Episode 98: News With A Little Mint 12

News:

  • Mathematical Software (both are Linux versions!) (Scilab) (Octave)
  • Raspberry Pi released to manufacturing, available in weeks. (raspberrypi.org)
  • Tizen project releases code, SDK preview – no longer vaporware. (phoronix.com)
  • Corel introduces AfterShot Pro for Linux, Mac and Windows. (engadget.com)
  • More reasons to dislike Microsoft:
    • Microsoft Lobbying helps to swing UK Government on Open-Standards policy. (computerweekly.com)
    • Microsoft is now being paid royalties on 70% of all US Android smartphone sales. (arstechnica.com)

The Main Topic: Linux Mint 12 Review

Featured Websites:

Tip:

  • On your KDE desktop, you can use krunner for more than just searching or launching applications. It can be used as a calculator, you can run bash commands directly in the krunner window, you can launch web pages and web shortcuts, you can control power management, use it as a unit converter, and other functions. Press alt + F2 to get started.
    (userbase.kde.org)

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Hosts:: James, Rob, Scott, Harrison

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Credits: Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast’s bumpers were provided by Oscar.


14 Replies to “Episode 98: News With A Little Mint 12”

  1. heltonbiker

    I used Octave for a while, until I discovered NumPy, a Python library which does virtually the same. So, I would recommend for anyone interested: FORGET about Octave, it is too slow compared to NumPy. Also, with NumPy you get all the power of Python as a “side effect”. And I am not a programmer! (I work into R&D for a medical software company)

    • Rob

      I’ve heard others say the same thing about NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib as a numerical analysis framework (http://ur1.ca/7l1rm). As an old Python-hacker-wannabe I tend to agree. The power of a generic programming environment is a nice thing to have at your disposal. The Octave/Scilab advantage, if there is one, comes from the domain-specific toolboxes that people have developed (e.g., control systems analysis in my case). I know there are things like python-control (http://ur1.ca/7l1st), but they’re not quite as well developed.

  2. Bananabob

    I also have duplicate downloads of the podcast. I use Bashpodder, and each week since I started getting your podcast about episode 93 I get two mp3s come down. Taking a quick look at the problem I see that you have multiple lines in the feed with .mp3. Since Bashpodder looks for .mp3 and then does a wget using that URL it finds – it will download each one.
    I don’t know why you have two URLS.
    Look for the “enclosure” statement in http://www.mintcast.org/feed/podcast/ it at line 145 & 146.
    Regards
    James

    • Rob

      Good observation! I’ve never looked into the source of the RSS feed to see what was actually there. I have an idea about why we might be getting two MP3 entries. I’ll try something different next week and see if that corrects the problem.

      • Bananabob

        Forgot to say that for one show also Bashpodder downloaded two copies of the .mp3 and two copies of the .ogg
        A little bit of overkill that week!
        James

  3. merelyjim

    Going to give the new MintKDE a try and see what it’s like – I haven’t used KDE since the glory days of Mandrake.

    I’ll also see what Cinnamon is like, as it’s not available on LMDE yet.

    I expect that I’ll go back to Xfce in fairly short order, cursing all things new like some crazy hermit out in the woods, but hey, you have to try…

  4. Brokenpike

    Rob,

    Is the flavor of scilab you are trying to run under wine native to debian? “http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/scilab.html”

    I fiddled with scilab a few year ago and thought it was matlab like but not matlab compatible like octave. In the end I went with scipy/numpy/matplotlib/sympy and ipythons rather than matlab for my research’s numerical needs.

    V/R

    Brokenpike

  5. ibm450

    KDE 4.8 released

    http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/kde-48-released-install-it-in-kubuntu.html

    will be trying KDE out when i fly back home. ive had nothing but over heating & battery life issues with mint 11 & 12. my laptop actually shut down and failed to transfer pictures taken while on holidays (41GB) worth. fired up win7 and transferred all pictures with ease and laptop stayed on a cool 38 degrees. not sure whether its a gnome or kernel issue with over heating but the battery life is horrendous with the newer kernels, even on suspend in mint 11 & 12, the battery indicated 15% battery life over night !(were did the power all go?). on win7 i left it on suspend for FULL 3 days straight and battery level still remained in the high 80% ??
    i starting to believe that (my opinion only) Linux is not designed or suitable for laptops.
    im hoping that the new KDE will prove me wrong. Your thoughts.

  6. Paul

    Just catching up with the podcast and am a few weeks behind.

    You recommended gPodder as an excellent podcatcher. I concur. I have used it for about 6 months now and love it.

    What you didn’t say, however, is that the version that ships with Mint 12 doesn’t work. It crashes after you tell it to grab feeds from a list.

    I hear you can grab the latest version from their site, but I have as yet failed to get it working.

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