Podcast Season 2 Episode 2

The thing that most confuses me is...

HandyGandy (not verified) - February 18, 2010 @ 11:36pm

pulseaudio.

PS:Isn't sketchpad the early 60s program that was written by Sutherland that inspired Alan Kay ro create Smalltalk and inspired Parc?

@first time

Nobody Important (not verified) - February 19, 2010 @ 1:19am

@first time listener: I'd say the same to you, complainer!

Actually I've noticed that yes, TuxRadar is a negative podcast sometimes. Considering the huge lack of Linux software negativity, however, I'll take someone talking about how something could be a lot better. If you want a podcast where people spooge happiness and priase, pick a card, any card. They're dime a dozen.

LXF a good place to work?

Ray Woods (not verified) - February 19, 2010 @ 10:42am

Something I've noticed over the past few podcasts is the laughter in the background. There you are, discussing this or that about Linux (or should that be GNU/Linux? - I'm not sure if there was a result from your discussion,) and there in the background is the laughter.

May be you need a sound proofed studio or a more dominant boss in the office! ;¬)

audio

Paul S (not verified) - February 19, 2010 @ 1:24pm

The audio quality on this episode is atrocious (both ogg and mp3). Please, Do something about it.

The future magazine feature thing mentioned

biggles1000 - February 19, 2010 @ 1:58pm

I am very confused about the command line/console things, so would it be possible for you to put a list of console commands (not just the 10 basic ones) and a help guide about it?

KDE Versus Gnome

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - February 19, 2010 @ 5:41pm

Each to their own... People stick to what they know, as many a Windows user has done after trying some form of Linux.

To me the podcast team sound exactly the same when complaining about KDE compared to GNOME: complaints over minor annoyances even though GNOME has it's own that you are simply used to; not bothering to find an albeit slightly hidden option or even to ask for help. The (percieved) path of least resistance is to stick to GNOME

I have used KDE since I started using Linux with a special Linux Format that focused on Kubuntu 6.06 in 2007. KDE was recommended because it was easier for new users than Ubuntu and GNOME. I soon tried Xubuntu and Ubuntu but settled with Kubuntu because it was faster than Ubuntu on my laptop and with more options than XFCE. Also I was lured by the promise of KDE4.

I have used all versions of KDE from 3.5 to 4.4 today. 4.0 was disappointing I have continued to follow the development and have used KDE almost daily since 4.2. I know it is a moving target; all those features and bugfixes actually do yield improvements and of course there's room for more, especially polishing and usability improvements.

I could list a few things I don't like about GNOME *and* KDE but I won't bother. I appreciate KDE more but I don't preach. It just works for me and I enjoy it. However, I feel I can rightly be proud and not embarrassed if I were to show it off to Mac/Windows users.

I am a fellow Briton but you guys seriously embarrass me! In your podcast you sound like a group of teenagers thinking they can impress girls by seeing who can be the most sarcastic. Surely all the users of KDE (there's not only me is there?) and all the developers must be idiots (to quote Torvalds), not to listen to your wisdom and convert to GNOME?

It can only be a matter of time before you become GNOME Format. I think I'll exercise my choice and not listen to you guys in the future.

Agree on the audio quality...

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - February 20, 2010 @ 2:07am

Just to agree with Paul S, the audio quality in this month's podcast is indeed pants, in comparison to what went before.

Hate ?

Mark (not verified) - February 20, 2010 @ 7:18pm

Love the podcast, but whats with all the KDE hate ?
KDE 4x is pretty, 3d useable and MODERN ..
Gnome is tired .. sorry.. its plain, dumbed-down and
i dont understand why some technical Linux users complain
about 'too many features and tweaks' and in the same breath extol the virtues of an OS that you can tweak to your hearts delight.. it seems a rather strange position to be in.
i'm not a Gnome hater, no way, i started Linux in 1998 and have seen these two D.E.'s develop, Gnome has changed little and looks stale and flat, with simple features just disabled because you cant trust users judgements or confuse the poor little fellas. this is dumbing down and smacks of the 'we know better' attitude of propriety vendors work. its just insulting our intelligence and by implication, we are all presumed dumb users.
KDE assumes users know what they are doing, and lets them make their own choices, in much the same ethos of free software, user choice. you are not forced to go tweaking,
but you have the option without grappling with the eerily similar windows registry look-alike Gconf editor.
please no.
I have had plenty of problems with KDE 4x .. but it isn't pulseaudio exectly, but Phonon bugs and lack of features and occasional plasma crashes are lamentable, but will improve, its not 1999 and PC hardware has moved on, so must OS's and GUIs .. but you still have choice.. good old free software.
i may seem defensive of KDE but after 20 odd years of handling various GUIs i think i can find my way around KDE4
i think everyone can, i enjoy the light-hearted banter but it can snowball into the 'religious wars' of years gone by.
Less Hate Please .. ?
Mark

Openoffice disrespect!?

