On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 05:57:38AM +0545, Jwalanta Shrestha wrote: > hi ujjwal, > > imho, gettin troubles while using oss is a common thing. it's jus that we > dont seem to admit it quite openly. ya there r problems with oss, but r any > software free of problem? even the mac osx, which u seem to like very much, > crashes..
My Leopard is working beautifully so far. Not that I like it > Etch/Gutsy. ;) > > first of all, price does matter. most of oss we use are free in terms of > price too, so obviously developers dont have any obligation to make it upto > guidelines n standards. but i think it's quite silly to shout for quality > when u r gettin something for free (price).. > > n plz dont take the sheer number of linux distros as a problem. cmon dude > we've lots of choices, isn't it a good thing? Someone I believe once said regarding standards something like .. "Good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from". I think every conceivable programmers/hackers know that standards are important but what OSS should aim to achieve is Open Standard. So far, they are going very slow, there's Linux Hardware Compatibility, Linux Standards Base, Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, Open Document Standards... Lot more if you keep in-loop with the news. > > n dont look at linux/oss the same way u look at windows n mac. those os r > optimized for high user friendliness but have low usability. it's the other > way around in linux/oss. jus look the command like apps in linux n the power > u achieve when u use them in pipes n scripts n all.. we've been pushed into > the world of point, click n flashy graphics. but linux world doesn't work > that way.. imho, the best of linux/oss are still in command line.. we all > know ffmpeg, imagemagick, tex n the list goes on.. True. Linux system lacks beautiful GUI (Changing with FC, Ubuntu, Sabayon etc..) and all that flashy stuffs but it is very flexible and does what it's told to beautifully. No question about all the tools Jwalanta has mentioned. On top of that, we can write softwares that use these tools very easily. For e.g., ffmpeg's API is available freely with source. So, if one wishes and has the need, they could use that API freely and develop say a GUI frontend to ffmpeg. Would that be possible with proprietary systems? I do not think so. To some deggree yes it would be possible with propreitary API, but in general it would require significant more amount of time than OSS counterpart and would potentially cost $$$. > like they say, little knowledge is a dangerous thing. n since the learning > curve is kinda steep with linux/oss that can even be fatal. i think it's the > same with ur pendrive data loss incident. maybe u didn't care about properly > unmounting the disk or issue a sync command. we (esp guys ;)) have a habit Ujjwal, repeat with me. "sync", "sync", "sync". Just as we always flush water closet, we should not forget to flush buffers as well. :) Or you can "eject/umount" the medium which automatically flushes the pipes for you. > of reading manual only after things r broken. plz dont do that. like any os, > linux or any oss have proper way of doin things, it's jus that it aint user > friendly, but i think that's the price we pay for flexibility n cost. Whenever I try something new thats not trivial, I always try to read on-line manual pages. There is usually everything one needs to know about that tool in man pages and only sometimes it's not in which case I ask Google(tm) or more experienced people. > i dont want to offend u ujjwal, u're an excellent code writer, dedicated > foss user n a hacker in its real meanings. plz dont get frustrated with oss. > it's the pain n sufferings that motivates us to improve n move forward. oss > r actually gettin better n i hope in a few years there wont be any more > unhappy users.. Ujwal, it's really bad to mix OSS and your temperament. :-) Whenever, I can't get something to work, I just take a deep breath and try it again. It's always something I am missing on my part (probably my eyes missed entry in manpage, README or README.Debian, /usr/share/doc etc...) > > It's a good part for us that we've been trusting many opensource > > softwares for years and over. I hope we won't loose our trust for > > another hundreds of years. However, sometime something happens which > > let us think about trusting open-source deeply. last time when i got a > > chance to look at Mac Os x human interface guide suddenly something > > touched in me about Open-Source. What Mac developers thinks is, user > > should never confuse on what they were using. It might be pressing a Apple tend to practise so called "HCI zen". GUI abstractions that Apple practises is what has won osx applaud/criticism. I use Leopard on my other laptop and I find it pretty cool on the GUI but if I need to do some quick job on the console, there's always Term for that. That is what I like about osx. They give you the feeling of being cool kid in the town and at the same time, they give you the opportunity to be the plumber if you wish to do so. > > button to showing a dialog box or even while configuring internet or > > devices. The thing Mac is trying to convince their developers that > > standardization is the most what lots of users want. We in the world I believe, osx has it's own set of software standard which closely follow the bsd/ieee/posix standard. Then on the GUI-side of the things, theres the Carbon/Cocoa standard that they follow. It's hard as it is getting major players to agree on something. To give a simple analogy - do major political parties agree on some issue and work there way towards it? Most of the time, NO. Same case with the OSS market aggreeing with a common open standard. Let me also mention that the politicians (Viz-a-viz OSS) are working for the same end goal in