This post was inspired by another recent post that I read. I will be quoting and sourcing it later on. I want t make direct my focus to a play on the original posts title. “Are you a casualty”. And, The last paragraph of the post which reads:

When you find what works for you, work with it to get all the kinks and oddities under control – all browsers have nits to pick. Once you get the choice tuned, stay with it unless something huge happens. You’ll be happier and much less cranky after long sessions. You’ll also be able to resist the click-happy exploits of the home benchmarking crowd.

The Browsers

These days everyone is familiar with at least the names of the most popular browsers, Internet Explorer, from Microsoft; Firefox, from the Mozilla Foundation; Chrome, from Google; Opera, from Opera Labs; and last on the list of well-known – Safari, from Apple.

All browsers have the good points and the bad points. This is will all software or anything else for that matter.

First we’ll mention IE. Paraphrasing what the other author stated, They have not been innovative and have not lead the way in the browser wars. In my experience, this is the slowest and least outstanding browser in existence.It is the largest target for exploits and most attacked browser. This could be because it still stands as the most used browser. Most used because it’s the default on the Windows OS.

And then there is Firefox. This happens to be the browser of choice for me. ‘m comfortable with it because I have used it for many years. I have only issue with some of the extensions not being maintained. At this point though, the extensions that I use, seem to stay in development. Firefox seems to be a bit of a memory hog but, I can live with that. Memory is cheap these days.

I have not tried Opera in quite some time. I know that there are many useful tools, either built in or, available for Opera. At one time it would have become my choice but, I’m just comfortable with the way Firefox works.

On my Mac, I use Safari quite often but still not on a day to day basis. I like that Safari will render a web page just as it is. It fixes nothing on the fly. It is compliant to the newest web standards and is good for page testing. That though, is all that I use it for.

The Bottom Line

So, the question that I posed in the beginning; Are you a casualty? Well, you don’t have to be. Pick the browser that fits your needs or suits your taste. The browser that performs the task at hand and provides that which you ned and go with it. Get comfortable with it and use it.

source

Happy Slackin!
usr

Popularity: 6% [?]

As published here :

Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Novell developer who maintains the staging, USB and driver core for Linux, has announced that the driver code for Google’s Android operating system has been removed from the 2.6.33 Linux code base. Kroah-Hartman says that “I love the Android phone platform” but that the code for supporting Android has not been cared for, and as is his policy, uncared-for code is removed from the source code control system. The change was committed to the Linux source tree on December 11th, last year.

This is one reason that the Linux kernel source is smaller. I agree with this action being taken. It should be that a kernel and the kernel source is kept managed and maintained.

usr

Popularity: 8% [?]

In the interest of my good friend, @BIOSShadow and his blog over at Geek Crack, I would like to extend the welcome that he issued in this post. The welcome goes out to @KitsuneDragon from twitter, who is rapidly becoming a true slacker in #slackstuff and, a valued member of our slacker community. Also, the warmest of welcomes go out to Anay who I do not know but am looking forward to meeting in #slackstuff also.

Welcome Welcome new writers to Geek Crack!

Happy Slackin!
usr

Popularity: 6% [?]

This was a busy week for me. I thought at first that I might not get enough tweets collected for the top ten. That turned out to be completely un-true. I ended up having to whittle down from about 25 tweets.

So, without further ado:

