Perspective of a Thinking Human Being.

I really seems so, this article takes an in depth look at this. The conclusion: "When setting out on the benchmarking for this article we had no idea that in all of the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars benchmarks, ATI Linux would steal the lead from the latest Redmond operating system. Doom 3 had also performed very well under Linux with the latest ATI driver release. Being surprised by this, we are now going to be performing a much larger cross-platform comparison with multiple ATI Radeon graphics cards and we’ll likely run the same set of tests on the NVIDIA side."

I really find this interesting, Why? Because I have always been an nVIDIA enthusiast, because they have had the best support for years on Linux, but this articles opens my perspective, as well as the choices I have now when buying a new video card. If ATI proves to be a better performer in the long run, then I’m all in, I will just stop buying nVIDIA products (I have been buying them forever) and start buying AMD/ATI products. I am a person who only use Arch Linux, so I don’t need Windows support on any of my hardware, so the product that can better deliver for Linux is the one that is going to be kept as my product of choice. I should also come to the attention, the fact that the latest nVIDIA drivers for Linux has been nothing more than bad, introducing more bugs than they fix. And, to conclude, AMD/ATI are going the open source way, nVIDIA will likely catch on too late to that quality thinking, if they ever do.

Thanks for reading and as always share your thoughts in the comments.

Is true, the Arch Linux newsletter is going to undergo a makeup surgery. I want it to be more in concordance with the Arch Linux main site style. I think this can give the newsletter a more elegant look, and be recognized as an official part of Arch Linux. I guess that when the new logo gets chosen the Arch Linux main site and all of its depending sites, as well as the newsletter will undergo another makeup, so lets enjoy it while it last.

 Well, I have already sent Aaron Griffin the interview questions I compiled together from the community users who asked them. I believe they are the best, even though I could not put everyone of them as there were many more I liked, I hope you all enjoy the ones that did make it to the interview. Theres even a little humor added to the interview so I hope it will be of your liking. Remember this will be featured on the Arch Linux newsletter issue of Nov, 5 2007.

 About the future of Arch Linux, I’m just so willing to see all the things to come, I believe Arch Linux is aiming big, and everything can possibly come true. I expect the changes to come to be of quality. It has been better for the leadership to be now in the hands of someone with the time to dedicate to such a big project, in this case Aaron Griffin, who I think is a good community leader. I’m also willing to see which Arch Linux logo concept is going to win, I have seen them all to date and are just awesome.

I want to take this line to wish the best to all of the participants and may the best concept win.

 For me, Arch Linux has never been in better shape, I mean everything is working stable, clean and fast. But this is just the begining, it’s so good to know that with an open source Operating System we all are part of this success.

I wanted to do something funny, lets say put the dumbest quotes by Steve Ballmer (Microsoft Head) and the funniest quotes by Linus Torvalds (Linux Creator) so all of you get a good laugh. Let’s start with:

The quotes by Steve Ballmer:

• "Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards."
• "There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."
• "I don’t know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me."
• "I like to tell people that all of our products and business will go through three phases. There’s vision, patience, and execution."
• "I think it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible for anyone to try and break up Microsoft."
• "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."
• "My children - in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod."
• "We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference."

As you can see lots of them are dumb, some never came true, and some are lies, anyways they give you a good laugh.

Now lets see the quotes from Linus Torvalds:

•  "I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."
• "An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
• "Some people have told me they don’t think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They’d be a lot more careful about what they say if they had."
• "Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)"
• "…the Linux philosophy is ‘laugh in the face of danger’. Oops. Wrong one. ‘Do it yourself’. That’s it."
• "See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too ;-)"
• When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say ‘Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*’.
• "In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won’t end up like the Hurd people."
• "Really, I’m not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect."
• "Modern PCs are horrible. ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we’re kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce."
• "There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they’d still be wrong."
• "’Regression testing’? What’s that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up it is perfect."
• "A lot of people still like Solaris, but I’m in active competition with them, and so I hope they die."
• "I claim that Mach people (and apparently FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots."
• "So the whole ‘We have a list and we’re not telling you’ should tell you something. Don’t you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they’d just tell us and go, ‘nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!’?"

So as you might see, Linus Torvalds attack other systems or companies sometimes, but still is funny. In conclusion, Linus Torvalds win, with the better quotes, Steve Ballmer wins with the dumbest quotes. As you might have noticed it is Sunday, I have nothing to do, so please, understand that I’m bored, I had to do something to entertain myself, as well as you guys. Thanks for reading as always. I did enjoyed searching and merging the quotes together. So I hope you enjoyed as well.

As many of you know, I have started some threads in the Arch Linux forums to get peoples opinions on what should be removed, added and improved in the Arch Linux newsletter. I want to show you the change log so far:

• Application of the week. (Suggested by F)
• Collect Linux related but necessarily Arch Linux related news that help improve users knowledge on one specific subject. (Suggested by Dusty)
• Remove Stats section. (Suggested by skottish and Dusty)
• List of threads in the forum, with reasonable questions or concerns, that haven’t been replied to, in a reasonable amount of time.

I guess that should do for now. Removing the stats section is a way for me to focus more time on the sections that matter most to you, the community. Hope you all like the changes, remember the next issue will be out on Nov, 5 2007 if Jason Chu, doesn’t take long to write the devland section.

 

 UPDATE: Added the last change listed, that are going to the newsletter. (27/oct/2007 11:48pm)

Have you ever had two or more movie files that you would like to join? So that you can burn them to DVD as one single movie file, which plays continuously without skipping for a change between files? Well, if you are using Linux this can be easily done. If you are using Arch Linux, you will only need to: "pacman -S mplayer" and if you are using another Linux distribution you have to make sure mplayer comes bundled with mencoder, if not install mencoder & mplayer, for ubuntu that should be: "sudo apg-get install mencoder mplayer". Now change to the directory where the files are and issue the following command:

• mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy thefile1.avi thefile2.avi -o thefinalfileiwant.avi

That should make it, it performs fast and it leaves the quality of the files intact. If you have any question about this tip post your comments and I shall look to answer them if I can. Also note that this can work with .mpeg as far as I know. You can correct me and add suggestions in the comments. Hope this helps, thanks for reading.

The surprise for the next Arch Linux newsletter is, that we are featuring an interview with Aaron Griffin the Arch Overlord. The community is the one to ask the questions, so if you would like to participate is as easy as clicking here and post your question. Just the top 10 picked by us will make it to the actual interview. Thanks for reading and supporting as always.

I have changed the theme of this web log, to make it look and feel better, simpler and professional. I hope you all like it. It makes me for more at peace with my environment when I visit the web log myself.

In other news, the Arch Linux newsletter are going through some kind of revamp to make them better for the community, stay tuned for more, and there is even a surprise for all of you, in which you will get involved in some part of the next newsletter, I will announce it shortly after I make this post, or tomorrow morning in the Arch Linux forums.

Is good to feel how, even though my time is limited, even more with the fact that I’m in the process of starting in a new job, I still feel great about it. I mean, since I discovered the open source world I never thought I would be so involved and that it would be so rewarding. Let me explain, when I work, at my pay job I get the satisfaction that I’m earning money, so I’m being paid to help the people and be kind to them. But, when I work on lets say, making the Arch Linux newsletter or helping the open source community in general, I get the satisfaction that I’m helping someone without getting paid, I’m giving without waiting to receive, even though what I receive is of more value to me than money, the kind words from the people that enjoy what I’m doing.

 That is what life is about, our hearts are made in a way which we feel satisfied by helping others. That is the why we, in the open source community are so kind on giving, we make everything with a sharing spirit, and in that way we become better persons overall. As Judd Vinet once said when stepping down as Arch Linux leader: "The community left me some very kind comments and it warms me to know that I’ve left such a nice impression on so many people. I guess that’s the best reward for stepping up and making something that you can’t really charge money for — the payment comes in kudos, pride, and a boost in self-confidence." Inspiring words they are, hope you all agree with me. Thanks for reading.

Why should I, use a system without slocate, grep, highlighting text with cursor copy, and paste with middle mouse button. Why should I use an OS that you need to rely on third party applications to customize its theme, this way making it slower and bloated. Why use a system without a decent package manager like pacman, apt-get, portage, and more importantly without a repository with more than 18,000 free applications available for one click download and install without bugging wizards. Why should I be binded to only one vendor, who only brings me a high price alpha quality OS, with which I have to wait until several service packs to feel is in final product quality. An OS with such a bad file system like NTFS which gets fragmented with every simple file movement/erase. An OS that is plagued with virus yet unknown that you have on your system, waiting to deploy.

I mean, thinking about this things make me realize I don’t like Windows, and I don’t need it, I don’t even dual boot, I just have one Arch Linux installation, and thats all I ever need. Is sad how sometimes people want to be binded themselves.