For those using Linux, I recommend the following multimedia applications:
Great article about Apple's iChat, written by the Gabber maintainer. I haven't gotten much time with Jaguar (and therefore iChat), but I've liked it so far.
Well, I'm back where I started - using Red Hat 7.3. Gentoo was nice, but Galeon was very unstable (because Gentoo uses gcc 3.2, and Galeon doesn't like gcc 3.2).
Also, I found an interesting article about Mac OS X from a Linux zealot's perspective, in response to Tim O'Reilly's switcher stories. I have to say - the author of the Freshmeat editorial, J. Paul Reed, is brutally uninformed about Mac OS X.
Red Hat recently released Psyche (version 8.0) of their Linux-based operating system. It's clear to me that Red Hat is taking very logical steps toward bringing Linux to the desktop. I applaud Red Hat's numerous efforts to improve the quality of Linux as a desktop operating system, including their new Bluecurve (Flash required) desktop theme.
I've always loved Red Hat because they setup the stuff that I don't want to bother with, so I was really excited when I saw that Xft was installed along with the FreeType libraries to enable anti-aliased fonts in many applications (Mozilla and Galeon being notable exceptions; was it a licensing issue with the infamous Web Fonts?).
It's gotten to the point where Red Hat's default setup is too ingrained in the user environment for me. For example, the XMMS default skin is effectively inaccessible through the skin browser (it doesn't remain chosen after restarting XMMS). To get around this, I had to move /usr/share/xmms/Skins/Bluecurve-xmms.zip out of the way (e.g. to /usr/share/xmms/Skins/was-Bluecurve-xmms.zip).
I might install version 8.1 or 8.2 on my computer, maybe even on my family's computer, but I can't run Psyche. Sorry, Red Hat:
(02:15:33) Joe: rh8 is the windows of linux
(02:15:36) Daniel: to get the xmms default skin back, i had to move the redhat skin out of the way
(02:15:37) Joe: nifty
(02:15:44) Joe: wow
(02:15:45) Joe: thats gay
(02:15:54) Daniel: so now i'm running a broken as ass install of windowmaker
(02:15:57) Daniel: but yeah
(02:16:03) Daniel: rh is the windoze of linux
(02:16:05) Daniel: they finally did it
(02:16:12) Joe: you knew it was coming
(02:16:23) Daniel: yeah, i was hoping it would be better than windows
(02:16:24) Daniel: but it's not
Oh, and what's up with XMMS skipping while playing MP3s? XMMS has never skipped while playing MP3s, even on my 266-MHz AMD K6 with 32 MB of RAM. Now, on my Athlon XP 2000+ with 512 MB of RAM, it skips.
Who's up for a little Gentoo?
