I hate Linux

[lordmissus]

Yes, but still Darwin, not FreeBSD.
You really think that about ossxmix? I find it really easy to use personally. It's interface makes much more sense than in other mixer apps.

[jdratlif]

You really think that about ossxmix? I find it really easy to use personally. It's interface makes much more sense than in other mixer apps.

Yes, I really think ossxmix is terrible. So many controls that either do nothing, or simply do nothing for me (i.e. control things I'm not using). Can the interface be tailored? I think I would like it better if I could hide 80% of the controls.

The only volume control I see on Snow Leopard is a master volume control. That's not good either. Perhaps I have overlooked the real Mac mixer app. I've only been really using it for 3 days.

I think Windows Vista/7 does it best. One control for Master, one for Windows Sounds, and another control for each application you start.

I allocated all my space to Snow Leopard, but I'm thinking of making a backup and trying out Xubuntu with the OSS thing you mentioned. If the disk problem doesn't manifest, then I probably screwed up my kernel config. Which version should I grab? Hearty Heroin or Mock Methamphetamine?

[kode54]

Chiming in for no particular reason to point out how much OSSv4's X-Fi driver sucks, or at least did when I tried it a few months ago. Barely any support for most controls the device has.

Conversely, ALSA support for my onboard sound (Intel HDA) leaves much to be desired, as it doesn't offer independent volume control for each output jack, so it's either headphone level volume control on all outputs so I can use headphones with the front jack, or full volume on all outputs so I can use the speakers I have connected to the rear panel.

Although I must say, jack sensing sucks in both systems. The ALSA doesn't seem to have jack sensing, and the OSSv4 driver for my onboard requires a full driver reload for jack sensing to either enable or disable various inputs. Laaame.

I'd say that PulseAudio is probably an acceptable solution. Low latency, multiple stream support, including per-application volume control, and if you need it, seamless support for device switching any application, or all applications, without restarting them. Even support for simultaneous output on all devices at once, using a virtual device. Although I guess for most people, this is unnecessary and possibly bloat.

[paulguy]

Ossxmix usability differs based on driver an card. For some cards it's great, but for some others it's just a ridiculous mess.

[Gil_Hamilton]

DOS 6.22!

You make a compelling argument.

Imagine a great GUI on a FreeBSD install. That's Mac OS X.

You forgot "if the FreBSD install was fucked up so badly that every good thing about it was broken."

[jdratlif]

Imagine a great GUI on a FreeBSD install. That's Mac OS X.

You forgot "if the FreBSD install was fucked up so badly that every good thing about it was broken."

Could you elaborate? I don't see any problems with the unix stuff. Everything works the way I expect it to.

[jdratlif]

Xubuntu destroyed my Snow Leopard boot partition. I don't know what happened. All I told it to do was format the Snow Leopard partition as ext4. I didn't change any partitions. I think my home partition is safe though, so it's not a big deal. Wasn't like I could dual boot atm anyways.

I'm running OSS4. It seems to be working. I'm going to try some more apps and see what happens. I ran through the Ubuntu OSS page and Nach's blog.

Whatever that mixer that Xubuntu is using works with OSS4. Although it doesn't add the virtual controls, so still not perfect. Here is a screenshot of my ossxmix. You really think that's a good interface?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/j ... ssxmix.jpg

Need to do some more testing to see if the disk access problem is solved.

edit: I was able to keep playing Civilization which kmttg was downloading things off my TiVo. Only had about 5 minutes to test. I'll try it out more tomorrow.

[lordmissus]

Yes, that interface in the screenshot you posted looks fine, similar to the one I see with my card on ossxmix.

It looks much better than all the other mixer apps, in my opinion. Then again, I'm a major fan of OpenSound, so...

[kode54]

I'm a fan of pavucontrol, which provides simple volume controls for each device under Playback and Recording tabs, and then a separate tab for per-application or per-stream volume controls. That screen shot looks like accessibility failure.

[paulguy]

I don't mind the number of controls, I just hate all the empty space. Huge frames with only 1 control in it? ick.

