Skip to main content

Hardy Heron - Linux getting better!

A few months back, I had requested Canonical to dispatch me (they still do it for free!) a CD of Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS (hardy heron). I was still running an older version of the same distro for quite some time and this was an opportunity to change. I had installed the newer OS and these are a few observations:
  • Display is much better, with my ancient VIA chip-set getting recognized with 3D acceleration too. Now, I can play most of the 3D games (tuxkart, supertux, billards GL) and a few non 3D games (chromium) in full glory.
  • Wireless is still a problem. My netgear wireless adapter was able to recognize my ADSL router among the other routers in range in my neighborhood, but fails to connect frequently. But once connected, they blaze through at 200kbps. I have not been able to see this kind of speed on a windows machine though...
  • Audio CDs are mounted properly. This happened to be a problem with 7.04 when only data CDs were recognized.
  • Video / audio codecs are easier to download from the main application installer.
I happened to find more applications available on the Linux platform, especially for kids compared to windows. TuxPaint, TuxMath, celestica, GCompris are some must haves. And my son's current favorite is Pingus (a lemmings clone where you deal with penguins instead).

Of couse, you have the standard suite of tools for regular work (open office), CD burning, browsing (FireFox), e-mail (Evolution) and all this happened to work well on my 4 year old Athlon with 384 megs of RAM!

Keep watching... I'll post in a few screen-shots.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Battle of Wesnoth Been on the lookout for a free turn based strategy game and chanced upon the Battle of Wesnoth . Despite it being an open source game (meaning, you get the source), it was incredibly polished akin to any of the other turn based strategy game (Alpha Centauri), be it the background score or the graphics or the tutorials. The game itself is set in a period similar to the D&D or nethack era. For the film buffs, if you have read or seen the Lord of the Rings, you would probably be able to relate to the clans that populate the game world. The game play, as with any turn based strategy game requires background information on each of the units that you own, their strengths and weaknesses and a lot of planning (a kin to chess, but with a lot more parameters) where factors like day - night cycles are taken into account (e.g, humans fight well during the day, but the orcs are better during the night). It is encouraged to keep your older units as they gain experience and beco...
1 comment
Read more
Going forward... Happy Diwali to anyone who has managed to reach this site! With this being a long weekend, by next novel that I recently read was NEXT by Michael Crichton, based on the new advances that are being made in the world of genetic engineering and the implications of their effects in the social world. Good read which changes the perspective of the darker side of generic engineering in the ever changing world.
Post a Comment
Read more
The Quest The quest for a free UML tool has been going on for the past few years until I chanced upon StarUML . Capable, with support for UML 2.0 constructs except Timing Diagrams, this is a good tool compared to others like ArgoUML . StarUML is developed using Delphi and is COM compliant so that plugins exist to extend the existing framework to support or provide configurability. The base installation supports document generation and well as rudimentary reverse engineering support. I tried reverse engineering a few C# code and only a few classes were imported. This being an open source project, there is no stopping you from acquiring the source and fixing any open issues and submitting a patch. The UI is snappy and unlike other tools that are over 250 MB in size, this is 1/10 in comparison. A great tool for quick modeling.
Post a Comment
Read more