Dylan (not verified) - February 21, 2010 @ 8:47pm

Seriously guys I can't believe how much ye disrespect Openoffice and the developers.

Openoffice maybe isn't pretty but its certainly very functional. Try Openoffice 3.2 before dissing Openoffice some more.

Version 3.2 is much, much faster. Its a more efficient program in terms of resources. It has smooth scrolling just like MS Office 2007 and supports the majority of MS Office 2007 files except Access which lots of casual users don't use anyway!

The Openoffice development team has done a great job and I would love to hear some real praise from ye to make up for those years of disrespect and sarcasm!

Web slices is a feature

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - February 22, 2010 @ 1:47am

Web slices is a feature similar to Mac OS X feature-- but for some reason, I wonder why they took the IE 8 feature name? (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/features/easier.aspx)

KDE Comments

Dylan (not verified) - February 22, 2010 @ 11:06am

Well Im not a KDE user but I can understand how the KDE users feel. It seems that even the KDE user in Tuxradar does not stand up for KDE.

I did try KDE 4.3 and I must say I found nothing I could rant about. Im not going to say anything negative about KDE, I just found its not for me.

@Ron

Louis Bougeard (not verified) - February 22, 2010 @ 4:45pm

No, Rome was built in Italy! :P

Most people I know stumble with DE and WM

mtelesha (all short vowels) (not verified) - February 23, 2010 @ 2:22am

An idea:
Most people new to Linux have no understanding about Desktop Environments and Windows Managers. It's all alien to a Windows or OS X person.

Open Office is bloated and I agree with your "hate." I use it only for Zotero plugin support. Personally I like Abiword and where KOffice is headed better.

Linux NEEDS critics. The only thing is the community doesn't handle it well. Look at http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=pts_scale_2010&num=1 It shows the way the community has been reacting to Phoronix's benchmarks. I think it has something to say how Linux community handles criticisms.

Gnome-do

johnvile - February 23, 2010 @ 3:28pm

I found in the latest edition of Linux format talk about how great Gnome-do is. Gnome-do is great, in fact its brilliant.
But there is something that has always puzzled me.

Why for instance wouldn't the people @ KDE not simply rip off or copy Gnome-do for there project. Gnome-do is clearly the best program launcher of its type so why wouldn't you just rip it off instead off trying to do your own lesser version?

Maemo

dm319 (not verified) - February 23, 2010 @ 9:35pm

Thanks for the podcast - I enjoyed it a lot.

Personally very excited about maemo - what other mobile phone can you sudo gainroot into? Or use firefox or openoffice (if you wish - it still has the most comprehensive native browser that can run full flash if it needs to). Also has a very elegant multitasking system.

In terms of demystifying linux - can you explain to me some things...

1. How does Linux's roots in Unix's big mainframe computers of the 70's affect linux today? I.e. when computers used to be one large mainframe with several terminals attached to it - is that of any use to us nowadays - or does my laptop function as a sort of combined mainframe+terminal? Can I connect a load of terminals to my computer and have several users use my computer at the same time? How is this different to cloud computing or servers and clients?

2. What advantages/disadvantages does the monolithic kernel have for desktop use? Does my kernel have drivers for every possible hardware configuration out there, or is the kernel built/trimmed when I installed ubuntu? If it's the former, does this slow down linux? If it's the latter, will my laptop not work if I change some of the hardware?

3. What is X?

4. Is it legally possible to sell 'free' or open source software? I.e. software that allows you to modify the source, but that must still be paid for/require a paid license to use.

5. Can you explain the file structure - I'm sure it makes sense to someone else, but I don't get it!

Thanks!

You guys need to do more research before each podcast

bigbrovar (not verified) - February 24, 2010 @ 10:49am

I am writing after just listening to 20min of your podcast discussions Concerning the Meego move by Intel and Nokia. I was expecting at least an objective analysis of the move. Not something that was clouded by your obvious bias for clutter and gtk. I mean most of the stuffs you guys said shows you have little idea what you were talking about.

