Windows 8 Features With Linux Antecedents 642
itwbennett writes "As details about new features in Windows 8 started to be discussed in the Building 8 blog and bandied about in Linux/Windows forums, Linux users were quick to chime in with a hearty 'Linux had that first' — even for things that were just a natural evolution, like native support for USB 3.0. So ask not 'did Linux have this first', but 'does Windows 8 do it better?'"
"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Funny)
The Microsoft twist: No Linux distro does ISO mounting as easily as Windows 8, as it requires some command line trickery (or, again, third-party tools).
Here's your "command line trickery" (once you've gotten superuser):
Did you see that trickery? Someone call the pope, I'm well on my way to sainthood after that "miracle." Hahah that's funny though, this guy should see some of the command line paragraphs I've typed out for stuff like ffmpeg back in the day. I think the author doesn't understand that there are many linux machines that are servers or headless and many distros that love to leave you the option of not having to run a window manager. As a result, it's almost always up to you if you want to run a heavy GUI to execute two whole commands.
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Right, because there's absolutely nothing arcane or overly complex about having to open a terminal window, read a bunch of man pages, and then issue two commands with various flags just to mount a disk image.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not for anyone who has bothered to learn how to use their computer. But then, that's just one way to do it on modern Linux distributions, which now simplify the process by letting you right click and mount the volume.
And has since the days I was using Daemon Tools on Windows.
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Not for anyone who has bothered to learn how to use their computer.
Learning to use your computer should *NOT* require knowledge of shell command flags. The very attitude that it should, is why its so bloody hard to hire good product people. Not coders, not sysadmins, people who actually get users and what they want. (Also explains the huge salary gap seen in the IT world)
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW, Windows actually has plenty of command line tools (made by Microsoft) which allow you to script much more than one might think without ever touching the GUI. Too bad a lot of the said tools aren't included by default and need to be searched for in various * Kit packages from Microsoft.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, mount and its ilk are more complicated than they need to be. The flags and path should be optional, and the default behavior should be to detect the FS type where possible and mount in /mnt/volumename as read-only, creating the folder if necessary. This is the behavior that the majority of people want the majority of the time, and "mount image.iso" should accomplish that automatically. Commands without default behavior are like doorknobs that don't return to center because hey, *someone* might not want the door to latch after they close it. Conform to desired/expected functionality with as little user input as possible by default and let actual power users handle the corner cases.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Every mainstream linux distro with gnome/kde will automagically mount a recognized device on a predefined location without any user intervention, and creating folders as necessary. I'm no expert, but not only Linux's udev seems to work quite well (and recognize a lot more filesystems than Windows), but automounter has been available for ages in almost all modern/relevant unix operating systems.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the commands were about mounting an ISO file, why the hell would I want 1) mount to automatically detect a filesystem inside a file; 2) mount it as read-only on a predefined location?
Because that's what 99% of people who are mounting an ISO file need.
I actually sometimes use files as raw devices for writing (for example, if I need to demonstrate how ZFS resiliency works, a couple of files and mount allows me to quicly show how it works instead of having to use physical devices)?
For that kind of thing, you'd use additional parameters. His point was that the default should be to automatically do whatever is most reasonable for most users. If you know better, by all means, use your knowledge to specify the exact switches in advance.
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My ZFS example is a good one - automatic filesystem detection could expose the
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Funny)
I actually sometimes use files as raw devices for writing (for example, if I need to demonstrate how ZFS resiliency works, a couple of files and mount allows me to quicly show how it works instead of having to use physical devices)?
Thanks, I don't think I could find a better example of a corner case if I tried.
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There's various standard programs like pmount that do that for removable media already, but ISO mounting is a bit more obscure and quite often you genuinely do want to specify a specific directory where it should be mounted.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4)
Hey.
Ubuntu user here and right click on ISO and select "Open with archive mounter" and you're done.
The writer of the article missed the boat completely there.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because the command line is so unimportant that Microsoft came up with an entirely new command shell called PowerShell and OSX has full-on bash.
You know, the two major OSes pointed at consumer idiots have powerful shells. Go figure.
--
BMO
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because the command line is so unimportant that Microsoft came up with an entirely new command shell called PowerShell and OSX has full-on bash.
