Just another linux blog

Hvordan man fanger dansk radio i rhythmbox

2012-01-31T11:12:00.000Z

Hop til denne side http://www.dr.dk/hjaelp/DR%20Netradio/20111020145139.htm

Jeg har fundet ud af at windows streams er dem, som virker bedst for mig i ubuntu 12.4.

Der er på nuværende tidspunkt 10 kanaler. Kopiere link fra den stream du ønsker at importere i rhythmbox musik afspiller. Derefter vælg ny radio kanal i radio menuen, det du har klippet vil allerede have dukket op i feltet, tryk derefter tryk retur knappen.

Derefter finder du din radio kanal i ukendte genre, vælg streamen og give den en ny navn og lave en genre der hedder dansk radio.

Du kan også bruge disse streams i andre media/musik afspillere.

How to get started animating using the GIMP Animation Plugin (GAP) : PART2

2010-05-27T14:03:00.001Z

A simple tutorial written by Alexander Henning Drachmann

Part 2

MOVE PATH TOOL

You will often find yourself using the move path tool, it does basically as stated,,,,When using the tool you will have two windows open the one with your layers for animating and the other with the first frame (_000000.xcf). From the window with the first frame access the tool.

Top bar ------> video -----> Move path tool

If it isn't highlighted, then you have most likely only one window open or forgotten a step.

You will see a rectangular window with a lot of options. This is the primary tool used when animating, as it allows you to move layers (objects, figures etc...)

There is a basic run down of the various functions on the the gimp.org site, but it only tells you what they do and not how to use it. So, I will try to add some more ingredients to the mixture.

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Using_GAP/

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Advanced_Animations/

I have previously hinted that you background isn't limited to being static, in fact that is because a background is just a layer like any other, which naturally can be moved about at will.

GIMP GAP doesn't distinguish between sprites, figures, background, objects or anything else you might want to move about. So, the only real limit to what you can animate is your own abilities and your imagination.

A brief overview of the features of the move path tool, from top down, goes something like this.

CHOOSE SOURCE

Choose source... This where the layer or layers for use in your animation reside. It allows you to choose a specific layer for animating if this is your goal.

STEP MODE

Under this is a bar where you can choose how to cycle through the layers in your animation, and which speed to cycle though the layers. An example of this is a sequence of layers which you have created of someone walking. This is called the step mode. The step mode, specifies that you can play the layers in a loop for the entire length of the sequence (loop), in reverse for the entire length of the sequence (reverse), just once (once) or once in reverse (once reverse), in one direction and directly after that in another (ping-pong) or not at all (none), this is used when animating a single layer or several layers, one layer at a time. The “frame” step mode options are for integrating other GAP animations in the current animation, and work the same way, as the previously stated functions. This is for more advanced animation projects with several individual animations.

Loop

Reverse

Once

Once reverse

Ping-Pong

none

Frame Loop

Frame Loop Reverse

Frame Once

Frame Once reverse

Frame Ping - Pong

Frame none

MODE

This gives you the ability treat the layer/layers using one of gimps many layer modes (blending modes). Gimp has 21 different modes and they allow you to change the appearance of the layer based on the mode and the layer underneath. It is on default set to normal. If you only have one layer, then it has no effect, but with several, the effect can be very dramatic.

Normal

Dissolve

Multiply

Divide

Screen

Overlay

Dodge

Burn

Hard light

Soft light

Grain extract

Grain merge

Difference

Addition

Subtract

Darken only

Lighten only

Hue

Saturation

Colour

Value

You can read more and see examples of the different layer modes on.

http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-concepts-layer-modes.html

HANDLE

The handle option is used for placement of the image, this is more or less the same as in placing an image in a word processor. Your options are up, down, centre, left and right. And variations of the same.

MODIFIERS

The modifiers allows you to more accurately place the layer/layers, on the cavas and allows you to manipulate the layer/layers dimensions, as well as determining what should be animated.

In the 3 panes presented here to your right, you can place the object using X/Y coordinates, adjust the objects width, height, opacity, rotation and perspective. You can also choose to animate a selected area of the layer/layers, using the selection feather radius bar in the last of the 3 tabs.

TIMELINE POINTS

Timeline points are equal to movement, think of it like moving from a to b to c etc... this allows you to animate your layer/layers directly, by placing points. Your placing of points will be a factor in how realistic or smooth the movement of your animation is. You have to have at least 2 points in order to animate.

The alternative to placing points directly is marked areas using the “path tool” on the canvas window (called something like name_000000.xcf), not in the layers window. This will create a series of points in accordance with the structure of the shape. Later using the move path tool, you can use the path, by using the grab path button. Using both methods, the results can vary greatly.

Here is an overview of the various functions, for manipulating points.

Add point

Insert point

Prev point (previous point)

First point

Clear point/Reset point

Rotate follow

Load points

Grab path (grabs path made using path tool and converts them into points)

Delete point

Next point

Last point

Clear all points

Save points

ACTIVE PREVIEW

This is where you can see the changes made to the current frame and the animations path and animation points (time line points). Activate path, curser and instant apply to see the elements in the window.

Adjust the colour of the path and points in the colour box underneath.

Above the Active preview window and the modifiers, you will be able to see which current frame you are manipulating.

The frame bar underneath the active preview window, enables you to view the movement and manipulation of your points across frames.

FRAME MANIPULAION

The animation starts in accordance with the layer selected in the choose source and in accordance with the step mode, so if it starts, at wrong frame then it is here you should make your changes or in the layer stack.

Force visibility

Forces all layers to be visible even if you have specified some of them previously not to be visible

Crop to layer

This crops all the source layers to the boundaries of the current frame. Good for cutting down on rendering time.

Start frame

This is important for specifying from which frame your current animation sequence should start.

End frame

This is for specifying when the current animation sequence should end.

Start and end frame, are essential elements to be adjusted. For some short or simple animations, this could equal the amount of .xcf frames you have created, but often this is not the case, especially for large and complicated animations.

Layer stack

Is used to place a selected layer into a particular placeing in the final rendering layer stack. 0 is equal to the top of the stack. The mode function also plays a role in the output, when using several layers.

RENDERING AND PLAYING

The more zooming, rotating and use of complicated movement the slower the animation or rendering process will take.

Another tip is to use the preview animation feature from the start, especially if you don't think you need it. It will save you an awful lot of grief. The preview feature creates a preview rendering of your animation, complete with layers, so it can be important not to make it too big, but it can be important to keep the frame rate, so you get a realistic idea of the movement in the animation.

Update, updates the preview window and shows the current layer, at its current control point.

Animation preview

Animation preview, creates a preview version of your animation. Use the preview animation feature from the start, especially if you don't think you need it. It will save you an awful lot of grief. The preview feature creates a preview rendering of your animation, complete with layers, so it can be important not to make it too big, but it can be important to keep the frame rate, so you get a realistic idea of the movement in the animation.

Rendering

Pressing OK, renders your animation to the frames you have previously created when using the duplicate frames function.

How to get started animating using the GIMP Animation Plugin (GAP)

2010-05-03T20:23:00.002Z

How to get started animating using the GIMP Animation Plugin (GAP)

A simple tutorial written by Alexander Henning Drachmann

Part 1

Introduction

The GIMP Animation Plugin is quite easy to use, especially if you are already used to using the popular open source image manipulation tool GIMP. It has to be mentioned that art and animation, are similar and very different to each other. It also has to be mentioned that there is no real standard when it comes to animate, programs and methods can be similar, but slight nuances can cost hours of grief. So, it will be to your advantage to properly study the mechanisms and processes involved in animating. If you, at this point, despite my warnings have made up your mind and are ready to walk this path, then read on.

The GIMP GAP module,the bar shows the tools used in relation to animation and video editing.

The picture is taken from my own machine running Linux Mint 8

How to get started

Preparation is very important when animating, I can not understate this fact. It is so incredibly important, that what ever you do, no matter how basic it is, is wholly dependant on your planning. This is especially pertinent concerning animation.

It does not really matter how you plan your animation project, only that your planning is thorough. I can at this point state that a written story, an explanatory text, story boards, cartoons, diagrams etc.. are common methods of planning a project.

Time

It all starts with an idea, all projects starts this way and some can be called a collection of great ideas. You can also look at your animation, as a story. All stories have a start and an end, and the experience due to the nature of time is chronological in nature. Which brings us to time. Time has to be planned, into your animation. Any event or sequence of animation should have in your plan a start and an end. An example could be a ball that transforms into a square. In that case you could plan a sequence which starts as a ball and ends as a square. If the sequence is complicated or long, then you could plan partial goals in between.

How

Maybe it is due for me to explain that a knowledge of how is also quite important. Having thought out how to do something and a knowledge of methods and techniques of doing it, will be to your advantage. Leaving it to later, even if there is the chance of you finding better methods while engaging in the process of animating, is quite reckless. A complete knowledge of how can only be gained through trying, failing and trying again in a great educational loop, but be reassured that having once failed, your chances of excelling at something is greatly increased.

Format and resolution

The resolution of the animation in question is of great importance. I personally believe in making the animation in as great a resolution as possible, but in some circumstances this is a waste of effort. Size and movement are factors to be taken into account when rendering your video, as it can be a time consuming task.

A good guideline would be to choose the resolution in accordance to the animations purpose, and the aspect resolution of the medium onto which it will be shown. Adding a little more to the size, so as to make your effort future proof, or not to loose too much in video quality in the editing of your video, is often a good thing. I often keep a copy in 1080 HD or above.

Background and foreground

A great place to start and something which needs, as much care when animating, as the events in the foreground is the background. Often the background has to be taken account of from the very start and is something on which many of the foreground elements are wholly dependant. A question to ask, is should it be animated, have movement or should it be static....zoom, pan and rotation are also animating! The background can easily destroy or enhance the plot.

I personally start an animation project by creating scenes, figures, elements and the background. Each done on individual layers...and often modularly groupped in different windows, so when I come to a scene, I don't have anything from previous or future scenes confusing me.

If the character or background is partially animated manually (walking movements etc...). Then it will create several layers, a useful tool in this instance is the “onion skin” tool

Any scene with too much complexity and movement will be confusing to the viewer, try to keep it at a minimum.

There are many factors to take into account when starting an animation project, far more than I have space to write about, but I can infer that caution is a good thing, create lots of backups and be bold.

Now all I can do is to wish you good luck with your project.

Creation of duplicate images

This is where having planned the amount of frames and length (time) of your animation plays a role. Do the following equation:

Length of animation x frame rate = amount of frames to create

I personally prefer a frame rate of 60 frames per minute, instead of the often cited 24,,,due to my own personal experience of being able to see slight glitches at a lower rate.

Create and save a new xcf file in a new folder,,,this is where all the magic will be happening. The file will have to end with the following _000000.

An example will be: I love gimp_000000.xcf

Now you can use the duplicate script to create the amount of xcf files needed to create your project.

I usually start from 1 and up to the final amount needed, but you can also do it modular ie. Create 1-1000 and do 1001-2000 etc... in another folder, this has its advantages too. If you look in the folder after using the duplicate tool, you will be able to confirm that the files have been created.

Edit a video from the commandline

2009-10-08T22:25:00.002Z

Yep, you can do the impossible, edit a video from the commandline using FFmpeg (for video splitting/conversion), create a dvd slideshow and soxmix for audio editing/effects and conversion. Here is a link to an article explaining how.

Fresh new video editors on linux

2009-09-27T12:35:00.006Z

Video editors

I am only running linux, currently Ubuntu 9.04 soon to upgrade to 9.10. I have mixed experiences with video editing software in linux, mainly due to lack of functionality and at times stability.

Avidemux

Avidemux video editor

The first thing I started using was avidemux, I used it primarily to edit video footage,,,which it is quite good for…its strength is that it is quite stable. The effects are though quite poor (so I supplied that with LIVES), the graphical user interface is overly complicated and there are far too many options when it comes to rendering, it is not a non-linear video editor. Up-to-date versions for Ubuntu and Debian systems can be downloaded from www.getdeb.net

Lives

Lives can all that most decent video editor can, it just feels really complicated. It has tons of options and a lot of effects and has several graphical user interfaces depending on the task you are doing. One of which is a non-linear video editor. It just isn’t for the faint hearted. The fact that it is originally a VJ tool and it is probably ideal for that, is probably also why an average user might be scared of it. Up-to-date versions for Ubuntu and Debian systems can be downloaded from www.getdeb.net

LIVES video editor VJ tool

Pitivi

Pitivi is a simple video editor, great for editing your video, it just doesn’t have the effects. It has an import from web-cam feature and is a non-linear video editor. It is also very stable and expandable with plug-ins, there just haven’t been any made yet. It is also advertised on the site as being perfect for batch editing, as it can be controlled from the commandline. The version of pitivi in the Ubuntu repositories (jaunty 9.04) is v0.11.3 and their current version is 0.13.3. For latest version for Ubuntu/Debian choose experimental from their downloads page. You can also build from source.

Pitivi video editor

Kino

Kino is a program that I have used a few times. It is not a Non-linear video editor, it is very stable and has a basic set of video effects. It can capture and import direct from the camera. The downside is according to me the graphical user interface.
Up-to-date versions for Ubuntu and Debian systems can be downloaded from www.getdeb.net

KINO video editor

Kdenlive

I have probably had my most experience and best experience running Kdenlive. Kdenlive is a Non-linear video editor, which has a lot of features, effects, wipes, titles etc… It is probably the best contender for the most complete video editor in linux. It is also greatly expandable, as of date, rendering profiles, wipes and MLT profiles can be user submitted. Kdenlive is easy to use, but with a lot of options, the amount of options can make the menus look bloated in places and it has the bad habit of crashing, so I have to save my projects constantly. Do not use the version of Kdenlive in the ubuntu repositories (0.7.3), rather download the latest and greatest from the kdenlive downloads page, currently (0.7.5). As the (0.7.3) version is very crash happy.

KDENLIVE video editor

Open shot video editor

The Open shot video editor is fast biting in the heels of kdenlive.It is a Non-linear video editor which after only being out since april 2008, the editor has had an explosion of features. The Graphical user interface is simple and easy to use, a lot of things can be done simply using drag and drop and the effects buttons are made in such a way to show what they do. Even the rendering options are not cluttered. It is also a project that can see its limitations in the eye, therefore it uses inkscape for when doing advanced titles. As of yet it is still unstable when doing some tasks, it also lacks translations and a complete set of features and options. But at the rate at which it is being developed, this wont be a problem soon.
You can get the latest version of Open Shot by downloading it from their main web page or continuously by adding the PPA to your software sources Ubuntu only.

Open shot open-source, non-linear video editor for Linux

Gimp

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program

I have though used the features of gimp to add effects and create animations for videos. It is done through layers, one layer = a frame then you can either make it into an animated gif, as several jpg images or export it into a video using the GIMP Animation plugin. The gimp animation plugin is also great for splitting all the frames into individual images, so you can paint/animate on them, add effects, clean the video for un-attractive elements, remove elements etc. The list is endless. It is also great for making short title animations and the like.

Cinelerra/Blender/Jashakka

The Jahshaka Project

Cinelerra

I have never had any luck downloading or using Cinelerra, so I can’t comment on that. Neither have I used the video editing features of Blender. Jashakka the effects program with 3d capabilities is also foreign to me, but I hope to use it, as the stuff done

Blender 3d modelling software

on it looks cool. Just waiting for a new version of it for linux, until now I have only gotten it to work on windows.

FFmpeg/handbrake

When it comes to converting in between formats, the tools FFmpeg and handbrake have proven invaluable. Handbrake is great if you need a graphical user interface though slightly bloated it does its job well. Up-to-date versions for Ubuntu and Debian systems can be downloaded from www.getdeb.net

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is flexible and from the commandline it is the tool for batch processing of video. It can be used to split sound from video, split video into frames and images and video conversion. Graphical user interfaces exist for it for video conversion.

One of the great advantage when using linux for anything is that the web is full of user generated solutions in the form of Screencast, Podcasts, Videocasts, faq’s, documentation, forum articles etc… So getting started is easy. I have seen that type of content for all of the above on-line.

Handbrake

INDEX

Graphical user interface

Non-linear video editing

Fedora 11

2009-09-09T19:46:00.006Z

After deciding a spring clean was in order we did a fresh install of the operating systems on our desktop computer. I had been using openSUSE 10.1 for what seems like years and there were a few annoying things, pretty much just because it was becoming outdated and I found it difficult to configure to use all the latest mod cons. I would've installed the latest SUSE but I couldn't get the live CD to load up. I tried Mandriva and had a smiliar problem. I've got a netbook running Linpus Linux Lite (based on Fedora) so Fedora 11 seemed like a good option, and when I downloaded the image and burnt it to disc the live CD worked straight away.

