Recent Comments

Wowohwowohwow want need must have rowr!

Shouldn't spectrum licences expire?

That ratpoison article was friggin' hilarious. I have no ideas about the merits of the desktop vs other Linux desktops, but the article? I cackled. Favorite line:

That cheat-sheet is about as helpful as a donkey with a semi-automatic rifle. Sure, it looks cool in a picture... but you don't want it on your desk.

No option for scooters? We just had this discussion:

https://pipedot.org/comment/2TEQ

Every time I walk somewhere, it always astonishes me just how convenient cars are. Sure, maybe walking you can take a more direct route, ignore traffic signs, don't need to park, etc., but it's still just so ridiculously slow as to never be convenient. Expect to multiply your travel time by 10-20. Even the shortest trips suddenly become cumbersome, with basic issues like food getting cold before you can get it home. Of course bikes are faster, but they have most of the disadvantages of driving, and some of the disadvantages of walking, too.

Personally, I anxiously await a future where fully enclosed (fully electric) bikes are common:

http://www.gizmag.com/go/1811/

The EPA or CARB just has to crank-up the (CAFE) fuel efficiency requirements a few notches, and car makers will necessarily have to improve upon current sub-compacts, turning them into something an awful lot like the above in order to keep their numbers up, without needing to make all their vehicles EVs or hybrids. That's almost similar to what happened in the mid-90s, when GM was developing the EV1, Chrysler was meanwhile nearly giving-away as many GEM electric golf-carts as they could.

... you forgot my wheelchair. *smiley of your choice*

What you say might be true or not. But unless you can prove your accusations, your should not make them. And certainly you should not make them as A.C. It smells.

I don't post anonymously. Not a fan of it. When I have something to say, I put my name and my face right on it.

You also came here pretending to be someone else and defended your own article anonymously in the 3rd person ("Lunduke's impressionistic series of pieces" above). Sock puppeting/astroturfing.

That pathetic exercise indicates your journalistic ethics are below those of a subway rat. Nicely demonstrated.

I get that impression too.

Didn't mean to make you verklempt, chaver. Just giving my meynung of LXDE. If that makes me a full on chutspenik, then so be it!

[Also, I actually said some pretty nice things about LXDE in that article. Because LXDE deserved to have some rather nice things said about it.]

Since you mentioned ratpoison (the "r" is lower case... don't let the ratpoison team catch you using an uppercase "R"), here's my review.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2604623/opensource-subnet/the-linux-desktop-a-week-review-ratpoison.html

That, and the LXDE review, are part of a "Desktop a week" series I'm doing where I use a different Desktop Environment ever week.

We don't need copper networks. Fibre is the way of the future. Fibre to the house errr node errr exchange for the win for Australia!

Should be a good fit for AT&T's U-Verse service. They've been responsible for the proliferation of network cabinets (VRADs) through neighborhoods they serve for many years... Though not remotely enough to put everyone 50m from a DSLAM.

CenturyLink is probably in the same boat. They're deploying fiber, but they might take the DSL upgrade path for their (many more) already-deployed DSL areas.

Verizon has gone the other way entirely, deploying FIOS instead of improving DSL, and trying to make POTS and DSL impossible to sign-up for, anywhere FIOS is available.

Hard to see how this will shake out in the US: higher bandwidth internet connections threaten the cable providers, and the ISP oligopoly - who are frequently cable companies too - seem more bent these days on protecting their vested oligopolic interests than in investing in new infrastructure or improving the quality of service.

I'm not hopeful that reason will prevail in the United States where better internet infrastructure is concerned. Sure would like a nice, zippy connection though. Maybe I should move to S. Korea.

So you're saying the folks flocking to cheap high powered Chromebooks here on Pipedot and elsewhere.... don't exist. And that I'm the delusional one. 'Cause people really really don't want small affordable powerful notebooks. Okay, right....

what would be a better word? Is there one? Or are we stuck with "showered with gamma particles" etc.?

Hmm, let's try a few...

Original: cosmic rays, which are dangerously radioactive.

Option1: cosmic rays, which are dangerously high-energy radiation.

Option2: cosmic rays, which are dangerous high-energy particles.

Option3: cosmic rays, which are dangerous high-energy atomic nuclei.

Option4: cosmic rays, which are dangerous ionizing radiation.

Option5: Cosmic Ray's, which is the most dangerous pub in the universe.

I'll second the vote for Moon+ Reader here. I registered and use the Pro version on my Transformer and find it consistently gives the best results, is very stable, and has good performance - with the exception of handling PDFs which could use some work. For that I tend to use EBookDroid, which also has a great 2-up display mode that I use for a couple of PDF photography magazines that have a lot of image heavy double page spreads.

