Before I begin this post, if you're wondering how I manage to churn out these posts and still claim to be busy, I will say that I write almost all of these posts on the weekends and then schedule them to automatically publish during the workweek. I don't usually have time to write posts on weekdays.As I review more distributions, I'm continually fleshing out exactly what I want to see in a distribution. There are a few things that I would like to see in Linux distributions, none of which should be especially hard to do, as some of these features...
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Yesterday, I was reading articles about eBook software for various OSs when I stumbled on the site Feedbooks which distributes eBooks of public domain works in various formats (including PDF). One of the featured books was Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I've heard several times that this book (handbook, really) is often used now for improving business and management strategies, and producing and selling movies and music is one such business, which file sharing is supposedly destroying. The debate over file sharing is often portrayed in popular media...
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Given the presence of Microsoft and Apple, of course Red Hat can't be a monopoly (at least in the desktop market). However, there have been a slew of reports of Oracle rebranding RHEL as Oracle Linux a.k.a. "Unbreakable Linux". This article (Brian Proffitt, ITworld) discusses how that and Amazon Linux AMI (Amazon's Linux distribution built for its own cloud servers) are proof that companies are "stealing" Linux, as Oracle and Amazon are bundling their hardware with their own Linux distributions.First, I think it's misleading (at best) to say these...
Monday, 27 September 2010
Main ScreenWhat's aptosid, you ask? I had reviewed sidux 2010-01 "Hypnos" before, and unfortunately, that review didn't turn out so well; it refused to load after booting in VirtualBox. So why am I bringing up sidux? Well, sidux, due to various legal and financial issues, has changed its name to aptosid (but otherwise continues the release naming/numbering system as well as the fundamental base (Debian's sid (unstable) system)). Let's see if this...
Sunday, 26 September 2010
There were a few posts that garnered comments this week, so I will list them all.Whose LXDE Is It Anyway?Anonymous reader 1, referring to my example of KDE as a tightly-integrated DE, counters, "Funny the components you mentioned as integral part of KDE (Nepomuk, Akonadi, and Strigi) can be run in any DE (like LXDE) as well."Anonymous reader 2 counters this by saying, "To use Nepomuk, Akonadi, and Strigi you'd need to have some kde libraries : x11-libs/qt-qt3support. This probably means you have kde installed and lxde."As anonymous reader 3 points...
Saturday, 25 September 2010
I mentioned in my last post on the topic that Oxidized Trinity is now on SourceForge. I am linking straight to the download link here. Also, Oxidized Trinity now has a wiki page (which I haven't had the time to develop, but when I have a bit more free time, I will get around to it).Finally, I have semi-successfully created my respin of Linux Mint "Debian" with the Elementary theme. Yay! It too is on SourceForge for download. Please note that as I made it with Remastersys Backup (as opposed to Remastersys Dist), it is not an installable live DVD....
Friday, 24 September 2010
Main ScreenYou may be asking, "Why are you reviewing this? You just did a review 2 days ago!" Actually, I wrote the preview on Sunday and scheduled it to automatically publish on Wednesday. On Thursday, the official stable version of ArchBang 2010.09 "apeiro" was released. As I have touched upon most of the things relating to this distribution in the last article about ArchBang, this will be a slightly shorter review. Or will it? Follow the jump...
Thursday, 23 September 2010
There's a new article (Gautham Nagesh, The Hill) that talks about a new bill being put through Congress regarding tougher restrictions on file sharing. Let's go through it, piece by piece.Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee including chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would create an expedited process for DoJ to shut down websites providing pirated materials. “Each year, online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods costs American businesses...
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Happy 200th post Das U-Blog! I hope you readers have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them! And, as always, if you have not already done so, please take a moment to click any one of the various subscription buttons to get updated on new Das U-Blog posts as they come out (either by email or in your favorite RSS/Atom reader) Main ScreenThis is not a typographical error.This is not "CrunchBang ('#!')".THIS. IS. ARCHBANG!...
