Monday, 28. January 2008, 00:54:55
I don't know if it was the result of me rattling my cage or something else, but I just witnessed a change in Facebook.
I decided to bite the bullet and sign up. I discovered I couldn't sign up using the Opera browser because the "captcha" box wasn't displayed! This meant I couldn't peer at the picture and guess at the letters contained therein in order to verify I am a real person and not a bot or script.
I did what any disgruntled consumer should do, and complained to facebook, and complained also to Opera. This lead to an interesting interchange with Facebook. One thing I will say for them is they replied to every single one of the emails I sent them, no matter how prickly my emails were. Of course their replies were not necessarily helpful.
On the Opera forum came some interesting information: Facebook used to list Opera as one of the two browsers it supports! There was also an encouraging reply from one of the Opera team: they were actually in communication with Facebook about it. You can read the whole brief saga on the forum here:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=220214The upshot of it is, the problem is now fixed and Opera users can now sign up to Facebook.
Hurrah. Common sense was the winner on the day.
Friday, 25. May 2007, 00:48:24
non-Windows, Debian, Knoppix, Kanotix
Getting back to my trials of non-Windows operating systems...
Knoppix is the next on my list. I've already tried
Kanotix which is based off a lot of the work of Knoppix, and I'm told it's similar. One thing to note is Kanotix development has slowed considerably since last year, and the available version which I tried was actually from early last year. Knoppix on the other hand hasn't slowed, and it appears it's catching up on the innovations in Kanotix. The version I'm trying, 5.1.1, is from January this year, and according to
this page 5.2.1 should not be far away. Sounding good...
Read more...
Friday, 18. May 2007, 02:18:23
non-Windows, FreeBSD, FreeSBIE
I figure I should check out another FreeBSD-based OS other than
DesktopBSD just for a point of comparison.
FreeSBIE is a live-CD implementation of FreeBSD with an extended toolkit for creating your own implementation. That would be fun if you were a bit geekier than me, I'm sure...
Read more...
Sunday, 13. May 2007, 09:50:58
This is an interesting one.
Dyne:bolic is billed as "shaped on the needs of media activists and creative and practical tool for multimedia production". That sounds great to me, I am certainly interested in musical production. I don't know if I'm a "media activist" but I like the concept. It goes a bit further though. It's also
Rasta software. That's well and good, but I don't know if that's going to make it better software. Of course, it won't make it worse software either...
Read more...
Wednesday, 9. May 2007, 22:31:32
xfce, non-Windows, Slackware, Vector Linux
Vector Linux is promoted as a light and fast distribution of Linux based on Slackware. Over at the Opera forum they forewarned me that this means it's not so good for the newbie, so it's with some trepidation I put the CD into my trusty P3 0.863Ghz machine with 256Mb RAM. The desktop environment is not Gnome or KDE, it's a more "lightweight" one called
XFCE, version 4. Interestingly, according to the website XFCE is now based on
GTK+, the
GIMP toolkit - the GIMP being my new favourite graphics and animation program. I'm sure it can't be all bad. So, let's have a look then...
Read more...
Tuesday, 8. May 2007, 01:12:44
Debian, non-Windows, Linux, Ubuntu
Finally we get to the most hyped of Linux distributions. Firefox is to web browsers what Ubuntu is to Operating Systems: it's fans are so enthusastic in their support of
Ubuntu that you almost need the word "rabid". However it does look like the uptake is pretty rapid, even detractors aren't say too much is wrong with it, and recently it became the only Linux operating system available
pre-installed on PCs offered by a major manufacturing brand. So, let's give it a go...
Read more...
Sunday, 6. May 2007, 22:21:44
non-Windows, PCLinuxOS, Live CD, Linux
PCLinuxOS is at an interesting stage. Their
website has been down for the duration of my testing. As of this morning, they are back online again. Over the weekend I downloaded TR4 from their
temporary forum and gave it a test, now it appears they are online and
making TR4 available as a final beta before their next official version release. I couldn't find a readily available page on the site describing PCLinuxOS so had a look at the
Wikipedia entry instead. It appears PCLinuxOS split from
Mandrake Linux in 2003, working with the
LiveCD project, and become a distribution in it's own right. The tagline is "Radically simple". Fair enough.
Read more...
Thursday, 3. May 2007, 21:49:43
Mepis, non-Windows, Debian, Ubuntu
...
Moving right along in my Linux/BSD desktop for newbs test, the next to test is
Simply Mepis 6.5. Mepis appears to be a
Debian based version of Linux which borrows a lot from
Ubuntu. Although over at the forums there was a couple of complaints about driver issues, there seems to be a lot of endorsements for it as well. And hey, driver issues are pretty universal - even with Windows... Mepis is touted on the site as "Desktop Linux the way you want it", which is easy to try, easy to install, easy to use, and with extra features. It's also the first distro that includes
OpenOffice, so I may have more luck opening those MSOffice documents I have on my HDD.
Read more...
Wednesday, 2. May 2007, 22:26:38
non-Windows, Mandriva, Linux, Conectiva
...
The third in my
test drive of non-Windows operating systems here is one of the more well known distributions of Linux going back a few years, aimed at business and office users, it used to be known as Mandrake until the company bought out
Conectiva.
Mandriva Linux appears very professional from the website, and it's clear they are aiming at a professional desktop user market. The version I am using is the one they promote as being able to boot and go from a single CD: Mandriva One.
Read more...
Tuesday, 1. May 2007, 23:06:26
non-Windows, Debian, Kanotix, Live CD
...
My second Live CD to mess with - in
my quest to find a reasonable substite to and improvement on Windows - is
Kanotix. It's a
Debian-based Linux distro that is similar to
Knoppix but is touted with more hardware support. Thanks to
blackbelt_jones for the suggestion. This time I decided to test first on this P3 866Mhz machine with 256Mb RAM I have here since it's handy, and the same machine did so well with
DesktopBSD.
Read more...
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