Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.0 released

The unigine guys shows what a Linux box well equipped can do with a well prepared environment... I must say I'm impressed and, even if I've not run the benchmark tests yet because I don't want to mess up my 'production' system :), I'm very glad to see what a linux driver can do in both 64 or 32bit environment, even if some users complain problems... but IMHO this is a great step in any manner!!!

Nvidia releases CUDA 3.0

Since I'm not a gamer I've never been very interested in the 3D performance of my GNU-Linux boxes (mmmh, until I saw compiz) but the more Linux is close to Windows for functionality and ease of use, the more i get interested in the differences, in term of performances, between the two. Even if recently ATI took over Nvidia in the middle market segment, it seems to me that the latter is more active in the driver development for Linux. Being a (very) pragmatic person I don't mind whether the driver itself is -or how much is- opensource or not, I've always felt comfortable with Nvidia drivers and press releases like this one are music for my ears!

New GNOME 2.29.0 shell released

Even If I personally prefer the new KDE 4.x for personal use, I work everyday with the GNOME so I must admit that I began to follow its development process. Having said that, here there is the announcement of the new GNOME Shell release with all the new improvements list.

Kubuntu boot

I must admit that, even if I use Ubuntu on daily basis, I'm not a great fan of this distro; but, loving the KDE environment, I've often installed Kubuntu -a distro with great potential but maltreated by Canonical- on my old laptop. Even if it's two years that I don't install Kubuntu I was a little surprised of these boot benchmark results, even if I would have preferred a direct comparison with Windows 7.

KDE SC 4.4.1 released

Two days ago the KDE team proudly released the KDE Software Compilation 4.4.1. This release fixes some annoying performance issues like those that that afflicted kmail and konsole; many widgets also received their part of bugfixing. You can found a (far from being complete) changelog here.

Prejudice

At first glance I couldn't believe in what was written in this quite old post, I woudl expect this kind of things here in Italy where, according to my personal experience, there is still too much diffidence toward free software - (the old story "If it does not cost, cannot be serious/reliable/etc"). Even if the situation is getting better and better those who would gain effective advantage from opensource software, are those who resist the more... At least the Microsoft supporter in the Elios post had what she deserved.

Skype & Ubuntu 9.10

Lately I've wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to make skype 2.1.0 to detect my integrated microphone: all my efforts were to no avail. A colleague of mine had a similar problem with a different laptop. On Ubuntu forums somebody suggested that the problem can be fixed installing the package "padevchooser" to help configure your PulseAudio and select the proper Mic input. That worked great but I had to downgrade to version 2.0.