Mandrake 8.1 have not installed apt-get. I do not know if they don't carry it or just do not install it by default.
And I was not really talking about the browser, but about KDE in general.
I agree it should be up to the distro to upgrade the packages, and Mandrake has its own update tools, but I was really pointing to the fact that Red Carpet is the easiest tool I saw to date (it is rpm based, everything is automated and nicely GUIed).
I am not much of a GNOME user, for some reason or another I always find that I can make KDE run faster and I know exactly how to configure it to match my taste.
But a week or two ago I decided to upgrade the GNOME in my machine to give it another try. So I launched Red Carpet, subscribed to the Ximian channel, checked every checkbox and let it run. After a couple of unattended hours I had Gnome upgraded. KDE, on the other hand, requires a lot more work.I think that at this point, a piece of software of KDE's importance should really have a very visible and easy to use upgrade utility (as a sidenote, I am still using KDE. GNOME Ximian is good and pretty, but KDE is still better for me).
As for the features, you may be right about some (like the sidebars, the first thing I make disappear every time I install Mozilla), but I feel that you should not generalize, either we would all be still using Lynx... Tabbed browsing, for instance, is something I can barely live without at this point. When I have to use IE I find it very annoying having to open a new window every time I need to see a new page.
My two last complains about Mozilla are its loading time (an eternity under Linux compared to the same version in the same machine under Windows 2000) and the fact that I can't save a whole bunch of tabbed URLs under the same bookmark name. Once these are there, I would probably have found my browser forever.
"The problem is that its free availability taints your ability to make an unbiased decision."
How can we know? The fact is that the non-availability makes your point void and null. You are reaching for an untested and (until some old game copyright owner decide to re-issue it) untestable hypothesis.
So, I think we should really drop this line of reasoning for now. There is no use in accusing abandonware supporters of being copyright thieves until we can at least test the idea.
I don't know, but from where I sit, after some necessary adjustments (eg, telling Nautilus it sucks as a "everything and the kitchen sink too" and should restrain itself to file management), both KDE and GNOME are doing almost fine. Most of my complaints refer to specific applications (Evolution taking forever to open a reply-to window, Red-Carpet grabbing all CPU time, Mozilla entering a "repaint window" that will return next Monday, thank you).
I think your main complaints are being adressed. The recent video drivers are good, I never had an X crash in this box. And I really like the GUI design of KDE and almost like the GNOME one.
I sit on a Mandrake 8.1/Win2k dual box. I must say you don't have the faintest idea of what your are saying...
I changed from Windows to Linux on the desktop for a number of reasons, Windows instability NOT being one of them. My personal reasons are mainly the need for flexibility, the joys of having free access to most code I use. Beyond that I have a host of professional reasons for using Linux.
But the Windows side of my box is extremely stable. I has hundreds of applications, from legacy DOS little programs to Office 2K. I have everything I have on Linux, including a running Web server, MySql, Zope, PHP, Java etc.
As an annedoct, the only program that managed to bring Windows 2000 to a hard halt was StarOffice 6.0 beta.
You are telling me that a small technological change in a never to be widely adopted OS killed a whole enterprise? I hope you will not ask me to cry for them.
Please do not misunderstand me, I hope Be (whatever this means by now) wins this case. Any chance to restrict Microsoft monopolistic practices is welcome.
But for crying out loud, were these guys so enticed with their bells and whistles that no one could code a decent bootloader?
How come Linux runs alongside anything Microsoft has today, if "it is assumed that MS made this change to restrict other OSes from running along side of Windows."?
Just look at his username. What good can one get discussing anything with such people?
On the other hand, as a Linux desktop user (Mandrake 8.1 but seriously considering Suse), I would say that you are going a bit too far when you say Linux is easier to use than Windows.
For a very special kind of user, the kind you have to baby-sit be them on Windows, Linux or Mac, maybe. But I would really love to have everything working from the start.
Installation should tell me "Look pal, we don't support your funny soundcard, go buy something usable". Which I eventually did, but I shouldn't have to cope with a system that thinks some sound is being played when it isn't.
