“Desktop Linux is almost soup. We only have a few items left on the short list. Will we do it? If history is an indicator, the answer is yes.” Read this article at LXer. Read more for a short list of my personal needs before I could say “yes, I can switch to Linux or FreeBSD full time”.In this order:
1. A *reliable* graphical FTP client. gFTP is buggy (I almost buggered up some osnews ftp files once while trying upload using drag-n-drop), Nautilus/vfs doesn’t cut it, and KBear looks really ugly and uneeded busy (and hasn’t been updated for over a year).
2. Windows Media & QuickTime. Sorry, but I need my regular dosage of movie trailers. Real Player works on Linux, but I need QT and WMV/WMA too (and please don’t suggest the windows-codecs package for use with VLC/Xine/Mplayer and their browser plugins as these hardly work with what’s out there).
3. Audio & Video support for AIM/iChat, Y! & MSN in Gaim or Kopete (I need a multi-protocol app to handle these). I have three webcams here, I gotta use them. Gaim-vv is still alpha quality, and it isn’t really part of Gaim’s official line.
4. Alsa needs to fix their architecture and/or drivers to automatically include a software mixer if the hardware doesn’t have one. There are a gazillion of PCs (and especially laptops) out there with Intel/Via AC97 onboard sound cards that don’t support hardware mixing. For these machines, Linux will only serve sound to one application at a time. Using the “dmix” software mixing plugin only satisfies Gstreamer & ESD apps, XMMS and Mplayer (all after tweaking their default settings to use the new “default” virtual Alsa “device”), but there are so many other apps that are not configurable as they use their own OSS/Alsa backend that simply won’t even load sometimes, or just won’t play any sound (mind you, the “aoss” trick only works with Real Player).
This situation is disgraceful considering that we are in 2004. This is not 1993 with Windows 3.1 and Sound Blaster, people. The Alsa Project should find an automatic solution to this huge problem that degrades the Linux experience down to the floor. Remember, these Via/Intel on board sound cards are everywhere these days. At least 2 out of my 8 PCs here have the problem with Linux (which is not a problem at all with Windows/BeOS btw). Update: I couldn’t help myself and emailed the Alsa guys about it.
5. A good home video editor. Kino is closer than others, but still not there yet, plus it’s easily crashable.
6. A simpler interface for Gimp. Something like PaintShopPro’s. Trying to do some basic image editing with Gimp is a nightmare. PSP’s and Photoshop Element’s interfaces are much more intuitive for simple stuff, Gimp’s is simply not.
7. Easier wi-fi/bluetooth configuration and ability to easily “create networks” with them (share internet connection with other wi-fi or bluetooth devices). Currently this is a lot of hard core unix command-line work on any distro. Even Mac OS X only makes it easy for Wi-Fi, but not for IP over Bluetooth.
8. Library developers should not break their APIs too often. There’s nothing more nerve wrecking than trying to satisfy deps by compiling them, and realize that your app doesn’t compile because it needs this or other specific version of a library/header. Yuk.
9. Better and more reliable ACPI support. Currently my ATi-based laptop does not awake with any distro I tried (and recent kernels with supposedly “fixed” acpi).
10. Better PalmOS and PocketPC synchronization software that work with the latest models and software (I got a new Clie). Something like “The Missing Sync” available for Mac.
Your needs may vary…
Especially with Wi-Fi. My Wi-Fi card works okay on a Thinkpad with Linux but not Compaq or Toshiba and a lot of cards simply aren’t supported.
I’ll look at the new FreeBSD next…
> 5. A good home video editor. Kino is closer than others, but still not there yet, plus it’s easily crashable.
Have you ever heard about Cinelerra or MainActor?
> Trying to do some basic image editing with Gimp is a nightmare.
Wake up then, 2.2 is knock-knock-knocking at your front door. I find GIMP’s GUI far more usable that the one from Photoshop CS. I use them both on daily basis.
But yes — “your mileage may vary”
Nothing too revolutionary, but a pretty good article overall.
In reply to a couple of items from your list:
6) Yes! It’s bloody awful… no doubt there’s some method of keeping the floating windows on top of the picture (but not on top of _everything_) but I haven’t found it yet. Hence when enormous 4000-pixel-square image is maximised, I can’t see any of my tools…
7) I actually found bluetooth easier under Linux; quite a different situation to yours though. All I wanted to do was push a few files at my phone; in Windows this precipitated Explorer crashes and all sorts of badness.
The synchronisation software didn’t work at all, and of course in true Windows fashion I’m not allowed to configure anything for it so that’s a lost cause. It won’t work under Linux either, but at least SonyEricsson never got my hopes up that it would.
9) Often this comes down to the BIOS; my laptop’s got a subtly buggy table, but some are much worse. Basically the Linux ACPI implementation seems to be much stricter than the Windows one – I can’t help but feel that while standards compliance is a good thing, it’d be nice if it just worked…
Suspend to RAM seems to be a total disaster too, which is a bit nasty.
10) Yep. No argument here. My desktop does things properly, having a proper Sound Blaster; my laptop has an Intel chipset and it’s one sound at a time. Which isn’t the worst of it; the worst bit is XMMS refusing to play because something is “blocking” the sound card.
>Have you ever heard about Cinelerra or MainActor?
Yes, I have. Cinelerra looks like a$$ (I don’t want to use it, it’s a crime against aesthetics), and MainActor’s Linux version is buggy (it crashes on load here because of my X fonts, I have filed a bug report months ago).
>Wake up then, 2.2 is knock-knock-knocking at your front door.
Sorry, but it’s more of the same. They simply added more previews for the plugins. I was more talking about how you actually use the app. For example, writing some text on a new gimp document it’s overkill. And I have to use layers, even if I don’t really need to. It’s things like that where PSP shines over usability. It’s just simpler.
Please, don’t take me for an idiot, I FOLLOW the Unix software scene more closely than you think.
1. i dont understnad why you drop a fully working ftp client on the basis of it looking ugly…
2. cant comment on quicktime but from what i understand, mplayer is able to handle windows media. it can even integrate with firrefox if you use the right plugin or extention.
3. this is in many ways the holy grail of third party im clients. cant help you there…
4. sorry, cant help there as i dont know much about that kinda stuff. but didnt mozilla ship with a palm sync? or was that only on windows?
5. sorry, dont know about that…
6. i dont have a problem with the gimp interface. atleast not the one on 2.x. yes your familiar with psp or photoshop but that does not mean that they have the ultimate interface.
7. sorry, never messed mutch with that…
8. if you stick to packages made for your distro you avoid most if not all of this…
9. well i think the big bad wolf here is 2-headed. i cant recall reading about a X version that can handle sleep cleanly yet, and there is a lot of buggy acpi implementations out there that is solved in windows by the hw makers own drivers.
