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[Schlep]

I'm not really sure what their philosophy is anymore with the iMac and Mac mini. On one hand they tout how green all of their computers are now, yet on the other, they send every legit consumer desktop out with a monitor built in. The Mac mini was supposed to be the affordable Mac, but it's almost 30% more expensive six years after release. That boost in cost didn't really come with much of a performance gain, either. Is there really much of a point to the MacBook anymore?

I'm sure they have a strategy, but the Mac is definitely not a priority. That goes to the iPad, iPods, and iPhone. For the moment, I'm bitter, lol.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

I'm not really sure what their philosophy is anymore with the iMac and Mac mini. On one hand they tout how green all of their computers are now, yet on the other, they send every legit consumer desktop out with a monitor built in. The Mac mini was supposed to be the affordable Mac, but it's almost 30% more expensive six years after release.

Their focus in making unique trendy stable products that focus on things other manufactures tend to forget. Form factor, long battery life, intuitive interface, stylish design, stable software, etc.

That boost in cost didn't really come with much of a performance gain, either.

Yes the "updated" Mac Mini is pure bullshit.

Is there really much of a point to the MacBook anymore?

Small form factor, lightness, long battery life, stable operating system, unique features (Godpad), etc.

I'm sure they have a strategy, but the Mac is definitely not a priority. That goes to the iPad, iPods, and iPhone. For the moment, I'm bitter, lol.

They still have some focus on Mac, but you're right it isn't their top priority. The future of computing is clearly mobile.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

So what do you all use for backups? Time Machine has spoiled me, I admit.

 

[Vanillalite]

So what do you all use for backups? Time Machine has spoiled me, I admit.

People are gonna hate on me but I hate back up software. I just drag and drop my music/video to my external drive, my pics are all on the cloud, and my docs are all dropboxed.

Then if I ever have problems I tend to prefer a reinstall. I'd rather just start fresh rather than starting back to where I was. I tend to get rid of crap I might not need, and things just tend to run smoother. I usually format once a year anyways so if I ever have a big issue I just treat it as my one big format.

I don't keep a ton of local shit I NEED backed up though. I'm definitely a cloud man. Got my games on steam, my pics on picasa/photobucket/facebook, my docs either in google docs or dropbox, my blizzard stuff is synced to my battle net account, and that leaves just my movies and music to drop onto an external.

 

[Vanillalite]

Trying out the Natty daily because I was bored and couldn't stand it. I wanted to see this unity shit in action.

So far so buggy so it's hard to say if I like it or not. IT seems weird, but more importantly I keep getting errors. I think tomorrow I'm gonna try out Gnome 3.

 

[Suitcase Test]

So what do you all use for backups? Time Machine has spoiled me, I admit.

I use and love Déjà Dup. It's not as visual as Time Machine (I think, I've never actually used TM) but it does its job and it does it well.

Thing is, Linux has several powerful utilities for backing up stuff, like rsync, and there are loads of software that try to wrap that power into an easy to use package. Most of them fail epicly. I've tried a lot of them and so far, Déjà Dup is the only one that works for me.

It's dead simple, but really fast and clean.

//Edit: to give you an idea, this is the main screen:

 

[Schlep]

I'm looking at building my new rig in the next few weeks, and I feel like I'm at a fork in the road. Down one path is waiting for all the sandy bridge mess to get sorted out and drop the extra $100-150 on that equipment. Down the other is taking that money I would spend on sandy, and using it instead for a 64GB SSD (to complement a 1TB HDD).

Any opinions? With a 64GB would I still need to move /var etc to the 1TB, or could I just leave them on the SSD?

 

[tearsofash]

Opensuse 11.4 coming out in a few weeks. Anyone tried out the RC? Any significant changes from 11.3 that are noticeable?

 

[Vanillalite]

I'm looking at building my new rig in the next few weeks, and I feel like I'm at a fork in the road. Down one path is waiting for all the sandy bridge mess to get sorted out and drop the extra $100-150 on that equipment. Down the other is taking that money I would spend on sandy, and using it instead for a 64GB SSD (to complement a 1TB HDD).