Apart from StarOffice, and I hate 5.2, all other pseudo-Word software couldn't cope with lightly formatted Word files.
But then there is development, and Linux is a far superior, controllable platform if you know what you after. And of course, Mozilla gets better each night.
I guess what I am trying to say is that Linux today is not always the best solution for the desktop, but it is amazing how far it came in, say, two years (if memory serves, two years ago it was still quite easy to burn a monitor misconfiguring X during installation - today distros will configure it automatically). I believe that Microsoft is even lending a hand, by changing its licensing policy. The corporate world will be looking very hard at Linux for their millions of desktops.
But there is still a long way to go before Linux desktops can show the maturity one sees in MacOS X, for instance.
From the linked Register article one gathers the keymaker is generating independent keys. To do this one need to have broken the key generation algorithm.
But then again, the code in the parent-most post of this thread may well be doing just what you said. I wouldn't know. I don't have any use for XP AKs in this Mandrake 8.1 box of mine...:)
As a matter of fact, I am just waiting to test StarOffice 6 and then move my whole office and home LANs to Mandrake or Suse.
It would be a marvelous feat, to craft a program capable of stealing random numbers. Imagine the cryptanalysis breakthrough it would represent if I could steal your random private PGP key out of the blue...:)
Seriously, the keyspace for Activation Keys is huge beyond your wildest dreams. The probability of generating a duplicate key in the lifetime of the Sun is very small.
Besides cryptography (or do you expect files to be exchanged as plaintext?), no computer will have more than a tiny portion of any given dataset. Even a large farm of eavesdropping servers would represent no more than a small drop in this processing and storage ocean.
Very Large Governments, of course, would probably have the power to successfully mine information, but even they would be given a good run for their money. And then again, Very Large Governments already have access to almost anything they care to want.
"I am sorry Mary, but 15% of this file's backup were lost due to last week "You are really an idiot if you click this attachment" Outlook 2010 virus, 20% are unavailable at this moment due to orbital problems with the Earth-Moon Internet backbone and other 5% were in computers seized by the government in the on-going war on spammers. Should I guess the missing 40% from the available 60%?"
Please mod the uninformed troll down...
on
OpenMosix
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
The AC above, besides being a troll, is an uninformed one at that. The legendary goatse.cx is gone, dummy...
I am talking about the general tendency of the Chinese Communist Party to distrust anything vaguely new, western and/or mildly revolutionary.
It is well known that one of the main enabling factors of Free Software/Open Source developemnt was the existence of a free-flowing information channel, namely the Internet. The Chinese government has already showed many times over it distrusts and fears many fundamental features of this channel.
Also, I do take notice that you have choosen to pick the only critical point I made in my post. Do you think your governnment is above criticism? It may well be, but it would be the first time in known history a country achieves perfect government. Alas, my country's government is anything but perfect. So rest assured I am not trying to be anti-Chinese. I am just trying to be realistic. Hope you can too.
Let us see how long it lasts in China
on
Free Software Magazine
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I mean, before the old guys in Benjing decide that FSF-China (the magazine's publisher) is guilty of anti-Chinese activities, high treason and general lack of hygien. You see, China is a country where order is far more important than freedom.
They have a good chance, though. Every week some US commerce agency produces a memo criticizing China for its lack of copyright enforcement. I wonder if some time from now we will start to see memos criticizing China for its copyleft enforcement...
The Chinese government has already showed interest in Free Software/Open Source many times in the past, mainly as a way to avoid Microsoft/Oracle/IBM/whoever proprietary lock. They are well aware of the strategic value controlling its own software.
This can also boost FS/OS development in ways we simply can't imagine. As someone said, when you change some quantity by an order of magnitute or more, you automatically achieve a quality change as a side-effect. Think about China sponsoring a few (a few, in China, are hundreths of thousands) Chinese programmers developing Free Software. Microsoft may well fear this.
My respect for you is great, since you did almost exactly what my father once did. His hard work and his obstination with studying are the main causes my life and my brother's are and have been for a long time a life full of choices and surrounded by high technology.
