My Ubuntu Lucid Beta play

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 Technical Overview | Ubuntu

I've installed Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 (Lucid) on my Toshiba Portege (ie. old, old laptop) because XP was running a tad sluggish. So far, I'm loving it! Yes, they've put the window buttons on the wrong - I mean the Apple (left) - side, but then I've been using a Macbook Pro as my home laptop for a while.

User experience:

It's fast - snappy even - which is saying something considering that the laptop it's on might be best described as antique. The new interface/themes which they have put under the banner of 'light' - Ambiance and Radiance. I currently use Ambience - and I have to admit, it's a lot nicer to look at compared to the 'woodsiness' of the old Ubuntu colours.

Installing:

The install (I used the Wubi installer which installs as a separate virtual disk so there's no risk) was easy and relatively pain free - didn't even have to answer much in the way of questions.

Problems?

I say relatively because the one issue I had with the install was that Ubuntu didn't recognise my ancient video card - a Trident CyberXP - and the default screen size was 800x600... positively tiny. Not much of an issue if I could easily fix it up. Of course, I couldn't, at least not easily. This led to a couple of hours of searching forums until I found that I needed to create (because Ubuntu doesn't use it by default) a blank xorg.conf file with some basic settings (below). Once that was done, restarted the x-server and voila! Had a 1024x768 resolution again! And then, after heaps of searching, I find out that Trident CyberXP cards can't do 3D under X-Server (though it can in XP). Just have to suck that up and move on.

In terminal, run sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf , enter your password when asked, and then add the following:



Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
HorizSync 60-60
VertRefresh 43-117
EndSection


Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection 

My Customisations:

On the other hand, I've customised it a bit - added a dock because I like the icons - added Google Desktop and Chrome (because I'm a fan boy) which was all really easy using the Ubuntu Software Center. Screen:

Ubuntu Software Center

This is a really great addition to the distro. It makes finding the software out of all the mess which is Linux Packages simple. Nice. It's basically an application for easily finding, installing and removing programs. It's a 1-click type of interface and categorises the types of applications you might be looking for. Screens below.

Final Comments:

If you're looking for an alternative to Windows, Ubuntu 10.04 is already a great OS, with some final tweaking (I guess) before the final. Worth a play at least using the Live CD.

Five Years of Firefox

Wow! Five years already!!! Who knew that time could go so fast.

Five years ago, Microsoft had killed off their major web browsing competitors and looked set to keep the throne for decades (mumble, grumble) to come. Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Netscape reborn, rebadged and completely (pretty much) recoded, comes back on the scene as Mozilla Firefox.
With features that MS could only dream of and a user base which rapidly grew (and still is), Firefox reignited the Browser wars of yesteryear and warmed the hearts of so many who had been enslaved in the net pits of IE.
Now, after paving the way, and wounding the dragon, Firefox has allowed other browsers to also take up the fight to reclaim the Internet - welcome Chrome, hello on Win Safari, and Opera: just keep on singing.
So to say happy birthday, I've linked to the celebration page. Go there and rejoice for the reign of 'good enough' is almost at an end.

Five Years of Firefox

Posted using ShareThis

Hang on - what is Google Operating System?

If you have no idea what it was that I was talking about in the last post, lucky for you that google has released a video for you:

Chrome Operating System - It's here!

Google has just released Chrome OS as Open Source and they've got bucketloads of videos out there.

I thought I'd post a very recent demo video (from Google's youtube channel) here - it's a live, working version.




What I find interesting is the absolute reliance upon the cloud. All documents etc are based "in the cloud" - or on a google server.

What I love is that it's not due for release for another year, but it's working and Google is mroe than willing to show it off.

There are more videos on the channel, but I thought I'd start with this one.

Chrome Dev Version rocks!

I've taken the plunge and been trying out the Google Chrome dev channel releases.

Chrome 1 gave us speed
Chrome 2 gave us more speed
Chrome 3 gave us themes (kind of like igoogle)
and why am I using Chrome 4?

One reason, and one reason only:
Extensions.

Yep - that's right, extensions. And you know what? While there aren't actually all that many out there, the extensions I'm using don't appear to have slowed Chrome down. Not at startup, not during page rendering and not during shutdown. While Chrome's memory usage is a dog - because it seperates each tab out into seperate processes (really good idea by the way - seriously), the extensions don't seem to add anything.

This is really important, because I'm now going to get rid of Firefox... gasp! I don't really need it anymore - except to play Quake Live. Okay - I'm going to keep Firefox. For now.

Security issues - I'm not sure, but it still appears to be quite secure. I'll let you know if my bank accounts suddenly empty.

Try it or not. Extensions are cool

Chrome 3 - lovin' it still

Yep - Google's chrome browser is up to version 3 already, and it's just getting better all the time. It's been out for a couple of days, and I've been playing with it, thus leading to this fantastic write up.

All the main points from when v.2 was released are still the same. I still don't like having personal information about me stored when all I want to do is browse. I still occasionally want to use some plugins, but I haven't seen any 'official' ones yet.

Some new features - speed (again) and themes. I like the themes that Google have offered, they're simple, quick and plain (ish). All this means that they don't slow the jolly browser down - unlike some of the themes on offer with Firefox.

When it comes to plugins, I'll just keep using FF.

Enjoy!

Google Operating System... but not Android

Google has announced (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html) that it will be creating an Operating System specifically built for netbooks. It's not hard to see, though, Google expanding upon this over time to drive the OS onto the more traditionally bloated area of laptops and desktops. I'd be interested, for example, in putting it on (at least in a virtual machine) on my desktop for a look-see.

Some points of interest:

• It will be built around the linux kernel - I bolded that for a reason. They're not building it around a linux distribution (eg. gOS or ubuntu etc).
• From what I can gather, it will be a new windowed version of Chrome (the browser) running on top of that kernel - nice sandboxing of apps, just like in Chrome
• It will be aimed 100% at web-apps only. This is obviously good for google - master of the web app domain
• It will be open source. This means more security (read all about that here)
• They've already got some hardware support (link)
• Being made by google, and being based on chrome, you can bet that there will be a host of privacy concerns. Hmmmm. Better start watching for black 4WDs and people wearing sunglasses on cloudy days. :)

Obviously, there's a lot more points to note, but you can read about it in the google blog, or by doing a google search.

For those of you who are conspiracy freaks (like me), you could be forgiven for thinking that this is just one more step to google taking over the world!

But I love it.

Not blogging for a while.... AGAIN!!!!

Struggling to make stuff work at the moment. Stupid internets [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internets]. What a silly bunch of tubes![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes]

Anyway, lots of plans to update this again - and more often... YAY!

But not right now.