Nineteen Eighty7

By Adam Nicholls

Weekend Birthday Plans

So its Mine, Dan's, Sam's and Tim's Birthday all in the space of a week.

So to celebrate we're thinking...

The Plan


Weather Update

Can check ClevedonWeather.co.uk on the days if you want to know if you should wear a jumper or suntan.

Essentially:
Friday is gonna be Cloudy about 16oC.
Saturday is gonna be warmer 19oC and less Cloudy.
Sunday is gonna be 18oC and Cloudy.

All in all a whole weekend is needed, and everyone is invited.



Posted on: Wed, 10 Jun 09 00:08:13 +0100

Welcome to the New Site!

This is my NEW website. Its made with PHP, uses an SQL backend, and XML with XSLT rendering.

Its got its own back end, and is very impressive. Still lacking in comments. But rest assured they are on the way.

The website now has an awesome 80s look. I've also renamed it 1987 in the title.

I'm still debating to add Twitter or Last.fm feeds to the page. Not sure where I'd fit it into the design? Also debating now about releasing my source code? I should at least validate it first!



Posted on: Sat, 06 Jun 09 02:31:53 +0100

Dubstep the next step

http://rapidshare.com/files/231702265/InForKill-Skream-mix.rar

I've been listening to a bit of Dubstep recently, this is an awesome remix of La Roux's In For The Kill, which is taking the charts and clubs by storm. I sense a big buzz around Dubstep is on its way, much like drum and bass exploded in the past few years.

Pendulum brought the Jungle and Drum'n'Bass Genre to the mainstream masses and achieved daytime radio play. And now acts like High Contrast, Micky Finn, DJ Hype, etc are receiving part of the sucess simply by curious listeners delving deep into the genre's history. Now its up to someone to do the same with Dubstep, I've started hearing the name Rusko mentioned alot, and Skream has already got his name out there by the above remix. I'd just say watch this space for now.



Posted on: 2009-05-11 13:23:50

Configuration, Destruction, and Typical Procastrination

I've been playing around in Wordpress, its been ages since I've used it, and this is the latest and greatest version. I've gone and got quite a few plug-ins. It started out as a search for an anti-spam plug-in because my Gmail account is getting spammed by wordpress requesting me to approve spam comments! It ended up me getting loads of different plug-ins.

One of the more interesting ones was DandyID. I'd like to think I'm 'down with the kids' on the net these days but the sheer vast amount of online communities is crazy. I remember years ago when I was starting to get into web communities, all I remember was the MSN/Yahoo Chatrooms (sadly gone iirc), and MySpace was just taking off. My main web communities at the time were DeviantArt and Slashdot. But looking through some of the entries on DandyID's list there was a communities for everything, either way I decided to explore a few interesting ones which could get a bit of use from time-to-time.

I'm sad to announce that my 500GB Western Digital USB Elements hard-drive has fried. Well after attacking it with a screwdriver I got the hard-disk out and looks like the SATA to USB board has fried, luckily the hard-disk is fine. I tried a bit of a make-shift SATA Power adaptor but it didn't work. Here's the story...

I've had it for a year (figures the Warranty would run out!) and when you plug it into the main the green light on the power-brick goes off and drive doesn't turn on. My natural assumption was something is short circuiting. I wasn't brave enough to prise open the power brick with its transformers etc. But I decided to open the hard-drive case instead. The drive is actually exactly the same as the 500GB drive inside my machine now! After taking the drive out, I swapped it with the one in my machine and booted and found all my files still there intact. Now this drive holds all my movies, which its interesting to note the performance increase from switching from USB to SATA2. The movies loaded up instantly and I could skip around the movies instantly. On the USB connection the drive would have to spin up and spin down again, and there seemed to be a lot of buffering and caching involved.

