frankps
The world as frankps sees it!
UHULINUX with a big market share in Hungary
0No, I have not managed to get my mom to use Zeta or BeOS. She prefers windows and linux. My mom favors the Hungarian distribution UHULINUX, and when ever I am home, I see her spending more time in Linux then in Windows.
One of my favorite Linux news sites O’REILLY’s OSDIR yesterday published 50 screenshots of the latest live cd from UHULINUX. I have not tested their live cd, and I am not planning to. The user interface looked horrible, but that has never been the case with with the installed version. It’s one of the most gui consistent distros that I have tried. No wonder why UHULINUX so fast became the major distro in Hungary.
The choice of applications cover all the things that you need, and it has a great Hungarian localization. It is also more then useable in Norwegian. This is why my mom started using it. She has two keyboards, one Norwegian and one Hungarian. When she is writing letters in Hungarian, she uses a Hungarian interface and keyboard, and switching between the languages is simple.I guess the reason why she started using Linux instead of Windows can be explained easily. She had no computer experience before she got the computer. She started using both operating systems at the same time, and as long as she don’t have to open a Terminal, she is fine with it. It just works and she can do all the things she needs to with it. The next computer I will buy her will be a mini-itx or a laptop that she can take with her between Hungary and Norway.
The never ending story has ended for now!
0After having spent several hours on different Linux distributions for my new desktop computer (x86-64), I have found a distribution that covers my needs.
Last week I actually ended up buying SUSE 9.2. Something that I should never have done! That was a 100 € straight out of the window. I installed it both on my laptop and my desktop, but I just didn’t like it. I have heard that SUSE has been telling Linux users, that on this version of their distribution they have focused on mobility. Strange, cause this is the only Linux that I have tested that I have had problems using my ORiNOCO Gold wifi card with! I also have a wifi card making use of the Prism GT chipset, the driver failed to download in YAST.
No, it had to be ubuntu. I have become more and more impressed of what these developers have managed to put together. I am running their warty release now on both my computers, and I don’t plan to change. I have also tested their hoarty release. The future of ubuntu is promising!
Here’s some eye candy for all Ubuntu users: SVG Wallpapers from the volvoguy. The image backgrounds are transparent. This means that you can set the SVG image as the backround image, and then change the color or gradient to whatever you’d like. They are just so cool!
The never ending search for the perfect Linux distro
0I just bought a new computer with an AMD 64 CPU. It is amazing fast, sadly that also refers to how fast I am switching the various Linux distrobutions available for the platform, but one distribution is defiantly out…
The first two distros that I have been testing were Fedora and UBUNTU. Fedora is *so* slow, and the lack of useable multimedia formats disqualifies it. Another serious problem with Fedora is the always failing update service. I recommend all users to use yum from the terminal instead. You can almost forget downloading and installing rpm packages, you will end up in a dependency hell!
UBUNTU on the other hand impresses me a lot, even though it is not quite there yet. It is one of the most hype distros at the moment, with reviews on every major internet computer news site. It is still under development and I guess there will be some more changes in the nearby future. Not the easiest distro to install for users that switch from Windows, but most people should be able to install it without any serious problems. Updating this distro is done with the apt-get tool in Terminal, and there is a various packages available for the distro and if not, you can quite often use a debian package instead. One weak point with UBUNTU is that it the moment has no support for KDE. I don’t use KDE often, but from to time to time, I am booting into it just to conclude that it still sucks. This is a distro that I will definably have an eye for future releases.
Tonight I will try to install SUSE 9.2 direct from a FTP server. I have already burnt a mini install iso. I used to run SUSE on a laptop earlier, and never ran in to problems regarding lib dependencies. Some of the developers on the Beagle project are ready to help me with installing their upcoming query system in Gnome. I hope to have it up and running later today.
I feel really bad…
27 years ago
I think it feels more or less like what I would have felt, if I bought sex. Great during the sex, and quite bad afterwards. Why? I bought my probably first and last HD-DVD movie “Lara Croft Tomb Raider – Die Wiege Des Lebens” (The Cradle Of Life).