Any opinions? With a 64GB would I still need to move /var etc to the 1TB, or could I just leave them on the SSD?

64 is BIG. Outside of your media or games 64 gigs is a ton of space for everything else. Programs not named Adobe CS tend to not really take up much space and in general I tend to find even the newest versions of your favorite distro to take up half as much space as Win 7.

I see no reason why everything outside of your media in your home/usr folder can't fit on the SSD. SSD space for nerds usually gets filled up fast mainly by Steam IMO.

 

[Wrekt]

My company is adding in some additional branch offices that require some very light server usage. DHCP, DNS, print sharing, that sort of thing. I'm trying to save the company a few bucks and decided to look into Linux instead of spending thousands of dollars on Windows server licenses just for the box to hand out IP addresses.

Problem is I haven't touched Linux in 7 years and even then it was just a brief class back in college. Everything I ever knew about Linux has been long forgotten. Can anybody point me in the right direction on how to make this happen? I'd really prefer a GUI (w/ a way to remote into the GUI from a Windows 7 machine) if at all possible. I can follow a step-by-step command line guide but if something goes wrong I'd have no clue how to begin troubleshooting it. The company has 3 IT guys and all of us have to be able to troubleshoot a problem while none of us have Linux command line experience.

I've done some preliminary research but most google hits just give me "servers don't need a GUI." While I dig for a more appropriate guide, I figured I'd beg you all to help get me started.

 

[peakish]

I finally returned to my home and my desktop wouldn't boot to Ubuntu - some initram error or whatever, I didn't really care since it gave me the excuse to install Archlinux again

A day of reading wiki's and whatnot later I have a pretty functional desktop and a lot more knowledge of building systems again. Totally fun! There's a lot going into building something like it though, for every problem I solve a few new almost pops up instantly. Gotta find some nice Gnome-theme now.

What are you guys using as image viewers btw?

 

[angelfly]

I'm looking at building my new rig in the next few weeks, and I feel like I'm at a fork in the road. Down one path is waiting for all the sandy bridge mess to get sorted out and drop the extra $100-150 on that equipment. Down the other is taking that money I would spend on sandy, and using it instead for a 64GB SSD (to complement a 1TB HDD).

Any opinions? With a 64GB would I still need to move /var etc to the 1TB, or could I just leave them on the SSD?

If you're like me and keep a ton of stuff in you're home folder as well as external drives I'd keep that on the 1TB. Everything else should be fine on the SSD.

What are you guys using as image viewers btw?

gqview is by far my favorite image viewer

 

[itxaka]

My company is adding in some additional branch offices that require some very light server usage. DHCP, DNS, print sharing, that sort of thing. I'm trying to save the company a few bucks and decided to look into Linux instead of spending thousands of dollars on Windows server licenses just for the box to hand out IP addresses.

Problem is I haven't touched Linux in 7 years and even then it was just a brief class back in college. Everything I ever knew about Linux has been long forgotten. Can anybody point me in the right direction on how to make this happen? I'd really prefer a GUI (w/ a way to remote into the GUI from a Windows 7 machine) if at all possible. I can follow a step-by-step command line guide but if something goes wrong I'd have no clue how to begin troubleshooting it. The company has 3 IT guys and all of us have to be able to troubleshoot a problem while none of us have Linux command line experience.

I've done some preliminary research but most google hits just give me "servers don't need a GUI." While I dig for a more appropriate guide, I figured I'd beg you all to help get me started.

CentOs 5.5

Is Red Hat, robust, has a gui, a lot of system-admin GUI tools (included bind, which is one of the worst thing to manage).

While I agree that servers are better off without a gui, with centos you can have one and a stable server.

You also got hundreds of guides and such regarding centos as server http://www.howtoforge.com/howtos/linux/centos

You could also create the server, set up on the gui everything and then backup the conf files (bind.conf, dhcpd.conf), reinstall the server without the gui and copy back the conf file so you have it configured without a gui.

Or you could boot up on init 3 as default (no gui) and launch the gui on demand (init 5) or use the gui only for VNC connections http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/VNC-Server

Good luck! Do not hesitate to post back if there is something you need. Also, I'm looking for a Linux Admin related job, so you could hire me

 

[Wrekt]

CentOs 5.5

Is Red Hat, robust, has a gui, a lot of system-admin GUI tools (included bind, which is one of the worst thing to manage).

