Ubuntu and cool stuff

My youngest daughter discovered his week that GIMP (open source equivalent of PhotoShop) runs better on Linux than Windows XP. She uses about a thousand brushes and as many fonts and after a few hours XP just grinds to a near halt. On the same system, Ubuntu Linux 8.04 stays consistently lively across several days with no problems doing exactly the same things.

I've been coming home to find her deep in the grip of the penguin....for hours...designing Bebo skins for her mates. I have to confess I've been seeking tuition on how to use layers and masks and collect brushes of all types for creating interesting graphics. I have a lot of catching up to do. She's been thrashing GIMP for almost 2 years now, to the point where she can do stuff that is REALLY cool....and be completely unable to explain how she did it. It just happens......part of her internal programming.

Still on Tux, she also found that on Ubuntu 8.04 she can preview her MP3 files by hovering the mouse pointer over the file in a folder. She was waving the mouse pointer around "creating" ad hoc sample 'concerts'. It must load them into cache or memory as the switch between songs was instant. Even I, somewhat jaded linux user for 14 years now, thought that was pretty cool. The system has 512MB of RAM and is based on an AMD Athlon 2200+ CPU (approx 1.8Ghz) that was new 5 or 6 years ago.