Fixing Wine for Desktops

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Want to Playback DVD’s on SLED?

Come on, you know you do.  It’s the last thing besides Call of Duty 2 that keeps even a single instance of Windows anywhere near most real techies.

With this article, you’ll know how to hack OpenSUSE 10.x, which translates pretty neatly into hacking SLED 10, including some information that might get you in trouble with the various bloodsucking, erm, umm, legal types.

Read at your own risk, and enjoy that DVD, hmm?

RossB

Is Microsoft Wicked?

So we are at the relatives the other day, and we (all the kids and I, or as my wife would say, “all the kids”) play a bunch of rounds of a game called Apples to Apples.

The game’s premise is that you are dealt 7 red cards which are persons, places or things, and then someone who is the dealer (judge) will pick a green card that has a concept on it that you have to present the best solution to.  For example, if the judge picks a green card that has the term “emotional” on it, there will be 3 or 4 alternative descriptions for emotional, such as “moody”, “tempermental” etc.

When the green card is put down, everyone else picks the best card from their hand that will persuade the judge to pick them, and if picked as the best match to the green card, they get the card, and it takes 8 of them to win the game.

So, with all that setup, I was playing with the kids and having a great time, ages 6-19, very fun and informative game, when the judge plops the green card on the table and it has the word “wicked” on it.  “Wicked” is defined as “evil”, “corrupt” and “despicable”.  I’m looking through my cards for just the right one to convince the 17 year old judge that I have the best one and I have some doozies in my hand, “President Bush”, “Count Dracula” and some others of lesser note, but I knew I had the very best one; “Microsoft”.

Now, when you play such a game with all those differing levels of awareness, education, relative innocence and just plain savvy, you never know if the judge’s age and lack of knowledge will work FOR or AGAINST you.

So I put my Microsoft card out on the table facedown, and  figure that with the judge’s age and evident lack of awareness of all things computing, I won’t get the green card.

To my utter surprise, even with opponents like “Saddam Hussein” and “First Day of School”, they all agreed with the judge that my card was the one to win.  When I asked them all collectively about why that was, they related to me that everyone knew that Microsoft Windows had viruses and crashed all the time.

Love it, we’re ready to intro SLED at this point.  Maybe we’ll go dual-boot next visit out there…

RossB

Use Two Monitors with One Computer?

I do. A LOT. I have to say, Linux guy that I am, I prefer how OS X plays with the various monitor layouts I have tried, but there is a great program that I use to make it all seamless anyway, called Synergy.  More about using multiple monitors can be found in this article.

40 Coolest Free Apps

Over at Soepher.com there is a great list of 40 free apps, some of which you’ll have heard of, but there are some real gems in this list, check it out.

Ubuntu Fanboy dates around with SUSE…

Element14’s cathartic blogging post about his dalliance with OpenSUSE is interesting and funny, particular since he’s a Ubuntu fanboy (self-admitted) and the best line of the whole review is:

“I’m impressed. I love my opensuse10.2 install with a passion. But now it’s kinda like the passions one might have for a hooker he doesn’t want to bring home to mom. It feels a bit dirty, but i am in love nonetheless.”

Caution, the posting is a little, erm, “salty” at times, so be warned.

Wow, even Windows users can get the spinning cube…

Like back when Frank Zappa said “Speed was cool until the Republicans got into it” or something to that effect, there is a new FF extension that reproduces an XGL-like effect only on Windows Boxes.  Additional features include bugginess, instability and crashes, so it follows the usual MS Development Guidelines, apparently.

Will Vista be the End of an Era?

It is the engine behind the largest personal fortune ever amassed. All-conquering but largely unloved, it has changed the daily lives of hundreds of millions — but Microsoft Windows, the Genghis Khan of computer operating systems, faces an uncertain future.

Switching from Word to OO Writer

Fascinating article about the switch

Ubuntu vs. SLED

Nice writeup of SLED in this article about Linux Trends.