Adopt a KDE Geek 228
sultanoslack writes "In an effort to bring together KDE hackers that are students, unemployed or by other means lacking in hardware and capital with users in that have spare goodies, Adopt-a-Geek has been launched. More details are available on how to help out. Been wondering what you can do to help out? Here's your chance!"
Do I get a framed picture of my geek? (Score:5, Funny)
Aaaaw, look at that.. not-so-cute geek!
Re:Do I get a framed picture of my geek? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do I get a framed picture of my geek? (Score:2)
I'd be much more interrested in knowing where she lives. Let me adopt a lady and i'll consider it =)
Re:Do I get a framed picture of my geek? (Score:5, Funny)
Him? What about Her? Are there any female KDE Geeks to adopt? I'd like a 16 year old asian girl, please!
*cough*
You asked for it... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You asked for it... (Score:3, Informative)
I think it's not very fun... (Score:2)
I'd like to see a rent a geek service. Now that would be cool.
Re:I think it's not very fun... (Score:2)
Yum... (Score:2)
Better place sto donate (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:3, Informative)
Donate to the opensource programmers today and children of tomorrow won't have to throw their educational dollars away on constant computer upgrades and expensive commercial programs.
It's a nice idea but, as you say:
I've been an out-of-work programmer and it's great to spend some of that free time giving back to the community but it's hard when you can't pay rent let alone buy the hardware you need to test so and so feature against.
Which is surely a good summary of the problem with the open source model. It relies on someone paying the programmers for the love of open source. Now there may be enough university departments and software manual publishers to feed the likes of Larry Wall, which is great, but I can't see this model ever scaling to the point where it 'employs' anything like the number of people currently working on commercial coding projects. You need some way to collect the money, on the basis of what work is the most useful. And the conventional way to do this is called a company in a free market.
Cf science, which started off as a hobby of the upper classes, was then patronised by the upper classes, and is now mainly funded either by business or the public sector.
I like KDE. It helps me to earn a living. I already pay for it, in the sense that I buy boxed distros. I wouldn't be averse to paying more, so that some of the money went to the people doing the coding. But I doubt if my French accountant would let me pay the programmers in hardware...
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is surely a good summary of the problem with the open source model.
The first problem with the open source "model" is that there isn't one, at least not in the sense of a standard, documented business model, or even any realistic idea about how "all" software could be produced by it. In other words, there are a thousand open source models, and none of them are really complete. That means you have to define precisely what you mean by "open source model" before you criticize it, else you're just attacking a strawman, and one whose details are known only to you.
I can't see this model ever scaling to the point where it 'employs' anything like the number of people currently working on commercial coding projects.
Aside from the question of what model you mean, exactly, why would you expect open source to 'employ' that many people? More on that below.
You need some way to collect the money, on the basis of what work is the most useful. And the conventional way to do this is called a company in a free market.
The problem with these statements is that you're assuming your conclusion. How? You're thinking only about the world of off-the-shelf packaged software as the way in which software is developed. In fact, only a small fraction of the world's software is developed that way. The vast majority of the software that is written is in-house, custom software. And the majority of software developers are employed in writing this sort of application.
Here's a more realistic view (in my opinion, at least): There will always be certain categories of software that will be produced primarily in the for-profit-software-company style. Some people, particularly those who run or work for for-profit-software-companies would like *all* software to be developed that way, but there's a great deal of software that can never be written that way, because there's just no market for it; it's too application-specific. Finally, there's a goodly chunk of software that can benefit tremendously from an ("an", not "the") open souce approach. Most of this software falls into the category of "infrastructure" -- operating systems and their components, development tools and libraries, basic office and business applications, etc.
Now, all of this software, from all categories, is needed. People want it, and they're willing to "pay" for it. Some of this "paying" is in the form of donated labor, equipment, etc., some of it is in the form of a P.O., and there are other forms as well. A fundamental rule of economics: Where there is adeqate demand, a supplier will step forward. People want the software, ergo, it will get written, one way or another. And only programmers can write it. And programmers must eat. Therefore, programmers will get paid for writing software, one way or another.
It *is* possible that open source software will reduce the number of programmers employed in writing software, but if it does it will be because of the greater efficiencies provided by open source. All of those programmers hacking out in-house, custom apps will have this massive base of tools and almost-right applications that they can use, so they can do the job in less time, with less effort, less people and at less cost to their employer, freeing up that capital to be employed elsewhere.
