techSunday, January 22, 2006
A new logo for craziness
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Follow the link. Read the linux intro.
Monday, January 02, 2006
The Advancement of *nix
*nix refers to any Unix-like system - a UNIX derivative or clone. I am specifically referring to the state of open source Unices including GNU/Linux. I am mainly referring to GNU/Linux1, but these days, many open source Unices share a lot of code and so develop in parallel.
Anyhow, This rate of development is fairly rapid. It seems that the capabilities of the GNU/Linux Desktop are advancing much faster than their proprietary counterparts (You know, like the OS that nearly everyone uses). Linux has been usable as a Desktop system for more than a few years now, complete with Internet browsing, word processing, spreadsheeting, desktop publishing, photo editing, etc. And with many options for specific applications in any of these areas. You can even get MS Office (and a lot of other Windows apps) to run in linux with the help of CrossOver Office from Codeweavers. And most of the MS Office open source alternatives, like Open Office, are compatible with MS Office Documents.
I would not be surprised if, eventually, Linux were to become the dominant operating system. Windows would shrivel up and blow away. The bigger Linux gets, the more developers it wins over, the more support it gets from hardware manufacturers, the faster it develops - the faster it grows. Unix is a superior design from a security and stability point of view, Linux is an open source *nix, there's no reason not to use it and develop it.
Look at the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Firefox is gaining popularity fast - without Television ads, web pop-ups/banners/etc - with basically no advertising except word of mouth. Today it seems that 15%-20%2 of web surfers use Firefox as their primary browser. It used to be that I'd occationally run into a page that didn't display properly in Firefox, but these days it has not been a problem at all. Three or Four years ago, Firefox was nearly unheard of. I think that this same thing will happen with Open Office, the gimp, and many other open source applications. When people start to realize that they're using more open source than proprietary software, maybe they'll realize that this stuff runs just as well if not better in Linux.
Games seem to be a big reason for a lot of people to hang on to Windows. This is starting to change as well. Game developers are starting to include Linux ports/installers (Unreal Tournament 2004). They still don't run quite as well in Linux as in Windows, but this is because of a lack of, or poor support for accelerated graphics drivers in linux. As the developers turn to linux, the performance and compatability will get better.
My advice to hardware developers and 3rd party software developers would be to start supporting linux or get left behind.
Anyhow, This rate of development is fairly rapid. It seems that the capabilities of the GNU/Linux Desktop are advancing much faster than their proprietary counterparts (You know, like the OS that nearly everyone uses). Linux has been usable as a Desktop system for more than a few years now, complete with Internet browsing, word processing, spreadsheeting, desktop publishing, photo editing, etc. And with many options for specific applications in any of these areas. You can even get MS Office (and a lot of other Windows apps) to run in linux with the help of CrossOver Office from Codeweavers. And most of the MS Office open source alternatives, like Open Office, are compatible with MS Office Documents.
I would not be surprised if, eventually, Linux were to become the dominant operating system. Windows would shrivel up and blow away. The bigger Linux gets, the more developers it wins over, the more support it gets from hardware manufacturers, the faster it develops - the faster it grows. Unix is a superior design from a security and stability point of view, Linux is an open source *nix, there's no reason not to use it and develop it.
Look at the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Firefox is gaining popularity fast - without Television ads, web pop-ups/banners/etc - with basically no advertising except word of mouth. Today it seems that 15%-20%2 of web surfers use Firefox as their primary browser. It used to be that I'd occationally run into a page that didn't display properly in Firefox, but these days it has not been a problem at all. Three or Four years ago, Firefox was nearly unheard of. I think that this same thing will happen with Open Office, the gimp, and many other open source applications. When people start to realize that they're using more open source than proprietary software, maybe they'll realize that this stuff runs just as well if not better in Linux.
Games seem to be a big reason for a lot of people to hang on to Windows. This is starting to change as well. Game developers are starting to include Linux ports/installers (Unreal Tournament 2004). They still don't run quite as well in Linux as in Windows, but this is because of a lack of, or poor support for accelerated graphics drivers in linux. As the developers turn to linux, the performance and compatability will get better.
My advice to hardware developers and 3rd party software developers would be to start supporting linux or get left behind.
