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- mookau, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12I wish more people were aware of the 'bling' that Linux has to offer. Perhaps then more people would consider it for personal use. (Of course, business use doesn't require 'bling', but power and security)
- PhinnFort, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10...and with total control you can turn off all the bling you want, or just drop all bling and go huddle together over your CLI.
- fiorenza, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11Nonesense. When you have total control, there's no such thing as too much. Dial-up what you want, and there you have it.
- PhinnFort, on 10/10/2007, -3/+12Mono is troublesome because Microsoft has total control over the implementation (worrying from a support pov and legal pov, and probably other pov's too), apps written with it are (imho, from personal experience) slow and memory consuming compared to their counterparts written in C(++), and lastly it isn't good for anything; it's not very innovative, it's not easier to use that it's counterparts, etc.
And rotflmho to the "don't use anything but the core parts". That would lead to some miserable applications. - pak314, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Radial menus have existed for a long while. Its also called a pie menu. (see WIkipedia) I remember a window manager from more than 10 years back that something similar.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7You should have known Cairo has nothing to do with Mono; Cairo is a very basic 2d vector library written in the plainest C possible (it doesn't even link to Glib; it's only "true" dependency is Freetype/Fontconfig, even though it's pretty useless without libpng too). Mono's used Cairo from day one for its drawing, but that's because Mono requires a vector drawing API, and Cairo's the one of choice currently.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6It's pretty apparent you have no idea how the kernel works, with special regards to modules. We've been able to ship third party drivers without rebuilding the kernel (or for that matter, in many cases the driver either) for years and years now. There are some edge cases where a specific version of the kernel is needed for version parity in the driver, but for most distributions, you'll find the driver that's shipped with the kernel works fine, and that if you actually do need to install a 3rd party driver (like the Radeon closed source driver, or nVidia's kernel module), it's easy as pie and is often automated.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Or the Sims or anything else with radial menus. Believe it or not, they were invented a very, very, very long time ago, and this isn't the first time has made radial menus for GNOME either (there was one that worked with GTK v1).
- Kazbaeden, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I think it's a bad idea to make it rotate in the direction you're moving the mouse. One of the advantages of a pie menu is that they take advantage of our excellent angle memory, thus making navigating pie menues more efficient. If the menu options rotate, that angle memory is never established and with that advantage gone I'm not convinced there's any advantage of this menu over a traditional list menu.
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3MS certainly does not control the implementation and doesn't even control the standard, ECMA controls the core (though I still do not consider them an acceptable standards body, they've got little to their name compared to the ISO or ANSI, the core is as sound as any other technology wrt IP). We have our own libraries so don't need to touch the rest of the implementation.
Don't use the MS technology. For Linux apps use GTK# and the rest of the OSS Mono stack. The .Net stuff is there purely for compatibility, anyone starting a project intended for OSS platforms using the MS stuff needs to be slapped.
Personally I won't use it but there is nothing wrong with others doing so. - segphault, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Radial menus have been around for a long time. You can find them in many video games and commercial applications, many of which predate Kommando. The paradigm itself is based on well-known design principles like Fitts' law.
- amoore260, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3this might be good for tablet pc users...
- 9a3eedi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I love the lib name. "libsexier"
awesome XD - logomancer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Fittsmenu doesn't require Compiz or XGL; it only needs a compositing WM if you want it to use transparency.
- Xilon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Why can't *nix improve on multiple fronts?
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2The .Net platform out performs Java in start up time. However, the hack MS implemented to do this severely restricts the possibility of run time optimisation. Java runs more efficiently when it's running but may take 4 seconds longer to start.
Java also destroys .Net in terms of scalability which is why C# isn't going to hurt it any time soon. - init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2@FreakyT
"Why don't you try to explain to a new user why the Nvidia driver won't install without the kernel headers installed? Or how it has to be run from the command line, and requires that it compile modules for your kernel in the background?"
If you use packaged version of the driver, such as with the Restricted Drivers Manager in Ubuntu, or from the Livna repository in Fedora, I'm pretty sure that you won't need any headers installed. - geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I built and played around with the menu demo. It's kinda cute but it's pretty dizzying and really can't see the need for anything like it (yet). The biggest change I'd make right off the bat is to change the menu items to fixed positions (and maybe make them rotate based on scroll wheel activity). I'm very glad to see people discovering the power of Cairo and what they can do with graphics on the Free Desktop though, and I encourage this guy to keep going.
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1They could use a shim like Nvidia and have DKMS handle all the compatibility issues.
Also lots of companies have open sourced their drivers. - harlowsmonkeys, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Note also that the FSF has a competitor to Mono: http://www.gnu.org/software/dotgnu/. Evidently, the FSF believes that it is safe to implement the ECMA part of .NET (and they have used some code from Mono).
- ZephyrNinety, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I wish people were less concerned with "bling" and more concerned with performance. Wobbly windows, water droplets, and widgets might look cool but screw that, I'd take XFCE with some transparency over those any day.
