The last days i worked with GIMP (yes i must admit i am really impressed by it!). Once i checked the “Info” i found out that i am still using 2.4.0 RC3, well kinda outdated - so to speak (thats the one you get with Ubuntu 7.1). I checked the Gimp homepage and saw, that there is the final 2.4.3 already. But as usual i did not find the binary for 64 Bit. Due the fact that i had already most of the development stuff installed i decide to make one on my own.

You can download it from here:
GIMP 2.4.3_amd64

This is NOT for 32Bit!! Use it on your own risc!

After some weeks playing around with Ubuntu i tested GNOME and liked it so far. Then i wanted testing the KDE4, well it was ok, just far overloaded. After some years with an OS which was always clean from its concept for the Desktop, the Tracker and the Deskbar i was kinda disapointed.

I went over to the internet and read on golem.de that there is a new version of Xfce. Xfce? what is that? well lets ask the Oracle. Ah cool nice and clean desktop, why not give it a try? Downloaded (man apt-get is a tool we should have had in the other OS also!) and installed and then just started it, it was realy easy.

I played again some days with it and started to read documentation and HowTo’s. Thx to my long time in building an OS i understood quite fast how to use the tools inside the Terminal. The cool thing is, that you can modify the look and feel very far. What was closer than make a skin for my beloved OS?

The result is here:

Unfortunatly you cannot get BUTTON|WINDOWTITLE|BUTTON i hope that this can get fixed asap so people can skin it even more.

Head over to their homepage: Xfce-Home

It is now some weeks i started to use Ubuntu. I decide to use the ubtuntu studio 64 Bit Version as i have an Intel Core2Duo machine running here.

One thing i found out quite soon was, that 64Bit is not that common still. So if you want to use apps you will see that there is more for 32 Bit than for 64 Bit.

Same thing was with some applications i started to use. One of these apps is called “Kino” there is the version 1.1.0 out for my system but in the same time you also can get kino 1.1.1, just -as usual in Linux - as sourcecode. Anyway i downloaded it and decide to install all dev tools i need to get it running.

So this is the first application i compiled for Ubtuntu. Feel free to download it from here.

Kino 1.1.1 amd64 (64Bit ONLY) for Ubuntu (debian)

Nachdem ich ja damals Claus Eisenmann’s Homepage gemacht hatte fingen die ersten Probleme an. Ich hatte versucht, weitestgehend reinen HTML Code zu verwenden, damit die Sachen auch auf möglichst vielen Browsern laufen. Im laufe der Zeit stellte sich aber raus, dass die Administration von Artikeln… sich recht kompliziert gestaltet; Alles muss offline gemacht werden, keinerlei Automatisierung…

Ich fing also an, nach einem CMS System zu schauen. PHPWebsite, Typo3, Xoops…. und wie sie alle so rumlaufen. Jedes für sich, natürlich das Beste und das Einfachste, dass es auf dem Markt gibt. Ich habe auch jedes ausprobiert und Claus’ Server damit strapaziert (ebenso wie meine Nerven). Irgendwann kam ein Freund und meinte zu mir über MSN: Hey Bernd, schon mal von REDAXO gehört? “Ne, hab ich nicht” sag ich.

Also mal geschaut unter www.redaxo.de, runtergeladen, entpackt, auf den Server gezogen. Ein Demotemplate installiert und ein wenig rumgeschaut. Nach etwa 24 Stunden stand die komplette Homepage und weitere 24 Stunden später war der komplette statische Inhalt der alten Seite rübergezogen. Alles läuft nun mit PHP und MySQL und ich bin total begeistert!

Alle Templates, AddOns und Module sind in PHP gemacht und werden online einfach per Copy&Paste “installiert”. Artikel werden blitzschnell erstellt und können dann auch bearbeitet werden. Media-Daten werden komplett über das Adminmenü gehändelt. Es ist jeden Blick wert wenn man sich ein CMS zulegen möchte!

Runterladen kann man sich das hier

Man man man I am not a friend of Microsoft, really not. But that is really hard cinema!

In the last 12 weeks i tried a bunch of different Linuxversions, most of them did not really work properly. Some were really bad and some were…well anyhow “usable”. Speedwise they were all better than Windows Vista on my Testlaptop. The worste were Freespire, followed from Ubuntu 7.04 and then Mandriva. Funny, that on Mandriva it was the only bootloader which did not break the Vista booting. But other than that it was not really well done and slow. The best one in the end was Ubuntu Studio 7.1 with Gnome, it works so far really well on this machine here.

Now what is to say about Mandriva? the CEO wrote an OpenLetter to Steve Ballmer. Both are working in a Softwarecompany and doing business to make money and not just for fun (at least this is my personal impression). Well the story is more or less written in the OpenLetter from Francois.

Here just my opinion about the letter itself:

1. Hey, if you write an open letter, let it do by one who know better how to do it than you
2. If you wanne do business do not get scared if you get into a competition, thats how business works
3. If you get into competition when it comes to an OS Vendor you hould not be surprise that someone like Microsoft also wants be a part of it, thats how business works
4. If you have to make things cheap enough to sell them, well again This is how business works

All in all i must admit that this openletter was a stupid thing in my opinion. You should not waste your time in writing things like this, you should concentrate on your OS and make it as good as possible and then start a real competition. And honestly: You are in the OS marked and that beside a lot of other Linux Distributions, you should know it better.

As usual… My 2 Cents