10. i could swear that alsa have this. that was supposed to be one of the advances over the old OSD system…
> Which isn’t the worst of it; the worst bit is XMMS refusing to play because something is “blocking” the sound card.
Email me personally, and I can guide you how to create the Dmix plugin and make XMMS, Mplayer, and all ESD and Gstreamer apps to work together. This dmix plugin should fix about 60% of all sound apps on Unix through its mixer, but don’t expect ALL of them to work. However, I can help out with the most used apps, so please email me and I will guide you.
11. Better CD-RW/DWD burning software (yep, K3b is quite good though)
12. Better scanner support and software
However, personally I already use Linux practically exclusively for all desktop work at home. But I know well that many people couldn’t do the same yet.
But at companies and organizations with enough IT support staff, Linux is already quite a viable choice for work desktops. The recent news about the many decisions to switch to Linux from all over the world prove that.
>1. i dont understnad why you drop a fully working ftp client on the basis of it looking ugly…
I do not like KDE apps. They all look too busy and ugly. I only use K3B or KOffice sometimes, and that’s it.
>mplayer is able to handle windows media
No, it’s very poor. And Mplayer plugin would crash on the Apple’s Star Wars II trailers.
>8. if you stick to packages made for your distro you avoid most if not all of this…
There are apps that I want to try that neither Slackware or Arch Linux include. For these apps, I need to compile them myself.
>10. i could swear that alsa have this. that was supposed to be one of the advances over the old OSD system…
Alsa only provides the dmix plugin. But this only works with about 60% of all the sound apps available (and ONLY after you configure them to use the new mixer). The rest, will either crash or tell you that the sound card is blocked.
I’ve seen you do quite a few articles criticizing various alternative OSes, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you say a single unkind word about Windows. It seems like if we’re talking about Linux, you’re comparing it to BeOS. If we’re talking about BeOS, you’re comparing it to OS X. You’re not happy with FreeBSD’s progress, and you seem to pretty much think most other hobby and alternative OSes are a joke. So what I want to know is, do you think all OSes except for Windows and OS X are crap, or do simply see no flaws whatsoever in these two?
If the card is actually *supported* (which is the tricky part, admittedly, especially with 802.11g stuff), Mandrake at least and I believe SuSE and probably some other distros can configure all the necessary stuff for basic connect-to-an-access-point work through their standard network connection programs (including encryption). Getting most 802.11g cards to work is an exercise in frustration, unfortunately, but it’s getting a little better. I really hope the BSD guys’ campaign to open up the firmware works out.
ACPI I agree on too, but again the hardware manufacturers could do so much more to help. The acpi4linux team has a lot of very, very good coders who work on the thing constantly. I find it hard to believe that it wouldn’t work fine by now in all cases if some hardware wasn’t fairly fundamentally broken.
2. Outside the illicit codec packs for xine/mplayer there really aren’t any options except apple/microsoft deciding to support linux. Things like Sorensen are patented, no corporate distro will touch support with a 10 foot pole.
6. Use the best tool for the job. If you’re not dealing with photos and are doing something involving text, simple graphics, etc. Use Inkscape instead, its proved far more mature than Sodipodi for me, and has replaced a good part of the gimp’s functionality, I just wish that it had an interface more like the gimp’s. I don’t know how many times I’ve clicked on a tool in one window, used it, and then clicked on another document window to use it.
There is a need though for a simple photo editor for common simple uses. A easy one click way to remove red eye, combine multiple images into a panorama, etc. I have a feeling that the reason this hasn’t happened is that these features are patented. There are apps that can do one or the other of these features, but they exist under the radar, and aren’t going to be included in commercial distros because of the patent issue.
9. This is a hardware issue, and needs as much work from the Linux ACPI maintainers as it does from the hardware manufacturers.
10. I agree completely. I keep a SB Live around simply because of this issue. I really hope we see this before the 2.8.x kernel.
> and please don’t suggest the windows-codecs package
> for use with VLC/Xine/Mplayer and their browser
> plugins as these hardly work with what’s out there
Dammit, I’m going to suggest it anyway. Since MPlayer 0.9 the wincodec package has played everything I have ever thrown at it. QT, Win media, streaming Real files, tons of movie trailers (Incredibles, Matrix revolutions, SW III etc). Can’t remember a single hiccup (though there probably have been some).
The Dmix thing, on the other hand, is right on the money. I hate playing the “guess which process holds the sound card” game.
I can add one more annoyance to the sound problems. For some inexplicable reason, my nifty 5.1 channel sound card only outputs 5.1 sound properly if I output via ALSA’s OSS emulation. I have a test file which simply has each channel identify itself in turn. If I play it with mplayer -channels 6 xxxx.wav , it’s perfect. If I use mplayer -ao:alsa -channels 6 xxxx.wav, all the channels are completely screwed. So I can’t use dmix, cos I can’t point it at a proper ALSA output and get 5.1 output. sigh. I submitted this to ALSA but it doesn’t happen to them so they don’t think it’s valid. d’oh.
That’s because my Windows XP or 2k3 *work*. Except this one time, which I actually did write about it:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8032
ALL the other times (and ever since that incident), WinXP has NEVER let me down. All its MS apps and third party apps for it that I use, they ALL work more than fine.
And if you ask “why don’t you stay on windows then”, it’s because of two reasons:
1. I am a geek, I also like unix, so Linux is among my interests.
2. I run osnews, it’s my “job” to try out and evaluate everything. #2 is consequence of #1.
I agree quicktime support could be much better (but, this is really more of a patent issue, isn’t it?) As for window’s media, I find myself using mplayer on my powerbook to play .wmv files that Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player (for mac) can’t play. Codec problems exist on all platforms (even on windows, where the ‘connect to the internet to try to find the necessary codec’ dialog has never once worked for me…)
Anyway, I think these are issues that exist on most operating systems at the moment, which is why so many sites have several different versions of every single video they put up. (At least one for windows and one for mac users.) If linux had as large commercial support/general user base, there would probably be a version specifically guaranteed to work on linux boxes…
“ALL the other times (and ever since that incident), WinXP has NEVER let me down. All its MS apps and third party apps for it that I use, they ALL work more than fine.”
I’d love to say it does it behaves this way in the hands of an expert every single time. Ahh, to hell with it I just did..
Amazing how little there is to complain about when you know what you’re doing.
I agree with those who are saying the Gimp interface has greatly improved in the 2.x version, but I do also think it needs more work.
I think they would do well to imitate existing commercial apps more closely: Photoshop, PSP, even fireworks. For one thing, the way the menu system is on the pallet, attached to the individual file, and it’s the right-click context menu when you click on the image– well, it’s just a little silly.
Plus, there aren’t simple things, like having selections snap to the edges of the picture when you’re moving them. I don’t know. It’s not that it’s ugly, it just seems harder to get it to do what you want.
