I don't know about Clinton but I bet the Iraq war would be much more popular overnight if the current president came out in favor of it. His followers seem capable of swallowing anything he excretes.
I agree that Clinton didn't care about the Iraqi people, or, more accurately he didn't do anything to show it if he did. But then he wasn't president of Iraq was he, he was president of the US.
I honestly think Bush cared even less though. Bush never claimed he sent our troops to save the Iraqi people. He said he did it to save the rest of the middle east (I read that as Israel) from Saddam's WMDs. This would be all fine and good if his intel claiming Saddam had WMDs wasn't so questionable. One could argue he acted on wrong intel but even before the first bomb was dropped it was apparent that the information and the source were very questionable at best.
Now, when we attacked Iraq, I must admit I was happy about it. I for one expected a quick victory and a better world with one less dictator regardless of whether or not there really were WMDs. It didn't turn out that way though did it?
Next up in this story is Halliburton. All that money was funneled to Dick Cheney's friends while both our own troops and the Iraqi people suffered even more than they did with their mad dictator. Do I really have to go into the stories about parents scraping up change to buy their soldier kids the armor they were not supplied while Halliburton execs threw big parties and took home huge bonuses at our expense? Are the lights on 24/7 in Baghdad even now?
Now it is 2010. 2010!!! and the war continues. Did Bush know that once Saddam was gone Iraq would become the haven of so many insane terrorist types? Did he know that it would create an environment that converts more over to the terrorist side? Did he understand the ethnic tensions that lied dormant, suppressed by the terror of an evil dictator that would resurface once he was gone?
I for one supported the war at the start. I expect better of a leader in a position like president of the United States. If he didn't, he should have understood the area better and realized what would really happen. If he did realize and he decided to go anyway... well... let's hope his dead are waiting for him when he gets there.
Go to a typical hospital. Count the number of life critical monitoring equipment is running old unpatched copies of XP and connecting to easily broken WEP encrypted networks.
How many financial transactions take place at ATMs loaded with Windows 2000? How many banks have crappy, poorly written ASP.NET websites.
How about all those malware filled crusty old porn surfing boxes that manage our power grid in their spare time?
Yes, there is a problem. We are vulnerable and something bad will someday happen. However, nothing our government is going to do is going to help. What's necessary is for the people to demand better from the hospitals, banks, power companies etc... which implement this crap. That isn't going to happen. The people don't understand, don't care and don't want to.
Meanwhile what is some government agent reading my email going to do to help? Our government has a horrible track record on privacy and lately even on basic human rights in general. On top of this, all three branches and both parties are in the pockets of media executives who admittedly do have some legitimate points about their property being stolen but would like to take things way beyond protecting what is truly theirs and eliminate fair use while closing off media to any potential competitors.
Protect the internet, protect free speech. Keep the government out.
That's a long, well thought out reply for not reading the article.
They don't have a dead, ugly lawn. They removed the lawn and added plants that don't need a lot of water. You know, the kind of stuff that naturally belongs in California. The city IS coming after them for not making it a lush, green, expensive and environmentally negative artificial oasis.
- but if it sobers you up faster couldn't you just get a beer with less alcohol?
Then you wouldn't get as drunk in the first place. I believe the idea is to get as drunk but just not stay that way as long. That way you can enjoy it till the party is over but be sober again sooner.
The Russians have the will and the experience but not the money.
China has the will, the money and not the experience.
Recession or not, the US has the money. It does not have the will and I'm not really sure it even has the experience anymore. People retire, people die. A generation has attempted nothing beyond orbit and the next generation won't even be doing that.
Hey now, I was only making guesses based on your post and my observations of other one-time Linux attemptors. I'm quite aware that I wasn't there and don't know you personally.
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. I'm not sure how the fact that we both thought of trying the same things shows either of us has more or less experience than the other though... but no hard feelings. I suppose you may have been configuring Unics servers (yes with a C, that's the original spelling) before I was born but you certainly couldn't have configured a FreeBSD server before I was born. Unless of course you invented a time machine. I am 30 years old.
I'm sorry if I assumed you fit the one time Linux user that I described. Honestly, seeing as you post AC I didn't expect you to even come back and read it. I was hoping some of the people who do fit that pattern might read it instead of the more flaming posts, recognize themselves and go get a fresh CD and a Linux using friend to install on their Desktop.
