Entries Tagged as 'Computing'
Installing Fedora 11 vs. Installing Windows 7 RC.
I decided, in some fit of madness to upgrade to Fedora 11, and to upgrade to Windows 7 RC on my dual-boot laptop. I thought that I would take advantage of the unaccustomed Generosity of Microsoft with their free version (that is, it’s free untill July next year).
First, let’s start with the upgrade.
Upgrade:
Fedora 11: Surprisingly painless. A small window popped up telling me that the download was available, and all I had to do was to click “Install”. This kicked of the downloading of all the relevant packages. Upon reboot, the computer asked the usuall questions about keyboard and, and then set about upgrading the computer. Job done.
Windows 7 RC: This is to be done from inside vista itself, and much to my surprise relatively painless. It required the extra step of creation of a DVD, but one that was done, it asked the same questions about the keyboard, and upgraded my Vista to Windows 7. This is a VAST improvement of previous upgrades of windows Software. It did also seem to fetch updates from Microsoft, the problem was that as this was done during the process of upgrading, it meant that the process left your computer unusable much longer than Fedora 11.
Experience
Fedora 11: As nothing much has changed on the interface, there was nothing new to report. The improvements meant that a lot more stuff had reached that stage of “Just Worked”. It appears to have solved an intermittent problem with my Wireless Network card, where it would just stop working, so that’s an improvement. Also, the random crashes when using Compiz Fusion seems to have gone as well. As with everything, a new upgrade made me revisit a few old favourites, and discovered that Evolution now allows me to sync with my Google Calendar, I don’t know how long it’s been able to do this, but it’s funky. I can also (using alltray) hide Evolution in my task-bar. Seems to work fine, but we’ll see how it works with more time.
Windows 7 RC.: A big change to the interface has made it somewhat confusing to use. I’m also not sure what the changes are designed to achieve. Having spent a lot of time trying to shift all the things that I have open to the system-tray, it was a surprise to discover that MSN now seems to want to take a place on the task-bar, rather than hiding it’s self away in the system-tray. As ever, IE is back on the Windows 7 version of the quick-launch, but it was a matter of seconds to remove it. Much to my surprise and delight, it appears that Firefox has remained my default web-browser. I guess the court ruling actually did make a few changes. The System Tray is now hidden away in a pop-up box, which for most things is fairly handy, and it’s fairly straight-forward to return things that you want to the sys-tray if you want them (like I use Adolix wall-paper changer to change my wall-paper every minit). By and large, the interface seems to be Vista with a few updates, most of which seem to have been done for “the look of the thing”, rather than for any kind of increase in functionality that I can see. An example is that default setting for the task-bar. In this, you can maximise windows, but not minimise them. We are used to being able to click on the button to raise a window, or to lower a window. This doesn’t seem to be the case in the Windows 7. Another odd thing that has just happened, is I randomly got a large Advert for Garnier appear in the foreground on the right-hand side. This vanished after a few seconds, and seems to be comming from Windows Live Messenger (MSN). That’s a massive invasion of my desktop. I don’t know what triggered it, or where it comes from.. we shall have to wait and see if it comes up again. Another odd thing seems to be that when I minimize firefox, the main windows of Windows Live appears. This could be a bug, so we have to remember that Windows 7 is still in development.
Conclusion
As “Pretty” as Windows 7 is, I think it’s too Much too late. The interface is excessive, and doesn’t seem to add anything to functionality. With the improvements in Fedora 11, the least user-friendly/tech heavy of the linux distro’s, I’m not sure that there’s any way that Microsoft can catch up. Considering that the programs I use for daily use are Firefox, Thunderbirt/Evolution, Open Office, and LaTex, there’s very little that is the pervue of Windows only. With Microsoft’s obsession with only allowing you to connect to Microsoft’s services, which by and large cost money there seems to be very little to come back to windows for. The only game that I play that is Windows-Only is World of Warcraft, and in the current climate that subscription has been cancelled. Of course, the ordinary person will be stuck using Microsoft while Business continue to insist on bying into the Microsoft Madness under the mistaken belief that it will save them on Tech Support Costs. People’s computer training comes mostly through their business and schools so until that changes, I guess Microsoft will hold tight on the world, despite it’s usefullness having been extinquished by their inability to inovate, or find another stream of monetizing to open up their operating system to interoportunity.
~Black Xanthus
Popularity: 51% [?]
Getting LaTex word count which ignores footnotes
I’ve been wrighting my essays in LaTex every since I discovered that it made footnoting and other various items easier. The one thing it made harder, however, was doing the word-count.
Wanting to know how far through my 5000 word essay I was, I started trying to work out how. Lots of people say things like “Turn it into a pdf and copy it into word”. I’m sorry, but I don’t have that kind of time.