You know, the two major OSes pointed at consumer idiots have powerful shells. Go figure.
-- BMO
Optional for power users who want them, not required for simple tasks like mounting an image where a mouse click will do.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Informative)
Optional for power users who want them, not required for simple tasks like mounting an image where a mouse click will do.
And that's the way it's been on almost any Linux distribution, for quite a while. On Ubuntu 10.04, I just right click on an ISO file and select the mount option. Then it appears as a new drive on the desktop. It works about the same, whether you're using a Gnome desktop, or KDE, or LXDE, or xfce. Probably also on other desktop environments or window managers, but those are the ones I'm familiar with.
Of course, with Linux, you can ALSO do it via the command line. This is very useful on a headless (no GUI) machine, which Windows curiously lacks support for.
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You can't get cheep windows VPSs probably due to the cost of windows license. I don't know why you would want to mount an ISO on a server with less than 256 MB of RAM but you could serve the content of an ISO from one if you somehow wanted to avoid extracting it.
You are right that any "machine" with the RAM to meet windows requirements probably can handle a GUI.
When ram runs under $20 for your choice of brand in 4GB sticks I fail to find myself concerned with how much ram windows wants. It is one of the (if not the) cheapest components of a computer these days. Splurge and get yourself an 8GB upgrade for 40 bucks. May or may not be a surprise to you but Linux runs slicker than snot on a healthy amount of RAM as well.
My source for pricing: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007611%20600006067&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PR [newegg.com]
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Informative)
Even in Windows land, it is the GUI that is optional. The shell is always there - you can poke at it through a GUI like some terminally obese person with a dialling wand, or you can just use it directly.
Server 2008 doesn't even install a GUI by default.
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Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Interesting)
It should if you want to be considered proficient. It shouldn't be required for basic day to day operations, as I noted. But go on, be an angry anonymous coward.
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No, it's the Gnome3 and Unity devs who are the reason for that.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well... since you didn't bother to limit it to only "simple user tasks".....
for i in *
do
mv $i `echo $i | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]`
done
Done, all the files in that directory are now lower case. Can you do that with some GUI tool pulled off ZDNet or some other random place? Yes. Would it take you longer to find it, download it, virus scan it and figure out how to use it? Absolutely.
The parent specifically said "if you want to be proficient" then you should learn the CLI. This is true.
The parent also specifically said you shouldn't have to drop to a CLI for basic day to day activities. Did you even read the post you were replying to?
Another example? Oh, okay.
for i in `cat listofservers`
do
rdesktop (bunchofoptions) $i &
done
30 RDP sessions open and ready. It would work equally well with an actual list of servers instead of a handy text file laying about. A Linux/KDE specific example has all those 30 sessions grouped into tabbed windows of 5 each, windowshaded and placed where I want them on the desktop for rapid access.
More?
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... since you didn't bother to limit it to only "simple user tasks".....
for i in * do mv $i `echo $i | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]` done
Done, all the files in that directory are now lower case.
Except:
And that's just it. It's another case of "See how easy that was? Oh, we just need to add some quotes. Oh, and -- as an argument for mv. Oh, and -i as an argument for mv. But remember to put -i before --. Everybody knows that." - and yet you created a script that is a text book example of creating a fragile script.
Great default settings are of utter importance and the whole list of the default tools is much influenced by historic (and backwards compatible) reasons. It still leads to different interesting design cases:
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Learning to use your computer certainly SHOULD require familiarising yourself with your chosen platforms command line. The very idea that it shouldn't is why it'sso bloody rare to find an "average" user who knows how to do more than hit Play in iTunes. Not that it even involves the command line, do you know how many customers I have who don't know how to install software in Windows? This is simple, Computer Literacy 101 stuff. I learned how to use computers back when they were actually hard to use (though people who learned before I did, would probobaly look at my cosy DOS prompt and wish they'd learned there), these days there's no excuse for not having some basic and essential skills, yet every time I dare say we coddle the users, and that the problem is user education, NOT the programming and design, I'm told I'm being elitist. If a grown man with no intellectual disabilities couldn't work out how to use a spoon, and got cereal everywhere, would you blame the bowl, the spoon, the cereal, or him? I'd blame him just a bit, for not seeking out some user education. I'm sure a copy of Spoons for Dummies can't cost that much.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone else already pointed out, you *can* use the gui to mount an iso if you want.
