Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 February 2

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February 2

Why does linux suck?

Just trolling in the title to get people to look at the question :) But I have a more specific question- everyone at work agrees that PuTTY is FAR better in every way than "ssh" on xterm/gnome-terminal. Also everyone agrees that WinSCP, being just fantastic, is possibly infinitely better than FileZilla, which is generally worthless and let's face it downright hated. So why is it that the windows implementation of *nix programs and protocols is often so much better? And is there any progress on porting WinSCP back to linux? :) --:D\=< (talk) 01:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that putty is far better etc. Most importantly, putty doesn't do X - you can't for example, run Firefox on a remote server, and get the GUI to work. Whereas you could do much, much more through SSH.--Fangz (talk) 03:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That's not true. PUTTY supports X forwarding. It is under Connection->SSH->X11->Enable X11 forwarding. --Spoon! (talk) 05:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Well for a shell. I know you can do a lot with ssh but I'm talking specifically about xterm/gnome-terminal.. putty is a much more fully-featured, customizable terminal emulator --:D\=< (talk) 04:14, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

1) There IS a *nix port of PuTTY, you know. 2) It would be helpful if you told us some specific criticisms rather than just about things being "better" or "worthless" or "fantastic" or "hated". Marnanel (talk) 03:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Have you used WinSCP? This is a matter of common sense --:D\=< (talk) 04:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I've used both PuTTY and WinSCP. Neither one works completely. In PuTTY, either the backspace or the delete key is always broken. It constantly has display problems requiring me to clear the screen and restart. Eventually, it just locks up and I have to restart it. WinSCP is a big headache. It tries to be a cool handy program, but if it was done properly it would be embedded into Windows Explorer. Like KDE, I should be able to type a url into the Windows Explorer address bar and move files around securely without running an extra program. If you want to see how SSH/SCP/SFTP is merged seamlessly into an operating system, check out KDE (which happens to primarily be a *nix windows manager). -- kainaw™ 04:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Ugh, no no no. KDE is just realizing that Hey, "explorer" and "internet explorer" sound and function alike, let's integrate them into the same program for the new Windows 98 release. Not until the turn of the millennium did Microsoft realize that the web is good for more than listing files and it doesn't really make sense to integrate the two features.. inexplicably KDE still hasn't realized this and still insists on making one super-app that does everything, and does it OK. Konqueror is an ugly mess of special pages, plugins, handlers, and settings for all of its different modes. --:D\=< (talk) 08:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You do realize that KDE 4 has broken the file management app off into a new program, right? (Took 'em long enough...) -- Kesh (talk) 01:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Nobody can fix anything if all you're going to do is say "look at it for yourself and you'll see why I don't like it". That's not a bug report, that's whining. Marnanel (talk) 05:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't really know, since I don't use them much - my PuTTY's main function at present is to be a desktop icon...but my guess would be simply that windows-like applications are usually more user friendly. I find Linux-like programs are intended to be more functional than easy to use, which makes them (mostly) better but a bit more cumbersome, therefore, a windowsy version of a *nix progam is generally more pleasant, even if it looses some functionality...but that's just me. Trimethylxanthine (talk) 04:46, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps "everyone at work" is uncomfortable with command line tools? APL (talk) 06:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

