Beli’s blog

O virtuelnim mašinama je napisano mali milion opširnih članaka o svim mogućnostima i prednostima istih, međutim, malo ko razume sve što one mogu. Uključujući tu i mene. Sve je to previše “virtuelno” za jednog prosečnog korisnika, ali ipak, i previše korisno da bi se one zanemarile. Kako ja mnogo koristim virtuelne mašine (do duše, na najjednostavniji mogući način), mislim da vredi objasniti koliko su korisne.

Šta je u stvari virtuelna mašina? Virtuelna mašina, u daljem tekstu “VM”, je program koji radi unutar operativnog sistema, kao i svaki drugi program, ali za razliku, simulira drugi kompjuter. Drugim rečima, kompjuter unutar kompjutera. Kako je to program, omogućuje kreiranje bezbroj kompjutera unutar (fizički prisutnog) kompjutera na kome radite (mogući broj VM-a zavisi, zapravo, od mesta na disku).
Dobro, kompjuter unutar kompjutera, ali čemu to? Read more…

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The problem: I need the easiest way possible to resize a bunch of images from a digital camera, or from one directory, and place them into another.

There are a lots of great tools for the job. As linux user, I had a choice of a variety of excellent applications to use, from large scale applications like GIMP or Krita, to small tools like BIRT. Lately, because I have KDE4, I used Gwenview because it supports batch resizing.

However, all of them ask you to select the files which you wish to resize. Well, I want all of them; I may have already prepared them in some directory by selecting them from various sources. So, file selection was just slowing me down.

Solution: Since I could not find a tool which would solve my problem, I made one.

Baires is an application that will resize all of your pictures that reside in a selected folder, and resize them to the same folder or another folder. Since it keeps ‘last used’ settings, next time resizing is just one click away.

Baires is an open source GUI application, made in Qt. It works on all platforms, but if you are not using openSUSE or Fedora linux, you’ll have to compile it from source. I have pre-compiled RPM packages for openSUSE 11.0 to 11.2, SLED/SLES 10 and 11, and Fedora 9-12, available for download.

You can download it from Baires download page

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The first question you may ask is why to compile kernel in the first place? Well, since all companies/groups that makes Linux distributions wants their product to work on as many machines possible, kernel is compiled in the most generic way possible. That means that it is compiled for low-end processor and it includes all possible modules that kernel has to offer. It is obvious that it is made to work with everything and not to work fast. For example, you will see in many Linux packages, kernel included, filenames have some suffix like i386, i486, i586, i686… It means for which processor they are compiled. i386 and i486 will work on i386 and i486 old processors respectively, and higher, while i586 will work on Pentium 1, and i686 on Pentium pro. So, if you have, for example, Intel Core2, and you use i586 generic file, this means that all of the new and fast instructions that your processor have will be unused. So, if we compile kernel for our processor, it will run much faster.
Read more…

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Članak ispod uporedno prikazuje originalnu licencu, član po član i šta on znači na jednostavnom engleskom, koji svi mogu da razumeju. Obavezno procitajte. Članak je baziran na licenci “Windows XP Home”

>>>>> MS EULA in plain English <<<<<

Od svih katastrofalnih (po nas) članova licence, ovaj mi se najviše svideo:

Microsoft may collect information about your computer and may share it with other companies, but this may not include personal information about you.


Ovaj link je pokupljen sa sajta(foruma) linuxzasve.com

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Dear AMD/ATI,

you said on your site that you needed to withdraw resources from development of older drivers. You said that it was necessary for you to focus all efforts on your new hardware. You said that it is for our own good, so we can have better experience.

Dear AMD/ATI, did you forget that video cards, that you called old, are 6 months old?
Did you forget that there are more than 10 million laptops in shops with yours, now unsupported hardware?
Do you know that all of that video cards does not work with Linux anymore?
Did you forget that number of Linux users is on the rise?

Dear AMD/ATI, why don’t you fully open your video drivers? There are people out there, who knows how to make it work. There are people who have time to make it work.

Dear AMD/ATI, I am very disappointed in your decision to forget me and the money I gave to have your product.

Dear AMD/ATI, I will never again buy laptop with your video card. NVidia didn’t open their driver either, but at least, their cards work and keeps working better with Linux.

Dear AMD/ATI, I am sorry, but you forced me to say ‘farewell’.

