I don't say I understand Linux but what I mean is that the huge number of very different looking (be it taskbar location, default program folder structures or just the colors and shape of menus) interfaces does no good to Linux' popularity. It's probably a psychological thing, but I think if there was one, single interface that is accepted by a majority would claim to be the "new standard" and would be advertised as a good alternative to casual users it could win over a lot of people that feel intimidated by the "choice".

I believe many people don't want choice. They want what everybody else has.

I'm not sure if that's good or bad but it's what keeps people to stay with windows. I think if one group of programmers and interface experts decided to build a perfect, smooth, easy-to-use interface and advertise it in the web as the absolute standard (perhaps with a few testers before) kinda like - you guessed it - Firefox, that wouldn't be selfish or something. It could be what Linux needs so badly. A face. Something very recognizable for us stupid people :biggrin:

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Why snark works.

Then they can use KDE. That's what it would default to anyway.

But don't you dare say they should eliminate all the interfaces, that's ridiculous.
Moving the task bar is arbitrary. You can do that in Windows as well.

You'd have a harder time setting the OS up than using whatever interface. The point is, you're making excuses. You wont realize how simple it is until you use it, it's not something you can really judge by screenshots.

There's KDE and Gnome, two interfaces that are included with almost every single distribution of Linux, KDE especially, is more Windows like than you can imagine. Of course you wont try it, so you wont know what I'm talking about. But eliminating choices would do nothing but alienate the people who already use it. And keep in mind, people do use different GUIs, or none at all.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I think one of the major barriers to veteran Windows users installing Linux for the first time is that a fresh install needs some work before it's really usable. That's not to say fresh install of Windows doesn't, but on Linux the work involves using the shell command line, package dependancies, etc, and that's only if everything is functioning as it should be. I've installed Windows many many times, and only had major problems enough times to count on one hand, whereas I've installed Linux about a dozen and less than half went without a serious hitch. For example, more than once I've installed a Linux distro only to find that X is trying to use a resolution that's not supported by my monitor, so I have to search for the solution with a text-only web browser, assuming my network connection is working.

From my fairly brief time working in tech support, that's more involved than most people ever have been or want to be in their computer. They just want it to work, they don't care how. I don't foresee Linux gaining a big share of the market unless it becomes more accessible to that type of person. Last I checked there was some improvement on that front, but there's still a long way to go.

I'll probably run Linux full-time once UT2007 is released (assuming the editing tools run on Linux).

---

o

Fedora Core has a one touch installation feature, as does some SuSE distributions. They'll configure the partitioning as well as the packages that are installed.

Something like Slackware, or Gentoo are not aimed at the individuals you speak of. But people who don't want to think about, but just install, can use many distributions that are actually aimed at them (Fedora Core, Xandros, and Linspire to name a few, two of which actually run Win32 binaries)

There are no excuses, for whatever your need, there is a linux distribution suited for you. If you want to be oblivious to the inner-workings: you can be.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Just once you guys are gonna talk about something I can relate to like using charcoal instead of gas.

I can relate to charcoal. This crap about Winsock 32 kernel whatchamacallit just sux owl droppings.

Next thing you know you asswipes are gonna be posting in 1's and 0's. :razz:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

None of those things go hand in hand.
And Gas has many advantages. The monotonously "better" flavor is not enough to make it a better alternative for grilling.

And the Kernel is insanely important, even if people think it's silly to discuss. It's the heart of the OS and is responsible for every "expected" ability in an operating system. (Like creating and managing processes and threads as well as managing I/O) If you write a Kernel and a shell (the shell is the easy part), you technically have an OS there. Everything outside of that are details of preference and stem from decisions some developer made.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Adam, no matter what they said about you in IRC, you still make me laugh.

If Snarkpit ever has a member of the month award, I am gonna nominate you 12 times a year.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus said:
Next thing you know you asswipes are gonna be posting in 1's and 0's. :razz:

<div class="code">Code:<pre>010101000110000101101100011010110110100101101110011001110010000001101001011011100010000001101111011011100110010101110011001000000110000101101110011001000010000001111010011001010111001001101111011100110010000001101001011100110010000001100110011101010110111000100001
[/pre]

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SourDough2.0 - With Strawberry Jam

Ahem

<div class="code">Code:<pre>01011001011001010111001100101100001000000101001001110101011011010111000001101100011001010010110000100000011010010111010000100000011010010111001100101110
[/pre]

You asked for it Orph :razz:

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o

i am a windows user, because of compatibility, but i learned to use photoshop on a mac, and from experience they are much better for design type work

and aaron, you should use firefox just for the sake of spellcheck, i'll bet it just puts a big dotted red line under your whole post

My only gripe with spellcheck in FF is that it just tells you the word is wrong. But often that's how I think to spell the word so... it doesn't really help.