So its well worth bearing in mind the performance difference from USB to SATA. Even though there shouldn't theoretically be any difference... as I've been told on my local Linux User Group in the past!! Essentially the numbers should be something like this:

USB 2.0 480MBps

SATA2 2GBps

Average Hard-disk Read Speed (7,200rpm) 60-70MB/s

So god knows why I saw an performance increase, something to do with the hard-disk cache size maybe, or even having the OS working directly with the I/O (input/output) controllers?? I've never been a big fan of USB anyways, it always felt like an after thought, and a dirty work around, its probably because it relies so heavily on software for connectivity, unlike SATA/IDE/eSATA/Firewire/RS-232.

This message is also procrastination, I'm buying time because I can't be bothered to get on and do my Software Design coursework. How hard can a 2 Class Number Generation program be? -- easy that's the problem, I tend to say to myself its easy it'll take 5minutes to do, all I have to do is X,Y,Z and voila! The reality is always different.

Anyways its time for bed for me, I have to be up for a wonderful lecture at 11.30am on Linux Network Programming.



Posted on: 2009-02-25 01:19:42

Admit Defeat or Not Reinventing the Wheel

I have sort of given up on my own Blogging application. It was going well, but when you compare it to something that is as mamoth and collosal as Wordpress it would never win in terms of features. The only thing my blog had going for it was that it was light weight, small, and ran using XML instead of MySQL.

Just because my main blog is now Wordpress, doesn't mean though I'm going to give up the development of my own blog. The base code is still there, and usuable. Its as much an academic exercise as it is something serious to be used in a real world situation. Hopefully some good will come from further development. But for now, I want something a little more complete for my personal blog.

Also, do you think this theme reminds you of the Slumdog Millionaire posters?



Posted on: 2009-02-18 01:36:36

EEEasy PEEEasy

Currently installing Easy Peasy Linux 1.10 on my EEE PC. Just deleted the recovery partition and the default Xandros install. I'm planning on replacing it with the Easy Peasy install, and removing my Linux Mint install.

Easy peasy does everything my Xandros default install did, and i'm sure it'll do more in the future when its fully developed. The Xandros 4GB Solid State is also faster than my 16GB Secondary Solid State drive, so hopefully I'll see a performance increase!

I'll be sad to see Linux Mint go, but its a little too heavy for my EEE PC. I've checked out the XFCE and Fluxbox variants but they don't feel quite right on an EEE PC.

I have a 4GB SD Class 6 Card which should be big enough and fast enough if I ever want to check out any other distros in the future, so I don't have to commit to using the Easy Peasy install forever.



Posted on: 2009-02-17 23:34:49

Who said Debian was slow?

Every Linux user knows that the Debian project is infact slow with its release cycle, and that it always hangs on for the last minute bugs to iron out every thing. With the release of Sarge back in October 2005, i thought that i'd be pretty likely that Vista would be out by the next release of Debian, but if Microsoft keep up their excuses and keep on pushing back that release date it'll be Debian Sid before we know it!

Microsoft Vista is now said to be released on January 2007, instead of the Christmas Holiday period of 2006. However if Microsoft plan now to release Vista after the New Year why rush it out, why not hang on to it until easter time? Infact there is a little logic to that. April time is the end of the finacial banking year (or at least in the UK it is, i'll assume that its the same internationally? (I'm no Stock Broker)) This would give businesses chance to look at their new budget for the next finacial year. I personally cannot see Vista being released in January 2007.

Whats even more annoying to me, is the attitude towards Vista from Microsoft. Theres been lots of stuff recently in the Press about Bill Gates admitting that Internet Explorer is shit, and from this he has "vowed" to release a new version of IE every year. But its the fact that Bill only realised that it was shit half-way through the Vista production, I kinda get the impression that Microsoft seem to be doing alot of back-tracking over their code. I'm not saying that the whole Vista team probabily came to a stand still to try and work some new ideas in to enhance any new or proposed IE versions, but its starting to feel that way. There was also in the press mid-last year about the apparent insecurity of the command-line shell to be included with Vista. This was mainly concerning Business users, and involved some remote access vulnerabilties, however Microsoft decided to dither about claim it had be cut from the final release, and then changing their mind.

