I can’t get no satisfaction
I have not tried anything Linux or non-Windows, except for my hosting and whatever runs on Solaris at work. I wanted to explore a bit what’s new in the moving sands of Linuxland, yet I was unenthusiastic enough (aka lazy) to have skipped it. Really, I can’t get no satisfaction. Maybe it’s not 100% because of Linux not being a mixture of Prozac, Viagra and the Holy Grail, and definitely XP is nothing more than an underlying technology that happens to run the various applications I am used to believe I need to run. Maybe I should institute a no-electronics zone, but I don’t have that much space.
What was I trying to get attracted by (and kinda failed)?
- I tried to… try Wolvix 2.0.0 build 39 or 40, but I haven’t.
- I wanted to try Linux Mint 6 XFCE CE, and I’ve downloaded it and burned a CD, but that was about all.
- I’ve thought about Zenwalk 6.0, but then I noticed it’s not ZenLive. OSNews is eating shit, because the Live edition is still 5.2.
- …and for the sake of LXDE, I considered considering wattOS, maybe for the old laptop, who knows?
Now, why the heck can’t I get enthusiastic enough as to still use Linux again at home? (Some commercial applications would still need WINE. Oh, and OpenOffice.org is a hog.)
In the meantime, I also look for motivational articles, but the grumpy me can’t be satisfied so easy.
- I take Jack Wallen’s 10 reasons why GNOME is better than KDE as the best proof that KDE4 still doesn’t have the right identity, and KDE3 is not considered as a viable desktop for the future. And I really liked #6: “With the advent of KDE 4 came the widgets. With the widgets came clutter. KDE 4 emulated the OS X dashboard with its plethora of widgets and tiny applications that can do various and sundry tricks, all the while making your desktop a veritable junkyard. I am currently staring at a KDE 4 desktop with a single widget, Desktop, that is doing nothing. What is it? It is a simple file manager for a single directory — ~/Desktop. This widget is on the KDE 4 desktop by default. Why? I have no idea. When I can open up the file manager and see what is in my ~/Desktop folder without having extra clutter on my desktop, why would I need a widget to do that for me?”
- Bruce Byfield considers the Xfce Linux Desktop: Better Than KDE or GNOME? Unfortunately, official XFCE 4.6 packages don’t enter that easily in the already-released versions of the mainstream Linux distros, and 4.4.x is still the same. And Bruce fails to offer a detailed comparison with KDE and GNOME from the usability standpoint.
- From Linux Magazine (via DownloadSquad), we found that Knoppix 6.0 replaces KDE3 with LXDE. Is KDE3 really dying?
- Softpedia had a First Look at Zenwalk Linux 6.0, but I somehow failed to be impressed. And they didn’t show the illogical/anti-ergonomic NetPkg — the thing that makes Zenwalk unusable for me (this, and the lack of the complete sources for the released versions of the binary packages).
- When you know that it took 3 full months to Linux.com to get back on tracks, can you still assert that “crisis is good for Linux and the open source”?
- Or, when Zemlin says to Linux OEMs: Yer Doing it Wrong, how is this supposed to make me confident in the future of something poorly managed and poorly promoted?
I was however moved by reading a flashback, The Best Window Managers of 2000! I was reminded why I never liked KDE (’cause it’s ugly), why I missed the CDE/Motif and OpenLook desktops (’cause they were already missing from Linux in 2000!), and I’ve found once again that WindowMaker and FVWM were indeed very good choices for 2000. Hmm, I’ve never used Qvwm, nor FVWM95, but I’ve tried IceWM95 once.
Well, I’m still looking for Linux incentives, but some usage scenarios are simply ridiculous: say, wattOS with the über-light LXDE, but with the need to use the fucking over-bloated and worse-than-Microsoft-in-system-requirements OpenOffice.org?
SoftMaker 2008 for Linux is way too expensive, but I know from its Windows version that it’s as speedy as Road Runner.
Geezus, the best things in life are not free, the best things are impossible.
P.S.: Oh, that was funny! Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows. I mean… “Networking with Ubuntu was flaky, to put it mildly. When I browsed the network, it showed only some of the PCs, and those it showed weren’t accessible.” Samba issues? Join the club.
