yet another couple rants and rambles about linux.

i had a couple rants n rambles on a facebook comments for the pc, mac or linux question.



GNU+Linux! Or any other open-source software, there are plenty others besides linux kernel based free operating systems. shop around, there's plenty to choose from, and easy to try 'em out since they are FREE!!!!

but really, when we say linux.... which one are we talking about? there are literally THOUSANDS of flavours of linux distros to choose from!!!



i ascribe the matter not to be mere shallow vanity, loyalty or preference, but a very important issue regarding one's rights and freedom.

many champion the cause of open-source for it's pragmatic benefits to the development process, making better software, developing faster, and more diversity to choose from, faster running, no viruses, etc... See More
I think the more important matters revolve around assurance of no spyware, and freedom.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy
http://www.fsf.org




if you can use it?? who cant use linux? it's pish easy. gOS, Ubuntu, Slax, Puppy, etc. so many noob friendly distributions these days.

oh, do you mean like if you're boss or work are forcing you.. yeah, that'd suck.




amazed at some of the comments from wintards here. methinks they never actually tried anything else.

i use linux for making music and artwork. i know people who use it for games, for office stuff, for networking stuff (obviously), for engineering stuff, for software development and programming stuff, for super computer stuff, for cracking and security testing stuff, for a backup os to rescue their data when windoze breaks, for astronomy stuff, for nerdy science stuff, for simple media (music n video) stuff, for DJ/VJ stuff, and on and on and on.

i stopped using my old windoze when i saw how much faster linux was. how much better it makes use of ram. how many times more stuff i could have open at any one time on older hardware using linux, than i could even on newer hardware running windows. it was insane!... See More

windows was too restrictive, and i kept pushing it harder than it liked to go, getting blue screened too often for comfort.

i ran my first linux desktop for 6 months solid, with HEAVY use, without ever restarting (!!!), no problems. only reason i had to stop at 6 months was because my flatmate didnt pay the electricity bill!

some folks try one linux distribution for a day, n give up. they missed the point. there is not just one-linux-distribution-fits-all. there are hundreds to choose from, so choose something like you want, and then u can completely customise it even further to juuuust like you want it. so the question windows, mac or linux is a bit of a misrepresentation.
it should be windows, mac, fedora linux, ubuntu linux, suse linux, gentoo linux, debian linux, slackware linux, etc etc etc etc, and then also mention, reactos, haiku, aros, irix, unix, solaris, riscos, and on and on with all the others that also so rarely get a mention. ... and of course mention all the BSD's too.

http://makethemove.net/
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

mmmm, freedom.

i still have winxp installed too... but i just dont bother ever booting up into it. no point waiting for a bloated piece of crap like that take 10 minutes to boot up and settle down, just so i can fragment my harddrive, get viruses, have to constantly maintain spyware checking and anti virus, avoid certain sites cause they'll infect me, choke out all my 2 gig of ram in no time, and not be able to open a hundred apps if i feel like it because it'd choke and grind to a halt after probably not even a dozen.

seriously... if you think windows is the best, you've not tried the alternatives.
...(or somehow missed all it's failings and it does miraculously suit your needs... like if u never go online, and just do software testing for windows.) :P

Mac's are just a noob-friendly coated BSD these days now anyways, so u might as well switch to a free BSD distro if you are a mac user, so then u can poke around under the hood easier, get to learn some of the more cool stuff.
...and it wont cost u ridiculous amounts.

frankly, i dont see any reason not to at least have a free operating system AS WELL AS your expensive corporate-ware. and there are plenty reasons to go for it, no matter your needs or skill level.






"i have a question for everybody how many games can u run linux, mac? how many design software for CAD can u run on linux,mac not really any? Solidworks is a big time software for CAD. Solidworks can only run on windows. Solidworks is a big time software in the world next to pro/e. i am a windows Fanatic. and always will be. i tried linux as couple of times. but to install games u have to use wine and that sucks."

yes... using wine does suck. almost as much as having to pay a weeks wage to the richest corporation in the world, just to rent out a piece of your harddrive to them. :P actually, not "almost as much"... it's still way better. ;P
... See More
there are already numerous open-source AND proprietary games titles that run on linux though. one big name example, "id" open-source all their titles after a little while.

the day all games developer's finally "get it" n switch to an open-source development model, is the day when the quality of games really explodes.

