The Final Zone project

That message from LWN (Linux Weekly News) said it all. Here is that part: Our MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License includes 29 patent owners contributing more than 900 patents that are essential for use of the MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2) Standard. Our AVC Patent Portfolio License includes 25 patent owners contributing more than 1,000 patents that are essential for use of AVC/H.264 Standard ("MPEG-4 Part 10"). Under the Licenses, coverage is provided and rights are granted for (a) manufacturers to make and sell MPEG-4 Visual/AVC Products and (b) for such MPEG-4 Visual/AVC Products to be used to deliver MPEG-4 Visual/AVC Video content. The Licenses were set up this way so as to apportion the royalty at points in the product/service chain where value is received, and also to not place the full royalty burden on one party in the chain (e.g., an encoder maker). No wonder software patents are such a mess.

Drawing straight to the tablet on Gimp 2.6.7. No GEGL used. Not sure if I should go to paint or more realistic.

First FUDcon I ever attended as Fedora contributor in Toronto. It was not only a fruitful experience but also seeing some familiar faces. Adam Holt from OLPC gave me a prototype of XO-1.5 that I immediately run side by side with the regular XO. Only notable physical difference is the simplified touchpad much like regular laptop but more rugged to prevent water infiltration. For the Sugar interface, the boot process is much faster on XO-1.5 than its predecessor thanks to the updated specification and the storage has been increased to 4GB instead of 1GB. Another difference is Gnome is more responsive and Firefox is included by default instead of Midori. Perhaps Gnome desktop environment needs to be lighter but other alternate like XFCE and LXDE already fill the gap. XO-1.5 is promising and I am looking to explore more about the machine and the software as designer (already updated to latest build and downloading the new Sugar on Stick Bluebbery). Having so much listed presentations on a...

Due to the poor network in Seneca College, my message will be short. Final release name is known as Goddard, American scientist behind one of first rockets using liquid fuel . Fedora 13 Artwork wiki has been created as kick-off for designers. Feel free to submit your concept as sketch, illustration, collage as long it follow the theme related to rocketry, space, galaxies.

My first ever live participation FUDCon will occur in Toronto. It will be the first I will travel to that city in Winter. It will be also my first I will see some familiar faces like Mo (Libre Graphic Meeting 2007 in Montreal) and Spot (Linux World San Francisco 2005). Reservations are essential done. Now looking for roommate in hotel.

After deeply checking about the fuzz on bug # 534047 , I think the reaction is exaggerated. The default policy from PolicyKit applies for single user that can install signed package from official repository without root password but unsigned packages need authentification. Grab any unsigned package and test yourself . For multiple user account, setting policy is the key.

English Fedora 12 release is cleanly installed on Tablet PC and the backup is fully restored despite the mishap from pybackpack application due to its inability to use CD/DVD. The whole installation was smooth. I notice both Keyboard and Language selection can be combined on the same page and am planning for a mockup. The stylus is fully supported out of box which has become a norm for me as art (designer is an artist). Gone is the tweaking of xorg.conf. On negative side is the backlight that will stay in low level and the hotkey will not work after either suspend or hibernation of laptop. Screen cannot be rotated out of box in Tablet mode and some keys will not be recognized . Français La sortie Fedora 12 est nettement installé sur la TabletPC et les archives restorés malgré les problèmes de l'application pybackpack en raison du manque de support de CD/DVD. L'installation complète est sans histore. J'ai remarqué que les pages Clavier et Langage peuvent être combinées e...

Echoing Nicu, Mo, Kusha and Marìa.

One of my designer friend shows me Color Scheme Designer , similar to Adobe Kuler . The best part about that scheme is it only uses HTML and Javascripts instead of Flash, can export as Gimp palette. What are missing are HSV, CMYK, and LAB.

Since this summer, most of my tasks are now done on Tablet PC. I took opportunity to try Fedora 12 on my LT-20. Unfortunately, major regression occurred because the stylus is no longer recognized. It appears linuxwacom package is old and not up to date compared to upstream . I tried to use the old method to create xorg.conf. Alas, the set-up for TabletPC crashed X and I restored by removing xorg.conf. Bug report has been submitted and hopefully that will resolved for final release because TabletPC users get a bad surprise

Following my comment about gnome-shell useless with nouveau driver , I installed KDE for testing Plasma about 3D as suggested by Kevin. As expected, effects will not work with OpenGL enabled for composing. What I did not know before is the presence of XRender option for Plasma that give those effects in glory. That test brings a question about gnome-shell: why Gnome development did not use XRender as fallback option or even providing that option? Enlightenment can least produce some similar effects without requiring hardware acceleration.

Running rawhide 20090924 from desktop system , I test gnome-shell to explore its features (seems Activities name is inspired from Sugar interface . Very disappointing because the shell needs hardware acceleration i.e 3D support. Even Sugar interface did a much better job despite its simple look. Picture speaks itself.

libxml2-2.7.4-1 which is available on test-update and rawhide seems to be broken preventing Inkscape to run. Should you attempt to dowgrade that package, make sure to downgrade packagekit, setroubleshoot and system-config-printer first, otherwise temporally remove them. Bug report has been submitted and hopefully should be fixed.

Armacycle is basically a renamed Armagetron Advanced for Fedora due to trademark concert. That game is perhaps overlooked by many users because it provides an excellent benchmark for free and open source drivers (nouveau in this case) with a lot of parameter to adjust. It might work on other system like XO-1 with lower resolution considering the RAM limit but that is another story. The system is a Nvidia Geforce 7800GS powered by AMD Athlon X2 4200 2.2GHZ running on nforce 3 based motherboard. The operating system is Fedora Rawhide. In fullscreen mode, the game only runs in average on 7-10 fps but four times faster in desktop mode using default setting (640x480 with 16bit colours). An idea comes to list benchmark in order to improve those FOSS driver with the following list: - Desktop, laptop? - CPU: - GPU: - Smolt information - Average frame per second with following setting - default: - Screen Mode setting: Windows size, resolution, z-buffer, fullscreeen, color - Preferences: effec...

Reading The Tales of Menu , it appears to be a step backward. Using a very outdated stock widget to justify the removal of icons is the worst excuse ever written. Real issue is the API itseft.

While reinstalling Fedora 11 (network stopped without warning), I accidently deleted ext2 storage containing all works on other hard drive from desktop. I am trying to recover with the use of testdisk. Let see how that turned out

Found that article from Linux Magazine titled Having Yum for Breakfast via Distrowatch . According to the test apt-deb easily beats yum. Any comments about result and factors that affect it? From what I understand, apt-deb is static by nature unlike yum (dynamic) which could probably explain faster transaction. Update : Added author's blog related to the article.

From Slashdot via Fedora Mexico . Sad thing is h264 will be patented which is no different than MP3 back then. It is all about control. *sigh*

Task done so far: Replaced Windows XP by Fedora 11 on a client's Toshiba Satellite that works out of box except media hotkeys. Completed an article of Fedora 11 for a small magazine editor. Installed Fedora 11 on LG Xnote LT20. Installing Fedora 11 on LT20 note had some trouble start like DVD freezing on first try after doing the test. A second try went smoothly. For the first time, I was able to see the smooth transition of boot process to the login screen unlike my Nvidia powered desktop. Power management works well although the battery consumption seems to be higher than usual (maybe I need to replace it). Suspend and Hibernate flawlessly work. The screen made from Wacom technology works out of box, I only need to set up Gimp and Inkscape to support screen mode although I wish the support is done automatically. Rotating screen was the problem because of the transition went flaky as the width went off screen. The button for rotation will not be recognized and will not work at all...

I got a tablet pc (an LG XNote LT20) as a gift for graduation. That tablet is in very good shape and just need to upgrade both hard drive (40GB) and memory (512 MB). After doing research, it looks like the cost will be around CAD 200.00. I am planning to dual boot the system as I need Microsoft Windows for making Flash design along with Fedora 11. I would like to test tablet support on Fedora 11 as it turned out the screen uses Wacom technology. With that notebook, it appears design will be much easier.