20081014
The Smell of Sulphur before Cambridge
In these irksome economic times where money is tight, the job market is arid, and you pray to God that what you still have holds up until you find a job that pays well and has modest benefits.But until the technology companies figure out that climate in Missouri is less likely to spontaneously combust into a fiery inferno than California, and that gas is cheaper, and housing is more affordable, I can only dream about working for a technology company that offers an appreticeship position.
In the meantime, I upgraded from Fedora 8 (Werewolf) to Fedora 9 (Sulphur).
I realized that when I had to reinstall operating system on my parents' computer recently, and that Firefox 3 was available, that I had enough with waiting for Fedora to upgrade to Firefox 3.
Firefox 3 is a must have. Saved sessions are a godsend since the Adobe Flash Plugin generally crashes. But like Firefox 2, Firefox 3 loves to consume memory, especially when Flash is being used. The Adobe guys still like to play the part of Debbie Downer. Flash 10 still doesn't work for X86_64. Flash 9 still doesn't work well with Compiz-Fusion. And Compiz-Fusion (not an Adobe product) would be so much cooler if I had more memory.
Perhaps I can't comprehend Compiz-Fusion how good it can be because I am to anxeous to appreciate it due to my hardware constraints. If I could afford fancier components (more memory, new DVD burner, better graphics card, a case with better air flow, a better partitioned harddrive, a touchscreen monitor,...) then maybe I could appreciate it. But running Compiz is like trying to run Vista on an old 286 notebook computer. But I'm using a 64-bit dual core system. So for right now, Compiz is turned off, which sucks considering Google Gadgets is available and looks beautiful when Compiz is running.
Speaking of Google, some Google goodies are available in Fedora 9. GMail has a link as does Google Calendar and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, though Abiword and Gnumeric are great Open Source alternatives to Microsoft Word and Excel. I think there might be a way to fool GNOME into making GMail the default mail application and Firefox open GMail when an email address is clicked.
Google Gears is still not ported to X86_64, but I have a feeling that someone at Fedora or Google may be working on that issue. And rumors are going around about a possible 64-bit version of Flash 10. For right now, I'm sticking with Flash 9. A stop by here and here are still manditory for X86_64 Linux users.
Fedora 10 (Cambridge) promises tabbed windows in Nautius at the end of the year (which seems likely) and KDE 4 (hopefully). Personally, since most of the programs that use GTK for their UI rather than Qt, GNOME seems to be taking an outstanding improvement over KDE.
I personally believe widgets are kind of silly. What is the point of running a program that is underneath several other programs that you actually are using. Widgets are nothing more than eye candy really. And as the dentist would say, too much candy is bad for you. Call me old school, but I prefer icons and taskbars over widgets and dashboards. Again, my conservative views on computer hardware and performance seem to be a killjoy in terms of all this new technology.
Labels: firefox, google, linux, software
posted by Bushido Hacks 10/14/2008 05:48:00 AM
