Is this article interesting to anyone? It is not poorly written, it is just about as dull as you can get. The subject matter is dull, I guess, but even that could have been made more interesting by comparing it to the other mentioned package manages (urpmi, Zypper, Apt-get, et. al.), perhaps. Or maybe just having this article be a subsection in a larger article about Fedora 11. Sometimes, Linux-Mag, you are just plain boring. Sorry. True. »

How about memory management and process isolation? I haven't used Chrome (Google's browser) but from what I've read, Chrome isolates each browsing session -- tab, window -- from the rest so that if one crashes for some reason it does not kill your entire browser. Does FF 3.5 have this? Or, at a minimum, does FF3.5 deal with and/or prevent crashing any better????? IMO, that is a much more important feature than this eye candy and GUI nicety stuff. FF3.0 is great but it still crashes way the hell too often. And for an app that I spend MOST of my day using, ONE crash per WEEK is way the hell too often. »

So, everything about Linux mag is "preaching to the choir" but that's really okay. I'd like to see articles like this, or discussions on this topic somehow pushed out to the general public, but that is, perhaps, a topic for another article. Anyway, my 4yo son loves using Childsplay, Gcompris, and Tux Paint. I'd say he uses Gcompris the most. But this article also misses an important point, possibly because it is not really in the scope of what the article is trying to address. The point is that these days, the general computing "platform" is moving more and more to the WEB BROWSER and making the underlying OS irrelevant. My point here is that my son, who attends a nursery school/daycare, can come home and use the exact same games at home /because they are all flash-based applets on the web/. I think this is a good thing, generally speaking. Its not without problems, of course. A big problem with web-based stuff is its tendency towards commercialism. Even with PBS Kids, there is an undercurrent of "buy this merchandise". Some of the PBS Kids dot org games and learning tools are pretty cool, though. And *someone* has to pay for the development of stuff. The complete and utter lack of commercialism in Gcompris, Childsplay, and the other FOSS kids tools is a breath of fresh air, but the quality of the art, sound, and general imagery is not quite as high as the commercially available stuff. The quality of *gameplay* is, though. Seeya! »

Evolution *Sounds* like a great tool, but in my experience so far -- and I have been trying it on and off since 2002 -- it has, well, not to be nasty, but, well, it has sucked. Evolution has always had some very basic issues, like instability and bugginess. I have tried Evo on Red Hat 9, MEPIS 3.3, Ubuntu 6.06, 6.10, an 8.04, and I still encounter show stopping instability and bugs. I wish I had specific examples, but I don't. But suffice it to say that I have never had good success with it. Has no one else had my negative experiences? Am I using the wrong distros? (Red Hat or Debian-based distros) I figured on a RH distro Evo would be alright but not AFAICR. Also, does anyone actually like the "send/receive" button (ala MS Outlook)? Why are send and receive not separated from each other? I have never been able to figure that one out. There are times when I DON'T WAN TO DO BOTH! Yay! Linux! Seeya! »

Hi. I am very lucky, in that I have been able to work with computers on my own terms for the last 8-9 years, using any desktop OS I want. But I also have very consciously stayed away from positions that would hem me in. Maybe it is because I work in a tech-savvy part of the country (Baltimore-Washington corridor, MD, USA)? I've even gone as far as including the line "would prefer an environment hospitable to Open Source" in my Objectives section of my resume. And it has worked well! I have interviewed with several positions that not only *let* me use Ubuntu but use it themselves as their dev platform, and gotten offers from two different companies that service and support Open Source products. I currently work for a company that does not use Windows for anything, really. (Except the CEO and CFO's desktops :) ) We use Solaris as our server platform and Linux for development. Oh, and some Mac OS X in there. My point? My point is that it is very possible to develop a tech career using tools that you love and want to promote. And that Windows really, really, REALLY is not the only game in town. Now, I really don't mind Windows, overall. I also don't mind that MS is a huge company and needs to make money and grow and all that. I do mind the anti-Linux FUD that is all over the place. ah, well, gotta stop commenting for now, but that's my story. Seeya »