New Linux User » 12

Linux Kongress 2009

Clair Ching — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:36:13 +0000

Ever heard about the Linux Kongress? It’s a venue for Linux kernel
developers to talk about the things that they research on and work on.
It is an annual event, organized by the German Unix Users Group. This
year it was held in Dresden, Germany from October 27-30. Ted T’so,
Felix von Leitner and Andi Kleen were all in this year’s Linux
Kongress. They highlighted some of the key things in kernel
development. Talks included topics like the GNU Compiler Collection
(GCC) as well as how multi-core systems are powerful.

Not everyone might be able to appreciate these things especially new
Linux users but reading about them at the very least gives us a better
idea of how development happens, who are some of the key people in the
community, what might be happening in the coming days for us.

Not everyone might be developing software in the free and open source
community. But those who do have a great impact on Linux as we get to
use it. The kernel might seem to be a very intimidating thing to most
newbies. But the kernel is an important part of the Linux distros we
use and love. The very performance of these distros on our respective
computers have a relationship with how developers improve the kernel.
We might not understand all the processing being done by the CPUs and
how the kernel interacts with it but these names make it possible for
us to have something that we could use everyday for our work and play.

I suppose those who are more into technical details and hacking would
be able to appreciate the talks and training tracks in Linux Kongress.
Be sure to check out the
Linux Kongress 2009 page for other information.

Linux kernel developers deserve our appreciation for all their hard
work and time. After all, they’re part of the group that make Linux
become better and better each time.

Post from: New Linux User

Test Posting from Tomboy

Clair Ching — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:54:29 +0000

I've tried posting a note on my personal/crafting blog using Tomboy already. But not yet on this blog. It's interesting because I am used to Drivel, where I have to do the mark-up myself. In Tomboy, it's like I am using a rich text editor or something. Lists will be easier to make, same thing goes for other formatting needs.

Things that will be easy using Tomboy as a blogging client:

Using bullet points.
Putting links.
All basic mark-up related tasks and editing.
Having a better idea of what the post will look like, more or less, at least in terms of the styles of the fonts, etc.
Copying and pasting information from other notes. Tomboy has a search function I could use for that.

What are difficult things to do with Tomboy as a blogging client:

Embedding videos and images. At least not now. I have yet to test it and see for myself if there's actually a way.
Tagging blog entries.
Assigning categories.

It's going to be tricky but for text-heavy posts, Tomboy seems to work fine. I guess that for quick notes that I want to publish right away, Tomboy could be the tool to do just that.

Post from: New Linux User

Pencil as a Mock-up Creation Tool

Clair Ching — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:58:21 +0000

Designing mock-ups of your applications could be tricky sometimes especially if you just want quickly drawn wireframes of the screens. I personally don’t want to use GIMP for that because it seems to complicated to use for such a task. Thankfully there is a tool you could install on Firefox called Pencil. (View more about it on the homepage of Pencil.)

Once you have installed Pencil, you should restart Firefox and then look for it under the Tools menu of Firefox. It will open a new window with a new page waiting to be ‘drawn upon’ with a mock-up screen. On the left side is a pane with the shapes you could use.

Common shapes such as rectangles, lines, text areas.
Annotation for your comments. Balloons, arrows, etc. make it easier for you to write your own comments fast.
GTK widgets help you come up with mock-up screens of GTK-based apps.
Windows widgets help you make design for the Windows user interface.

A sample mock-up screen. Image credit: Clair Ching, 2009.

One of the nice things about using Pencil is that you could put the shapes one on top of the other if needed. You could just drag shapes from the panel and drop them in to the space for the page. It is also nice that you could resize and rotate those shapes. Resizing is done by clicking it and you will notice the points around the shape become blue. Then, move your mouse pointer to stretch it in the proportion of your choice. If you will rotate the shape, click the shape until the points around the shape are red. Then start moving it in the direction of your choice.

You could create a new page with a button click on the “New Page” button. You could specify the size of your ‘canvass’ It’s up to you how you pick the size of the screen. As long as your team knows it’s what your designing for then well and good.

Creating a new page on Pencil. Image credit: Clair Ching, 2009.

Whatever you make with Pencil is something you could export as an image file so you could use it for presentations, etc. if you need them.

Post from: New Linux User

Should We Think That Vendors Will Almost Always Be Exclusively Selling Linux?

Clair Ching — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:31:27 +0000

I just read this email/blog entry about Asus being a fair-weathered friend. Asus released their EEE PCs some 2 years ago (roughly) and it was initially released with Linux on it. Now the letter’s pointing out that Asus has quickly changed its allegiance.

Linux was good enough for you at the launch of your Eee PC models two years ago, and it’s even better now. How quickly you changed your allegiance when the hardware caught up with the requirements of Windows. We now know who our real friends are. Maybe you never really were our friend, maybe you just used us to steal a march on the competition. If that’s the case then you suck.

As much I’d rather have Asus sell their laptops and netbooks with Linux pre-installed, the reality is that not everyone in the market would like that. Even if the numbers are probably growing in terms of their Linux sales (not sure of this, just stating a possibility), as a manufacturer, they have probably seen that they have different markets out there. They have the crowd that wants Windows and they have the crowd that wants Linux.

Linux & Windows

Personally, taking it from another perspective, they are vendors. They are most likely out to profit. If they see that they are not yet getting a lot of profit, they would be looking for avenues that are going to give them the gains that they want. At the same time they probably think that they are giving the potential buyers a choice anyway.

Do I expect manufacturers to be totally supportive of all things open source? I am pessimistic by nature and I have to admit that I cannot say yes. Taking into consideration that businesses need to profit, it will be difficult at this time. Maybe some day but I don’t see it now. For now, at least there are manufacturers like Asus and Acer who give us choices. That’s a first step, I think.

Post from: New Linux User