An apology, Gimp 2.8 and Vivaldi’s taking
shape. David Hayward explains it all.
David Hayward has been using Linux since Red
Hat 2.0 in schools, businesses and at home, which either makes him every
knowledgeable extreme punishment.
Linux
Firstly, an apology Alan Griffiths (and
everyone else) in response to the letter he wrote in issue 1207. Yes, Alan,
you’re quite right, and I should stick to writing instead of trying to count on
my fingers.
For those of you didn’t read the letter or
the article it was referring to, I started that 850,000 Android phones are
activated daily and then went on to say that by the end of the week that will
be enough for every person on earth. As Alan kindly pointed out, it would
actually take 22.5 years. Would you also believe that my wife is a
mathematician?
So what’s the moral of this story? I think
I should get my missus to check my work before hitting the send button!
The Gimp’s no longer sleeping
After a whopping three years, we finally
have a stable version of everyone’s most underrated image manipulation
application, Gimp. With a new, and optional, single-window mode, multi-column
dock windows, on-canvas text editing, GPU acceleration and a wealth of other
goodies, Gimp has really know into a mature photo and image package.
To enjoy this latest of Gimp, simply drop
into a terminal and add the Gimp repositories to your software sources by
typing:
Sudo add-apt- repository
ppa:otto-kesellgulasch/gimp
Then update your sources by typing: Sudo
apt-get update
Finally, install Gimp by typing: Sudo
apt-get install gimp
All being well, the Gimp will download and
off you go. However, to really get the best from Gimp’s features, have a read
of the following titles:
·
Bit.ly/Ja2Sty – beginner, intermediate and
advanced tutorials.
·
Bit.ly/JTihoO – A ranger of tutorials on how to
create great effects
Vivaldi taking orders, soon
The Vivaldi
Things are heating up for the first KDE
Plasma Active Linux tablet, the Vivaldi. Apparently, the team behind the
Vivaldi tablet will soon be getting ready to take orders from the public again
after the initial pre-ordering blitz.
On top of this, one of the lead developers,
Aaron Seigo, has provided the public, who are already coming at the bit, with a
screencast showing off the ‘Add Ons App’, called Make.Play.Live. This add-on
app will allow you to download ebooks, wallpapers, services, widgets and all
sorts of other wonderful additions that will be a mixture of free and paid-for
extras. Aaron also started that the Vivaldi will actually come with 1GB of RAM,
as opposed to the 512MB that was previously advertised.
Things are looking good form the Vivaldi
camp, and as soon as we get our hands on one, we’ll let you know what it’s
like.
And finally
K computer
Japan’s ‘K Computer’ has reassured its top
position as the worlds fastest Linux supercomputer again, by adding several
thousand more Sparc64 processing cores, bringing the total up to 710,000.
This monster can now effectively achieve a
performance of over 11 petaflops per second and houses something like
1,327,104GB of memory, which is just a ridiculous amount that I find hard to
get my head around. But that’s not all, the current upgrade will be fully
completed by June, and the designers are starting that we will see even faster
processing performance numbers, although they were vague in the numbers that
will be achieved.
It makes you wonder, though: is it really
necessary? Does it do humanity a great service? I couldn’t find out exactly
what this behemoth calculates, but if it’s not working out the cure for cancer,
or how to solve the problems in society, then is it really worth the $10
million annual running costs?