Binary without interpretation doesn't mean anything. It's gibberish.

I frequently get annoyed with the FF spell checker. The word could be one vowel off and it wont suggest what word I was typing. The heuristics they use, as in most spell checkers, are very outdated and need to be extended upon.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Yeah its funny. Google is one of the most known of websites and IE Spell doesn't recognize it as a word.

As for the spellchecker in FF, it does put a red line under the word but you also need to click the little "ABC" in the top center of the toolbar to get it to suggest. It doesn't always find a word, but that's how you get it to suggest one.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

You right click on an incorrect word to see its suggestions in Fx.

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SourDough2.0 - With Strawberry Jam

yup, it works like Word's spell-checker for me. Like Rumple said.

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Why snark works.

i don't nead a spell checker.

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i eat paint

reaper47 said:
yup, it works like Word's spell-checker for me. Like Rumple said.

ahem

It also works like I said. :razz:

I do occasionally post inaccuracies, but not this time.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

But he had a screenshot!

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Why snark works.

reaper47 said:
But he had a screenshot!

Well, if that's what it takes:

/giggles hysterically

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The best things in life, aren't things.

:rolleyes:

btw, Crono: I believe I understand most of the things you explained. What I meant isn't ease of use in general, or how fast and efficient an interface is once you get used to it. No, not even how easy it is to learn. I mean that the choices are more intimidating to most people than helpful. It takes a lot of time and insider knowledge to feel comfortable with all the different aspects of using Linux.

For example, when I want to install a new driver in Windows (blah example, I know), someone can tell me in an IM program to click on "start" in the lower left corner then click "control panel" and then I find a button labeled "hardware" in the upper right corner that has an icon shaped like a wrench (I made up everything after "control panel"...). It makes me feel save if I think I can or could do that and pretty much everyone would understand. With Linux you can probably customize your OS and choose from 20 different interfaces and change everything in detail. But that comes at the cost of not having a standard, a complete, identical standard for all Linux users there are.

If there'd be only one (and I don't mean trashing the others, I mean picking a single one everyone can relate to as the standard) and not two or one and a half interfaces then Linux could unite to a more consistent product that gets recognized easier by the majority of casual users who are likely to be overcharged with actually choosing the right Linux for them in the first place.

Please don't think of people like me, who aren't fully convinced to run Linux yet as ignorant. If it's nothing else then it's a time issue. I used to build my PCs by myself. I decided to buy fully assembled systems in the future (with the exception of graphics cards or RAM updates) because I don't have the time and enthusiasm any more to choose and mount every single part.

Maybe there are a few compatibility issues to be solved first. :sad: But the day a single version of Linux solidifies as the one and only choice for newcomers it will probably start becoming a serious competition to Windows for casual users. It's not efficiency or sympathy, it's plain marketing. Add a price minus to Laptops and PCs at the malls and a bit of DRM controversy with Vista and we have a nice OS revolution.

I'd be looking forward to that.

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Why snark works.

In my experience, I know more about computers then the average person. The reason I'd be scared to switch to a different OS (even though i hate Microsoft) is because if i screw up installing it or it doesn't work for some other reason, I have no idea how to wipe or reboot a hard drive.

This is ridiculous.

How about you let this go? You have shallow concerns which would be addressed if you used any of the distributions I mentioned (amongst many others).

I'm not pushing Linux, I'm running a Windows machine right now, I hate it, but it's sort of mandatory for games. There are reason to own one. But, if what you do is outside that realm ... there's no technical reason why you should use Windows over many Linux distributions. (Besides the fact that Linux distributions only might be as high as $80, but many are $0).

I mean ... there's just so many things wrong with your line of thinking. If you really want to learn about it and are interested in it, just f**king try it.

This is like a new console came out and everyone's interested in it, but refuses to try it and just scrutinizes everything it does ... even though you've never seen it in action. It's biased and ignorant and I don't think not wanting to switch or thinking it's daunting or intimidating is ignorant by any means. However, being firmly vigilant of false pretenses is.

RedWood, you wouldn't wipe the hard drive ... as for installing, distributions like Xandros understand you don't care about how it works, just that it does (as does Linspire, and even some versions of SuSE and Fedora Core) they install in as little as 4 clicks. But it still retains the option of installing extra packages.

There's this shadow of Windows that's really looming over all of Operating Systems. People seem to think certain things Windows does is how it works everywhere else or that it's the best option ... or even good. There's many things that are just choices someone made, they're not set in stone or anything like that (like separating add/remove hardware, software, and the device manager. In many linux distributions these are in the same application.)

