Strawberryland Forum

Since I have a 120gb USB2 portable hard disk, I decided to give Linux a try on Greta and Audrey. Here are the results with Ubuntu 13.10:

Greta: Works great and graphics run well. Performance appears to be faster than Windows 7 as it is. However, she has a dual-GPU setup with Nvidia Optimus, and though the current Linux binary driver supports it, it apparently doesn't support any power saving options. Even if her Nvidia GPU is unused, it's never shut off completely, reducing battery life greatly. Also, for some reason, the driver detection utility never offered up the binary drivers to make this work, and apparently, you also have to perform some other advanced tasks to make Optimus work as well.

I still have some further testing to do, but even if I do get great results from gaming and video tasks, Linux will sadly not become a permanent replacement at least until Nvidia makes Optimus work as it should.


Audrey: Strikeout, with the binary ATI drivers at least. The system installed as it should, but when I tried to start it, I was taken into low-graphics mode and I was unable to reconfigure the driver. I tried going into VESA mode, and it couldn't find any displays, according to the error.

Either Audrey's hardware is still too new for driver support, or I need to install using the open source drivers.

Blackberry Bun Wrote:

Stella Grapes Wrote:James, and thus our family, might be invited to move to Switzerland. This would be roughly ten years from now, however.

That's interesting, is it because of some job offer or something else?

It's because of his work. He wouldn't want to stay in Switzerland. I would, maybe. I'm odd.

Stella Grapes Wrote:It's because of his work. He wouldn't want to stay in Switzerland. I would, maybe. I'm odd.

But, well, I hear that Switzerland won't let people become PR of their country. They'd let you move there to work, but the moment you retire they send you back to where you came from. I don't know why they're like that, or if there's any truth to it tho.

Likewise, for me to move to the US, the US immigration wants to see that I have 1.5 million Malaysian ringgits in my pocket before allowing me to. That's the only thing that's stopping me from moving over- I just don't have that much money.

RAMChYLD Wrote:Likewise, for me to move to the US, the US immigration wants to see that I have 1.5 million Malaysian ringgits in my pocket before allowing me to. That's the only thing that's stopping me from moving over- I just don't have that much money.

That's about US$ 500,000 right? Definitely not an easy amount to possess.

American Girl invades Webkinz!!! Sort of.

cpd2009 Wrote:American Girl invades Webkinz!!! Sort of.

Hurr durr lol. :lol:

Turns out the newest versions of iWork and iLife for OSX Mavericks have been simplified to make them identical to their iOS counterparts. This means that all the awesome editing features of iMovie '11 like multitrack editing and advanced video effects are now gone. What remains is a very basic cut-and-paste video editing program similar to Windows Live Movie Maker.

This will probably win over new Mac users, but for an advanced user like myself, it's a step backward. Luckily I have Adobe Premiere for my video editing needs.

That's a drag when developers end up streamlining things too much. I'd say why not add a "noob mode" of sorts while keep the more advanced features intact? Sure enough that would be a win-win proposal, aye?

huckleberrypie Wrote:That's a drag when developers end up streamlining things too much. I'd say why not add a "noob mode" of sorts while keep the more advanced features intact? Sure enough that would be a win-win proposal, aye?

Because Apple is greedy and are trying to push people towards their costly Final Cut Pro >.>

Still tho, there's always Cinelerra or KDenLive or LiVES on Linux...

RAMChYLD Wrote:

huckleberrypie Wrote:That's a drag when developers end up streamlining things too much. I'd say why not add a "noob mode" of sorts while keep the more advanced features intact? Sure enough that would be a win-win proposal, aye?

Because Apple is greedy and are trying to push people towards their costly Final Cut Pro >.>

Still tho, there's always Cinelerra or KDenLive or LiVES on Linux...

I now find Cinelerra very intriguing. Even though I have Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, it's a horribly outdated version to boot with no support for .mp4 container formats. It does work well otherwise, but you need to convert your video to a readable format first like AVI or WMV, and that takes precious time if you are making a video on a whim.

Seeing as how Greta can run Linux from my portable disk with no problems, she would be a perfect candidate to try Cinelerra. I just need to find a distro that supports it. If not, I'll try compiling it myself.

And as for Apple... yeah. Make the free versions so simple that advanced users need to fork over $400 or so for their professional software.