1. If you take a look at the *nix link on the first word of the post and look at the *nix history diagram, you'll notice that GNU/Linux is the only system that is not derived from an existing Unix codebase - it is written entirely from scratch
2. These statistics are not really reliable, but they are an approximation of what I found out after some quick research. It's really a pretty hard thing to track, web browser usage.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Color Depth
If you're running Windows, you probably run your desktop with a color depth of 32 bits. This 32 bit designation is a bit misleading. Only 24 bits are actually used for color, though for one reason or other, the OS may allocate 32 bits per pixel. If so, 8 of these bits are not used, but allocating a full 4 bytes per pixel may provide some sort of advantage regarding memory performance (it's about alignment or something), though at my resolution of 1280x800, that's nearly a full megabyte of wasted memory.
In 24bit and the so called 32bit modes, one byte is designated for each of the three colors - red, green, and blue. This gives 256 possible values for each color (0-255) and all of the colors that your computer displays are some combination of these 3 colors. This is simple stuff here, it's what I learned in elementary school art class about primary colors along with a little elementary math - only the actual colors are the inverse of what we learned about in art class and the reason for this is the topic for another post that I'm probably not going to write - do a google search if you really care to know.
The point is that there is effectively no difference between 24bit and 32bit color modes.
But my (partially) automatically generated xorg.conf file had an entry for 32 bit color mode in the server section - this is rather uncommon as 24bit mode is usually the max. I know that there is no difference, but I changed the config to default to 32 bit mode instead of 24. And this change caused an unexpected problem which you can read about in my Gentoo Tweaking post (which I wrote before this one, but you'll probably be reading this one first). So I switched the config back to 24 bit mode and everything works just fine.
You can stop reading now unless you're not sure that there is no difference between 32 and 24 bit color modes.
There really is no difference, they each designate 1 byte (8 bits) to each of the primary colors (8x3=24). I think that Windows just calls them both 32bit mode and makes no distinction - or just wastes the 1 Mb or so in unused bytes.
Now, 16 bit mode is a bit interesting. You still have 3 primary colors, no simple way around that, but 3 does not divide evenly into 16. Some cards/drivers handle this by using 5 bits for red, 5 bits for blue, and 6 bits for green (huh? - yup). Some others handle it by using 5 bits for each with 1 bit for padding.
So, I just use 24 bit mode - it works great.
In 24bit and the so called 32bit modes, one byte is designated for each of the three colors - red, green, and blue. This gives 256 possible values for each color (0-255) and all of the colors that your computer displays are some combination of these 3 colors. This is simple stuff here, it's what I learned in elementary school art class about primary colors along with a little elementary math - only the actual colors are the inverse of what we learned about in art class and the reason for this is the topic for another post that I'm probably not going to write - do a google search if you really care to know.
The point is that there is effectively no difference between 24bit and 32bit color modes.
But my (partially) automatically generated xorg.conf file had an entry for 32 bit color mode in the server section - this is rather uncommon as 24bit mode is usually the max. I know that there is no difference, but I changed the config to default to 32 bit mode instead of 24. And this change caused an unexpected problem which you can read about in my Gentoo Tweaking post (which I wrote before this one, but you'll probably be reading this one first). So I switched the config back to 24 bit mode and everything works just fine.
You can stop reading now unless you're not sure that there is no difference between 32 and 24 bit color modes.
There really is no difference, they each designate 1 byte (8 bits) to each of the primary colors (8x3=24). I think that Windows just calls them both 32bit mode and makes no distinction - or just wastes the 1 Mb or so in unused bytes.
Now, 16 bit mode is a bit interesting. You still have 3 primary colors, no simple way around that, but 3 does not divide evenly into 16. Some cards/drivers handle this by using 5 bits for red, 5 bits for blue, and 6 bits for green (huh? - yup). Some others handle it by using 5 bits for each with 1 bit for padding.
So, I just use 24 bit mode - it works great.
Tweaking the Gentoo setup on my laptop
I got gentoo linux all setup on my laptop now. I'm running KDE for my desktop environment, Mozilla Firefox for my web browser, Open Office for word processor/spreadsheet/etc; I got wireless networking working (maybe the most difficult part), I got my touchpad working (though it needs some tweaking as it moves very slow while the usb mouse moves normally), I got all sorts of media players installed and the flash player for firefox, sound works, my GUI runs at the LCD's native resolution of 1280x800, I got some True Type fonts installed, everything's up and running beautifully.
