The DnD Sanctuary

Just a tech poll. Vote and comment :D

Ersi, you should've allowed users to change their vote. For one, I now use one computer primarily, the phones - let them don't count. But I've bought a tablet with Android, which is not in use yet.

I thought about allowing to change the vote. On one hand, allowing to change vote would make this poll an ever-changing thing, instead of a proper accumulation of statistics, and I didn't like this. On the other hand, real life is changing and we are not that many to make drastic changes in the polling situation, so yes, maybe I should have allowed it. Anyway, the poll cannot be edited any more, at least this aspect cannot.

Less complaining, more voting!

O'k, next time the poll will be flexible, right?

NetBSD on a whole lot of different hardware, some of it also has things like Solaris, IRIX, Android, Mac OS X or Haiku installed :right:

Hmm! I'm a bit of a mixed bag as far as my computers are concerned.
Laptop running Vista, a sad and old desktop running Linux Mint and an Amiga 1200 running AmigaOS 3.1 which my Mrs still uses frequently, though I will admit to using it occasionally for a bit of nostalgic gaming.

Carbon based operative system.

For computing, windows XP.

Bel, it'll rather be some neurological term, huh? I had a thought about such an option too. Unfortunately Ersi, being unfriendly with our Lounge experience, wouldn't allow funny choices.;)

I wasn't being funny, I was being futuristic and there's nothing funny about our future.
Drones and robots are being presented as entities that we have to accept in our lives as if they were persons. Silicon based operative systems instead of carbon.

I'm running Windows 8 these days. Last was XP, I skipped the Windows systems between those two.

I'm running Windows 8 these days. Last was XP, I skipped the Windows systems between those two.

For what I hear, you're wrong.
It seems that 7 is what Vista should had been and 8 a total failure.
So I keep with XP preparing to upgrade for 7.

The reason I didn't already is simple, I don't need to. Everything keeps on working.
Besides, I'm curious about the Linux worshipers.

I don't think my experience with 8 would be a total failure. It's not as good as XP, or as good as I hear that 7 is, but it's not the crashing nightmare that ME was. Hard to use-- yeah, it can be. 8 has some idiosyncrasies related to the touchscreen that I can do without, seems it wants to bring up stuff I didn't ask for but that touch thought I did-- and there's no way to turn off touch.

I still have my XP laptop, at this time there's some jobs it does better and no getting around it, at least with the older hardware I still have. It will get risky to use it online because criminals will write malware to attack XP and Microsoft isn't supporting it anymore, but for internal work here it still gets the job done, often better than the new laptop with 8 can do.

You know what is the problem with 8 mjm?
Being an operative system deliberately made for turning people into idiots.
What those logos reminds you? the cubes children used to play at kindergarten. All the system structure is made to turn people into idiots.
React, don't use it.

You know what is the problem with 8 mjm?
Being an operative system deliberately made for turning people into idiots.
What those logos reminds you? the cubes children used to play at kindergarten. All the system structure is made to turn people into idiots.
React, don't use it.

Please say you're kidding. Because if you're not--- if you really believe that logos on the screen can turn you into an idiot-- then it may be already a little late.

By your reckoning, we've been slowly being turned into idiots ever since we left command-line in favor of GUIs.

By your reckoning, we've been slowly being turned into idiots ever since we left command-line in favor of GUIs.

Current research overwhelmingly shows that comics are good for children's reading skills, but opposition to pictures dates back a long, long time. Back in the 16th or 17th century at least one humanist was horribly offended that the publisher had dared to add a few illustrations to his work. (I do think an author should be consulted on such issues, mind you.) Some were of the opinion that any picture was bad, even though e.g. an anatomical diagram is immeasurably clearer than any written text could ever be.

Whether any of this has any bearing on Windows 8 I don't know.

Please say you're kidding. Because if you're not--- if you really believe that logos on the screen can turn you into an idiot-- then it may be already a little late.

I said system structure. Logos made of kindergarten cubes are just a matter of design coherency with the product.
It's symptomatic that they don't even tries to hide it.

Oops - just voted Windows because it is my main system, haven't tried to tick more then that - but to add: I am using on different Hardware (and Software: Virtual Machines) various systems.... and as most (Edit: of the current) ones beside Windows are more or less *nix based... So I add to my selected vote of Windows *nix :P (Sadly I haven't kept my old OS/2 Disks - if I still would have the Installer then at least one VM of mine would be running it... And then there still is MS-DOS and - oh wait, I still have a C64, C128 (Thanks McAllan) and an Amiga 2000 and all of them are used at least once in 24Months, so I think they count towards my systems)

This week I had an encounter with a weird beast: Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite laptop. The "Lite" in it is probably important, because Ativs are supposed to be proper equivalents of Macbook Air, so I have heard, but what I saw was far from it (not that I have seen a Macbook Air in real; I simply believe the hype). The only thing it did fast was boot up. From there it began coughing at merely opening the web browser - not browsing YT/FB yet, just opening the browser. Autostarting Skype and antivirus apparently made it choke even before the browser.