[dfreer]

Xubuntu destroyed my Snow Leopard boot partition. I don't know what happened. All I told it to do was format the Snow Leopard partition as ext4.

Sounds like your problem is right there.

[lordmissus]

Yes, that's what I thought when he said it.
He should have shrunk his SL partition with gparted (if those partitions are supported in gparted...), then created the right partitions for his Linux.

Is it possible to read/write MacOS partitions from Linux, and vice versa? I imagine it probably is. In which case he could just place all his personal files in /home/, where /home/ is mounted as a partition used by both MacOs and Xubuntu.

So, e.g. he has an 80GB disc:
10GB to Xubuntu itself
10GB to Snow Leopard
60GB to /home/, ued by both systems.

[jdratlif]

Yes, that interface in the screenshot you posted looks fine, similar to the one I see with my card on ossxmix.

To each his own.

Xubuntu destroyed my Snow Leopard boot partition. I don't know what happened. All I told it to do was format the Snow Leopard partition as ext4.

Sounds like your problem is right there.

I guess that wasn't too clear, but the Snow Leopard partition is not the Snow Leopard boot partition.

Yes, that's what I thought when he said it.
He should have shrunk his SL partition with gparted (if those partitions are supported in gparted...), then created the right partitions for his Linux.

I don't know it's possible to shrink hfsplus Journaled with gparted. I didn't try it though.

Is it possible to read/write MacOS partitions from Linux, and vice versa? I imagine it probably is. In which case he could just place all his personal files in /home/, where /home/ is mounted as a partition used by both MacOs and Xubuntu.

You can read/write the pre-Journaled versions of hfsplus, but not the Journaled ones. They are read-only, The only filesystems they can both read/write are ext2 (maybe ext3 also, I can't remember) or ntfs.

I don't think I could have done it anyways. The Mac data was already 10 GB, and I had an 8.5 GB VirtualBox hard disk file I had to copy to a writable Xubuntu partition. That doesn't leave much space for Xubuntu itself.

Okay, the disk issue must be my fault. Xubuntu can grab files from my TiVo, install OpenOffice, compile Qt4 (with make -j3), download files off the internet, and run VirtualBox to let my play Civ 2 all at the same time. Civ 2 got a little slow at times, but wasn't unusable as it had been before. You win; Linux is great and I am stupid. I probably wouldn't of tried Snow Leopard without that motivation though, so I'm okay with the outcome. I think I might replace gentoo with Xubuntu on another old machine I manage. I tried before, but it had a huge problem with intel video, but I hear they've resolved it.

[lordmissus]

Regardless, you could set up /home/ to be an ext2 partition that Linux and MacOS can both read, then have MacOS and Xubuntu on their own partition.

If disk space is an issue, you can always pick up a 500GiB disc for about £30-40 on scan, which really isn't much. Though, I'll assume you live in the US, so the currency will be different (and in which case you probably won't even buy from scan, since it is based in the UK).

I'm personally planning on picking up a 750GB Western Digital disc from there. See:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/750GB-We ... 32MB-Cache

[Gil_Hamilton]

Imagine a great GUI on a FreeBSD install. That's Mac OS X.

You forgot "if the FreBSD install was fucked up so badly that every good thing about it was broken."

Could you elaborate? I don't see any problems with the unix stuff. Everything works the way I expect it to.

IT's not the interface as much as all the behind-the-scenes stuff.

The biggest one is BSD is known for being secure, and Apple totally broke the security. Every time I've seen anyone say anything more detailed than "Macs don't get viruses like Windows" or the more modern "Macs don't get viruses because they're UNIX" kneejerks, it's been "Mac OSX is the single least secure operating system on the market today and the only reason it's not completely unusable online is because Mac is such a small portion of the market relative to Windows."



http://news.techworld.com/security/1798 ... h-exposed/

http://blogs.technet.com/robert_hensing ... eport.aspx

Older articles, but... They were first-page hits for "OSX security" and I'm too lazy to see if someone's still willing to talk about it.

