It’s out, and it’s available from here.
Mirrors are likely to be slightly busy for a few hours though.
Category: Linux
Gnome-do
I think Gnome-do is going to end up on the list of my favourite pieces of software.
It reminds me a lot of Quicksilver on Mac OS X, but is much prettier.
gNewSense – Free as in Freedom
I was sceptical that a Linux distribution with no proprietary components at all would do everything I need it to. But 30 minutes after burning the CD, I’ve got a pretty desktop, a working wireless connection, and what seems like quite a fast and user-friendly interface.
gNewSense can be downloaded from http://www.gnewsense.org/
Mandriva 2009 is out!
http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/ has everything you may need. Known issues are at http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Errata
I like this release, and think it’s the prettiest Mandriva release for ages (if not ever). I may get round to updating tonight, but it will more likely be tomorrow when things are a little quieter.
Have Asus dropped the ball by choosing Xandros for the EeePC?
For the past couple of weeks we’ve been piloting a laptop surgery at work. We’ve had several EeePCs bought in, and the general consensus of opinion was that they loved the hardware, but that Xandros looked ugly and wasn’t very functional. So what we’ve been doing is offering either Mandriva 2008.1 or the netbook respin of Ubuntu as an alternative (either on the internal SD card or on an external device). Feedback has been good, and I’ve had a few very productive chats with new Linux users over the past few days which have made me realise how vitally important user interface is. Users don’t want their computer to look like a dumbed down version of their last computer, but they do want something that is instinctive, stylish, and doesn’t get in their way.
Something for Asus and Xandros to think about perhaps.
Gnome 2.24 (again)
I think I’ve made my desktop look sufficiently like a default “install”.
I really like the look of this, and could very much get used to it.
KDE 4.1
I’m running RC2 of the latest Mandriva from a live-cd to test a couple of things out, and thought I’d have a look at how KDE is doing. It’s pretty, but doesn’t seem anywhere near as instinctive as Gnome.
But maybe that’s just me.
It’s still pretty though.
Gnome 2.24
Dropbox for Mandriva
I’ve built an RPM that installs fine on my installation of Mandriva 2009 (RC1).
Downloadable from here, but I’m only prepared to say that this works for me right now, as I’ve not tested it elsewhere.
Update: this version of Dropbox will also install on Mandriva 2008.1 on my EeePC. Mission accomplished.
New keyboard
My much loved Belkin keyboard croaked it yesterday (or at least several of the keys now refuse to work). Today I bought an Advent ADE-KBW100, largely because it is slimline, quiet to type on, and didn’t break the bank. It claims to only be compatible with various versions of Windows, but not only does it work perfectly with Ubuntu, I can also use all 18 of the hotkeys without any further installation of drivers (which actually makes it more compatible with Ubuntu than with Windows XP).
Once again, another win for Ubuntu.