IMHO the move between Nokia and Intel (2 major contributors to the Linux kernel and userspace) is a no brainer. Intel has always wanted to get into the smartphone space. while Nokia have been looking to get more into smartbooks ,netbooks,tablets. Moblin is more suited for Nokia's goal ( a platform optimized to run on portable internet devices, like network, smart-book and tablets) while maemo fits very much into Intel's smartphone dream ( an OS optimized to run on smartphones or internet devices with small screen factor). I guess both companies realized that they had more to gain by merging both OS together and take out the best of both worlds. If you look at the architecture diagram http://meego.com/developers/meego-architecture The idea is to create a platform with different UI for different form factor devices it would run on. A different UI for MeeGo Handheld and another for meego netbook. The way I see it meamo6 which is scheduled to be based on Qt anyway would now be branded meego and would still retain the overall look and feel of maemo. While the netbook UI of moblin may receive a major UI change due to its move to Qt from gtk/clutter (we would have to wait and see)

On Qt: Again this is a no brainer. Qt is a better toolkit compared to GTK when it comes to building cross-platform apps. hence a developer only needs to write and application once and be guaranteed that it would run on all Qt based platforms, symbian ^3+, Linux, windows, megoo. added to its supports for web runtime development on top of QtWebKit. These would allow every platform that support Qt to all be grouped as one big Qt ecosystem. While Clutter provides animations, but only if you have OpenGL acceleration enabled and Qt provides navtive animations with and without OpenGL I am aware of you guys are gtk fanboys. But you should not always allow your bias cloud your judgement.

On maemo and gtk
They were lots of things you said didn't about maemo which shows you are completely clueless about the distro. If you look at the maemo road-map you would see that even though its running gtk. Maemo6 is planned to be based on Qt using QML as an animation framework. This would allow symbian ( which is also moving Qt applications) to also be ported easily to maemo (or meego)

on RPM
I am a Debian user and I completely hate rpm based distro. but really basing the argument on package management is pretty narrow and immature. Since the Linux foundation would be the steward for megoo its no surprise that the package management system is based on rpm. But really for megoo to succeed it has to be a platform that works so well the end user would never be able to tell (or care ) if it runs dpkg or yum.

Also it should be noted that this is not the first time Nokia and Intel are working together in the mobile space. We all remember the Ofono project which aims to build a complete open source telephony stack. I guess a merger of maemo and Moblin as been a long time in coming. Do I want meego to succeed? Sure. Will it succeed? Well we would have to wait and see.

In all I want to be optimistic that two major technology companies coming together to make a big mobile platform based on open source technologies is surely a good thing.

@TuxRadar

bigbrovar (not verified) - February 24, 2010 @ 1:24pm

I am glad you took some time to further explain you point of view. I would have really appreciated if the above analysis was used in your podcast so that many of us listeners can have deeper understanding of you take on issues.

In general I agree with you on the issue of a Qt platform being the Unknown compared to GTK which has been tried and tested time and again with maemo, moblin and UNR performing very well each time. Nokia seems to want to tie all their product UI to Qt because there are looking at making developing apps for maemo and symbian very easy. But has you have observed we are yet to see a working implementation of a Qt based UI anywhere so its a case of the devil we know.

Concerning the portability of Qt. Well maybe I made it look too simplistic. But the idea is that porting applications writing in Qt from say symbian to meego or maemo wont be very painful. Although it doesn't mean apps would work across the platform OOTB. and obviously some work would still need to be down in respect of screen resolutions, processor, hardware requirements of the different platforms running Qt. Still I completely agree with you concerning the issue of programming for the lowest common denominator. If Nokia is not careful Qt would because the new Java runtime for mobile phones. (which is not a good precedent considering the fact that .jar never took off and most JavaME based apps are crap. not one killer app came of that framework)

To be frank I rather have maemo and moblin run as separate projects. But am not surprised with this merger. Both the maemo and moblin community are still yet to react to the merger. Which seems to be more of a horrid business decision than one based on technical requirements (hences the lack of anything meaningful in the meego websites.)

In all it would be nice to see this type of analysis on your podcasts It would help us listeners to understand the issues better and make you positions much clearer.

You're a bit harsh on MeeGo...

toyg (not verified) - February 24, 2010 @ 11:45pm

...considering it's been announced what, less than two weeks ago? And you already want a shipped device? :)

Maemo and Moblin did ship devices already, and they were awesome in my opinion; in particular Maemo didn't explode like Android only because of three elements (IMHO):
1. Java programmers are a dime a dozen, and Java is easier to pick up than C++. Motivated C++ programmers are already invested in iPhone development, and they're unlikely to switch.
2. the Ovi Store has been an embarrassment.
3. Intel and (especially) Nokia didn't really believe in the products. The N900 is an awesome device that needed just a little bit more polish (and a better touchscreen) to blow the iPhone out of the water, but the Nokia management considered it a geek toy and even failed to anticipate demand to the point where they couldn't literally produce enough devices. They had to catch-up with their own customers, which was weird to see.

I suspect points 2 and 3 will be fixed with the N910, coming out later this year, and the ongoing effort on Ovi.

Point 1 is harder to fix; the next best language for Qt is Python, but Nokia don't believe in it for various reasons. They are also pushing the javascript-based "Web Runtime" which may or may not work, but is fundamentally oriented to low-power Symbian phones at the moment. Maybe Intel will bring a smarter approach; for example they could try appealing to the Ruby community, which does have Qt bindings already (although I don't know if they're as good as the Python ones).

