Comments

Beer28 wrote:

BTW, I'm talking about release here though, not devel,

I consider myself a developer (that's why I love C9 btw). I have used both rpm and deb based distro's and I probably don't have anything major against them. Except that after x number of months packages stop getting released as often and or time (dev's need packages yersterday), or packages get built on other glibc or some other library and you start upgrading, sometimes even uncompatible packages and you quickly end up with a unusable system. Then you have to start from scratch. In a way binary based linux is much more vulnerable to dll hell. In the past I'd be using a GNU/Linux distro for about 4-6 months,then format and repeat with distro x+1. I ran a gentoo distro for a year and a half flawlessly with all init things going OK something that was a real problem with RedHat (mileage may vary depending on hardware ),even after various updates. I would have had it still if I had more space on that disk.
Package systems are good solutions but aren't free of problems, often are less then flexible (ex. trees compiled for certain architectures and/or not taking all advantages of your hardware). Plus you have to have developers that take care of each tree (think about commercial vendors that have to support >1 distros, it's a nightmare). And I'm not bashing rpm in any way don't misunderstand me, I liked it when I installed my first RH5, I liked it when I discovered src.rpm's but it's still a feat to keep a system stable.
Good or bad linux does one thing well, it's the GNU toolchain. Almost every linux program gets built with it. If you nail the toolchain you can nail most other problems. I have not seen any other linux distro (or did not care to see at the time) except gentoo that has such a tight coupling between their tools and development process, a remarkable example in software engineering. Perhaps you could in extremis distcc binary packages, but then again, the computation cost, the various architectures, use flags, etc would probably make it unmantainable even if automated.
This is a strange discussion to be having on a MS forum , so... let's start fighting back and convince the world and all flamers that MS is commited in doing really great software by investing in .Net on all platforms (linux included, btw is Rotor is BSD-only?).
My personal wish that I suggested on the MSH newsgroups, why not have MSH on linux as well ?

Beer28 wrote:

except our version of windows update will allow us to install pretty much any software with signed packages from secure repositories.
Imagine if windows update also let you download and install a signed cab with adobe photoshop from a secure source, well up2date gimp. Downloads the package and the dependancies. I have extra repos in my sources as do most linux users, dag, freshrpms, fedora-extras, what have you.
You can do the same with yum or mdk's urpmi.

Why bother, just compile from source

Toward gentoo domination and beyond...

Of course you all guys know that the best combination is having all the GNU goodness, backed up by gentoo build system and running on the NT kernel and MSH as shell?
And it exists too
Haven't seen the interview yet but I hope that you have gentoo in your labs.
Question does MS have their C,C++ on the linux platform? I bet there are some gentoo'ers (like me) that would like their platform to compile a bit faster

The licencing interview is a real jewl in economies behind software developing. One thing that was clear is that investment has to be recuperated.
I think that the investment will be recuperated now or never as I belive this kind of integration will become focus even for free projects. Projects like Eclipse could bring products equivalent to Rational's suite or TS in rather limited amount of time. Many tools already exist and there's always Ant, Maven, Subversion, Bugzilla, trac, xUnit, ...
On the other hand I don't belive MS can loose the investment as they actually made a system that will help them build better software and it's MS's best pay-off.
PS. My own personal question, if I have a versioned project in SVN, how is migration done? Can I keep SVN (as I like it a lot, and have a lot of history in it)? I attended a TS event and the MS guy said that many ISV's are developing plug-ins for the TS studio, is there some group that could help me use SVN?
Doesn't MS think that plug-in based developing made eclipse what it is today (not counting the big companies behind it) and effort should be made to make it more mainstream? That way, we can push the lower bount of the market penetration even further as development would/could/should happen without cost to MS.
All that said, I'm not a Java freak
There is a one more thing (but this is just off the wall), what would happen if you set up a TS farm site? (read sourceforge)
That way people would not have to buy the server and still be happy with the clients, not to mention the proof of scalability that you'd like to get. Just for Open Source projects of course (or closed if they pay)

I actually heard one guy swore "we really screwed up.." (the 1.0 framework). Anyhow, it seems a part of the video got cut off when he said that "people always enjoy this story". Yup, we take mental notes so whach out what you say

I think that I revised my oppinion on what would the best customers be for this kind of equipment. Graphics are great but you SHOULD think about the >1'000'000'000 Chinese and the rest of the world that can't have keyboards for all their characters.

I know I can get the SDK running but without handwrithing recognition it's no fun (actually the ink seems edgy as well). However, it's far from saying that my tablet is bad, even though it's a lower end wacom tablet. It's primary use is for drawing (as most wacom's products are... this sound almost as ad perhaps I'm violation policy?) and it has pressure sensitivity but no tilt sensitivity (higher end pen's do have it) and resolution of 1016 dpi, 40 l/mm. As far as the comment 'what for', I think that the best use for it is drawing, but also it might be the natural way older and younger persons should approach the PC. Go ahead, sign your digital check with a mouse

DanielRieck wrote:

At least installing the Tablet SDK should add that kind of support.

I think it does, to some degree. You can develop Tablet applications on a regular desktop, you don't even need any kind of pen device. Of course, testing the application is no fun when you have to write with the mouse. And since the handwriting recognition engine is missing, you can't test it all.

I don't know about the Wacom boards, what's their native resolution for the pen? The Tablets' is several times higher than the screen.

Are they pressure-sensitive? Can they check the 'ID' of the pen so an application can assign different styles to different users working at the same time?

I agree it would be cool if regular desktops had this functionality, but for what? Tablets are designed to be carried around, and to use them when you can sit down and type or use the mouse. They're very useful to take notes in meetings, but I wouldn't want to have to work with them all day, because I can type way faster than I can write.

I belive that the PC evolution has proven that the number of different platforms has never been a negative factor in developing a common api for devices, if that was the case we'd have different drivers for each mouse and keyboard that we buy. I'd be more betting that MS is trying to target consumers at the top of the spending pyramid forgetting that there are a lot more possible adopters below. It's time to put the tablet back in all houses again (as I had one on an Apple IIe

Does anyone think that Tablet support should be allowed for the "normal" XP editions? I have a Wacom board and I would love to be able to use it under my desktop system. Am I the only one?
At least installing the Tablet SDK should add that kind of support.

Will IIS 7.0 work on Windows XP (SP2)?