Posts tagged fun

KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Preview

May4th
2008 Leave a Comment

Written by Sathya

KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 was just released, and it looks very promising indeed! Here’s what bastion of PolishLinux had to say:

Desktop

First thing worth noticing is the new looks of KRunner. Unfortunately, on the current stage, it behaves in an unpredictable manner. In some cases after typing one letter I had to wait a few seconds for KRunner to catch it and prompt me with a list of available choices. What is more, it randomly hung up completely, exceeding the maximum response time, forcing KWin to kindly ask me to kill it.

READ MORE »

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Countdown to Ubuntu 8.04: The Hardy Heron

Apr20th
2008 6 Comments

Written by Sathya

It’s that time of the year. Everyone’s excited and looking forward to it. Ofcourse it’s the release of the next LTS version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 8.04, aka Hardy Heron. So what’re new features expected in Hardy Heron you ask? Well here are some of them
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Are You A Linux Poser?

Mar27th
2008 1 Comment

Written by Sathya

Via – TechThrob

General humour, linux, os, ux, X

Teach me Linux – A Compilation of Linux FAQs and Guides

Mar3rd
2008 3 Comments

Written by Sathya

Picture this. You’re fascinated by Linux. You always wanted to try it out. Now that you want to try it out, or have tried out the LiveCD but want to know more details, where do you look for? Of course Google and the Internet is always there. But that would require the right set of keywords.

Fear not, my good friend Santosh aka Gigacore has compiled an exhaustive list of Wiki’s, guides and PDF’s which will satiate your appetite & thirst for knowledge.

Some of the topics include

Introduction to Linux – A Hands on Guide
The Easiest Linux Guide You’ll Ever Read – an Introduction to Linux for Windows Users
Getting Started With Fedora
Fundamentals
System Administration
Network Administration
Shell Scripting

… and many more! So if you’re interested, head over to Teach Me Linux, and you might learn a new thing or two!

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Ubuntu goes mobile: Ubuntu Mobile

Feb26th
2008 2 Comments

Written by Sathya

Introducing Ubuntu Mobile – full Internet, no compromise

Ubuntu Mobile is an Ubuntu edition that targets an exciting new class of computers called Mobile Internet Devices.
Ubuntu Mobile, based on the world’s most popular Linux distribution, and MID hardware from OEMs and ODMs, are redefining what can be done in mobile computing.

Ubuntu Mobile, a fully open source project, gives full Internet, with no compromise. Custom options may include licensed codecs and popular third-party applications.

Full Web 2.0/AJAX fidelity, with custom options of Adobe Flash®, Java, and more
Outstanding media playback so you can enjoy videos, music and photos with superior quality and easy navigation
A suite of applications that work seamlessly to meet every need of a digital parent, student or anyone who is on-the-go
Facebook®, MySpace®, YouTube®, Dailymotion®, 3D games, GPS, maps, in short, the full Web 2.0 experience delivered into your hands as a compact and powerful device that’s easy and fun to use

The product of Canonical collaboration with Intel® and the open source community, Ubuntu Mobile is the software that makes it all possible.

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Free Software Easter Eggs

Feb21st
2008 Leave a Comment

Written by Sathya

The good folks over at Free Software Magazine got bored writing regular articles on free software. For some chuckles, they decided to research on some easter eggs. Here’s what they found.

What is it with cows and GNU/Linux? Let me answer my own self-serving question and show you some varied and slightly bizarre examples of human randomness. Assuming you are running under Ubuntu from a terminal type:

apt-get help | grep -i super

This APT has Super Cow Powers.

OK, let us generate some somewhat warped and deranged ASCII

apt-get moo
         (__)
         (oo)
   /------\/
  / |    ||
 *  /\---/\
    ~~   ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...

Having fun yet? My brain is starting to bake trying to work out the meaning of it all. There are even serious and well researched Ubuntu bug reports on the subject.

How about trying to use aptitude from the command line to discern a recognizable and potentially disturbing pattern of social humor. Can we get aptitude to talk sense? Let us beat it around the head verbally and see if we can get it to admit its origins.

aptitude -v moo
There really are no Easter Eggs in this program.
aptitude -vv moo
Didn't I already tell you that there are no Easter Eggs in this program?
aptitude -vvv moo
Stop it!
aptitude -vvvv moo
Okay, okay, if I give you an Easter Egg, will you go away?
aptitude -vvvvv moo
All right, you win.

