Sabtu, 16 Oktober 2010

Eight Tech Signs the World really might be coming to an End

You have all heard the jokes that the end of the Mayan calender on December 21st 2012 might bring about "the end of the world" in some type of cataclysmic event. Regardless of whether or not this is necessarily true, there have been more than a few technology releases/announcements in the past couple years that many of us thought would never happen.

8. Starcraft 2 releases (and runs on Linux!). This is one many gamers have been waiting on for some time. After Starcraft Ghost turned into vaporware I think some of us where wondering if Blizzard was ever going to release anything other than WoW expansions ever again. Starcraft 2 is finally here and it was worth the wait, easily one of the best RTSes I have ever played.

7. Microsoft releases a decent desktop operating system. After their Vista fiasco that left many consumers running back to Windows XP, Microsoft took their time getting Windows 7 from beta to a release stage. The result is truly their best desktop operating system. Sure it is not as resource friendly as some alternative operating systems, but if you are coming from XP or Vista - Windows 7 truly does simplify your PC.

6. Broadcom releases open source drivers. The bane of Linux users for many years now has been Broadcom wireless chipsets. Sure, distros such as Ubuntu have made it easier in recent years to install the closed source driver - but a fully open source driver is by far a best case scenario. Once these drivers make it into the mainstream kernel releases, modern Linux distributions will support most all internal wifi chips OOTB.

5. Steam client comes to OSX. Easily the most popular digital distribution system for games on Windows, Steam has been released for OSX. In addition to this Valve company, the one behind Steam, is also re-releasing all of their source engine games (CSS, TF2, L4D, ect.) re-written to use OpenGL for Apple's platform. Something such as this could allow OSX to one day challenge Microsoft's dominance in the PC game market.

4. Microsoft extends Windows XP downgrade rights till 2020. This one might not signal the end of the world exactly, but I think it makes those of us who work on Windows wish the end would come a little sooner. Even though Windows 7 has done so many things correctly the business world is always afraid of change, meaning we will be dealing with this now decade old operating system for another ten years (at least).

3. Microsoft contributes 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. In a move that shocked many Microsoft submitted code that allows Linux virtual machines to perform better when running on a Windows Server 2008 host system. Keep in mind that while 20,000 lines sounds like a lot, it is simply a drop in the bucket of the millions of lines of code that comprise the Linux kernel.

2. Enlightenment E17 libraries reach beta. After ten years and several rewrites later of being defined as "alpha" software, E17 has finally reached a beta stage. It is yet to be seen if we will see a 1.0 release any time soon, but for the time being a beta release is a step in the right direction. If you would like to easily check out the E17 beta, take a peek at Bodhi Linux.

Finally, drum roll please...

1. Duke Nukem Forever gets a release date (again). First announced on April 28, 1997 Duke Nukem Forever seemed to be eternally delayed. This makes for it's 5th (6th, 7th?) release date. This one appears to be a solid one though (so much in fact that there are "early access keys" being advertised on Steam). Hopefully this one will not disappoint when it finally releases after almost 14 years.


Where there any other advances in technology or releases in recent years you thought would never happen?

~Jeff Hoogland

Kamis, 14 Oktober 2010

Ubuntu - The Flagship Linux Desktop Distro

Like it or hate you have to admit:

Ubuntu has done wonders for the Linux desktop.

Through Canonical's works, community development, and the various spin offs such as Linux Mint, PinguyOS, Zorin, and many others there is no arguing that Ubuntu based systems are the most popular choice for the Linux desktop operating system. Ubuntu has almost become synonymous, or at the very least as popular, as Linux in general. If Google search trends mean anyhing just "Ubuntu" could very well surpass "Linux" itself within a few years (because we know Canonical like to keep the Linux hidden). The year after Ubuntu's first release the amount of searches of "Ubuntu" versus searches for "Linux" was 13 to 1:


This number quickly changed as Ubuntu gained in popularity. In 2006 this ratio was more than cut in half:


Ubuntu continued to gain steam from this point forward, in the next year this ratio was halved yet again:


Now, in 2010 the Ubuntu search ratio is extremely close to that of Linux itself, settling at a 1.24 to 1 for the last twelve months:


As someone who has used nearly every distro on the Distro-Watch top 100 list, I can say from personal experience that Ubuntu based systems have always been the easiest to configure. They are what I recommend to friends and family when they ask about Linux. Some people will tell you Ubuntu is harder to use than some other operating systems, but we know that is just plain FUD.

