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Another Look at Thoggen (Part 1)
Thoggen is a tool for backing up DVDs to the ogg container with the theora video codec and vorbis audio codec. Theora is the darling video codec in Linux because it is unencumbered by patents. There are other free formats, such as Xvid – a format compatible with Divx, but it is based on MPEG-3,…
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Be Careful with Super Gamer 2 livecd
I booted into this disc to see what games it had. It is a decent disc and I discovered that there’s a Penguin-based Mario Kart Clone. It mostly has FPS shooters. Anyway, when I booted back into Windows my network card was no longer working. After fretting for about an hour and rebooting and shutting…
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Mac vs PC ad gets an update
Some guys over at Novell decided to update the Mac v PC ads to become Mac v PC v Linux. I think they’re pretty creative and he gives a great reason behind the choices he made for the video. I’ve got the videos here, below, but be sure to follow the link above and see…
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The Name Change
One of the biggest trends over the last few years has been customization. People customize their cellphones, myspace pages, websites and computers. Via the popuplar widgets system on the Mac OSX, SuperKaramba for KDE, and gDesklets in Gnome, people customize their desktops to make them unique to their vision. Even Microsoft has jumped on the…
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Hidden Features
Veterans of Linux installs from the early days may chuckle at my new discovery, but I’ve only been installing Linux since the graphical days of Anaconda and Fedora Core 1. (But first some background info) I was recently installing Xubuntu on my father-in-law’s computer. He wanted me to install a new Windows Media Player version,…
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Dual Screen Gnome with Compiz finally works “correctly”
I’ve done a few updates in the past week or so and I’ve been in fvwm-crystal, so I don’t know which update fixed things, but Gnome finally handles Dual Screen Compiz correctly. Previously, if I maximized a window, it would maximize across both monitors! I NEVER want that kind of behaviour because my screens are…
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Vista is so bad……
….that my wife, who hates the idea of Linux on her computer, told me that when her computer dies, rather than have Windows Vista on her computer she wants me to install Linux on the computer for her. That’s right, she’d rather have Linux on her computer than the next version of Windows. Why? First…
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Torvalds’ Superbowl Sunday Kernel Commit
Yes, computer geeks *do* have a sense of humor! Date Sun, 4 Feb 2007 11:10:36 -0800 (PST) From Linus Torvalds Subject Super Kernel Sunday! In a widely anticipated move, Linux “headcase” Torvalds today announced the immediate availability of the most advanced Linux kernel to date, version 2.6.20. Before downloading the actual new kernel, most avid…
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I’m Sorry, but you’re wrong – Linux IS ready for the prime time
I read a blog post a few days ago where someone who purported to be a Linux user (so as to not be accussed of trolling) claimed that although Linux and its freedoms were great and all – at the end of the day – the user had to return to Windows to get any…
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Having trouble understanding the open source movement? Just think of fruit!
Tristan Rhodes has come up with a great analysis of Open Source vs Proprietary software by using fruit. It’s on the same par as Neal Stephenson using the car metaphor to describe Windows, Mac, and Linux. Here are some of the key arguments that I loved. Mabolosoft is a company that sells seedless fruit. They…
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Windows Tax – you don’t need to pay it anymore!
Dell has introduced (or, if it’s been around for a while, it was just recently brought to public attention) the nSeries Desktops. These are computers that have no installed operating system – so you don’t have to pay for windows. It comes with a Freedos disk. So you can install Linux, *BSD, or whatever you…
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KDE 4 Marches on….
KDE.news has reported on part of the progress of KDE 4 specific to SVG graphcs. (I know that’s redundant) It’s redundant because SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. Ever since about 2 years ago, Gnome and other projects began to move to SVG rather than PNG, JPG or other types of graphics. “What’s the advantage?”…
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Fedora News
A few big things in Fedora News. First of all, the Fedora Summit happened recently. They are tackling a lot of things for Fedora Core 7 including blurring the line between Core and Extras (a point of contention for those moved from Core to Extras – they were less important they felt) and finally having…
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Linux Tidbits
In an interesting game of Russian dolls Techalign released Pioneer Linux, based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based upon the venerable Debian Linux. Technically, they’ve based it off of Kubuntu which is a KDE spinoff of Ubuntu; they aren’t even using Ubuntu proper. So when they send patches upstream, are they sending them to…
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Kids love Linux!
As I read this article about how this guy’s kids love Linux and hate Windows, I had a couple of questions come to my mind. First of all, is this a testament to how easily kids learn things? Second, what does this mean for newbies to Linux who complain that it’s not as easy as…