Samba's Jeremy Allison On Linux's Future 193
TRNick writes "Jeremy Allison talks Ubuntu, why he loves Gnome, and the trials and tribulations of open source development in a wide-ranging interview on TechRadar."
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Samba's Jeremy Allison On Linux's Future
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Re:I seem to prefer GNOME (Score:5, Informative)
(And over OSX, since I prefer a start menu to a dock)
Well just for extended information (I am not trying to make you change your choice) the reason why OS X doesn't have a start button is because of the way that files are organized are different then on Linux and Windows. /usr/bin directory filled with application some are X Based (which really should be in /usr/bin/X11 or /usr/X11/bin) but still you have alot of little utilities mixed in your application.
For the most part application have everything it needs inside its own folder and when you see that application icon it is actually a folder that automatically runs the application within it. So except for going to the start menu you can just enter the Application Directory and choose your application much easier then with Linux and Windows (for that method). Where in windows you have a Program Folder directory filled with exe files that may or may not lead to to you running your application, that you want. Or Linux
Re:Ubuntu and the new users (Score:5, Informative)
Why should I have to type "apt-get"?
You don't. Just go into the main menu and pick "Applications..." or whatever the menu option is. It pops up a simple, user-friendly interface for installing any major applications you'd be interested in, ordered by category (the same categories as present in the main menu, actually).
Of course, if you want to get a little more advanced, you can always pop up Synaptic. But there's absolutely no reason whatsoever that an average user needs to run apt-get on the command-line.
Re:I seem to prefer GNOME (Score:3, Informative)
And on MacOS, all apps seem to prefer to be lumped in a completely disorganized pile in /Applications. Sure, you can rearrange them, but that rearrangement may break some apps, or at least cause issues with their updaters.
For this reason, I find it cumbersome to use a Mac without at least some sort of programs menu. Currently, I use a little app called MoofMenu [lobotomo.com], which does the trick.
Re:Samba is considered harmful (Score:4, Informative)
NFS does suck. It trusts the client to do quite a bit of access control enforcement insofar as it expects the UIDs to be the same on the client and the server.
NFS does suck... (Score:4, Informative)
Any administrator will tell you that NFS sucks. NFSv4 simply sucks less.
NFS is fine for systems which have static IP addresses, filesystems that have limited writes and do not require high-performance access for reads of many files. If you need better performance, you should look at direct-attach options such as SANFS, Veritas Storage or GPFS.
NFS has a nasty tendancy of tying itself in knots when a server goes offline. Witness the zombie processes that can't unlock themselves. Even if you go down the route of soft mounts and interruptable locks, it can be messy. As the original server comes back up, all the remote systems relying on it can suddenly flood the machine with requests for NFS access and knock it over again, requiring some careful masking of the servers traffic for a while.
Samba isn't perfect but it works better for dynamic IP, has reasonable performance and generally doesn't get into locking hell. You can also access remote services such as printing over Samba.
My 2 cents...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:I seem to prefer GNOME (Score:3, Informative)
Last time I tried gnome, it took forever to get to auto-hiding panels, increasing font sizes, and getting colors set so my eyes didn't hurt.
Lets take it from the top.
Autohide in four clicks.
Application Font size in five clicks.
Changing theme colours in 4+3*N clicks.
That last one is a little messier but you could always have chosen a different theme which matched your aesthetics better.
All with GNOME 2.24.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:And I seem to prefer KDE (Score:3, Informative)
Banshee 1.4
Re:I seem to prefer GNOME (Score:2, Informative)
6. KDE4.
Yep, bottom of my list.
I used it, and tried to like it, but just couldn't feel at home. The lates releases are awesome, and I believe that this is a real desktop for the future. A few gripes I had included buggy plasmoid implementation, and the huge and chunky panel (taskbar.) I am fond of tiny taskbars, and why in KDE4 I cannot make it slimmer as in gnome, kde3 and xfce I do not know. The built-in compositing effects (transparency is cool...) is nice, but I generally do without. In fact, KDE4 and Vista Aero feels TOO similar to me, as if the two teams had a bet among each other who could create the best interface when measured along some very strict guidelines.
So there you have it, my list of favourite desktop environments.
I've been using KDE 4 as my desktop environment of choice for a couple months now. In KDE 4.1 the 'huge chuncky panel' can be set to any desirable size - though admittedly the process for resizing and placing it still needs some work. The 4.2 beta just released adds auto-hide as well.
A lot of people used early versions of KDE 4.0 and gave up on it, but it is rapidly evolving into something much more usable, and very pretty.
