No, it not so simple.
Companies like Dell are required to GUARANTEE their out-of-box usability. How can they possibly do this with the multiple flavors of Linux. Most particularly when the various desktop products offered by Linux providers are most definitely not 'plug and play'. Rather they are geekware, go to the command line to insert arcane instructions. dogs.
Linux has already found it's niche - in the small to medium stress server marker. As to the high stress market, note the resurgence of SUN and other Unix providers. Wonder why that is.
Back to Dell, I have just received a high-end Dell XPS and it: contains no 'crapware' other than what I specified in my order. And, yes, the OS options are all Microsoft. But for 99% of computer users, what is the viable alternative. Certainly not Linux geekware!
I can only conclude that those whining about Nvidia Vista drivers used the 'Ready, Fire, Aim' approach to downloading the update and didn't follow Nvidias install directions. If they didn't, tough luck.
I installed the driver for NVidia cards below the 8800 level while using a 6600GT. Worked like a charm. A week or so later, I installed a 7800GS and it worked beautifully as well.
Who's zoomin' who here?
The US already is mostly metric. Ask any auto mechanic stuck with a ton of SAE wrenches and tools. The same applies to every other product made for export - they couldn't be sold otherwise. All science is conducted in metric, including medicine and related disciplines as well. Again, the rest of the world would have to go through contortions converting things to replicate scientific results. It is just consumers who rail against it. It happens in all convert countries to some degree - Britain and Canada are examples. Canada, though, has a somewhat different problem. As the US's largest trading partner much food flows back and forth across the border. Since rural people are the metric sceptics, here and in the US, the measurement of that food is in US terms, but Canadian labels show the metric equivalents.
Yes, the more things change the more they stay the same. A few years ago the big buzz was VCR vs Betamax - most people cannot not now recall the difference; about three years ago the AMD 32 bit series was the next best thing; and CDR drives were a hot issue. Todays hot tech issues will invevitably die and be replaced by something who knows what else.
What hasn't changed is the predictions of the ultimate effects of the net (even though it did not exist as the Web, at the time) was a guy named Marshal McLuhan. He accurately predicted all of todays hot web activities like cross-cultural communication; the blurring of societal differences on a global basis; and the concept of individuals sharing thoughts and experiences with many, many others - think Utube, or blogging, online diaries, ad infinitum.
His seminal publication was the 'Wired World', published, I think, in the late seventies or early eighties.
Yes, others invented the web, but Mcluhan defined its impact on global society.
Stick with Windows. Desktop Linux is ridiculously lame in comparison, and Windows is compatible with almost everything.
If you are a geek, then try Linux, if you are not, then stay away from it. Why waste the time and effort to learn entirely new technology just to compensate for Linuxs' shortcomings.
How could Oracle, or any responsible company, indemnify anything BUT the core engine of an OSS project? The rest of it is an agglomeration of smaller inputs from enthusiast programmers, most of whom are untraceable anyway.
If one uses FireFoxm as an example, the 'community' is the product's worst enemy to begin with.
A little off topic, but with only 1 GB of RAM your system will not run an NVidea card at anywhere near it's peak performance level so how well your system will run Vista is problematic. An NVidia card requires a minimum of 1.5 GB of RAM to enable it to run at full capacity. On-card GPU memory, processor capability and motherboard don't seem to lift card performance characteristics very much.I've been uprgrading my machine for several months and started by bumping my RAM capacity from 1 to 1.5 GB (I was using an FX 5200 128k card.) The difference in graphics performance was mind boggling. Next, I upgraded from an old Athlon 1800+ system to an Intel 2.8 ghz Pentium D and a new mother board BUT with just 1 GB Ram. I immediately noticed that card performance had plummeted. Shortly after, when I upgraded my card to a 256k 6600GT there was still no noticeable performance improvement over the 5200! However, when I kicked RAM up to 2 GB the card flew (I have a dual board that allows a max capacity of only 2 GB of either DDR or DDR2.)
Having been to Munichs' Oktoberfest, I feel qualified to describe it as an officially sponsored public beer binge. During the event, Munich suddenly acquires the most drunks per square block on the planet. In the dim mists of time, it may have had something to do with harvest, but in recent decades it is just a story of folks dressing up in kitcshy Bavarian Alpine gear (Lederhosen and stuff), and barmaids with arm muscles like Schwarzeneger. About the only connection with 'Harvest' is the crop of monumental hangovers reaped by participants.
You might want to make your viewpoint known to relatives of those North Americans who have died or those who have come near to death from this disease. I'm sure they would have a couple of choice comments in response to your juvenile 'analysis'.
They wouldn't have bought it from Best Buy, by any chance? My friend bought a PC from them that came with a copy of Office 2003 - but in BETA version. Apparently the store was swept by an epidemic of "Huh? I dunno." disease when he called to demand a real version as advertised.