Instead of HDD it has an SSD, which some people say is a good thing, but I'm suspicious now after this encounter with an SSD machine. I am not smart enough to say if all the troubles of the machine are due to SSD or due to weak processor, whose specs did not seem weak to me (Quad-Core 1.4 GHz) but it surely behaved like it. The weakness can also be a combination of factors.

The size of the SSD is some 95 GB. Isn't this too small? Well, this is where things get weird. The laptop comes with HomeSync and SideSync features - entrust your files to the cloud. Also, by a similar token, a host of vital features in the available hardware, such as bluetooth drivers, memory card slot drivers, better graphics drivers,  security and recovery-related stuff, were available via Software Update module where you had to specifically add them, install and enable.

This cloud-your-files and install-for-your-life concept saves SSD space initially, it's true, but in a computer for dumbusers, how is it supposed to add up? How should people get all their connectivity and graphics to work in a laptop with Windows 8 where everybody expects everything to work out of the box? I think these are illegal questions. This is not supposed to make sense.

The whole thing felt like an odd step towards GoogleOS from Microsoft and Samsung. (Not that I have seen GoogleOS either; I simply believe the hype when it's loud enough - and stay away from it.) There's no single-option poll item here for this bastard.

SDDs... that may sound of-topic, but I am just in the right mood for some flaming :/
I can see the benefits, but with all the optimizations which are reducing writes... and their short lifetime compared to HDDs - I can't see why someone wants them on their Desktop System. I remember a C't Article some decade ago where they compared (before SDDs time) the suitability of medias for archival purposes and HDDs in the usage of "write once or twice" and leave them just safe to be read just then when you need to recopy where then stated as you may well read 'em after a century, whereas CDs and such will degrade after a decade. In one of my systems I still have a 6GB IBM HDD which still serves well as a swap partition, so I am all in for HDDs - if it wouldn't be for the sad experiences of 30GB IBM HDDs which in my hands all died out (not the 20 and 40GB ones). Sometimes I just wish for a buyable (for affordable price) WORMs for Backup Purposes, but at the moment I am all in for classic HDDs - if only the manufactures would understand the need for users like me that want low sized (nowadays POV) Discs for the OS (around 120-250GB), really low sized discs for swap/temp (around 10-40GB/40-250GB), somewhat mid-range for the programms partition/disk (around 300-500GB) and the rest as work/archive disks/partition (1TB+ each)... I Like to have the few basics (Root(OS),Temp/Swap,Programms) on a HDD each and My_Documents/Home/Archive/Work/etc. on large HDDs (however partitioned or per Usage for single HDD) - and for the first I hate it nowadays that I may waste a 1TB HDD with a ~100GB OS Partition and then some whatsoever... as having swap/programms on the same HDD in just a different partition makes no sense - i want them on a different controller chain.

Oh wait, where do I started - sdds.... well, those would be small like I want them, but I am not in the mood to buy 'em just to waste 'em, as those small sized context I would like to have 'em in is write intensive and that is IMHO a nogo for sdds...

Right, lots of rant. I should also mention that the laptop in question has no CD/DVD drive. Is it a multimedia device or not? Also its wired internet connection socket and HDMI sockets are of weird tiny format that I don't know if anyone has the jacks for. I don't. Either we are supposed to buy an external CD/DVD drive in addition to this expensive junk, or cloud our souls.

what I saw was far from it (not that I have seen a Macbook Air in real; I simply believe the hype).

I've seen a Macbook Air. It's so thin it doesn't have an ethernet port. Speed is fairly decent afaik. Its competition consists of ultrabooks, which the Ultrabook Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is, but the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite is not.

Instead of HDD it has an SSD, which some people say is a good thing, but I'm suspicious now after this encounter with an SSD machine. I am not smart enough to say if all the troubles of the machine are due to SSD or due to weak processor, whose specs did not seem weak to me (Quad-Core 1.4 GHz) but it surely behaved like it. The weakness can also be a combination of factors.

The size of the SSD is some 95 GB. Isn't this too small? Well, this is where things get weird. The laptop comes with HomeSync and SideSync features - entrust your files to the cloud. Also, by a similar token, a host of vital features in the available hardware, such as bluetooth drivers, memory card slot drivers, better graphics drivers,  security and recovery-related stuff, were available via Software Update module where you had to specifically add them, install and enable.

Low-end SSDs are slow. However, this review (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2427154,00.asp) actually claims the SSD has "peppy performance". It then goes on to say the AMD budget processor performs significantly worse than the Intel alternatives, although I have to say it doesn't seem like that should make it feel slow.

To clarify, my 2010 Atom netbook doesn't feel terribly slow to me unless I try to use something like the GIMP. In fact it usually feels surprisingly fast. But of course, I'm using Xubuntu. On a different, inferior netbook Xubuntu was still quite snappy, but Windows 7 Home Edition did indeed feel slow.

Is 95GB too small? Depends on your use case, really. For me it'd do on my portable device. But 95GB is a bit of an odd number afaik. Perhaps it's 120 or 128GB with a 25-30GB recovery partition?

