Vindictive mods today? I see no reason this post is a troll.

+Funny mods do not affect karma in Slashdot. The theory is that this will lead to more insightful conversations and less jokes. However, all it does is get the funny posts modded as +Insightful instead because the modders want to help out the guys making funny posts.

When commenters insightfully point this out, they get modded +Funny...

Sorry for the brief reply, if I get a chance later I will be a bit more verbose. Anyway, about "libraries" for installing gnome, if you are using the .deb or installing from the repositories using apt, the dependencies and libraries that are required will be listed, and if you accept everything is installed at once. I would be surprised if "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get install qtparted" or "apt-get install gparted" does not work on (k)ubuntu without adding or enabling repositories. Unless you are installing something that is not in the repositories or there is no package available, you should not need to worry too much about the location of the libraries and other dependencies on your system.

But the article states that Apple did not make the "cloned apps", they were just approved while his app was not. They eventually approved it, which shows they have problems with their app approval process, but you are making it out to be some sort of conspiracy to screw him out of sales.

So Apple rejected an app, then later sold similar apps and then revised their decision? How is this cloning the person's app? The article you posted even said it was similar apps, not renamed versions of the same app.

And if your program crashes on exit, you can just change the error message to "Thanks for playing!" and no-one would know!

I too know true story about poor right post with no post source information. This post ignored by most other user on dotslash.

Oops, the e was actually unintentional. Well, at least I fulfilled my own prophecy...

So states should be allowed to tax interstate commerce as long as they change the name?

Thanks, its nice to have a conversation about both the goods and bads of *NIX that doesn't devolve into an argument. I think it is easier to have an open mind if you use software pragmatically as opposed to zealously following one sect or the other. I see this time and time again with BSD vs. GPL licensing debates. GPL advocates often see BSD-licensed code as too easily stolen and BSD advocates see GPL-licensed code as "infectious" and too restrictive. The reality is that a developer needs to weigh the different licenses and decide if they want the code free for anyone to take or if they want others to be required to share changes back with them.

By the way, I took a look at the feature sets for qtparted and gparted. There are some screenshots on the respective web pages. I know (k)ubuntu keeps low-level system tools to a minimum, but I would be shocked if neither of these were in the default repositories. Gparted definitely is more feature-rich, but if you don't need any of the extra features I would try QTparted first. Gparted would likely require extra gnome libraries if you are in KDE.

Also, if you want or need to do offline partition management, I would recommend using the Parted Magic live CD.

Lastly, it looks like NDS is still alive and running in SUSE Enterprise Server, but under the name eDirectory. I am not familiar with it, so I do not know if it does as good a job as Group Policy in Active Directory at managing settings for tons of machines remotely. There is also no price listed, and I believe it is sold separately from SUSE Enterprise, so it may also lose out on a cost standpoint.

OH NOES!!! Not the dreaded thirth party content!

Sorry, I couldn't help it. I'll probably fulfill Muphrey's law in some way with this post anyway.

According to the email they are as good as Greg even!

You didn't indicate that you thought I was being a jerk, I had just reread my post and thought it read a bit stand-offish. Glad you didn't feel that way.

Thanks for the tips, I'll have to check out KDE in my Ubuntu desktop again and maybe try the linux-xp in a VM.

For visual management of drive volumes, gparted is pretty strong on this front. The KDE equivalent is QTParted, although I do not know if they have feature parity.

For Active Directory, I misunderstood and thought you were talking about managing volumes with AD, hence the confusion. I agree that this is a must have for enterprise management of both servers and desktops. Anything I've seen from Red Hat or Novell just does not come close. I too am shocked that Novell did not do this considering AD started off as a poor copy of Novell's directory services.

But yeah, linux just never stops chugging along. It is a dominating player in the server arena and hopefully netbooks and tablets running linux will get more users to use it on a regular basis. In fact, tons of people already do and just don't know it (NAS devices, routers, phones and set-top boxes are already running linux in a lot of households).

My apologies if I sounded hostile in that post, my intentions were to give some info on what "Lindows" is if anyone is looking for a Windows-like experience on Linux. I agree that KDE is the way to go for something like that. I hear Kubuntu gets far less development attention than the main Gnome-based Ubuntu, and see many people recommend SUSE for a KDE desktop. I have not personally used KDE in a long time, but I think I might give it another shot now that 4.x seems to have ironed out most of the kinks. I do recall a friend once customizing a KDE desktop for his parents to the point that they had no idea they were using Linux instead of Windows.

Also, I agree that gaming is a big thing holding linux back from mass desktop usage, but I do not see how this can be fixed. WINE and similar will always be at least one step behind in supporting DirectX/3D APIs, which are pretty much de facto. I've heard even John Carmack will be using DirectX/3D for an upcoming game.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "good volume management system like NTFS/Active Directory", but for ZFS/similar, BTRFS is making strides. However, it still seems behind ZFS. Also, ZFS now has a kernel module, instead of needing to run in FUSE, but IIRC needs to be built manually due to licensing issues.

Are you kidding, not aware of AROS and ReactOS, or just commenting on how they both still have a ways to go?

Assuming the second, check these out(and possibly contribute, if you want to help speed development):

(1) AROS Research Operating System - The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas.
(2) React Operating System - ReactOS® is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows-NT® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture.

The blurbs next to each link are quoted from the homepages of AROS and ReactOS, respectively, and are not my personal opinion.