GENERAL (i.e. to work for people) but the way they approach to make that happen differs ( well, by not aggreeing to agree). > > of linux got many softwares for Different types for different > > purposes. We got many Desktop environments. Each and every one dealing > > their users in their way. Now the point is a user never uses desktop > > environment all the time he got. The thing is the software they got. > > How about standardzing applications on linux, how about getting human > > interface guidelines in Linux too (I know OLPC got one). what about > > feeling no problem in configuring internet either in (suse, debian, I know Ujjwal, it's quiete a headache sometimes getting things to work but have you more trendy (by trendy I mean User-friendly) like Ubuntu, Sabayon running on custom (not upstream ones) Gnome/KDE? I think in terms of user-freindly, Ubuntu clearly wins the race. > > fedora etc). The same way in Everything. I know it's even harder to > > standardize Linux, because of more than 1000 of different Distros..... > > We can't say your are standard and you are the best. Might be we'll > > get such more problem in linux, we'll are sure to solve each one. Each distro works there own way. Users tend to like something about that distro and sort of stick around until they get sick of it and then move around like a zombie/nomad until they find another one. Like me I guess. Winblows -> Redhat 7 -> Slackware 7 -> (Period of Winblows) :( -> Debian sarge -> Ubuntu hoary/FC 3(I think?) along with old boxen of minix 2.1 -> Etch/Gutsy currently (fancy freebsd6 & winblows on vmware sometimes :-) ). I had a period where I had to work on some odd box like Winblows 98/XP (no vmware!) which I absolutely hated. I found each distro so much fun and nice. I didn't do much serious work in them because I always had a seperate Debian box that was more sort of hardcore development environment and I'd put all my daily work there. > > presently I got another problem.... I thought Debian is one of my > > Choice.. better in every aspect. Last time i couldn't be able to You can sort of say that Debian is plain version of Ubuntu. It's unpolished and all that but it's got all the softwares in there you could ask for. You name it, and it's there. > > compile my kernel in my way i used as in previous time. Later i got > > "make-kpkg". I found my new kernel ready to go. Sooner during booting > > i got problem no login ... just restarts x-server i couldn't be able > > to get console login, found that kernel is trying to get keystrokes > > and then print on console instead of giving me FULL access. Anyway not > > rocket science problem. I used old kernel. everthing was back. later I > > copied all my datas from Desktop to a 2 GiB pendrive . deleted > > everything from my Desktop. after burning a disc. i backed everything > > from pendrive to my Desktop. once again something is not good to me. > > Each and every file is 0 byte. The most amazing thing is the filename Not properly flushed the fs buffers I believe. Say again with me Ujjwal. :-) "sync", "sync", "sync". :) Or "eject", "eject", "eject". Hope you don't mind. > > and properties is same beside nothing. I was not upset, even though > > i'd loosed everything in pendrive too. there are some of my important > > documents and i can't recover again. I thought it's my own fault. My > > fault is I believed in something. I still want to believe it more. Now Ujjwal, you can decide it's your own fault or someone else's fault. But if you think you can pay a little bit of price of OSS by reading manuals, readme's and howtos, it'll save you time and headache later as well also. I know that your point is that Linux should be more user-friendly and INTUITIVE but what I can say is that no matter what I wouldn't have been able to use Linux without on-line pages, howtos and readme's. They have been as much of a help to me as the software itself. :) If Linux was under one umbrella like Apple's OSX, maybe it could have made more progress faster and more beautifully but the whole concept of Linux is the "community" thingy. Without Linux, there could have been no major FOSS community (beside maybe some fanatics using *bsd/minix etc..) so it's also the same "community" thingy that I like about Gnu/Linux. Also, decisions tend to be taken quickly if under one radar and the flow of activities (workflow) is much smoother compared to active developers dispered in all continents working at odd hour. > > i'm downloading ubuntu gusty (derived from debian). If the same cases > > is for you and your using Debian then what would you wanna Do? I'd bet my aussie $0.5 cent (sorry don't have more. :p) that you'll find Gutsy more mature and intuitive (as you have expected Linux to be) compared to etch. There are subtle but important usability changes that Ubuntu team do at their end before flushing it down the repository for release. > > Believe me or Open-source. Still open-source softwares are best and > > good.. still there is something we don't like. can we start to make > > softwares(/linux) a standard as like W3C.. ? might be we can if we > > tried. You could. If Nepalinux becomes standard Linux distro used in Nepal, it could have it's own standard like Debian commands right now. Then Nepalinux upstream team could change the distro they derive from and make usability enhancements like having more user-friendly network connection manager, some more fancy GUI etc.... This last thing is certainly possible at Nepalinux's end and is actively encouraged in all distros community (Unless that breaks stuffs and you run around parent distro mailing list asking for a fix... LMAO :)) Hope that wasn't too long of a mail but it's Tuesday morning and I haven't got much to do. ;) -- Cheers, Bikal. GPG: 0x5DAE3BE5 "Rule 6: There is no Rule 6." - Rob Pike
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