Archive for category free software
9.10 – Now With More Candy!
Posted by jdodson in free software, tech on February 23rd, 2010
After dealing with swapping out a newer Nvidia card for an older one on my Linux machine I decided the easiest course of action would be to install the latest version of Ubuntu on it. Plus it would be cool to check out how far Ubuntu has come since Hardy. Ill sum up my thoughts in one sentence.
This free software thing is really incredible.
I think we are starting to see the free software desktop evolve to a point where all the functional parts exist. At this point its not about getting a great browser, image viewer/editor, music player, video player or ability to easily install software. All that stuff exists and in spades. Now the free software desktop is polishing itself to the point of decadence. And I use that word because in the past it was unpolished to the point of frustration. The default stock Ubuntu experience in its latest release 9.10 is like candy on top of cake. Or at leasts thats how it feels to me and I spend 99% of my work life on Mac OSX desktop. Ive used the Mac for 2+ years now and I can honestly say this version of Ubuntu is in ways better than Mac OSX. Im not going to get into specifics its just little things mostly. Like a easier time of desktop switching, resource management bars, middle click paste in linux and the power of apt-get and more. Oh and it doesn’t tie you down to vendor specific hardware…. That said depending on the hardware you can be in for quite a ride. Also the default theme in Ubuntu seems more elegant to me than the gun metal grey Mac OSX theme that seemed so sexy in 2001. Can’t a brother get a theme selection tool native on the Mac? No? OK then.
In Ubuntu 9.10 after installing the closed source Nvidia driver it switched my monitor to a lower resolution than id like. So I decided to simply use the free software 2D driver and not spend time in config hell. Yeah I don’t get the full power of the card but id rather things just work. And beyond that bit of driver annoyance which Ubuntu can do nothing about the experience is quite good. Suprisingly good in fact.
Head over to the Ubuntu site and notice the tour. I am happy to see this kind of progress and thank the free software developers that made it happen.
Free Software Nvidia Drivers Make Me Happy
Posted by jdodson in free software, life, tech, video games on February 16th, 2010
Finally, my old hardware wont suck to use!
Last week I got a PC from my friend. I decided to make that something I play PC games on and use my other PC for home development. So I moved the Nvidia 7600 from my Linux desktop to the new PC and my old Nvidia 5400LE back to my desktop Linux development machine. This usually goes fine as the proprietary Nvidia drivers are first rate and the installer is easy enough to use. Well, turns out, its not as easy as it once was.
Nvidia seemed to deprecate my old 5400LE video card in the up-to-date proprietary driver sometime in the last year so I have to use the old legacy Nvidia drivers to get it to work with the proprietary driver. OK well that should be fine right? No it wasn’t. The old legacy driver didn’t auto configure xorg like the old one did. So basically, I installed the old video card ran the legacy driver setup and was in 800×600 land. Yippie. So it was a fun hunt to track down how to set the display resolution. Long story short the legacy driver doesn’t seem to really work well and I don’t have 3D on the card. I have the amazing 2D from the in kernel Nvidia driver but the rendering artifacts are annoying and font smoothing doesn’t work.
My choices at this point involve more pain of screwing with configs, hacking kernels and doing stuff I don’t want to do or reinstalling everything and having the setup process of Ubuntu work it out. I bet that would fix it all and I have backups, that might be less pain than the “magic config file hunt and change scenario.”
However, the long term fix in my opinion for Linux is to STOP using hardware that requires so much manual work. Which means, stop using hardware that doesn’t have relatively useful drivers in the mainline kernel. Which is why the recent inclusion of the Nouveau drivers that can do useful 3D is so sweet. Since I am not gaming on Linux anymore due to the pain involved in that(sorry, spent the last 5-8 years in Wine and thats not really fun) I don’t need super bling cutting edge 3D in Linux. Which is why the recent work in the free software Nvidia space is so cool. Its the long term fix for a problem that I hate dealing with in Linux.
