Yes folks I have done it again, another operating system on my desktop. I removed SuSE 9.3 after the various issues I had with it, namely (and to recap) the fact that I could not find the correct way to install any kind of video or audio codec.

Well, I had SuSE on my machine for about a few weeks and after utilising all of my ADSL bandwidth, managed to get it as up to date as possible. I even ventured onto the 64bit version of the operating system, but alas, it was not to be. After initially raving about the perceived speed gains of using a 64bit operating system, I found that there was not really that much difference between SuSE 9.3 32bit and 64bit.

Not to mention that I could not find any suitable apps, to play movies or listen to music, that was 64bit compliant! Even windows XP 64bit is not as supported as I thought it was going to be and so we wait for the market and developers to catch up to us.

Well, back to the story, I decided to wipe Suse and put gentoo on my machine. I was warned by my friends that I was going to spend a lot of time compiling this OS and any applications that I wanted to install.

Well, they where not kidding, there is NO graphical install at all and you need to follow the handbook very carefully and TAKE NO SHORTCUTS!! now you show me someone that does NOT take any shortcuts and I’ll eat my shorts (and I fill a lot of shorts So, I called int eh expert to do my install, thinking it would take like an hour maybe or at the msot double the install time of Windows (2 hours). Well, we took about 5 or so hours with loads of time waiting around (I rode my brothers bike for a lot as well – which was cool) for the system to compile “stuff” – which was fast I was told, but not thaaat fast

Well, when it was all done, I had a choice of KDE or Gnome, so I chose KDE as it looked awesome under Suse. Well, I downloaded everything I needed to for the compile and then the compile ran, after an hour I thought – hmmm, goign to take some time. Four hours later, I had no diea what the progress was of the compile and then finally I went to bed and that was like 7 or so hours after I started the compile and it was still compiling!!

I then looked at KDE and thought – it doesn’t look as good as the one on Suse did, so I thought, let me try Gnome and see what that looks like – but there was no way in hell I was going to wait about 10 hours for it to compile – bugger that!

I think that gentoo is a kickass distro, but you need to be a serious Linux junkie with the passion to fiddle with everything in order to get it working like you want it to – and I meen EXACTLY like you want it to – as Gentoo offers that to the dedicated user.

Not for me, I’m a Windows kiddie and I like it that way – but I want to see what this Linux desktop is about and whether its a viable alternative. I firmly believe that Unix will dominate the desktop, but I think that domination will come from Apple with the MacOs X operating system.

I heard that there is a petition goign around that wants MacOSX on Intel:

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2000/09/20000920121128.shtml
http://www.macopz.com/columns/jt/thinkswitch.html

Som, its back to Ubuntu with Gnome for me!

NASA’s World Wind is an amazing little program. OK, so it’s not little, weighing in at over 170Mb, but if you have any kind of broadband internet connection, get this now… (Also of note is that to appreciate the full effect of this app, you really should have a reasonable graphics card, anything from a Geforce 2 Ultra up should suffice.)

You can find it at http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

That’s what it says on their website. It’s true! You can rotate, tilt, and zoom around the earth, viewing the terrain as if you are right there… I managed to zoom in so far into my neighbourhood, that I managed to see my street! It has up-to-date placenames, country borders, etc.

No words can explain the wonderous visuals you can see with this program. If you have sufficient bandwidth available, the app will download updated lists of their “Visualisation Studio”, which enables the app to animate some really awesome visuals. (Unfortunately, stuck on a 56k dialup makes for rather slow updates…) Amongst the animations include atmospheric effects, sun-earth interactions, etc.

It is only available for Windows, and as of this writing they just released version 1.3.1.

OK, so why is this newsworthy to even mention? Well, other than the fact that this is an amazing tool to play with, it’s absolutely free, and it is part of NASA’s Open Source Software program!

Don’t take my word for it, go download it, and see for yourself.

-Aubrey

Update 2005-10-27: There’s a new version of Nasa’s World Wind V1.3.3.1 for download. A couple of bugfix, a bunch of new features. Go download it now.