Memory Requirements

Mostly kicked off by this post (http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/ubuntus-minimum-requirements/)

OS	Required / Realistic
Ubuntu (full Gnome)	384 MB / 512 MB
Xubuntu	192 MB / 256 MB
Windows XP	64 MB / 128 MB
Windows Vista Home Basic	512 MB
Windows Vista (Other)	1 GB
Windows 7 32 bit	1 GB
Windows 7 64 bit	2 GB

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Ubuntu is approaching Windows Vista Home's minimum memory specs, but is still a long way off our biggest competitor, Windows XP (70% market share and our only real competitor in netbooks). With netbooks usually having 512 - 1 GB of memory, it seems like XP would really let the user run many more applications (yes I am ignoring anti-virus and all the other random stuff OEMs load onto Windows to make it slower). So, I just have one question:

How hard would it be to reduce Ubuntu's memory usage from 9.10 to 10.04 by just 64 MB (oh, and does anyone want to make this an official goal for 10.04)?

I have knowledge of at least one school district where the majority of computers have only 128 MB of RAM. They are running XP and want to switch to Linux, but it was simply not an option due to memory. (And no if they don't have a big IT budget, read: no budget for LTSP)

Win 7 requirements http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx
Win xp requirements http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865
Ubuntu requirements https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements
Win Vista requirements http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/system-requirements.aspx

Exaile & Amarok. Because my original review of them...

was not quite that good. Let's try this again...
Exaile and Amarok are very similar players as Exaile is a music player inspired from Amarok but designed for GNOME. Whereas Amarok is the premier music player on the KDE desktop.

(I'm also on Karmic now, so things might look a little different if you install on Jaunty and also look different from my original review)

Exaile in Depth
The above is the Exaile main window. On the left side it let's you navigate through your Collection, Radio, Files, and Playlists. Clicking on them only update the next area to the right (which is where I currently have right clicked on an album and am about to "Append to Current").
The next region (or main region) is a tabbed collection of playlists or music sources. The use of tabs always makes things more cool. Quite useful for going through your music once and separating into multiple playlists (for things that can't be done by smart/dynamic playlists).

The easiest way to just start playing random music, is to go the playlists tab where you will find several smart playlists. Among them are Random 100/300/500 songs, Entire Library, and Rating >3 / >4.

Blacklists, which let you exclude songs from being played, are one of the features Exaile has that I haven't seen elsewhere.

The Radio should provide you more than enough shoutcast streams to listen to, although it can be somewhat overwhelming with the number of stations. Karmic Xubuntu users will be enjoying music from Exaile out-of-the-box. For the rest of you, get it below.

Get Exaile

Amarok, Rediscover Your Music!

The Amarok motto is back! I swear it went missing when I did my first review this year. Since I first reviewed Amarok (and then upgraded to Karmic) they made some significant changes to the interface. For instance, the left hand vertical navigation is gone. The first area (going left to right) is the Local Collection (can be switched to Playlist/Internet/Files mode (sound familar?) This is pretty identical to the one in Exaile (or I really should say the Exaile one is the same as the Amarok one). However, after that things change :).

The next area with the nice "Discovery Blue" (I'm making up colors now), is the Discover your music area (I'm also making up names). You can customize this area with Wikipedia entries, Videos, Photos, etc, that will automatically update based on the artist you are currently listening to. You can mess with the layout as well, like I did below:
The last area is the Playlist section which allows you to sort and rearrange the playlist by (seemingly) every possible bit of metadata you have on your music.

Random in Amarok can be made to cheat. Which is awesome (who wants mathematically perfect random for music playing anyway). It can be made to favor Higher Ratings or songs that you haven't played in a while.

Amarok really rocks when it comes to finding music or audio online for you to listen to. Aside from the more standard ones (Magnatue, Jamendo, Last.fm) it also has access to Librivox recordings (books) and a Podcast Directory.

Ubuntu Users, Get Amarok Here

Read my old review of 2007 Amarok

Read more of my reviews

India, 4th of July

I went to the US Embassy for the 4th of July and got a beef cheeseburger and french fries... In the red circle is the US Ambassador to India. He gave a short and sweet speech.

This is during the pledge...There were fireworks as well! (btw, do we let embassy's in DC use fireworks?)
And then there was cake..

Note: Pictures not actually in chronological order.

India, the park

I love this park and it is about a 2 minute walk from the office... these are pictures from a bit back...
Look "normal" park stuff:
The best part is this is a medium size park here :), and just walking around it you can usually find a....

Gecko! And sometimes discarded legacy stuff. :)