The discussion should be at a higher level. Not 'what feature do we want from package managers' but 'why do we need package managers?'
After-all, Mac OS and Windows don't have package managers and they seem to do quite well... so what's wrong with the Linux way of doing things?
If you're talking about package managers, then the discussion is already lost because you're not even bothering to attempt to step back and look at the bigger picture.
I'm guessing that you're either not a Mac user pretending to be one for some reason, or you've never actually looked at your expensive Macintosh.
Believe it or not, I don't use Safari on OS X. I like tabs.
Browser preferences are browser preferences, but, uh, Safari HAS tabs. I'm pretty sure it's always had tabs.
Except for the fact that you get weird web-folder crap often in those mounted drive images that popup
What are you talking about? What is "weird web-folder crap?" (Your technical terminology is excellent, BTW.)
that don't have the applications shortcut in finder. I should probably of said this point with "open another finder window or use a existing one other than this one to drag and drop"
4 points here:
1) Click the weird oval thing on the title bar to show the toolbar, if that's what you're ranting about.
2) I agree that it's moronic for software to instruct you to drag it into the Applications folder, and then hide the toolbar by default. Unfortunately, Apple can't do anything to fix moronic third-party software. (Some packages hide the toolbar, but put a shortcut to the Applications folder in the disk image window, which works well. Why all Mac developers don't do it, who the hell knows?)
3) Many applications run just fine out of the disk image. In theory, all applications would run just fine from a disk image, but there are a lot of applications that require installation because they hook into the OS in some way, and there are a lot of applications written by programmers with a Linux or Windows background, so that ideal is a bit off.
4) All that said, Finder does, indeed, suck ass.
The UI design for Macintosh is basically based around the concept that "installation" doesn't exist, other than on the OS level. That is, if you see a.app file, whereever it is, you can double-click it and it'll run. This worked probably 90% of the time in Mac Classic, and it works maybe 75% of the time in OS X. It should be 100% with only extremely rare exceptions. Even Microsoft got this one correct: Office 98 for Classic would automagically re-install any support files it needed if it found they were missing and run without a hitch once finished. "Uninstallation" consists of dragging the application to the trash-- sure this leaves behind a harmless under 50k preferences file, but that's a lot less left-around junk than the average Windows uninstaller.
If Linux emulated the "installation doesn't exist, just run the app" ideal, it'd be a hell of a lot easier to use, just as most people find Macintosh easier to use than Windows.
And really, why SHOULD "installation" exist? You have a program, you run it. You're done with it, you can either keep it in a folder, or on your desktop, or even in a disk image if you want, or you can drag it to the trash. Easy, simple. The entire concept of "installation" needs to go away. One thing Apple had spot-on from day one.
Too bad so many Mac applications don't follow OS X's conventions then, isn't it?
Except Linux package management does this, and it's my opinion it's a good system, a feature that OS X lacks.
What about all of the Linux applications that aren't in repositories? I guess they don't follow Linux's conventions, right? How is that any different?
No OS is going to get perfect support from third party software developers. Hell, look at Windows: how many decades have they been telling software developers to write software so that it runs correctly for limited-access users, and how many Windows programs still require administrative access to run? The fact is, the vast majority of software developers don't know what the hell they're doing, don't give a crap about the quality of their software, and don't give a flying crap about following the approval process that OS makers like Microsoft and Apple have set up to ensure quality software. No system can fix that problem.
Minority? We must be running very different software.
Of the programs in my dock, exactly two (out of 19) don't auto-update themselves in some way. Those are Microsoft Remote Desktop and Cisco VPN Client. The rest either have their own auto-updater, or hook into the Apple Software Update program.
The OS X way would be more or less perfect, if updates for third party products could be searched for automagically, just as with the Apple software (through the system updater).
That will never happen on OS X, as it won't on Windows or Linux, because of legal and administrative reasons. Apple did used to offer the service, IIRC, and no third parties ever took them up on it.
Yes, but you can't buy a copy of (say) LinuxOffice on CD, install it from the CD, and expect it to work well (or at all) with your package manager. And if Google decided to charge for Google Earth, they wouldn't be able to as your package manager doesn't have any facility for taking payments, or requiring a serial number to download.
So you're right that it supports proprietary software, in a very limited fashion. But it still doesn't support commercial software.
Allow commercial and proprietary software the same distribution channels are open source software.
Until that happens, there will be no commercial software on Linux. Not only do current Linux package managers not facilitate the installation of commercial or proprietary software, but they are also designed in such a way so that installing a commercial/proprietary package is likely to break the package manager, requiring an extensive repair process next time you run it.
Linux will never have a strong software ecosystem unless commercial/proprietary software is allow to compete on an even keep with open source software.