Just look at CNR with Linspire, it's something that's so stupid easy to use, it's very similar to something like, Xbox Live Marketplace.

People seem to think the issue is ease of use, or even compatibility when it isn't. It's people in general refusal to adapt. When something is introduced to them, they don't want it to change ... ever. (Probably why cars are the way they are today, ancient)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Linux is always free!

Alright, it seems you're much more upset about this, Crono, than I would have expected in anyway. Something went wrong with what I've written. I think it's because it sounds very arrogant to talk so much about Linux while never even having used it. I made a mistake there. Sorry.

What's important to me now is to make clear that I wasn't really talking about Linux (which I don't know anything about). I was talking about a true competition to Microsoft Windows on the OS software sector as a global phenomenon. There is none. A buggy, unsecure system, packed with anti-user software clearly produced by a monopoly and no real competition anywhere. Linux is just a name I heard often when it comes to this discussion. And I've been using it thoughtlessly as a placeholder for "alternative, open OS that competes with Windows". Instead of Linux I will from now on use "Doors", a fictional OS not very different from Linux that is a clear alternative to "Windows".

I'm just asking: Why the lack of popularity? And how could this be changed?

I could start using Doors (and chances are I will sometime soon) but that doesn't change the fact that there is an overwhelming majority of casual users that do not even consider switching to it. I could tell them all how great Doors is and they still wouldn't change. As a result the Adobe suite will not be programmed to work on Doors. There aren?t enough potential users for this to be profitable. Gimp is nice but it has major usability problems and I doubt you can ever get the workflow of a professional niche-product like InDesign or Illustrator without a big, specialized company. And the Adobe programs are the only reason I and many others are not using Doors for work. It?s a devilish cycle:

To get Adobe, Valve and other major companies to produce versions of their software that work on Doors, Doors needs to be attractive to a huge user-base. In order to be attractive to a huge user-base, Doors has to support major titles like those of Adobe and Valve.

For a long time the Internet Explorer was pretty much everything there was as a standard for web-browsers. There have been many alternatives, much better alternatives also. I've been an avid Opera user for a long time. But I couldn't see how any browser could ever scratch the 90%+ dominance of IE.

Then Firefox came along. People who I thought didn't even know the difference between the words "internet browser" and "Internet Explorer" told me how happy they are with Firefox now. Suddenly Firefox gained a dominance around 30% (more in many countries) and became a true competition to IE. It was very exciting to watch, even for someone who doesn't know much about global software markets.

So what I did the last few posts was trying to apply the tricks FF used to gain its popularity among web browsers and apply it to operating systems and a fictional "Doors". More as a thought experiment than anything else.

I doubt FF was so revolutionary, technology-wise. There've been good browsers before (its just a version of Mozilla), many of the features were not new and aren't even used by casual surfers. There also were some incompatibility issues at first. But it won over the hearts of hundereds of millions of users, worldwide. I'd love to see that with Doors. It's just a very interesting thought I enjoy thinking. And I think it means that a single, compact OS release that stands out (and up) from the rest is necessary for a revolution on the OS software market. Just like it was necessary for web browsers.

It's nothing but an overly optimistic idea. Call these ideas naive or flawed, but please don't call them "shallow concerns". This has nothing to do with me trying out Linux or not. Only with it becoming a serious competition to Windows.

PS: It seems like the next step in post-length would be 2 full pages so I'll try and stop now :rolleyes:

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Why snark works.

Gwil said:
Linux is always free!

can't you charge for compiled stuff, as long as the source is free?

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i eat paint

See, this is a completely different discussion.

What you were saying earlier was, "change Linux", now what you're saying (which is what I was saying you should be thinking about) was that you should BUILD on Linux and make your own OS (the you is not directed).

The problem with the firefox analogy is 1) it didn't come out of nowhere, it's roots go further back than Internet Explorer and 2) the web has a standard that everyone needs to try to follow at the least. So there's already a generic ground that levels the playing field, anyone can make a browser that will interpret web pages, the standard explains how to do this.

Games and applications, however, are very different. For games, there's two blaring, enormous, "elephants in the room", if you will.
1) Direct X: The direct X API is THE reason why "big name" games don't run on Linux. MS has the bucks, and if game developers want to sell anything, you have to sell it to people who will at least pay for your product (not something most Linux-fan boys will do).

2) Windows APIs: How do you even install some of these games? Install Sheild doesn't exactly have ties to a non-Windows platform.

The solution, of course, is simple (as in we know what needs to happen), but difficult to actually do ... legally.

