h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm a Linux user too. Okay, so right now I'm not, but only because of a hardware fault that trashed the system (and I haven't had tome to reinstall). I hope never to have to touch Windows again from a couple of years from now.

Me too! Currently the only things I need Windows for are ICQ (because no Linux client can navigate the University firewall - this will be resolved when I'm not living in Halls anymore), playing games and watching videos/DVDs. Also looking at websites that use plugins you can't get for Linux, although once I get around to reinstalling the Flash plugin that will be much less of a problem.

Linux rocks!

Even running GNOME 1.4rc1 as my desktop (which I am) is more stable than Windows, although a considerable amount less stable than GNOME 1.2. Which is why it's still a release candidate.

I have to give Microsoft some credit and say that Windows XP looks pretty good, but it remains to be seen how good it really is underneath the promotional spin. Still not as good as Linux I'm sure, and certainly not as cheap as Linux!

As far as I am concerned, any website that needs a platform-specific plugin isn't worth the phone bill it takes to see it.

See link 2, part 2 of my links page for more. (L2P2? )

True, true. Flash is supposed to be cross-platform though... shame the Linux version of the plugin don't work properly isn't it! Seems to have big sound problems... tries to take over exclusive rights to /dev/dsp for one thing, which is silly because my sound card's capable (apparently) of 512-voice polyphony (and even if that's with software emulation, it's still surely capable of at least 32-voice hardware polyphony). So if I'm playing MP3s or something, the Flash plugin can't get /dev/dsp exclusively and so doesn't play any sound.

* kicks it *

Silly Macromedia people.

I don't like Flash anyway. It gives you useless animations that, in the most part, would be served just as well with animated GIFs (or, if it becomes a W3C standard, MNGs) and normal hyperlinks, Java(Script), etc., which are faster(?). Too often, a website forces you to have Flash installed - it's simply not possible for many platforms (and some people prefer, or can only use, something like Lynx). It's also annoying when you just want to get some info quick, and if your machine's a 486 or something similarly archaic you're forced to sit through about a quarter hour of intro that was designed on the assumption that anyone who was worth their money all had the latest astronomically fast processor that can display the whole thing in two minutes.

Mind you, the companies that wrote most of those websites probably aren't worth the phone bill either.

No, they are not worth the money.
Now, can we have a round of applause for microsoft XP. Due to the way microsoft think about copyright, they have written a recogniser into both windows XP and office XP. Due to the way it is designed, you only get 10 upgrades on your machine, So if you have to reflash your rom a couple of times, and and upgrade your processor a couple of times, it thinks it's not the same machine, is a pirate copy and stops your office software or your os from working. As this is a general feature of the recogniser, which is part of windows, customers should start leaving it in droves. and moving to linux. now how about 3 cheers as well.

Hip hip... Hooray! (x3)

Now let's hope hardware companies start releasing their specs so drivers can be written for any platform that could potentially support it. (It's not as if they're losing anything by letting more people use their equipment, is it? I mean, that must be the most ridiculous marketing decision ever.)

Now what the heck *is* Windows XP? I first heard about it from MaW, in this thread. WinME replacement?

Windows XP is the long-promised unification of the NT and 9x codebases (what Win2000 was supposed to be). Formerly codenamed Whistler, XP will no doubt come in different versions for consumers and businesses and servers, and with a big surprise for all Linux users, it actually looks like it might be slightly good.

Of course, Microsoft have negated the stability of the OS (which is evident even in the betas, apparently) by adding Product Activation - although I doubt it'll take anyone long to crack it. A program is, after all, only safe from tampering if you prevent all modification of it, including tweaking it at a raw hex level - from another OS. People will get around it.

Oh, and another thing, it looks like the taskbar in WinXP for home users will be a garish blue thing, with a green start button. It's also skinnable, although it's most likely only approved Microsoft skins will be allowed (they licensed the skinning system from the people who make WindowBlinds). And no, skins don't work properly with Office XP at the moment

Still, looks like a fairly decent version of Windows at last (apart from Product Activation of course)... but I've not had a chance to use it so I don't know for sure.

