EasyLinuxGuide Blog

UFC’s Ultimate Fight Night 15 took place in Omaha Nebraska which is the hometown of Houston Alexander who was on the latest card. The main event was Nate Diaz vs Josh Neer, however; the loudest ovation was for Houston Alexander from his hometown crowd as he faced Eric “Red” Schafer. The UFC aired this event on Spike TV for free.

I went 7 for 10 on my picks overall with which I was happy since there were some really tough picks. Unfortunately one of the fights I lost was the Alexander vs Schafer bout.

I’m sure Alexander will never read this nor anyone who trains him, but nonetheless, the secret is out: there is an easy formula to beat Houston Alexander and he proved it that night. As great of a fighter that Thiago Silva is, it was surprising how easily he dominated Alexander in his victory over the Nebraska native. Houston was exposed. He had a weak ground game, possibly nonexistant ground defense. After that loss, one would think that Houston and his trainers would work tirelessly to improve his ground game as he looked completely helpless and dominated by Silva. We didn’t get a chance to see it tested until Fight Night 15 because his previous fight was a knockout courtesy of a superman punch landed by James “The Sandman” Irvin. Schafer divulged his own strategy for beating Alexander: get through the intial onslaught of punches and then take over, which is exactly what Schafer did. I was impressed with Schafer’s ability to work through that barrage since some of Alexander’s strikes landed cleanly and would have knocked out many a foe. Schafer then took over and it was a carbon copy of the Silva fight. Alexander is now 2-3 in the UFC and had just signed an extension with the MMA juggernaut prior to this matchup. UFC is notorious for releasing fighters when they don’t win, but Alexander is still a big draw due to his all or nothing fighting style.

Alexander is a very likable character and seems like a genuinely nice guy, but if he wants to stay around in the UFC, the ground game or take down defense needs to improve prior to his next fight or it could be all over.

Criterion’s Burnout Paradise has set a new mark with DLC (downloadable content). If you own an Xbox 360 or a PS3 and you don’t have this game and have been considering picking it up, see why it is well worth it. The developers at Criterion are truly the best example of demonstrating that they listen to the customers and actually implement requests. The greatest thing about this is that they did it all for free after the game was released. The most recent update as seen in the video link above is the addition of bikes into gameplay. This re-invents the game in terms of playability and also adds over 70 new challenges. Burnout Paradise is simply the best looking feature rich and dynamic racing game out right now. Many thanks to Criterion to demonstrating how a game should be developed and how to release DLC! Thank you!

It took a while and surely some people gave up on the project because of the wait, but Carrier has finally been upgraded to version 2.5. This is is significant because the previous version of 2.4.1 had stopped working with the MSN protocol, rendering it useless for anyone who exclusively used those accounts. Version 2.4.1 was released in April and somewhere along the line, the MSN protocol changed and despite requests in the forums, things seemed at a standstill. It wasn’t until late August that the software was updated. There are a lot of great reasons in theory to support the Carrier project, but ultimately we all need a working IM. I even explored the use of Empathy which is going to be the default IM application in future releases of Gnome. It shows a lot of promise and is being developed actively and upgraded regularly which is great. The main difference or advantage between Empathy and traditional IMs is that it will support voice chat and also integrate into Gnome’s environment. An example of this would be that you would see an icon to call someone from within the Evolution email client. It will take some time to move things forward but the future does look promising for Empathy and Gnome.

In terms of the future of Carrier, we can only hope that the recent past is not an indication of future development. Carrier has a great opportunity to attract users. It won’t attract as many as it did when it initially started though since one of the main reasons for its creation was to enable the text resizing box during chats and secondly Pidgin is still the defacto IM client included with a lot of distros. While a lot of Linux users will put forth the extra effort to replace Pidgin with Carrier if they feel strongly enough about it, for most people, they are likely to leave well enough alone.

I am not giving up on Carrier yet though. The current version took a bit long for my liking to be released, but it’s here now and it works very well.

My advice for the developers at Carrier would be to make packages readily available for various distros including the most up to date version and make them easy to find on the website. For example. the preamble for the Ubuntu version still links to version 2.4.1. Also, keep up to date and respond to people in the forums more regularly. After all, from your main stanza on the homepage, you indicate: “What makes us different from the official client, is that we work for you.” If that is truly the case, then it needs to be demonstrated fully.

I had never tried Linux Mint before but had always heard good things about it. Mainly the reason that I never bothered trying it was because I was already fairly familiar with Ubuntu from where it was derived. I was aware of some differences such as obviously Linux Mint uses a different theme, includes some codecs and such as well as a different menu style for Gnome borrowed from SuSE but customized into its own style for Linux Mint.

I had recently installed FreeBSD and as in the past, eventually became tired of the ports system so I decided use that disk space to install something else. I had recently been fairly bored with Operating Systems so I was a bit more flexible with trying out something else. In came the Elyssa  0.5 Revision 1 Gnome version of Linux Mint…

The Install

Installation is quite easy, pretty much the same as Ubuntu where you can install it from the live cd boot. It offers custom partitioning which is a must and also adds some extra configurations post install like a small window box for setting up your optional root password and such.

