Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: S-99 on October 03, 2008, 08:50:53 am
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My ex called me up today out of the blue. I just needed somewhere that had hot water so i could finish my shower. I made it over to her place, and her desktop and laptop are both ****ed up to use.
Suffering from a continual and unexplainable bsod in normal mode and safe mode with xp media center edition on her desktop. I popped in linux, backed up her data, and asked where her xp install disc was. She doesn't have one. So i said ok, you've used my computer, you're getting linux. She wasn't even alarmed, she already knows from talking to me a whole lot that openoffice and firefox are linux apps too. So i installed mandriva for her because the control panel in there is more friendly than other distro's control panels. I configged the system for her. She didn't really need to learn anything new with the kde desktop.
She's a real trooper, right off the bat she knows how to use the root password for installing games and the importance of the root password. She really liked the added security in keeping herself from ****ing up the computer or other people ****ing it up for her. She also loves that she doesn't need antivirus (i did configure a firewall for her). Her watching movies, downloading music, firefox usage, and openoffice days resume with no interruption. She just wants her desktop to work flawlessly. She doesn't use it for anything beyond surfing the net, movies, music, and openoffice like when she had windows. She loves how easy it is to lock people out of her computer too.
She even likes the other applications like amarok, kaffeine, and amsn. Amarok is too self explanatory for her, kaffeine reminds her too much of media player classic, and amsn was much too obvious for how it works. The start menu for mandriva was pretty self explanatory for her too.
Prime candidate for moving over to linux, mainly because a good deal of the time she only used openoffice and firefox on windows. She's very happy with what she has now, she's considering moving her laptop over to mandriva also (to replace vista entirely). Anyway, using her desktop became a much more simplified operation for her. She doesn't have to worry about drivers, malware, and screwing up the system as much as with when she had windows. I also didn't need to hunt down driver after driver for every piece of hardware in windows (if she had an xp install disc). Her computer now has no fuss :yes: It was cool.
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Linux is great... it's faster to install software, the software itself is often modular, it's fairly stable.
until it breaks, what would be a 10 minute repair in Windows often takes hours in Linux. Right now I can't view flash videos in Linux, and its not scheduled to be fixed for a few more weeks. Drivers for AMD graphics cards are beyond painful to deal with.
Hopefully Linux as a whole starts to work out these kinks, because they're all potential show stoppers to normal people.
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Linux as a whole will NEVER start to work out those kinks, due to the fact that Linux will NEVER operate as a whole.
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Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati. My ex has like the miracle machine, it came with a geforce 8400gt.
In all honesty, i make much more money off of windows than i ever do off of linux. On average, what i'm fixing in windows is a heck of a lot more than 10 minute repairs. The inefficiencies of windows makes me money. Microsoft update makes me a lot of money.
Sounds like you need a better choice in linux to mess around with. Not switch totally from windows and use it souly, but to mess around with. Mandriva like i said is a good choice, upon installation your proprietary nvidia or amd drivers are installed, all of the codecs you could ever imagine have already been installed (you can even play windows media right out of the box with mandriva), and there is flash already working. If your distro isn't working for you, try another :yes:
Anyway, be very careful with the admin privileges in linux. On average someone with admin privileges in linux is just like someone with admin privileges in windows...if that person don't know what they're doing, they can ream the system.
Anyway, this is my ex were talking about here, she's not going to screw up the computer, she only uses openoffice and firefox and much better that she uses them in linux than windows. This is a scenario where installing linux is perfect for someone else.
Linux as a whole will NEVER start to work out those kinks, due to the fact that Linux will NEVER operate as a whole.
This is something both of you guys said. Linux does operate as a whole actually. Scuddie is straying from the topic anyhow.
Yes, there's hundreds of distros out there, yeah they all seem kind of separate, but they do actually help each other out. Ubuntu puts out packages and bugfixes for debian, debian does the same back for ubuntu, some debian devs help out over with redhat, and redhat helps out all over with ubuntu. Basically distro developers help other each out a lot. Past people helping each other out, distros are getting more and more synced for released. Meaning that many distro's get released at the same time. When this happens, it means that the distros that were released at the same time are all made out of the same stuff. Mandriva 2008.1 has the same versions of software as ubuntu 8.04. Syncing releases makes it easier for developers to make their software available to other distros. Also, we can't forget about the LSB (linux standard base foundation). Linux does quite operate as a whole. And this operation does help work out kinks in the long run especially.
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What is "Linux as a whole"? I think Linux as a whole can never be stable, integrated or anything like that. How could it? It is constantly molding itself to become something new. There are no releases or roadmaps that would comprise the whole.
I think its the responsibility of each distribution to take care of the parts it is shipping, trying to ensure maximum level of integration within those parts. From thereof of its the job of each individual user to make sensible choices, regarding 3rd party software etc. things to use. It can be done well enough, but it will never be perfect (nothing is).