Are you joking? With about 10 million users, world-wide, Firefox doesn't lead in anything except the ill-informed arrogance of many of its users.
Yea, it's an OK browser and did innovate tabbed browsing, but all browsers now have that and it still is not as fully functional as IE. I have tried both - current and past versions - and have dumped Firefox every time.
IEs popularity, though, is its greatest comparative weakness. Hackers get next to no public ego points for hacking Firefox, but get tons of publicity for IE hacks.
About Microsoft's so-called laxness in fixing security holes, these generally take only a week or so to get patched. Firefox waits until they accumulate enough to justify an entirely new version!
True, as far as it goes- it is called backwards compatibility. That is what drives the 'appearance' of look and feel of versions long past. Look under the hood a bit, though, and you will find an array of features that only a full-time document processor or power user likely has even an inkling of. It is why Office 12 has been redesigned incorporating 'Ribbons' to make features more accessible.
Why is this? The corporate world, Offices main customer base, doesn't like having to re-train people to use versions that differ significantly from the version they currently use - it is expensive and individual productivity takes a smack in the nose. Bad things for the suit set.
I have used every Office-type suite available over the past 10 or 15 years - Corel, Open Office, and (can't think of the name of it right now but the other full suite) and all have quietly sunk out of sight. Corel and Open Office remain, but of the two, Corel's suite is far superior to Open Office in almost every respect and is very nearly free (which seems to be the 'gold standard' today.)
When the second latest version of Open Office came out I gave it a try, but filed it away as significantly less capable than Office to the point of clunkiness. Free is free, I suppose, but you generally get what you do (or don't) pay for.
Rojacks is, for those who aren't aware, a hardware evaluation site. As far as being a 'review' is concerned, if you understand the implications of video card specifications it provides a gold mine of performance potential information. A true techie could give you a pretty accurate estimation of the relative performance potential of a given card just from the specs provided in Rojacks listing.
C# is an extension of C++, is an extension of C. Most major applications now available, including Java,Linux and Windows, are written in one of the first two iterations. C# is too new a variation to yet register on the scale set by C and C++.
Forget about your 'committed to Linux' statement unless you plan to use your studies to either work exclusively with small server shops and, perhaps, supporting the minimal user base of Linux desktop software.
Learn C++ and the rest is easy. Once familiar with that, you can go forward or back as circumstances require and apply your skills to the humungous user base of C style applications. Once C++ skills are learned, Java becomes just another C variant with some niceties thrown in.
Firethorn is, apparently, a died-in-the-wool NRA wingnut. He includes in his post a URL that leads to an online survey that could be nothing other than a transparent attempt to lead one toward adoption of that hayseed groups twisted view of human life and justice.
As a statistical rejoinder to the post; Why is it that the US, with about 3.5% of the worlds population and the only country in which a group such as the NRA has colossal political clout, annually takes the lives of 17 children by gunfire for every ONE lost in the other 96.5% of the planetary population?
Something is really sick somewhere....
Which helps to explain why Linux is, for the consumer market; by for and of the geek community. Not that there's anything wrong with that, so long as one doesn't pretend it to be anything but that.
Tried it, dumped it. It is too much of a pain in the butt to setup (you have to reinstall every media player you own, for example); and it's AV playback was erratic to the point of freezing or simply not working.
This has never happened to me with Explorer, any version.
Yes, for now, it is less secure than IE, but that will last only so long as it remains a bit player in the world browser marketplace.
Should they gain serious market penetration, watch out. It took Mozilla a very long time to fix bugs and vulnerabilities in the second last edition, which they addressed by rolling out a whole new version.
At their current rate of flaw/attack adaption, what's going to happen if they do gain significant market scale and hackers become seriously interested?
No thanks.
I'm not all that familiar with OpenDoc and don't much care about it. To me, it's just another 'proprietary' file structure accessible by weenies who understand where and what the proprietary bits are and how to use them.
What I do know is that file structures in Office 12 are far more accessible to open access than any office-type suite ever constructed.
How so? There is no proprietary code in the Office 12, it is all plain vanilla XML. Now who is most 'open'? Not OpenDoc, I think.
Slashdot recenly posted a fairly lengthy video interview with the lead guy at Office 12, name is Brian Jones, I think. Almost the entire video content dealt with Office 12's abandonment of Microsofts proprietary binary format in favor of standard XML.
The purpose, he said, was to distribute Office as an easily extensible product available for easily achieved, specialized development from third party developers.