No, no, no, it isn’t cause the movie came with german sound, it has an english track as well. If you still don’t understand why I feel bad, here is why:
I sat down Sunday evening and started watching the movie on my computer. The picture quality was stunning. I have nothing to say against it. Well, after 5 minutes I turned it off, as I wanted to see it with one of the projectors (Panasonic PT-AE700E 1000 Ansi Lumen, Contrast 2000:1,1280×720) we have at work. I hope to be able to enjoy the movie, but it sure made me thinking. The format is fully owned by Microsoft, and as always, when they reinvent the wheel, you need to buy a brand new computer.
Here is what CONCORDE HOME ENTERTAINMENT sets as minimum requirements:
- Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 Series
- Intel Pentium 4 2.5 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 2.500
- Graphic card: 8x AGP (ATI Radeon 9500 or nVidia GeForce 5)
- 512 MB Ram
- DVD-ROM (8x)
Appearently it also works with Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 for MacOS X, so I can play the movie also on that system. Now, this is why I feel really bad. Microsoft seems not to be able to grow more in the PC market, as they already more or less have monopoly. But the company still has to grow, and now the home entertainment industry seems to become their next victim. The DVD is of course copy protected, and you are not capable of playing it on any other media player or operating system for that matter.
It was with great joy I read that DVD-Jon (and his friends) once again had hacked a DVD format, this time this format, the WMV-HD. The platform uses the VC-1 reference decoder, which is developed by Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. With his hack I can possibly play WMV9 files on my VideoLAN client in Zeta and Linux. I have never defended Jon Lech Johansen before, but I will from now on. All major standard should be open, so that all operating systems and software can compete on equal terms. Microsoft is not to set standards any more. If we adopt their standards, we will just help them keep their monopoly position. It feels more and more like they have become the world’s technical goverment, and we are to pay an annual tax to them. THIS JUST CAN’T BE RIGHT…
(and his friends) once again had hacked a DVD format, this time this format, the WMV-HD. The platform uses the VC-1 reference decoder, which is developed by Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. With his hack I can possibly play WMV9 files on my VideoLAN client in Zeta and Linux. I have never defended Jon Lech Johansen before, but I will from now on. All major standard should be open, so that all operating systems and software can compete on equal terms. Microsoft is not to set standards any more. If we adopt their standards, we will just help them keep their monopoly position. It feels more and more like they have become the world’s technical goverment, and we are to pay an annual tax to them. THIS JUST CAN’T BE RIGHT…(and his friends) once again had hacked a DVD format, this time this format, the WMV-HD. The platform uses the VC-1 reference decoder, which is developed by Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. With his hack I can possibly play WMV9 files on my VideoLAN client in Zeta and Linux. I have never defended Jon Lech Johansen before, but I will from now on. All major standard should be open, so that all operating systems and software can compete on equal terms. Microsoft is not to set standards any more. If we adopt their standards, we will just help them keep their monopoly position. It feels more and more like they have become the world’s technical goverment, and we are to pay an annual tax to them. THIS JUST CAN’T BE RIGHT…I don’t know if it works with Turbolinux, the first major Linux distribution that shipped a media player capable of streaming pure Windows Media format (both audio and video). But it doesn’t change the very fact that you should be able to play your CDs and DVDs on what ever player and operating system that you as a consumer want.
Well, I almost forgot…I can’t play the movie on my homecinema system either. My DVD player doesn’t play the WMV-HD format and my surround receiver has no decoder for the Windows Media Audio Professional 5.1 format, only Dolby Digital and DTS.
I was so lucky to just buy a new PC and I made sure that the hardware could play back this format, but not cause I wanted to use it. The format indicates what system requirements Windows will need in the future. But I will not buy a new homecinema system to be able to play this format. I hope this format will never become a standard. Think of the total price of changing a bigger part of your homecinema system and buying a new PC would be.
To end it where I started, I’m scarred that I have gotten a disease that I can’t get rid off. I hope somebody soon will find a cure, a competing format (hopefully an open one)!