Not having room due to a limited word count shouldn't be a problem for a competent writer; you don't have to publish test methodologies and reams of results in that case, just summarise your findings. He does say that LXDE is insanely fast, before launching into how mundane it is and that he can't think of anything much to say. A far more useful article would have been to comment on about how much quicker (or not) it felt when trying to run a remote desktop compared with KDE/Gnome/Windows/OSX, how the simple interface and lack of visual FX might be contributing to that, point out the inconsistencies in the interface, and opine about why/when you might want to chose LXDE over other distros.

As stands, it smacks of an article that was phoned in just to meet an arbitrary word count and get paid that probably would have been better left unpublished by the site's editor.

Curiosity but also a chance for me to learn: what would be a better word? Is there one? Or are we stuck with "showered with gamma particles" etc.?

LXDE is boring and I think most would agree that's a selling point. The writer needed to attract some eyeballs, painted LXDE as the 'meh' desktop, and got his article linked here (free marketing). Well done Mr. Lunduke...

You've got an incredible level of self-delusion going on to believe the article supports your claim.

Your link merely confirms what I've been saying, that people desperately want netbooks at a netbook price point but that they were terminally crippled through artificial constraints by MS and Intel.

So, thanks?

Somebody's been Googling himself!

1) You're completely wrong about what I was saying.
2) It's not just a theory, it's based on plenty of evidence:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/dec/31/netbooks-dead-2013

+1 for the ziplock bag!

I'm not sure about the technical feasibility of this, but someone really needs to find a way to make a laptop with a mechanical keyboard.

Once you go cherryMX, you never go back...MX.

The last time I used PCMan, I found that it required a lot of tweaking to get basic functionality that you expect out of a file manager, and for not much gain. I'm using Thunar right now and it pretty much does everything one might want while still being pretty light. It also has the all important "Open this folder in terminal" option, which should really be standard in all file managers.

...that he was trying to be tongue in cheek about there being nothing to complain about, which isn't always the case with GUIs (especially if they're from MS).

That it uses PCMan has me interested in trying it.

You're right. I'm wondering what this guy's qualifications are and on what technical merits he makes his determinations. I mean, to work for Network World or whatever you have to be pretty savvy, know technology, and have a good working knowledge of systems and code, right? Or do you just have to be a journalistic hack with a whiny penchant for criticizing themes.

You want an interface that surprises you? Let's set your journalist butt down in front of a Ratpoison instance and see how you do. You surprised now, you journalistic fraud, you?

You might be new, but you seem to know exactly what to do. Welcome aboard, grandpa :)

Lunduke's impressionistic series of pieces on different interfaces don't have room for in-depth analysis, presumably because his column is only allotted so much space in the publication.

In any case, I think LXDE is fine for someone with constrained hardware resources, although it seems to me an ungainly and unattractive hodgepodge of disparate elements.. It's also fine for someone without hardware constraints. It's inarguable, though, that having adequate contemporary hardware opens up a much wider range of choice. Given that, choosing a desktop environment because you like the way it looks and feels is just as legitimate as choosing anything else. Why use something you don't like using unless you have no other choice?

Yeah, the reviewer completely missed the point of LXDE. Lightweight desktops are aimed at people that just want the UI to get the hell out of the way and let them get on with doing actual work without any distractions or bogging down systems with limited resources (e.g. a lightweight CPU, low memory, or limited bandwidth for remote GUI desktops), LXDE does that pretty much perfectly. I prefer KDE for my main *NIX desktop, albeit with most of the distracting bling switched off, but even with a high bandwidth connection if I want a remote GUI desktop I tend to switch to LXDE, XFCE or something similar.

Instead of writing about the lack of any bling, the article should have focussed on benchmarking how much better it performs vs. the likes of KDE and Gnome with limited resources available, the benefits provided by lack of UI distractions, what has been removed to facilitate that, and maybe even how you can possibly add back in those bits of bling that you really can't do without. What a waste of bits...

My point is, cosmic rays or space itself cannot be "radioactive". Radioactivity is a property of ordinary matter.

But yeah, I'm being needlessly pedantic. Thanks for the submission, I did enjoy the "article". And thanks for linking directly to the source, by the way -- that's something that rarely happens on /. these days.

Ahahahahaha

oi! We're not allowed to post from work

Yes. Exactly. His was a good answer.

When you are showered by gamma/cosmic rays, or high energy particles, does it matter where they come from?

Your first paragraph theorizes maybe the market wasn't there, and your last paragraph says maybe Google created a forced market through massive advertising.

I don't think either of those (oversimplified) things is close to true. Google hardly advertises, for one thing.

Again, I say the market was always there but companies abandoned it due to collusion between Intel and MS. Atom chips, really? Can't run cheaper Windows on a screen larger than 10", really??.

In 2006 or so gmail was a pretty straight-forward thing that did everything you were used to doing but better, more cleanly, and more easily. They've pissed around with the UI ever since then and generally made it into a beast that's less likeable by those who value their email.

You can get the old Gmail interface back quite easily. Just disable javascript and reload the page.