If i was explaining to someone how to mount an iso, i would probably explain the command line way because its easier... Someone could simply cut+paste the command that were posted here, whereas explaining a gui is much harder in a textual or vocal setting.
It's very important that both options be available, so that people can choose which method they want to use.
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USB is something where the drivers should be built into the OS, not something you have to depend on a vendor for. And while it's no surprise that Linux got its USB3 drivers first due to its fast release cycle (esp. on the kernel itself), MS has no real excuse. There's nothing forcing them to wait until the next major OS release to pop in some extra drivers; they can easily include that in a service pack or even a downloadable patch like they do for security fixes. They didn't confine new IE releases to o
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IE releases *were* going to be tied to windows versions, the dedicated IE team was even disbanded at one point...
It's only thanks to competition from firefox that they're bothering to update IE at all, otherwise IE8 would be "IE6 thats had minor tweaks to make it compatible with windows 7 and fit in graphically"...
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claims OTHER people copied them and tries to stop them from shipping their products.
WTF are you talking about? The only times this has happened is when other people REALLY DID copy them. That's called "copyright infringement".
MS sues people (companies actually) for not licensing their bogus, obvious patents. There's a world of difference.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Learning to use your computer should *NOT* require knowledge of shell command flags.
Yes it should. Whenever someone wants to do something ridiculously repetitive with say, OpenOffice - converting thousands of documents into pdfs, I show up with my "magical powers" and open a terminal window, and convert them all into pdfs. Because they don't bother to learn something simple (command line basics, or just %*&^ing Google), they would have either wasted hours of their time manually converting the docs, or wasted money hiring a person to manually convert the docs. As it is, I suppose they wasted a little money, because they had me do something they should have been able to do for themselves.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wait... someone paid you to do something you are good at that they are not good at.... and you're pissed off about this?
I'm pissed that my job, which used to be less user-based, is slowly migrating into butt-wiping; something degrading and unnecessary. Would you be happy exploiting illiterate folk if you're the only one who knows how to read? Doesn't it make it worse when they refuse to try to read?
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Informative)
Or you could click on it in Gnome/Nautilus (and probably whatever file manager KDE uses), but don't let that get in your way of your rant.
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It's certainly no more arcane than having to learn which squashed bug you have to click.
On the other hand, I can just right click the iso in the GUI and open it with the archive manager as if it was a directory. It just depends of if you like GUI or command line.
Bottom line, it doesn't matter if you prefer GUI or CLI, Linux has had it covered for years.
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KDE has build in point click for those to retarded to know the benefits of using the command line. I believe Gnome has an add on as well, but I hate Gnome so don't care if it does.
Look, even Microsoft started realizing (15 years to late) the benefits and power of the command line vs. depending on a GUI for everything that's done. Hence they released "Power Shell".
It is always refreshing to see an idiot fan boy that thinks it's hard to do things without a GUI though, so thanks for the laugh!
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We all speak English. That's pretty fucking arcane and complex. "mount -o loop image.iso /mountpoint" isn't any more arcane and complex than "loopback mount this image here".
And it's more convenient than using the GUI. Since you're managing files, you probably have a terminal open already. So it's really just a matter of typing the mount command. You don't even have to take your hands off the keyboard.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
loopback mount this image here
For most people, every word you said except "this" and "here" is gibberish.
You don't even have to take your hands off the keyboard.
For most people, the productivity bottleneck isn't the time spent moving hands to and from the keyboard; it's having to memorize 1000 commands to use the damn thing. rm, ls, cd, cp, grep, etc. and all their associated flags are not easy for most people. The one I get tripped up on the most is renaming a folder. I want to rename, so is it rn? No it's mv... but I'm not moving it so that's confusing. How about copying a directory? cp is for one file, I guess I need a flag for more, which was it again? and do I type the source first or the destination first? And what about naming conflicts? I guess if I want to deal with those I need to know some more flags...