If you are a Linux user do you use something Ubuntu-based on your personal machine? If you have a friend interested in learning Linux, would you recommend Ubuntu or a different distro? Finally, why do you think Ubuntu is the most popular around?

~Jeff Hoogland

Microsoft Launches FUD VS OpenOffice.org

Some good old classic FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) in three, two, one...



Now if I recall not to long ago a Microsoft representative was quoted saying "We love open source". Apparently they realize that many other people love open source as well, so many in fact that it is cutting into their bottom line - thus the offensive attack video you can see above.

It starts off with a quote saying "We originally installed Linux-based PCs running OpenOffice to save money in the short term". That sounds like a viable idea, replace the cost of the operating system and the office suite with free systems on 10+ (or sometimes even 100 or 1000+) and you could be looking at a good chunk of change. So far so good...

Then it goes into "We quickly found that the exorbitant cost $$$$ and limited availability of support left us worse off" Ah, yes. Its not like you can spent three minutes on Google and find many, multiple, different methods, of commercial support for OpenOffice. Maybe they have a point here. /sarcasm

"I need something I can rely on. If an open source, freeware solution breaks, who's gonna fix it?" First off, lets over look the fact that the "director of technology" for an entire school district doesn't know the difference between open source and freeware software... Who fixes issues in OpenOffice? Well there is the community and I also seem to recall some corporate giant having their name stamped on the software as it loads - they might have something to do with it.

"A hugely disproportionate 30% of our IT resources was required for a period of months to service open source... an estimated 25% of additional staff time was routinely required to install and maintain OpenSource-based systems"Now maybe it is just me, but Linux/OpenOffice has always installed fast for me than Windows/Microsoft office. If you are deploying operating systems across hundreds of different systems your install time should really be about the same (regardless of operating system), you setup one master image and then push it out across the network. My main question about their "IT resources" is this:

How many Microsoft certifications did they have compared to OpenOffice or Linux certifications?

"When I was using OpenOffice.org I was especially having trouble with MACROS not being supported enough. I was asking for help from the IT department, they evaluated my request and suggested I use Microsoft Excel" I think we just answered my above question.

"We were accustomed to fielding calls from users in a bind due to difficulties with OpenOffice.org on a daily basis" Did you train your people (or IT staff) in using OpenOffice before you made the switch? Doesn't sound like it to me.

"With OpenOffice.org there was total uncertainty about the formatting of documents and also about their inconsistency when shared outside our production group" Last I checked it was OpenOffice, not Microsoft Office that strictly adhered to the open document format. As far as sharing documents with others goes - as of Office 07 SP2 it can now open and edit open document format by default and OpenOffice.org is a free download.

"Employees using OpenOffice.org weren't always capable of correctly making sense of documents arriving from outside the company and doing so with adequate security guarantees" Formatting issues do occur from time to time going between the totally uncertain Microsoft format and open document format. These issues have been decreasing with time though and I can say to this date I have never had a document get mangled enough that I couldn't correctly make sense of it. Now that I think of it, you know what else has issues? Office 03 trying to open anything ending in .XXXx

"OpenOffice.org 3.1 failed to deliver on its promise of better Microsoft Office interoperability. Severely mangling our Microsoft Office and Microsoft Excel test data files" Obviously other people have had different experiences than I have. That being said, I have never heard of OpenOffice (or any of its developers) promise perfect "interoperability" with Microsoft Office. Did OpenOffice 3.1 have better Microsoft Office support than OpenOffice 3.0? Yes, it did.

"I've had students who turned in files that they've converted from OpenOffice with formatting problems that affect their grade" I'm in my senior year of college right now, I've been using OpenOffice for all four years - I'm an A student. If you are truly worried about formatting issues, click that little "export to pdf" button when you finish typing your paper.

"When I open a spreadsheet it can take ten times times longer in OpenOffice.org (calc) than in Microsoft Excel" Was it an ods (open document) file? If not, then I apologize that the OpenOffice.org engineers have yet to fully reverse engineer the closed Microsoft format.

"Our employees where frustrated because OpenOffice.org and our over all IT environment prevented them from being more productive. New employees lacked OpenOffice.org applications' use skills. That significantly increased the employees adaptation period and adversely affected their operational efficiency" I think I covered these points already, but in case you missed it: Get your people (and more importantly your IT staff) trained in whatever software they will be using. Would you expect an automobile mechanic to be able to work on a 747?