Click the link that says:

"To use Gmail's basic HTML view, which does not require JavaScript, click here."

Then in the new yellow bar across the top, click:

"Set basic HTML as default view"

All done. Good old plain Gmail, wherever you log-in from, permanently.

And yet manufacturers are too stupid yo give it to them

As slim as the margins were, and as high as the return rate was, I'm not so sure it's stupid at all. If they have to price them so they only just barely turn a profit on the line, then it's not worth it for them to make the products you want.

One can't get a tablet or phone with a real keyboard, except maybe those overpriced or crippled MS things.

Most Blackberry phones still have real keyboards, and now they can run Android apps, too. I admit, looking for Android slider phones is depressing and unrewarding.

But I suppose keeping my old phone is for the best, as Google just keeps making it harder and harder to make a phone call on Android. Several additional unintuitive steps needed to add a recent number to the contact list, much more difficult to switch between recent calls, the dialer, and your contacts, and absolutely NO WAY to EDIT your contacts from the dialer... You can create one there, but if you make a mistake, you must switch to a different program entirely. This is a complete regression. [/rant]

I don't get it. The entire market is being handed to Google.

Actually, at least Acer's Chromebooks are just older models of cheap Windows laptops they previously sold. Maybe the Windows tax makes a huge difference in low-end hardware, or maybe Google's mega advertising for a tiny number of products gets them exposure they wouldn't have as low-end Windows laptops.

I wouldn't call laptop keyboards "great". Ever. Anybody ever found one that isn't terrible for programming?

The keyboard I prefer to use on my desktop is smaller than many laptop keyboards:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036WTWX0/89-Key-Mini-Keyboard

Only thing I really regret is that it only has one CTRL key, but altwin:ctrl_win takes care of that under X11 just fine.

But it would be necessary for the wrist-wrest to be 0.5" lower than the keyboard, which I haven't seen any laptop ever do. That might make the difference between comfortable easy typing, and horrible laptop keyboards...

I also prefer a trackball for faster pointing, which is a similarly good fit for laptops, though sadly haven't seen them on portables since the 486 days. Their pointless and unnecessary demise makes it clear that whatever laptop manufacturers are looking for, it isn't good input devices.

A simple interface that does what you expect without throwing throwing around this year's version of eye candy gimmicks?

I suspect you're a lot younger than me. Lots of stuff in current FLOSS distributions flummox me. Nautilus? Why? What's wrong with mount? Unity? Never seen it. :-O You don't like the standard $window_manager? Install your own, ffs! I read today people were concerned about the wallpaper in the latest Ubuntu. Ho.Ly. ....

Install a minimal distribution, then tweak it to hell and back! Feature!!! I don't understand why anyone complains about this stuff. If you can find real breakage or bugs, that's important. But it looks funny to you? Do you know how to fire up the config GUI (or even hack a text config file)? Is this a daunting challenge for you?

If so, you need to hire me, and I'll be rich! :-)

P.S. I'm brand, spankin' new to Pipedot, this's my first post, don't expect me to know what I'm doing here. Looks good so far. I've high hopes.

Zomgs I can find nothing to say about it, where is my bling, my swipey swishing crap? Seriously if you can find nothing to say about it then it's probably doing it's job. I imagine you wouldn't have much to say when reviewing a fork or a hammer either cause they do the job.

Are there any Linux reviewers that can match that level of detail and writing quality?

Yes, unfortunately I'm too busy working for minimum wage to waste time on that shit.

...I do not think it means what you think it means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_(disambiguation)

I used to really like the OS X reviews. But, maybe its me, but I miss the HFS+ bashing that used to come with each one. Just not the same without them.

Case in point. Those silly autocorrect typos don't happen when I have a real KB available.

People want netbooks, they CRAVE netbooks. A compact, very cheap PC with adequate performance and a real keyboard

And yet manufacturers are too stupid yo give it to them, all because MS licensing crippled the format.

Thus we have giant phones and tablets with accessories and Google controlled "chromebooks" all desperately reaching to satisfy a market need that's been there all along. It's sad. One can't get a tablet or phone with a real keyboard, except maybe those overpriced or crippled MS things.

I don't get it. The entire market is being handed to Google.

Those OSX reviews are defiantly nicely written. That recent Yosemite review was the first of those articles that I actually saw (I don't have a Mac, so I normally don't follow OSX too closely), but it seems Ars has extensively reviewed the past several releases as well. I'm a little envious.

But should one day for whatever reasons Window Maker not be available anymore, LXDE is probably quite on top of the alternatives I would try.

simple, intuitive, and stays the heck out of your way so you can work.

Perfect.

Two desktop environments, which I probably never will use: GNOME and KDE = bloat. At least for me. I installed KDE for my wife and she is happy with it.

A simple interface that does what you expect without throwing throwing around this year's version of eye candy gimmicks? Sounds like a pretty good feature to me.