her to Gnome and a few days later I switched as well. Of course once KDE came out with 4.3 we switched back.
Actually a a good window manager is purely subjective. What one person likes another may dislike and prefer different Window manager which other people may not like in return. In many respects having a choice of window/session managers gives greater flexibility to the user and in this Linux distributions have well and truly succeeded.
I buy only mp3 for this very reason. Once I have it, it's MINE. Just like the CD, cassette, or record I used to buy. I can play it on whatever player I want: car stereo, computer, whatever.
While I don't buy music my wife and sons do. To make sure we keep that music we have paid for I rip it to flac. Once I have music files in that format as far as I am concerned they are mine and will last forever as long as I make sure to do backups and have a player that will play them. The problem with DVD and CD media is they are easily scratched so you need to be careful hence my reason for ripping to a good quality format such as flac but you do need more space to do this, however from flac it is easy to convert to mp3 (most players will play this), wav, aac or ogg.
Once I have a master copy format it only takes seconds per track to translate to a popular and acceptable (ie. mp3) but not as good quality format.
There isn't a space-saving methodology in the world that's more cost effective than slapping another terabyte into the rack.
Provided you have a rack. Adding another terabyte to a laptop or tablet means carrying around a relatively bulky USB hard drive and powering it somehow.
On my laptop (2 x 650GB 2.5in drives) I can replace them with 2 x 1TB drives and the weight of my laptop won't increase. Granted it will cost but it is very easy to replace a modern laptop 2.5in disk with a larger capacity 2.5in disk and for some this can be very cost effective.
The one thing that baffles my mind is that Linux filesystems still don't offer compression of specific folders or files.
If you need to do this why not try a compressed, gzip'd or bzip2 tar, rar or zip file. You can even use your a graphical explorer to actually create and manage your archives (yes you can have more than one). When I say manage you can easily (ie. point and click) display, extract and even insert specific files.
Windows has had this for over a decade.
Well you could do this in Unix for over 20 years.
Why doesn't Linux have such a simple but important filesystem feature? And no, I don't want to make an archive file, because I want to access those files and folders while they are compressed.
Linux does, I think I already explained this above.
Too many people think that because CentOS is basically a clone of the Redhat distribution they don't really need support or they have enough technical people who can provide support. This is fine until something goes wrong and it is very hard explaining management that there no need for software support when many software applications and other OS's do require support contacts (at least in the eyes of management).
Personally I don't have any issues with using CentOS in none critical environments, however if you have as an example a production Linux database server running Oracle then I would be pushing for Redhat support since in the majority of cases you would have an Oracle Support contact in place which is normally very much more than paying for a Redhat subscription. If you as the IT manager push for a CentOS solution on production machines then you are really risking your career, but if you are directed to get CentOS then get CentOS, however make sure you get this in writing otherwise you could be the one that gets the blame if something goes wrong and your people cannot fix the issue.
To sum up, in a Linux solution production environment it is always the best policy to choose a solution that is supported at the hardware, OS and application level. Choosing not to have OS support should a a senior management decision and all the IT manager can do is point of the pros and cons. It is not a matter of "spending other people's money" it is doing what is best for the company.
He might, you might ,and I might be able to. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of consumers don't. Some are lucky if they manage to get an Office Suite installed without help. Walled gardens and lots of hand holding are appropriate for those folks. Linux which has a near 100% guarantee of having to go to a command line to fix something is not.
Yes you can go to the command line if you want but you can also do that on an Apple machine. Installing software on a Linux distribution can be a command line exercise if you want or you can run a graphical tool to do just this. In fact you have been able to run a graphical update and install interlace for a few years now.
Actually I would go as far as to say that the majority of people have no idea how to compile code but given the package nature of a Linux distribution and the ability to use a GUI or even use the command line why would you.
The many-eyes reviewing the code theory is also bunk.
Bullshit! You don't seem to understand what makes open-source so powerful. Yes the majority of people would not have a clue on how to configure, compile and install software much less understand the source code and why should they. However it is possible for a company or even an individual to hire a constant/programmer to fix, modify and possibly extend open-source software. Of course you will have to pay for this. As for many eyes you only need one person who has the requisite skills to find a bug and/or mall-ware in the open code and alarms start to ring normally within the geek community first but very rapidly to the wider community. The same does not happen to propriety software.
I bet there are fewer than 100 people who know enough about the linux kernel to be able to contribute meaningfully to its development. Probably even fewer whom would be considered trusted enough to be allowed to contribute.
You are right in that only a few people would have the direct input in contributing to the Linux kernel much less packages however there are tools that allow anyone to send information back to the developers and they are normally graphical and very easy to use. In fact if you have a support subscription to companies like Redhat the customer feedback from crashes and bugs does go directly to the developers. This means that all Linux distribution users have an input to the developers.
A modern MacBook has no mouse buttons since it is multitouch. They are simply the best mouse pad on any laptop currently available
I found out very quickly that the best use of the touchpad on a laptop is to actually turn it off since it is so easy to brush against it when typing. I find an external mouse the best solution for a laptop and considering you can get wireless mice transmitter/receivers that have a very small form factor there is no issues with using it.
Pull that rug out from underneath, and the ones unable to survive will simply die.
