Clete’s Blog

Today, I was trying to get LightScribe to work. I run Gentoo Linux and Windows Vista RC2. Neither one of these supports LightScribe. So, I decide to use my GParted cd (it’s a partitioning Linux LiveCD). I go into it and find out that I can’t make any more primary partitions; I already have 4. I was planning to shrink my NTFS partition, wipe my SWAP partition and then make an extended partition and place the SWAP and another NTFS or FAT32 filesystem in there as well (XP or 98 SE respectively). I do this and go to boot my XP CD but it won’t boot. Not a problem, I’ll go with 98 SE (hey, it takes up less drive space anyway). Pop the CD in, reboot… long long long story short (I rebooted probably 30 times before it got to this point), it told me it was going to reformat the C:\ drive (known to me as /dev/sda6; the FAT32 parition), but what it really did was reformat the entire drive.

I have learned 2 lessons today:

1) Back up more often. I backed up my pictures last month, but my main backup is from April 21st of this year.

2) Never ever trust a Microsoft product to format any section of your drive.

Hans Reiser, the founder and lead developer of the popular filesystem, ReiserFS, was arrested a couple of days ago for the murder of his wife. [Link]

I use ReiserFS. I hope he didn’t do it. I don’t have anything else to say. If he did, I’m sure that the ReiserFS team will continue. I just hope it doesn’t kill ReiserFS, as I personally think that it is the best filesystem out there.

Hey everyone! I am on Vista right now. I’ll post my opinion on it at the bottom, but without further delay, pictures!

Did I mention that you can also view live video in a view such as the one above?

Click on them to enlarge them. Now, I know that I am a Microsoft hater and a Linux fan, but I am going to give my unbiased opinion. It’s short:

1) Looks pretty, but if you want pseudo-3D effects, XGL with beryl (formerly compiz-quinnstorm) is better. Aero does the basic effects that anyone would enjoy. XGL+beryl is excessive for some, but is highly customizable.

2) Uses a lot of RAM. The Linux kernel is designed to keep files in RAM even if you close the program, but it drops them immediately when space is needed, so RAM usage is always high, but that is different. Vista runs my games just as well as XP did, but uses a lot of RAM. Do they do the same thing now? I doubt it, because I close something and it removes the RAM that was allocated. Not a big deal for me, as my games run the same as XP.
3) A little buggy. It crashes about as much as Windows 98 did for me. Maybe slightly less, but it is still in Release Candidate stage. Microsoft told us that RC1 would go final and now that RC2 will do the same, but I think there will be at least one or two more.

4) They added a feature to stop the annoying security center popups! That made me really happy. I don’t use virus protection or a firewall. I generally scan using an online scanner. I never come up with anything either. I backup often.

5) They added User Account Control, which asks you every time you change something critical in the system or do anything potentially hazardous. (e.g. open an executable or install a program) It’s a good feature in theory, but very annoying when installing things.

Also, my bet is that something like the blaster worm will be released in mass that will effect people using a beta version of Vista (I hear it’s active until June 1, 2007), forcing users to upgrade. I don’t plan on buying Vista until games are Vista-only. I won’t rant about that now; I’ll save that for another time. Bye for now!

Microsoft has released Windows Vista RC2 to the public! I think it was an accident. Microsoft released RC1 to the public (just sign up on their website), but announced that RC2 would be closed. I’m 45% on my download right now. We’ll see if it works. I signed up and got my RC1 key. Reportedly, your RC1 key works with RC2. I had no idea that Vista was out to the public until I heard about this recently. Check it out yourself! (this page links to the pages to get it for your architecture)
In other news, I have setup XGL (3D desktop) on my Gentoo Linux partition and I have it running fairly well, with only a few glitches. More on that after I install Vista.