                               /----\
                       -------/      \
                      /               \
                     /                |
   -----------------/                  --------\
   ----------------------------------------------
 aptitude -vvvvvv moo

What is it?  It's an elephant being eaten by a snake, of course.

Yes now I understand life clearly. Well, if you cannot beat them with sharp pointy objects, then join them I say. Let me introduce to a small program called cowsay, a man’s best friend, a configurable talking cow. Just what you need when you already have multiple personalities and two children. From your favourite terminal, please type:

sudo apt-get install cowsay
cowsay what the

 ----------
  what the
 ----------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w||
                ||     ||

Cows, cows everywhere and not a pint of milk to drink.

For more chuckles, read the entire article over at Free Software Magazine

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andLinux – Run Linux on Windows seamlessly without virtualizers!

Feb19th
2008 1 Comment

Written by Sathya

andLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux system running seamlessly in Windows 2000 based systems (2000, XP, 2003, Vista [32-bit only])

andLinux uses CoLinux as its core which is confusing for many people. CoLinux is a port of the Linux kernel to Windows. Although this technology is like VMware or Virtual PC, CoLinux differs itself by being more of a merger of Windows and the Linux kernel and not an emulated PC, making it more efficient. Xming is used as X server and PulseAudio as sound server.

andLinux is not just for development and runs almost all Linux applications without modification.

Screenshot (click to enlarge)

To start Linux applications, you may either use the XFCE Panel:

The XFCE Panel

Or, you may choose to use the andLinux Launcher, which ships with andLinux since Beta 1. It consists of:

quicklaunch icons (e.g. for the file manager or the terminal)
a start menu in the system tray (next to the clock) which can be adapted to your own needs
so-called Explorer shell extensions, i.e. context menu item, with which you can open a folder in the file manager / terminal or open a file with the text editor
file type associations at your choice (e.g. for KOffice files, .tex / .dvi / .ps / .pdf files)
andCmd.exe to run linux commands from Windows scripts

Quicklaunch icons (XFCE version)

Quicklaunch icons (KDE version)

Start menu (XFCE version)

Start menu (KDE version)

Open a folder with Konqueror or Konsole

Requirements

OS: Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista [32-bit only]
Memory: at least 128 MB (192 MB or more is recommended)
Hard disk space: 2.5 GB (XFCE version) / 4.5 GB (KDE version)
Note that you need an NTFS file system (which is default since Windows 2000) because you can’t create files larger than 2 GB on FAT(32) file systems!
A good internet connection (to be able to install further applications)
Some basic Linux skills to proceed once andLinux is installed

What you will get

You will get:

a fully functional Linux system, however without the usual desktop (you’ve already got one from Windows)
a second panel (e.g. at the top of your Windows desktop) or a second start menu (in the system tray next to the clock), from which you can start Linux applications
Linux applications and Windows applications can be used simultaneously and you can cut and paste text between them
apt / synaptic to install further applications

You will NOT get:

another desktop
the bench of applications that usually ship with Linux distributions (you have to fetch whatever you want)
a printer driver
trouble with further drivers

Security warning: It is recommended to use andLinux only on single-user-PCs or in a trustworthy environment because the communication with the X-Server and the launcher is not secured, i.e., every user who can login to Windows can access andLinux.

This looks really interesting and promising! Am definitely going to try this out and report how it turns out

Thanks to @chetanthaker who twittered about this

Technorati Tags: linux, andlinux, sathyasays

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Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 3 Impressions

Feb14th
2008 3 Comments

Written by Sathya

Yesterday, Mozilla announced that the 3rd beta of the next version of their immensely popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox would be available for download. I’d posted earlier on the impressive changes between Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 Beta 2. So what does the third Beta bring? Let’s have a look.

