Showing headlines posted by hkwint

LXer Feature: 24-May-2013

Recently I've been trying to 'minimize' some big 'legacy' MS Word files. When using MS Office to export to HTML (unfiltered), I've found out they're so big because they have EMZ (gzipped EMF) and WMZ (gzipped WMF) files in them, accompanied by large "msoledata-thingies". These WMZ's / EMZ's are (zipped) "container" formats, and some of them contain vector graphics, a bit like SVG - but sadly Microsoft doesn't seem to support SVG in MS Office. These EMF / WMG-graphics may contain vector images: That's text, fonts and lines - which has to remain readable of course. I found out replacing this EMZ / WMZ files by PNG files in the Word-documents dramatically reduces size.

LXer Feature: 13-Aug-2011

For everybody who understands less about the current Apple/ Samsung battle in EU than I do, here is my attempt to share the few things I understand with you. I'll briefly discuss the situation in both Germany and the Netherlands. The article should be especially suited for those who cannot read Dutch / German and are not up to date with what has been happening the last few days.

LXer Feature: 16-Jun-2011

Lately there has been some uproar about the 'dumbing down of interfaces'..KDE4 didn't offer the settings 3 did, Gnome dumbs everything down, and maybe Apple did the same the last decade. I couldn't tell because I never touch anything Apple, and the only time I did the software crashed and all this dumbing down for the sake of usability! However in my opinion, they are wrong. They confuse 'usability' with 'approachability'. Which leads to software which many times is not user friendly.

(Reuters) - Technology firms such as LG Electronics are moving toward adopting the Linux-based MeeGo operating system after Nokia abandoned it, one of the project's leaders said.

3 days after its release, 3.6% of visits were made through Firefox 4 in Europe, in other words three times more than Internet Explorer 9.

[ English version just became available it seems, sometimes it takes over a month for AT Internet Institute to provide an English version, but this time they did it within a week -hk].

LXer feature 30-Mar-11

Lately Flash became very unstable and crashed both Firefox and Opera time and time again. I had the latest version, so I thought the problem might be outdated dependencies. When finding all the dependencies, I used some of my limited bash-scripting skills, this time also using my first 'intermediate' regular expression. Nothing fancy but on the other hand I thought I might share them with anyone interested; maybe it's of any help to anyone! Because some of the commands may also be useful for doing other work while dealing with file and text streams.

LAS VEGAS — Jan. 5, 2011 — Microsoft Corp. today announced at 2011 International CES that the next version of Windows will support System on a Chip (SoC) architectures, including ARM-based systems from partners NVIDIA Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. On the x86 architecture, Intel Corporation and AMD continue their work on low-power SoC designs that fully support Windows, including support for native x86 applications. SoC architectures will fuel significant innovation across the hardware spectrum when coupled with the depth and breadth of the Windows platform.

[For those of you asking what this has to do with open source: Most times ARM prototype SoC's are developed using Linux, like currently at NuFront (MS-partner), TI (think BeagleBord) and FreeScale. Only _after_ these prototypes run on Linux, they're going to receive Windows compatibility, meaning Windows will be some kind of 'afterthought' for some time. Of course, we don't know how long MS has been developing for ARM, but I'm pretty sure they're behind in ARM SoC support compared to Linux - also thanks to the Linaro initiative. And if not, at least we'll see a level playing field in which hardware doesn't work better with Windows than with Linux! - hkwint]

Seattle-based Attachmate Corp. is buying Novell for $2.2 billion, the companies announced on November 22. At the same time, Novell announced the “concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash.”
So far, Microsoft is saying little about its role in the deal.

First off, don't panic. We don't know for absolute sure that somewhere in the $2.2 billion acquisition of Novell by Attachmate and the “concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash” that those unidentified IP holding were, in fact, Novell's ownership of UNIX.

