Yup! Finally my laptop is here, delivered to my office at OMR, Chennai! After all those hassles(read this and this post to know more!)  I received it 12 days after my order was registered(ie, the day the amount was realized). In case you’re wondering, my Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1520, featuring an Intel Core2Duo Processor T5250@1.5GHz, 2 GB RAM, a 160GB HDD and (my most cherished component) nVidia 8600 mGT w/ 256MB RAM(although Windows and DXDiag reports 512 MB RAM, hmm). I’ll have a review on it shortly, both on Windows as well as Linux.  So keep reading in! (PS: Was playing Oblivion till 2AM yesterday , it looks :shock: @ 1280×800 with texture size set to large, all details set to Max, and HDR enabled(AA was disabled, though, the same ol’ Oblivion caveat)

In an interview with the IT news magazine, InformationWeek Linus Torvalds speaks on where Linux is heading in 2008. He says that he is very gung-ho about solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualization despite his personal lack of interest in the area.

Here’s an excerpt of the interview:

[...]

Phoronix reports that NVIDIA’s 169.04 driver brings out a lot of improvements over its predecessor. This X.Org driver contained a number of GeForce 8 fixes, initial support for the GeForce 8800GT graphics card, monitoring of PowerMizer state information, and other changes. 

What Phoronix had not tested, however, at that time was a performance comparison of the new driver and the previous 100.14.23 driver. The undocumented fact we have found is that this 169.04 Beta driver does deliver performance improvements for the GeForce 8 series on Linux.

[...]

“Penguin Pete” gives 10 reasons as to why the command line is far better than GUI. And yeah, I do agree with him. Something as simple as installing as application is a lot easier! I mean c’mon tell me, which is better, telling someone to type “sudo apt-get install xxx” or “Click on the Button, Click on system, click on utilities, click on install” etc. Wouldn’t you agree? I prefer the command line way–not because it’s geeky, because it saves you a lot of time!

Here’s his reasons:

• Keying is faster than mousing.
• It’s easier to both give and get help.
• Repetitive stress injury comes from the mouse, not the keyboard.
• Commands are standard where GUIs are not.
• Commands are more powerful.

[...]

Whacko : lets pay a tribute to the worlds best software windows
Geek : Yeah! Right!
Whacko :At present its the most used Operating system in the world
Geek :Not to mention the worst.
Whacko :Hey Windows XP and Windows Vista are the best.
Geek : Its more like Windows letsPee and Windows it’s-Stuck
Whacko : Why do you say that?
Geek bvious isn’t it. Hackers exploit Windows letsPee so easily that its like they are peeing on you. Windows it’s-Stuck is so slow that people think its stuck.
Whacko : So what windows lets me do a lot of stuff. All I have to do is buy a security suite and I am safe.
Geek : Linux lets most of that and that too for free. Morever you are not safe even with that security suite of yours. Its very easy for a hacker to get past all your protections.
Whacko : There are so many softwares that let me do anything on windows.
Geek k! Then does it let you fly?
Whacko :No! but they are working on it. Can linux play games?
Geek :No!but they are working on it. Moreover I have Doom-3, Unreal-Tournament , Quake, CounterStrike and torcs.Plus we have found a way to get dx-9 in linux.
Whacko :Windows installation is very easy.
Geek : Well they had to make it easy with the way it has to be re-installed every 2 to 3 months. Morever even my little brother can install Ubuntu.
Whacko :Well I couldn’t install it.
Geek :The reason is obvious isn’t it.
Whacko :With Windows Vista the WOW starts now.
Geek :You shouldn’t be too sure of that cause with windows you press start to turn off the computer.
Whacko :Well Linux sucks and is gay.
Geek :Ya it sucks in more and more windows users everyday and makes them gay(as in happy for those guys who take it the wrong way )
Whacko h yeah! Windows is going to save the world along with the Intels Classmate PC.
Geek :Yeah! by killing them. Enough of fighting now. You have lost.
So guys lets give the _|_ to windows

I found this blog giving a step-by-step tutorial on how to get Direct 9.0c installed on your Linux box. Worthy of a look I say!

Excerpts:

About DirectX

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. DirectX, then, was the generic term for all of these Direct-something APIs, and that term became the name of the collection. Over the intervening years, some of these APIs have been deprecated and replaced, so that this naming convention is no longer absolute. In fact, the X has caught on to the point that it has replaced Direct as the common part in the names of new DirectX technologies, including XAct, XInput, and so forth.

[...]

This for all those guys who don’t know which linux to try. These are the ones that had us awed at their usability and features.

Aditya’s Picks:

• Ubuntu
• Xubuntu
• Puppy

My Picks:

• openSuSE
• Kubuntu
• DreamLinux

[...]

Windows vs Linux in a friendly fight to be choosen as the right OS for basic everyday use.
How we ranked

• Installation

Installation shouldnot be too messy and should be user friendly. A GUI is preffered and faster installation obviously scores well.Live Cd’s/DVD’s score plus points.

• Default Software

The operating system must come with a good suite of softwares to take care of all your needs.

• Stability

This is the place where the Operating System has to score. It is very important that it doesn’t spur problems routinely.

• Easy Availability and Installation of Softwares

Softwares for the Operating System should be easily available and easily installable.

• Light on System Resources

The Operating System Should not hog your system resources. By hogging you system resources you will get very little performance out of your system.

Introduction to the contenders

[...]

NVIDIA has released new BETA drivers for x86 and x64 (AMD64/EM64T). This new driver is now off of their latest 169 code line and will possibly net some performance benefit on top of the long release highlights list:

• Added support for GeForce 8800 GT.
• Improved modesetting support on Quadro/GeForce 8 series GPUs.
• Fixed stability problems with some GeForce 8 series GPUs.
• Fixed stability problems with some GeForce 6200/7200/7300 GPUs multi-core/SMP systems.
• Improved hotkey switching support for some Lenovo notebooks.

[...]

Penguin as logo/mascot for Linux was discussed first in early 1996 by several people in the linux-kernel mailing list. The idea of such mascot came from Alan Cox first. Among many other suggestions made by different people there were parodies of other operating system logos, sharks or even eagles.

At some point Linus Torvalds casually mentioned that he was rather fond of penguins and it stopped the debates at once.

The first person called the penguin “Tux” was James Hughes who said that it stood for “(T)orvalds (U)ni(X)”. Tux was designed for a Linux logo contest.

[...]