This is going to go through your head every time if you're anything but an expert. And guess what, not everyone wants to be an expert. People use computers as tools and GUIs help them do that more effectively. I don't need to know the inner workings of a drill, I just know I press the button and the bit turns. Likewise, I don't need to know all the features of cp or mv by memorizing the man page. I just click and drag or right click rename and I'm done.
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For most people, the productivity bottleneck isn't the time spent moving hands to and from the keyboard; it's having to memorize 1000 commands to use the damn thing.
You could say the same thing about the English language. If complexity was a barrier, we'd all be pointing and grunting. But it turns out that the human brain has evolved for language, because language is empowering. Learing shell syntax is similarly empowering.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Insightful)
Shell is as empowering in the computing domain as speech is empowering in the social domain.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
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To me, learning the shell is useful because I spend a lot of time on my computer. For my roommates, learning the shell is a skill that they'll have to actively maintain just so that the one time they try and do something esoteric, it takes them 10 seconds less to do it. A complete waste of time.
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But when you want to do something more complex, that GUI won't help you. Instead it gets in the way. Of course, only in the Windows world are a functional GUI and functional CLI somehow mutually exclusive.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Informative)
You can do the same thing in many Linux distros by just right-clicking an .iso file, or even just double-clicking it. So both you and the article are plain wrong.
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The point of the terminal is that you have all the commands for every program accessible in one location. The downfall is that you have to know the commands beforehand.
There's actually a number of other reasons why the terminal works well. You can chain commands, you can express them without resorting to screenshots or ambiguous descriptions, scripting is easy, there's no gui overhead, and remote system access is dramatically simplified. Multitasking is sort of prevented but most people, including myself, w
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not think you understand.
I do not have to use the terminal.
There is almost nothing I can not do in the GUI of Linux that you can do in the GUI of windows.
The difference is that I can open up a terminal anytime I want and do shitloads more and do it faster.
The terminal in most desktop distributions of Linux is not a mandatory monthly use tool.
It is an added powerful feature.
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Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Informative)
Suppose you want to delete everything from a directory that was created in the past 24 hours. How would you do that with Explorer?
View by detail, sort by date, ctrl-down until the date changes. Or use the search-folder tool using date criteria.
Or if you want to find all the TIFF files under a tree, and move them to a single directory?
Organize-group by file type.
Or even just batch renaming? How do you do that with Explorer?
Yeah, you need a third party utility for that - or use the command line.
The CLI is superior in some situations, but I find myself mostly using the UI for file management, mostly because I regularly have to move around arbitrary files in large file collections during development/debug work. For batch operations the CLI (or scripts) are usually superior.
That, or I have to find one of my folders in that hideous tree dialog on the left.
If your directories are laid out properly this isn't a big deal anymore.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that sounds hard! You have to do all that? Windows 8 must really suck!!!
In modern linux distributions, if there's an ISO on the media, it appears the same as any other container object, except the icon's a shiny CD looking disc instead of a manila folder. You click on it like any other container object, say for example a folder or an archive file, and it opens.
Why do you use windows if it makes you do all that crap?
And worse, with random abbreviations (Score:3)
Things you mount aren't located in /mount, no it is /mnt. Ahh well that is so easy, I can't believe it didn't know that right off the top of my head!
That's what makes the *NIX command line even worse as a tool (not saying the Windows command line is better, but you needn't use it) is that commands are all kinds of random abbreviations. You can't make the argument with a straight face that it is "intuitive" or people can "use commands that seem natural." You don't list directories, you ls them, you don't put
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Again, I kind of agree with you, but that isn't different to Windows. Your personal stuff is in the registry, in the My Documents folder (which has been changing name recently,
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because there's absolutely nothing arcane or overly complex about having to open a terminal window, read a bunch of man pages, and then issue two commands with various flags just to mount a disk image.
While yes it can be arcane to go through man pages to find out how to using things, I doubt many people do that anymore. If I need to know the command I go to google and type "Linux ${thing I want to do}" and get exactly what I need 90% of the time.
However what I find stupid is having to run a gui to do the stupidest little thing. For example:
Yesterday I had to print out quizzes for my students, I had 4 .doc versions of the quiz and needed 15 of each. On a gui I would have to this 4 times: 1) LibreOffice 2) Press Ctrl+P 3) Type in the number of copies. Opening LibreOffice/MS Office can be brutally slow on older machines.
