I’ve been a long time SuSE user, I enjoyed the old boxed sets with the big manuals and CD books full of software. With that view I have always looked forward to every release of the distribution.

openSUSE 11.1 features all of the great new improvements in the Gnome and KDE desktops, combined with many of their own direct innovations.

Having been a user of SuSE, now openSUSE as well as their enterprise offerings such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server I’ve seen this distribution from a lot of different perspectives. The various releases always seems well integrated and have a lot of small touches that give it a polished feel. The enterprise version has key features that fit that role perfect, and the desktop always seems to nail it’s target. I recall when SuSE was the first Linux distribution to ship with the ability to boot off the installer CDs and perform a system recovery that could restore your boot loader or kernel, something that saved my bacon once or twice when I was still learning “the right way” to do things!

These days I’d say the gap between distribution features is starting close up, but did I find something that stood out about openSUSE? Watch the video and find out:

Some major features by category

In some ways openSUSE is a distribution (like others) caught in a transition world between KDE3 and KDE4. As the KDE user base makes it’s switch, the developers must spend a lot of energy in making both KDE3 and KDE 4 work well, on top of Gnome and XFCE. It’s difficult task I am sure, but I think in a year or so it will have paid off, as KDE4 seems to be steadily reaching a point where it will be useable for the everyone. Despite this nether desktop environment seems to lack polish, truly a job well done!

Great job to the openSUSE team, they’ve got a great release on their hands!

This post is not about stealing copyrighted martial, but about backing up your personal DVDs (such as family events, etc) and converting them to a space saving file format.

There are many tools to accomplish the task of ripping and backing up your DVDs, I know, I have used most of them with different levels of success. Recently Handbrake, a multi-platform Open Source software project has been climbing to the top of the pile of different applications, through a series of constant releases and improvements, Handbrake has really set itself ahead of the pack.

If you have VLC on a Windows or Mac box, or libdvdcss on a Linux box Handbrake can copy directly from any protected DVD, however this is not needed since most home DVDs are not copy protected. Something that can be even more handy, especially when talking about legitimate uses of Handbrake, is the ability to use and folder or file as a source for encoding. There are lots of reasons why this is handy, transcoding to a more universal format, reducing the file size of an existing video and so on.

Handbrake supports a lot of great formats and containers, such as:
File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

It’s also multi-threaded and takes advantage of dual and quad core systems, which can really speed up the process of encoding your DVD to your favorite format. It also means other important tasks, like de-interlacing which gives you a much better picture do not take as long.

Check out my video for a full review:

You can catch new videos as we release them over on our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/jupiterbroadcasting

You can find Handbrake over at their page

If you enjoyed this review, and would like to spread the word, DIGG it!

When Fedora 9 shipped just over six months ago, Bryan and I were not exactly blown away by   what we saw in fact, while we had some positive things to say, over all we were not overly impressed. Fedora 8 faired even worse in our review for the most part.

One of the major things we complained quite about was the lack-luster theme in Fedora 8 & 9, which generated quite a strong response, and motivated us to interview the lead of the Fedora Art Team.

My hopes were high for Fedora 10, and I honestly think they have delivered the best theme we have seen since the DNA theme in Fedora 6 . The new theme for Fedora 10 is called ‘Solar’ and I really like it.

Watch the video review for screen shots and more info:

Some of the other features I think are great in Fedora 10:

• Improved Boot Times, with less or no flicker of the screen when X11 starts – This makes it “less scary” for new Windows converts.
• Fedora 10 has improved Printing in a lot of ways, a simpler printer configuration window, and a solid improvements to the print job monitor
• The PulseAudio sound server has been rewritten to use timer-based audio scheduling. They claim this puts Fedora’s audio system on par with OS X and Vista, further testing will verify that claim. They also mention Less hardware wakeups, which should result in reduced power consumption.