So you're saying Linux sucks because you don't like a select few applications? Isn't that like saying a car sucks because you don't like the colour of the upholstery? JIP | Talk 07:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Read the first sentence.. anyway it was just sort of something I noticed, that linux programs tend to be crappy graphical frontends to the real command-line program that the cli developer decided to teach himself qt over a weekend and glom together some widgets. Windows ports tend to look a lot better and make more sense interactively.. I far prefer the glossed over WinSCP interface to FileZilla, which is basically just a big smattering of widgets to paste FTP commands together, not a real graphical application. --:D\=< (talk) 07:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how your criticism of FileZilla supports any of your points, since FileZilla was, until recently, a Windows-only program. --Spoon! (talk) 09:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, it just seems like the de facto graphical scp/sftp client for linux --:D\=< (talk) 10:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed and if memory serves me correctly in the past it was primarily thought of as a FTP client and download manager not a SFTP/SCP client. I'm not even sure if it supported those protocols from the beginning Nil Einne (talk) 15:11, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Now the OP's argument is making sense. It isn't that the Windows programs function any better. They actually function worse. It is just that they look better. In the OP's opinion, applications that look prettier are better. That is merely one way of judging a program. As I stated before, PuTTY can't properly handle the backspace/delete keys. So why would I prefer it over SSH in the shell? It also doesn't tunnel X. So why would I want to use it to run applications remotely? It does look pretty, but putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make it anything other than a pretty pig. -- kainaw™ 17:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Now, as I mentioned above, PuTTY does tunnel X (Connection->SSH->X11->Enable X11 forwarding); so please don't mention things that are false. And it does have settings for how to handle the backspace and other keys (Terminal->Keyboard); perhaps you need to set it correctly. In my opinion the comparison between PuTTY and OpenSSH has nothing to do with operating systems because both PuTTY and OpenSSH can be used on both Windows and Linux (OpenSSH can be used with Cygwin in Windows). I agree that it's just a matter of personal preference. --Spoon! (talk) 22:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I use ssh in an xterm all day every day, and I have no idea what the OP is talking about. It does exactly what I want and never gets in my way. Diff'rent strokes, I guess. Froth, I've noticed that you tend to divide computer topics into well-defined sucks/doesn't-suck categories (your inexplicable screed against Java above is an example, along with your MacOS opinions). There are often reasons that design choices are made which don't suit you; not every application is right for every user. --Sean 17:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, froth, maybe we can begin to bond over our frustration with *nix, even if we don't see eye to eye on the Windows/OS X thing. Personally I suspect most of your frustrations with *nix like things (and mine as well) come from the developing environment. A bunch of loosely communicating programmers might be able to come p with killer command-line tools, but they are a lousy way to develop software that will work well in many different contexts and with many different expectations. There are a few exceptions to this (I think Firefox does alright at this, Inkscape okay, but GIMP is pretty lousy in this regard as is OO.org), but on the whole open-source software is characterized by lousy interfaces, an immense amount of useless features (even though its practitioners claim to hate "feature bloat", the programmers themselves rarely seem to know what the users are actually going to want to use, and seem rarely to think that they should ask or observe), and often serve to at best attempt to emulate already-existing software but slower and less effectively. I think there's a lot of room for a third approach here, one that takes to good parts of open-source software and takes the time to make them work reliably and easily for those of us who don't want to hack our own machine every day to get things done. (This is, incidentally, one of the things I like about OS X—it's essentially a very very pretty, and expensive, *nix GUI. I can drop into bash in a second or I can have all of what I want to do handled in a lush and reliable way.) I think the programmer-center approach favored in much open-source software, especially *nix culture, leads to some really awful development decisions. --24.147.69.31 (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, of course everyone knows that the best way to transfer files over SSH is with rsync. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:14, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Meh. If you have an actual question, by all means let's hear it. But if you just want to fight silly religious wars, take it to a forum. Friday (talk) 19:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

As a counter-example, I find that Samba has far fewer issues than Windows' built-in file sharing, which likes to stop working for no reason whatsoever. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 09:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

??? [Windows file sharing] It's got LOTS of reasons to stop working. It just doesn't want to share them with you. Or me. Or anyone else, for that matter..... -SandyJax (talk) 16:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Everybody knows that Linux works best in your mother's basement! It's really a matter of preferences. Some people think that Windows sucks. It really depends on what capabilities you want from an operating system. Ilikefood (talk) 22:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Windows Media Player is Kaput

When i try to play a Mp3 or audio stream that uses windows media player from a website the following page phrase comes up:

This program cannot display the webpage

  Most likely causes:

You are not connected to the Internet. The website is encountering problems. There might be a typing error in the address.

  What you can try: 
    Check your Internet connection. Try visiting another website to make sure you are connected.  

    Retype the address.  

    Go back to the previous page. 

    More information 

This problem can be caused by a variety of issues, including:

Internet connectivity has been lost. The website is temporarily unavailable. The Domain Name Server (DNS) is not reachable. The Domain Name Server (DNS) does not have a listing for the website's domain.

What could be the problem.--logger (talk) 06:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Is it with any and all web streaming audio that you tried? If you are connected to the Internet, and you have Mozilla Firefox installed on your computer, could you try it? Kushal^t 08:29, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You could also try VLC media player. Try the "open network" option. If you need help with a particular stream, please come back. I hope that helps. Regards, Kushal^t 15:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Audio Quality Metric

Is there some kind of audio quality metric, sort of like SSIM for video? im trying to compare the difference between 32 64 and 96 kbps aac and the original sample. Kingpomba (talk) 07:09, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Probably, but considering transparency isn't ubiquitous at those bitrates, I'd say you'd be able to listen for compression artifacts and rate them subjectively.