• 10. @shrdlu @ReverendDigital An ASS file buffer overflow sounds really gross. #gettheplunger
• 9. @infogeek2u Just don’t let one of those flying bricks of enlightenment that I’m hurling hit you on the way out.
• 8. @myrcurial I tried following Bill Gates on Twitter, but suffered a STOP 0×47FD:76D5 bluescreen error. I think I need a new Twitter driver. 64-bit ??
• 7. @wadew RT: Thesaurus entry for “Advanced Persistent Threat” only has one entry: “in-laws”
• 6. @armorguy RT @DedRyzing: /me steps out to save the world and people from their own stupidity <-- Mr. Quixote, meet Mr. Windmill.
• 5. @geekgrrl Note to Mentally-Challenged Self: Sharp scissors are SHARP. Try not to impale yourself. Again. We’re running out of band-aids
• 4. @armorguy Delivering performance reviews is like a box of chocolates – not sure if there’s going to be a nut in this one right now or not
• 3. @DedRyzing hahaha…ah fuqitol…am the only one on Twitter who loses followers on #FollowFriday
• 2. @excid3 I slept in the car so my snoring wouldn’t bother you and I left that recording of my snoring so you wouldn’t know I’m gone.

And, This weeks #1 …

• 1. @Montetwoshots @0ph3lia:That person is a “Slinky”. Slinkys are of no real use, but they do bring a smile to your face when pushed down a flight of stairs.

All Righty then!!!
Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoy following you tweetsters!!

Until next time,
Happy Slackin!
usr

Popularity: 10% [?]

I have a place reserved in my heart that only Slackware Linux fills. Strange as it might be, Slackware was the first Linux distribution that seemed to understand me and, I it.
I recently read an article which brought to mind, the time that I started my venture into the Linux community as a new user.

In the beginning
I was introduced by a friend who was on class and studying a Linux course. He told me of the stability and the fact that Linux was free and open source. I really had no idea what he meant by this except that I could download and install an operating system onto my computer with out fear of it expiring but, without having to pay for it.
After my first install of a couple of RPM based distros, I stopped at a book store and picked up a copy of “Linux for Dummies”. This was an awesome book to me. From cover to cover and, I had build my own kernel within a week.

Something was missing. I still felt confined with in the Operating system, I thought that Linux had the potential to be cleaner, simpler, even more light weight than what I was getting from Mandrake and Red Hat.

Along came Slackware

Slackware is the oldest Linux distribution still with us and has a loyal following among those long term Linux users who pine for the old fashioned virtues of simplicity, straightforwardness and lack of bloat.

Slackware certainly isn’t for the faint of heart. And it isn’t for the everyday user. An install of Slackware is a simple, clean and stable machine that expects more of you. Slackware isn’t the Desktop Linux that you might want. There are no bells and whistles. There are no shiny blinkies. The installer is clean and simple CLI. No over-bloated, CPU hog of a GUI installer here.

I cannot explain why this was the OS that brought me into the Linux world with ease. I just understood it and, it really seemed to just work. That is what Slackware does. It just works.

The asset most valued by the Slack user, and most often claimed for Slackware Linux, is system stability. If you install Slackware on a backroom server you expect it to stay there, and be unnoticed.

Slackware is just right for a back-end system admin that wants a server that is up and stable in 15 minutes or, a simple, fast workstation with the install of the default KDE DE or, Fluxbox WM. Mind you, I said workstation. Yes I also said 15 minutes. After just a few installs, I can have a GUI-less server up and screaming in 15 minutes. I have many times set up Slackware as a Samba file server and had the network sharing files in a very short amount of time. The most time consuming was the Samba config itself.

A little history
Slackware remains true to being the most similar to Unix of any Linux flavor available. Patrick Volkerding cleaned up a version of SLS for a professor at MSU to use in teaching LISP. This was the start of a beautiful thing. For many years, Patrick was the sole maintainer of Slackware Linux. This is still largely true to this day and has it’s advantages. Nothing goes into Slackware unless it’s ready. Packages must require little or no tweaking for maximum performance. Even Gnome was dropped because it required too much configuration.

Slack users would argue that simplicity is its own reward. Slackware is minimalist and transparent and works as the user wants it to work, which from a Slack user’s point of view, is as it should be.

So that is my ode to Slackware. Inspired by the article found here of which I also quoted. Thanks to ITPro.co.uk for a great read.

Happy Slackin!
usr

Popularity: 100% [?]