For those who say “You’re just not used to it…” well, I can go between PSP, Photoshop, and Fireworks without a problem, so why am I so unused to gimp? And I’m just doing editing for web pages.
Sometimes, if the way your program works is different without being substantially better, you may was well drop it for the sake of being conventional. Being annoying to professional graphic artists and web-developers is a problem. Gimp doesn’t even look/work like other gnome/kde applications. The lack of coninuity alone should be enough reason to change its interface.
the real problem is that it was a catchup project. it was made to be a unix on PC, free of charge.
Now that no more unix is around they are catching up from windows and Mac. Think windows is better, not at all as they copy apple, be and linux also. This is what bring the post C64 era of BORING!!! computer.
What if ftp is not good, the WHOLE internet TCP stuff is broken. Linux community should try to push free internet by doing a new protocol. Ho crap it’s true, nobody do hardware now so they could not do custom modem. That is because company stoped to sell easy to get electronic part at finguer scale. So we get a generation of mechanics lost because they can’t fix car and the one that could help them with electronics can’t because it’s too much integrated now
You see, we are in a dead end with computers. Those that don’t want to see it are in serious denial. Just read stuff from computer history since early 1920 and up and you will see that current “advance” are more a building of fortification to trap ourself in an evolutive dead end.
you can’t see quicktime or windows file? Just stop using them! Every body hate to resort to many media player that don’t offer anything different from each other. Support open system, and when you create one include content protection option so that nobody would complain it lack stuff other system have.
Bring back the OS on a floppy, the 1 wire protocol… stuff like that. Sure sometime cool stuff is made, but most of the time it’s to fix a problem that should not even be there in the first place. All those created-by-and-for-computers problem act like noise that screw the “mother of inventivity is creativity” moto. So we got LOT of bright individual having trouble to identify the real problems.
FTP GUI being one as it should never have been an app but an extention of the file system, itself a problem because we should never have transposed the file methaphore in the first place.
Everybody curse flat screwdriver, yet we always buy them in screwdriver kit. Because we have them they make stuff screw with flat head… in the end we all get screw.
Security updates seperate from general updates that could be d/led over a modem for multiple archs. Also a user gui for this process so mom/poop could login as root and run the updater.
That’s the truth, be it sad or good, windows XP/XP-Pro they do just work “out of the box”.
Install the driver given you by the vendor of the machine (or preinstalled), and voilà, a wifi is automatically detected, acpi works perfectly, soundcard has never been “blocked” (I learned this could happen working with Linux…), and, last but not least, printing is quick, easy, and standard of all the applications, not the nightmarish list of “todos” of the typical linux environment.
Mind you, I used Linux for 8 years, but I give to Cesar what Cesar deserves: for sheer usability of the machines features, for “mindless” operations throughout, there’s no comparison at all…
I can close the lid of my laptop now, go to sleep, and reopen it and everything working in a second; I had to twitch even the kernel sources to get that from Linux, and never reliably…
I think it’s time to stop being geek-minded and be honest: Linux needs a lot to become a viable desktop platform for the masses; the sooner developers realize this, the better.
Otherwise, desktop linux will be only for programmers, curious (and affected by a light form of sadism) people, and people who use its incredible tools and power for something very specific, like simulations, where a Desktop environment is probably useless anyway.
Eugenia is right: why do I have to find a solution to watch Star Wars trailer when it*s obviously supposed to just click&work? is it the computer who has to relieve me of some work, or vice versa?
Lorenzo
“mother of inventivity is necessity”
Point… Click… Ready!
yup. sometimes windows works, and sometimes linux doesn’t.
but then, sometimes it’s the other way around. I’m glad all your laptop’s hardware works in XP. That’s great. With my laptop, half of the hardware has no drivers for XP, or even for Windows 2000. The only two OSes where everything on it works are Windows 98 and Linux. (Well, I guess the BSDs might work too, though I don’t know if they support the webcam. I haven’t tried them.)
I’ll let you guess which one I choose.
Yes, so it’s an old system. But it still works, and more than well enough to do everything I want to. Why should I buy a new one just to run a vaguely securable and supported operating system?
This is a huge problem for Linux and open source right now. And there is no easy solution. While it’s possible to play just about anything using mplayer or Totem and the right windows codecs, this isn’t legal for many of us as it involves using unlicensed technology that is not free software. But what is the alternative when someone sends you a link to a quicktime or windows media video? I’m not going to just miss out or give some lame excuse about how I can’t play it because it would involve using proprietary software. So I go download the plugins and make it work with mplayer or Totem. Combine that with mplayerplug-in and there has never been a video someone has thrown at me that I haven’t been able to play on Linux.
But the problem still exists. Obviously we need to advocate the use of free codecs. Ogg Vorbis/Theora rock. But, the other formats aren’t going to go away. Aside from some company like a Novell or a Real licensing the codecs for use with GStreamer, I’m not sure what the solution is.
I think the market will eventually solve the problem, while we continue to advocate free software, free codecs, and improve the “workarounds”. Continue to improve Desktop Linux and the number of users will continue to grow at an alarming rate. At some point you reach a critical mass where people distributing content really really really want to make sure their content is viewable by that mass. And they’ll find a way to do just that.
And go Ogg!
> The Dmix thing, on the other hand, is right on the money. I hate playing the “guess which
> process holds the sound card” game.
To ease your pain a little bit: lsof /dev/dsp
1) gFTP has always worked fine for me and has a great interface. If you say its buggy, I will believe you though. Command line ftp clients always work.
2) Mplayer and totem/xine have always worked for me. I never watch quicktime trialers though.
3) Video chat in Aim was only recently introduced, and it sucks. Gnomemeeting is much better for video chat. Gaim is better than any windows im client, expecting it to support three different video protocols seems a bit picky.
4) I thought gnome pilot was good for palms, but I don’t have one so I will take your word for it.
5) I will take your word for it
6) Im guessing Xpaint and Kpaint are too simple and the Gimp to advanced. Seems a bit picky for free apps.
7) Linux works fine with wifi, even my windows using friend was able to get ndis wrapper to work with his wifi. And most home users do not need an easy way to create a bridge with wifi. It is a nice feature in windows xp, but you can’t measure everything by windows xp.
8) Use debian, but in general you are right.
9) ACPI works fine on any desktop I have tried, but on laptops it can be a problem.
10) Defintly a problem, thats why I have a SB live.
I find it amazing that you — as the maintainer of this site — are not totally fed up with “missing features in desktop linux”-articles.
>7) Linux works fine with wifi, even my windows using friend was able to get ndis wrapper to work with his wifi.
My wifi works too. What I said that I need is “sharing internet”. Most people only have one computer, so that ain’t a problem. But I have 14.
Well, the only thing that prevents me from moving all my computers is DVD burning software. Nero, PowerProducer, Easy Media Creator, etc. They rock. No, I won’t run them in wine!
hmm, I thought K3B could do most of the DVD burning stuff? (except of course some good DVD video creation with menus)
Eugenia..
