So for those of you who don’t know or follow my twitter feed, my aunt is a IT Pro Advisor at Microsoft Canada. You may also know that my opinion of Microsoft hasn’t been the highest (as expressed often in this blog).
The purpose of my visit was to ask successful people how they got to where they are in their field, which holds my interest. The people were incredibly kind and interesting and really let me pick their brains. Continue reading
OMG! Ubuntu (a blog you should certainly be reading if you don’t already have it in your reader) has the complete guide to tricking out XSplash, the new bootscreen manager in Ubuntu 9.10.
One of the great things about XSplash is that it starts XServer, what displays good graphics on your screen in Linux, BSD, and OS X systems, a few seconds into the boot instead of near the end. This means that you no longer have to really know your stuff to change the bootscreen; all you need to do is follow some very simple instructions.
First off, if you just want to change your bootscreen, play with the files in /usr/share/images/xsplash
But I’m not here to talk about that: I’m talking about a seamless boot experience that changes your login window and XSplash background to be your normal wallpaper. Continue reading
The latest release of Ubuntu has hit the streets. The much-acclaimed “Karmic Koala” (Ubuntu 9.10’s codename) is now out in earnest, bringing many usability enhancements as well as technical ones.
Make sure to use the torrents if you can, just to relieve server tension.
Because I can’t update incredibly often, I’ll use this post to point you to OMG! UBUNTU!, probably the best Ubuntu blog I’ve seen out there. Regularly updated, OMG! UBUNTU! gives you the low-down on everything Ubuntu-related, including upcoming plans.
So I was thinking about one particular thing that I wrote about in my review of the GNOME shell, when I said that you should drop the ideas you have about how a desktop should look. This was how artificial the “desktop” concept is. Back in the Stone Age we came from the desktop paradigm: it’s what we understood in terms of productivity. However, a computer is much different, much more powerful than a desk. On a desk you have a finite space which contains only the information and objects you put on it. It doesn’t fetch data, tell you anything, give you opinions or options. It’s a tool. A computer is different in that it has the power to fetch information, to move it, and to bring it all together and present it to the user. It can handle any type of media: where a desk could only handle text and photos (unless you put a boom-box on it) the computer can do text and photos and sound and video and social interaction through Twitter and other feed-based services. We need to embrace a paradigm that suits the computer. Continue reading
For starters, throw away all your conceptions about desktops. They no longer apply.
Also remember that I am reviewing a highly experimental piece of software. It may look unwieldy but that’s because it has no customization options yet (or at least, no GUI).
And lastly, remember that because there is a whole new paradigm introduced here it may seem that GNOME Shell’s whole concept is flawed. However, after playing with it I can safely say that I can’t wait for it to arrive and believe it will increase my productivity.
So what am I talking about? This (click for full view).
This is a reference to Ubuntu’s famed Bug 1: Microsoft has majority market share (“Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.”)
The writer references another writer who identifies (correctly) Linux to be at GhandiCon3 (from the famous Ghandi quote promoting non-violent revolution: “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”). Linux has certainly been ignored. Then laughed at (“Linux? Nothing runs on Linux!”). When Microsoft is issuing Get the “Facts” campaigns and trying to sue Linux supporters into submission (like TomTom GPS), we’re definitely at GhandiCon3 (Then they fight you). Whether we will win, well, that’s to be determind. I am hopeful, however, that the Google Chrome OS will go far to helping us win.
Do I think Microsoft will lose majority market share (Note, this is not wiped out) by June 2011? Not really. Do I hope they do? Yes. Remember, it’s not just Linux that needs to make the dent, but Apple’s OS X (which poses little threat to Linux as long as it stays bound to the Apple Macintosh). As far as crises that would percipitate this go I see US Antitrust breaking up Microsoft, Microsoft flopping with Windows7, or computer manufacturers refusing to put up with the grief that Microsoft gives them (like defining what a “netbook” is despite not actually making computers, Per-Processor Licensing Fees, and the like). Microsoft’s market share is dependent on its stranglehold of the manufacturers and if that collapses, Microsoft would collapse (in relative terms, of course).
Until then, the open source community can just keep making the best software they can and wait for GhandiCon4.
Google, the big little company we all know and love, has decided that a logical extension of their vision for Google Chrome is the Chrome Operating System. While the original Chrome was marketed as being similar to an OS in how it handled the web, Google decided that the desktop OS is built for an age where people are tied to desktop applications. Google says that ChromeOS will be a lightweight, fast-to-boot-fast-to-run OS that focuses on getting people to the web. While aimed at netbooks, it will also be available for desktops and laptops (so presumably not a Moblin-like interface).
