April 2008 Archives

It's been a long time since I've played a game on console. In fact, it's been quite a long time since I last played a game. I don't know about you guys but it feels quite good to play games-because when I wasn't. I was being devoured by stress and a lot of problems. I always thought of games as "level-up, reach the goal", but not as "have fun, doesn't matter if you die you can go back and kill the boss".

I can't say I'm not an uptight guy. It's really a good measurement to distract your mind from problems for a while. I'm back to consoles and PC games for a while. You know, playing some old games from gamecube and PS2 I've never played like Tales of Symphonia which I hope to beat in this week and Zelda Twilight. Sadly, I'm not really a Zelda fan (sorry) but maybe I get to finish it.

I need more titles to get so later~

Watching turtles walking from one point to another... how fun! Alright, let me start by saying that today is the new release of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS). Sadly, I don't use Ubuntu anymore but I still recommend it to new users who are just entering the linux world.

Congratulation to the Ubuntu Team and their progress so far :)

I'm back once again, yes I know I've been quite inactive and I hope to compensate it with more GIMP tutorials and more Tips and Tricks for you all. I also have a Arch Linux Review up my sleeve to post about and a few other comments and a few games that are not known due to its early stage of development.

Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros right now. Yet, it has lost its touch in matter of speed and performance for me and my machine. Now, why would I chose Zenwalk over Ubuntu? Lightweight, XFCE adaptation and friendly community.

I've been using Ubuntu for around 3-4 years, it has given me the opportunity to grow to know more about computers and Linux itself. Nonetheless, I think Ubuntu accomplished its mission to bring linux for human beings. Once a user have been with Ubuntu for a year or so, he can decide whether to stay with it or hop to another distro. In my case, I decided to go because I wanted to learn more.

It's no mystery that there are more distros out there. I encountered with Arch Linux, is it lighter than Zenwalk? Who knows, but it really didn't leave much of an impression to me. I can't say it was slow, quite an speedy one, yet for some reason I just couldn't quite fit into it.

Zenwalk ISO is around 482 Megabytes. Quite a stud to do that because it brings you a complete desktop for the average user. What does it brings? Abiword, GNU Image Manipulation Program, GQView, gFTP, Iceweasel (Firefox), Icedove (Thunderbird), Geany, Evince, Brasero, MPlayer. We have a Word Processor, an image editor, image viewer, a FTP Client, Web Browser, Mail Application, an IDE editor (which is also used to read text files and so on), PDF Reader, CD/DVD Burning Program, Video/DVD Player. It's almost as if they took their time to choose, if they did, awesome work guys.

Preferences and availability of your favorite programs is important for you and the user. I installed OpenOffice (2.4.0 which is the last stable version), Adobe Reader, Audacious, XChat. Most of them are the last version and some are the previous last version. In general, you can install packages from Slackware if you can't find yours, it's not recommended to do so but it quite works out. Not to mention that Zenwalk also have a section for users submitted packages and they give you your own section to upload your packages to make them available.

I've covered a bit on packages and the packages Zenwalk brings. Now, let's take a look at our desktop:

Multimedia

Who doesn't love music? I do! I'd also like my favorite programs to run my favorite movies and music. In this screenshot from left to right I'm running: Audacious, GNOME Mplayer, Brasero, WINE (CVS), Conky. I think everyone knows what these applications do alright. Conky is an alternative system monitor, also one of my favorites.

Word Processors

The last thing you wanted to see is OpenOffice running with Micro$oft Fonts, yet I did this to show the users that it can be done quite simple with a few commands. The launching speed takes almost 3 seconds, in my ubuntu it took around 7 seconds. Things you should know: DejaVu fonts is a derivate from Bitstream Vera Sans with a fortified unicode support. If you installed Zenwalk, don't go all crazy. I can't say Zenwalk installs a wide selection of fonts from the CD Installation, you can grab them later on.
Restricted Drivers

It's probably one of the most important things for NVIDIA users. There are NVIDIA Drivers in the restricted area, mine installed flawlessly and didn't ran into any problems. Despite that, Geany wanted to be in the screenshot to let you know how it looks.

Digital Cameras

I can't say that your camera will just work as a plug n' play. Mine didn't, yet I didn't worry much. Truth is that some cameras does plug and play in Zenwalk. As for me, Zenwalk have gphoto2 as a default package and the manual is pretty straightforward to use. You can also get gtkam, gthumb and other applications for this. They'd just work out.

Back me up with games pal

As default, there is Grsync to back up your things. Zenwalk does not install games when you do a fresh installation, which is actually a good thing if you don't care about them. Yet I grabbed a copy of Nexuiz from netpkg (the package manager of Zenwalk), Enemy Territory, old school Cube and SuperTux 2. Overall, they should keep the games away from the installations since it's just a waste of space.
Welcome to my jungle

As default, Zenwalk brings you Asunder, a CD Ripper. I inserted my Guns n' Roses CD to give it a test. Queried the CDDB. In matter of minutes I had my CD ripped out.

Image Manipulation

Yes people, you all know about this one. One of the most "underrated", "hated" and underestimated program. That is the GIMP. As a GIMP enthusiast I must start by saying that "yes, GIMP does gradient overlays, Bevel and Emboss, Inner Glow, Inner Shadow", please just look at this article. I don't have to say much on this. I've been using this tool for several months and I love it. If you are a user that just take an hour to check a program out and then bash it later, then sir, please do your homework complete.

In matters of performance and speed, Zenwalk is your next stop. I'd hope it grows as much as other distros and be well embraced by the linux users and new users. If you are still in doubt whether you should change to Zenwalk or not, give it a real try. Something I didn't like about Zenwalk is that they use LILO as the boot loader. It's just a matter of installing everything you need and be set

Do I regret moving from Ubuntu? No. I think users should explore new grounds. There is also Gentoo, Arch Linux, Damn Small Linux. It's a matter of learning, once you have everything you need in your computer, then applaud yourself for your efforts and start helping others so the movement continues.

Get Started with Zenwalk

I'm condemned to use a web service such as Google Mail. The reasons are simple, I get to have a nice spam filter that reaches the level of an enterprise edition. Of course my host is a very reputable one that offers enterprise spam filter for free, but I prefer having a back up(like, 2 GB of space?). Not many users uses the Filters options provided in Google Mail. It's not that they are not aware of it, it's just that they probably don't need it.

Not everyone likes to view their mail using web browsers, like me. I sometimes get annoyed since it takes long so I just use Evolution to get the messages. Oh, and when I mean slow, it's the seconds it takes to display all your mails. Nevertheless, it's good to have your mail offline.

Filter Manager

Let's do a filter now. Go to your Edit -> Message Filters.

Press Add, and follow the screenshot.

You will notice that you can do many things with the message, I bet you can probably make your computer explode too! Alright, no more ideas for you guys. Now, you notice that in Find items: I left it to If all criteria are met, of course that's wrong, change it to If any criteria are met because "all" criteria will only run if the match is exact, and in mailing lists, sometimes you get all kinds of CC, BCC, so it's not good to have it set to 'all'.

Applying The Filter

Note that when you create a filter in Google Mail it asks you if you want to run the filter on all the message. In Evolution, it doesn't have that automatic option that allows you, so you'll need to go to Message -> Apply Filters (CTRL + Y). NOTE: DO A SELECT ALL IN THE INBOX, THEN RUN THE APPLY FILTERS.

Evolution will start checking for the old message recipients, then start moving them to the correct folder. I think I prefer Evolution over Thunderbird, it's pretty well thought out on the features and perfect for any person (meaning, you don't need to be a geek).

Ordering

This is a really option thing to do. Ordering will probably ease your life since a mailing list tends to get a bit rowdy. This is something that Google Mail can't do, that is ordering alphabetically, by sender name. They could probably add it to the next version, I mean the jQuery Team have done it in jQuery UI (which is really nice).

I guess I still prefer Evolution over it. If you are a linux user you might want to check out Evolution, and if you aren't then try out Ubuntu Linux.