Oh wait, where do I started - sdds.... well, those would be small like I want them, but I am not in the mood to buy 'em just to waste 'em, as those small sized context I would like to have 'em in is write intensive and that is IMHO a nogo for sdds...

Your information is outdated. See e.g. an SSD review from last year here (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested).

Despite having a far more limited lifespan compared to its 2bpc MLC brethren, the TLC NAND Samsung used in its 840 turned out to be quite reliable. Even our own aggressive estimates pegged typical client write endurance on the 840 at more than 11 years for the 128GB model.

Your information is outdated. See e.g. an SSD review from last year here (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested).

Sounds promising, but unless some tech review along prod-specs are explicitly naming such a device as built for swap/temp usage I would at least spare them from that purpose.

To clarify, my 2010 Atom netbook doesn't feel terribly slow to me unless I try to use something like the GIMP. In fact it usually feels surprisingly fast. But of course, I'm using Xubuntu. On a different, inferior netbook Xubuntu was still quite snappy, but Windows 7 Home Edition did indeed feel slow.

I have the exact same impression with Atom CPU: With the rightly chosen system on it, it does just fine. Should be the case with any CPU really.

Is 95GB too small? Depends on your use case, really. For me it'd do on my portable device. But 95GB is a bit of an odd number afaik. Perhaps it's 120 or 128GB with a 25-30GB recovery partition?

Now, I did some deeper investigation in the bowels of the machine and indeed, it's a 119.24 GB SSD with 98.59 GB committed to the system. The numbers as reported by GParted.

I don't know how to detect this data properly in Windows, so I booted from USB to a Linux distro to have another look at the hardware. GParted says that in addition to the partition committed to the usable system, there are no less than 4 (four!) different recovery partitions, all flagged as hidden, altogether 7 (!) primary (!) partitions. The purpose of the partitions that are not for recovery remains obscure to me.


The BIOS design on this Ativ Lite thingy is another horror I don't want to get into right now. Lucky I didn't screw anything up there.

Sounds promising, but unless some tech review along prod-specs are explicitly naming such a device as built for swap/temp usage I would at least spare them from that purpose.

If you have trouble with low RAM, buy more RAM, but making I/O nice and fast is kind of the purpose. What would be the point of an SSD if you're going to stick everything it'd speed up on an HDD? That being said, I have a swap partition on my SSD. It seldom sees any use. I mount /tmp in RAM (tmpfs).

See some sample (older) lifespan stats here (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5734/kingston-hyperx-3k-240gb-ssd-review).

Perhaps an SSD is not the thing for you; I don't know what you do with your computer. But I'd say sticking your OS on an SSD is the single most significant performance upgrade available today.

I don't know how to detect this data properly in Windows

Like this (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/disk-management-windows-7.htm). :)

Quote from: ersi on 2014-05-02, 08:48:06

I don't know how to detect this data properly in Windows

Like this (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/disk-management-windows-7.htm). :)

Amazing. This thing can be found by the same series of steps in Win 8 too. Well hidden in the first place, and the initial interface in Win 8 is another hurdle. In the end, yes, it shows the same partitions :) at the same time I see how right it has been to ditch Win.

I just hope the Gnome Partition Editor will remain as user-friendly as it is.

Was Blackberry OS meant to be a joke? :P

I'd like to have one of those operative systems we saw in the sci-fi movies. :)

Where do they get that? I understand those computers probably don't do much more than the funny effects we see but I have to recognize that they're cooler than mine XP, Vistas and soever.

I'd like to have one of those operative systems we saw in the sci-fi movies. :)

Which ones do you mean? I have seen three kinds of OS's in films:

- Nerdy gray or green on black text-based DOS or Unix-like things (most prevalent, last seen in Matrix)
- Nutty transparent touchscreens (I remember them from music videos)
- Real-life OS's

I was thinking about those kind of transparent, 3d with lines connecting  pieces of information.
There are also those that just have colors flowing but I suppose that only bad aliens can operate them... :)

You can find an emulation of the Jurassic Park OS online. I think it was actually a real Unix GUI.

Which ones do you mean? I have seen three kinds of OS's in films:

- Nerdy gray or green on black text-based DOS or Unix-like things (most prevalent, last seen in Matrix)
- Nutty transparent touchscreens (I remember them from music videos)
- Real-life OS's

You forgot the major one.
There's a window half the screen with the words "Do you want to hack this?" and a thick button "Yes". Let alone Johnny Stark's one.;)

You can find an emulation of the Jurassic Park OS online. I think it was actually a real Unix GUI.

Wasn't that just SGI's 4Dwm without much doctoring?