I do still stand by what I said about not starting with a laptop though. I suppose, yes, that is a Linux weakness. I can certainly defend it with a rant about how proprietary and hard to support laptop hardware tends to be but I do understand that it isn't on the owners of such hardware to care. You paid for it. Windows works on it. You expect an OS to just work. I do get that but at the same time how can any OS ever take off without vendor support? Why would a vendor support an OS if the market isn't there for it? It's a chicken/egg problem but I for one don't like the Windows monopoly very much. Actually, I think that Windows has a monopoly in that it's much larger user base causes hardware vendors to only make Windows drivers but I think Linux has in other ways provided Microsoft with some competition. Windows has made quite a bit of improvement in stability, Microsoft has released versions of it's compilers for free use and worked on building a community. I suspect this is due to competition with OSS and I would like to see it continue.
Now, you had a horrible time trying to install Linux on your laptop. I've installed both Windows and Linux on many computers. Either one can be easy or difficult. I've seen some Linux distros up and detect every piece of hardware and run perfectly with no user input on some machines. Linux is the only OS I've ever seen do that. Windows comes with a lot more drivers built into the install CD than it used to but Linux still has it beat there.
I've also seen a couple computers like yours where it just won't work. That seems to be the exception though. Will you really NEVER install Linux again because of this experience? Will you own this one laptop the rest of your life? I've had hardware which only ran Linux although to be fair it turned out the CPU was broken in a very specific way. My current laptop was running Gentoo just fine until I decided last night that I didn't need that level of customization on a machine I only use for special occasions. I installed Kubuntu, it installed directly off the CD first time and auto-detected everything. I pretty much just hit enter the whole way through. It even installed drivers for the built in winmodem. I'm not sure I can even get Windows drivers for it anymore unless I use the original factory CD with all HP's extra bloatware.
Personally I've barely touched any of the actual Unixes. I think I installed FreeBSD once for about a day a long time ago. I've met a couple very rabid FreeBSD fans who like to put down Linux a lot. I don't really get it. It's just a kernel! You are still running GNU, X and probably Gnome or KDE or maybe some lightweight window manager if your tastes go that way. At the end of the day if FreeBSD likes your hardware better go for it! But why rant against the other choice? It really does work great on MY hardware. Does FreeBSD work better on your laptop? Have you tried it yet?
There are two things I am mildly curious about with FreeBSD.
I've set up a lot of Windows computers. I've also set up a lot of Linux computers. Either one can go really easy or really hard. Of the two I have found Windows is the more likely one to be difficult. (I'm not talking about installing Windows on a factory made machine using a factory restore disk with the computer's exact drivers pre-setup, what kind of fair comparison would that be?)
Now, that being said, I'm not trying to belittle you for trying but I have a few observations about people who try Linux, have a horror story and then tell everyone else how much it sucks...
First, they are usually experienced Windows users trying to set up Linux on their own. As an experienced Windows user you have access to an experienced Windows users advice at all times. It's yourself! If you are going to make a fair comparison get a Linux user to help you... in person... just like you are there in person.
Second, it's usually a laptop. Of course you can run Linux on a laptop. But you really shouldn't make a laptop your first Linux experience. Laptop hardware is not anywhere near as open as desktop hardware. If there is ever going to be one-off hardware with a custom driver available only for windows then it's in a laptop. Laptops just aren't really made or marketed as multipurpose devices. They are designed to be Windows boxes used as/is for their short lives until they burn out. If you really want to see what Linux is about start on your desktop if you have one. It's just easier. Then, if you chose to continue, after having some experience under your belt there are plenty of people out there who will help you figure out the intricacies of upgrading your laptop to Linux.
Now, as to your specific install...
If your machine didn't want to boot off of your install disk then that's a pretty big red flag. Either something was wrong with your disk or with your machine. My first bet is it was a bad burn. That, or the disk media wasn't totally compatible with the machine. A lot of older machines don't boot very well off of burnt media even if they read it just fine. I wonder if your XP disk was burned or original? OK, you don't have to answer that. If burned then I wonder if it was the same kind of disk, burned with the same burning software, at the same speed... I'm not familiar with "Unetbootin" but it sounds like you went for the uber-Linux hacker approach before trying the easy stuff... like re-downloading a fresh copy and burning a new disk.
You received numerous errors even with the "Unetbootin" approach. Yup, that fits, probably a bad burn. If the disks boot sector wasn't right no doubt there were other corrupted areas too.
I could sum up any complaints after that with saying you can't trust an install from a bad disk to be representative of the norm. Still, that is assuming too much, I wasn't even there.
