Customization: Windows vs Linux

Now being human and all I tend to like things to be aesthetically pleasing. The ease of which Linux is customizable compared to when i used windows. For my desktop I am using KDE-3.5.6, which is the latest stable release I think, and for awesome looking themes I goto www.kde-look.org. It's great, got almost everything from there, The theme I'm using for KDE, the Icon set - which linked to Deviantart for the download.

hmm looks good.



I started using Linux back when Red Hat 6.2 came out. which was a while ago now, I had not used linux in any form untill just recently when I downloaded and installed Fedora Core 6. Which I find extremely nice to use and with KDE being what it is now, It makes the experiance all that much better.

Now if i wanted to make windows look good, I had to either find the hard to get .theme files that windows supported natively, or download software that was so bloated and full of crap that it was impossible to do anything (exageration) The whole way Windows does the look and feel is all wrong. It is just not robust enough, also its main problem is that it is not open source, the advantage of open source is that you have millions of people making KDE better. Of course the main devs on KDE say what gets put into the official release and what doesn't. It is still better than having no outside input at all.

Also the way the Linux is modulated makes things a lot smoother. well in my opinion it does.
I would put up a pic of a Windows XP desktop but can be bothered. I could probably get XP to look just like i have Fedora Core 6 and KDE looking, but i would then have to grab a windows version of kicker.

What would be nice is the way windows does things with the way linux is built. Don't see why they can't try they just dont have to release the source code. In my opinion Linux works better, and in most cases looks a hell of a lot better. plus its not bloated with code that ya don't need. well one would hope those whom make linux so great don't leave in old code that doesn't work.

Linux and gaming

Since I am somewhat of a gamer I thought that I should explore the world of gaming on other O/S' rather than just windos. I have found out recently that you are able to install World of Warcraft onto linux using a program called wine. Wine is and interface so that programs that are made to work with MS windows can also work with Linux. which is great for those whom want to use linux but still be able to play those games that are made for windows. this works even better if the games you want to play use openGL for graphics instead of DirectX since openGL is an opensource graphics thing, and DirectX is microsofts graphics thing.

This is also the way the Microsoft are trying to control the O/S industry by controling what graphics platform the game industry use. ATI and nVidia both said that they would make openGL drivers for their gfx cards for Windows VISTA and Microsoft said that they were not allowed. I dont quite understand it myself but it somehow makes game developers think about what graphics platform they use for thier games. i just hope that a lot of them choose to use openGL instead of DirectX for future games. that way they can be either ported to linux by 3rd party developers or done by the companies that made the game themselves.

anywho, in some of the searching i have done with reguards to gaming a linux i have found that there are tonns of games out there, a lot of them are free and offer some limited gaming experiance, then there are the comecially available ones. like Neverwinter Nights, Quake II and III + other games that use the Quake II and III engines. as they are opensource. Most of Id's old game engines are now opensource so people are making them better and also making their own games aswell. which is great. as a lot of them will be free, even if they are not they will be worth purchasing so they can make more good games with great engines.

I just wish that other commercial companies would make their game engines opensource or at least feesable. or at least compatible with openGL.

Well i shall be adding more links to the menu on the right, adding links to games for linux, and other opensource stuff.

On another note. there are lots of people that have problems with companies making money by selling products for Linux, I dont see why they should, they have to make money somehow. even if they made the game engines free and charged for the content. a bit like the www.multiverse.com client.

The Brilliance that is Yum

For those of you who do not use Linux in anyform probably don't know what yum is. like most programs made to run on linux, it is an accronym, which stands for YellowDog updater Modified. I can only guess that it was written for the Linux Distro YellowDog, and it has since been modified to work with other linux distro's one being Fedora Core. which I am currently using.

It is the most innovative and brillant tool that i have ever used. As you can probably guess by its name, that it is an updater, and it has been modified. if you do not have a particular piece of software installed and want it to be so, all you have to do in the terminal as root is type 'yum install package' where package is replaced with the program you want installed. if it so happens that the program you want intsalled needs other programs to work properly then it will also download and install them as well. not only that it will also update any software that needs updated. It does all the work so you dont have to.

it is how i updated Firefox. with the command 'yum update firefox' of course it only updated it within its version. from 1.5.0.7-1 to 1.5.0.10-1 if i want firefox 2.0 installed i would have to tell it to install it. as it is essentially a different program. which i might do soon.

Linux is somewhat of a mystery to most people, and they probably think that it is extremely hard to get their head around, which is not true. if you dont know how to use either system they would both be rather easy to get to know, although Linux does have a steeper learning curve. or does it.

anyway, back on the topic of yum. extremely brilliant, I am currently installing GCC which is a 4.9MB download. yum has to install 4 new things and update a further 4 so i can use GCC, the other 7 programs are needed for GCC to work properly, all 8 downloads total 31meg. just so a 5meg program can be used.

awesome thing is all i had to do was type in 'yum install gcc' and it does. downloads everything needed. yay for innovative people.