- santaclaws, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Kind of like kommando on KDE (which btw doesn't need compiz or xgl.) I have kommando mapped to ctrl + menu; it pops up a menu wherever the cursor is. It'll take you perhaps a week of use to tweak the apps and submenus in the way you use it most efficiently, but in the end it's way more efficient than using kmenu.
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Funny since XFCE has increased in size so much in the last year I think it belongs alongside Gnome and KDE now.
- allywilson, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I quite like KDE - but you're right, Kmenu needs a big makeover.
- djGentoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It still runs faster.
XFWM4 actually has compositing support, funny that you mention it... - tomj88, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I was at a conference (lugradio live) when Karl Lattimer first demonstrated this, and the crowd went nuts. I'm glad to see he has finally implemented it :)
- Xilon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"Of course, business use doesn't require 'bling', but power and security"
If that was the case they wouldn't be using Windows... - FreakyT, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"It's pretty apparent you have no idea how the kernel works, with special regards to modules. We've been able to ship third party drivers without rebuilding the kernel (or for that matter, in many cases the driver either) for years and years now."
Nonsense. While a driver is built as a module for a specific version of the kernel, that module will generally not work with another version without recompilation.
"if you actually do need to install a 3rd party driver (like the Radeon closed source driver, or nVidia's kernel module), it's easy as pie and is often automated."
Easy as pie? Why don't you try to explain to a new user why the Nvidia driver won't install without the kernel headers installed? Or how it has to be run from the command line, and requires that it compile modules for your kernel in the background? - init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The good thing is that you can choose to run without bling, while users that like it can turn it all on.
- Xilon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I think by "Compiz or XGL" people simply mean compositing manager... like when you say "Linux", or "PC" (windows). Yeah, I know, not very good examples.
- djGentoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1...for Windows fanboys like you.
- pyrates, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2If your point is that the kernel includes most drivers that are needed, you don't get it. And your other point of some drivers needing a specific kernel version is because that is how the kernel was designed. Now their is an api that hardware makers can follow to create a driver that works across any linux kernel 2.6.xx. I'm not sure if its been released yet though.
I suspect that the linux kernel was designed this way originally because Linus wanted to force hardware makers to open source their drivers. But that didn't happen and was hindering linux from being more popular. Now they can release their closed source drivers without issue of worrying to build it for specific distributions or matching it up to a certain kernel version.
Maybe after this we can design a way to install a driver from a gui instead of from the command line. I know I've suggested this to ubuntu to be able to install a driver as easy as it is in Windows Vista even when installing Windows Vista where you sometimes need to install a storage driver. - kooft, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1@PhinnFort: C# isn't really that bad, performance wise. In fact, it's better than Java in many areas and as much of a beast that Java is, it's pretty widespread. I don't tout Dr. Dobb's Journal as being the premiere benchmarking site, but they do a pretty thorough comparison of C++, C# and Java. While the Mono implementation tested does lag behind the pack, Microsoft's .NET 2.0 platform is pretty snappy. Sure, you wouldn't write an OS kernel with it, but for evertyhing else it's not too shabby: http://www.ddj.com/java/184401976
- leksdraven, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I agree that rotation is not a good thing here. But it does have an advantage over traditional menus--it's less obtrusive and "sexier" when used properly; for example, when a user right-clicks in a program like GIMP, Miro, or even Firefox, but not Gedit, Calculator, nor gconf-editor.
- AxiomShell, on 10/10/2007, -6/+5Seriously ... *nixes don't need any more features to convert anyone. They're excellent as it is.
What they need is photoshop, dreamweaver and ableton live.
And please ... don't start about GIMP etc... I won't insult your intelligence also by comparing notepad with Vi.
Perhaps all this drive and energy lobbying at users could be directed at Adobe? - MavRevMatt, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Bling?
- NoTiG, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1the benchmarks of Silverlight with the CLR clearly show they far surpass javafx.. and flash. So not only are the indeed useful but with the DLR you can even pick languages that you are more familiar with like python to program RIA's. I think moonlight (linux's silverlight) is going to be very interesting.
- PhinnFort, on 10/10/2007, -6/+4Isn't this a total ripoff of Kommando, for KDE?
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Kommando?content=29514 - bkrishnan, on 10/10/2007, -5/+2Most people don't care about the 'bling'. They just need basic things like wireless, direct 3d, tv tuner, (insert hardware here) to work out of the box. That's the reason linux hasn't taken off yet as a desktop replacement for the masses. I know we're getting there, but it's gonna take longer for perceptions to change too.
- FreakyT, on 10/10/2007, -6/+2What Linux really needs is the ability for third parties to release drivers that can be installed into a generic kernel with no recompilation. If they added that, Linux just might have a fighting chance on the desktop. Sadly, they never will.
- schestowitz, on 10/10/2007, -16/+5I've just done some searches and it seems like there's no obvious link between Cairo and Mono, which is good news.
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