Free Software I Love
Posted by jdodson in free software, tech on February 2nd, 2010
Google Chrome
I have been using Google Chrome as my primary browser for a few months. Its a low footprint UI and its blazingly fast. I won’t primarily use a non free software browser so Google Chrome fits my needs in that capacity as well. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to. Compared to IE or Firefox 3.0, Chrome is a rocket. Add flashblock to the mix and it crashes less than any browser ive ever used. This runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is a music player ive used for years. It just keeps getting better and better. It can awesomely manage my 24 days and 12 hours of music. I use iTunes on my Mac and Rhythmbox on Linux. iTunes is a extremely bloated player and I have less music on my mac. I have a few gripes with it but largely it works really well. Ive tried Songbird but it just isn’t as good as Rhythmbox and I am still on the version that shipped with Hardy. To my knowledge this only runs on Linux.
PiTiVi
This project I have been avidly watching and hoping could release something awesome in a stable Linux distro I use for quite sometime. It looks like the next Ubuntu stable will see something great I can use and I excited. I don’t make as many movies as I could because the only tool I have for that is on a Mac in my living room. When I sit down in the living room I want to watch a video or play a game not edit video. The above demo video shows that its come quite a long way and I hope by next Ubuntu stable release it has titles and some transitions. Thats pretty much all I need for the basics and my videos dont do more than that.
Handbrake
I buy movies. I buy movies because I love watching movies. I rip my movies into a variety of formats at times to watch them on a mobile device or laptop. Think of it like ripping a CD. I rip the music I own as well. DVD’s come with copy protection to limit your legitimate use of them in this way but it doesn’t stop enterprising people from figuring out how to get around that. Handbrake is one such program. I mostly use it to rip movies to watch on my iPhone. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
LAME
I rip my MP3’s using LAME. It creates the best quality 320k MP3’s ive heard. I use grip to ensure I don’t have to write a script to rip a CD. grip is old school but the MP3 files it creates sound great and are tagged properly. Runs on practically everything.
VirtualBox
If you want a completely free replacement for VirtualPC or VMWare I recommend VirtualBox. Its come quite a long way in the past year and it works perfectly on my Mac and Ubuntu for virtualizing Windows or any other OS id care to. Did I mention its free? Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux and more.
Huh?
Posted by jdodson in free software, tech on January 7th, 2010
Recent security update email from Ubuntu had me wondering.
“Stefan Cornelius discovered that GIMP did not correctly handle certain
malformed PSD files. If a user were tricked into opening a specially
crafted PSD file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the user’s
privileges. This issue only applied to Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10.
(CVE-2009-3909)
Updated packages for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:
Source archives:…”
OK so Ubuntu 8.04 didn’t have the problem but you updated the 8.04 package anyway? What’s the point of that? If I were Ubuntu I would error on the side of not updating a package that doesn’t need to be. Reason? Not screwing up something is easier if you don’t mess with it. Plus a zillion people update Ubuntu’s LTS, save the bandwidth.
New Verizon Android Phone
Posted by jdodson in free software, tech on October 29th, 2009
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/motorola-droid-initial-impressions-20091028/
Its a matter of time really.
New Ubuntu(Its Been Six Months)
Posted by jdodson in free software, tech on October 29th, 2009
New Ubuntu released. I won’t get into the name or numbers because I find they don’t matter to me that much anymore. Its just the latest version of Ubuntu. Kind of like the latest version of Saw. No idea what number it is, its just there and they keep coming every 6 months.
One feature of this release kind of surprised me though. They are now moving to ext4 by default. That prob means that ext4 is in the main kernel(which I missed the news of and is more noteworthy to me than a new version of Ubuntu). Thing is, even if its in the main kernel I still prob wouldn’t use it yet. I know ext4 is a incremental file system built on ext3 which does make me less nervous than using something like btrfs(which looks hell of amazingly cool) on release day. However, I am still a bit leary that its as bulletproof as ext3. Perhaps its just a “mind thing.” Ive been using ext3 since… Well since I switched from ext2 and its been a fine file system. I have absolutely no complaints. Then again I am not doing replicated data storage over a network on multiple arrays of servers. Id prob use something else for that.