Readers of this blog know that I have many beefs with Microsoft, primarily over software and their overzealous patent protection/bullying of other organizations. However, please do not extrapolate my issues with Microsoft to the realm of hardware. I will say it loud and clear: Microsoft makes good-quality hardware.I know a few people that use Microsoft webcams for video calling on the computer; the quality is certainly as good as (and in many cases better than) the quality of either my integrated laptop webcam or my Logitech QuickCam Communicate...
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
I'm not here to answer the question of what LXDE is. Wikipedia has a very well-written article explaining what LXDE is. I'm also not here to hate on LXDE's functions and capabilities; it is a very nice and capable DE that's great for low-resource environments and environments where speed (and not overwhelming aesthetics) is paramount. What's been bugging me for a long time is that I've felt that LXDE doesn't really have its own identity.Take WattOS. Its website says that it's a desktop made of Openbox and LXDE. Yet, Wikipedia says that Openbox...
Sunday, 19 September 2010
There was again only one post this week that attracted comments.Reflection: KDE 4.5Commenter thegzeus also wonders why "Qt seems to be faster for some people and GTK for others, even across the same distro. I don't know why this is, but it seems to be the case." I too wonder why this is so, but I feel like it ultimately boils down to familiarity and preexisting perceptions.Reader lefty.crupps also agrees that many problems are "based on adding KDE to your GNOME-based Mint install, although others are indeed just app preferences." Indeed.Reader...
Saturday, 18 September 2010
This is a slightly unusual post for me as I am writing a follow-up to a review. I mentioned in my comparison of newbie-friendly KDE distributions and my review of Mandriva 2010.1 Spring KDE that I did not include Mandriva in the original comparison of distributions due to the financial tumult Mandriva has been experiencing over the past several months; Mandriva may not be around much longer, so I reviewed it separately because comparing it to the other distributions could make that post obsolete.Well, as it turns out, Mandriva is experiencing even...
Friday, 17 September 2010
I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but I have added new static pages to this blog. I wanted to mention this again as I will probably be adding at least 2 new pages in the near future.I made a remastered version of Kubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" Trinity, which I have called "Oxidized Trinity". I no longer have to worry about Google Docs's upload limits, as this project and the ISO file are now on SourceForge. Yay! Please do download it, check it out, and be on the lookout for any bugs present in the live image, and please do let me know...
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
This is the start of a series on featured comments and who wrote what in the posts for that week. I won't republish all of them, but I'll try to get the major ones.Counter-Debunking the 1% MythThis was the only post that week that attracted comments.Reader John points out that while computers preinstalled with Linux in poorer countries often have the hard drives wiped and replaced with Microsoft Windows, "that cuts both ways. I've never bought a copy of Linux pre-installed on a PC, but instead just downloaded it for free and installed it myself....
Monday, 13 September 2010
Blogger Page View StatisticsI can't claim to speak for all bloggers when I say what I'm going to say. Whatever "advice" (if that's what it is) I give will probably be applicable only to bloggers who write about Linux/free culture/open source topics, as that's what I mostly write about (with the occasional diversion, like this post).I would like to start this post (well, it isn't technically the very beginning anymore) by thanking Linux Today for...
As a few readers of this blog have noticed (judging by my blog statistics), I have modified the layout slightly. I have removed the "Popular Posts", "Labels", and "Archives" widgets from the sidebar to clean it up; I have created pages in their stead (and replaced them on the sidebar with a "Recent Comments" widget) — "Archives" is now its own page, while "Popular Posts" and "Labels" have been combined in the "Popular Posts" page (but each has its own subheading). Furthermore, I have created a "Useful Links" static page, and this is where the content...
Sunday, 12 September 2010
I was reading through TechDirt when I came across this (Mike Masnick, TechDirt) article summarizing how IBM has filed a patent for determining how many passengers are in a vehicle. Naturally, I was a little skeptical that a company would try to patent something so trivial, so I thought the link might be to a less credible rumormill site. Instead, following the link took me to the actual patent filing, where I could see the details of the patent in all of its silliness. This is in stark contrast to the Apple patent filing (which I have written about...
