Episode 82 - Inkscape Part 1

[Chess]

In this guest episode: a new old toy in my household; rootbsd.net, a provider of FreeBSD-based Virtual Private Servers; then, Richard Querin, who co-maintains the Screencasters site with video tutorials, presents the first part of a two part series on the vector graphics editor, Inkscape; a Listener Tip on lspci by Verbal; lots of listener email and feedback.

http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/episode-82-inkscape-part-1/

[Magus]

GAG linkage: http://gag.sourceforge.net/

[Mark P]

Nice episode, Chess.  I almost laughed when I heard Christopher's tip of Doom 3 and Quake 4 for Linux as being old games, I still like playing Doom 1 and 2! 

Thanks for mentioning RootBSD, if any podcast listeners are interested in trying it out feel free to drop me a line.

[tristian]

IMO to set up a dual boot box, it is better to install Windows first. This will wipe Suse of the drive. After the clean install of Windows, insert the Suse disk and install it second. This should give you the chance to partition the drive and it will give you the choice to install Grub or Lilo.

[Sebulba]

I'd agree with the "Windows first" as a dual boot PC. I was about to mention the fact that M$ install their MBR overwriting what was there before (leaving any other Windows, so they know HOW to do it, they just choose not to when it's Linux), whereas Linux adds to what was there. I'd not heard of the GAG option, I'd like to see it work before I judge it.

At least there are no license issues if you do need to wipe your previous Linux and reverse the install order. If you don't have the CD, just go download and burn a fresh one......or even try a different distro altogether. Linux is great in the freedom it's users have.

[thelastknowngod]

awesome show. i assume this was rfquerin...

was doing the LR logo your first shot with inkscape? you did a hell of a job either way.

[kleptos]

This may be a little off topic, but are there any other good virtual server hosts out there? When you mentioned rootbsd on the podcast, i was like, whoa! i need one. Are there any other good opnes out there that do linux as well?

[mjjzf]

A very interesting episode. I look forward to the next part.
A neither-off-nor-on-topic question for this weeks guest presenter:
As you say, there are a lot of advantages to SVG. I have sometimes been wondering why SVG are not used in 2D CAD - is it because of the layering? I don't know how layers work with vector graphics.
I just find that since CAD works with basic shapes, they might be presented just as well with vector graphics - thus also making the drawings more portable?

[Claudio]

Very good episode.  I'm thinking of having my father use this since he does with in commercial graphic arts.  And now that he's creating files that need to be read by a CNC routing table, the DXF format support will help greatly.

Kudos to Richard for his work.

BTW Richard, the sound of your voice reminded me of Keanu Reeves.  I was ready to take the red pill and see how far the rabbit hole goes.

Looking forward to the next Inkscape episode.

[rfquerin]

awesome show. i assume this was rfquerin...

was doing the LR logo your first shot with inkscape? you did a hell of a job either way.

Yeah, I think the LR logo was probably the first thing of any substance I did with Inkscape. Actually, I think I first used it to create a couple of CD covers for some audio CD's I had burnt. I imported a jpg of a cd cover, then turned it into a vector, played with it a bit and added the track info. It was a 'mix tape' sort of thing, so I got a bit creative with the cover.

As far as the 'hell of a job' goes, I can't stress enough how much tougher it was to do 60 minutes of audio than a nice 10min screencast! I still think I sound retarded whenever I hear my voice played back. But if you think it sounded good then I'll take your word for it...

Incidentally the LR logo thing was where I meant my current partner in crime heathenx. I hold this forum responsible.

A neither-off-nor-on-topic question for this weeks guest presenter:
As you say, there are a lot of advantages to SVG. I have sometimes been wondering why SVG are not used in 2D CAD - is it because of the layering? I don't know how layers work with vector graphics.
I just find that since CAD works with basic shapes, they might be presented just as well with vector graphics - thus also making the drawings more portable?

I think SVG and typical cad formats (like DWG and DXF) are similar in the fact that they are both vector-type formats. DWG happens to be a binary format proprietary to Autodesk (I think) while DXF is really just a text file that describes  drawing information and is an open format (just because they're really just text files). SVG differs in that it is XML based.
I think you could very well do cad files in SVG. In my line of work though, Autodesk really rules the roost. So I see dwg files all the time and almost never DXF. I think SVG is just relatively new and wouldn't help them keep everyone locked into AutoCAD - which is what they've been extraordinarily good at for well over a decade :<

Kudos to Richard for his work.

BTW Richard, the sound of your voice reminded me of Keanu Reeves.  I was ready to take the red pill and see how far the rabbit hole goes.

Looking forward to the next Inkscape episode.

Thanks for the kudos. I thought it was pretty ragged myself. But like I said earlier I'm one of those people who cringes when they hear their own voice. I told heathenx that I thought I sounded retarded, and predictably he agreed.
As far as sounding like Keanu Reeves goes, I've never heard that before. He grew up in Toronto so there could be some of that good ole Hoser accent goin' on there eh? While maybe not the consummate actor, my wife thought he was hot in 'Speed'. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't seem to think I resemble him in voice or any other way.

Glad you peeps liked the first part. After doing it, I have to say I'm blown away by the quality of Chess's discussions in all the past episodes. For him to be able to talk so lucidly about so many different topics is HARD nevermind one lone topic! Kudos right back at him!

   

[bodycoach2]

Chess - I have the same Sun Utra60, same configuration. VERY heavy machine, and makings a really interesting "whoop, whoop" sound when booting. I tried Solaris 10 on it, then installed Xubuntu 7.04. Xubuntu ran well, but not many apps work with the Sun version. I'll eventually put solaris back on.

Keep us up-to-date on your adventure with that machine.
Danny

[Chess]

@bodycoach2:  yes, it is a very heavy machine!  It's built like a tank, very heavy-duty. 

So far, I have installed Sparc64 version of FreeBSD on this machine and it went on smoothly.  Works great.  I may use it a webserver, but we'll have to see.  It's fun to play with, that's for sure.

[rfquerin]

Back in my graduate school days, the work portion of my masters degree involved hacking on a structural design program in C++. We worked on Sparcstations, they ran on System V Unix and I distinctly remember using (and loving) the Openwindows environment. I knew relatively little about PC's back then. The big honking monitors (17") were very high-res compared to my 386 back in my apartment running DOS6.22/Win3.11 at 800x600 on a 14" CRT. I thought I was the absolute shiz-it. This was around the time of the birth of the WWW. I distinctly remember this fellow student showing me this 'Mosaic' thing. I remember looking at a webcam of some coffee pot in some US university in the browser. I was utterly amazed. And although I was a compuserve and bbs junkie back then, this WWW thing just blew me away.

But those Sparc machines were so cool (and expensive) back then. They had 64MB of RAM. My PC had exactly  1.

Ahh.. back in the day..   Did I ever tell you about how I had to walk 10 miles to school uphill both ways....

[rgcaldas]

Hi

Just another info regarding one of the user questions, the one about dual boot windows/linux

The is also a grub restore CD, the Super Grub Disk http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/SuperGrubDiskPage.html

It very useful to restore grub after something like changing partitions an the like.

RG

[bodycoach2]

Chess,
If you find any links to resources for the Sun Machine, could you post them here. I had an insane time thing to figure out how to boot off the CD. I did it awhile ago, but now I forgot the command to do that. I'd like to wipe the disk clean, and start over, maybe with OpenSolaris Indiana.

Another problem I have is that the machine came to me with 20 SCSI disks, but only one was hooked up. Even with a A+ cert, I'm struggling to get the other disk running. I'd like to set mine up as a webserver too. My blog: http://coachdanny.blogspot.com