MaximumHoyt

Slashdot ran a story about getting Quake2 running in a browser windows. That is very cool. There were installation instruction at quake2-gwt-port except the instructions were not for "Linux" but only for Linux distros that provide apt-get (probably Ubuntu). That is not cool at all. While it would have been possible for them to write their HOWTO instructions in a generic way (provide a list of all dependencies, provide links to source code for needed apps not included in every Linux distro, etc.), they just assumed that everybody uses Ubuntu. Bad. Bad. Bad. Here's what I needed to do to get it compiled and installed on my Mandriva 2010 system. Read those Ubuntu-ed instructions first for the details. You should be using sudo to run commands that need root privileges. (All the following commands are written on one line even if they appear to be on multiple lines.) $ sudo urpmi mercurial ant gcj-tools javacc lame vorbis-tools URPMI asked, and I told it to insta...

The best font-viewing experience occurs when the patented (by Apple) Bytecode Interpreter is enabled. Due to licensing restrictions until May 2010, it's not possible for many distros to ship it enabled, but it is perfectly permissible for you as an individual to enable it and use it. Since May 2010 , distros have been enabling it by default Better fonts also help. Install the webcore fonts from here which include the Tahoma and Veranda fonts that were specifically designed to look good in browsers. There are FireFox tweaks that help it look better by changing these values in about:config, or by directly editing your prefs.js file . For better rendering of fonts: user_pref("font.FreeType2.autohinted", true);   user_pref("font.FreeType2.enable", true);   user_pref("font.FreeType2.printing", true);   user_pref("font.FreeType2.unhinted", true); user_pref("font.freetype2.shared-library","libfreetype.so.6"); ...

Discussions suggest that a lot of Firefox 's sluggishness on Linux (as compared to Windows) is due to Intel compiler profiling (maybe, but GCC offers profiling ), compiler cpu optimizations ( i386 vs. i686 -- not so much anymore; Mandriva compiles Firefox for i586 - see BONUS at the end) and Linux's use of pango , a library for laying out and rendering text with an emphasis on internationalization (likely a cause of slowness). Let's get rid of Pango support first. This is easily done by editing your .bashrc file and adding at the end   export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1   Resource your .bashrc with $ source .bashrc You could also put the line of export code in .bash_profile. Then just re-start Firefox to get the benefit. Short of recompiling Firefox ( which appears to be a daunting task ), we have found something that helps if you have RAM available. The trick is to keep the disk cache in /dev/shm , a POSIX-compliant temporary filesystem ( tmpfs ). Let's us...

My HP 1120NR  uses the Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller and my Acer Aspire 5315 uses the‎ Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller, both of which use the  0915 video driver. This means that I can use kernel modesetting . This is how: In /boot/grub/menu.lst , delete any vga= entries. Add i915.modeset=1 Reboot. Check to see if modesetting is enabled by looking for a value of modeset : 1 when you run the command get_module i915 I also added the file /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf that contains the following: options i915 gem_enable=1 options i915 modeset=1 options i915 fbpercrt=0 options i915 fastboot=1 The first line enables the GEM option. From here , "To [dis-]able GEM, just replace [1 with 0]. Users should try to disable GEM "when slow 3D performance is noticed and when the Xorg.log makes reference to problems enabling tiling due to it being rejected by the kernel" ." Mandriva disables GEM automatically for i8xx har...

GQView is an image browser that can easily be configured to use external applicatin to extend its functionality. In "Edit > Preferences > Editors" there are ten entries that can be used to identify and enter the command strings. GQView provides a few macros to assist you: Macro Description %f Inserts list of selected files, may occur only once. %p Command is executed once for each selected file, may occur multiple times. %v Display result of the command in an output window, must occur as the first two characters. %V Displays output window when multiple files are selected. Make Mirror Images By default, Editors 9 and 10 allow you to rotate jpeg images clockwise or counterclockwise using the jpegtran application, part of the jpeg tools . It would be nice to also flip the images to a mirror image. Add to, for example, Editor 8: Mirror Image %vif jpegtran -flip horizontal -copy all -outfile %p_tmp %p; then mv %p_tmp %p;else rm %p_tmp;fi A...

While I enjoy using Linux every day, most of my family continues to use Windows (mostly WinXP) and relies on me for tech support. I have done the usual things such as installing Firefox and MalwareBytes , but they still get some infections. That usually involves running a scanner over and over and some virii evade detection. F-Prot makes commercial virus scanners and has a free home version available for Linux . Download the tar.bz2 file and extract it to /usr/local/share . Then, from the /usr/local/share/f-prot directory, run: # ./install-f-prot.pl and accept the defaults. The /usr/bin/fpscan link to the program will be created and teh virus database will be updated. To scan a Windows drive, remove it and attach it to your Linux computer using a USB adapter, then mount the drive rw (read,write) at, for our example, /media/windows . The run the scanner with: # fpscan --disinfect /media/windows As it progresses, any corrupted or infected files are listed. Any that...

Plymouth is a new bootsplash application that replaces splashy for many distros like Fedora and Mandriva. There's not a lot of documentation on how to use it. The themes reside in /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ . You set the default theme with: # plymouth-set-default-plugin themename or # plymouth-set-default-theme themename Then execute: # /usr/libexec/plymouth/ plymouth-update-initrd to make it occur at boot. Plymouth works by using a series of still images to create animation for the display during the init process, so it loads along with the kernel. The scripting uses its own language which is said by one of the developers to be "not hard" to figure out, meaning that we mere mortals may likely have only a difficult time creating our own Plymouth themes. REFERENCES Plymouth - ArchWIKI Plymouth - Ubuntu Plymouth themes: Fix, install, edit and create- Mint PlymouthTheming Guide