Here here! Or is that hear hear? Never been sure about that one...

My mum has a 3.0 GHz laptop with... Plenty of RAM and it slows to a crawl when running WinXP. It's painful watching her struggle along with it, as it loses its wireless connection, takes ages to do a simple task, overheats, crashes, etc etc etc. I really want to install Linux on it for her, but last time we tried that the wireless PCMCIA card didn't work (Suse 9.1 on an IBM thinkpad) and all problems after that were blamed on Linux... Plus she's unwilling to learn to use it. It's really frustrating .

In other news...

Fsk m3...! Please tell me you built that yourself .

It's a contraction of "Hear him, hear him," so you want "Hear hear!"

Yup, originally built June 05 and upgraded to the Dual Core in March of this year. But under windows even this thing has hiccups and weird slowdowns, I got so used to them I didn't think a system without that existed

What do you use that requires all that bad assness?

Bad assness?? It barely meets the minimum requirements for Vista!!

Thankyou, I'll be here all week. Try the veal!

Some of you around here may already be familiar with this site, but I just stumbled acrossed it recently. It has a real good explanation of why free software is important to everyone and not just hackers, geeks, and programmers, but also to the average joe user that alot of times doesn't see how it's a good thing for them as well.

http://www.moria.de/~michael/freedom.html

This guy explains it really well.

I just want to add some of my own thoughts about this though.

I've been into computers since somewhere around 1983 or so. I've seen how they have changed over the years. Not just computers, but all of the standards, and all of the paradigms around them. These days the world of computer users, on average, has become conditioned to computing being an environment where it's somehow ok to for them to be spammed with advertisement, snooped on, and have processes and software forced upon their system behind their backs. It's become normalized for big corporations to do anything they please, no matter the ethical ramifications, as long as they somehow merely slip in some obscure and hard to understand fine print into an accompying EULA.

Then, due to certain companies that still believe in the misnomer of security by obsurity, they are forced to invest even more dollars on software to protect their system from malware. It's rather ironic though that there is a huge hypocrisy when it comes to concept of malware and anti-malware. It ends up that what is considered malware is determined by the definition of the anti-malware designers. Somehow, it seems that if there is enough financial backing behind certain software, that it isn't categorized as malware. Alot of the anti-malware advocates seems to say that "malware is any form of software that does either something malicious to the system and/or without the user's approval". The first part is ambiguous and is something that those with lots of resources can get their legal staff can easily put whatever spin they need to on. While the second part to that statement is rather interesting and just makes you go hmmm.

What ever happenned to the concept of that when you buy something, such as your computer, that it's your property and not some company's. Would one be ok if some suit came barging into their home to rearrange their furniture, install cameras, and/or told them how to run their household? Or did something similar with their car (funny thing is that it seems like these days that there are starting to be a market for such things for people's cars. Obviously people's home are the next thing. Hurry up and be the first on your block to have on-star so that you can be kept tabs on.)?

Those were my exact thoughts upon taking delivery of MS-DOS 3.3 in 1990 (the first Microsoft product I'd ever purchased) and reading the EULA that came with it. I never felt comfortable using any Microsoft software after that, regardless of the fact that I'd paid for it and it was rightfully mine.

And then along came Linux. What a welcome relief it is to use quality software which is sensibly licensed!!

Well. I'm not very sure what this thread is about anymore, but I'd like to add my 2 cents about something I personally dislike in Linux so far: The GUI. That goes to GTK, QT and other toolkits.

They sure look good, has a lot more fancy stuff than Windows GUI, but at the end, none of them work very well. A simple copy 'n paste in Linux can be a nightmare.

Today, I was sitting in a box with SuSE 9.0 Enterprise Server installed, running KDE. The system was a fresh install and I have root privileges, so I went ahead and downloaded all applications I would need to create a simple wireless application in Java, for example: Netbeans, Eclipse, Firefox, gftp, J2SDK, J2ME, mysql, drivers, frameworks, apache tomcat and a whole lot more.