While I agree that servers are better off without a gui, with centos you can have one and a stable server.

You also got hundreds of guides and such regarding centos as server http://www.howtoforge.com/howtos/linux/centos

You could also create the server, set up on the gui everything and then backup the conf files (bind.conf, dhcpd.conf), reinstall the server without the gui and copy back the conf file so you have it configured without a gui.

Or you could boot up on init 3 as default (no gui) and launch the gui on demand (init 5) or use the gui only for VNC connections http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/VNC-Server

Good luck! Do not hesitate to post back if there is something you need. Also, I'm looking for a Linux Admin related job, so you could hire me

Hah, thanks for the info. I'll play around with the servers a little bit today and let you know if CentOS is a good fit.

Do you live in the St. Louis, MO area and comfortable working for peanuts? Cause if so, you're hired!

 

[Vanillalite]

Couple of Distro notes...

JoliCloud got updated to 1.1.1 which is mainly just a bug fix release. There were some random hardware incompatibilities which blocked JoliCloud installs and so that's fixed now. Not sure about any other big bug fixes.

Also Linux Mint 10 finally got it's KDE spin out. Not sure what took so long to get the KDE version out. I get there is a slightly lag time for Mint post Ubuntu, but that's usually a month and the regular version has been out for a while. That being said the wait time did give us KDE 4.6.

Next up OpenSuse 11.4 in like a week or two. Don't expect anything big though as it's supposedly just a solid bump, but nothing big is coming.

Once March hits all eyes will be on both Gnome 3 and Ubuntu 11.04 getting into high gear. My god does Ubuntu 11.04 need it to because that daily I tried was well pretty fail.

 

[Blackhead]

I'm here to ask for switching advice (I see Ignatz and Schleps have already come to similar conclusions about the value in Apple's recent Mac products). I want a mac mini like box to run linux (and possibly windows in a vm) but with better specs and an easier upgrading path. I'll be bringing my own KBM. So... Is there such a recommended box? Well first, I have an apple wireless keyboard and magic trackpad. Has any linux distro gotten multitouch support and gestures yet?

 

[Schlep]

I'm here to ask for switching advice (I see Ignatz and Schleps have already come to similar conclusions about the value in Apple's recent Mac products). I want a mac mini like box to run linux (and possibly windows in a vm) but with better specs and an easier upgrading path. I'll be bringing my own KBM. So... Is there such a recommended box? Well first, I have an apple wireless keyboard and magic trackpad. Has any linux distro gotten multitouch support and gestures yet?

Really, I think the only recommendations are to stick with nvidia for the graphics card, and for things you might put in the PCI slot (eg. wi-fi card), search the comments on Newegg and/or the Ubuntu wiki to make sure it's compatibile.

Beyond that, it's more about what type of system you want to build. If you want to go the incredibly cheap end, you'll want to look at building an AMD machine. Mid-range or higher and you'll want to go with Intel. For something about the same size as a mini, go with a Mini-ITX board. Micro ATX is bigger, and ATX is bigger still. I've upped the specs in mine a bit and thinking of building in this case. Fair warning on the mini ITX route, you'll be able to build something with better specs than the Mac Mini, but you'll need to pay special attention to case temperature.

For your last question, I found something that may work, but I've never tried it before.

 

[Blackhead]

Really, I think the only recommendations are to stick with nvidia for the graphics card, and for things you might put in the PCI slot (eg. wi-fi card), search the comments on Newegg and/or the Ubuntu wiki to make sure it's compatibile.

Beyond that, it's more about what type of system you want to build. If you want to go the incredibly cheap end, you'll want to look at building an AMD machine. Mid-range or higher and you'll want to go with Intel. For something about the same size as a mini, go with a Mini-ITX board. Micro ATX is bigger, and ATX is bigger still. I've upped the specs in mine a bit and thinking of building in this case. Fair warning on the mini ITX route, you'll be able to build something with better specs than the Mac Mini, but you'll need to pay special attention to case temperature.

For your last question, I found something that may work, but I've never tried it before.

It's glad to see that it's possible to get use the trackpad gestures on Ubuntu. I wonder if gestures can work when controlling an Ubuntu computer over VNC... I digress. Unless the cost savings are great indeed I didn't intend to build my own tower. I was thinking more along the lines of Zino HD or a Transtec miniPC. I want something small and quiet... maybe even with a battery

 

[Schlep]

It's glad to see that it's possible to get use the trackpad gestures on Ubuntu. I wonder if gestures can work when controlling an Ubuntu computer over VNC... I digress. Unless the cost savings are great indeed I didn't intend to build my own tower. I was thinking more along the lines of Zino HD or a Transtec miniPC. I want something small and quiet... maybe even with a battery

Gotcha. When you said easier upgrade path, I was under the impression you meant more than RAM and the HDD. I would just do some research on what's available. A quick search on the Zino told me several people are having overheating issues with the box.

If you do come around to the DIY route, there are some Mini ITX cases out there about the same size as the Mini, but none exactly that small.

 

[Blackhead]

Gotcha. When you said easier upgrade path, I was under the impression you meant more than RAM and the HDD. I would just do some research on what's available. A quick search on the Zino told me several people are having overheating issues with the box.

If you do come around to the DIY route, there are some Mini ITX cases out there about the same size as the Mini, but none exactly that small.

So is AMD really a no-go? I'm looking at this:
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Fusion-Hits-Retail-Zotac-and-Gigabyte-E350s-Tested/?page=1

 

[Vanillalite]

So is AMD really a no-go? I'm looking at this:
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Fusion-Hits-Retail-Zotac-and-Gigabyte-E350s-Tested/?page=1

I'm not sure how true this still is but the mantra over the past few years has always been AMD is a solid other choice, but they just tend to run hot comparatively speaking. For a small enclosure that probably is a no no, but I could be wrong.

 

[zoku88]

Random question, what shells do people usually use?

I used to use bash (since it's been the default on almost every system I've used,) but recently have moved towards zsh. Zsh seems to have lots of advanced features that are pretty useful.

 

[angelfly]

Random question, what shells do people usually use?

I used to use bash (since it's been the default on almost every system I've used,) but recently have moved towards zsh. Zsh seems to have lots of advanced features that are pretty useful.

csh used to be my main shell of choice but these days I mainly use bash. I've been curious about zsh but I've never gotten around to trying it (hoping to soon).

 

[cntr]

Edit: Erm, sorry, wrong thread.

 

[-KRS-]

I've always used bash on my own machines. It's good enough for me.


Btw, thought I'd ask about something... I realize it's probably not a typical "noob" question but whatever.

So I bought an ethernet cable for my laptop (since I use it as a stationary computer with monitor and kb/m etc) a couple of months ago, and ever since then I noticed that if I download something from an American (or any other country that is far from me) server it only downloads at about 30-40kbps. I have a 100mbit connection, so it should not be going this slow. There are no such issues with any of my other computers. They always downloads the same file at around 4-500kbps. If I transfer a file on my internal network to the laptop, the file is transferred at a full 12.3 MB/s

Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed something. While downloading something at the usual 40kbps, I entered a folder on my laptop which has 11 000 images. When the harddrive began to work, reading the image files to make thumbnails out of them, the download suddenly jumped up to 4-500kbps or even more from some servers. First I thought it was just a coincidence, but now I can confirm that this works EVERY time I download something and open that folder. It starts at around 30-40kbps and when I open the folder it never fails to jump up several hundred kbps.

Why is it like this? Is it my harddrive that sucks? But if that's the case, why doesn't this happen when I transfer a file from my file server? In that case it transfers at a full 100mbit. It can't be my router because first of all it's an Arch Linux server with two network cards and not some cheap $30 router or something, and second of all I don't have this issue with my other computers on the network.

Oh and I should mention that I never noticed this problem when I was using the wifi on the same laptop. Only with ethernet. So that also makes the harddrive an unlikely cause.

Should I just take this to Linuxquestions or does anyone have any idea what the problem could be? I'm running Arch Linux on the laptop as well.