And that, my friend, is unarguably a *good* thing. Sure, it may mean that the world needs fewer programmers, but that's also a good thing, since it frees up all of those smart people to apply their effort and intellect to other, more valuable tasks. The only way that all of this could be bad would be if it got us into a situation where the software we needed could not be produced, maintained or supported, and economics would not seem to permit such a situation to exist.
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:2)
The first problem with the open source "model" is that there isn't one
I agree with the sentence, but maybe not with the thought behind it. The multiplicity of OSS models does a lot of people's heads in. At least with the commercial model it is very simple (you may be being ripped off, but at least you can put that into your spreadsheet)...
It is possible that open source software will reduce the number of programmers employed in writing software.
That isn't my concern, if I have a 'concern' on this matter. My projection into the future goes more like this:
You can start a project on your s/h PC in your dorm, and, if it's a great idea, it may get a lot of interest. When it gets too big for one dorm room, you can network. But if you want to produce a piece of software with the breadth of, say, Windows XP, the 'doing it for love or donated equipment' model just won't do it.
IMHO, the current state of Linux/GNU (or whatever it is I have on my Redhat CD) illustrates this fairly well. The kernel is state of the art. And a lot of big companies are putting a lot of $$$ into keeping it that way, because, on a purely commercial basis, it is cheaper to do this than to keep developing and supporting bespoke OSs, especially for minority platforms. Some of the geeky applications are pretty whizzy too, because they catch the imagination of the dorm-room developers.
On the other hand, the less 'sexy' bits are often pretty bad. I use Redhat in French, except that half the applications still come up in American English. In linguistic terms, Windows runs away with the ball. Why? Because translating page after page of someone else's text prompts is not what sets your average geek's imagination on fire. Then there are drivers. Or not. I bought a Polaroid digital camera over a year ago, plugs and plays with Windows, still waiting for it to work with a standard Linux distro. The last 2 versions of RH claimed to support it: v8 has a driver, but only via the USB port, which is funny since that model never had a USB connector. What's the problem here? Producing drivers for umpteem million products is grunt work, and unless some geek somewhere happens to have my camera,it just ain't going to happen.
And the lack of development on the non-sexy bits of Linux/GNU is, IMHO, one of the main obstacles to its widespread adoption on the desktop. So I don't think we are looking at less programmers, I just think that the OSS/Commercial split is reaching dynamic equilibrium, and that the balance will not shift further towards OSS unless or until we find a sane way of financing the dull bits of infrastructure development.
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:2)
At least with the commercial model it is very simple
Only if you don't read EULAs, and don't think about the future.
In linguistic terms, Windows runs away with the ball. Why? Because translating page after page of someone else's text prompts is not what sets your average geek's imagination on fire.
This is a relatively simple problem. Non-programmers can do it, and we're just now starting to see projects recruiting non-technical people in a serious way.
I'm also not at all sure that Windows does, in fact, "run away with the ball" here. Sure, the apps from Microsoft are very widely internationalized, but what about third party applications? I'm sure that the packages you find on the shelves in France are in French, but the majority of Windows software as a whole is not.
Just out of curiosity, have you tried Mandrake? Given that they're a French company, they may do a better job of supporting your preferred language.
That said, I'll certainly agree that there's a level of professional polish that is lacking in OSS projects, and will always be lacking as long as it's strictly a hobbiest thing. But it isn't just a hobbiest thing anymore, and all it takes is for a bunch of, say, French companies to decide they want to use a particular software and to spend a few thousand euros each (often cheaper than licensing a commercial version) to fix it up. This makes sense for exactly the same reason that it makes sense for IBM to enhance Linux rather than put that money into AIX. We haven't seen a lot of it, but that's because this whole OSS thing is very new and not widely understood, yet. It's coming, though.
Then there are drivers. Or not.
Do you think Microsoft writes those drivers? The state of this situation is exactly the opposite of what you're saying. Writing rogue drivers is a lot of geeky fun, particularly since it generally requires reverse engineering the protocol. However, it is very difficult and time-consuming, so we should really be amazed that Linux supports as much hardware as it does. The thing MS has going for it in regard to drivers is that the manufacturers of hardware write the Windows drivers themselves. As Linux becomes more widespread, we're beginning to see hardware manufacturers who chose to support Linux themselves, and it's reasonable to expect that trend to accelerate.
The downside is that many of the manufacturers will keep their drivers closed. In my experience, Linux has fewer drivers, but they're often higher-quality, and almost always more flexible, because of the openness.
And the lack of development on the non-sexy bits of Linux/GNU is, IMHO, one of the main obstacles to its widespread adoption on the desktop.
