Chrome OS working!

I'm using Chrome OS Everbody! Well, technically Chromium OS Zero, and I've got it up and running on my eeepc 900. ***! It just broke when I tried to install flash. oops!

I'm back on karmic now but chromium os zero is brilliant! It's not as good as chrome os is going to be later this year(I'm estimating from Google's info), but it works! I had to tweak it a bit(and will have to again), but when I had it was brilliant. It's got the Ubuntu  terminal so I am familiar with it.

If you like experimenting with operating systems, then try this out now! It's really fun to tweak and use!

Here is my chromium zero adventure(I haven't finished yet though!).

X-Ubuntu

Two days ago, my puppy linux on my white eee pc died(the desktop is blank when you boot). I could have tried to fix it or even reinstall puppy, but I decided not to. I am sick of the browsers on it.

So, I thought I should try out xubuntu. I had tried out X-Jaunty a while back and I didn't see any real diffirence. But this time I took a closer look. So, this morning, I got the .iso, used usb startup disk creator in ubuntu. Working fine. I installed it on my ep 700, booted. Really fast. And it worked.

So, I don't see much diffirence. The display settings take a lot longer to get your head round than ubuntu. I don't really care about that though! Xubuntu is about 2/3 of the size of ubuntu. But, it is fast! So far, it has not 'hesitated' at all. So, Xubuntu is fast!

I hope this post wasn't too short!

A Little Competition

I love linux. I use it on everything. But... I still know that linux is not perfect and there are some advantages of using 'Microsoft' Windows on your PC instead of linux.

So, here, I have made a little list of advantages and disadvantages of windows and linux:

• In windows, when you install a program, it goes into program files and can be copied onto a usb. A containable way of installing applications onto your computer can be a very big advantage to people who constantly switch and movve around. Yes, in that way, Windows is better!
• In Linux, security is never a problem. Sudo only comes in when a password is entered. No need for virus scanners and no need for firewalls.
• In Linux, you usually have to be a bit of a geek to use it. Because unless something is closed source and payed for, it's guaranteed that it's going to have a few bugs. But, I don't mind that and neither do quite a few people.
• Windows does have viruses. Windows is the most used and therefore the most hackable operating system around.
• But, because Windows is the most used operating system, you have barely any incompatibility problems.
• And last of all, linux is free!

I hope this has added to your knowledge of Windows!

gOS

I was browsing around, looking at all the linux distros and I find this operating system, gOS. This is what I though Chrome OS would have been!

It is based on ubuntu and has a clear, simple look. It looks a bit like OS X but also has it's own simple twist to it.

Ok, so far through reading about this, I thought 'I'm going to get this' but then I found Out this:

• It uses avant-window-navigator(maybe you dont, but I hate the way this sucks all my CPU)
  
• The last update was ubuntu 8.04(slightly old!)

Now that's a shame! It's a brilliant OS, works simply and fine and google gave up on it. Please google, if you're reading this post, keep building!

Chrome OS conclusion

Ok, all the disputes have died down now about Chrome OS and I wanted to send out a last reminder of what it was all about before we all close the tab and read something else while we wait for 010. When... it will appear drasticly different and well approved, in position and ready to become the sole or secondary OS of all the users worldwide!

Ok, so far, to be blunt(atleast with the version I was running!), Chrome OS is a slow locked down operating system that will not work for my net-book unless I have a network cable!

Obviously I think that! Google released the source code, they asked for help. They did not release a beta and they did not want to send it into war against windows(that's all ther gonna be fighting by te way, Mac will hopefully still sit up there as the high quality OS and the other linux distros will just improve their allready brilliant desktop quality), they were just asking for help.

How can I help? Was actually the first thing I thought. Well, I can't edit the source code or do anything flashy like that, so you can just learn to use JavaScript, Java or flash and develop web-apps.

Well, to set all the lines straight, lets all just wait, develop and change to the next tab in our tab bar!