 

[Vanillalite]

Honestly that sounds random as a mother fucker. I'd take it elsewhere.

 

[cntr]

Maybe the reason downloads are normally so slow is that your hard drive isn't writing files at a high speed, but going into that folder forces it to go at a higher speed?

 

[Vanillalite]

LOL...

Want to get a laugh go check out OMGUbuntu and their Gnome 3 story... I only need to post the headline... the comments are LOLs

Gnome 3 removes ‘max’ and ‘min’ window controls – but why?

 

[itxaka]

I've always used bash on my own machines. It's good enough for me.


Btw, thought I'd ask about something... I realize it's probably not a typical "noob" question but whatever.

So I bought an ethernet cable for my laptop (since I use it as a stationary computer with monitor and kb/m etc) a couple of months ago, and ever since then I noticed that if I download something from an American (or any other country that is far from me) server it only downloads at about 30-40kbps. I have a 100mbit connection, so it should not be going this slow. There are no such issues with any of my other computers. They always downloads the same file at around 4-500kbps. If I transfer a file on my internal network to the laptop, the file is transferred at a full 12.3 MB/s

Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed something. While downloading something at the usual 40kbps, I entered a folder on my laptop which has 11 000 images. When the harddrive began to work, reading the image files to make thumbnails out of them, the download suddenly jumped up to 4-500kbps or even more from some servers. First I thought it was just a coincidence, but now I can confirm that this works EVERY time I download something and open that folder. It starts at around 30-40kbps and when I open the folder it never fails to jump up several hundred kbps.

Why is it like this? Is it my harddrive that sucks? But if that's the case, why doesn't this happen when I transfer a file from my file server? In that case it transfers at a full 100mbit. It can't be my router because first of all it's an Arch Linux server with two network cards and not some cheap $30 router or something, and second of all I don't have this issue with my other computers on the network.

Oh and I should mention that I never noticed this problem when I was using the wifi on the same laptop. Only with ethernet. So that also makes the harddrive an unlikely cause.

Should I just take this to Linuxquestions or does anyone have any idea what the problem could be? I'm running Arch Linux on the laptop as well.

That is...strange.

Do you run your own DNS? Which kernel are you using (2.6.37-ARCH?)? What do you use to download?

You can try downloading the same file but from wget or other gui download manager to see if it works better.

Do you have laptop_tools installed? Could be that the hard drive is lowering it's speed in order to save energy and the downloader is not waking it up properly, but the file manager is.

Its probably this last thing as I heard several times of energy tools even switching off the HDD completely and not waking it up properly, it happened to me with my usbs, they turn off to save energy but never came back.

Be sure to check what kind of laptop tools you have installed and what modules are loaded just in case.

You can always get ready to download, make something heavy on the hdd just before to make it spin and start the download to see if that is the issue.


Sorry if the post is kind of disorganized, I was remembering thing and thinking about what could be while I wrote so it came out a bit disorganized

LOL...

Want to get a laugh go check out OMGUbuntu and their Gnome 3 story... I only need to post the headline... the comments are LOLs

Gnome 3 removes ‘max’ and ‘min’ window controls – but why?

gah. wat. Like..uh..eh?

Windows maximized all the time or...uh, not or ... I don't get it.

Unity VS Shell: The battle: Change things harder.

Sometimes I kind of hope that this design teams will made available the reasons for this changes. Kind of when Mozilla show that video showing why they did choose to have the tabs on top. It made too much sense, and all the test behind it looked to agree that it was the way it should be.

With this 2 is like a battle.

 

[zoku88]

Yea, the only thing I can think of is something to do with energy-saving settings.

 

[angelfly]

LOL...

Want to get a laugh go check out OMGUbuntu and their Gnome 3 story... I only need to post the headline... the comments are LOLs

Gnome 3 removes ‘max’ and ‘min’ window controls – but why?

I would laugh but having used awesome for the last few months I haven't had any window buttons or borders and I've been completely happy although for the average user (who gnome is aimed at) that's a pretty terrible decision. I'm glad KDE isn't going on one of these wild UI rides (although some would say they already did).