On the home desktop, sure. On the business desktop, the main barrier is the Office lock-in. Once companies can get past that, the cost of polishing up the rough edges that annoy them is pretty small, and there is a business model for doing that development. The really big win for the corporate world, however, is the ability to *customize* that doesn't exist with most closed software. The IT industry really hasn't caught on to that yet, but they will.
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:2)
Only if you don't read EULAs, and don't think about the future.
I have no fears on that score. Like any extorsion racket, it is in MS's interests not to kill off their victims (or hurt them so much that they decide to fight back), so, whatever the EULA might allow in a /.er's paranoid mind, it just ain't gonna happen. (And my business is 99% Linux anyway, so I don't care too much if I'm wrong on this...)
Most software isn't internationalised
But if, as you more or less say yourself, the MS apps are, and the products I can buy in the country where I live are, who cares whether I could buy a Czech version of some obscure program in a supermarket in Equador?
Do you think MS writes those drivers?
No, I'll give you that one, wrong discussion...
Mandrake
It might be better in language terms, but the version I tried was extremely bad in many other ways. I'm going back a couple of years here. SUSE was better than RH language-wise, and, in general, I liked it a lot, but I just got fed up with having to fix every program I wanted to run because none of the files were in the normal (ie RH) place.
Office lock-in
Glad you mentioned that, because office software is another really bad thing with Linux. Star Office/Open Office are great office suites for people who don't need an office suite. I get to try MS Office users on Star Office in my cybercafe most days, and they all end up wanting to chew their arms off, and that is before we mention 'features' like locking the entire system up big time if you try to save a file directly onto a floppy disc (this bug has been around for at least a year, survived from SO 5.2 to OO 1, and also happens on a laptop with a different distro). Thing is, geeks are not usually Office power users...
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:2)
so, whatever the EULA might allow in a /.er's paranoid mind, it just ain't gonna happen
Given that some competition is arising, I'm sure you're right. Given complete domination, however, I have no doubt that MS would come up with stuff that would amaze even the most paranoid.
But if, as you more or less say yourself, the MS apps are, and the products I can buy in the country where I live are, who cares whether I could buy a Czech version of some obscure program in a supermarket in Equador?
My point was that this is a problem that corrects itself as the software becomes more widely used. By the time Linux has grown to a, say, 5% market share of desktops worldwide, internationalization will be far better than it was when Windows achieved that same penetration. Why? Because anyone who wants to can do it, and more and more people are wanting to.
With respect to RedHat/Mandrake/SuSe and internationalization, honestly I just have to plead ignorance. I don't use any of the above (I like Debian, 'cause I don't like reinstalling), and, frankly, my first language is English and that's what I use. I do know that I can switch KDE to Spanish and everything in KDE changes.
Glad you mentioned that, because office software is another really bad thing with Linux.
It's weak. OpenOffice is getting there pretty rapidly, although I wonder sometimes if the half-open nature isn't slowing it down. However, you're comparing a decade's worth of work by Microsoft's very large Office team to what has been done in the two to three years since people got interested in building an office suite for Linux. And, for that matter, there are areas in which the OSS offerings are vastly superior to MS Office. Automatic document generation, for example, is supremely easy using OpenOffice.
Also, I think you overestimate the problems users have with OpenOffice. I recently put it on my brother-in-law's computer (he's completely non-technical, and computer stuff is pretty hard for him) and he and his family have had no problems with it at all. That's the Windows version, of course, but it's essentially the same. His daughter saves documents to floppy to take to school all the time. I can see how MS Office users would be driven insane by the StarOffice 5.0 take-over-the-desktop approach, but have you tried it again with a newer version?
BTW, I just tested, and on my Debian system with OOo 1.0.2, I can save to floppies with no problem. Tried both FAT and EXT2 file systems, too.
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:3, Insightful)
Giving to schools is a fine thing and needn't be exclusive to helping out KDE. In fact if every active KDE core developer were given a new computer, this at most might be enough for one school. In this case, there are probably about 20-ish (or less) core developers that could use upgrades. We're not talking about big numbers here.
Now lets say that one school switches to KDE / Open Source from MS desktops. The cost savings in that alone outweigh the cost of diverting machines which might have gone to schools to KDE developers. In fact there have been a good handful of schools switch to KDE based desktops -- dragging an Open Source envirionment with all of its Free tools and such behind it.
Remember the ideal is for people pushing technology in schools to keep in mind both hardware and software concerns; this is a partnership, not a competition. When you send in your hardware donation I'll even be glad to direct it to a KDE Edu developer.
