Finally got my turn to try out Jolicloud, a “cool new OS for your netbook“. I learned about it several weeks ago and it took quite a while for me to get a invite.

First off, I tried the live boot. I selected my native language etc. and while it was  booting, I stepped away for a few. Upon my return I glanced on the screen and much to my surprise, it seemed as if the netbook just loaded my regular system, Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

No – wait. It was the new OS, but with only subtle differences separating the initial state from its parent OS. A quick glance trough the installed applications revealed only “facebook” to be added initially – a shortcut to a prism application.

Ok, time to try out the jolicloud applications. When I logged into the application with my user name -  picked when I got the invite, I choose “MSI WIND 100″ as my notebook, as Medion Akoya e1210 was not on the list but afaik is just a re-brand of a WIND anyway.

The jolicloud application itself, as most of the applications it serves, is built upon Mozilla Prism. A “web OS” built upon the web itself – perfectly integrated in the social media system.
It synchronizes itself into your jolicloud profile – so couple that with a Dropbox and you have a notebook to carry around without having to think about the consequences of it being ( stolen or in any other way ) unrecoverable beyond losing a piece of hardware. No data or settings would be lost – or be easy to steal with some encryption.

One click is all it takes to install any application – native or web/prism. With my favorites like Google’s Picasa, Skype, Dropbox, Last.fm and Google Chrome already there – not to mention most of the biggest social media sites and web applications there as prism apps. Also there some Game and Education titles I have yet to see anywhere else. How to install the from the regular ubuntu stream – or adding more sources – is a mystery because no package manager is present. Besides that, system and application upgrades are fast – one click – operations.

Other changes might not be as apparent to the average user, but the kernel itself was – as I learned from one of the developers in #jolicloud – optimized for this specific use. Why this was needed and what this brings to the end user is – to me – unclear.

All in all, I can see a lot of this changes being up-streamed into Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The applications selection ( my personal favorite in jolicloud ) is something that could do Ubuntu (or Linux in general) a lot of good. Installing applications is easy in the Linux world but the hard part is actually finding a application to install. Did you know there are 5 excellent - insert appication type – to be installed on your system via the install system, but most actually just stick with the one that is already there and never even think there might be something out there that would suit them better ?

If you want to try it out yourself, you have to register for a invitation.

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Image via CrunchBase

Spore, the multi-genre “massively single-player online game” by Maxis was succesfully tested on Linux trough WINE. The actual video after the jump.

Both the PC and Mac versions of the game will feature the full experience of cell through to space with editors for designing creatures, buildings, and vehicles. Spore for the Mac will be made possible through TransGaming‘s Cider Portability Engine, with experience gained from the past EA Mac titles.

Also, a side affect of the Cider port, its cousin project WINE has all the benefits. That also brings up the question why didn’t Maxis go and release the title under Linux.   

Since I am a big fan of the Half-Life series, I went and picked up Half-Life 1 Anthology ( Team Fortress Classic, Half-Life: Opposing Force, Half-Life, Half-Life: Blue Shift ) yesterday to play the original just like I did about 8 years ago.  Or so I thought.

My Inspiron 1525 is where I installed the game. A quite modern piece of equipment, thus more than capable of running HL1. But alas, under Vista, the resolution is limited to only 1024*768 (or smaller.) The game doesn’t go into fullscreen and it runs terribly slow. Changing settings is futile.

But I didn’t give up so fast. I was quick to boot my workstation and just missing the boot screen to go into WinXP, I decided to try my luck under my favorite OS openSUSE GNU/Linux. So the first thing to do was to install Steam onto wine: wine msiexec /i SteamInstall.msi etc.. then installing HL1 trough steam. Steam itself is slow on my P4 1.6GHz 512mb GF2MX, but it gets the job done.

I have to note how little trouble it was to get HL1 running under Wine. Besides the .msi installer trick I had to once again google to figure out, it was straightfoward.

Running HL1: Right away it went into full screen mode and unlike under Vista, it let me set resolutions to match my hardware (22′). Speed was no issue here.

Just goes to show the level of quality and dedication in Wine. Im off to play some HL =D

Features:

• No Mysql needed,
• Admin page included but limited to one user/password;Adding, deleting files; adding folders,
• Lightbox,
• Automagic thumbnailing,
• You can also turn off administration and use FTP to upload images, once pages with new images are accessed, thumbnails will be created.

Requirements:

• safemode off
• apache server with php > 4*
• a little knowledge editing scripts

Setup:

1. edit to suit needs
2. upload
3. make folder with images

/*    RawGallery 1.0 GNU/GPL - RawDev.net
//        Derived from phAlbum (c) phphq.Net
//===========================================================
Customised 09 Aug 07 Marko Zabreznik hekos (a) rawdev.net
- Added PHP Sessions
- Thumbnails in subfolder
- Implemented relative resizeing for thumbnails
- Login now linked instead of login box on every page
- Logout implemented
- Embeded images, favicon and css into script
- Made image display name a link
- Rebuilt navigation
- XHTML validated
- Rearanged Settings
- Fixed bugs
- Made PHP 5.2.2 strict compatible
//===========================================================

This script is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Folder Images were taken from KDE

//=========================================================*/

Download: link.

Top of the list is a neat perception tool, you can see its results in the top right of this web page’s design. The new, and long awaited bucket fill works just like any other bucket tool you might have used in any other program, but its advanced filling options might just give it the edge.

The tweak tool gives you a quick way to morph, shrink/grow attract/repel shaped without worrying about nodes.

The usual horizontal and vertical guidelines have become angled at 0/90 degrees. To change to a different angle, just double-click the guideline you want to change and enter the values.

Skeletal brushes are now possible with the new path on part effect. Anyone for engraving ?

Also, new built in stroke patterns and a interface to OpenClipArt.org.