Encoding is a CPU-intensive operation. Whilst encoding, using optimised code is crucial. In this short article I will explain how I gained a 300% speed boost when encoding DVDs and will show how having the program’s sources and being able to talk to the maintainers sometimes really, really helps. Welcome to doing things “the GNU/Linux way”.

Microsoft declared yesterday (May 21st, 2008) that Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 would include (among others such as PDF 1.5, PDF/A and some more) built-in support for OASIS OpenDocument Format version 1.1 (finalized, submitted to ISO, supported by OpenOffice.org, Kofffice, GNOME office apps and their forks) while ISO-submitted OOXML support would wait for Office 14.

I recently re-read the article how to hate free software in 3 easy steps by Steven Goodwin. I’m no programmer, but then I’ve also installed a few distributions myself. And frankly, I have trouble relating to that post.

Several points were made in the article’s comments, some being that non-programmers don’t compile from source anyway, compiling from source requires you to be a programmer, and other operating systems don’t crash when you tinker with their partitions.

Excuse me?

I’m the increasingly discontent owner of an Hotmail account (don’t laugh, I subscribed back when Hotmail wasn’t owned by Microsoft). Recently, in order to compete with Google on the Web, Hotmail’s interface was overhauled: it now has a “classic” interface, which works reasonably well but is still rather limited, and a supposedly “Full” interface that should make it the equal of sites like Google Apps and Yahoo Mail/Calendar/etc.

Are you still using Microsoft Office 2003? If so, get ready to have problems opening older file formats with it once SP3 is applied: Microsoft has decided to disable file parsers for the older file types (Word 95 and older, Wordperfect, Lotus etc.) by default. Why? Security reasons.

My last post was about Mandriva 2008.0 and Ubuntu 7.10—and I let slip a little bit about trying drivers with them.

Now, however, I have compiled enough data to (roll drums please) update the 3D driver matrix!

This article updates and replaces this previous version.

For those of you that follow my blog, you must have noticed that I’m a Mandriva user. Recently though, I took an interest in Ubuntu: I installed version 7.04 on a laptop, and it did look interesting, enough to make me doubt my commitment to Mandriva’s products.

Thus, when 7.10 came out with a bang in the media, and I got another laptop to de-borgify, I downloaded the Ubuntu 7.10 ISO along with the install CD for Mandriva 2008.0 Free.

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.

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.

Creating graphics

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)