You probably want to do an ABC/HR test so that bias doesn't creep in. --Kjoonlee 13:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

HSDPA vs. HSUPA

If I have a notebook that says it can handle HSUPA, will it work with services that advertise themselves as HSDPA? Does HSUPA capability imply HSDPA capability? Cheers! —85.227.205.90 (talk) 13:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Technically I would suppose it's possible that a network or device only has HSUPA capability. However this would seem unlikely to me since from what I can tell HSDPA proceeded HSUPA (not surprisingly) and networks+devices are much more likely to have HSDPA then HSUPA (since the downlink tends to be much more important and as I said it's older). So I would guess your notebook has HSDPA and HSUPA. Why don't you just look in the features in more detail or ask tech support? BTW, do you want high speed uplink or downlink or both? Nil Einne (talk) 15:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Mostly, I want it to work at all. The spec lacks details and the support doesn't answer. It's promising to hear that you have the same feeling as I, anyway. Now, I just hope it works under Linux. Anyone knows if that might become a problem? —Bromskloss (talk) 16:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

HSUPA implies HSDPA capability. The trick would be finding a network which is using HSUPA, none are at the moment as far as I'm aware. So your HSUPA device will just use old R99 channels for the uplink and HSDPA for the downlink (if available).

Changing a color in an image

I have in an image.

How can I change ALL of the pixels with color X to color Y using the Gimp/Irfan View/FastStone Image Viewer?

X and Y are exact colors like #F3D19C or #00FFA1. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.166.63.3 (talk) 14:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

First result for "Gimp replace color" --24.147.69.31 (talk) 14:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Laptop blackouts

This isn't a serious problem yet but sometimes when I leave the laptop on for a while it goes completely dead out of no where. Even though its plugged into the AC, the battery light doesn;t even show up. Then a n hour or few later its back to normal. --Grondor (talk) 14:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

How old is this laptop? How old is the battery? Are either still under warranty? Nil Einne (talk) 15:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Press Control and Alt and it should light back up, I just recently discovered this myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.125.158.40 (talk) 15:23, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

CMOS problem

I have a PC with Compaq board my question is i change the CMOS clock cell called Button cell but it does not work.what should be the problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.103.9.48 (talk) 14:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

In future, please put your questions under their own subheading Nil Einne (talk) 15:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure you used the correct cell? What are the symptoms from which you deduced that the cell is not working? Kushal^t 01:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC) Sir the BIOS seetting are not saving as the date and time option.

Were you grounded at the time? You could have damaged the circuits with static electricity as CMOS is very sensitive to static electricity. Ilikefood (talk) 22:23, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Mock Laptop

A friend of mine gave me an extra fake laptop (the kind they put on display at stores), the outside seems real but the inside is hollow and the screen is plastic. Is there any way to make this work, maybe switch out for a real screen and add a motherboard? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.125.158.40 (talk) 15:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Its possible I guess, but it might cost a fair bit. You'd have to get the parts from the manufacturer, as laptop spares are different for each model, and thats assuming the mock laptop design is based on a real model in the first place. But it sounds like a fun project to try, and you'll learn a lot about computer working in the process. Good luck! Think outside the box 16:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

If you have assembled a desktop computer before, you can understand what uphill battle you are fighting. assembling a laptop is considerably more difficult than assembling a desktop since space is such an expensive commodity. Please use caution and double check everything you are doing with someone knowledgeable. Kushal^t 01:42, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It'd basically be very similar to you having just an empty PC case and a plastic mockup of a monitor - you still have to get all the insides and install them properly. Have fun. --Ouro (blah blah) 20:30, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Fortran program copied from manual doesn't work correctly

The following program is directly copied from "Fortran 95 Handbook: Complete ISO/ANSI Reference":

     PROGRAM TEST_FLIPPED 
     PRINT *, REVERSE ("I have flipped for you.") 
     CONTAINS 
     RECURSIVE FUNCTION REVERSE (PHRASE) RESULT (FLIPPED) 
         CHARACTER (*)              PHRASE 
         CHARACTER (LEN(PHRASE)) FLIPPED 
         L = LEN_TRIM (PHRASE) 
         N = INDEX (PHRASE(1:L), " ", BACK=.TRUE.) 
         IF (N == 0) THEN; FLIPPED = PHRASE 
         ELSE; FLIPPED = PHRASE (N+1:L) // " " // REVERSE (PHRASE (1:N-l)) 
         END IF 
     END FUNCTION REVERSE 
     END PROGRAM TEST_FLIPPED

It's supposed to "[reverse] the words in a given phrase", but when I compile it with gfortran and run it, it prints out the single word " you.". What could be the problem? —Keenan Pepper 15:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a typo at the end of the recursive call REVERSE (PHRASE (1:N-1)) - the last bit should be "N minus one" instead of "N minus ell". Hope this helps. 84.239.133.86 (talk) 20:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

That's weird, because I'm using an official digital copy of the manual and it definitely has a lower case ell. Maybe it's an OCR error or something. Thanks! —Keenan Pepper 05:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

There's a message from me for you in your related post.. apologies if I'm already preaching to the converted. I'll assume for now that you were typing on 'auto-pilot' when you entered this.. Note that there are no other lower case letters in there (even if it is case insensitive) next time you will be aware.87.102.114.230 (talk) 20:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't type in anything at all. As I said, it's a digital copy of the manual, and I literally copied and pasted it. —Keenan Pepper 06:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Did it work as advertised when you applied the correction suggested by 84.239.133.86? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 08:59, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

