Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 11, 2009
by sjvn01
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When did you first use Linux?

At the recent Linux Foundation Summit in San Francisco, several people were asked when they started with Linux, which lead me to the same question. First, though, I watched the Linux Foundation’s video of their answers. Boy, do I feel old now.

Most of them have been using Linux for about a decade and they were introduced to it in–moan!–high school. I started using Linux in 1993, but I don’t consider myself an early Linux user.

Linux got its start in 1991 with Linus Torvalds’ famous Usenet message announcing that he was working on “a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system(due to practical reasons) among other things). I’ve currently ported bash (1.08) and gcc (1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them 🙂 Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi) PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.”

It got a wee bit bigger than Torvalds thought it would. By 1993, when I came on board, Linux was already gathering steam. I’d heard about Linux from Usenet, but I didn’t compile it from source code. Instead, I start playing with Linux with Slackware, one of the very first Linux distributions.

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April 9, 2009
by sjvn01
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MLB.com looks great on desktop Linux

f you visit MLB.com and look to see if you can watch baseball games over the Internet, you’ll be informed that you’ll need Windows or a Mac to watch them. Wrong. Any modern Linux desktop distribution will let you keep up with your favorite team.

The key is that MLB has dumped Microsoft’s Silverlight for its real-time video in place of Adobe Flash. While you can view Silverlight video in Linux via Moonlight and Moonshine, it’s a lot easier to just use Flash on Linux.

So, the first thing you should do is install Flash on your desktop. If you elect to go with Adobe’s own, but proprietary Flash player, you can either download and install it from the Adobe site or get a copy of the open-source Gnash Flash player. Both programs are also almost certainly available from your Linux distribution’s software repositories.

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April 9, 2009
by sjvn01
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The top 10 operating system stinkers

I love old technology as much as the next techno-geezer, but come on, it wasn’t all wonder and goodness. After we’re done reminiscing about the good old days of operating systems, let’s reflect on the bad old days of operating systems as well. After all, the bad times are still with us — even in 2009, there are still some wretched operating systems out there.

In historical order, from oldest to newest, here’s my own personal list of the top (bottom?) 10 OS stinkers.

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April 8, 2009
by sjvn01
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And the winners of the Linux Foundation video competition are…

A few weeks ago, I went over my selection of the best of the Linux Foundation “We’re Linux” Video Contest. Well. I got it wrong, but I think the Foundation got it right.

Starting from third to first, the winners were: Third place went to Linux Pub. This was a favorite of mine, and I think easily the funniest of all the videos. It was made by Sébastien Massé, who lives in Paris, France and is a graduate of the EICAR, The International Film School of Paris.

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April 8, 2009
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu accuses Microsoft of Linux netbook FUD

When Microsoft employee, Brandon LeBlanc announced that Microsoft ruled the netbook world, he was exaggerating, shall we say, just a wee bit. I was going to stomp on him but Chris Kenyon of Canonical, the business that stands behind Ubuntu, beat me to it.

LaBlanc opened by claiming that almost all netbooks sold today are sold with Windows. Well, no, not really. The numbers LaBlanc cites are from NPD’s sales survey. NPD focuses on brick-and-mortar U.S. sales, not overall sales. Notice how many Linux systems you see at Best Buy? NPD numbers say a lot more about retail channel sales than it does over-all sales. Besides, as Canonical’s director of business development Kenyon wrote, “However here is an interesting fact–when customers are offered choice on equally well-engineered computers around a third will select Ubuntu over XP.”

Kenyon was talking about the Dell Mini 9, one of the best netbooks out there. Besides, as Jay Lyman an analyst at The 451 Group points out there are other problems with NPD’s numbers when you take them out of their U.S. retail context. First, the United States only has about 20% of the netbook market, and, second, the global market is still 30% Linux. I wouldn’t start the victory parade quite yet if I were Microsoft.

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April 7, 2009
by sjvn01
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Linux desktop neglect

Why isn’t Linux on more desktops? Here are the usual reasons: 1) Microsoft has hardware vendors locked-in; 3) Monstrous Windows installed base; and 3) Operating system and application FUD. Here’s the reason we don’t talk about much: the Linux distributors don’t encourage the Linux desktop.

Oh, there are lots of Linux desktops. You can read my reviews, such as my comparison of Fedora 10; openSUSE 11.1; and Ubuntu 8.10 or my look at Debian 5’s five best features. And, I just touch the surface of Linux distributions. There are hundreds of Linux distributions listed in DistroWatch, and most of them are desktops.

So, what’s the problem? How many of those desktops are actually supported and advertised by their vendors or groups? I count two. They are Novell with its SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 11 and Canonical’s Ubuntu on Dell computers like the Dell Mini 9.

What about all those other Linuxes? They’re all community-based Linuxes. They’re supported by fans for fans, and not for a general audience. Some of them, like the ones I mentioned above and Mint and MEPIS already work well for many people in place of Windows. But, without serious advertising and corporate support, they’re destined to stay niche operating systems.

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