http://www.osnews.com/story/4812/Call_For_Contributions_Update Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:31:02 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? How about a refresher on where all the alternative operating systems are in terems of usability (besides major ones likes the various distributions of Linux? I also mean usable as in, eh, usable, not just GUI design btw. I think it would be interesting to see how far along some of the "alternative alternative" OSes have come, and how they stack up compared to each other. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 04:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd like to see a greater emphasis on applications for other (non-MS) operating systems, especially as they compare to their MS counterparts. The lack of quality applications for alternative operating systems is one major reason why I have so far been unable to switch from Windows.

After all, what good is the best OS without them? Tue, 14 Oct 2003 05:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't think we need another site about Software reviews, after all this is OSnews.com, I agree with you though that more articles about rather unknown OSes would be interesting.
E.g. "A day in the life of an OS user", just to show that you can do mail/internet/whatever on XY just as well as on Linux/Win32. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 07:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Articles that actually talk about operating systems and not just GUIs? I'd love to see some operating system comparisons and/or reviews that actually talk about internals, performance, etc and not just how pretty the GUI is, or how it doesn't or does resemble Eugenia's pet, BeOS. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 08:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? jbm, you must realize that the GUI is one of the most important part for a desktop OS. When you are reviewing a *bsd for example, the "GUI" isn't important (you probaably don't even load X at startup anyway). So when someone reviews a desktop oriented OS (say, Windows, Mandrake, Mac OS X) the GUI is probably the most imprtant thing after the stability and functioning of the kernel.

So, please, stop whining about reviews being GUI-specific, for certain OS it's hella important. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @Thom

The GUI isn't important with *bsd....hmmm, their are a lot of people who use for example FreeBSD or NetBSD as their primary desktop OS...i would say that the GUI on *bsd is as important as it is on GNU/Linux systems. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "So when someone reviews a desktop oriented OS (say, Windows, Mandrake, Mac OS X) the GUI is probably the most imprtant thing after the stability and functioning of the kernel."

Exactly. It's the most important thing about an os.. AFTER the stability and functioning of the kernel. So how about some details about those 2 things? That's exactly what I was 'whining' about. Of course there is some importance to the gui, but it isn't the only thing, and it isn't the most important thing, as we seem to agree on.

So please, stop being childish and making accusations of 'whining' when I have a perfectly valid point. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sorry, sorry, you're right, I kinda got too irritated (but hey, I just failed my driver's test ). It's just that I hear that a lot: The reviews focus too much on the GUI.

Sorry for the offence Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I love the idea of the list, in fact I think it makes the process of reviews and articles more streamlined, I was going to suggest a list like this myself but David beat me to the punch. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 11:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thank you for the explanation. I was one of the persons that was confused about being part of the list.

Please make sure that this doesn't happen again. What you just did is the normal way of starting of a mailing list, i.e., by pointing people to it and letting them decide whether they wish to join, but it seems you have realized this and your apology shows that you actually care enough about your readers that they might stick with you even after this major hiccup. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? you should have invited people to join the list rather than signing them up and discovering that they recieved 50+ emails on their work account. Thanks. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? David,

No big. Hopefully everyone will get over it soon. I think the list is a great idea. However, word to the wise, maybe you should set the list up to have OS News Contributor as the FROM line instead of the contributor's name - leave it up to the contributor to sign the post. This way people will be less likely to hotly reply.

Will Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Is it any wonder no one likes me? I'm a whiner and a complainer. I'm all alone. Then this morning I got 45 emails. And I thought, I'm not alone. Perhaps things have changed, somehow. Could it be prayer works?

Well, you see, I thought I had responded to a request for article writers for OS News, but I guess I really responded to a request for putting my name on a mailing list. Music magazines do it all the time. "Who wants to submit their song to us for a songwriting contest?" Me, me, me, cry thousands of unpublished musicians. There is a tiny surge in circulation.

I'll give Adams the benfit of the doubt, that this wasn't a STUNT. That this mailing list mistake wasn't BAIT and Switch. The original article, as structured, as hypertext linked, sure made it seem that way. Have a nice day. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 15:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ...when it comes to Linux. Almost everything else is fairly complete. Linux makes a great web/ftp/anything server, and has been "enterprise ready" for some time. Occasionally Linux lacks functionality on traditionally unix-based architectures (remember when SMP was limited to 8 processors?), but when it gets such functionality, it gets reported here.

The big drive now is to give Linux a good GUI. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Mandrake Linux 9.2 has been released, we are all so happy!!!! Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? For the love of god...please no more "Why linux is ready for the desktop" articles. After your last call for articles we had a glut of them. Talk about irritating. I want to see a focus on actual technologies not some linux afficiandos opinion of why he thinks his desktop should be everybody's desktop. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I agree. There have been way too many articles on that subject. We want a wide range of topics for articles, not just a million articles going back and forth about linux on the desktop. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 20:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? We should have short reviews about every major desktop distribution release, but I agree "Is Linux ready for the desktop" is not a question reviews should ever ask--they should just report their experiences and feelings without any comparison or analysis. Tue, 14 Oct 2003 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think a lot of people would love to see a very basic introduction to using linux as a home web server. this is a good way for geeks interested in linux to get into the technical side of the operating system Wed, 15 Oct 2003 00:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I agree, applications should be equally reviewed even though this is "OSNEWS". As far as MS equivalents, are you monstly talking about MS Office applications equivalent or would you extend it more generally to SOHO apps? Wed, 15 Oct 2003 04:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If contributors are to write for the site, it should be done as "news" hence the name OS NEWS.

Let the other sites take care of the OS Opinions Wed, 15 Oct 2003 05:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments