Archive for September, 2009

Linux Getting Some Upgrade Love

With Microsoft and Apple both making releases this fall, I sometimes have felt like I need to comfort my Linux desktop that it’s not getting huge upgrades at once after reading tech news. Both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 offer some usability improvements over the predecessors as well as some speed improvements. However, Linux doesn’t have to feel unloved this fall anymore. The new Linux kernel, version 2.6.31, is promising some serious speed increases, specifically for the desktop.

The speed improvements will be much more noticeable on a desktop strapped for memory as it comes from better memory management that reduces the number of reads from disk to memory. The benchmarks also show a dramatic reduction in the number of major faults on file servers as well.

Other improvements to the release include ATI graphics card support improvements, USB 3.0 support and an improved Firewire driver.

I’m glad that I’m finally able to read software release news other than for Microsoft and Apple for a change.. :)

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Sep 6th, 2009

The $10 Free App

I don’t think it’s fair to talk about my Snow Leopard experience this weekend without talking about the hosing I took from the iTunes App Store this weekend. A coworker of mine and Digg both told me about the new Facebook app for the iPhone. My wife uses Facebook incessantly and I thought that she would be excited about it, but she never said a word. When I asked her about it she checked for updates on her iPod Touch and it said there were none.

Not one to give up easily, I checked the article that was posted on Digg and found out that others had had problems with their devices finding the update and the recommendation was to remove and reinstall to get the new version. So.. we quickly removed the old Facebook app and went to install the new one. Sadly, we were disappointed (more like she was mad and I was in trouble..) to find out that it required the iPhone 3.0 upgrade (her iPod was a gen 2 without the upgrade). Since the iTunes App Store is so closed and wont’ allow to get the older version, Facebook 3.0 did end up being the $10 free app for us..

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Sep 1st, 2009

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