But I must disagree when you say that working for low wages in expensive cities is a choice some (many) people make out of the blue. Unfornately, the very fact that makes Silicon Valley an expensive place to live (the concentration of high-tech industries) also makes it the place where the jobs are. No choice here, unless you are willing to move away to cheaper places (where you will obviously earn even less).
It should also be noted that work and study at the same time is not for the faint of heart. And may be objectively impossible for some people (single parents, parents with a many children etc).
I've read the title too quick, and for a moment I thought Good Old Rick had decided to go all way and become a desert hermit, as in "RMS: Putting an End to World Attachments"
Like other major distributions, the brazilian Connectiva employs many people closely related to Linux development.
Marcelo Tosatti was recently announced as the new head mantainer over the 2.4 stable kernel tree. Rik Van Riel is known for his work in the memory management subsystem and Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo works with IPX.
The point here is not to praise Connectiva (or Red Hat or anyone), but to notice that it is perfectly possible to run a profitable company and care for the development community at the
same time.
Everytime I saw such a move, IT would push to treat developers like any other office clerks. It never worked.
The problem is, IT is solving a real problem. It is impossible for any company to mantain a support force that can handle any and all configurations and prevent unauthorized software installations by people who don't know what they are doing (like in "Hey, my friend just send me this great Back Orifice game, let me install it").
But developers are beasts of a different kind. In the long run, the underpaid IT tech guy will lose. Always. All my NT machines, and I had some during the past years, were mine in every sense. Administrator passwords were cracked, domains were abandoned. New, local domains were created. Linux machines were installed to handle development projects. IT never had a chance, because we were always adding value, they were always a burden.
And we never did it out of despise for them. But because the work had to be done and when work has to be done you can't wait for that same underpaid IT guy to come around to upgrade Acrobat Reader or install Visual Studio beta X.
And for the reasons above, the development boss would always prevail over the IT boss when a complain was send up about those pesky developers that wouldn't stand in line. And I was, at different times, the pesky developer and the boss that had to tell the CEO that "No, we can't play by IT rules unless you want version n.m to be x months late". Can you guess the answer?
OK, it is a dead discussion by now, but let me take a chance.
My answer to you implicit question is so what? Someone solved a problem and open sourced the code. You tried to use the same code to solve another problem. Whose faults is it that it crashed most of the time? Unfortunately yours.
And as for process, most free software (take a look at SourceFourge) is indeed written by 3 or 4 people. Most good free software has code moderators to decide what goes in what doesn't (see Linux).
For a capitalist closed source competitor, Free Software is a nightmare came true. You can't out-invest it, you can't bankrupt it, you can't stop it.
Worse of all, you can't even beat it by developing a better technology. Because we don't care.
They tell us Word is at least two or three years ahead of StarOffice and we smile at them with a condescending look. They look into our eyes and slowly came to see the little bright spot in there. They leave quickly, because they know we must be mad. Because that little bright spot spells victory.
You see, Free Software does not really have to care about marketshare in the small. Wall Street is not measuring us each quarter. And if I can't finish it, because I don't know how or don't have time, my eventual sucessor will. Or my sucessor's sucessor. Who cares?
As for technology. we eventually catch up. We always had. Free software has already developed the best WebServer in the market and two or threee of the best operating systems. We can and will some day come up with the best Office suite. It is just a matter of time.
You found a wife that besides being programmable is also remote??
Assuming you can override the remote part when need be, do you best to keep her, friend. You won't find another one easily (but also be aware of the universal part, it sounds a tad dangerous).
You see, where I live I would be hard pressed to find 320 hours of TV to record on any given month.
Even 40 hours may be an overkill.
Maybe it would work well as an archiving tool. It would be nice to have all Babylon 5 in one place: 5 years * 52 * 50 minutes ~ 217 hours, leaving plenty of space for everything else. Unfortunately Bab is history now.
Slashdot Mirror
Mandrake 8.1 have not installed apt-get. I do not know if they don't carry it or just do not install it by default.
And I was not really talking about the browser, but about KDE in general.