It's nice. I don't really have any complaints so far. It boots up really quickly, detects my mobile phone and digital camera. I installed the KDE version at first but then felt like a change and reinstalled with the default GNOME as well and I use that mostly now.

Here are some screenshots:

The Kenta Cho games collection

2008-07-12T07:31:00.027Z

The Kenta Cho games collection

In the ubuntu repositories you are likely to stumble upon hundreds of games, all of them well crafted and original. In that large stash of games, I have fallen in love with a games collection under the auspice of Kenta Cho.

All of the games by Kenta Cho are shoot-em-ups, primarily in the arcade games genre, with a series of abstract elements and controls. I have later found that Kenta Cho has made a lot of other games not in the ubuntu repositories, which I really hope will make it in there soon. The games are also available on the windows platform from the ABA games site.

Torus trooper

My favoritte is called Torus Trooper. Which I believe is a good title, as it places the player in a sci-fi role, which fits the game like a glove. The setting is a mult- colured wire-frame tunnel which in many places is only partial and spiraling like a ribbon. You are skiming the surface in a ship, if you by accident leave this path, then you are dead, same goes if you are shot down by the barrage of enemy fire. There are several types of enemies, big ships and normal ships. All of which has lots of firepower. Luckily you have standard directional controls and 2 fire controls, one is activated by the Z button and is a standard auto-fiering gun, the other seems to work like a killer static charge. Keep it down and release for maximum damage.

In torus trooper there is a lot of things trying to kill you and you are travelling very fast, which to me is the perfect recipe for a shoot-em-up.

Gunroar

Just imagine that you are controlling an abstract geometrical fighting ship from the future, you are deep in enemy waters and your advantages is having full 360 degree movement and two weapons, a firelance and gun. That is gunroar to a T.

You are under attack by a large collection of battleships. There is a constant barrage of fire and a never ending armada of enemies. You just keep on scrolling upwards towards total pandemonium, armed with only a laser gun your task is to clear a path through the enemy.

The scenery is dark and partially see through, green is land, which if you get stuck on kills you.
The game scrolls at a speed of your choosing, some of the enemies are static others are quite the opposite. There is always plenty of enemy fire coming towards you and after each round you have to face a large mother ship. Which is basically a hive of guns on a giant ship.

The keyboard controls for this games is the basic directional controls, ctrl, for keeping your ship fazing the one direction and z and x for the gun and the fire lance.

The gameplay is very addictive, even though the360 degree controls takes some getting used to.

rRootage

You duel against a never ending collection of enemies, one at a time. You see one dematerialize only to be replaced by another. The enemy has awesome weaponry, you have only your trusty shooter. You have to use all your wits to stay out of the constant barrage of fire and it is only a matter of time before you are toast.

In rRootage the background and the sprite you control is quite dark and poor in detail, the sprites for the enemy and the bullets are far more detailed.

Controls are the directional controls and z for guns and x for a temporary shield.

Mu-cade

The site calls it “The Physics Centipede Invasion” followed by “Smashup waggly shmup, ‘Mu-cade‘”. Which I am still trying to decipher.

My impression is that it is centipede in mush-pit in space. You are one of a few ever growing centipedes fighting for space in a tiny contained area. If you leave or by accident get pushed out of the contained area, the you fall to you demise in the never ending void of space. If you survive you grow, though you can also loose weight. In the tiny arena there are objects you can push around to help you push the other centipedes over the edge, plus you have the fire power to help you move objects or other centipedes. You can also cut of the tails of your opponents.

The controls are the directional controls and the z key for laser guns.

Parsec47

Parsec47 is a lot like a lot of other top-down scrolling shoot em-ups, though with some partially invisible enemies of varying sizes and some wholly visible ones. In fact it reminds me a lot of galaxians, just far better executed. The enemies have different types of weaponry.

The controls are as follows z and x for weaponry, followed by directional buttons.

Titanion

On the site it is written that it is “Strike down super high-velocity swooping insects” and “Fixed shooter in the good old days”.

You have chains of enemies attacking you, against a background og a 3d vertical tower which moves and changes. Shots and explosions are represented by squares flying off in all directions and the feeling is of a fixed ie no scrolling scenery shoot em’ up.

It has like the other Kenta Cho games, 3 modes Classic, Basic and Modern. Each requiring a different fighting style. In one of them you can capture your enemies with a beam and use them to fight on your side.

TUMIKI Fighters

Is a 2d side scrolling shoot em up in soft colours, where the aim is to have elements stick to the fighter, creating a hybrid of transformers, lego and a standard shoot-em-up.
The graphics is simple, addictive and very cute .

A7Xpg

You are chased by these red figures, more and more of them keep turning up and all you have to do is not get caught. It makes pac-man look as if it is for wimps.

One Response to “The Kenta Cho games collection”

Sibz Says:
October 8th, 2009 at 15:43
Nice selection of games there.
I was interested in the one called rRootage, single combat against enemies is fun in any shoot-em-up. My dad’s damn computer is too slow to let me play any so I will save this to an email in drafts and hope to download on my laptop.

Unfortunately… vista… yuck…

Right choice in words when you called Tumuki Fighters cute, it certainly looks like fun and very cute.
I shall look forward to (attempt) playing these games.

Talk to you soon.

Running PUPPY LINUX 4.0 on LINUTOP 1

2008-05-22T11:47:00.010Z

Half a year ago I got a linutop computer. Since then I have wanted to run it, as my primary computer, but a lot of challenges have impeded my progress. Most of those challenges have been purely application based. Certain applications have been buggy or lack functionality, a problem I still have to this day.

As of yet, puppy linux 4.0 'DINGO' has been the best candidate, and is what I am currently using. In fact I have gone so far, as to give away my old computer because of it.

I will come with a small review of puppy linux 4.0 'DINGO' from my perspective and my needs.

I have used older versions of puppy linux and to me it always lacked an essential bit of functionality and I also lacked time to tamper with it, but out of frustration and having linutop (xubuntu) os, slax and damn small linux , not work ideally for my liking. I decided to give it a try once more.

I first had to copy the iso to a cd, then burn it and run it. The install menu had many options, but it was very easy to use, I simply choose install to usb and it did the rest.

Puppy comes with a lot of applications, most of which I didn't need. Linutop doesn't have any cd, dvd, hd, blueray drive, so all of those applications were useless to me. I tried to uninstall them, but you can't unless you get an application called pup-be-gone and that only hides the programs and doesn't permanently delete them.
I found that out later when I restarted JWM which is the window manager of puppy linux.
You have to restart jwm, in order to see the programs you have installed in the directory tree.

Installing programs is easy just look in puppy package manager and click which programs you would like to install from 3 repositories, 2 of which are from older versions of puppy linux. Here you install .pet files, in older versions of puppy linux you had to install a .pup. In order to install pup files you have to have pre-installed a program from the repository to install these. Once you have both, there is so many more programs available for download. You can also install .deb packages (you need to have a deb. installer pre-installed from which can be found in the repository) and some slackware packages.

Here is where you can get .pup and .pet packages, Puppy Linux Discussion Forum and the puppy repository browser.

Mozilla Sea Monkey the default browser of DINGO, is a cut down version without email, chat client or address book. Which is ok, instead you just have to use pidgin for chat, sylpheed for email and osmo, as your all round diary, planner calender, address book.
I suppose this decision was made, because of size, but if you want a full install of Sea Monkey, then a copy can be found in the main repository.

Word processing is a different story, DINGO comes with abiword, which is a brilliant word processor, but due to lack of local language support (as it lacks spell check in other languages than American English), I can't use it, as a stand alone word processor. In fact there is no real localization support for puppy linux, yes you can get the menu to run in different languages, but it is a bit of a hazzle to get a fully local system running. I now use google docs for all my spell checking needs and as a second back up.

Games, I am not a major gamer but I like to play a few games, time wasters and such.
The first thing I have to say is that most flash games are too slow in my browser, due to my limited hardware, I often have to set the flash to low quality mode in order for it to run more or less smoothly. The games you get with linutop are a tile slider game, a jigsaw puzzle and a rubik's cube (which is quite impressive).

None of which I intend to play, so I quickly found a few new games on the forum, mainly old arcade games, mahjong and shintsen. There are also a lot of other games to find, you just have to look.

Music and media, those two have been a headache from the start. Gxine, which comes a s default, crashed on me constantly and dropped all streams after 2 mins.
I fact, since then I have had problems with xine, mplayer and vlc too, all of which do a few things very well, but is bad at every thing else. My main problem has been catching video streams from the net, vlc at catching most streams and is the best so far, but it lacks a sea monkey plug-in. So I am dependent on mplayer for my radio streams, but it has a major problem with video streams and VLC for a limited number of video streams, music and video. I know some of these problems are partially related to my limited hardware, but most of it is bugs in the applications.
I think puppy linux also lacks a good music player, much like amarok or rhythmbox. It also lacks a decent stand alone RSS reader, I had to get an RSS plugin for seamonkey in order to read RSS streams.

I have had no problems at all with the graphics packages, all the editors and viewers work fine, in fact I was surprised how fast inkscape and gimp ran in puppy linux. My only problem here is that my wabcom tablet isn't supported in puppy, so I have to use a good old mouse...but for what I make, mainly touch up jobs and clip art,,,, that is a situation I can live with.

I haven't used the podcast client much, but I have found it usable and I have been able to get it to download video podcasts too without a hitch.

Internet, puppy linux doesn't automatically connect to the internet first time you turn it on, but it isn't a problem either the internet connection wizard is very easy to use and It was up and running in under min for me. The file system also needs a bit of getting used to (especially the layout) and how to manipulate the desktop. I won't lie to you, some of it needs to be adjusted from a text editor and you have to go deep into the system, if you want the perfect desktop for yourself, but all in all it isn't a bad OS if you are a noob (mainly because of the amount of easy to use wizards, the great amount of manuals, documentation and a very helpful forum.

My wish list over improvements.
In the future I hope to see an improvement of the appearance of the icons in the menu. A nicer looking bar, at the bottom of the window, the current one still looks a bit windows 98'ish and I haven't found a theme that has changed that.
Improvements in the media player and flash player.

I do not regret having moved over to puppy linux 4.0, it is very stable and as you can see in the pictures, even on old or low power hardware, it can run a lot of processes without freezing. In fact the only time that ever happens is in flash.

Just one more thing, i love the new icon set on the desktop (it just hasn't scaled very well in the menu. I also love the new puppy linux icons, they are beautiful...I wonder why we couldn't have that on the puppy menu button? It looks that good.

The main puppy linux websites have also improved a lot, instead of the cheesy peach puppy look, you have a much cleaner uncluttered look.

Until next time, look after yourself.

Alex

GNASH 0.8.2 which sites work and which don't.

2008-04-13T18:26:00.008Z

Gnash the free as in freedom (libre) flash player has made some serious ground, I have just tried the latest version of the popular player (0.8.2) and I can confirm that it can play youtube videos.

The video quality and sound quality is on par with the output of the proprietary swf/flv player, so this is no small victory. I tried it out on a lot of other video sites too, but I didn't experience the same success, I either got a white screen, black screen or something weird. Remember this isn't any sort of thorough test on tons of different computers, it was done on my computer an old p4, running the gnu/Linux distribution Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, using the Firefox (beta 3) browser. I would also like to point out that I have had a lot of success playing other types of flash elements, sideshows, animations etc... using the player

Fail

My search caught it totally failing on the following sites:

Google video, metacafe, angryalien, blastro, bofunk, dailymotion, devilducky, crackle.com, music.com, revver, videos.streetfire.net, thatvideosite.com, vimeo, vidilife.com, vsocial.com.

A partial success

Gnash partially worked on these sites:

break.com (I had sound but no video)
last.fm (no response after having loaded elements)
blip.tv (elements placed wrong and doesn't seem to load)
vids.myspace.com (looked like a really bad techno video, elements misplaced , no sound).

The success stories
The video was watchable and the sound worked well enough to be bearable on the following sites.

Youtube.com (works very well)
putfile.com (I had to restart the video to see what was happening, but then it worked+ had a tiny green cube)
lulu.tv (tiny green cube in the upper left corner, but works)
newgrounds.com (works very well)
sharkle.com (works very well)

Gnash is still playing catch up with the established player, but I can see the next few releases increasing the success rates of the player, I can not stress how important it is for it to become better than the proprietary version and with added functionality to boot, in order to win people over to the free as in libre world of software.

My personal wish is for it to have better support for keyboard shortcuts and maybe even real time video filtering or conversion (just like in vlc).

Why use Gnash?

It has a few nice features, you can load videos for it to play and watch videos in full screen from a right-click menu. It is very stable, especially compared to the proprietary player and finally it is free as in freedom.

Free as in freedom, means that you are free run, copy, distribute, study and change it, please go to the gnu/gnash web site to read more.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

FIREFOX 3 ROCKS!!!

2008-03-22T19:29:00.001Z

Firefox rocks!!!

I have played around with the latest beta of firefox 3 on ubuntu. It rocks, like you won't belive.

The major feature which I think is brilliant is the plugin and extension checker and installer. It integrates 100% with synaptic and works like a charm, it is now easier to mainatin and install plug-ins in firefox than any other browser.

I also like the way that evolution the email/calender/project manager/planner is heading, by just clicking on the date of the desk bar plug-in you get a detailed overview of time across the globe and what projects you still have to do. This is unbeliveably convenient.

Ubuntu 8.04 is the best release yet and that goes for firefox 3 too.

2008-03-22T15:29:00.007Z

Marble

One of my favourite applications on Linux is marble, a geography program. It is quite simply a globe of the world on the desktop. It is though unlike NASA, Microsoft and Google's globes in that it is very fast and the maps are easily interchangeable.

In fact the program is expandable, you can add your own maps.

It also has a few drawbacks, as of yet the maps you get with it are neither really artistic or in great detail. It doesn't have a plug-in, widget system or great integration with other applications. The wikipedia integration is flawed and with the exception of a few countries there aren't too many towns dotted about on the maps.

This is for now a minor issue, as it serves it's original purpose, which is as a geography teaching application, but a lot can be better and though I don't want it to looses its simplicity, I do want it to grow in directions where no other geography application can go.

In the future I hope to see it become more social, with better integration and expandability. If you haven't already done so, give it a try.

UBUNTU 8.04 BETA tried and tested, Upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04

2008-03-21T16:36:00.008Z

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Today I checked my rss aggregator and found that UBUNTU Hardy Heron 8.04 BETA has just been released. The final version will not be out until The end of April, but as I have 2 machines and don't mind loosing slight functionality in one of them I decided to test this beta version out.

Installation or rather the upgrade, took a while, actually about 5 hours (I HAD A LOT OF PROGRAMS TO UPGRADE) and some where in the middle of the upgrade the gnome panel disappeared and I lost even access to programs through keyboard short cuts. It hadn't stalled, so this was a bit of a mystery.

I knew how to solve this problem and I did once the program-installation-process was finished, a simple make folder on desktop and go through that to usr/bin and from there i activated the gnome panel once more.

A few programs had popped up that I never seen before, a few GNU step games, they were simple and their interface/theme wasn't really compatible with the rest of my desktop, it looked like something from an old enlightenment theme.

Open Invaders was crashy, but I have never really felt the inclination to play it either, so it was for the common good.

KOMPOZER was also installed, can't tell why I already ran NVU. I did notice how a like the both are or rather were to the old mozilla suite (sea monkey).

Mozilla, is lovely with only one giant exception...half of my plug-ins have stopped working. I am looking forward to new versions of my old plug-ins, since I feel a bit naked without them.
Apart from that the main entry field has a new star icon, which turns yellow if the page is in my bookmarks, plus pages in my book marks which I have seen recently are first in the field which expands out of it.

It is as everybody says, very fast.

Openoffice is a bit drab, but it is configurable, so I hope to work out how to make it look a lot better. I haven't found all of the new features yet, but I am on the case.

A search program called catfish was also installed, but I really have no clue as to what to make of it.

A lot of the programs are still running ALSA, so I am wondering what happened to PULSEAUDIO, I hope to find out what happens there, since I have had a lot of dissatisfaction with a lot of the audio modules in Linux.

Apart from that there is not much to report, UBUNTU 8.04 seems stable, but right now I don't really feel that there is too many revolutionary changes in this version, but who knows, I might spot something with real wow factor, I have after all only used it for a couple of hours.

CHEERS!!!

P.s. The HARDY HERON art work looks fab.