There hasn't been alot of press or commenting on the new version of Windows Media Player that will come with Vista either, is this because Microsoft only decided to have a new release at the last minute? Whats more the new WMP looks vaguely similar to iTunes in a way.

The other alarming thing i've seen in the press is that Microsoft (apparently) have claimed Vista could be their last Operating System. As a guess i think they might be trying to take a leap out of Linux Vendor's Books: don't bother with full releases just have small incremental releases. Much like SP2 was to XP, Microsoft could have a annual Security and Update Patch to update/upgrade Vista to work with the new technologies(at the time) and would make Vista feel seamlessly next-generation.

Maybe some of this is aload of bullshit, but one thing is certain Vista won't be out any time soon. But what do I care, I'll probabily be using Ubuntu 7.04 by then delivered on a shiney DVD Disc ready with Kernel 2.8 and Gnome 2.18!!



Posted on: 2006-03-28 22:25:17

UCAS Tracking: Howto

Like many people my age who are getting to the last year of they college courses I decided to go to University. In the UK the easiest way to apply to Unis is through UCAS. Known as the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service which handles all the applications to Unis and Colleges electronically through their website, making it more efficent and easier for Unis to manage the applicants.

The UCAS website also the has the ability to be able to keep track of your application so you can see which Unis have made you an offer and which ones are still deciding. However like many in my class and other friends from around the country, we logged in to try and track our applications to be shown a message saying quoth:

'Your Personal ID is: XXXXXXXXXXX.

Your application number is XX-XXXXX-X
Login again soon to see your password for ucastrack (the UCAS Applicant Enquiry Service).'

After a while and alot of logging in we were all wondering if we were ever gonna get this UCAS Tracker Password. Well good news, you probabily don't need one. UCAS haven't done the best of jobs documenting how to navigate and use their website. Heres how to actually check your UCAS progress.

We go to ucas.com like usual, and follow the link to 'apply' on the left menu. We then login normally into UCAS using the Student Login. Your user name for UCAS is usually your first inital follwed by your surname and your day of birth.

Once logged in you will need to make a note of the number where it says: 'Your application number is XX-XXXXXX-X' this is your UCAS application number.

Now logout again. Back on the main website you need to go to students in the little quite tab at the very top of the page. Then go to 'Track Progress' in the grey bar in the middle of the page. From this page click the 'enter 2006 entry Track service'.

In the new page you need to put the application number you noted down eariler. However you have to remove the dashes in the number because the box is only just big enough to fit the numbers in only. So put just the numbers in without the dashes. Under that you just need to put your usual UCAS login details like before.

Once logged in if you go to the choices link in red near the top it will show you all your choosen Unis with they're current progress. If it says 'sent' don't panic it means that UCAS has sent your application to your Uni.


------
Sorry for making this little howto a little long winded, but i guessed theres probabily alot of people out there applying to Uni, who might not be going to Uni to study Computer Science :P. I just tried to simplify it for Average Joe.

Anyways hope this helps a few people.

//inkeh



Posted on: 2006-03-05 20:15:00

A neat idea for Linux: Boot-to-Desktop

I was thinking the other day about how boring the linux boot process is, i know most modern distros try to hide it with some sort of 'quiet' bootsplash but its still rather dull. I was thinking how cool would it be to have your desktop wallpaper appear on boot till desktop? What do i mean? Well simply have your wallpaper as your Grub Background, Your Bootsplash, and the GDM background, and then your Desktop background. I don't think any distro has attempted to keep the same background image throughout the entire boot process and desktop loading. Its probabily do-able right now, but the effort required to probabily achieve this is above my 'i can't be fucked' scale.

