The Way It's Meant to be Played

Among computer gamers and 3d-application aficionados, the question of which video card to buy is not as much a question as which manufacturer to go with. The primary two video graphics producers are ATI and Nvidia. Having owned both brands of video cards, it is hard for me to say which is better. Because their differences are so slight, the question you'd ask is, which logo do I like better? Although that is just in humor, both cards do have their differences. One company focuses on one aspect like the number of pipelines, whereas the other company focuses on the bits of the card - 256bit, 512bit, and so-on-and-so-forth.

I am not going to tell you which card is better, because new video cards are always being released - almost every week. But I will tell you my experience with one card I am quite happy with.

Earlier on another post, I talked about the Nvidia 7600 GT I bought. Well, I won't talk about how great of a deal it was, or all the features it has, because frankly, I already did. Instead, I will tell you about how great this card has performed while in Windows, as well as in Linux.

The card works in Windows. That is obvious. The drivers are great, Oblivion is pretty, Half-Life 2 is extremely fast. But in Linux is where I have grown a deeper respect for the card, as well as for Linux overall. Ubuntu has a new system of supporting non-free drivers if the user should so choose to. Well, I figured, shoot, I want 3d-graphics, I'll support Nvidia's non-open-source driver. It was two clicks and a reboot for me to have a 3d-desktop working perfectly in Ubuntu 7.10.

However, I did not know that I would get all the goodies that the Windows driver package has as well. For those of you who like the Nvidia settings, this will mean something to you. When you enable the Nvidia non-free drivers in Ubuntu, the 3d-settings are enabled, but also a tool from Nvidia is now able to be used. Before you use this tool, I would suggest you install something else, for your benefit. I suggest you install the Sysinfo tool. To install it, simply type this in the console:

sudo apt-get install sysinfo

Then open the tool by typing sysinfo, or selecting from the menu, Applications -> System Tools -> Sysinfo

This tool alone is the equivalent to many system info tools that would cost you $20 or more for the same functionality in Windows. You'll see an Nvidia button on the left-hand side of this application.









When you click the button, You'll see an Nvidia settings tool open. Within this tool you have many options, like anti-aliasing, Digital Vibrance to change the color-intensity, and so on.

If you did not want to install sysinfo, you can still access the Nvidia tool by typing in the terminal "nvidia-settings".



For any of the settings you specify within this tool, you will want those settings to automatically load at startup. To do this, go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions

Click on the "Startup Programs" tab, and then click on "Add". Type whatever you want for the name, but for the command type in "nvidia-settings -l" and it will load the settings without launching the nvidia-settings application.

The (Future) Best Media Player

I love searching the net for great information, and I just happened to stumble upon something like that. Mozilla, who is responsible for the creation of Firefox and Thunderbird, now is putting out a new project - Songbird.

Songbird bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple's iTunes, while proudly bearing the name of the Mozilla family tree. Songbird is currently in a development state, but it is currently available for download Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Why would this program become widely used? People, like me, have a computer with more than one operating system on it. I have Windows and Ubuntu Linux; other people have a Mac with Windows XP or Vista on it. The great thing about cross-platform software is familiarity and friendliness. Songbird, like Firefox and Thunderbird, is about being widely available to all computer users, regardless of operating system. My web browser of choice is Firefox, regardless of what computer or OS I am using. The same most likely could be with Songbird.

Straight out of the box (in Windows) Songbird supports playback 0f Windows Media files and Quicktime files. Upon install, it will automatically download and install the necessary packages based upon the options you choose.

If Mozilla creates this piece of software to be lightweight, fast, bug-free (for the most part), and very useful - which is why people use Firefox - this will be yet another friendly tool that can be used cross-platform.

Perhaps iTunes and Windows Media Player 11 might want to jump on the bandwagon. DRM is already becoming a thing of yesterday, so why not just let all users purchase the music they love anyways? (It would either be that, or the old-fashioned way - Limewire, Frostwire, Bittorrent, or whatever else is out there that people already would use for music.)

Free Bootable Partition Editor

If any of you are like me, you like to toy around with more than one operating system on any given PC. The best balance on a machine is Windows with Linux. It's like the Yin and Yang. (Sometimes Windows and Linux switch parts as to who is Yin and Yang, but they both balance each other.)

If you are also like me, than you may also be toying around with partitions too much. In my case, I decided to move completely from Ubuntu on my primary hard drive, and I am going to install a second drive completely for Ubuntu and it's goodness. While inside Ubuntu (or any flavor of Linux), a great free and open-source tool (as always) comes packaged with it called GParted. However, in Windows, there is no such a thing as a free partition editor that works well and won't destroy your harddrive. But wait. There must be, otherwise this article is about nothing.

I happened to stumble upon GParted's site at Sourceforge, and they already created a LiveCD made to boot fast, use few resources, and get your disk partitioned they way you want it in no time at all. The actual specs, according to GParted's site are as follows:

The CD aims to be fast, small in size (~50mb), and use minimal resources
to get that disk partitioned the way you want it. GParted LiveCD is based
on Gentoo-catalyst, and uses Xorg,the lightweight Fluxbox window manager,
and the latest 2.6 Linux Kernel.


The GParted LiveCD can currently support the following filesystems:

• ext2
• ext3
• fat16
• fat32
• hfs
• hfs+
• jfs
• linux-swap
• NTFS
• reiserfs
• reiser4
• ufs
• xfs

From a Windows user's perspective, if I wanted to partition a hard drive in NTFS or move, resize, or merge an NTFS partition, this LiveCD can now support it. Since this CD is only around 50mb in size, it is even possible to load the image onto a USB flash drive and if your computer can boot from USB media, that will save you a blank CD, while extending the usefulness of a flash drive a bit further.

In my personal experience, I deleted a Linux ext3 partition, and resized (or extended) the NTFS partition on the drive to the entire disk. However, there is some difficulty in getting the video to work correctly while booted into this LiveCD. It appears there is support for Intel, HP machines, and VESA graphics, but not for Nvidia or ATI. But booting to the preset VESA setting still worked for me, just with a very dim display.

Engineered

If somebody asked my why I thought Mac's were good, I would sum it up in one word - engineered. Sure OSX is a sweet operating system on the Mac's. Sure everything runs smooth.

But why?

Apple doesn't just sell an operating system. They don't just sell sexy looking computers like the Macbook, they sell computers (including iPods, iPhones, and so on) that are designed for their operating system. (Hence why you can't buy it by itself or easily put it on another computer.)

In previous blog about Dell and Ubuntu, I mentioned that on Dell's site, you can now buy a machine that comes preloaded with my personal favorite operating system. The preloaded PC's ship with the latest version of Ubuntu on the machine, ready to fire away.

Dell PC's with Ubuntu is like an Apple. It's smart. It's engineered.

I have nothing against Windows - it's a great operating system and will continue to be for a long time. Windows is serving businesses worldwide and always will be, but it Windows is on a huge hardware market. New types of processors, new hardware, and even the no-name branded hardware is always being released everyday. Microsoft has a huge race that only Microsoft could run. It's doing well to accommodate for the hardware it can be put on.

Instead, Apple went a different route. They went for specific hardware that only Apple decides can be used, and now Dell makes PC's tailored to best run Ubuntu, with room to tweak some hardware peripherals.

Ubuntu has been evolving like a baby, and over the past couple years, I have witnessed it firsthand growing and becoming more user-friendly and more compatible with certain hardware (like the Dell Inspiron 6000 I'm using right now). Now, I can pop the Ubuntu install CD in my computer and in 15 or so minutes, everything is working as it should, with no drivers to install or anything. It just works.

Engineered for greatness, tailored for speed.