Organic design (the future of LINUX) and a yarn about 3D

2008-03-02T19:54:00.007Z

Today, I was waiting for a bus and it got me thinking about design, especially about how to make my desktop experience better. I first thought about 3D and about how it is that we haven't really implemented anything with real stay power when it comes to a 3D experience and why is that?

The first thing to look at is no doubt the screen from which you view the 3D world which you call a desktop. The screen does seem as if it is in the way for any REAL 3D experience, because no matter what happens on the screen your physical interaction with the screen will still be close to 2 dimensional.

You type, use the mouse or if you are rich touch the screen at various places. To me it seems that this isn't a fully 3D experience, because you are interacting with your desktop in a way which is quite alien to a fully immersed 3D experience. Just imagine how a real 3D experience would be like. It would be as convenient as the physical world and the hang-ups and irritations which a screen has would not be present.

Well should we junk the PC or put on interactive gloves and 3D glasses?

Hell, NO!

We should just rethink how we use the PC. A screen is 2D despite its content, so what we should do is to present the content in a easy to use and graphically pleasing manner.

This usually means copying nature.

There is a good reason why flowers are so visually pleasing, the main one being that they have had several millions of years of trial and error. There is though a belief that there is a standard to which everything in nature tries reach or rather does. For those in the know, I am talking about the same standard that makes white cabbage, some trees and brains look similar.

It has also spurned the Fibonacci sequence and the golden section. Why am I telling you this? Well my observation is that we live in a very square world and everything that I think is cool and has a decent price tag is very organic looking.

This means that the key to any success is probably gained by copying the construction methods, the design plans and tools used by nature.

Even though a lot has to be constructed from ground up, we can at least start now by thinking how we can make buttons, windows and desktops more organic looking and more important, more like how we use things in the real world.

Well that is a big serving, so I will break it down to a few short sentences.

Organic design is making something that is complex but not busy, flexible but not completely free, curved and not linear. It is pleasing to the eye close up and from a far. It is a leaf out of natures notebook.

I will ask you now, why do so many have flowery backgrounds on their computers?
Why do you think analogue clocks are such a hit on PCs?
Why are chips square, when all brains are curved cauliflowers trapped in goo?
Why are rounded buttons better looking than square buttons.

You will find the answers in organic design.

Organic design has the key to making computers better and if there is any group out there which is capable of implementing the changes needed then it is the open source community!

Well that is it, it is amazing what waiting for a bus can bring forth in one!

The photo was found on FLICKR manipulated in GIMP and is published under a Creative Commons license by maplemusketeer

openSUSE 10.3..... sweet!

2007-11-21T19:53:00.000Z

Mmmmm....yummy....it's the delicious openSUSE 10.3. Finally a live CD is available for download here. I got the live KDE version and it installed like a dream. Nice and green. Next up was to get my nvidia card fully supported and switch on some compiz fusion magic. One of the great things about 10.3 is "1-click-install" which I don't really need to explain, it does exactly what it says on the tin. I got nvidia drivers here and compiz here and..er..that was pretty much all there was to it. I also got screenlets from here- the little desktop icons like Alex has on Ubuntu with Gnome - I've got a picture frame, clock, sticky notes etc. Here's my screenshot...feel the envy! Then go and download all the stuff! It's free! It's fantastic! It's lovely!

Neat ubuntu stuff

2007-11-05T20:49:00.001Z

Fonts STUFF

As an artist I want fonts, fonts and more fonts. This post tells how you can get tons of new fonts for ubuntu.

http://crunchbang.org/archives/2007/10/13/465-free-fonts-for-ubuntu/

Weather data

If you are running a desklet/weather application that collects a forecast from the net and displays it on your desktop then this site will be useful, as it contains a database of all the weather codes.

http://aspnetresources.com/tools/locid.aspx

Improve security in Ubuntu

I found this entry interesting and useful.

http://www.itsecurity.com/features/ubuntu-secure-install-resource/

EXTRA GAMES for UBUNTU

There is not always what you want in the official repositories. Thankfully get deb is here. It has a lot of easy to download deb files and the site is very user friendly.

http://www.getdeb.net/

URBAN TERROR

My favoritte game on linux at the moment is Urban Terror 4, a fabulous 1. person multi player shooter, with a lot of realistic levels.

http://www.urbanterror.net/news.php

Are you GUTSY enough?

2007-10-31T18:45:00.000Z

Just a short entry to say that I have been running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon for a while now, actually since beta. It is brilliant and to prove it I have a new screenshot of my desktop, it has eyecandy gallore (compiz-fusion) ...most of it animated, so you can't see it here, besides that it has the avast panel (at the bottom of the screen) and gdesklets(the calender, clock etc..).

It is the future and has a lot of features that do not come with vista or os x.

I rubbed out some details, so that is why there is that black bar.

Innovative idea: animated desktop 2

2007-09-26T13:23:00.000Z

I was stumble'ing using the service stumble upon, when I came across something that reminds me a lot of the concept of the animated desktop.

The post was by Erik Gyepes and it is on geekhacks.com

The idea is simple, you use the screen saver as the background. To do this you type the following.

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

Followed by

/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root

more details can be found by following the link to the original site.

You don't have to stick with the glmatrix screen saver,
just look in your /usr/lib/xscreensaver folder for other screen savers.
Just replace glmatrix with the other screen saver name.

WARNING ...this is pretty experimental stuff,
so you might want to save any work before playing with this.
I am saying this because my desktop crashed while playing about
with one of the screen savers. Not a big thing, the computer logged out,
I logged in again and was working once more.

Innovative idea: animated desktop

2007-05-23T17:37:00.001Z

I was thinking about vista, mac etc and I thought about how linux needs some innovation to take up a level or two from those two, not that it isn't already far better than the competition.

That made me think of animation, why not have a fully animated desktop background. I know it sounds hardcore on system resources and distracting for the eye.

Though it can be done really innovatively. Imagine a cave with bats flying round it or a house with the lights turning on and off and showing signs of activity.

The animation doesn't have to be system intensive and the effect could make the desktop more dynamic and usable.

I expect it should be made using jpg or png, as gif's look awfull.

technorati tags:linux, desktop, animated, animation

OFFICE clip art

2007-05-22T16:39:00.000Z

This is another of my clip art experiments. It is released under a creative commons license, so please use it.

KIll, kill, kill...sudo

2007-05-20T18:27:00.000Z

This is the first episode of I love penguin, I hope to improve on the look of the cartoon in the course of making new strips and think up new concepts for the strip. The strips will be released on a non-regular basis, so don't get disappointed if there goes some time in between strips.

Explanation

If you haven't guessed it, it has nothing to do with killing, its all about the terminal. A general (basic) understanding of open source or linux will help your enjoyment of this strip. I love penguin, is supposed to be a "I love lucy" like strip, it is more of a "ha, heh" strip than a "rolling on the floor laughing thing", much in the same way the humour was in I love lucy. It is all made in gimp a GNU licensed graphics editor. It is released under the same creative commons license as everything else on this blog.
I hope you will come to enjoy this new addition to the blog.

Viking Ship clipart

2007-05-08T20:43:00.000Z

I was fiddeling with the vector graphics program Inkscape,,, which I love but never really had much chance to fiddel with, so today I created a piece of clip art with it. I found an old black and white picture of a viking ship pasted it into inkscape and started to trace an image over it. This allowed me to try out some of the techniques and tools in the program and is probably the best way to test a graphics program.

http://www.inkscape .org/

Red diamonds are forever!

2007-05-08T20:32:00.001Z

I have just moved over to using BERYL instead of using COMPEZ as my 3D desktop on my Feisty Fawn 7.04 Ubuntu desktop.

The compez which is installed as default in ubuntu is great it has two features, the 3D cube desktop switcher and wobbly windows.

This is rather limiting when seen in comparison to the amount of adjustable features in BERYL.

I installed it from http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty

Which is a great guide for installing anything, adjusting and personalizing your ubuntu box.

Currently all my windows get eaten by fire when I close them down, i still use the wobbely windows effect and I have adjusted the 3D cube feature, so it now runs exactly like I like it. My windows are also see through when I move them and I have a little preview of each page when my mouse moves close to them.I

Last night I wasted 2 hours playing with it, I really do not know how I ever lived without BERYL.

If you want to check out BERYL then look at their web site or look at one of the many beryl demonstrations on youtube.

technorati tags:beryl, compez, linux, ubuntu, feisty, fawn, feistyfawn

3D GAMES IN LINUX

2007-04-25T13:45:00.000Z

Introduction

I surprised a few of my friends the other day by showing them the games which I can play under Linux and how easy they are on my system. I have an at least 4 years old 2.66 Intel 4 processor based computer, it is old, in fact very old in terms of computer longevity. It has no graphics card worth writing home about, in fact the built in graphics card was never intended to be able to run 3d games.

The one thing you can say about Linux is that it is not very system resource intensive. Which means that I am capable of running lots of 3d games with ease and yes they run very well.
I have compiled a list of those I play the most, but if you want to know more about games on Linux then check out The Linux Game Tome and Games for Linux.

1st person shooters

The first few I want to introduce to you can all be found in the Ubuntu repositories.

Open Arena - or Cube 2 as it is also called, is a game in which you have to chase and kill a number of almost cartoon like characters through several levels. You have a wide variety of weapons that you can find and put to use. The lightning gun is my favourite. You also have to collect health packages and ammo otherwise you can end up in a very sticky situation indeed.
It is like all the others in this genre, and has a variety of options, single player against bots, multi player against others on the net + a great variety of games & levels, capture the flag etc...
The greater mission is always the same, flack, flack and flack again.

Nexuiz - Is basically more of the above, I find that the players on the servers are a bit more hardcore, so it can become a flack feast with ones self on the receiving end. I also think a lot of the levels are far darker (atmosphere and colour scheme) than the levels in open arena.

Tremulous - Is my own favourite of them all and my nr.1 choice if I want to procrastinate. The story is simple, bug and spider like aliens versus humans. In the game you can choose between being an alien or human in the game. An engineering or warrior. All the teams have a capability the others don't have, the aliens can evolve to become more fierce over the course of the game, while the humans can upgrade their weaponry. I really enjoy playing this game. If I make a sudden kill or die unexpectedly, the nature of the interaction and speed means that I sometimes jump in my seat.

The graphics aren't that bad either, it might not be the most detail rich graphics ever but it does the job of creating atmosphere in the game.

There are other 3d first person shooters that I have not covered out there, check out CUBE, Alien arena, Saurbraten and Warsow.

Sport games

OK, you are not likely to become very fit playing these, but I fail to think of a better category for them.

Neverputt – it is as the putt implies a golf game, rendered in 3d it takes the guise of a mini-golf bane from hell. The most obvious dilemma is avoiding going over the edge, which is surprisingly easy to do. It is very cheery coloured and easy to play. My only point of criticism is that I am not that big a golf fan, though I don't mind wasting 5 minutes on this game once in a while.

Neverball – What you have to do is to control the land in order to steer the marble. The aim is to collect coins until you are allowed to leave and before your time runs out. Simple to start with, but around level 5 it gets really hard. It is the 3d games version of the wooden marble mace game, in which you control all 4 directions with a mere 2 directional knobs.

Billiard GL – A billiard game, it is easy to control, the directional buttons and space bar or mouse. The graphics are as you would expect, delightfully rendered. Its only bad side is that there is no multi player (server) option or play against bot option.

Simulation games

Super tux cart – Super tux cart is the Mario cart alternative for Linux, the graphics is slightly blocky but do not let that bother you, the game play makes up for that. It is just as addictive as the Nintendo offering and you will find that you play in order to create havoc on the other players rather than to get a first place position. There is also a even more basic graphics version called Tux cart which no doubt should run better on computers with older hardware.

Trigger – Trigger is a car rally/racing game which occurs out in the wild, the graphics are not bad but could be better and the game play can be hampered by the ease of getting thrown about off the circuit. It is a great game as soon as you get into it, but first impressions might leave a few behind.

Torcs – A far better racing game by far, though the graphics will take anyone back to mid-90s nostalgia. The game play is much better, as you do not get stuck because of terrain or suffer confusion about which direction that you have to take. It is a traditional racing game, it is on a variety of circuits that you have to drive on in relatively normal cars.

Flight gear – Is a flight simulator. I find it a pain to use, as you have to basically learn how to fly an aeroplane before you can get any joy out of it at all. The graphics are OK.

That is about all for this segment. A lot of these games also work on other operating systems like Mac and Win, so even if you haven't made the switch to linux you can still enjoy these great games.

I have left out all the 3d chess games and a really great number of other 3d games, including 3d rpg games (including Balazar) and arcade games such as Briquolo.

Enjoy!

Free'ing up my world

2007-04-25T12:35:00.000Z

Following up on the free software as in libre efforts, I ahve stopped using the two google products Picasa and Google Earth. To tell you the truth I have never really used them that much to start with.

I have replaced Google Earth with google maps (only when I desperately need its features) and the free (libre) Earth 3d.Earth 3d is still very basic you can't zoom very close on the maps and the detais are not as rich as googles offering.

Picassa I have replaced with f-spot (a photomanager for gnome), actually, I can't really notice the difference, especially as I do almost all my graphics in Gimp (a free as in libre' graphics program) and really only use it for slideshows.

That means that the only proprietary program left on my system is Skype, all I now need is for all my friends and family to move over to the GIZMO project which is open source (free as in libre) and in many ways a superior alternative to Skype.

Actually, I have no intensions of getting rid of skype anytime soon as the user base is so great, but I do hope to convince all that I know to also run GIZMO as it has video support in linux and can run on Windows, mac and Linux. Skype has yet to support video in linux.

My BETA 7.04 Feisty Fawn experience

2007-04-09T01:10:00.001Z

Getting my paws on the feisty fawn

I couldnt wait, so I upgraded to Feisty. It was mostly a problem free upgrade and I love seeing the new upgrades coming almost every second day as we get close to its release date.

If you go to Ubuntus site, forums etc... you will get a different idea of what the hot upgrades are than I convey here.

A lot of the games have been upgraded and there by improving them dramatically, everything from the standard time wasters, sudoku, chess etc to the more serious contenders like The battle for Wesnoth and frozen bubble.

Frozen bubble has improved considerably, not that there was anything wrong with it in the first place, but the graphics have been updated and you are now given a greater variety of choice. To those not in the know Frozen bubble is a game in which you have to hit a collection of balls with another ball, if the colour matches then they fall, if not the ball sticks. THe Battle for Wesnoth is a RPG, with cartoon like monsters, elves etc....

3D effects are also now available by default, I am currently limited to wobbely windows, but the famous cube desktop changer is installed. I believe it is Compez that they have choosen and not Beryl, both of which are very good 3D desktops solutions in linux.

I have mentioned in a previous post that I run the Looking Glass 3D desktop too, but all of these are very system intensive, not near as intensive as a windows based 3D solution, but still, I don't use them while video editing or during heavy graphics editing sessions.

A lot of these updates have made it possible for me to rely more on free software apps. One app that has helped me is a interesting program that shows you which proprietary programs that you have on your system.

I have now gotten rid of Opera and replace it with Flock (it has matured very nicely indeed), I have also stopped using Realplayer (M-player and G-streamer have been mature for a while now, so I don't need it anymore). I haven't been able to get GNASH the open source flash player to work efficiently enough on my system, so I am still running the proprietary Flash drivers.

I now only have the 2 google apps that I almost can't live without on my system, Google Earth and Picasa.

I am very impressed by this update and look forward to impovements as I go along.

I also still haven't heard what the next release will be called.

My Wacom drawing tablet has started working again on this release, so I can draw again.

THE FLIP SIDE

I spent almost an hour trying to get my printer/scanner to work in Ubuntu, after I showed in a live CD of Mandriva, which I know detects my old printer without question, I had to admit that the poor beast had danced it's last waltz.

I am having one problem, it is with audio and it isn't anything that I have been able to adjust. The funny thing is that it only really affects gnome applications and especially recording.

MY WISH LIST

In the future, there are a couple of things that I would love to see, especially in the next few releases, a lot of them are though out of the control of Ubuntu.