Slow KDE & Gnome? If this was a recent, up to date Linux it probably defaults to having lots of 3D effects. Hey, geeks just like eye candy so give them what they want. If your graphics chip just doesn't have 3D drivers in Linux then those effects can be turned off. There's plenty of back and forth posts here about whose fault that is so I won't bother. Just about any nVidia device is supported though. You just have to install the closed source nVidia drivers. Most RECENT Linux distros make that easy with just a minimal number of clicks.
Another common Linux onetimerism I forgot to mention. Trying to install an old out of date distro. Linux and OSS in general moves much faster than closed source customers are used to. If you see a Linux CD stuck in the cover of some dusty library book LEAVE IT THERE! A Linux disk from 6 months ago will be significantly behind a new one. Once you get to a year or two it's like trying to learn Windows by installing Windows 95! The nice thing is though... Linux is free. Just download the latest today and use that. All you lose is the cost of a CDR and a couple minutes time. If your co
I'm sure GM can read something in a Honda service manual and use it to make a better car. Would you buy a car if no one could get a service manual for it?
Am I understanding this right? The game relied on info from the graphics card to determine where the player is? And it was ASUS that took the reputation hit?
I think you have too much faith in businessmen. It really comes down to they equate sharing with giving their product away and turn their minds off at the mention of it. That and certain instances where functionality that should be in the hardware has been cheapened up by implementing it in software.
Honestly, open source drivers for hardware for which the specs have been released almost always work as good if not better than the ones the company makes themselves. It's only the reverse engineered ones that ever truly suck and even the closed source drivers crash now and then. Of course, Windows BSOD rarely indicates which driver or that it was even a driver at all causing the crash in a way that a normal user could understand. Maybe there is something to that...
Competition...
I'm standing in a computer store isle trying to chose a video card. The maker of the card on the left strictly guards their super secret driver recipe. The one on the right released their info and has really great drivers for my favorite OS. Hmm... Who won that competition?
I get it when it's a fully software product but what is a company going to lose from sharing the driver. I'm sure there's quite an underground market for pirated drivers. I think I'll go download the latest Video drivers from bittorent tonight.. Oh Yah.. my computers going to run so much faster now!
The bread and butter of the closed source communities aren't as high functioning as Linus either! That's the nature of programming, there is a place for everyone from the computer scientist uber-geek who can write and improve the deepest guts of the kernels all the way down to someone who can just write a quick script or SQL query now and then to get a company the report it needs. If we all were on Linus' level either computer users would have a billion really great kernels to choose from but no actual applications to run on them! That, or most of us would just be underutilized and bored to death.
It is true, open source does "suffer" with YAX syndrom - Yet Another ______. For a while every furry-tooth with a how to program book was writing an MP3 player (player front-end really). How many truly unique or significant closed source products are there though? I count 2 OSs, an Office suite and a graphics program. (Win/Mac/MSOffice/Photoshop). Beyond that everything closed source is either written to a niche market (that's the case with the product I work on) or it's just as much YAX as the OSS stuff. At least OSS YAX doesn't contain ad-ware like closed source YAX does. To complete the comparison OSS has Linux/BSD/OpenOffice/Gimp. Ok, I hear that Photoshop is superior to Gimp. Personally I don't do enough graphic work to care. Hmm... maybe photo editing should go in that niche market category afterall.... It's just a niche with a disproportionally large number of Slashdotters included.
For background... I am a commercial, closed source software developer myself. I fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I did have one open source project years ago but never really got far. I hope to some day contribute more OSS myself as I am an OSS user at home but currently do not have the time.
I too make my living producing closed source software and yes... coming up with the original spec is work. No, it's not as challenging as working with something someone has already done. Have you been tasked with fixing a bug or adding a feature to code someone else wrote? How about poorly written code with no comments? It's pretty tough. Now imagine you don't even get the code, just an inert chunk of hardware and maybe some pre-compiled binary file. Now make it work. Good luck! When it does work, that truly is a miracle.
Now, I don't know how much of the original design is done by Microsoft or Apple as opposed to the hardware manufacturer nor do I care. If they are working for the hardware manufacturer for free then that's their problem. When I buy a piece of hardware I expect a functional device which works on MY device. The driver isn't the product, it's just support. When did you last walk into the local computer store, pick up the box for the latest whiz-bang video card and see the words "We have the best driver" written on the front? It's the hardware they are selling, not the software.
