I now blog somewhere else:
Moved to WordPress:
http://linuxfruity.wordpress.com/
Monday, 4 February 2008
Monday, 7 May 2007
Up and running!
So it's been a while since I last posted anything here so i thought it would probably be a good idea in case blogger do a hotmail on me and throw away my account!
Well my exams are over (thank god!) and i'm mostly working on finishing my dissertation which got good peer reviews at my last deliverable so everything is on track. Apart from that I've been doing alot on my Linux system.
Firstly the biggest change has been my move from Ubuntu Edgy Eft to Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn which was a pretty good experience considering my previous moves from large releases with openSuse and Fedora Core. Lots of new goodies to play with including built in Desktop Effects via compiz and a working network manager plus built in dialogues for non-free codecs and drivers. There are lots of other notable upgrades most of which i've probably completely missed, some others include much better networking with windows clients via SMB and Avahi and Visualizations in Rhythmbox. To cut a long story short, I was very pleased with Fiesty.
I had a very brief encounter with Opera the browser which for a while seemed like a god send until problems started appearing such as not being able to use the bar at the top of blogger pages. I found it very good in such areas as UI customization and page presentation however it did show a few incompatibilities with some of my favorite websites.
Since development on Avant Window Navigator seems to of grinded to a halt, i've had to focus my ideas somewhere else. I came up with an eye candy addition to compiz which seems to have caught some attention from the likes of macslow . If your interested in reading more, the post can be found here .
While on the subject of compiz, i'm now using compiz instead of beryl now as my window manager. The main reason for this is because of the recent merge of the two communites with compiz still being the root of the fork it sorta makes sense... at least to me.
I've also had lots of job interviews with one in the centre of Edinburgh to one in the center of London! Yes thats right, I travelled all the way down to London for a two hour interview. The whole trip took me around 12 hours from leaving my house to arriving back in Edinburgh. I was so knackered when I got back I passed out in my suit on my bed and didn't wake up will 10am the next day. More on the job front later.
My desktop has also changed considerably since my last postings, here's a little screenshot:
Thats it for now, expect quite a few postings over the next month.
Well my exams are over (thank god!) and i'm mostly working on finishing my dissertation which got good peer reviews at my last deliverable so everything is on track. Apart from that I've been doing alot on my Linux system.
Firstly the biggest change has been my move from Ubuntu Edgy Eft to Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn which was a pretty good experience considering my previous moves from large releases with openSuse and Fedora Core. Lots of new goodies to play with including built in Desktop Effects via compiz and a working network manager plus built in dialogues for non-free codecs and drivers. There are lots of other notable upgrades most of which i've probably completely missed, some others include much better networking with windows clients via SMB and Avahi and Visualizations in Rhythmbox. To cut a long story short, I was very pleased with Fiesty.
I had a very brief encounter with Opera the browser which for a while seemed like a god send until problems started appearing such as not being able to use the bar at the top of blogger pages. I found it very good in such areas as UI customization and page presentation however it did show a few incompatibilities with some of my favorite websites.
Since development on Avant Window Navigator seems to of grinded to a halt, i've had to focus my ideas somewhere else. I came up with an eye candy addition to compiz which seems to have caught some attention from the likes of macslow . If your interested in reading more, the post can be found here .
While on the subject of compiz, i'm now using compiz instead of beryl now as my window manager. The main reason for this is because of the recent merge of the two communites with compiz still being the root of the fork it sorta makes sense... at least to me.
I've also had lots of job interviews with one in the centre of Edinburgh to one in the center of London! Yes thats right, I travelled all the way down to London for a two hour interview. The whole trip took me around 12 hours from leaving my house to arriving back in Edinburgh. I was so knackered when I got back I passed out in my suit on my bed and didn't wake up will 10am the next day. More on the job front later.
My desktop has also changed considerably since my last postings, here's a little screenshot:
Thats it for now, expect quite a few postings over the next month.
Thursday, 29 March 2007
Desktop Screenshot 4
I've been quite busy with my studying lately so been unable to checkout any new wallpapers or themes. However I did come across a set of wallpapers I downloaded weeks ago and never used. Here are a few screenshots for your enjoyment:
Dell: One small step for GNU/Linux...