The touchpad was simple - I just needed to change one setting in the system BIOS so that linux could detect it (some driver conflict or something)
The wireless networking was not so simple - There are many options when it comes to wireless networking drivers and software. And there are a lot of inconsistencies between different wireless cards. Add to that the increased complexity of wireless configuration options (WEP, WPA, preferred AP's, DHCP, etc) and it's a big mess. In linux, you can not only setup an ad-hoc network, you can setup the computer to act as a regular Access Point, assuming the card supports it, this just adds a bit more complexity.
I had to read two different guides on wireless networking, each with a completely different tool and configuration setup, in order to arrive at some blend of the two that works on my setup. I got it working first from the command line with a few settings in gentoo's distribution specific wireless configuration file. Then I tried to get it to start automatically at boot. It didn't work the first time. Then I couldn't get it working from the command line either. On top of that, after I rebooted to see if it would work automatically, Xorg (very crucial for the GUI) didn't want to run either. So I played around in the wireless config file some more. The GUI thing was puzzling me because I didn't remember making any changes to that configuration. In fact, I discovered, I had changed something the night before and hadn't thought anything of it - I also hadn't rebooted until I went to test the wireless setup, so the change did not manifest itself until the inopportune moment. It turned out to be rather trivial - I had changed the display depth to a value that, as it turns out, is not supported by my card/driver combination (This is worthy of a separate post. I'll probably write it right away, you'll probably have read it by the time you read this.)
So I got the wireless working from the command line again, crossed my fingers, and rebooted. It worked. I'm not sure which of the configuration changes that I made caused it to work - I'll have to play with that a bit more sometime. If I ever have to connect to a WPA network, I'll definitely have to make some changes. WEP works just fine, though the only way that I know of to specify a WEP key is to edit the wireless config file. I'm sure there's some command line way to do it. Yes, there are GUI tools available for that sort of thing, but they would be useless before the GUI is loaded, the setup I got now will be connected as soon as linux gets to the console login (No, I do not have the GUI load automatically at boot, changing this is a trivial matter - one command).
The touchpad was simple - I just needed to change one setting in the system BIOS so that linux could detect it (some driver conflict or something)
The wireless networking was not so simple - There are many options when it comes to wireless networking drivers and software. And there are a lot of inconsistencies between different wireless cards. Add to that the increased complexity of wireless configuration options (WEP, WPA, preferred AP's, DHCP, etc) and it's a big mess. In linux, you can not only setup an ad-hoc network, you can setup the computer to act as a regular Access Point, assuming the card supports it, this just adds a bit more complexity.
I had to read two different guides on wireless networking, each with a completely different tool and configuration setup, in order to arrive at some blend of the two that works on my setup. I got it working first from the command line with a few settings in gentoo's distribution specific wireless configuration file. Then I tried to get it to start automatically at boot. It didn't work the first time. Then I couldn't get it working from the command line either. On top of that, after I rebooted to see if it would work automatically, Xorg (very crucial for the GUI) didn't want to run either. So I played around in the wireless config file some more. The GUI thing was puzzling me because I didn't remember making any changes to that configuration. In fact, I discovered, I had changed something the night before and hadn't thought anything of it - I also hadn't rebooted until I went to test the wireless setup, so the change did not manifest itself until the inopportune moment. It turned out to be rather trivial - I had changed the display depth to a value that, as it turns out, is not supported by my card/driver combination (This is worthy of a separate post. I'll probably write it right away, you'll probably have read it by the time you read this.)
So I got the wireless working from the command line again, crossed my fingers, and rebooted. It worked. I'm not sure which of the configuration changes that I made caused it to work - I'll have to play with that a bit more sometime. If I ever have to connect to a WPA network, I'll definitely have to make some changes. WEP works just fine, though the only way that I know of to specify a WEP key is to edit the wireless config file. I'm sure there's some command line way to do it. Yes, there are GUI tools available for that sort of thing, but they would be useless before the GUI is loaded, the setup I got now will be connected as soon as linux gets to the console login (No, I do not have the GUI load automatically at boot, changing this is a trivial matter - one command).