Tag Archives: Linux

Err, wow! I just booted into Linux 2.6 and am shocked at how speedy everything is. The mouse cursor acts like it’s on steroids. Browser windows pop up really fast. The GIMP loaded quickly.
I loaded 3 photos from the baseball game on Sunday into the GIMP. Each is 2560×1920 pixels, or between 1.8MB and 2.2MB in size. I ‘auto-corrected’ the colour on each to build up a large cache and the system is responding well. The auto-correction is quite intensive, both in CPU and memory terms. If I had done that while running 2.4 my machine would have ground to a halt while the images swapped in and out of memory (I also have Moz FB, xchat2, MGT, and Kmail open)
Another test – when working on the GIMP and large images, if I swap desktops it takes a few moments for the images to swap out and my browser and mail client to come back in. Not now! The images take about 1/2 second to redraw, and moving back to my browser desktop I can start typing here again immediately.
Of course, it’s not a completely fair comparision. I’m using the open source Nvidia driver, not the propreitary one I used before. I’m going to get the propreitary one working next.
(Tested on an overclocked 300 -> 500Mhz PII, 300MB RAM)
Almost forgot – I’m recompiling the kernel as well..

Prompted in part probably by this report on the state of GnuCash, Linux.ie will now accept banners from Open Source projects looking for a bit of attention. There’s more details on the page above, but be aware that not all banners will be accepted, and less mature projects won’t get a look in at all.
This is a service to boost awareness among new users to Linux. That means the applications have to work well and look good!
Update! I joined the #gnucash channel to lurk for a while. The first thing I saw made me grin.

<conrad> Oh man. I go away for a day, and hundreds of people join the channel…..

Thanks Waider for this..
#
# Dear Mr. or Mrs. Journalist,
#
# The changelog below is a list of modifications that have been made
# to the kernel at one time. By no means does this text reflect any
# official position of Red Hat, Inc. nor does any text reflect what
# is in the actual current kernel, due to the fact that we actually log
# tests and one-off builds as well.
#
# Sincerely yours,
# Arjan van de Ven
# Red Hat Linux kernel maintainer.
#


Owen Kelly just called from a POS show here in Cork. They suffered a power cut for a few minutes.
As the lights and machines came on again Owen spotted some weighing scales booting up. At closer inspection he noticed Linux boot messages and mentions of Red Hat scrolling up the small screen!
When booted, the scales have a touch screen interface and also display movies of food being cooked. I presume the interface allows the user to select the food being weighed, which dictates the movie shown.
Internet on your toaster anyone? Nah, that’s old news! Movies on your weighing scales is in now!

I read this on the GIMP-Users mailing list but as their archive is broken now, here’s the scoop via gnomedesktop.org (and thanks to Feedster for finding it for me!)
The next major release will be 2.0, not 1.4. Unfortunately this means that some features slated for a 2.0 release won’t make it until later. All you print shops will have to wait a bit longer for CMYK support.

Send your cheques to …

SCO is giving the “tainted” Linux users out there a way to clean up their filthy ways via a licensing program that will begin in the coming weeks.

After dolling out threats of legal action, SCO has called on enterprise Linux users to come forward and pay for code the company claims to own. The legal zealots at SCO reckon Linux has grown up too fast by nicking technology such as support for large SMP systems from its copyrighted Unix code. SCO plans to start calling Linux customers this week, asking them to pay up or face the consequences.

If you have an interest in the Irish language, beidh suim agat san clar seo. An Gramadóir will check your grammar and style. Kevin says, [it’s] the first grammar and style checker for the Irish language. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first such package for any minority language.

I finally did it. I went back to Window Maker after the longest stint away from it. The Bluecurve theme of Red Hat 9 under Gnome and KDE kept me busy for several months, but it’s now time to throw in the hat and go back to a simpler world.
One reason I’m ditching Gnome/KDE is a simple one. My new camera produces 2.2MB jpeg files. Opening those in the GIMP requires me to shut down Kmail, and even then the machine swaps. Of course I should really close some of the dozen tabs in Moz FB but I may need them later.. 🙂
Via the DockApp Wareouse comes wmFuzzy. It’s a neat fuzzy clock that’ll display “twenty to ten” instead of 9:40!
Lots more dockapps available at the warehouse linked above too.