Flying Wild Alaska - Series Review

Flying Wild Alaska shows the family operating their family-run airline and battling the Alaska weather.

"Sometimes it feels like living on Pluto"

Artic wilderness largely untouched by men

The State of Alaska is one of two states of the United States that does not touch another state. The other is Hawaii. It was purchased from Imperial Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million.

Lubuntu vs Ubuntu Comparison

Connection between Lubuntu and Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution which strives to be easy-to-use regardless of the user's level of experience with computers. It is the most popular Linux distribution and thus a large variety of software has been written for it and a wide variety of laptop and desktop hardware is compatible with it.
Lubuntu is an Ubuntu-based distribution intended for computers with less memory, processing speed, and hard drive space. It uses the "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment" (LXDE) as an alternative to GNOME, the default desktop environment for Ubuntu.

Features

Lubuntu's default applications are both lighter in terms of system requirements, and include fewer features. Lubuntu doesn't include a program equivalent to OpenOffice Impress (presentations) and its image editor is suitable for simple image editing tasks only.

Speed

Both Ubuntu and Lubuntu are designed to boot up quickly. The applications that are included with each are different, though. The word processor, spreadsheet program, and web browser included with Lubuntu all are cabable of starting quickly and functioning well with limited RAM. Ubuntu's default programs for these tasks start and run more slowly.

Compatibility

Many desktop-computing programs for Linux are written to integrate well with GNOME, which is installed by default on Ubuntu. This provides a great degree of compatibility for an Ubuntu system. Many, but not all, applications will work as desired in Lubuntu's LXDE too. Installing GNOME to a Lubuntu system in order to increase compatibility is possible but negates most of the advantages Lubuntu would have had over Ubuntu in the first place.

Conclusion

Lubuntu: old computers
Ubuntu: new computers and linux newbies

lxde vs xfce Comparison

XFCE provides precious little performance improvement compared to GNOME (at least in my experience), but with the loss of considerable functionality and a hundred mildly obnoxious quirks that combine to make it not at all worth my while. 

XFCE is gotten considerable more bloated in recent releases. However we have started to notice not as wide of a cap between the performance of XFCE and GNOME/ KDE than in the past.  

LXDE 
LXDE starts instantly, it is blazing fast and is very highly configurable. It also has a clean, uncluttered interface that gets out of your way. PCManFM (the original, and central, component of LXDE) is hands down the best file manager ever written, lxpanel is both lightweight and very functional, and of course there is the power and flexibility of OpenBox underneath. What's not to like? 

Memory consumption:
free memory after startxfce4:  1,789,552
free memory after startlxde:  1,804,456 

Conclusion
XFCE isn't as lightweight as it used to be and in fact operates slower than gnome in many setups and distributions. So for the purpose of being lightweight/smaller footprint I will have to say LXDE, but you asked which one is better and that all depends on what you want. XFCE is plenty more functional or rather feature rich. So its a matter of compromise between function and smaller footprint. 

Video of the Week: 01-09-11 T. Drysdale Coke Spot

Video of the Week

Terrence Drysdale's Coke Commercial

VOTE FOR TERRENCE!!!

Check back next Monday to see the next video of the week!

Dietary fiber Foods

Dietary fiber refers to the cell wall components in plants: namely, pectin, beta-glucans, hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin, fructans, and gums. All vegetables and fruits contain these dietary fiber components. The fiber content and composition, however, varies depending on the fruit or vegetable maturity, type, growing environment, ...


Solubility

Both soluble and insoluble fiber are undigested. They are therefore not absorbed into the bloodstream. Instead of being used for energy, fiber is excreted from our bodies. Soluble fiber forms a gel when mixed with liquid, while insoluble fiber does not. Insoluble fiber passes through our intestines largely intact.


Soluble fiber is found in varying quantities in all plant foods, including:

• legumes (peas, soybeans, lupins and other beans)
• oats, rye, chia, and barley
• some fruits and fruit juices (including prune juice, plums, berries, bananas, and the insides of apples and pears)
• certain vegetables such as broccoli, carrots, and Jerusalem artichokes
• root tubers and root vegetables such as sweet potatoes and onions (skins of these are sources of insoluble fiber)
• psyllium seed husk (a mucilage soluble fiber).

Cauliflower

Zucchini

Sources of insoluble fiber include:

• whole grain foods
• wheat and corn bran
• nuts and seeds
• potato skins
• flax seed
• lignans
• vegetables such as green beans, cauliflower, zucchini (courgette), celery, and nopal
• some fruits including avocado, and bananas
• the skins of some fruits, including tomatoes

Green beans

gam server process

What stands gam server process for?

gam server watches your file-system for changes. It's in the "gamin" package, you should find some more information there. gam server is the binary fo gamin (see http://www.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/). It's a sgi_fam replacement for file alternation monitoring. A lot of linux programs use gam_server process to do different tasks. gam server is locater at: /usr/lib/gamin/gam_server

As a short-term solution for slow PC: I've had no problems just killing the process with a 'killall gam_server'. Right now I just monitor gam_server, kill it if it starts going wild(100% cpu), and renice it when it restarts.

Artic with Bruce Parry review

Artic is heating quicker than anything on the world.

Joining the big family picnic

Tank is not "green" but can travel trough hars terrain