Posts Tagged Ubuntu
Identi.ca
I recently signed up to Identi.ca (around Monday evening GMT).
Basically it’s like Twitter but it’s Open-Source, and has a large following from the Ubuntu community, a lot of the members from the Forums are on there too 
As well as being open-source, it supports OpenID which means you can use 1 login across multiple websites (read the link for more info).
In all I actually prefer it to Twitter (I deleted my Twitter account). You can find me at http://identi.ca/Joeb454
Qosmio Review: Part 3c
HD DVD Playback
As I mentioned in part 1 of this review, the Qosmio has a HD DVD-R Drive 
Now as I have a few HD-DVD’s, I figured I would try this out. Especially given that it also sports a Full 1080p HD Screen!
So I popped in the HD DVD (The Matrix if you must know) and the HD DVD player launched. I have to admit, this slowed the system down a little, and changed the theme to Windows Vista basic, however I expected this, as playing HD content requires a lot of processing power.
I should also mention that if I paused the movie, and minimised the player window, I was able to do other things (i.e. yesterday I was torrenting the new Ubuntu 8.04 release all day).
So, overall, combined with the killer audio system, the HD DVD playback was brilliant, the images were sharp, black’s were very dark etc. I think the sharpness of the image was helped a little by the small 17″ screen – It’s small when you consider I watch HD movies on a 37″ screen usually 
– however I can’t really say much more than this, other than the playback was flawless So I’ve attached some screenshots, though I don’t know how good the image quality will be, I know it won’t do justice to the HD images
Qosmio Review: Part 3b
Ubuntu Linux
Yes that’s right, I managed to get Ubuntu installed on this machine. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) as it was at the Release Candidate (RC) stage when I tried it.
It all runs perfectly smoothly. I had to change the boot options on the installation CD, due to the Nvidia graphics card, which needed a proprietary driver. This was the most painful part of the installation, as on a screen with a native resolution of 1920×1200, I had to run at 800×600 :’(
After that it was all smooth sailing, I compiled a few apps, and used it as I would my own. Everything worked just fine, I was impressed that the volume control (the disc “thing” on the left of the keyboard) even worked! Sadly the touch buttons didn’t work, but I expected this, as I know they’re controlled by software and not hardware.
I didn’t manage to get the fingerpint reader to work either, which I wasn’t too fussed about, but it would’ve been nice. Overall I was impressed with the Linux experience I had with the Qosmio. The battery life didn’t differ from Windows, though it doesn’t on my own laptop either.
So overall, the Qosmio does actually work pretty well with Ubuntu in my experience, I wasn’t expecting much because Toshiba laptop can be notoriously difficult to get working properly (just read through some of the threads in the UbuntuForums ).
There are also some pictures of the qosmio running Ubuntu if you would like to take a look :
Ultimate & Elite
I upgraded my Windows Vista install last night, I went from Home Premium to Ultimate (I have a cool DreamScene background now ) I’ll have to reinstall GRUB at some point, because the upgrade means I can’t boot into Ubuntu…though this is a good thing at the minute, because it means I can’t fiddle with it (I always end up doing something like that :p)
Also I think I’ll be buying an Xbox 360 Elite sometime in the next 3-5 weeks my brother want’s his own Xbox 360, so I figured I might buy an Elite (bigger hard drive + HDMI = happy Joe ) But I’m definitely waiting a little while, because just today, Microsoft announced a price drop in the Europe & UK Xbox 360 SKU’s so that’s good news for me!
UPDATE: I just noticed that when I have DreamScene running, if I unplug the laptop from charge, it pauses the video to conserve battery life! I think that’s a clever little feature Especially because the background still looks good when paused.
