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Member Blogs

Artwork

Submitted by smilliken on August 20, 2010 - 12:28pm

The wallpapers are starting to flow into the website. Keep them coming!

Cracked Linux machine!

Submitted by rich_c on June 12, 2010 - 6:05am

I just read a pretty plausible sounding account on the Mepislovers forum of a Mepis box getting cracked.

Nova versió de les pàgines en Català de MepisCommunity

Submitted by EduardS on April 26, 2010 - 5:00am

Haureu observat un canvi en la presentació d'aquestes pàgines. Juntament amb les millores al lloc web de suport MepisLovers, s'ha fet el canvi del gestor de continguts de MepisCommunity (actualment Drupal).

Això ha significat que durant uns dies, algunes de les entrades anteriors han desaparegut o bé s'han visualitzat les de l'idioma anglès en el seu lloc. Excuseu aquestes molèsties -que esperem solucionar en breu- atès que el nou lloc web pretèn resultar més pràctic i amigable als usuaris.

Further phone adventures.

Submitted by rich_c on April 19, 2010 - 7:21am

Last night I managed to get my Nokia N900 tethered to my Mepis 8.0 laptop. It was one of those things where little bits of info from various sources slowly slotted together until all the promising signs of progress came together in a proper network connection!

Newbies are Not Laboratory Rats!

Submitted by dixiedancer on February 20, 2010 - 1:57pm

I've been badly embarrassed twice already for introducing newcomers to Linux with a buggy, unstable distro (which I won't name - this is not a flame post).

Beta software is fun for people who are willing to test it and trouble themselves to fix it or find a workaround. Voluntarily. Such people are seldom newcomers to Linux! Any distro that calls itself "beginner friendly" should not include Beta software as the default for booting, managing sound or video, etc.

So that's why I'm here, using Mepis both for myself and to introduce my friends to Linux. There's no Beta software to mystify or frustrate newbies, who are already quite uneasy already at first. It's Debian Stable for goodness sakes, with a gorgeous, flawless, effortless implementation of the easiest desktop in Linux.

Shame, shame, shame on those big popular distro developers who rush a so-called "beginner friendly" release to market with Beta software in it! Newbies are not to be treated as unwitting laboratory rats, to test unproven, immature software.

So, this is my first rant. I'm so glad to have found Mepis!

Adventures with my new phone.

Submitted by rich_c on February 12, 2010 - 7:15am

Today I took delivery of a shiny new Nokia N900. I have to say, my impressions over the first hour or so of using it are that I made the right choice.

I can't imagine any other smart phone that would let me run Openoffice.org remotely from my desktop machine without some serious hacking,not by just installing ssh!

Congratulations Nokia, with this one you seem to have embraced the Linux spirit of enabling users to do what they want! This entry was made from my N900 by the way.

Juegos para Linux: Savage 2

Submitted by marcos on February 6, 2010 - 10:00am

Seguro que muchos de vosotros ya lo conoceis, pero hoy voy a hablar de Savage 2: A Tortured Soul. S2 Games es un estudio de creación de videojuegos afincado en California. Allá por el 2003 sacaron un juego bastante entretenido llamado Savage: The Battle for Newerth. Éste era una original mezcla entre estrategia en tiempo real y shooter en primera persona online disponible para Linux y Windows. Vamos, como el PvP de World of Warcraft pero dónde hay que destruir el centro de mando del enemigo y se pueden construir edificios. El juego se puede descargar gratuitamente de la página web de los desarrolladores desde 2006.

En 2008 se publicó la segunda parte: Savage 2: A Tortured Soul. Esta nueva versión hacía uso de un motor desarrollado por ellos mismos llamado "K2 engine". Los gráficos mejoraron sensiblemente. Se ampliaron los personajes y razas. Se ampliaron los movimientos cuando se estaba en modo "melee" (shooter)... Pero sigue fiel a su esencia original, juego de estrategia combinado con shooter online. Me recuerda remotamente a Dungeon Keeper.

Desde diciembre de 2008 el juego se puede bajar también gratuitamente de la web del desarrollador e igualmente gratis se puede abrir una cuenta que nos permita jugar al juego sin limitación alguna. Así lo que no lo hayais probado y tengais un driver con aceleración 3d no se a que estais esperando para probarlo.

El estudio ya está trabajando en otro nuevo juego Heroes of Newerth que sigue en la misma línea de los anteriores. Estará disponible para Linux, Windows y MacOS. De momento se puede probar una beta cerrada para la que se requiere invitacion. Yo personalmente, viendo los videos y el compromiso con Linux que tienen, cuando salga me lo compraré."

