István's blog

Browser Comparision with Acid Test 3

2010-12-30T13:51:00.003+02:00

Windows 7, 64 bit

Updated! Pidgin 2.7.4 for Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS (Lucid Lynx) and for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)

2010-10-30T15:16:00.031+03:00

If you are in a hurry, and don't want to wait for the latest version (2.7.4) to be built, download the file, that matches your Ubuntu version. The update contains important security fixes and several bug fixes (ex: fix for the file transfer issue for yahoo). Be sure to uninstall any pidgin related stuff before installing my package (libpurple, pidgin, etc.), and don't update (downgrade) it until the latest version is built!

Update: both i386 and amd64 versions!

Downloads:
lucid x64
lucid x86
maverick x64
maverick x86

Related link: https://launchpad.net/~pidgin-developers/+archive/ppa/

Internet Explorer 9

2010-10-17T08:19:00.009+03:00

The guys at Microsoft have released a beta version of the new Internet Explorer 9, which will include a lot of performance related issue upgrades, and native support for HTML5, and beside this a lot of new features. They have realeased first a platform preview, and now the beta has arrived. The only dissapointing thing is that Windows XP users will have to forget about the new Internet Explorer. The minimum system requirements are Windows Vista or Windows 7. The platform preview gives you a preview version, without any other functionalities, but the beta version is a fully functional browser. The only thing to mention here is if you install it, it will uninstall IE8 first, so the two versions does not run beside eachother, but you can uninstall it any time you want to, and you will get back your old IE8. The Acid3 test looks promising too (according to my testings), 95% of 100%, it is one percent ahead of Firefox, but still Opera, and Google Chrome does better scores (100 out of 100)

More info and downloads here

Xmarks: dead or alive?

2010-10-16T21:09:00.018+03:00

Seems that the famous bookmark synchronizing service, "has risen from it's early ashes". Formerly known FoxMarks, is an addon/plugin or whatever you would like to call it, with the capability of synchronizing not only your bookmarks, but your passwords and open tabs too, between different browsers, and different platforms. So it's a great little thing, but sadly they (the developers) have decided that they shut down their service till the end of the year, because the service has growned way too large, to handle such number of users, and to deal with the daily costs of maintaining, developing and keeping it running. But the power is in our (the users) hands, so we kept this service alive with spreading the word, and Xmarks got offers from companies who would like to buy this service. So thankfully there is hope

For more info go to Xmarks blog

Utorrent for linux

2010-09-04T14:18:00.013+03:00

Finally, linux users can enjoy all the stuff that is good in utorrent. An alpha version has been released (just a server version with a WebUI), which runs native on linux without wine.
You can download it here: http://www.utorrent.com/downloads/linux

A little help with the WebUI: after starting the utorrent binary in a terminal, just go to http://localhost:8080/gui and you will see the utorrent WebUI with all it's glory

Hurry up NVidia, we are waiting for you!

2010-07-17T03:29:00.003+03:00

OpenSuSE 11.3 has just been released, and after about a half an hour testing i would say it works quite well. I've experienced some icon artifact bugs, in KDE 4, and adding repositories under GNOME was kinda slow (maybe my connection was the problem, or maybe the servers have had some serious loads). All is fine, except... NVidia... i read that the nvidia binary package installation is a pain in the ass, and there are no drivers in the repositories yet, so i won't bother with that for now. So i have to be patient :)

About "www." ...

2010-03-07T03:51:00.003+02:00

I have saw so many people typing www. in front of an internet address, and i wondered why they do it. And I realized that they are used to do this, because they don't know how the internet works. www is an abbreviation for World Wide Web, and every site that you are interested in, is ON the world wide web, so why separate these sites by adding a www to it? The www part is a subdomain, and it's kinda useless in my opinion

A working streaming server on Linux?

2010-02-02T20:56:00.006+02:00

Linux is kinda cool and stuff, but... a thing that I really missed, is an audio streaming client/server solution that works.
I searched a lot and tried several things, but I haven't found any impressive things that I would liked to use. And some days ago I thought I give it another try, and installed icecast, and xmms2.
First time I had problems with xmms2 because I couldn't load all the tracks to the playlist, but I compiled xmms2 from source, and it finally works (have to install all the plugins to be sure every track loads).
What you need to do to get a similar client/server to work?
Well first of all install icecast and xmms2, and then edit the icecast configuration file (in my case /etc/icecast.xml).
Set a password and a mount point (if the mount point is not specified icecast uses the default mount point "/stream").
After that search through xmms2 config to find which one relates to ice plugin. To do that type xmms2 config_list | grep ices . Usually you only have to set the mount point and the password. Then set your xmms2 default output to ices, type xmms2 config output.plugin = ices.
And there you go, you have a working server.