I spent some time searching, and eventually came accross a perl script:
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~kanmy/software/texWordCount.pl
That I found here:
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~kanmy/software.html
This was wonderful. Hats off to the guys that wrote it and updated it. However, I needed it to ignore the words in footnotes. They don’t count towards the word count for my theological essays, so I hacked it until it seemed to work. It works even if you include \textit{} to itallicise the book name, which I have to do in my footnotes. If you need it to do more, you will have to hack it yourself.
http://blog.valhalla.jara23.co.uk/?page_id=275
Also, this was a quick hack. It may not work in all cases. If you find it doesn’t, feel free to leave a comment, and I might fix it. Also, the word count has not been verified.
~Black Xanthus
Popularity: 64% [?]
Free Web Hosting
Now, it’s not often I put up posts that are likely to shoot myself in the foot. I’ve been toying with online services for a very long time, in the vaugue hope that I would make some money. Ideally enough to be able to actually afford the insane plan of going off to join the church.
Being as, so far, my online plans haven’t moved far beyond a few friends, and time being the limiting factor between me and making money, I figured that I’d put this here.
Now, I first must say that I’ve not looked at this place, but It seems to be legit. Especially as I found it’s link while searching the forum for answers.
It’s an add supported, or forum supported free hosting. According to the site, that means that if you are the kind of person that spends a lot of time browsing the forums, you could get some free web-hosting while adding to their knowledge base.
Here’s the link:http://www.trap17.com/free-web-hosting/free-web-hosting.htm
If someone gives it a go, tell me how it works out!
~Black Xanthus
Popularity: 39% [?]
Installing a new desktop on Ubuntu
If you happen to like windows, then you will love Ubuntu. This distribution seems to adore making things overly complicated for no real reason, and obfuscating the way things should work.
Perhaps it is the way of the future for those that don’t care how their system works. I do. I’m not a big fan of Fedora as a distribution, but at least it allows me to do what I want, the way I want it. That’s the reason I moved to linux away from the glaring lights of Windblows (appart from, of course, games, but that’s another rant).
I thought that I would get round to actually using the Ubuntu install that I put on my laptop on the urging of a workmate, and after 20 minits messing around with it and not getting anywhere I gave up and went back to windows, swareing to bring a Fedora DVD home so I can re-install it. Anyway, being as my memory is terrible, I’ve found myself wondering how I go about installing a desktop on Ubuntu.
Here’s how to do it (don’t blame me. It makes no sense to me either).
To install a desktop of your choice (say, kde or xfce), Ubunty has handily renamed the groups to something memorable: xubuntu-desktop (xfce) or kubuntu-desktop(kde). So if you were wondering why they weren’t showing up in your searches, now you know.
So, open up a Terminal (aplications->accessories->terminal) and sudo /bin/bash to give yourself a real root terminal, like you get on all other grown-up operating systems. (I am told that you can do this by modifiying config files, but I have a life to live).
Then run:
aptitude install xbuntu-desktop
Then wait while it fetches the packages for you.
There do seem to be a lot of nice features in Ubuntu, but it’s irritating habit of hiding things in places that I wouldn’t think to check and it’s horrible orange colourscheme means that I would much rather go elsewhere. That and it’s package management that seems impossible to use from just messing about means that it has a few things left to be desired.
Black Xanthus
Popularity: 35% [?]
Upgrading Fedora 8 to Fedora 9 (beta)
This article is based on an article by brandon hutchinson
I noticed with some glee (as most geeks do) that Fedora 9 was on the way in 17 days. Could I wait 17 days? I needed to remove the Ubuntu install on my machine, and replace it with one that at least gave me a root terminal when I asked for one, without messing about with removing the security. Ubuntu, I’m told, is very nice, but for older hardware, I’m personally sticking with Fedora.
The idea of downloading another DVD iso, and then burning it to disk, and then going through the rather long upgrade process didn’t please me. It would mean, for a start, not having my machine while it did the upgrade. (One of the things, perhaps, Ubuntu has over Fedora is that the install gives you a virtual version of Ubunty to play with (it’s just not very pretty)).
I thought that there must be a way of upgrading using yum, so I went looking. The key appears to be the fedora-release package. By upgrading this, and then running a yum update everything works smoothly.
So, the steps for doing this are:
- download: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-8.93-1.noarch.rpm
(or navigate to the directory containing the release you want to upgrade too) - Run(as root): rpm -Uvh fedora-release-8.93-1.noarch.rpm
- Run(as root): yum update
Note It can take 4 GB to dowload all the files. Ensure that you have enough space in /var to put them. If not, symlink the directory: /var/cache/yum/rawhideto somewhere that does.
Hope that helps,
Black Xanthus
Popularity: 43% [?]