While it will be Linux-based (like Android but seperate), ChromeOS will build many things from the ground up. Now, I probably won’t wind up using ChromeOS (this is purely speculatory with no screenshots or anything) as I like the full-fledged Desktop OS provided by Ubuntu, but because the project is open source and builds on open source projects there will be a lot of new material coming in to the FLOSS ecosystem which will inevitably be picked up by the mainstream Linuxes.
I incorrectly reported on Twitter (based on a misunderstanding of Gizmodo) that it would be able to run Windows and OS X apps. As far as I can tell, there won’t be apps per say but rather web-based applications which can be run on any operating system from any modern browser. This, needless to say, makes more sense, though I am dissappointed because geting Win/Mac compatibility in an open source project would mean Win/Mac compatibility for the Linux universe.
So yes, I’m excited. Can’t wait to see where this goes. I am a fan of Chrome as a browser (if it only did Flash it’d be my default on Linux – it’s alpha is great) and I’m sure Google will do a great job on ChromeOS
According to NetApplications, Microsoft’s forced-use browser Internet Explorer lost 11.4% of the browser market between the three versions currently in the wild (the recent IE8, the first-IE-with-tabs-finally-half-baked-standards-support-they-could-have-gone-all-the-way-but-noooo IE7, and the it-just-won’t-die-no-matter-how-many-times-I-whack-it-with-a-sledgehammer-AHHH-AHHHH-AHHHHH IE6). While IE7’s loss in popularity is explainable – people upgrading/being forced to upgrade to IE8 – and IE6’s persistence is starting to wane because it lacks certain features like tabs and any notion of security, the nice thing is that it’s losing to the renewed competition in the Second Browser Wars. Where it was once mainly between Netscape and Internet Explorer, there’s now Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox (Netscape’s next of kin), Opera,Apple’s Safari, and the new and very impressive Google Chrome. As the Internet Explorer line has done very little in the way of innovation (A small browser called NetCaptor invented them in 1998 and after losing market share to the tabbed Opera, Firefox, and Safari, IE integrated them in 2006) this isn’t surprising.
What is surprising (though not at all unwelcome) is that people are taking enough interest in quality to look past the default, to revolt from the dictatorship of Good Enough. All the new entrants to the browser wars bring new innovations – Firefox with extensions, Opera with Unite and many others, Chrome with Tab Sequestration – and people are realizing that what comes installed on their computer really isn’t that good.
This evening I was going to sit down and play Age of Empires III with my mom. We have it installed on two computers and just trade discs. Then my little brother said he wanted to play. That’s great, but the problem is that neither his nor my mom’s laptop runs fast enough to play it well and my laptop runs Ubuntu. I checked and it wasn’t supported by Crossover Games, my beloved commercial WINE software, but after googling on a way to play AOE on my Ubuntu laptop, I found Play On Linux.
http://www.playonlinux.com/en/
Play On Linux is an application that supplements the WINE translation software that allows some Windows applications to run on Linux. It contains and applies scripts that provide the best configuration for a game.
One of the things that I love about Linux is that there’s always a community, open-source project that makes things work even when an upstream project like WINE doesn’t work by default. It’s by no means perfect – WINE is just a stepping stone to building Linux market share so applications like games would be native – but it’s encouraging when you look at all the junk that’s available for Windows to do a little thing (I looked over programs to encode video to/from OGG in Windows and it was a nightmare of shareware and spyware and uggggg!)
So as I wait for Age of Empires III to install, good luck to the people at PlayOnLinux!
Aaaand Firefox 3.5 drops today. This post is a Three-In-One. Part One is a Firefox Overview, Part Two is how to give Firefox some (more) serious speed, and Part Three is how to stop wasting your time on the web.
Here’s your overview. I was going to write one all by myself but the Mozilla team’s great quick tour really defeats the purpose:
It’s interesting how “buying gifts” has become a universal euphamism when it comes to Private Browsing…
There are also all the usability features which are great but don’t really *innovate* as much as they follow Google’s (amazing) Chrome browser.
As someone who designs and builds websites, however, what I’m really excited about is Open Video. Open Video uses the OpenSource OGG-Theora video codec (which is included by default in Linux, BSD, and Solaris systems and available for Windows and OS X) to do some really neat stuff: Continue reading
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