Unfortunately, the web emulation hasn't bothered to implement much, besides what's relevant to the movie plot.

http://www.jurassicsystems.com

But it looks like you're quite right:

http://www.sgistuff.net/funstuff/hollywood/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn

Unfortunately, the web emulation hasn't bothered to implement much, besides what's relevant to the movie plot.

http://www.jurassicsystems.com

There used to be a 4Dwm clone called 5Dwm and IIRC there's at least one gtk2 theme that emulates SGI's Motif look.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jurassicparkjeep.com%2Firix53%2Firix53_movie&hash=8cd6677ea6e217c872baed773a3393dc" rel="cached" data-hash="8cd6677ea6e217c872baed773a3393dc" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.jurassicparkjeep.com/irix53/irix53_movie)
It's even a Silicon Graphics monitor ( which is actually a Sony with an SGI-gray case :left: )

But it looks like you're quite right:

http://www.sgistuff.net/funstuff/hollywood/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn

I have an O2, an Indy and an Indigo2 R10000 here, I think I know what an IRIX desktop looks like :right:

I have an O2, an Indy and an Indigo2 R10000 here, I think I know what an IRIX desktop looks like

A collector, eh? :lol:

Quote from: Macallan on 2014-05-10, 11:40:25

I have an O2, an Indy and an Indigo2 R10000 here, I think I know what an IRIX desktop looks like

A collector, eh? :lol:

Well, you know what I do in my Copious Spare Time - comes with the territory :right:

You forgot the major one.
There's a window half the screen with the words "Do you want to hack this?" and a thick button "Yes". Let alone Johnny Stark's one.;)

In some films I remember that when the hacker was typing and was faced with password request, then "override" took care of it. In real life it somehow hasn't worked for me.

Quote from: Jоsh on 2014-05-07, 10:35:57

You forgot the major one.
There's a window half the screen with the words "Do you want to hack this?" and a thick button "Yes". Let alone Johnny Stark's one.;)

In some films I remember that when the hacker was typing and was faced with password request, then "override" took care of it. In real life it somehow hasn't worked for me.

Frantic speed-typing usually seems to do the trick in movies :right:

Most intergalactic spaceships that invade Earth are conveniently equipped with a RS232C socket for the hero to use when he hacks into the on-board computer with his laptop.

Frantic speed-typing usually seems to do the trick in movies  :right:

So RJ must be one of the movie stars?
At least he could apply.:rolleyes:

Most intergalactic spaceships that invade Earth are conveniently equipped with a RS232C socket for the hero to use when he hacks into the on-board computer with his laptop.

We could introduce USB to them.

Looks like the new OS infobit cannot distinguish between Linux and Android. Is it possible to make it work?

Looks like the new OS infobit cannot distinguish between Linux and Android. Is it possible to make it work?

It should be. For instance, my Opera for Android user agent is

Opera/9.80 (Android 4.4.2; Linux; Opera Mobi/ADR-1309251115) Presto/2.11.355 Version/12.10

The most important aspect of the mod I installed is that it has started recording user agents since yesterday. But I don't want to spend my time fixing up some detection system, so I'll have to figure out what to do about that.

@Frenzie, simplified version of detection algorithm I've done for punBB (should be fairly easy to port to any script):

function user_agent_detect($string, $rules)
{
	foreach ($rules as $key => $value)
	{
		$version = 0;

		if (isset($value['rules']))
		{
			if (strstr($key, '.'))
			{
				$version = explode('.', $key);
				$key = $version[0];
			}

			for ($i = 0, $c = count($value['rules']); $i < $c; ++$i)
			{
				if (($version && preg_match('#'.$value['rules'][$i].'#i', $string)) || preg_match('#'.$value['rules'][$i].'#i', $string, $version))
				{
					return array($key.(isset($version[1]) ? ' '.$version[1] : ''), (isset($value['icon']) ? $value['icon'] : $key));
				}
			}
		}
		else if (stristr($string, $key))
		{
			return array($key, (isset($value['icon']) ? $value['icon'] : $key));
		}
	}

	return NULL;
}

if (!empty($cur_post['user_agent']))
{
	$browser = user_agent_detect($cur_post['user_agent'], parse_ini_file($ext_info['path'].'/rules/browsers.ini', TRUE));
	$operating_system = user_agent_detect($cur_post['user_agent'], parse_ini_file($ext_info['path'].'/rules/operating-systems.ini', TRUE));

	if ($browser || $operating_system)
	{
		$browser_img = ($browser ? '<img src="'.$base_url.'/extensions/user_agent/icons/browsers/'.strtolower($browser[1]).'.png'.'" alt="" title="'.htmlspecialchars($browser[0]).'" />' : '');
		$operating_system_img = ($operating_system ? '<img src="'.$base_url.'/extensions/user_agent/icons/operatingsystems/'.strtolower($operating_system[1]).'.png'.'" alt="" title="'.htmlspecialchars($operating_system[0]).'" />' : '');
	
		$forum_page['post_actions']['user_agent'] = '<span class="edit-post user-agent-post" title="'.htmlspecialchars($cur_post['user_agent']).'" onclick="alert(\''.htmlspecialchars($cur_post['user_agent']).'\n'.($browser ? '\n'.htmlspecialchars($browser[0]) : '').($operating_system ? htmlspecialchars('\n'.$operating_system[0]) : '').'\')">'.$browser_img.$operating_system_img.'</span>';
	}
}

It requires these definitions:
https://github.com/Emdek/eStats/blob/master/src/share/data/browsers.ini
https://github.com/Emdek/eStats/blob/master/src/share/data/operating-systems.ini
And uses these icons:
https://github.com/Emdek/eStats/tree/master/src/share/icons

Personally I would suggest to store results in additional columns (or single one, as serialized array), no need to run it each time.
It could be also modified to check if they are not empty, so when rules are updated then these columns could be emptied and script would refill them when needed.

