They Say A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

[DoDoENT]

Can I run win98 or xp binaries in win7 natively?

Yes, you can.

I meant idiotic, because Windows uses swap while there's still enough memory left and things slow down.

Fedora does that too. I had to set vm.swappiness to 0 in order to avoid such behavior.

[V!NCENT]

I never unstoods why all these whiners never got together and said: Hey let's make a binary compatible API just like Wine and all use that. That way we only need to port the layer. Well people... you do not even need to make that freaking layer because it already exists: GNUstep: http://www.gnustep.org/

Why doesn't everybody stop whining if they do not really care? And why do people who do care that whine do not take any action?

[kraftman]

I think we've got a misunderstanding here - by portabble apps, I meant something like this - apps you extract to a random directory in which the app is fully contained - settings, temporary files, pretty much everything. This allows you to use a USB flash drive as the app root and run the app on any windows PC you connect it to.

Sorry, my fault. This looks interesting.

With some tweaking, I believe one cat turn a tarball into a portable app, but the incompatibilities in some low-level libraries + binary incompatibilities between binaries created by different versions of gcc mean the stuff rarely works across multiple distros.

I consider some different distros as different OS'es Maybe it won't be a big problem on distros which follow LSB, but I'm not sure.

[myxal]

It depends what you mean. In example I can use tarballs, Debian packages, Ubuntu packages, Ubuntu packages from previous version and they work. Can I run win98 or xp binaries in win7 natively?

I think we've got a misunderstanding here - by portabble apps, I meant something like this - apps you extract to a random directory in which the app is fully contained - settings, temporary files, pretty much everything. This allows you to use a USB flash drive as the app root and run the app on any windows PC you connect it to.

With some tweaking, I believe one cat turn a tarball into a portable app, but the incompatibilities in some low-level libraries + binary incompatibilities between binaries created by different versions of gcc mean the stuff rarely works across multiple distros.

[kraftman]

Really? Where are they? Or am I expexted to do it myself from the tarball version?

It depends what you mean. In example I can use tarballs, Debian packages, Ubuntu packages, Ubuntu packages from previous version and they work. Can I run win98 or xp binaries in win7 natively?

How do I do that? I consider the fact this is not immediately obvious as another problem.

Maybe this way: yum --installroot= but it probably depends on package config ( you can change it). However, if it's not what you expect it can be 'disadvantage' of not having something called registry, but I'm glad we don't have this thing.

Idiotic in what way? I definitely prefer swap files over partitions (that the Ubuntu installer insists on a partition is mind-boggling at this point) and given a choice between self-inflating swap files and having the system slow down to a screeching halt when there's not enough virtual memory, I'll take the former, thankyou

I have nothing against this and I would also prefer this way I meant idiotic, because Windows uses swap while there's still enough memory left and things slow down.

For example, the filezila FTP server - install, run and have a server with accounts in minutes. On linux, the are some ftp servers I could install, but they're all conf-file driven AFAIK and have no graphical console. Without reading the manual, I have no idea where to go from installing the software. Another example - solarwinds TFTP server: Run, select directory, click start, done. Ready to read/save random Cisco IOS image/configuration/etc in mere seconds, no manual. No such thing on linux AFAIK.

In this case it can be like you said.

Good for you, I'm using Kubuntu and the network manager widget in 9.04 was unusable for WPA-enterprise (didn't even try to connect). 9.10 uses knetworkmanager which pretty much just works, but something down the stack (WPA supplicant or the driver) causes AP-scans to randomly fail and NM sees no networks. If this is with the (best-supported?) intel3945, I can't imagine what the owners of broadcom must be going through. More omportantly though, I'm still waiting for GUI-driven ICS and preferably bridging/bonding, custom MAC etc. (nope, using /etc/network/interfaces doesn't work for me).

It's probably Kubuntu fault, there are known bugs in knetworkmanager (or in some other Kubuntu package) and it seems they won't fix them till next release...

[myxal]

I know those are your opinions, but I don't see a single problem in making portable apps on Linux - there are such apps,

Really? Where are they? Or am I expexted to do it myself from the tarball version?

you can install packages to directories you like to

How do I do that? I consider the fact this is not immediately obvious as another problem.

(and thanks, but I hate windows way of installing - I prefer repos),

I prefer repos too, it's the package manager utility (I use aptitude) which could use more user input. I agree that repos are the way to go, definitely easier to deal with.

auto inflating swap file... but Windoze had idiotic way (or still has) in using swap file,

Idiotic in what way? I definitely prefer swap files over partitions (that the Ubuntu installer insists on a partition is mind-boggling at this point) and given a choice between self-inflating swap files and having the system slow down to a screeching halt when there's not enough virtual memory, I'll take the former, thankyou

power management and wifi management as far as I remember never broke for me (except madwifi drivers, but it's another story), can you point what broke for you?

