Wayland is not taking over X any time soon, if ever. It's mostly a playground for some new ideas. X.org is nowhere near being deprecated and probably never will be. Instead, the old extensions and feature crap will be removed (as has been the case for some years now) and new features and architectures will take over.
I've used Ubuntu in VirtualBox on Windows 7 and Compiz with fancy effects turned on actually runs rather smoothly. Some things are a little on the slow side (Firefox scrolling -- but face it, that's always slow), but otherwise, it does pretty good, considering.
All I have to say is "no shit". Thinking is brain chemistry. Emotions are brain chemistry. You take someone away from their family and throw them in a Gulag and I'll be you'll find a chemical change and "withdrawal" and whatnot. People like what they are used to. The brain adapts to its environment.
The only definition of addiction that I don't find odious is one that includes the qualification that the addiction must interfere with a person's ability to function according to cultural norms, or what is pleasant and self-constructive for them, should it fall outside of cultural norms. Anything else is just borderline moral panic.
You don't have to tell me. I'm fond of Perl. I do admit that it's easy to write obtuse code, but if you just try a little bit, you can write readable and straightforward code. In fact, some of the often-derided syntactic constructs make Perl easier to read, not harder.
Please, for the love of $DEITY, learn Perl or Python or Ruby or SOMETHING. VB's syntax is not predictable or reasonable if you've programmed with any other language or know how a computer works. And the other languages are actually cross-platform and can do everything VB can do and then some.
I'm a big fan of Unixy goodness, but this post is retarded. If there is a problem along the lines of "I'm trying to do this totally legitimate thing XYZ, but language ABC is having trouble with it" and your answer is "don't do XYZ", you have not answered the question correctly. There is absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be spaces in filenames...except that certain old programs and scripts can't handle it. Well, some old programs and scripts can't handle property security either. Should we get rid of property security? No. Fix the programs. Similarly, fix the shell. Or...just use Perl or Python. But the solution is not "don't use spaces".
Lucky you. Often times distro upgrades are a disaster unless you are on a rolling release distro like Gentoo (which has its own host of problems). As for the versions, uhh, there are half a dozen commonly-used distros and they do actually have different editions, such as a separate server edition, not to mention frequent releases. OSS does not and never has had one edition (and I certainly wouldn't call it "Awesome" since so much of the desktop software is half-working, limited in features or buggy) and aside from X and the kernel and the GNU userland, there isn't even a single primary piece of software. You have different DEs, different web-browsers, different administration tools (per distro), etc. I like that flexibility, but it has to be mentioned because it obliterates your argument.
And Linux is not highly resistant to viruses. Its security model, without SELinux, is actually less protective than Windows's security model. The problem with Windows is that the shell is more permissive (which actually turned out to be a problem with KDE as well, with the.desktop files fiasco a little while back) and that the user and developer culture around Windows has been one of lax attention to security. These things are changing. And thanks to new protections put in by MS over the years and new attention to security brought about by the massive increase in malware during the 2000s is turning the tide. I rarely have to go fix my mom's or other people's computers because of viruses any more. And I've never gotten one (unless I intentionally did something very stupid) on Windows.
How is that any different from the problems you face in the OSS world? To take your points one by one...
If you really using MS products you can't change to something else.
Yeah you can. When was it ever true that you couldn't? This doesn't even make one lick of sense.
If it weren't for open source software, you couldn't switch to OpenOffice.org, you couldn't access files on Windows with a Mac.
It's true that Mac uses Samba and the OSS NTFS drivers, but if those weren't available and they wanted interoperability, they could have just as easily licensed the tech from Microsoft or done their own reverse-engineering. They have enough developers and money to do that. It's certainly cheaper to leech off of OSS, of course, and that's the general tactic Apple has followed. In any case, this isn't a victory for open source as an ideology, merely a convenience gained by some software that happens to be OSS.
There were no way that Firefox became a real competitor to IE if the code of Mozilla wasn't opened up.
I'm not sure what the logic behind this one is. Netscape *was* an actual competitor to IE for a while with a completely closed codebase. It lost for other reasons. Firefox could have been a closed-source browser developed by the Mozilla foundation and done just as well. The reason it was successful was not because it was open source, but because it was better than IE in terms of features, speed and security, among other things. There's nothing inherent to open source that made those things true.
My tangible long term issue which closed source software is that you never end the upgrade path. Need a new Windows? - You need a faster computer. Need a new Office CD? - You need to buy the latest Office version. Nero Burning was once a neat and easy to use burning application. Now it's over 300 Megabytes big.
