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The OTHER Free Operating System
After reading about the BSDs in Linux Format Magazine a few months ago, I started to wonder about these Linux cousins. The original Berkely Software Devision port of Unix was developed a long time ago, but the free ones developed almost simultaneously with the Linux kernel had remained hidden from me up til now. Even…
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FOSS Tidbits
F-Spot is looking really good and sporting a much better looking website. They now support RAW files as well as XMP data. Perhaps some of their programmers can share this with the GIMP people – hint hint! Fluxbox, one of my favorite window managers, and the one I’m using now, won a 2005 linuxquestions.org Choice…
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ReactOS – The Soap Opera-like Twin
So, as readers of my blog know, one alternative to Windows is Linux. (Formally GNU/Linux) Another alternative I haven’t talked much about is BSD, another Unix derivative. Both of these are great operating systems, but they aren’t Windows. For the most part, this doesn’t matter. If I can do the same stuff on Linux, why…
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Fedora Core 5 Test Release 2 Part 1
I decided to do something I’ve never done before, I’m going to install Fedora Core 5 Test Release 2 and actually help with the debugging process. It was a bit of an internal struggle. By taking part in the debugging, I get to see the new technologies instead of being surprised in March when it…
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In the News, 28 July 2005
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. That’s a very important mantra to have in the software/hardware world. For example, OpenOffice.org has its own file format, but around 90% of the world uses the Microsoft Office format. Therefore, OO.o must incorporate support these formats. Similarly, a large portion of the Internet servers out there are…
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In the news yesterday, 27 July 2005
I wanted to be able to talk about the news stories I found very interesting without creating an additional post for each story, so here is the first edition of “In the news today”. This BBC story shows how NASA’s attitude about shuttle accidents has changed since the 2002 shuttle destruction. Previously NASA was more…
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a short one today
I’m really busy trying to wrap up classes so that I can enjoy the last few weeks before graduating and being thrust into the “real world” so today’s post is just a minor observation. Of course, any of my long-time readers will know that as soon as I say that I’m too busy to post,…
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Why Mandrakesoft bought Conectiva
A while back I posted that Mandrakesoft had bought Conectiva and changed its name to Mandriva. What I didn’t both researching at the time was the reason for this move. Apparently, Conectiva made the most popular commercial distribution of Linux in Latin America. In fact, it had contracts with the Brazilian army and navy, as…
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Whatever you do….don’t use wikipedia….
…unless you have a LOT of time on your hands. Wikipedia, by being internet-based takes advantage of cross-referencing in a way that was NEVER possible with traditional encyclopedias. Even new multimedia encyclopedias like Encarta don’t take advantage of it like Wikipedia does. Almost every word in an article is a reference to something else. For…
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Back to Pictures
For a while I had taken a break from photography. There were two basic reasons for this – first of all, it had become very cold and that disuaded me from taking my camera around. I was afraid of breaking it with the temperature difference between the outside air and the buildings. I was afraid…