Ivan Krstic' critique of the One Laptop Per Child Project has made its ripples around the pond of the intertubes. Apart from the obvious part where it criticises a major project from an insider's point of view, it also had a few other remarks that caught people's attention - most notably the admission that despite his ability to do Linux kernel hacking, his main development laptop is a Macintosh running Mac OS X.
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Member since:2005-08-29
Not sure what video codecs you're talking about. VLC and MPplayer play pretty much anything (both on Linux and OSX).
As for Linux being perfect I'd say it's fine, especially for programming work, but the current distributions still have their rough edges, mostly when it comes to configuring graphics cards and getting the best out of them (yes I blame mostly the manufacturers too). The last time I tried an ubuntu 8 cd on my PC with a radeon x1950 it just wouldn't let me use anything more than 16 bits colors.
I know it's not an easy task to write drivers but on a commercial OS such as OSX I never had to face this problem. That alone for me is worth the price tag. With todays Linux distribution you don't have to go compiling modules in your kernel as much as you used to do back in 2002 but the whole thing still smacks of organisation problems. I have heard people praising X11 for decades now but I still see it as a major hurdle today.
Edited 2008-05-26 19:02 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
They do and they don't do. They are good enough that for most streams, they can play at least something. However, you need to install proprietary Real codecs and pirate Windows Media dll files from a Windows installations to get things work right.
Further, especially with Realvideo and Windows Media streams, it more often goes wrong than correct. Either the picture is not right, or it does not work smooth, or...
I simply need to spend more time than I like to spend on this issue and the results are not perfect. I simply want to click on a media stream in my web browser and have it start.
As for Linux being perfect I'd say it's fine, especially for programming work, but the current distributions still have their rough edges, mostly when it comes to configuring graphics cards and getting the best out of them (yes I blame mostly the manufacturers too). The last time I tried an ubuntu 8 cd on my PC with a radeon x1950 it just wouldn't let me use anything more than 16 bits colors.
Here I have no complaints at all. It's a long while back that I encountered a PC that did need manual intervention in its graphics setup. That is not to say there exist no problems, but at least I had many "it just works" experiences.
Edited 2008-05-26 21:29 UTC
Member since:2007-08-11
OSX uses X11 too. so what was your point again?
Member since:2006-01-16
Perhaps if you were smart enough to go to http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html and download a driver for your radeon (or use the one in the repositories if it's not too old for your card) you'd have it working. But then again paying for a new mac is such an economical solution to this rather pathetic problem.
Don't get me wrong tho, I don't mind you using Mac OS X but what you described is probably the worst possible pathetic reason. Even in Windows you'd have to go and download the driver to your card for it to let you have proper resolution and 3d.
Now.. the QUALITY of ATI linux drivers is another thing, but please don't criticize linux for it, they can't do anything about it.
Edited 2008-05-27 08:32 UTC
Member since:2008-03-25
Well, I guess as a "somewhat more hardcore developer", it is fine for you. I'm a developer myself, and I've also use Linux for several years (with dual boot to Windows). I'm satisfy with Linux in general. But once a while, you just meet problems that you need to find information everywhere and have to edit configuration files to fix probelms here and there. Or may be you can't find some softwares that are as good as on Windows once a while.
May be it's because of age as said in this news. I'm slowly feeling less fun to play with those stuff and feeling the annoyance whenever problems hits me (even though I may know which files to edit already). I simply want everything to work as I want, without all those configruations.
I now uses Windows and still uses all those open source softwares, but I don't have all those problems I had on Linux that annoys me. Of course, that depends on personal character. But then, I guess, it's one view.
Member since:2005-07-06
Funny thing. I'm using Linux - not exclusively, but constantly - myself [10+ years since my first contact] and I've always found that everything gets simpler to do for me as the years go by, and that includes various configurations. I just happened to accept that Linux comes with having to do some things by hand, which wasn't really a hurdle for these years.
And I also have to say, all those "annoyances" people like to repeat and come up with every so often - configration issues and the like - are really not so frequent, unless one's sole businness is to setup new distros every day.
Yet, it's like a catch-22, since it's mostly newbies who keep installing things and distros again and again when they run into some problem - which is a train of thought coming from their Windows backgrounds for sure - and at the end they say Linux sucks, but it wouldn't suck if they wouldn't keep installing distros hoping they'll run into a magical everything-works one. Also, they'd need to learn that Linux is Linux is Linux, i.e. there's really not such a huge difference between distros that they need to install every new release they run into.
Edited 2008-05-27 08:18 UTC
Member since:2006-01-03
Things will only work out of the box if you have no preferences. Having no preferences means your life is limited and you gave up your desires for convention. Billy knows everything you want? Where is your uniqueness?
You sure are unique, you just don't use computers for anything important so usual consumer box with a usual interface is fine with you. Right?
Member since:2005-07-11
Member since:
2005-07-06
I'm perfectly happy with my Linux desktop. Modern Linux desktops are way more powerfull than the commercial desktops. While some years ago I had to do some kernel driver hacking to make things work, my current hardware works fine from the installation CD's.
My only complaint is video codecs, but for that OS X is not necessarily a solution.