Directory —
Technology —
Blog Details for "Penguin Pete's Blog"
Penguin Pete's Blog Penguin Pete's Blog Being an extraordinarily geeky site about Free and Open Source Software and the wonders thereof. Full site features include the hippest FOSS blog on the 'net, a gallery with over 400 wallpapers at this count free for download, source code, distro rev 
Articles
Public Service Announcement To Those Selling Computers On Craigslist
2009-07-05 11:28:00 Hello, I am a geek. I am your market. Look around. See anybody else with me? It's just me. I can say this because business users buy their computers through other businesses. And the non-geek home users only feel secure buying their computer the same place you did. It's just me. And I'm exploiting my position on purpose. I am, in fact, the most arrogant, condescending, self-important, insufferable computer geek you have ever met. I will dispense with the list of my credentials - suffice it to say that as far as you're concerned or will ever be able to comprehend, I make lightening shoot out of my fingers, have scrolling program code in my eyeballs, and can tell you what Google dreams about in its sleep. My sole interest in your machine is to wipe its hard drive, exorcise the Demons of Microsoft from it, install GNU/Linux or BSD on it (or something else you've never heard of) and add it to my growing hacker den of a home network. Even without the building-up-my-power part, ... More About: Reviews , Computers , Selling , Public Service , Public
10 Signs You Are Ready For Linux
2009-06-28 22:41:00 The title of this post is a search which came into my site, verbatim. (It was a Canadian search through google.ca.) Curios, I searched around the web and didn't encounter any such article. So let's make one! It's a good way of looking at things for a change. So much ink is devoted to "Linux is ready for the desktop", that we tend to forget to view things from the other angle - what kind of user is right for Linux? 1. You're tired of being bossed around by your computer. Would you tolerate your car refusing to start until you scanned in your pink slip every time to prove you bought it? Would you put up with parts of your house being walled off because only the architect was allowed access? Would you allow your doctor to withhold information in your medical file from you because it's intellectual property? Then why do you put it with this from a computer you bought and paid for? 2. Your money's tight. Linux is still free! 3. You're tired of having to buy a new machine every... More About: Signs , Ready
Michael Jackson Moonwalks Offstage
2009-06-26 00:44:00 Michael Jackson has died, at the age of 50, reports the LA Times Blog. So as soon as I read that, I immediately fired up XMame and loaded a ROM of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker that I had laying around from a past project. Say what you will about him - he was pretty freaky towards the end there, and I admit I made my share of jokes about him - but the screenshot is how I'll always remember him, as the unbelievably cool entertainer we had in the '80s, not the strange alien we had from the '90s onward. There'll never be another. More About: Michael Jackson , Michael
Reddit Gimp Promotion Fail
2009-06-20 17:20:00 Reddit had a little poll lately to ask which open source programs the community would like to see promoted. Gimp won third place. But, as seen here, Gimp just can't get a break even when it wins... Yeah, sure, Gimp, the open-source Photoslop. And I suppose Linux is the open-source Windows, and ABIWord is the open-source MS-Word, and Firefox is the open-source Internet Explorer, and PHP is the open-source ASP... Never mind that the Gimp team states quite clearly that it's not intended to resemble Photoslop in any way, shape, or form, and never will be. I've heard of feeding trolls before. This goes beyond feeding trolls. This is giving the trolls sugar diabetes! More About: Promotion , Reddit
The Case For Video Games As Art
2009-06-19 19:56:00 A story today brought to the forefront an issue that's been on my mind. This is an argument that censorship stifles the art of video games. But behind this issue lies another point: video games just don't get accepted as an art form in our culture. At least not with the legitimacy that other media forms get. Where is the Mona Lisa of video games? Where is gaming's Beethoven's 9th? When will a video game be praised on the same level as movies like Fellini's 8½ or, if that's too artsy-tartsy for you, even Star Wars? Here's an example I'd like to show. Maybe it's no Mona Lisa, but it's pretty good. It's Polyphonic Spree's Quest for the Rest. It's an adventure game of a few scenes with little puzzles to solve, not too difficult, the point being more to showcase songs by the band Polyphonic Spree. This has been one of my favorite web games for years now. I've had it bookmarked forever, and come back to play through it every year or so just because it's beautiful. How ... More About: Video , Video Games , Games , Case , Video-Games
India Does What the United States Can't
