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.

Friday, January 31, 2020

Don't let men have all the fun.

Not a software post.

Every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions. The Common New Year's Resolutions people make are Exercise more and Lose weight. But did you know that often people set goals that are not for themselves. Many times those goals are coerced by a spouse, parental or peer pressure.

We all know that cardio is the way to go if you want to get in shape. But simply sweating it out on a treadmill or bike can get repetitive and very boring to some. I find boxing is good to be a exercise. I know a lot of people when they think of exercising, boxing is not the first thing that comes to mind. For the outsider it's often seen as an aggressive, fast-paced sport that's only geared towards two sweaty men in a dimly lit boxing ring.

Boxing is not just for grunting, sweaty men anymore. Yahoo Sports Female MMA Fighter of the Decade is Amanda Nunes. As long a lady don't have any conditions or that could be affected, boxing is great exercise for women of all ages age. Contrary to popular belief, boxing isn’t just about punching. It engages not only the human body but also the mind. It’s a mental exercise as much as it is a physical one, and it should keep you interested and engaged for as long as you practice it. Boxing is not all about getting in the ring, most people get so much out of boxing training with the fitness side and the pad and bag work. Most do not enter the ring competitively or even spar.There are two types of boxing training: Training that focuses on teaching boxers to compete in the ring, and training that focus on helping everyday everyday people get in better shape.

The right gloves

Finding a pair of boxing gloves that offer sufficient support and protection is very important. This is even harder for women, as the market place filled with boxing gloves designed for only men. Most gloves you find at sporting goods are made for a mans wide and larger hands. So women end up with gloves that too big. Well-fitting boxing gloves reduce the impact of striking trauma to the hands, and thereby, aid performance.  Gloves being marketed as essentially unisex are also will not give good protection. Do not be fooled by pink and sparkly.

Gloves for Woman..

There really is not a lot differences between gloves that are made for women versus men except most women’s are cone or “V” shaped because women require a smaller hand compartment because their hands tend to be more narrow. Even most tall women have wrists that are much slender than a man’s wrist. Some women's gloves even have longer finger cavity because of longer nails.

Machina Boxing,Society Nine, and Unorthodoxx Boxing have created gloves that are designed and engineered solely to fit a woman's hand. Adidas has its Dynamic Fit. Everlast has its WSD (Women Specific Design) Sting has the Aurora Women's boxing gloves. Last but not least Punch Equipment has the "Bling" range of boxing gloves. However, Machina Boxing,Society Nine, and Unorthodoxx Boxing, will give female boxers better range choices in gloves.

Men box, women can too.

Boxing workouts allow women to stimulate muscle fibers that they have never used before. After training for a while, like men you will discover a strength and explosion you never you had before. You will gain hand-eye coordination. Punching a bag or focus mits requires focused movements challenging your muscles along with your mind.Plus hitting something is a healthy and productive way to help people let go of tension. So don't let a busy lifestyle stand in the way of your health. 30-minutes is all you really need. Four 3-Minute Rounds on a double end bag. Maybe warm up with shadow boxing.You don’t need a partner, and you don’t need any equipment.Shadow boxing is a great way to get your muscles warmed up and increase your heart rate before starting a more physical exercise routine. It’s just you against yourself.

Friday, January 24, 2020

GNU/Linux AMD Ryzen PC Build: Part 5

Back in August of 2017 I put together a Linux-Ryzen-PC (Build 2). At the time my build would not let me play games at 1440p or 2160p. And video encoding of large frames was not good with the Ryzen 3 series processors.

In Dec of 2019. I spent around $430.00 on my latest upgrades.

Upgraded Parts list:

GPU Powercolor Red Dragon RX 5700 (openbox)
PSU EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3, 80 Plus Gold 550W

Parts retired list:

GPU GeForce GTX MSI 1070 Ti AERO 8G (per-owned)
PSU EVGA 450 B3, 80 Plus BRONZE 450W

Note Upgrading from GTX 1070 Ti to RX 5700 is not something I would recommend to most people because the performance of the RX 5700 is not much better than the GTX 1070 Ti. But an AMD GPU is better if you are an open-source driver fan. The open source driver is part of the kernel, meaning less steps to get up and running with a GNU/Linux steam. Just plug and play. AMD's Navi GPU support is baked into Linux 5.3 and Mesa 19.3.