proprietary development model cannot compete again open-source model. handful of guys in an office, compared to millions of users and developers and enthusiasts around the world... hrmmm. :P

there's loadsa cad programs for both mac and linux. what frikkin universe r u living in?
and not only that, but u can try your much loved "solid works" in wine on your 'nix install. and there are always virtual machines.
better yet though, you'd join a development team to help make your dream cad program, even better than solid works, like all the great pioneers of their respective feilds have done throughout history. from aristotle, to mozart, to da vinci, to tesla, to rms... they all made their own tools. except now with open source software, it's easier... the community shares most of the work for you. :)

seriously, this isnt an "OR" situation. it's "AND/OR". ;)

u can still stubbornly be a windoze fanboy for life, even if you do have a 'nix install too.

i wonder, which distros did u try, and when, and for how long?




s'pose i shuda just started with this (lol):
currently installed and use:

CRUNCHBANG LINUX #! 9.04 (heavily customised)
Sabayon Linux 3.5 (heavily customised)



cant wait for vlmc. then linux & opensource will (i presume) finally have an excellent video editor.... cos frankly the current offerings are all a bit unstable and lacking in one respect or another.

as a creative chap, i cant stand macs.
i know, sounds weird right?





anyone notice, there are more comments about how crap windoze is than there are for mac or linux? :D i wonder why that is? ;P





if only microsoft (and apple for that matter), would stop being such selfish greedy whores who want to spy on you... and release their source-code!

then i might move back to windoze... once we can see what's in it, and gut out the corporate spyware crap, and let the community develop the kernel and api to be even better. and maybe even find a way of making the whole os secure enough to be safe to use online.

...cos despite all my previous comments here... there are divisions of microsoft who have done some cool stuff! NTFS, and the NT kernel... really quite cool! and what about all those other lightning quick things they did, just to show off, but didnt release them!? wtf. and the whole seadragon thing, WOW! very special.

alas, thats me about run out of cool things to say about microsoft, and their coolness is undermined by the lack of freedom conferred to the users.


if you read my previous comments, you can probably guess i have thousands of positive comments to make about free open-source software. :)

well, i'm gonna stop commenting here, i hope it's been an education for some of you who didnt know what linux is.

quick squishboom update and orklug!!!

squishboomwise.

got a clearer picture of what needs doing for squishboom.
revising pris (the post reinstallation script) into prip (the post reinstallation program), where config files will be stored online and added with a wget, as well as stripping it down to be cleaner, and also adding more elaborate and user friendly options learned from studying crunchbang's alternative installation method.

but all of that's been put on a short term temporary hold while i help with some initial adminnery for...




orklug!

orklug being the shorthand of Orkney Linux User Group. much thnx to andrew who really took to the idea and has been the principle initiator in getting us going. i may have been the first to throw the idea out there, but it wouldnt have happened n gotten so far if it werent for aorkwa.
so anyways...

now we've got our wiki on the go:
http://orklug.org.uk


our (low trafic) mailing list currently on:
http://groups.google.com/group/orklug
~ though theres talk of soon moving to gnu's mailman.


a presence on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=198032207797

and on identica:
http://identi.ca/group/orklug



and we even have our very own irc chatroom now too on freenode, which can be accessed via a simple web interface here: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=orklug
or of course whatever your preference of irc application.
(i'm just being a sucker for convenience and using pidgin, since i already have a handful of other chat protocols i use on that)

so come say hi on freenode #orklug


our number are still small, but considering we've only really been properly at it for about a day now, i say we're going pretty strong, n off to a good start.

wont be long before the conversation turns to "lets organise a meet!"

:D


happy days. :)

squishboom

been making squishboom pre-alphas. gearing up for an alpha release, hoping for a rapid transition there-after from alpha through beta to official.
more to come....




edit


... COCK! if only i had re-ran remastersys... i've just got back into my squishboom pre-alpha2 desktop, having previously intended to be in my squishboom alpha desktop. note to self, always remember when in a unetbootin live-cd/usb environment instead of a real install. and if in that situation, always be sure to save anything you need elsewhere. oh phew, that reminds me *checks* at least i saved my tips desktop background image that's to be used as the default in squishboom. it only survived as i was saving the gimp xcf multi-layered file onmy hd, rather than what i thought was the pendrive, but was actually the casper inside the pendrive. heh. well... thats been about 7 hours of gutting and cleaning and rescripting completely down the pisser, what a pisser. gah. well, that was hard, n i hope, well learned.

http://omploader.org/vMnBnbw/cbdtbggf001.png
http://omploader.org/vMnBncA/cbdtbggf002.png
http://omploader.org/vMnBncQ/cbdtbggf003.png
http://omploader.org/vMnBncw/cbdtbggf004.png
http://omploader.org/vMnBndg/cbdtbggf005.png

some crunchbang desktopbackgrounds.

as seen here: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/post/44321/#p44321

Linux*

it's the potential

"i need a better screwdriver... times nine."

