Re: [newbie] My personal response to msn.com and Internet Explorer.
On Monday 29 October 2001 08:25 pm, you wrote: And I'm saying, he should make sure that it can be viewed properly. Not cop out with uncertainty. I agree with you, except Franki explicitly stated that he fears unless people are drawn away from MSIE, they might not ever consider switching to Linux. == You missunderstood me again I made that point to indicate that if the web becomes IE only (can anyone deny that that is what M$ want?) people won't have the choice,,, I don't actually care if people want to use linux or not... I care that people have the choice to use whatever they want. What they want, and what they can do are two separate things. Controlling the WORLD wide web would be significantly harder than their attempts to control the OS market. If the US fails to stop them, the European Union, Australia, Asia, and other regions get their crack at them. The Internet will not stand to be controlled by Microsoft. There are too many people running Linux. Macs, Amigas, ect. for this to happen. The WORST that will happen is that third party browsers will have to learn how parse Microsoft's proprietary web code. Afterall, Star Office can read Word documents. In fact, if it weren't for Linux, the government's case against Microsoft might have come sooner -- John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallently. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] My personal response to msn.com and Internet Explorer.
On Monday 29 October 2001 08:26 am, you wrote: Microsoft has backed off now, because of attention and articles. (I may make a note of that in the warning.) It will be back when they can do it in a way that won't draw attention to themselves. Mozilla is not significantly slower then IE, I have both and there isn't much in it. Exactly what type of computer are you running? MSIE is MUCH faster than Mozilla. The browser is practically integrated into the OS, so it's naturally going to run faster. There have been benchmarks to prove it. If you like, I can dig some up. IE6 is the first browser to come close to the standards, and it doesn't support Java applets or plugins unless you upgrade IE5.5 to IE6, then it keeps the support, other wise it does not. (but IE6 is no closer then Mozilla and supports stuff that wc3 don't. IE 5.5 supports HTML 4.x just fine. As did 4. I never (repeat, NEVER) came across a site that wouldn't display properly in IE 5.5, until Sridhar posted that one page with CSS. If you're using CSS, then, and only then, would a message be in order. Though make sure you point out that Opera has the same problem. I am not stopping them from using IE, I am just warning them that its not our choice of browser and detailing some reasons why. Frankly, I consider your pop-up idea to be a form of harassment. You are making a political statement when you should be thinking of intelligent ways to integrate IE into your webdesign. I don't want to be bombarded with pop-ups because you're too lazy or jaded to test out your site in IE. This is a HUGE step back you're taking. You are entitled to place a best viewed with text at the bottom of your page because I realize there's always going to be one browser that looks a little better than another, but to state that you won't even try and make your page viewable to roughly two thirds of the web population is ridiculous. This is about giving people a choice. This is why I'm upset as MS. It's not about herding people into a certain direction by using scare tactics. I haven't heard much in the way of truth from you *OR* them. We need to do something like this, we can't be underhanded about it like them, but we can't afford to sit by while they carry on.. Do something about WHAT? I think the peanut gallery has spoken on the MSN.com scandel. Everybody agrees it was universally stupid of them and that they were full of crap. MSN.com still looks fine in Mozilla 0.95 as of five minutes ago. who knows, if M$ .NET takes off, we may one day end up in a situation where nothing not IE will be able to browse any .NET supporting site... Until that day comes, stick with the facts Do you think they wouldn't do that if they could get away with it This is very serious,, I really believe something like this is a good way of educating people... The truth always prevales, but only if people hear it. Then start telling the truth. -- John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallently. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] My personal response to msn.com and Internet Explorer.
