Since its inception, the Xfce desktop environment has aimed to provide high functionality with only modest demands on system resources, with the overarching goal of leaving more facilities for the user to run applications. One of the significant changes in recent releases of Xfce 4 is the Thunar file manager, which replaces the original xffm. Thunar does a good deal to advance the goals of its parent project: it’s fast and lean, especially by today’s standards of hardware, yet it offers rich functionality. Like its namesake, Thunor, the Saxon god of thunder, Thunar is much smaller than “giants” like Konqueror and Nautilus, yet powerful in its own right. If you want some of the functionality afforded by the GUI file managers of the larger desktop environments, but with less overhead, Thunar may fit your needs.

Technorati tags: Linux, Software

Introducing the Thunar file manager

I’ve been a fan of SimplyMEPIS for years. The distribution was one of the early pioneers in the field of user-friendly Linux development, and to this day offers a system that usually “just works.” Earlier this month the MEPIS site announced a community variation for older computers based on SimplyMEPIS. AntiX is an installable live CD that features a modern kernel, recent X server, and lighter applications for use on computers with as little as 64MB RAM. I tried it, and liked what I found.

Technorati tags: Mepis, News

New AntiX distro makes older hardware usable

VLC is unique among Windows players in that it doesn’t require installed codecs and drivers to play back media content. Why this approach? VLC originates in the Unix/Linux world where there’s no such a thing as Windows codecs. It has been designed to use built-in decoding algorithms from the beginning. Some of the codecs were also developed within the VideoLAN project (e.g. libmpeg2), but most of the codecs are now coming from FFMPEG or other external open source libraries. VLC is cross platform, of course. What does it take to enable that support? We use the same Unix-centric build-system for all platforms. Support for Windows is very time-consuming of its own. Nowadays, we use BuildBot (http://buildbot.sourceforge.net) to automatically test and detect build failures on different platforms.

Technorati tags: Multimedia, Programming

Developer Tricks: VideoLAN VLC Media Player

Back in January I wrote a review of Vector Linux 5.8 Standard. The fact that as I write this, over five months later, that review is still in the O’Reillynet Blogs Hot 25 says a lot about just how much interest there is in this up and coming Canadian distribution, a user friendly derivative of Slackware. Back when I wrote that review I talked about the three different flavors of Vector Linux. Standard, with a default Xfce desktop, can be compared to Xubuntu in some ways while SOHO, it’s big brother with a default KDE desktop, is more directly comparable to Kubuntu. The implication is that the same code base is used in both.

Technorati tags: Linux

KDE Built For Speed — Vector Linux 5.8 SOHO

DocBook XML is a library of standard XML tags you can use to write stylesheets for generating almost any output. Learn how to use DocBook XML and the Eclipse IDE together to create reusable technical documentation that you can easily distribute in most formats.

(Perfect for writing that Doc for that project you have been working on for the last year,Baldy)

Technorati tags: Software, How-To

Build DocBook XML in Eclipse

Dozens of online music broadcasters will go silent on Tuesday to protest a new set of royalty rates that many smaller companies say would put them out of business.

Viacom Inc.’s MTV, Live365, Pandora, AccuRadio and several public radio stations including KCRW in Los Angeles and others will observe the day of silence and encourage listeners to support a bill in Congress that would roll back the new rates. The stoppage applies to ad-supported music streams, not to paid subscription ones.

The new royalties were decided by a panel of three copyright judges in early May, and the first payments are due on July 15. Unlike previous arrangements, which expired in late 2005, no breaks were given to smaller online-only broadcasters as they build their businesses.

The royalties are paid to SoundExchange, a music industry group that distributes the payments to artists and recording labels. Richard Ades, a spokesman for SoundExchange, called the webcasters’ day of silence protest a “moot point” because his group was already in “active negotiations” with smaller webcasters and has also made offers to non-commercial stations.

“Cutting off the streams of music demonstrates what happens when there’s no music,” Ades said. “If artists aren’t paid for their music, there will be no music.”

Source: Yahoo News

~LC