Posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago at 8:52 am. 1 comment
The growing adoption of the Linux operating system on netbook devices has compelled Linux distributors to focus on improving startup performance. Ubuntu 9.04, which was released last month, is one distribution where these improvements are particularly noticeable.In a presentation at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, developer Scott James Remnant noted that boot time decreased from 65 seconds in version 8.10 to only 25 seconds in 9.04. This is already a substantial improvement, but he believes that there is still room for more aggressive optimization. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, will continue pushing the limits of boot performance during the upcoming development cycle for Ubuntu 9.10, which is codenamed Karmic Koala. According to Remnant, the company aims to achieve a ten-second boot time next year for Ubuntu 10.04, the release that will follow after Karmic. Full story here.
Posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago at 2:37 pm. 0 comments
David Friedman’s Ironic Sans blog is full of great ideas, but never have we been in such desperate need of rapid implementation as this Outlet Wall. We’d say the idea is pretty self-explanatory, making an art out of plugging in devices instead of fussing with a hidden tangle of cords and powerstrips on the floor — we’ve lost many a friend and family member to the wilds behind our entertainment center. As David points out: “Of course you don’t have to actually wire all the outlets on the whole wall for electricity, but you’d better come up with a good way to remember which ones are live.”
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago at 10:02 am. 0 comments
Another mini laptop came up just around the corner. It’s the new S series from Lenovo, named IdeaPad S10. It has nice and slick design and the standard features for a mini notebook. Intel Atom 1.6Ghz, comes in 512 and 1024 Mb of Ram, standard 2.5 inch hard drive, B/G WiFi 2 USB ports, one VGA Port and a 10.2 Inch screen. It has only 3 cell battery but thats not so bad-for now. Unfortunately, it also has a smaller keyboard and touchpad than its 10-inch rivals. At $449, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 is within $30 of the street price for the three-cell MSI Wind ($479 street) and comparable to the six-cell ASUS Eee PS 1000H. Consumers who want the most compact and stylish 10-inch netbook on the market will look past these flaws and snap up the S10. But those who need long battery life should look elsewhere or hold out for an S10 with a six-cell battery. Price:US$399 (512MB RAM, 80GB), US$449 (1GB RAM, 160GB). Overall I will buy this notebook…I will wait for the Thanksgiving Sale ;-). More images here.
Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago at 10:15 pm. 1 comment
DeVeDe is a program to create video DVDs and CDs (VCD, sVCD or CVD), suitables for home players, from any number of video files, in any of the formats supported by VLC Player or MPlayer. The big advantage over other utilites is that it only needs Mplayer, Mencoder, DVDAuthor, VCDImager and MKisofs (well, and Python, PyGTK and PyGlade), so its dependencies are really small. I did my first DivX to DVD conversion yesterday and it only took hour and a half. After that loaded the dvd in the dvd player and I had a working DVD movie just like that. The program has very simple user interface, so basicly anyone can make a DVD in just 10 mouse clicks. Check it out here. Notice for the Ubuntu users - this program is included in the software repositories ;-).
If you want a DVD creator with more advanced features, you will be amazed what you gonna see now. The program is called ManDVD. I’ll say no more - download it from here and read a great article here.
Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago at 7:38 pm. 0 comments
The new Ubuntu 8.10 is coming soon.
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago at 9:14 pm. 0 comments
View of the CERN Computer Center during server installation. Wicked… 