Well it seems my initial skepticism about Dell and there apparent efforts to big up the Linux community have actually bared some fruits. Here's a quote from BetaNews.com
Reading some of the comments from the post of Dells site (Link to original post can be found within the link above) it seems most people are happy with the progress Dell are making.
However typical of the Linux community, the one thing which will always creates barriers is Open/Closed drivers specifically graphics cards. To be honest, I don't use open source graphics drivers because they are slow and don't perform anywhere as well as the closed source drivers. It's not that I wouldn't support the open drivers, it's just I spent over 900GBP on my laptop and it's kinda unfair to ask me to use them when i'm not getting my money's worth. But hey, thats my two pence! I expect alot of other people feel the same. I understand the point of view from the open source standpoint, however I think sometimes the open source community forgets that ATI and Nvidia are in direct competition with each other and that letting the competition have access to your optimized and expensive source code for drivers only stands to give away your market edge.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Dell_to_Ship_Linux_on_Desktops_Laptops/1175108192
"Dell confirmed on Wednesday plans to offer Linux pre-installed on select desktop and notebooksystems, beyond its current Linux-based servers and Precision workstations. The decision comes after feedback on its IdeaStorm site and a survey that garnered over 100,000 responses.
No specific timeframe was given for the expanded Linux plans, although the company said in a blog posting that it will provide an update in the coming weeks regarding the effort. It will detail "information on which systems we will offer, our testing and certification efforts, and the Linux distribution(s) that will be available," Dell said, adding that, "The countdown begins today.""
Reading some of the comments from the post of Dells site (Link to original post can be found within the link above) it seems most people are happy with the progress Dell are making.
However typical of the Linux community, the one thing which will always creates barriers is Open/Closed drivers specifically graphics cards. To be honest, I don't use open source graphics drivers because they are slow and don't perform anywhere as well as the closed source drivers. It's not that I wouldn't support the open drivers, it's just I spent over 900GBP on my laptop and it's kinda unfair to ask me to use them when i'm not getting my money's worth. But hey, thats my two pence! I expect alot of other people feel the same. I understand the point of view from the open source standpoint, however I think sometimes the open source community forgets that ATI and Nvidia are in direct competition with each other and that letting the competition have access to your optimized and expensive source code for drivers only stands to give away your market edge.
Thursday, 22 March 2007
Windows is the most secure operating... and pigs can fly!
After celebrating my mum's birthday today and getting through the huge amount of surprises my family and I had in store for her, I was greeted with laughable surprise. According to Symantec Windows in the most secure operating system compared to Mac OS X and Red Hat... in the last 6 months. Ehh, wait a minute, how can windows be the most secure operating system on the market when it's faulty by design? how can telling users they are about to do something stupid and not stopping them be secure?
It just seems strange that a company who only makes software for the Windows platform publishes an article saying "the most secure operating system is the only one we develop security software for".
It just seems strange that a company who only makes software for the Windows platform publishes an article saying "the most secure operating system is the only one we develop security software for".
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
Affinity Mockup
I really like affinity so much i´ve made a mockup of a little addition which adds a little personalization to the panel:
If your reading this dude, keep up the good work!
If your reading this dude, keep up the good work!
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Affinity
Well it seems the author of the avant-window-navigator has lots of tricks up his sleeves. He´s now released a new piece of desktop software called Affinity. Simply it´s a fancy application launcher with integrated instant search. But it does have the potential to be much more than that. Here´s a couple of screen shots of affinity in action:
It does have quite a few bugs and seems a big slow at highlighting items on the panel however it is a first release and compared to most first release´s is actually quite stable and usable. You can grab a cvs version from here and the author´s blog is here.
There is also a very similar program called loro-launcher for Mac OS X, project page is here and the authors blog is here.
It does have quite a few bugs and seems a big slow at highlighting items on the panel however it is a first release and compared to most first release´s is actually quite stable and usable. You can grab a cvs version from here and the author´s blog is here.
There is also a very similar program called loro-launcher for Mac OS X, project page is here and the authors blog is here.
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