The upgrade treadmill in the OSS world is even worse. Distros are released every 6 months or so. New versions come out all the time. "Release early, release often". Windows comes out once every few years. And as for needing a faster computer, well, bloat is increasing just as fast in the OSS world as in the closed source world, unless you limit yourself to simple and old fashioned apps. Then again, if you so chose, you could still run Win2k or earlier.
You can't switch applications. You don't like the ribbon menu in Office2007? Touch luck, you don't have a choice.
Huh? Are you really trying to imply that there is only one app for everything in the closed source world? No. Far more software out there is closed source than open. And there are alternatives. There are more browsers available for Windows than Linux, for example. Most of them crap, but the same is true of the OSS world. But in any case, there's nothing intrinsic to closed source that would make your argument valid in any way. And even if there were no such thing as open source, you could still write your own software if you really wanted to scratch your itch. There's nothing stopping you from doing that on pretty much any platform (except those that are terribly locked down, but you can avoid those if you choose).
Windows7 can't use your printer or scanner from 5 years ago? Go get a new one. Nvidia don't write new driver for your 5 years old card for Windows7? You need to get a new one for 100$.
Again, I fail to see how open source is any better, or even necessarily better, than Windows in this respect. First of all, at some point, if you are going to upgrade your computer or software enough that you don't have drivers, then you need to do the rest of the work. Nobody's going to support every possible combination of hardware going back 20 years. It's infeasible for both closed and open source software. And that is really just a matter of manpower, not s
You have time to write a Slashdot comment, but you don't have time to log in to your bank's website for a few minutes once a week and look over recent transactions?
You have a strange sense of economics. Reduced demand usually means reduced prices and vice versa. Reduced consumption means less need for more power-plants and other related expenses. On the flip side, much increased demand means that the power companies have to build new plants or upgrade old ones, or upgrade infrastructure. The fact is, using resources costs money and the more you use, the more it costs somewhere. Reducing consumption does not make costs go up unless there's a false economy created by imprudent decisions on the part of the power companies or some sort of insane government involvement that keeps fixed costs high (which I can buy).
Ahh, why bother? Let's just burn through all our natural resources like there's no tomorrow so that the status quo can be preserved at all costs. I'm sure that'll work out somehow.
GTK+ themes require a compiler to create as well. Unless you count the color tweaking that you can do with the gtkrc files (something you can do easily through the GUI with KDE and isn't considered a theme). Of course, I don't see why a couple of megs of KDE libs is really a problem unless you are using a ten year old computer (but then it wouldn't be fast enough to use GNOME anyways).
Just to set things straight from reality, I'll tell you that you can very easily find out about these other facts and alternative theories. In fact, I was taught some of them in public school (yes, that's right). This isn't the Soviet Union. Information actually is available. Now whether some people choose to seek it out or listen to it is another issue. But please don't accuse Americans of just listening to "government bulletins" (!!! seriously? Almost no news is disseminated that way here).
What's so crappy about the Windows OS? The kernel is pretty solid and well-designed. Userland could be better, but it's still miles ahead of the Linux userland.
1998 called: it wants its anti-Windows rant back. Now if you want to see a truly cobbled together desktop system, take a look at the Linux desktop stack.
No, he meant he was going to kill Google by way of a file system check. On large ext3 volumes, those take forever. Might as well just kill yourself instead of waiting.
No, it's the OS's job to maintain an interface to its functionality and that is done, for historical reasons, via the C standard library on POSIX-type systems. Windows uses another set of libraries as the main interface, upon which the C standard library is built. I find the idea that you can make system calls directly on Linux a bit strange. It's really the odd one out. All other client-server models require a library on the client end. And almost every program on Linux does use such a library. So why the fuss?
Additional points:
But you have to remember, C isn't just another programming language. It's pretty much the closest thing to assembly without actually being assembly. So it's a darn good choice for the system libraries because any other language can easily access the interface. If the interface where in some more complicated language, it'd be a pain and probably require a lot more overhead.
Competing compilers can still use the same C standard library, so that concern is irrelevant. If they really really want to use their own special C standard library, they can still do that...but they have to make system calls via the system one. Big deal. One extra library (which you don't have to use if you don't want that kind of bloat).
And this one is actually interesting, unlike hers, which simply cuts out libc (boring). This one overlays the ELF header with the program code itself, which I find to be rather clever. In fact, it's better than the 29 byte DOS COM executable because COM files don't have headers and so don't have to deal with that problem.
Doesn't matter anyways because demand paging ensures that only the parts of libc that your program actually uses will be pulled into memory, so all the extra junk will remain on disk.
You can allocate global multi-dim arrays.