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:2)
I'd suggest donating to schools and community centers and let the programmers have access to those machines for programming and testing tasks but somehow I can't see many schools that'd go for that. I have a big interest in community centers especially as they are open to the general public and not just students. I'd love to be able to set up and manage a community computing center. Hardware is less of an issue than having a rent/utils covered by donatations. I can put very nice, full multimedia, computers in for around $300-$400 each including monitor. It isn't hard to get a community business or organization to donate that much.
A lot of programmers are working on educational software - myself included. Edutainment type software is one of the growing hotspots of interest. Myself I develop in Python w/ Pygame or wxPython as it makes the software portable between Windows, Linux, Mac, etc which IMO is a good thing. If you have a specific interest in donating to educational software check out seul.org/edu/ for some possible recipients.
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate when some bleeding heart socialist steps in and says money could be better spent "on the needy" in cases like this. Almost everyone reading slashdot has some kind of discretionary income. For some it's $5 a month, for other's its $500 a day. Either way, part of enjoying life is spending what you have (cash, time, knowledge) you things you enjoy. Are there other people out there who "need" things. Yes. Does that mean we should give every spare dollar to them? No.
Unless you live in a grass hut you made with your own 2 hands, dress in recycled fig leaves, give back to the land more than you consume, and produce more food personally than you consume, shut the hell up. If someone wants to spend money on the development of open source software, they should have that right without being accosted by some hippocrite. Now take the PC you used to post on Slashdot offline, sell it on Ebay, and give the money to the "needy".
Love, Proc6
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:2, Insightful)
I never advocated coming along and taking your PC away from you or forcing you to give money to some people and not to others. You're free to do with it as you will. People have the right to spend money on developing open source software. I never said otherwise.
Neither did I say you had to give away every dollar/pound/euro/whatever you own. If you read the article, you will see that this is about old PCs you have and are no longer using. My post was in the context of someone who is already giving something way. I was not debating how much to give, but rather where was in most need. Surely that's an important question to ask when donating to people? And keeping a single computer for my own personal use is not hypocrisy.
Re:Better place sto donate (Score:3, Insightful)
A little more information (Score:5, Informative)
From the Relevant Page [kde.org]:
So keep this in mind before you ask why they're requesting this. Thanks :).
Why? (Score:2)
Probably the single largest thing I have needed when working on debugging/building large systems was enough diskspace. Processor power and memory were usually not a major problem because although we would be running the entire system, only part would be in debug at any one time. The rest would be instrumented, but that is all.
It seems like someone should be looking very hard at the engineering aspects if this is really a bottleneck.
Depends a lot on change control (Score:2)
Disk space is a situation that's improved radically since the days when I was coding, and price/size has been on a deep faster-than-Moore's-law dive for a few years now. A 120-GB disk costs about US$120-200 these days, and the trip from 2GB->6GB->20GB->120GB only took about 3-4 years, but it rapidly crossed the boundaries of "how big is the biggest system I'm working on now with everything and the kitchen sink (except my MP3s) thrown in".
Also, one reason disk drive was always a critical resource was that corporate IT departments often forgot the difference between computers and systems - developers and testers often need large numbers of systems, but that doesn't have to cost a lot of money because one computer with a removable-disk-enclosure and a stack of 20 disks in $10 plastic drawers really costs a _lot_ less than a stack of 20 computers, and the IT department and/or the developer can keep a set of clean images available to duplicate more checkpointed-from-user's-perspective systems for testing on.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Have you got a reference to this?
Re:Why? (Score:2)
I just had an exam (last thursday) where they asked me for the time and space complexity of a load of algorithms. I put my hand up and asked if they meant time complexity for searching or insertion or what. The guy who wrote the exam had to come all the way up the exam room and replied "oh er well use your judgement".
Jeez.
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
(or have a div(0) if someones put a bad timing loop in there!).
Also....
"Building KDE on my modern desktop (1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM) takes 6-8 hours. Many developers are working on systems which cannot fully build KDE in under 24 hours"
What?
1: get the pre-compiled header patched version of GCC
2: Do you always build the whole tree every time? A kernel compile takes 30mins or so my PC, but if I change a module is takes 1min because everything else is build already and I don't make clean/mrproper.
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Almost all of the tree will be dependent on the core libs, so if something fundamental changes in one of them the whole tree needs to be rebuilt to take this into account - even if it's only a one-line change. If something in a higher-level library changes significantly - an entire function is reimplemented, or something - only a few things will have to be rebuilt, as the make program is smart enough to rebuild only those parts of the tree that depend upon the changed part.