Mar 11, 2009 at 18:09
Finally an old style free software article…you didn't even mention anti-virus! I can read this stuff and enjoy your blog again.
Knoppix with LXDE - I tried it and was really impressed. It's gone from "we confused Komplex with clever" to actually being inviting and pleasant to use. It also ran a 3D composited cube/desktop *at good speed* on my Intel GMA 855, the world's wimpiest 3D capable GPU…Mostly I don't like LXDE but this was nicely done.
10 reasons why GNOME is better than KDE
A couple of years ago you'd think guy is going to get hunted down and Krucified but maybe these days everyone will just shrug. He should try taking a shot at Slackware + KDE if he wants to really provoke the beady eyed luddites into a badly spelled flamewar.
Keep Blogging the good stuff!
p.s.
debiandebiandebiandebiandebiandebiandebiandebiandebiandebiandebiandebian
Mar 11, 2009 at 21:27
Quand même une bonne nouvelle, le Net Français va être nettoyé:
"S'inspirant des filtres parentaux pour les sites porno, un programmateur(sic) s’est attaqué à une autre plaie du web : …."
cf
https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/8120
qui cite L'Adjudant Tifrice….
Mar 11, 2009 at 23:10
Zenwalk Linux all the way. I am very pleased with this released. I tested Fedora and Ubuntu and they don't compare in terms of speed and simplicity.
-2501
Mar 12, 2009 at 10:47
Your comments in the "P.S." part gave me the wrong impression. I thought it was an objective observation by I person well versed in both systems, but the article actually starts off by clarifying an important factor:
"Can a dedicated Windows user make it for two weeks using only Linux?… I've been in the trenches of those wars for years. I've written about Windows since the days of Windows 2.0, including numerous books and hundreds or even thousands of articles, blogs and columns. Along the way, I've been called every name in the book — and many you won't find in any books, either — by Linux proponents, because I've extolled the benefits of Windows, while ignoring those of Linux.
So I thought it was finally time to confront the issue myself. How does Linux stack up against Windows?…"
That's doomed to begin with. No way Mr. Gralla will be able to come to terms with Linux in two weeks if he did start from scratch with Linux without even basic knowledge about how many Linux distributions you can choose from. This approach to Linux is NEVER recommended by a sane Linux user. From blog point of view the article is fair - a personal view is to be respected - but from a journalistic point of view he presented the wrong premisses for the article. It wasn't about how well "Linux stack up against Windows", it was about a how one man, a for decades Windows-only user, would manage to live without Windows for two weeks.
I don't know but there's a clear tendency going on: more established IT news sites are filling up their front pages with articles proclaiming to explore subject "X", quite often some sort of "shoot-out" between rivals, but in the end the article doesn't come to any interesting conclusion at all. Maybe perezhilton.com should add an IT section? In comparison with many it wouldn't be worse anyway.
…
DEs and WMs: I've more or less found what works absolutely best for me, namely tiling window managers. I'm now using Awesome - pretty perfect and will improve - and I think I'm getting "too" used to it to change. Going from Gnome, KDE or XFCE to Windows explorer isn't such a big deal, but going from Awesome to Windows explorer makes you absolutely mad and upset about the inefficiency of Windows explorer (not a universal truth, it's just my own personal view).
Mar 12, 2009 at 11:04
(i) Two weeks is indeed the wrong approach. Still, the Samba/CIFS connectivity is important, and somehow I agree that most people would expect Ubuntu to work as smooth as possible with regards to this kind of integration.
(ii) Awesome? So very spartan! (Tiling is good, and KDE, GNOME, XFCE and pretty much everyone else *lacks* something Windows has for ages, i.e. "Tile Windows Horizontally/Vertically", but I kinda hate the *tiling* window managers!)
(iii) I've tried Mint 6 XFCE on the desktop PC, which has an old ATI Radeon 9200 card. It entered an impossible-to-look-at and "fuzzy" video mode which could not be changed via Ctrl+Alt+Plus. I encountered this situation with some other Linux LiveCD a few months ago, but I don't remember the details. One more reason to be disenchanted by Linux… OTOH, Wolvix 2.0.0 b39 worked well (video-wise), but it absolutely refused to start the NIC (no, it wasn't from a hibernating Windows).