But anyways, it's not a big deal. Make a macro or a function to do the address translation for you and then forget about the impl. details. That's what FORTRAN effectively has to do. That's for C, where there should be no performance loss. For less low-level C-derived languages -- well, I guess if you need performance, you wouldn't be using them.
Slashdot Mirror
Wayland is not taking over X any time soon, if ever. It's mostly a playground for some new ideas. X.org is nowhere near being deprecated and probably never will be. Instead, the old extensions and feature crap will be removed (as has been the case for some years now) and new features and architectures will take over.
I've used Ubuntu in VirtualBox on Windows 7 and Compiz with fancy effects turned on actually runs rather smoothly. Some things are a little on the slow side (Firefox scrolling -- but face it, that's always slow), but otherwise, it does pretty good, considering.
All I have to say is "no shit". Thinking is brain chemistry. Emotions are brain chemistry. You take someone away from their family and throw them in a Gulag and I'll be you'll find a chemical change and "withdrawal" and whatnot. People like what they are used to. The brain adapts to its environment.
The only definition of addiction that I don't find odious is one that includes the qualification that the addiction must interfere with a person's ability to function according to cultural norms, or what is pleasant and self-constructive for them, should it fall outside of cultural norms. Anything else is just borderline moral panic.
Flame away.
You don't have to tell me. I'm fond of Perl. I do admit that it's easy to write obtuse code, but if you just try a little bit, you can write readable and straightforward code. In fact, some of the often-derided syntactic constructs make Perl easier to read, not harder.
Please, for the love of $DEITY, learn Perl or Python or Ruby or SOMETHING. VB's syntax is not predictable or reasonable if you've programmed with any other language or know how a computer works. And the other languages are actually cross-platform and can do everything VB can do and then some.
I'm a big fan of Unixy goodness, but this post is retarded. If there is a problem along the lines of "I'm trying to do this totally legitimate thing XYZ, but language ABC is having trouble with it" and your answer is "don't do XYZ", you have not answered the question correctly. There is absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be spaces in filenames...except that certain old programs and scripts can't handle it. Well, some old programs and scripts can't handle property security either. Should we get rid of property security? No. Fix the programs. Similarly, fix the shell. Or...just use Perl or Python. But the solution is not "don't use spaces".
Lucky you. Often times distro upgrades are a disaster unless you are on a rolling release distro like Gentoo (which has its own host of problems). As for the versions, uhh, there are half a dozen commonly-used distros and they do actually have different editions, such as a separate server edition, not to mention frequent releases. OSS does not and never has had one edition (and I certainly wouldn't call it "Awesome" since so much of the desktop software is half-working, limited in features or buggy) and aside from X and the kernel and the GNU userland, there isn't even a single primary piece of software. You have different DEs, different web-browsers, different administration tools (per distro), etc. I like that flexibility, but it has to be mentioned because it obliterates your argument.
And Linux is not highly resistant to viruses. Its security model, without SELinux, is actually less protective than Windows's security model. The problem with Windows is that the shell is more permissive (which actually turned out to be a problem with KDE as well, with the .desktop files fiasco a little while back) and that the user and developer culture around Windows has been one of lax attention to security. These things are changing. And thanks to new protections put in by MS over the years and new attention to security brought about by the massive increase in malware during the 2000s is turning the tide. I rarely have to go fix my mom's or other people's computers because of viruses any more. And I've never gotten one (unless I intentionally did something very stupid) on Windows.
Yeah you can. When was it ever true that you couldn't? This doesn't even make one lick of sense.
It's true that Mac uses Samba and the OSS NTFS drivers, but if those weren't available and they wanted interoperability, they could have just as easily licensed the tech from Microsoft or done their own reverse-engineering. They have enough developers and money to do that. It's certainly cheaper to leech off of OSS, of course, and that's the general tactic Apple has followed. In any case, this isn't a victory for open source as an ideology, merely a convenience gained by some software that happens to be OSS.
I'm not sure what the logic behind this one is. Netscape *was* an actual competitor to IE for a while with a completely closed codebase. It lost for other reasons. Firefox could have been a closed-source browser developed by the Mozilla foundation and done just as well. The reason it was successful was not because it was open source, but because it was better than IE in terms of features, speed and security, among other things. There's nothing inherent to open source that made those things true.
The upgrade treadmill in the OSS world is even worse. Distros are released every 6 months or so. New versions come out all the time. "Release early, release often". Windows comes out once every few years. And as for needing a faster computer, well, bloat is increasing just as fast in the OSS world as in the closed source world, unless you limit yourself to simple and old fashioned apps. Then again, if you so chose, you could still run Win2k or earlier.