2009-06-18 23:28:00 http://lizards.opensuse.org/2009/06/15/in dian-government-takes-a-lead-in-getting-f oss-in-education/ Here, would everybody like some positive Linux news for a change? The India n government launches the FOSSEducation initiative. The details are there in the link, but I'd just like to point out a few phrases in the article which, as an American, just taste good to say out loud for a change. "...Gujarat State Education Board(GSEB) to give 50% weightage to Open Source and Linux in Computer subject across all streams (Science, Commerce and Arts)." A state education board setting a mandate of FOSS/Linux at least half the time! US education boards are still haggling over whether we can teach evolution or not. "Ministry of Human Resource Development" You know, as opposed to a "tech czar" in the US, who isn't even an engineer (Robert Cresanti has a BA and a JD), and whose chief concern seems to be making sure nobody listens to music or watches movies without paying. "the Nationa... More About: United States , United , States , The United States
Only 8% of the United States is Computer Literate
2009-06-17 21:02:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrU Q&feature=player_embedded A while back, I posted my sour-puss opinion that the United States is doomed, period, by its collective ignorance. I concluded that America needs a Renaissance, and it isn't going to happen. I haven't seen anything to change my mind yet. But one more fact comes to light to bolster that outlook: Google conducted a survey in Times Square, asking simple things like "What is a browser?" and "What's the difference between a browser and a search engine?" Is there a single American citizen who does not recognize the results? Watch that video; watch the dumb grins, the helpless flailing of hands, the shrugs, the fumbling and stuttering. At the end, the survey results are shown: less than 8% of the people could even get the first question right. Doubtless, the people knew that the company conducting the survey was named "Google", and so they repeated the word Google with baby-like mimicry. No doubt, they were only able ... More About: General , Computer
Only 8% of the United States is Computer Literate
2009-06-17 21:02:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrU Q&feature=player_embedded A while back, I posted my sour-puss opinion that the United States is doomed, period, by its collective ignorance. I concluded that America needs a Renaissance, and it isn't going to happen. I haven't seen anything to change my mind yet. But one more fact comes to light to bolster that outlook: Google conducted a survey in Times Square, asking simple things like "What is a browser?" and "What's the difference between a browser and a search engine?" Is there a single American citizen who does not recognize the results? Watch that video; watch the dumb grins, the helpless flailing of hands, the shrugs, the fumbling and stuttering. At the end, the survey results are shown: less than 8% of the people could even get the first question right. Doubtless, the people knew that the company conducting the survey was named "Google", and so they repeated the word Google with baby-like mimicry. No doubt, they were only able ... More About: General , Computer
Seven Reasons Why Beef Is Not Ready For The Dinner Table
2009-06-15 22:59:00 Despite its many advocates, whenever I buy some beef and try it, I always end up going back to chicken. Chicken has what I want, and beef doesn't. The latest releases of beef got my hopes up, but I was again disappointed. Now, don't get me wrong. I like beef and I was one of the first people in my family to try some - I was even eating beef decades ago! And I have a tattoo of a cow on my back! But I think, for most diners, beef isn't ready for the dinner table, and here's why: 1) Too many cuts. Should I get loin, tenderloin, sirloin? Ribs, T-bones, tripe, tongue? Consumers are confused by all these choices; they want a wing, a drumstick, a breast, and a thigh in a bucket. 2) Lack of recipe support. Nobody knows how to cook it, except for those geeky elitist specialists who went to chef school. 3) Too complicated for Joe Sixpack. You have to cook it to a certain temperature, or else you could get some foodborne illness like "Campylobacter jejuni" or "Salmonella" or "E.Coli". L... More About: Humor , Dinner , Beef , Reasons , Table
All Settled in the New Igloo
2009-06-03 23:58:00 The move's complete, we're almost unpacked, and my office is set up enough to rejoin the online world and hang the 'open' sign! :) And was this move worth it? Here's a photo of the view out our front window: There's nothing across the street from us but woods! That's several square miles of the Iowa Greenbelt right there, with a lazy curve of the Des Moines River beyond that, and then yet more woods. We see deer wander around every now and then, and I'm sure more wildlife sighting is in store. The bulldozers in the foreground are building a scenic bike trail, which is all the development the area's going to get. So, yes, it was worth it. Just perfect for us cantankerous, grouchy hermit types who want to retreat from the rest of you noisy people so we can contemplate our masterpieces. Bonus Buck: My karma twin, Eric at Binary World, also moved. I swear we don't plan to do everything at the same time, we just have matched biorhythms or something. Anyway, he has an int... More About: Site News
"Doomed to Obscurity" - Caught up until June 5
2009-05-27 14:29:00 http://penguinpetes.com/Doomed _to_Obscuri ty/index.php Today and today only, you get six strips for the price of one! I'm posting them all in advance so I can take time off to move at leisure without missing my webcomic schedule. And to all of you out there who are my steady clients, hang in there! We're almost through this! I have no idea what else to do for the blog, so to tie you over, here's a picture of a fish: Talk to the fish. He's your friend until I get back online. More About: Site News , June , Caught , Obscurity
Penguin Pete's Could Use a Renaissance, Too
2009-05-24 03:13:00 This is the other half of the thought from a post a while back, "America Needs a Renaissance ". Buck up, this will be good news. I believe that every few years, you have to reinvent yourself. It's how you stay fresh. So up until now, this site, and the blog in particular, have been mostly high purpose and serious business. Doing my best to explain technology to the world, cheering the good guys, booing the bad guys, helping the newbies, and so on. But my interests have turned. I'm not kidding that the United States is in a dark age that it isn't going to pull out of any time soon. There is no proof I can link to, because any proof would be too trivial. Look at the past 20 years of Western history. All of it, every minute. You think one progressive president's going to change this? Puh-leeze! I've talked about it enough. That's it, I've had it. I've preached enough sermons; they're all there in the archive. Help yourself whenever you want. You'll either be one of the f... More About: Site News , Penguin
I Finally Joined Twitter
2009-05-18 22:14:00 http://twitter.com/Penguin_Pete Alright, I can tell a must-do trend when I see one. I resisted being assimilated into the Twitter ati as long as I could. But I at last have a Twitter account. You see, kids? Grampaw ain't so out-of-it after all! So I'll be tweeting whenever I post updates to this blog, the webcomic, Delicious bookmarks, Ezine articles, and work-related purposes when necessary. Keywords: necessary. I'm not going to live on the thing like some people do. I practically live on the web at large already... What finally sold me, the very last bit of convincing I needed, was this post on Twittering from the command line. Yep, a one-liner in Curl'll do 'er! Hey, if you can CLI Twitter, then you can Bash it and hack it and script it and automate it... anything hackable, I'm there. Meh, it'll also help when we move. Which reminds me... Official early notice: The Penguin household will be moving to a new house by the end of May/ beginning of June! Still in Des Moin... More About: Site News , Finally
Wait, I Thought Command Lines Were More Evil Than Hitler?
2009-05-10 09:00:00 You don't need to ponder your answer, you just need to free-associate the first thing that pops into your mind: What is the number-one leading complaint people have about Linux? Go! The two words now emblazoned in your cerebellum like flaming Elvish writ by hand of Sauron are "command" and "line". Here, try these Google searches: "linux sucks" "command line" - 5,090 hits "linux will never" "command line" - 5,630 hits "linux on the desktop" "command line" - 9,840 hits See some familiar old flames? It's kind of like a song set to the tune of "The Blue Danube Waltz", only the lyrics go "Whinge whinge whinge whinge whinge... whinge whinge, whinge whinge" whenever the subject of the Linux command line comes up, even among those who claim to love Linux. But suddenly, Microsoft is including their own command line shell with the next version of Windows, and the pundits immediately change polarity and weep hot tears of joy over the glory of command lines, faster than a Republican tryin... More About: Hitler , General , Thought , Evil , Lines
Fear and Loathing at Technology Open House
2009-05-01 10:27:00 My daughter dragged me along last night to her school's event, "Technology Open House ". Mainly for the giggle value; if any parent would be fun at this event, it would be me. The event was set up with different activities in different rooms, and you had to run back and forth like cattle in a chute milling from room to room. And I came away with a mingled mixture of appreciation and disgust. The event was put on by QWest, who are granting $15,000 to Des Moines Public Schools. I heaved a guarded sigh of relief: at least I wouldn't have to pretend to be nice to Microsoft all night, but on the other hand, this is QWest. First we got to log into the school's own Wiki and talk about how technology impacted our lives. "It's shiny!", I added, "It has lots of buttons and lights up!" My daughter gave me one of those looks so I had to write the boring old practical stuff. But hey, it's a Wiki! ka-ching for open source! Next it was a podcasting demonstration, which involved speaking int... More About: Fear , Open House
My Linux Personal Lexicon