As someone who has observed the open source community for a while now (many, many years) there have been different times where I have felt that one group of people, or certain projects were really pulling ahead from the pack in terms of new real ingenuity and great code.

For the last several releases of Fedora that has been a clear that they are introducing new code and features that impact the entire desktop Linux landscape.

• AIGLX that enable great 3D composting effects, AKA Compiz
• Network Manager that makes managing your network connection possible for humans
• Virtualization Tools like Virt-Manager
• They’ve led the pack on EXT4 support and development

For the Linux desktop as a whole, Fedora is bringing a lot to the party. They are like that friend that brings a ton of great snacks to your party… You know the one, the one you kind of count on to help take on that bit of work for you. Sure the party would still go on if they did not show up, but it sure makes your life easy with that friend around and the party goes smoother with their help.

Fedora seems to have reached a point with their 10th release where almost all complaints have been answered, or at least have an easy enough solution (AKA Codec buddy to get needed video and audio codecs).

My attention turns from issues with the distribution, and more towards issues with the Fedora team’s poor communication. I won’t rehash it all in this post, I’d just rather direct you to Bryan’s Blog post regarding the matter I think he covered it well.

Overall Fedora 10 looks to be a great release, and I think really sets the bar that the other new distributions need to meet. There is a lot of great technology in Fedora that was built and pioneered by the Fedora Project and RHE (Red Hat Enterprise) folks that we often see trickle down to other distributions, to me, that is the very definition of setting the standard.

Ubuntu 8.10 kicks off the new batch of Linux Distribution releases, how does it stack up? Read on…

When the very first version of Ubuntu shipped it was late October of 2004, and the release name was Warty Warthog, I was among the many that rushed to the mirrors to download this new version of the Linux Desktop. Since 2004 Ubuntu has been a Linux desktop trend setter, and it’s with that in mind that I look at the latest version of Ubuntu.

Each release of Ubuntu I spend some time talking about the brown theme, and I do so in the video below a bit more… So I’ll leave it at that, and not re-iterate those comments here.

Watch the video for some screen shots and a general overview of new features:

I’ll breakdown some of the key new features and talk about them. I’ll start with what I think might be the most significant work my way down. I’ll try and give each new major feature a grade, that will reflect its usefulness, and functionality.

The new Gnome 2.24 and a improved File Roller (the Archive manager)

At first I was more than ready to roll my eyes at a tabbed file manager being a major feature, after all with Firefox and every other browser on the planet, we are all kind of tab snobs now and it all seems like such old hat.

But then I stopped to think about it, and realized this is a VERY handy feature that most other

desktop file managers do not have… Oh sure KDE has had it for quite a while as well as a handful of other file managers on Linux, but Windows and OS X still do not. And after all does it matter if we already had it over here, but did not have it over there.. The most important thing is that we have it now! I have spoken with some developers on the Nautilus project and they told me that adding tabs was no easy task, it involved some major re-tooling at the core of the file manager and for a long time they were unsure if it would be worth the efforts.

Well I am very pleased we got this feature, my grade for tabbed nautilus file manager: A+

X.Org 7.4, X11 steps up it’s hot-plug support for display devices

I have been harder and harder on X.org lately. To make a long story short, I feel they are holding the Linux desktop back in some major ways. So any progress forward on multi-monitor support improvements or the ability to plug in projectors and have that project recognized immediately

with the correct resolution (just as OS X or Windows would).

X.org also handles input devices like your mouse and keyboard as well, so it’s critical that a Linux Desktop distribution has a fantastic implementation.

Now all that said, there are real disadvantages to living on the cutting edge of X.org, at the time of this writing the Nvidia and ATI binary (proprietary) drivers do not work with X.org 7.4, that means for many of us, no OpenGL acceleration and no Compiz support.

Now if this was 2006 or mid 2007 and we were looking at a distribution shipping that does not support those drivers, I’d look past it. But this is 2008, and desktop Linux is trying to complete in the same space as OS X and Windows Vista, both of which have accelerated video and utilize transparency with alpha channels to enable better usability.