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I guess nobody wants to understand linux as a whole. The best way i understand it is a lot of cooperation between all of the distros. Trying to imagine linux as a whole like windows or osx....those are completely different things. Perhas linux would be more whole if it had one project in mind, but it doesn't. The hundreds of distros out there proves it, as well as the many desktop environments, and the numbers of ways to get things done.
However each distro of linux as a whole of itself is it must be understood. There is no central distro that all linuxes are based off of, and that's why. Each distro is it's own whole. And with each distro comes different philosophies and ways of gettings things done. In debian there's deb packaging, in mandriva there's rpm packaging...each packaging format has a different piece of software to facilitate installation. Debian with the deb packaging and it's installer was more geared for easy and fast updating and software installation on servers, whereas mandriva with it's rpm format and its installer is geared at easy individual program installation and updating not really facilitated by the user. Each distro not only has it's own ways of getting stuff done, but also supplies just about everything you could need. Mandriva is a much more whole experience than ubuntu is (the way mandriva gets things done is awesome).
I think linux is particularly stable. Centos, redhat, suse, debian stable, arch linux, are all very stable. Ubuntu on the other hand is stable a good deal of the time, that's because ubuntu is a reworked snapshot of whatever was in the debian unstable repositories from a short time ago, and reworked by the ubuntu devs to be stable. Many distros do stuff like this. Mandriva is just as stable as opensuse, and pclinuxos is very stable. Pclinuxos is a rolling release, but the updates put out for it, are put very slowly, and only if they are stable updates.
It really depends on which linux you use for stability and an awesome exerience.
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Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati.
What year you're living in? They're both more or less on even ground today, both suck just as much. Neither still haven't released XServer 1.5/X.Org 7.4 compatible proprietary drivers.
I'd tell people to get computers with ATI cards if possible, just because ATI has been releasing their cards specifications to the open, unlike Nvidia. ATI open source drivers are progressing fast and I doubt it will take long to have full hardware accelerated (and working) 2D and 3D rendering on all ATI cards. Much of needed hardware accelerated features are already working. Of course licensed proprietary tech like UVD will be out of reach. There is open source nvidia drivers called Nouveau in the works, but because nvidia doesn't release hardware specifications, development is much slower than on ATI open source drivers.
The days when nvidia was the choice of card for linux users is past. Until they do what ATI did and release the specs.
But anyways, good work getting your ex converted to linux.
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I don't know about the theoretical situation, but I'll tell you, it's a ***** to install the FGLRX drivers in ubuntu.
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I haven't had any problems installing fglrx on Ubuntu for a long time. The restricted driver manager makes it quite straightforward. On the Intrepid Ibex beta however, fglrx can't be installed because it doesn't support the latest XServer or X.Org. But neither does nvidia's proprietary drivers.
In any case, I rather wouldn't install proprietary binary drivers on linux. ATI open source drivers is coming leaps and bounds thanks to the released specs. It is just a guess but within next six to twelve months I don't think you'd need proprietary ATI drivers for anything unless you want to use some proprietary tech like UVD. Can't really say the same about open source nvidia driver project.
In fact, the open source ATI driver does support almost all ATI cards now if not all. So for basic desktop usage its all you need.
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Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati.
What year you're living in? They're both more or less on even ground today, both suck just as much. Neither still haven't released XServer 1.5/X.Org 7.4 compatible proprietary drivers.
I'd ask you the same thing (http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-gritty-****-on-open-source.html).
While X11 remains Linux's "only", or should I say most popular, window system, graphics will always be subpar compared to other OS's.
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Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati.
What year you're living in? They're both more or less on even ground today, both suck just as much. Neither still haven't released XServer 1.5/X.Org 7.4 compatible proprietary drivers.
I'd ask you the same thing (http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-gritty-****-on-open-source.html).
While X11 remains Linux's "only", or should I say most popular, window system, graphics will always be subpar compared to other OS's.
What are you smoking? I want some.
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Could you expand on what you disagree?
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You've got to admire X11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11) for it's principles though
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:wtf: damn people, this thread is getting seriously tough to follow.
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Linux deliberately contains no specification as to user interface or most inter-application communication.
Fixed.
Linux will never be a complete, unified operating system.
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It's always nice to not include all of what was said for your scuddie agenda :lol: Scuddie, you're horrible. There's a reason why X deliberately contains no specification as to application user interface.
X deliberately contains no specification as to application user interface, such as buttons, menus, window title bars and so on. Instead, user software – such as window managers, GUI widget toolkits and desktop environments, or application-specific graphical user interfaces – provide/define all such details. As such, it isn't possible to point to a "typical" X interface as at most times several interfaces have been popular among users.
A window manager controls the placement and appearance of application windows. This may have an interface akin to that of Microsoft Windows or of the Macintosh (examples include Metacity in GNOME, KWin in KDE or Xfwm in Xfce) or have radically different controls (such as a tiling window manager, like wmii or Ratpoison). The window manager may be bare-bones (e.g. twm, the basic window manager supplied with X, or evilwm, an extremely light window manager) or offer functionality verging on that of a full desktop environment (e.g. Enlightenment).