MY full Linux PC build:

Linux Mint 19.3
Linux kernel version 5.3.0-24
4.5 Mesa 19.3.1~kisak1~b_amd64

CPU  Ryzen™ 7 2700 processor CPU Cores 8 Threads 16
GPU  Powercolor Red Dragon RX 5700
RAM  Team Elite Plus DDR4 2400 16GB (2 x 8GB) (PC4 19200)
MOTHERBOARD ASRock AB350M Pro4  (BIOS 5.90 2019/7/5)
STORAGE  Intel 545s Series 2.5" 256GB (SSDSC2K W256G8X1)+WB Blue 1TB 7200 RPM (WD10EZEX)
SOUND Onboard
NETWORK  Onboard (wired gigabit Ethernet)
PSU    EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3, 80 Plus Gold 550W
CASE   MasterBox Lite 3 (MCW-L3S2-KN5N)
OPTICAL DRIVE  ASUS DVD-ROM(DVD-E818AAT/BLK/B/GE)
Case fan 3 120mm be quiet! BL070 SILENTWINGS 3 PWM

The Power color Red Dragon RX 5700 offers excellent GPU-accelerated performance in a variety of programs, and for those who care, gaming. For digital creatives, including graphic artists, designers, illustrators and 3D professionals, the RX 5700 can make a huge difference with some tools, and some effects that can not even run on a CPU alone. While it dose not have quite the same graphical power of workstation-class graphics cards, the RX 5700 is more affordable alternative.

Linux-Ryzen-PC past post: Part1 Part2 Part3

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Steam’s Lunar New Year Sale begins today


The 2020 Lunar New Year Sale is about to begin, and it will reportedly run from January 23 through January 27.

Friday, January 17, 2020

Linux Mint Cinnamon/Linux Mint Mate

Linux Mint is the number one Linux distribution on Distrowatch. Like many Linux distributions, Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon doesn’t ship with proprietary hardware drivers but installing such drivers is pretty easy. All you have to do is Launch Menu ‣ Sound & Video ‣ Install Multimedia. Codecs. Click Install then enter your password and wait for the codecs to be installed on your computer.

The latest version of Mint, 19.3  needs 2GB RAM and 1024×768 resolution, but slightly less disk space at 15GB. However, it recommends 20GB to ensure the best performance.Linux Mint tracks upstream Ubuntu long-term support (LTS) releases. This foundation means that Linux Mint gets the security and maintenance updates Ubuntu LTS users get.Linux Mint 20 will be based on Ubuntu Focal Fossa 20.04 LTS. This gives the Linux Mint team a modern yet solid foundation on which to build. It also means Linux Mint 20 will get critical security fixes until 2025.

Friday, January 10, 2020

why the Penguins?

The following is a quote from Linus Torvalds:

Somebody had a logo competition announcement, maybe people can send their ideas to a web-site..

Anyway, this one looks like the poor penguin is not really strong enough to hold up the world, and it's going to get squashed. Not a good, positive logo, in that respect..

Now, when you think about penguins, first take a deep calming breath, and then think "cuddly". Take another breath, and think "cute". Go back to "cuddly" for a while (and go on breathing), then think "contented".

With me so far? Good..

Now, with penguins, (cuddly such), "contented" means it has either just gotten laid, or it's stuffed on herring. Take it from me, I'm an expert on penguins, those are really the only two options.

Now, working on that angle, we don't really want to be associated with a randy penguin (well, we do, but it's not politic, so we won't), so we should be looking at the "stuffed to its brim with herring" angle here.

So when you think "penguin", you should be imagining a slighly overweight penguin (*), sitting down after having gorged itself, and having just burped. It's sitting there with a beatific smile - the world is a good place to be when you have just eaten a few gallons of raw fish and you can feel another "burp" coming.

(*) Not FAT, but you should be able to see that it's sitting down because it's really too stuffed to stand up. Think "bean bag" here.

Now, if you have problems associating yourself with something that gets off by eating raw fish, think "chocolate" or something, but you get the idea.

Ok, so we should be thinking of a lovable, cuddly, stuffed penguin sitting down after having gorged itself on herring. Still with me?

