Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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The most popular Linux is…

Trying to figure out what the most popular Linux distribution is isn’t easy. We can safely say that Red Hat’s Rat Hat Enterprise Linux is almost certainly popular server Linux. You don’t close in on a billion in annual revenue without a lot of users. You could argue that it’s Android since there are over two hundred million Android smartphones out there, but I was thinking of PCs. So, which distribution do most individual people use on their computers?

For years, Ubuntu has been the number one end-user Linux, but, somewhat to my surprise, it looks like Ubuntu has to face not just a challenger, but indeed it appears that Ubuntu has already been dethroned by Linux Mint, my own current favorite Linux desktop distribution.

I say that Linux Mint seems to be number one now because on the site that tracks all Linux distributions DistroWatch’s, Page Hit Ranking list, Mint has been number one for the last week, the last month, and, indeed for the last six months.

In the overall rankings over the last six months, Ubuntu remains number two, but recent updates of openSUSE and Fedora have knocked Ubuntu into 4th place in recent days.

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November 17, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google Music: Your Great Music Locker in the Cloud (Review)

I’ve been using Google Music since it was in beta. At first, it didn’t interest me that much. Yet another way to save my music to the cloud? How much good really was that? Well, after using it for several months, and now that Google Music is open for everyone in the US to use, I’m here to tell you that Google Music has proven to be a great way for me to listen to my music wherever I am with whatever computing device I have at hand.

Why? Well, let’s start with the basics.

Google Music enables you to you store your music on the cloud. While Google will now let you buy music from the Android Store, it’s really more of an online music storage locker than a competitor with Apple’s iTunes Store.

Unlike other cloud music and storage services, Google doesn’t give you a fixed amount of storage space. Instead, you can it to store up to 20,000 songs. On the Google Music Web page, Google provides a counter to let you know how close you are to hitting your limit. At an estimated 5MBs a song that works out to about 100GBs of storage. The cost? Not one red penny.

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November 16, 2011
by sjvn01
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How Google–and everyone else–gets Wi-Fi location data

When I wrote about Google making it possible to opt-out of their Wi-Fi access point mapping program, I made a mistake. I thought Google was still using its StreetView cars to pick up Wi-Fi locations. Nope, Eitan Bencuya, a Google spokesperson, tells me that Google no longer uses StreetView cars to collect location information. So, how does Google collect Wi-Fi location data? They use you.

Or, to be more exact, they use your Android phone or tablet. But, it’s not just Google. Apple and Microsoft do the same thing with their smartphones and tablets.

I’d missed this, but earlier this year Apple, Google and other companies got into hot-water because they’ve been collecting location data from your devices for some time now. These days, it seems, it’s the only way any of the big companies pick up Wi-Fi location data.

How it works, according to Google, is that the Android Location Services periodically checks on your location using GPS, Cell-ID, and Wi-Fi to locate your device. When it does this, your Android phone will send back publicly broadcast Wi-Fi access points’ Service set identifier (SSID) and Media Access Control (MAC) data. Again, this isn’t just how Google does it; it’s how everyone does it. It’s Industry practice for location database vendors.

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November 16, 2011
by sjvn01
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OpenSUSE’s new Linux distribution is for the clouds

When Novell was bought by Attachmate, people wondered if Novell/SUSE’s community Linux distribution, openSUSE, would even survive. Now, we know, openSUSE lives.

The openSUSE Project has released the latest version of its popular Linux distribution openSUSE 12.1. In a statement, Jos Poortvliet, openSUSE community manager for SUSE, said, “OpenSUSE 12.1 represents more than eight months of worldwide effort to create one of the industry’s best Linux distributions. The openSUSE distribution and its thousands of open source applications are the result of contributions from individual testers, writers, translators, usability experts, artists, ambassadors, packagers and developers having a lot of fun working together to create a uniquely powerful set of tools and capabilities.”

So what does that mean? Well, among other things even more so than Ubuntu, openSUSE is embracing the cloud.

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November 15, 2011
by sjvn01
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How to keep your Wi-Fi location out of Google

This summer it was revealed that Google Street View cars, besides taking photos of your neighborhood, were also collecting the street addresses, Wi-Fi service set identifier (SSID), and the unique Media Access Control (MAC) identification information for computers, Wi-Fi access points (AP)s, and routers. Worse still, Google was, apparently by accident, also grabbing unencrypted passwords and e-mails. Yack!

While Google quickly backed off grabbing people’s personal data, the company’s Google Street View cars are continuing to pick up Wi-Fi access points and routers’ unique MACs, SSIDs, and physical addresses.

Google uses this information to improve its Google Map and other location-based services, but what if you don’t want to contribute to this effort? Until recently, you were stuck.

Now, Google will let you opt-out. Frankly, I think it would be a lot better if they only recorded your Wi-Fi equipment’s location if you opted in, but it is what it is.

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November 14, 2011
by sjvn01
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Where Linux crushes Windows like a bug: Supercomputers

The faster a computer goes, the more likely is to have Linux at its heart. The most recent Top500 list of supercomputers shows that, if anything, Linux is becoming even more popular at computing’s high end.

In the latest Top500 Supercomputer list, you’ll find when you dig into the supercomputer statistics that Linux runs 457 of the world’s fastest computers. That’s 91.4%. Linux is followed by Unix, with 30 or 6%; mixed operating systems with 11 supercomputers, 2.2%. In the back of the line, you’ll find OpenSolaris and BSD with 1 computer and–oh me, oh my–Windows also with just 1 supercomputer to its credit. That’s a drop from 4 in the last supercomputer round up in June.

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