Practical Technology

for practical people.

May 12, 2009
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Linux does have a future on netbooks

I’m puzzled. Desktop Linux, for the first time ever, has at least 1% of the desktop market. Linux probably has considerably more than that. So, why is Lenovo’s Worldwide Competitive Analyst Matt Kohut claiming that Linux has no future on netbooks?

Could it be because, as Kohut said, “there were a lot of returns because people didn’t know what to do with it.” Really? That’s odd. Most of the time, you have to ask for Linux by name. Of the big name computer companies only Dell makes it easy to choose Linux and even at Dell, you really should head straight to Dell’s Ubuntu Linux site or you can spend a lot of time looking for it.

That reminds me. Dell is now offering the newer Ubuntu 8.10 on its Inspiron 15n laptop. In the past, they were only offering the LTS (Long Term Service) Ubuntu 7.04. Check it out. You see, Dell is taking desktop Linux seriously.

All the other big vendors, including Lenovo, make it almost impossible to find their desktop Linux offerings. You’d almost think they want desktop Linux to fail, and they’re only offering it because those darn, pesky customers keep asking for it.

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May 12, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

What’s the point of XP Mode anyway?

Microsoft made XP Mode so that you can run XP applications from inside Windows 7. Ah… OK, doesn’t Win 7 run XP applications anyway?

Let me check. I’m currently running Office 2003, OpenOffice 3.1, Quicken 2008, iTunes 8.1.1, ooVoo, (a video-conferencing program), and a host of other XP programs on Windows 7 on my Gateway DX4710 with its 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and 6GBs of RAM. And, you know what? They’re running just fine.

Sure, there are some XP programs that don’t run well on Vista or Windows 7, like ah… ah… hmmm. You know, these days I really can’t think of a single popular program that won’t run on them.

This is a feature?

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May 11, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

OpenOffice.org 3.1: The next generation

The latest version of the open-source office suite OpenOffice.org 3.1 has just arrived, and it’s a good one. While some of the improvements are visible to the naked eye, I found that the most important changes were hidden under the hood.

What is it? OpenOffice.org 3.1 is a set of office productivity applications: Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation manager) and Base (database manager). It’s missing an Outlook substitute, but otherwise it’s a complete replacement for Microsoft Office. The suite is available as a free download for Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows; there are versions for most major languages.

What does it do? The first thing you’ll notice about the new OpenOffice.org is that it just looks better. Thanks to its use of anti-aliasing, the program menus, letters and images it displays are sharper and clearer. (You can see examples at Sun’s OpenOffice.org engineering blog.)

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May 11, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

What was the first netbook?

wasn’t aware that there was a question about what the first netbook was, but Anthony, a blogger at the Coffee Desk, asserts that 1996’s Toshiba Libretto 70CT was the first netbook. Ah… no.

His post was then picked up by Slashdot, and, to my surprise, most of the people there also don’t seem to know what the first netbook was. Odd.

So, let me start from the top. What is a netbook anyway? First, legally speaking, Intel is fighting with Psion, the UK hand-held OEM, over who owns the trademark. I’m not interested in that aspect of the conversation and I don’t think anyone outside of marketing and legal circles is either.

OK, so technically speaking what’ a netbook, or to use the long-winded phrase we used to use for them: an UMPC (ultra-mobile PC). According to Anthony, it wasn’t the size-factor alone, the Toshiba made the grade because it was the first to use infrared and PCMCIA-based phone card connections and it also included a Web browser, Internet Explorer 2.0.

Sorry, that doesn’t make it.

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May 7, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

The Ubuntu and ATI Blues

I like Ubuntu 9.04 a lot, but ATI graphic drivers don’t work and play well with it. This is especially annoying since, for a while there, ATI was working hand-in-glove with Linux and even ATI’s proprietary drivers worked well with Linux. ATI has stopped keeping up with Linux though and the result is mediocre graphics performance.

This has happened because of two changes and a lack of co-ordination between ATI and Linux developers. The first change is that many desktop Linuxes, including Ubuntu 9.04 and Mandriva 2009 Spring are now using the latest X.Server, version 1.6.. X.Server provides the basic framework, or primitives, that Linux and Unix computers use to display their graphics. Everything else you think of as the Linux desktop, such as GNOME 2.26 and KDE 4.2.2, runs on top of X.Server.

X.Server 1.6 has been available since February of this year. ATI didn’t support it immediately. And, this is where the second change came in. The graphics branch of AMD finally got around to supporting X.Server 1.6 with the ATI Catalyst 9.4 driver (aka fglrx 9.4) release in late March. There’s only one problem with these new drivers: They don’t work worth a darn.

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May 6, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Installing Windows 7 with some Linux help

I’ve been working with Windows 7 for some months now, and while 7’s not for netbooks, I vastly prefer Windows 7 to Vista. So, when it came time to try out the release candidate, I didn’t expect to have any trouble. I was wrong.

For the Windows 7 RC (release candidate), I used my main Windows test desktop: a Gateway DX4710. This PC is powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and has 6GBs of RAM and an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. It’s no speed demon, but it gets the job done.

In the past, I had updated this desktop to Windows 7. This time, I took Microsoft’s word that the best thing to do was to install Windows 7 as a new operating system. That was a mistake. After zapping the Windows 7 beta on my PC, Windows 7 couldn’t find a hard drive partition to install itself on.

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