So, core KDE developers need monster PCs as they're work has a fundamental impact upon the entire project; app hackers do just as well on less cutting-edge equipment as they shouldn't really need to build everything - that's what binary distributions are for.
-Mark
Re:A little more information (Score:5, Informative)
I can compile core.c and is turns into core.o
I can compile fish.c that depends on core.h compiles to fish.o
I link fish.o that depends on core.o
If I change core.h (an API change) then I must recompile fish.c
If I chnage core.c then I only need to relink fish.o against core.o
If i use dynamic libraries then I don't need to relink atall.
Changes to core.h should be in the form of, 'Right lads, were changing the API, get you design and documentation heads on'
Oh I forgot (Score:2, Informative)
If anyone lives in the Newbury/Reading/Basingstoke area (UK) and could really do with some extra kit, I've probably got some spare bits floatings around (256MB ram a couple of HDD's, boxed Mandrake 8.0) drop me a mail and I'll see what I can do.
Re:A little more information (Score:3, Insightful)
What is even more time consuming seems to be linking. For some reason libtool takes forever before it starts the actual link process.
Granted, not using --enable-final will speed up the patches, but compiling is still a long and demanding process.
As for debugging, with all the shared libraries, gdb will easily consume 200MB of RAM just to load symbols. God forbid that you link with something like Electric Fence and try and start up a process. A couple of years ago I used this to debug a problem with konsole crashing and starting one konsole session with EF consumed something like 200MB. Loading the resulting core file in GDB took forever since the machine only had 512MB of RAM.
It takes a lot more horsepower to debug and profile code than it takes to run the final code.
-Aaron
Re:A little more information (Score:2, Informative)
2b:No wonder remaking kernel after changing one module is so fast. Usually nothing except the module itself depends on it, so nothing else needs to be rebuilt. But if somebody commits a change to some of the kdelibs header files, many files have to be rebuilt.
1a: Most people probably don't want even to patch and compile even their GCC. It's just one more thing to take care of.
1b: Moreover, GCC is not the only bottleneck. The linker (not ld.so, but ld, the one creating binaries) is pretty slow as well. Or you could try debugging some KDE app (with debug info compiled in) in GDB - THAT will teach you what 'slow' really means (and maybe you'll even suddenly find KDE's performance quite acceptable).
Re:A little more information (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Re:A little more information (Score:4, Interesting)
Thinking back to the useless hours being wasted trying to crack the X-Box encryption, how much of this compiling could be distributed? Obviously it wouldn't accelerate live debugging or optimizing tools, but what if there were networks of computers who people volunteered to standby and remotely download, build, and upload code, and a linker on the initiating machine to reassemble globals, etc?
I know nothing about distributed compiling, which probably means that either A: I should go back to college (very likely) or B: compiling doesn't break down nicely into chunks.
If it is possible, a network of volunteer Open Source compilers would probably build in a significantly faster time than many of the aformentioned older systems can, assuming no major bandwidth bottlenecks, and would probably find a rather large home of OSS and Free Software supporters who don't have the time to code as much as they would like to. Such a structure would probably support the compiling of any large linux project, such as X, or Gnome, or... err... Well, Kde, X or Gnome. Any of these projects would be worthwile.
Someone with more experience, please stand up! If it were possible, many people would become that much more involved, and the community would prosper. Could you imagine teams of people competing to help out the KDE developers as much as they do the seti@home project?
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Imagine a server that could compile kde in 1 second. But on a dialup it takes you 12 hours to get it there and another few hours to get the results back.
Distributed compiling for students (Score:2)
Also, there's the question of where the data lives - do the master copies live on your PC, or on a server, and how do you check it in or out? It may actually be just about as fast in a parallel environment, where people are getting the data from fast LANs.
Re:Distributed compiling for students (Score:2)
At my uni you have an NFS drive. So I can ssh into any machine in the uni and my files appear to be on it.
One quick and dirty way to do this would be simply to compile each directory on a seperate machine. Most large programs have lots of sub componants so you can compile each part seperately.
Use distcc for more complex cases - plus it is probably easier to use.
From distcc.samba.org:
"distcc is nearly linearly scalable for small numbers of machines: Building Linux 2.4.19 on a single 1700MHz Pentium IV machine with distcc 0.15 takes 6 minutes, 45 seconds. Using distcc across three such machines on a 100Mbps switch takes only 2 minutes, 30 seconds: 2.6x faster. "
I took a quick look at the instructions. It really is dead easy to setup. I think I'll do it
Let a geek log in on your system (Score:2)
The geek can then get the compiled code for testing.