Anyways… new Saw… new Ubuntu… Ext4 by default. If it were me, I wouldn’t switch so soon.
**UPDATE**
Ach! Mein Laben!
Posted by jdodson in free software, tech, video games on September 23rd, 2009
Repeat of yesterday. Love it or leave it.
Looks like the Germans are recalling Wolfenstein in Germany because one swastica made it into the German version. Seriously? The game is about Nazee killin’. BJ Blaskowitz is a Jew on a mission to destroy the Nazi machine. WHY DO YOU WANT TO CENSOR THAT? Because of one swastika? Seriously, I thought the United States had a patent on lame moral outrage. Whats next, demanding an apology?
This isn’t that funny, but its Star Wars.
“Watchmen The Ultimate Cut” Don’t buy the first release of a movie. If its a good one, more than likely they will release a ULTRA MEGA EDITION four seconds after you bought the first one. I liked the Watchmen quite a bit and plan on consuming this at some point. Unsure when. Only lame thing about this edition is it features a My Chemical Romance song. Well, actually I don’t feel qualified to say that as I have never heard the music of said band but I have a sneaking suspicion it does in fact suck.
“This Just In, Company Going To Continue Milking Cash Cow!” The creators of Drakes Fortune want to continue the franchise. Good idea. It makes them a zillion dollars. Sounds like some CEO is getting a raise! I bet the meeting went something like this:
“HEY GUYS WE JUST TEH MAKE MONEYZ ON DRAKES 4TUNA!”
“YEAAAA!!! DRINK TEH CHAMOPAGENE!”
“LETS KEEP TEH MONEY TRAIN GOINK POPULATION USSES!”
“YEAAAA!!! DRINK TEH CHAMOPAGENE!”
In all seriousness though, I applaud a business that can profit in these uncertain times. Seriously. What I don’t find noteworthy in this article is the entire article. As if it were news any company deciding to continue to profit from success. YOU MEAN MICROSOFT IS COMING OUT WITH A NEW VERSION OF WINDOWS AND OFFICE! NO KIDDING! ANOTHER SPIDERMAN MOVIE, NOW WAYS1A
Ok I promise, no more all caps in this post. Its so fun to yell in text though.
“New LTS Of Ubuntu Lucid Lynx“ Wherein Ill prob switch to it, I don’t find it really that important that a new version of Ubuntu is coming out. Though, this one is more important as it is a new LTS. These happen so often they seem kind of passe really. Id recommend Ubuntu to only release every two years with a minor “if you have to have something new” every year. Every six months is just not on my radar anymore. I guess I just want stuff to work reliably.
GOODBUYE!
MASHTHISUIP!
Posted by jdodson in Uncategorized, apple, free software, humor, offhandstrangity, tech on September 22nd, 2009
Decided to blog on a few articles I read this morning. I dub this, premise and opinion.
The first premise brought to you by slashfilm: “Would You Be Sad If Rental Stores Vanished?”
I am going to answer this in two parts, literally and figuratively.
LITERALLY: If rental stores around the US vanished it would be a very cool thing. Stores just don’t melt into nothingness. In my mind I would think alien store abduction or a massive USA wide prank. Then again.. a really good prank. Maybe rental stores did it to advertise their online business. The kind of buzz it would generate would be amazing. Then again, if it was the alien thing, well I don’t know what would happen about that. Maybe we would take the space shuttle to Mars and nuke it or something. No I didn’t mean nuke the space shuttle at Mars, I meant nuke Mars by taking the space shuttle and dropping a bomb on it.
