binary blobs

apparently, GNU have said that Linux is a breach of the terms of the GNU General Public License, by far the most popular license for open source software. The reason is that Linux includes 'binary blobs': drivers and whatnot for hardware, namely video cards, that the source code isn't freely available to view, study, modify and redistribute of, as the GPL states it should be. But the companies that provide these closed source drivers are NOT willing to release the source code (read: don't give a sh!t about linux). This causes a dillemma: either we have closed source drivers and breach the true open source spirit, or we stick to open source software, at a price (e.g no hardware video acceleration). It's a choice that us Linux users have to make.

Mac4Lin: ditched

A few days ago I decided I didn't want all the leopard-lookalike stuff on my linux box, just a nice ubuntu look. The main reasons were: (1) that it created gtk errors for EVERY app, and (2) it also used a hell of alot of RAM. I also thought, 'why would I want to make Gnome look like a propietary GUI?'. What I ended up doing is just having preset icons/themes and stuff, then hacking it a little. Right now I have Human icons, Clearlooks window border (with default blue color), and Glossy controls. I hacked icons like the rhythmbox tray icon (I actually got that icon of gnome-look) and the computer icon (I bodged that together in GIMP). Here is an overview of my desktop, grey-propietary-leopard-look free (I got the wallpaper from interfaceLIFT):

Stable web browser for GNU/Linux

Firefox is the web browser that comes on nearly all GNU/Linux distros, and often is the sole one (i.e. there is no other preinstalled web browser). But the truth is, firefox under GNU/Linux is still very buggy, and I reckon it should be considered a beta. But GNU/Linux users: don't dispair! There are two other web browsers that aren't so buggy (and alot more if you use google 8-0); namely Epiphany and Konqueror. Konqueror comes with KDE as part of the package, so if you use KDE and haven't tried out Konqueror for web browsing, give it a go. I can tell you it's one of the best out there. For GNOME users, try out epiphany (most users will have to download and install the package as it doesn't come with many (if not any) GNOME distros). Epiphany is very stable, but it's not nearly as feature rich as Firefox. Use epiphany if you want a good, stable web browser that doesn't crash all too often (in fact I am typing this under epiphany right now ;D), but isn't too feature rich either. Both Epiphany and Konqueror run on either platform (GNOME or KDE) but generally, Konqueror will run better on KDE and Epiphany will run better on GNOME (that goes for lot's of other apps too). For Xfce/Fluxbox/[insert obscure desktop environment here] users, you probably know what you're doing! ;)

Debian and its crap

I'm not dissing the Debian GNU/Linux OS in any way whatsoever, but I am going to say that it must have a lot of crap on it, as the full set requires 21 CDs!!! Even Ubuntu (highly recommended for the newbie linux user) is just small enough to fit on a 700MB CD, which includes cool apps such as the GIMP image editor, lots of games, and stuff.