1) i know you’re not a fan of KDE apps.. but you might wanna look at Kasablanca (an FTP client)… it’s still in development, but I’ve found early versions to be both stable and relatively uncluttered interface-wise….. It reminds me of oldschool versions of CuteFTP… simple, but quite functional.
2) I use GNOME desktop, but I’ve found Kaffiene (w/ Xine back-end) integrates pretty nicely… especially when using FireFox in place of Epiphany.. I’ve had no troubles viewing online footage… Movie previews from quicktime, etc…
I agree with everything else you said.
=)~
Having read the article, the only thing I can say is that if what we need for Linux to succeed in business is binary driver loaders, peer-to-peer networking and some kind of Unified Library Standard (hint to author – recompiling for different distributions does *not* involve changing the source itself in any way, and in any case your vendor does it for you), I hope to God no distro I use ever goes after the business desktop…
Hello,
maybe I’m just stupid, but did you ever did that in WinXP:
1. Try to copy one harddrive to another one and make that one bootable
2. If you have a Wi-Fi network and want to share one directory with passwort protection, is there an easy way of doing it?
3. The first time I’ve started Outlook on my companies computer, it crashed, WinXP crashed as well, now everytime I want to start Outlook it complains something about missing mail account and refuses to start.
4. USB stick which works perfectly with Win2000 and Mac refuses to work with WinXP
The consequences are that the only thing I do with my WinXP computer is to print out Microsoft Office documents and browse some IntraNet applications, which do not work with Mozilla. I love my MacOSX box at home and my Sun box at work.
Just my 0.02 pence,
Anton
Please tell me you have a router.
the biggest issue is see here is really the sound card complaint which is right on the money.
something like 74% of the sound cards is mass or semi-mass circulation do not support hardware mixing in linux, and dmix is a cludge. how about a standard software mixer build into the alsa system, which only deactivates when their is a hardware mixer available.
reasonably legit points on everything else.
writer is correct about asthetics! if a program looks like crap and is hard to use because of a busy appearance without merrit, then their is a problem. the Gimp is getting better and better, and i think that it is just a few minor or maybee 1 major version from being incredible(Gimp3.0!!) photoshop is quite a bit easier to use until you really learn where everything is in gimp. photoshop also just looks better, more polished, but again, just a matter of time.
>Please tell me you have a router.
I do. A LinkSys one. I used to route all that through a FreeBSD box, running on an AMD K6 400 Mhz, 64 MB RAM, 1.7 GB drive. Then, the linksys router came along (with wi-fi support along with plain ethernet) and so DHCP ruled the house since then.
However, there’s not an easy way to do this for Bluetooth devices too (it’s doable using a linux/bsd as a server and a bluetooth Class 1 dongle, but it’s lots of cli work)
ah, I see now – well, that sounds like quite an ambitious thing to work on, I think maybe the other points should take priority
1. gftp is reliable enough, never had problems, but I still more and more often use nautilus, but I guess you have your own reasons
2. As soon as you pay for these codecs for developers to get IP rights to distribute them. Those cannot be included in any distribution or free software, because THEY AREN’T FREE
6. Simpler interface??? You mean like Photoshop. No thanks, some of us have more than 1&1/2 monitor. Personally, I’ve got 3 on every box. And interface like you wish would screw 70% of my productivity. You can still buy Pixel32 (but I don’t recomend that. Version I tried crashed a lot and after I bought it I never received serial)
7. As for bluetooth, it was way more simple than on Windows (v525). As for wireless, ok kernel module and netapplet. Again easier to use than on Windows. As for sharing, well this is a firewall setting and I don’t think it should be available in user mode.
8. Most of the times when API breaks, there’s a really good reason behind it. Most of developers understand these facts. Other should use yum, apt, emerge or anything else but compiling
Question: How do you dispose software for being ughly (cinelerra)??? Is software less functional then??? My best guess is that Office 2003, Quark,… is complately unfunctional if I take your thinking (they all look but ughly).
I see many people here dissing Eugenia over the fact that she finds aesthetics important– I just wish to say that I agree with her. Aesthetics certainly do influence the satisfaction one has with an application. And no, I’m not pulling this from the air; I study psychology (brag brag
), and stuff like this is also a major part of that study (talking to people on a couch represents 10% or so 
).
It’s the same with windows (the real ones): people will work harder in offices with windows, than in offices with less or no windows.
> Those cannot be included in any distribution or free software, because THEY AREN’T FREE
Who said ANYTHING about “included in distros”? I just said that they DON’T WORK as expected with all the videos out there.
>As for bluetooth, it was way more simple than on Windows
Huh???
>As for sharing, well this is a firewall setting and I don’t think it should be available in user mode.
You obviously don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
>Most of the times when API breaks, there’s a really good reason behind it.
I disagree. The user should be among everyone else. Keeping compatibility is a good “business” decision. Yes, there should be some few times where things would break, but if it happens all that often, then something is really wrong with the whole thing.
>How do you dispose software for being ughly (cinelerra)??? Is software less functional then???
Yes, I can’t STAND looking at it. It doesn’t function to me as it should do if it looks the way it is.
s/among/above “everyone else”.
I agree with eugenia on the ugly thing…Its why I cannot use KDE or windows.
Aesthetics and usability are two completely unrelated subjects. (No need for psychology here). But satisfaction mostly comes with work being done. Eye candy loses its charm after 1 hour or so, after that everything just as normal as anything else.
btw. Eye candy is mostly a major stopper for functionality, it is mostly CPU burner and nothing else. Try one thing for instance. Take OSX, set dock icons to enlarge on mouse over and start top. Whenever you move mouse over dock CPU gets 95% of usage. All bottom runing applications slow down.
Agree on surrounding environment though.
I agree with a lot of the points, what I don’t agree with is (for the lack of a better word) the attitute.
So you are complaining that a good graphical ftp client is missing, though it isn’t missing at all you just don’t want to use kde apps. (Btw. konqueror should also handle these things just fine) Not very convincing. Now if you want to complain about the lack of a good graphical ftp client for gnome, you might have a point. (Though gftp always worked for me the few times I used it).
About the codecs. All I can say is that mplayer and the mplayerplug-in work for me. They really do and I even was able to watch the Star Wars trailer without any crashes. (Considering how much I disliked the new star wars episodes a crash wouldn’t have been to bad anyway:).
And using konqueror with either kmplayer or kaffeine as plugins is really a joy.
You shouldn’t take your personal experience as the only messure here.
To sum it up, you are right on a lot of points, but your refusal to even look at kde seriously doesn’t imho give you the needed perspective to comment on the state of the linux desktop (at least it doesn’t help) and taking your own personal experiences (I had a problem, therefore linux is not ready) isn’t very convincing either. You write that you never had a problem with Windows XP. Fine for you, but I always had trouble with my Windows installs. Bad luck, my fault, who knows, but me saying that Windows is unuseable because of my troubles would be silly, wouldn’t it?