FIGURATIVELY: I think its somewhat sad to lose things I grew up with that I like. Like drive in movies. Then again, there is 99w in Oregon and the wife and I go there a few times a year to check out the double feature. I guess my answer, in a way, is that if there is something people like, it will exist in some form. Perhaps video rental stores will be a smaller thing, perhaps only in boutique store form but I don’t think they will vanish. As the Blockbuster and Hollywood discontinue more brick stores we can all buy cheap movies on clearance. I like that more than I like renting a DVD for $7 or whatever the insane price is now. Do technological shifts make me sad? Some. Like the shift to digital downloads instead of physical copies. They usually come with DRM and I really am not a fan. Oh well, maybe its in our consumer nature to only have things for four seconds and never expect to own anything. LEASE LEASE LEASE, CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT… right? right?
Bueller… Bueller..
“Linus thinks the Linux Kernel is Bloated” – Yeah it is and he says its unavoidable. Seriously though, everything seems bloated these days. Budgets & spending, Operating System Kernels and Jessica Simpson. The Mac OS I use for work is a cow or I guess a better analogy is that its a walrus. Its also a very pretty walrus. This pretty walrus needs 4 gigs of RAM to be adequately skippy when I develop software on it. I guess Vista requires quite a bit of horsepower too. You could surf the web on Windows 3.1 so if people want to use something less bloated you can always do that. Netscape 2 has your back on that one though(I am not sure maybe it was Netscape 1). Which means you couldn’t really do anything other than Craigslist on the machine. Then again, it is not bloated by today’s standards. Enjoy.
Clearly bloat isn’t the worst of problems, but it is one. Then again RAM is pretty cheap these days.
See the slashdot comments for somewhat interesting take on this. If you dare.
“Michael Jacksons last concert video is coming!“ I put it here as proof that I can write about things I won’t see or really care too much about. Then again I cared enough to say I was disinterested in it.
“Mario Kart The Movie“ This is pretty creative and funny. I like the part where Bowser eats mushrooms. Well done fellow geeks, well done.
“The Tooth Fairy” File this under “holy fucking shit” but The Rock is going to be playing The Tooth Fairy in a movie about the Tooth Fairy. Ill just let that one speak for itself.
“Guy Replaces Halflife 2 Sounds With His Own Voice” This is a clear example of how awesome it is to be alive in the greatest age of mankind. This is incredible, this guy totally captured how I spent my young life in the car with my parents. I would daydream of chasing the Terminator or whatever and make sound effects with my voice to myself in the car. Ahh the good old days. I wish this guy could get a award for this.
“NiN’s The Fragile is 10 Years Old!” Trent event said there is going to be a mega reissue in 2010. Nice. The Fragile is a great NiN double album. One of my fav NiN albums actually. Listening to it now to celebrate. I own it but you can stream it all online at last.fm. I recommend the following tacks: “Were in this together”(Possibly NiN’s most optimistic song to date), “Even Deeper,” “The Great Below,” “Where is Everybody?” “The Big Comedown,” “The Day The Whole World Went Away” and the rest of the album.
Shifting Viewpoints
Posted by jdodson in free software, life, tech on August 24th, 2009
Many years ago I was pretty zealous about Linux and the free software movement. I thought that the only way that I could do computing was using software that I had the freedom to view and modify the source of. I am not going to define what that is, there are plenty of sites out there about that, the free software foundation has a great site on that check it out for more information.
Those ideas led me to make choices about my home computing. Over the years that followed, I dumped all versions of Windows from my house and started using Linux exclusively. This was fun as it was challenging to change your computer work flow. Linux being very apt was up to most of the tasks and it worked quite well.
Except games that is. Linux has some cool free games but they are not of the same quality as proprietary Windows or Mac games. Plus most of the games didn’t come with licenses compatible with my free software view. So, I modified my view so games were OK to run as long as they all ran in Linux. Interesting view, if not really hard to pull off and absolutely not free software compatible.
Also on Linux, I had to run the binary NON free software Nvidia driver to run games. It was a double whammy, not only was the game non free but the driver to run the game wasn’t either. It made no sense to run Linux for reasons of freedom if I was running a non free system.