- I want someone to take up the gauntlet and either expand/improve Emilia pinball or make a pinball program 200% times better.
- Net panzer could also do with a bit of a polish.
- Openoffice would be a lot better if you could personalise it with themes, at the very least improve the interface, so we can finally come away from the grey 90's look.
- A decent Grand Prix game, yes we already have Torcs and Trigger, but they are not that customizable.
- A decent fight game, in the genre of Mortal Combat, Street Fighter , TEKKEN category.... there were tons of them on the spectrum and on the commodore 64, why are they not there on linux.
- A COUNTER STRIKE and WOW killer would be nice, but I doubt they will come anytime soon.
- A more MULTIMEDIA like LANGUAGE learning program,,,,There are 2 species of language learning applications that I would like to see, a child friendly language application (possibly in the style of a 3D game) and a more sober adult version, which is more to-the-point. I think both should have lots of multimedia elements, including video, sound, images etc.... Most language apps on linux are just a (GUI) graphical-user-interface for a word database, I would love to see something which is more than that.
- I would also like the AVIDEMUX Video editior to have a better GUI and for the filters to work better. I also want less confusion concerning formats, functions and filters. I hope they will work on having some usefull error messages, so less time is wasted on basic errors and human made errors.
- I am always hoping that better webcam/audio support will come to the messenger programs.

Well, that is about it. It is getting late and I have to get some sleep before dawn. In conclusion, I think Linux in general is digging it self more and more out of the pure driver dependency nightmare, that I only have to think a year back to remember. I also think that even though Ubuntu is not perfect yet, it is getting very good.

technorati tags:feisty, fawn, 7.04, linux, ubuntu, review

k3d

2007-03-12T15:51:00.000Z

I have had problems uninstalling K3D for a while (because the package was broken) and this stopped me uninstalling other packages too. Today, I looked on the forums and found this solution.

The solution was simply this, I gone to...
/var/lib/dpkg

found the file called status

I did this in a ROOT version of nautilus

I used the search tool to find K3D in the file.

Under K3D, it says Python-Versions: current
I just got rid of the "s" in "Python-Versions" and now it can be reinstalled or unistalled.

I found the solution in ubuntu forums.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2208991

Looking through the looking glass

2007-03-08T16:01:00.000Z

Everybody has heard of Beryl and Compez, yet there is another 3D desktop out there for your Linux or Solaris machine and I have just tried it out. It runs under the name of the looking Glass project, it is by the people at Java.

I can feel that it is still in it's early stages of development. Features is not its high point and there is not much to fiddle with. It is not like Compez or Beryl, in that it works like a 3d layer on top of your Desktop, it looks like you have to give up your Gnome, Kde, enlightenment, xfce etc... for this one.

The 3d effects are amazing, though the control of it takes a bit of getting used to. It looks fabulous, though the buttons and menus look very 90's. To be quite honest, even by this brief glance I wanted to adjust the experience, maybe I am just too used to the intuitive interface of Gnome.

In the bottom task bar (there is only one) you can quit into the login screen, start programs from the menu (it even has a 3D file manager) and change wallpapers. The wallpapers are not static, which takes some getting used too, neither are the programs on the desktop static.

One of the first things I looked at was a 3D periodic table, though not impressive, it demonstrated some of the clear advantages of the 3D desktop, like viewing things from the side and movement in a 3D space.

The main thing worth mentioning is the music player, which can spread music albums in a neat circle or as you would keep them on a bookshelf. Very impressive especially if you were to have a party, though as with the rest of the 3D desktop, the graphical user interface looked a bit out of date.

I have installed it on my Ubuntu 6.10 running with the Gnome desktop, of course now it has the looking glass 3d desktop too. I have no real graphics card and the processor is an old P4, but I have to say it still ran fine on my system (not fast, but not at a snails pace either), though I won't open any programs which taxes the abilities of the machine in any hurry.

I won't use this yet for anything other than showing off to my "Win" dependent friends, as it hasn't developed enough yet, but hats off to the people who have created it, for something so easy on the system, it looks great.

Looking Glass is distributed under the GPL license and is free to download, distribute and work on. You can install it on Ubuntu and other Debian systems easily, there are .deb packages on the site. The site also has packages for other distributions.

Once you have installed it, which you can from the looking glass website login to your login manager, choose to login to looking glass instead of gnome, kde or what ever desktop your were using, then you too can enjoy 3D graphics that doesn't tax your system.

I choose the option of adding the LG3Drepositories links to my list of repositories, so I get updates fresh from the factory floor (as they say).

Wow! Wow! and more Wow! Mandriva One 2007

2007-02-01T22:14:00.000Z

I am almost lost for words! Just installed Mandriva One 2007 on my laptop (HP Pavilion ze4900ea) and it's SOOOOO GOOD!
It has to be BY FAR the fastest and easiest installation of a Linux system I have EVER used!
I downloaded Mandriva One 2007 and burnt it to CD, first of all running it as a live system to check out how my laptop dealt with it - good - so then I clicked the desktop icon to install it. It was so quick! And so simple! The only thing I really had to check was the partitioning (I already had my system partitioned, dual booting with Windows XP, so I just formatted the old Mandriva 2006 partitions and put 2007 here - this was at the installers suggestion).
And THEN (the best is yet to come) I rebooted, went into KDE, all good, then plugged in my Speedtouch modem and using Mandrivas own configuration tool (Configure Your Computer - Network & Internet - Set up a new network interface) I set up to connect to the internet and to connect at boot and.........IT WORKED!!!! This blasted Speedtouch modem has been the bane of my life, usually I've managed to sort it out with SpeedTouchConf, but this time it was unbelievably simple and straightforward! Phew! And ironically this comes just days before I am due to get gear for a WiFi network, so I guess it'll be back to the drawing board!
Mandriva 2007 is super slick, with fantastic 3D desktop effects (windows bulge and move into the distance and bob up and down when you maximise, minimise, open menus) and the One CD has all the basic applications on and of course more can easily be downloaded.
I've only just installed this evening so it's early days but I'll be posting any further interesting progessions.
Impressed!

Amarok plays BBC radio

2007-01-30T22:29:00.000Z

*I've just corrected this because it didn't work before - just found out why - my typo!

Finally found out how to add BBC radio streams to Amarok.

In Amarok go to Playlists - Radio Streams - Add Radio Stream and put in the following information:

Name: BBC Radio 1
URL: mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/radio1/radio1_nb_e1s1

Name: BBC Radio 2
URL: mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/radio2/radio2_nb_e1s1

Name: BBC Radio 3
URL: mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/radio3/radio3_nb_e1s1

Name: BBC Radio 4
URL: mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/radio4/radio4_nb_e1s1

Name: BBC Radio 7
URL: mms://wmlive.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc7/lo_s1

OpenSuSe 10.2

2007-01-30T22:10:00.000Z

Just did a clean install of OpenSuSe 10.2 x86_64 on my PC (AMD64). It's pretty stylish, installed easily and works well. It seems to be picking up my onboard sound better than 10.1 did (sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't) and in fact I think it has detected it correctly without fail so far. I haven't got my webcam (cheap iSpeed camera) or TV card (Twinhan DTV) working correctly yet but I haven't really played with it too much. Can't get the damn Speedtouch modem to work but I think this is because it's a rubbish modem. I intend to get a wifi modem/router at the end of this week and probably will use an ethernet connection from it to this PC and use a PCMCIA card or USB stick for my laptop. I'll let you know how it goes!

Changing hostname & upgrading to Kopete 12.1 on Mandriva 2006 Free

2007-01-30T21:50:00.000Z

I'm running Mandriva 2006 Free on my HP Pavilion ze4900 laptop. It installed nicely, and I even got my Speedtouch 330 modem working using SpeedTouchConf, including to connect at boot.

I wanted to change my machines hostname from the default "localhost"... here's how to do it:
Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network - I used kate to edit this file, so as root I typed
kate /etc/sysconfig/network
And added the following line
HOSTNAME=whatever name you want
Finally I saved and closed the file. On reboot, the hostname has been changed.

I was also keen to upgrade my version of Kopete (10.3 I think) to the new 12.1. I had to find a repository for this and add it to the installation sources. I got the Seer of Souls repository and added it by opening a terminal as root and typing:
uprmi.addmedia http://seerofsouls.com/mandriva/2006/i586/KDE-3.5.4 with hdlist.cz
Then all you need to do is go to 'Configure Your Computer' in the menu, then choose install software packaged, search for Kopete and the new package should show up in the list. Select and install. Easy!

BROWN GNOME BACKGROUND

2006-12-28T13:38:00.000Z

This is my very first background...I was very pleased about everything with the exception of the gnome logo, which I tried to do again and again, but it never seemed to work with the background. I used a combination of Inkscape and Gimp to make the background.

I'm still here! Update on Suse 10.1

2006-12-16T12:52:00.000Z

I know, I know, I haven't posted for ages...not since the suse 10 disaster. A lot has changed since then. I installed Suse 10.1 which is slick and intuitive. Issues I've had or am having that are worth a mention are:

- Updater
This is a big old mess! There are some instructions here on how to solve the problem.

- Can't get Speedtouch 330 modem to connect at boot
Speedtouch modems are notoriously difficult to get working under Linux (they're generally the crappy cheap one's that come free from your ISP). I use Steve Parker's Speedtouchconf to get things working but unfortunately it won't connect on boot (which it used to under Suse 10). This isn't a big deal as it only takes a few minutes to run the script but it is a little annoyance.

- Flash player in Firefox
It just wasn't working, although I thought I'd got it installed. Eventually I went here and downloaded the beta Flash Player 9, followed the instructions in the read me file and hey preto! Note that there is no 64bit version, so I presume I must have 32bit firefox installed although I'm using a 64bit machine with Suse x86_64.

- Xine engine
Occasionally the Xine engine can't be initialised after I've booted up (so no audio). Don't know why or what to do about this.

Apart from that it's a great distribution. I like it!

2006-12-02T16:57:00.000Z

I am on 6.10

I bought a german computer magazine the other day and noticed that it included the new Edgy Eft 6.10 version of Ubuntu, on the cover cd, so instead of carrying on with my old version 6.06 of Ubuntu, I decided to upgrade.

Even though I have heard loads of comments about it being "NOT THAT EDGY", which could be true. The fact is that I haven't experienced a distribution that has run with so few hick-ups ever. It is very reliable...

The main difference is in the start up screen, no matrix screen, to scare one away. It is odd, as a whole it just feels a bit more smooth, as if it all just works.

Even the fortune-cookie generator "wanda" has been improved, by having a face-lift.

Choice

2006-11-09T13:31:00.000Z

Choice or lack of it, is often the
concern of those who advocate the use of free software, though free
software is some thing different people to different people. A lot of
users, use it on a variety of platforms, but it doesn't tell that
much about the user. This would tie together with the fact that the
users of free software, come from a lot of different cultures, have
different social positions and functions in society. Still, the
belief that software should be free bonds a lot of people, who do not
necessarily share any other beliefs with each other.

Those that choose free software have
made a choice, that choice isn't always based on the concept of
freedom (libre), but more often it is a choice made based on
practicality or cost.

To them free software is often the
cheapest option out there, it probably comes in their own language,
is not as unstable or prone to the near same impregnation by
malicious viruses, hacks etc... that proprietary code so often is.
These users have made a choice, maybe it can be said to be the wrong
one in relation to the beliefs of the free software movement, it is
still after all a positive choice.

This matters a lot, because proprietary
operating systems and software is not automatically a choice based on
any principles, it certainly wasn't for me when I first gone into
computing, it was just what everyone else was using. Now, users are
also using free software because it came bundled on their $100 laptop
or it was on the net and ripe for downloading and sharing.

This has consequences that many more
experience than I have talked about before, but the most important
one is that it wasn't them that made the choice, even though they
would have if they knew what free software advocates.

I would like to explain a little
further about choice and more so, of my own choice to run free
software.

I was recently at a wedding and I ended
up talking about Linux.

The guy I talked to asked me, if I used
Linux 100%, which to him must have sounded incredible, because it
surprised him a lot, when I admitted that I use it for everything and
that it was all that I used. This lead to him thinking that I was a
hacker, but I am nothing of the kind. I needed then to quickly
explain to him, how my use of Linux, fits into an overall philosophy
of “living right”. Which surprised him just as much as my earlier
comment.

To me free software and Linux fits into
a theory of “living right”, yet living right should be at no
cost. It shouldn't cost me more ethically, spiritually or give me a
sub-human lifestyle. This living right philosophy, has caused me to
make choices, whereas before it was my senses and my following the
herd philosophy that dictated what choices I made. This was not
freedom, but rather the lack of it and the choices I made could be
said to be non-choices, because they were not really choices at all.

I have now gone into the habit of
making choices again, recently I turned to a greater extent organic,
more than I was before, not to buy things harmful for the
environment, save electricity, recycle etc... I also told the chap
about these choice and he added it all together and responded with a
buzz word that I couldn't shake off, because to me it is right. Linux
is “ecological computing”. It is just like in organic farming,
wherein it is a choice of not having pesticides and e-numbers
touching the food you eat. Free software is the same it is the choice
to use and keep some software free and open, so only good code is
added and bad is eventually edited out of it.

In my eyes Linux and free software is a
natural progression of the choices I make and the principles that are
the foundation of them.

A SUSE 10.0 disaster

2006-10-04T17:35:00.000Z

I have had a disaster. A SUSE 10.0 disaster. Here's how it all happened......
Earlier today I decided 'wouldn't it be great to update all the stuff on the system!'. So, using Yast I blithely clicked at will on any packages I could and marked them for upgrade, freely and easily checking random boxes to resolve any dependencies. I didn't know what I was doing. Something happened, something strange and dark. I got errors: "No mime type installed" and "application/octet-stream". I was lost. I rebooted. It became worse. The whole display had gone cuckoo and I stumbled about for a while trying to see if I could alter the settings, then tried to back up all my data but to no avail. I put in my SUSE 10.0 disc and tried an "upgrade" to see if this would help but when the system rebooted during the process it came back with the fudged display and I was unable to continue. But it's not the end of the world. There was no real important data so I'm going to wave it goodbye. I'm in the process of downloading SUSE 10.1 (which I've wanted to upgrade to for a while) and I am going to do a clean install.
I will report again soon!

WANDA

2006-09-11T20:16:00.000Z

I have made an extra piece of animation for the little box, in WANDA, the little fortune cookie generating fish applet that gives advice, suggestions and quotes hosted on the gnu linux gnome desktop.

It is a simple PNG graphics image. It is composed of 10 frames and I got the best results at a frame rate of a change every 0.3 - 0.5 seconds. You can change this in the preferences option.

It is share-alike -creative commons just like everything else I create, so improve on it and share it with others.

PART OF A lETTER I WROTE TO MY MUM, LINUX YOU CANT GET MORE BASIC THAN THIS!!!

2006-08-09T16:08:00.000Z

Suse is the one heralded already now as The Windows VISTA beater...in that its 3D and graphical desktopå is light years ahead of what microsoft have thought up. Suse 10.1 is German and very efficient, I use suse a lot, it occupies one of my harddrives.

SimplyMEPIS is the liveCD thatcomes with all the non-GNU apps and GNU are not to happy about it, so they are being told off at the mo by the FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION.

I havent mentioned the fedora project either, the home computing (rather businessy) of RED HAT....it is totally free unlike RED HAT which is enterprise only now.

What you do have is the latest version of Ubuntu, which can be turned into Kubuntu or Xubuntu.
The difference is the desktop, in the old days you just had a green screen and you typed commands, now it has more than 4 different types of desktops to choose from

....the most popular is KDE or rather THE K DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT, it is the most fancy and very damn thing can be easily adjusted. It also has a very loyal group of artists and app developers that create some amazing stuff.
Just look at kde look..it has tons of wallpapers, icons, themes etc... distro's using KDE are Kubuntu, Slax, Suse...

http://www.kde-look.org/

.....The second most popular is GNOME...which is also the most simple to use, a lot can be adjusted very easily, but not everything, which if you are a KDE user can be a bit irretating. It is the original desktop supported by the free software foundation and is what UBUNTU the most popular linux distrobution runs on. I have UBUNTU on one of my partitions.

http://art.gnome.org/

After that it is XFCE which is very lightweight and doesnt take up much power. Used in vector linux, damn small linux and XUBUNTU.

http://www.xfce.org/

Enlightenment is not very mainstream at all, but it is very cool...a bit like xfce, but it looks and works a lot better. You can get it on the enlive LIVE CD...look on the web if you are up for it.

http://enlightenment.org/

Then there are packages
Different systems run on different types of packages

RPM which was originally used by red hat and is now used by various other distrobutions....RPMs are used by SUSE, FEDORA and REDHAT.

DEB or Debian packages run on DEBIAN, UBUNTU, KUBUNTU, XUBUNTU and KNOPPIX systems.

TAR.GZ are the file system used by SLACKWARE and other systems.

A lot of packages can be installed on systems they were not designed to be installed on using programs such as ALIEN which is for installing RPMs on a DEB system.

There are also BIN, they are BINARY files, which is pure code....you have to compile these yourself.

