Computer Stores with Linux Pre-installed.

Traditionally installing a new operating system has been an intimidating task. This was especially an issue with (GNU/)Linux as it was difficult to get all of the hardware working correctly with the software. In recent years this has gotten much easier. However, most computer users still would prefer to get their system pre-installed. Another advantage of getting Linux pre-installed is that companies that offer this ensure that the hardware they include works well with Linux. There are several companies selling systems with pre-installed Linux. I haven't found a complete list so I'll provide a list of the ones I have found. Note that I haven't had any personal experience with these companys - this isn't an endorsement.

• Emperor Linux --- http://www.emperorlinux.com/
• Los Alamos Computers --- http://laclinux.com/
• System76 --- http://system76.com/
• ZaReason --- http://www.zareason.com/
• Efficient PC --- http://efficientpc.co.uk/
• Penguin Computing --- http://www.penguincomputing.com/

I am sure there are a lot of other companies out there. Feel free to drop a line if you know of some that I missed.

Computer Generated Images

I have been working recently on an evolutionary computation system of my own design. I have created it to evolve programs that generate computer images. I have been asked to share the most interesting images and this seems like an appropriate place to do this. Eventually I hope to use a similar system to help solve more practical problems. I am interested particularly in applying the same idea to optimizing computer code.

This is the initial base image. I wrote the program to generate this image and used that program as the original "ancestor" for all of the images. All of the other images are based on random changes (mutations) to this original image.


The cirle is gone on this one and much of the left side has disappeared. The left side represents negative coordinates so changes often relate to the origin of the image. I've chosen the center to be the origin in for these programs.

With random mutations you might expect to see a lot of images with random 'junk' in them. Actually these type of images are less common because the images are based on logical rules. I find these images combining order and choas really interesting.




In this one the cirle in the middle has become a horizontal line. The circle in these images was creating by calculating the distance from the origin so it appears in this image that X (horizontal distance) has dropped out of the equation in this one. It calculates the distance from the origin only along the virtical y scale.

Of all the ones I've seen so far I think this one is my favorite. You can see the similarity to the original, but it contains some new effects that weren't part of the original at all.


Dramatic I think is the word. Great contrast between the inner purple/pink and the outter green.

The images are a bit pixelatted because they were done at 64 x 64 pixel resolution. The programs work on a huge virtual resolution so it is possible to scale them up. However, at the moment this is a very slow process because it takes a long time to calculate the value for each pixel. 64 x 64 images can take over a minute to create.