Would that help you guys?
Re:A little more information (Score:3, Informative)
Given that most source files don't get changed every build, the major problem is going to be disk space. We need to donate some of those old 10 Gig disks that are too small for our MP3 (sorry, Ogg) collections now.
Oh, and we should give them all a pointer to Compiler Cache [samba.org] while we're at it.
Must install that on my own system, it look sweeeeet.
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Perhaps they should consider using ccache [samba.org] to avoid recompiling unchanged sources and distcc [samba.org] to make use of the almost-inevitable collection of low-powered machines every developer seems to have?
Re:A little more information (Score:3, Insightful)
What doesn't make sense is that hardware is so cheap these days and yet some of these developers are using old crap. Why? Are they really that dirt poor? Seriously! We're talking about like ~$50 Athlon xp 1700, ~$50 motherboard, ~$80 512 MB RAM. Lets say $200 with shipping. Is there anyone who can't afford that kinda upgrade even if they have to save a couple months? $200 is a drop in the hat even with a $30k/year income. It seems these guys either have no concept of managing their personal finance or else they're purposely living in poverty / self-pity. I would hope it's simply the former, because KDE is a really excellent project and its developers deserve a lot more than they give themselves credit for.
Just a thought: Try consulting on the side.. A handful of consistent clients is enough to support a reasonable lifestyle.
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Developer vs. compiler horsepower (Score:2)
Having said that, though, that doesn't mean that the machine you run your compiler on needs to be the same machine you install and test the end product on (and in fact it's really nice if it's not, because that forces you to make cross-compiling for production systems work well.) Running the compiler on a newer, somewhat faster CPU and adding a big disk drive helps a lot, and motherboards at Fry's seem to be running about $99 for ~1.7MHz Athlons these days. Of course, it's awfully tempting if you've got a new motherboard to install it on your desktop (even if you're not a gamer...)
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
How long do you think it takes to compile windows, with it's
Re:A little more information (Score:3, Insightful)
And on this machine Windows XP is more responsive than KDE for some reason. Go figure.
-Mark
Re:A little more information (Score:3, Informative)
The kernel made more of a differnace than anything else, with kernel 2.4.19 with CK performance patchset KDE is clunky as hell, xine skips frames and isn't smooth. kernel 2.5.54 smooth KDE no missing frames in XINE.
Re:A little more information (Score:2, Insightful)
QOS(KDE) + QOS(Linux kernel) > QOS(Windows)
The analogy is not implicitly flawed it's just incomplete. Also, KDE includes *lots* of applications, Windows does not. You'd better start adding in the amount of cruft in Office as well.
Comparisons like this are always going to be subjective. I can say right back at you that on this machine Windows XP is less responsive than KDE. Does it prove anything? Nope.
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Windows 3.1 was slow on my 286 (and I beleive the computer could only do cga). I ran Windows 3.0 instead.
Re:A little more information (Score:2)
Of course, i routinely rebuild kde, mozilla, and OO several times on my box(es) each week (not each one several times), and stay fairly up-to-date on xfree-cvs too. This is brought to you by the magic of ccache, distcc, and emerge [gentoo.org].
If only.. (Score:2, Funny)
-MadCamel [EnergyMech IRC Bot - www.energymech.net]
My geek... (Score:5, Funny)
And he's captain of the chess club!
I'm so proud of my adopted geek!
Re:My geek... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My geek... (Score:2, Funny)
Umm.... how long are they supposed to sleep?
You see, I adopted my geek and brought him home (his name's Mike!) and put him in a jar by the computer so, you know, he could program when I wasn't using the computer and he could help my wife with her email quesions and so on.
Anyway, this morning I went to change the paper and feed him (pepperoni pizza - yum!) and he's *not* *moving*. I prodded him with a Playstation controller and even offered him a game of Moria, but he won't budge.
Should I try calling tech support?
Do I need to put air holes in the jar?
Does anyone know CPR?
Oh well, back to dot.kde.org!
Go for it (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember when was I younger I had to stop coding for almost year when my power supply blew and I couldn't afford another one...
It put me behind my classmates (the good ones that is) - a year of knowledge is quite a lot
Re:Go for it (Score:2)
Seriously, if you run opensource software and aren't giving back code of your own, documentation, or something worthwhile then the least you could do is donate $10 or a mobo or something to one of the projects you use. Not having to spend $500 for your software should be worth that $10.