If the manufacturer won't release the information I need to make the physical object I purchased with MY money work then something is wrong. If Microsoft or Apple are developing the drivers on behalf of the manufacturer in return for some exclusivity deal where the manufacturer keeps it a secret how to actually interface the hardware in order to lock the user into Windows or Mac then that is pretty shady. I don't care how common it is, one can point out that it's the norm and it's how the world works until they are blue in the face. It's still shady. The hardware manufacturer should be writing their own drivers and if I pay my hard earned cash to buy the hardware and I want to write a driver for some other OS they should be more than happy to release the information. I understand if my OS only has 3 users and they don't want to do the work themselves. Releasing the information just gives me and anyone else using the other OS an incentive to fork out more cash to buy more of the same hardware. After all if I did pay for the hardware I should get to use it to it's fullest potential.
Drivers should not be protected like big trade secrets. There's plenty of unique imaginary property in those chips that a company can keep on making money after it's drivers go public. Those drivers are still useless without hardware. Not many of us can press our own chips now can we? The easier it is to get that software the more valuable your hardware is. Now, I realize that in the last 10 years or so there has been a move to put more of the brains into the software in order to cheapen up the hardware. I can't really defend this practice as it has really just resulted in shoddy computers. If a more open driver development environment means those kinds of products start to go away then that's just another benefit.
Compare the situation today with 10 years ago. Most hardware manufacturers have cooperated with the open source community. When I stick that LiveCD in some random computer most of the devices really do work out of the box! What's left? Wireless and 3D. Here's the real story with that... First, wireless. Every country has it's own laws regarding radio. If you want to sell in a country your wireless product has to be certified to follow that countries regulations. For that reason most wireless chips are designed with full capabilities in every country it is going to be marketed in. Thus.. to market in any one place the device has to be crippled, channels are removed, power is lowered, etc... This could be accomplished easy enough by adding some fuse bits in the chip. Offending capabilities could be burnt off the chip with no way for a user to recover them. This would add some fraction of a penny to the cost of your wireless card and that would make 1 or 2 less sell to the unwashed masses at the local Walmart. Thus, the limits ar
It should be easy in the major metropolitan areas. We have lot's of area though where there are only a few houses per square mile. Who's going to wire up all of that? Cable and DSL have been slowly expanding into the countryside but that expansion will probably be put on hold for quite a while. Also, even in more populated areas wiring an apartment for high speed is not the same as wiring houses. It's just one fiber connection and some CAT-6. I really doubt your fiber connection to the building actually supports 100MB at the same time for all apartments. Your resources pooled provide that nice connection and it shares well because you aren't all likely to be downloading at the exact same moment. How would you wire up 100MB to every single family house of a suburban block? How about a suburb full of such blocks?
I think it's great that someone is actually defining a minimum speed for what can be called broadband. There are quite a few services available today such as BPL, Satellite and some DSL connections which are really more like old-school ISDN than the other "Broadband" options. Unfortunately anything which is always on and/or faster than a 56k modem often gets labeled as "Broadband" and bought up by consumers who don't know any better.
Still, looking at it that way I would think it's more of an FTC issue than an FCC one. Also, I can't see mandating that companies must sell only "Broadband" internet connections. If someone wants to pay less for a slower speed that's their right. They just shouldn't get to advertise it as broadband.
Now, for what that minimum speed would be? I think 100MB is WAY too optimistic. 8MB should be just fine although setting it at something like 20MB could force a smaller more realistic upgrade which we could benefit from as consumers. Setting it at 100MB seems like it will probably force the price up beyond what most of us want to pay. Unless of course the networks are already capable or close to capable of this and the providers are just holding back so they can take credit for rolling out upgrades later. I often wonder why I keep reading articles about the speeds FiOS is capable of and yet the speeds they offer are so much slower. I find it hard to believe though that the cable companies can get 100MB over their coax lines. Unless maybe if they are using that new DOCSIS version which uses multiple lines per house. That is a stupid idea though because multiple lines just means higher failure rates.
Phones suck, they ring and people expect you to interrupt what your doing to answer and then blab on about something unimportant or confirm plans for the umteenth time about something that's still a year off anyway.
I want my phone to be a pocket sized computer with an available everywhere (that I go) data connection. Anything else is just annoying.
OK, I missed the PS. Still, he started Linux long before there was a Linux foundation or anyone else paying him. Gates rebranded CP/M to make a quick sale. I'd give him the phone.
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I don't know about Clinton but I bet the Iraq war would be much more popular overnight if the current president came out in favor of it. His followers seem capable of swallowing anything he excretes.
I agree that Clinton didn't care about the Iraqi people, or, more accurately he didn't do anything to show it if he did. But then he wasn't president of Iraq was he, he was president of the US.
