There was one post that got a comment this past week, so I am reposting that one.Done with 5th Semester!Reader Mechatotoro said, "Good work, my friend! It's great to hear you also made it through this intense year. Enjoy your free time--you earned it!"Thanks to him for that comment during the past week. This coming week, I will be spending time with family out of town, so I don't anticipate posting much until after new year's day. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting! Also, happy past-doomsday, happy holidays,...
Sunday, 23 December 2012
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Wow. This semester was longer and far more difficult than any previous one here. Most of that is courtesy 8.13, though 8.231 and 14.04 were certainly contributing factors. Final exams were also fairly challenging as well this time. My only regret is that my UROP somewhat fell by the wayside as a consequence. I really enjoyed learning what I did in my classes, and the experiences I gained were immensely rewarding in the end, but I am so glad that I am done with it now. Right now, I'm just focusing on going home in a few hours and spending quality...
Sunday, 16 December 2012
There was one post that got a handful of comments this past week, so I will try to repost most of those.Review: Linux Mint 14.1 "Nadia" MATE + GNOME 3/CinnamonAn anonymous reader said, "It's too bad you didn't get to experience Mint 14 with Cinnamon. I have it running on both a Pentium E5300 desktop with Nvidia 440 GT, and on a 6-year-old laptop with Intel C2D T7200 with Intel 945GM integrated video, and it runs great on both."Another anonymous commenter had this to say: "Cinnamon now comes with Nemo instead of Nautilus. I like it, but I am...
Monday, 10 December 2012
Wow. It's been a really long time since I've had the time to sit down and do a review like this. The reason for that is because this semester has been incredibly busy in pretty much every way, and today was finally the last day to turn in problem sets and other assignments. Now, I can finally do this review.Main Screen + Linux Mint MenuLinux Mint needs no introduction here. However, one thing to note is that this is the first release since version...
Sunday, 18 November 2012
There hasn't been a post featuring comments in a while because there hasn't been any post that has gotten comments in a while...until this week. This past week, there was one post that got a handful of comments, so I'll repost most of those.Long-Term Review: openSUSE 12.2 KDEAn anonymous reader shared, "Regarding this: the YaST2 GUI package manager and updater would not work as it would complain about PackageKit... OpenSUSE uses PackageKit, because of the KDE appstore application(called Apper). This constantly looks for updates and intervenes...
Thursday, 15 November 2012
I did this long-term review on my normal UROP desktop computer with the 64-bit edition of the OS. Follow the jump to see how it fared. Also do note that there are more days logged because I intend to use it for about 60-80 full hours of work, which is the equivalent of 7-10 full days in the summer, though now I am working on a part-time basis as classes have started. Finally, for some reason Blogger decided to delete the content of what I had here, so everything up until "Day 2" is very much paraphrased from memory.Read more...
Monday, 5 November 2012
This is just a quick post that tomorrow is the 2012 election in the US. I have voted absentee from my home state. I know a lot of people who are apathetic about voting because they feel like in the face of large corporations and lobbyists, their votes don't mean much. I used to have an apathetic attitude like that too...until SOPA/PIPA got rejected. What I learned from that is that the people still matter; no matter how much corporations may support a particular agenda and no matter how much it seems like a local or state politician has been bought...
Sunday, 14 October 2012
There haven't been any "Featured Comments" posts in the last few weeks due to the general dearth of posts in that time stemming from my busy schedule. There was one post this past week that got a handful of comments, so I will repost all of those.Review: Cinnarch 2012.10.01Reader Alexandre Filgueira, who is the lead developer of Cinnarch, said, "Hi, [...] Thanks for the review. It was very interesting. I wrote down some things that you said to improve the distro I will include a link to your review in our monthly stats."Commenter Greg shared, "I...
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
I haven't gotten the chance to do a review in a while. It's a long weekend, so I finally do have some more free time now, and I need to take a break from the otherwise endless stream of work, so I'm taking a look at Cinnarch now.Cinnarch is a relatively new distribution on the scene. True to its name, it is based on Arch Linux and uses GNOME 3/Cinnamon as its primary DE. At first I figured that the packaging would be fairly stock, but as it turns out (and as you will see later in this post), there are a few other mild customizations present as...
