NO STOP

Now there is a reason for why I do not like nvidia anymore.

I had a Dell XPS laptop since February of 2008, with an NVidia graphic
accelerator that is more powerful than my needs, given I do not need
the laptop for gaming or other graphic intensive applications.

During these years the computer was some time really slow due to real
inadequate Linux graphic drivers that Nvidia provides.
The GPU control was inefficient so often it works at maximum clock
when not needed, causing the GPU to heat too much causing degradation
of performance and of course, the laptop to be hot. This happens
randomly across different driver version. But it happens always when
the laptop was connected to an external monitor.
One way or another, sometimes they worked fine enough for me but
always under the expectations.

In the last month the heat problem occur more often so today, having
the CPU constantly over 80 Celsius, I decided to try the new beta
driver, 260 series. Now, the performance improvement is sensible and
the Nvidia Powermizer is working so clock is at minimum and GPU
temperature down around 70 Celsius.

Now why should I hate Nvidia? I should be happy because today I have a
almost brand new laptop with all the graphic going smoother than ever
and the cool GPU.

But today I just bought a new laptop. Not only for the GPU problem
reason but also because my laptop performance were not enough fore me
anymore. Now they do not seem so bad after all.

By the way, I bought a Dell, again, due to their great customer
support in Italy. But I did not choose the nvidia card. I'll stay with
integrated Intel card.

NVidia, today I hate you.

Ok I am searchiing for something like this since a lot. This spring I evaluated three tool, Huddle, Deskaway and another one I do not remember but they did not fulfill my very basic needs.

Since then on my Diigo page under "project management" there are six new tools, and I discover another couple today.
Now let's make it quick, I do not need much. I'd like a light task management and some sort of topic-centered conversation flow. Single project is ok, I can always open a new account or space for another project.

1. For light task management I mean  "one line/one click" task creation, assign/involve people with a twitter like syntax "Hey @jonny what do you think about this matter here?"
2. For topic-centered conversation flow I mean I need some categories/tags, some "flow marker" like "engeineering" or "analytics" or "business development" and so on with any kind of object attached (links, email conversation, docs, events, maps...)

I think this can be described just as Twitter along with its List and Search and Mentions, with a very simple and plain task lifecycle management in addition. 

I now have to try teambox.com, shareflow.com, theflowr.com, wedoist.com, kohive.com, skylightit.com
Anyone want to help? :)

Sembra cosi' semplice, ma e' cosi' difficile.

Voglio un laptop, lo voglio piccolo, 13-14 pollici, sottile e leggero,
dalle forme semplici, che sembri un prodotto del 2010 non del 97.
Voglio che abbia un intel I3 o I5, lo uso per lavorare ma non roba
cosi' cpu intensive.
Voglio 4 GB di RAM e una scheda grafica intel ultima generazione e con
la sua benedetta memoria, non condivisa con la RAM
Voglio un disco poco capiente e velocissimo, ma cosa me ne potro' mai
fare di 500GB sul portatile? Ho i NAS, i dischi USB, lo storage su
internet, il media center... sul portatile 100GB mi avanzano.
Poi le solite cose insomma, le porte sui lati e non dietro per
carita', un paio di USB da un lato e una dall'altro, il connettore DVI
non VGA vi prego se proprio dovete metere qualcosa olte al HDMI.
Il CD, ecco il CD potete tenervelo e rispedirlo al 2003 assieme a
Windows e a tutto il software aggiuntivo tipo MacAfee (gesu', sono
seri, macafee mi installano).
Va be' il monitor che faccia 720p ma tanto quello lo fanno tanti 13
pollici oramai.

Sto chiedendo cosi' tanto?
Ci saranno decine di aziende che producono decine di modelli ciascuna
con decine di varianti.
Io non trovo quello che mi serve. Non posso passare la vita a cercarlo.

Spero che qualcuno legga il mio appello e mi dica "io ho quello che ti serve".
Cosi dovrebbe funzionare. Non sto chiedendo tanto.

I just upgraded my system to Ubuntu Maverick, that will become Ubuntu
10.10 in october. While it will ship with the default window manager,
Gnome Shell is available from official repository so is super easy to
install it from the Software Center.

Gnome Shell is the next generation window manager and you can see here
two screenshot. Pressing the SUPER button (or, sic, the windows
button..) you can access the "Activities" view. This view is
activable also going to the top-left of the screen with the mouse
pointer.

On the top left there is the search field: writing there you look for
the applications. Or you can press the "applications" button to
explode them all (last screenshot). Under those elements, always on
the left, there are the open applications, some notable folders and
disks and the recent documents.
The center of the screen is the actual desktop, which is temporary
reduced reduced to left space to the activities pane and to the area
to switch from one desktop to another, at the bottom.

(download)

Click here to download:

Gnome_Shell_on_Ubuntu_Maverick.zip (1.51 MB)

The second shot shows the desktop in it's normal size, which has just
a black bar at the top. Let's dig into the top bar. "Activities" show
the activities view we just talked about. Then there is the logo and
title of the actually open window, that is no more on the application
bar. Then the clock on the center and on the right the system tray
that is showing: tweetdeck, skype, tomboy notes, the Empathy multi
chat instant messanger, the wifi connection and the system menu.

Please also note that the opened application is the last nightly build

of Firefox 4, feafuring tabs on top, the four button interface (back,
forward, stop/reload, home), the search box and the location field on
the right and the button to toggle the tab sets view on the very right
of the tabs.

Great stuff. The gnome shell is great in functionality, polished and
faster compared to Compiz, at least in perceived smoothness of the
user interface.

To activate the gnome shell window manager in Ubuntu Maverick, just
install it from the Software Center and run "gnome-shell --replace"
from the command runner, that is activated with ALT-F2.
Ah, the command runner in gnome shell is amazing, what I always dreamed.

From now on Gnome Shell is my default window manager.