GOOGLE EARTH on 6.06 ubuntu Dapper Drake

2006-08-08T17:47:00.000Z

I installed BETA 4 of Google Earth on linux, the interface looks better than the one I used on the old google earth on windows and the graphics has a lot of bugs, but it works wonderfully. I did it thanks to looking on google and finding this very nifty link...a fewq commands in the console and it is up and running.

instructions to doing it are:

- open a konsole and type or paste

wget http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthLinux.bin

- once it is done type or paste the following:

chmod +x G*.bin

- followed by:

./GoogleEarthLinux.bin

- and that should be it!!! You should have the google earth install screen up and just do as it says until it is installed and working!!!

Good luck

The link to where I got the very useful advice...

http://www.macewan.org/2006/06/12/how-to-install-google-earth-for-linux/

SUSE 10.0 OSS 64bit working well - graphics card, mouse pointer, multimedia

2006-07-28T07:16:00.000Z

Graphics Card
I have finally sorted out SUSE on my system. I had been having problems which made it unusable - the system kept freezing up and going to a blank screen, no keyboard actions possible. After a bit of research I reckoned this was down to the graphics (I had onboard ATI Radeon) so I installed a new nVidia GeForce 6600, and just cos I thought it'd be easiest I reinstalled SUSE. At the end of the installation it is important to check the box to launch YaST so that different graphics card / display settings can be tested out.

Mouse Pointer
Once I had booted up successfully and could see the GUI I found that there was no mouse pointer. Moving the mouse did affect things so it was obviously there but not visible. I found information on the SUSE site which told me to do the following:
- Login as root in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + F1)
- Type:
- init 3
- Type:
- mcedit /etc/X11/xorg/conf
- Find the section "Devices" which lists BoardName, BUSID, Driver etc. and before the line "End Section" insert:
- Option "noaccel"
- Option "SWcursor"
- Save with F2
- Close the application with F10
- Run runlevel 5 by typing:
- init 5
Or I think I had to reboot at this point, whatever, it worked!

Multimedia
The next problem was not being able to get Amarok to play any music. I could play CDs using the CD player on SUSE but wasn't able to play any MP3s on Amarok or anything else. I searched about on the internet and it seems to be a common problem as the Open Source version of SUSE doesn't have MP3 support built in. I found this article which was really easy to follow and helpful and worked, and now I have music! http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/

So it's all going good now, I can finally properly use SUSE which is a great relief!

Linux design, what is the linux look?

2006-07-18T19:25:00.000Z

A lot computer users are very design consious, while others are not, but no matter what the Operating Systemc, the cabinet has been designed to look a certain way.
If you are a machintosh user then you would be very consious of this, one of the first things you notice about a mac is its design, which differs greatly from the standard windows cabinet.

A linux set up is on the other hand mostly a windows machine with the windows operating system deleted out of excistence. This is not surprising since a lot of linux users first get introduced to computing through a windows machine and later immigrate over to linux. There is also a real lack of vendors selling linux machines. This also nothing new, since the operating system has not been very popular until the current explosion in the use of opensource software.
I have only recently thought about the issue in conjunction with the "a laptop per child" campaign. In which the effort is to give children the world over a laptop, so as to aid learning and communication. The Operating System on the machines will be a Linux distrobution and this is more or less what made me think about this issue. The laptop-per-child laptop, looks great but is only for children in the 3rd world and it is also without the specifications super-users are used to.

In order for linux to reach the next level of adoption especially by the super-users in the west, it needs its own design, that is in the box, as well as outside of the box.

Having a flashy GUI (Graphical User Interface)is great, but as it is, without a box (cabinet) matching the GUI in design, linux will never reach near as wide adoption, as it would if it had its own "look".

I am all open for suggestions and if anyone has a design the linux community/industri I am sure would love to se it.
I have adapted my old windows cabinet as much as I can, I did it the traditional Linux way. I painted a giant penguin on the front, kde logo and placed a tux sticker where the windows one used to be.
This is only a temporary solution, I had showed a linux os on it only after I had grown dissatisfied with windows and kept on using it since I have lacked the funds to buy a new + I would love to know where you can buy a pure linux machine in Denmark.

My next machine, I hope to be a virgin (as in pure) Linux machine that has never seen a Microsoft logo in its life, I would love to be able to see clearly that my machine is different from a mac or windows machine.

Open SuSe 10.1 versus Dapper Drake 6.06

2006-07-15T18:47:00.000Z

A week ago I bought a Linux magasine at the train station, in it there was a Open SuSe 10.1 cd, I looked at it and threw it against my pile of linux install cd'. I was happy with my old Kubuntu and eagerly waiting for the new Dapper Drake cd to arrive in my postbox.

One day, (well two days ago) it arrived and as soon as I had back up'ed what I had which I didnt want to disappear, I was ready to get it installed.

Now, I wont debunk any of the hype by writing this...but the start up wasnt any more graphical than the last, though it was maybe slightly faster, it felt as if it was and less painful, though I cant say it was painfull installing the last one either. Everything was fantastic...until I had it up and running, then came the first problem, Xine which amerok uses instead of gstreamer, helix or any of the others just wasnt up for the job. I couldnt hear anything coming out of my speakers.

Then came the second problem, Adapt, the default installer with Kubuntu had dumbed down. Yeah, I can see the advantage of having a nice and shiny installer, but I couldnt see the point in having so few packages avalible (very exclusive, to the crem del la crem of linux business/serious programs). I dabbled with it so it could install some of the forbidden stuff, but funnily enough, it still didnt show any of my old favorittes.

I was forced to get what I wanted from source forge and sites of origin. Yet, even from there, I could only get Skype to work, Democracy just couldnt install properly.

I was quite fed up by this point, so I tried using another installer, which was more old fashioned and had packages displayed in the old less flashy maner, yet this meant that I could install missing packages and make things work even though the package manager couldnt.

I got a few midi programs in my start menu and I was quite pleased with myself and after an hour or two I shut it down again. I did this again a bit later after having fiddeled with it a while.

This was when it went really bad. I got up to my password screen. Typed in my password and return. Which was followed by a black screen, then nothing and back to the password screen.
I tried to start it up from the shell. Nothing but a error message, which more or less stated that something was wrong. I then said to myself that it must have been a bad install, but when I had installed it again and turned it off a couple of times, I had the same problem again.

This was when I decided to sleep on it.

When I woke up, bitter over the experience from the evening before, I found the SuSe cd and tried it out as a LIVE CD.

What can I say, it was very flash, very business and I loved it far more than Mandiva in apperance, yet it didnt have the cute, friendly apperance of Kubuntu or any of the other buntus.
It was what Windows want to be when it has grown up, the attention to detail was quite astounding.

It just felt as if it was all designed to work in harmony.
When it comes to packages, using Yast isnt that big a shift from Adapt and the KDE desktop is as great as ever. I could have choosen Gnome, but I have grown accustomed to KDE, yet I think I might get a xfce based distro for my fob-key.

I could also easily install Skype and couldnt install Democracy, because of a python package. I am still going to look for a way around this, because I would love to run Democracy player in Suse. It detected all my hardware wonderfully and is just generally great.

Well, hate to say it to the kubuntu/Ubuntu crew, but this time you lost me, I will try again another time, maybe some of the problem lies with my machine, so I am not really blaming you and I am looking forward to the next release. It was just a shame that it didnt work out, well SuSe it is, appropriate that I would use a very efficient german distribution, as they are my neighbours.

Why Antitrust Doesn't Cut It for NN (but why Google has to pretend)

2006-07-09T03:30:00.000Z

Harold Feld of Media Access Project on Google's use of anti-trust regulation as a fallback in case network-neutrality regulation fails to pass.

read more | digg story

Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem?

2006-07-09T03:27:00.000Z

People want to have better service somehow but then why senators don't want to happen.
Net Neutrality thing really stinks.

read more | digg story

Free Civ

2006-07-02T08:38:00.000Z

If it is that you can remember and miss civilisation or the myramid of other world strategy games, that has passed away to be replaced by the more graphics intensive games then this is for you.

In Free Civ you have control of a civilisation, your task is to allow it to flurish by building roads, buildings, monuments and industry. You will walk a fine line between providing entertainment for your people, getting takes from the people and developing new technologies. A change in any of these variables can be both benefitial or disasterous. The goal is the same as in the original game, become the best civilisation, through, sheer domination.

Free Civ is very much like the original, the interface can be even said to be better than the original, now you can move your pieces by simply pressing a couple of letters on your keyboard.

Where free Civ falls behind, is the graphics. The start up screen looks very cheesy, the next screen you meet is unneccesarily complicated, after that it is easy sailing. The actual land masses look much like the original, so do the characters and buildings. The exception to the rule, is the data you get through out the game, like the most popular town and what inventions your sciencetists have made, which is very basic indeed. The game could do far better, with more graphics in such places, in the original it came as newspaper print, going beyond the orignal game could put it on a different level.

A bit of animation here and there could not go a miss and could keep it alive for many years to come. A start up animation and at intervals through out the game and after specific actions can do wonders in the game.

An easy map editor or character editor , would also be very welcome.

The version that I used was a Free civ version 2.0.2. I am looking forward to seeing a later version and the improvements that no doubt follow in the future.

I give this game 2 out of 3 little pinguins

Good

Addictive
Good interface

Bad

Start screen looks way too basic
Not easily adaptable
Gets boring after a while

Bono asked to stand against DRM

2006-07-02T08:37:00.000Z

DefectiveByDesign invites U2 frontman and iPod aficionado Bono to take a stand against "Digital Restrictions Management" (DRM). They're asking all interested parties to sign a petition that will be submitted to Bono, inviting him to investigate DRM and its negative impact on artists and fans.

read more | digg story

The Music You Thought You Bought

2006-07-02T08:36:00.000Z

Michael Robertson discusses what happens when the company you bought your DRM protected music from goes under. It is kind of scary to think that when you have DRM music that must be authenticated, that you really don't own the rights to that music.

read more | digg story

French law affects copyright, DRM, Apple

2006-07-02T08:34:00.000Z

With a show of hands, French lawmakers approved a new copyright law on Friday, in a move that could have profound consequences for online music stores, open-source programmers, desktop Linux users and peer-to-peer file sharers.

read more | digg story

France legislature passes "iTunes law"

2006-07-02T08:33:00.000Z

After all sorts of protesting, name calling and backtracking, the French legislature has finally managed to pass their DRM law that could spell a bit of trouble for iTunes and other companies bent on locking down their own respective file formats.

read more | digg story

Cringely: It's time to own our own last mile

2006-07-01T18:29:00.000Z

The idea is simple: run Fiber To The Home (FTTH) and pay for it as a community of customers -- a cooperative. The cost per fiber drop, according to Bill's estimate, is $1,000-$1,500 if 40 percent of homes participate. Using the higher $1,500 figure, the cost to finance the system over 10 years at today's prime rate would be $17.42 per month.

read more | digg story

DRM DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

2006-06-30T17:57:00.000Z

Stop DRM from spreading.
DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT locks down the media that you want to play, so you can't play it on certain devices or copy it.

Now you will have to buy a copy of your music or film for each device you want to play it on (especially in the case of IPOD) or you wont be able to copy a film over to your harddrive (DVD's and CD's have a very limited lifetime), so backing them up is essential if you do not want to cough up for the same piece over and over.

Just think...in your lifetime, just because of the lifetime of the devices or media that you are using, you would have to buy the same song, again and again and again.

You can make a difference, dont buy DRM infested media and help change the law, inform you politician, tell them that you are concerned about this issue.

Get a personality on your side, sign a petition to get Bono to take a stand against Digital Rights Management DRM.

KERRY VOTES FOR NET NEUTRALITY

2006-06-30T17:46:00.000Z

"The Commerce Committee voted on net neutrality and it failed on an 11-11 tie. This vote was a gift to cable and telephone companies, and a slap in the face of every Internet user and consumer." from a guest blog for SavetheInternet.com by Senator John Kerry. He shows his willingness to fight for a free Internet.

read more | digg story

Senator Wyden to Block Telecom Bill Without Net Neutrality

2006-06-30T17:33:00.000Z

Network Neutrality pretty much died in the senate yesterday by a 11 to 11 tie... Yuk. Then Sen. Wyden came to the rescue and will filibuster the bill unless it is changed to include strong Network Neutrality provisions. Good news for us. Network Neutrality is good. The republicans do not have enough votes to block the filibuster.

read more | digg story

Open net calls fall on deaf ears

2006-06-29T19:13:00.000Z

Of course the BBC is referring to the failure of net neutrality here in the US. "Under the (newest) plans, providers would be allowed to give customers faster internet access for a fee."

read more | digg story

Making the bold move

2006-06-28T18:32:00.000Z

This is from a comment I left on DIGG.

I was introduced to the concept of opensource through using open office, gimp and later ink scape on windows.

This empowered me to experiment or rather make the bold step and go over to using linux. There is by it s very nature more open source software on linux and more free software in use on linux. There is though more windowsand mac machines out there and a very large user base, a lot of which are slowly moving over to using opensource.

Amatures often start with windows and move over to linux, once they have matured and start to crave more of their computer. If people want to go over to using open source, then they will no doubt take this rute.

AT&T secret room revealed

2006-06-27T17:09:00.000Z

It was very hush-hush, said one of the former AT&T workers. We were told there was going to be some government personnel working in that room. We were told, Do not try to speak to them. Do not hamper their work. Do not impede anything that they are doing.

read more | digg story

NET NEUTRALITY

2006-06-25T11:01:00.000Z

The last bit of news from digg, was very important indeed.

Even the founder of the net is for net-neutrality, companies that I usually label as slightly bad support NET-NEUTRALITY, over a million are for net-neutrality.

The question is why does a foreigner like me care about an issue in the great U.S of A.

Well as you probably know, if you live in the rest of the world, the issues that happen in the U.S.A. travel abroad and get forced upon the rest of the world.

This is due to the domination and power which the large american corporations have and if it is no problem to get a law passed in congress in the U.S of A. then it will often be easier to get it passed in small European countries, where there is often less opposition, especially when there already is a standard or rather a monopoly in place. It is often the case that many laws or standards are just imposed on the rest of the world with out ever being discussed outside of America, that is the power that lies in America being a super-power.

AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Are the ones who want control of your connection, do not allow them to do so.

Join the net-neutrality cause, like the countless others. I hate to say it, but in this case microsoft, yahoo, amazon and ebay are on our side and that is a very good thing too.

Read up on net-neutrality visit the following sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
http://www.itsournet.org/

Berners-Lee: Net Neutrality - This is serious

2006-06-25T10:59:00.000Z

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.

read more | digg story

Still confused by Net Neutrality? Don't Be! (Title Fixed)

2006-06-24T16:30:00.000Z

This video provides a simple and succinct explanation of what Net Neutrality is and why it is a GOOD thing. Watch. Learn. Contact your Congressional Leaders. Spread the word.

read more | digg story

Alternate Net Neutrality Proposals Submitted Just 2 Days Before the Debate

2006-06-22T16:07:00.001Z

Civil liberties advocacy group the Center for Democracy and Technology and New Yorkers for Fair Use, comprised of businesspeople and technology advocates, both released net neutrality proposals Tuesday, two days before the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is set to debate the issue.

read more | digg story

AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn't yours

2006-06-22T16:06:00.000Z

AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The new policy says that AT&T -- not customers -- owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."

read more | digg story

US Govt. to EFF: We're above the law!

2006-06-22T16:01:00.000Z

New court filings from the government argue that secrecy is more important than legality. "In short, the Government asserts that AT&T and the Executive can break the laws crafted by Congress, and there is nothing the Judiciary can do about it."

read more | digg story

Senate panel proposes Net user 'bill of rights'

2006-06-20T05:58:00.000Z

The latest Net neutrality provisions in a mammoth Senate communications bill stopped short of giving Internet companies and consumer advocacy groups all the assurances they have requested.

read more | digg story

Emilia Pinball - review

2006-06-14T20:39:00.000Z

It is not that infrequent that I get very excited about a linux game, but here is one that is showing a lot of potential.

I have been looking for a half-decent linux pinball table in a while, a few weeks ago I found one. In the midst of a search across the great, wide and wonderous web, I came across Emilia.

Emilia, which sounds like a cute girls name and probably is, has a lot of pinguins in it. It has a tux on its start up screen and even a tux board, for all you tux fanatics.

It plays well, the balls do what the balls should, but I would probably like for the spring to kick a bit more of a punch. It allows for several flippers and wobbles about when you press space (no surprises there).

The only problems I have with it are due to it being very fresh. What would be nice for them to have is some where to post your own board designs and a function where you can choose which boards to have with your game, just like the campaign selector in the battle of wesnoth.