On Monday 29 October 2001 05:41 pm, you wrote: On Mon, 29 Oct 2001 13:45:52 -0800, John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday 29 October 2001 08:26 am, you wrote: Microsoft has backed off now, because of attention and articles. (I may make a note of that in the warning.) It will be back when they can do it in a way that won't draw attention to themselves. Mozilla is not significantly slower then IE, I have both and there isn't much in it. Exactly what type of computer are you running? MSIE is MUCH faster than Mozilla. The browser is practically integrated into the OS, so it's naturally going to run faster. There have been benchmarks to prove it. If you like, I can dig some up. What do you mean by MUCH faster? If you mean time to execute, then you are correct, because most of IE executes at bootup whether you want it or not. If you talking about page rendering speed (which IMHO is far more important), then Mozilla blows everything else out of the water. I find the page rendering speed in MZ 0.95 to be roughly comparible to IE 5.5, while the startup time is somewhere in the order of 4-5 times slower. If Browser.com is to be believed, the page rendering of Netscape 6 (which uses Gecko engine), is still less than that of IE 5.5. http://www.cnet.com/software/0-3227883-8-3607741-3.html?tag=st.sw. 3227883-8-3607741-1.DIR.3227883-8-3607741-3 Note that Mozilla isn't 1.0 yet - there is a good chance that it has not been fully optimised yet, and that it has the potential to be _much_ faster.' I won't agrue against that. Though I'm skeptical 1.0 will benefit from a perfomance boost. I'll bet money that performance won't be addressed to any real degree until revision 2.0. The current trend seems to be focused on piling on the features (bloat). MZ is a fine browser and worthy of the Netscape legacy, but it needs a lot of tweeking. Personally, I would like to see a feature-freeze initiated after 1.0 so that what they already have can be refined. They also should consider bringing the memory footprint down. IE6 is the first browser to come close to the standards, and it doesn't support Java applets or plugins unless you upgrade IE5.5 to IE6, then it keeps the support, other wise it does not. (but IE6 is no closer then Mozilla and supports stuff that wc3 don't. IE 5.5 supports HTML 4.x just fine. As did 4. You'll never know that for sure unless you do some _real_ tests. My definition of a real test is to connect with a variety of different browsers and see how the page looks in each one. It lacks elegance, but it's foolproof. HTML validators are cute, but I only find them useful in checking code integrity for the benefit of browsers I don't test the page in. Browsers like IE are designed to find alternatives to functions pages which they don't support, so they can at least _look_ like they handling the code well. Also remember that most people design sites for IE, not for W3C standards. You're missing the point, which is that it's the webdesigner's responsibility to ensure his code meets W3C standards and looks good in browsers other than IE. You can not lay this one on MS's doorstep. If you don't take the time to learn proper HTML, you get what you deserve. And contrary to what you or anybody else says, MSIE will render proper HTML if you take the time to use proper HTML. I myself type the majority of code by hand. I never (repeat, NEVER) came across a site that wouldn't display properly in IE 5.5, until Sridhar posted that one page with CSS. If you're using CSS, then, and only then, would a message be in order. Though make sure you point out that Opera has the same problem. CSS is becoming increasingly popular, particularly for large sites. CSS has the potential to make web design much easier. MS's claim that they support CSS1 is simply a lie. Again, most people design their sites for browsers (particularly IE), not standards (which is a real shame). I can't argue with that last point, other than to say that this entire thread wouldn't be faced with my ire if this were specifically about CSS. If you want to specifically put this warning pop-up on CSS pages, your case would be all the much stronger. I am not stopping them from using IE, I am just warning them that its not our choice of browser and detailing some reasons why. Frankly, I consider your pop-up idea to be a form of harassment. You are making a political statement when you should be thinking of intelligent ways to integrate IE into your webdesign. I don't want to be bombarded with pop-ups because you're too lazy or jaded to test out your site in IE. This is a HUGE step back you're taking. You have a point there. Thank you. You are entitled to place a best viewed with text at the bottom of your page because I realize there's always going to be one browser that looks a little better
Re: [newbie] My personal response to msn.com and Internet Explorer.
On Monday 29 October 2001 06:02 pm, you wrote: On Mon, 29 Oct 2001 11:43:08 -0800, John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday 29 October 2001 09:11 am, you wrote: Actually, I made no reference to linux at all... simply open standards and free software, thats all. Then say so. Don't tell people they might not be able to view your site with MSIE. That runs counter to all the whole point of the web, which is to make information available to as many people as possible. If you can't ensure that 2/3rds or more of all web surfers can view your site, you are a poor web designer just like the idiot's who use client-side VBScript. Whether you hate MS or not is really irrelevant. No, the message is saying that IE users may not be able to view the site _properly_. They are not being blocked, just warned. And I'm saying, he should make sure that it can be viewed properly. Not cop out with uncertainty. So basically, you want people to switch browsers so they switch to Linux. It seems to me you have little concern for freedom of web navigation. Leave Linux out of this. The issue is on standards-compliance. I agree with you, except Franki explicitly stated that he fears unless people are drawn away from MSIE, they might not ever consider switching to Linux. Too me, this campaign reeks of ulterior motive. Just like a certain Redmond Washington-based software giant. -- John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallently. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] My personal response to msn.com and Internet Explorer.
