[SLUG] Re: Ubuntu 9.04 performance [Was: Sound in Ubuntu 9.04]
On Tuesday 19 May 2009 00:55:18 Jeff Waugh wrote: The sluggishness is almost certainly related to the video driver performance regression in Ubuntu 9.04. There are some half-fixes which introduce new problems, but for most users I recommend going back to 8.10 for now. Easiest way around it, sadly. My own domestic workstations are 4 Ghz AMD64 machines with 2Gb of RAM and an Nividia graphics card. Built by me. I used to build machines for IBM and Compaq. There is a slight glitch in the graphics from time to time but mostly it's okay. I find these machines to be good for making videos and editing them. Kino or something similar Good for editing images from my Nikon digital SLR camera and of course the usual word processing and spreadsheets and e-mail (Kmail) and web pages. Regards Richard www.sheflug.org.uk -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: GIMP (Was: Lenovo wins $150m NSW schools deal or April Fools joke?)
On Tuesday 19 May 2009 00:21:41 Marghanita da Cruz wrote: With regard to Technical/Architectural drawing - I suspect there would be lots of shortcomings in the gimp apart from its printing capabilitybut my tech drawing and photography classes were too long ago, for me to comment on how the subject is taught today. But I don't think the Gimp is a particularly good drawing package. Hmm... I tend to use Gimp for editing Nikon raw data files and then batch process afterwards with Phatch. To do any graphics or drawing I prefer Inkscape. At least we made it to the point where there is now a choice of graphics packages on the Linux desktop :) Richard www.sheflug.org.uk -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Proprietary colour names (was GIMP was...)
On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 15:53 +0100, Richard Ibbotson wrote: ... much better than it was but some sort of Pantone colour integration would be good (eventually). An open source version of that would need to be implemented. Which is what the hold up is, at least as I understand it. The Pantone colour palate (specifically their name-to-ink-colour mappings) is Pantone's proprietary intellectual property and they have chosen not to let them be used in libre ways. [they make tons of money printing swatch books of the mappings and licencing the names. This is not dissimilar to the business model used by most font foundries, which is why there are so few libre fonts. The difference is that anyone can create a font, whereas an industry standard that is not an open standard with libre data is a bottleneck] As long as the graphics arts industry continue to use those names to identify, and the printing industry uses such names to distinguish the pile of coloured bottles on the shelf, then apparently there's nothing we can do. ie, we are free to come up with our own names for inks, release them freely, and manufacture said inks to our hearts content. But this doesn't do us the least bit of good until such time as such inks were widely available at printing houses as an alternative to the Pantone copyright ones. And that ain't about to happen. It's exasperating, but the names mapping are their property. I think most people who need to would be happy to pay for access, but a) such a datapack would be non-redistributable, and in any case b) since people are used to getting it for free (in products whose vendors have already paid Pantone for a licence), people don't really get the idea that there's a cost to it. So maybe we need to go on a crusade to convince ink manufacturers to _also_ label their products with [some hypothetical set of redistributable] names, as well as Pantone ones. AfC Sydney signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Proprietary colour names (was GIMP was...)
On Tuesday 19 May 2009 08:32:33 Andrew Cowie wrote: As long as the graphics arts industry continue to use those names to identify, and the printing industry uses such names to distinguish the pile of coloured bottles on the shelf, then apparently there's nothing we can do. ie, we are free to come up with our own names for inks, release them freely, and manufacture said inks to our hearts content. But this doesn't do us the least bit of good until such time as such inks were widely available at printing houses as an alternative to the Pantone copyright ones. And that ain't about to happen. It's exasperating, but the names mapping are their property. I think most people who need to would be happy to pay for access, but a) such a datapack would be non-redistributable, and in any case b) since people are used to getting it for free (in products whose vendors have already paid Pantone for a licence), people don't really get the idea that there's a cost to it. So maybe we need to go on a crusade to convince ink manufacturers to _also_ label their products with [some hypothetical set of redistributable] names, as well as Pantone ones. Some further background information for people who might not know a lot about this http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/49236?theme=print http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=43129 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=733411 For further info use Google and search for Linux Pantone or similar. An add on Gtk+ application for Gimp and Inkscape might do the job. As always, it comes back to some brave sole who wants to write the code and circulate the software :) Someone has to do it. See also.. http://endsoftpatents.org/ Richard www.sheflug.org.uk -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Lenovo wins $150m NSW schools deal or April Fools joke?