A third-party distributor who wishes to distribute something that must link against a particular version of a library can include it in the application bundle, knowing that the exact version needed will be available. This can lead to many copies of the same libraries being installed, facilitating compatibility with applications that require different versions, but consuming (small amounts of) disk space unnecessarily and increasing the attack surface when multiple copies of an exploitable library are installed on the system... so? Macintosh has always operated this way, and it's always had a reputation for quality software, and it hasn't had a security problem in a decade. Sure it takes up a little bit of extra disk space, but you completely and forever eliminate the problem of DLL-hell (Macintosh has never had this problem), and if KDE/GNOME are worth their salt they should include 90% of the shared libraries applications actually need to use anyway.
A system such as APT does not need to provide a facility for private copies of libraries, since it does all of the dependency computation, and all software in the repository is built and linked against the libraries in the repository.
It also frequently fails, and is incapable of detecting a user's manual upgrading of some component. It also takes ten times longer than it should to do ANYTHING, as the 50k icon maker program requires downloading and compiling 20 different libraries from 14 projects. If the icon program was 150k, but included everything it needed in one file, things would be a lot easier.
But the Linux software ecosystem does not require this concession from the user -- the Linux distributor is free to provide a repository and tools for finding, installing, and updating software, without the need for manual installation.
What stops the distro maker from setting up their own website, or something like a package manager, to install the software from? (Hell, even Apple does this: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ )
The real problem is that Apple's package system is already well-established, has a reputation as being easy to use, and Linux users hate things that are easy for normal people to use. They'd rather be the "high priesthood of technology" and keep only "worthy" people on their OS. (Of course, they'll never admit this. But take one look at GIMP and it's obvious.)
That's not the point. The point is, why doesn't Stallman cart his hippy-ass off to some functioning democracies to sell his crummy software? India, in case you didn't notice, has tons of states that *aren't* communist. How come only commies are interested in Linux?
More to the point, he's starting with a computer that has hardware problems. (First sentence, he says it won't run XP because it has hardware problems.)
Why would he *expect* Vista to run flawlessly on a computer with hardware problems? Gee, do you think it didn't detect the USB memory sticks because of the hardware problems? News flash: OSes running on bad hardware don't work well!
What he's done is made a FUD-machine he can show to people to demonstrate how horrible Vista is to people nearby who would never suspect that the problems are due to faulty hardware. In reality, the fact that the computer runs Vista *at all* (considering it won't run XP) should be considered a major success for Microsoft.
First, let me apologize for something. I really should get out of the habit of replying to a post without reading the grandparent, and explicitly stating where I don't agree. For one thing, I am NOT claiming that a CLI is in any way a replacement for a GUI. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll note that I say ALL forms of UI have their place.
Fair enough.
But these are running a whole CLI in a GUI. For all intents and purposes, everything inside that little window is just as if I was back on vt1.
"But" nothing. The answer "double-click Terminal.app" was at least as useful as your previous answer "type in GIMP".
I avoid Word macros and AppleScript with a passion, and I haven't tried Automator (and probably won't), so you may be right here.
So you're qualified to speak to the merits of AppleScript without having tried it. AppleScript and Automator may not be perfect, but the point is that you *can* get the kind of scriptability/programmability you want without ever leaving the GUI. (And it's not like UNIX is perfect, either. It could improve in a dozen ways if UNIX users like you weren't so habitual.)
I'm not sure whether to insult you directly, viciously, or stealthily and sarcastically. The obvious thing is to make some joke about how for all your smugness about the Internet, you obviously can't use Google.
There's a difference between "knowing how to use Google" and "caring enough about the topic to Google it." You're the one who brought up those mysterious acronyms, not me.
You're on. Let's grab two normal people who have never used computers at all, ever, and you try to teach them a GUI web browser, and I'll teach them lynx. I'll have them exploring Google by the time you've taught them the difference between "right-clicking" and "left-clicking".
Why would I teach them about right-click at all? In the continuum of computer users, "right-click" is a power-tool. The vast majority of computer users never use it.
If a large corporation can save thousands of dollars by moving everyone from paper files to some ungodly VAX klugde where you have to manually type PostScript commands, they'll go with the VAX every time.
The VAX kludge would probably be superior to paper files. Of course, for a tenth the cost the same company could move to Windows Small Business Server or something similar *and* be more productive than the VAX solution. So your argument sums to "any computer is faster than doing things on paper," which while I'm sure most people would agree, has nothing to do with this particular debate.
Certainly not better, not really worse, and utterly pointless when Gaim works so well.
That GAIM? Oh yeah, it works so well it puts an un-movable un-resizable window on my screen, or on half my screen. That truly is the hallmark of well-working software. If you want to see decent multi-IM software, try Adium on OS X, but GAIM is a piece of crap.