Monday, 24 September 2012
I haven't gotten a good time to write this until now, despite how short this will be. Anyway, before the semester got busy, I remember browsing around some YouTube videos, and before one of them started, I saw a longer version of the television advertisement for the show "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo".Like most people, I thought the show represented yet another new low in yet another new dimension of reality television. But then I also realized that this family is perfectly happy doing their own thing, while the TLC show executives are essentially...
Sunday, 16 September 2012
There was one post that got a handful of comments this past week, so I will repost a few of those.Review: openSUSE 12.2 KDEReader DarkDuck shared, "Absolutely agree that the menu in OpenSuSE KDE version is too cluttered. This is valid for each KDE-based version of this OS, unfortunately."Commenter alcalde said, "This is really a review of the live CD rather than the distro as such because the live cd is not identical to the full install. If you didn't have the opportunity to actually install the distro, you could have at least installed it...
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
It has been over 10 months since I reviewed openSUSE 12.1. Since then, version 12.2 has been released, so I am reviewing it now.Main Screen + openSUSE Welcome ScreenIn my review of openSUSE 12.1, I was unhappy with the fact that Skype and Google Talk would not work, especially given that they both worked in openSUSE 11.4. I want to see if those and other regressions have been fixed with version 12.2. Also, I see that the GNOME developers want to...
Sunday, 9 September 2012
There was only one post this past week that got a comment, and that itself was a "Featured Comments" post, ironically enough.Featured Comments: Week of 2012 August 26Reader Charlie had this bit of support: "I enjoy reading your blog for the reviews of distro's that I have never heard about. Its neat to hear about whats out there and one day I may find a better solution than my Ubuntu I use now. Thanks for all you do!"Thanks to him (or her, perhaps) for commenting on that post this past week. This coming week, I intend to have a review out, but...
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Well, it has indeed happened. I am now a junior! Wait, what? When did this happen all of a sudden?Classes start tomorrow, and this semester I'm taking 8.05 (Quantum Physics II), 8.13 (Experimental Physics I, also known as "J-Lab"), 8.231 (Physics of Solids), and 14.04 (Intermediate Microeconomic Theory); in addition, I am continuing my UROP from the summer. I'm most scared about J-Lab, because I've seen other friends take it in the past and I've seen how they have had essentially no time to do anything else (often even to the detriment of other...
Sunday, 2 September 2012
There was one post that got a whole bunch of comments, so I will repost a few of those.Review: Manjaro Linux 0.8.0 XfceAn anonymous reader said this in response to my question about Xfce RAM usage: "Debian Wheezy Xfce - 92 mb RAM".Another anonymous commenter said, "Good distro,however; try to get cups to work with HP Officejet which will work on nearly any Debian distro".Reader Phil Mulley had this to share: "I set up Manjaro (also after having read about it on DistroWatch) using VirtualBox and was very pleased with its performance. I tried both...
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Main Screen + Xfce MenuI was busy at home for the last two weeks with many people coming and going; plus, I never had any other reason to post much else. Well, now I'm into the last few days of my break at home before getting back on campus and there haven't been as many people coming and going, so I've gotten some time to do a review. On DistroWatch, I read of the release of Manjaro Linux 0.8.0, and while I initially didn't think about it further,...
Friday, 24 August 2012
I wasn't planning on posting anything this week, but I've read a few news posts that Samsung has lost against Apple and must now pay $1 billion in damages for patent infringement. If this is indeed true (and I sincerely hope it isn't, because while I am not necessarily a Samsung fanboy, what Apple has done is beyond outrageous), this really gets my goat.I hope Samsung appeals this. All of the arguments for why the case is ridiculous have been done to death, so I won't repeat them here. If this ruling stands even upon appeal after appeal, that'll...
