Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is out since yesterday and I’ve been busy first installing it (wasn’t as easy or as fast as I’d hoped, but that is another topic) and then benchmarking the usual games to see whether there were any improvements in performance. Here are the results, including a surprise or two. Read the rest of this entry »
OS X 10.7 Lion gaming performance
July 21st, 2011OS X 10.6.8 graphics performace in games analysed
June 25th, 2011OS X 10.6.8 is out, bringing with it a promise of increased graphics performance, among other improvements. Previous point releases in the 10.6 series have had quite an impact on framerates in games on my hardware, with the notable exception of 10.6.7, which did not come with an updated Nvidia driver and did not impact game performance in any notable way. Let’s see what the story with the latest release is. Read the rest of this entry »
Does OS X 10.6.6 improve graphics performance?
February 18th, 2011Once again, a new version of OS X Snow Leopard is out. It took me some time to get around to installing it on my mid-2010 Macbook Pro, but I’ve finally done it and here’s another comparison of graphics performance, this time between 10.6.5 and 10.6.6. Read the rest of this entry »
OS X 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 Graphics Performance Comparison
November 11th, 2010I just installed the 10.6.5 update on my mid-2010 Macbook Pro (Nvidia 330M). Before I did it, however, I wrote down some numbers pertaining to the graphics driver for the Nvidia card present in 10.6.4, along with some performance numbers from Starcraft II and Jade Empire, which I had readily available. Here’s the result. Read the rest of this entry »
Kubuntu 10.04: Network Management Disabled
May 29th, 2010Booting into Kubuntu on my Mac mini today I was greeted by no network and a useless knetworkmanager which reported only “Network Management disabled”. Here’s how to fix it. Read the rest of this entry »
Apple Wireless Keyboard in Kubuntu Lucid Lynx
March 1st, 2010With Lucid Lynx it seems Bluetooth is once more working more-or-less as expected in Ubuntu, after seemingly years of problems. On my Mac mini I recently decided to switch to Kubuntu, as the latest KDE is simply too good to pass up. While it’s very easy to make the Magic Mouse work, the Apple Wireless Keyboard is a little more tricky to get operational. The system discovers the keyboard just fine, but getting to register the PIN for it is not straightforward.
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One-button mouse in Linux
January 7th, 2010Linux is very hard to use with a one-button mouse. Even though Ubuntu interprets F11 as the middle-click and F12 as the right-click, it’s cumbersome and not really practical. Since I’m sitting in front of a Mac, with a Mac keyboard, I want to make the experience as Mac-like as possible. It’s very easy. Read the rest of this entry »
If Apple Wireless Keyboard won’t turn on
January 7th, 2010Today, after complaining about the battery level for a few days, my wireless Apple keyboard finally stopped working. I took out the old batteries, put in the new ones and the keyboard remained dead. One hour later, it’s working again. Read the rest of this entry »
How to fix black wallpaper in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
November 7th, 2009Ubuntu Karmic is nice, but the version of Mesa included with it has… issues. One of these appears when Compiz is running and results in horribly slow performance and black desktop background. This happens when using the open-source ati driver on hardware like the Radeon 9200 and possibly on other driver/hardware combinations as well.
Here’s a possible way to fix it in 5 minutes or less. Read the rest of this entry »
How to make Linux touchpad scroll like Mac
September 9th, 2009Touchpads in Windows laptops usually allow for scrolling vertically by moving one finger up and down along the right edge of the touch surface. Similarly, horizontal scrolling is done by moving one finger left and right along the bottom edge. On Macs, this is done by putting two fingers on the touchpad and moving them up/down and left/right. Both methods are available in Linux.
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