This rules.
Category Archives: Distractions
What is it with Germans and bunkers?
Damn cool anyway. This video rocks.
Female Counterpart Now Uses Linux
After a frustrating stint with Windows Vista and seeing my enjoyment whilst using Linux, Amy (my girlfriend) has decided to take the plunge and install Mandriva. This is a small recount of what transpired during that introductory period.
| I downloaded the release candidate for the new Mandriva 2009.0, burned it to a CD, and attempted to boot up. Unfortunately, there appeared to be several bugs remaining in this distro: After showing the initial Mandriva loading screen, it went straight to a flickering cursor in the top-left of the screen. Oh well, it is a release candidate. “A ha!”, I thought, “I know what to do.” I had this same problem with the last version on my laptop. I can install it with the ACPI option turned off. (It was at this point that I realized that this was an example of what separates a Linux user from the rest of the world — The rest of the world would throw the disc in the trash and NEVER come back. Me? I was tinkering, trying to get it to work and enjoying every minute.) acpi=off? No. Hmm. |  What? |
Sensing that my girlfriend was slightly disappointed, I decided to go to plan B and download last season’s stable release — 2008.1. In my opinion, this is the best release of Mandriva Linux to-date.
I downloaded the ISO for Mandriva Linux 2008.1, burned it, and awaited the dreaded blinking cursor yet again. Success! The blinking cursor was nowhere to be found. It went straight into KDE without a hiccup. I walked her through installing it to her hard disc using the “Live Install” icon on the desktop and everything went swell from then on.
I have installed Linux quite a few times over the years on computers of friends and family. It never seems to last past the 15 minute “oh, that’s neat…” phase. I am happy to announce that Amy, two days later, is still using Linux and is very happily zooming around in KDE thanks to Compiz Fusion and all the hard work that has gone into making Mandriva Linux. Thanks, guys and gals!
Amy does all of her web browsing and chatting using Firefox 3 and Kopete. We decided to leave Vista installed so she could dual-boot into Windows and play Team Fortress 2. As I’ve blogged before, games seem to be the factor holding mainstream Linux adoption back.
I will continue to post articles about this experiment with Linux as time goes on. In the mean-time: If you haven’t yet converted your girlfriend to Linux, what are you waiting for?
Helping The World = The Power of Ideas + Resources
Google has launched a new initiative asking people for ideas on how to help as many people around the world as possible. The project is called “Project 10 to the 100th”. Users submit ideas, which are then reviewed by a small panel of experts. The ones that have the potential to help the most amount of people will have financial resources committed to them by Google.
Google is spending $10 million to help these projects get off the ground. If you have a great idea that you think may help people lead better lives around the world, you’re encouraged to send it in! While you won’t be receiving a financial reward if your idea is picked, you will sleep well knowing your idea is being made for real and will help those in need.
There are 10 categories to choose from. From the official website:
- Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
- Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
- Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
- Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
- Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
- Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
- Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
- Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.
Submissions to the project are due October 20th, 2008. For more information, watch this video:
Links:
Project 10 to the 100
How It Works
Submit Your Idea
Submission Categories
Frequently Asked Questions
Grass-roots open-source gaming console?
Earlier today, I had a thought: What if a few of us got together to develop specs for a PC-based open-source games console that uses a bootable Linux-based game DVD for games?
I blogged about the awesome boot’n'play Linux CD before, but it still relies on someone to burn the disc and reboot their machine. Also, this requires gamers to (unless they have a unique set-up) sit at their desk and look at their computer monitor to play games. Finally, you always hope that the bootable disc supports your graphics or sound hardware.
Why can’t we put together some specs for a cheap gaming PC in a mini-atx case, include a TV-out card that has composite, S-Video, and Component output, and offer downloadable ISO game-packs from a website. The system can have a hard disk or can save the games to a USB memory card.
The goal is to make the gaming system as easy to use as, say, a GameCube.
Download the ISO, burn the disc, put it in the console and play.
We’re already half there — the games console could easily use the boot’n'play Linux CD I spoke about earlier. It kind of makes you wonder why this hasn’t been done already?