On Monday 29 October 2001 07:00 am, you wrote:
You can do whatever you want, but I won't visit your site. I find
pop-up Windows abhorantly annoying. This is one of the reasons
I stopped visiting Geocities sites.
Also, I think you're blowing this way out of proportion. As a
webdesigner, I can tell you that it only takes a little effort to
support a number of browsers with the same HTML code.
I'd submit people that don't bother to do this are lazy.
My old homepage was tested with many different
types of browsers including IE, Netscape, Opera,
Mossiac, Lynx, and some sort of Russian browser
which name escapes me at the moment. And yes, I
downloaded them all.
It's already been brought up ad nausium that MSIE does
support HTML 4.x, and the use of their proprietary tags is
optional. The MSN webmaster was clearly full of crap. Just
accept this for what it is. In a sense, you're no better than
they are by stretching the truth.
As for the security risks regarding MSIE, I could easily
write a Javascript program that does some pretty mallicious
stuff. You hear more about VBScript viri because of the
volume of computers that support it.
Further to our conversation on this list about msn.com..
I have created what I think should be Linux and open sources
retailation for Microsofts attempt to force the use of their non
standards compliant browser.
This is what I have so far.
Here is the code that goes in your main site..
##
htmlheadtitleNon Compliant browser!!!/title
SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript
!--
var browserName = navigator.appName
if (browserName == Microsoft Internet Explorer)
{
PoPuP = window.open(http://mydomain.com/non-compliance.html;,
PoPuP,
scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,statusbar=no,width=450,height=200,resiza
ble=yes) ;
}
/SCRIPT
/head
body
/body
###
Nothing terribly fancy about that, pretty standard code.
and here is the page it opens:
###
html
headtitleWARNING! Non Standards Compliant Browser Detected.
Possible Security Risk./title/head
body
h4You are using: Microsoft Internet Explorer to view this
site./h4 Because Microsoft do not always support open standards,
and they appear to change their level of support constantly, we
cannot guarantee that you will receive our site in the manner and
with the functionality with which it was intended.br
Also, many security flaws have been found in Internet Explorer
that could put your computer and your personal infomation at risk.
We suggest you download Mozilla (Free) at a href
=http://mozilla.org; target=new
http://mozilla.org/a and show your support free software around
the world. Mozilla was created and is maintained and advanced by
open source programmers around the world. It is a fast, secure and
most importantly, standards compliant browser.
br
This is not necessary you may have full functionality, we just
can't guarantee it, and neither can anyone else other then
Microsoft and its partners.
/body
/html
This opens a small featureless browser window of 450x200 pixels
that contains the above html,, I would like to hear anyones
comments on this.
rgds
Frank
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; name=message.footer
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Description:
--
John Hokanson Jr.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
A human being should be able to change a diaper,
plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship,
design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the
dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act
alone, solve equations,analyze a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty
meal, fight efficiently, die gallently. Specialization
is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] My personal response to msn.com and Internet Explorer.
On Monday 29 October 2001 12:23 pm, you wrote: As for the security risks regarding MSIE, I could easily write a Javascript program that does some pretty mallicious stuff. You hear more about VBScript viri because of the volume of computers that support it. This doesn't hold water... as those same computers also support Java. There are many different visions of Javascript though. It's easier to do it in VBScript. It's not the fault of the language. -- John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallently. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] My personal response to msn.com and Internet Explorer.
On Monday 29 October 2001 09:11 am, you wrote: Actually, I made no reference to linux at all... simply open standards and free software, thats all. Then say so. Don't tell people they might not be able to view your site with MSIE. That runs counter to all the whole point of the web, which is to make information available to as many people as possible. If you can't ensure that 2/3rds or more of all web surfers can view your site, you are a poor web designer just like the idiot's who use client-side VBScript. Whether you hate MS or not is really irrelevant. I stated facts, and that is all. No you didn't. You're fighting one gross embellishment with another. yes, all other browsers could possibly learn something from IE, and vice versa, but having IE work its way slowly into being the only browser able to access web sites is a good way to ensure the population will never swap to linux or consider it.. So basically, you want people to switch browsers so they switch to Linux. It seems to me you have little concern for freedom of web navigation. -- John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallently. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] KDE 2.2.1 on MD8...the saga continues...