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ATI Radeon HD 3650 Reviewed

Feb2nd
2008 Leave a Comment

Written by Sathya

Last week AMD introduced the ATI Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series, which are the new low-end graphics processors compared to the Radeon HD 3800 series. These budget graphics cards are branded as the Radeon HD 3450, 3470, and 3650 and are all available for under $100 USD. While they may be cheap, they are the first graphics cards to introduce support for DisplayPort. DisplayPort is the newest digital display interface standard, backed by VESA, and is direct competition to HDMI. DisplayPort has yet to be fully supported by the available Linux display drivers, but the Catalyst Linux driver already supports these new ATI graphics cards and there will be open-source support through the RadeonHD driver in the coming days.

At hand today we have the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB graphics card as Phoronix delivers
the first Linux benchmarks for this RV635 GPU.

ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB

The Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 graphics card boasts 512MB of 128-bit GDDR3 video memory running at 1.6GHz, built on 55nm fabrication, 725MHz core clock, and contains 120 stream processors. The HD 3650 supports DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.0. Like the other graphics cards in the Radeon HD 3000 family, the RV635 is PCI Express 2.0 compliant and has other functionality common to the R600 series such as CrossFireX, ATI’s Unified Video Decoder, and HDMI support with 5.1 surround sound audio. An addition to the Radeon HD 3650 that cannot be found on the Radeon HD 2600 series, which the RV635 replaces, is support for PowerPlay. PowerPlay is supported by the binary Linux driver (and is expected in the future for xf86-video-radeonhd) for adjusting the core/memory frequencies and voltages in order to conserve power and reduce the heat-output when the graphics card doesn’t need to be fully utilized.

ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB

This budget graphics card from Sapphire had arrived in a small cardboard box that had contained a couple of accessories that were secluded from the PCI-E graphics card itself. These accessories had consisted of a component video output adapter, composite video adapter, one VGA to DVI dongle, DVI to HDMI audio/video adapter, Sapphire driver CD, Sapphire case badge, and a quick installation guide. For being a graphics card retailing for ~$100 USD or less, the packaging and included accessories were fine by our standards.

Continue reading the Review at Phoronix

Technorati Tags: Linux, ATI, Radeon

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Nokia To Acquire Trolltech

Jan28th
2008 Leave a Comment

Written by Sathya

Nokia, one of the leading cell-phone manufacturers will acquire Trolltech as announced by Nokia today. Trolltech which designed the Qt toolkit, on which KDE is based upon.

As per the Press release,

Espoo, Finland and Oslo, Norway – Nokia and Trolltech ASA today announced that they have entered into an agreement that Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech (www.trolltech.com), a company headquartered in Oslo, Norway and publicly listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Trolltech is a recognized software provider with world-class software development platforms and frameworks. In addition to the key software assets, its talented team will play an important role in accelerating the implementation of Nokia’s software strategy.

Nokia will offer NOK 16 per share in cash. The board of directors of Trolltech has unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept Nokia’s Offer. Holders of 35,024,830 shares, representing approximately 66,43 % of Trolltech’s issued shares and votes have as of January 27, 2008 irrevocably undertaken to accept the Offer. Haavard Nord, Vuonislahti Invest AS (controlled by Eirik Chambe-Eng), Teknoinvest and certain funds managed by Index Ventures are among the shareholders who have agreed to tender their shares to Nokia.

The acquisition of Trolltech will enable Nokia to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business. With Trolltech, Nokia and third party developers will be able to develop applications that work in the Internet, across Nokia’s device portfolio and on PCs. Nokia’s software strategy for devices is based on cross-platform development environments, layers of software that run across operating systems, enabling the development of applications across the Nokia device range. Examples of current cross-platform layers are Web runtime, Flash, Java and Open C.

Interesting news! Will KDE make it to Nokia’s cellphones? What will be the future of Trolltech I wonder

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Posts tagged fun

KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Preview

Desktop

Countdown to Ubuntu 8.04: The Hardy Heron

Are You A Linux Poser?

Teach me Linux – A Compilation of Linux FAQs and Guides

Ubuntu goes mobile: Ubuntu Mobile

Introducing Ubuntu Mobile – full Internet, no compromise

Free Software Easter Eggs

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 3 Impressions

ATI Radeon HD 3650 Reviewed

Nokia To Acquire Trolltech

Stack Exchange Flair

Games I’ve been playing

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