"Our users' familiarity with the Microsoft Office interface and the uniformity of the different application tools have minimized calls to the help desk" Office 07 looks nothing like Office 03 and I still know people that refuse to change over to the new system. Now I know Office 07 and 03 are fairly uniform within themselves, but then so is OpenOffice.org

"By using Microsoft Office 2007 we have reduced the internal support costs significantly because our staff is familiar with this system. This increases acceptance and job satisfaction" You know why they are familiar with that system? Because they where trained to use that system. For the third time - regardless of the software you choose to use, your employees needs to be trained in its use! People get upset when you put something in front of them that they don't know how to use.

"The company paid to much for using open-code of OpenOffice.org software" And yet none of these quotes talk about the actual monetary amounts they spent! Just that it was "too much".

"efficiency of operations was decreasing" Get - your - people - TRAINED.

"I don't necessarily agree that open source is a free product" You are entitled to whatever backwards opinions you would like. "There are always costs related to: support, standardization, and compatibility" This is true, but wouldn't it be better to have a free product that you then have to pay for support for? As opposed to a product you pay for and then have to still pay for support for?

"When we returned to Microsoft Office after our experience with OpenOffice you could practically hear a collective sigh of relief across the entire district" I bet their people where trained in using Microsoft Office, but never had one class for OpenOffice.

Were did all these quotes come from? None other than twelve Microsoft cases studies (You can find a full list/links to these on ArsTechnica). When watching the video you will also notice clever advertising tricks such as a brown colored background whenever they are speaking about OpenOffice and a pleasant blue colored background whenever Microsoft Office is mentioned. This video is nothing other than pure FUD, plain and simple. If Microsoft really does love open source they have a strange way of showing it.

~Jeff Hoogland

Sabtu, 09 Oktober 2010

Ubuntu 10.04 E17 LiveDVD

The Enlightenment foundation libraries (EFL) recently reached beta status after having been marked as alpha software for a decade. If you are unfamiliar with what EFL are, they can be summed up in a single quote from their front page:

"Enlightenment is not just a window manager for Linux/X11 and others, but also a whole suite of libraries to help you create beautiful user interfaces"

Enlightenment is easily my favorite Linux desktop environment and I feel it has not gotten the attention it deserves from distro developers largely due to it's long time alpha status. In fact the only Linux distributions with recent releases utilizing the Enlightenment desktop are the Slackware based Austrumi and PCLinuxOS.

Ubuntu Linux is my distro of choice for desktop usage and as such I felt it was wrong that there are no recent releases of it that come pre-configured with an Enlightenment desktop. Sure, there is MoonOS - but this is based on the no longer supported Ubuntu 9.04 - and then there is OpenGEU, which is based on the even older Ubuntu 8.10. There is also always the compiling from source option, but this is timely and something not most beginners want to attempt.

Now for the point of this post, I would like to announce the release of a pet project I have been working on for the last week:

This is an Ubuntu 10.04 based LiveDVD that is configured to have a usable Enlightenment desktop. I started off with an Ubuntu minimal CD, compiled and installed a stable build of E17 from SVN, configured the desktop to look beautiful, and then setup a default application set that should be able to accomplish the tasks of most every user.

You will notice that I use many Gnome/GTK tool sets in place of some of the default E17 ones, this is because I feel they do a better job of accomplishing their given task. I did this because while E17 is wonderfully pretty, I want the desktop to be as usable as possible. PCManFM is the default file manager, Shutter is included to take screen-shots, and parcellite is included as a light-weight clipboard manager. This release also includes non-free software such as Adobe Flash, Sun Java, multi-media codecs, and Skype (if there is an interest I will compile a version of the DVD excluding all non-free components).

The DVD is a 1.4 gb download that is currently being shared via a torrent download. You can find the 005 32bit release here. If you can spare the bandwidth please seed the torrent after downloading it.

And finally, a screen shot of what the desktop looks like:


I am not done working on this disc, so changes will be made over time. I am open to suggestions for improving the over all look/feel/functionality of the live disc - so if you give it a spin please leave some feed back! Also while this is a Live DVD, it is installable. So if you like it - feel free to make it your everyday desktop operating system :)

Looking for something more minimalistic? Check out Bodhi Linux!