On Saturday 27 October 2001 11:38 pm, you wrote: On Sat, 27 Oct 2001 18:43:50 -0700, John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Okay, I'm 99% certain I'm going to have to upgrade to XFree86 4.1.0 if I want to have any chance of installing Textstars RPMs. I also have a LOAD of other dependencies I still need to satisfy. I went to the Xfree site and tried running the Xinstall.sh script with the -check flag. However, it will not display what version of the binaries I have to install. It says that Linux a.open is not longer supported. Any ideas what binaries I really need? - John What version of Mandrake do you have? If you plan on making such a major upgrade, I suggest that you upgrade to Mandrake 8.1. Not only is it easier, it also avoids many problems which can arise when upgrading XFree. I'm really getting sick of this though. The RPMDrake lockups, the fact that I get an invalid page fault when I try to start Ghaleon (shades of Win9x), the slowness and buggyness of KDE and almost all the other programs that come with Mandrake 8. The fact that Sawfish locked up when starting today (I have *NO* clue what's up with that). I just want my computer to work right, and Linux has been a complete bitch to set up properly. I've already spent money on two distributions. If I spend any more, I'll be fast approching the cost of an MS Windows upgrade. Everytime I get a new peice of Linux software, it's not good enough or has major bugs and I have to do it all over again. eon (shades of Win9x), the slowness and buggyness of KDE and almost all the other programs that come with Mandrake 8. The fact that Sawfish locked up when starting today (I have *NO* clue what's up with that). I just want my computer to work right, and Linux has been a complete bitch to set up properly. I've already spent money on two distributions. If I spend any more, I'll be fast approching the cost of an MS Windows product. Everytime I get a new peice of Linux software, it's not good enough or has major bugs and I have to do it all over again. So far the only thing that makes it better than Win9x is the fact that I can leave it running without having the reboot every couple of hours. That's not good enough. I've been fighting the urge to tear it from my HD and switch to NT. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] KDE 2.2.1 on MD8...the saga continues...
On Sunday 28 October 2001 12:41 am, you wrote: There is always the possibility that your hardware is to blame. The problem is that these problems aren't random. If they were I'd be inclined to agree with you. These problems are reproduceable. Some of them are actually documented (like the RPMDrake problem). - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] KDE 2.2.1 on MD8...the saga continues...
On Sunday 28 October 2001 07:25 am, you wrote: John Hokanson Jr. wrote: I just want my computer to work right, and Linux has been a complete bitch to set up properly. I've already spent money on two distributions. If I spend any more, I'll be fast approching the cost of an MS Windows product. Everytime I get a new peice of Linux software, it's not good enough or has major bugs and I have to do it all over again. So far the only thing that makes it better than Win9x is the fact that I can leave it running without having the reboot every couple of hours. That's not good enough. I've been fighting the urge to tear it from my HD and switch to NT. John, Sorry to hear you're having so much trouble. IIRC, you're running on a 200 Mhz. Pentium (something) with 64 MB ram. That's really not enough for Mandrake and KDE. Also, IMHO, Linux tends to be oversold at this point in time. Depending on your requirements, Linux might not be for you yet. Well, I'd be willing to take the performance hit if I can get certain things working a little bit better. Like I don't know why I can't get Sawfish to load (so I can try it). I *MAY* have gotten RPMDrake to work by refreshing it's own internal database. I was actually able to uninstall Netscape last night. I *WILL* upgrade my RAM. In fact, I intend to do that before I put in another processor. Also, my other box under construction will run Windows 98. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Upgrade Suggestions...
Okay, here's the deal. My Linux box is currently a Pentium Pro 200Mhz (256 L2 cache) with 64 megs of RAM (esentially it's an workstation that used to run NT). I don't want to get rid of it because it's got a lot of goodies including a built in NIC, SCSI, and great case cooling (yes, I know it's a little long in the tooth, but I was told Linux doesn't need a Cray to be productive). The motherboard is dual processor capable, but presently only has one. However, it's also able to support *ONE* Pentium II running up to 333Mhz. My questions is esentially asking for what would yield the best speed boost? I'm leaning toward dual PPros, but not if there are known SMP problems under Linux. I'm also intending on upgrading the RAM. Thanks it advance. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Upgrade Suggestions...
On Saturday 27 October 2001 09:33 am, you wrote: On Sat, 27 Oct 2001 09:06:09 -0700, John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] With these concerns aside, you are probably still better off with an extra Pentium Pro. My guess would be that your kind of board is better optimised for PPro, and that the PII support was included simply to provide an easy upgrade path. Your PII chipset is most likely an early model, like an FX or LX. I can tell you right now that it's an440FX. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Upgrade Suggestions...