The larger, overall, issue is this: the law. Microsoft patents anything and everything they get their hands on, they also have a legion of lawyers looking for anything near grounds for a lawsuit.

So, you have to be careful when trying to create compatibility, because MS works around the clock to stop this so they keep control over whatever field. This is the way they run their business. The very best thing you could ever get from them is an offer to buy all licenses and rights to the product you're developing.

If want to 'take them out' or at the least, knock them down a notch, you must support their 1st party applications and do it better. To do that, you need to know how their stuff works. There's one way to do that: reverse engineering. Observation is the more "untouchable" type of RE, but also the slower. Reverse Engineering is perfectly legal as long as you don't use any of their code, also, and doing that is called white room reverse engineering (or white box, I don't remember which) anyway, the point is, if you don't use their code, they can't sue you because you didn't take any of their product and sell it, you just made a product that does the same overall thing.

This is what I've thought about doing, and I'm not sure why people haven't done this, my only guess is that most people who work in the field aren't exactly ... on top of things like theoretical or logic oriented computer science work and generally the people who are, are very busy with things that interest them, namely new stuff. So, my idea would be to take the DirectX API, study all the header files (so you have the names and inputs you need, this is mandatory and if a judge allows you to be sued over this you can appeal, because it's just silly, you're trying to make something compatible, there's realistic way to do it otherwise. You reverse engineer the API and develop abstractions of the functionalities.

By doing that, you remove any chance of MS code being used in your product. In fact, once you do that algorithmic abstraction ... you can make it run better. The only thing that matters is that the programs calling those functions get what they need and get it in the manner they expect.

By doing that, you would support 100% applications developed with DX API, and better yet, there is absolutely no emulation happening.
The next problem is that you need to do the same thing to some Windows APIs.

But that is all very doable. From that, you could support these things, but also just have the DX API functions be aliases for your real suite. And in that, you can develop new features for and try to lobby developers over. I would imagine that creating a faster, more cutting edge gaming platform than Windows would win developers with ease. You can support whatever, and charge the price you want while delivering exactly what most every game enthusiast wants: no more ms hassle and faster performance from existing hardware. If you tossed in some features like IMing in any game over any existing network as well as integrated email ... which can all be accessed while in a game ... you'd have a very powerful tool and it'd do exactly what you're talking about.

HOWEVER, for an office environment or something like that ... that already exists. I've mentioned them several times in this thread already as well.

That's sort of random thoughts all thrown together, but you get what I'm saying.

The concerns you addressed before were for existing Window Managers and what I was getting at is that all of those things are independent of the operating system it self. I know that's sort of confusing if you've only used Windows ... but they should be seperate.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Reverse Engineering is perfectly legal

Now that's interesting. I never knew you could do that legally. :o

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Why snark works.

Why would it be illegal? I mean, it's sort of silly to say, "It's against the law for you to figure out how things work". If you repackage a product you found and claim it in the process: that is illegal. But, observation is another form of Reverse Engineering, which doesn't even involve taking the thing apart, but rather how it reacts.

I don't think there's any court that would allow you to be sued for reverse engineering a product when you aren't violating any patent or copyright laws and the product is used for compatibility and an alternative to the all encompassing present "option", which isn't an option at all. It is also unfair to expect struggling developers to develop for something that doesn't pay their bills. So, it can also be seen as an anti-monopolization product and healthy competition.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

without reverse engineering we would just have problems with monopolies anyway

I don't know a whole hell of allot about patent law, but I do think you could get into serious trouble reverse engineering a patented product. Patents typically cover a mechanism and a mode of use. For example, you might patent a particular molecular structure to treat a particular disease. (bear with me, I'm a chemist). Even if another company doing research into the same disease discovered the same molecule completely independently, they still wouldn't be able to sell it!

I expect the same would apply to a software application. If you mimicked a feature of someone else's software, and just happened to independently invent the same algorithm they used... I think you would get nailed. I don't know how likely that is to happen, but it seems like it could. For some things, there just aren't that many different ways to do it.

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Some people are like slinkys...