I think that applies to all things.
as most people in the western world have no conception of how to survive even a plane crash
Fortunately plane crashes don't happen too often considering the number of plane flights that occur on a daily basis. Still a plane crash is a great leveller between first and third world travellers very few actually survive.
let alone the crash of civilization as they know it
Actually people in third world countries have a better chance of surviving a civilization crash since they (the third world) don't have so far to fall.
I've often wondered if anyone has ever thought about splitting libre into a personal and a professional version.
Why? They both cost the same (ie. free) and if you as a user don't want to use the more professional features then you don't need to use them. In addition creating so called personal and profession versions is counter productive since you will require more people to do this and like anything of this nature who is going to decide what is "personal" and what is "professional"? It would be "pass the popcorn" if you attend when the two committees meet.
The full LibreOffice is approx 101MB (part of the latest distribution media) however adding all language packs can blow this out to 600 plus MB (also on the latest distribution media). Updates, at least under Linux can vary from a few MB to approx 40MB.
Sort of like what firefox was to mozilla when it first started, back when it was under a 10mb download, not the near 30mb it is today.
For Linux the full version of Firefox is approximately 17MB and usually comes with the distribution media, with updates normally of the order of a few MB. Even under MS Windows Firefox updates are still of the order of a few MB.
LibreOffice and OpenOffice both still seem really heavy. Java probably has something to do with it, but they just aren't nice to use. On top of that the UI starts to get kind of old.. I started using Office 2010 just lately and I have to say I love the Ribbon interface. It keeps useless stuff out of the screen and is fast and pleasant to use. It takes some time to get used to, but once you do there's no going back to the old clumsy interfaces.
Yes I know this is bordering on flame-bait and is ill-informed at best but for those people who don't know and want to counter comments like this:
From the Fedora 15 DVD (size is in kB):
[root@XXXX Packages]# ls libreoffice* | grep -v libreoffice-langpack | xargs du -sk
7548 libreoffice-calc-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
79896 libreoffice-core-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
653 libreoffice-draw-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm>br> 220 libreoffice-graphicfilter-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
996 libreoffice-impress-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
66 libreoffice-kde-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
1074 libreoffice-math-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
167 libreoffice-opensymbol-fonts-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.noarch.rpm
483 libreoffice-pdfimport-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
619 libreoffice-presenter-screen-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
2399 libreoffice-ure-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
5778 libreoffice-writer-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
198 libreoffice-xsltfilter-3.3.2.2-7.fc15.x86_64.rpm
All up approx 101MB. Of course if you are going to add all the language packs then you will get over 600MB.
Doing something similar for "Java" you get about 50MB, so all up baring language packs you would install approx 152MB. To the Microsoft apologist, "Have you looked at the size of Microsoft Office recently and have you or your work paid for it?".
Liking/loving an interface is purely dependent on the person's perception so this is a reasonable comment. As for LibreOffice being clumsy well that's your opinion, many including me would disagree, especially those people who have to fight with 100 plus page documents which has been mangled by a variety of users actually running Microsoft Office.
Another counter to Microsoft apologists is to look at the size of the updates. Most packages in Linux use ether "apt-get" or "yum" and most updates use what is called "delta's" so the total size of an update would most likely be in the order of 20MB to 30MB. MS Windows updates for LibreOffice are much bigger. Also in the majority of cases LibreOffice can read most Microsoft formats and is getting better all the time. And now the clincher - it's legally free and supports ISO standards.
You don't appear to have used LibreOffice recently. I work in what many perceive as a Microsoft exclusive environment yet I don't have any issues with using LibreOffice. As for buying Office 2003 for $40 on EBay you do realise that most Microsoft products are tied to the original purchaser so in many ways you would $40 better off by just joining the green parrot brigade. :)
Also Office 2003 is something like 8 years older than the latest release of LibreOffice. Of course if you like the old MS Office then fine by me.
I have a similar setup. Four programs sounds excessive, though :)
The only program I start on a regular basis from the GUI is xterm, and I have one of the windows keys set up to do that. Firefox is usually running in a virtual screen, so it is started rarely. Editors, etc are generally most easily started from an xterm in order to provide them with a filename. Everything else needs an xterm to run.
In KDE I try to limit my favourites to about 10 in the Kickoff Launcher while programs that I use regularly I put in my Desktop Folder. What's the difference? Well it depends on what I want to do and either way I can be running an GUI application in about 2 to 5 seconds. Command searches normally take me anything from 5 to 10 seconds.
I rarely use xterm any-more since I find it better to use Konsole rather then have six to ten xterm windows cluttering up my sessions. If I connect to a "jump host" as I do in my work I normally use putty and then run an application called screen which is over 23 years old but allows me to toggle/maintain multiple virtual screens all within one terminal window. Using screen is very useful when connecting to other machines via a "jump host" in that if your connection drops out you don't loose what you are doing and you can easily reconnect and continue with your work when you log back in. You can use screen on your Linux PC running an xterm but I find Konsole works just as well and IMHO is excellent for the average person who wants multiple windows in the same window.
As for using vi (vim on Linux) you can use "gvim" if editing from your file-manager but I like your self just run "vi" from the command line an the relevant file(s). For those who like "emacs" (lets not start a flame war) yes this is an excellent editor however on most Linux/Unix machines "emacs" is an add-on while "vi" is installed by default.