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Re: Commercial Software. Evil?

I define commercial software as software you pay for.

Re: Commercial Software. Evil?

Quote:

Originally Posted by tabletrat (Post 168659)

I didn't know what the compiz-fusion was, so I did a search and saw a youtube demo. Sure enough, lots of deforming cubes, and rotation and fancy effects. One thing I didn't get is, why? How does that help anything? OK, the geek in me loves the graphics, especially having done graphic programming before, but one of my loves is user interfaces and I didn't see anything in all of the compiz fusion demos that made the user interface better to use, or friendlier, or any more obvious. I watched the windows zooming round, and my thoughts went back to talking my mum through trying to download a scanner driver from the web. I am glad my mum doesn't have that!

Well, there's several window-hunting aids (including an exposé clone), and OS X style zoom; also, live displays of windows can replace icons in the task switcher (Alt-Tab), and can be deployed on mouse hover over taskbar. So I'd say there really is some usability advances there, even though there's more eyecandy.

Re: Commercial Software. Evil?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benson (Post 168486)

Ok, but softpoweroff is fixed with powerlaunch, App Muggr. works as well as ever AFAICT (and apt-get is fine), and we have builds of both OS2007 xterm and a non-broken OS2008 one from svn. Ok, home screen is useless, but that's the only one that you can argue is functionally holding you back; the rest are fixed, thanks to Nokia or not.

I have absolutely no idea how to make Powerlaunch work and I dare not install it. I've read the documentation pages and my only thought was: "WTF???!!!" And that's coming from someone who has (successfully) edited mce.ini...

We have been complaining about Application Mangler since day one and it's only got worse. It's now gone so far that I can no longer see package names. I agree that apt-get works (thank Bog for that!), but why is it seemingly so difficult to implement something that works?! Synaptic is a perfectly working package manager; as it now stands, it just gives the impression that Nokia doesn't want to admit defeat and replace its own cr*p by working community software. It's the Bluetooth débâcle all over again.

You may think that the defective home screen is a detail, but it happens to be the screen I have open the most.

As I don't have crapOS2008 installed, I haven't seen the xterm build for it. Does it do everything I can now do in my 2007 xterm?

Re: Commercial Software. Evil?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karel Jansens (Post 169333)

We have been complaining about Application Mangler since day one and it's only got worse. It's now gone so far that I can no longer see package names. I agree that apt-get works (thank Bog for that!), but why is it seemingly so difficult to implement something that works?! Synaptic is a perfectly working package manager...

Absolutely, the package manager needs a) an overhaul and b) options. Aptitude is another great utility. I haven't been having problems with App Manager, though I think it's clumsy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karel Jansens (Post 169333)

You may think that the defective home screen is a detail, but it happens to be the screen I have open the most.

Again, you call it defective, many don't. Same with the applications menu, I like the big icons much better. I install favorites-menu too and have everything in two or three taps... last thing I want to do is pull out the lousy stylus to launch a program that is probably finger-friendly anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karel Jansens (Post 169333)

As I don't have crapOS2008 installed, I haven't seen the xterm build for it. Does it do everything I can now do in my 2007 xterm?

The shipping one is weak; the toolbar options are broken. The Ctrl button is ******ed, but it was in OS2007 too (the dialog comes up and the keyboard goes away?!). The newest build, available from some individuals is much better.

Re: Commercial Software. Evil?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karel Jansens (Post 169333)

OK... it's not really all that hard, as long as you know what you're in for going in...

Quote:

We have been complaining about Application Mangler since day one and it's only got worse. It's now gone so far that I can no longer see package names.

That's fixed in SVN, IIRC; someone around said they built the SVN and it fixed it. And it doesn't die when one repo fails anymore... Major improvement, it's now actually usable.

Quote:

As I don't have crapOS2008 installed, I haven't seen the xterm build for it. Does it do everything I can now do in my 2007 xterm?

The build from OS2007 is identical to OS2007 maemo-hackers xterm. The OS2008 one is functionally equivalent, IMHO. Differences:
Horizontal toolbar at bottom, instead of vertical. (Less screen space in portrait, so I'm happy.)
No tabs, since separate windows are accessible through the task switcher anyway. (Less screen space; happy again.)
Toolbar disabling works; not sure about the OS2007 version, though.

Otherwise, they're both the same, AFAIK. Character encoding is selectable, toolbars go to the window they belong with, closes window when shell exits (I think OS2007 had some glitches with this and multiple tabs, but it's been a long time...).