The fact that so much has been done already is commendable and I am looking forward to seeing it mature.

I give this game 2 out of 5, oh so cute tiny pinguins.

Good

You can download an editor for use in conjunction with it.
It is very addictive.

Bad

Not enough levels.
Graphics is a bit naf.
Very basic (still new)

GOOGLE - I havent got the whole world in my hands

2006-06-14T19:56:00.000Z

I have been thinking of GOOGLE, (the collossal browser/search engine) and google has been thinking of us in the linux community, after a lot of pestering from side of the community, they have finally given in and made it possible to use Picasa on linux.

I was introduced to Picasa around the time in which it came out (...on windows) and was not severely impressed, but the program has matured quite nicely.
Now I find it to be ok.

Picasa is actually quite simple, but rather effective. It finds out where all your image files are on your computer, presents them in a manner in which it is easy to find the images you want to use, from there you can choose to send it to your blog,print,label your image or you can choose, to use any of its numerous functions.

I have my images nicely organised in a lot of small folders in a larger folder, in my home area, on my computer, like most linux users and not all over the place. This means that the search function is of limited value to me.

The way that the images are presented within the program is nodoubt better than most image browsers, but non-the-less, it is not enough for me to switch over to Picasa, as my primary image browser, neither does all the extra functions get me to wag my tail any faster.

It must be pointed out that they had packaged it in a lot of different formats, so actually getting one to run on my KUBUNTU desktop was a breeze.

The controversy surrounding this piece of software, can be divided into two areas...the first being that they havent bothered to create a linux version, but have instead made it compatible with WINE. If you do not know WINE is a program for running Windows programs inside of Linux.

The other controversy, is the fact that it is NOT open source and as any one knows GNU linux is all about OPEN SOURCE.

I will not give this software any penguins, because it is not really PENGUIN, actually it is more WIN, as in windows, than any thing else.

I have as yet not got the whole world in my hands, or at my fingertips, as I havent been able to get google EARTH to run on my LINUX distro yet, but the time will come, it is still very young on linux and I hope the guys and gals at google will do the same for google Earth, as they did for Picasa. I wish more organisations and programmers a like, would pack their programs in as many possible package types possible, to make it easier for normal users and beginners.

Why the MEDIA LICENSE is wrong.

2006-06-08T21:26:00.000Z

I will use my own situation, as a good example, because I am a danish
student, living in Denmark and I have as a matter of fact not seen any
tv, used their web content or listened to any radio by the Danish
media in over 2 years, through choice. I will include my views on
the matter, I recommend that you do a bit of research on this matter before you make your opinion on this matter.

It is far too expensive. It will cost over 2000 Danish crowns a year
for a MEDIA license for one household. If it is a large family, then
you could say that it is a cheap price to pay per household, but if
you are a student or living alone, the cost is quite unacceptable.

"It is far too expensive".

This will be almost half a months student benefit, out of the student
benefits in Denmark of 4.300dkr after tax a month.

This will be about 5-6 crowns a day, which is what I generally spend
on my lunch a day. Which is about 167dkr a month, that is twice my
mobile phone and skype fee together or 20dkr more than my monthly
internet connection.

"It converts internet users who can't or refuse to pay into freeloaders..."

I also have to pay for food 1000dkr, housing 2.500dkr out of the
benefits each month, so it certainly does'nt spread very far and once
this tax is implimented, which it will next year. It will force me to
be even more socially secluded, which is the case with modern
students, they really arn't that wild anymore, how can they be, they
have to work in order to pay for their education, books, social life
and now also media.

It converts internet users who can't or refuse to pay into
freeloaders, and illegal viewers, even though in a lot of cases they
do not access any material by the channels in question.
This is quite disturbing. When you pay your taxes, you are in effect
paying for services which you will reap the benifits of at some point
in your life.

"....you can access quite a lot of content on the web and if they all crave a license then I will have to have quite a good bank balance just to access the tiny proportion of the web which I use everyday".

This could be pensions, free schools and other services, in this
instance it is only those that view their website, download their
content, listen to their radio stations and watch their tv, who will
get to enjoy this content. Those who don't are paying for somebody
elses service. The argument is that it is because people can access
their content from the web, which is true, but what they do not
mention, is that it is done in MICROSOFTS formats, meaning that you
have to have a Microsoft media player or plug-in that can play this
content. Linux users generally do not and will feel disgusted over
having to be force to use a microsoft product in order to access
content that they have in effect paid for if they paid their MEDIA
license.

My argument is that you can access quite a lot of content on the web
and if they all crave a license then I will have to have quite a good
bank balance just to access the tiny proportion of the web which I use
everyday.

Students who are already lacking in founds, will have a hard time to
pay for this extra tax, even though a lot of computer users and
students do not access this content at all, you could say that this
goverment-supported TV channel is choosing what content you watch. Who
pays for tv-channels you do not watch.

..."it will force people, who only use the internet.... to pay for radio/tv and a few internet radio/tv streams for others"...

In effect it, it will force people, who only use the internet and do
not want or choose not to see this content, to pay for radio/tv and a
few internet radio/tv streams for others. This is like paying for a
strangers grocery bill in the supermarket. What if I flat out refuse
to use any media at all, what then? Well the really cruel thing, is
that even if you have a shitty PC lying about that you only use for
playing old ASCII games, then this law will also catch you out, as it
is like having a TV lying about, you could in theory potentially
access their content.

Read this wikipedia article about the prices for tv across the world,
to get a feeling for how high a rate the Danish TV license is
currently at.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

If you believe this is wrong and live in Denmark then it would be a
good idea to sign the petition against it.

http://www.pc-licens-nej-tak.skrivunder.dk/index.php

netPanzer - Review

2006-06-05T12:01:00.000Z

Gaming was and is still not that big on linux, this is though a bit of a shame, as it is supposedly quite fun to code. This is partially due to there being put a lot of effort into creating great apps and a very stable system, which we are all ofcourse very grateful for. Despite this there are a few games out there that are really fab.

netPanzer is one of them, it is a multiplayer game played across a server online with quite a lot of players being able to compete at the same time and in real-time.

The start-up menu is very green and military in appearance, but once you have figured it out, it is quite easy to access the various servers to play on and to get started. The game will start on a green plain and you will see that you have a small group of tanks placed in a square formation. Already from that point in time, you are in a state of war and nobody will have mercy on you for a mere second.

"...nobody will have mercy on you..."

The object of the game is to destroy the opposition or to capture the various bases, which are in reality factories that will produce much needed tanks for you. Tanks you will need in order to take over even more bases.

It is often done under difficult conditions, in which the amount of damage inflicted upon you and a time limit, being deciding factors.

The grapics are good considering that it is an online multiplayer game and I saw no hacking in the graphics, so it is also quite smooth. You can see and feel which textures are horrible to traverse in, meaning that there are no horrible stalls and surprises, like in some games.

Moving your tanks, can be done simply with a mouse or the keyboard and all the funktions can quickly be accesed in a little window at mere click of a button.

"...defeated after a mere 10 mins,..."

In every instance, in which I played it, I was defeated after a mere 10 mins, mainly because I am not that great a strategist. It is pure carnage, I thought in the start that there was a time differential between fiering a shot or a missile and it being rendered on screen, but no, my missiles and shots, came on command and the retaliation from the enemy was faster than I had anticipated.

I was destroyed. This is why I believe it is not that addictive, because you have to be good at strategy, in order to succede. It still holds something for people that love to see explosions, destruction and carnage(who does'nt).

"....it is a great idea not to upset anyone...."

Observe before you shoot. I would suggest that it is a great idea, not to upset anyone too much by blowing them up or the like before you have found out exactly who is most disliked (this is quite often yourself) and then finding out how you can mount an offensive against them. I believe this will make you a bit more popular, meaning that you can possibly survive long enough to celebrate a victory.

Like any other great game, there are always improvements that could be made.
later editions would be better if they had more textures, environments, buildings and tanks, this would make it more addictive and more interesting. It would also be great if there was a graphical intro and some in game (atmospheric) music, that you can turn on and off with ease. There is neither the great social interaction of most online games and it would be great if there were some bonuses, like emoticons or tiny images of participants in the chat window.

It is GNU and everyone can help in with making this game better, lots of improvements will no doubt come in the near future.

It is avalible in several flavours of linux, mac and windows.

I give this game 3 out 5 slightly evil, but still cute, little penguins.

Good

Easy to play and to get started.
Smooth graphics, with explosions and carnage done in real-time.
Plenty of action.

Bad

You end up dying far too soon.
A lot of waiting around trying not to get killed.

BATTLE FOR WESNOTH - Review

2006-05-29T15:15:00.000Z

A monster, possibly a dragon with an enlarged head and with the appearance of the lead singer of Lordi, destroys an elf.

I look on at the carnage, I notice my weaknesses and streangths.
With a cold head, as always, I make a move.

Wrong move, some how I knew it, I tried to out flank them, I tried to apply the tit bits of strategy I could remember from previous gaming experience and to no avail. They will always go for easy prey. Its a hard world or worlds, should I rather say.

The Pixies, knights and other beasts destroyed my characters one by one, with due precission, like a chess player that has played this game once too many times. I had to hold out. I thought, what should I do, I knew it, at once, it was obvious, I had to retreat. I retreated behind the mountains with a few of my troops behind me.

"It is better than dying"

A text scrolled across the top of the screen "I love to see my enemies flee"

I replied "it is better than dying".

They had stopped following me. I was safe, I had time to regroup and to get a new bunch of recruits together. I just had to get some gold, "soldiers dont gro w on trees", I thought, while prowling the map for places to occupy, before I knew it the game was over, one of the beast armies had surrendered, I had surved but only just.

"I expect this could get slightly addictive"

I am not a typical player of fantasy games, I used to play loads of action games in my day, when I did'nt study as much as I do now, but somehow the social element to games do appeal to me, when I talk to people on skype, I often play mini golf or tetris, because the hands need something to do. In the same way people who play adventure games often need to socialise. This is where playing over a network comes in, it introduces far more variables to a games outcome than interaction with a pc can and means that you end up meeting loads of interesting people on the net. I expect this could get slightly addictive. Everyone has had the feeling at the end of a night, in the company of good friends, that you just don't want to go home. That is where the danger is, or the goodness, depending on your point-of-view.

Wesnoth is a very basic game. It is in a fantasy world, with lots of characters stolen from the realms of fantasy. Just like playing a board game, you have to wait for people to finish making their move, before you can make yours. Your objectives are listed at the start of each game and after that there is only your enemies that can stop you.

"...no fuzz, no frills, strategy game"

There is minimal amount of animation or attention put on the characters, it would also, at a glance, seem very spartan indeed. In comparrison it reminded me slightly of an early Zelda game, with some strategy put in for good measure. It must be said, that the story lines, at the start of each game, if you choose to pit yourself against the computer, are really cheesy to the point of being good.

It is really easy to control your characters, you dont have to press loads of buttons or cycle through a thousand windows. This probably what makes it such a great game to play., just like pac-man or tetris, it is all about the playability and this is most likely where they have placed most of their energy. It is therefore a no fuzz, no frills, strategy game. I expect that as with any other collaborative open source project, there will be loads of fab developments to look forward to in the future, nodoubt the graphics will get better with time and I hope they could make for plug-ins, like a amarok player plug-in, so I can control my music from within the program or other glimpses of genious.

I give this game 3 out of 5 little cute baby penguins.

Good

You can play against others on a server.
Has several flavours of Linux and has a Mac and Windows version.
Easy to play and to control the characters.

Bad

Graphics
Waiting for others to make a move (Lack of elevator music).

Recycling & running Linux

2006-05-14T07:53:00.000Z

On the theme of re-using old computers, I have now installed Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) on my old PC after a bit of upgrading. It has an Intel Celeron processor (will find out speed and post later), a refurbished 40GB hard drive, and DVD rewriter. I'm using this machine in my front room as an 'Internet computer' to download things from the internet. This should be preferable to using my main computer because it keeps the risk of virus infection on my main machine to a minimum and takes away worry - it doesn't really matter if a virus does get in to the old computer because there's nothing else on it and it can just be reformatted if that did happen. However, Linux is very secure online and there aren't as many viruses out there that target this platform, so it should be doubly safe.

I now have:
Main: Dual booting Windows XP / Open SuSe 10.0
Laptop: Dual booting Windows XP / Mandriva 2006
Internet computer: Ubuntu 5.10

Out of all of these Ubuntu has been the easiest to use so far and has had no problems with the hardware of the computer it's on. It has a very user friendly package / application download and installation program. I also like being able to spend time using Gnome as the other two Linux's that I have run KDE.

LINUX PODCASTS

2006-05-08T20:28:00.000Z

Catch linux on your POD or on your computer...here are my faves....

LUG RADIO

http://www.lugradio.org/episodes.rss

LINUX NEWS

http://linux.quicksurf.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=78

LINUXQUESTIONS

http://feeds.feedburner.com/linuxquestions/LQPodcast

DEMOCRACY PLAYER

2006-05-08T18:21:00.000Z

Democracy player is out on LINUX,
"oh yeah, so what!!!" I hear you say.

Well, then it is because you havent tried it. It is probably the coolest program for playing/downloading/making video feeds.

Video feeds/video blogs are just like the audio concept, just using video instead (very much like tv).

They are also, the next stage in the process of taking back the media.
"Make you own tv"...
"Do your own distribution"
"watch what the world is doing"
and all the while it is free.

Broadcasting

People at home, companies, small stations....amatures and professionals all making their own broadcasts and sharing it on the web.

Do you miss the days of local tv stations, well here they are and there has never been so many. Anyone can make one, all you need is something to record your episodes with (a camcorder or the like) and democracy will show you how to do the rest.

Watching TV

This is made possible using rss subscriptions, where you collect the address of the feed, put it in your player and it can download new episodes direct to the player, just as soon as they are made.

All at the press of a button, so the comparrison to it being like a normal tv is justified. All you do is press once for it to download the content of a feed(episodes)....
you can watch one episode, as you wait for another download. It can be made even easier than that, if you allow it to download episodes automatically.

You can have as many feeds on your computer, as your computer can handle, you can even save episodes of your favoritte program on to your computer
It is ideal for programs, which are only made once in a while and at irregular intervals (just like podcasts).

INSTALLING DEMOCRACY

It doesnt demand much to download and install it.
It is avalible on:

Windows
Mac
The following linux distrubutions.
Ubuntu (the current version works on kubuntu too)
Debian
Fedora

The fact that it is avalible on so many linux distributions is great and I can only say a great ....thank you, to the team who made democracy.

I first tried it, about half a year ago, I waited for it to come onto linux with bated breath after having converted 100% and finally gone to the PENGUIN SIDE,,,,well I am a bit DRAGONish (the KDE icon). It was so great, that I have talked about DEMOCRACY player ever since.

It only has a few downsides and most of these will be sorted out in the near future.

It might crash a bit on older machines, as it does take a bit of power. Plus, it is slightly unstable, as it is still BETA software, which basically means that it isnt that ripe yet. It is quite common for new software (it is like a testing process, we, the users find the bugs, while at the same time, we, enjoy the product).

I have a few favoritte feeds that I enjoy seeing on DEMOCRACY...

Rocketboom
Mobuzztv
Geek Entertainment Tv
Basic Brewing Video
Planet TV
Telemusicvision

Getting there with SuSe

2006-05-07T14:36:00.000Z

I finally decided to have another go with sorting out the problems on my SuSe installation - namely that the screen freezes up for no apparent reason and goes usually white or sometimes stripey green or grey.
First of all I got the modem working using Speedtouchconf - fairly straightforward, just follow instructions on the site - only problem I had was I started off with the wrong firmware and had to change it. Now it connects to the internet on boot - YAY!
I had an inkling that it could be to do with the ATI onboard graphics driver as I'd read about similar problems on internet forums, so I headed over to the ATI site and downloaded the Linux driver for my ATI Radeon Xpress 200 and followed their clear instructions on how to install it - it wasn't difficult.
I rebooted and the machine stayed on for ages, the longest yet, giving me time to surf the net, download Skype, listen to some music from a CD. But then, after 30 or 40 mins the same old thing happened again. White screen, no response from keyboad (e.g. ctl-alt-del or ctl-alt-f1) although I did note that the CD kept playing.
I rebooted and have just tried adjusting the screen resolution and refresh rate to the next one down (it was on the highest). It's been going now for around 20 minutes, so we'll see what happens.
I have also been using YOU to get update patches, some of them refuse to install though for some reason. I will look into it later.