From a philosophical perspective, the Linux world stands to benefit more from MeeGo (which is 100% open-source and built on the classic OSS ecosystem) than Android (where Linux is just a kernel that could be replaced tomorrow if Google said so). I don't think bashing the effort even before it has had a chance to deliver is fair :)

Build your own distro challenge...

Jake (not verified) - February 26, 2010 @ 10:26am

Love the podcast and the magazine, keep it up.
So, where can I find your custom distros?

Hot topic suggestion

Roland Rat (not verified) - February 27, 2010 @ 8:54am

The songs from the Ubuntu Music Store are going to be available in MP3 format instead of Open source alternatives Ogg Vorbis or Flac. Should Canonical have insisted that open formats were available? Does selling songs exclusively in MP3 format undermine the work of those, such as the Xiph foundation, who have developed the open source codecs? The Tuxradar podcast is available in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis - should the material on the Ubuntu One Music Store be the same? Incidentally, I'm just curious, but what is the ratio of MP3 Downloads to Ogg Vorbis Downloads for the Tuxradar podcast? What is the future for Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora and other free codecs and are we fighting a losing battle if we try to support them?

gnome ore negativity

Johnny Ace (not verified) - March 8, 2010 @ 5:09pm

Of course it is important that we have the right to dissent and we shouldn't be fawning in our praise towards a project just because it's open source. However, you've got to be consistent - it is so stark the contrast - you can never find a good word to say about kde whereas gnome can seemingly do no wrong.

For instance,

"KDE is floundering in every possible direction to try to introduce what they call innovation but it doesn't actually make anything more usable or effective."

Couldn't you say the same about gnome shell?

No, your praise of gnome shell is gushing eventhough it is arguably a solution in search of a problem and, at the moment, is basically a combination of desktop activities and a widget layer of launchers, things which you are so scathing about in KDE.

I don't have a problem with you preferring gnome (I am predominantly a gnome user myself) but if it is so far superior to KDE then why do so many millions of users continue to prefer KDE. Are all of these people irrational KDE fanboys? I believe, if you're fair, you will recognise that both desktops have merit and gnome's superiority is not as black and white as your podcast would suggest. You make it sound like KDE is so far behind Gnome they might as well give up.

Also in that episode where you tested KDE for a fortnight if I am correct you used Kubuntu. Canonical channel most of their resources into Ubuntu (I have heard that there is only one fulltime Kubuntu developer at Canonical) and so Kubuntu is obviously likely to lack the polish of Ubuntu. This is illustrated by the way that Ubuntu one integration in Kubuntu lags far behind that of the main Ubuntu gnome version. Perhaps a fairer test would have been to use a more predominately KDE based distro such as Mandriva or Suse or better yet vanilla KDE with Arch or Slackware. Also Graham complained that installing 4.4 broke his system, but surely that is a package management problem with his distribution not with KDE.

Also surely there are some good things KDE has got which gnome lacks. For instance the Youtube video applet in Amarok which offers useful functionality absent in Banshee and Rhythmbox, the way that Digikam allows you to manage videos as well as photos, unlike f-spot, and it's versatile bulk rename and editing features, as well as 3D geolocation with Marble embedded - all without parallel in f-spot. I also find the terminal emulator in konqueror handy and the kparts and kioslaves and believe KDE is the best DE in aesthetic terms, which although a bit shallow is important for many, and eyecandy helps encourage new users to try linux.

Also as regards configurability, ok - options can be buried, but at least they are there. To configure gnome beyond a basic level requires basically a hack to get it the way you want. If you recall this is what Linus Torvalds found so exasperating in his "Gnome treat users like idiots" rant. Mike and Paul complained that they couldn't find stuff, but they are used to gnome. Perhaps if they used kde for years and then tried gnome for 2 weeks, they would find the experience similarly disorientating. We are creatures of habit and have a general tendency [often subconcious] to dislike things that we are not so familiar with.

Also KDE 4.4 is a vastly different beast to 4.0 or even 4.2. Condemning the whole KDE 4 series just because early versions were hit and miss is like denouncing a distro on the basis of an early alpha iso - not really fair.

Also there is a saying "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". Is it fair to criticise something that you admit you "haven't got the time to try"?

So if you're going to be critical OK, but you should have a dig at gnome from time to time and say where you think gnome is lacking and don't always pick on KDE.

I'm reminded of the Ali G

TenLeftFingers (not verified) - May 14, 2010 @ 1:56am

I'm reminded of the Ali G nursery rhyme which ends with "The clock struck two, I dumped MeeGoo and I dropped her at the end of the block."