LXer Feature: 19-Nov-2010



Ever since I installed Kontact 4.5, it has been showing an MySQL warning when starting. The exact error in the logs is:

Can't open and lock time zone table: Table 'mysql.time_zone_leap_second' doesn't exist trying to live without them

While it's only a warning, I don't like to have my logs filled with warnings. Hence, I went on a hunt to prevent this warning. Lots of posts said this issue is fixed in newer versions (certainly not for me!), or it doesn't matter. But that wasn't good enough for me so I felt relieved when I found a workaround yesterday, which I shall explain below.

7.0 marks a huge milestone for the Webconverger browser only operating system, since the Debian base system has upgraded from “lenny” to “squeeze”.

Hello Interwebs! The rumors are true… starting today, we’re offering access to an early version of RockMelt, a new browser designed around you and how you use the Web. RockMelt does more than just navigate Web pages. It makes it easy for you to do the things you do every single day on the Web: share and keep up with your friends, stay up-to-date on news and information, and search. And of course, RockMelt is fast, secure, and stable because it’s built on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome browser. It’s your browser – re-imagined and built for how you use the Web.

Inventec may be preparing to ship 60-70 thousand ARM Powered laptops running the Chrome OS laptop starting later this month according to Taiwan based rumor and fact website Digitimes.com. This may be the absolute demonstration of the shifting trend to come in laptops, where Intel and Microsoft will not be needed anymore and laptops can run ARM Cortex processors with fast I/O, good RAM, flash based storage, very thin and light form factors with very long battery runtime and instant boot, all running full Chrome web browser OS, one that loads all websites at full speed and provides fast web browsing.

Find out if those TCP streams on your network are filled with C monsters or if it's smooth sailing for your Internet surfers.

While the GNOME developers are busy at work on GNOME 3.0 and the KDE developers are busy working on KDE SC 4.6 and changes that may lead to KDE5, the Xfce desktop environment is still out there and being developed...

Unlike Android, Google Chrome OS is open source. Whereas Android is coded behind closed doors – one big-name developer says it's no more open than Apple's iOS – Google's imminent browser-based operating system is built – in large part – where everyone can see it. A portion of the project remains closed – Google's boot-time-boosting firmware work – but like the browser it's based on, Chrome OS is a platform that can serve Google's ad-centric purposes even if its code is set completely free.

LXer Feature: 29-Sept-2010



A while ago, Graham Morrison wrote: "The trouble with Linux: there's too much choice". Implicitly, the article refers to "more choice than with Windows". The article led to reactions from Carla Schroeder [1], Caitlyn Martin [2], Alastair Otter [3] and Ron Miller [4]. While the articles provided for an interesting discussion, none of them addressed the fundamentals of Linux distributions and choice of desktop software in my opinion. Because from an objective point of view, Windows users face as many choices as Linux users do. But most Windows users are just not aware of all the choices they're making.

LXer Feature: 10-Aug-2010

When discussing 'migration' costs from one platform or piece of software to another, I noted many people fail to understand the idea of 'exit costs'. In this article, I present my explanation of exit costs, and I hope this article may serve as a reference to exit costs in the future. Especially people involved with decision-taking in IT are encouraged to read this article!

According to the publication “Kommersant”, the state enterprise “Russian Technologies” has almost completed the acquisition of shares LLC Alt Linux.

[CNews has an interesting article on the Russian investment in Mandriva which became known last week. Google translation here - hkwint].

According to Google cache, at 17 June 2010 05:08:28 GMT, Dell's website stated:
"Ubuntu is safer than Microsoft® Windows®
The vast majority of viruses and spyware written by hackers are not designed to target and attack Linux. (screenshot)

However, within 24 hours, it seems Dell changed its mind, and now their website states:
"Ubuntu is secure -- According to industry reports, Ubuntu is unaffected by the vast majority of viruses and spyware."

I asked Dell for comments using their "website feedback function", will keep you updated. If you think Dell bent to pressure from Microsoft again, please raise your hand!

Update: The VarGuy has already noticed this bold Dell-statement eight days ago, and they made a screenshot - now available in PDF - to prove this was on the Dell-website. Tom's Hardware also wrote about this Dell statement four days ago, and they included their own PDF (time-stamped) showing the 'old' statement on the page. A hand full of other websites also wrote about the 'original' statement.