Nouveau, Galium3D y el genial Francisco Jerez

Submitted by marcos on February 4, 2010 - 6:38pm

Nouveau es el proyecto que pretende ofrecer controladores libres para tarjetas gráficas de NVIDIA (conocidos como "nv"). Inicialmente utilizaban DRI de Mesa3D. Mesa3D es una librería de código abierto para OpenGL. Y DRI son las iniciales de Direct Rendering Infrastructure (traducido, Infraestructura de Renderizado Directo) que no es sino una interfaz del servidor de las X para acceder directamente a la tarjeta gráfica. El servidor X es el servicio de proveer interfaces gráficos al sistema operativo, es decir, que se encarga de recibir las peticiones de pintar ventanas del gestor de ventanas y de capturar la entrada del ratón, teclado... Obviamente poder saltarse un intermediario como es el servidor de las X y hacer directamente las peticiones a la tarjeta gráfica mejora sensiblemente el rendimieno.

Pero en febrero de 2008, el equipo de Nouveau decidió que iba a dejar de utilizar DRI para pasarse a Gallium3D. Gallium3D es una interfaz unificada para distintos controladores de distintos desarrolladores: Nouveau (NVIDIA), ati, intel (915, 965)...

Hoy mismo me he enterado por Saist, miembro del Foro de MepisLovers que Francisco Perez ha realizado unas moficaciones al controlador Nouveau basado en DRI de tal forma que las tarjetas gráficas nv0x, nv1x y nv2x tengan aceleración 3d. Estas tarjetas abarca desde la original Geforce hasta la Geforce 3, e incluye también las Geforce 4 MX que no son sino una Geforce 2 MX overcloqueada.

Por su parte que varios usuarios han informado de que en los juegos basados en Quake 1 y Quake 2 (OpenArena, Tremulous) así en como otros populares juegos de Linux (xmoto frozen-bubble hedgewars neverball supertux2) la aceleración 3D funciona correctamete.

Esta es, sin duda, una excelente noticia para los controladores gráficos libres.

Total Cost of Ownership

Submitted by rich_c on December 4, 2009 - 4:39am

Among my web pages is a piece comparing Linux and Windows. In it, I mention TCO. To me, Linux costs a lot less to maintain. I just went through a practical example of that theory.

I've just had a family laptop 'return to base' to make sure it's all up to date and virus free. I set it up as dual boot with Vista (Pre-installed.) and Mepis 8. This laptop hardly ever gets used on the internet, so the updates that needed applying went back to before Vista SP2 was generally available. I fired up the Vista partition first... It took 2-3 hours and more reboots than I cared to count to get Windows up to date. While this was going on, I upgraded Firefox and one or two other apps. Probably not best practice while Windows was doing it's thing, especially as one of the changes I made was to remove AVG and install a version of McAfee that comes included in my ISP subscription. (So, a little monetary cost there...) In summary, half an afternoon of my time and a small outlay of actual money.

Then on to the Mepis partition. I fired up Synaptic, hit reload, marked all upgrades and applied the changes. Synaptic downloaded the updates for the operating system AND installed apps in about the time it took the vista partition to 'do' one of the update/reboot cycles. Say, 15-20 mins? That done, I set about making a few enhancements like adding the Vista partition to fstab and putting a shortcut on the desktop to the Users directory to make sharing files between Mepis and Vista that little bit easier. I haven't attempted to enable Vista so that it'll see files from the Mepis partition. That would involve downloading and installing an app & I feel I've wasted enough time in the Vista environment to mess with that! Summary of the cost of the Mepis update? Enough time to make and enjoy a leisurely cup of tea while updates were applying, then maybe another hour tweaking things to make life even easier! Oh, and I recently made a donation in the community end of 2009 funds drive.

Stats compiled from server logs.

Submitted by rich_c on November 20, 2009 - 4:51pm

I just saw an article on TuxRadar about some stats from their web server logs. The amount of Windows machines visiting a Linux site was noted. I'd guess you'd find similar for this site! (That'd make an interesting blog post - hint...) What at first might seem a bit odd is, however, easily explained...

It all boils down to reluctant Windows users at work! In fact, I'm posting this from IE6 on an XP machine. Suffice to say, I'd rather be at home using my Mepis box! I wonder how much Windows 'desktop market share' is enforced?