I agree that Plasma should be a lot farther along than it is right now. But Plasma seems like a very necessary change even though it will cause a few headaches in the beginning.
From what I hear the big components of KDE 4 and the smaller ones that you don't hear about are coming along very nicely. Things like Solid and Phonon will make my life easier, Plasma will make the desktop much more interesting, along with the spell checking and semantic (strigi+nepomuk) search sounds too good to be true. I'm glad KDE took lessons learned from 3.x.y and put them to such good use with the KDE4 tech.
Desktop Linux distros that rival and even surpass Windows and OS X in enough ways to make switching more than a cost cutting maneuver are still a year or two away. The desktop experience Linux can provide has gotten some serious work put into it lately, but its not there yet.
This made me think of bit torrent over a massive LAN mesh network. I bet the RIAA/MPAA will be angry when that starts, actually so will anyone else in the business of selling software/media.
Khtml developers will add features that Webkit is lacking and then they will all get in the same boat. Trolltech and KDE will work together for Webkit under qt, Nokia works on gtk, Apple with whatever OSX uses. While I don't agree with Apple secretly forking it, the momentum Apple created should be used by the open source community. Webkit will be very versatile when this is done, being able to use both gtk and qt.
It seems like half the world is heading towards a freer and more open computing scheme, while the other is heading towards a more closed and controlled one.
Firefox 3 fixes the memory usage very well. Since its alpha the memory usage changes rapidly but the build I tested used identical, and sometimes less, amounts of memory on windows.
Microsoft starts on the offensive with patents, and suddenly they get slammed with patent suits from everyone and their brother. FOSS has lots of supporter with huge patent portfolios, I'd be willing to bet Microsoft infringes on hundreds collectively. Microsoft is either blowing steam or has finally gone stupid. Now since Microsoft does not hire morons in their legal department, they know that this is an uphill battle at best. If big supporters like IBM, Red Hat, and HP fire back then could ruin Microsoft.
Its IE so it is still going to dominate the market, but Microsoft won't win any users back. The next versions of Opera, Firefox and Konqueror are set to impress on all platforms.
For the longest time AMD appealed to the people who built their own PCs, their chips had superior performance, used less power and were cheaper. Now the tables have turned and AMD has the dubious honor of producing both the CPU and video card ranked second in a two product race. Complete with the benchmarks behind closed doors proving how great their future product is.
I eagerly await the Barcelona since any solid competition will drive down the quad/soon octi core prices and up performance.
They tested games that also run natively on Linux, emulating the Windows versions of them via WINE/Cedega is going to get you good performance. The games also use OpenGL, which leads to low Vista results and high performance everywhere else. A better test of performance across the board would be to use games like Half Life 2 that can use different DirectX versions. WINE has made great progress (can't comment on Cedega) but unless you've got some programming ability or want to run a popular program then you are out of luck.
I remember awhile ago an employee at Opera pointed out that using html and css would create a much easier to adopt document standard. Since it is well understood and universally used. There are a half dozen html renderer's that could all be used to read content on all platforms.
This has many advantages over everything that is being offered now. A universally viewable open well understood and easily learned document standard? That makes too much sense to go anywhere.
I've heard some very strong opinions on Linus wanting Linux to remain gplv2. Some even suggest replacing Linux with Solaris. What I'm wondering is the same companies that helped Linux become what it is today make the transition? Open source is rarely run on kindness and love for humanity. Linux has reached critical mass, and I don't think GPL'ing even a product as good as solaris will derail it.
Both Solaris and Linux would benefit immensely from sharing with each other. But whos ever heard of two competing products helping each other.
Any "damage" done by television can be attributed to stupid kids or irresponsible parents. If parents would monitor their children's tv viewing and kids would realize that tv is fantasy world we could stop this.
Theres no hope, abandon ship
Firefox may be one of the most popular open source projects, but that does not mean it can implement features as fast as other browsers. Its developers are still comprised mainly of volunteers. When Firefox 3 comes out (Q2/3 2007) it will be a huge step forward from firefox 2, but how many steps forward will Opera have taken by then? If the nightlys are any indication, then Firefox 3 will be on par with Opera 9 in terms of speed and memory usage.
Lets just assume IE doesn't exist, but another browser I didn't mention is Konquerer. From what I've heard it will be avaible on OS X and Windows when KDE 4 is released.
If firefox speed up their release cycle a little bit then maybe they could catch up to Opera. The nightly builds of firefox are a huge leap forward from 2.0, they are much more stable, faster, and use less memory. I'm very impressed with the memory usage improvement, with 8 tabs open (and browsing extensively in those tabs) I'm only seeing 45-50mb memory usage. Opera clocks in at 33mb with no browsing with the same windows open.
I may be missing something here, but Firefox has a large public database off all known firefox bugs. Opera and IE have no such system. They are comparing the known (Firefox bugs) to the unknown (IE and Opera bugs)
I can't decide to post about how Microsoft is just trying to get into every possible market, or they are diversifying themselves for the unthinkable time when Windows doesn't have 98% of the desktop market. But I'm pretty sure they are doing one of those, or both.
Maybe I'm being too hopeful, but perhaps we'll see things like Opera, firefox and vlc preloaded with our dells now. Or dell browser and dell media player.
Average joe doesn't see a need to upgrade, his computer surfs the web just fine Linux joe doesn't need to upgrade either
The only people who aggressively upgrade computers now are gamers, even then its a once per 6 month upgrade at least. Most gamers live with the same rigs for a year or more.
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I agree that Plasma should be a lot farther along than it is right now. But Plasma seems like a very necessary change even though it will cause a few headaches in the beginning.
