Well, it’s been a while—“cough!”—the set’s all dusty since my previous post about 3D cards...

One thing that isn’t quite dusty though, is the state of free software drivers! I will sum up the different evolutions (some would even say, revolutions) that have occurred over this summer (June-September 2007).

I recently read a doctorate’s thesis on file system robustness by Vijayan Prabhakaran from the University of Wisconsin. It’s very interesting, and may explain in part the recent ruckus on the LKML around file systems.

Since this is, actually, a blog, I feel entitled to speak my mind in it once in a while. However, being the computer nut I am, most of it is tech-oriented.

If you’re actually interested by this kind of read, prepare your scroll wheel, soften your ergonomically designed backrest, and start reading.

Gnash is the Free Software Foundation’s alternative Adobe Flash player. Version 0.8 is the third alpha release, and frankly, it rocks! It is also one of the first projects to be covered by the GPLv3.

OpenOffice.org is probably the biggest free software project in existence today. It certainly is the biggest single piece of software one can download and compile in one go, with the core package hitting over the 100MB mark (while bzip’d) and the total sources going over 200MB.

It directly competes with Microsoft Office, is a bit more easy to install than KOffice, and is very complete.

But what will you get?

It is an old question, and one worth investigating regularly.

What do you do when you want to move a disk back and forth between a GNU/Linux system and Windows? Updated: how to update FUSE and some precisions.

Did you game well? If no, is it because you had 3D driver issues and couldn’t make head nor tail out of this mess? Here, I discuss the most recent driver releases on the most demanding 3D application there is today on the GNU/Linux desktop.

You guessed it, 3D desktops! Since my last version of the matrix is getting a bit old, it’s time for an update.

All my previous posts were pretty much technical in essence, and several were related to my work habits: 3D desktop productivity enhancements, virtual machines, etc.

This time, I’ll go back to something else entirely: GAMES!

I spend most of my time doing Web programming - basically, tinkering and cleaning up some professional websites that require maximum accessibility, and efficient coding while remaining very simple. This needs XHTML+CSS+ECMAscript and some PHP glue; and while I have no problem running a LAMP test server on my main machine, up until now I needed a spare machine just to do testing under Windows.

Not anymore.

(Revised: some typos, missing brackets, and an 'extra' on kqemu configuration)

I guess my previous post was a bit premature; for shorts, I was saying then that some Free softwares for video editing on Windows were good, but had no equivalent in the Free software world. While I was not wrong stricto sensus, I hammered a few of them during the last few weeks.

Thus, I’ll now write about the various free video treatment softwares I know and the slight shift in method this entails.

You'll see that there are strengths and weaknesses on both sides.

I appreciate NVIDIA’s existing support for free software operating systems: their drivers are various, quite full featured, and they do upgrade the source of their minimalist free “nv” driver for those platforms they don’t support fully.

But where do the others stand?

The matrix in this article has been superceded by the one in this article.

It’s been mentioned in one of my previous posts. Now, I’m putting it forward due to some progress...

A great deal of the web is GNU/Linux based: most of it runs on LAMP servers, and some content is created with great tools such as the GIMP, Inkscape and a fancy notepad (or Vi, or Emacs—don’t start). Pen tablets are recognised and used, you have access to effects plug-ins, you can work on bitmaps or vectors (thanks Mr Pierre Bézier! Your name will remain in history). On the other hand, as soon as you want to have your work printed, it’s another matter.

I discovered Virtualdub back in the days when DivX was a ripped-off Microsoft experimental beta codec. Since then, I have used it to do some small captures, but also to recover some bad quality films that could gain major improvement through a carefully weighted application of filters.

I live in France. Yeah, I’m French. And while you may not know about it, we have both wonderful and damn annoying technologies at our disposal—like free, quite widespread digital TV broadcast. And here’s how I tried to save a few bucks.

As you may know, Debian 4.0 stable 'Etch' is almost out. As expected from the Debian project, it will be a very stable, feature-ladden if slightly outdated OS.

What you may not know, is that it will come without Firefox. Nope, no fox trailing fire on your Debian desktop, no sir.

Instead you'll get Iceweasel.

Well, while I haven’t posted anything new in a while, I’m (AGAIN) updating my 3D desktop article.

This time, I’ll answer some comments I have seen appear in response to the two previous incarnations of this very same article, as well as revise (further) some of the content.

This revised version brings some confirmations from users, and adds a preliminary Matrox product line support description.

The matrix in this article has been superceded by the one in this article.

I’ve been talking about them, complaining about what you CAN’T do, about the troubles with 3D cards... Personally I’m getting a bit lost with all this. So, I’ve decided to compile all the information I could find out about those pesky 3D desktops.

Since last week, comments, accounts from other websites, personal experiments, further readings and general nosiness allowed me to update my article. Still, further comments are welcome.

I’ve been talking about them, complaining about what you CAN’T do, about the troubles with 3D cards... Personally I’m getting a bit lost with all this. So, I’ve decided to compile all the information I could find out about those pesky 3D desktops.

Comments required.

The matrix in this article has been superceded by the one in this article.

A few years ago, when you wanted to use a GNU/Linux distribution for your desktop computer, you still needed to concede a part of your freedom to open some PDF files, run most Java programs, or all Flash animations.

Not anymore.