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When Did GNU Become Linux?

James North Sep 28, 2023 Linux , Open Source Software , Programming , Free Software 0 comments

The GNU Project was started in 1983. Today is the 40th anniversary of the first public announcement of GNU. If you aren't familiar with the project, their goal was simple, if highly ambitious. It was to "create an operating system composed of entirely free software". Today, we have several options for completely free operating systems, like GNU Guix, PureOS, and Hyperbola. But we don't call these operating systems "GNU"—aside from GNU Guix, anyway. We call them "Linux". Why is that? When did we go from The GNU Operating System to Linux? Let me take you through the history, one step at a time.

Scanlation: An Overview

James North Sep 16, 2023 Japanese , Manga 0 comments

If you don’t know what “scanlation” is, allow me to remedy that. Let’s talk about it as it applies to Japanese manga. It’s the process of taking a physical manga volume, scanning it to bring it into the digital realm, and then translating the digital version of the manga. Although, the translation part doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it’s just about getting a digital version. This article is not intended to be a guide to the very involved process of scanlating manga; just an overview. I want to give you an idea of all the work that goes into scanlating manga. And I’m going to tackle it from the perspective of an unauthorised scanlation team, rather than from the perspective of an authorized scanlation team.

Xbox—"The Owner is The Attacker"

James North Sep 11, 2023 Proprietary Software 0 comments

Turns out, the problem is quite different. The PC owner is a good guy. He's working with us to prevent his PC from being attacked. [...] Microsoft [...] is working with the PC owner to fight the bad guys. On the Xbox, the owner is the attacker. The customer who goes to the store to buy the Xbox.

Vimeo Engineer—Are Video Codecs...Done? (H.264 is the JPEG of Video)

James North Sep 10, 2023 Video 0 comments

Derek Buitenhuis is the senior principal video engineer at Vimeo, although he's been deeply involved with ffmpeg and VideoLAN (among other open source projects). Derek talks about how the only stakeholders really interested in next-generation video codecs like AV1 or VVC (and even last-gen like VP8/VP9 and HEVC) are megacorporations or people actually involved in developing the standards themselves. Derek's argument is that the bandwidth savings you get with extra efficiency aren't that great compared with the other costs you have to pay; H.264 is good enough for most people and businesses today.

Apple makes app development hard.

James North Sep 9, 2023 macOS , Rants , Proprietary Software , Programming 0 comments

I’m trying to write an app with React Native because that’s the only sane way to write most cross-platform apps these days. You write it once and it works on iOS and Android, in the same way most modern Graphical Toolkits work on all desktops. But you can’t compile an app for iOS without macOS. And that's not all. This article details all the ways Apple makes app development hard.

Using DaVinci Resolve on Linux With MP4—Questions, Answers, and Tips

James North Sep 2, 2023 Linux , Commercial Software , Rants , Guides 0 comments

DaVinci Resolve ought to be the no-brainer choice for working with video on Linux. Not only is it a great NLE, it’s the most advanced color grading tool in existence. Almost all the features are completely free. Even if you need features from the Studio edition, it’s astonishingly cheap to obtain a lifetime license you can move around to any computers, and continue to receive all major updates, forever. So, what’s the catch? Let’s talk about it…

Libvirt (QEMU Virtualisation) Guide

James North Jun 2, 2022 Linux , Open Source Software , Guides , Arch Linux 0 comments

This guide will teach you how to create and manage a VM in KVM using virt-install, virsh, and virt-viewer, which all make use of libvirt. For a beginner's guide and introduction to libvirt and virtualisation concepts, and why you would even want to use libvirt instead of, say, Virtualbox, see: https://jamesnorth.net/post/qemu-guide

Understanding Japanese (1) - Mindset

James North Apr 19, 2022 Languages , Japanese , Understanding Japanese 0 comments

This is the first in a series of articles on Understanding Japanese, though much of it is relevant to the pursuit of understanding any language. This article is the most important one—nothing matters more than your mindset. It isn't your tools (no matter how fancy they are) that get the job done; it's your attitude.

CrossOver - Commercial Wine—An Honest Look

James North Dec 21, 2021 Linux , macOS , Windows , Commercial Software , Open Source Software , Proprietary Software 14420 comments

CrossOver is CodeWeavers' commercial implementation of Wine and a dozen other components. It's a stable version of Wine with a proprietary graphical interface and a variety "hacks" that can get specific programs working, that wouldn't make it into Wine proper as they aren't long-term solutions. It aims to make installing, managing, and running applications easy. However, there are some issues with the user interface.

How to Install Arch Linux and Wi-Fi Drivers Completely Offline

James North Oct 24, 2021 Linux , Open Source Software , Guides , Arch Linux 0 comments

Here's the scenario: your laptop is approaching 13 years of age, the internal NIC has suddenly stopped working, but you don't want to give up here. You uninstall Arch Linux and install Windows 10 just to check that the NIC is actually not functioning anymore—which it isn't. You buy a USB Wi-Fi NIC Adapter, carelessly not checking if the vendor's drivers have been mainlined into the Linux kernel. You boot into an Arch Linux live session and you don't have an internet connection. Here's what you do next.

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