The product managers at Apple and Microsoft would never even consider taking a “final” version of their operating system to management for approval with out those features, just like the vast majority of us they realize the important it is that users are able to take advantage of the most expensive component in their computer, their GPU. The lack of support for binary drivers is not Ubuntu’s fault, but it is going to be a deal killer for many.

The great improvements in X.org 7.4 with Hot Plug, and the new X safe mode are great, but the short-falls of no binary driver support are a killer. I have to believe that X.org could have worked more closely with Nvidia and ATI to prevent this, after all it would be in Nvidia and ATI’s best interest to do so.

I have high hopes that this is fixed very soon.

X.org 7.4 in Ubuntu 8.10 final grade: D-

NOTE: Sounds like updated drivers are already in the repo, this brings the final grade up to: A-
(more details at the bottom of the post)

DKMS, rebuild kernel modules automatically with kernel updates

DKMS stands for Dynamic Kernel Module Support, DKMS means it’s very easy to rebuild modules (such as drivers, or VMware hooks) as you upgrade kernels. This will allow Linux vendors to provide driver updates without having to wait for new kernel releases while also taking out the guesswork for customers attempting to recompile modules for new kernels.

I see no reason that this should not be HUGE, I want to see this in every distrobution going forward. The best part is that it is working, tested code. Dell (creators of DKMS) have been using

DKMS in house for several years. This is going to bridge that gap between the use of binary drivers and frequent kernel updates, and that is going to be BIG time handy.

Personal side note, members of my family have tried Linux on the desktop after having awful experiences with Windows, but kernel upgrades broke X11 for them too many times, and they gave up and bought a Mac… Needless to say I was very disappointed, my hope is that DKMS will prevent this kind of thing in the future.

DKMS included in the new Ubuntu 8.10 final grade: A+

Other minor features that I think are great, but overall I am not super stoked about:

• Samba 3.2 (good improvements for large enterprise)
• Network Manager 0.7 (improvements in 3G device support, have not tested yet)
• Guest sessions (seems handy, but not something I’ll use)
• Totem BBC plugin (Probably great for my friends across the pond)

Minor features in Ubuntu 8.10 final grade: B+

Final Grade Roundup:

So is Ubuntu 8.10 once again a trend setter? Perhaps, I aruge maybe not what it once was, but it is still a very strong desktop offering. In the end though, thats up to you and everyone else to determine!

You can download Ubuntu 8.10 here: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

UPDATE: A new Nvidia driver (at the time of this writing) is reported to have early support for new X.org version in Ubuntu 8.10: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122139 and appear to have been included in the repository, still waiting for an official word on ATI drivers (I do not have an ATI card to test with).

Last March Bryan and interviewed a gentleman from Hot Head Games who were about to release a new game that was coming out for all platforms, with first class Linux support. Of course we were very excited and could not wait to play. After what seemed like almost forever, the game shipped and we got our hands on it for a full review.

We all liked Episode one of On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness quite a bit. I especially like the episodic nature of the game, as a casual game player I prefer something perhaps a bit  shorter that gets refreshed every so often with new levels, adventures, and challenges. 

Episode 2 of the Penny Arcade game continues the dry wit and humor, combined with the familiar characters placed in a steam-punk 1920s robot butt kicking world!

Today episode two is being released for all major platforms, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and on the Xbox 360 arcade with the exception of the PS3 for now.
I think the fact that Linux is being targeted at release for a commerical game like this is a great step for desktop Linux. While this game may not put the demand on your system that something like Crysis might, it is by all means a modern game with great graphics and sound. Releasing for four platforms on launch day is really impressive, and something we talked about in our interview with Hot Head games last March.

Bryan and I put togther our first episode of The Big Story a quick video about Episode 2, and include some screen shots and video from the game: