Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
It's funny. Laugh.

Video Linux Sucks (Video) 293

Posted by Roblimo from the to-learn-how-badly-linux-sucks,-you-need-to-use-it-for-at-least-five-years dept.
How do we know Linux sucks? Because Bryan Lunduke says so. How did he become a Linux authority? By using Linux, of course. He has also written a kids Linux book, Linux for Hank, and a grown-up Linux book, Linux is Badass. But wait! That's not all! Bryan is also one of the people behind the infamous Bad Voltage podcast.

And now, for something slightly different: In moments of weakness, Bryan admits that maybe Linux suckage isn't total, and Linux may have a good point or two and maybe some of the suckage could be removed. Zounds! Is that possible? Watch our video chat with Bryan (and/or read the transcript) and see. Or watch the entire 44 minute speech he gave at the 2014 LinuxFest Northwest, which was the 5th (or maybe 6th) "Linux Sucks" speech he's given at LFNW. That makes this a tradition, not just a speech. So if you find yourself in or near Bellingham, Washington, in 2039 you might want to pop in and see if Bryan is still updating his "Linux Sucks" speech. He'll be the geezer hobbling to the front of the room with help from his AutoCane, a device sure to be developed between now and then -- which will no doubt run Linux. (Alternate video link)
Handhelds

Apple Announces New iPods, iTunes 10, Social Network, AppleTV 579

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
Steve Jobs gave his iPod keynote this morning. He started with iOS 4.1 and Game Center which will be coming out next week. iOS 4.2 will add printing to the iPad and will be out in November. The new iPod Shuffle has buttons again, and costs $49. The new iPod Nano has a tiny multi-touch screen, and an FM radio, and starts at $149. The new (thinner) Touch has the iPhone 4 screen, an A4 chip, and FaceTime over WiFi, starting at $229 for 8GB. They all ship next week. iTunes 10 looks the same, but adds a social network called "Ping," which basically looks like Last.fm integrated, and should be out today. AppleTV is updating: 1/4th the size, no purchases — only rentals. 99 cents for TV rentals (ABC & Fox), Netflix on Demand built in, and for $99.
Media

FFmpeg Finally Releases Long-Awaited Version 0.5 176

Posted by timothy from the unsung-software-heroes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After many years of release-free development, FFmpeg, the most widely used audio and video codec library, has finally returned to a regular release schedule with the long-awaited version 0.5. While the list of changes is far too long to list here, some high-profile improvements include the reverse-engineering of all Real video formats, WMV9/VC-1 support, AAC decoding, and of course vast performance improvements across the board. To commemorate the 'lively' discussions predating the release, 0.5 is codenamed 'half-way to world domination A.K.A. the belligerent blue bike shed.' The new version can be downloaded from the official website." As another reader points out, FFmpeg is what makes some open source multimedia apps (like MPlayer, Xine, VLC and Kdenlive) so versatile.

Comment Multi-Head Linux Systems (Score 1) 411

by tesno2 (#26620775) Attached to: Best IT Solution For a Brand-New School?

I haven't seen Multi-Headed systems proposed yet so....

I run IT for a 400 student Nursery through 12th Grade school in Bolivia. There are 2 Labs. A Preschool / Elementary lab with Windows boxes for playing educational games and a Middle & High School Lab with multi-headed linux boxes for OpenOffice, HTML programming etc.

In the Elementary Lab, kids love the educational games and learn English which is a second language for most of them. They love coming to computer classes. Networked games like Ages of Empires are particularly popular. Some other favorites are Putt Putt, Freddie Fish, Carmen Sandiego and Clifford.

The Middle/High School lab has always been a problem - mainly finding interesting things for the kids to do. Computers is not so popular. There is only so much Openoffice and Gimp you can do. What next? Programming? 3D Graphics? We still haven't found a solution....

A few years ago I looked at thin clients but dismissed them because of the poor graphics performance and poor overall performance. The machines were laggy and games were crap.

We went with multi-head machines. 3 keyboards, mice and monitors on each machine. Performance is indistinguishable from a single head machine. Games run fine - even 3D games if you use 3D accelerated PCI graphics cards - we use Nvidia GeForce MX 440's.
Maintenance is VERY low. I have 39 stations but only 13 PC's to maintain. Students and teachers log in on any station and get their own environment. Home directories are mounted over NFS (performance is fine) and we use NIS for authentication.

One problem has been the inability to run Windows games (most of the best educational software is on Windows) on Linux. Wine doesn't hack it. I've been looking at Virtualbox and I think we have a solution (although no 3D acceleration - yet!). With dual-core machines, each virtual machine gets allocated a core and most of the games run with acceptable performance. When quad-core CPU's are cheaper, I can see a workable solution where 3 kids can be running 3 CPU intensive VM's at the same time with good performance.

Good luck!

Comment LTSP vs Multi-Head (Score 1) 106

by tesno2 (#18911313) Attached to: Multiple Desktop Users on a Single Machine?
I set up a K-12 school in Bolivia using 12 Multi-Head PC's driving 3 stations each giving 36 terminals. The original version used the Backstreet Ruby kernel patch and a hacked X server. It has been running stable for 2 years now. I have been trying out X.org which is stable with new (9631) Nvidia drivers (we use one onboard Nvidia graphics card and 2 Nvidia PCI graphics cards - around $50 each).

I looked into an X terminal solution but the performance was not good enough. We want to run kids educational games that have nice graphics and things changing quickly on the screen - LTSP is too laggy. The machines use Athlon XP 2500+ processors with 512MB RAM.

Getting a stable configuration can be tricky. Chris Tyler's blog here:
http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/ 14-Multiseat-X-Under-X11R6.97.0.html
has useful tips that helped me out - you have to wade through some crud to find them...

Ideally we would like to use VMware or Wine so the kids could play Windows educational games - they are lots of them and the kids love them. I have not been able to get the games to run on Wine however and with VMware, the performance is not good enough. We set up another Elementary lab with Win98 installed - PIII 750's with 128MB and 40GB 5400RPM drives is plenty for the type of games they run.

Good luck!
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Slashdot Top Deals

Why be a man when you can be a success? -- Bertolt Brecht

Close