david wrote: lloyd wrote: I was surprised to get a written reply from the Education Minister to my enquiries on this matter. I quote below, which may shed some light on the Department's decisions. The NSW Dept of Education Training manages and currently installs, in parallel with Microsoft Office suite, Open Office on all Technology for Learning computers and runs appropriate servers on a Linux base. In sourcing applications all avenues are explored to identify the most appropriate and cost effective solution, taking into account platform migration costs and interoperability with current systems. . During the procurement process, a range of operating systems and applications was offered to meet the Department's requirements, including solutions based on Apple, Linux and Microsoft platforms. ... It was determined that a Microsoft based solution best met the Department's needs, particularly with respect to multimedia applications. I'm sad to say that there is probably some truth in this. I recently started messing with video, and ended up buying a Mac because video on Linux was simply too difficult for the amount of time I have to spend on it. Not that it can't be done, but Apple make it EASY to do. I want to do video work, not system administration work. Assuming that you are producing MPEG2/DVDs there is probably also a licensing issue. I would guess when they say multimedia, above, they mean flash. Though the NSW health department seems to have chosen to publishe video on their website in WMV. (Warning the video automatically downloads from this site and fires up Kaffiene in my config). Note also the ASP extension http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/publichealth/swine_flu.asp compare this with: !-- compliance patch for microsoft browsers -- !--[if IE 6] script type=text/javascript src=/TemplatePackage/js/A/blocks-ie6.js/script link rel=stylesheet type=text/css href=/TemplatePackage/css/A/threeColumn-float-ie.css / ![endif]-- in source code at: http://www.cdc.gov/?s_cid=swineFlu_outbreak_004 For more about Video on the Web see http://www.ramin.com.au/linux/web-video-formats.shtml Haven't tested the Video editing on the Linux 701 eee PC but the microphone camera worked extremely well with skype! http://www.ramin.com.au/linux/eeepc-video-conference.shtml Linux colour management simply isn't good enough. GIMP is fine, and I use it a lot, but it's too restricted in the colour management area, and doesn't handle 16 bit. Sound on Linux is patchy. There are too many times when I have to struggle to make it do what I want it to do. That doesn't mean things won't change in the future. It's not so long ago that Gnome was a dog. Now it's my window manager of preference over MacOs or Windows. And despite references to interoperability - I would guess the standard desktop is Explorer rather than Firefox. Meaning webpages comply with Explorer rather than open standards Marghanita L On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 15:47 +1000, Marghanita da Cruz wrote: Adrian Chadd wrote: On Mon, May 18, 2009, Marghanita da Cruz wrote: So, the school kids are being taught to develop content for four colour industrial printing, rather than websites? Personally, I would think that school kids and FOSS developers time is better spent improving tools and adding to content in the online world. What really erks me, is that no doubt a PDF newsletters will be produced and emailed around to be printed on home and school printers (no commercial printer in sight). - Tell me I'm wrong. I'd rather they'd be taught the difference between the two, so hopefully those who are smart enough to get it will have the oppertunity to. Don't dumb stuff down. Kids are smarter than you'd think. And god knows that FOSS developers could do with being exposed to stuff -outside- of the cool+hip FOSS environment(s) today. Far from limiting the kids chances, I was hoping for the opposite. There is far too much PDF/proprietary and Desktop published content/designed for the printed page, on the web and not enough open accessible (HTML) web content. If the kids are going to be provided with education on all the different formats, discussion about appropriate communication mediums etc, then fine but Comparison with RGB Comparisons between RGB displays and CMYK prints can be difficult, since the color reproduction technologies and properties are so different. A laser or ink-jet printer prints in dots per inch (dpi) which is very different from a computer screen, which displays graphics in pixels per inch (ppi). A computer screen mixes shades of red, green, and blue to create color pictures. A CMYK printer must compete with the many shades of RGB with only one shade each of cyan, magenta and yellow, which it will mix using dithering, halftoning or some other optical technique; this dithering produces a lower level of detail than the printer's dpi suggests.
[SLUG] Dell Latitude 2100
Someone posted something about the above. I went looking to see what I could find about it from Dell itself and found this: http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/05/18/latitude-2100-dell-netbook-for-schools.aspx Among other things, I noticed that the version of Ubuntu being offered is 8.10. -- To see papers written by me on, among other things, literary allusions in Australian reasons for judgment, start here: http://ssrn.com/author=1164057 To see photos taken by me of, among other things, Sydney now (as well as comparative photos taken by others of Sydney then), start here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23623...@n03/sets/72157604225021655/ -- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] security monitor with webcam
I remember that story as well, I believe he was using zoneminder. We use this package at work, it is not an easy install with some USB camera's although it has improved with later releases and kernels. On 19/05/2009, at 1:47 PM, Amos Shapira wrote: Whatever you use, consider uploading the feed to a server in another location. I remember reading about a guy from the UK who caught a thief who stole his computer by having the entire incident recorded remotely, including the face of the idiot as he walked over to pick up the working computer. Good luck. -Amos On 5/19/09, Ken Foskey fos...@tpg.com.au wrote: My flats have had a series of fires (BY Idiots) and I want to hook up a webcam and record all the comings and goings from the building. Fortunately I can do this from my kitchen window. Is there a way to snapshot every second and discard any significant duplicate pictures, pictures would also need to be watermarked with the time. I then want to be able to replay a section of time that is the best estimate of when the fire was set. I may not be home / awake. From a hardware point of view, can I extend the USB wire as I need about 3m extra. Would it still work. Ta Ken -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Sent from my mobile device -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] security monitor with webcam
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:46:15PM +1000, Phil Manuel wrote: [ ... ] use this package at work, it is not an easy install with some USB camera's although it has improved with later releases and kernels. Indeed; my camera (logitech sphere af) has only become painless with very recent versions of kernel and motion. Here's some dmesg lines for it: Linux video capture interface: v2.00 uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device unnamed (046d:0994) uvcvideo: UVC non compliance - GET_DEF(PROBE) not supported. Enabling workaround. input: UVC Camera (046d:0994) as /devices/pci:00/:00:1d.7/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/input/input5 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] LPI course in Sydney
From time to time someone will ask how to get a Linux certification. Most of us recommend the LPI, but apart from Granville TAFE I haven't known about any preparation courses out there. Today I found another place, via (*cough*) a Google advert. http://www.simt.nsw.edu.au/lpi1_linux.php http://www.simt.nsw.edu.au/lpi2_linux.php It might be worth taking a look. -- Bring choice back to your computer. http://www.linux.org.au/linux -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