Or 1)Open terminal. 2) for i in quiz*.doc;do lp -n 15 $i;done. Now not many people would know how to do that and need to have the GUI to guide them. But for those of us who do know, not having the option of using a command line (especially for remote connections!) is dreadful. Why do I have to have so many GUIs, wizards, pop-ups, tips of the day, and other nonsense between me and the code that will send my stuff to the printer?
And that is really the crux of the problem for me. It's not that the command line is better or the GUI is better. They each have their pros and cons. The problem is MS has crap command-line support, so when something is better done via command-line the option isn't there.
MS is just adding insult to injury with their command line trickery comment. They claim the Win8 is better because you can mount ISOs from the GUI while on Linux you have to use the command line. Okay that is fair, but what about all of the windows versions currently available? You know, the ones where you just can't do it at all, command line or not?
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Or 1)Open terminal. 2) for i in quiz*.doc;do lp -n 15 $i;done. Now not many people would know how to do that and need to have the GUI to guide them. But for those of us who do know, not having the option of using a command line (especially for remote connections!) is dreadful. Why do I have to have so many GUIs, wizards, pop-ups, tips of the day, and other nonsense between me and the code that will send my stuff to the printer?
That's assuming, of course, that the lp command knows how to print a .doc format file. Its interesting to me though - that never used to be the case (its been a while since I've done command-line *nix printing though). How do you register a file format with the print daemon?
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Furthermore, even though they are "3rd party", many simple applications do that with ease and without having to be tied up to a crappy monopolist OS.
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hm I just right click and tell it mount
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't even do that. I just double click it.
It sounds like someone needs to update their FUD playbook. They're at least 5 years behind the times.
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Heck, I can mount an ISO with a double click.
Can somebody please tell me what ISO stands for? Everbody in in this thread keeps saying "I mounted this ISO...I mounted that ISO." I finally found out what you guys mean by "Mounting a MILF", and now you come up with some other mess of letters.
"ISO is taken from the ISO 9660 file system" (Score:5, Informative)
The name ISO is taken from the ISO 9660 file system [wikipedia.org] used with CD-ROM media, but what is known as an ISO image might also contain a UDF (ISO/IEC 13346) file system or a DVD or Blu-ray Disc (BD) image.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Funny)
International Standards Organization, specifically, this is ISO9660, the definition of a cd image.
Or, you know, you could just FUCKING GOOGLE IT!
No way. The last time I did that, I almost got fired.
Our SysAdmin: "Yeah, I mounted a MILF last night."
Me:What's a MILF?
Sysadmin: You don't know? It's uh...[pause]...I forget what it stands for, Mobile..Image..Something...Format. Fucking google it. It's an image type, so be sure to use Google Images. Also, we have udev set up so it won't mount automatically. You'll need root access. Google's closest equivalent is turning off safe search. So you'll want to do that too when you go looking. Then just look for "Mounting a MILF".
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What? I can mount an ISO in F14 and GNOME with a right click. How is that not easy?
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Compare this to Right-Click -> Mount. Which is also available on some distros of Linux depending on DE and such.
No, two lines of fucking arcane bullshit isn't ease of use. It's nerdy crap.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's really a horrible example, though.
If Win 8 can handle ISO images half as simply as WinCDEmu (Open source, too), then it's kicking Linux's ass in that regard. Double-Click on ISO, mounted. Right Click->Eject, unmounted.
Tilting at this particular windmill might not have been the best illustration.
[0]which I won't be updating to, so fanboy accusations to /dev/null
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Informative)
Linux requires root for too many things. You shouldn't need root to mount a file/device.
So you're saying I should be able to plug in a USB stick with a setuid root shell on it, mount that without root permissions, and own your system with almost zero effort?
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Noh, but you should be able to mount random USB stick and access any files on it and run any executables on it with your user rights and the OS should ask for admin password if more rights are needed.
Re:"Linux Command Line Tirckery" HA! (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux requires root for too many things. You shouldn't need root to mount a file/device. Only read (and optionally write) permissions on the file/device.