> though it isn’t missing at all you just don’t want to use kde apps.
No, I use the ones that I need to use (as I said, K3B and KOffice). But, KBear is just… unbearable. I mean, look at it! Plus, it hasn’t been updated over a year, I don’t even think it compiles cleanly with the new compilers/KDE/Qt.
As for the mplayer plugin, I have the latest version and either:
1. The Quicktime trailers at apple.com will work, but without sound (Totem can play them with sound btw)
2. In some older trailers, like SW II, mplayer plugin would crash. Maybe it ain’t so for you, but that’s how it is for me.
3. I can’t play most new video clips from windowsmedia.com while launch.yahoo.com doesn’t let me play them either!
As you can see, my experience has been less than great with these two specific points.
I just said that they DON’T WORK as expected with all the videos out there
How could they if you haven’t paid IP rights for developers:) If not, then you should bug M$ for WMP and Apple for QtP (Linux versions)
You obviously don’t have a clue what you are talking about
You said (share internet connection with other wi-fi or bluetooth devices). Believe me, I know about it.
Whenever we discussed anything, it was always the same thing. You work on common kitchen environment (that’s what I call small networks, I believe you said Mac, PC and now Clie (if I count that one too)), while I work on real production environment (12 computers at home is the smallest network).
Yes, I can’t STAND looking at it. It doesn’t function to me as it should do if it looks the way it is.
Just currious, how do you stand reading your own page then???
Eugenia, the only luck I’ve ever had with mplayer is with SimplyMepis 2004.4 (yes Quicktime.com/trailers have sound, yes to all your other complaints, yes it will work in Opera if you install libmotif3). And I would use that distro if I didn’t like Xandros so much…I wonder if there’s a way to copy the package over or something.
All the other mplayer packages I’ve used otherwise fail on one of those 3 points.
you can’t see quicktime or windows file? Just stop using them!>>
What other widely used streaming video formats are there? Real Player? Okay, but that’s proprietary, too.
Where I work, I need to take a series of tutorials. The tutiorials are all in flash with supplemental real media or windows media files.
These formats are used because they are supported by the most widely used desktops and browsers. They are the standards.
So, what else is there? What browsers support it? And does the program I use to create it run on Windows or either flavor of Mac OS? Is it stable? Does it have customer support?
On this page are several linux ftp clients, graphical and otherwise. Linux has plenty of ftp clients.
http://www.usinglinux.org/ftp/
> How could they if you haven’t paid IP rights for developers:) If not, then you should bug M$ for WMP and Apple for QtP (Linux versions)
You have completely lost the plot. I don’t care if MS/Apple are going to port their apps or we have to use mplayer codecs forever. What I am after is a SOLUTION that works. Be it one way or another. I don’t mind which solution, just a solution. Remember, the article is about what I need before I can switch to Unix, it’s not about mplayer in particular, it’s about “whatever works for me, it’s good enough”.
> how do you stand reading your own page then???
Why are you still here then? Troll.
And use a correct header instead of “@eugenia”.
° Gimp 2.X is fine here (Interface has its own phylosophy, its not so bad)
° GFTP is working great here (much faster then FlashFXP for ex.)
° Mplayer plays EVERYTHING here, even .bin-files without repacking/mounting (i hated using ISObuster all the time)
° Scanning with XSANE is a charm! (my Scanner blocked Win totally while scanning — EPP, no DMA — on Linux it takes 100% CPU also but i can keep doing anything…)
… many more i wouldn’t agree with you. But, I dislike the QT-GUI also
Aesthetics and usability are two completely unrelated subjects.
That is simply not true. I’m not saying that improved aesthetics will undoubtedly improve useability– but to say that they are two unrelated things is just… Ignorant.
Why don’t you give konqueror a try for ftp?
About mplayer. It really works for me and I never had any problem whatsoever viewing the trailers at apple.com and I do that quite often.
You could also try the kaffeine plugin for mozilla. I think it simply opens kaffeine, so you won’t get to see the movie embedded iirc, but I’m using konqueror with kaffeine (in this case it really acts as a plugin) and it really works like a charm.
Aesthetics and usability are two completely unrelated subjects.>
Never never say that to an industrial psychologist.
the real problem is that it was a catchup project. it was made to be a unix on PC, free of charge.
Topical quote: “We are nauseated by the despicable sloth that, ever since the 1970’s, has let our programmers survive only through an incessant reprogramming of the glories of the past.”
Now that no more unix is around they are catching up from windows and Mac. Think windows is better, not at all as they copy apple, be and linux also. This is what bring the post C64 era of BORING!!! computer.
I agree. Modern computers are boring once you disconnect them from the Internet (which is not so boring).
What if ftp is not good, the WHOLE internet TCP stuff is broken. Linux community should try to push free internet by doing a new protocol. Ho crap it’s true, nobody do hardware now so they could not do custom modem. That is because company stoped to sell easy to get electronic part at finguer scale. So we get a generation of mechanics lost because they can’t fix car and the one that could help them with electronics can’t because it’s too much integrated now
I am a first year doing CS. I am reminded of a recent lecture hearing the praises of TCP/IP sung. I’m pretty neutral with my opinion to this but I certainly have ideas in my head of new modernised network protocols. But moving TCP/IP will be like moving a mountain 😉 <Protocol X> over IP is an option.
I wish I could make my own hardware. The barrier to entry is too high. But even if we stick to 70s/80s level hardware, where does anyone start? There’s a deep knowledge gap.
You see, we are in a dead end with computers. Those that don’t want to see it are in serious denial. Just read stuff from computer history since early 1920 and up and you will see that current “advance” are more a building of fortification to trap ourself in an evolutive dead end.
I often get that feeling.
you can’t see quicktime or windows file? Just stop using them! Every body hate to resort to many media player that don’t offer anything different from each other. Support open system, and when you create one include content protection option so that nobody would complain it lack stuff other system have.
And how long until this happens, if ever? If we really want to view that Quicktime movie then we need Windows or OS X or the dodgy codec pack. Dirac looks promising but I’m not holding my breath.
Bring back the OS on a floppy, the 1 wire protocol… stuff like that. Sure sometime cool stuff is made, but most of the time it’s to fix a problem that should not even be there in the first place. All those created-by-and-for-computers problem act like noise that screw the “mother of inventivity is creativity” moto. So we got LOT of bright individual having trouble to identify the real problems.
How hard is it to get an OS on a floppy? It amazes me that people can write so much code that they can fill a floppy. Many programmers try to be too general and indirect (running on 10+ architectures from microcontroller to supercomputer… pointless). There are too many standards to catch up with so that you can talk to the rest of the world, before you even get started designing new stuff (check out http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/rob/utah2000.pdf for more thoughts on this). The myriad of different hardware devices, that are very poorly documented and over-complicated, is another horrible barrier.
