Practical Technology

One of the neat things about Linux has always been that you can run it on just about anything: iPhones, xBoxes, PS3, you name it, you can run Linux on it. So, why not, the good people at DeviceVM thought, make a desktop Linux that came bundled in a PC’s motherboard: Splashtop.

Splashtop is a mini-desktop Linux distribution that’s based on the 2.6.20 Linux kernel. Currently, Splashtop comes pre-installed on pretty much all ASUS motherboards and on netbooks and laptops from ASUS, HP’s high-end VoodooPC division and Lenovo. Rumor has it that Splashtop and similar baked-in desktop Linuxes, like Dell’s “BlackTop,” aka Latitude ON, will soon be appearing from other PC and motherboard vendors. I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if DeviceVM makes some new partner announcements at this week’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show).

The concept behind Splashtop and its competitors is to make it possible for you to open your netbook or laptop and be able to get to work in five seconds or less. It’s not a Windows replacement idea. Most of these systems come with Windows pre-installed as their main operating system. Instead, vendors are addressing the needs of today’s hurry-up-and-go users. These folks simply want to get to a desktop quickly so they can check their e-mail, make a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) call or check a Web site, and then close it to catch their next flight.

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Google has been slowly, but surely, displacing Microsoft as the number one PC technology company. Google has done it by misdirection. Instead of taking Microsoft head-on in desktops, Google first consolidated their hold on Web search and only then start moving into Web-based desktop applications. Then, in 2008, they made their first direct strike at the desktop with the release of their own Web browser: Google Chrome. Now, Matthaus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann, founders of the stealth startup Mobile-facts, have found that you can take Google’s smartphone operating system, Android, and use it as a desktop operating system.

In fact, the dauntless duo found that it took them only “about four hours of work to compile Android for the netbook. Having done so, we (Daniel Hartmann, that is) got the netbook fully up and running on it, with nearly all of the necessary hardware you’d want (including graphics, sound and the wireless card for internet) running.” In short, they found that Android was already a desktop operating system.

This didn’t come as a surprise to either of them. They’d been expecting Google to use Android for more than mobile phones for months. What I find a bit surprising is that it was already so easy to port Android to a PC. Heck. I could have done it, and my coding skills are really rusty.

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Some people say I like to beat Microsoft up. Not really. I just dislike bad technology, and Microsoft makes a lot of poor-quality hardware and software. Anyone unfortunate enough to own a 30GB Zune knows exactly what I mean.

Today, December 31st, many, if not all, 30GB Zunes, Microsoft’s first generation of music players, stopped working. They were as dead as doornails.

Now, Microsoft is explaining that the so-called “Z2K9″ glitch was the result of how the device’s firmware handles leap years. While short on details, the Microsoft press representative also said that the frozen Zunes should start working again by by noon GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on January 1st. In other words, by 7AM Eastern time tomorrow morning, your bricked Zune should be working.

Microsoft assures users that they won’t need to reset the time or do anything else fancy. If you buy Microsoft’s story, users’ Zunes will just magically start working again.

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I love the illustration for a Linux Haxor story, Obligatory Year-End Positive Linux Predictions. It features Bart Simpson at the school blackboard, which is covered with “Year of the Linux desktop.” I understand all too well how people can tire of endless predictions that this (fill-in-the-blank) year will be the year of the Linux desktop. There’s only one problem with all these predictions. We’ve already had the year of the Linux desktop.

For me, it’s been the ‘year’ of the Linux desktop since 1995. That’s when I started using Linux on a regular basis. My first distribution was Slackware. Slackware is still around, and it’s still a fine Linux for people like me who came to Linux from Unix.

Let’s get real though. There have never been that many people to whom the arguments over whether the Bourne, C, Korn, or Bash shells were the best desktops really mattered. I still maintain, however, that Korn is the best since you can do serious programming in it while maintaining backwards compatibility. OK, so that kind of thing still matters to me and to other die-hard Linux/Unix users, but no one else really cares.

For most users, I think 2005 was the year of the Linux desktop. That was the year that Novell introduced SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 9.3. What was important about that? It was the first desktop Linux, in my opinion, that you could put down in front of an office-worker and expect them to get up to speed on it as quickly as they would on Windows and get just as much work done.

In other words, 2005 was the year that the Linux desktop became a business desktop.

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When you’re talking Linux, three big names always pop up: Canonical’s Ubuntu, Novell’s openSUSE and Red Hat’s Fedora. Ubuntu has ridden a groundswell of both consumer and commercial support to its current ranking as the most popular Linux distribution. OpenSUSE, with its business underpinnings, has always been popular in Europe and has been making inroads in the U.S. And it is largely thanks to Fedora that Red Hat has become the biggest Linux company with a major role in community Linux.

Each of these “big three” has recently released a new version of its distribution, which means it’s time to check them out and decide which is No 1. Or, more properly, which is No. 1 for what user.

To test them, I installed each distro on a Dell Inspiron 530S powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. The test machine had 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set. This is a standard 2008 computer, which retails for approximately $450.

I also ran each distribution on other PCs to get an idea as to how they worked on a day-to-day basis. For example, I ran openSUSE on a Lenovo ThinkPad R61, Fedora on a Gateway GT5622 desktop and Ubuntu on an older Gateway 503GR desktop.

The Linux distros all had several things in common. First, installing each of them was a no-brainer. I popped in the CD, DVD or (in Fedora’s case) a USB memory stick; got the computer to boot from the installation media; agreed on the time zone, the keyboard type and the new username; and then had a cup or two of coffee. At the end, each distribution was installed and ready to go.

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