Sunday, 19 August 2012
There is no "Featured Comments" post for this past week because there were no posts that week, but the one for the previous week is this one because I was out of town last weekend and couldn't write this post at that time.Review: Stella 6.3An anonymous reader supported the puns: "I know what you mean about Tennessee Williams, I been perfecting my Marlin Brando Stanley Kowalski impression since I first heard the name. I know there's a pun headline there somewhere, but I just can't seem to capture my 'Stel-la!' impression in text."Commenter...
Friday, 10 August 2012
I recently reviewed Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" KDE, and I was quite pleased with it. My long-term review of the Xfce edition just ended, so this one will go for another 8 days. This will be the last such long-term review of the summer, because after this I am going home and won't be back until just before the semester starts, at which point I probably will not be able to continue this.Read more...
Thursday, 9 August 2012
The long-term reviews I have been doing this summer have been on the desktop that I have been using for my UROP work this summer. Most of my thoughts about that have basically been along the lines of "UROP work went fine today". But I've realized that I haven't properly discussed what I've done this summer, I figured that I should share a little bit about that today because tomorrow is my last day here for the summer before I go home for a few weeks' break.Let us start with the basics. A dielectric is essentially any material medium that changes...
Monday, 6 August 2012
Main ScreenA couple weeks ago on an unrelated review, I remember a commenter asking if I could review a Linux distribution called Stella. It seemed interesting, but I didn't think much of it until the last few days when its release of version 6.3 made news on several major Linux news sites. At that point I knew I should check it out, so here it is. (Also, if Tennessee Williams were alive today, I think that "A Linux Distribution Named 'Stella'" would...
Sunday, 5 August 2012
There was no "Featured Comments" post last week because comments on the previous week's posts didn't come until after that week was done. There were two posts that got a couple comments each, so I will repost all of those.Long-Term Review: Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" XfceReader Bernard Victor suggested, "Have you tried Xubuntu. I am using it and find it very good. Even able to change to Nautilus from Thunar. All my sound and video files play without any tuning, using either VLC or Gmusicbrowser. Rhythmnbox is also available."My Installation of...
Friday, 3 August 2012
Old: [Customized] Mozilla Firefox + Desktop CubeWell folks, this is it. After many months of looking for a suitable replacement for my setup of Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" GNOME, I have found one and have followed through with it. There were two reasons why I wanted to make this upgrade/switch: I wanted to stay up-to-date and take advantage of the support promised in the latest LTS release, and I needed to either reinstall my current OS or install...
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
If you've read my very recent review of Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" Xfce, you'll know how pleased I was with it. Given that my latest long-term review of Kubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" just ended, I needed something new, so this was going to be it. Follow the jump to see what this is like over the course of 7-10 days.Read more...
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Main Screen + KickoffAbout a week ago, I reviewed the Xfce edition of Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya". While I was quite pleased with how that turned out, I held off on going ahead and installing it because I wanted to try the KDE edition as well. Now that is here, so I'm reviewing it.I tried the 64-bit edition as a live USB system made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see if it could be worthy of installation on the hard drive of my laptop.Read more...
Sunday, 22 July 2012
There were two posts this past week that got several comments each, so I'll repost a few from each. Long-Term Review: Kubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin"An anonymous reader suggested, "Please can you try Mageia 2, the KDE edition. Use the livecd version and have a great time with it. Only problem is mupen64plus is not in the repos, but you can make package request or try out mupen64plus from Mandriva Cooker. Should work without any issue. I have used many KDE edition pass this year and Mageia 2 is the best of them all."Commenter avelinus...
Friday, 20 July 2012
Main Screen + Xfce MenuThe final release of Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" Xfce hasn't even been officially announced yet, but despite that, I'm reviewing it now (and it is indeed the final release and not an RC). How is that possible? To be honest, I was quite anxious to get my hands on it, and earlier today I found that some mirror sites of Linux Mint had uploaded (though not others, which was weird, although as I write this, more mirrors have uploaded...