How would you?
Although the best way is to have an application which you can set the background of your current desktop. Once you click apply the applications can then begin applying the image as a wallpaper to all parts of the boot up.

1) So it'll probabily start off doing it backwards, so it'll tell Gnome or KDE or even Fluxbox/openbox etc to set this new image as a wallpaper. Bang new Desktop Wallpaper

2)Then it will try to do the same to the GDM theme. I've never made a GDM theme, infact i've never even poked into a GDM theme's tar.gz file because you simply don't need to when you click the install button in the GDM setup. However for this article i had a poke. And i found a background image included in the file. This is quite common amongst a few GDM themes i checked out, so all you simply need to do is replace the background image with our wallpaper image aswell. The application would have to identify which theme we were using and replace that image with our one.
OR:
A cheating method to this could be to have a image put in a hidden directory in the home directory, and then 'patch' all the GDM themes, by deleteing 'background.jpg' and using a symlink to this one location. Then all you do is overwrite this one image in the home directory, and all the GDM themes will show the same image.

3) The Bootsplash, this is kinda of hard to implment, i know that Gentoo, Fedora, Suse, and Mandrake have boot splashes. And i know that Ubuntu uses usplash. But i haven't really had much experience of how to change the image in a bootsplash. This is probabily also more distro dependant. Each distro has a different setup of where it keeps its bootsplash images, and which applications are used to load them as a bootsplash.

4)The final one! Grub! From what i can understand Grub is fairly easy to apply an image to. All you have to do is convert it to an XPM which is achievable through a program like ImageMagick or something, i know it is definately availble through Gimp. Then you need to gzip the xpm. So you have splash.xpm.gz, then the last part is copy to the /boot partition, and add the following into /boot/grub/menu.lst

splashimage (hdX,Y)/boot/grub/images/usplash.xpm.gz


Voila! Now those 4 steps are all thats needed to apple the same wallpaper through out the boot process and to the final desktop. Now i'm not much of a developer but maybe someone out there might read this and attempt it. Theres a few interesting articles about Grub and Boot Splash imaging at:

Ubuntu Forums

Gentoo's Wiki

My main reason for wanting the same image through out the whole boot-to-desktop process is to first off create some consistantcy, and also to give the user some eye candy, not just some white-on-black scrolling text. If this particular ever catches on in the linux world i think in the future it'd be nice for some animation to take place from the login managers, and the desktop program. If the wallpaper is applied by a third-party applications, whats stopping Gnome layering its own widgets and windows on top, and having them slide on screen when loading/booting.

//!nkeh`

PS i might be trying to write my own bash script to maybe apple my wallpaper as a GDM and Grub image.



Posted on: 2006-03-05 20:11:00

Linux Predictions

Hmm i was listening to the new Lugradio episode the other day, and thought what would i predict for the future of linux? Well the Lugradio team were probabily wishfully thinking that Java would be Open-Sourced. I can't see that happening any time soon, but it will happen.

Linux Eye-Candy is a prediction you can be sure of. This was already demonstrated by a digg article with links to current XGL screenshots. I've been aware of the XGL project for quite sometime, however i thought it wasn't really in a position to be deployed and used on machines. While it'll be cool to have a OpenGL rendered desktop, and probabily most newer 64bit machines could handle it, theres still the problem of you need a nVidia or an ATI graphics card in order to get a decent performance from it. Either way i can foresee XGL atleast making its way into the X.org package as an optional feature, just like the drop-shadows and translucentcy. The other thing i can see happening this year in the Linux eye candy world, is the final release of KDE 4.0. I think it'll be more performance enhanced, and with the arthur engine being developed i can see KDE actually putting the SVG engine to some good use! KDE already is a great Desktop Manager, but is lacks some refining for me personally. I don't like the bright coloured icons, and the cluttered menus. But i think KDE might make an effort to smooth these things out. For Gnome i can't really see where the project is going anymore. 2.14 will just be another release with bugfixes and maybe some more progress in some cairo enhanced themes.

