Linked by David Adams on Fri 18th Jun 2010 19:17 UTC
Linux Magazine has a profile of Daniel Fore and the Elementary project. Elementary is a Linux distro that's committed to a clean and simple user experience, but it's more than a distro - it's actually a multi-pronged effort to make improvements to the user experience for a whole ecosystem of components, including icons, a GTK theme, Midori improvements, Nautilus, and even Firefox. The work that elementary is doing isn't limited to their own distro, and some of their work is available in current, and perhaps future, Ubuntu releases. The results are really striking, and I think it's probably the handsomest Linux UI I've ever seen.
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RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by Neolander on Sat 19th Jun 2010 05:37
in reply to "RE[4]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2010-03-08
RE[6]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by jtfolden on Sat 19th Jun 2010 05:48
in reply to "RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2005-08-12
This may have changed since I last tried using binary packages but doesn't that bring into play the issue of dependencies - both in having to possibly install something secondary that effects the core of the OS (and potentially breaks another app) and having said dependencies available for your particular distro?
RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by Moochman on Sat 19th Jun 2010 05:58
in reply to "RE[4]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2005-07-06
Remember, I never said that there weren't ways to possibly upgrade apps, but these kludges are simply not suitable in a modern desktop operating system. The OS and the applications should not be so tightly bound to one another and I think the main failing here is the way libraries and resources are handled by the OS.
Hit the nail on the head. With disk space as abundant as it is today, app encapsulation is the way to go.
Actually, the overall layers of userland libraries need to first be better defined. When it comes to e.g. graphics and multimedia libraries there is no standard base. So it's an all-or-nothing approach--every library depends on every other library all the way down to the core of the system. So it makes app encapsulation quite a bit more difficult.
RE[6]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by jtfolden on Sat 19th Jun 2010 06:41
in reply to "RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2005-08-12
Exactly! ...and if a group are going to chase after OS X for anything, it should be the way it handles applications/libraries and not simply cosmetics.
There's no reason that a Linux distro can't do this and the fact that there have been all these attempts at landing on the desktop without anyone satisfactorily solving this issue, at this late date, is kind of mind boggling.
RE[6]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by vivainio on Sat 19th Jun 2010 06:46
in reply to "RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2008-12-26
Hit the nail on the head. With disk space as abundant as it is today, app encapsulation is the way to go.
The deal is that with desktop becoming a less and less interesting target, reusing the already loaded libries is interesting again. It's not as much about disk space than it is about memory usage. Having multiple versions of the same library loaded at the same time eats all your RAM.
RE[6]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by Neolander on Sat 19th Jun 2010 09:35
in reply to "RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2010-03-08
Hit the nail on the head. With disk space as abundant as it is today, app encapsulation is the way to go.
Actually, the overall layers of userland libraries need to first be better defined. When it comes to e.g. graphics and multimedia libraries there is no standard base. So it's an all-or-nothing approach--every library depends on every other library all the way down to the core of the system. So it makes app encapsulation quite a bit more difficult.
Actually, the overall layers of userland libraries need to first be better defined. When it comes to e.g. graphics and multimedia libraries there is no standard base. So it's an all-or-nothing approach--every library depends on every other library all the way down to the core of the system. So it makes app encapsulation quite a bit more difficult.
You mean like the all-in-one bundles you see on OSX ? I *heavily* disagree with that. I offered a pen tablet to my girlfriend for Christmas, which came in a bundle with a photoshop elements licence. I discovered that there was no DVD in the box, it was available for download only. I then said "well, no issue". That's what I thought. But downloading 2 GB of data over a crappy Wi-fi network is a pure nightmare. After the third time the download stopped without a warning one hour after the beginning and refused to restart except by re-downloading from byte 0, I just gave up and teached her how to use GIMP, even though the OSX version belongs to the hall of shame of most crappy software ports in my opinion. Software packages are *much* easier to download when they're small.
Edited 2010-06-19 09:38 UTC
RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by nt_jerkface on Sat 19th Jun 2010 19:49
in reply to "RE[4]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2009-08-26
RE[6]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by jtfolden on Sat 19th Jun 2010 22:54
in reply to "RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2005-08-12
RE[6]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?
by cycoj on Sun 20th Jun 2010 02:54
in reply to "RE[5]: Rip-offs are news worthy now?"
Member since:2007-11-04
Oh please ...
repeating it over and over does not make it true. Everything in a single package is a huge waste of resources:
Disk resources because you have libraries several times on your disk (and this is actually relevant if you use an SSD for example).
RAM, I'd rather use my RAM for useful things instead of keeping multiple copies of the same library in it.
Bandwidth, if a library that is part of a lot of packages needs a security upgrade, you suddenly have to download all these packages. Now let these packages be things like Photoshop and suddenly you look at multiple GB downloads. I'm not even talking about the fact that you have to wait for a new version of every one of the packages.
CPU, every app needs to check for updates, great use of resources!
Time, looking for software at places all over the internet is definitely not a better use of my time than looking in one central location.
I can't believe you actually touting all-inclusive packages as the better engineering solution.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
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.More News »
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Member since:
2005-08-12
Option 1: "Rolling-release" distros *are* essentially upgrading portions of the OS as you upgrade apps, etc... it just comes pouring down the wire and stability suffers, as a result.
Option 2: "Testing" repositories are not a solution at all, because a) not every app has one, and b) you generally have to manually set up the repository for each one (that might, possibly, maybe, happen to be available).
So, Option 1 is the equivalent of having to continually install beta releases of Windows or OS X just to get the newer apps available. Option 2 is not particularly user friendly and it's incredibly spotty at best.
Neither of these options provide the previously mentioned easy of use in comparison to Windows or OS X. Heck, I think just about all the apps I currently use on OS X even check for their own updates and install them for you, upon approval, without me ever having to do a thing - and I never have to worry about the stability of the OS or that the core might be tampered with...
Remember, I never said that there weren't ways to possibly upgrade apps, but these kludges are simply not suitable in a modern desktop operating system. The OS and the applications should not be so tightly bound to one another and I think the main failing here is the way libraries and resources are handled by the OS.