... said my friend as he dismantles the innards of a perfectly working 900 athlon 768mb greybox.
he's prepping the old case to hold his new box's components while hes waiting for his new psu to arrive.

i think that old machine is just the perfect age for linux. linux would work really well on such a spec machine. really really well. alotta bang for those numbers.

"it's made out of stuff, it'll be alright" was another comment... i dont quite know the context, i wasnt listening, but it sounded cool, so it made it into this blog.

anyways, this little project he has going on here, and others we were talking about earlier has got me thinking geeky again... and dont worry, some of it isnt linux specific, so fans of other operating systems can play along too....

(hehe, yeah, i know my readership of this blog is currently about 0. and that's including me (i dont even read this blog). i know someday someone will read it, and just maybe, someday someone will get a kick outta my rambling....)

stick a computer in a freezer!

there, slapped you in the face with the doozey there, right when u thought i was gonna ramble on pointlessly again... ;D an idea inspired upon seeing hte operational temperature range of some components.

the obvious thing that stands out at first of course is... the overclocking potential! If you didnt think that immediately upon reading the words "stick a computer in a freezer" then maybe this isnt the blog for you. :D or maybe it is! and you need to stick around all the more. :D

there are small freezers available pretty cheap, and big enough to house your box in. however... i do wonder about how well each tech would stand up, the heat source, inside the tiny box trying to keep cool. when i first thought of the idea i was thinking a guy at his desk in a meat locker.... this idea very quickly moved on to putting the human interface outside. i was still thinking large room freezers while my friend was the first i think to put it into the realms of "doable". especially when i urged him to look for freezers on a shopping search.

i was actually gonna ramble on and make this another full length ramble... but heck... sticking a computer in a freezer does it for me. got mah geek on.

arty musings from outside the matrix

http://n3wt0n.com/blog/?p=326

having been a long time fan of musagi, it is a joy to get to experience another creation from the same genius, "sfxr". it's a gorgeous little app for making sound effects. oh my... my music is gonna take another change of direction.... crap... i was really hoping to get the latest album i had been working on polished off and released... but i can see this will interfere with that plan. :)

now if only i could get musagi and gungirlsequencer (or another similar basic audio sequencer in e-jay style) on the go too... musically, i'd be provisioned with everything i need then.

lmms and ardour, they're nice to have, but not quite my preference for how i like to compose my musical creations. for the most part.


for my animation stuff, i still feel a little short handed. i miss the likes of animation shop. gimp's gap, it just dont cut the mustard when ya need workflow. still early developement for it.

i just recently started playing around with synfig studio, a simple vector graphics animation package (which i originally thought was more bitmap oriented), and it's showing some promise.

i also miss adobe after effects a bit. but this is my own doing. i chose this path, i chose to renounce slavery and proprietary and all that crap. idk if there anything close to similar in the open source community yet.

blender and softimage|XSI.
mmm. i do miss softimage from time to time. i recieved some top notch intensive training on it, and that helped me be familiar with it, and get some level of workflow outta it. my learnings with blender have been far more sparse, far less intensive, and less focussed with a hundred other things on my plate, and as a result, there are times in blender when i still, even years removed, find myself thinking in softimage terms.

still, i'd never get to poke under the hood of softimage, so i know i'm on the right path with blender.

this is a point i think many folks must look at me and think me a fool for opting to go for a kinda richardstallmanesque renunciation of proprietary software. i'm in it for the longer view, i see not only which way the wind is blowing, so to speak, but i see just how much faster and further i'll go if i steer my ship into those winds. the sooner i'm with them, the better. of course, (leaving the sailing analogy) i'll need to learn alot more.
.....this is not a bad thing.
this is not a "con", it is very much a "pro".
i do not want to be dumbed down by plastic wrapped convenience, i want to know how things work.

