Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 29th Jan 2010 16:26 UTC
Microsoft presented the results for its second quarter of the 2010 fiscal year yesterday, which ended on December 29 2009. As it turns out, thanks to sales of Windows 7, Microsoft experienced a record quarter, which is especially welcome after the previous two lacklustre ones. It sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses during this record quarter.
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RE[6]: This is what happens when you get competition
by Devi1903 on Fri 29th Jan 2010 23:06
in reply to "RE[5]: This is what happens when you get competition"
Member since:2009-11-05
Performance is still choppy and way behind Windows on the same hardware.
I would run ubuntu over vista any day for performance! And have u tried running windows 7 on 512mb ram. Please!
I gave up on ever using KDE 4 because it continued to fail to produce.
Havn't used kde for years cause it headed in the wrong direction. But you can hardly judge linux on kde alone! Gnome is a perfectly good alternative.
And, while the rest of the world gets work done and can watch whatever media they want
Cannot see the problem with media on linux at all. Did u forget to install the gui after installing ubuntu server edition? I use ubuntu for my entire household entertainment and works just as good as any other alternative in my mind.
RE[7]: This is what happens when you get competition
by siride on Fri 29th Jan 2010 23:09
in reply to "RE[6]: This is what happens when you get competition"
Member since:2006-01-02
I'll tell that to my roommate who struggled for quite some time with MythBuntu. He eventually gave up and switched to Windows 7. Everything works and playback is not choppy. Same hardware. Also, he didn't have to spend hours configuring and tinkering to get things to work right, things like audio and screen resolution. Stuff that you think would work on a frickin' media center-oriented version of Ubuntu.
RE[7]: This is what happens when you get competition
by StaubSaugerNZ on Fri 29th Jan 2010 23:09
in reply to "RE[6]: This is what happens when you get competition"
Member since:2007-07-13
Cannot see the problem with media on linux at all. Did u forget to install the gui after installing ubuntu server edition? I use ubuntu for my entire household entertainment and works just as good as any other alternative in my mind.
Yes, and even more important than Ubuntu are applications like VLC that are excellent for playing media (except for codecs that are specifically designed to squeeze out competitor players).
RE[6]: This is what happens when you get competition
by SlackerJack on Fri 29th Jan 2010 23:25
in reply to "RE[5]: This is what happens when you get competition"
Member since:2005-11-12
X11, for one, which is even going to lose its room at FOSDEM next year because nobody cares about it, despite it being a critical component of the desktop. Still can't get OpenGL 2.0 on an 8 year old graphics card, for example. Performance is still choppy and way behind Windows on the same hardware.
But aside from that, the DEs are lacking in coherence and it is very easy to run into bugs, crashes, incomplete functionality and just plain lack of polish. I gave up on ever using KDE 4 because it continued to fail to produce.
Priorities are also in the wrong place. KDE devs keep pushing for KHTML when it is so far behind the times, it's not even funny. Instead, they could be working on WebKit, but that's just not "free" enough for them, or whatever the problem is.
And, while the rest of the world gets work done and can watch whatever media they want and run whatever software they want, Linux users and devs will at least have their "freedom", whatever value that actually has (certainly isn't technical).
While the rest of the world gets work done,
But aside from that, the DEs are lacking in coherence and it is very easy to run into bugs, crashes, incomplete functionality and just plain lack of polish. I gave up on ever using KDE 4 because it continued to fail to produce.
Priorities are also in the wrong place. KDE devs keep pushing for KHTML when it is so far behind the times, it's not even funny. Instead, they could be working on WebKit, but that's just not "free" enough for them, or whatever the problem is.
And, while the rest of the world gets work done and can watch whatever media they want and run whatever software they want, Linux users and devs will at least have their "freedom", whatever value that actually has (certainly isn't technical).
While the rest of the world gets work done,
Lacking in coherence you say? Canonical are using the new KDE notification spec, both desktops use dbus and use various freedesktop specs. Qt provides native GTK theming which unifies the desktops' look.
What can you run on an 8 year old graphics card anyway?(Geforce4 series)
Yes I do work in Linux/KDE4 all the time. It's my main OS and desktop for graphic design, video editing, music, messaging, browsing and other common tasks. I get lots of work done thank you very much.
I don't worry about the "Linux is not ready for the desktop" people. I just get work done in Linux and leave them to think we can't to proper work.
RE[7]: This is what happens when you get competition
by siride on Fri 29th Jan 2010 23:32
in reply to "RE[6]: This is what happens when you get competition"
RE[6]: This is what happens when you get competition
by phoenix on Sat 30th Jan 2010 02:13
in reply to "RE[5]: This is what happens when you get competition"
Member since:2005-07-11
X11, for one, which is even going to lose its room at FOSDEM next year because nobody cares about it, despite it being a critical component of the desktop. Still can't get OpenGL 2.0 on an 8 year old graphics card, for example. Performance is still choppy and way behind Windows on the same hardware.
But aside from that, the DEs are lacking in coherence and it is very easy to run into bugs, crashes, incomplete functionality and just plain lack of polish. I gave up on ever using KDE 4 because it continued to fail to produce.
Priorities are also in the wrong place. KDE devs keep pushing for KHTML when it is so far behind the times, it's not even funny. Instead, they could be working on WebKit, but that's just not "free" enough for them, or whatever the problem is.
And, while the rest of the world gets work done and can watch whatever media they want and run whatever software they want, Linux users and devs will at least have their "freedom", whatever value that actually has (certainly isn't technical).
While the rest of the world gets work done,
But aside from that, the DEs are lacking in coherence and it is very easy to run into bugs, crashes, incomplete functionality and just plain lack of polish. I gave up on ever using KDE 4 because it continued to fail to produce.
Priorities are also in the wrong place. KDE devs keep pushing for KHTML when it is so far behind the times, it's not even funny. Instead, they could be working on WebKit, but that's just not "free" enough for them, or whatever the problem is.
And, while the rest of the world gets work done and can watch whatever media they want and run whatever software they want, Linux users and devs will at least have their "freedom", whatever value that actually has (certainly isn't technical).
While the rest of the world gets work done,
It's debatable whether Linux distros are suitable for home desktops. For business desktops, though, they've been ready for years now. And it's mainly due to all the nifty network features in X11.
There's a huge market around desktop management tools for Windows primarily because Windows itself is not suited to large, networked, business deployments.
Should one really need a completely separate server just to run the desktop management tools, over and above the shared network server? Should one really need 17 different GUIs to manage everything? Should one have a completely separate server just to manage all the software licenses?
These are all things that Unix solved years ago, and that Linux inherited over time.
RE[6]: This is what happens when you get competition
by elsewhere on Sat 30th Jan 2010 04:57
in reply to "RE[5]: This is what happens when you get competition"
Member since:2005-07-13
Priorities are also in the wrong place. KDE devs keep pushing for KHTML when it is so far behind the times, it's not even funny. Instead, they could be working on WebKit, but that's just not "free" enough for them, or whatever the problem is.
KDE is committed to supporting KHTML through the 4.x release cycle, so dropping it is not an option. Besides, while I'll admit that KHTML may not be cutting edge, it is still very usable, a fact made more impressive considering that it is developed by a handful of people. It's worth remembering that the whole reason KHTML was chosen by Apple (versus Gecko) was the code base. It's no surprise that WebKit passed it by once Apple, and then others, poured resources into it.
It's still worth remembering where WebKit came from, though.
Having said that, you may want to give this a read, because clearly not all the KDE developers are pushing KTHML because it's "free"(?), or whatever.
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/01/key-quest-webkit.html
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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2006-01-02
X11, for one, which is even going to lose its room at FOSDEM next year because nobody cares about it, despite it being a critical component of the desktop. Still can't get OpenGL 2.0 on an 8 year old graphics card, for example. Performance is still choppy and way behind Windows on the same hardware.
But aside from that, the DEs are lacking in coherence and it is very easy to run into bugs, crashes, incomplete functionality and just plain lack of polish. I gave up on ever using KDE 4 because it continued to fail to produce.
Priorities are also in the wrong place. KDE devs keep pushing for KHTML when it is so far behind the times, it's not even funny. Instead, they could be working on WebKit, but that's just not "free" enough for them, or whatever the problem is.
And, while the rest of the world gets work done and can watch whatever media they want and run whatever software they want, Linux users and devs will at least have their "freedom", whatever value that actually has (certainly isn't technical).
While the rest of the world gets work done,