Thursday, 19 July 2012
Sunday, 15 July 2012
There was one post that got a handful of comments, so I will repost most of them.Long-Term Review: Chakra 2012.05 "Archimedes"Reader manmath sahu suggested, "prasanth, liked the review very much and the way it's done over a period of 8 days is very useful. please take Stella (a CEntOS remaster) linux for a spin. i found it good, but would like to know about your experience."Commenter abveritas, who I think is a leading developer of Chakra itself, had this to say, among other things: "Chakra being a rolling release, it is an absolute must to always...
Monday, 9 July 2012
For those of you who don't know what this is about, this post should clear things up. Essentially, I now have another computer upon which I can do tests of installed distribution sessions for several days at a time. There will be three more posts like this one this summer; I may or may not be able to continue it through the semester. For reference, I used the 64-bit minimal CD for live testing and installation. Follow the jump to read my experiences with Chakra over more than a week of use.Read more...
Sunday, 8 July 2012
There were three posts, each of which got a handful of comments, this past week, so I'll try to repost most of those comments. Review: Pinguy OS 12.04 LTSAn anonymous reader had this bit of support: "Very Good Review!!"In a similar vein, commenterبرق said, "Nice review as usual. Good job, Prashanth!"Reader Ant said, "I installed it on my wife's Dell laptop that previously had Win7 and she loves it. It's now her OS of choice :)"Commenter linxbot shared this comparison: "I tried pinguy in my old compaq presario V3000 which has only 512 RAM...
Thursday, 5 July 2012
I've been a fan of #! ever since I tried version 9.04.01. It's quite lightweight, yet the UI doesn't feel antiquated, and it's quite well-stocked with features that normal users would find useful. Two months ago, the first testing images of version 11 "Waldorf" went online, so I am previewing that now.#! is a Debian-based Openbox distribution. It used to be based on Ubuntu, and at one point, it gained [and then later lost] an Xfce edition. It aims to be quite lightweight yet have the niceties of other distributions with more mainstream DEs.I tried...
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Today is Independence Day for the United States of America. But more importantly, today was the day that the Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery(ish, because more experiments have to be done to verify its other properties) of the Higgs boson!This is HUGE! It's an amazing vindication of the Standard Model of particle physics as it stands today, and it should be the last nail in the coffin of the old trope I have heard frequently that there is no new interesting research to be done in physics. So with that in mind, happy Independence Day,...
Monday, 2 July 2012
Main Screen + Cardapio MenuA couple weeks ago, the latest version of Pinguy OS came out, and I wanted to try it. I haven't had the time until today, though, so that's why the review is happening today.I previously reviewed Pinguy OS 11.10 and found that while there are certain things to which I may not be able to become fully accustomed, the "beta" label on Pinguy OS 11.10 seemed overly cautious considering its stability and high quality overall....
Sunday, 1 July 2012
There were two posts that got a couple comments this past week, so I will repost all of those. Review: Sabayon 9 KDEReader Jesse said, "I tried to load it twice. Didn't finish after abt 45 min. Tried again, same problem. Decided not worth it."Revisited: SolusOS 1.1 "Eveline"Commenter manmath sahu had this suggestion: "prashant, it's strange, just now I installed the latest skype right inside solus. it was just an apt-get away. here's my skype package list.: dpkg --list | grep skype ii skype 4.0.0.7-1 ...
Friday, 29 June 2012
Unless you have been living under a rock these days, you know that this week, the United States Supreme Court ruled (5-4) in favor of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more popularly known as "Obamacare". What shocked everybody was that Chief Justice John Roberts was in the majority of that ruling. Basically, he and other Justices reinterpreted the clause about the ACA mandating the purchase of health insurance as being a tax rather than forced commerce. In addition, the only major setback to the ACA was the striking down of the clause saying (if...
Thursday, 28 June 2012
This is the follow-up to this review. At the time, the 64-bit edition had not been released, and I was unable to install packages in the live system probably due to a bad USB writing procedure by that particular version of MultiSystem that I was using at that time. For this post, I tried the 64-bit edition of SolusOS 1.1 "Eveline" using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Because I am simply discussing whether installation of my preferred packages worked, I will keep it short and sweet.Using the Synaptic Package Manager to install the Linux Mint Menu...