Recycling computers

2006-05-06T10:02:00.000Z

Just wanted to say that I totally agree with Alex's sentiments about re-using old computers or parts. It is very tempting to just thrown out an old PC and replace it with a new one, and the rapid progress in the computer world makes this difficult to avoid in many cases, but it is possible to keep old computers, upgrade bits, and it is especially the case with Linux that you can run a decent system. There are loads of 'minimist' Linux distributions out there - I started off using Vector Linux on a computer that's probably about 8 or 9 years old now. I suppose it depends what you want to use the computer for, but there's no reason why you can't have a good, working, old PC happily running word processing programs, with internet ability etc. Newer models are great for hungrier programs and tasks, e.g. advanced internet programs such as video players, flash etc, graphic design programs and games, but let's not forget the little machines too! I think Alex's idea of having a main work computer and an older secondary one is a good idea, also if they're networked that allows the main computer to take some of the load off the other one.
Very good.

Skype on Mandriva 2006

2006-05-06T09:58:00.000Z

Cor blimey...it's been ages since I've posted! Well, here I am again. Following Alex's splendid example I have installed Skype on my laptop which runs Mandriva 2006. It went very smoothly as I remember, downloaded from skype.com and installed as directed, had to do some sort of fiddling to get it to show up on my 'start menu' thingy...I should have written all the steps down shouldn't I? This isn't much help! I may consider re-tracing my steps and posting in more detail at a later date.
I haven't actually used Skype yet, but I logged in. I don't think I've even got my webcam up and running, and haven't tried it out with mic, so watch this space.

I am not hurt by the delays...kubuntu

2006-04-22T22:03:00.000Z

Damn....there are so many delays out there VIsta, Dapper and others....but to be quite honest with myself.....I am so used to 5.10 KUBUNTU....now ....and I have gotten everything working ...fine.....well more than just fine.....that I am not upset if it takes a bit longer.

I used to watch TV...now I am a internet radio and podcast addict ....thanks to Amarok...My kaffeine player works fine - not great ...but hey,,,it is not that easy ....with so many unsupported formats out there.........

KDE - BABY.....I must say again that what I am most looking forward to, is the new kopette features (mainly video) in the KDE-UPGRADE.....wow. I just need to get a camera that is supported by linux....I suppose it isnt a normal problem inside of linux....but nothing would accept my PHILLIPS camera, so that is a pressie for a friend....as soon as I get a new one.

Getting better at it ....

2006-04-22T21:33:00.000Z

I got the SIMPLY mepis CD...it is a later one from the ISO i burned from the net, which as I might have mentioned was an unstable version. The only problem with it is that it hates my CD/DVD drive and actually...that is an problem occuring quite often ....almost everything I put into my DVD/CD drive that isnt a normal music cd it hates and either does'nt load/boot or does it badly. The question is, when am I going to buy myself out of the problem.......what ever it is going to be....it is definately going to be an internal drive, I have the space and am not afraid to shove things inside of the box.

I am also going to look at ways to dampen down the sound released from my maschine .- it is a lot and I would love for it to come down to a tolerable level.

My current machine .- is going to be part of a 2 pc home network, where the one is my kitchen machine (a multimedia machine) and the other (the one I will buy in the summer/autumn this year) will be a serious study/work machine.

The environment,,,,,

I need to upgrade.....but I also need to feel that I am not just throwing away and adding to the mountain of computer components out there, by reuseing my computer and delegating it to becomeing a kitchen machine, it means that I can have the added advantage of haveing 2 machines and not throwing things out just for the sake of it.

I believe that the next one should be even more upgradeable than the last and it might even be the case that I will only be upgradeing chips and cards in the future .- as I feel processor speeds have reached an almost ideal level for the work that I do (which is mainly study/internet-multimedia based). It is possible that I could keep it for upto 10 years if I did that.....I am sure that linux....can keep old hardware alive...it is only a question of how big the propriety-formats get, on the net - that will come to dictate the amount of upgradeing I will need to do in the future, as the open source stuff file formats really don't expand with the harddrive/processer development in society to the same degree, as propriety-formats out there....

DAMN IM GOOD -

2006-04-18T20:10:00.000Z

My SKYPE is on again and working + I have the feeling that it doesnt
need adjusting all the time like before .....

All I need to have up and running now - is my printer and scanner
...which is as yet still unrecognised by KUBUNTU.

and why do you ask!!! well I suppose it is because...I have spent zero
energy on getting KUBUNTU to recognise them ...

DVD PLAYER - PROBLEMS and the mighty UNIVERSE

2006-04-17T16:31:00.000Z

Most of my problems were solved and a few new ones were created by
getting new programs/drivers through UBUNTU UNIVERSE in ADEPT...I
enabled it in the MANAGE REPOSITORIES.

I have been getting a bit tired of having to reinstall kubuntu,
because ADEPT stopped working due to me having expanded my
repositories.

My last attempt was to install the universe repository of ubuntu, but
as you would belive it is never that simple, because half of the
programs do not work in kubuntu - so even that is a great time waster
-

I did though install as many drivers for gstreamer as possible, while
I was at it, meaning that Noatun and Kaffeine, are capable of playing
far more media than before. I also downloaded helix player, but I
havent been able to make it do anything useful as yet.

I can now play dvd's and play (in a roundabout way), some video's from
the web, I still lack proper flash support (it really dont work at the
mo)....I also need proper JAVA support.

I have found out that I cant get it to play NEWERE american DVD's - I
belive it is something with the copyprotection stuff .- not too
worried most of my films are KOREAN, japanese or European films.

I am just Happy that it is finally doing what i tell it to.

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE - DISTRIBUTIONS

2006-04-11T21:58:00.000Z

MANDRAKE

Well I started with mandrake 10.1....which was ok...i had a few issues
with it, as any one using for things none office related would....but
at the time I had no experience using linux....so I was incapable of
upgrading or installing anything without using the package finder + I
was unable to find a few of the devices that I was running on windows,
but atleast I could easily find my harddrives and get access to them.
I did'nt know how or where to get plugins/programs. It would have been
nice to have real player- so I could listen to radio or another player
with plug-ins so I could see/listen to other media. I also got the
chance to learn my system, this was also due to me having downloaded
SLAX (which I am using at the moment (the kill bill version - to be
precise)), knoppix and Damn Small Linux.

SLAX - is great it identifies everything, it is easy to use, it
does'nt make my fan go loco. I didnt even know what my bios was until
I tried loading it onto my computers in school, but I soon found that
out. The Kplayer included is also fine tuned, so I didnt have to mess
with it that much. I would have loved to have seen skype bundled with
it, amsn or the like. Kopette is fab - but I would also like to see
and talk to my freinds + use my computer as a phone- even on the go.

KNOPPIX - Where with slax, the software bundled had been carefully
choosen and with not more than one per funktion + with nice and tidy
menus. Knoppix is quite the opposite - it is more a case of shove so
many apps in a distro, as is possible - which is also ok- but it
scared me away from using it. It just made me feel as if linux or
rather knoppix was far too complicated, it lacked also guidance (what
app should I use for what, hardly perfect for beginners).

Damn Small Linux - This was no use to me...not because it was useless
- nope, it is just because there was'nt enough apps, easy enough to
use on the go and as ussual a lack of decent multimedia apps. It would
be great on tiny pcs (school systems), especially if it came bundled
with a few decent multimedia apps, as it already have a few great
office packages. I assume it would also be fab in an office, on the go
for people not expecting to se multimedia dependent web - pages and
video, in small computers fridges and car systems. It just wasnt my
cup of tea. The fact that it could be put on a credit card siced cd-
is a definate advantage.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The first impression given to me of linux was that it was a
complicated and hard to use system. This was simply on the fact that
once upon a time, it was more or less only a techie/nerd operating
system. I had never seen a screen shot, but i had made up my mind. I
was addicted to microsoft,,,,so a techie system was definately not
going to veen me away from it...well not until I had enough of system
crashes/program crashes - it is amazing how much I learned to tolerate
of that kind.

-------------
I must say that now I've been using linux a while, then I can tell you
that I have only experienced system crashes on Simply Mepis and that
happened only two times (it was the newest/experimental version)
--------------

My intention at the time was to migrate over to linux because:
a: Most of the applications I was using were opensource (open office, gimp)
b: The Vista upgrade....was imminent and I knew that I didnt have any
use for most of the features promised.
c: My experience with windows was that it became more and more
unstable, the more patches, devices and programs it was running.
d: I was starting to believe in open source, CC creative commons and gnu.
e: Following the path of my living role model and very best freind Amy.

---------
I know that there will always be the issue of opensource/closed
source, but still if there is no alternative and there are players
availible on linux for using very commonly used closed-source files,
then it is almost an obligation to clearly give instructions on how to
install/bundle it in with the rest. I hate being given the choice of
having to turn a binary file into a debian file or rpm, so it can run
on my system - just because I dont know how to do that. If clear
instructions were given then that would be an advantage. If there is
ever going to be a great migration over to opensource systems then it
would have to have all the advantages of the closedsource system plus
extras and certainly when it comes to multimedia and the web - a lot
of the every day multimedia programs dont come pre-bundled/installed.
That means that a user such as me wont be able to see the content of a
lot of sites.
---------
MAKING THE MOVE

A few months later and I was stil using most of my time on windows and
there was no reason for it other than saw a lot of sites using flash.
listened to radio using real player and watched video using windows
media player. This was my weak point and I knew it, I also hated
tweaking - I still do!!!

This was before all of the horror stories started circulating of
holes, viruses and the like on windows/outlook. To be quite honest, I
just ignored them - until I started getting a serious amount of
attacks on my system - plus it started to feel more and more unstable.
I started thinking about how much time, I used patching/looking after
the system and came to the conclusion that it was time to delete my
windows partition.

KUBUNTU

I then choose to move over to KUBUNTU, because by that time I had
falen in love with KDE and as an artist, I can only say that the
support by artist/hobbyists on KDE is fab. It is like the flash car of
linux - didnt know much about debian and stuff, then but....wow I
learn new things every day. My first real challenge was to installing
skype - did it- no probs - downloaded from the skype site, with out
any problems, but to be quite honest there were still a few challenges
out there....
The first was that I couldnt get acces to my other harddrives inside
of KUBUNTU (which meant that the mp3's, ogg files and other files
couldnt be accesed from KUBUNTU - this is why I am faced with the
choice of using "simply MEPIS" or slax in order to get access and to
play them.
The other is that I have serious problems with Kaffeine when it comes
to playing video files of any nature/even dvd's....it has loads of
plug-ins.....it isnt intelligent, so it really doesnt choose between
plug-ins for the various files - I dont know how to get it to do what
it is supposed to do + I am suspecting that it hates my discdrive,
just like that I am certain that it doesnt like my harddrive.

My temporary solution to the dvd problem was to get totem, but even
that wouldnt work. I am not going to get serious with 5.10 - of
kubuntu.......it wont have the long period of support and upgrades
that I am looking for, so I am anticipating 6.0 and Dapper Drake...the
upgrades to Koppette sound fab and I hope the harddrive prob will be
sorted in the new release.

simply MEPIS

My idea is now to have simply MEPIS on the one side and KUBUNTU on the
other,,, so they can share each others drives and I can reap the
advantages of both systems.

The great Advantages of simply MEPIS is ofcourse it being upgraded so
often and that it comes prebundled with all that I have moaned about
other systems not having, the only problem I have had with it is that
it is capable of crashing (freezing), it recognises things quite
easily too.

Kubuntu has the advantage of having great language support (i am
Danish and not naturally English speaking, making that an advantage
over a lot of other systems) + it looks great (in the way that a fine
tuned machine should). The packages choosen for download are
tried/tested and most of them just work - no probs.

This is how it is going to work. I have aleady installed kubuntu using
GRUB loader on the start spor, now I just have to install simply mepis
on another drive - a small challenge - but well worth it...

I will then have a serious school/business system KUBUNTU and a lesser
serious entertainment system simply MEPIS....both distros are great at
most of what the others do,,, but simply MEPIS is the best at
multimedia and KUBUNTU is just such a fab office/school system that I
cant live with out it.

LEARNING
-----------
What I really want to learn now,,,,is how to delete the content from
harddrives in kubuntu, seeing/using alien harddrives in kubuntu.

I also want to learn how to get my changes in the sound manager to stay put.
..............

FUTURE APPs - My wish list

The apps I want to see is a GUI app for installing RPM's and bundeling
BINARY and sourcecode on a DEBIAN system. I have ALIEN...which works
with Apt....but it would be great if if I could just do it from inside
Adept or a program like it. It is about choice....the more choice of
packages the better....

I would like HELIX or Real player to work inside of KUBUNTU - found
out on the web that it was a no-no.

I would also like to see KLIK running nicely inside of KUBUNTU and the
various apps. KLIK is the type of service that I think will bring the
hoardes over to linux, as it is so easy to use and very, very
promising.

KUBUNTU - Damn the badger

2006-03-06T17:48:00.000Z

Kubuntu is great, installed the 5.10 version. I have had it lying about absolutely ages, so I just had to give it a try.
It is great, the interface is much better than Mandrake.
I found it far easier to get things up and running. There is not a lot of the problems with it, I had quite a few with mandrake 10.0, there are though a few new problems.

The first is that it does not like my sata drive and refuses to boot up if it is plugged in.
It says something about an error 17.
The other is that I am having problems accesing my windows hard drives, on my windows partition. I could do this easily in Mandrake.

I rely on being able to throw files from the one to the other, so it is a bit of a downer if I cant get it working ok.

Early times and I hope that I can get it working 100% optimal.

It is still hard for me to install stuff - my lack of wisdom is inhibiting me from getting the most out of linux. I will read back issues of TUX to see how I can get the most out of KUBUNTU,

KUBUNTU is the KDE version of UBUNTU, which has a GNOME gui.

SuSe problems

2006-02-25T10:22:00.000Z

I haven't been able to use SuSe very much as the 'freezing up' problem still remains, and it's quite annoying. It happens randomly but often, so I have never been able to use the system for more than a few minutes at a time. What happens is the computer totally locks up, the screen goes blank and freezes, and I have to turn the computer off and on again manually with the button on the case. Very annoying. I've looked through various forums and searched on the internet for help and I think it's probably the motherboard (or onboard graphics) - and ATI motherboard. I may try to install the 32bit version of SuSe as I have read a couple of posts on the internet that claim this has more support for these boards ?but who knows?! At the moment though it's pretty much unusable so I'll have to try something.

SuSe 10.0 OSS x86_64

2006-02-08T14:55:00.000Z

Last night I got all the iso images I'd downloaded for the 64 bit, open source software version of SuSe 10.0 and burnt them onto 5 CDs. I installed this in the partitions on my system which had contained the (not really working) installation of Kubuntu 5.10 64 bit, and it all went smoothly, detecting and re-formatting the existing Linux partitions and leaving the WindowsXP one alone. It detected everything pretty well and I booted up first time into the GUI (I chose KDE as default). I only dabbled on it for a little last night as it was getting late, but first impressions are it looks nice and most things seem to be working except every time I try to open the control centre (yast) the screen goes sort of green or white and the computer locks up and I have to restart with the case button. I've had a little look some forums to try to find a solution and will try a couple of things later. Here are a few rather low quality screenshots of the installation.

Going 64 bit

2006-02-06T22:21:00.000Z

Hello, it's been a while so I thought I'd check in with an update on what's been happening in my world.

I now have a new home built computer, various specs as follows:
AMD Athlon 64 2.2 GHz CPU
1GB RAM
320GB SATA hard disc drive
DVD+/- RW
1x floppy drive, USB ports etc.
Graphics & sound onboard on ECS RS482-M motherboard
And it's black and silver colour!

First off we installed Windows XP - I still find it usefull as I'm no Linux expert, and there do seem to be some things I need that I don't yet know how to run on Linux, e.g. mobile phone sync software. Then, using Partition Magic I shrank the NTFS windows partition down to about 150GB leaving the rest as free space. I had a copy of Ubuntu 5.10 that I'd got free on a magazine and had been running on the old PC so I installed this. It partitioned the free space, creating a swap file, and seemed to install but I couldn't get into the GUI. Having researched a bit on the internet, to cut a long story short I think it's probably something to do with either the processer (being 64 bit whereas this distro is for 32 bit machines) or needing a new driver for the onboard graphics. I came to the conculusion that it'd be better to use a distribution specifically designed for 64 bit processors so I downloaded the 64 bit version of Kubuntu Live CD to test how this would go on the system, but it was kind of the same. So, feeling lazy, I tinkered a bit with Ubuntu and then just thought I might as well try another distro. SuSe looks to be good for 64 bit (the 64 bit version of SuSe 10.0) so I downloaded the Live DVD iso and burnt this to DVD to test it out - or tried to. I've been totally unable to burn the image to DVD although I've tried it using different programs (Nero, Record Now, Roxio) and on Linux using K3B and using different brands of media, but to no avail. So I've given up. Now i'm in the process of downloading the installation version of SuSe 10.0 Open Source which makes up 5 installation CD's and I'm just going to go ahead and have a go at installing it. Well I figured the way it is now I don't have a working Linux system so what is there to loose by overwriting?