Huh? Are you really trying to imply that there is only one app for everything in the closed source world? No. Far more software out there is closed source than open. And there are alternatives. There are more browsers available for Windows than Linux, for example. Most of them crap, but the same is true of the OSS world. But in any case, there's nothing intrinsic to closed source that would make your argument valid in any way. And even if there were no such thing as open source, you could still write your own software if you really wanted to scratch your itch. There's nothing stopping you from doing that on pretty much any platform (except those that are terribly locked down, but you can avoid those if you choose).
Again, I fail to see how open source is any better, or even necessarily better, than Windows in this respect. First of all, at some point, if you are going to upgrade your computer or software enough that you don't have drivers, then you need to do the rest of the work. Nobody's going to support every possible combination of hardware going back 20 years. It's infeasible for both closed and open source software. And that is really just a matter of manpower, not s
There are books detailing the NT Kernel and the OS X kernel (which is open source, after all).
Why do you need to run sed as root?
You have time to write a Slashdot comment, but you don't have time to log in to your bank's website for a few minutes once a week and look over recent transactions?
You have a strange sense of economics. Reduced demand usually means reduced prices and vice versa. Reduced consumption means less need for more power-plants and other related expenses. On the flip side, much increased demand means that the power companies have to build new plants or upgrade old ones, or upgrade infrastructure. The fact is, using resources costs money and the more you use, the more it costs somewhere. Reducing consumption does not make costs go up unless there's a false economy created by imprudent decisions on the part of the power companies or some sort of insane government involvement that keeps fixed costs high (which I can buy).
Ahh, why bother? Let's just burn through all our natural resources like there's no tomorrow so that the status quo can be preserved at all costs. I'm sure that'll work out somehow.
GTK+ themes require a compiler to create as well. Unless you count the color tweaking that you can do with the gtkrc files (something you can do easily through the GUI with KDE and isn't considered a theme). Of course, I don't see why a couple of megs of KDE libs is really a problem unless you are using a ten year old computer (but then it wouldn't be fast enough to use GNOME anyways).
The toolkit/DE zealots really amaze me sometimes.
I'm not sure why you think I'm a teacher...
Dammit!
Just to set things straight from reality, I'll tell you that you can very easily find out about these other facts and alternative theories. In fact, I was taught some of them in public school (yes, that's right). This isn't the Soviet Union. Information actually is available. Now whether some people choose to seek it out or listen to it is another issue. But please don't accuse Americans of just listening to "government bulletins" (!!! seriously? Almost no news is disseminated that way here).
Then I would say that's a big bug, so it should be fixed.
What's so crappy about the Windows OS? The kernel is pretty solid and well-designed. Userland could be better, but it's still miles ahead of the Linux userland.
1998 called: it wants its anti-Windows rant back. Now if you want to see a truly cobbled together desktop system, take a look at the Linux desktop stack.
No, he meant he was going to kill Google by way of a file system check. On large ext3 volumes, those take forever. Might as well just kill yourself instead of waiting.
No, it's the OS's job to maintain an interface to its functionality and that is done, for historical reasons, via the C standard library on POSIX-type systems. Windows uses another set of libraries as the main interface, upon which the C standard library is built. I find the idea that you can make system calls directly on Linux a bit strange. It's really the odd one out. All other client-server models require a library on the client end. And almost every program on Linux does use such a library. So why the fuss?
Additional points:
But you have to remember, C isn't just another programming language. It's pretty much the closest thing to assembly without actually being assembly. So it's a darn good choice for the system libraries because any other language can easily access the interface. If the interface where in some more complicated language, it'd be a pain and probably require a lot more overhead.
Competing compilers can still use the same C standard library, so that concern is irrelevant. If they really really want to use their own special C standard library, they can still do that...but they have to make system calls via the system one. Big deal. One extra library (which you don't have to use if you don't want that kind of bloat).
And this one is actually interesting, unlike hers, which simply cuts out libc (boring). This one overlays the ELF header with the program code itself, which I find to be rather clever. In fact, it's better than the 29 byte DOS COM executable because COM files don't have headers and so don't have to deal with that problem.
Doesn't matter anyways because demand paging ensures that only the parts of libc that your program actually uses will be pulled into memory, so all the extra junk will remain on disk.
You can allocate global multi-dim arrays. But anyways, it's not a big deal. Make a macro or a function to do the address translation for you and then forget about the impl. details. That's what FORTRAN effectively has to do. That's for C, where there should be no performance loss. For less low-level C-derived languages -- well, I guess if you need performance, you wouldn't be using them.
And this is most funny because C *does* actually have multi-dimensional arrays (at least statically sized ones).