The Linux Blog

Hey people,

Oddly enough, today, I have noticed that my system (or at least KDE) is running insanely fast (under Gentoo Linux). I have recently re-done my whole system in terms of wiping the disk. My previous setup was just about the same. If anything, I was less consistent this time around.

Whilst compiling KDE, I paused, installed unsermake (supposed to speed up KDE compile times, dramatically in many cases), changed my CFLAGS around (from “-march=pentium4 -funroll-loops -O3 -pipe’ to ‘-march=pentium4 -Os -pipe’), and then continued on compiling. 75% of my system is now consisting of the former CFLAGS and the remainder of the latter ones. I’m using the latest gentoo-dev-sources kernel in the Portage unstable tree (~ and specifically “~x86″).

I’m now on KDE 3.3.2 and it’s dramatically outperforming Windows XP in the realm of loading applications, response time, etc. The other differences are that I was using KDE 3.2.3 and XFree86 (currently Xorg-11). This is absolutely fantastic, as before, I had similar performance in XP, but it is easily and notably faster now. I’m not sure what to attribute all this to, but I must highly recommend Xorg and KDE 3.3.2 along with the latest fresh-out-of-the-oven kernel (2.6).

After asking around, I’ve determined it is mostly the upgrade from XFree to XOrg, but the same sources are telling me that XOrg is not that good for ATI (and supposedly, Linux ATI drivers suck too, which I have found the opposite, personally) cards. (Yes, I do have an ATI card )

Another short entry. World of Warcraft is now in open beta mode! You can sign up and everything here.

Also, check here for a download link that is better than the stupid torrent client they use. The client seems to want you to have a 1:1 upload/download ratio and eats up every last bit of your upload.

By the way, be prepared to wait. I had 600 people in line before me on fileplanet, but it should be worth it due to how horribly they messed up their torrent client. If anyone can give me the announce URL for the official torrent, I will be very pleased (stripped it using ethereal?).

Rejoice! Firefox 1.0 is released!

Get it!

I’m running it right now and am about to emerge it on Linux too once my World of Warcraft beta download finishes .

Firefox home.

By the way, check out the feature in the advanced settings to open all links externally clicked in a new tab! I love it…