I agree it should be up to the distro to upgrade the packages, and Mandrake has its own update tools, but I was really pointing to the fact that Red Carpet is the easiest tool I saw to date (it is rpm based, everything is automated and nicely GUIed).
I understand Mozilla has had this feature for a long time. It is not a menu/GUI driven option, though.
You can edit the file user.js using the instructions in Custumizing Mozilla
Not exactly user friendly, but fairly easy anyway.
I am not much of a GNOME user, for some reason or another I always find that I can make KDE run faster and I know exactly how to configure it to match my taste.
But a week or two ago I decided to upgrade the GNOME in my machine to give it another try. So I launched Red Carpet, subscribed to the Ximian channel, checked every checkbox and let it run. After a couple of unattended hours I had Gnome upgraded. KDE, on the other hand, requires a lot more work.I think that at this point, a piece of software of KDE's importance should really have a very visible and easy to use upgrade utility (as a sidenote, I am still using KDE. GNOME Ximian is good and pretty, but KDE is still better for me).
As for the features, you may be right about some (like the sidebars, the first thing I make disappear every time I install Mozilla), but I feel that you should not generalize, either we would all be still using Lynx... Tabbed browsing, for instance, is something I can barely live without at this point. When I have to use IE I find it very annoying having to open a new window every time I need to see a new page.
My two last complains about Mozilla are its loading time (an eternity under Linux compared to the same version in the same machine under Windows 2000) and the fact that I can't save a whole bunch of tabbed URLs under the same bookmark name. Once these are there, I would probably have found my browser forever.
"The problem is that its free availability taints your ability to make an unbiased decision."
How can we know? The fact is that the non-availability makes your point void and null. You are reaching for an untested and (until some old game copyright owner decide to re-issue it) untestable hypothesis.
So, I think we should really drop this line of reasoning for now. There is no use in accusing abandonware supporters of being copyright thieves until we can at least test the idea.
I don't know, but from where I sit, after some necessary adjustments (eg, telling Nautilus it sucks as a "everything and the kitchen sink too" and should restrain itself to file management), both KDE and GNOME are doing almost fine. Most of my complaints refer to specific applications (Evolution taking forever to open a reply-to window, Red-Carpet grabbing all CPU time, Mozilla entering a "repaint window" that will return next Monday, thank you).
I think your main complaints are being adressed. The recent video drivers are good, I never had an X crash in this box. And I really like the GUI design of KDE and almost like the GNOME one.
I sit on a Mandrake 8.1/Win2k dual box. I must say you don't have the faintest idea of what your are saying...
I changed from Windows to Linux on the desktop for a number of reasons, Windows instability NOT being one of them. My personal reasons are mainly the need for flexibility, the joys of having free access to most code I use. Beyond that I have a host of professional reasons for using Linux.
But the Windows side of my box is extremely stable. I has hundreds of applications, from legacy DOS little programs to Office 2K. I have everything I have on Linux, including a running Web server, MySql, Zope, PHP, Java etc.
As an annedoct, the only program that managed to bring Windows 2000 to a hard halt was StarOffice 6.0 beta.
You are telling me that a small technological change in a never to be widely adopted OS killed a whole enterprise? I hope you will not ask me to cry for them.
Please do not misunderstand me, I hope Be (whatever this means by now) wins this case. Any chance to restrict Microsoft monopolistic practices is welcome.
But for crying out loud, were these guys so enticed with their bells and whistles that no one could code a decent bootloader?
How come Linux runs alongside anything Microsoft has today, if "it is assumed that MS made this change to restrict other OSes from running along side of Windows."?
"Don't feed the troll"...
Just look at his username. What good can one get discussing anything with such people?
On the other hand, as a Linux desktop user (Mandrake 8.1 but seriously considering Suse), I would say that you are going a bit too far when you say Linux is easier to use than Windows.
For a very special kind of user, the kind you have to baby-sit be them on Windows, Linux or Mac, maybe. But I would really love to have everything working from the start.