Main Screen, Widgets, and Lancelot LauncherI've been using KDE 4.5 for the last 2 weeks (since I reviewed it), and though I generally like what I see, I think my first experiences with Linux (i.e. with a GNOME desktop) have already biased me against fully accepting KDE 4.5. I think it also has to do with the fact that I'm using KDE on top of GNOME instead of just KDE, as would be the case if I used Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" KDE (or something similar)....
Friday, 10 September 2010
Wired has a new article saying that an appeals court has ruled that the first sale doctrine of copyright (that says that people can sell or give away copyrighted products once they have purchased it without permission from the original maker) does not apply to licensed copyrighted software. It comes as the company Autodesk has said that a man selling unused copies of AutoCAD that his company purchased many years before was not legally allowed to do so.What does this mean? I can't sell a copy of Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office to you even...
Why do I say this? (It's from this article (Mike Masnick, TechDirt).) Read on, dear readers.I have previously written about patent troll company Intellectual Ventures and how they claim to invent new things when all they do (aside from not inventing a single thing) is buy other companies' patents for the sole purpose of suing people who infringe upon those patents. Well, that concept seems to have been extended to Righthaven, which is a copyright troll. All it does is buy newspaper articles' copyrights for the sole purpose of suing people who infringe...
I got this from an OSNews submission on this. In a previous post on the subject, I lamented how Apple exercises near-total control over third-party developers' abilities to write applications, such as what programming language and tools they use.Well folks, this just in from Apple itself: the requirements have been relaxed! Now, developers can use any tools and languages they want (as long as no other code is downloaded); in addition to this, Apple is being more transparent (or so it says, but we'll see about that) about its review process.These...
Caitlyn Martin of O'Reilly Broadcast has another interesting article about why the figure of Linux market share is quite a bit more than the oft-quoted 1%. She starts out by doing a bit of math: (1 Linux netbook)/(3 total netbooks) * (18 total netbooks)/(100 (desktops + laptops + netbooks)) = (6 Linux netbooks)/(100 (desktops + laptops + netbooks)) — Linux netbook sales alone constitute 6% of the total desktop market. I can't argue with that. It's also a really impressive number; the number for total Linux desktop sales (that includes desktops,...
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Main ScreenI wrote a few posts in the past discussing CrunchBang's move to a Debian base (among other things), the realization of Linux Mint LXDE based on Debian for PowerPCs, and the development of Linux Mint GNOME based on Debian for the i386 architecture. Well, now Linux Mint "Debian" GNOME is here, and I wanted to try it out. Just to recap, Linux Mint "Debian" is based on Debian's Testing repositories (right now, that means "Squeeze"). That said,...
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Today is my last day of doing absolutely nothing, and I probably won't get a day like this for the next few months (and that's if I'm lucky). That said, I am really excited about classes starting tomorrow. What that also means is that I won't be able to write posts as often. (I have a post scheduled to be published tomorrow morning; I've already written it, so don't think I'm writing from class or anything like that. Then again, I don't have classes at that moment, so it's possible.) Oh, I'll write a post or two (maybe more if I have time) on the...
Monday, 6 September 2010
SUCCESS! I have actually remastered Kubuntu!As it turns out, I didn't need to install Kubuntu 10.04 Trinity to do this remaster. I have already installed it (and made the modifications I detailed in the previous post on the subject) within VirtualBox. I realized that I could share folders between VirtualBox and my Linux Mint installation, so I followed the instructions on the forums to do so. It worked, as Kubuntu 10.04 Trinity in VirtualBox recognized the selected folder on my Linux Mint installation.I then needed to move folders like .config,...