It wouldn't still be around if [Mac OS] didn't meet people's needs. Yes it would. And for what it's worth, Pre-OSX Mac isn't something I'd touch if I could help it.
So now you're arguing that the free market economy doesn't work.
Don't think you learned to use Excel and GUIs without years of learning curve.
Not years. But yes, there's a learning curve to learning Excel. It's still months shorter than the learning curve involved in learning the Unix CLI interface, and I stand by my point. Ignoring the thrust of my argument to point of a minor omission doesn't change my mind, sorry.
It's trivial to run a CLI in a GUI. It's not trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI
I have an answer for you:
Double-click Terminal.app.
What the hell whack-ass GUI are you using that doesn't have a Terminal program? Either that, or you have so little experience running a GUI that you don't know about the Terminal program. Either way, I don't think you're qualified to talk about the GUI if you know nothing about it. Seriously, try actually turning on a Mac running OS X sometime.
but you can combine them to cover really anything you want to do, because at that point, you're programming.
Oh yeah, and we all know how popular programming is. Surely your "everyone must learn CLI" philosophy will make computer sales skyrocket!
I feel as frustratingly restrained as I do when my X won't start and I'm restricted to a commandline only.
So now you're arguing the opposite you have in the last two posts. What the hell? Make up your damned mind!
Every interface has its place, and there are at least a few of them that are absolutely irreplacable. Another one is the 3D interface -- all hype aside, you simply cannot do 3D modeling or mapping effectively with only a flat GUI, much less a commandline -- you really need to be able to fly around your creation.
Wait... so every 3D animator at Dreamworks and Pixar, every architect, every video game artist, every CAD user... they "cannot" do their job "effectively?" Have you told them this? I'm sure they'd be very interested.
(Come on, let's engage the brain before we start typing, huh? Or at least make an argument I can't shoot down in one sentence?)
But this kind of thing -- batch processing -- is something that Windows people have whole specialized applications for.
OH NOES! PEOPLE USING WINDOWS DOWNLOAD UTILITY APPLICATIONS TO GET WORK DONE!!! CALL THE COMPUTER POLICE!!!
Ok, sorry, sarcasm there. What exactly is your argument? And why the hell does anybody *need* to convert FLAC to OGG? What the hell even *are* those? (I have the vague idea they are file formats for music... right?) Can you pick a task that a normal rational person might someday need to actually do, and not these crazy contrived examples?
It's this realm between usefulness and cool hacks that is so attractive to the technically inclined.
And all ten of them are very excited. The rest of the population wants to use the computer to get work done, or maybe surf the web or play videogames. But there's a big difference between saying "the CLI is very attractive to the technically inclined" and saying "everybody must be able to install a video card driver using only the UNIX CLI."
Oh, and BTW: You're wrong. I'm technically inclined, and I hate the damned CLI. I'd much rather use something like Word/Excel macros or AppleScript (or Automator) to do batch processing on the rare occasions I need it because those technologies are actually easy to use. When I do need to use a GUI, I prefer DOS because DOS Batch files are a lot easier to write than Unix.sh files. And DOS can actually cope with spaces in filenames! *gasp*!
One more example: My DVD drive seems to kick into high gear... [rambling about using a CLI program to fix faulty hardware]... but I pretty much guarantee you'll never run into it not
Really? You thought that the GUI won in the 80's? Which GUI was available then?
Mac OS.
And you think THAT was more powerful than CLI? You're an idiot.
Ask someone interested in desktop publishing. Hell, Apple's Macintosh along with the LaserWriter printer *invented* desktop publishing. Decades of the CLI didn't create it, but only a couple of years with a GUI did.
And for what it's worth, yeah, Mac OS was pretty damned powerful. It wouldn't still be around if it didn't meet people's needs.
3 seconds, no starting a program or using the mouse.
Plus the months of learning curve so that you know what the hell that "cut -f2,3 -d',' file1 | sort > newfile" gibberish even means, not to mention the time taken learning how to create your own gibberish that does what you want. Given a choice between doing an extremely rarely-needed task in 3 seconds with years of learning curve, or doing it in one minute in Excel, I'll pick Excel every time.
These are trivial examples, yes, but you would be shocked to learn how much processing is trivial once you start doing it in an environment that doesn't hold your and and change your diaper for you.
If you're the type of person whose job consists mainly of combining and/or sorting strange random data files over and over again, you might have an argument. Maybe. (Except still not, since it's trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI-- try running GUI tasks like photo editing or desktop publishing in a CLI!)