Stuck at unwanted resolutions or refresh rates? Here's the solution!

2009-06-25T22:32:00.011+03:00

I have an Asus VW202SR monitor that supports a maximum resolution of 1680x1050 at 75Hz, but some operating systems (like Windows Vista and Windows 7) base strictly on EDID information wich is stored in the monitor's "memory".
So when I installed yesterday Windows 7 I was unable to set my refresh rate above 60 Hz (using nvidia control panel wich gave me the following error: "custom mode test failed").
So after a lot of searching on Google I found the solution for my problem: make my own monitor driver that will override the EDID information that is stored in my monitor (my monitor does not have an official driver, so in windows it is installed as a plug and play monitor).

But beware, only do this if you are sure your monitor supports the required mode(s)! Else you may cause serious damage in your hardware!
So what you need to do is download the following programs:
Phoenix
moninfo

Unzip and run Phoenix, click on the registry icon in the toolbar, select your display and then click "Extract EDID". For editing click on the pencil button in the toolbar. Go to the standart timing tab, select the desired one (you can only find 4 ID-s so to switch to the others select the following group (5-8) from the bottom. Edit your desired resolution and refresh rate, and when you are done, save it
(File->Save EDID As...)
Install moninfo, open your DAT file that you have previously saved, select "Create INF" from the File menu. After the INF file is created you only have to install it the following way:

Go to computer management (right click the my computer icon, and from the list select Manage, and when the window opens select Device manager) Select your monitor from the list, right click it, go to properties, go to the driver tab and select update driver. Use the "Have disk" method to browse to your INF file. Install it, reboot, and there you go!

Source How to Force DVI or HDMI Resolutions and Refresh Rates in Windows 7

Compiz fusion 0.7.8 on Suse 11.1

2009-03-20T08:49:00.016+02:00

SuSE 11.1 it's quite a good distro, I switched from Ubuntu 8.10 to SuSE, because Ubuntu had some bugs which annoyed me. One of these things were the screen redraw with compiz using Nvidia drivers. I thought that i messed things up in Ubuntu and that's why it doesn't work. But as I found out later, the same issue exists in other distros too. So I googled around for a bit and find out that there is a solution for my problem. There is a workaround patch, which you have to compile yourself, if you are not using the most recent version of compiz (and if you didn't add any other repositories, beside the 3-4 standard community repositories (not the build ones) the chance for compiz not being recent is high)
If you are issuing the same problem you can find the solution here.

So I configured my system just the way i like it :)
If you wanna check it out here's my video on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWYRibVIDdU

As soon as compiz 0.8.2 is available for Gnome I will test it and get back to you with the results ;)

Say goodbye to Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista!

2008-10-27T03:18:00.006+02:00

Yahoo announced that they will discontinue the development for Yahoo Messenger for Vista, and encourage users to use the new Yahoo Messenger 9 instead of the messenger made especially for vista users. The real cause of this act is unknown.
More info here

For those of you who have desperately searched the web for the last released yahoo messenger version for windows vista, here's a link from where you can download

Nvidia Graphics Driver install on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-10-21T02:54:00.015+03:00

Today someone mentioned me that he installed Ubuntu and he didn't get the nvidia driver to work. I said to him to look on google first, because google has all the answers... I did the same but all I got is too complicated stuff like: download this, download that, then switch runlevels, and stuff like this...
If Ubuntu is for human beings then how come a simple driver install become so complicated??
Back then when I installed Ubuntu for the first time I've done it within a few seconds, and I didn't googled for it. So I want to share with you this method that may not be the first on google's search results but if you tried all those things and you reached my site hope that this will resolve your problems ;)

First of all pop-up your Applications menu, and choose the Add/Remove item.
When the Add/Remove window appears type into the search box nvidia
Select nvidia driver and nvidia settings, and then push apply. Wait for the install to complete it's task then
open up a terminal and write sudo nvidia-xconfig. Enter your password and press enter. Some information will appear telling you that your old xorg.conf is backed up.
Log out, and if you see the Nvidia logo, then all went OK. Log in and enjoy!