Mar 12, 2009 at 12:15
"I take Jack Wallen’s 10 reasons "…
You should not take every one of the ten reasons ("reason" 5 is a pure joke : 'On my running system, from a fresh log in, KDE reveals 1268876 K memory usage in GNOME vs. 1279348 K memory usage in KDE 4. That is a change of 10472 K. Granted, this is not a huge difference. But it does show that GNOME requires less hardware to run. '
A 1% error (from a somewhat fresh log in) cannot be reproduced. The remaining are pure credos…
When I decided to have GNUlinux, I added some RAM (W98 worked well with 128M, ICEWM would be better with 384M…. and it was rather good: Then I asked for advice about Gome/KDE and the only reasonable answer was 'as Gnome, *now* seems to be buggier than KDE…. take KDE -now-.)
It was a purely temporary advise (if KDE is buggier than Gnome, I wonot be that distressed with Gnome -my colleagues use without too many mental disorders-…. if both are buggy, there remain xxxxWM or the infamously stable XP).
Presenting comparisons (in the present tense) on such 'bases' (up to the last KB …)
just "DOES SHOW" (as it was seriously written) … that linuxers neither have
methods to objectively compare,
nor common sense.
If someone read this "text", he will buy a > 1G RAM PC (and bot gnome and kde can work with 256/300M, even if their users complain sometimes). This might even break to 9 other reasons…
Mar 12, 2009 at 13:42
Oui, mon colonel Duplan, apparemment vous avez raison.
Mar 12, 2009 at 13:49
"Awesome? So very spartan!"
What! Are you joking with me? In total I had to install 2MB, including decencies, just to get it running. Spartan in my ass!
I suppose you either love or hate these kinds of "pure" tailing windows managers.
KDE4: I know it's kind of popular to bash it, but I yesterday found out it has some real advantages while remotely helping my mother-in-law getting a grip of a few tasks on her computer (she runs Arch + KDE4; it was Arch + KDE3 until some months ago when I remotely switched it over to KDE4). I won't go into detail, but I actually think that going back to KDE3, if it isn't only a matter of habits, is out of the question now.
…
By the way, what did you mean by this Béranger: "…retty much everyone else *lacks* something Windows has for ages, i.e. "Tile Windows Horizontally/Vertically"…"?
As a Windows administrator I've always been frustrated at how focused vs. unfocused windows were managed by explorer. What feature are you talking about that has been better for ages? No challenge, just curiosity.
Mar 12, 2009 at 13:53
Awesome: dependencies or not, the ergonomics of the WM is limited by modern standards.
Windows: right-click on the taskbar (in an empty portion). The menu will include (localized versions of) "Cascade Windows", "Tile Windows Horizontally", "Tile Windows Vertically". I am not aware of any Linux/BSD window manager to have that — but I don't know everything.
Mar 12, 2009 at 15:21
Tiling worked good with CDE (as far as I can remember : the last CDE sceen I had rescued burned heroically one year ago…)
I agree whith Kim Tjik the ability to have the focus following the mouse (" at how focused vs. unfocused windows ") is nice in KDE (I found it with CDE, and used it as it was very comfortable ; I did not like nor use tiling…).
I lack it under W$$$$$$$$ (it is the only thing,as many good GNU apps end up being W$$$ ported)….
Mar 12, 2009 at 15:34
Oh, mon colonel, c'est compliqué pour le monde du libre : soit c'est toujours et obligatoirement en mosaïque, soit… jamais.
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/gnome-tile-windows
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/428/
Mar 12, 2009 at 15:56
Have you noticed LinuxHater is back? (part time but still a good read)
Mar 12, 2009 at 19:26
I a bit surprised to read your arguments Béranger. It's one thing to not like it - I don't force you to - but that has nothing to do with whether the WM is "limited by modern standards" or not. Which standards are we talking about and in what way do they qualify as modern?
Your rants about DEs have in the past included thought about whether a supposed new feature makes it better than the abandoned. New isn't necessary better, I think we agree on that. Now however you generally talk about "modern standards". I suggest you rethink the approach to computing if such measurements are guiding you.
