Deluge is a very nice minimalist gtk bit torrent client that features UPnP, DHT, and all the other features one expects in a torrent engine. It's in the Ubuntu repositories, so if you want to try it out, you can get it through the Synaptic Package Manager, or the command line
apt-get install deluge
. It's written in Python, so it won't take over your machine's ram like some Java based (cough Azureus cough)torrent clients do.
If you are in Fedora 7, it's also in their repositories, so it's as easy as
yum install deluge
, and it's ready to go. I got half a dozen Jamendo hip-hop albums in around three hours when I first tried it out--it seems stable and bug-free. And as for my testing of Fedora 7, it continues without a hitch, though I'm still waiting for the update to Revisor, due any moment now.
There is an interview with the creator of Deluge in the first issue of Full Circle magazine; it's a 6.3Mb pdf file download, and chock full of beautiful pictures, an introduction to the Linux file structure, how-tos for using Scribus and Add/Remove software with tons of pics, a review of some genealogy software (Gramps) and a load more.
Two new interesting distro releases this week: the linuX-Gamers DVD, with five 3D games, the ATI and Nvidia drivers and more(The torrent is here.); and Stux, a liveCD built on top of Slackware using Knoppix liveCD implementations. You can download the ISO file or the torrent from here; particularly exciting is the liveCD's ability to install directly to a USB flash drive. I'm getting it through Deluge right now. A review of version 0.8 can be found here; it's currently 1.0. I'll detail my never ending quest to get a GUI install to a USB flash drive, just as soon as I get this downloaded.
The patent system is truly broken; a company named intellectual weapons (how apt) is now trying to get security vulnerabilities patented; you can read more at this site. You should check out more of what the writers have to say, and they really don't hold back--but who could expect them to, especially since their site is name boycottnovell.com. Some seriously good rants going on there.
Whoa! almost missed this: the BBC has a tech article (from their click online show) with a nice overview of Linux and open source; when you reach the BBC you truly are 'ready for the desktop'. A small sample:
And from the open source movement we get the Linux operating system. It is free and you can copy it to as many machines as you like.
And from that acorn did many versions of Linux grow - up to 300. Each flavour is called a distro (short for distribution) and is a version prepared for a different purpose or a particular type of user.
A nice intro for those who know next to nothing about open source and/or Linux.
Say what you will about tuxmachines and Ubuntuhq regarding their packaging other folks' work and getting a bunch of clickthrough revenue from it, but they do centralize your Linux browsing needs, and have interesting content every single day.
One such story is a new browser, named Kazehakase, that is neither Gecko (Firefox) or Konqueror (Safari) cloned; it looks a bit like the nautilus file browser under KDE, but more extensible. I wish KDE would use it instead of their upcoming replacement of nautilus with dolphin, which is really awful. A nice writeup on Kazehakase can be found here.
And finally, what about a DkLUG, a DkMUG, and a DkWUG? There's enough excitement around all three camps to justify forming them, you would think. Helping people solve their tech problems one click away from their lovely Dkos Paris Hilton red meat diaries would be a boon to us all.
If you are looking for a glossary of terminology, then this is a good place to start; or you could begin by looking at some of the previous diaries on this subject; if there are specific questions, please ask away.