From what I hear the big components of KDE 4 and the smaller ones that you don't hear about are coming along very nicely. Things like Solid and Phonon will make my life easier, Plasma will make the desktop much more interesting, along with the spell checking and semantic (strigi+nepomuk) search sounds too good to be true. I'm glad KDE took lessons learned from 3.x.y and put them to such good use with the KDE4 tech.
Desktop Linux distros that rival and even surpass Windows and OS X in enough ways to make switching more than a cost cutting maneuver are still a year or two away. The desktop experience Linux can provide has gotten some serious work put into it lately, but its not there yet.
This made me think of bit torrent over a massive LAN mesh network. I bet the RIAA/MPAA will be angry when that starts, actually so will anyone else in the business of selling software/media.
Khtml developers will add features that Webkit is lacking and then they will all get in the same boat. Trolltech and KDE will work together for Webkit under qt, Nokia works on gtk, Apple with whatever OSX uses. While I don't agree with Apple secretly forking it, the momentum Apple created should be used by the open source community. Webkit will be very versatile when this is done, being able to use both gtk and qt.
I've slowed worked Linux into everything else I do on a computer, now just let me never have to switch out of it and I'll be set.
It seems like half the world is heading towards a freer and more open computing scheme, while the other is heading towards a more closed and controlled one.
It gives an easy way for computer idiots like myself to contribute to Ubuntu in a small way
Firefox 3 fixes the memory usage very well. Since its alpha the memory usage changes rapidly but the build I tested used identical, and sometimes less, amounts of memory on windows.
Microsoft starts on the offensive with patents, and suddenly they get slammed with patent suits from everyone and their brother. FOSS has lots of supporter with huge patent portfolios, I'd be willing to bet Microsoft infringes on hundreds collectively. Microsoft is either blowing steam or has finally gone stupid. Now since Microsoft does not hire morons in their legal department, they know that this is an uphill battle at best. If big supporters like IBM, Red Hat, and HP fire back then could ruin Microsoft.
Its IE so it is still going to dominate the market, but Microsoft won't win any users back. The next versions of Opera, Firefox and Konqueror are set to impress on all platforms.
For the longest time AMD appealed to the people who built their own PCs, their chips had superior performance, used less power and were cheaper. Now the tables have turned and AMD has the dubious honor of producing both the CPU and video card ranked second in a two product race. Complete with the benchmarks behind closed doors proving how great their future product is.
I eagerly await the Barcelona since any solid competition will drive down the quad/soon octi core prices and up performance.
They tested games that also run natively on Linux, emulating the Windows versions of them via WINE/Cedega is going to get you good performance. The games also use OpenGL, which leads to low Vista results and high performance everywhere else. A better test of performance across the board would be to use games like Half Life 2 that can use different DirectX versions. WINE has made great progress (can't comment on Cedega) but unless you've got some programming ability or want to run a popular program then you are out of luck.
I remember awhile ago an employee at Opera pointed out that using html and css would create a much easier to adopt document standard. Since it is well understood and universally used. There are a half dozen html renderer's that could all be used to read content on all platforms.
This has many advantages over everything that is being offered now. A universally viewable open well understood and easily learned document standard? That makes too much sense to go anywhere.
I've heard some very strong opinions on Linus wanting Linux to remain gplv2. Some even suggest replacing Linux with Solaris. What I'm wondering is the same companies that helped Linux become what it is today make the transition? Open source is rarely run on kindness and love for humanity. Linux has reached critical mass, and I don't think GPL'ing even a product as good as solaris will derail it.
Both Solaris and Linux would benefit immensely from sharing with each other. But whos ever heard of two competing products helping each other.
Any "damage" done by television can be attributed to stupid kids or irresponsible parents. If parents would monitor their children's tv viewing and kids would realize that tv is fantasy world we could stop this. Theres no hope, abandon ship
Firefox may be one of the most popular open source projects, but that does not mean it can implement features as fast as other browsers. Its developers are still comprised mainly of volunteers. When Firefox 3 comes out (Q2/3 2007) it will be a huge step forward from firefox 2, but how many steps forward will Opera have taken by then? If the nightlys are any indication, then Firefox 3 will be on par with Opera 9 in terms of speed and memory usage.
Lets just assume IE doesn't exist, but another browser I didn't mention is Konquerer. From what I've heard it will be avaible on OS X and Windows when KDE 4 is released.
Competition is good
If firefox speed up their release cycle a little bit then maybe they could catch up to Opera. The nightly builds of firefox are a huge leap forward from 2.0, they are much more stable, faster, and use less memory. I'm very impressed with the memory usage improvement, with 8 tabs open (and browsing extensively in those tabs) I'm only seeing 45-50mb memory usage. Opera clocks in at 33mb with no browsing with the same windows open.
Squabbles between projects is keeping Linux from advancing quite fine.
I may be missing something here, but Firefox has a large public database off all known firefox bugs. Opera and IE have no such system. They are comparing the known (Firefox bugs) to the unknown (IE and Opera bugs)
I can't decide to post about how Microsoft is just trying to get into every possible market, or they are diversifying themselves for the unthinkable time when Windows doesn't have 98% of the desktop market. But I'm pretty sure they are doing one of those, or both.
Maybe I'm being too hopeful, but perhaps we'll see things like Opera, firefox and vlc preloaded with our dells now. Or dell browser and dell media player.
Average joe doesn't see a need to upgrade, his computer surfs the web just fine
Linux joe doesn't need to upgrade either
The only people who aggressively upgrade computers now are gamers, even then its a once per 6 month upgrade at least. Most gamers live with the same rigs for a year or more.