NOW comes the hard part. With this image firmly etched on your eyeballs, you then scetch a stylizied version of it. Not a lot of detail - just a black brush-type outline (you know the effect you get with a brush where the thickness of the line varies). THAT requires talent. Give people the outline, and they should say [ sickly sweet voice, babytalk almost ]"Ooh, what a cuddly penguin, I bet he is just _stuffed_ with herring", and small children will jump up and down and scream "mommy mommy, can I have one too?".

Then we can do a larger version with some more detail (maybe leaning against a globe of the world, but I don't think we really want to give any "macho penguin" image here about Atlas or anything). That more detailed version can spank billy-boy to tears for all I care, or play ice-hockey with the FreeBSD demon. But the simple, single penguin would be the logo, and the others would just be that cuddly penguin being used as an actor in some tableau.

Linus


My post from  September 25, 2005

Monday, January 06, 2020

Pop!_OS 19.10 steamplay/proton+Lutris

If you use GNU/Linux and enjoy playing video games, 2019 was a good year. And 2020 will be an even better year. Not to long ago System76 has released their newest operating system update of their Pop!_OS distribution based upon Ubuntu. Pop!_OS 19.10 is based upon Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" but adding various extra changes and enhancements. As such, the distro inherits many of Ubuntu 19.10’s key selling points, such as GNOME 3.34, Linux 5.3, better Wayland support, and access to an updated archive of software and tools. System76 ships two versions of Pop!_OS: one designed for Intel/AMD, and one designed for Nvidia GPUs. The Nvidia ISO installs the proprietary driver so that users don't need to add a repository by hand and install it later.

Play Windows 10 PC games with the help of steamplay/proton and Lutris

Steam is a digital distribution platform for video games. It provides you the option to buy and install games, play multiplayer and stay in touch with other games via social networking on its platform. The games are protected with DRM. Valve's Proton tool can play "SOME" Windows-exclusive Steam games and relies on the Vulkan API.

Lutris doesn’t sell games so you will need to have bought commercial games in order to install them. The Lutris community provides scripts that give you access to a game library where you can play games without the need for a manual setup. It allows you to install games from multiple platforms easily like Windows games, GOG, and more.

How to steamplay/proton and Lutris in Pop!_OS 19.10 by using The Pop!_Shop.

If you have seen Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store, then installing software it Pop!_OS 19.10  will be familiar. It comes with Pop!_Shop which let you install various software. You can search for software by its name or various categories. Simply search for programs in categories, and click the Install button to install the software.

Supported Graphics Card List

Pop!_OS 19.10 (NVIDIA Edition)

* NVIDIA Edition: Installs the proprietary NVIDIA driver.

GeForce 700 Series
GeForce 900 Series
GeForce 10 Series
GeForce 16 Series
GeForce RTX 20 Serie

Pop!_OS 19.10 (Intel/AMD Edition)

Radeon RX 400 Series
Radeon RX 500 Series
RX Vega 64
RX Vega 56
Radeon RX 5700 / RX 5700

Windows 10 games that can work very well with  Pop!_OS 19.10

GUILTY GEAR Xrd -REVELATOR
THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIV STEAM EDITION ULTIMATE PACK
Quake Champions
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition
Castle Crashers
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - Collection
DOOM
TEKKEN 7
Cuphead
Unreal Gold
Batman: Arkham Origins
A Plague Tale: Innocence

Detroit: Become Human
Overwatch
World of Warcraft
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

How Do You Identify Games That Work On Steam Play?

You can visit ProtonDB to check reports/stats contributed by gamers who test the games.

How Do You Identify Games That Work Under Lutris?

For Lutris, all you have to do is search for their page for the game you plan install. Lutris doesn’t sell games so you will need to have bought commercial games in order to install them.

Note: GOG.com, like steam, is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. But GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through its digital platform.

Wednesday, January 01, 2020

Happy New Year


2020 will be a good year for many Linux distributions. As of today the Linux kernel 5.4.7 has around 27.8 million lines. Linux kernel 1.0.0 only had 176,250 lines of code. Linux has improved by leaps and bounds over the 2 decades, and more and more people have come to appreciate its power and flexibility. Linux 5.5 stable kernel release will be out by the super bowl depending upon how the cycle is.