So the Desktop is gonna get prettier and more edgyier, but what will happen in the distro front? Well i can see Ubuntu actually starting to get some serious competition for top spot on distrowatch. The project is already breaking away into different distros already, i think it'll be hard for the Ubuntu team to keep they're efforts fixed on the Gnome desktop, and will try to keep they base code ambigous for the Kubuntu and Xubuntu teams to borrow. As for the competing distros, i think maybe the OpenSuse project might have a chance. I can also see Nexenta OS (opensolaris distro) actually making lots of progress and maybe by autumn/winter it might be ready for some desktop usage.

Linux on the Desktop? Everyone says that every year 'It'll be the year of the Linux Desktop...' i believe every year we are getting closer. With in the past few weeks and months we've actually seen quite a bit happening on the Linux Desktop dream. This is mainly involving Linspire. Linspire gave they're distro away for free for a small period in autumn/winter 2005, it also annouced a whole Linspire Mini PC designed for desktop usage, and that have a moderate specification. I think Linspire will further more enforce its point of being ready for Desktop use through out the year. I can also see Mandriva also playing some sort of role in the Linux Desktop, i'm not sure how, but i can see it making headlines. Maybe another acquisition?

New Applications that will revolutionize the Linux Desktop this year in 2006, will be tricky to predict. I think Linux has reached a stage where it has an application and project for every purpose and need, that it seems pointless to create more. I think Beagle will start being used as the default desktop search on most distros, including KDE ones with the development of a KDE interface for Beagle. I can also a big uptake on the Songbird Media Player which is already dubbed the iTunes killer. I think that we might actually see the final release of Enlightenment 17 by the end of the year! Which would be nice!

To be honest i can't foresee anything new really in Linux for 2006 except the re-enforcement of how linux is developing into a real desktop operating system.



Posted on: 2006-03-05 20:11:00

Change a Heatsink and get no Wifi support?

I recently found an old 1.2GHz AMD Duron, kicking around in my box of computing goodies, and thought about putting it in the family PC to smooth out my brother’s gaming. The PC is about 5 years old now. Its an IBM Netvista 2284 model i believe.

Its a 600MHz AMD Duron, 320MB Ram (64+256), 40GB IBM HardDisk, 64MB Geforce 4 MX 440, and a Muse LE Sound Card. Its also got a Realtek Ethernet NIC Card, and a Belkin 802.11g PCI Card.

So i set about taking off the case once more (as i’ve upgraded this machine a few times now) and discovered the huge cloggs of dust floating around inside. I really ought to use compressed air, but my vacuum cleaner did the job okayish. I had to unhinge the Hard-disk/Floppy Caddy so i could get to the CPU, and take a better poke around. I had previously attempted to install this chip, however it overheated and i had recently bought a new heat-sink and fan. I took the old CPU and the HSF out. Put the new one in, and tried to put back the HDD/FDD caddy but it wouldn’t quite fit because the HSF has some fins that stick out either side and so it was wider than the previous HSF, so a little force on the HSF and i managed to just squeeze the caddy back into place, but i couldn’t get the IDE or Power cables reconnected. So i had to take the caddy out and unscrew the hard-disk and flipp it upside down so the IDE and Power slot were at the top part of the caddy and give it some clearance.