In my linux desktop, my CD-ROM and USB devices automount when I plug them in, no root required, I don't even need to run a command, they just mount. And I can unmount them by clicking through my file manager. I can mount an ISO by right-clicking on it in my file manager. No root required.
What mounts do you need root for? If it's something you need to do more than once, add it to fstab and add the "user" option.
Common sense (Score:3)
Linux *Implemented* It First (Score:5, Insightful)
As details about new features in Windows 8 started to be discussed in the Building 8 blog and bandied about in Linux/Windows forums, Linux users were quick to chime in with a hearty 'Linux had that first' — even for things that were just a natural evolution, like native support for USB 3.0.
Perhaps they're not jeering Windows for "copying" Linux so much as they are happy to show that the flexibility and community involvement in open source is starting to surpass those closed source equivalents? Isn't that what Windows used to gain so much marketshare? Supporting everything before everyone else?
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So Win7 doesn't have "native USB 3.0" support?
That kind of sucks. Although it's not unprecedented.
Microsoft needs to find some way to artificially drive demand for new versions of Windows.
Re:Linux *Implemented* It First (Score:5, Interesting)
USB 3.0 works fine with Windows 7, you just have to install the drivers provided by the mobo/card manufacturer. Big deal...
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That's a problem with a specific driver, though, not Windows 7. Just look it up - ASMedia USB3 drivers have that problem, but not all others...
The real question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
A better question may be (Score:4, Insightful)
And what will Linux do that Windows 8 doesn't when Win8 finally gets on the market?
Or maybe:
When will people start to care about paying for low quality products when hight quality ones are free?
Re:A better question may be (Score:4, Insightful)
When the producer of the low quality product has coerced the hardware vendors into making it exceedingly hard, if not impossible, to install the high quality one.
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When will people start to care about paying for low quality products when hight quality ones are free?
'People', like me, will start to care when the software we run (for me it's games) run *natively* under the freely available operating systems.
THAT is one of the biggest issues preventing 'people' from migrating to Linux.
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Ah, the brilliant circular argument: I use windows because all my apps are windows apps. Good thing I learned English, because all the books I read are in English.
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Meh. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't really see anything here worth the attention -- this really just looks like an attempt to generate traffic.
Move along, nothing to see here.
...No, really. It's quite dull and profoundly uncontroversial.
ISO Mounting (Score:5, Funny)
It boggled my mind that even Windows 7 didn't have that. At my job, I'm the Mac tech and there are a couple of PC techs. When they're overbusy, I take some of their workload... had to do an install of Office on someone's machine, so I found a folder of ISOs on a network share, downloaded it, and...? Hmm. "I may be an idiot," I said to my colleagues, "but I can't figure out how to mount this ISO file." "Burn it," they said. "Why, how do you open it on a Mac?" "Uh... you double-click it."
Talk about your long times coming.
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I like to say that I literally 'LOL'ed at this. I've said the same thing a number of times about things that are so easy either on a Mac or on Linux that is impossible to do natively on Windows.
Will Windows 8 have virtual desktops? Seriously...this needs to native to Windows.
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Re:ISO Mounting (Score:5, Insightful)
The one that really gets me is updating.
On Windows:
* Run Windows Update
* Run a program that detects out-of-date software like FileHippo's update checker (or open all of your programs and see which ones annoy you)
* Download each program's update individually
* Run each of those (clicking through the damn wizard every time)
* Reboot your machine
* Watch as a "new update available" popup appears an hour later when you open a program
On Linux, pick one of the following:
* Click the update icon (Ubuntu, maybe other distros)
* Run 'yum upgrade', 'aptitude update && aptitude upgrade' or 'pacman -Syu'
"OMG Linux is so hard. You expect me to open a terminal and type two words??! It's much easier to spend an hour clicking 'Yes"!"
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I don't understand the update fetish. Why should it be up to the system or the user to update a program? If a program has such a short development cycle, or periodic bug fixes then it should update itself. And really most of the programs out there do and do so transparently to the user.
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Hmm. "I may be an idiot," I said to my colleagues, "but I can't figure out how to mount this ISO file."
This post seems fake to me. Even your average "mac tech" should have enough passing familiarity with windows to be able to figure this out.
"Burn it," they said.
This part is especially fake sounding. Where did you find a windows tech who didn't know how to deal with an iso file?
