My mom's computer sucks, help me fix it.

[Malwyn]

Some time in October. KDE4 comes out in December though. <3

[Ulti]

Oh, cool. I'll just hold off until then.

[Spectere]

KDE4 comes out in December though. <3

Woo!

I like how KDE4 looks so far.  I can't wait.  Not only does the environment itself rock, but they're probably going to be porting some of the stuff to Windows as well (which is awesome for me, given how much I use both systems).

[Malwyn]

Woo!

I like how KDE4 looks so far.  I can't wait.  Not only does the environment itself rock, but they're probably going to be porting some of the stuff to Windows as well (which is awesome for me, given how much I use both systems).

Honestly I'm not sure how I feel about that. Seems that everything nifty that linux has, everything else must have a working port. Apache, the konqueror rendering engine, cups... okay, I just hate Apple. But I can see benefits in the porting, and plasma's sticking to X11 environments, which is neat.

What I've come to like most about KDE is its tight integration. It's got everything you'd ever probably need a computer for, all tightly integrated. There are a few nasty quirks and KDE can look just plain fugly without severe configuring (and KDE's theme management is vile) that I'm hoping KDE4 will fix. GNOME's ease of use, intuitive behaviour and out-of-the-box pretty is why people love it. If KDE4 goes and fixes these, there'll be one awesome desktop environment that has everything set to awesome instead of two that you'd have to pick between...

[Spectere]

Honestly I'm not sure how I feel about that. Seems that everything nifty that linux has, everything else must have a working port.

There's nothing wrong with that.  If anything, it'll give people a taste of the penguin (so to speak).  If people try KDE in Windows and like it, they may be inclined to give Linux a shot.

It'll also give people like me a bit more consistency.  Not to mention that I just like some of KDE's tools better than some of the Windows ones (hello Kate, goodbye Notepad++).

Apache, the konqueror rendering engine, cups... okay, I just hate Apple.

Yeah, Apple really loves to make it look like they actually wrote OS X.

As for the parts that they actually did write...well, let's just say that in my experience, OS X runs like ass compared to XP and every X11 environment I've used, even on superior hardware.

What I've come to like most about KDE is its tight integration. It's got everything you'd ever probably need a computer for, all tightly integrated.

Mmm, yes.

I've also found KOffice to be quite usable as a productivity suite.  I prefer KWord and its brethren to OpenOffice.  It might not have as many features but it sure makes a hell of a lot more sense.

GNOME's ease of use, intuitive behaviour and out-of-the-box pretty is why people love it.

I don't love it.   It's a fine product, I just don't care much for it for whatever reason.

[Malwyn]

It's why the people that use it use it.

As for notepad++, have you tried notepad2? It's very pleasant. I prefer Kate, but... for windows. Very pleasant.

Then again, coding in Windows is like having teeth pulled. :|

[Spectere]

I would give Notepad2 a shot but...no tabbed document interface. :<

Actually, I don't mind notepad++.  It's generally a pretty good editor.  The biggest problem that I have with it is that it really really sucks at handling large documents (like Quake movie scripts...a couple of megabytes long).  I literally have to use Wordpad for large files because notepad++ is incredibly sluggish with them.

And really, coding directly for any platform is usually like having teeth pulled.  I prefer to either have much of the nitty-gritty work involved with manipulating windows abstracted or made into a point-and-click operation (using WinForms or something along those lines) or just use the console.

[Malwyn]

Coding IN windows, not FOR windows.

The coding in windows experience for me has basically been:

1> install unnecessarily large packages to operating system... hope nothing breaks
2> Make simple 'hello world' app. Unnecessarily large IDE/compiler bundle creates a dozen other files and puts them in bizarre places.
3> Compile.
4> Go fishing in the mess for an executable file.
5>
6> Profit.

This is of course, excluding qbasic and the extension of freebasic. <3

Coding in linux I like much more because, well, the operating system is designed for a lot of compiling, and optimises itself to do it in the most convenient manner.

'tar xvf [blah]; cd [blah]; ./configure; make; sudo make install' is a far more streamlined process than anything windows has to offer in my opinion. There's so much... MESS. D:

[Spectere]

Visual Studio is quite fine for large projects.  I've written a number of applications in that IDE and its debugging of .NET applications is top-notch and the responsiveness of the environment is good.  The slowest part is starting it up and, with 2005, even that's not so bad.

Also, using something like MSYS or Cygwin essentially gives you a GNU userland under Win32.  The two are a bit different in implementation but they still provide the same basic thing (though Cygwin gives you a bit more, allowing you to use X11 under Windows).  Microsoft themselves even provide an environment with GNU tools and compilers for development (Windows Services for Unix, or whatever it's called).

Granted, it's not an out of the box experience, but you can still use the same ideas and utilities that you use in Linux in an Windows environment.  Hell, you could probably even use Visual Studio to code with and set up build events that call the GNU tools if you wanted to.  It's easily as flexible as any *nix setup, it's just different.

[Bobbias]

Anyone ever tried programming for the SNES? Trust me, windows is a walk in the park after you've tried making something work in SNES ASM, lol.

[Spectere]

Oh, it could be worse.  You have to have knowledge of how TVs worked to program for the Atari 2600, haha.  I kinda figured a system like that would be rather basic -- easy to emulate and develop for -- until I read a bit more about it.  Woo...

I mean, yeah, the fact that you had that much low-level control made it kinda flexible and combining a bunch of tricks made things like Pitfall possible (compare that to just about any Atari 2600 game -- except for Pitfall 2, of course), but...damn.

[Bobbias]

Lol, Some tricks require you to process image data during HBlanks to get it to work right, and yets, you need to know some about TVs, or VBlanks and HBlanks wouldn't make sense to you, lol. I mean, Programming for the SNES is retarded, you do EVERYTHING. There's a reason there are so few SNES homebrew games :/

I tried learning, but it's just so damn time consuming, and hard that it's just not worth it. Plus there are so many limitations on what's possible :/

When I realized how much work needed to go into making even like, pong, I just went "Jesus fuck, I'm not doing that!"

[Spectere]

Heh, I don't think that the SNES is quite at the level of the Atari 2600.  To do anything with the latter you needed to do all of that.  At least with the SNES you didn't need tricks to get decent looking graphics.  The Atari 2600 literally only allowed for two sprites, two missiles, a ball (literally, one pixel), and a playfield.  The display is normally mirrored.  In order to do anything substantial, you had to heavily modify the settings going to the graphics chipset as each scanline was being drawn.  By rights, multicolor sprites aren't even supposed to be possible with the 2600, yet people have done it.

[Bobbias]

Haha, yeah, I really wonder how they programmed Space Invaders, since all those enemies can't be treated as objects in any way. They're drawn to the play field, I assume? But how does it collision check? lol.

[Spectere]

I did a brief Google search but couldn't find anything.  Pitfall did most of its rendering with software so that's always a possibility.  Another possibility is that it constantly changes, in mid-draw, where the sprites are.

I'm kind of interested in finding out.