And the developers' old hardware goes where? (Score:3, Funny)
All very good i'm sure (Score:5, Interesting)
i belive techsoup.org [techsoup.org] has a list of organisations near you
Suchetha
Re:All very good i'm sure (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh come on now (Score:2)
People could go on and on about more "worthy" causes. Let the KDE people request some help without trying to guilt others into donating to a different cause.
Re:All very good i'm sure (Score:2)
Is that kind of like "Hire a Hermit?" (Score:3, Funny)
But Hermits can't hack out bulletproof code... hmm...
FYI: back in the old-old days, Castle owners found it "fashionable*" to gave a hermit or two living on their property to... do whatever hermits do. There ARE professional hermits.
* I can't think of another word - I mean, besides peer pressure, why else would you get a hermit? At least your geek would write you some CS homework code for some pizza (I would assume)
Re:Is that kind of like "Hire a Hermit?" (Score:4, Informative)
Suchetha
TV Commericals (Score:5, Funny)
From the comments on the KDE page: (Score:3, Funny)
by Yocihc on Monday 27/Jan/2003, @11:45
SLASHDOT crowd coming!!
lol
Wow. (Score:2)
Geeks and a family. Go figure.
I am active kde hacker who needs some equipment (Score:3, Funny)
I feel I need to upgrade to a better system to expand my programming knowledge and help society and Kde in general. I am in desperate need of newer hardware and software since my low end athlon +1800MP with a half a gig of ram just doesn't cut it. A sun workstation 2000 [sun.com]with 2 gigs of ram as well as the Enterpise edition of Forte for java, Borland Jbuilder Enterprise Edition, as well as the full version of Kylix is what will really help me for my quest to help man kind. To help me write great software for you a nice scalable server [sun.com] to help beta test my high end client/server apps would also rock.
PS, I also wouldn't need oops I mean mind a dual XEON 3ghz with the Enterprise edition of Visual Studio.NET and Adobe Photoshop to port some of my great free software to Windows that I am sure I oops I mean none of you can live without. But I can live with just the 2 sun's.
Thanks guys I appreciate your help in this since I can't afford any of these nice toys oops I mean tools. Will you please adopt me.
Know how to ask... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Know how to ask... (Score:2)
Either way, the demands of the Adopt-a-geek program ask for computers way better than my own (heh...)
Re:Know how to ask... (Score:2)
I have a friend who works as a computer builder (he builds computers according to customers specs). His employer evaluates lots of fun hardware before choosing a supplyer and stuff gets left over. Also, spare parts may go old (1-2 years). These parts (evaluate + spare parts) is what I pick up from time to time. The company saves money by not having to pay for destruction and I get cool hardware.
If you google around a bit, I think that there are quite a few sites concerning this subject. I rember reading a HOWTO about it once.
Cool but... (Score:1)
I'm hoping to see something like adopt an open source developer.
Re:Cool but... (Score:2)
> I'm hoping to see something like adopt an open source developer.
start it then
this is lame (Score:1, Insightful)
Possible alternative donation options (Score:4, Insightful)
A Case of Bawls - $29.99 [thinkgeek.com]
Caffeniated Soap - $6.99-$14.99 [thinkgeek.com]
Caffeine Candy Sampler, v3.0 - $19.99 [thinkgeek.com]
And various other assorted goods and sundries.
Now, some people make think this is a joke post, but its not. Even if its not hardware, I think anyone who uses KDE should feel compelled to donate something. As someone who does a lot of Volunteer work for local charities, it always feels good when someone recognizes all the hard work you've put into a job. And since alot of these guys can't really spend alot of money on luxury items, I say give em something to make a geek's day a lil brighter.
Re:Possible alternative donation options (Score:2)
We need this! (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea might seems quite funny to at first glance, but it actually makes sense.
I am involved in KDE (maintainership of one of the web sites), and I know of cases where lack of hardware has indeed prevented people from working on very interesting projects. It is not only about the speed of compilation, it is also about disc space. This is especially true for projects dealing with Gnome interoperability, as this sometimes requires to compile _two_ huge desktops from source.
Of course, lack of hardware will not stop things forever - other geeks or some distribution will step in eventually - but it has slowed down interoperability effords.
Adversity (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason the requirements for Windows keep increasing and increasing, every release requiring the most modern hardware is because the developers all have modern hardware and don't see it as a problem to make full use of it. (Games are even more of a culprit here, but that's a little more forgiveable)
Whatever hardware the developers have is what the hardware requirements will be in the end; if that is a gameboy and a piece of string then so much the better for the project.