Well, I wasn't previously aware of Oregano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregano_(web_browser)). :P

Well, I wasn't previously aware of Oregano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregano_(web_browser)). :P

You know I do have RISC OS on some little ARM boards here :right:

( actually, I just wanted to see in what form TenFourFox would show up :right: )

Quote from: Frenzie on 2014-05-24, 11:37:01

Well, I wasn't previously aware of Oregano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregano_(web_browser)). :P

You know I do have RISC OS on some little ARM boards here :right:

There :right:

Edit: nothing, huh?
This is netsurf on RISC OS 5.19 on a Raspberry Pi.

lol, what?

lol, what?

No OS or browser detection :p

Most intergalactic spaceships that invade Earth are conveniently equipped with a RS232C socket for the hero to use when he hacks into the on-board computer with his laptop.

Yup, that way he can install a Windows virus....  :left: :right:

Quote from: tt92 on 2014-05-20, 03:13:57

Most intergalactic spaceships that invade Earth are conveniently equipped with a RS232C socket for the hero to use when he hacks into the on-board computer with his laptop.

Yup, that way he can install a Windows virus....  :left: :right:

Using an old PowerBook :right:

Let's see...

Edit: unknown OS and Safari?! :lol:
It's Haiku and WebPositive :right:

I'm currently checking out KDE Plasma 5. It feels somewhat slow on this 2010 Atom netbook, but it looks a lot more to my liking than the KDE4 iteration where I just couldn't get it to get out of my way like the Xfce-basic GTK2 theme. On the bad side, changing the icon theme doesn't seem to change the  completely colorless notification icons. And KWin keeps crashing, but that aside.

I'm currently checking out KDE Plasma 5.

You installed it under Debian, right?

Ah no, I grabbed the latest Neon image (http://files.kde.org/snapshots/neon5-latest.iso.mirrorlist) to dd to a USB stick. I try to keep my actual installs relatively clean. Also, I don't believe it landed in the Debian repos yet.

Building xfce4 on Raspberry Pi because Why The Hell Not?! :left:
That should give me some motivation to add more graphics & acceleration support :right:

On my netbook KDE 4 under Mageia in live session barely ran, so I didn't bother. Netrunner Arch (a modified KDE desktop) ran better, but I still didn't go further than the live session. Is Plasma 5 supposed to be lighter? Or is it the way it's packaged in Neon?

On my netbook I have had a modified Xfce (Manjaro Netbook edition with no icons on desktop, DockbarX instead of Xfce taskbar, etc.) and Openbox installed. I have also considered PekWM. Best keep it light, so that work gets done, among other things.

Last weekend I tried out wattOS which is Debian with Openbox. Its default theme looks nice enough. The default terminal is urxvt with amazingly sane defaults. It was set so that I easily discovered on my own that it could paste from clipboard and primary separately. Some terminal-oriented people surely see the benefits of this. There are other things in wattOS that I consider lack of polish, such as that the terminal does what I call fake transparency,* but I found nothing serious to complain about.

* I.e. the transparent terminal displays the desktop background and it misses other windows that should be under the terminal. The same phenomenon sticks the eye in Mint Mate.

Building xfce4 on Raspberry Pi because Why The Hell Not?!  :left:

Because it'll take like a week? :lol:

On my netbook KDE 4 under Mageia in live session barely ran, so I didn't bother. Netrunner Arch (a modified KDE desktop) ran better, but I still didn't go further than the live session. Is Plasma 5 supposed to be lighter? Or is it the way it's packaged in Neon?

I never tried KDE on my netbook before, so I couldn't say if it ran any better or worse. Like I somewhat implied, based on the live session I'd consider it too slow and heavy for use on my netbook. The fan was also spinning up way too much for what little I was doing, which wouldn't be very good for battery life. I think it might've been more GPU than CPU-related, but I'm not entirely sure. There were some settings about performance which was set to "low GPU, very high CPU" which I tried to change but that resulted in a KWin crash. But then I don't think Neon is supposed to be stable.

On my netbook I have had a modified Xfce (Manjaro Netbook edition with no icons on desktop, DockbarX instead of Xfce taskbar, etc.) and Openbox installed. I have also considered PekWM. Best keep it light, so that work gets done, among other things.

I run stock Xubuntu with TLP (http://fransdejonge.com/2013/04/a-quick-note-on-laptop-power-saving/). Despite what might seem like suggestions to the contrary, I like some things to Just Work™.

There are other things in wattOS that I consider lack of polish, such as that the terminal does what I call fake transparency,* but I found nothing serious to complain about.