I don't have a clue, and could care less, what standards OpenDocument does or doesn't adhere to, but what Mr. Jones indicated sounded pretty open to me.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it not so simple. Companies like Dell are required to GUARANTEE their out-of-box usability. How can they possibly do this with the multiple flavors of Linux. Most particularly when the various desktop products offered by Linux providers are most definitely not 'plug and play'. Rather they are geekware, go to the command line to insert arcane instructions. dogs. Linux has already found it's niche - in the small to medium stress server marker. As to the high stress market, note the resurgence of SUN and other Unix providers. Wonder why that is. Back to Dell, I have just received a high-end Dell XPS and it: contains no 'crapware' other than what I specified in my order. And, yes, the OS options are all Microsoft. But for 99% of computer users, what is the viable alternative. Certainly not Linux geekware!
I can only conclude that those whining about Nvidia Vista drivers used the 'Ready, Fire, Aim' approach to downloading the update and didn't follow Nvidias install directions. If they didn't, tough luck. I installed the driver for NVidia cards below the 8800 level while using a 6600GT. Worked like a charm. A week or so later, I installed a 7800GS and it worked beautifully as well. Who's zoomin' who here?
The US already is mostly metric. Ask any auto mechanic stuck with a ton of SAE wrenches and tools. The same applies to every other product made for export - they couldn't be sold otherwise. All science is conducted in metric, including medicine and related disciplines as well. Again, the rest of the world would have to go through contortions converting things to replicate scientific results. It is just consumers who rail against it. It happens in all convert countries to some degree - Britain and Canada are examples. Canada, though, has a somewhat different problem. As the US's largest trading partner much food flows back and forth across the border. Since rural people are the metric sceptics, here and in the US, the measurement of that food is in US terms, but Canadian labels show the metric equivalents.
Yes, the more things change the more they stay the same. A few years ago the big buzz was VCR vs Betamax - most people cannot not now recall the difference; about three years ago the AMD 32 bit series was the next best thing; and CDR drives were a hot issue. Todays hot tech issues will invevitably die and be replaced by something who knows what else. What hasn't changed is the predictions of the ultimate effects of the net (even though it did not exist as the Web, at the time) was a guy named Marshal McLuhan. He accurately predicted all of todays hot web activities like cross-cultural communication; the blurring of societal differences on a global basis; and the concept of individuals sharing thoughts and experiences with many, many others - think Utube, or blogging, online diaries, ad infinitum. His seminal publication was the 'Wired World', published, I think, in the late seventies or early eighties. Yes, others invented the web, but Mcluhan defined its impact on global society.
Stick with Windows. Desktop Linux is ridiculously lame in comparison, and Windows is compatible with almost everything.
If you are a geek, then try Linux, if you are not, then stay away from it. Why waste the time and effort to learn entirely new technology just to compensate for Linuxs' shortcomings.
How could Oracle, or any responsible company, indemnify anything BUT the core engine of an OSS project? The rest of it is an agglomeration of smaller inputs from enthusiast programmers, most of whom are untraceable anyway. If one uses FireFoxm as an example, the 'community' is the product's worst enemy to begin with.
A little off topic, but with only 1 GB of RAM your system will not run an NVidea card at anywhere near it's peak performance level so how well your system will run Vista is problematic. An NVidia card requires a minimum of 1.5 GB of RAM to enable it to run at full capacity. On-card GPU memory, processor capability and motherboard don't seem to lift card performance characteristics very much.I've been uprgrading my machine for several months and started by bumping my RAM capacity from 1 to 1.5 GB (I was using an FX 5200 128k card.) The difference in graphics performance was mind boggling. Next, I upgraded from an old Athlon 1800+ system to an Intel 2.8 ghz Pentium D and a new mother board BUT with just 1 GB Ram. I immediately noticed that card performance had plummeted. Shortly after, when I upgraded my card to a 256k 6600GT there was still no noticeable performance improvement over the 5200! However, when I kicked RAM up to 2 GB the card flew (I have a dual board that allows a max capacity of only 2 GB of either DDR or DDR2.)
Having been to Munichs' Oktoberfest, I feel qualified to describe it as an officially sponsored public beer binge. During the event, Munich suddenly acquires the most drunks per square block on the planet. In the dim mists of time, it may have had something to do with harvest, but in recent decades it is just a story of folks dressing up in kitcshy Bavarian Alpine gear (Lederhosen and stuff), and barmaids with arm muscles like Schwarzeneger. About the only connection with 'Harvest' is the crop of monumental hangovers reaped by participants.
If it is anything like their 'Desktop' piece of software garbage, Microsoft execs can rest easy following Google's latest new product announcement.
You might want to make your viewpoint known to relatives of those North Americans who have died or those who have come near to death from this disease. I'm sure they would have a couple of choice comments in response to your juvenile 'analysis'.
They wouldn't have bought it from Best Buy, by any chance? My friend bought a PC from them that came with a copy of Office 2003 - but in BETA version. Apparently the store was swept by an epidemic of "Huh? I dunno." disease when he called to demand a real version as advertised.
