2010-04-27

Reflection: Sabayon 5.2 KDE

I said in my review of Sabayon 5.2 KDE that I was so pleased with the speed and features of the OS that I would install it. I did read some online forum posts on Sabayon 5.2 being a nice live DVD OS but not good for installation, but I figured that this person just had a bad day. I decided to give installation and full use a shot.
The former went smoothly. The latter went untested for reasons that you can read after the jump.

2010-04-26

Why Open-Source is not Socialism

I was thinking of writing something on this for a few days, but I got lazy. Then, I saw this (Glyn Moody, The H Open) article, and it gave me the perfect motivation to actually write this.
I'll first sum up what he says, as he covers most of the important stuff. Follow the jump to read more about Linux, Microsoft, capitalism, socialism, cars, and the music industry.

2010-04-25

College Decision

And I picked...MIT!
It's going to be a hard, rigorous, fun, enjoyable, research-filled time all packed into one! I'm so excited that I'm going!
Also, why can't school just end already? (It's a common lament of high school seniors.)

2010-04-24

Steve Jobs and Android + India's Copyright Bill

This article (MG Siegler, TechCrunch) talks about Steve Jobs's position on applications on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad that have to do with sexually explicit images (a.k.a. prXn). He has said that Apple will not allow such applications, so if one wants to do such things, one should buy a device with competitor Google's Android OS to fulfill such desires.
Follow the jump to see my take on this, as well as my take on India's new copyright bill.

2010-04-23

Thankfully, the US isn't the UK

I'm referring to this (Slashdot) piece on the White House releasing open-source code relating to Drupal.
I fully admit that I really have no idea what Drupal is. However, what is more significant is that the White House has released this code to the public for unlimited viewing, modification, and distribution.
I've read many articles and blog posts by Glyn Moody (e.g. this article here) describing how the UK government has essentially viewed open-source as blasphemy. I feared that, with ACTA and all, the US government would generally follow suit. Thankfully, my fears can now be (at least partially) assuaged. In fact, in that article (on Slashdot) itself is a link to a British observer's opinion piece on how the UK absolutely rejects open-source while paying lip service to the ideals of openness.

2010-04-17

MPAA + RIAA = Big Brother

It comes from this (Richard Esguerra, EFF) article on what is basically a wishlist for the US government drawn up by the MPAA and RIAA regarding protection of copyrights. I come to basically the same conclusions just by reading the material from the MPAA and RIAA. Follow the jump to read more.

2010-04-13

Our School's Stupidity Regarding Microsoft

It is fairly well known that while the vast majority of servers use the open-source Apache technology (as opposed to Microsoft's closed IIS technology), the vast majority of computers hooked up to these servers use Microsoft Windows. Due to the huge price benefits schools and businesses get from Microsoft, these organizations are also partially bound to Microsoft's ideologies. Case in point: the Ubuntu forums are blocked sites in my school.
I am here to report that the situation has gotten even worse.
It is common for office workers who want to use open-source software at work but can't install such software directly to use Mozilla Firefox Portable and OpenOffice.org Portable from their flash drives to avoid using Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Office.
This is what I did for a while.
However, as of today, neither of these are possible anymore on the school computers due to new user privilege restrictions disallowing the use of any software not installed on the computers themselves.
While I appreciate the newfound appreciation for user privileges (something that UNIX started and has been continued on with Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris, Mac OS, and (more recently) Windows [Vista and 7]), this is a huge step backwards from 3 years ago, when Mozilla Firefox was preinstalled on the computers already as an alternative to Internet Explorer. I was pleased then.
I am highly displeased now.
(UPDATE: I know this is a little delayed, but I kept forgetting to add this...until now. It seems that third-party software can be run from one's "My Documents" folder, just not from a flash drive. However, I can see changes to that as well.)

2010-04-10

How to Make a Multiboot Live USB: Revision 1

I realized that I've written this article twice before, so I'm going to title subsequent rewrites "Revision 2", "Revision 3", etc.
This time should be easier as there is no command line involved.
The USB flash drive involved is still an 8 GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro.
I still did this on Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" GNOME.
The distributions used are Sabayon 5.2 KDE, SimplyMEPIS 8.5 KDE, CrunchBang (often abbreviated "#!") 9.04.01 Openbox, and Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" Xfce. I could not find a suitable GNOME distribution that was not Ubuntu or Fedora that could be put onto a live USB with Unetbootin (many now use the "dd" command, which does not allow for multibooting - more on that later; also, I tried putting on Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" GNOME, but for some reason it wouldn't work with Unetbootin, though it has in the past). Also, with the hubbub about GNOME Shell, I am now staying away from newer versions of GNOME.
Follow the jump to read the rest.

Review: Linux Mint 7 Xfce


This is the final distribution that is part of my live USB. I realized that I never really wrote a thorough review of it. Given that I already use Mint 7 (GNOME) every day, my review of this will be less thorough and much shorter. Follow the jump to see the full review.








2010-04-07

Review: SimplyMEPIS 8.5

In my quest to find new distributions to add to my multiboot live USB, I came across SimplyMEPIS, part of the MEPIS family (which also includes the lightweight Enlightenment [window manager]-based AntiX). MEPIS is based off of Debian, which is also the source of Ubuntu (and its derivatives). However, while Ubuntu uses the Debian unstable "sid" packages (though that has changed with 10.04 to the testing packages), MEPIS has usually used either the stable or relatively stable testing packages. While both MEPIS and Ubuntu aim to make Linux computing easy for those unfamiliar with Linux, Ubuntu goes for the cutting-edge, while MEPIS goes for rock-solid stability. Follow the jump to see the rest of this review.

2010-04-03

Review: Sabayon 5.2 KDE















I have reviewed Sabayon before. Here I am reviewing the latest version. I said before that while Sabayon has a lot of cool features and looks, the performance requirements are too taxing on most computers, which goes somewhat against the trend set by most Linux distributions [of being able to work well on older (6-7 years) computers]. Follow the jump to see what I think now.


2010-04-02

My Trip to MIT

I had an extremely enjoyable visit to MIT over the last few days. I got back home late last night.
Our hotel was quite nice; it was very well-furnished and looked quite clean and well-maintained despite being a cheaper hotel.
I got to sit in 2 classes: Quantum Mechanics and Statistical Mechanics. I found the former to actually be easier to understand; I was completely lost in the latter.
I got to visit a dorm - Simmons Hall. It is totally wacky in construction and design.
I got to speak with all of the people that I intended [to speak].
I found myself loving Boston - it is quite safe and has a lot of nice parks, restaurants, and other attractions, as well as a whole host of other colleges.
Overall, it was quite a great trip, and I could definitely see myself going to MIT!