If anyone has attempted to watch H.264 video on an older PC you know what a frustrating experience it can be due to the ridiculous amount of CPU the decoding eats up. CoreAVC is a Windows codec that dramatically reduces that load. Being a Windows codec we Linux users are left in the cold (we’re getting used to it) - but I just discovered a project that rectifies that situation! The aptly named CoreAVC for Linux is a set of patches for mplayer, etc to allow them to load the CoreAVC codec through DirectShow emulation. Or something.
I haven’t tried it out myself as I watch all my videos on my desktop, which is more than capable of handling HD H.264 videos, even with inefficient decoding. Someone give it a go and let me know if it works!
Another Linux distribution looks to be hitting the net in the next few days, dubbed PyroLinux. The site looks impressive but I’m seriously underwhelmed by what I’m reading about the OS itself. For starters, it’s based on Ubuntu and seems to have just added some packages in by default, including non-free drivers and codecs (a la Mint) and some “fancy” apps like Avant Window Navigator dock.
Whilst I’m all for diversity in Linux distros I would prefer if people actually had something to show, or at least had a semi-original idea, before submitting their distro on Digg and trying to build hype. I mean, really, why on Earth would anyone want to use PyroLinux? To save themselves the 5 minutes it would take to install AWN?
In case you’ve been living under a rock - or simply don’t care about mobile development - Google recently released a public preview of Android, a new platform for mobile devices built on top of a Linux kernel. You may have heard of it before as it turns out that Android is the thing everyone assumed to be the Google “gPhone”. Well, they’re not releasing a phone but with a ton of device makers on board to use Android (sounds like everyone except Apple, surprise, surprise) I don’t think anyone is going to mind.
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Now that Leopard has been released a few people are commenting on the usability of Time Machine as a backup system for “ordinary people”. As is usually the case, what Apple have done here is slap a GUI on functionality that Linux and UNIX systems have had for years. Naturally though, because Time Machine looks so pretty and is grabbing more headlines that the humble rsync, there are some efforts to bring a similar system to Linux.
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In my last post on Deluge I commented that one of the things the BitTorrent client was lacking was a web interface. That situation has been rectified by a recent plugin that provides WebUI capabilities. After taking a look at what is offered I can say that it looks very promising but isn’t quite at a stage where you’d want to use it for anything but the most basic administration of your torrents.
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