So XP is the successor to both WinMe and Win2000 - Microsoft practising a little multiple inheritance there...

Although, with the vast differences between the two codebases, I doubt it will be as good as claimed.

Okay, it's micro$**t. Of course it won't be as good as claimed.

Well actually it's more of the Win2000 codebase, because that's better... improved though, and supposedly greater compatibility, although I'm not sure exactly how much stuff it'll run...

No doubt it'll still have the same hideous GUI, albeit with different colours.

KDE forever!

Down with KDE and Gnome (at least as the default that programs are written for). There seems to be a silly idea among program writters out there that every program must be written for one or the other, even if it is better written as a command line tool. Everyone can use the command line, so this is best. If it needs more, use ncurses or X windows. Only resort to KDE or GNOME libraries if absolutely necessary. There is nothing to stop most programs being written as command line, with a GUI front end if needed, making both automation, and code maintainance easier.

But the problem with not using KDE or GNOME (or rather Qt or GTK+) is that you then have to use some horrible toolkit - probably Athena - for your GUI. And nobody likes Athena!

I write my Linux programs using gtkmm, the C++ bindings for GTK+, because I like the toolkit - it's easy to use, and it looks good too. Plus I can migrate to GNOME integration quite easily if I wish, although I don't wish. The GNOME Panel (or KDE's Kicker) is certainly useful, although I don't believe everything should be tied into and dependant upon GNOME - compatible, certainly (with regards to drag-and-drop and so forth) but not dependant.

But that assumes that you will be able to get either kde or gnome to run, which you can't always even if you can get X to work, which you can't always.
If you take programming tools as an example, they take an input data stream (source code) and produce an output data stream (executable code). No sensible person would consider writting GCC as a GNOME or KDE only tool, but for some other very similar situations, that is exactly what the people writting the program have done. This can only be gross stupidity. Equally, when you need to do image manipulation, you can NOT sensibly make the program a command line tool (for display), but you can include the ability to call all of the different functions from outside the program, and that makes it a command line tool that you can call from your own program (as a lot of archimedes users did do), and you only need to detect if the program was called by the GUI or non-GUI name, and the gui interface can be written to call X. Or are you going to tell me that X uses non-standard libraries, that are evil to program with?

I'm not going to tell you that at all. Have you looked at an Athena/XAw3d program lately? You know how ugly they are? How unintuitive the controls are? Look at a Gtk+ program... or a Qt program.

I'm not saying to get rid of command-line functionality or anything like that. All of it's very useful - Gimp could do with a good deal of command-line stuff adding to it for batch processing of images etc without needing to write Perl-Fu to do it. And it's hardly difficult to get Gtk+ running on an X system - you just grab the tarball and compile it, and it'll work on more or less anything. Hell, it doesn't even need an X server to run anymore - it'll work on the framebuffer!

OK, that should have been ...

It is not a religious war, just a request to keep me notified if you find programs written to the appropriate level, and to write your own that way to.

What have window managers got to do with it? This is a war about the philosophy of program design, isn't it?

yes, but most of the worst offenders seem to beleive that because they want to use GNOME or KDE, then we should ALL HAVE to use gnome or kde.
If they write for X rather than either of those, then your whole install can shrink considerably, without any problems. Also, when making the dependancies, they tend to make them dependant on KDE, rather than KDE-LIBS.
The same applies to gnome by the way.

My stuff's mostly dependant upon Gtk+ only, or Gtk+ and gtkmm, because I prefer writing in C++ so gtkmm is needed because it's the C++ language binding for Gtk+. No requirement for GNOME at all.

Looking at the way KDE is structured, you need Qt, KDE-libs and KDE-base to run anything - ideally it should be Qt and KDE-libs, I agree. Preferably Qt only for those who can get away with it, although KDE-libs do have some pretty groovy widgets in - as to GNOME-libs. However, some of those groovy widgets in GNOME-libs are being put into GTK+ 2.0, so...