I'll let you know what happens...

OPEN SOURCE DIAGRAM

2006-02-05T00:46:00.000Z

In order to understand the expansion of open source and all of the various uses in which it has become useful, I have made a curious type of chart. You can use it in conjunktion with the links, in the side bar or when serching on the web. My theory is that, the more useful a technology/concept is for the majority of the population, the greater its chance of survival. When open source was a concept purely for the minority, i.e. those deepely involved in computing, that was the time in which it was weakest.

There has been agreater expansion of technological knowledge since then and all areas of that knowledge has started to creep into every part of our lives. I have tried to include most of those, and I hope to include future eksamples of this.
Please contribute if I have missed a few out.

All of the various concepts come from the idea of "open source", so that is an obvious starting point, then I went to code and code needs written work to explain what happens in the code, so manuals and explanatory teksts were made open source, and from there it expands. Until the link to the original concept of source code, with out the imposing rules that companies put on them, dissapears into human concepts such as entertainment and alchohol.

I have placed the various concepts so close to their partners as possible, so music and film, which go very well together are close to each other in the diagram.

On the one end of the page is the technical concepts and the less technical they are the closer they get to the bottom of the page. That will say that on the one side you would find HARDWARE and on the other BEER.

I must apologise, but I can already remember a whole lot that is not on the graph yet, but I suppose that comes in the re-drawing.

I hope to do one based on time, but thatwill take a bit of research, research takes time and guess, what ? I lack that most of all.

Historical posts - Manrdake 10 / Mandriva 2006

2006-01-01T20:54:00.000Z

Chronologically these two posts should go pretty much right at the start of this blog. They were originally on a personal blog of mine and I have only just got round to moving them.

------------------------------------------------

09 November 18:12

Linux Mandrake 10.0 / Windows XP Home dual boot

I have finally got around to installing Linux Mandrake 10.0 on my laptop (HP pavilion ze4906ea) and it is now dual booting with Windows XP Home. (Mandrake is now called 'Mandriva' but I got these discs a couple of years ago.)Here is what happened:
I tried to do this previously, about a year or two ago, but ran into problems and gave up. I think what happened was I got a message saying there was no space on the drive or it couldn't read the drive or something like that and the installation cancelled. I believe this was because I hadn't done the following in Windows first:
CHECK DISK
DEFRAGMENTATION
So this time I made sure I did a full disk check and defragmentation of my hard drive before I began.
I put in the first Mandrake disk and rebooted the computer. (Most new computers will boot from CD, but if yours won't you have to go into the BIOS settings when the computer is starting up and change the boot order so that CD is first. It will then look to the CD drive to see if there is any boot material before looking to the hard drive). Mandrake 10.0 uses the DrakX installation program which I found really easy to use, with very clear instructions.
The first few steps are to choose your language and accept the license agreement etc., all pretty straightforward.
Mandrake picked up the mouse as Universal which works fine at the moment with the Synaptics Touchpad I have - the only difference to Windows so far is that you can't tap the pad to click the mouse buttons under Linux.
The first scary bit - where to install Linux. DrakX presents a few options, and as I had only Windows XP on the computer and wanted to keep it along with Mandrake I chose "Use the free space on the Windows partition". It is possible to do custom disk partitioning but I decided it would be fine for drakX to sort it out itself as I didn't need anything special. I was then presented with a slider which could be moved to alter the amount of space to keep for Windows, so I reduced it to around 30GB leaving 10GB for Linux. I think this will be enough for now, and if not it can (probably!) be altered in the future. Clicked OK and waited while it formated my hard drive, creating new partitions, hoping it wouldn't all turn to toast. It didn't.
Continuing on the only other eventful part of the installation was to check that everything was configured properly. Pretty much everything had been picked up by DrakX except the Graphical Interface which I set to flat screen 1024x768 resolution and I think I chose the generic intel graphic card in the end. I kind of guessed a few things, just went along with DrakX as I didn't actually understand all of it. You can do a test to check you've set it up properly - a screen comes up and a message asks if it's displaying properly, which is a bit confusing as nowhere does the documentation say what it should look like! It was just a load of vertical different coloured stripes, and it looked pretty clear and good to me so I went with it, and it turned out fine. I believe the configuration can be changed later but obviously it's difficult to work in Linux without the display being properly tuned in the first place.
I chose that I wanted Linux to boot into a graphical interface rather than a text one as I will mostly use the gui.
The boot loader I think was automatically LILO and was put on the Master Boot Record. This enables me to choose whether to boot into Windows or Linux when the machine starts up.
And that was it. Hoping and praying I rebooted and went into Windows. After running a disk check (scheduled by the Linux installation), XP booted up absolutely fine. There was only one weird thing - the 'found new hardware' thing popped up and said the new hardware was installed and ready to use and then rebooted. Not sure what that was about, but it seems all OK. I booted up into Linux and that was all good too. Graphics fine, and sound good too, except I can't change the volume on the keyboard or keys on the laptop case now, only by using a slider within Linux.
I plugged in my printer, an HP PSC 1317 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier and went to configure hardware and it picked it up. I had to choose a driver though, and there wasn't one for this exact machine so I chose the HP PSC 1300 one. I tested by printing out a text document and it was fine. Haven't tried scanning or done a full check of printing functionality yet.
Haven't even looked at internet access as I'm pretty sure it won't work with the modem in the laptop, as I think it's a winmodem and these are notoriously difficult to get working with Linux. Also I have a broadband USB modem coming soo and I'm hoping this will be easier to configure. We'll see!
I'm very pleased!

20 November 10:58

Mandriva Linux 2006

Mandrake 10.0 was good, but there were a couple of minor problems I was having (modem, touchpad) and as I finally have broadband I decided to upgrade to the new version (2006), now called Mandriva Linux. I downloaded three iso images by going to the mandriva.com website and burnt these to three CDs using Windows. Once done, I rebooted the machine with the first CD in the drive and the installation process began. I decided to do a clean install rather than upgrade Mandrake 10.0, so chose this option when asked. I used the existing Linux partitions, formatted them both, selected the packages I wanted (I wanted to install more windows managers e.g. GNOME etc). Had a problem with the installation not reading from CD2, so the first time I skipped this but the system installed with quite a few things missing although it did boot up fine into GUI, so I went back into Windows and ran MD5 checks on the iso's (should have done this before burning them to disc!) but actually they were fine. I burnt another CD2, thinking it could have been a faulty burn, and re-started installation. Again, it seemed to be having trouble reading from the disc and kept ejecting it and asking for CD2 again, but I persevered and after about three times of it ejecting the disc and me putting it back in the installation continued fine. I had to manually configure the graphical interface again. I chose Intel 85x as the X server; chose to configure all heads independently as the system supports multiple head configuration; chose xorg 6.9 with hardware acceleration; set the resolution at 1024x768 and 16 million colours (24bits); chose flat panel 1024x768 for the monitor for both head1 and head2. The test was fine so I proceeded, and that was pretty much it. Rebooted, all went well. Mandriva 2006 is nice, the first main advantage with upgrading to it was that the Synaptics Touchpad worked much better, supporting touch-to-click and the side scroll panel, and also it can be deactivated using the button on the laptop case. There is also now a battery meter on the system panel which reads how much battery charge there is and whether the machine is running on battery or ac power. Very handy. There are also alerts when the battery is running low. Getting my modem working (speedtouch330) would still prove to be a little tricky, but that is another story and will be told in another blog entry! And in case you're wondering, yes I'm using Mandriva Linux right now to write this!

News - Ubuntu 5.10

2005-12-17T00:26:00.000Z

I have installed Ubuntu 5.10 "The Breezy Badger" on another machine of mine, a desktop pc. It dual boots with Windows 2000 professional. The installation went very smoothly, sound works fine, graphics look good (just adjusted screen resolution as it was set so everything looked rather tiny), GRUB boot loader is fine. I used the speedtouchconf script again to get my SpeedTouch 330 USB modem working, but this time when I set it to connect at boot it worked just fine, so I'm automatically online now when I login. This saves me the hassle of having to manually connect and is good for me as my connection is a flat rate one, not one where I am charged by the minute. If you are charged by the minute you can choose to manually connect (and disconnect) whenever you like. Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop, which I have not used very much at all before. I quite like it, it is different to KDE but still it is good. There is a version of Ubuntu available running KDE as default, it is called Kubuntu, and if you already have Ubuntu installed you can download the KDE desktop too. I have not been able to access the Windows 2000 drive from Ubuntu, nor can I access Ubuntu from Windows 2000, but I do not mind this at the moment. Perhaps I will see if it can be solved some time.
I'll keep you updated of anything noteworthy Ubuntu-wise.

More screen stuff

2005-12-17T00:17:00.000Z

Actually, I did too have problems with my monitor when I first installed Vector Linux on an old desktop PC. The installation didn't automatically pick up the monitor, and because I (unwisely, I now see) set it to boot into the GUI, when I first booted up after installation I was confronted with a flickering, confusing screen and a very puzzled feeling. I couldn't make out anything on the screen and had no idea of any way to get to a text prompt, and even if I had known I wouldn't have known what to do! Eventually, I managed to twidle with the knobs on the monitor until I could just about see what was happening on the screen and then was able to get into the system setup in the GUI and reconfigure the monitor.
It is important to find out your monitor type, horizontal and vertical refresh rate and frequency before installing Linux. This can probably be found by searching on the internet or looking at any paperwork that came with your PC, or by looking on the label on the back of the monitor.
However, a lot of the new Linux distributions are very good at picking these things up, and you may (as I found with Mandriva 2006) have the chance to test the configuration before completing the installation.

SCREEN

2005-12-15T08:25:00.000Z

Actually the first problem that I had with Mandrake 10.1 was that my monitors screen frequency and display was not found automaticly by the installation wizard, I heard from Amy that she hadnt had the problem, so obviously from computer to computer there are a few issues that dont affect all. I tried looking in manual and on the back of the monitor, but it was not until I pressed the button on the monitor it self, that I had any luck. I have never had the same problem with live-cds.

Beginners guide to LIVE CDs

2005-12-06T13:45:00.000Z

THE WORLD HAS GONE LIVE

I know that those of you that are experienced and done it all, don't need any explaining about what to do with a live cd, but it can be hard for beginners, so while I am still on the ground here goes.

LIVE CDs ARE GREAT

You can have them about you, where ever, when ever, for almost any need. You can have the advantage of having all of your data ( addresse book, notes, diary), computer settings, favorit programs etc...on you at all times...

Just think about how you will be able to have all of that with you, with out having to take a PDA or Portable Computer with you, when going on holiday or on trips.

All you need is a computer to shove the cd into and you are on your way....just think about how and to what degree the world is connected (online) and how often you will bump into a cyber cafe, then you can see the advantage of such a system.

START

The first thing to do, as it says in the instructions for every live cd, is to set it in the drive, turn the computer off and start it up again. If the computers BIOS has been set to boot from cd/dvd rom, then all should be fine. In most cases it should start up....you will see loads of letters and numbers roll down and sooner or later you will hit onto a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

If you dont....you will need to.... when starting your computer, press a certain key constantly and you will get a text screen (in my computers instance it is DELETE). From there you will have to go to though the list of options until you hit BOOT (dont be afraid to search) and then a media (on my computer it is CD/DVD boot as nr 1, usb boot 2nd and harddrive 3rd), change it to CD/DVD first if it is a live cd, if it is a live usb-key (dongel) then make sure that it boots to usb before the harddrive. Then save and leave the BIOS screen....it should boot up fine now.

In earlier computers, there could probably be a few things wrong. It could be that it will only boot from floppys.... that could be due to it being the standard in the old days before cd's.

I am supposing that the cd-rom it self could also be a problem, if it was made before the modern standards came in place. (but that is only a guess, I have heard of it creating other problems).

GET SET

The next thing is to set your settings, language...time etc...In most cases this is simple either you can keep the sttings saved on a USB dongel or with slax you can also have it saved across the net.

GO

Now, if you are satisfied with your LIVE CD, then you can often install it permenantly on the computer...this often involves partitioning (BEWARE....keep an extra copy of the info,,,,and remember to partition the right drive, not like me that deleted a half years worth of info). All you have to do is follow the instructions, use a lilo or Grub loader, and you are on your way.

FASTER

If you are satisfied with the cd, but not the packages...then you can always make your own live cd, by installing packages froom the live cds web site.

There are several live cd out there, some tiny clones of larger systems, such as mandrivas live cd. There are also others first made in a trial run and then became a permenant fixture on the horizon: KNOPPIX and Damn Small Linux

My personal favorit is SLAX....

Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL Modem

2005-11-27T23:19:00.000Z

This post is about the Alcatel/Thompson Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL (broadband) modem and how to get it working on Mandriva 2006.
First I tried to configure the connection through Mandriva's configuration wizard but didn't get far - the modem lights blinked a bit but no connection was made.
After a lot of searching the net, I stumbled on this http://steve-parker.org/speedtouchconf/ just what I needed. I had to install a few other things (dependencies) and did this through Mandriva's installation thingy, also installed the microcode from the speedtouch website, then logged in as root by opening a console and typing "su root" and putting in the password when prompted, cd'd to the directory then ran the script /speedtouchconf-2.0_16_Oct-2005/speedtouchconf.sh and followed the instructions. Need to know vpi/vci numbers (which in UK are 0 38), user name and password, then hey presto it connected!
I have been unable to get it to connect on boot and also can't start it once it's booted by using /etc/init.d/speedtouch start, I have to run the script every time, but I'm so pleased it actually connects I don't mind.

A brighter future

2005-11-27T22:45:00.000Z

In the true spirit of open source I have indeed played with your picture Alex, and added this bright sky background to show we are looking forward to a brighter future with Linux!

BABY penguin

2005-11-27T19:31:00.000Z

A logo, i think it gets the message across that we are only beginners, but looking up.

In the spirit of opensource, linux and the like, all images that i put across you can use, play with and distribute.

Introducing Alex

2005-11-27T18:06:00.000Z

Hi my name is Alex
I have been using linux the last 4 months and I am steadily, moving away from windows.
I have known about linux a long time now, but been a tiny bit afraid to try it out on my own system.

My path to linux began when I started to use opensource software about a year ago, open office (an office package) and gimp (a graphics program) and in the spirit of open source, soon I was ready to go a step further. The first thing I downloaded was Damn Small Linux, then I used Knoppix and then Slax. This gave me the confidence to install LINUX on my system, and now I have a dual partition with mandrake 10.1 on the one side and windows on the other.

I am still experimenting with SLAX and hope to make my very own compilation of it, installing the packages that I need and creating a very personal bootable cd, for use on the move.
Knoppix is great but I love by far the ease of use that you only can get from Slax.

Mandrake is a fine system for beginners, but I am still learning some of its most simple functions. I hope to share what I learn from linux with everyone...

PENGUIN SKETCHES

2005-11-27T17:43:00.000Z

PENGUINS - - -

We need an icon, logo...that gets the spirit of this blog, at the same time it will be a great excersize leading possibly to lots of clip-art images of cartoon penguins and the like.
These are by the way sketches and not a final product, just bear that in mind.

Introducing myself

2005-11-27T17:28:00.000Z

Hi, I am Amy, I have been using Linux for about three years now on and off, but only just beginning to use it as my main OS these last few months. I can't remember where I first heard about Linux, but I think it was through surfing around on the net. I began using a live distro called Demo Linux, then installed Vector Linux on an old PC, and now have Mandriva 2006 dual booting with windows on my laptop. I'm learning, with the help of internet forums, guides and magazines, and want to contribute to this blog so that my experiences with Linux are out there to help others too. My main aims for the next few months are to properly get the hang of installing new software packages and learn some programming language stuff. Good, clean fun.

HARDCORE LINUX

2005-11-27T16:01:00.000Z

I am becoming more and more linux fixated, especially as it allows me to findout more and more about how my system works. I am a bit amature when it comes to knowledge of the system and I feel that I am tunneling my way through a lot of knowledge, trying to feel my way to the light switch. There is just so much to learn and experiences to share. I have no doubt that my knowledge is not always adequate, but what I lack i have in spirit. I have talked with one of my freinds, about creating a site, where we can share content, advice and information. I hope that this site wíll prove entertaining and adequate to your needs.