But that type of person is a very small minority. Face the facts, bud, you're only deluding yourself. I may be an idiot for agreeing with the grandparent poster, but at least I'm not a delusional idiot.
It's a pain in the ass to link to the "static" version if I just want to pass a link along to a friend through email or IM. If Wikipedia wants people to link to "static" pages, they should make that the default URL. Duh. You have to click to some long-ass history page with thousands of entries, then click the top-most entry there, then THAT is the "static" URL.
Obviously, Wikipedia doesn't want that, because they haven't made that change. So while it is possible to link to a static page, I see the "no Wikipedia cites" policy being very wise, considering the current state of it.
The vast majority of personal computer users never used Windows 3.11 or a CLI-based computer. (A larger percentage of corporate users did, but they also had an IT department to take care of things like installing drivers.)
but in my experiance it is more ready than Windows 95.
That's a safe assumption. In fact, I'd be more generous and say Linux is probably closer to Windows 98/Mac OS 8.x standards. The problem, of course, is that it's not competing with Windows 95 or Mac OS 6.0.8. It's competing with vastly superior software, Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X.
Anyone who gamed in Windows 95 had at least a couple bootdisks laying around for DOS games, and in the early days those bootdisks didn't write themselves.
No, you went to the Add/Remove Components control panel and clicked a button. (Might have been in the System control panel in Win 95... I can't remember. Point is, you did it with a GUI.)
Figuring out what to type in is. Rebooting, then coming up with a text screen because "startx" failed and there's nothing but an instruction telling you to restore your backed-up config (with, of course, no instructions on HOW to do that or, even better, an option to automatically do it)... that's very difficult.
Of course typing in those commands *is* difficult for somebody who's visually (or otherwise) impaired. You can install a driver on Windows or OS X using a screen-reader... try typing in 6-x86.x86_64.run with a screen-reader.
Sharia and Democracy are not mutually exclusive. Sharia actually doesn't define how leaders are chosen... it can be a dictatorship, or it can be a free election, it doesn't matter.
You're right that not all interpretations of Sharia include stoning for offenses like adultery, but the most radical interpretations do (like those in effect in Iran), and those are the Muslims trying to spread their view of the world. If the only Muslims around were the variety in Malaysia, then we'd have no problems.
Why not compare it to open source search programs THAT RUN ON THE SAME OS?
Let's say that Beagle is the greatest thing ever and will change my life. How the hell am I supposed to "switch" to it if it won't even run on my computer?
That factor makes your comparison somewhat worthless, in my opinion. And even a bit cruel. Like when you describe Adium on OS X to a Windows user struggling with Trillian.
(And no, I'm not one of those slobbering Mac jerks who loudly proclaims how superior everything is on Macintosh. Adium just happens to be a good IM program and not available for Windows. There are lots of great programs available on Windows that aren't on Mac.)
Back in the "old days" when harddrives were 150 MB and people backed-up to floppies, there were tons of programs that would make indexes of your floppy collection for off-line searching. Are you seriously saying that zero of those programs still exist?
That's pretty much all there is to it to answer your question. Most things on OS X are great, but Finder is a huge, festering piece of crap that doesn't handle network drives worth crap, doesn't handle large folders worth crap, and doesn't have as many features as Finder in OS 9 did. And 5 releases later, Apple still hasn't fixed it.
I think the obvious point you're missing is that harddrives are huge and cheap. Disks are fine for backup, but if it's anything you might conceivably need ever, just keep it on the drive.
I heard the illuminadi made them pay Microsoft because these companies know about the Venus base! NOBODY IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VENUS BASE! Anyway, the aliens in the Venus base don't use Windows because they know the French government has installed electron bugs in it which can enter your brain and make you like blueberry bagels, and really, who wants that?
Posting videos to a website isn't a "right", it's a freebie offered by a corporation so that they can make revenue by showing ads alongside the video. Saying you have the "right" to post to YouTube is like saying that you have the "right" to get a free toy when you buy Cheerios.
In what way, exactly, is Google taking away somebody's rights? Please, I'd like to know.
To a majority of Muslims, "progress" would be considered having the entire middle east living under the Sharia law as outlined by the Koran. Debates in Sharia aren't things like, "should the speaker be given use of a military jet?" but along the lines of, "when we stone adulterers to death, should it be public or private?"
Slashdot Mirror
The discussion should be at a higher level. Not 'what feature do we want from package managers' but 'why do we need package managers?'
After-all, Mac OS and Windows don't have package managers and they seem to do quite well... so what's wrong with the Linux way of doing things?
If you're talking about package managers, then the discussion is already lost because you're not even bothering to attempt to step back and look at the bigger picture.
I'm guessing that you're either not a Mac user pretending to be one for some reason, or you've never actually looked at your expensive Macintosh.