Many users use X with a full desktop environment, which includes a window manager, various applications and a consistent interface. GNOME, KDE and Xfce are the most popular desktop environments.
Basically it's saying that X is a windowing system that implements the X display protocol and provides windowing on bitmap displays and leaves the gui to the people who develop gui's. Particularly the devs who handle desktop environments like kde or gnome.
Another way to interpret this:
I'm not stuck with one lame ass desktop environment forever predetermined to me by my display protocol.
Benefits of this:
There's so many DE's out there to suit different needs that it's great. They're all in high demand. I can switch between them all, i have this power.
The next lame thing that people will say is, "well beginner users aren't going to need to do this, they aren't going to need this power." The quite simple thing to think about next is that beginning users don't care that they have this power, and that they're not going to use this power.
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While that's all nice to say, it doesn't excuse the fact that it's horribly implemented. Then again, that's to be expected of a program which has been around for a quarter of a century, hacked and patched, trying to keep with the pace of current technology. The fact that I'm forced to use a program whose current version (maybe iteration is the better word) is older than I am scares me.
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I don't think it's horribly implemented at all. To me it seems that it's built exactly to do what it's supposed to do and does it well. As far as that goes, i wish the devs working on new versions of it would be a little speedier. Been waiting on the new version of x for a while.
Patching and hacking yes, this happens with most software, including windows and macosx. Idk, old software = bad software? Where are you coming from? Do you know how old dos was when it was in use with win 95/98/ME (1980 ring a bell)? NT seems to have been around for the least time since way back in 93. I think age of the software is irrelevant. If it's been in use for that long, it's also been changing for that long, then it's probably that good. Otherwise everyone would not be using unix based oses (unix, solaris, bsd, macosx, linux) for desktop or server use anymore and there would have been a mass influx for a better platform a while ago.
Anyway, dont surf the net ghostavo, the number of linux and unix servers out there. It'll scare you. Like saying hi to a 40 year old grandpa (unix since 69).
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I don't think it's horribly implemented at all. To me it seems that it's built exactly to do what it's supposed to do and does it well. As far as that goes, i wish the devs working on new versions of it would be a little speedier. Been waiting on the new version of x for a while.
Patching and hacking yes, this happens with most software, including windows and macosx. Idk, old software = bad software? Where are you coming from? Do you know how old dos was when it was in use with win 95/98/ME (1980 ring a bell)? NT seems to have been around for the least time since way back in 93. I think age of the software is irrelevant. If it's been in use for that long, it's also been changing for that long, then it's probably that good. Otherwise everyone would not be using unix based oses (unix, solaris, bsd, macosx, linux) for desktop or server use anymore and there would have been a mass influx for a better platform a while ago.
Anyway, dont surf the net ghostavo, the number of linux and unix servers out there. It'll scare you. Like saying hi to a 40 year old grandpa (unix since 69).
Except I'm older than Linux (and if you take account it's latest iteration I'm way older) and Unix servers are probably rarer than even Windows servers. I'm not saying that old software is bad, but when you take into account just how far we have progress in 20 years (or even 10 or 5) it's not adequate to our needs and should honestly be put down and start from scratch. Even the holy grail of the open source world, the linux kernel is showing signs of bloat nowadays and if in another 5/10 years there doesn't seem to be any movement to replace it, I'll be surely dissapointed.
X11 IS horribly implemented. It consumes far too much to do far too little and if you don't believe me, check xclock which consumes over half a megabyte of RAM just to tell you what time it is. It was never designed in the first place to do what it does today and it shows. Imagine if suddently you had to change Microsoft Paint into a browser and you get the same idea.
P.S.
I wonder how much flak I'll get for the kernel one. :P
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Unix and linux servers are rarer than windows servers? Where are you coming from? Unix and linux are actually modular compared to windows server class products first off. Secondly for net servers and a bunch of companies, many already have had, or are getting more linux or unix based servers. Especially since linux and bsd unix can gotten for free.
The other thing is why would you want to slap down a lot of smackies just to have a server powered by windows server 2003? Going the route of debian stable or centos for a server is much better and much more capable.
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Unix and linux servers are rarer than windows servers? Where are you coming from? Unix and linux are actually modular compared to windows server class products first off. Secondly for net servers and a bunch of companies, many already have had, or are getting more linux or unix based servers. Especially since linux and bsd unix can gotten for free.
The other thing is why would you want to slap down a lot of smackies just to have a server powered by windows server 2003? Going the route of debian stable or centos for a server is much better and much more capable.
I said Unix servers are probably rarer than Windows, not Linux.
P.S.
And it seems you are right, apparently I forgot to include BSDs into the Unix bunch. :P It probably feels like a cop out to say this, but server OSs are built with more emphasis on stability than desktop OSs and so ancient near obsolete OSs are a shoe fit for them. Anyway, I still stand by my point with the added emphasis on desktops. :P
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It's hard to pinpoint what is still true unix. Solaris and bsd are the closest, with solaris being the closest out of the two. If anything is still powered by true unix yeah, that'd be rare. For server purposes...that's why centos and debian stable are ridiculous about stability with emphasis on server use. If you wanted to you could install them as a desktop operating system as well, it's a very stable experience, but i like the latest kernels and ff3.
To everyone else except ghostavo.
This topic should end since scuddie the flamer took it off topic from his first post in this thread. This thread was about those perfect instances when linux is great as an alternative. Do you really think that my ex cares that X may not be implemented properly? She can surf the web, have microsoft office compatible documents, and not need to worry about viruses. But no, everyones got to show how ****ing big their balls are instead of having a balanced discussion or story telling for that matter.
On the contrary, I do agree that ex will have still have problems implementing herself in future relationships.
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To be honest I am "one of those flamers". I was the one who brought the X11 issue.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice to provide a new experience to other people so that they don't grow accustomed to one OS. It's just we have higher hopes for what standards OSs and other "essential" applications in todays world should achieve.
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You are correct. It was me, and not Mars, who threw your topic off course. And it's obviously very true that I did it by flaming.
Oh, and you've got a lot of nerve comparing the likes of Linux to the greatness of Unix/HP-UX/Solaris. You have just insulted your knowledge and wisdom of operating systems far beyond what I would.
Anyway, I think this discussion is headed nowhere. It's just some uninformed and incredibly biased linux fanboy who wants everyone to bask in linux's own aroma. If Maeg were still here, he'd put you in your place faster than you can say, "Open source does not make a product better." But whatever, I've got to beat my chest and show off my huge ****in' balls to everyone.
Tool.
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X11 IS horribly implemented. It consumes far too much to do far too little and if you don't believe me, check xclock which consumes over half a megabyte of RAM just to tell you what time it is.
If this is horrible resource usage, then please by all means, post screenshots of your system that apparently does a much better job.
(http://www.joskus.jossain.com/free.jpg)
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i have to say my laptop uses much less ram when running linux( ubuntu and pclinuxos) than it does using windows on average 200mb less when running freespace with media vps,
and ive never had to use windows to unbug a linux installation but i have had to debug windows many times using a linux live cd
im not against windows or linux but to say windows is superior and more stable is blatantly
a joke
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Scuddie. Whether you like it or not. Linux is a unix like os just like bsd and solaris is. Who cares that i'm lumping linux in there. I did not say opensource makes a better product. Opensource in makes just as good a product when compared to closed source.
My how big your balls are scuddie. So maeg would put me in my place just as you have by switching the topic from the second post in the thread like you did.
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X11 IS horribly implemented. It consumes far too much to do far too little and if you don't believe me, check xclock which consumes over half a megabyte of RAM just to tell you what time it is.
If this is horrible resource usage, then please by all means, post screenshots of your system that apparently does a much better job.
/* screenshot showing Firefox using a bit below 40000K in memory usage */
I'm not really sure what you are trying to communicate. Those programs kind of make it hard to see how much X is consuming by displaying them, which is why I used the xclock example, since it's mostly just X. If you really want to keep using those examples, then by all means.
(http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/1761/screen1ls5.jpg)
The irony of proving (or not, since it's mostly because of other factors other than the window system I'd wager) windows has a "better" window system. With a desktop that's horribly bloated at that (not in my pc at the moment).
Obviously, in Linux you won't find anything better in the window department, but that's like trying to find a turd that looks better than another turd.
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Scuddie. Whether you like it or not. Linux is a unix like os just like bsd and solaris is. Who cares that i'm lumping linux in there. I did not say opensource makes a better product. Opensource in makes just as good a product when compared to closed source.
Linux is Unix-like. And it is only so cosmetically. It was designed as a cheap knockoff. Unix was (and still is) a very powerful operating system designed for enterprise solutions. Unix had standards, protocols, and specifications that were strictly enforced. Linux does not share that quality. Quite the contrary, standards, protocols, and specifications are usually looked down upon by the Open Source community. Likely due to the fact that it brings up limitations. But either way, Unix, HP-UX, Solariis and the like are OSes in their own right. The only thing that's standard about Linux is the kernel. Nothing else. BSD I don't know much about, so I can't say whether it's in the same vein as Unix or Linux.
My how big your balls are scuddie. So maeg would put me in my place just as you have by switching the topic from the second post in the thread like you did.
I was responding to mars, not you. I could give two ****s about what OS your ex uses. Think with the left side of your brain, not your right.
Oh, and I have NEVER said Windows was more powerful or more stable than linux. I have, however, stated the FACT that linux is neither unified nor standardized.
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Basically, linux, minix, bsd, solaris, etc. are all descendants of unix in a way and not (linux not so much yes). While linux may not be certified with any unix standards like the single unix specification and the POSIX standard, linux in this realm is where it is referred to as unix like.