I managed to put it back together. And Booted. It first off frooze during the XP login screen. Not a good sign. I rebooted again, and it lasted a few more minutes and let me go and check my email via firefox. When i say “Frooze” or Freeze i mean total lock up, no mouse, no hard-disk, no keyboard activity. No response from anything. I thought it might be overheating still so i installed vcool, (which i know works with my mobo and cpu). It claimed a cool 27oC. Which was a few degrees higher than my old CPU. I started playing a video and tried to see if it was something inparticular it was crashing with, like a CPU intensive task or something. It frooze again in the video. I then decided it wasn’t any random XP thing its probabily a serious hardware fault somewhere. So i installed CPUz to check out my memory and fsb details. The Front-Side-Bus was the same as before on the old CPU, 100MHz. The CPU was running however at a 1.6Volts and i know the old 600MHZ was running at 1.4V i decided to check the PSU to see what it was capable of. I discovered that it was only 140W, because it was the orginal PSU. So i chatted to some friends and we came to the conclusion it’s probabily not powerful enough. So i switched the CPUs back over. But i decided to keep the new HSF, just out of curiousity. Last night it was fine. Then this morning, it frooze again. I dismissed it as some random problem with windows adjusting to the new hardware or something. Trying to update it’s Database of drivers or something to that effect. Then my brother booted it later in the day. And there was no wireless connection. Well not only was there no connection, there was no card! There was now no Belkin 802.11G PCI card in the PC according to the Windows Device Manager. I thought it might be the drivers maybe? I googled, and found a forum post about updating the chipset driver, the guy claimed that it stopped his card from disconnecting, and getting poor signals. I know my brother had previously complained about signal dropping and disconnecting. So i decided to give these new drivers a shot. I connected my laptop up to the PC via a Cross-over cable and uploaded them (i installed a FTP server on the PC for occations like this!) I uninstalled the current belkin stuff and installed the new one. And nothing. I had drawn a blank.

Now as it stands the PC is all working appart from no wireless card being reconized and random freezing. I had a chat with my friend Jim, and we’ve got a hunch that the HSF might be drawing too much power. So we’re gonna revert back to the noisey one. If i do that the PC will be exactly as it was before i even opened the case last night. And fingers crossed it should be wirelessly connected and be more stable.



Posted on: 2006-03-05 20:07:00

Cathedral and Bazaar

I recently noticed whilest listening to Lugradio they sometimes used the phrase 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', so a quick google revealed an essay by Eric S Raymond. Its a very interesting read, well the first page is. The following pages ramble about Fetchmail development. But the whole Cathedral and Bazaar idea, is soo spot on. Open-Source software is like a Bazaar, people coming and going, people talking, and trading. Whereas the Cathedral is an example of commercial software. Eric says 'carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time.' which we all know is as the common office, the main place where commercial software is developed.

A recent article posted on google/digg mentions about the google screening system to get a job within google, and it is very heavy. However the benefits are awesome. Dental Plans, Laundry Service, Creche, Gyms, Lunch, Carwashes, Haircuts, Massages, and Commuting Buses! Apparently google think that their hackers/employees should 'strip away everything that gets in their way.', and google do this for them. Now if you ask me, this sounds quite similar to our Cathedral eariler. By this i mean, in a spiritual and pure sense. The google hackers are there to purely hack, impurities such as laundry are removed for them to focus on the job. Its a similar scenario within the Cathedral, they are isolated, and are working in a quiet environment to focus they attension on doing the job in hand. Interesting link i thought.

Ohh and by the way, Eric S Raymond, the author of the essay is also the feature of : Everybody Loves Eric Raymond!

//!nkeh`



Posted on: 2006-03-05 20:05:00

Howdy Everyone

I’ve actually changed me blog! i got bored of drupal, it was rather dull
and boring. Wordpress is a much better blogger, and has been hyped alot.
I have to say i’m impressed. It even accepts posting by email. So i’m
writting this in Evolution at the moment.

I’ve not updated this blog in along time, so to bring you upto speed,
i’m using Linux only :O *SHOCK HORROR* i decided not to install Windows
XP again, i thought it was pointless considering that i try and use
linux when ever i can, in which case thats all the time! I’ve got Ubuntu
Breezy Badger. I can’t say i’m that impressed with some of the changes.
They’ve shifted around the menus and stuff after using Hoary i was
looking under Applications–> System Tools for a terminal window. I
found i can been put into the Accessories menu. There is now no
Root-Terminal either. The Human theme, is purely awefull in my opinion.
Its more like Human Faeces Brown, rather than a natural slick looking
Brown. I’ve got no problem with brown, but the Human brown is too dark,
if it were a couple of shades lighter it would have been good.