i dont want to be hostage to dependance, i want to be empowered with competence.
this is the difference.

so i choose non-proprietary as much as possible.... tho convenience does have me reaching for proprietary flash still, rather than the fsf initiative versions of GPL released flash. ideally though, if i was imbuing myself with the spirit of socrates and empiricus or other philosophers who made a point of sticking ot yer guns, then i'd stick to learning how to program, how to hack my own code to get it to work.... again... convenience traps the lazy and impatient.

ok, i'm straying wildly again...

but thats ok i suppose. its my blog, and i can do what i like. no fascist mod wanting to keep up appearances and excersize their powers of authority over me here. :D

so yeah... it's all on topic really, i just think broadly. :D

lemme pull it back round for you to see i'm correct in asserting i'm still on topic.

so as an artist, with fanciful delusions of grandure, of being up there with the greats, i too, like them, prefer to retain more control over my tools, and therefor over my artwork.

i want to make my own paints, fetch my own ingredients for the paints, etc. metaphorically speaking.

my paint comes in the form of complex arrangements of ones and zeros.

i could just leave it to the whim of the authorities, or i could (like the sentiment in the video in my last blog depicted), renounce the esstablishment, and do something actually progressive for us all. :)

heh, talk about limiting beliefs.... i've just noticed i've been holding myself back because of what i think other people think, because i think myself incapable of explaining or them incapable of understanding, the alternative sence of worth outside the stringent linear quantitative monetary terms.

there's the old idea (i once read in a book on taoism) that artists should not make money from art, that profit should be kept seperate from art, that art is above profiteering, that an artist would never lower themselves to be as low as the businessman, who is only a peg above the criminal.

... as someone identifyingy themselves with being an artist, you can see why i'd take to that idea. :D especially living in the society we do where businessmen have been allowed to seize too much power and status, and pressure the rest of us to conform to their ways.... it seems quite the paradise utopian society where businessmen are regarded as just barely better than criminals and artists just barely worse than saints. :)

even tho i think it's fading these days, there's still some remaining residual ridicule and demonising of open-soure freedom-software folks. probably exponentially increasing now, folks are starting to see free software in a rather divine light. it is rather saintly and angelic. it's very nice. "sharing", "community"... these are two big words in the ... community. whether you're calling it the open-source community or the more die-hard free(dom) software community, we're effectively all the same community. the ven diagram would be quite clear on this i'm sure. there's ecconomies of gifting, of giving, without expectation of anything in return. we've left the paradigm so heavily enforced upon us by dominator industrialists. we're more tesla, than westinghouse. we're achieving what the technocrats of lefist political ideologies dreamed of. ok, sure, so far we're pretty much only achieving this in digital realms. but i think its not long now before the dam bursts completely, and the corporatist oligarch can no longer plug the leak of all the technologies which will set us free. this will be none other than the surfacing of all those sci-fi technologies.... the total liberation of man from uneceassry toil. we'll have zero-point vacuum energy devices, capable of providing all our energy needs, we'll have 3d printers and hologram technology synthesizing to produce star-trek like replicators and other fabrication devices, geet engines, water fuel, solar paint, and piles and piles of other stuff... i could go on and on, and i'd still never scratch the surface of all the liberationary technologies that ALREADY EXIST and the many more which have yet to be imagined.

think i'm off topic again?

nope.

this is the point.

this is exactly why i, as an artist went to open source software over proprietary.

this is exactly the thing which will enable artists of the world continue to create their art, and do so without profit incentive-ising them, distracting them. ( to show that i still communicate my thoughts in ted-talks videos: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html ;D )

"why do you have to pay to live on the world you are born on?" asked the visitor to our world.

zero obliged outgoings.

and why not?

only if you are addicted to having a billion crypto-slaves should you baulk at the idea, and even then... you aught to reccognise the precarious situation you're in as master of a billion slaves who are at risk of waking up to realise they are but slaves for you... and they might not like it.

so yeah... i take my choice of software pretty seriously huh. :D

i got told in one of those silly little internet quizes recently that i was from arcutus, and as such, i'm a 5th dimensional being with a strong inclination to do things forthe benefit of all. well, idk if i'm from arturus, but the rest seemed to fit. ;)

time to beam up to my ship http://omploader.org/vMm9wcQ/booingwhirie1.wav
(first sound i just made in sfxr)