I was responding to mars, not you. I could give two ****s about what OS your ex uses. Think with the left side of your brain, not your right.
Who cares, this thread got brought off topic really fast and you're doing nothing than being a flamer and really the first person who brought it off topic. If you really can't reply to a thread and be on topic, then that means you should find an outlet, contain yourself, or make a new thread for your topic.
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It may be all over the place but the thread is still funny to read.
Moore's Law just doesn't apply to software, there is no linear pattern to it.
People wander around buying PC's like hammers from the hardware store and instead of building something like proverbial house or a bridge, they hit people over the head with it and claim its a security risk... yeah thats cute.
Similiar reasons prevent societies from supporting managed traffic systems and the like. Humans inherently break things to figure out how they work and try to learn from their mistakes. Some however seem to favor the lazier approach of tricking people into mistakes for their own gain because it takes little effort to wreak chaos as compared to actually building things.
Others because they feel isolated and lash out on innocence thinking they are all against them.
OS's are tools but often vanity plays into it and we end up with individual variety which leads to diversity.
Then we cull the herd through destructive forces.
Its all an endless circular argument confusing Capitalism with Fascism to hopefully find a grey area to sustain itself.
Software development is the deciding factor toward the Singularity, not hardware development which Raymond Kurzweil even points out. I'm indifferent about a brand name or approach toward computing needs, its simply a vehicle for collaborating and communicating data. The only reality of purpose is a consistent predictable environment for handling complex repetitive tasks. The problem with security right now is that those tasks are quagmired by having those repetitive tasks fed back to the user for approval and distracting them from their goals or altogether preventing them from reaching their goals entirely to pay yet another toll to someone else to get there.
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Basically, linux, minix, bsd, solaris, etc. are all descendants of unix in a way and not (linux not so much yes). While linux may not be certified with any unix standards like the single unix specification and the POSIX standard, linux in this realm is where it is referred to as unix like.
Yes. Unix like by interface. Not in theory, not in practice, and certainly not in architecture.
Who cares, this thread got brought off topic really fast and you're doing nothing than being a flamer and really the first person who brought it off topic. If you really can't reply to a thread and be on topic, then that means you should find an outlet, contain yourself, or make a new thread for your topic.
lolwut?
**Complicated and irrelevant speculation about nothing in particular.**
What does that have to do with anything??
EDIT: Are you a bot? Judge Floro, is that you?
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I'm not really sure what you are trying to communicate. Those programs kind of make it hard to see how much X is consuming by displaying them, which is why I used the xclock example, since it's mostly just X.
Your comment gave the impression that someone using X should fear it to collapse any minute due to its horrible memory usage - if I exaggerate just slightly :). I was trying to illustrate how things fare on a system running X, in practice.
I did this because I think your argument was completely irrelevant considering the nature of the discussion that was going on. I mean, at the end of the day, isn't it so that what matters is how the end user experiences the system is functioning as a whole? How much xclock (for example) consumes doesn't relly tell anything about that.
So, well, maybe you are right - there could be problems if I had to run thousands of applications simultaneously. But personally I can live with a weakness that has relevance mostly in academic debates, as long as all the stuff I'd never imagine to need is running perfectly fine.
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I'm not really sure what you are trying to communicate. Those programs kind of make it hard to see how much X is consuming by displaying them, which is why I used the xclock example, since it's mostly just X.
Your comment gave the impression that someone using X should fear it to collapse any minute due to its horrible memory usage - if I exaggerate just slightly :). I was trying to illustrate how things fare on a system running X, in practice.
I did this because I think your argument was completely irrelevant considering the nature of the discussion that was going on. I mean, at the end of the day, isn't it so that what matters is how the end user experiences the system is functioning as a whole? How much xclock (for example) consumes doesn't relly tell anything about that.
So, well, maybe you are right - there could be problems if I had to run thousands of applications simultaneously. But personally I can live with a weakness that has relevance mostly in academic debates, as long as all the stuff I'd never imagine to need is running perfectly fine.
I'm sorry if I gave that impression, I might have also exagerated the situation, but we all like hyperboles, right? :nervous:. Hell, I use X (with openbox) in Gentoo because there is no real alternative to it. And yes, it's probably completely irrelevant to a general user using office and a browser and whatnot. However that doesn't mean it couldn't be better.
To prevent this from escalating even further, I'd like to present this interesting view (http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf) on not just X11 but on a whole lot of other issues regarding Unix and Unix-like OS's. Remember, criticism helps build better systems.
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To prevent this from escalating even further, I'd like to present this interesting view (http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf) on not just X11 but on a whole lot of other issues regarding Unix and Unix-like OS's. Remember, criticism helps build better systems.
...this book is amazing. The chapter on programming vindicates just about every single thing I had go wrong in Intro to C/C++ in college. (Spending the better part of two days debugging a segfault...only to find it was being caused by a single missing semicolon? Check.) I seriously have half a mind to forward this to a few of my ex-professors. :p
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Well, like even for an "I hate this" book, it is incredibly biased against Unix. Not to mention many of the things that they were doing were things that Unix was not designed to do.