I’ve never heard of the “1-wire protocol” (except when I’ve seen it in ‘make menuconfig’). Will Google for that later.
FTP GUI being one as it should never have been an app but an extention of the file system, itself a problem because we should never have transposed the file methaphore in the first place.
Too true…
Everybody curse flat screwdriver, yet we always buy them in screwdriver kit. Because we have them they make stuff screw with flat head… in the end we all get screw.
Vicious cycle, isn’t it?
I run MPlayer on my computer at home.
I downloaded it back when Mordorsoft’s WMP for OS X was so far behind, it wouldn’t play new WMP files at all.
I got about 80% good results. The other 20 percent of the time I got picture but no sound, or sound and glitchy picture.
I was reasonably impressed, but still frustrated. But, finally, MS has an WMP player that works with the current codec, and I’m back to playback that works 100% of the time.
But, were I somebody who needed reliable WMP playback to do my job … I’d have reservations about going MPlayer only.
Bahaha…it’s more busy than KDevelop….which has a right to be “busy”.
And use a correct header instead of “@eugenia”.
And give up years of grand OS News tradition? 😉
That is simply not true. I’m not saying that improved aesthetics will undoubtedly improve useability– but to say that they are two unrelated things is just… Ignorant.
Nope, what aesthetics improves is not usability (if software is aesthetic that doesn’t mean that this software takes the right path for work to be done in the most efficient way). But on the other hand it improves first impression (yeah, the screenshot mania) and partialy learning curve (for example, if software art was made by artist who knew what icon would best represent some feature).
KBear is shockingly disgraceful. I normally use the built-in KIO thing in Konqueror.
KDevelop….which has a right to be “busy”.
Hardly! It’s only a glorified editor/compiler invoker. Not rocket science.
I apologize if this has already been answered, but I’m running out the door and don’t have time to read all the replies.
The CodeWeavers CrossOver Plugin will let you install Windows Media Player and Apple Quicktime. I’ve not used it in a long time, but I suppose they keep track of the latest versions.
My machine is too slow to really use the software (original Athlon 600, speedy 5 years ago), but I suspect Eugenia has some beefy hardware that can handle it.
Yes, it is for-pay software, but if access to the codecs is your issue, this is the only legitimate way. I use mplayer, personally, but I can understand if you don’t like the codec packs for it.
Maybe: a usable program must have good aesthetics, but a program with good aesthetics isn’t necessarily usable.
Gnome and KDE are working and looking better, but they aren’t working and looking good enough. XFCE is OK, but just about every other window manager looks like it was designed by, well, an engineer.
How, please?
Maybe: a usable program must have good aesthetics, but a program with good aesthetics isn’t necessarily usable.
Nice way to put it
But, here’s best example: Quark4 is completely different. Usable and butt ughly. Some DTP people are prepared to kill you if you say something bad about Q4
Maya, Illustrator, Blender,… no fancy interface and very usable. Personally, most visualy pleasing interface was MacOS9 with its simple consistancy almost everywhere (repeat after me: there’s no Fetch, there’s no Fetch, there…)
…for Gnome.
(1) Not really your average “desktop” user issue, but a decent IDE. I love vim as much as the next Unix-head, but at the end of the day, it’s just a text editor. Anjuta doesn’t cut it…development is stalled, even though I hear there is some kind of 2.0 “in the works”
(2) Get Gpdf working properly. I read a lot of technical documents and even though Xpfd does work, it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the desktop and it’s interface way too spartan.
(3) Get wxWidget library packages updated using gtk+ 2.x. There are a lot of utilities that use wxWidgets and just look like ass with the default gtk+1.2 build. Ubuntu seems to be pretty bleeding-edge and it still ships with wxWidgets built with gtk+1.2
Two and three are minimal issues. One is a much bigger issue.
hmm, slack or arch, eugenia, your makeing this way to difficult for yourself
as for kadymae’s statement about windows media and quicktime being standards. there are two types of standards, real standards and de-facto standars. the last one is what those two codecs are and in my view de-facto standards are a pain in the ass as they enable lock-in…
Hardly! It’s only a glorified editor/compiler invoker. Not rocket science.
99.999% of all software is hardly rocket science, but KDevelop is more than a glorified editor/compiler invoker. It’s got its own C/C++ parser as well as other parsers to do real-time code-completion(and maybe refactoring stuff in the future).
It’s a lot more non-trivial to do a proper language-agnostic IDE with a decent plugin system than to do a freaking ftp client.
Seems like with every cycle of distro releases we need to revisit the Linux desktop arguements. Is Fedora Core 3 really THAT much better than core 2 that we must again re-evaluate the entire state of Linux desktop again. I downloaded it and still need to install it, but my uess is no. We still have a very very long way to go.
So i bought a used VAIO PCG-GR270P, it didn’t include the Windows Restore discs, so I decided to run linux on it. I threw gentoo on, it works…just as I expected it to.
I throw Windows 2000 on it and it doesn’t work. The video drivers do not recognize the card (ati radeon mobile), ATI’s drivers don’t recognize the card, my sound card doesn’t work (ac97 based soundcard), my ethernet doesn’t work (eepro100)…
So basically, windows sucks on this laptop. Sony sucks for not allowing drivers to be downloaded from their website for this unit, and Linux looks like it’s the real winner of them all. Sorry, but windows 2k, XP and 2k3 are the losers here, they just don’t work.
FTP:
Some have said it but I’ll say it again. Konqueror is great for ftp. In fact, all kde apps can save/retrieve files anywhere by using the ftp:// protocol or by sftp:// protocol which is safer. Konqueror makes it look like you’re accessing any local directory on your computer.
Given two computers on a network, it’s so easy to use sftp:// to transfer files between them provided you have a user account on each.
But you don’t use kde and to fire up konqueror in gnome takes too long beacause it loads all those kdelibs.
Multimedia:
I’m using suse 9.1 enhanced with apt, so I have
w32codec, and libxine1 from pacman. I don’t have any problems with wma,wmv or quicktime. Kaffeine and Totem are good video plalyers when they use the libxine. However they are still not as stable as xine-ui. Now RealPlayer10 finally works for Linux. I wish RealOne would be ported to Linux though. I need the RealOne in order to subscribe to video services such as the one offered by uefa.com or cnn.com.
ACPI: Right on. They’ve been working on this for a long time and it doesn’t still doesn’t work for my laptop. In fact, my laptop has been blacklisted. I really believe the hardware vendors need to be involved with this or it will never work out of the box for any laptop.
I am actually quite satisfied with the status of the linux desktop.
Only, sometimes some apps work with one distro and don’t with another.
My solution? I dual boot between Debian and SuSe: no broken windows here, LOL.