Easy to use screenshot server

2008-10-15T15:25:00.013+03:00

If you have ever been helping to your friends configure things out on their computer, or just wanted to share some things that takes too long to explain, then you know how useful a screenshot is. And if you're the kind of person who likes to explain things step by step, you have to make a few screenshots till you get all the steps you wanted. You have to save them to your computer, zip it or send it one by one to others, in other words it's time consuming.

Just think about that you wouldn't have to do all this, and still send screenshots to others.

It is possible with a useful little program called Itaka

It is a screenshot server wich runs on your computer like a webserver, except this one only sends images, instead of webpages. Easy to install/configure, has a nice graphical user interface (GUI), and consumes minimal amount of resources, and it's available for Windows, and for Linux operating systems (deb/rpm)

Last.FM the social music revolution

2008-10-11T07:48:00.008+03:00

One of my addictions is music. If I have the opportunity I listen to music all day long. I love to share my favourite tracks with others, and I'm extremely happy if someone has the same taste of music as I do. So I'm curiousely looking for those with whom I share the same taste, and the best way of doing this, is by subscribing to one of those social networking sites that links people by their music taste. If you shouldn't guessed it by now, I tell you... the site what I'm talking about is last.fm.

What is so great about this site?

Well in first place, you can find people who loves the same tunes like you, share music between eachother, compare your music compatibility with others, get recomendations based on your music taste, download free tracks, make new friends etc.

Ok I like how this sound... so what do I have to do?

Register a user and enjoy your music the way you should have done it before ;)

You may ask: "How does the site know what am I listening to?"

Well you can download last.fm's own music player wich has all the options that last.fm offers (listen to your radio, listen to recommendations etc.) or you can download a plugin for your favourite music player (like winamp).

From where to download plugins for my player?

Winamp - here
Other players (Xmms, Audacious, Amarok, etc.) - here

Yahoo final?

2008-10-11T03:03:00.009+03:00

Today I've discovered a new yahoo mobile website (maybe it's new just for me?).
It's a "beta" mobile homepage (http://beta.m.yahoo.com/)...
That was the point when I started wondering if Yahoo will ever get "final"? I mean take a look at what services/applications yahoo offers: Yahoo mail beta ; Yahoo messenger 9 beta ; Yahoo messenger for Vista (I guess it is a beta release, one thing is for sure: it's not final!) ; Yahoo groups beta, Yahoo mobile homepage beta, and there may be others too which I don't know.
The question is: these things are really beta or it just sounds cool to be beta?
If they are beta then when will the final version appear? ;)

Recomended YouTube video

2008-09-24T00:11:00.007+03:00

One of my videos on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yyr9gIOtoQ

If you have a user please leave a comment or rate it ;) and ofcourse check out my other videos too :)

Linux filesystem in windows

2008-09-22T02:23:00.009+03:00

I've used vista and linux together for a while and I wondered how can I make the linux partition visible in windows. I googled around a little bit and I found the so called "Ext2 Installable File System For Windows". I installed it and it is working fine, but one thing annoyed me: Windows makes a folder on every drive for recycle bin... it looked kinda stupid in the linux root directory, so i deleted it manually. But after a boot in windows and reboot in linux the folder was there again. So I wrote a script wich automatically removes the recycle bin folder from the root directory at system startup. This works only if the folder is empty (it has no deleted items)
The file that i've edited to make this script working on Ubuntu 8.04 was /etc/rc.local , but it can be added in other distros too

View the scrip here

What is this thing called Linux?? -- Desktop effects

2008-09-21T04:55:00.012+03:00

A screenshot of what a linux operating system is graphically capable of. Of course this is just one of many desktop effects that can be used on a similar system (with much lower resource consumption than windows vista, and without the use of the newest hardware available on the market). It beats vista not only on resource consumption but on stability (you don't even have to reboot, because not even long uptime won't slow the system down, and of course your system is virus safe without any kind of antivirus) and costumizability. And what's the best part? It's FREE! A few reasons why you should try/use it :)

Download here
More info here