Ergonomics and Gnome Software

Ergonomics is about the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize overall interaction. In short, ergonomics is about making things comfortable and efficient to work with. This also applies to software design and development, or at least it should.

Inspecting the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD

Following a recent request I downloaded the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD for a test drive. I tried Gentoo many years ago but gave up after a few hours due to the time involved, and my knowledge back then was a lot more rudimentary than today. Gentoo is a source distribution that is supposed to be configured and compiled from stage 2 or stage 3 tarballs, although images are available that allow you to cheat and skip the early part of kernel compilation etc. via minimal install images.

A Review of Vinux - Linux for the Visually Impaired

Vinux is a specialist distribution remastered from a Ubuntu base and optimized specifically with visually impaired users in mind. Some others also come with a screen reader and other accessibility options by default, for example in the login screen, but these are never turned on from the start and voice recognition software is rarely if ever present. [Also see Vinux 3 install guide].

Trisquel GNU/Linux - Free Software and Gorgeous

Welcome to Trisquel GNU/Linux! I've been wanting to write this for a long time, because trying this distribution really feels inviting. Trisquel GNU/Linux is as you can see by the naming convention one of the few distributions fully endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, and in return they're doing a lot to promote the FSF and their principles on their website. If you're yawning already, hold steady and read on, because Trisquel looks sharp and has something to offer.

Quick Look at Sabayon 6 Continued (KDE)

To give Sabayon a fair shake and with the aim of comparing it to recent releases of other KDE  distributions I also downloaded the amd64 image for the KDE 4 edition, which comes in at a hefty 2.13 GB, with a few surprising results (torrent here). First of all, boot options, boot loader background and splash, artwork and overall style and feel is very similar to the GNOME edition which makes for a good coherent theme across all spins.

Quick Look at Sabayon 6 (GNOME)

Earlier this year we had a poll regarding which distributions to review, and Sabayon received enough interest so here we are. Besides, Sabayon Linux is always fun to try, to see which start up music and themes they come up with this time, and to play with the media center included. I also find the dark blue themes employed in recent versions quite appealing.

Did GNOME Shell Miss the Mark?

Having played with a couple of tablets over the last week it occurred to me that these are the sort of devices the GNOME 3 Shell is said to be intended to run on, a reasonable assumption when looking at the design. However, the current breed of tablets PC's come with their own interfaces already, and they seem rather streamlined and efficient at what they're doing. Android tablets, HP webOS, the Blackberry Playbook and of course the iPad all have rather good interfaces in my view that are more than up to the job they're intended for, and probably superior to the Shell because they have been designed with just that one purpose in mind.

GNOME 3: Bearable with GNOME Shell Frippery

A while ago I read about this project, a small collection of scripts with the aim at creating a more GNOME 2 like user experience with the name of GNOME Shell frippery, so I had to try it out on my experimental install and took a few more screenshots to illustrate the effect. I'm also suspecting that many users are still unaware of it.

GNOME Shell Impressions - Trying GNOME 3 on Arch Linux

Another article about the GNOME Shell. Nothing really to see here, it's just opinion, and yours is as good as mine. If you are bored however, read on.

Recent trials with GNOME 3 using the Fedora Live CD's did not go so well. They always dumped me into fallback mode which is, despite some claiming it to be a solution for GNOME 2 lovers, nowhere near good enough as a tide me over, and it looked unfinished.