Videolan Client is now able to check for updates on its own. I like this. Applications should check for updates, but only if I tell it it should. I don’t remember telling it that it was allowed, but maybe I did when I installed it? It makes me slightly nervous, but the application is open source. I could go see in the source what info the application is sending, but I’m lazy.

I guess I vaguely trust the Frenchies so meh.

So I’ve been telling a friend that I have a laptop for him. Now he actually wants it. So I went and turned it on; apparently I once thought that it would be a good idea to put Gentoo on the thing. So I logged in and ran

emerge --sync

which didn’t take too long. Next, I ran my usual

emerge -NuDav world

and looking at the packages, which included a bash upgrade, I figured it would take a while. So I said yes, and off it went. And went. And went. That was three weeks ago and I finally had to cut it off. It was still compiling bash when I stopped the madness.

…

Fast forward to the present day. I installed Xubuntu, which uses Xfce desktop environment. It is now installed and running pretty well. If you have an older, lower spec machine that you want a free OS for, try out Xubuntu.

So, let’s say that you are a road warrior type. Let’s then also say that you keep a good amount of videos and albums on your external hard drive. You’ve installed PortableApps with VLC to be able to play the videos off of the hard drive.

But what happens when you go on a visit and your friend has changed the password on their computer? You can’t log in to Windows to be able to even run VLC. Enter Movix2! It let’s you boot up the computer that you have physical access to (so long as there is no bios password or if there is, that it is set to boot from Removable Media first), into a Linux-based media playing machine!

I had two previous unsuccessful tries with WOMP and GeeXboX. Those two weren’t able to auto-detect the frame buffer correctly so the screen just was blank. Movix2 is my vote for best Mplayer Live CD. Check it out if you need to play some media.

Woo.