Installation should tell me "Look pal, we don't support your funny soundcard, go buy something usable". Which I eventually did, but I shouldn't have to cope with a system that thinks some sound is being played when it isn't.
Apart from StarOffice, and I hate 5.2, all other pseudo-Word software couldn't cope with lightly formatted Word files.
But then there is development, and Linux is a far superior, controllable platform if you know what you after. And of course, Mozilla gets better each night.
I guess what I am trying to say is that Linux today is not always the best solution for the desktop, but it is amazing how far it came in, say, two years (if memory serves, two years ago it was still quite easy to burn a monitor misconfiguring X during installation - today distros will configure it automatically). I believe that Microsoft is even lending a hand, by changing its licensing policy. The corporate world will be looking very hard at Linux for their millions of desktops.
But there is still a long way to go before Linux desktops can show the maturity one sees in MacOS X, for instance.
From the linked Register article one gathers the keymaker is generating independent keys. To do this one need to have broken the key generation algorithm.
:)
But then again, the code in the parent-most post of this thread may well be doing just what you said. I wouldn't know. I don't have any use for XP AKs in this Mandrake 8.1 box of mine...
As a matter of fact, I am just waiting to test StarOffice 6 and then move my whole office and home LANs to Mandrake or Suse.
It would be a marvelous feat, to craft a program capable of stealing random numbers. Imagine the cryptanalysis breakthrough it would represent if I could steal your random private PGP key out of the blue... :)
Seriously, the keyspace for Activation Keys is huge beyond your wildest dreams. The probability of generating a duplicate key in the lifetime of the Sun is very small.
Besides cryptography (or do you expect files to be exchanged as plaintext?), no computer will have more than a tiny portion of any given dataset. Even a large farm of eavesdropping servers would represent no more than a small drop in this processing and storage ocean.
Very Large Governments, of course, would probably have the power to successfully mine information, but even they would be given a good run for their money. And then again, Very Large Governments already have access to almost anything they care to want.
"I am sorry Mary, but 15% of this file's backup were lost due to last week "You are really an idiot if you click this attachment" Outlook 2010 virus, 20% are unavailable at this moment due to orbital problems with the Earth-Moon Internet backbone and other 5% were in computers seized by the government in the on-going war on spammers. Should I guess the missing 40% from the available 60%?"
The AC above, besides being a troll, is an uninformed one at that. The legendary goatse.cx is gone, dummy...
1024. Bugs are bad for business
2048. Bugs are good for business
I am talking about the general tendency of the Chinese Communist Party to distrust anything vaguely new, western and/or mildly revolutionary.
It is well known that one of the main enabling factors of Free Software/Open Source developemnt was the existence of a free-flowing information channel, namely the Internet. The Chinese government has already showed many times over it distrusts and fears many fundamental features of this channel.
Also, I do take notice that you have choosen to pick the only critical point I made in my post. Do you think your governnment is above criticism? It may well be, but it would be the first time in known history a country achieves perfect government. Alas, my country's government is anything but perfect. So rest assured I am not trying to be anti-Chinese. I am just trying to be realistic. Hope you can too.
I mean, before the old guys in Benjing decide that FSF-China (the magazine's publisher) is guilty of anti-Chinese activities, high treason and general lack of hygien. You see, China is a country where order is far more important than freedom.
/whoever proprietary lock. They are well aware of the strategic value controlling its own software.
They have a good chance, though. Every week some US commerce agency produces a memo criticizing China for its lack of copyright enforcement. I wonder if some time from now we will start to see memos criticizing China for its copyleft enforcement...
The Chinese government has already showed interest in Free Software/Open Source many times in the past, mainly as a way to avoid Microsoft/Oracle/IBM
This can also boost FS/OS development in ways we simply can't imagine. As someone said, when you change some quantity by an order of magnitute or more, you automatically achieve a quality change as a side-effect. Think about China sponsoring a few (a few, in China, are hundreths of thousands) Chinese programmers developing Free Software. Microsoft may well fear this.
My respect for you is great, since you did almost exactly what my father once did. His hard work and his obstination with studying are the main causes my life and my brother's are and have been for a long time a life full of choices and surrounded by high technology.