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
I am doing a UROP on campus this summer (as opposed to last summer, when I interned at NIST), and it is a continuation of my UROP from the last two semesters concerning photonic crystals. This summer, my ultimate goal is to be able to use MEEP finite-difference method simulations to recreate the spontaneous emission spectrum of a particular photonic crystal structure of great interest to the research group in which I am working.To do that, I create the simulations as programs written in the Scheme programming language (a derivative of Lisp) and...
Tuesday, 26 June 2012
Main Screen + Kickoff MenuOver the last several months, I have become a fan of Chakra GNU/Linux. It seems like the best combination out there of stability, newness, and ease-of-use, as it uses KDE and is a rolling-release distribution. But even since before I found out about Chakra, there has been another distribution that aims to do all that, and that is Sabayon.The last version of Sabayon that I reviewed was version 7, and it has been a while since...
Sunday, 24 June 2012
There were two posts that got several comments each, so I will try to repost a few from each. Review: Zorin OS 6 CoreReader DarkDuck said, among other things, "I have done a quick screenshot preview of Zorin OS 6 Core, and my system used much less memory."Commenter Kryten451 had this bit of support: "Good writeup. I like what they're trying to do with Zorin, and I've tried them last release, and I'll give it another look soon."Reader Glenn said, "I installed it and it works really well. I like it. I'll d/l the paid version to give them a little...
Saturday, 23 June 2012
I was talking to my family today, and they mentioned that this week, Stephen Colbert interviewed physicist/author Lawrence Krauss on The Colbert Report, where he promoted his new book "A Universe From Nothing". They also talked about how they saw a review of this book on the New York Times that seemed rather critical of it, and they suggested that I read that review.In fairness, I have not read the book, nor have I (yet) watched the interview on that show. But reading this article made me laugh and cringe simultaneously, and I am going to lay out...
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Main Screen + KMenuThe first and most recent time that I tried out Netrunner, it was in comparison with Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" KDE. At that time, I felt like although Netrunner had a few quirky design choices that I didn't agree with as much, I felt like Linux Mint with KDE just felt too generic, while Netrunner made a conscious effort to improve the user experience of KDE. Now, Netrunner has come out with a new release based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise...
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Main Screen + "Zorin OS" GnoMenuI've looked at Zorin OS before, and I liked what I saw then. That was based on Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal", and now the new Zorin OS version 6 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin", so I'm checking it out.I haven't paid much attention to Zorin OS until recently because when GNOME 2 was still around, it seemed easy enough to create a Microsoft Windows-lookalike. Now, with GNOME 3, though, that is much...
Sunday, 17 June 2012
There was one post this past week that got a bunch of comments, so I will repost a few of them.Review: Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" MATEReader Fudger said, "I have Linux Mint 13 - 64 bit Mate edition running on 2 machines. Skype installed on both OK via synaptic. Laptop worked OOTB without tweaks, desktop needed microphone tweaking in alsamixer. Desktop has new ATI graphics and I had to add proprietary drivers via command line after fails with Jockey and Synaptic. I followed the simple instructions in a post on the Mint forum. I am very happy with...
Monday, 11 June 2012
Ah yes. I've been wanting to do this review for quite a while now. And now I can! So I will do just that.Main Screen + Linux Mint MenuLinux Mint has been my OS of choice for the last 3 years now. For the last 2 years, I have been using Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" GNOME. That will be supported for another year from now, but that also means that I need to start looking into replacements for when the old version loses its official support. I've played...
Sunday, 10 June 2012
There was no "Featured Comments" post last week because there were no comments on the posts from the previous week. This past week, one post got a handful of comments, so I'll repost a few of those.PCLinuxOS (Kinda) Saved My LaptopReader shem suggested, "PXE at bootup is usually for booting via network, so yeah, something happened to your ethernet. Could try go into BIOS, check all settings and save changes, even if none made. If that doesn't help, power off for 20 seconds, go into BIOS again, load default settings or optimized defaults (if...
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