 

[peakish]

I am actually quite intrigued by those news and the arguments made for them. In the end, if they don't think it fits their current shell design and will offer better ways to do the same stuff there's no point in just keeping it in for old times sake.

For me personally the maximize option is almost never used in day-to-day activities, my windows usually sits on one half of the screen, tops, so I'm probably the user they're targeting with this policy (lucky!). I would have more use of other controls like aero snap in W7 etc. and if stuff like that is more important in the encouraged window behavior there's no reason for maximize to be singled out in the top right corner.

Minimize otoh is used a lot. They'll have to make workspace tools incredibly good for me not to miss it.

So all together, I'm interested in seeing what they'll offer instead of the min-max controls. In the end it'll probably result in even more baby problems for the first year so I'll steer clear of it for general use until then. Well, at least if the end result is good at all - if they fuck it up completely I'll just return to XFCE again.

 

[Vanillalite]

So it appears they are getting close to launching Bhodi Linux. Most people probably won't care, and normally I'd agree with the shit ton of random nix spinoffs out there.

Key for me is this is an Ubuntu spin that tries to use Enlightenment as it's window manager. I've been wanting to try out enlightenment, and this now gives me an excuse. Supposedly it's sort of a pain to compile enlightenment from the source on their page. Now I have a new distro that I can just try out instead! It's currently on RC2 as we speak so baring any big blockers we should see a real deal release sometime soon!

Bohdi Linux

PS: Whenever I hear Bohdi I think Brodie from Mallrats. LOL

 

[angelfly]

I used Enlightenment a lot a couple of years ago but with when compiz/beryl hit it sort of lost some of its specialness and just start to look flashy (as in adobe flash). I was running alpha e17 on slackware back then so things could have changed drastically. I'll most likely give the give the Bohdi live cd a spin to see how it's looking now.

 

[-KRS-]

That is...strange.

Do you run your own DNS?

Yes. But I didn't when I bought the ethernet cable so I don't think that's it.

Which kernel are you using (2.6.37-ARCH?)?

Yep, the standard Arch kernel.

What do you use to download?

You can try downloading the same file but from wget or other gui download manager to see if it works better.

No this happens with every download basically, no matter what I use to download it with.

Do you have laptop_tools installed? Could be that the hard drive is lowering it's speed in order to save energy and the downloader is not waking it up properly, but the file manager is.

Its probably this last thing as I heard several times of energy tools even switching off the HDD completely and not waking it up properly, it happened to me with my usbs, they turn off to save energy but never came back.

Be sure to check what kind of laptop tools you have installed and what modules are loaded just in case.

Is this what you're referring to? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools
If so, then no I haven't installed that.

You can always get ready to download, make something heavy on the hdd just before to make it spin and start the download to see if that is the issue.

It only downloads faster while the harddrive is spinning. As soon as I back out of that folder with the 11 000 images, the download speed goes down.

Yeah this is really odd. I guess I'll have to make a thread on Linuxquestions instead. I doubt anyone there knows what it could be either though. Thanks for trying to help me though

 

[Pctx]

So.... I'm in love with Ubuntu.

I've setup LAMP servers, SSH tunneling and everything else inbetween and it's been so easy!!

Also--- if people haven't switched from apt-get to aptitude... do so now!! Makes Windows (and even mac to a point) look stupid on many levels. The power in the terminal is amazing!

 

[Vanillalite]

So.... I'm in love with Ubuntu.

I've setup LAMP servers, SSH tunneling and everything else inbetween and it's been so easy!!

Also--- if people haven't switched from apt-get to aptitude... do so now!! Makes Windows (and even mac to a point) look stupid on many levels. The power in the terminal is amazing!

Now that most things come prepacked I honestly do use either. I just use the software repo or download the prepacked .deb file.

Good to hear you are having such great experiences though.

PS: Oddly enough my biggest use of Linux now is on my CR-48. Never really thought about it till now really.. hmm....

 

[itxaka]

Yes. But I didn't when I bought the ethernet cable so I don't think that's it.


Yep, the standard Arch kernel.


No this happens with every download basically, no matter what I use to download it with.