Are you joking? With about 10 million users, world-wide, Firefox doesn't lead in anything except the ill-informed arrogance of many of its users. Yea, it's an OK browser and did innovate tabbed browsing, but all browsers now have that and it still is not as fully functional as IE. I have tried both - current and past versions - and have dumped Firefox every time. IEs popularity, though, is its greatest comparative weakness. Hackers get next to no public ego points for hacking Firefox, but get tons of publicity for IE hacks. About Microsoft's so-called laxness in fixing security holes, these generally take only a week or so to get patched. Firefox waits until they accumulate enough to justify an entirely new version!
Apparently written by a diehard Linux geek. Which is to say, hardly worth the space it took in Slashdot or the dignity of a reply (blush).
True, as far as it goes- it is called backwards compatibility. That is what drives the 'appearance' of look and feel of versions long past. Look under the hood a bit, though, and you will find an array of features that only a full-time document processor or power user likely has even an inkling of. It is why Office 12 has been redesigned incorporating 'Ribbons' to make features more accessible. Why is this? The corporate world, Offices main customer base, doesn't like having to re-train people to use versions that differ significantly from the version they currently use - it is expensive and individual productivity takes a smack in the nose. Bad things for the suit set. I have used every Office-type suite available over the past 10 or 15 years - Corel, Open Office, and (can't think of the name of it right now but the other full suite) and all have quietly sunk out of sight. Corel and Open Office remain, but of the two, Corel's suite is far superior to Open Office in almost every respect and is very nearly free (which seems to be the 'gold standard' today.) When the second latest version of Open Office came out I gave it a try, but filed it away as significantly less capable than Office to the point of clunkiness. Free is free, I suppose, but you generally get what you do (or don't) pay for.
Rojacks is, for those who aren't aware, a hardware evaluation site. As far as being a 'review' is concerned, if you understand the implications of video card specifications it provides a gold mine of performance potential information. A true techie could give you a pretty accurate estimation of the relative performance potential of a given card just from the specs provided in Rojacks listing.
C# is an extension of C++, is an extension of C. Most major applications now available, including Java,Linux and Windows, are written in one of the first two iterations. C# is too new a variation to yet register on the scale set by C and C++. Forget about your 'committed to Linux' statement unless you plan to use your studies to either work exclusively with small server shops and, perhaps, supporting the minimal user base of Linux desktop software. Learn C++ and the rest is easy. Once familiar with that, you can go forward or back as circumstances require and apply your skills to the humungous user base of C style applications. Once C++ skills are learned, Java becomes just another C variant with some niceties thrown in.
Firethorn is, apparently, a died-in-the-wool NRA wingnut. He includes in his post a URL that leads to an online survey that could be nothing other than a transparent attempt to lead one toward adoption of that hayseed groups twisted view of human life and justice. As a statistical rejoinder to the post; Why is it that the US, with about 3.5% of the worlds population and the only country in which a group such as the NRA has colossal political clout, annually takes the lives of 17 children by gunfire for every ONE lost in the other 96.5% of the planetary population? Something is really sick somewhere....
Which helps to explain why Linux is, for the consumer market; by for and of the geek community. Not that there's anything wrong with that, so long as one doesn't pretend it to be anything but that.
Tried it, dumped it. It is too much of a pain in the butt to setup (you have to reinstall every media player you own, for example); and it's AV playback was erratic to the point of freezing or simply not working. This has never happened to me with Explorer, any version. Yes, for now, it is less secure than IE, but that will last only so long as it remains a bit player in the world browser marketplace. Should they gain serious market penetration, watch out. It took Mozilla a very long time to fix bugs and vulnerabilities in the second last edition, which they addressed by rolling out a whole new version. At their current rate of flaw/attack adaption, what's going to happen if they do gain significant market scale and hackers become seriously interested? No thanks.
I'm not all that familiar with OpenDoc and don't much care about it. To me, it's just another 'proprietary' file structure accessible by weenies who understand where and what the proprietary bits are and how to use them. What I do know is that file structures in Office 12 are far more accessible to open access than any office-type suite ever constructed. How so? There is no proprietary code in the Office 12, it is all plain vanilla XML. Now who is most 'open'? Not OpenDoc, I think.
Slashdot recenly posted a fairly lengthy video interview with the lead guy at Office 12, name is Brian Jones, I think. Almost the entire video content dealt with Office 12's abandonment of Microsofts proprietary binary format in favor of standard XML. The purpose, he said, was to distribute Office as an easily extensible product available for easily achieved, specialized development from third party developers. I don't have a clue, and could care less, what standards OpenDocument does or doesn't adhere to, but what Mr. Jones indicated sounded pretty open to me.