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

Sabtu, 02 Oktober 2010

Wasteful Technology Habits - Think Before You Buy

In America many people are always buying things they don't really need. That fifteenth pair of shoes, a third car, a second house... Well you get the idea. I guess it should really be no surprise then that people in America are also over paying for computer hardware and software they do not need, nor will they ever come close to fully utilizing.

I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone to someone's house to clean out a system that is used strictly for webrowsing and typing papers and the system is a total power house. Maybe it is just myself, but it seems wasteful to use a 2.4ghz Quad core sporting 8gigs of RAM to just compose papers.

Why does this happened? Well there are really two people to blame here. The first is the sales person. Odds are the system was purchased from someone who works on a commission and as such it is to their benefit to sell a more expensive computer than a cheaper one. The second is the consumer themselves. If they had been informed on what they are buying in the first place they never would have purchased something so ridiculously powerful for their simple needs.

Beyond these two factors I think another misconception that is ingrained in people is that technology has to be expensive. A computer that costs half as much? That can't possibly last as long as the more expensive model or meet my needs as readily.

In the same manner I believe people have become accustomed to be gouged on the cost of software. The old "you get what you pay for" motto sticks in the back of their mind and because of this I think many don't give free alternatives a fair chance.

OpenOffice meets the needs of easily 95% of home users (and a good deal of those that use office software at work) and most of those people using an, often times illegal, version of Photoshop would be able to accomplish the exact same tasks using the legally free GIMP. Beyond this beginning Linux distros such as Linux Mint or Pinguy OS easily fulfill all the desktop computing needs of your average user.

With all of this in mind, why don't you see Linux, OpenOffice, or GIMP on the shelf at your local computer store? Simple:

There is no money in it for the retailer.

None of these products come with the, often hundreds of dollars, price tag attached that the commerical products have. Beyond this if a customer is using a Linux system the store will not have that same customer returning in six months to have their system cleaned out of viruses and "brought back up to speed".

The lesson to be learned here/the point I would like to get across is this - if you are not familiar with technology, bring someone with you who is when you go to pick out new hardware/software! It could end up saving you a good deal of money in the long run.

~Jeff Hoogland

HOWTO: Install Firefox 4 on Ubuntu or any Linux Distro

Firefox 4 is almost ready for prime time! It offers lots of new features and is currently in beta. As such not all distributions have installer packages for it (and those that do don't always update them right away). Another problem with these builds (on Ubuntu and several other distros at least) is that they brand their beta Firefox package not as "Firefox", but as whatever code name the project has. This causes some websites, such as Facebook, to detect it as an unknown browser and thus disable some functionality (not to mention it will also confuse non-tech people that sit down in front of your computer).

Now I know there are always the nightly builds, but these are extremely bleeding edge and I personally don't care to have to run a system upgrade every single day. The following is an easy way to install the latest stable beta version of Firefox on any Linux distribution.

First -
Odds are your Linux distribution has a Firefox package (albeit and older version), install this package so your system will automatically install all of Firefox's dependencies through your package manager.

For example on a Ubuntu based distribution you would run the following in terminal:

sudo apt-get install firefox

Second -
Download the latest beta package of Firefox from here.

Finally -
Open a terminal and run the following commands in order (note these instructions assume you download the Firefox archive in step 2 to your ~/Downloads folder):

cd ~/Downloads
tar xjf firefox-*.tar.bz2
cd firefox
sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-old
sudo ln -s ~/Downloads/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

You are all set! The Firefox icon in your menu will now launch the beta version of Firefox you just downloaded. There are two important things to note when installing Firefox via this method. First - Your older version of Firefox is install installed, if you want to use it for some reason just run firefox-old in terminal. Second, the version of Firefox we installed will not be updated through your system's package manager - it will however handle it's own updates just fine.

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

Kamis, 30 September 2010

One Year Blogging

As September comes to a close so does my twelfth month of writing:
Thoughts on Technology


What started off as a small page for me to post my tech tips and tricks for myself and friends has spiraled into over 50,000 unique hits a month for the the last three months. I'd just like to say thanks to all those who read regularly, if you could please drop a comment on this post letting me know who you are and why you read.

I'd also like to say thanks to Wine Reviews - they where the first ever to re-post one of my works and really generate some traffic for my page here. Thanks also to Lxer, Raiden's Realm, /r/Linux, and all the countless other places that I have found links back to my works here.

If you ever have a suggestion for something you would like to see written or would just like to say hello, please feel free to send me an email - JeffHoogland at Linux dot com

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland