Sunday, April 22, 2001

FreeBSD 4.3 Released -- 9:23 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

It's been a banner week for Unix geeks. I just spotted the announcement that FreeBSD 4.3 has been released. I've been using FreeBSD 4.2 extensively during the last few weeks while telecommuting. It's a nice, clean, fast system and runs well on my 100 MHz machine. I'm afraid even to think about running the latest Mandrake or Red Hat on this system. Now if Netscrape would just stop crashing every few hours, I'd be a happy guy.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 6:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Today is "A.T. in LinuxLand" day. I've spent most of today fiddling around with my new RH 7.1 install. Now that I've gotten the bugs ironed out (mostly), I'm very impressed. The only problem I'm having is that my old 4.3G drive just isn't cutting the mustard for my Linux install. Installations of Quake III Arena, Shogo, and Soldier of Fortune eat up disk space in a BIG hurry.

My next quest is finding a decent word processor. I don't think KWord is going to do it for me. Later today, I plan on checking out Star Office. For some reason, my copy of WordPerfect 8.0 doesn't want to install.

J.t.Qbe comments: Hmmm, for your purposes WordPerfect is probably the best choice. However, check out this article on word processing options for Unix. Maybe you'll find something else. StarOffice is nice, but it's a big hawg.

Saturday, April 21, 2001

Mozilla Roadmap -- 4:53 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Mozilla Project recently updated their release roadmap. Version 0.9 of the open-source web browsing suite will hopefully be released on Monday. It would be nice if 1.0 could get out this quarter. We'll see.

Loki: Not Quite Dead -- 4:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

ITWorld did an interview with Loki's Scott Draeker on why things have been so quiet at Loki lately and where the Linux gaming market is heading. One of his comments which I'm sure will attract a lot of discussion is this one:

One of the things that I am personally concerned about is that you've got two camps out there, who are ostensibly working on the Linux desktop. You've got the GNOME group, and Helix Code and those folks, on one side, and you've got the KDE folks on the other side. From where we sit, the GNOME people see the desktop as a GNOME desktop and the KDE people see it as a KDE desktop. Nobody is really working on a Linux desktop, per se.

Things seem to be turning around for Loki with the release of the Tribes 2 port and the Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack. I've been enjoying their port of Soldier of Fortune quite a bit myself. Thanks Linux Games.

J.t.Qbe comments: I was encouraged to read that Loki already has enough of a market to stay afloat. That's good news. Loki does good work (currently playing their port of Heroes of Might & Magic III and it's good stuff). You can go to Linux and still have top-quality games, the same games your Windows-running (or maybe Windows-limping) friends are playing. Support 'em, Linux geeks!

Fullscreen Problem Solved -- 10:12 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I figured out why I couldn't get Quake III Arena to run fullscreen in my new Red Hat 7.1 installation. When RH installed XFree86, it only defined one resolution. All I had to do was to edit the "Modes" subsection of the "Screen" section in my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file and add "800x600" "640x480" after "1024x768". Problem solved. Every Linux distribution has its quirks, I guess I just need to get familiar with RH 7.1's.

RH 7.1 does seem to be snappier overall. My web browsing seems to be much faster, but I don't know if that is a function of RH 7.1 or the newer version of Mozilla than I had been using with Mandrake.

Past Two Days' News

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).