2009-04-24 13:15:00 In the spirit of Douglas Adams' The Meaning of Liff, this is the little list of words I've come up with to describe aspects of Linux life. They don't have to make sense - I'm just being silly. "adminland" n. "ad-min-land" The console. The black text terminal you get by hitting Ctrl-Alt-F[2-6] and return to the desktop from with Alt-F7. For myself, it's a natural environment on my own machine. For the rest of the household, it's that weird thing that dad does to your computer from over your shoulder when you're having a problem. I've gotten so good at adminland, that all anybody sees is sudden black, a flurry of flying text, and the desktop again with the problem fixed. "Appleshock" n. "app-el-shock" The surprise of unzipping a received file which you expect to be from Windows and instead it's from an Apple user. Oh, yes, there are alternative systems out there, aren't there? So now instead of dealing with spaces in file names or all-uppercase DOS-isms, you're dealing wi... More About: Personal
Google Similar Image Search Brings Me Weird Hits
2009-04-22 04:25:00 http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/04/ google-similar-images.html Uh, in case you've missed it, Google has released Similar Image Search , a function which allows you to find images similar to the one you're looking at. And for those of you saying "That's like TinEye!", well, no, since TinEye performs real-time image analysis with an uploaded image and is designed to uncover cases where an image was copied and filtered and reused. Sorta. The part where my mis-aimed fame comes in? Apparently, one of the favorite ways to test it that most people think of first is to type in "XKCD" - and lo, there in the second result is the parody image I drew for a closing sig on a blog post a year and a half ago. Next thing you know, I'm getting tons of hits. Oh, well, I think I'm still in the clear, unless Randall Munroe has a copyright on all stick figures or something. But while everybody's looking for stick-figure comics similar to XKCD, well, I do have a steady webcomic to offer. On... More About: Weird , Hits
America Needs a Renaissance
2009-04-16 14:18:00 Yet another big technology corporation is bemoaning the lack of engineering talent for hire in the United States. This time it's Google. With a money-quote from Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of Intel: "We are watching the decline and fall of the United States as an economic power - not hypothetically, but as we speak." And who is taking our place? Three of the nationalities mentioned as producing prominent engineering talent are Chinese, Indian, Russian. Now, keep those three countries in mind. Let's take a look at a possible indicator, by checking Google Trends for keyword 'Linux', discovering who in the world has Linux on their minds enough to search for it. By region, Russia and India are the top 2. By city, Russia, China, and India are in the top 3. By language, Russian and Chinese are in the top 5. The US isn't even in the top ten for region, has only one city in the top ten (San Francisco, where all those "libruls" come from!), and English was only tenth for l... More About: America , General , Renaissance
Showing My face In A Few New Places
2009-04-14 23:26:00 Where the whiskey drowns, and the beer chases, my blues away... Oh, hi there. Anyway, I've branched out to a few new sites, the better to spread my tendrils of influence across the web. These will be a supplement to my own site. In the first place, I've made an account on Yahoo Answers. Can't exactly link to it right now, because Yahoo's doing something there where it's all caddywumpus, but then that's pretty much Yahoo all the time. I figure that a lot of my blog's post archive answers some questions that people ask over and over again, so I might as well pounce on a question there if I can help. I'm also now an Ezine Articles expert writer, a title not nearly as lofty as it sounds. From time to time I'll be dumping an article over there. The purpose of the site is to provide stock articles for e-zines and other use, and anyone can use them as long as the block at the bottom is included (which you can have link back to your own site, soapbox for your cause, etc.). It's... More About: Site News , Places , Face
A Little Start-Up Success Story
2009-04-11 23:50:00 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article /0,9171,1890387-1,00.html Hosted by, of all places, Time.com. Now before I start, I'd like to answer a question that might be on some of your minds: "Why aren't I sticking more to pure FOSS topics?" And the answer to that is, that tech start-ups tie into open source, especially when they're Internet-based. Open source is a unique enabler for entrepreneurs. Get it free, run it free, let it teach you and you can work on it for practice, and when you're ready, launch a business for darned near nothing. The way I see it, the more Linux geeks I can guide towards being the next Sergey Brin, the more Linux wins. If we are to replace a ten-billionaire who runs a global monopoly, we must replace him with ten thousand millionaires scattered across the globe. So, the story is Get Rich Slow and the interviewee talks about how he has this idea for a car review website (I was just lamenting the lack of such a site this month), so he went idea-shoppi... More About: Story , General , Success , Start-Up , Start
