I wrote:
>> And again, how many distros (I know many won't play
>> MPEG-I's off the bat) will play whatever you
>> have bothered to download?

Eero writes:
> I have no idea, since I haven't tried all distros.
> Will Windows play whatever you have bothered to
> download out-of-the-box?

I've tried two dozen.  It's common for them not to play an MPEG-I out of the
box.



I wrote:
>>  > The removal of ath_pci is precisely the reason I
>> left openSUSE for my hobby use.

Jim wrote:
> 11.0 includes ath5k, which actually (at least for me)
> worked much better than the proprietary ath_pci (madwifi)
> stuff.  Madwifi was always flaky for me.
> ...
> Have you looked at 11.0?

I ran to Distrowatch at your suggestion, but it looks like there's only
installation DVD's available now. I'm saving space on my spare PC for
practicing ubuntu installs.

But **THAT** is the way it should be-- if the purists don't like the proprietary
drivers,  WRITE US SOME NEW ONES!   Hurrah that someone did!  But, I must ask,
why did it take so long, with alll the development that went on otherwise?  It
is an issue of magnitude that I'd think they'd have held up 10.2 until they had
one. I'm deadly serious.  Just cutting off an essential feature is plain stupid.
As the bug report for missing ath_pci shows, it lost SUSE a minumum of two
customers.  A car with no tires.


I wrote:
>> ... which is the "live in a mud hut, wipe with a leaf" option.

nemesis wrote:
> I don't like that analogy.  I prefer a Matrix or Rebels from
> Star Wars one.  Notice they too wear ragged clothes, eat slimy
> food, sleep on crowded dorms, live on the run.  But they enjoy
> every bit of it, BECAUSE THEY ARE FREE!! :D

So you were to develop your own video format system and were thwarted by
proprietary software? I'm trying to imagine how many people would have a
freedom they'd've actually exercised in this case.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:06:24 -0400, gregjohn wrote:

>> Have you looked at 11.0?
> 
> I ran to Distrowatch at your suggestion, but it looks like there's only
> installation DVD's available now. I'm saving space on my spare PC for
> practicing ubuntu installs.

There are liveCDs for GNOME and KDE4 available from software.opensuse.org.

Jim

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Will Windows play whatever you have bothered to download out-of-the-box?

No. A lot, but not FLV, DivX, or Quictime MOV.  You can, of course, put 
in codecs for that that integrates it, as I assume you can in Linux.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Watching YouTube on a browser on Linux makes the browser really slow

  Yeah, that must be true for *all* linux systems out there because it
happens to your system.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Watching YouTube on a browser on Linux makes the browser really slow
> 
>   Yeah, that must be true for *all* linux systems out there because it
> happens to your system.
> 

It can't be, while it doesn't happen on the computer I have at work
(Gentoo x86, Seamonkey, Flash9 (yes, I have a internet-computer with
Flash, that's how I know eg. that it still has memory leaks)
etcetcetc...). In that computer, flash just hangs from time to time and
leaks memory. And yes, Flash is the newest one that Portage offers.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 
> 	Well, a site like Hulu has a business model relying on making it as
> hard as possible to download. Nevertheless, I'll grant that an
> application probably does exist or will.

If the information will be provided to the end user, it is possible to
save the information somehow. Another thing is that is there enough - or
even anyone - users who would like to save that information enough to
create such software. It's well possible that such software will never
exist, but I don't believe it's impossible to create one.

> 	Well, perhaps the reason is that these aren't problems for most people.

Possibly. It still surprises me if Adobe ain't aware of them.

> I wasn't even aware of them till you brought them up. I don't have
> memory leak issues with my browser or with Flash. But that's perhaps
> because I use NoScript and only run a Flash app when I want to. 

Possibly. When Macromedia released Flash7, the Linux-version had huge
memory leak (something like 700MiB in 2 hours oslt), which was fixed
IIRC in couple of weeks, but ever since it has had smaller leaks.
Granted that most of them are cleared when the particular application
(practically means the web page) is closed.

> Crashes?
> Can't remember the last time Flash resulted in a crash for me.

No crashes, hang ups, ie. the application (and therefore the browser
process that mothers the Flash-process) hangs for some nice time and
won't answer, then recovers.

And yes, I have had such hang ups on Windows, too.

> 	As an end user on Linux, Flash sucked for a while. It's been just fine
> for a few years now, though. 