.app file, whereever it is, you can double-click it and it'll run. This worked probably 90% of the time in Mac Classic, and it works maybe 75% of the time in OS X. It should be 100% with only extremely rare exceptions. Even Microsoft got this one correct: Office 98 for Classic would automagically re-install any support files it needed if it found they were missing and run without a hitch once finished. "Uninstallation" consists of dragging the application to the trash-- sure this leaves behind a harmless under 50k preferences file, but that's a lot less left-around junk than the average Windows uninstaller.
Believe it or not, I don't use Safari on OS X. I like tabs.
Browser preferences are browser preferences, but, uh, Safari HAS tabs. I'm pretty sure it's always had tabs.
Except for the fact that you get weird web-folder crap often in those mounted drive images that popup
What are you talking about? What is "weird web-folder crap?" (Your technical terminology is excellent, BTW.)
that don't have the applications shortcut in finder. I should probably of said this point with "open another finder window or use a existing one other than this one to drag and drop"
4 points here:
1) Click the weird oval thing on the title bar to show the toolbar, if that's what you're ranting about.
2) I agree that it's moronic for software to instruct you to drag it into the Applications folder, and then hide the toolbar by default. Unfortunately, Apple can't do anything to fix moronic third-party software. (Some packages hide the toolbar, but put a shortcut to the Applications folder in the disk image window, which works well. Why all Mac developers don't do it, who the hell knows?)
3) Many applications run just fine out of the disk image. In theory, all applications would run just fine from a disk image, but there are a lot of applications that require installation because they hook into the OS in some way, and there are a lot of applications written by programmers with a Linux or Windows background, so that ideal is a bit off.
4) All that said, Finder does, indeed, suck ass.
The UI design for Macintosh is basically based around the concept that "installation" doesn't exist, other than on the OS level. That is, if you see a
If Linux emulated the "installation doesn't exist, just run the app" ideal, it'd be a hell of a lot easier to use, just as most people find Macintosh easier to use than Windows.
And really, why SHOULD "installation" exist? You have a program, you run it. You're done with it, you can either keep it in a folder, or on your desktop, or even in a disk image if you want, or you can drag it to the trash. Easy, simple. The entire concept of "installation" needs to go away. One thing Apple had spot-on from day one.
Too bad so many Mac applications don't follow OS X's conventions then, isn't it?
Except Linux package management does this, and it's my opinion it's a good system, a feature that OS X lacks.
What about all of the Linux applications that aren't in repositories? I guess they don't follow Linux's conventions, right? How is that any different?
No OS is going to get perfect support from third party software developers. Hell, look at Windows: how many decades have they been telling software developers to write software so that it runs correctly for limited-access users, and how many Windows programs still require administrative access to run? The fact is, the vast majority of software developers don't know what the hell they're doing, don't give a crap about the quality of their software, and don't give a flying crap about following the approval process that OS makers like Microsoft and Apple have set up to ensure quality software. No system can fix that problem.
I rarely use the start menu, I usually do alt
Minority? We must be running very different software.
Of the programs in my dock, exactly two (out of 19) don't auto-update themselves in some way. Those are Microsoft Remote Desktop and Cisco VPN Client. The rest either have their own auto-updater, or hook into the Apple Software Update program.
The OS X way would be more or less perfect, if updates for third party products could be searched for automagically, just as with the Apple software (through the system updater).
That will never happen on OS X, as it won't on Windows or Linux, because of legal and administrative reasons. Apple did used to offer the service, IIRC, and no third parties ever took them up on it.
Yes, but you can't buy a copy of (say) LinuxOffice on CD, install it from the CD, and expect it to work well (or at all) with your package manager. And if Google decided to charge for Google Earth, they wouldn't be able to as your package manager doesn't have any facility for taking payments, or requiring a serial number to download.
So you're right that it supports proprietary software, in a very limited fashion. But it still doesn't support commercial software.
No.
Number 1 should be:
Allow commercial and proprietary software the same distribution channels are open source software.
Until that happens, there will be no commercial software on Linux. Not only do current Linux package managers not facilitate the installation of commercial or proprietary software, but they are also designed in such a way so that installing a commercial/proprietary package is likely to break the package manager, requiring an extensive repair process next time you run it.
Linux will never have a strong software ecosystem unless commercial/proprietary software is allow to compete on an even keep with open source software.