I honestly think Bush cared even less though. Bush never claimed he sent our troops to save the Iraqi people. He said he did it to save the rest of the middle east (I read that as Israel) from Saddam's WMDs. This would be all fine and good if his intel claiming Saddam had WMDs wasn't so questionable. One could argue he acted on wrong intel but even before the first bomb was dropped it was apparent that the information and the source were very questionable at best.
Now, when we attacked Iraq, I must admit I was happy about it. I for one expected a quick victory and a better world with one less dictator regardless of whether or not there really were WMDs. It didn't turn out that way though did it?
Next up in this story is Halliburton. All that money was funneled to Dick Cheney's friends while both our own troops and the Iraqi people suffered even more than they did with their mad dictator. Do I really have to go into the stories about parents scraping up change to buy their soldier kids the armor they were not supplied while Halliburton execs threw big parties and took home huge bonuses at our expense? Are the lights on 24/7 in Baghdad even now?
Now it is 2010. 2010!!! and the war continues. Did Bush know that once Saddam was gone Iraq would become the haven of so many insane terrorist types? Did he know that it would create an environment that converts more over to the terrorist side? Did he understand the ethnic tensions that lied dormant, suppressed by the terror of an evil dictator that would resurface once he was gone?
I for one supported the war at the start. I expect better of a leader in a position like president of the United States. If he didn't, he should have understood the area better and realized what would really happen. If he did realize and he decided to go anyway... well... let's hope his dead are waiting for him when he gets there.
Damn Liberals. They don't even believe in Saddam's WMDs!
Go to a typical hospital. Count the number of life critical monitoring equipment is running old unpatched copies of XP and connecting to easily broken WEP encrypted networks.
How many financial transactions take place at ATMs loaded with Windows 2000? How many banks have crappy, poorly written ASP.NET websites.
How about all those malware filled crusty old porn surfing boxes that manage our power grid in their spare time?
Yes, there is a problem. We are vulnerable and something bad will someday happen. However, nothing our government is going to do is going to help. What's necessary is for the people to demand better from the hospitals, banks, power companies etc... which implement this crap. That isn't going to happen. The people don't understand, don't care and don't want to.
Meanwhile what is some government agent reading my email going to do to help? Our government has a horrible track record on privacy and lately even on basic human rights in general. On top of this, all three branches and both parties are in the pockets of media executives who admittedly do have some legitimate points about their property being stolen but would like to take things way beyond protecting what is truly theirs and eliminate fair use while closing off media to any potential competitors.
Protect the internet, protect free speech. Keep the government out.
That's a long, well thought out reply for not reading the article.
They don't have a dead, ugly lawn. They removed the lawn and added plants that don't need a lot of water. You know, the kind of stuff that naturally belongs in California. The city IS coming after them for not making it a lush, green, expensive and environmentally negative artificial oasis.
- but if it sobers you up faster couldn't you just get a beer with less alcohol? Then you wouldn't get as drunk in the first place. I believe the idea is to get as drunk but just not stay that way as long. That way you can enjoy it till the party is over but be sober again sooner.
The Russians have the will and the experience but not the money.
China has the will, the money and not the experience.
Recession or not, the US has the money. It does not have the will and I'm not really sure it even has the experience anymore. People retire, people die. A generation has attempted nothing beyond orbit and the next generation won't even be doing that.
That was supposed to end with </ bitter ot we no longer have a manned space program rant>
Don't they already have the good ones? It's not like the US will be producing any more for a while...
Now that the US has given up trying to be a leader, if we hamper China's efforts then who on Earth will be making any progress?
Hey now, I was only making guesses based on your post and my observations of other one-time Linux attemptors. I'm quite aware that I wasn't there and don't know you personally.
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. I'm not sure how the fact that we both thought of trying the same things shows either of us has more or less experience than the other though... but no hard feelings. I suppose you may have been configuring Unics servers (yes with a C, that's the original spelling) before I was born but you certainly couldn't have configured a FreeBSD server before I was born. Unless of course you invented a time machine. I am 30 years old.
I'm sorry if I assumed you fit the one time Linux user that I described. Honestly, seeing as you post AC I didn't expect you to even come back and read it. I was hoping some of the people who do fit that pattern might read it instead of the more flaming posts, recognize themselves and go get a fresh CD and a Linux using friend to install on their Desktop.
