Measuring performance of GTK theme

Does GTK theme make any noticeable change in performance? Yes. as I have mentioned in previous post - Top 10 Gnome Performance Tweaks, Here is a way to figure out how much does it matter.  If you are interested in creating GTK themes you should know how to check performance of theme..

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I’m going to check performance of three completely different themes.

Mira, Mist, and Wasp

You will need GTK-Perf utility.

To install it on Ubuntu, use following command.

sudo apt-get install gtkperf

Run the utility and see the results, Lower is better.

1. Mira

Result: 10.96 Seconds

GtkEntry - time:  0.14
GtkComboBox - time:  3.28
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  2.72
GtkSpinButton - time:  0.53
GtkProgressBar - time:  0.21
GtkToggleButton - time:  0.56
GtkCheckButton - time:  0.26
GtkRadioButton - time:  0.36
GtkTextView - Add text - time:  0.77
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  0.29
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  0.48
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  0.65
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  0.60
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0.09
 --- 
Total time: 10.96

2. Wasp

Result: 7.72 Seconds

GtkEntry - time:  0.21
GtkComboBox - time:  2.07
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  1.45
GtkSpinButton - time:  0.23
GtkProgressBar - time:  0.09
GtkToggleButton - time:  0.34
GtkCheckButton - time:  0.27
GtkRadioButton - time:  0.38
GtkTextView - Add text - time:  0.63
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  0.26
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  0.39
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  0.64
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  0.65
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0.09
 --- 
Total time:  7.72

3. Mist

Result: 6.17 Seconds

GtkEntry - time:  0.13
GtkComboBox - time:  1.42
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  1.13
GtkSpinButton - time:  0.08
GtkProgressBar - time:  0.06
GtkToggleButton - time:  0.28
GtkCheckButton - time:  0.19
GtkRadioButton - time:  0.41
GtkTextView - Add text - time:  0.64
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  0.12
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  0.36
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  0.67
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  0.57
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0.09
 --- 
Total time:  6.17

-- “Ultimately you will find that simple themes are twice faster than high detailed themes.. This wont matter much if you got a healthy machine, But if you are running on older machine with poor or onboard graphics card, that too with bigger resolutions. GTK themes will make a big difference.”

Technorati Tags: Linux,Gnome,GTK,Theme,Performance

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Linux firewalls for newbies

Firewall is a very important aspect of security, You will not need firewall when you are behind router in your personal network. because router conceal your private network from public network. But, You will always need a good firewall configuration when you are in big private or Wireless public networks..
Not everyone can use iptables because its huge, and very confusing for newbies.
Here are some easy to use firewalls for Linux..

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1. Firestarter

This is a rich featured and user friendly firewall application, Firestarter provides many advance features like ICMP filtering, Service filtering, Internet connection sharing, local DHCP server.. making it a must have application for any Linux desktop installation
Screenshots / Download

2. Gufw

A popular front-end for ufw (Which is a front-end for iptables) firewall, You will find this installed by default on Linux Mint, Configuring a firewall is now easy as pie.. Gufw is the most easiest configuration tool for firewall you will ever see, However it serves very limited amount of functionality.
Screenshots / Download

3. Guarddog

I like this configuration utility since I used it for first time. Guarddog allows to configure advance firewall with few clicks, besides that It also supports configuring firewall through presets for different services and protocols.. If you don't know about networks too much, you can think about Guarddog
Screenshots  / Download

4. KMyFirewall

KMyFirewall is a front-end for iptables, However its not completely user friendly. because you need to write the iptables rules using GUI, then apply them. You can use KMyFirewall for creating complex firewall rules. but until you don't have enough knowledge of iptables. it can difficult to use KMyFirewall for you.
Screenshots / Download

5. Firewall Builder

This is the most popular firewall graphical front-end, fwbuilder supports multiple types of Firewall ( iptables (netfilter), ipfilter, pf, ipfw, Cisco PIX and more ) and Platforms ( Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows, Mac OS X ). Firewall builder is awesome, but its a  professional more than a desktop utility.
Screenshots / Download

6. Other IPTable frontends

There are many other Iptables front-ends around which can help you to build firewalls.
e.g. UIF, KIptablesGenerator, Simple IPtable Script generator, Easy firewall generator

Technorati Tags: Linux, Firewall, Desktop, Easy

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Quickest way for audio editing

Ardour or Audacity are very good options for audio editing on Linux, but It adds some unnecessary complexity to audio editing and production, for example creating small audio snippets, applying simple effects, or even recording audio from multiple sources and mixing etc, can be done very easily on Jokosher.

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Jokosher is currently in development, The latest release is 0.11.x, but It can save your big time.

Some of my friends use Audacity for audio production for screen casts, no wonder because its very good. but Audacity adds unnecessary complexity to their unprofessional work.

Jokosher on the other hand have an magnificent UI, specially its lot more cleaner and friendlier..

Jokosher is extensible and Cross-Platform. You can easily create extensions for Jokosher, If you are a Python programmer.

Download

Screenshots

 

Technorati Tags: Linux,Windows,Applications,Audio,Multimedia

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Karmic Koala, not too far - Penguin Inside

Only 15 days for Karmic Koala


I really don't what what makes it most awaited Linux distro..
people should really know that newer version of software is not a feature.

• this version of gnome
• that version of openoffice
• newer version pulse-audio
• replacement of IM client
  

Whats up with the gnome-shell, you can also have it on 2.26
and soon the update packages will be available for 9.04 too.

I wonder what happened to Ubuntu Brainstrom
Ubuntu disappointed me in terms of new concepts and feature this time..
In fact Fedora releases have much more innovating features than just a theme or just the package selection.

But still, nothing against ubuntu, Its still one of my favs, I guess jaunty will stay much longer on my machine this time.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Ubuntu, Karmic Koala, Release, Latest

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