On Saturday 27 October 2001 10:09 am, you wrote: On Sat, 27 Oct 2001 09:47:50 -0700, John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Saturday 27 October 2001 09:33 am, you wrote: On Sat, 27 Oct 2001 09:06:09 -0700, John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] With these concerns aside, you are probably still better off with an extra Pentium Pro. My guess would be that your kind of board is better optimised for PPro, and that the PII support was included simply to provide an easy upgrade path. Your PII chipset is most likely an early model, like an FX or LX. I can tell you right now that it's an440FX. - John The FX is te earliest PII chipset. I wouldn't use it if I were you. I'm leaning towards not using it for the PII. However, there are only two chipsets that support the PPro, and the FX is one of them. The other is the KX, but its rather cost restrictive and intended for high end server applications (not desktop and low end server stuff like myself). I'm guessing that I'll get the other PPro, making sure they're the same steping. I'll also look into getting 512k models, as well as punching my RAM up to 128mb or 256mb.. The box will primarily be running KDE (or GNOME if I get completely fed up with the latency of KDE), act as a light file server, and maybe an internet gateway. Nothing major. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] See what MSN.com has done?
On Saturday 27 October 2001 10:28 am, you wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Read: THEIR standards. Specifically, their use of VBScript, I believe. IE supports it; other browsers don't (or don't support it well). So when they start getting around to using VBScript to dynamically write the HTML part of the page, other browsers (probably) won't render it as well as IE will. VBScript runs just as well as Pearl-based (or anything similar) CGI would. Ideally, when using VBScript, you would run the code as an Active Server Page (ASP). I've gone to ASP based sites in Netscape and Mozilla, and they've always displayed fine. Running scripting languages client-side is generally not the prefered option for ANYthing. (includng JS). In any event, the MSN site looks fine in Mozilla, although the fonts are kinda junky (really the fault of the OS fonts and not the browser). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that Opera and Mozilla were designed *specifically* to be as closely as possible in compliance with W3C standards -- unlike IE. IE is very standards compliant, actually. The earlier versions weren't. But yes, Opera Mozilla are also very standards compliant. Almost all browsers that I know of adhere enough to the W3C standards. Almost any site that at least pays some lip service to the W3C should display fine in MSIE. There are exceptions like the site that Saidhar posted (ironically Opera won't display it, while IE for the Mac will). Many of the MSIE-only and Netscape-only tags came about when Netscape and MS were trying to show up each other. Those were the dark ages. Mozilla has chosen to strip out a lot of the Netscape-only tags, while MS has apparently chosen to retain theirs (though I don't know how much of it is still in use). What I resent is MS's claim that they have the only browser that supports W3C tags. Anything on MSN.com that won't display properly is more likely a result of theiir own proprietary tags nested directly on the page. But again, the page works fineI would say that this is just b*llsh*t designed to get people to download IE 6. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Some questions...
On Tuesday 23 October 2001 12:33 am, you wrote: On Mon, 22 Oct 2001 19:43:31 -0700, John Hokanson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1. Am I to understand that KDE 2.1.1 is simply slow? Just out of curiosity I fired up GNOME 1.4, and it ran MUCH faster. I've heard that KDE 2.2.1 fixes a lot of the slowness of 2.1.1. Is this true? KDE 2.2.1 is a bugfix release for KDE 2.2, and it is a little faster than 2.2. I would say it is about on par with 2.1.1 in terms of speed. I mostly use GNOME, which I have found to be significantly faster than KDE. I have heard others say the exact opposite, so I guess it depends on your system. Thanks. I'll try 2.2.1, and if there's no performance increase, I'll consider switching to GNOME. Both are on my system right now anyways. 2. RPMDrake seems jacked to me. I'm trying to remove Netscape 4.x from my system and it won't budge. It just stils there saying it's preparing to remove the selected components and I have to kill RPMDrake. I am using Mandrake 8.0 BTW. Is there a workaround for this? Run rpm --rebuilddb in a root terminal. I tried this. Now it hangs at 99% when it goes to scan CD1. :( - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] KDE 2.2.1 on MD8...the saga continues...
Okay, I'm 99% certain I'm going to have to upgrade to XFree86 4.1.0 if I want to have any chance of installing Textstars RPMs. I also have a LOAD of other dependencies I still need to satisfy. I went to the Xfree site and tried running the Xinstall.sh script with the -check flag. However, it will not display what version of the binaries I have to install. It says that Linux a.open is not longer supported. Any ideas what binaries I really need? - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Internet Explorer for Mandrake 7.2?