Is this what you're referring to? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools
If so, then no I haven't installed that.


It only downloads faster while the harddrive is spinning. As soon as I back out of that folder with the 11 000 images, the download speed goes down.

Yeah this is really odd. I guess I'll have to make a thread on Linuxquestions instead. I doubt anyone there knows what it could be either though. Thanks for trying to help me though

Damn, really strange. Have you checked your everything.log to see if there is something strange there?

 

[Vanillalite]

Just tried the Natty Alpha 3 in the form of a live cd.Honestly I was rather Ehhh... IDK you'd think since I liked 10.10 so much that even if I disliked unity I wouldn't be this underwhelmed. Some how I feel I am though.

That being said I did try out a new usb creation tool called LiLi. Normally I just use unetbootin, but LiLi seemed pretty nice. It even had an option you could click to make the created usb iso run in windows in some kind of virtualization. I didn't try that out that and just did the normal thing. Seemed like a cool program that I'd use again.

PS: Currently downloading whatever distro this is that is found on the gnome 3 page. Was waiting to try out gnome 3 when it went to beta, and it has. Unity verses stock Gnome 3 comparisons begin! FIGHT!

 

[Pctx]

Now that Unity is being written in Compwiz, I have faith it will successfully replace Gnome. I've tried out 11.04 as well as with all things Linux, I'm waiting to upgrade for a while until the kinks are ironed out.

 

[Elfforkusu]

I've always used bash on my own machines. It's good enough for me.


Btw, thought I'd ask about something... I realize it's probably not a typical "noob" question but whatever.

So I bought an ethernet cable for my laptop (since I use it as a stationary computer with monitor and kb/m etc) a couple of months ago, and ever since then I noticed that if I download something from an American (or any other country that is far from me) server it only downloads at about 30-40kbps. I have a 100mbit connection, so it should not be going this slow. There are no such issues with any of my other computers. They always downloads the same file at around 4-500kbps. If I transfer a file on my internal network to the laptop, the file is transferred at a full 12.3 MB/s

Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed something. While downloading something at the usual 40kbps, I entered a folder on my laptop which has 11 000 images. When the harddrive began to work, reading the image files to make thumbnails out of them, the download suddenly jumped up to 4-500kbps or even more from some servers. First I thought it was just a coincidence, but now I can confirm that this works EVERY time I download something and open that folder. It starts at around 30-40kbps and when I open the folder it never fails to jump up several hundred kbps.

Why is it like this? Is it my harddrive that sucks? But if that's the case, why doesn't this happen when I transfer a file from my file server? In that case it transfers at a full 100mbit. It can't be my router because first of all it's an Arch Linux server with two network cards and not some cheap $30 router or something, and second of all I don't have this issue with my other computers on the network.

Oh and I should mention that I never noticed this problem when I was using the wifi on the same laptop. Only with ethernet. So that also makes the harddrive an unlikely cause.

Should I just take this to Linuxquestions or does anyone have any idea what the problem could be? I'm running Arch Linux on the laptop as well.

This sounds sufficiently befuddling to be a kernel bug.

Seriously, no idea. Increased hard drive reading should not have such a positive impact on network throughput.

 

[itxaka]

Seriously, you gotta love docky + wingpanel + gnome-do on small netbooks.

 

[Elfforkusu]

So... seeing the screenshot above, here's a question for you guys:

I have an HP touchsmart tablet thingy. One of those laptop/tablet hybrids where the touchscreen folds down.

What's the linux standard for touchscreens? Firefox works pretty well thanks to some good touchscreen extensions, but what about a file manager? Music player? Window manager?

Touch scrolling is one obvious quantifiable thing, likewise applications that require right clicking or hover behavior to work right (kinda hard to use when you can't do either). Is there a semi-definitive list somewhere?

If there's an Ubuntu-derivative that's already figured this out, that would be sweet too!

 

[itxaka]

So... seeing the screenshot above, here's a question for you guys:

I have an HP touchsmart tablet thingy. One of those laptop/tablet hybrids where the touchscreen folds down.

What's the linux standard for touchscreens? Firefox works pretty well thanks to some good touchscreen extensions, but what about a file manager? Music player? Window manager?

