The other "New Release" I'm been testing...

The other "new release" that has most interested me has been the new Ubuntu 7.10, the "Gutsy Gibbon". I have installed it on three different older systems, my Dell Precision 420 (dual 1 GHz P-III w/ 768MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS), my Dell Latitude C640 laptop (2 GHz P4M w/ 512MB RAM, ATI RADEON 7500), and a Toshiba Satellite Pro M10-S405 (1.4 GHz PM w/ 256MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce4 Go 420). I was curious if Compiz Fusion and it's nifty special effects would work with any of their graphics cards. The answer in all cases was a disappointing "not yet". I could load the restricted NVIDIA and ATI graphic drivers on each of them, but when I tried to activate any special effects they could not be enabled. I had booted my Latitude using the Kororaa AIGLX LiveCD and that had seemed to have worked fine, but upgrading my Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 did not allow me to use the same special effects that ran fine under Kororaa booted live even after installing all the GL, compiz and beryl packages I could find. I may have to see what I must install and tweak in my xorg.conf to get things to work. I also plan on upgrading my Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 on my main desktop here at work (Dell Precision 360, 2.8 GHz P4, 1.5GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro FX500) and see what I can do with that box. This is just too much fun playing with Linux!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi...
Read more

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions...
Read more