You'd probably gain real transparency if you installed a compositor like Compton (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compton). I'm not quite sure what the advantages and disadvantages would be.

Quote from: ersi on 2014-09-08, 06:02:03

There are other things in wattOS that I consider lack of polish, such as that the terminal does what I call fake transparency,* but I found nothing serious to complain about.

You'd probably gain real transparency if you installed a compositor like Compton (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compton). I'm not quite sure what the advantages and disadvantages would be.

Looks like Manjaro Openbox that I have right now comes with Compton. Shouldn't a fancy desktop like Mint Mate have it too by default?

Update: Indeed there's no Compton in Mint Mate. However, mere installing it and rebooting doesn't fix the fake transparency.

In MATE you should just be able to enable compositing directly in Metacity (or whatever they've renamed it to). My mention of Compton was specifically for Openbox, which doesn't come with built-in compositing like Xfwm and Metacity. Although iirc in Metacity I could find no way to disable window shadows.

Incidentally, here are my Xfwm settings.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpolymathicmonkey.smugmug.com%2Fphotos%2Fi-jR6MMc8%2F0%2FO%2Fi-jR6MMc8.png&hash=4f6dfaeaabf5adf4ea74e7249d0d9666" rel="cached" data-hash="4f6dfaeaabf5adf4ea74e7249d0d9666" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/photos/i-jR6MMc8/0/O/i-jR6MMc8.png)

Edit: ah, here you go (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MATE#Enabling_compositing) for "Marco".

In MATE you should just be able to enable compositing directly in Metacity (or whatever they've renamed it to). [...]

Edit: ah, here you go (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MATE#Enabling_compositing) for "Marco".

Right, this turned out to be embarrassingly easy in Mate.

Let's see how this shows up ( NetBSD on an iBook G4 running Epiphany )
My AMD64 laptop died thanks to a cat and a cup of coffee, so I revived my old iBook G4. I used to like OSX back in the day but it's showing its age ( maximum supported version is 10.4.11 ) and the only modern browser is TenFourFox, which is alright but kinda slow.
On the NetBSD side of things - Firefox dropped PowerPC support years ago and I'm not sure the powerpc-specific bits in webkit were ever published.
Well, turns out getting firefox to even compile is more work than I can be arsed to invest, and a closer look at webkit shows that the only part that actually causes trouble is the Javascript JIT, which is unsupported on PowerPC, but apparently the stupid configure script doesn't know that and tries to build it anyway. Simple enough to fix, to my surprise since last time I tried webkit was rather crashy even on x86, if I could get it to build at all. Either way, both Midori and Epiphany seem to work so far and feel quite a bit faster than TenFourFox on OSX.
Also, here's some advice I could have used myself - when updating, for example xfce from some ancient version you may need to delete all config, cache and whatnot files the old version left in your home directory. Quite a few xfce4 components here crashed with the old files.

Edit: Chrome? On NetBSD? On PowerPC? :lol:

... and Midori, using exactly the same WebKit as Epiphany above ...

Edit: ... is also Chrome, but a different version? :insane:

Also, here's some advice I could have used myself - when updating, for example xfce from some ancient version you may need to delete all config, cache and whatnot files the old version left in your home directory. Quite a few xfce4 components here crashed with the old files.

I think upgrades should be alright as long as you don't skip versions. 4.6 -> 4.8 -> 4.10 rather than 4.6 -> 4.10 (of course, chances are it'd be simpler to handle migration of settings yourself than bothering to do all that…)

I'm not quite sure which version left the config files but it's been several years ago :right:

Edit: now Midori is "Mozilla compatible" - wtf?! :insane:

Building xfce4 on Raspberry Pi because Why The Hell Not?! :left:
That should give me some motivation to add more graphics & acceleration support :right:

This day we unpacked our Pi after a hiatus of about eighteen months. The scars from our previous efforts are healed. Back then we achieved a working media centre but never used it for anything. This time we will have access to a lot more literature and, I imagine, a larger pool of enthusiasts to answer  questions. I would like to make the leanest, smallest possible turnkey system for email and simple browsing and little else.

The most important aspect of the mod I installed is that it has started recording user agents since yesterday. But I don't want to spend my time fixing up some detection system, so I'll have to figure out what to do about that.

I looked into plugging in Emdek's detection system, which was fairly straightforward. However, I should've looked at the original source better. Apparently this mod only stores results and not the original user agent. I find that very odd, because e.g. regenerating the detected values after upgrading your detection mechanism or viewing the original UA string seem so self-evident that I missed this gross oversight. In any case, proper Otter detection is coming soon.

Quote from: Frenzie on 2014-05-23, 18:11:31

The most important aspect of the mod I installed is that it has started recording user agents since yesterday. But I don't want to spend my time fixing up some detection system, so I'll have to figure out what to do about that.

I looked into plugging in Emdek's detection system, which was fairly straightforward. However, I should've looked at the original source better. Apparently this mod only stores results and not the original user agent. I find that very odd, because e.g. regenerating the detected values after upgrading your detection mechanism or viewing the original UA string seem so self-evident that I missed this gross oversight. In any case, proper Otter detection is coming soon.