Eight Reasons Why Fluxbox Is My Favorite Desktop
2009-04-05 23:06:00 It happened again, this time at Tech Republic. They ask the question "Which Linux desktop would you show to a new user to impress them?" and the answers are limited to 3 versions of KDE, 2 versions of Gnome, 2 variations of Enlightenment... and Fluxbox once again is left lurking in the shadowy anonymous depths of the dreaded option "other". What the hell does Fluxbox have to DO to get some love around here? For that matter, what does Window Maker, FVWM, iceWM, and the other diverse Linux-native desktops have to do? You occasionally find somebody who stumbles upon the inconceivable notion that XFCE exists alongside KDE and Gnome, but basically Linux desktops suffer from the same misconception that plagues the rest of technology: binary thinking. There is a maximum of Two (2) choices in any topic, because one brain can't seem to handle the complexity of thinking about more than two. (Microsoft or Apple, Mac or PC, Visual Basic or C++, Democrat or Republican, Coke or Pepsi, God or... More About: Reviews , Desktop , Reasons , Favorite
April Fools Flash Tutorial: Embed a Sound File
2009-04-01 17:14:00 What, you don't know how to play a song from a Flash file in SWFTools? Easy stuff. Takes a minute. Make a source.sc file with this in it: .flash bbox=50x50 fps=36 .sound SONG "./AFD.wav" .action: songFX=new Sound (); songFX.attachSound("SONG"); songFX.setVolume(500); songFX.Start(); .end .end compile: swfc -o AFD.swf source.sc Where 'AFD' is the name of whatever .wav sound you want to play for your April Fool's Day joke. Then embed the Flash file somewhere on your web-page, with small height and width arguments, or hidden with a CSS trick, or buried behind an image - whatever it takes so the user cannot possibly find it to shut it off! Bonus Buck Today and today only I support the grassroots effort to save Internet Explorer 6. More About: Tutorial , File
How Do You Tell People That You Work in Technology?
2009-03-30 22:04:00 Since you're reading this, I'll assume that at least you can understand something of what I mean. So, for the record, my income is derived about 50% from writing, 30% graphic design, 10% coding, and the rest is dribbling into website ad revenue and the odd consulting gig. It's all done from home. Literally, I sit at home and type on a keyboard, and checks mysteriously arrive in the mail. Now, you try explaining that to people. My wife and I, in our day-to-day transactions with The Outside World, have developed a reflexive cringe whenever the subject comes up. "So, what does your husband do?" is the kind of thing that these days gets her to just hang up on people, if the call wasn't all that important. Or change the subject, if in person, even if that requires her to knock something over and break it. For myself, I'm just contemplating changing my answer to: "I'm a witch doctor. I dance around a pentagram drawn in goat's blood while biting the heads off chickens and shaking... More About: Humor , Technology , People , Work
How Do You Tell People That You Work in Technology?
2009-03-30 22:04:00 Since you're reading this, I'll assume that at least you can understand something of what I mean. So, for the record, my income is derived about 50% from writing, 30% graphic design, 10% coding, and the rest is dribbling into website ad revenue and the odd consulting gig. It's all done from home. Literally, I sit at home and type on a keyboard, and checks mysteriously arrive in the mail. Now, you try explaining that to people. My wife and I, in our day-to-day transactions with The Outside World, have developed a reflexive cringe whenever the subject comes up. "So, what does your husband do?" is the kind of thing that these days gets her to just hang up on people, if the call wasn't all that important. Or change the subject, if in person, even if that requires her to knock something over and break it. For myself, I'm just contemplating changing my answer to: "I'm a witch doctor. I dance around a pentagram drawn in goat's blood while biting the heads off chickens and shaking... More About: Humor , Technology , People , Work
Interface Fail: Yahoo Answers
2009-03-24 06:22:00 You know an assistant is bad when it makes you wish for Clippy. I was toddling along answering a Yahoo question and doing my best to ignore the Annoying Critical Box that pops up on the right to inform you that the proper name you just typed in isn't in the dictionary. You know, as if built-in spell-checkers in web-browsers were this unheard-of feature that only advanced alien races had discovered? And as if this does anything about spelling on Yahoo anyway? But having avoided spelling errors in this case, the A.C.B. had a stern warning for me regardless: oops im sory yuhoo iz dis bettr im nut uzing puntuacion r 2 muc spelin now i jus tak in leetxt lk al yr otr uzrz sory 4 bein 2 smrt wont hapn agin More About: Humor , Answers , Yahoo Answers , Interface
The Real Secret to Computer Geekdom
