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The tide is turning

dan + john.

have you become those busy, glamorous people i see in televisions shows, who walk around quickly and give los of important orders at work? i am trying to imagine the use of a tablet outside that context (and following kardashian twitters on the go ;-)


vuk.
 
vuk said:
-many people value illusions of convenience over freedom
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In fairness most people don't have your luxury of being able to fart about for countless hours just to get Linux to do really basic stuff like sync contacts between a phone, a computer and a tablet that any decent modern IT system should do out if the box. It is fine if you are a geek/wannabe hacker with time on your hands, or just want a nice free UNIX server (this is where it really excels IMO), but as a turnkey solution for home computing it is just terrible. As such I'm where I've always been with Linux in that I think it is a great idea but I'd hate to actually use it as a home computing platform.

PS I've been playing about with Ubuntu recently on a Raspberry Pi, and I love that it is actually a perfectly useable computer for the price of a decent bottle of Scotch, but it still feels like an OS about 10-15 years behind the curve. I couldn't live with it as my main OS.
 
Tony L said:
PS I've been playing about with Ubuntu recently on a Raspberry Pi, and I love that it is actually a perfectly useable computer for the price of a decent bottle of Scotch, but it still feels like an OS about 10-15 years behind the curve. I couldn't live with it as my main OS.
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i assume you mean the GUI, not the actual operating system. if that is the case, perhaps you need a few tips on how to configure it to your liking. my mother has her setup looking pretty much identical to a mac.

i don;t really see much difference in GUI sophistication bewteen the big 3 playes. windows is the most annoying now. mac has a lot of dumbed-down and non-intuitive (albeit from my perspective) features that bug me. ultimately, ubuntu gives me the flexibilty to change anything i don't like "out of the box". that seems 10-15 years ahead of all the others.


vuk.
 
I think thats the point though Vuk, a regular argument on here I concede, but most people just want something great out of the box that works, Ubuntu is not it, especially that dog shit brown theme they seem to insist upon.
 
gary.

i agree the brown is a problem and i don't know why they persist -- brown does not equate with computing. there are only 2 other "default" themes and neither is great.


vuk.
 
Happily, Ubuntu becomes an integral part of Windows 10 in the forthcoming July Update - and as a proper subsystem, not a virtual machine, thanks to a love-in with Canonical.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/30/11331014/microsoft-windows-linux-ubuntu-bash

So at last people will be able to awk, curl, gawk and do whatever they are driven to do to those poor xargs from the comfort of the Windows desktop, or the autumnally tinted front end of their choice, as it seems Windows will probably run those too! Happy days - 2016 is finally the year of Linux on the desktop.

palp

Hololens stuff looks good too.
 
vuk said:
i assume you mean the GUI, not the actual operating system. if that is the case, perhaps you need a few tips on how to configure it to your liking. my mother has her setup looking pretty much identical to a mac.

i don;t really see much difference in GUI sophistication bewteen the big 3 playes. windows is the most annoying now. mac has a lot of dumbed-down and non-intuitive (albeit from my perspective) features that bug me. ultimately, ubuntu gives me the flexibilty to change anything i don't like "out of the box". that seems 10-15 years ahead of all the others.
Click to expand...

The difference between us is you think as a programmer, I think as an IT manager / IT trainer, i.e. I'm sure I'm very much more clued-into how actual users think and what the training implications are. As such I'm very much into human interface guidelines etc, consistent interface behaviour between apps etc, and in this area Linux just sucks. You may be able to get it to do what *you* want, but the average user trained to use a Microsoft or Apple system would probably throw it at a wall in frustration.

PS You'd have absolutely hated me as an IT manager as I'd have forced you to design to standard HIGs to save on user training etc. No sticking buttons and toolbars wherever the hell you want them or making them daft colours with me!

PPS FWIW I detested Apple's skeuomorphism phase! Follow the f***ing HIG!
 
TecSyndicate had a look at that as well. Personally I don't get it, I am not sure whats available on ubunto that I can;t get natively on windows.
 
God, I don't know either. Good for developers, apparently. I read that it is a hangover from Microsoft's scheme to run Android programs natively, which did it so well that they realised that no one would ever bother to write any Universal Apps, so cancelled it and the linux bit just hung on. I think the idea of Microsoft absorbing Ubuntu is winding some people up a treat, though.

palp
 
garyi said:
Personally I don't get it, I am not sure whats available on ubunto that I can;t get natively on windows.
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bash, (proper) ssh, git, apt-get, sed/awk/grep, etc. etc. As a Windows developer I spend a significant part of my day in a pretend bash shell doing this short of thing and now I can use the real thing.

Note this is of no interest to people who do not do a lot their computing on the command line, mostly developers, devops and sys admins (although the latter might stick mostly with Powershell).
 
vuk said:
dan + john.

have you become those busy, glamorous people i see in televisions shows, who walk around quickly and give los of important orders at work? i am trying to imagine the use of a tablet outside that context (and following kardashian twitters on the go ;-)
Click to expand...
Hell no. This is not a tablet, and I have yet to see the need for one, sine I have a macbook air. The Nexdock is a simple monitor, bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. I like to travel light when going out of the country and have done it with just a phone sometimes, but there's always a long email that needs to be composed, a presentation to be updated, or ssh-ing back to the unix system to submit runs, etc. What is stopping me from doing all that on my phone is the interface. Upside of this nexdock is if someone wants to steal it or take it from me, I'm only out $110 and no risk of getting any data off it since it has none.
 
matthewr said:
bash, (proper) ssh, git, apt-get, sed/awk/grep, etc. etc. As a Windows developer I spend a significant part of my day in a pretend bash shell doing this short of thing and now I can use the real thing.

Note this is of no interest to people who do not do a lot their computing on the command line, mostly developers, devops and sys admins (although the latter might stick mostly with Powershell).
Click to expand...

ssh, sed/awk/grep, vi - I'd be lost without those so that would be great. What about an X server? I've been told I need putty & xming to get that going on Windows 10.
 
You won't need Putty as you will have native ssh. At least within the bash shell, I suppose Win32 apps that need ssh logons will still need to use Putty and have Paegent running.

This thing is not designed to support X and client apps so although people will try it and it might work I wouldn't rely on that. If you need to use Windows but use Unix tools and shells and talk to Unix servers this is great news and potentially means that one can stop using all the various not quite 100% working Win32 ports of these things. But if you need to run Ubuntu, I would just run Ubuntu.
 
I get random people that look like they have driven from home to deliver me stuff from Amazon, its most disconcerting.
 
I guess that's pretty much how it works. The last few miles from the distribution centres are subcontracted to a slightly random army of small companies and individuals looking to either start their own business or boost income with extra work.

Anyway Amazon refunded my money straight away and I have taken this as an omen not to spend £800 on making my bedtime surfing and media watching slightly more enjoyable. So I won't be joining the Surface Pro crowd and will have to continue to be an Apple fanboi now that their more fickle fans are abandoning ship :)
 
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