RHCE – Certification results
Or, to put it another way. I passed. I got 100% on this exam. Surprised the heck outta me.
Popularity: 37% [?]
Ledgend of Zelda Movie: Not a Myth
Yes, that’s right folks,
They have made, or to be more precise, they are in the process of finishing, the Ledgend Of Zelda Movie. Live action, no less.
I’m not quite sure about the Actor, but he’s obviously been chosen for his looks. The plot appears to follow that of the game, and there are little bits and pieces of it that gamer fans will recognise straight away. There is obviously a large reliance on computer graphics, but perhaps, there are a few places where a bit more attention to it might have been more useful.
The realease date of this film is set to be April 1, 2009
This film is obviously an update, and improvement on the previous attempt that can be found relegated here. As you can see, this new version has a lot more effort behind it, and a lot more money. It appears that Ninendo have got their act together and are joining the other successful films that have made the transition to celuloid, like Mario Brothers, the hit film with the music by Roxet.
The film is being made by a small film company called “Rainfall”. There is a music tailer on their website. The kind of thing that gets released as a music video for the backing tracks. This contains some shots of the movie not in the trailer at IGN, it also lists the actors and the producers. There’s obviously a lot of work going into making this, it’s looking good.
Black Xanthus
Popularity: 55% [?]
Backing up your data online – For Free!
How many of us actually backup our data? Hands up… go on? Did you put your hand up? are you lying?
IF your one of those thousands of people who know the importance of backup, but find that lazyness actually gets in the way, or that cost seems insane, then here are a few pointers for you.
This is a really handy online “usb” drive. It gives you one 1GB of online space where you can just upload stuff. For Free. No bells, no whistles, and no adds. I don’t know how they do it, either. Web-based.
Now this I found a little to difficult to belive. 25GB of free space. Yes, that’s right. I checked it twice. 25GB of space to dump stuff. It is, however very, very, very slow. This again, is web-based. It does have the small problem that there is a limit on what you can download. On the free version, it’s only 1GB.
Moxy is a free backup system for windows PC’s. Sorry, I know. I’ve yet to find one that will work on Linux, but the hunt goes on. It also doesn’t allow you to backup stuff over NFS file-shares, but then, like I said, it’s FREE. 2GB of data, regularly backed up (providing, of course, you leave your computer on, or that you start the backup manually). It’s easy enough to configure, and you can tell it to just take the files you need (like your important documents, or your code). While not a “true” backup system, it will prevent from accidental deletion and over-wrighting. This uses a piece of software that runs on your pc.
If you do decide to sign up for this one, please use my referance code (handily hidden in the above URL), or in the boxs that says “referer” put: UDZV9N. If you can refer 4 other people, you get an extra gig of space. It would really be handy!
This, again, is a web-pased file-holder. This has a difference as it allows you to define the elvel of access that other people have to your files, and allow you to share them to the world, or simply to a few close friends. There is no viewing/download limit on this that I can find, but the website is sparse of information.
I shall keep looking for one that works with linux!
enjoy.
Black Xanthus
Popularity: 45% [?]
WiiMote Genius: Someone should pay Johnny Chung Lee
A demonstration of head-tacking using the WiiMote was show on YouTube. It’s frankly amazing. Vr 3D in a way that isn’t going to mess with your head, and doesn’t mean waring some stupid googles to do it.
You’d have thought that it was built and designed by some boff from Nintendo in his spare time, or someone looking to break into the industry. It’s not. It’s written by a quite mild-mannered (from his blog at least) computer engineer and Carnagie-Mellon University. There are now, appacently, even games using this idea.
Want to know what kind of roylaties he’s getting? None, Zip, Nadda. NOTHING. That’s right. Take a look at the video again. Amazing isn’t it? He makes the idea seem very simple. The idea, is, infact, very simple. Building the application, demonstrating that it can be done on the other hand? Not so simple.
His blog says that he’s quite happy to help the front-end of the technological development. Groovy. I figured I’d sent him a couple of quid to help him along. Just a token of my appreciation, taking advantage of the fact that the pound is strong against the dollar. Perhaps then he can get a bit of pleasure from seeing that his inventions and developments are actually making a difference. But guess what? he only accepts donations for the products. Not for himself. HE wants to keep this stuff free for the world. I sent him $5 anyway. I have to say, that he’s the first person I’ve actually felt compelled to send money too.
This is what the free software revolution is all about. I hope that he can earn enough money with his little ventures like the steadycam.
Amazingly, and on a compleatly different tangent, he also takes some interesting photographs. These, again, he does for free (or at least, hes’ not for hire), he’s interested only in the medium, and the challenge.
I wish I knew where he finds the time, and the energy to do all these things.
Check him out.
Black Xanthus
Popularity: 40% [?]
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