2009-03-23 19:58:00 Like rocket scientists and brain surgeons, programmers have an aura of intelligence about them. Over and over, I tell people I work at home in computers and instantly they mentally add 50 points to my perceived IQ. Well, if I was all that smart, I wouldn't need a spell-checker to tell me that I just misspelled "perceived" (i before e except after c, dammit!).* Well, the secret is, intelligence doesn't get you nearly as far as you might think. Eric S. Raymond danced around this point in How To Be a Hacker. There's other traits that are even more important than intelligence. These are: Patience. Number one. People think that there's some heavy wizardry going on when I soak up a new platform in a week. What they don't see is the part where I start out (a) Googling, (b) following false leads, (c) scouring the library and bookstores, (d) plowing through the reading of thick manuals for ten hours per day, (e) fumbling around trying it out, making at least ten stupid mistakes... More About: Computer , Secret , Real
My Gimp Tutorial and Resource Linklist
2009-03-22 22:32:00 I don't know if it's the new economy driving people away from pricey alternatives, or if Adobe lost the asstroturf war and now people understand that Gimp is a viable image editor. All I know is that Gimp just seems to be a buzz topic lately. Since I have searches pouring into my site to find the five or six little Gimp tutorials I have, here is a whole list of resources from my personal bookmark list, covering everything from beginners to intermediate to expert advice: Learn the Gimp: Meet the Gimp! - The Gimp podcast, with video tutorials! Gimp.org - The official Gimp site. MMMaybe.Gimp.org - Gimp.org's own small list of tutorials, organized by category. Carol's site at Gimp.org - A collection of Gimp tutorials and resources. "Grokking the Gimp" - A free website eBook! May be getting old, but it still gets the beginner quite far. Also check out the recommended reading list, with actual bookstore-books you can buy. GimpTutorial s.com - A collection of user-submitted Gimp ... More About: Resource
New Poker Game in the Flash Gallery
2009-03-21 15:57:00 After a few false starts on this, my most ambitious Blogsquares Flash item yet, it's time to turn it loose. So, look for a video poker game down there in the sidebar on this blog. It's a simulation of the video poker variation known commonly as "Jacks or Better". I followed the example in Wikipedia for the pay table, so it should have the same theoretical return of 99.54%. Of course, in typical rounds of play, it will usually gobble your 100 credits within 30 plays or so, with a few hits of pairs and three of a kind in the mix. Having lived in Vegas and having experienced the average video poker machine on the average casino front on Freemont Street, I am reasonably sure that it plays like the same thing. When the credits reach zero, the only way to reset it is to refresh the page! GPL licensed, source package here. Run free, my little toy! Oh, and a related project is my Flash card-shuffling demo. As always with gambling games, I must state that this is an entertainment de... More About: Poker , Gallery , Game , The Flash
Point for Point with Bruce Byfield on GNU-Linux Desktop Myths
2009-03-18 18:01:00 Bruce Byfield has an interesting list of rebuttals for GNU-Linux myths. Yes, we've all dropped this anvil before, myself included (in only my second post on this site!), but we need to keep dropping it again and again. So here's a few thoughts to add to the points raised: 1. The problem of cross-distro compatibility. To add to that point: Big business needs to meet some actual Linux users and watch them for a day. For instance, I run Slackware, so packages made for my system are few and far. That doesn't bother me in the least. I regularly grab Debian DEB and Red Hat RPM packages and convert them. I get source tarballs an compile them. If something needs a library, I'll find it soon enough on my own. What I'm saying is, Linux users require much less hand-holding than the users of other platforms. Make it for any Linux system in any form, and we'll handle it from there. 3. Hardware support. I actually *would* go so far as to say that GNU-Linux supports more hardware than Wi... More About: Desktop , Myths , Bruce , Point
A Look Back at the Third Year of Penguin Pete's
More articles from this author:2009-03-15 16:47:00 Goodness! Another year already? Didn't I just do this? Apparently so, which means that time's flying faster and faster, while I get farther and farther behind. Anybody else out there notice that? The Internet keeps us so busy, we can barely grab a day as it flies by. This past year has been marked by two attributes that I've noticed: (a) More delay. These days, I'm lucky if I get to post once a week. (b) Hyperthyroid post growth. When I do post, I've tended towards big, multi-part meaty stuff. This could be a sign that my muse wants to outgrow blogging and publish books. But with the economy the way it's been, I'm going to be forced to lay my muse off anyway, so it's all good. Oh, well, here's this year's report card: I kicked off my third year by bewildering everyone with a five-part tutorial on using Image Magick to generate banners. See what I mean? Why would anyone want to do this? Nobody would, but the whole thing is supposed make you go "Cool, I didn't know you... More About: Site News , Back , Year , Penguin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
|