Situation reminds me of that one CD that actually bricked Macs. Yes, bricked. It would crash Windows machines on insert, and render Macs UNBOOTABLE, as per Apple's offical article at http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1585

A month after it happened, everyone was back to talking about how Macs are so much better than Windows because they're immune to rootkits and other malware copy-protection.




Security through obscurity is not infallible.

[jdratlif]

Regardless, you could set up /home/ to be an ext2 partition that Linux and MacOS can both read, then have MacOS and Xubuntu on their own partition.

If disk space is an issue, you can always pick up a 500GiB disc for about £30-40 on scan, which really isn't much. Though, I'll assume you live in the US, so the currency will be different (and in which case you probably won't even buy from scan, since it is based in the UK).

There are no serious issues I can think of (minor ones maybe), but I'm not really interested in dual booting. I've already killed Xubuntu and put Snow Leopard back on. Though my backup didn't work, so it's still a wip.

The biggest one is BSD is known for being secure, and Apple totally broke the security. Every time I've seen anyone say anything more detailed than "Macs don't get viruses like Windows" or the more modern "Macs don't get viruses because they're UNIX" kneejerks, it's been "Mac OSX is the single least secure operating system on the market today and the only reason it's not completely unusable online is because Mac is such a small portion of the market relative to Windows."

While Mac isn't any more secure than other operating systems, it doesn't seem any less secure either. Do you have an article describing what you're talking about? What did Apple break, specifically?

[Gil_Hamilton]

While Mac isn't any more secure than other operating systems, it doesn't seem any less secure either. Do you have an article describing what you're talking about? What did Apple break, specifically?

Seen some before, but can't find any offhand.

My second link had some of the high points.


Beyond that, most of what I've heard is just that the OSX kernel has none of BSD's famed security.

[funkyass]

OSX userland is freeBSD based. Thats it.

[AamirM]

OSX kernel has none of BSD's famed security

Thats because its kernel isn't based on BSD. Its based on Mach. Only part of freebsd core run on top of this Mach microkernel.

[DancemasterGlenn]

I thought I'd chime in and say that screenshot of ossxmix was cringe-worthy. Did it really take up the whole screen? I've been pretty lucky that my audio hardware is supported pretty well by alsa/pulse, and I have to say it's a joy to use the new mixer that ubuntu 9.10 added. Small, simple, excellent. Hopefully they won't have screwed it up when 10.04 comes out at the end of the month.

And, since I don't believe anyone did, I did some research for sweener (if he's still hanging around for that). The behavior you want on your touchpad seems to be known as "tap zones", and apparently can be done in linux (at least in ubuntu and fedora, from what I found in a quick search. The most helpful articles are still not super helpful, and are pretty old, but maybe they can still be useful...?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=518826
http://fkooman.wordpress.com/2008/06/11 ... tap-zones/

It's a place to start, at least. Hope that's helpful for you.

[Panzer88]

if you are incapable if configuring freebsd yourself try bsd for idiots, -- pc-bsd

[kode54]

if you are incapable if configuring freebsd yourself try bsd for idiots, -- pc-bsd

Indeed, because smart people can figure out how to install Xorg and a desktop environment manually. Smarter people don't even need those.

[odditude]

i also want to only have to click once in the address bar of my browser and be able to highlight the entire address. right now, i have to triple-click on the address itself (clicking in the bar, not on the address does nothing).

'f6'


Hurrr



(Alternatively, for browsers that suck ass, ctrl+L.)

or alt+D

[grinvader]

i also want to only have to click once in the address bar of my browser and be able to highlight the entire address. right now, i have to triple-click on the address itself (clicking in the bar, not on the address does nothing).

'f6'


Hurrr



(Alternatively, for browsers that suck ass, ctrl+L.)

or alt+D

doesn't work here

it's probably for browsers that suck MORE ass

[kode54]

or alt+D

doesn't work here

it's probably for browsers that suck MORE ass

Works in Firefox. For Windows.

I've personally experienced that Firefox likes to keep different keyboard shortcuts in Windows than Linux. For instance, the download window is activated by a simple ctrl+j in Windows, but requires a complete ctrl+shift+y in Linux. No idea why.