I half suspect that this would detect midori as well ( or at least that it would be trivial to add :right: )

It's active now. Some of the old stuff will appear broken, unfortunately.

:up:

In my work I generally spend hours and hours and hours using OS X. Industry standard it's expected. Occasionally using WIN to 'check it works' write an installer script, etc. (Virtual box comes in handy here).

At home we generally use Linux. Ubuntu/Crunchbang and Arch. (Currently)

In my work I generally spend hours and hours and hours using OS X. Industry standard it's expected.

What's the attraction with Macs? I haven't seen a single Mac user in real life. Literally. And no business is using Macs. I have seen 1 (one) iPhone user and a few iPod users, and that's the end of Apple's market here where I live.

There are a number of Apple shops in the country's capital though. I have paid them a visit about once a year and left my fingerprints on some of their things. That's pretty much my entire connection with Macs.

Somehow Apple's marketing works in America, but doesn't here. What could be the reason?

What's the attraction with Macs? I haven't seen a single Mac user in real life. Literally. And no business is using Macs. I have seen 1 (one) iPhone user and a few iPod users, and that's the end of Apple's market here where I live.

They're good for certain graphics-related stuff, most software is much the same as Windows and Linux, and the hardware isn't bad.

They're good for certain graphics-related stuff, most software is much the same as Windows and Linux, and the hardware isn't bad.

Have you tried Macs personally at length for something serious, like actual work? What did you like? What made you to not stay?

I had to finish a project about eight years ago. My laptop had broken and I was able to borrow someone's Mac to do it. At the time it felt faster and more responsive than Windows Vista on the same hardware (first release of Boot Camp). Is that still relevant? Given how my six-year-old computer is a speed monster in Linux and comparatively a bit of a slug in Windows 7, I should think so. This makes the experience subtly preferable in a way that it's hard to put your finger on. It's kind of the same way in which Windows Phone and iPhone offer a superior experience to even the most powerful Android phones, or of course how Opera is traditionally more pleasant to use than all other browsers.

The rest you've been able to experience in Unity. It's pretty much a direct Mac clone, and where it isn't (like the global menu not appearing until you hover) it's almost invariably for the worse. This means you've got an application-centric model of working, which I don't care for too much. First switch to the application you want and then to the document within that application which you want. Perhaps it's just because I've been using the "Windows" model of Alt+Tab for two decades.

Similarly, Photoshop on Mac OS works like GIMP — or rather the other way around. Your documents are individual windows, rather than all contained within one window. This is probably better for multi-monitor setups. On Windows it'd be a nightmare. In Linux you have workspaces; in Mac OS you have "Spaces".

The whole window thumbnail thing which I despise because only the document name differentiates one text document from another — it actually works fairly well while you're editing graphics.

So what do I like? You've typically got a more consistent and (by default) much better looking GUI than in Windows, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Apple contributes to this situation by making e.g iTunes for Windows look like a freaking Mac app. Also, back on Windows, all else being equal, I went with the most native-looking app, so as a user you play an active role in the matter.

The hardware is good, like I said. It's hard to find 16:10 aspect ratios and their "HiDPI" or "Retina" displays are a joy to look at. I wouldn't mind putting the iMac 5k on my desk. On the flipside, Apple mice and keyboards are atrocious. Also don't forget about stuff like color profiles, which especially on Linux is a bit trickier to handle with printers and displays (luckily I don't really care about it at this point in time). There are all kinds of small things along those lines which Apple pays attention to, while on Windows they are left to incompatible, weird, and often just plain awful individual hardware drivers.

So why don't I own a Mac? Eh, the display is tempting. Other than that, it's just not worth its price tag for me. Debian Xfce as my main OS is close to perfect. The only thing "missing" (I miss it like a toothache) is Microsoft Office 365, but I can run that in VirtualBox.

Edit: and here's some supposedly pretty decent Mac-only software (for Adobe isn't the be all and end all):
http://www.pixelmator.com/
http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/

I have roughly the same reasons for never having bought a Mac, even though in my case I have begun buying computers only very recently, just a few years ago. Until then other people had things I could use, so I didn't need to buy my own.

Once upon a time during G3 era I was thinking about buying this one, but the price was too high.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.everymac.com%2Fimages%2Fcpu_pictures%2Fapple_imac.jpg&hash=1fedb618a9b9b6068f3c680150ae9339" rel="cached" data-hash="1fedb618a9b9b6068f3c680150ae9339" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.everymac.com/images/cpu_pictures/apple_imac.jpg)

In Apple stores I have admired the displays of iMacs, but the keyboards and mice are ridiculous. And I know now from Ubuntu Unity that I could not work too long in the interface. If iMac came without OS, it would have a chance of being bought by me.

Peppermint Linux OS (http://peppermintos.com/), based on Lubuntu 14.04.  I had this guy using only 183 megs ram when first installed. After adding some of my own stuff, including Dropbox, it uses 300 or so on after first booting up.

