On 12/31/02 21:33, Matthew Carpenter wrote:
begin Net Llama! <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(Tue, 31 Dec 2002 13:58:06 -0500 (EST))
That's because i don't care about 90% of the precompiled packages that
come with a distro. I build my own version of most things, and rarely
use any of the extras that come preinstalled. What I want is a distro
that is easy to install, and easy to maintain, and Redhat fits the bill
for me. The KDE vs. Gnome wars are irrelevant to me, because i dont' use
either. That alone negates the desktop.
>
This is where I started disagreeing with you. If you use a system as a
Desktop OS (or more importantly, if you are going to recommend a Linux
Desktop for general consumption), it is going to be largely based on the
software included. Most people don't have the "comfort level" and others
don't have the time to build all their own software. Someday I'd like to
try Gentoo, but I haven't had the time yet... I don't know how you make
the time. I rely on so many software packages to get my job done that it
is very important for me to have a system that I can have standardized
packages to do so. Having done a lot of both Server and Workstation
administration, I'm forced to think about a low-impact and low-maintenance
install, as well as the importance of similar systems. You admin a couple
hundred workstations or servers and such things become dreadfully
important.
True, but thankfully, i don't admin a few hundred boxes, rather about
10-20. On the servers, i tend to use what Redhat provides for
standardization purposes, although even there i build custom kernels.
On the desktops, i build most everything from source because i want full
control over what runs on my boxes. Sure, the 'average' desktop user
won't know how to build stuff from source to start out, but i think
anyone using linux can learn, its not that hard for most things. My
wife, who is a Mac/Windoze diehard is slowly learning her way around a
bash prompt. She uses xv to maintain the digital pictures we take, and
she is insistant on using KDE-1.2 as her desktop of choice. I'd
actually breakdown and build her KDE-3.x if she wanted it, cause its
still miles better than the crud out of M$. She actually is starting to
appreciate XFCE, but KDE is still much more 'user friendly' for her.
I know exactly what you're talking about. I had to skip COLW31 but found
311 quite decent, however since it was DOA I have been searching for a
good distro, both for Server and Desktop. Since I am finding SCO's
version of UL a pretty good match for me, and it's based on SuSE, I gave
SuSE another chance. Red Hat has always had a lot of weird quirks which I
have never quite got over, although I've not used it much since 7.2.
What kinda redhat quirks? I've always felt that SuSE had the quirks
(like the rather unusual layout under /etc).
Yea, i know there are a few
Debian based distros with GUI installers out there, but i never washed
the bad taste out of my mouth, and i still dislike the entire
"GNU/Linux" zealotry that comes with Debian.
:) I liked David Bandel's description of removing the GNU from some files
from the debian distro.
Yea, but that's window dressing, and doesn't change the fact that the
zealouts are still out there running the show. Dave Bandel is by no
means your average linux user, so when he works his voodoo, its magic in
the making.
I installed SuSE about a year ago, and
while the install was ok, managing it was also a nightmware with one of
the most non-traditional filesystem layouts i'd ever seen (and this was
compared to Redhat, Caldera & Debian).
I also hated SuSE when I tried it in 7.1 (which was a HUGE improvement
over 6.0 which was the last SuSE I tried). The filesystem WAS obtuse...
but since I found that UL, which is supposedly "LSB and FHS-compliant",
had the same base I decided I'd better figure out how it works...
Redhat is also LSB & FHS compliant. Granted the last SuSE i touched was
their enterprise server release, and that was still horribly perverse in
its layout. If things have changed since then, i might not feel the
same way.
I have personally only done this a couple times, at times when I either
felt the need to familiarize myself with what differences really equate to
in distros, or when Caldera announced their own distro-scuttling.
By the time that occured, i was already using Redhat at work, so it was
a natural progression for me. Caldera just gave me a good reason to
ditch them.
> > MPlayer is one of my favorite apps. If you build it from source,
> > you can get some amazing performance improvements, not to mention a
> > very high degree of customization.
What makes MPlayer better than Xine? Something that optimises for
I dont' think i ever said that MPlayer was better than Xine. They are
both full featured. MPlayer is a techies dream app, with loads of
arcane configuration options. And it is the first open source movie
player to support both Windoze-media-v9 and Quicktime/Sorrenson-v6.
That support alone does make it more valuable to me than Xine.
hardware at compile-time doesn't sound very robust or
professional-quality. It just sounds like they are unnecessarily limiting
We do it for the kernels we build. You need to understand that alot of
the hardware optomizations are based around your videocard, and to a
degree your CPU (the whole MMX vs. 3dNow! thing). Not all videocards
support acceleration, and even those that do have other limitations,
such as Xv support and the like.
their software. I like the run-time detection approach that Xine uses,
although Xine is far from perfect...
Xine isn't anywhere near as optimized. I spent time comparing the two,
and there is a noticable performance difference playing the same movie
between MPlayer & Xine. On a fast box the difference isn't enough to
impact viewing.
Since I am mostly interested in DVD and VCD/ASF/AVI playback, Xine seems
like a better match for me... although I do like the fact that you can
view QT through MPlayer.
Yes, I know you wrote the SxS's for Xine and MPlayer :)
If MPlayer is built without DeCSS but DeCSS is found on the system at
runtime, will it use it for DVD's? Or will I have to go through and
rebuild MPlayer to make it so?
You have to compile MPlayer with libdvdcss support in order for it to be
capable of playing DVDs. THe same is true for Xine.
The latest stable version of XFCE is 3.8.18. Unless you haev that or
possibly 3.8.16, you're not getting a clear picture of what's available.
Also, the development version of XFCE, 4.x, is available from CVS, and
is prolly more stable than KDE's latest.
SuSE 8.1 includes XFCE 3.8.16. Did you run CDE or OS/2? This looks a lot
like those...
No, but i ran/run it on Solaris. The default theme for XFCE is very
CDE-like, but it doesn't take much tinkering with various themes to
stray quite far from the CDE look (if you dislike it).
Thanks for the dialog and Happy New Year.
Same here, back at ya!
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo: http://netllama.ipfox.com
9:35pm up 17 days, 4:44, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.07, 0.08
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