On Thursday 25 October 2001 10:13 pm, you wrote: in reply to: I realized after I sent that I worded my post poorly. I do believe MS has an unfair monopoly and probably got there with the help of some illegal practices. But I don't think MS having more knowledge of the workings of Windows is necessarily unfair. If they use that knowledge to shut out competition or do clearly malicious things, then that's definitely a problem. If they use that advantage to create better programs than what their competition is making, that's fine with me. MS wasn't just handed Windows. Illegal activity aside, it took them a lot to become the monster they are today. If they're willing to take that risk, then I see no problems with them gaining some benefits from the reward. If that were the case, and forcing everyone to use the API while they embed everything they write into the OS is acceptable.. Then no company other then M$ can write a better app for windows then M$ M$ is adding stuff into the OS all the time to cut our their competition, thinks like Office2000 and XP, Mediaplayer, Internet Explorer, and all the new freebie thrills you get with XP, can't be competed with for speed because regardless of how got the competing app is, it has to use the windows API and as such can never compete for speed and integration with M$'s own apps. The result being something like this: Why download Mozilla if IE is faster? Why download Staroffice if Office2000 does it all faster? (apart from the price which is sad if its the only factor in Staroffices favour.) Why download ICQ when MSN messanger is faster? Just to play the devil's advocate here. If you agree that the aforementioned Windows applications are only faster because of MS's intimate knowledge of their own APIs, and that the aforementioned applications are still slower, even under Linux. Would it not follow that an open-API version of Windows would have signifcant performance advantages over Linux if you were running something like Mozilla on both platforms? Let's forget about the abhorantly bad memory management and stability for a second. Those are mostly kernel related and have little to do with the discussion over APIs. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Internet Explorer for Mandrake 7.2?
wrote: On Monday 22 October 2001 04:07 pm, you wrote: On Monday 22 October 2001 05:11 pm, you wrote: On Monday 22 October 2001 02:50 pm, you wrote: In reply to Eric Baber's words, written Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:07:10 +0100 Spoken like a true newbie. Linux and Microsoft do not mix. Could we PLEASE be a little nicer to the poor guy. They *DO* have IE for non-Microsoft operating systems. I believe Sun has a variant, and they were doing one for HP-UX. Don't forget MacOS and MacOSX. The latter could qualify as a form of Unix. I wonder why MS sees Linux as a threat and not these other Unices. I suppose since it can run on the x86? I think a better question is, would Linux users even use a MS product, or would they find it too revolting? I personally believe that Microsoft Internet Explorer is the best web browser out there. For any platform. Period. Perhaps if you like the following: 1. The browser is automatically installed and starts up at every boot whether you want it or not (which explains why it seems to load so quickly). If it is your primary webbrowser and you use your computer for webbrowsing a lot, this isn't a problem. Indeed, if you check out what is going on in the Mozilla community there is talk about doing this with Linux by preloading some of the browser into memory. Another alternative is to have the browser run as a daemon so that the benefits are reaped across a multiuser system without redundant setup for each user. 2. When it crashes (which is quite often), the whole OS crashes. Doesn't happen often in my case. Occasionally you WILL get GPFs. I won't argue with you that Windows memory management is crap. My experience is that Netscape crashes much more often under Windows. 3. It's closed-source, so you have no idea what's going on underneath. For example, the 'snapshot' facility used in the XP products will send whatever is in your memory to Microsoft, even if it is private. XP does bother me somewhat. 6. You like an inherently insecure application - one which has many well-known exploits which can easily compromise your data and privacy. I've downloaded the 128-bit encryption update. The times I do transmit sensitive information, I feel relatively secure. Unless there is something specific you're refering to. 5. You don't want to ever use Java. In a move against Sun, Java support has been discontinued in IE6. You can fix this by upgrading to IE6 from 5.x. It will retain the Java plugins. 6. You don't want to ever use plug-ins. In a move against Netscape and other non-IE based browsers, plug-in support has been discontinued in IE6. Same solution as above. I was watching intently in the mid to late 90s, and I can tell you right now that MS *DID NOT* attain their position in the browser war entirely by unscrupulous means. They were well on their way even before they started bundling it with Win98. MSIE 3.x would tear anything else apart. And when AOL bought out Netscape, the writing was on the wall. Hopefully the Mozilla folks can actually turn things around. AOL's purchase of Netscape was a major blow for the company. AOL used MSIE, as part of a Faustian deal to have an AOL icon on the Windows desktop. They had little interest in developing the Netscape browser - they only really wanted Netscape's web services. Hopefully things shall change now that the