During that time, id get a game that wouldn’t work or would work badly. Wine, which is a way to have Linux pretend its Windows is fine on old games but really suffers on many modern games. Playing games on Linux using Wine is so bad, I really only gamed when there was a native Linux port for a game, which is VERY rare.
So I gamed little. Then I got a Wii and that all changed. I played many more games. Then I got a PS3, now I can play games whenever I want and technology doesn’t get in my way of playing a good game. At least, right now its not.
So I have literally stopped all my computer gaming in favor of my living room consoles. However, some new games are coming out that are exclusive PC titles, like Starcraft 2. Am I going to run this in Linux? No way. Not worth the hassle. I am going to build a new PC and then dual boot between a XP license I have and Linux.
Today I read a article that had a quote from John Carmack I found interesting:
“If you are restricted to it only working on the closed source drivers, you might as well boot into windows and get the fully tested and tuned experience…”
I actually agree with John here. See, running a Linux system is awesome. I run it as my primary desktop and to develop software. Its great for that. However, because its a nascent system for games, hardly anyone ports games to it. That makes running games hard. If you are going to play games and resort to using non free software to do it, go the full 10 and run Windows. If you are dedicated to buying new games, its not that much more for Windows anyway.
In the end, I now select software for its purpose. Id love to run everything on Linux but that doesn’t work well right now. Perhaps in the future it will, but until then, its a multi-platform set of systems. These are the list of platforms I have at my house(currently): PS3 OS, Wii OS, Mac OS, Linux OS & Windows OS(I use this so infrequently its not worth mentioning, but I will more for games in the future). Each for its different set of uses. Id like to consolidate but no one OS does it so well I can dump the others.
The iPhone is Amazing! The iPhone is Horrible!
Posted by jdodson in apple, free software, tech on August 15th, 2009
** ADDITION: Please read this and understand this is an post about my opinion based on my experience. This isn’t the end of the world, I assure you its simply my opinion. END ADDITION **
The iPhone is an amazing product. At least, I think so. A few other people seem to agree with me. A year or so ago, a friend gave me a first generation iPhone he bought that was broken. It wouldn’t turn off or on. You could charge it fine, have it go into standby and use it in every way save it won’t turn off or on. Since thats not a big deal, I started using it minus the “phone.” I just use the “i” part and the “i” part is great. Ive heard bad things about the phone part. Can’t comment on that really, I just have an “i”.
I think the i is amazing. About two years ago I purchased Nokia N800. This Linux powered internet tablet plays music, surfs the web over wifi, supports email, flash in the browser, has a web cam, does Skype and more. It is a cool device but is has problems. Not only is it slow, its just not that easy to use. Crashes, laggy apps and over time it seemed like a chore to use. After my friend gave me his broken iPhone I realized you could take a handheld device and make it shine for certain uses the Nokia was bad at.
One other huge gripe of the N800 was how lame the web looked in its mini-firefox OR Opera browser. Fonts were small. Scrolling simply didn’t work on some pages(Amazon). The web sucked on the N800. The biggest thing the i got right was that it made the Safari mobile browser shine. Surfing the web on the i is a joy to use and I don’t surf the web at home on a regular computer these days at all. I use the i.
Another thing the i does well is email. I guess I should qualify, the i is good at reading email. Any kind of text entry on the i means you have to touch the screen on a fake keyboard. Essentially imagine typing on a glass window. It sucks. I like that my fingers hit a keyboard and they don’t immediately stop. Plus its hard to remain 100% accurate with no keys. I recently picked up a Verizon phone and it has a flip out touch pad keyboard. I am way more accurate on a flip out touch pad than the iBoard. Because of this, I enter little data in the i, I use it as a client primarily.
