Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 26th May 2008 17:54 UTC
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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RE[2]: No thanks, Linux is fine
by dmantione on Mon 26th May 2008 21:28
in reply to "RE: No thanks, Linux is fine"
Member since:2005-07-06
Not sure what video codecs you're talking about. VLC and MPplayer play pretty much anything (both on Linux and OSX).
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:2005-12-13
RE[2]: No thanks, Linux is fine
by pixel8r on Tue 27th May 2008 03:30
in reply to "RE: No thanks, Linux is fine"
Member since:2007-08-11
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.
OSX uses X11 too. so what was your point again?
RE[3]: No thanks, Linux is fine
by ashigabou on Tue 27th May 2008 04:33
in reply to "RE[2]: No thanks, Linux is fine"
Member since:2005-11-11
OSX uses X11 too. so what was your point again?
OS X has X11 for compatibility, but the number of mac os X applications using it is really low. Most of them are unix applications that typical mac users do not use.
"Native" mac applications do not depend on X; On Tiger at least, X11 is not installed by default, and I bet nobody but developers and open source people install it.
RE[2]: No thanks, Linux is fine
by Almindor on Tue 27th May 2008 08:28
in reply to "RE: No thanks, Linux is fine"
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
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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