I do still stand by what I said about not starting with a laptop though. I suppose, yes, that is a Linux weakness. I can certainly defend it with a rant about how proprietary and hard to support laptop hardware tends to be but I do understand that it isn't on the owners of such hardware to care. You paid for it. Windows works on it. You expect an OS to just work. I do get that but at the same time how can any OS ever take off without vendor support? Why would a vendor support an OS if the market isn't there for it? It's a chicken/egg problem but I for one don't like the Windows monopoly very much. Actually, I think that Windows has a monopoly in that it's much larger user base causes hardware vendors to only make Windows drivers but I think Linux has in other ways provided Microsoft with some competition. Windows has made quite a bit of improvement in stability, Microsoft has released versions of it's compilers for free use and worked on building a community. I suspect this is due to competition with OSS and I would like to see it continue.
Now, you had a horrible time trying to install Linux on your laptop. I've installed both Windows and Linux on many computers. Either one can be easy or difficult. I've seen some Linux distros up and detect every piece of hardware and run perfectly with no user input on some machines. Linux is the only OS I've ever seen do that. Windows comes with a lot more drivers built into the install CD than it used to but Linux still has it beat there.
I've also seen a couple computers like yours where it just won't work. That seems to be the exception though. Will you really NEVER install Linux again because of this experience? Will you own this one laptop the rest of your life? I've had hardware which only ran Linux although to be fair it turned out the CPU was broken in a very specific way. My current laptop was running Gentoo just fine until I decided last night that I didn't need that level of customization on a machine I only use for special occasions. I installed Kubuntu, it installed directly off the CD first time and auto-detected everything. I pretty much just hit enter the whole way through. It even installed drivers for the built in winmodem. I'm not sure I can even get Windows drivers for it anymore unless I use the original factory CD with all HP's extra bloatware.
Personally I've barely touched any of the actual Unixes. I think I installed FreeBSD once for about a day a long time ago. I've met a couple very rabid FreeBSD fans who like to put down Linux a lot. I don't really get it. It's just a kernel! You are still running GNU, X and probably Gnome or KDE or maybe some lightweight window manager if your tastes go that way. At the end of the day if FreeBSD likes your hardware better go for it! But why rant against the other choice? It really does work great on MY hardware. Does FreeBSD work better on your laptop? Have you tried it yet?
There are two things I am mildly curious about with FreeBSD.
I've set up a lot of Windows computers. I've also set up a lot of Linux computers. Either one can go really easy or really hard. Of the two I have found Windows is the more likely one to be difficult. (I'm not talking about installing Windows on a factory made machine using a factory restore disk with the computer's exact drivers pre-setup, what kind of fair comparison would that be?)
Now, that being said, I'm not trying to belittle you for trying but I have a few observations about people who try Linux, have a horror story and then tell everyone else how much it sucks...
First, they are usually experienced Windows users trying to set up Linux on their own. As an experienced Windows user you have access to an experienced Windows users advice at all times. It's yourself! If you are going to make a fair comparison get a Linux user to help you... in person... just like you are there in person.
Second, it's usually a laptop. Of course you can run Linux on a laptop. But you really shouldn't make a laptop your first Linux experience. Laptop hardware is not anywhere near as open as desktop hardware. If there is ever going to be one-off hardware with a custom driver available only for windows then it's in a laptop. Laptops just aren't really made or marketed as multipurpose devices. They are designed to be Windows boxes used as/is for their short lives until they burn out. If you really want to see what Linux is about start on your desktop if you have one. It's just easier. Then, if you chose to continue, after having some experience under your belt there are plenty of people out there who will help you figure out the intricacies of upgrading your laptop to Linux.
Now, as to your specific install... If your machine didn't want to boot off of your install disk then that's a pretty big red flag. Either something was wrong with your disk or with your machine. My first bet is it was a bad burn. That, or the disk media wasn't totally compatible with the machine. A lot of older machines don't boot very well off of burnt media even if they read it just fine. I wonder if your XP disk was burned or original? OK, you don't have to answer that. If burned then I wonder if it was the same kind of disk, burned with the same burning software, at the same speed... I'm not familiar with "Unetbootin" but it sounds like you went for the uber-Linux hacker approach before trying the easy stuff... like re-downloading a fresh copy and burning a new disk.
You received numerous errors even with the "Unetbootin" approach. Yup, that fits, probably a bad burn. If the disks boot sector wasn't right no doubt there were other corrupted areas too.
I could sum up any complaints after that with saying you can't trust an install from a bad disk to be representative of the norm. Still, that is assuming too much, I wasn't even there.
