Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 1st Dec 2008 23:31 UTC, submitted by linuxlinks
"Mainstream Linux distributions typically default to one of two desktop environments, KDE or GNOME. Both of these environments provide users with an intuitive and attractive desktop, as well as offering a large raft of multimedia software, games, administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, artwork, web development tools and more. However, these two desktops focus more on providing users with a modern computing environment with all the bells and whistles featured in Windows Vista, rather than minimising the amount of system resources they need. For users and developers who want to run an attractive Linux desktop on older hardware, netbooks, or mobile internet devices, neither KDE or GNOME may be a viable option, as they run too slowly on low spec machines (such as less than 256MB RAM and a 1 GHz processor). This article seeks to identify the best lean desktops for Linux, for users that have old or even ancient hardware."
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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Not really. GNOME uses software rendering libraries to draw the desktop. KDE uses the 2D graphics primitives available in the GPU, which is accessed in turn through the Xrender API in the Xorg X server.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xrender
So of all the Linux desktop environments, only KDE4 uses the GPU for UI acceleration. None of the others are accelerated.
The Xrender API interface is, AFAIK, at a "lower level" than even the GTK libraries, so that means on KDE4 that the GTK applications will also benefit from the accelrated desktop. It is lower level than even the font rendering, so even fonts benefit from the acceleration. This is all pretty much a fundamental "paradigm shift" type of improvement in the desktop environment.
Well, as I said, KDE4 is the only Linux desktop to take advantage of accelerated graphics functions of the GPU. It is consequently the fastest Linux desktop, beating out even the "lightweight" desktops (which are the topic of this thread) on any system which has a working GPU ... which, after nvidia releases the next version of their binary driver, will be almost all still-running systems out there.
If you want the best desktop performance ... go with KDE4 on just about any system with 512MB of RAM or more.
KDE4 has a whole new underlying infrastructure ... it is so portable and flexible and good at presenting the same API to desktop applications regardless of the underlying hardware or OS version or drivers that KDE4 is actually ported to Windows and OSX as well. I believe that is a first ... the ONLY desktop environment that runs on all three common desktop OSes.
Anyway, the point is that multimedia applications can interface to the Phonon API, desktop applications can use Plasma services, etc, etc ... and all can enjoy the best performance available from the system without having to try to find out which sound server is installed & running or whatever.
Finally ... KDE 4.2+ can run plasmoids, Google widgets or OSX widgets on the desktop. The desktop can be scripted via javascript, java, python or ruby applets.
Add the plasmoid widget called "Lancelot menu" to the desktop, and then drag it from there to the lower left corner of the panel. If the Lancelot plasmoid is not available, search for the keyword "Lancelot" in your package manager, and install it.
All your KDE4 menu woes will disappear, I'd wager.
http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/main
You can of course still run all your KDE3 applications directly in KDE4. Most distributions ship like this, if a KDE4 version of an application is not ready, then the KDE3 version is offered. Works fine.
Mandriva has KDE4 as default. SuSe, Fedora and Ubuntu all offer KDE4 alongside GNOME.
Now that KDE4 has stabilised, and the nvidia driver performance issue appears to be squashed, GNOME is suddenly miles behind ... again.
Meanwhile, anyone who wants to and who is a bit afraid of change can always run KDE3 still.
KDE4 ships without Mono and GNOME libraries. It does however support GTK applications out of the box, such as firefox, GIMP, thunderbird and openoffice.
Only if you were to install some very GNOME-specific applications, such as Nautilis, would you need to install the GNOME libraries. Only if you installed Mono applications, such as F-Spot, would you need the Mono libraries. Personally, I'd install Mononono and hence prevent the Mono libraries from installing accidentally ... but of course it is up to you what you do.
http://tim.thechases.com/mononono/
That will save you a huge group of totally un-neccessary libraries right there.
Edited 2008-12-03 22:42 UTC