But I must disagree when you say that working for low wages in expensive cities is a choice some (many) people make out of the blue. Unfornately, the very fact that makes Silicon Valley an expensive place to live (the concentration of high-tech industries) also makes it the place where the jobs are. No choice here, unless you are willing to move away to cheaper places (where you will obviously earn even less).
It should also be noted that work and study at the same time is not for the faint of heart. And may be objectively impossible for some people (single parents, parents with a many children etc).
I've read the title too quick, and for a moment I thought Good Old Rick had decided to go all way and become a desert hermit, as in "RMS: Putting an End to World Attachments"
Like other major distributions, the brazilian Connectiva employs many people closely related to Linux development.
Marcelo Tosatti was recently announced as the new head mantainer over the 2.4 stable kernel tree. Rik Van Riel is known for his work in the memory management subsystem and Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo works with IPX.
The point here is not to praise Connectiva (or Red Hat or anyone), but to notice that it is perfectly possible to run a profitable company and care for the development community at the
same time.
Everytime I saw such a move, IT would push to treat developers like any other office clerks. It never worked.
The problem is, IT is solving a real problem. It is impossible for any company to mantain a support force that can handle any and all configurations and prevent unauthorized software installations by people who don't know what they are doing (like in "Hey, my friend just send me this great Back Orifice game, let me install it").
But developers are beasts of a different kind. In the long run, the underpaid IT tech guy will lose. Always. All my NT machines, and I had some during the past years, were mine in every sense. Administrator passwords were cracked, domains were abandoned. New, local domains were created. Linux machines were installed to handle development projects. IT never had a chance, because we were always adding value, they were always a burden.
And we never did it out of despise for them. But because the work had to be done and when work has to be done you can't wait for that same underpaid IT guy to come around to upgrade Acrobat Reader or install Visual Studio beta X.
And for the reasons above, the development boss would always prevail over the IT boss when a complain was send up about those pesky developers that wouldn't stand in line. And I was, at different times, the pesky developer and the boss that had to tell the CEO that "No, we can't play by IT rules unless you want version n.m to be x months late". Can you guess the answer?
OK, it is a dead discussion by now, but let me take a chance.
My answer to you implicit question is so what? Someone solved a problem and open sourced the code. You tried to use the same code to solve another problem. Whose faults is it that it crashed most of the time? Unfortunately yours.
And as for process, most free software (take a look at SourceFourge) is indeed written by 3 or 4 people. Most good free software has code moderators to decide what goes in what doesn't (see Linux).
For a capitalist closed source competitor, Free Software is a nightmare came true. You can't out-invest it, you can't bankrupt it, you can't stop it.
Worse of all, you can't even beat it by developing a better technology. Because we don't care.
They tell us Word is at least two or three years ahead of StarOffice and we smile at them with a condescending look. They look into our eyes and slowly came to see the little bright spot in there. They leave quickly, because they know we must be mad. Because that little bright spot spells victory.
You see, Free Software does not really have to care about marketshare in the small. Wall Street is not measuring us each quarter. And if I can't finish it, because I don't know how or don't have time, my eventual sucessor will. Or my sucessor's sucessor. Who cares?
As for technology. we eventually catch up. We always had. Free software has already developed the best WebServer in the market and two or threee of the best operating systems. We can and will some day come up with the best Office suite. It is just a matter of time.
The Register has also noted StarOffice new version here.
They also go on to say that they find Abiword the best of the free Office suite pack.
You found a wife that besides being programmable is also remote??
Assuming you can override the remote part when need be, do you best to keep her, friend. You won't find another one easily (but also be aware of the universal part, it sounds a tad dangerous).
You see, where I live I would be hard pressed to find 320 hours of TV to record on any given month.
Even 40 hours may be an overkill.
Maybe it would work well as an archiving tool. It would be nice to have all Babylon 5 in one place: 5 years * 52 * 50 minutes ~ 217 hours, leaving plenty of space for everything else. Unfortunately Bab is history now.