The system is damn fast and stable, but trying to copy a link from Konqueror to Eclipse or Firefox or even from gftp was not always working. FTP-wise, I use the straight command line instead. Just "dragging" a Window in KDE was not very smooth either. I was running a few applications, including a Cell phone emulator when programming for the J2ME today. I needed to have a few Windows open to watch how the phone was communicating with the server. Resizing Windows was slow. Dragging and moving them around was slow.

At home, I have Ubuntu with Gnome and I face many similar problems everyday. Sometimes, even a small thing won't work well between two applications using the same toolkit. For example, I have a Swedish keyboard, but I'm in the process of learning Korean (for fun). I can write in Korean perfectly in Gaim, but it won't work in aMSN, for example. I can write in Korean in another application (like gedit) and paste on the aMSN chat window and it will work. It is just the keyboard input buggy as hell. If I remember right, I can't input Korean in Abiword, but it works in OO Writer.

Another thing is... running GTK applications in KDE or QT applications in Gnome not always look very nice either. KDE apparently makes a better job running GTK applications (personally, I like gnome more though).

Again, I found interesting when peoples say that MS is more "eye-candy" than Linux, but I see this exactly the other way around. Both Gnome and KDE can be much more customized when compared to the default, ugly look and feel of XP. They both also provides way more features (GUI-wise), most of them are eye candy or "useless" enhancements.

They both do, look awesome though. But when you sit down to do some serious work, using different IDE's, programming languages and toolkits, the "Linux"-GUI can be a pain...

@maritime

Just a note, I'm not in any way bashing you here, this is just for conversation's sake that's all please don't take me as argumentative, it's just a few thoughts from an old FOO.

Do you have a link for that? That would truly be an interesting read.

Regarding your 'linux is not more stable than windows': All I can say is that for me, in all my years of computers experience; for my own computers, and others friends, family, etc I have never, ever, seen a more robust operating system. I'm amazed at linux's stability. I can run practically every application in my slackware at once if I want, and move gigabyte files over the lan, and tar up a 'home' directory at once and have UT2004 minimized and it won't crash, hiccup or anything. There is just no way in god's great earth that windows is anywhere near stable as linux.

Now I did find XP more robust than any other previous versions, but that's a function of them using the NT kernel and getting away from 9x kernel.

I used windows ME for about a week then dumped it, that was blue screen city.

You say 'use Windows with intelligence'. I spent years using their OS I guess I missed that part of the manual

Regarding browser's in windows. We must call a spade a spade here. The only reason that there is 'browser' choices in windows is because people in open source community (also netscape who MS almost put out of business) took it upon themselves to make one! Browser choices in Windows is not an MS sponsored program. In fact, if I recall, wasn't there this little 'lawsuit' thingie where MS found themselves in court for allegedly acting as a monopoly with "predatory" like behavior...and oh yea they lost that one too by the way

In addition, let's face it. If MS could have their way, there would be NO firefox or choices. It's all about protecting themselves and their investors.

Now, I truly do NOT like windows as an operating system. However, I do think that MS makes some pretty good software to load onto Windows.

But without the lack of competition, they are truly stagnate.

Yet, in fear of being slammed here or flammed, I don't see Linux innovating much over them on the desktop over and above price, speed to fix security or patches for flaws, stability, viruses, and general day to day use. I see many well written enhancements to the life of day to day use. But then again, it's the year 2006 and we can hardly play two audio sources at once!

However, I don't see linux pushing with any great force into area's of handwriting technology, 3d graphics/video, drafting (autocad), cad/cam, voice recognition, accessibility for disabled and robotics. And my fear for linux, is that linux could be, note I said could be, squashed by MS because MS is investing a ton of money and effort in these areas. I often wonder if that is why we do not see them release vista because so much energy from them as a company is spent on those area's.

Just look at massachussette's wanting to go open source. It was pretty much squashed because of accessibility issues.

I've read many threads where people say what needs to be on linux desktop and most of them seem to go towards catching up to windows. Crazy things, like 'linux isn't on desktop cuz I cant use my webcam in a window more than 3" in diameter in aMSN". That's all hog-wash. What about pushing windows to catch up to us in newly explored territories. We have this low load operating system, with really fast hardware compared to what we had before and we're still typing! Not to mention people developing carpal tunnel at 16 years old! There's something really wrong here.