I’m also getting quicker at getting my wireless card running,
Ndiswrapper+Wireless Tools and ifup wlan0 and i’m done. I’ve also
installed Banshee tho it seems to have forgotten my music library and
its database is blank. So i’m back to using the trusty Music Player
Daemon. I got mpdscribble submitting my tracks to last.fm too. Although
even mpdscribble doesnt work all the time. I’m currently playing with
the MPD PHP Class, i want to try and make a PHP script to display my
current track, and history of tracks. I’ve managed sofar to get the
example script connecting from Lunarville.co.uk to my box. I just need
to edit that and make it display only my current track. I might also try
and get it to write to a database, and generate some statistics similar
to that of AmpSig. I used to use AmpSig when i was on Windows, you
installed AmpSig and Amip and Curl and Winamp would send data using Amip
to Curl and Curl would upload that onto the internet to Ampsig, which
recieved and outputted the image. But i’ve get to get XMMS or
Beep-Media-Player outputting properly so Ampsig can understand it.

Anyways Back to Work on polishing the new Blog!

!nkeh`



Posted on: 2006-03-05 20:03:00

My Distro Story

...and then suddenly as if from no where bots discover my blog and decided to post comments about 'Alcohlism' and 'viagra' with a wide selection of other taboo themes.

I noticed recently a story on slashdot asking why people have switched to linux, and to the large but shallow threads on /. i decided i'll explain it here instead.

Basically i had Windows ME, and i got to the point where there was nothing left to explore appart from getting bits of warez software to mod a few things and spice things up. In windows its very basic, Desktop, Control Panel, Recycle Bin+Network Neighbourhood, Command.com, there is nothing left to explore. So to me Linux seemed like a natural progression in exploring the world of computers. Yes at the time tho i may have used the Anti-Microsoft argument but that was me being 14yrs old. Nowadays i don't really mind what i sit in front of so long as its Linux or XP/2000, although to my disappointment its often 2000/XP unless i'm at home then Linux my de facto.

I'm not sure if i mentioned in my previous post, i've got mpdscribble installed now on Gentoo. Which is a Audioscrobbler plugin, so my last.fm account is now being updated properly.

Recently i've also considered getting Suse 10.0, i've been reading nothing but good reviews of Suse. There was a time that Mandrake was regarded as the better, being more cutting edge. However as much as i like Mandrake (or formerly Mandrake) they've not been the same since they're near bankruptcy. They're come back as good with Mandrake 10.0 but its just lost it from there, since they've been busy purchasing and collaborating. I've heard Mandriva 2006 RC is pretty good, but its looking tired. At least Suse has its sexy green theme, and very corperate desktop image. I think was mainly helped Suse over take Mandrake, is that Novell is now the man incharge, and with that Novell seem to taken a leap out of Red Hats book, lets make Suse Open, and then have our corperate product based too. Just like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora, Novell now have Novell Desktop Linux and Suse.

Novell == NDL && Suse == Fedora && RHEL == Redhat

...On to more exciting news it appears i've been pulled in to the making of a live distro, based/inspired by DeviantArt. So far in the Da:Forums we've concluded:http://rainscape.org.uk/storage/whyijoinedthebraindrain.jpg

ArchLinux
KDELite (Openbox+fbpanel)
Gimp+Inkscape

However we've got a long way to go before we even begin producing something. My main problem is that i've no space on my laptop to even test out ArchLinux, and convert into a LiveDistro.

And to conclude this marathon of a Blog post, i shall post a link to a article my friend has scanned in from a news paper,

http://rainscape.org.uk/storage/whyijoinedthebraindrain.jpg

//!nkeh



Posted on: 2006-03-05 20:02:00
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