Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 16, 2012
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu wants to be your cloud and data-center Linux

Linux fans are excited about Ubuntu’s forthcoming long-term service desktop release, Ubuntu 12.04. That’s all well and good. After all Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company hopes 20-million of you will buy Ubuntu PCs in the coming twelve months. But, Ubuntu also wants to be your Linux of choice for your cloud and data center.

A first look at Ubuntu Linux 12.04’s Unity desktop (Gallery)

On the cloud,. Canonical has reaffirmed its allegiance to the OpenStack alliance. But, the company is adding their own twist: “Any Web Service Over Me” (AWSOME). AWSOME, which is now available in beta, is a cloud proxy. It provides OpenStack application programming interfaces (APIs) that are also used in the Amazon’s EC2 and AWS public cloud services. The idea is to make it easy to deploy hybrid cloud workloads across both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and OpenStack clouds.

Ubuntu wants to be your cloud and data-center Linux. More >

April 13, 2012
by sjvn01
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20-million new Ubuntu Linux PCs in 2012?

In less than two weeks, the latest version of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution, Ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin, will be released. This new Ubuntu is looking good. How good? In a recent interview with Julie Bort, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said, “We expect to ship close to 20 million PCs in the next year.”

He wasn’t talking about 20-million new copies of Ubuntu being installed. That’s easy to believe. True, desktop Linux has only a fraction of the total desktop market, but there are certainly tens of millions of Linux users. Mind you, there are hundreds of millions of Mac OS X users and over a billion Windows users.

A first look at Ubuntu 12.04 (Gallery)

Still, 20-million people buying Ubuntu pre-installed on their computers in the next twelve months? That’s a lot!


20-million new Ubuntu Linux PCs in 2012? More >

April 12, 2012
by sjvn01
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OpenStack vs. CloudStack: The beginning of the open-source cloud wars

The open-source cloud conflict got started in earnest last week when Citrix, formerly an OpenStack cloud supporter, announced that it was reviving its own CloudStack cloud under the Apache Foundation. Today, OpenStack finally announced that its Foundation was really launching with industry heavy-weights AT&T, Canonical, HP, IBM, Nebula, Rackspace, Red Hat, and SUSE as Platinum Members, Let the open-source cloud wars begin!

OpenStack vs. CloudStack: The beginning of the open-source cloud wars. More >

April 11, 2012
by sjvn01
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Google Plus gets a new look and feel (Review)

I’ve been a happy user of Google Plus since its early days.. Now, with its recently revised interface and functionality, Google+ is indeed a bit simpler and more beautiful, but… it still have some blemishes. Such as, what the heck is that large swatch of white space anyway? Bur more about that later. First, the good stuff.

Google Plus, which now has 170-million users according to Vic Gundotra, a Google senior vice president, has been redesigned to make it easier to use and more attractive. The first feature you’ll notice is the left-hand Google Plus menu-bar, the “ribbon.” From it you can quickly go to your favorite Google Plus service.

And, I do mean your favorite service. Google makes it possible for you to edit the ribbon, So, for example, you can place your favorite service on the top. Or, if you don’t care for one—I have no real use for social network games—drop them in the bottom-right “More” box. If you hover hover over some applications you’ll also be presented with a set of quick actions for them. For example, if you hover over the photos app, you’ll get options to add images from your phone or an online album.

Say hello to the new look of Google Plus (screenshots)

It’s also a lot easier to start video hangouts. These are free video-conferences. You can have up to ten people in a hangout. It’s always been a nice feature, but a trifle hidden. Now, it’s right on the ribbon. Once in it, it’s also easy to pick and choose who you want to join you in your impromptu video-conference.

Google Plus gets a new look and feel (Review). More >

April 11, 2012
by sjvn01
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What Microsoft’s AOL/Netscape patent purchases means

We now know a little more about the Netscape patents that Microsoft bought from AOL. It’s believed that the patents that Microsoft either bought outright or acquired a license for over a billion bucks include:

Patent No. 5657390, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which has since been transformed into Transport Layer Security (TLS). SSL/TLS sets up an encrypted communication channel between Web browsers and servers. It’s used in practically every Internet financial transaction

Patent No. 7478142. Packing Web-browser based applications This describes how to package applications that are delivered over the Internet and then runs inside a Web browser. You could argue that this covers all Web 2.0 technologies.

Patent No 5774670 and Patent No. 5826242, Cookies. These patents cover cookies and their use. Web servers and browsers use cookies for advertising, e-commerce shopping carts, persistent Web site logons and on and on and on.

You get the idea. These are all essential Web technologies.

What Microsoft’s AOL/Netscape patent purchases mean. More >

April 10, 2012
by sjvn01
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Google’s new Chrome OS: Back to the future

I have little love for the new generation of desktop interfaces, such as Windows 8 Metro. They use a smartphone/tablet like metaphor in which each application takes up the entire screen. So, why did I buy all these 20-inch and larger displays? Google, in the latest developer release of its Linux and cloud-based Chrome OS, has reversed this trend. This developer Chrome OS update adds a taskbar and support for multiple windows to its light-weight, desktop operating system.

Say hello to Google’s new, old Chrome OS (gallery)

This new interface, Aura, is both a new desktop window manager and shell environment. Aura is an optional replacement for last year’s Chrome OS single Web browser interface. With it you can have multiple, small browser windows, each with its own set of tabs, against a desktop screen background. These windows can be overlapped like the Windows on older desktops such as GNOME 2.x, Windows 7 or Mac OS X.

You also get, like OS X’s dock, a status bar on the bottom of the screen with icons for each of the open windows and system status displays for as the clock and battery. When you maximize a window to full screen, the task bar vanishes. You can always bring it back though by moving your pointer down to the screen’s bottom.

Google’s new Chrome OS: Back to the future. More >