Peng’s links for Thursday, 12 February

It took a bit longer to get this post written, but while the post is longer than I wanted it to be I have some links I just saw this morning so you only need to read one post to get them all.

• Russell John: UNIX Time 1,234,5667,890! I meant to blog this a lot sooner, but this weekend will see the above number as the total number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970 UTC/GMT. Russell has more info and a simple way to find out when that milestone will be reached in your area. (For those in in the Eastern time zone it will be tomorrow night at around 6:30 pm. Read Russell’s post if you want the exact time.)
• Thomas Thurman: More on themes, and why Human’s slow. In my last links post I had a link to a post by Thomas about why the Human theme (Ubuntu’s default theme) takes so long to draw theme elements. Thomas has a followup with some info that themers should make sure you read.
• Jun Auza: Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” Wallpapers. Jun has some user-created wallpapers for the next version of Ubuntu. I’m not thrilled with all of them but I like yoyovlt’s wallpapers, although I’m not 100% in love with either of them. I do love checking out the user-created materials for new versions of Ubuntu.
• Aaron Toponce: Ubuntu Codenames. Aaron makes an important point about our love of referring to versions of Ubuntu by their nicknames (Hardy, Intrepid, etc.). After reading it you’ll understand why I have started referring to versions of Ubuntu by their version numbers (8.04.2. 8.10, etc.). Please remember that the numbers after the decimal point are always two digits, and there is no such creature as Ubuntu 8.1. Ever.
• Justin Scott: Better Safe than Sorry. Justin found two posts from the developer of Adblock Plus about extensions development. Whether you create extensions for Firefox or not they’re definitely worth reading.
• Mark Lee: Awn/Awn Extras 0.3.2 Released! There’s a new version of Avant Window Navigator and Mark has screenshots and the rather large list of changes to the new version, as well as a link to the best location for Ubuntu users to get the updates. The AWN devs are working with other Linux distros to get their packages updated as well. After using testing packages for some time I have to say that AWN is just getting better with every release. Of course you need some sort of compositor to run AWN, but if you can’t run Compiz for some reason you should check out xcompmgr. That’s how I ran AWN while I was waiting for updated Nvidia drivers after I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10.
• Dion Almaer: Will the real WebKit please standup. It turns out that there doesn’t seem to be a single definitive WebKit (which was news to me) and that means that something built for WebKit doesn’t necessarily mean it will run on everything that runs WebKit. Just the thought of it makes my head hurt and makes me love standards even more.
• Stefano Forenza: Ubuntu saw from the eyes of a Mac user. Stefano found an article from November (which I may have linked to before, now that I think of it) that gets into some pretty nice detailed comparisons between OSX apps and Ubuntu apps. The author knows about Mac4Lin, although it doesn’t look like they used it.
• Nick Ali: Ubuntu Training in the US. You can now take training courses on Ubuntu within the United States. I see this as only helping the spread of our favorite GNU/Linux distro, and GNU/Linux in general.
• Miguel de Icaza: Moonlight 1.0 goes live. Miguel has info on the official release of Moonlight 1.0 (which I had already blogged back in December) as well as info on how Moonlight 2 is coming along. Also check out the interview with Miguel over at DesktopLinux.com.
• Mackenzie Morgan: Malware Terminology: Trojans, Worms & Viruses. Someone recently wrote an article on writing a virus that will effect Linux (thanks, knuclehead) but Mackenzie points out that his terminology is wrong. She also has a nice clarification of the three terms in her title.
• Aaron Bockover: Announcing Moonshine, the project never formerly known as Pornilus. Moonshine, a project based on Moonlight, makes it easier for GNU/Linux users to enjoy Silverlight content without having to deal with codec hassles. A pretty nice project, although it’s Firefox-specific at this point. Hopefully that will change for users of Epiphany and Opera on Linux.
• Ingo Juergensmann: Automatically restore files from lost+found. Ingo wrote a couple of scripts for getting files that found their way into your lost+found folder.
• LinuxDevices.com: Real-time Linux gains accelerated graphics. The Open Source Automation Development Lab has come up with a way to get even accelerated graphics with even lower latency in the Linux 2.6.26 kernel.

Whew! I just did once more check through my RSS feeds and didn’t see anything more to pass along at this point. It’s a good thing, too, because I need to update some screenshots for Mac4Lin to reflect some changes in version RC2 (an internal release, so it’s not available to our users and testing community) so we can get a smidge closer to releasing version 1.0. It’s taking a while to get Mac4Lin 1.0 out, but I think you will all find it worth the wait.

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