Huh, the forum makes understandable mistakes when identifying the browsers and OS. The first one is already mentioned and this is Chromium, not Chrome.

You can see the UA if you hover over the icon.

Peppermint Linux OS (http://peppermintos.com/), based on Lubuntu 14.04.  I had this guy using only 183 megs ram when first installed. After adding some of my own stuff, including Dropbox, it uses 300 or so on after first booting up.

What is the desktop? Their website doesn't say. LXDE?

It does say. :P

The default desktop environment for Peppermint is LXDE (literally, "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment") which has shown itself time and again to be user friendly, easy on the eyes, and wicked fast.

Oh, I didn't notice. My search skills are getting ever poorer. At least I guessed right.

I haven't used LXDE (not knowingly anyway). How does it compare with Xfce?

I have installed Debian LXDE on a netbook, taking only 90 MB RAM after boot and login. :D
I have used LXDE for a long time. I haven't used Xfce ever, but I know a little how LXDE compares to Gnome. LXDE is light and fast, and its UI resembles Windows classic desktop. Its text editor is very basic and its file manager has some annoyances (keyboard shortcuts are poor and it's not easy to open files in Samba shared folders). Access to system settings is poor and somehow bugged. As a whole, it pleases me. If I need to accomplish some task that's not supported in LXDE, I switch to Gnome for a while.

I have installed Debian LXDE on a netbook, taking only 90 MB RAM after boot and login. :D

Sounds great. My Openbox, generally considered a lightweight window manager, on a netbook is 140 MB with some autostart goodies, such as Tint toolbar with icons, Conky, Compton, Parcellite, Thunar, etc. But at least I never miss another desktop environment when I work in it. Particularly keyboard shortcuts are perfect(ly customisable).

As someone who never had much attention on Macs, a basic question occurred to me.

It's said that Mac OS X is UNIX-based. Does this mean that when you open up the command prompt or terminal emulator, you can operate it like a UNIX?

And does any of you Mac users actually do it?

It's said that Mac OS X is UNIX-based. Does this mean that when you open up the command prompt or terminal emulator, you can operate it like a UNIX?

Mac OS does not come with the GNU Core Utilities by default, but its shell is Bash and I imagine it comes preinstalled with equivalents for common things like grep.

As someone who never had much attention on Macs, a basic question occurred to me.

It's said that Mac OS X is UNIX-based. Does this mean that when you open up the command prompt or terminal emulator, you can operate it like a UNIX?

Yes. It comes with a mostly BSD-ish userland and at least up to 10.4 also included an Xserver, nfs client and so on.
Some things like administration and stuff that normally goes to /etc are different but that's mostly NEXTSTEP heritage.

And does any of you Mac users actually do it?

I used to when I still ran OSX.

It comes with a mostly BSD-ish userland and at least up to 10.4 also included an Xserver, nfs client and so on.
Some things like administration and stuff that normally goes to /etc are different but that's mostly NEXTSTEP heritage.

That's interesting to know. Unfortunately I don't have much clue about BSD and NEXTSTEP either. Insofar as Mac has deliberate differences from BSD, it seems not worth the effort to learn it.

Quote from: ersi on 2015-08-16, 12:11:01

And does any of you Mac users actually do it?

I used to when I still ran OSX.

I will wait for Jim's and Oak's statements too. (Not really waiting, just giving them an opportunity I know they will never use.)

Quote from: Macallan on 2015-08-16, 19:17:13

It comes with a mostly BSD-ish userland and at least up to 10.4 also included an Xserver, nfs client and so on.
Some things like administration and stuff that normally goes to /etc are different but that's mostly NEXTSTEP heritage.

That's interesting to know. Unfortunately I don't have much clue about BSD and NEXTSTEP either.

IIRC the GNU userland is based on early BSD. If ps -aux gives you a list of all processes you're using something BSD-ish. The standard shell is bash, but it comes with tcsh, sh, ksh and so on.

Insofar as Mac has deliberate differences from BSD, it seems not worth the effort to learn it.

The differences are almost all administration and library handling ( they're not using ELF binaries ). In my experience it's not much weirder ( compared to Debian or *BSD ) than Solaris or AIX.

In fact I used to cross-build NetBSD on a G5 running OSX 10.5 with sources mounted via nfs. The only thing to watch out for was the fact that by default the filesystem will be case preserving but insensitive. Up to 10.4 OSX supported a modified BSD filesystem ( Apple UFS ) which behaves like, well, UFS, and after that HFS+ can be case sensitive.

IIRC the GNU userland is based on early BSD. If ps -aux gives you a list of all processes you're using something BSD-ish.

It does on (my) Linux :)

The standard shell is bash, but it comes with tcsh, sh, ksh and so on.

sh is also something pre-installed on my machine. Great!

The standard shell is bash, but it comes with tcsh, sh, ksh and so on.

sh is also something pre-installed on my machine. Great![/quote]
I have yet to see any UNIX-ish OS that didn't come with at least sh and csh. Most include ksh as well. Some commercial UNIXes have rather ancient versions though, Solaris for example.