Good for you, I'm using Kubuntu and the network manager widget in 9.04 was unusable for WPA-enterprise (didn't even try to connect). 9.10 uses knetworkmanager which pretty much just works, but something down the stack (WPA supplicant or the driver) causes AP-scans to randomly fail and NM sees no networks. If this is with the (best-supported?) intel3945, I can't imagine what the owners of broadcom must be going through. More omportantly though, I'm still waiting for GUI-driven ICS and preferably bridging/bonding, custom MAC etc. (nope, using /etc/network/interfaces doesn't work for me).

About those simplistic GUI-driven utils I don't know what are you talking about,

For example, the filezila FTP server - install, run and have a server with accounts in minutes. On linux, the are some ftp servers I could install, but they're all conf-file driven AFAIK and have no graphical console. Without reading the manual, I have no idea where to go from installing the software. Another example - solarwinds TFTP server: Run, select directory, click start, done. Ready to read/save random Cisco IOS image/configuration/etc in mere seconds, no manual. No such thing on linux AFAIK.

on-line defragmentation afaik Ext4 supports it.

It will support it at some point, I think it's still not implemented. This after what, 15-20 years since online defragmentation worked in DOS? My best shot at defragmenting files on Linux seems to be to buy another HD and copy over all the files one by one. EDIT: Oh, and don't forget this will do nothing to help defragment other filesystems, notably FAT.

[kraftman]

There are (lots of) things I'll praise Windows for (ABI compatibility making portable apps possible; allowing the user to install apps into whatever directory they feel like; auto-inflating swapfiles; power management; wifi management that doesn't break in every other version, simplistic GUI-driven utils for the one time you need something simple; dead-simple filesharing; after-the-fact compressed folders; on-line defragmenting...). But window management is one of those things "so exceedingly simplistic that only a caveman would want to use them."

I know those are your opinions, but I don't see a single problem in making portable apps on Linux - there are such apps, you can install packages to directories you like to (and thanks, but I hate windows way of installing - I prefer repos), auto inflating swap file... but Windoze had idiotic way (or still has) in using swap file, power management and wifi management as far as I remember never broke for me (except madwifi drivers, but it's another story), can you point what broke for you? About those simplistic GUI-driven utils I don't know what are you talking about, on-line defragmentation afaik Ext4 supports it.

[V!NCENT]

I'm still not getting the whole genius thing, sorry. They're squares...with rounded bottoms...sitting flush with the top of the border. That's hardly genius.

Not everyone has the same opnion and likes And that's probably a good thing...

As for the blur, I get it. I know what they're doing, and I like it. What I meant was, it's too strong. I've not used it, so I don't know if that's configurable or not.

The only thing that is configurable is the color of the window border.

The only thing wrong with your description of the 'program-in-a-window function' is that it's using IE8.

Too right

How does it work with Chrome?

I don't know if this stuff is in a hidden API or a documented one. I have only tried Windows 7 for a week or so (release candidate). I don't know if Chrome uses this functionality...

[diagonal_mambo]

I'm still not getting the whole genius thing, sorry. They're squares...with rounded bottoms...sitting flush with the top of the border. That's hardly genius.

As for the blur, I get it. I know what they're doing, and I like it. What I meant was, it's too strong. I've not used it, so I don't know if that's configurable or not.

The only thing wrong with your description of the 'program-in-a-window function' is that it's using IE8. How does it work with Chrome?

[V!NCENT]

I do wonder what exactly is genius about the placement of the close/maximise/minimise buttons. Is it that they're sitting flush with the top of the window border? Wow, inspired...

It's the fact that you cannot do anything interesting with these buttons, yet it's very different from squares and circles. That in my opinion makes it genius because I thought no one could do anything else with these things.

The blur in particular looks very awkward. The transparency is fine, except that the window contents are entirely opaque.

It's blurred as if everything behind it is out of focus. Like depth of field.

Also, congratulations Windows 7 on finally getting an innovative window management feature. I refer, of course, to being able to drag windows to the sides/top of the screen. About time.

That is not even something that I would realy care about msyelf. However the fact how the 'program-in-window' functions are integrated are awesome. For example IE8 is an icon on a button on the taskbar, right? But when you download something the button starts functioning as a progress bar and thereby showing the user some valuable information.

All these touches are awesome. But I prefer KDE4 on Linux with a magnitude of ten more