Only one issue is annoying me at the moment: my Nvidia Geforce4 Ti 4200 doesn’t work quite right with the latest Nvidia drivers: no full screen games. I posted in the Nvidia forum but I didn’t get much help.
Which features of FTP do you need?
Basic things, that all ftp clients have. I just need it to be 100% RELIABLE and not look like a$$.
In this order:
1. gFTP bugy ? damm what user you are ? Never had problems with gFTP
2. Windows Media Player doesn’t respect protocols, like their other products. I use mplayer never had problems, gxine works as well, and their are other cool clones.
3. gNOME messenger have suport for video card’s. If you are linux user why don’t you use gnome messneger ? I use gnomeicu and amsn, and they work fine for me.
4. I have ac97, works fine here …
5. I am not cineastic
6. Gimp is cool
7. Well here you have a lot of reason. Wireless support for amd64 is a mess.
8. Use gentoo
emerge -uDav 
solve your problem
9. My acpi laptop is working great. ATI is a mess. Problem is from ati support drivers.
10. I have a palm bot not teste can’t comment.
I have gentoo in a amd64 3000+ laptop, ati radeon 9700 mobile.
Ati glx not support yet, it’s a problem of ATI support team.
Wireless i have compiled rt2500 driver sucessfully, but for 64b it’s very buggy.
This are the 2 big problems for amd64 with 64b compile.
In my 32b desktop i have sucessfully reach my objectivs and not report any problem
Honestly, I’d imagine most people don’t use many if any of the features Eugenia requested.
“1. A *reliable* graphical FTP client. gFTP is buggy (I almost buggered up some osnews ftp files once while trying upload using drag-n-drop), Nautilus/vfs doesn’t cut it, and KBear looks really ugly and uneeded busy (and hasn’t been updated for over a year).”
Nautilus FTP should be enough for most people, although gFTP has been fine for my (limited, admittedly) usage. Plus, most people are never going to use FTP anyway.
“2. Windows Media & QuickTime. Sorry, but I need my regular dosage of movie trailers. Real Player works on Linux, but I need QT and WMV/WMA too (and please don’t suggest the windows-codecs package for use with VLC/Xine/Mplayer and their browser plugins as these hardly work with what’s out there).”
Windows Media/Quicktime is a big one, but to be honest, the only way I can see it being solved is through the proliferation of Theora and Vorbis.
“3. Audio & Video support for AIM/iChat, Y! & MSN in Gaim or Kopete (I need a multi-protocol app to handle these). I have three webcams here, I gotta use them. Gaim-vv is still alpha quality, and it isn’t really part of Gaim’s official line.”
Audio/Video support for IM clients is currently a fringe need at best, although this may change in the future. Plus, work is already being done with GAIM-vv, which does plan to merge back with GAIM when ready. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“4. Alsa…”
The ALSA thing is a bit of an issue, by the sound (no pun intended) of it. However, I doubt many users will ever even notice or care.
“5. A good home video editor. Kino is closer than others, but still not there yet, plus it’s easily crashable.”
Home videos is another fringe pursuit. But once again, work is being done.
“6. A simpler interface for Gimp. Something like PaintShopPro’s. Trying to do some basic image editing with Gimp is a nightmare. PSP’s and Photoshop Element’s interfaces are much more intuitive for simple stuff, Gimp’s is simply not.”
GIMP interface issues are really subjective, and I doubt many people will use it anyway, it’s a specialised tool. For basic photo editing (red-eye reduction, cropping), such functions should be implemented in apps like F-Spot and the KDE equivalent.
“8. Library developers should not break their APIs too often. There’s nothing more nerve wrecking than trying to satisfy deps by compiling them, and realize that your app doesn’t compile because it needs this or other specific version of a library/header. Yuk.”
Agreed – but it’s all about sacrifices, progress versus compatibility. Users shouldn’t need to compile their own apps anyway, and if they’re using a half-decent distro, they don’t.
“9. Better and more reliable ACPI support. Currently my ATi-based laptop does not awake with any distro I tried (and recent kernels with supposedly “fixed” acpi).”
Can’t comment, although it seems fine in my experience.
“10. Better PalmOS and PocketPC synchronization software that work with the latest models and software (I got a new Clie). Something like “The Missing Sync” available for Mac.”
Once again fringe. Too comment you’d have to be a little more specific as to what is wrong with the existing tools.
So most of those are either unfixable or being worked on.
>Use gentoo
emerge -uDav 
solve your problem
I hate gentoo. I tried it.
>Problem is from ati support drivers.
I do not use ATi’s drivers. I use Xorg’s.
> I have ac97, works fine here …
So what? There are many ac97 models.
>gNOME messenger have suport for video card’s.
Huh?
That “Too” should naturally read “To”, and in conclusion, the free desktop meets the needs of the majority of users.
> The ALSA thing is a bit of an issue, by the sound (no pun intended) of it. However, I doubt many users will ever even notice or care.
Trust me, it’s a huge problem
Just a short note about kde apps taking a long time to start outside of kde.
I always hated this problem but now I finally found the solution. Simply run kdeinit when starting up your DE/WM of choice (for example my gnome-session starts kdeinit) and the problem is solved.
A amateur technological testbed.
It will *NEVER* be ready for the desktop, like Windows. NEVER. I wish people would realise this, the quicker everyone uses OSX or Windows.
The better.
Make ‘like windows’ ‘unlike Windows’ in the above post.
Battery life with linux laptops stink.
With Windows XP, my HP nc4000 can get 3.5-4hrs on a single charge.
In comparison, Linux on the HP nc4000 gets about 1.5 to 2 hrs.
Why the big diff?
Mandrake ships with wx 2.x and wx-using apps (Audacity, etc) built against it. Prepared to like it yet?
99.999% of all software is hardly rocket science, but KDevelop is more than a glorified editor/compiler invoker. It’s got its own C/C++ parser as well as other parsers to do real-time code-completion(and maybe refactoring stuff in the future).
It’s a lot more non-trivial to do a proper language-agnostic IDE with a decent plugin system than to do a freaking ftp client.
Why on Earth does it have a C++ parser in it? If the GNU guys had written GCC as a set of libraries rather than a bunch of command-line programs, KDevelop could have asked a GCC library to make it a nice syntax tree.
I don’t see the value of code completion, but I won’t argue if people like it. I suppose it would be useful if you have to deal with frameworks with lots of long names to remember.
“Audio/Video support for IM clients is currently a fringe need at best,”
Haha. No, it’s not. Do you live under a rock? Audio / video over IM is *hugely* popular. Thousands of people use it, and some of them even have clothes on.
I remember my p200 mmx with 32 mB sdram and internal graphic card with win98. i had redhat 6(maybe6,1) just to play with.
My tv card worked without hickups when channelbrowsing.