They aren?t really good for anything, but you can't help but laugh when one tumbles down the stairs.

if someone studied this new molecule, and found that it worked against a disease by triggering a series of reactions, then no patents would be broken when a new molecule is constructed that can do the same thing. As a chemist, you would probably want to 'reverse engineer' both of them, under a big electron microscope or something. :smile:

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i eat paint

Yeah Tracer, its a slightly different problem. For one thing, the exact makeup of the chemical can be described in the patent, but there are infinitely many minor changes you can make to software that can make it look different from whatever is in the patent. How different it has to be from the patent is a grey area for the courts to decide, if and when it happens. I doubt there would be any patent infringements involved in, say, creating a DX library for Linux (or Doors) since a different OS would neccessarily change the way the functions are implemented.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

I don't know a whole hell of allot about patent law, but I do think you could get into serious trouble reverse engineering a patented product. Patents typically cover a mechanism and a mode of use. For example, you might patent a particular molecular structure to treat a particular disease. (bear with me, I'm a chemist). Even if another company doing research into the same disease discovered the same molecule completely independently, they still wouldn't be able to sell it!
I expect the same would apply to a software application. If you mimicked a feature of someone else's software, and just happened to independently invent the same algorithm they used... I think you would get nailed. I don't know how likely that is to happen, but it seems like it could. For some things, there just aren't that many different ways to do it.

You're right, if it's a patented product, it is illegal. Software, I think, is a little different, because, specifically what we were speaking about is developing something that is compatible and not necessarily a replacement (since it would be operating on a different platform). I know, in this specific situation, that it is legal to reverse engineer DirectX, since the WineX project has been doing it for years. (Through observation). The way they snag you in software is if you use someone else's code, since you can actually own that. You can own an implementation of an algorithm, but not the algorithm it self.

I believe they're in that realm of "unpatentable things".
You also can't patent something that is a natural progression from an existing product. (Like, adding a heat sync to a processor, which has been battled out in many cases), it's just like the next step in development and the court will say, "you can patent that" and revoke the patent.

The only reason I know these specific things is because in one of my courses (Ethics in Computer Science), we got the chance to speak to a patent lawyer who handles engineering clients and he explained a lot of intricacies about how the law works.

I think, if you developed something compatible to DirectX, but you didn't use any of Microsoft's implementation, you would be fine in court. To note, EULAs are often illegal agreements, since they give the developer far too much power and because of this they don't tend to stand up in court.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

If you reverse-engineer DirectX, for example, will it always be slower than the original DirectX (like it normally is with emulations) or can you create a complete replacement that works just as fast?

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Why snark works.

There'd be no emulation. So it really depends. I mean, I don't know how the thing works, but I would imagine Microsoft isn't using the most efficient techniques possible, so it's very easy to modify and adjust the algorithms, as an abstract, then implement that separately. If you don't know what I mean I could explain in a bit more detail.

But, the short answer is: I don't think there'd be a huge slowdown. Especially when you equate that the situation we're discussing is a more efficient platform than Windows.

Remember, the way DirectX works it only works within its self, programs call DX functions that do some stuff. So you actually have a lot of freedom to change how things work just as long as the application using it isn't the wiser.

Now, emulation would be recreating the Windows kernel, in some sort of wrapper that makes it compatible with the Linux (or Door) kernel and operating system, then running DirectX unaltered on top of that. I guess you could also emulate it by calling other functions inside. I believe Direct3D, for example, writes stuff to the video card on it's own, where in the implementation I'm talking about would use the OpenGL API, so there's a small amount of overhead, but I wouldn't think it'd be by much. It certainly wouldn't be a concern for many games out right now.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I know that this is unrelated but look at the music industry. The guy who wrote the Ghost buster tune wants to sue Huey Lewis for a similarity between the GB theme and I wanna new drug?

Personally I see no similarity, but it seems to me that there are a finite amount of ways to string notes and some are gonna bump into each other in a similar way.

Same seems true with lining up 1's and 0's.

/ruminating

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Copyright laws are going down anyway. The fights are getting ridiculous lately, downright desperate.

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Why snark works.

Cool, Crono. I didn't know you couldn't patent an algorithm. It's nice to know, but it seems a bit odd. I would have thought that novel algorithms would be a big IP area.

---

Some people are like slinkys...

They aren?t really good for anything, but you can't help but laugh when one tumbles down the stairs.

Well, there's a good chance that Direct3D uses a lot of well known graphics algorithms anyway.

I don't think Microsoft is the type of company that "pushes the frontier" on new and faster algorithms. They tend to use other people's products for simple things as a basis then go from there. So, there's a really good chance that there's little to no difference between how D3D draws polygons and how OGL draws them. That's what I would expect, in any case.

Also, be aware that I was altering the algorithms after they were derived to make them more efficient. So, technically, they're not the same any more either. Even if it were patentable, they'd be different enough while still retaining compatibility, that they wouldn't be the same. You can't sue someone because their program does the same thing, you can only sue them if the code is the same. And if you can prove that there's no other realistic way to implement parts that are very very similar while still retaining compatibility, there's a good chance you'll be fine.

Now, something I don't think would be legal would be releasing abstract algorithms online that show in detail a pseudo-implementation of DirectX. But I'm not sure.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.