Slow KDE & Gnome? If this was a recent, up to date Linux it probably defaults to having lots of 3D effects. Hey, geeks just like eye candy so give them what they want. If your graphics chip just doesn't have 3D drivers in Linux then those effects can be turned off. There's plenty of back and forth posts here about whose fault that is so I won't bother. Just about any nVidia device is supported though. You just have to install the closed source nVidia drivers. Most RECENT Linux distros make that easy with just a minimal number of clicks.
Another common Linux onetimerism I forgot to mention. Trying to install an old out of date distro. Linux and OSS in general moves much faster than closed source customers are used to. If you see a Linux CD stuck in the cover of some dusty library book LEAVE IT THERE! A Linux disk from 6 months ago will be significantly behind a new one. Once you get to a year or two it's like trying to learn Windows by installing Windows 95! The nice thing is though... Linux is free. Just download the latest today and use that. All you lose is the cost of a CDR and a couple minutes time. If your co
I'm sure GM can read something in a Honda service manual and use it to make a better car. Would you buy a car if no one could get a service manual for it?
Am I understanding this right? The game relied on info from the graphics card to determine where the player is? And it was ASUS that took the reputation hit?
I think you have too much faith in businessmen. It really comes down to they equate sharing with giving their product away and turn their minds off at the mention of it. That and certain instances where functionality that should be in the hardware has been cheapened up by implementing it in software.
Honestly, open source drivers for hardware for which the specs have been released almost always work as good if not better than the ones the company makes themselves. It's only the reverse engineered ones that ever truly suck and even the closed source drivers crash now and then. Of course, Windows BSOD rarely indicates which driver or that it was even a driver at all causing the crash in a way that a normal user could understand. Maybe there is something to that...
Competition...
I'm standing in a computer store isle trying to chose a video card. The maker of the card on the left strictly guards their super secret driver recipe. The one on the right released their info and has really great drivers for my favorite OS. Hmm... Who won that competition?
I get it when it's a fully software product but what is a company going to lose from sharing the driver. I'm sure there's quite an underground market for pirated drivers. I think I'll go download the latest Video drivers from bittorent tonight.. Oh Yah.. my computers going to run so much faster now!
You have that half right.
The bread and butter of the closed source communities aren't as high functioning as Linus either! That's the nature of programming, there is a place for everyone from the computer scientist uber-geek who can write and improve the deepest guts of the kernels all the way down to someone who can just write a quick script or SQL query now and then to get a company the report it needs. If we all were on Linus' level either computer users would have a billion really great kernels to choose from but no actual applications to run on them! That, or most of us would just be underutilized and bored to death.
It is true, open source does "suffer" with YAX syndrom - Yet Another ______. For a while every furry-tooth with a how to program book was writing an MP3 player (player front-end really). How many truly unique or significant closed source products are there though? I count 2 OSs, an Office suite and a graphics program. (Win/Mac/MSOffice/Photoshop). Beyond that everything closed source is either written to a niche market (that's the case with the product I work on) or it's just as much YAX as the OSS stuff. At least OSS YAX doesn't contain ad-ware like closed source YAX does. To complete the comparison OSS has Linux/BSD/OpenOffice/Gimp. Ok, I hear that Photoshop is superior to Gimp. Personally I don't do enough graphic work to care. Hmm... maybe photo editing should go in that niche market category afterall.... It's just a niche with a disproportionally large number of Slashdotters included.
For background... I am a commercial, closed source software developer myself. I fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I did have one open source project years ago but never really got far. I hope to some day contribute more OSS myself as I am an OSS user at home but currently do not have the time.
What a twisted view of things...
I too make my living producing closed source software and yes... coming up with the original spec is work. No, it's not as challenging as working with something someone has already done. Have you been tasked with fixing a bug or adding a feature to code someone else wrote? How about poorly written code with no comments? It's pretty tough. Now imagine you don't even get the code, just an inert chunk of hardware and maybe some pre-compiled binary file. Now make it work. Good luck! When it does work, that truly is a miracle.
Now, I don't know how much of the original design is done by Microsoft or Apple as opposed to the hardware manufacturer nor do I care. If they are working for the hardware manufacturer for free then that's their problem. When I buy a piece of hardware I expect a functional device which works on MY device. The driver isn't the product, it's just support. When did you last walk into the local computer store, pick up the box for the latest whiz-bang video card and see the words "We have the best driver" written on the front? It's the hardware they are selling, not the software.