The i has a 2 mega pixel camera. Its not amazing, but cool to have when you don’t have a better one. It is better than nothing but the quality is sub crap. You need the lighting to be perfect, you can’t move your hand or the picture will smear. Don’t think about taking party pictures, it will look like the inside of a dark shoe box. But its a great thing to have and I have taken many pictures on it and some turned out great. Most don’t.
I would say that sums up what I think is awesome about the iPhone. Sure it has 20 billion apps but most of them suck I don’t find compelling enough to use or enjoy. I recently bought a game called Zenonia for $3 and its incredible, but I find that to the exception to the blase app rule. I use a twitter app all the time but I could just the use mobile web part and it wouldn’t be terrible. All told I don’t find the fact that they have a billion apps to be a big deal at all. A few others I use are just the web site re packaged into a app on the i that is native. Its kind of nicer in some cases but not a big deal, most sites have a mobile view anyway.
Lets get into the horrible parts about the i. These are so bad, I prob won’t buy one because of them. Understand to me a open platform is pretty important. I value a open platform over a “more sexy” platform any day. So far the parts of the platform I use the most have no need to be closed. However, the i and the Phone is one of the most closed down platforms I have used in my recent memory.
1) You can only copy music on it from iTunes and only one instance of iTunes at that. Seriously WTF is it 1984? I am as legit a user as it gets yet Apple won’t let me sync this crap from one iTunes instance to another. That is simply lame. I sync between multiple computers, this is essential to my workflow. – infinity for treating me like a criminal.
1.1) I don’t like iTunes, why force me to use it? I just want the i not the Tunes! This is not a joke, I really don’t care for it.
2) All apps on the App Store are DRM’d no matter what. This is simply silly. First off, 99% of my apps are free so I don’t get why they are wrapped in DRM. Second off DRM shouldn’t be mandatory, it should only be on apps where the app provider requests it. Seems odd to wrap everything in DRM if some developers might not want it in the first place. Why would they not want DRM on the app? Oh I don’t know, how about because every time I upgrade my i they don’t work? I have to go into my i and authenticate to the App Store in preferences and then manually open every app so it can see I am me. This is stupid and silly. I am not a criminal, please don’t treat me like one. I am now starting to wonder if I ever bought another iPhone or iPod touch, if the apps I bought would transfer? Note to Apple: NEVER MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER QUESTION THIS KIND OF THING! This reason alone is reason enough for me to discontinue paying for App Store apps. I don’t care about DRM until it gets in my way or scares me and the reality of DRM is just that.
3) No bluetooth support in ways I care about. I got a new Verizon phone for $80. This phone is in every way a more open device than my iPhone. One of the ways is that it enables me to transfer any file on it to any bluetooth device. I guess Verizon(or LG) should be sued for enabling piracy. I actually think that is quite unlikely to happen, but they might have happy customers because they can transfer pictures to each other on the fly with each other. I guess you can always TXT or email a picture on the i but it scales it down very small like and some people(AKA myself) I care about fidelity of sources(picture, audio).
4) Can’t plug SDHC cards into it. I see failure in two ways: 1) (The Paranoid View) Apple builds planned obsolescence in its devices by denying their expandability. 2) Somehow a SDHC reader will not work within the confines of a iPhone/iPod touch. 3) Something else that isn’t coming to me right now. The i I have has 8 gigs of flash on it. Id like to upgrade this. Oh, wait, too bad, can’t. Buy a new phone. Not only is this silly because you can avoid it by allowing SDHC cards, it seems a little un-green of Apple too. Then again, there may be some technical reason they don’t do this. Like technically when everyone upgrades iPhones they technically make more money.
5) AT&T only. HAHAHAHA no.
I recently got a Verizon phone for $80 that in many ways puts the i to shame. I still will keep around the i to surf the web and cehck email but that will be it for now. I have read in some places that a Android phone is coming to Verizon this year and saw some specs and screen shots and it looks very cool. Prob get one of those. I won’t be tied to Apple then. I hope Apple decides to open up its device more than it is. It would be good for its users and may add another to its paying fold. Namely myself.