MS deal was allowed to expire. Mozilla technology is already being used in beta versions of the new Compuserve browser. Unless I'm mistaken, I believe it is mostly the Gecko rendering engine that is being used. If things go well, I think AOL would adopt it for their main browser. Considering AOL's track record with shoddy software, I remain skeptical. I personally believe going with IE was the only decent decision they made when you consider the alternatives were Netscape and their own proprietary browser. MS had the better product. It's as simple as that. MSIE became leaner and more stable, while Netscape became incresingly more bloated and buggy. No, it isn't as simple as that. MSIE didn't become leaner and more stable, it was just 'assimilated' by Windows so that it looked that way. IE loads up whenever you boot into Windows. When you want to use it, it will pop-up quickly, since it is already in memory. This, combined with MS's use of secret internal APIs, gave MS an unfair advantage over Netscape. Anything that isn't open source is suddenly unfair now? Let's not forget that Netscape's decision to go open source was relatively recent. You simply CAN NOT get source code for anything pre-4.x. All of this seems rather pointless to me because whether you examime pre-open source or after the fact, the IE at the time always seemed more stable than the Netscape at the time. I also doubt the level of integration in IE 3 was as extreme as it was in post-4.x. Netscape 6 isn't worth
Re: [newbie] Word of advice
On Tuesday 23 October 2001 02:10 am, you wrote: I too was in the same boat as you about a month and a half ago. I had Sound Blaster internal PCI modem. I tried the software and the settings. It was just easier to sell the card and pick up an external hardware modem. Linux used it without a hitch and life got interesting in surfing the web through Linux's eyes. The cost is about twice then a internal. Mine is a Hayes advertised to work under Windows and Linux. Ran about $75.00 and well worth the all the headaches. I don't mean to discourage you from doing it otherwise I just wish to spare you the trouble, especially if you completely new to Linux like myself. I'd have to agree. I use a Modem Blaster External on my Linux box and it has worked great so far. One thing that should be stressed here is that you should get one that uses a standard DB-9 serial connection. Most of these are hardware controller based. Do *NOT* get a USB external modem. If you must have an internal modem, you might be better off with ISA, because today's PCI modems are mostly of the winmodem variety. I personally see very little need for PCI modems anyways, other than Intel's push to kill ISA. You are simply not moving enough data to justify a bus witdh greater than 16 bits. - John Good luck. --- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1251; name=message.footer Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Description: Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Internet Explorer for Mandrake 7.2?
On Wednesday 24 October 2001 07:53 am, you wrote: Matt Greer wrote: You missed the point. MS isn't required to create apps through the Windows API. They've got the whole run of the OS, considering they made it. Which means they can do things no one else can. So IE has advantages over Netscape because of this. Although I don't see a problem with that. Netscape is perfectly welcome to create their own OS and compete with Windows if they want to, same with anyone else. MS has every right to use their internal advantage against their competition. Re: MS has every right to use their internal advantage against their competition. Matt, I don't want to start a flame war, but I think everyone who reads this should recognize that is your opinion, and there are other opinions, as is clear from the antitrust cases against Microsoft. I don't know the law well enough to state this clearly or correctly, but the government somehow reserves the right to limit the behavior of monopolies (or almost monopolies) under certain circumstances -- maybe when that monopoly severely restricts competition, or maybe depending on the methods used to obtain and maintain that monopoly, or maybe both. I won't go any further except to say there are quite a few people that believe that some of the methods used to obtain and maintain their monopoly were unfair and possibly illegal. Point taken. But I think the problem I and a lot of other people have is this silly notion that Microsoft MUST make its source code and APIs open to anybody. I say that's crap. Not every OS can be like Linux, and that's not what the government's case is about. You *CAN* close off your product to outside developers who failt to attain your expressed permission. It *IS* legal. This was a battle largely fought and lost in the 1980s. I think if you're going to make a case against Microsoft, you should focus on the more tangible legal aspects such as price-fixing and bundling. AFAIK, this is what the Justice Department's case is largely about. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Internet Explorer for Mandrake 7.2?
Well on their way? They obtained the code from another company who had made it as a variant of the Mosaic client. The deal was for a percentage of sales. Wow, did that other company make a killing! 95% market share times nothing! If you're referring to MSIE 1.0/2.0 (which was indeed very similar to Mosaic), that's a completely different animal. I was specifically referring to MSIE 3.x and beyond. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Internet Explorer for Mandrake 7.2?