Re:Adversity (Score:2)
I disagree. I'm running Windows XP Professional and IIS 5.1 (development webserver and it runs my own website, small few hits) on a dual Pentium II Xeon 450 with 768MB RAM and it's quite responsive. This isn't exactly new hardware and I have no compliants. Well, except that I would like to have faster hardware to run InDesign and Illustrator and rendering from AfterEffects. Other than that...
How to help? (Score:2, Funny)
> Here's your chance!"
Actually, I'm a die-hard GNOME user (I tried KDE but I found it toyish, lame, and frankly, suckish). I'm wondering what I can do to help SABOTAGE the KDE project. Please give me advice on how I might engage in such activities.
Re:How to help? (Score:2)
If you want to sabotage KDE, then I suggest doing lots of postings to public forums like the following:
Posts of that sort will reflect poorly on the people you advocate for and damage their reputation. But perhaps that's what you have in mind.
Adopting a geek ? (Score:2, Funny)
Remember, a geek is for life, it's a big decision...
Re:Adopting a geek ? (Score:2, Funny)
Why send hardware? (Score:2, Funny)
Plus I heard that fat geeks are really warm - could save some on the heating bill.
supporting free software in this way is good... (Score:2)
Why Dont the Rich KDE Geeks (Score:2, Funny)
stock options? (Score:2)
Adopt a Geek (Score:3, Funny)
-
MissMp
Re:this world has plenty of really helpless out th (Score:3, Insightful)
Sponsoring a hacker and giving money to oxfam, concern or whatever are not mutually exclusive.
At the same time, you can't really say people should only give money to charities that give food to starving children in Africa. People give to what seems important to them. I can understand those who'd give contributions to KDE that might directly benefit them in terms of a better desktop, as opposed to a charity that works in the 3rd world which doesn't.
Also remember that although these charities do good work and should be supported, they are effectively running at full speed to keep things where they are. There's a reason Africa is still such a hellhole, when South America and Asia are dragging themselves out of grinding poverty. Every time a part of Africa looks like it might be about to make serious progress, various tribal tensions are played off against each other and it degenerates into civil war. Of course that's a gross over-exagguration, South Africa for instance is doing quite well, but considering that Zimbabwe has basically gone downhill since they were given independance, largely because Mugabe leveraged tribal mistrust and favoratism, I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to give to a cause that they know stands a good chance of moving things forward immediately.
Don't get me wrong, since about a month ago I started giving some money by direct debit to Concern, who do a lot of such work in 3rd world countries. But I'm not kidding myself. My money will do some good, but it's unlikely to actually improve things, it'll only stem the misery.
RTFA jack-ass (Score:2, Insightful)
I have no intention to give my money to anyone for free. I can, however, give away my obsolete motherboard or CPU which I couldn't sell for a price that would justify the hassle of auctioning/whatever it.
Re:this world has plenty of really helpless out th (Score:2)
The sad (and cynical) truth is that adopting a 3rd world child will only make the problem worse because instead of the kid dying now, her/his 6 or more kids die later. (unless you triple your donations every generation)
Ethiopia went from 8 Million to 80 Million inhabitants from the 1920's to the 1990's.
Imagine the US going from about 150 Million to 1.5 Billion or western Europe going from 300 Million to 3 Billion in the same period.
Food donations won't solve Africa's problems, only postpone them.
Re:Don't do it until you read this (Score:2)
Alternatively (Score:2)
Re:Ok, I have a solution for them. (Score:2)
Uh, if you aren't using the html part from konqueror (and nautilus), it's not even loaded into memory. Like IE, Konq and Nautilus are mostly plugin shells. This contributes to their smallness greatly.
Next are you going to say to remove all modules capablities from Linux?
Re:Maybe they should stick with the older hardware (Score:2)
I remember KDE 2.1.x running fine on my powerpc 603e 200 mhz (603e=slow chip.. slower than PPC 604 and G3) with 48 mb of ram.
Re:Maybe they should stick with the older hardware (Score:2)
Compiling KDE on _that_ machine? barely ever. although I do use it for distcc once in a while. On that machine, I barely ever go into X anyways, and I skipped KDE 3.0 as a whole (KDE 2.2.2, I beleive to KDE 3.1 rc3)
Re:Faster hardware ?? (Score:2)
great.. go rewrite g++ for them so that compiling large C++ apps (mozilla, kde, OO) takes less time.