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You can make MPlayer play h264-encoded video files a lot faster on multicore machines if you graft some libraries from the ffmpeg-mt project into the resulting mplayer binary. We need to recompile for this. First, use Subversion to download the code for MPlayer: svn co svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer Then the code for ff-mpeg svn co svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk ffmpeg-mt Remove the old libavcodec, libavformat and libavutil code from MPlayer

I am in the middle of CentOS and Ubuntu comparison frenzy. It started with an attempt to assert quality of Linux distributions made for busy people. Today I am considering packaging. When comparing Ubuntu and CentOS packaging systems, first thing that crosses my mind is that, well, size matters. Ubuntu has nearly 70000 packages. CentOS has around 6000.

Well, that's what this commercial seems to tell us. Their claims? That my slow browser is probably "several generations old." They tell me that IE8 is "a huge improvement on the speed scale."

I came across two seemingly unrelated reports, one from the Register, stating that Microsoft will offer a choice of browsers in the EU version of Windows 7 and one from FAS Russia, which began proceedings in a case against several major hardware manufacturers. If this is the shape of things to come, it could mean the OS landscape is about to change.

Last week I wrote a feature for DistroWatch Weekly on the trials and tribulations of installing CentOS 5.3 on my Sylvania g Netbook Meso. I was very pleased when Dag Wieërs, a CentOS developer and long time packager and maintainer of an excellent repository of additional packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, posted in the comments section with some useful suggestions and a request that I document how to get the netbook completely functional in the CentOS wiki. That's a project I'll take on when I have everything working to my satisfaction. In the meanwhile...

GoboLinux is a Linux distribution I heard about from a friend who said that it looked interesting for its flagship property - a simpler file structure. I decided to check it out. I downloaded the distribution ISO from their website, which was easy enough, and booted up VirtualBox with that ISO mounted as a drive.

Linus has spoken. 'Nuff said--OK, maybe not.

On 15th July 2009, the Commission of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) began proceedings in a case against «Acer Inc.», «ASUSTeK Computer Inc.», «Toshiba Corporation», «Hewlett-Packard Company», « Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.» and «Dell Inc.» for the elements of violating the anti-monopoly legislation. In accordance with the Determination of 20th July 2009, the FAS Russia's Commission, investigating the case, suspended the case until receiving additional evidence. The case will continue on 10th September 2009.

The CoreCD is a text-based release. There is no X-Server, Gnome, or KDE provided. The Feature list is intentionally short: * Bootable Image suitable for a CD or USB thumb drive (~400M) * Text-Based installer * Basic default networking * Entropy and Portage ready

Current Sales Trend Indicates Gadfly Open Source Developers Will Be Nation's Largest Provider of Windows Technology; Microsoft Imperiled CodeWeavers Offers to Buy Microsoft Campus "On Credit"

Say you want to write a small shell script that locks up your GNOME desktop at specific intervals. What command would you use? In this case, your best bet would be gnome-screensaver-command –lock This has the same effect as you pushing the Lock Screen button in GNOME. You can forge a small shellscript and use this to lock up your desktop when someone launches an application. Or append the line at the end of the Brasero launch command, using the icon’s command line field, so that whenever someone tries to burn something without your knowledge, the screen will lock up immediately afterwards.

A few months ago I stumbled across a screenshot utility called Shutter. I liked it. A lot. So I decided to give it some well deserved publicity. I wasn’t the only one. It has been been getting rave reviews and it will be or should be in everyone’s toolbox. Bog standard screenshot software has been available as bundled software in both Gnome and KDE desktops for ever. They’re good at what they do but they are limited to relatively simple tasks. If you want to do more serious, integrated stuff then Shutter’s the kiddie. The latest version of Shutter (0.80) takes the “serious stuff” to the next level by adding six new features to the Edit tool. Shutter’s screenshot-taking features alone make it worth installing but the additions for editing make it the software of choice. This article describes the latest tools. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

Reports that Microsoft had to release the Hyper-V Linux Integration Components (LinuxIC) under the GPLv2 because they had violated the GPL have been rebutted by Microsoft and Vyatta. Vyatta had been referenced by reports as the source of the accusation.

The forthcoming standard for the object-oriented language C++ will not be released before 2010. It will also lack the planned 'concepts' mechanism. This is according to information in a Dr. Dobbs Journal article by C++'s inventor, Bjarne Stroustrup. Concepts have been "decoupled" – or in Stroustrup's words "yanked out" – by the ISO group responsible for the standard, Working Group 21.

khtml2png is a helpful tool for capturing an image of a webpage with ease. It's nice to use because it will get the entire length of the site, no matter whether it is fully visible in the browser. And, it sure beats shell scripting Firefox to open on a different display and capturing an image with Imagemagick, which is a royal pain in the butt. I embed this application in PHP scripts to create web design roundups over at my other blog. I was able to capture 75 minimal web designs without much hassle.

Over the last few years, various figures have been put forth as measures of Ubuntu’s desktop market share, with some sources contradicting themselves and most sources contradicting the other ones. This piece takes a look at different attempts to put a number on Ubuntu’s popularity, and explores the various shortcomings and ambiguities involved in all of them.

How can anyone make a living writing Free software? Why should a coder work for free? These questions, and others, are answered in this two-part series. Today we learn why Free and Open Source software are very important even to end users who are not coders.

In the dispute over bankruptcy-threatened SCO Group's legal claims, the company has submitted testimonyPDF in which it confirms having paid $100,000 to investor Steven Norris. According to the testimony, the money didn't actually come from Germany, but rather from its non-debtor Japanese subsidiary. The gift of personal funds from SCO boss Darl McBride is also mentioned. The payments to which IBM lawyers are objecting represent, according to the deposition, a baseless, sham argument, saying that "IBM and Novell are interested only in putting SCO out of business so it canot pursue its legal claims against them." SCO is in dispute with Novell and IBM over the copyright to Unix and over code allegedly illegally copied from Unix into Linux to which SCO claims it has copyright.

Let's get real, that's what it's all about. It's not because we all wear tin foil hats or that we're harmful to the community and should be expelled. It's because we don't like Mono. And we don't like Mono, because we don't trust Microsoft. And we don't trust Microsoft, because.. Well, do I really have to repeat the whole story again?

Microsoft released a set of Linux drivers for its Hyper-V software under the General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) not because of "perceived obligations" to that license but because it is the preferred license of the Linux community and would benefit both Microsoft customers and users of Linux, according to a company executive. In a statement by Microsoft Senior Director of Platform Strategy Sam Ramji posted to the company's Port 25 blog late Thursday, Microsoft stood by its original reasoning to release technology called the Linux Device Driver for Virtualization on Monday under the GPLv2. Microsoft had not previously released code under this open-source license and had, in fact, criticized it.