niallfleming.co.uk

Google Earth on Linux

Google Earth is now available in beta form for Linux, compiled natively, unlike Picasa which was the Windows (TM) version running using WINE I’m told it was pretty slow. Google Earth is anything but slow, it works pretty much perfectly and given it’s still in beta I’m happily surprised!

Getting it run…was difficult, but that was not the fault of Google, it was nVidia’s fault. Installing the native nVidia drivers for X.org 7 on Debian Etch is easier said than done, there was a time when you just ./nvidia-installer and sat back. Occasionally you might have to recompile your kernel to get rid of any erroneous rubbish on the end of the kernel version string so that it can detect the right one to compile the interface for.

For posterity, install pkg-config and xserver-xorg-dev before running nvidia-installer. I had originally just copied the xorg driver module into the right place, but evidently I hadn’t copied all the files necessary, I had X working for months in this state with no notion that there was anything wrong, until I came to run Google Earth.

OpenGL wasn’t working. It took me 3 days to figure that out. There was *nothing* in the logs to tell me that anything had gone awry, yet every time I tried to run Google Earth the X server restarted, and I was back to a now all too familiar gdm login screen.

But since fixing that. Google Earth runs flawlessly, and much quicker than I remember Windows running it, I’m not sure if that’s a speed increase due to optimisations in this new version or Windows (TM) just being slow and lethargic (NB: this author suspects it was Windows (TM))

New WordPress Skin

I found a pretty new WordPress skin this morning! You’re looking at it, in case you were wondering. It’s got native Widget support, which are described thusly:

“Widgets” is just a silly buzzword we’ve chosen for this sidebar-chopping plug-in we have developed. They could have been called Gadgets or Gizmos or Wizbangs or Whatevers. On the surface, they’re just things you can use to personalize your WordPress site without knowing HTML. Way down deep, they may be something entirely more significant.

WordPress Rich Text Editor

*SCREAMS!* I’ve written this post 3 times, because the RTE is broken, very, very broken, in Opera, even Opera 9, which is the most standards compliant version to date. I can only assume that the RTE code is to blame

Could I find the option to turn it off? Could I buxton, I eventually find it hiding at the bottom of the users page, after looking on the WordPress fora. It would have been nice to leave a note on the Options/Writing page where the option to set ‘RTE as default for all users’ checkbox is.

I think the non rich-text editor is far superior anyway, it’s not fussy and it doesn’t try to do things for you.