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Why don't you let her experience the wonderful consequences of sudo rm ./ :drevil:
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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1
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LMFAO. Nah, i'd just be nicer and make a startup script that doesn't require the manually putting in of the root password to delete the contents of the desktop and the home folder.
#!/bin/bash
rm -rf /
Unfortunately this script shoved into a text file and marking it as executable wouldn't work unless you were running this file as a root user. Make a batch file that deletes c:\WINDOWS or a script to format the C:\ drive. I've done some dumb things with windows before, and formatting the C:\ drive on purpose when i was in windows (win2000) was actually possible. I was however running as an admin in windows, so i'm not too surprised, but the fact that it let me do it. I used some third party program to do it, i was thinking windows would at least bring up a prompt saying files are in use. Man i said oh **** because i didn't back anything up because my hunch was wrong.
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..but we all like hyperboles, right? :nervous:
At least that would be convenient, as we seem to be stuck with those anyway :D
To prevent this from escalating even further, I'd like to present this interesting view (http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf) on not just X11 but on a whole lot of other issues regarding Unix and Unix-like OS's. Remember, criticism helps build better systems.
True, it has its place. Sometimes even the most obvious problems keep getting overlooked. I guess that has to do with the kind of personal focus everyone has at the matter -- everyone with his/her own tunnel vision, be it a narrow one or a bit more wider, but anyway.
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If Maeg were still here, he'd put you in your place faster than you can say, "Open source does not make a product better."
Yes, yes he would. (claim that open source does not necessarily make a product better) ;)
I'd have got here faster but my spider-sense is a bit rusty these days. ;)
A recent development looks likely to make things interesting for x11 as a whole: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=xorg_wayland&num=1
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Your spider sense might have gotten rusty, but your ability to search certainly has not. :p
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Your spider sense might have gotten rusty, but your ability to search certainly has not. :p
Well I figured I'd start on the most relevant topic I could think of... ;)
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Heh, my first experience with Linux was trying to update the ATI Graphics drivers, there are better ways of starting Linux, like ones that actually leave you feeling like you had a clue what the hell you were doing... :(
Though I did learn that 'Sudo ku' is not valid command ;)
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Heh, my first experience with Linux was trying to update the ATI Graphics drivers, there are better ways of starting Linux, like ones that actually leave you feeling like you had a clue what the hell you were doing... :(
Though I did learn that 'Sudo ku' is not valid command ;)
It took me two day just to figure out how to install Ubuntu 8.04. And 2 hours later it crash so bad it need to be reinstalled.
I hate those Sudo commands. IT made be to go back to Windows vista. At least Windows Vista is more user friendly.
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Heh, my first experience with Linux was trying to update the ATI Graphics drivers, there are better ways of starting Linux, like ones that actually leave you feeling like you had a clue what the hell you were doing... :(
Though I did learn that 'Sudo ku' is not valid command ;)
It took me two day just to figure out how to install Ubuntu 8.04. And 2 hours later it crash so bad it need to be reinstalled.
I hate those Sudo commands. IT made be to go back to Windows vista. At least Windows Vista is more user friendly.
I have to admit that I pretty much suggest Ubuntu to every linux virgin that asks me about it. That being said it isn't perfect, I've had issues with installing it on esoteric hardware and pulseaudio is a royal pain in the arse.
I am utterly perplexed at the concept of Vista being easier to use. I consider XP to be, for the most part a stable and useful OS, Vista by comparison is so utterly broken in practice and theory that it boggles the mind that anyone aware of alternatives would want to use it. When Microsoft are their own greatest competitor you really don't need to ask 'is it broken'.
I find trying to coerce people into using linux is counter intuitive, as a person who doesn't like an opinion stapled onto me I'm loathe to do the same to others. :)
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I've used Ubuntu, SUSE, RedHat, even fiddled with Knoppix, but I'm still using Vista. It really depends on where you gain the most productivity. I don't like the pricing of MS, but unfortunately industry standards for compatability with Autodesk AutoCAD projects & its AEC content libraries force me to remain in Windows. Industry software pretty much everywhere has bloated severely without really making very dramatic gains in productivity vs the amount of resources they consume. It's like a cancer in the commercial market. I can't stand PDF, I think that entire format can go away and I wouldnt miss it. Publishing them still consumes as much resources as a full blown overgrown image file so why not just use TIFF images of a word document and be done with it ??
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PDF is manipulatable though. Too many free alternatives for making free pdf's. One of them is openoffice. That one has built in free pdf exportation right there. Aside from that there's online pdf converters too. Not to mention the great strides of the adobe acrobat replacers...foxit. Foxit has a free pdf creator and viewer. So light on the resources too, it's enough to make anyone switch.
Of course pdf creation does come with the box of linux gifts. It's too easy to make pdf's with linux. With or without openoffice. But, i'm still very happy with the strides foxit has put forward for the windows community. You no longer need to put up with bloated slow loading adobe acrobat pro.