Re:I seem to prefer GNOME (Score:3, Informative)
OH SQUEE!
This is something that I ran into just last Thursday!
I assume that you're manually entering your display config into your xorg.conf? Stop that. You *NEED* to be using xrandr 1.2. If you're using a modern distro, you ought to have xrandr 1.2 support.
Check out the block after the first EDIT in this document for more info:
http://simoncion.livejournal.com/307011.html [livejournal.com]
Seriously, this stuff is slick as black ice. We're finally within pissing distance of Windows' multi-monitor configuration tools!
Also, if you have *any* questions about this, feel free to contact me. My email address should be easy to figure out... I have a gmail account. :)
Re:Focus stealing is your enemy (Score:4, Informative)
If using compiz go to gnome configuration editor and change Apps -> Compiz -> Screen0 -> options -> focus_prevention_level to "2" (or whatever amount you prefer, see help text).
Unfortunately, no GUI for this afaik and it gets reset from time to time during updates.
Re:Can GNOME do these KDE equivalents? (Score:4, Informative)
1. Customizing keyboard shortcuts in GNOME.
"gTweakUI - menus" offers a GUI way to enable GTK apps to rebind keys on the fly. Or you can edit your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and add
gtk-can-change-accels = true
2. Controlling GUI programs via command-line/script.
qdbus or dbus-send allow this sort of activity and apply to both GNOME and KDE4 apps. Although for your example I'd probably use xclip and invoke firefox directly.
3. File requester dialogues, specific to each program.
Not that I'm aware of. Most GNOME apps seem to remember the last location a file was saved but I think that's it.
4. When I Drag & Drop in KDE, a menu pops up
Right-click drag in GNOME produces a menu (Copy/Move/Link). Left-click drag will move files if you are on the same filesystem, or will copy if you are crossing filesystem boundaries. The latter is useful when copying files to a USB key, for example. The icon changes to indicate that change in behaviour, and can be overriden using Ctrl (for copy), Shift (for move) or Alt (for menu prompt).
5. Equivalent of Norton Commander/Midnight Commander for GNOME?
GNOME Commander is one choice. I seem to remember others but I tend to either use Nautilus, Emacs or the command line for file ops.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:NFS does suck... does not. (Score:5, Informative)
??
1- NFS performance is amazing. It isn't the protocol you have performance problems with it is the transport (layer 1 or layer 2). The protocol in a transport might make a couple % points difference, and that even rarely.
The transport is where it is at. Comparing gigabit with FC is a losing battle for NFS, but compare 10G with FC (even 8G FC) and you have NFS at the top of the performance heap right now for mass storage, only iSCSI is in the same ballpark- but it is also on... 10G ethernet. iSCSI also cannot do simultaneous reads/writes like POSIX compliant NFS can. Direct attach is miserable because you invest loads in disk and can only use it on one server. What if you want to share that data around? Replicate? Islands of storage?
2) use automounter. Seriously, this hasn't been a problem for 5-10 years. Automounter, hostnames, don't use IP addresses (better if you can reverse the addresses).
You obviously haven't maintained NFS either recently or in a large environment.
NFSv4 does things your post doesn't even mention (security and ACL improvements, some performance in some cases).
Re:And I seem to prefer KDE (Score:4, Informative)
Take your tinfoil at off and educate yourself on the matter. First of all Microsoft cannot sue users of the software just like any other patent case. Secondly the only thing used by Banshee that was invented by Microsoft is the C# language and it is a standardized language. Banshee doens't require any .NET libraries, only Mono libraries which are completely different from .NET libraries. For all the bellyaching about Mono over the years Microsoft hasn't even made a peep about it and in fact has helped Moonlight along. I suppose you're waiting for the rapture too.
Re:Can GNOME do these KDE equivalents? (Score:3, Informative)
Or you can edit your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and add
gtk-can-change-accels = true
Minor correction: That seems to be gtk-can-change-accels = 1. At least my GTK did not accept true as a valid value.
Re:Focus stealing is your enemy (Score:3, Informative)
No GUI??
On Ubuntu 8.10, do following:
System>Preferences>CompizConfig Settings Manager (we will say CCSM for short)
In CCSM, click on icon "General Options".
In this screen choose tab labeled "Focus & Raise Behaviour".
Find option "Focus Prevention Level". Set to any setting you wish (mine is at high).
________
I just described what you could do as per a ex-Windows user would be used to being told. Things just work, and settings- complex settings are easy to set.