Ark Mage's Blog

Normally I don't rant in my everyday language (or posts for that matter) but I am deeply disturbed by the actions of my fellow PS3 owners. SCE has been working extremely hard since the release of the Playstation 3 to provide meaningful and feature-rich software updated n a monthly basis. They have, in roughly 6 month, provided more added functionality than was added to the 360 in a year and a half's time frame. It has ranged from background downloading, to upscaling gamed and DVD's to Media streaming, customizable wallpapers, and the world bettering folding@Home application.
None of this, it would seem, has been enough, for only one features is on the mind of the internet community of PS3 owners: "In-Game XMB". Now, you might say that this should be a simple job, one problem: it isnt. The full XMB requires 64+ MB of RAM (Ironically all the RAM the Wii has :') out of the 512 the PS3 comes with. Using this much would ruin the performance of any game you tried playing. The Playstation engineers have been trying to get functional "In-Game XMB" from day 1, and are in fact very close according to this (from the PSU):

Today, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. confirmed that an In-Game XMB Overlay is coming in the Next Major Update

The problem arose with the release of the 1.9 firmware earlier this week, whose generous change log can be found here. The fanboys began to spam every site (Including the official SCE blog!!!!!) that was reporting on the new firmware with posts like "I don't care about any firmware unless it has in-game XMB" , or "Give us what we actually want!" , or "WE WANT IN-GAME XMB AND CUSTOM SOUNDTRACKS SONY YOU SAID YOU CARED". Yeah, you get my point. Sony is working very hard giving us free software updates with new features, I just think we should be a little more grateful, because one day we might find that the firmware updates stop rolling out, and then we will only have ourselves to blame.

Here is a demonstration of how much better SUSE is than Ubuntu, or any other distro for that matter. Ok, as many of us know, Compiz and beryl's new combined name is "Compiz Fusion", and it is already better than either projects. I am going to compare installing Copmiz Fusion on Ubuntu 7.04 and openSUSE 10.2

In Ubuntu (from Softpedia.com)

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal for GNOME users or KMenu -> System -> Konsole for KDE users) and type:

CODE


sudo apt-get -y remove compiz-core desktop-effects


Leave the terminal open and go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources, click on the second tab (Third-Party Software), then click on the "Add" button and paste the following code:

CODE


deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy


Click the "Add Source" button after you pasted the above code and to the same for the following code:

CODE


deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy


Don't close the Software Sources window yet!

In the terminal window, type:

CODE


wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb/DD800CD9.gpg


CODE


sudo apt-key add DD800CD9.gpg


Now click the "Close" button on the Software Sources window and you will be asked if you want to reload the information about available software, so click the "Reload" button and wait for the window to disappear.

Copy/Paste the following lines in the terminal window:

CODE


sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get -y upgrade


FOR GNOME USERS:

CODE


sudo apt-get -y install compiz compiz-gtk compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra libcompizconfig-backend-gconf


FOR KDE USERS:

CODE


sudo apt-get -y install compiz compiz-kde compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra libcompizconfig-backend-kconfig


Now, if everything was correctly installed and you didn't encounter errors, press ALT+F2 and type:

CODE


compiz --replace

In openSUSE

press this button:

One of my problems with Linux is it's lack of a pleasant UI. Now I am not taking about compiz/beryl UI, I mean the content of the window, compared to Aqua and Aero, KDE and gnome are a joke. However, the KDE4 team is trying to change that with Oxygen, the new look for KDE. It is still in Alpha phase, but if it keeps going at its current rate, it just might surpass Aqua and Aero. I am currently running a KDE4 machine with all the latest packages from the openSUSE repository, so I thought I would show some screenshots. (keep in mind this UI is constantly bring developed and is not representative of the final theme)

This is my first post from the amazing new blogging application from Microsoft. I have to say that it is very impressive, I am not sure if there is anything else out there this good. ( No, M$ isn't paying me)

Today we are proud to announce the first public Milestone of Longhorn Reloaded. To download it, please vista our Homepage

The concept behind open source is that a community of volunteers can create software that is editable by everyone, and no one makes money from it, it is simply done for the betterment of the world at large. This definition reminds me of the communist manifesto, in the way that the community will rise up against the "evil" corporations that actually want money for the code they work hard to write! As with communism, there is a fundamental problem with completely open source software, people making software out of the "Goodness of their heart" cant make software as good as a person with equal skill being paid. The idea of a monetary compensation for your work drives people to work harder. Besides the lack of customization, OSX, and Windows are both (in many ways) superior to most linux distro's (including ubuntu).
This brings me to the word "proprietary", which is the Linux community equivalent of the F word. Proprietary means code that is not 110% editable, and 100% coded by people not being paid. Putting even one line of proprietary code in a linux distro is enough to be condemned for a lifetime. The problem is that the best apps and code IS proprietary. Such as most drivers (nvidia, ATI, and madwifi), not to mention Compiz and Cedega. Some of the best Linux distro's include proprietary software. Take Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop , or Mandriva. It happens that these few distros are the only ones that I can see being used for normal people as their desktop. Until the linux communities get over their childish ideologies, windows and OSX will still have, what is it again, oh yeah 99.9% market share.