Touch scrolling is one obvious quantifiable thing, likewise applications that require right clicking or hover behavior to work right (kinda hard to use when you can't do either). Is there a semi-definitive list somewhere?

If there's an Ubuntu-derivative that's already figured this out, that would be sweet too!

I believe jolicloud has an incredibly awesome touch support out of the box, with everything included.

Also in ubu 11.04 there will probably be a good support for touchscreens with unity and the new launchers.

For windows managers, compiz has some touchscreen plugins IIRC that allows you to configure the windows behavior with multi-touch.

file managers and music managers...no luck I'm afraid. They are too stuck in mouse+kb to be touch friendly.

 

[Vanillalite]

So... seeing the screenshot above, here's a question for you guys:

I have an HP touchsmart tablet thingy. One of those laptop/tablet hybrids where the touchscreen folds down.

What's the linux standard for touchscreens? Firefox works pretty well thanks to some good touchscreen extensions, but what about a file manager? Music player? Window manager?

Touch scrolling is one obvious quantifiable thing, likewise applications that require right clicking or hover behavior to work right (kinda hard to use when you can't do either). Is there a semi-definitive list somewhere?

If there's an Ubuntu-derivative that's already figured this out, that would be sweet too!

Gingerbread!

 

[Elfforkusu]

Gingerbread!

Aw hell 2 da naw!

I believe jolicloud has an incredibly awesome touch support out of the box, with everything included.

Also in ubu 11.04 there will probably be a good support for touchscreens with unity and the new launchers.

For windows managers, compiz has some touchscreen plugins IIRC that allows you to configure the windows behavior with multi-touch.

file managers and music managers...no luck I'm afraid. They are too stuck in mouse+kb to be touch friendly.

Thanks. jolicloud looks like a real thing, I'll give it a try and report back!

 

[itxaka]

yeeesh Fedora smh

http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2011/03/preview-fedora-15-gnome-30-skippable.html

As you can see from the first look, the desktop is very bare, one single panel at the top, no icons, no files, no applets, no widgets, no nothing. And the panel and its widgets are dark, Windows and OS X style.

Playing with the Desktop Live image, our default download there is very little to do other than getting a feel of the desktop, practically there is no app to use, which is a shame and a disservice to fedora... the ISO is 567MB for i686, respectively 568MB for x86_64, with plenty of room left available for a few useful goodies, that would make it an useful tool.

I didn't need more than 5 minutes to understand this is not for me, the developers made GNOME 3.0 worse from my usability point of view than Xfce and even than LXDE, so the next step was to try the backup option, the classic panel was supposed to be available as a fallback option and providing a "classic" style of work. Unfortunately, the settings are now re-organized in an awkward control panel where is no option to switch modes.

Unable to find a switch, the first idea was to reboot, degrade the video settings, so hardware acceleration isn't available and the panel kicks in automatically. This was an opportunity to learn I can't reboot my PC, only shut it down or suspend... hello! this is a desktop, not a portable! And also learned I don't have handy access (where the panel applets are gone?) to safely umount the USB stick where I saved my screenshots.

And surprise! As I expected, the panel is not the classic feel promised to people complaining about a paradigm shift, but is a half-assed effort to provide... something. It is half shell and half panel.

There is a window list, there are some applets, you can put launchers on the panel, the desktop is empty, with no files or launchers, the colors are an uneven mix of light and dark, the window widgets are completely different... at least you can use Gnote and switch apps.

 

[Pctx]

So what is Fedora running for it's GUI now?

 

[itxaka]

So what is Fedora running for it's GUI now?

Gnome 3

EDIT: Shit I thought you meant on the pictures. Now it's running gnome 2.6. Standard bars on top and bottom with widgets and such.

 

[Pctx]

Gnome 3

EDIT: Shit I thought you meant on the pictures. Now it's running gnome 2.6. Standard bars on top and bottom with widgets and such.

Yeah I thought they were.. But wasn't sure. I haven't used Fedora since 2006... I'm sure people will switch to whatever manager they want if Gnome 3 really turns out as bad as everyone says it is.