I watched a divx movie i downloaded from internet to my 3,2 gB disk and it played. also my vcd´s
now i sit on Athlon 2500 with 512 mB,fx5600 256mem and sometimes my computer slows and even crashes when playing video. it dualboots XP & Mandrake CE 10.1.
My compro card works in both xp & Mandrake but channel browsing isnt faster och smoother.
something is wrong with the hardware manufacturers or the software developers.
hello from stockholm/sweden
1. A *reliable* graphical FTP client.
Every single KDE app inherently supports ftp and a heap of other network protocols transparantly. That’s all I need at least.
2. Windows Media & QuickTime.
mplayer-plugin and kaffeine-plugin works for me on everything I’ve tried it with, maybe I’ve just been lucky.
4. Alsa needs to fix their architecture and/or drivers to automatically include a software mixer if the hardware doesn’t have one.
I agree, although I don’t think you’re completely right regarding dmix. Dmix supposedly works on every application supporting alsa. In other words it also works through arts, gstreamer, esd, jack etc. The only apps that doesn’t work are apps using the old OSS api (some may work through the aoss wrapper still). The default device is used on every alsa-aware app unless something is very broken with that app. Dmix isn’t that great anyway though, since sound that’s not on dmix’ selected frequency often sounds bad and makes things slower.
9. Better and more reliable ACPI support.
You probably already know, but this is generally hardware producers’ fault, since they compile their ACPI-data with Microsoft’s broken ACPI-compiler which doesn’t follow the ACPI-standard correctly.
“I do not like KDE apps. They all look too busy and ugly.”
I disagree somewhat. I think KDE can be quite clean and look nice.
Screenshot: http://home.tussa.com/iaamaas/screenshots/skjermbilde16.png
All your ‘fringe’ areas (home video, audio, syncing to phones/pdas/ipods) are the exact areas that Apple is betting will be the future of personal computing.
That’s funny, Linux has been running on all my desktops for three years. I’m not a hacker. I just read webpages, play games, write emails. You know. Desktop stuff.
[:] – further to my above post, as Eugenia says, the sound issue IS a huge problem. For instance – play an MP3 in xmms or something. Now run your webbrowser and go to a site with a movie trailer, or a flash game, or something like that. You won’t get any audio from it. Trust me, normal users do this kind of thing ALL THE TIME. Same with the Palm sync issue – so far as American professional users go, it’s a big issue. They’ve all got Palms. If you don’t believe me, go to the nearest office building and stand in the lobby for a few hours.
@a320: you probably don’t have CPU frequency scaling turned on in Linux.
> Dmix supposedly works on every application supporting alsa. In other words it also works through arts, gstreamer, esd, jack etc. The only apps that doesn’t work are apps using the old OSS api (some may work through the aoss wrapper still).
Yes, these apps work through dmix, and only after yuo configure them to do so (which I find terrible experience for the user to do alsa scripting just to get mixing). Please note that Arts is not really working well with dmix (I had huge problems with some kde apps). But there are also many-many other apps that use alsa directly. These apps, including Ogle, ReZound, VLC etc etc, can’t be configured and so they just don’t play sounds if another app is using the current sound device.
And the aoss wrapper doesn’t always work. It works with Real Player indeed, but not with all oss apps. E.g. Hydrogen doesn’t work.
In other words, I have in my menus a number of apps that just don’t work properly.
My point is that Alsa should have had an *automatic/transaprent* solution for the sound cards without hardware mixing. Mixing should have been taken care from the framework and be transparent to all alsa/oss-emulated apps.
“Why on Earth does it have a C++ parser in it? If the GNU guys had written GCC as a set of libraries rather than a bunch of command-line programs, KDevelop could have asked a GCC library to make it a nice syntax tree. ”
this shows that you dont understand the gcc or kdevelop architecture. simply put you cannot do this with any compiler
the value of code completion is HUGE
1)ftp client as it said before : KASABLANCA http://kasablanca.berlios.de/screenshots.html
2)totaly disagree in this situation windows is just a mess , in last few months only one file xine couldn’t play.
3)agreed
4)no problem here.
5)never needed one.
6)never used gimp.
7)wifi work perfectly well but on windows still failing (waiting for support answers).
8)agreed
9)again hardware manfactures problems it’s just matter of time things get better.
10)i also want a new one.
some points correct some points are gnome problems and not desktop linux problems , but never the less nothing is a stopper. other os (and windows too) has there share of problems too.
> For instance – play an MP3 in xmms or something. Now run your webbrowser and go to a site with a movie trailer, or a flash game, or something like that. You won’t get any audio from it.
Exactly!!! In fact, just now you reminded me, that the http://www.macromedia.com page would NOT FULLY LOAD here a few weeks ago, if XMMS was playing a song (because of Flash that couldn’t access the sound device currently used by xmms)!!!!! This is terrible desktop usability, and this is why the mixing thing should be fixed ASAP by the alsa project, in a really transparent way.
1. Konqueror.
2. The mplayer codecs have always worked perfectly for me; in combination with mplayerplug-in it’s perfect.
If somehow that’s not good enough, Quicktime works great in Wine. I watch videos in Quicktime/Crossover daily.
3. Using IM for video/audio chatting is stupid; a dedicated program does a much better job. There are plenty of such dedicated programs, many compatible with Windows.
4. I’ve never had a problem with this – there are userspace solutions like arts.
6. So use Kolourpaint.
>4. I’ve never had a problem with this – there are userspace solutions like arts.
You are missing the point and you don’t understand the problem. The mixer I am talking about is from a lower level. The Arts mixer will only work for arts apps. If I load xmms, or real player, these would still not work.
>1. Konqueror.
I hate konqueror more than anything in this world. It’s lets-do-it-all.
“For instance – play an MP3 in xmms or something. Now run your webbrowser and go to a site with a movie trailer, or a flash game, or something like that. You won’t get any audio from it. Trust me, normal users do this kind of thing ALL THE TIME. ”
Uh, I do this all the time, it works great. Using XMMS, konqueror with flash, mplayer with movies, xawtv, all at the same time, get all the sound.
WTF?
this shows that you dont understand the gcc or kdevelop architecture. simply put you cannot do this with any compiler
Of course you can’t. It’s monolithic and over-complicated. The view of what a compiler is or does is steeped in tradition. It’s seen as realm of black magic. Nobody thinks about the problem deep enough to break it into smaller problems.
Are you saying it is impossible to write a library to take text source and return a syntax tree which KDevelop and such can use for whatever it uses it for? (What does it use it for, anyway?) OK, it may be very hard to do this uniformly with C++, but that’s another story.
the value of code completion is HUGE
How so? Endulge me.
>WTF?
You simply use a sound card that has hardware mixing. Stop being so abrupt, you don’t seem to understand the problem.
We are talking about the soundcards with no hardware mixing. And no, we can’t get new sound cards, the problem is mostly with laptops.
Freudian slip, perhaps? (LOL)