Once faithfully,
Emil Beli

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Few days ago, Mrs. Carla Schroder, managing editor of the Linux today magazine wrote a nice article on how software giants are considering users very stupid and turining its systems slowly into few button toys. She called it “Fisher-Price computer”, as Fisher-Price enterprise is the world’s biggest manufacturer of baby equipment and toys. And how, just maybe, Linux is for grown ups. You may read original article here.

I agree with her to a certain point, however, I will go deeper in why software giants considering users stupid. That’s because most of Read more…

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I’d like to share some funny lines I found in BBC’s article : MS Windows 7 goes on  a public test

Let’s start with funny quotes.

Windows 7 has been designed to be compatible with Vista so users do not have to invest in new hardware.

That is a good news, because you already bought new top-notch hardware to run Vista.

Windows 7 will also have “comparable system requirements” to Vista, which should mean that if your PC is capable of running Vista it will also run the new version.

If you still haven’t bought new top-notch machine, you should get it now!

“Vista is the fastest selling operating system of all time and, in percentage terms, enterprise moved to Vista faster than it did to XP [an earlier version of Windows],” he said.

Typography error: not ‘selling’ but ‘failing’.

“The timeline stated all along is that we are targeting Windows 7 within three years of of the launch of Vista and that would be the end of January 2010.
“We feel quite confident we are on trajectory that will deliver on that promise. But the exact timing will be based on quality.”

3 years for a fix? Confident? Not sure, though. May be 4 or 5?

“We were able to shave 400 milliseconds off the shutdown time by slightly trimming the WAV file shutdown music.

OMG, 400 milliseconds speed improvements! System will now shut down 0.4 seconds faster than Vista. Clearly worth to mention.

A version of Windows 7 will also be available for netbooks, but with some caveats.

The Windows 7 Starter Edition will have limitations on how many applications can be used concurrently on a machine in order to preserve performance.

Why don’t say publicly: 3. Windows explorer, Antivirus, and one of your choice. Otherwise can’t run on netbook (see quote above, where equalizes it’s requirements with Vista).

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(This article is a translation and adaptation of one text that was written in portuguese language that I found here.)

I understand problems passing from Windows to Linux which was declared by one individual. I felt I should experiment Windows too, since all of my friends are telling me all the time how great it is.

I went to the Microsoft site to download it, but it was not available. I was frustrated because I spent quite a time uselessly trying to find a download link, so I decided to ask my friend and he told me where I can buy it.

I took my car and drove myself to the mall, where I found a shop that sells software. I asked the seller for a windows OS and he asked me which version I want.
- “I want the most complete distribution”, I said proudly. Read more…

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It came a time when I could not avoid Mac at my work. Finally, they bring a Mac and ordered me to use it. Being a linux user, thought came to my mind “thank God it’s not windows”.

Ok, I got my new Mac machine, want it or not, I have to use it. At first glimpse, it is nice. Interface looks like Gnome (not my favorite), but it has nice silverish theme. Application just works. Installation of new applications is somewhere between windows’ way and linux’s way:
- You need to find it (window’s way)
- Copy it to application folder (neither windows nor linux way)
- No restart needed (Linux way – and all steps can be made from command line as well)

That is little odd, because MacOSX is based on FreeBSD or some similar Unix which one can take code, change it, claim it and close it.

What can I say… Applications just work. Configuring VPN (which I had a bit of trouble in Linux) is fool-proof. Mac works on “autopilot” under the hood. Applications are nice, well designed and full of features. Swell.

Then came initial nightmare: Shortcuts. Everything is completely different than windows and linux. Editing text shortcuts are different also. When I press END button, it should go to the end of line. Here goes to the end of document and end of line is COMMAND + ->. Very annoying. However, I will get used to it in few days. I was already prepared for initial frustrations. Mac is not Linux, and difference should be appreciated.

However, one thing I didn’t like. You must use your Mac in a way that Apple decided it should be used. If you just want something different, well, you can’t.
You cannot change the place of the menu, you cannot have taskbar, you cannot place another panel on the desktop, you cannot rotate icons, you cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot… whatever you think of changing, you cannot do it. It simply must look that way.

Bottom line:
Mac is wonderful OS where I can do any job that I want, cannot change anything I want about how things are done, and generally feels like my freedom was taken away.
Apart from that, it’s absolutely lovely.

P.S. All negative aspects of MacOSX, are about a thousand times better than in any version of Microsoft Windows I have used so far (used it all save 3.11 and w7).

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