Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 5th Nov 2010 19:15 UTC, submitted by Debjit
Finally. Finally the leader of a major distribution who has the guts to stand up and say what a lot of people have known for a long time, but didn't dare to say because it usually leads to a storm of criticism. Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu will be moving away from X.org, opting to go with Wayland instead.
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RE[4]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome
by phoenix on Tue 9th Nov 2010 04:47
in reply to "RE[3]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome"
Member since:2005-07-11
IIRC, windows remote desktop, at least, will lock the remote screen. This would not have worked.
RDP server in Windows XP Pro (probably Vista and 7 as well) only allows 1 user to be logged in, regardless if its a local login or a remote login.
Terminal Services in Windows 2003 (and newer I'm guessing) allows up to 5 users logged in simultaneously. If you want more than 5, you need to pay for extra licenses.
There are hacks online to allow the terminal services dlls from Win2K3 to be used on a WinXP system, allowing you to connect 5 users simultaneously. Works surprisingly well.
Especially when XP is running in a Linux-KVM virtual machine. 
RE[5]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome
by boldingd on Tue 9th Nov 2010 20:32
in reply to "RE[4]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome"
Member since:2009-02-19
Thanks for the info. That still wouldn't have worked: we had applications that only existed on one machine, that the entire lab might need -- you could easily be talking about more than five people. Tools like the Qt development kit, OpenOffice newer than 1.0 and MatLab all only existed on one or a handful of hosts. And there could easily be more than fifteen people working in that lab at a time, any one of which could conceivably need access to any one of those tools.
There's also the nice property that remote X windows interleave with your own local application windows, which enables smoother workflow than otherwise.
RE[4]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome
by twitterfire on Tue 9th Nov 2010 16:30
in reply to "RE[3]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome"
Member since:2008-09-11
Indeed. Remote X was an invaluable feature in the lab I worked in. It was actually a lot better than (the way I understand that) most remote desktop clients work, because it didn't lock the remote machine's screen: ten different users could be remoted into the same machine from ten other seats, without affecting a user actually sitting at that seat. (IIRC, windows remote desktop, at least, will lock the remote screen. This would not have worked.)
That's false. Remote Desktop Protocol, or, "windows remote destop" as you like to name it, actually allows many users to use RDP at the same time without "locking the screen". Maybe you confuse it with VNC or Radmin?
Anyway, ssh -x sucks badly across a long distance, RDP is much better in that aspect. There are many solutions which allows to use the GUI remote and which do a much better job than X.
X protocol is archaic and a dumb thing to use in 21st century.
Maybe they should name Wayland WNX: WNX IS NOT X.
RE[5]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome
by phoenix on Tue 9th Nov 2010 18:48
in reply to "RE[4]: Let me spoil the lynching: X is awesome"
Member since:2005-07-11
The protocol itself allows for multiple simultaneous access. Terminal Services is built on it.
However, Terminal Services in Windows XP is limited to 1 connection only. If I'm logged into the console, and you connect via RDP, it will log me out (well, pops up a warning, and I get the option). If you're logged in via RDP and I sit down at the console to login, you get disconnected.
It's an artificial limitation imposed by Microsoft to get you to use the more expensive Windows Server.
Even that, though, is limited to only 5 concurrent logins. If you want more than 5 concurrent logins, you have to buy Terminal Services licenses.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
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."More News »
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Member since:
2009-02-19
Depends on what kind of environment you run that desktop in. On your home PC, it's probably not a lot of use. In a software development shop where logging into other people's machine with ssh is routine, it's absolutely invaluable. "
Indeed. Remote X was an invaluable feature in the lab I worked in. It was actually a lot better than (the way I understand that) most remote desktop clients work, because it didn't lock the remote machine's screen: ten different users could be remoted into the same machine from ten other seats, without affecting a user actually sitting at that seat. (IIRC, windows remote desktop, at least, will lock the remote screen. This would not have worked.) There are some situations where remote X is extremely helpful.
And some of us have more than one computer at home, too.