A couple of months ago I had written a piece on what I believed Microsoft's strategy should be with regard to putting Windows 7 on netbooks and tablet PCs. I believed then that Microsoft should try to scale Windows Mobile 7 up onto netbooks and tablets as opposed to trying to scale Windows 7 down onto netbooks and tablets. While I still believe that this plan would deliver optimal performance, a new review (Sasha Muller, PC Pro) of ViewSonic's two new ViewPad tablets suggests that the latter option may not be as bad as I once thought. The 10.1"...
I got the idea for this post from this article (Caitlyn Martin, O'Reilly Broadcast), which is a response to this op-ed piece (Graham Morrison, TechRadar).I find it a little ridiculous that Mr. Morrison can seriously claim to not understand Linux package management after dealing with it for 12 years. But, then again, the article seems to support this as well. Follow the jump to read more about this.Read more...
Sunday, 5 September 2010
What's the title supposed to mean? You will figure this out by the end of the article.I mentioned in my review of Kubuntu 10.04 Trinity that while the Trinity revival of KDE 3.5.11 has huge potential as a new contender in the field of DEs for old computers (competing with Xfce and LXDE, among others), KDE 3.5 looks pretty bad. Sure, it looks quite cool/cute when it first came out. That said, the KDE 3.5 developers themselves said that they benchmarked...
Friday, 3 September 2010
I was browsing through my Yahoo! homepage and stumbled upon this article. I looked through the 6 outrageously overpriced items, and I do agree with all of the choices. I suppose that for an article targeted at total laypeople, I can understand why things like "paying for the label" might not make sense at first; that said, I am still astounded as to how a financial article doesn't (appear to) understand why these prices are actually so high. Let's start from the top.Movie Theater PopcornThe article here asks why the markup for a bag of popcorn...
Main Screen: Ethais Wallpaper + KickerFirst off, I want to give a huge thanks and a shout-out to Linux Today reader Candid for suggesting that I take a look at Trinity. Your suggestion piqued my curiosity enough to make me want to do a full review and write-up. This one is for you. Thanks! Reviewing this Linux distribution has reminded me of automotive news site Edmunds Inside Line's final review of the 2010 Mercury Grand Marquis in honor of Mercury's...
Main ScreenBefore I do anything else, I want to apologize to readers of this blog (and of Linux Today) as well as to the Mandriva community for giving Mandriva such short shrift in my comparison of KDE distributions for newbies. As I did this test separately (full disclosure: I also wanted to try desktop effects, so Mandriva gets 1 GB of RAM and 128 MB of video memory, while all of the distributions tested on my old computer got 448 MB of RAM and...
Thursday, 2 September 2010
I just watched this in my dormitory auditorium with a bunch of other freshmen. One of the graduate students introduced the movie by saying that it's hilarious for its absolutely outdated technology. I wondered before if it was supposed to be funny, if it was considered funny in its own time, or if it's only been funny since recent times.After watching the movie, I think it was supposed to be semi-serious, but I think even movie watchers of that day would have called it "so-bad-it's-good". To call the acting in the movie poor would be to insult...
I was at a presentation this morning where the presenters were discussing research opportunities at MIT (called "UROPs" (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programs)). The presenters showed a video about UROP that was put together last year to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the inception of UROP.Before I continue, I would like to mention that at MIT, almost all of the school run computers (in the "Athena clusters") run Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, which is really cool. In fact, the Athena software is optimized to run on Ubuntu 10.04. Weirdly enough,...
Main ScreenThis is a really short review of sidux 2010-01 "Hypnos". In fact, there will be more background information than review content. Why is this so? First comes the background: sidux (yes, it is all lowercase) is a distribution built off of Debian's unstable "sid" branch of development (as is Ubuntu, but sidux stays closer to its Debian roots in terms of tools and customization of the system). It uses KDE by default, though Xfce (and maybe...
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
I got this article (Wolfgang Gruener, ConceivablyTech) from a Slashdot link.This patent actually amuses me for several reasons. First, it shows just how (and why) the shutdown process on Microsoft Windows is so long and complicated. As it turns out, if there are graphical programs running, there are 3 different ways for the application to be terminated by force and the shutdown process restarted. That is astounding by itself, but not surprising to...
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