Treg's blog

On the Freedesktop.Org website, I saw a movie about the future of the Linux Desktop. The developpers are really doing nice things with Xgl there!

Linux Desktop Future Movie

Yesterday I read a post from Miguel de Icaza about new graphic improvements in Linux. Novell announced a new release of XGL and Compiz. This software is responsible for Direct Rendering, 3D and composition features in the X environment.

Some examples:

• Transparency
• Zooming
• Spinning cube (picture below)

In the future, this components will be a standard in the X-server, X.org.

Last week I was testing the KDE 3.5 “Window Manager” on my Gentoo 2005.1 box. I’m very surprised, cause this Qt based desktop system disapointed me many times in the past. I managed to use GTK2 styles in GTK2 applications, for example Mozilla Firefox. Also the transparant bottom panel ‘s very nice.
Yesterday, I compiled xorg7.0 with composite extensions, but it won’t work very nice due to my ATI graphics card. I had some problems with Direct Hardware rendering and composite extension enabled.

The remake of King Kong is out a few days in Belgium. So saturday evening, some friends and I decided to go to the movies and watch “The eighth wonder of the world”. Not a bad choice to watch this 188 minutes during classic movie. I wasn’t bored at all and the pause was there very fast. Yes, @ Kinepolis Brussels they have a pause. I need to mention that I didn’t saw this movie before, so I didn’t knew the whole story.

Using the public transport in Brussels ‘s very hard this week.
Monday a bus driver drove his bus into a traffic-jam AND an open dedicated bus road was available (we did 400m in 20 minutes)! Tuesday some dudes decided to drop their can of red paint and painted the inside of the tram. It’s quite normal that buses are driving up to 40 minutes too late these days.
And on the moment you think you ‘ve seen it all, there ‘s somebody who breaks down the doors of a driving bus and jumps out. 😮
Shocking!

It took a while, but now the waiting is over: OpenOffice 2.0 (stable) is a fact!

Of course this release offers some important improvements compared with the first version. The most important new features are the new userinterface (with native widget integration) and the introduction of the database component. OpenOffice uses now standard the OpenDocument format to save it’s documents.

You can download this software for free from their servers.

I ‘m trying to test it this evening, time is the limit these days. 🙂

Today, the 3th stable version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution is released. It’s called Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger.
Some major new features in this release are “Thin client integration”, “OEM installer support” and “Launchpad integration”.
Software included in Ubuntu Breezy: Gnome 2.12.2, OpenOffice 2.0 beta 2, X.org 6.8.2, an easy application install tool, easy language support tool, editable Gnome menus, support for writing audio CD’s (Serpentine), graphical startup process, new docs, kernel 2.6.12.6, better laptop support,…
Download the .iso images:

• PC (intel x86) Install CD
• 64-bit PC (AMD64) Install CD

Hm, I’m going to test it. 🙂

I am posting this message to confirm that I’m still alive. 🙂
I succesfully passed the 2nd examinations and for the moment I am doing some vacation work. Next week, I ‘ll be doing a stage @ Belgacom (3 months). As you can see, I am very busy.

Today Google released its Instant Messaging program. It’s an application that enables users to quickly and easily talk or send instant messages to their friends for free.
The program uses the standarized XMPP-protocol that also ‘s used by Jabber. The interface is quite simple and easy to use, just check it out! –> GOOGLE TALK < --

The latest sources for Ubuntu Hoary I use, changed dramatically. It are the standard sources because there is no need anymore to get custom binaries of mplayer and jdk. 😛

deb http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb-src http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe
deb-src http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security universe
deb http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted