Posts

Posted on

Linux is going to be super green

Gnome Power Management logoEcology, this is a kind of marketing and political buzz word now-a-day. When someone says “I am an ecologist”, what does he really want to say? Thus, I will not use it but rather say that I love hiking and cycling, and the best place to do so is Nature, especially far from any road or city. Therefore, I love Nature (at large) and I am doing my bit and my best to protect it and today I was quite happy to read an article on future improvements on the power management of Linux.

To shortly summarise (I heavily advise you to read the above linked article): the new kernel (2.6.21 with the tickless timer) and Intel involvement will mainly help reducing power consumption. Also, it seems that KDE (another Linux desktop environment) has some nice improvements in sleep states area.

Now linking the article conclusion about AMD/ATI drivers and the dream that perhaps AMD/ATI will help the open source community creating new drivers. There are hopes to save even more energy.

Posted on

LightZone 2.4 for Linux is released

LightZone logoLight Crafts is the commercial editor of LightZone, a multi-platform image editor. It supports mainly the Windows and Mac OS X platform, and it is not free: one has to pay for the software and it is not open source. LightZone integrates well into the photographer image work flow, offering a nice browsing experience and various tools to enhance zone of one’s photographs.

However, a Linux enthusiast (Anton Kast) at Light Crafts has managed to port LightZone to Linux and his company allows him to distribute this version free of charge. It is not free software, but that is still a really nice initiative from this company and its employee. Thank you Anton and Light Crafts :-)

The new release, stamped 2.4, is available for download: LightZone 2.4 for Linux (Warning alternate link if the previous one does not work. Click on “Read more” for more information)

Continue reading “LightZone 2.4 for Linux is released”

Posted on

Commercial virtualisation product available for Ubuntu

A bit more than a month ago Spring just started, but it is so hot and sunny now that it feels already like Summer. Summer means much more outside activities and fewer inside topics: less blogging and less playing with Ubuntu.

Anyway from time to time, I still find opportunities to discover a new side of Ubuntu and to write about it. Today is about a recent update in the Ubuntu repositories that enabled the first commercial package: VMware Server.

Continue reading “Commercial virtualisation product available for Ubuntu”

Posted on

Ubuntu 7.04 – spring cleaning

Ubuntu circle (logo)It is Spring and as every year it is time to do a bit of cleaning. Perhaps, you have recently upgraded your Ubuntu Linux from the release 6.10 (Edgy Eft) to the up-to-date 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). By doing so you might have some packages and residual files that are no longer needed, and by removing them you could free up lots of space on your hard disks.

To describe the various possibilities and reasons to do an Ubuntu Spring cleaning, I have started a wiki article. If you have any comments feel free to give them here, in reply to this post. I will try to take them into account.

Posted on

A web browser for Human beings

Ubuntu Linux is designed for Human beings. It tends to be as easy as possible for all of them and to make things just work. A similar contender on this concept but in the web browser/e-mail environment is Opera. Sadly it is not open source but it is freely available to anyone and on many platforms and languages.

Opera features many enhancement regarding accessibility (and are/were pioneer in many of this area). They have integrated into their browser things like mouse gesture, voice control and many UI improvements (some were adapted in other major software) including: tabs, sessions, zoom and private data management.

It seems as if Opera has always tried to make their software more ergonomic with each new release. Something that was not really considered seriously until recently by the contenders.

Continue reading “A web browser for Human beings”

Posted on

Upgrading Ubuntu Server to 7.04

Feisty official pictureYou might have read Canonical information on how to upgrade your Ubuntu 6.10 Server Edition to the latest Ubuntu 7.04 Server Edition. But somehow, you cannot install the update-manager-core program.

I might have the problem because I am not using the Universe or Multiverse repositories, but when using only the official ones, an installation of the above mentioned package will failed with the error that the package could not be found.

Continue reading “Upgrading Ubuntu Server to 7.04”

Posted on

It is spring, the trees and Ubuntu are in Blossom

Flower bud in a tree full of blossomI love spring (though I love each seasons…) the nature is never so green and full of colour as during this season. The nature is all blooming and it is such a nice sight.

And like every year since 2004, Linux Ubuntu is in blossom (at least for the Northern hemisphere). The next Ubuntu release has been confirmed today for release on the 19th of April. Both the desktop and server edition will be available at this date.

So what’s new in Ubuntu 7.04 (a.k.a. Feisty Fawn)?

Continue reading “It is spring, the trees and Ubuntu are in Blossom”

Posted on

Getting more from your battery

Gnome Power Management logoFollowing my previous article on the Gnome Power Management applet, I want to talk about another new functionality of this tool that got added with the latest version of Gnome (2.18 available with the coming Ubuntu Release).

This new facility helps you getting more information from your battery and is available via the menu of the Gnome Power Management applet when clicking on it with the left button. In the menu, the first entry should be about your battery with the charge information.

Continue reading “Getting more from your battery”

Posted on

The Wow had already started

It is not my intention to transform this blog into a video one. But I will from time to time add one that I found of interest.

Today is an alternative wow that I want to say. I have installed a 3D desktop on my computer last autumn and found it fun, I also found out how crap was my built-in laptop video card… sigh!

Anyway, today I was watching a recent video of such 3D desktop, and wow! They have evolved really fast. The video is a bit long at the beginning, but it is worth it. I like the dock at the bottom of the screen (kiba dock). Of course, the operating system is Linux.

Posted on

Hello, I’m an alternative!

Video MIME Type by TangoEven if you do not have a TV, it was difficult to miss the advertisement campaign from Apple: “Hello I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC.” If you have missed it out, here is one of the latest one to date: the flashback.

I am a big fan of Apple computers, and there are right that for a home computer desktop there are two possibilities: a PC or a Mac. However, there advertisement do not emphasise on the hardware (which is nowadays pretty similar) but more on what can be done with them. So it should have better been called: “Hello I’m OS X. And I’m Windows.”

But on this ground, there are more than those two systems, many alternatives like Ubuntu Linux, FreeBSD, etc. do exist. That is what maybe triggered a counter campaign from Novell (Linux distributor of SUSE Linux). I am calling it “Hello, I’m an alternative!“.