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PDF is ok with simple 8x11 media, anything towards the publishing side in large format media issues on plotters, and the mass of people using the standard cant seem to generate it properly. Not to mention end user's being totally inept and fiddling with things they have no idea about then getting all bent out of shape because they cant be published due to huge memory over runs on the print server just to render their ignorance. It's a productivity issue that gets me bent out of shape often. Everything in this little box doesn't amount to sh%$ if it cant be gotten out to the real world in tangible media in a reasonable amount of time and resources.
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Why use pdf at all? As far as i'm concerned, exporting documents as png's or something would be a lot easier, more supported, and free. One reason pdfs are used is to preserve formatting in documents. idk any other reason why they're used. you can just as easily preserve formatting if you turned your document into an image. The other thing is that images can be of any size (you could have a billboard sized image, or an 8x11). This would be faster because you wouldn't need any extra software to open an image, at most a web browser.
Reminds me of my old classes. Where i'd have to make a powerpoint presentation for a report. I didn't see any reason for using powerpoint at all. I just hopped into gimp and made many slides for my presentation (you could easily do this with mspaint of course). I also took advantage of the windows xp image viewer for doing a full screen slide show image by image so i needn't open every image individually. The end result was that i had a much easier created slideshow that didn't have any dumb slide by slide powerpoint animations. My presentation was just as good as everyone elses aside from lacking the powerpoint slide animations (i didn't see having slide animations as necessary for a powerpoint presentation). I did have openoffice to make a powerpoint presentation with, but making lots of png's was so much easier for what powerpoint does essentially the same thing...showing slides of images but a lot more complicated to use powerpoint than say mspaint.
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Why use pdf at all? As far as i'm concerned, exporting documents as png's or something would be a lot easier, more supported, and free. One reason pdfs are used is to preserve formatting in documents. idk any other reason why they're used. you can just as easily preserve formatting if you turned your document into an image. The other thing is that images can be of any size (you could have a billboard sized image, or an 8x11). This would be faster because you wouldn't need any extra software to open an image, at most a web browser.
Reminds me of my old classes. Where i'd have to make a powerpoint presentation for a report. I didn't see any reason for using powerpoint at all. I just hopped into gimp and made many slides for my presentation (you could easily do this with mspaint of course). I also took advantage of the windows xp image viewer for doing a full screen slide show image by image so i needn't open every image individually. The end result was that i had a much easier created slideshow that didn't have any dumb slide by slide powerpoint animations. My presentation was just as good as everyone elses aside from lacking the powerpoint slide animations (i didn't see having slide animations as necessary for a powerpoint presentation). I did have openoffice to make a powerpoint presentation with, but making lots of png's was so much easier for what powerpoint does essentially the same thing...showing slides of images but a lot more complicated to use powerpoint than say mspaint.
When it comes to certain industries you can't really pick and choose the OS as the software simply doesn't allow it. Apple are clever in that way, they provide a really nice user experience and productivity software that works best in their OS (or only in their OS), DTP and artists love their stuff as a response. CAD is one of those markets that open-source has a hard time keeping up with; a lot of the software demands that you include non-free, patented or copyrighted components and this immediately makes the proverbial water murky.
I don't get your argument for PDF though. There are a massive range of tools available both pay-ware and free that can handle it, you can even embed PNG and other formats if you wish. Distributing documents in image format prevents simple copy-pasting of text and requires the use of OCR which is not 100% reliable. Most importantly, it's a documented format that anyone can create. Microsoft held off on inserting the ability into Office because they don't have the ability to control it. They're begrudgingly allowing ODF exporters because they have been given little choice.
I assume the newest versions of the software you're using are Vista only? Given that vista eats up GPU time it seems counter-productive to run an app that benefits from as much GPU power as is available (for openGL rendering, for example) in vista over XP.
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Just my rant for hating pdf in general. The thing is for pdf you need a 3rd party program for it no matter what. I don't want to embed images in pdfs. I want to use images as an alternative to pdf. Jpegs and pngs are stuff that people can create too, and a heck of a lot less hassle too.
The new versions of software for win that i have to install for people is xp and vista compatible. Adobe acrobat 9 pro is a ***** on ice to install...then again so are all adobe products when one must install them. Whether users like it or not at my job. I always turn on windows classic mode for the gui. That's about the only thing i can really do to turn off 3d hardware acceleration for the desktop in vista. Vista runs a lot faster with aero off too.
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I haven't had the need to create PDFs, but I believe they have one distinct advantage over images. People can use their favorite word processor or other applications, then create a PDF of it. It looks exactly like the original and all the viewer needs is a PDF reader.
So far it is similar to an image, but with PDF you can modify the PDF afterwards much more easily than you would be able with an image editor. If the file would be an image, you can't really modify it without decent skills in some decent image editor such as Photoshop. Also, PDF is good as a fill-out form. You can simply type what you want in designated areas, then print the form or send it as email.