If the manufacturer won't release the information I need to make the physical object I purchased with MY money work then something is wrong. If Microsoft or Apple are developing the drivers on behalf of the manufacturer in return for some exclusivity deal where the manufacturer keeps it a secret how to actually interface the hardware in order to lock the user into Windows or Mac then that is pretty shady. I don't care how common it is, one can point out that it's the norm and it's how the world works until they are blue in the face. It's still shady. The hardware manufacturer should be writing their own drivers and if I pay my hard earned cash to buy the hardware and I want to write a driver for some other OS they should be more than happy to release the information. I understand if my OS only has 3 users and they don't want to do the work themselves. Releasing the information just gives me and anyone else using the other OS an incentive to fork out more cash to buy more of the same hardware. After all if I did pay for the hardware I should get to use it to it's fullest potential.
Drivers should not be protected like big trade secrets. There's plenty of unique imaginary property in those chips that a company can keep on making money after it's drivers go public. Those drivers are still useless without hardware. Not many of us can press our own chips now can we? The easier it is to get that software the more valuable your hardware is. Now, I realize that in the last 10 years or so there has been a move to put more of the brains into the software in order to cheapen up the hardware. I can't really defend this practice as it has really just resulted in shoddy computers. If a more open driver development environment means those kinds of products start to go away then that's just another benefit.
Compare the situation today with 10 years ago. Most hardware manufacturers have cooperated with the open source community. When I stick that LiveCD in some random computer most of the devices really do work out of the box! What's left? Wireless and 3D. Here's the real story with that... First, wireless. Every country has it's own laws regarding radio. If you want to sell in a country your wireless product has to be certified to follow that countries regulations. For that reason most wireless chips are designed with full capabilities in every country it is going to be marketed in. Thus.. to market in any one place the device has to be crippled, channels are removed, power is lowered, etc... This could be accomplished easy enough by adding some fuse bits in the chip. Offending capabilities could be burnt off the chip with no way for a user to recover them. This would add some fraction of a penny to the cost of your wireless card and that would make 1 or 2 less sell to the unwashed masses at the local Walmart. Thus, the limits ar
notice the parent post mentions 3d video drivers and not ethernet drivers.
It should be easy in the major metropolitan areas. We have lot's of area though where there are only a few houses per square mile. Who's going to wire up all of that? Cable and DSL have been slowly expanding into the countryside but that expansion will probably be put on hold for quite a while. Also, even in more populated areas wiring an apartment for high speed is not the same as wiring houses. It's just one fiber connection and some CAT-6. I really doubt your fiber connection to the building actually supports 100MB at the same time for all apartments. Your resources pooled provide that nice connection and it shares well because you aren't all likely to be downloading at the exact same moment. How would you wire up 100MB to every single family house of a suburban block? How about a suburb full of such blocks?
I think it's great that someone is actually defining a minimum speed for what can be called broadband. There are quite a few services available today such as BPL, Satellite and some DSL connections which are really more like old-school ISDN than the other "Broadband" options. Unfortunately anything which is always on and/or faster than a 56k modem often gets labeled as "Broadband" and bought up by consumers who don't know any better.
Still, looking at it that way I would think it's more of an FTC issue than an FCC one. Also, I can't see mandating that companies must sell only "Broadband" internet connections. If someone wants to pay less for a slower speed that's their right. They just shouldn't get to advertise it as broadband.
Now, for what that minimum speed would be? I think 100MB is WAY too optimistic. 8MB should be just fine although setting it at something like 20MB could force a smaller more realistic upgrade which we could benefit from as consumers. Setting it at 100MB seems like it will probably force the price up beyond what most of us want to pay. Unless of course the networks are already capable or close to capable of this and the providers are just holding back so they can take credit for rolling out upgrades later. I often wonder why I keep reading articles about the speeds FiOS is capable of and yet the speeds they offer are so much slower. I find it hard to believe though that the cable companies can get 100MB over their coax lines. Unless maybe if they are using that new DOCSIS version which uses multiple lines per house. That is a stupid idea though because multiple lines just means higher failure rates.
Yes, and then more Anonymous members go to prison and the Verizon execs still sleep well at night.
Keep dreaming.
And this happened to Comcast?
Yeah, I know. Look what happened to Scientology! It was totally destroyed. Take that Verizon!
Phones suck, they ring and people expect you to interrupt what your doing to answer and then blab on about something unimportant or confirm plans for the umteenth time about something that's still a year off anyway.
I want my phone to be a pocket sized computer with an available everywhere (that I go) data connection. Anything else is just annoying.
OK, I missed the PS. Still, he started Linux long before there was a Linux foundation or anyone else paying him. Gates rebranded CP/M to make a quick sale. I'd give him the phone.