A third-party distributor who wishes to distribute something that must link against a particular version of a library can include it in the application bundle, knowing that the exact version needed will be available. This can lead to many copies of the same libraries being installed, facilitating compatibility with applications that require different versions, but consuming (small amounts of) disk space unnecessarily and increasing the attack surface when multiple copies of an exploitable library are installed on the system ... so? Macintosh has always operated this way, and it's always had a reputation for quality software, and it hasn't had a security problem in a decade. Sure it takes up a little bit of extra disk space, but you completely and forever eliminate the problem of DLL-hell (Macintosh has never had this problem), and if KDE/GNOME are worth their salt they should include 90% of the shared libraries applications actually need to use anyway.
A system such as APT does not need to provide a facility for private copies of libraries, since it does all of the dependency computation, and all software in the repository is built and linked against the libraries in the repository.
It also frequently fails, and is incapable of detecting a user's manual upgrading of some component. It also takes ten times longer than it should to do ANYTHING, as the 50k icon maker program requires downloading and compiling 20 different libraries from 14 projects. If the icon program was 150k, but included everything it needed in one file, things would be a lot easier.
But the Linux software ecosystem does not require this concession from the user -- the Linux distributor is free to provide a repository and tools for finding, installing, and updating software, without the need for manual installation.
What stops the distro maker from setting up their own website, or something like a package manager, to install the software from? (Hell, even Apple does this: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ )
The real problem is that Apple's package system is already well-established, has a reputation as being easy to use, and Linux users hate things that are easy for normal people to use. They'd rather be the "high priesthood of technology" and keep only "worthy" people on their OS. (Of course, they'll never admit this. But take one look at GIMP and it's obvious.)
How do you afford building this damned thing in the first place?
That's not the point. The point is, why doesn't Stallman cart his hippy-ass off to some functioning democracies to sell his crummy software? India, in case you didn't notice, has tons of states that *aren't* communist. How come only commies are interested in Linux?
More to the point, he's starting with a computer that has hardware problems. (First sentence, he says it won't run XP because it has hardware problems.)
Why would he *expect* Vista to run flawlessly on a computer with hardware problems? Gee, do you think it didn't detect the USB memory sticks because of the hardware problems? News flash: OSes running on bad hardware don't work well!
What he's done is made a FUD-machine he can show to people to demonstrate how horrible Vista is to people nearby who would never suspect that the problems are due to faulty hardware. In reality, the fact that the computer runs Vista *at all* (considering it won't run XP) should be considered a major success for Microsoft.
First, let me apologize for something. I really should get out of the habit of replying to a post without reading the grandparent, and explicitly stating where I don't agree. For one thing, I am NOT claiming that a CLI is in any way a replacement for a GUI. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll note that I say ALL forms of UI have their place.
l y.pngg gy.png
Fair enough.
But these are running a whole CLI in a GUI. For all intents and purposes, everything inside that little window is just as if I was back on vt1.
"But" nothing. The answer "double-click Terminal.app" was at least as useful as your previous answer "type in GIMP".
I avoid Word macros and AppleScript with a passion, and I haven't tried Automator (and probably won't), so you may be right here.
So you're qualified to speak to the merits of AppleScript without having tried it. AppleScript and Automator may not be perfect, but the point is that you *can* get the kind of scriptability/programmability you want without ever leaving the GUI. (And it's not like UNIX is perfect, either. It could improve in a dozen ways if UNIX users like you weren't so habitual.)
I'm not sure whether to insult you directly, viciously, or stealthily and sarcastically. The obvious thing is to make some joke about how for all your smugness about the Internet, you obviously can't use Google.
There's a difference between "knowing how to use Google" and "caring enough about the topic to Google it." You're the one who brought up those mysterious acronyms, not me.
You're on. Let's grab two normal people who have never used computers at all, ever, and you try to teach them a GUI web browser, and I'll teach them lynx. I'll have them exploring Google by the time you've taught them the difference between "right-clicking" and "left-clicking".
Why would I teach them about right-click at all? In the continuum of computer users, "right-click" is a power-tool. The vast majority of computer users never use it.
If a large corporation can save thousands of dollars by moving everyone from paper files to some ungodly VAX klugde where you have to manually type PostScript commands, they'll go with the VAX every time.
The VAX kludge would probably be superior to paper files. Of course, for a tenth the cost the same company could move to Windows Small Business Server or something similar *and* be more productive than the VAX solution. So your argument sums to "any computer is faster than doing things on paper," which while I'm sure most people would agree, has nothing to do with this particular debate.
Certainly not better, not really worse, and utterly pointless when Gaim works so well.
This GAIM?
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/gaim_2_is_ug
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/gaim_2_is_bu
That GAIM? Oh yeah, it works so well it puts an un-movable un-resizable window on my screen, or on half my screen. That truly is the hallmark of well-working software. If you want to see decent multi-IM software, try Adium on OS X, but GAIM is a piece of crap.
It wouldn't still be around if [Mac OS] didn't meet people's needs.