In a nuthsell, S-99 is right in that PNG could do what PDF does, but PDF does the job it was designed to do much better because whoever creates, modifies and fills out PDFs needs much less skills to do so in PDF than PNG. Using image editor to fill out forms in PNG format would be more difficult because you can't just point, click and start typing. Nor can you edit already existing PNG file as easily as you would a PDF if you would have to, say to change a sentence. You would always have to keep the source material at hand if you ever think you have to change the PNG, otherwise it'll be a pain in the ass.
Sorry S-99, but advantages of PDF far outweights the minor annoyances of Adobe Reader. That said, PDF format is standardized and under OS X and linux you can view it without much hassle. Who knows, maybe Windows 7 image viewer will support PDFs natively.
I don't know how Vista ended up in this discussion, but you can disable desktop composition without reverting back to the ugly Windows 2000 theme by unselecting desktop composition in performance options. Still. it shouldn't be necessary unless it is a typical office workstation with sucky integrated graphics. If a computer has dedicated video card with its own physical RAM, it probably needs newer drivers. Vista composition is spiffy on my home computer and I like it.
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The PDF format itself is fine. Its annoyances all center around the atrocious Adobe Reader program and browser plugin. They have to be the worst examples of bloatware among any mainstream office software.
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I agree on that. However, Adobe Reader 9 is actually better than previous versions. Doesn't feel so bloated as it used to and starts up very quickly.
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Make sure to turn off automatic updates in adobe acrobat 9. That's also annoying.
One program i hope ms develops for windows is something similar to gnome's evince. Konqueror is also a multi document viewer, but it's also a web browser and a file browser. Very annoying. I prefer that file managers, web browsers, and document viewers not be one thing (modularity i desire if say i don't like a certain web browser bla bla bla and want to use a different as opposed to having redundant programs...one reason i hate installing real player for people as a media player when they've got media player 11 which is a pretty good program). Evince is great, just one program for viewing documents of any kind. I use it mainly for viewing images, pdfs, ms documents, and openoffice documents. This also makes sure i don't have to download a viewer for each different file format and file type. XP's and vista's image viewer is a great program quick and easy to view images and simple full screen slide shows. It'd be even more cool supporting more than just images :yes:
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Didn't I read somewhere that Vista's Aero-sparklies off-loaded the CPU (greatly reduced software-rendering of 2D) and thus made Vista run a bit faster? *Shrug* Either way, I'm a proud operator of Ubuntu64/GNOME, Ubuntu32/KDE and WinXP SP3 32.
I like it when the OS doesn't screw me to high heavens.
S-99: Good job on your ex. Think I'll have similar luck with my parents?
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*searches for word in PNG*
"FFFFFFFFFF"
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Think I'll have similar luck with my parents?
Definitely. I've converted my parents and one of my two sisters to Ubuntu and they've been using it for years. The other sister has husband who is pretty good with computers, so he takes care of their computer stuff.
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Think I'll have similar luck with my parents?
Definitely. I've converted my parents and one of my two sisters to Ubuntu and they've been using it for years. The other sister has husband who is pretty good with computers, so he takes care of their computer stuff.
"converted".
"My parents converted to Protestantism."
"WELL, MY PARENTS CONVERTED TO UBUNTU!"
herecy
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What? I thought operating systems were the religions of computers?
:p
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Think I'll have similar luck with my parents?
I don't see why not. You have to make sure the situation is perfect. Make the interface familiar as well as familiar programs. My ex only ever surfed the web with firefox, used openoffice, and media player classic in windows. The equivalents for linux for her was basically the same offering of software that she normally used in windows. I got her up and going with kaffiene for media player classic like media player. Also got her up and going with kde as her DE along with the mass storage taskbar addon in kde. After that computer on the desktop was easily understood as my computer, and the home directory as the equivalent of my documents worked good for her too. She really liked having an admin password and a user password. She totally digs having extra control with the security of her system that goes past just locking the desktop.
Use kde 3.5.10 for your parents. Kde is easy to modify to make it look like vista or classic windows (good for making users more comfortable).
Linux doesn't work in all situations for first time users though. It does work great for first time users when they don't have their own legal copy of windows (like my ex, they're usually the ones who are happy for an alternative and eager to learn). If you're parents are going to be messing around with linux install the kubuntu 8.0.4 release, and install with the wubi windows installer.
This will setup a dual boot system without wiping out the windows boot loader with grub (kubuntu will just get a bootup option in windowse's bootloader). This is the easiest way to setup a dual boot system and the fastest way to restoring a system back to normal when removing kubuntu. After installing kubuntu, make sure to install firefox.
With this you'll be able to dual boot and show your parents what's what. But, i wouldn't make them switch. Unless they need to reinstall windows and don't have a legal copy, or if they constantly get viruses and are tired of maintaining their computer when your not around. These are the only reasons i would try to interest someone in switching.
A good joke. "have you seen the latest ubuntu?", "i don't like pokemon."