On Monday 22 October 2001 02:50 pm, you wrote: In reply to Eric Baber's words, written Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:07:10 +0100 Spoken like a true newbie. Linux and Microsoft do not mix. Could we PLEASE be a little nicer to the poor guy. They *DO* have IE for non-Microsoft operating systems. I believe Sun has a variant, and they were doing one for HP-UX. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Internet Explorer for Mandrake 7.2?
On Monday 22 October 2001 04:07 pm, you wrote: On Monday 22 October 2001 05:11 pm, you wrote: On Monday 22 October 2001 02:50 pm, you wrote: In reply to Eric Baber's words, written Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:07:10 +0100 Spoken like a true newbie. Linux and Microsoft do not mix. Could we PLEASE be a little nicer to the poor guy. They *DO* have IE for non-Microsoft operating systems. I believe Sun has a variant, and they were doing one for HP-UX. Don't forget MacOS and MacOSX. The latter could qualify as a form of Unix. I wonder why MS sees Linux as a threat and not these other Unices. I suppose since it can run on the x86? I think a better question is, would Linux users even use a MS product, or would they find it too revolting? I personally believe that Microsoft Internet Explorer is the best web browser out there. For any platform. Period. I was watching intently in the mid to late 90s, and I can tell you right now that MS *DID NOT* attain their position in the browser war entirely by unscrupulous means. They were well on their way even before they started bundling it with Win98. MSIE 3.x would tear anything else apart. And when AOL bought out Netscape, the writing was on the wall. Hopefully the Mozilla folks can actually turn things around. MS had the better product. It's as simple as that. MSIE became leaner and more stable, while Netscape became incresingly more bloated and buggy. You'll note that virtually NOBODY on this list has recommended Netscape as a browser under Linux. They all recommend things like Ghaleon, Opera, or even Lynx before Netscape. I personally would not mind a version of MSIE under Linux if it works as well as it does under Windows. I think the original poster merely wants to bring ome of the more solid Windows applications over to help ease his migration. He hardly should be flamed for that. - John Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; name=message.footer Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Description: Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac vs Intel architecture deliberations
On Monday 22 October 2001 06:02 pm, you wrote: Hi everyone. I´ve been playing with linux (ML8.1) for a little while on my home machine (an old P166). Our family is getting to the point where we need a second machine, so I´m trying to decide on the merits of going with a PowerPC (Mac) architecture (perhaps a new Mac G4) instead of Intel. I forsee my current machine being used primarily as a linux box (file/print server, database server, secondary desktop for me). We would use the newer machine as the primary (user-friendly) desktop that all family members will be comfortable using. One of the things about the Mac that caught my attention was that its new OS X is basically another Unix variant. Aside from being more stable than Windows, Im hoping that each machine would be able to easily mount the others file systems. If that's the only reason, I would have to decline. Windows 2000 (not 9x) is already fairly stable, and there's the old argument about software availability. On the other hand, if you're thinking about games and educational software (with stability still a concern), the Mac might look attractive vis a vis the Win2k box. My advice would be to dual boot one or more of your machines with a Linux/Win2K combo. I presently have no opinion of Windows XP. I have yet to use it. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Some questions...
1. Am I to understand that KDE 2.1.1 is simply slow? Just out of curiosity I fired up GNOME 1.4, and it ran MUCH faster. I've heard that KDE 2.2.1 fixes a lot of the slowness of 2.1.1. Is this true? 2. RPMDrake seems jacked to me. I'm trying to remove Netscape 4.x from my system and it won't budge. It just stils there saying it's preparing to remove the selected components and I have to kill RPMDrake. I am using Mandrake 8.0 BTW. Is there a workaround for this? - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] ISA Soundcard in Mandrake 8.0...
On Sunday 21 October 2001 04:43 am, you wrote: Well, it seems in the standard LM8.0 kernel ISA pnp support is compiled directly into the kernel and not as a module. I suggest running 'sndconfig' as root in a text console. Your soultion worked. Thanks Frans. Okay...next thing is that I don't seem to have a working master volume control or panning control under Kmix. The individual source controls work just fine though (ie. I can raise and lower the PCM, CDDA, ect.). - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] ISA Soundcard in Mandrake 8.0...
I'm trying to configure my onboard ISA soundcard to work. When I use Harddrake I see the card listed, but when I go to test it says module isa-pnp not found. I'm completely at a loss here. - John Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
