“It used to be that Unix was for the geeks, while the rest of the world used less command-intensive, and usually less powerful, operating systems such as Windows or the Mac OS. Even with the advent of native GUIs such as the X11 system, Unix was not for the uninitiated.” Read the article at OnLamp.
Today’s Unix: New All Over Again
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
this article does not say much. offcourse unix is changing and has new functionality and offcourse things get easyer.
what is the goal of telling us, that on a 2 site html document?
“operating systems such as Windows or the Mac OS. Even with the advent of native GUIs such as the X11 system, Unix was not for the uninitiated.”
This makes no sense. X11 came in 1987, let’s see: how popular was Windows amongst Windows-users back then….
I remember my mother used to run DOS and WordPerfect at work in the late 80’s (maybe 1988…)
And yes, they had to know some DOS commands…
> what is the goal of telling us, that on a 2 site html document?
Because O’reilly needed some text around their ad for their 3rd edition of Unix Power Tools.
Regards,
Marc
according to the article we are all supposed to be indebted to the Open Source community (which I agree with) and then he spends half the article talking up OS X. I am not out to start a flame war, but despite OS X’s open source base Darwin, the Aqua GUI is closed source proprietary software.
If he wants to promote both open source and a quality GUI, he should refer to KDE 3.1, which will run on any UNIX that supports X windows, and is IMHO sexier than Aqua.
>>If he wants to promote both open source and a quality GUI, he should refer to KDE 3.1, which will run on any UNIX that supports X windows, and is IMHO sexier than Aqua<<
I disagree but did you know KDE runs on Mac OS X?
I disagree but did you know KDE runs on Mac OS X?
Sexiness is in the looks, not how the UI works. Besides, KDE can run of OS X provided you have XFree86 on root. Otherwise you are just running KDE apps.
I was expecting everyone whom read the article to know that OS X supports X windows, which is part of why I worded my phrase that way.
Everyone is entitled to their own preference as to why they like one GUI over another, but I would like to state my reasons for liking KDE’s GUI, besides being open source. It has transparent menus, shadowed frames for depth, and the GUI’s appearance is much more flexible than most. With OS X you only have the Aqua theme. With KDE we have a multitude of quality themes, Keramik and Mosfet’s Liquid (similar to Aqua, but smoother) to name two of the most popular themes. OS X has many nice icons, but KDE has more. KDE has Crystal Icons, Noia Icons, Slick Icons, and we even have a port of the most popular OS X icons (with consent from OS X artists). OS X only has one desktop, which can become quickly cluttered; whereas KDE has four desktops by default (it can support anywhere from 1 to 16 desktops). The nicer image rendering spoken of by many a MAC addict is accomplished by performing all th redraws on the buffer, which takes time and may be partially responsible for why so many people feel that OS X is slow. If you want to see some of our dead sexy art work go to:
kde-look.org
One last advantage of KDE over Aqua is that every time KDE has an update (which is quite regularly with our “Release early and often” attitude) we don’t charge our users anything to download and install it.
Is KDE perfect? Not yet, but we might attain perfection sooner than anyone else.
Just a detail: with OS X you don’t have only the Aqua theme. Aqua is themeable with third party software, and there is quite a bunch of themes.
KDE on Mac OS X comes with a default Aqua-like theme, which is spiffy. I wasn’t bashing KDE. I love KDe, I’ve been using it since 1.1 something on my old Mac using Yellow Dog Linux. Thats why I use it now on Mac OS X.
I think Aqua is really slick, slicker than KDE but they both rock 🙂
God now I’ve heard it all.
I won’t even bother responding to this comment, either you’ve only seen Aqua screenshots, or you have a friend running Aqua at 800×600.
Enough said.
There are dozens and dozens of icons sites for the MacOS. iconfactory.com, xicons.com, icons.cx, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Not to mention the fact that any graphic on the system that can be loaded into the systems clipboard can be turned into an icon as easily as “Get Info…” -> click on the current icon -> “Paste”.
While I do like some of the interface bits for Linux, I’m pretty fond of GNOME 2.0 with the Gorilla icons, Bluecurve-okayish widget theme, and the Bluecurve window decorations. To say that there’s “more” icons for KDE is just silly. KDE has essentially a single repository for most of it’s UI enhancements kde-look.org
You should take a look at the sites I listed above, as well as places like MacDesktops.com, resexcellence.com (a great place for themes), and any number of other places linked to from iconfactory.
Since pretty much any graphic can EASILY become a KDE or MacOS icon the whole thing is pretty much a wash if you’re willing to spend about 10 minutes fiddling with things.
-Nathan