Many tiling window managers are new and in some aspects bleeding edge. The possibilities to customize your desktop experience and work with very easy and efficient key-bindings does improve computing overall. To me improvement is far more important than some kind of self proclaimed modern standard. Others, as yourself, might look at this differently.
Mar 12, 2009 at 20:07
Exactly. Newer isn't necessarily better. But tiling of windows (on demand, not as the unique way of arranging them!) is in Windows since 3.0 or maybe earlier. But in Linux…
Mar 12, 2009 at 22:16
Improvements have been made in recent Windows 7, but then we're talking about something that's not available for the masses yet, but the tiling feature you refer to might or might not satisfy a user (strange but I think that works perfectly well in XFCE4, or am I wrong?), since you still need to click on the window before it becomes active. To me that's more irritating than setting them correct to begin with, but some might disagree with me. The only way to activate a certain window will be to alt+tab between, which kind of works, but if you as I work with 5 or more windows one mistake ruins the workable layout, something that annoys me a lot.
I suppose the tiling window managers - you sett per application in the configuration file and/or toggle with keystrokes the preferred layout including floating mode - shine when you're using a bigger screen and/or more than one screen. It also depends on how you compute.
Never mind, we obviously feel differently and we probably also prefers different kinds of applications. In the end it's not the choice of window managers that makes me avoid Windows beyond what's needed for my work (not that I neglect my duties as an administrator of Windows systems, on the contrary I try to be better and smarter at it, but beyond that I feel no real joy in using Windows, something I do in front of a Linux or BSD box).
Mar 13, 2009 at 15:19
I remember KDE 3.x had some tiling options when clicking with the middle mouse button on the desktop. I think these options will get surpassed by 3D effects similar to Exposè, when Linux will have proper 3D accel (in 5 years or so).
Mar 13, 2009 at 15:33
Apparently… not really! See:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56157
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59338
Not even in KDE4:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182532
Mar 15, 2009 at 00:34
What's wrong with the fucking X.org 1.5.2? Everything I try that is using it (Mint 6, wattOS, both based on Ubuntu 8.10) completely FAIL to cope with the Radeon 9200 of my (old) desktop PC! OTOH, Wolvix 2.0.0-beta1 works very well with it (except for some small bugs), and this might be because it uses X.Org 1.4.2. (Boy, I hate these "new" versions! What are they actually? 7.4? 7.5? *.*?) Anyway, with such a FUCKED UP X.Org, do they want people to USE Linux/BSD or anything based on such a piece of shit as the X.Org server and its screwed drivers?!
Mar 15, 2009 at 03:09
X.org in general sucks. The last good release was 7.2.
I'm currently on 7.3 (the lowest version of X.org that supports my card (Intel GMA X3500)), and won't be upgrading for a while.
XFree86 is always an option, but support is weak (non-existent) on newer cards.
I'm currently thinking about going with nVidia, at least they have stable drivers (and compatible with both X.org and XFree86).
xorg-server 1.1 = X.org 7.1
xorg-server 1.2 = X.org 7.2
xorg-server 1.4 = X.org 7.3
xorg-server 1.5 = X.org 7.4
Mar 15, 2009 at 17:15
At least it will probably be implemented in KDE 4.x at some time:
http://www.undefinedfire.com/kde/no-tiling-support-42/
Mar 15, 2009 at 19:36
It's bad IMHO that XFree86 is practically abandoned by all the Linux distros (and even by the BSDs). I can see some binaries here: http://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.8.0/binaries/
… but I don't know of any Linux distro to use XFree86 officially! Is it such a thing?
OTOH, from the release notes I can't tell what is *not* supported: http://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.8.0/RELNOTES
Mar 15, 2009 at 22:31
Yeah, X.org pretty much killed XFree86. Even NetBSD has moved to X.org.
I use XFree86 4.8 on my laptop (Intel GMA 9xx), works very good (a least better then X.org), but you'll lose Xrandr and 3D-support.
I don't know about any Linux distro currently using XFree86 (Draco Current has it in extra).
Mar 22, 2009 at 02:05
Hello!
Maybe you could (re-)try Parsix, 2.0r0 final version is out now… OK the theme must be modified but it's a quite good distro and alan is great.