.sh files. And DOS can actually cope with spaces in filenames! *gasp*!
... [rambling about using a CLI program to fix faulty hardware] ... but I pretty much guarantee you'll never run into it not
Yes it would. And for what it's worth, Pre-OSX Mac isn't something I'd touch if I could help it.
So now you're arguing that the free market economy doesn't work.
Don't think you learned to use Excel and GUIs without years of learning curve.
Not years. But yes, there's a learning curve to learning Excel. It's still months shorter than the learning curve involved in learning the Unix CLI interface, and I stand by my point. Ignoring the thrust of my argument to point of a minor omission doesn't change my mind, sorry.
It's trivial to run a CLI in a GUI. It's not trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI
I have an answer for you:
Double-click Terminal.app.
What the hell whack-ass GUI are you using that doesn't have a Terminal program? Either that, or you have so little experience running a GUI that you don't know about the Terminal program. Either way, I don't think you're qualified to talk about the GUI if you know nothing about it. Seriously, try actually turning on a Mac running OS X sometime.
but you can combine them to cover really anything you want to do, because at that point, you're programming.
Oh yeah, and we all know how popular programming is. Surely your "everyone must learn CLI" philosophy will make computer sales skyrocket!
I feel as frustratingly restrained as I do when my X won't start and I'm restricted to a commandline only.
So now you're arguing the opposite you have in the last two posts. What the hell? Make up your damned mind!
Every interface has its place, and there are at least a few of them that are absolutely irreplacable. Another one is the 3D interface -- all hype aside, you simply cannot do 3D modeling or mapping effectively with only a flat GUI, much less a commandline -- you really need to be able to fly around your creation.
Wait... so every 3D animator at Dreamworks and Pixar, every architect, every video game artist, every CAD user... they "cannot" do their job "effectively?" Have you told them this? I'm sure they'd be very interested.
(Come on, let's engage the brain before we start typing, huh? Or at least make an argument I can't shoot down in one sentence?)
But this kind of thing -- batch processing -- is something that Windows people have whole specialized applications for.
OH NOES! PEOPLE USING WINDOWS DOWNLOAD UTILITY APPLICATIONS TO GET WORK DONE!!! CALL THE COMPUTER POLICE!!!
Ok, sorry, sarcasm there. What exactly is your argument? And why the hell does anybody *need* to convert FLAC to OGG? What the hell even *are* those? (I have the vague idea they are file formats for music... right?) Can you pick a task that a normal rational person might someday need to actually do, and not these crazy contrived examples?
It's this realm between usefulness and cool hacks that is so attractive to the technically inclined.
And all ten of them are very excited. The rest of the population wants to use the computer to get work done, or maybe surf the web or play videogames. But there's a big difference between saying "the CLI is very attractive to the technically inclined" and saying "everybody must be able to install a video card driver using only the UNIX CLI."
Oh, and BTW: You're wrong. I'm technically inclined, and I hate the damned CLI. I'd much rather use something like Word/Excel macros or AppleScript (or Automator) to do batch processing on the rare occasions I need it because those technologies are actually easy to use. When I do need to use a GUI, I prefer DOS because DOS Batch files are a lot easier to write than Unix
One more example: My DVD drive seems to kick into high gear
Really? You thought that the GUI won in the 80's? Which GUI was available then?
Mac OS.
And you think THAT was more powerful than CLI? You're an idiot.
Ask someone interested in desktop publishing. Hell, Apple's Macintosh along with the LaserWriter printer *invented* desktop publishing. Decades of the CLI didn't create it, but only a couple of years with a GUI did.
And for what it's worth, yeah, Mac OS was pretty damned powerful. It wouldn't still be around if it didn't meet people's needs.
3 seconds, no starting a program or using the mouse.
Plus the months of learning curve so that you know what the hell that "cut -f2,3 -d',' file1 | sort > newfile" gibberish even means, not to mention the time taken learning how to create your own gibberish that does what you want. Given a choice between doing an extremely rarely-needed task in 3 seconds with years of learning curve, or doing it in one minute in Excel, I'll pick Excel every time.
These are trivial examples, yes, but you would be shocked to learn how much processing is trivial once you start doing it in an environment that doesn't hold your and and change your diaper for you.
If you're the type of person whose job consists mainly of combining and/or sorting strange random data files over and over again, you might have an argument. Maybe. (Except still not, since it's trivial to run CLI commands in a GUI-- try running GUI tasks like photo editing or desktop publishing in a CLI!)
But that type of person is a very small minority. Face the facts, bud, you're only deluding yourself. I may be an idiot for agreeing with the grandparent poster, but at least I'm not a delusional idiot.