Applications

The usual line up you would expect is here. You get the Gimp for detailed image editing, Brasero for cd/dvd burning, Firefox, Openoffice, Pidgin, Transmission (for torrents), Rhythmbox for audio, Totem for video and a host of other Administrative configuration tools. Linux Mint adds a few extras as well in their control center such as Envy for propritary drivers and also a tool for managing Windows Wireless drivers which I personally think should be default on any distro wanting to gain mass acceptance.

Package Management

Mint comes with its own method of updating but also includes Synaptic which is great to have some variety but could be confusing to newer users who may not know which one to use. I know Ubuntu has both Synaptic and also the Update Manager which are both great tools, but it might be better to combine them into one since they can do some of the same things. Of course its up to the user to decide which is best and choice is always nice, but perhaps having a one time wizard after the install to configure your preference would be a good idea. Having said all that, I’ve had Linux Mint installed for a couple weeks at least and using Synaptic I have noticed that there have not been many updates at all. I will need to look into this more, but I would have thought that there would have been more package updates at least for the applications.

Stability and Performance

Overall, I have found Linux Mint very stable and actually it is faster than I expected. I would definitely say it is faster than Ubuntu even. This was rather surprising to me as I had a preconceived notion that it would be slower if anything since it had some of its own tools added and had a reputation for being more complete out of the box after the install.

Longevity

A lot of times I install distros and then later on, I will install something else over top of it. I don’t plan on doing this with Linux Mint. I am interested in seeing how well it gets maintained, updated and enhanced.

Overall

If you are considering installing a new distro and want something easy with good performance, Linux Mint is definitely worth a look. The only concern I have with it compared to Ubuntu is longevity. I hope it continues to be maintained. Canonical has proven that they are here to stay with offering 5 years of support for each of their LTS versions of Ubuntu. I hope Linux Mint can enjoy the same kind of long term success.

Last night the UFC displayed an event that had all the makings of a great PPV which looked great as usual in HD. All that was left was for the fighters to come through and put on a good show and they did just that.

Here is a quick rundown…

The main event was Georges St. Pierre in his first title defense since regaining the welterweight championship from Matt Serra. GSP started off against Fitch very aggressive and did a lot of damage in the first round. Despite all of the talk about Fitch being tough, surely a lot of observers including myself were surprised that Fitch made it out of the first round. Not only did Fitch make it out of the first, he endured 5 full rounds of beatings until GSP was awarded with a unanimous lopsided decision. Fitch commented in a post fight interview saying that GSP was essentially too fast for him and after the first round, he had vision problems which plagued him for the remainder of the onslaught. After the fight, BJ Penn entered the Octagon and seemed extremely eager to set up a rematch between himself and GSP. GSP of course obliged but it will up to the UFC. BJ will need to move up to welterweight as he has done in the past. GSP vs Penn may be one of the biggest draws in UFC history if it comes to fruition.

Similarly, Brock Lesnar was equally dominant over Heath Herring. Lesnar opened the first round with a flying knee and later connected on a punch that sent Herring not only to the ground but head over feet toward the cage. Herring’s vantage point upon his vision returning to normal would have seen Lesnar charging toward the vulnerable Herring. What a sight that must have been even for a veteran of over 40 fights like Herring! Lesnar continued a dominating performance for the duration, focusing on his smothering wrestling scoring a unanimous 30-26 decision. Lesnar could be the answer to the sometimes dull heavyweight division. Lesnar has personality evidenced by his head nodding along with the crowd chanting for him during the battle as well as his excitement of watching his own replays after the fight. Although Lesnar was completely effective in nullifying any offense strategized by Herring, he obviously is very young in his MMA career at 2-1 and needs to work on some techniques. Lesnar had numerous opportunities to put in hooks while on top and never did so. It was quite possible he could have choked out or arm barred Herring but instead Lesnar used his amateur wrestling skills to smother Herring and beat him mercilessly. While this may look intimidating to some MMA competitors watching, Lesnar will need to become more well rounded as surely he is aware and working on.

Kenny Florian vs Roger Huerta was almost a carbon copy of the GSP vs Fitch fight. It was very obvious that Florian was the far more cerebral and technical fighter while Huerta revealed that he was limited to being a brawler. Huerta will have a great future, but needs to learn more technique.

Also on the card:

Demian Maia defeated Jason MacDonald by a choke in the third round.
Tamdan McCrory beat Luke Cummo by unanimous decision in what Joe Rogan called “The Battle of the Geeks”
Cheick Kongo proved too much for Dan Evenson with a TKO victory at 4:55 of the third round.
Rob Emerson disposed of an over aggressive Manny Gamburyan at 12 seconds of the first round with strikes.

check the UFC website for more results.

Overall I went 7 out of 10 on my picks.