It sure did. —Keenan Pepper 01:06, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Number of network connections to the same server

I'm using Windows XP SP2. When I'm downloading files, I can download only 2 from the same server at any time. Is there a way to increase this limit? The reason I'm asking this is a solution someone proposed for this question. --Admiral Norton ^(talk) 16:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, if you use Internet Explorer, you can edit your registry. There are two registry keys, one for HTTP 1.1 and one for HTTP 1.0. Google for MaxConnectionsPerServer for details. :) --Kjoonlee 18:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

And if you use Firefox you can edit network.http.max-connections-per-server in about:config --Kjoonlee 20:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

But if the server has a set limit, then you can't do anything about it. --Kjoonlee 20:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Windows games on Linux

Hi. I am using Linux, and I want to be able to run Windows games without having to boot. I do have a copy of Windows XP, but dual-booting won't satisfy this requirement. I'm not impressed with the capabilities of Wine and its derivatives, and I heard that games can need direct access to hardware which virtualization products like VMware don't allow. So, is there any solution to the problem? Is it possible to have two operating systems loaded in memory simultaneously, enabling me to quickly switch between them (assuming I have sufficient RAM, of course)? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 17:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Very few computers allow you to run two operating systems without virtualization. You won't find one for home use. What you can do is run Windows on the computer and virtualize Linux. Linux is not graphics intensive and will run nicely in virtualization. Another thing you can look at is running KDE on Windows. There is a port of it now that is sort of a desktop replacement. Then you will have the look and feel of a Linux-based windows manager with Windows still running. I didn't do anything like that. I just don't play Windows games anymore. If it doesn't come out for my PS3, XBox, or Wii, then I don't play it. -- kainaw™ 17:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Note that a lot of the difficulties in running a virtualizer with games depends on what games you are trying to run. I can run many games that came out a few years ago with great ease in Parallels (on a Macbook); Deus Ex runs as well as it did on my original PC at the time, as does Unreal Tournament. I could run Half-Life 2 just squeaking on by (lowest settings, but still pretty fun) until the very last scene in the game, which apparently went a little too far for it and would cause the game to crash.

Anyway, to be more direct, it sounds like you have already thought of the three options available to you (dual-booting, virtualization, Wine). It sounds to me like you'll have to pick the one which is the lesser evil of the bunch. If I were me in your situation, as I understand it, I'd probably go with dual-booting, as you'll get more performance out of your machine that way (I only game in the most occasional and causal way, and as you can see I mostly replay games that I played through five years ago!). To my knowledge there is no other way to do what you want to do. --24.147.69.31 (talk) 17:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the info. There is actually a fourth option - using two computers. I'll probably end up doing a combination of all four. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 18:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Cooperative Linux will let you run NT and Linux simultaneously without CPU virtualization. It's stable and works well (in my experience). -- BenRG (talk) 02:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Cedega is a product specifically designed to allow you to play Windows games on a Linux machine, but it is a Wine derivative, so maybe it's one of the ones that you're unimpressed with. In my experience, It works reasonably well, but there are some games that are spotty, and others that don't work at all. (oddly, on my machine some games actually perform better under Cedega than under Windows2000. Mostly games based on Quake engines.) I've found that the best (but far from ideal) solution to this problem is a combination of Cedega for some games and dual-booting for the rest. APL (talk) 16:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Icons in my taskbar--whats happening?

I running XP. Sometimes I have only 4 icons after a reboot, but sometimes 10 or more. Cany anyone say whats happening here?--TreeSmiler (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

maybe your computer is set up to hide inactive icons? Kushal^t 14:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Note the "in my taskbar" part of OP's question. He/she/it has either 4 or 10 programs starting automatically on a reboot. Perhaps OP has more than one login account, and the various accounts have various amounts of cruft auto-starting? -SandyJax (talk) 16:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Web Pop-up effect

How does one make this pop-up effects that is on here [[1]] (link is work-safe)? When one click the first picture on the tutorial, the screen turns semi-black and a white rectangle appears and enlarges to show the enlarged preview. Facebook also uses something similar when one goes to click to add a friend or when browsing the marketplace. Acceptable (talk) 18:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Check out Lightbox JS — Kieff | Talk 18:36, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

google earth

If I pout references into Wikipedia articles, how long before they appear on Google earth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swithlander (talk • contribs) 18:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with references appearing in Google Earth, what exactly are you referring to? Useight (talk) 21:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

where you put it in the article and when you look at the picture on google earth it tells you what it tis with the wikipedia logo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swithlander (talk • contribs) 22:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)