It's a pain in the ass to link to the "static" version if I just want to pass a link along to a friend through email or IM. If Wikipedia wants people to link to "static" pages, they should make that the default URL. Duh. You have to click to some long-ass history page with thousands of entries, then click the top-most entry there, then THAT is the "static" URL.
Obviously, Wikipedia doesn't want that, because they haven't made that change. So while it is possible to link to a static page, I see the "no Wikipedia cites" policy being very wise, considering the current state of it.
Mac OS X 10.0 was released to the public March 24, 2001. Sorry, but both Linux and Microsoft are way behind the curve on this one.
The vast majority of personal computer users never used Windows 3.11 or a CLI-based computer. (A larger percentage of corporate users did, but they also had an IT department to take care of things like installing drivers.)
but in my experiance it is more ready than Windows 95.
That's a safe assumption. In fact, I'd be more generous and say Linux is probably closer to Windows 98/Mac OS 8.x standards. The problem, of course, is that it's not competing with Windows 95 or Mac OS 6.0.8. It's competing with vastly superior software, Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X.
Anyone who gamed in Windows 95 had at least a couple bootdisks laying around for DOS games, and in the early days those bootdisks didn't write themselves.
No, you went to the Add/Remove Components control panel and clicked a button. (Might have been in the System control panel in Win 95... I can't remember. Point is, you did it with a GUI.)
Typing in the stuff isn't difficult.
Figuring out what to type in is. Rebooting, then coming up with a text screen because "startx" failed and there's nothing but an instruction telling you to restore your backed-up config (with, of course, no instructions on HOW to do that or, even better, an option to automatically do it)... that's very difficult.
Of course typing in those commands *is* difficult for somebody who's visually (or otherwise) impaired. You can install a driver on Windows or OS X using a screen-reader... try typing in 6-x86.x86_64.run with a screen-reader.
Sharia and Democracy are not mutually exclusive. Sharia actually doesn't define how leaders are chosen... it can be a dictatorship, or it can be a free election, it doesn't matter.
You're right that not all interpretations of Sharia include stoning for offenses like adultery, but the most radical interpretations do (like those in effect in Iran), and those are the Muslims trying to spread their view of the world. If the only Muslims around were the variety in Malaysia, then we'd have no problems.
Why not compare it to open source search programs THAT RUN ON THE SAME OS?
Let's say that Beagle is the greatest thing ever and will change my life. How the hell am I supposed to "switch" to it if it won't even run on my computer?
That factor makes your comparison somewhat worthless, in my opinion. And even a bit cruel. Like when you describe Adium on OS X to a Windows user struggling with Trillian.
(And no, I'm not one of those slobbering Mac jerks who loudly proclaims how superior everything is on Macintosh. Adium just happens to be a good IM program and not available for Windows. There are lots of great programs available on Windows that aren't on Mac.)
Back in the "old days" when harddrives were 150 MB and people backed-up to floppies, there were tons of programs that would make indexes of your floppy collection for off-line searching. Are you seriously saying that zero of those programs still exist?
A quick MacUpdate.com search brings up this product, but there must be others: http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/15717
Like I said, there used to be dozens... I don't believe that they're *all* disappeared.
Yes, this:
Finder sucks ass.
That's pretty much all there is to it to answer your question. Most things on OS X are great, but Finder is a huge, festering piece of crap that doesn't handle network drives worth crap, doesn't handle large folders worth crap, and doesn't have as many features as Finder in OS 9 did. And 5 releases later, Apple still hasn't fixed it.
It's infuriating.
Yes, yes, that's great... but I don't think Apple is CLAIMING that it's doing anything new. It's just adding features to program it already makes.
Frankly, I don't get the point of your post. Does Beagle even run in OS X?
I think the obvious point you're missing is that harddrives are huge and cheap. Disks are fine for backup, but if it's anything you might conceivably need ever, just keep it on the drive.
I heard the illuminadi made them pay Microsoft because these companies know about the Venus base! NOBODY IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VENUS BASE! Anyway, the aliens in the Venus base don't use Windows because they know the French government has installed electron bugs in it which can enter your brain and make you like blueberry bagels, and really, who wants that?
Posting videos to a website isn't a "right", it's a freebie offered by a corporation so that they can make revenue by showing ads alongside the video. Saying you have the "right" to post to YouTube is like saying that you have the "right" to get a free toy when you buy Cheerios.
In what way, exactly, is Google taking away somebody's rights? Please, I'd like to know.
Would it be progress?
To a majority of Muslims, "progress" would be considered having the entire middle east living under the Sharia law as outlined by the Koran. Debates in Sharia aren't things like, "should the speaker be given use of a military jet?" but along the lines of, "when we stone adulterers to death, should it be public or private?"