When 7 was released, it sucked 'cause it had a huge memory leak (which
was fixed, as noted). When 8 was released, Flash on Linux sucked 'cause
they didn't make Linux-version. From Flash9 they finally did one, but it
still ain't available in 64-bit. After AMD released Opteron (IIRC 2004)
Macromedia was from time to time asked why there's no 64-bit Linux
-version - they asked that it won't compile (which is somewhat
intresting, while there exists Flash 7 for Irix). I guess it still
doesn't, 'cause there still ain't one.

> I won't criticize anyone for making it
> better, but yes: Of course people will use software that happens not to
> give problems to them.

I criticize the way Flash has been growing. They do fix big bugs and
make new functions etc, but fix time of smaller problems (that won't be
complained by 95+% oslt of the users) seems to be very long.

Also while the users of the internet are expanding in systems (ie.
moving from Win to Linux), not releasing a 64-bit Linux-version (which
is a growing group of users) is a loss for both Flash and Linux. If they
wouldn't release version for Mac (I assume there is one, I don't know),
it would be a loss for Flash and Mac. In commercial practice this is ok,
but it shouldn't be considered (nor wanted) to be any kind of standard
on the www.

> 	Perhaps Java has improved in recent years. 

Surely.

> I rarely come across an
> applet these days, so I can't tell. 

Me neither on the internet, but I face it almost daily at work. I'll
have to grant that there ain't too many applications nor applets and
they don't change.

> However, it was overtaken by Flash
> simply because Flash provided a much better experience. Java had an
> irritating load up time (which in those days hung the browser - another
> problem...). 

I'd say they are ment for different things. Java was used while there
wasn't anything else and it could do, Flash was implemented to fill that
gap. Java is AFAIK better for bigger applications, where loading time
ain't such a beast - for example Raritan Dominion KVM-over-IP -switches
have built-in web-server to provide Java-based client. It works pretty
well, loading time is comparable with local application etc. Somehow
doesn't seem to hit the main target area of Flash, which is small and
quick web applications.

> Its interface was crappy. 

Interface? Doesn't that depend on the application/applet?

> Getting it installed was a
> Herculean effort compared to Flash. 

I can't remember anything special in the installation of Java. Can you
remind me?

> No real contest. It doesn't really
> impress most people that Java may be 10 times faster, and is/was a cool
> technology.

As I said, I believe they have different original goals - Java being
built to handle bigger applications and Flash to be kind of quick and
easy. With the latter one the utilization of cpu etc ain't such big deal
(it's a deal yes, just not that big), while it's more important that
it's there for you right away and handles well enough for the next 5-30
minutes. With the first one it's better to be more powerful, prefereably
also more flexible - it's not so bad to wait minute for loading the
system, if you're gonna use it for hours after it's loaded.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> It can't be, while it doesn't happen on the computer I have at work
> (Gentoo x86, Seamonkey, Flash9 (yes, I have a internet-computer with
> Flash, that's how I know eg. that it still has memory leaks)
> etcetcetc...). In that computer, flash just hangs from time to time and
> leaks memory. And yes, Flash is the newest one that Portage offers.

	Actually, Portage has had masked betas for v10 for a while now. I
wouldn't recommend them, though. A number of sites don't recognize it.
Rumor is that it's because 10 comes before 9 (or 8 or 7) in
lexicographic order.

	Not sure if that's Adobe's fault or the webmasters' fault.

-- 
"Graphic Artist seeks Boss with vision impairment."


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Eero Ahonen wrote:
>> leaks memory. And yes, Flash is the newest one that Portage offers.
> 
> 	Actually, Portage has had masked betas for v10 for a while now. I

Ok, I'll rephrase: newest stable-marked (x86, not ~x86) one that Portage
offers.

:)

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 
> 	As an end user on Linux, Flash sucked for a while. It's been just fine
> for a few years now, though. I won't criticize anyone for making it
> better, but yes: Of course people will use software that happens not to
> give problems to them.

It's going to suck again, either with the final release of Flash 10 or 
11. There is talk of Flash integrating the PaperVision library to allow 
ActionScript to do 3D animations. Right now, this is completely 
portable, because everything is done on the CPU. Software rendering in 
it's latest, virtual machine format.

With all the noise Adobe is making about the next version of PhotoShop 
utilizing the video card to do image processing, I'm expecting them to 
try the same in Flash. How well this will work across all the various 
*nix platforms, I can only imagine.

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On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:36:06 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   Yeah, that must be true for *all* linux systems out there because it
> happens to your system.

Arguably, the flash plugin for Linux does have significant memory leaks; 
the most recent version is much better, but for a long time, the only 
versions available were well documented to have memory leaks that would 
slow a system to a crawl if the flash "programs" ran for any length of 
time.

Jim

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