Someone here mentioned that because Apple is doing good Unix is winning. Sorry, but I don't agree with that. The general public has no clue that Apple has any relation to Unix. They don't even know what Unix is. Apple's strength is known in the world due to Apple's efforts, and not anything that any open source programmer has done for them. That's harsh, but that's how the general poplulation see's it.

All in all I think MS has become really complacent in their innovation for computing in daily lives. They've seemed to pull off convincing the world that hackers, viruses, spyware, auto-updates that break you and not fix you are not their fault. They've convinced the world to pay for incremental updates. They've convinced the world that moving icons around and a new color scheme is better, and warrants a completely new PC. But if linux does not catch up, and exceed them, then they will continue to be 'business as usual'. Hopefully the linux programmer's are really hacking away right now, as vista is taking a long time to get out. Hopefully we will see IBM, novell really push hard right now to make inroad's.

Regarding copying/mimmicing from others I see this:
-ms antispyware : copy spybot, ad-aware
-ie7 copying netscape, firefox tabbed browsing
-windows media player copy realplayer
-system restore of win xp copying roxio's go back.
-burning cd's in windows , well I believe they licensed roxio for that.
-vista glossy eye candy, copying windows blinds.
edit: add more copying stuff.
-windows firewall : zone alarm, norton
-desktop search : google
-msn instant messenger AOL
-msn internet : AOL


Where is the innovation from MS? I don't see it. Vista is really not an upgrade, let alone an innovation IMO. I have all those things already.

But that's the way I see it.

This is not really a "Linux" thing as an individual programmer's thing. Ditto hardware support - can we blame Linux because hardware manufacturers don't release their specs?

Mass didn't want to go open source, they simply wanted to ensure that if MS stopped supporting certain formats, that their documents would still be accessible. If the current version of Word ceasing being supported, let's say in 5 years, how will they access documents in 10 years. And, of course, Open Document Formats (ODF) have definitely not been squashed. In fact, Microsoft is now on the back foot because their crippled proprietary version of it is inferior to the standard.

for the 3d graphics I meant along the lines of '3dsmax' like windows, or 3d modeling in cad/cam design pipeflow, manufacturing, etc. i didnt mean video cards, but ditto to what you said - as many newcomers blame linux for something they bought when they just used windows; and instantly assume it should run on linux. it's truly not fair.

To me that is a minor annoyance. Sure I have the same problem, and also it would seem to me that also Midi should also just work right out of the box, but oh well. Linux sound support may seem to not quite be up to par like windows sound support, but it still works none the less. Also regarding playing two audio sources at once, I am sure that somebody in the ALSA community is working on this, as well as in OSS, but it wouldn't hurt to drop them a suggestion about this issue.

Am I the only one who doesn't need to play two sound sources at once? That said, I have tested this, and in Ubuntu I can play Flash from Firefox, MP3 from Rhythmbox, and MP3 from Totem all at the same time. I don't see what the problem is. Is there something else I should be testing?

Well apparantly Ubuntu is setup a little different. I am using Slackware, and when I am playing an MP3, and using GAIM, I won't hear any sounds from GAIM while playing MP3s, until the MP3 has stopped, then I get a flood of sounds that are apparantly queued up before stopping the MP3. It gets annoying after a while. Also, if there is another sound going on, lets say flash, and I try to play an MP3 with xmms, I get an error message from xmms, stating that the soundcard is busy.

What sound card is it? I've many problems with Linux and sound on the past when running an integrated card. A low end Sound Blaster with a emu10k chip really is awesome under Linux/ALSA.

Midi in Linux is a bit bad... true. It either works well or not at all for me. I wrote a very simple app in Java to play midi files:

http://goto.glocalnet.net/torch/applications/jmidi.jar

You can use this little midi file to test it. Please note that I've found this midi test on the net, I've no idea who the author is and I don't distribute it with my application. I am just posting it here if you want to test it. The song is from an old NES game called Journey to Silius which I love ^_^

http://goto.glocalnet.net/torch/applications/silius.mid

usage example:

java -jar jmidi.jar silius.mid

Note: buggy as hell. It's barely an application. I just did it to myself actually ^_^