Life without Windows or OS X

GNU/Linux is quite possibly the most important free software achievement since the original Space War, or, more recently, Emacs. It has developed into an operating system for business, education, and personal productivity. GNU/Linux is no longer only for UNIX wizards who sit for hours in front of a glowing console. Are you thinking about switching to Linux and want to learn how to use it? Have you been using GNU/Linux for some time and want to learn even more? This is the place for you.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Linux In The New Year...part two


What else is new for GNU/Linux in 2007?

Many people may imagine that installing Linux is difficult, but in fact for the most part it isn't at all problematic. Most modern distributions of Linux have tackled the installation problem so most of its difficulties have been solved.


Lets look at in the summer of 2006, Intel released open source software drivers for the newest generation Intel graphics , including support for 2D and 3D graphics features. In years gone by; graphic vendors had been unwilling to open source drivers that supported hardware acceleration for 3D graphics. A proprietary driver, even if it worked, rose complications at times. Well good for Intel.

Which takes us to Xgl and AIGLX.

Xgl will only get better 2007 as it is designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL and XVideo applications and graphical effects. It offers a new and intuitive navigation experience that helps you more easily find and organize your applications and files, but Xgl goes further by delivering a truly next-generation desktop experience. They turn the desktop into a malleable 3D environment with features such as 'wobbly' windows that can be stretched and pulled, true real-time opacity, and treating the entire desktop as a multi-faceted rotable 'cube'.There is also AIGLX which can do do the same however,NVIDIA graphic cards currently lack any support for AIGLX in some cases. Many features in Xgl and AIGLX even surpass what we've seen in Vista.


Next on the list: Adobe Systems has released Flash Player 9 for Linux.

Version 9 of the Flash Player, they say, runs scripts up to ten times faster than previous versions, and also allows programmers to write portable applications exploiting more of the capabilities of Adobe's Flex 2 development platform.

For those that use OpenOffice.org, new in version 2.1. Impress, now supports an option for multiple monitors to allow users to choose where to display the presentation. The spreadsheet application, Calc, has improved on its HTML export capability so that browsers are able to recreate the original spreadsheet's appearance more accurately and Base now has improved support Microsoft Access.

The Portland Project was established to help get a greater GNU/Linux foothold in the desktop market.

Linux is a kernel, part of an operating system—not a complete operating environment in the sense that Windows is a complete operating environment. So in other words, Windows has a single interface. You have no choice in the matter. But Linux has no built-in GUI interface. People are free to choose among many commercially available or free GUI X-Window interfaces, such as Gnome, KDE, and Xfce
each of which provides a different look and feel. That has been a problem in the past; the differences in GUI X-Window interfaces extend to the programming interfaces as well, meaning that software developers must either support multiple GUIs or choose which GUI(s) they plan to support; ie Amarok and Exaile. some developers would just generally target one or two primary GUI programming
models. The Portland Project aims at resolving a number of key factors that are believed to reduce the adoption rate of Linux distributions as desktop operating systems. The project has Alex Graveley (GNOME) and George Staikos (KDE) as two of the task force leaders, who will look to gain feedback from ISVs, integration possibilities, and possibly create a draft implementation as well. The release of Portland 1.0 is expected to accelerate adoption of Linux on the desktop. According to market analyst IDG, this will help the desktop Linux market grow to around $10 billion by 2008.

Part ONE

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home