Half the PCs out there come with some sort of 3rd party CD burning software that can deal with opening and extracting ISOs just fi
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Go ahead and double click on your iso with your 1 button mouse.
Back in the dim and distant past when I last used windows ("XP" I think it was called?) I seem to recall a Double Click entailed clicking one button twice. Don't tell me they subsequently changed that to one click from each button!
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You used the wrong joke fool. The correct reply was something to do with dragging the ISO to the recycle bin, or whatever it's called on the mac.
Not an unbiased comparison (Score:2)
Just look at the author's bio. Free advertising/advocacy has been going on in the computer magazines for as long as I can remember.
"things that were just a natural evolution" (Score:4, Insightful)
"things that were just a natural evolution"
Try to tell that to the patent jerks at Apple, and Microsoft...
Maybe someone like SCO will sue Microsoft for using the the USB protocol, even if Microsoft and Apple may have paid for using USB, and SCO doesn't even own the patents. This business is so litigious.
For some values of "Better" (Score:2)
It's noticeably better at generating profit for Microsoft.
ReFS... (Score:2)
BTRFS has yet to become the defacto file system in any linux distro today that I'm aware of, but it's well under way. That said, BTRFS will be a complete replacement for ext4, while ReFS is being phased in with a cautious approach (no system drives on ReFS).
The filesystem thing is definitely a natural evolution, it's like saying featur
Immitation/Flattery (Score:5, Interesting)
I would have thought Linux users would be happy if MS borrowed their ideas- it makes the "mainstream" operating system more like the one they have chosen to use for themselves.
Surely MS copying Linux can only be a good thing? No?
I've heard MS is going to even start using a penguin as their logo too. ;)
The big guys have always been inspired by FOSS ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... and vice versa.
Quite a few features on the Mac OS X UI are directly lifted from Enlightenment and similar projects. Enlightenment was the first UI emphasizing beauty and, for instance, had first spikes into OpenGL support about 10 years ago. They also were the the first to introduce the 'brushed metal' look throughout an entire UI. That all was back in the day when Mac OS 9 still looked like a souped up Windows 3.1 in a few places.
The new system settings tray introduced in Windows XP is a direct copy of the KDE settings layout of the time - which at the time also was a first. As where the Frog Design UI element designs.
All this is quite natural though, and can be taken for granted.
To be honest, I wouldn't take a professional UI designer serious, if he *weren't* intimately familiar with the various alternatives outside of mainstream OSes and UIs.
My 2 cents.
Re:The big guys have always been inspired by FOSS (Score:4)
Quite a few features on the Mac OS X UI are directly lifted from Enlightenment and similar projects.
Actually, I think you'll find that Enlightenment "lifted" features from NeXTSTEP, which significantly predates E. OSX is really just the latest and greatest flavor of NeXTSTEP.
OS X had OpenGL graphics since 2002 (Score:3)
OS X has had hardware accelerated Quartz, "Quartz Extreme" since 10.2 Jaguar, available August 2002, so close enough to 10 years.
And yeah, as another replier notes, NEXTSTEP had hardware accelerated blitting in the 1980s. The window manager on a NeXT Cube is not noticeably less snappy moving windows around than a Mac of today.
Articles like this are the problem, not Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like Microsoft said, "hey, we invented an easy way to mount ISO's. Take THAT Linux! wait, you already have that? Oh well, our way is superior!"
It's more like Microsoft said, "Hey, we made ISO's easy to mount."
The rest of the crap comes from those who make a living trying to instigate fights between users in both camps.
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HTC and Samsung are known to be paying Microsoft royalties for the devices they sell with Android.
AC is pointing out that something similar could happen if Microsoft patented ideas it gleaned from the open source community. An "Embrace, Extend, Patent, Profit" modus, if you will.
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You may laugh but I suspect there's a lot more in your one-liner than you realise...
I think the PC desktops and laptops do have a while to go yet but they're certainly on the decline as Joe Sixpack's main computing device in the house and Microsoft currently have very little to offer in the portable device arena, which are mostly ARM-based CPUs. Therefore Windows 8 is targeted primarily at ARM devices and Microsoft will be hoping that people will want to use similar environments on both PCs and portables, a