Les Mikesell wrote: > On 1/19/2011 12:03 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >>> >>> You are biased by having learned to live with the restrictions of old >> >> So, what I like how something works is all "old cruft", and I should get >> with the program, and not have opinions on what I want and how I want it >> to work? > > That's not the point. You've had years to learn how to make a computer > work like a slightly smarter typewriter, and for a long time that was > about all they could do and everyone was happy with it. But that's not > what someone starting today should expect. How much more do you do with it? I've pasted pictures and spreadsheets into it; what else do you do? Certainly, bulleting isn't as bulletproof as it was in my (legal) copy of WordPerfect 6.0.c for DOS, that I keep thinking of running under wine. > >> That *is* what you're saying to me, to which I respond with "take >> your opinion and shove it". > > OK, now it's my turn to misinterpret your position: you are saying that > all of the work that the upstream developers are doing has no value and > the field of computer science was complete when CentOS 5 was released > (or was it awk...). And I disagree. That's absurd. What I'm saying is that much of what's added is nothing more than eye candy, and features that almost no one actually uses. And just *what* do you have against awk?! <g> (says the guy who learned it and wrote 100-200 line scripts, lo, these many years ago). I also think that to some extent, CS has gotten onto a wrong tack (and my article on the failure of OO in general, and java in particular, will be written as soon as my life in the RW slows down some). > >>> Sorry, but Outlook 2003 and 2007 are huge improvements over earlier >>> versions - and lacking tight integration between messaging and >>> calendar/scheduling has been one of the places where free software >>> really missed the boat. >> >> No, they are *NOT* "huge improvements", they are absolute *shit*, that >> make any of the minor things I occasionally want/need to do *far* >> harder. >> And I thought I hated 2003, but 2007 I despise with a passion. > > My company is fairly distributed and lives on conference calls - and I > absolutely need the calendar integration/reminders to track the > scheduling. As far as the email component goes, I usually have a > thunderbird imap view of the same messages - and have used evolution > without any real difference in capabilities except in what happens when > I open (e.g) a visio file on a non-windows platform. I can't think of > anything you'd want a mailer to do that would be 'hard' in any of those > environments. Setting up encryption, certificates, digital sigs, how my email is displayed.... > >>> And remember that firefox/openoffice are rare exceptions in RHEL/Centos >>> in that they have had major-version updates since the distro release, >>> even though they still are far behind 'current' now. The rest of the >>> distro is much older and doesn't do much of what people do with >>> desktops >>> today (subscribing to podcasts, media playing, serving media to other >>> devices, etc.). >> >> Huh? I have no problem with streaming media, or playing pretty much any >> media that I care to. What media is difficult to serve? > > What apps are you using for (say) podcast subscription management, Don't do podcasts. > playing audio/video files, or serving them to upnp/DLNA devices? If you Playing them? Realplayer or mplayer, mostly. Ubuntu wants to use some media player, and I haven't gotten around to doing a ps to find out what it is. Haven't been asked to serve video/audio. > are using 3rd party sources you are making my point about CentOS not > making a great desktop, and if you enable more than one 3rd party yum > repository you are setting the system up for future conflicts. What 3rd party software? So far, everything's in the distro. > >> Sorry, but in *my* opinion, you've swallowed the Kool-Aid to the dregs. > > That good software is still being developed and updates are > worthwhile??? Yes, I believe that. Yes, I agree that some updates are worthwhile, and good software is still being developed - don't try to suggest I was saying *nothing* new is good; all I was saying is that the majority of New! Features! aren't worth it. mark