Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

that's very interesting, I didn't know that. in fact, I kind of assumed it'd be the other way round, as you see on the Zaurus its sound chip runs at a native 48kHz and its cpu struggles when mplayer tried to convert sound as well as video on the fly.

I'll tweak my video encoder/ripping program and see what benefits I get in terms of CPU usage.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

I went to find out what the sampling rates supported are and found a quoted spec which said variable:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=103015&postcount=5

Since DVDs are 48kHz, and CDs 44.1kHz, then I'd suggest it's better to stick to those rates to avoid mangling the sound. Suggesting resampling everything to 44kHz would reduce the size of the sound file a bit, reduce the data rate for playback a bit, but isn't going to help quality at all - you're better off tweaking the video compression for best results!

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

Sorry, but no, NO and NO.

Try it out please. The post you are quoting is way outdated. There is a day and night difference. I'm not kidding. It's not the data rate, but the downsampling process that kills the performance. Also the file size is defined most often (i.e. mp3, ac3) by the bitrate, and not the sampling rate (128kbit is 128kbit regardless of the sampling rate).

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

In the Windows world there is one desktop environment at a time to which all aps are designed to work with. At least that's MS plan which was foiled by the abomination called Vista that has kept users on XP. In the Linux world there are multiple window environments like Gnome and KDE for example. Each of these environments has there own set of libraries which lend a common feel to aps that use them. There are aps like OpenOffice and Firefox that are windows environment and even OS agnostic. The tablet has its own window environment to optimize use with it's hardware platform. Some aps that run on the tablet also run on Linux desktops. The GPE set of PIM aps is a good example. When we mix applications from different windowing environments they will run but will have a different look and feel -- inconsistency you noted. My personal preference on the desktop is Gnome which is used by Ubuntu, my Linux distrobution of choice.

Re: Does anyone else feel this way? OSS lacking consistency
 

This belongs more to the desktop software than mobile, but the thread is interesting.

Could you provide examples of good OSS applications with bad documentation? Then it would be great if you could provide a closed source alternative with better documentation. And how much you have to pay for it.

Maybe this is a too blind assertment, but I think OSS applications documentation can match the documentation of free of charge proprietary software. It makes sense that a piece of software costing dozens or hundreds of €€€ provide much better documentation. Still, you have examples like OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, etc where even the basic documentation is good, and you can buy printed manuals and training books if you wish.