Why Linux Works

When I started out with Ubuntu, I wasn't interested in any of the other linux distros like Suse, Mandriva...

But, as you can guess, I've changed my mind, I do prefer some distros more than others but I pretty much like them all!

Google Chrome OS is gonna drag linux into it's battle gear and well... that's to be found out!

Phun, as entertaining as the name suggests

I found out about phun a good while ago. But it's only once in a while that I actually get to play it again because I always try rather big and unpredictable experiments (that's why I like portable apps!) so programs only keep if they are any good, because I'll only actually bother to get em back if they were any good!

Anyway, so what am I talking about? It's a 2D physics sandbox that is extremely addictive! You can invent something to do anything of nothing, except maybe something that's important! In simple terms, it's a program where you can build thing, press play and the objects that you place will move into action(e.g. if you put a ball in mid air and pressed play it would fall).

It's not open source, but it's free and build for Linux, Mac, and PC(notice the order), the Linux version runs dead slow so I use wine and run the windows version(bizarre, isn't it!).

If you have any interest in physics(or Phun) or just something creative, try this.

The Future of Ubuntu

I found out about ubuntu a few in 2007 when I was experimenting with an old 'piece of junk'(now a good speed useful machine) and I was quite impressed that something with an open system had almost reached Microsoft's standards.

So, I left that old 7.04 on that machine using it once in a while for the odd experiment. Never updating or looking into linux. A while lat somebody else asked if I could help putting it on their home machine(the previous xp died of virusation(or whatever you call it)). So anyway, that got me back to the ubuntu site and I realised how much the OS had developed in two years.

So, I put jaunty on that old machine and used that instead. Then I heard about karmic, in three months it would be coming out. Many bloggers and tweeters were saying "Oh, Karmic, yet another release. Six months, PSHAW!". I didn't listen. I just waited impatiently for Karmic. So, when it finally did come out two weeks ago, obviously I got it (15 min after the release!). I put it on my eeepc 900 and viola, I had ubuntu back(I had forced myself to stay with xandros until the release).

So, what did I think. I liked the background, everything worked(excluding the USC repos) and I was running ubuntu again. It wasn't as much as I expected(I was expecting a vista7 anyway!), but it was exactly what should be expected. Anyway, straight after, I read posts on Lucid Lynx, and what it was coming with. This time I looked at it with slightly less enthusiasm than Karmic.

Anyway, down to the big question, what is the future of ubuntu? Faster boot, better speed integration... a version of Linux ready to top all the other distros and show Microsoft the true power of the open source world(STAR WARS!). No, not exactly. Ubuntu has taken a risk with Karmic, getting into low level code did mess up a few things. And I think the Lynx is gonna be the same. Then, the M(oon?) may tip the boat a little more. But by then, gnome 3'll be there, the bugs would be cracked and the N(est?) will be the best version of linux out there(assuming that techology doesn't take a truly dramatic change that'll catch ubuntu of guard, but even then...SUSE?). And not just ubuntu, the open source world won't stop growing!

Sweet Home 3D

I just found out about and it, I was browsing around and I found a website about linux versions of windows apps. One of the ones on the list was something called 'Sweet Home 3D', I clicked on it an it led me to the website. it looked like Google sketch-up(my favorite CAD program!) so it got me interested. I downloaded the Linux version, uncompressed it and ran it from the file.

The 'Sweet Home 3D' splash screen showed up and then it went into the program. One reason I was impressed was the fact that it 'just worked'(like Opera). Anyway, It's an interior design program with 2D and 3D views of your floor(there's one problem, you can't stack the floors!).

It's not as flexible as sketch-up, but in one aspect that is good, because it limits you to interior design and makes it easy to view. A clever program that I liked straight away!

I really think you should try this app if you have any interest in architecture or interior design.

Picasa

For a while I have used Picasa, it's like a google version of Photobucket that comes with a free program. Originally, it was just for Windows, but then Google made a linux version using wine hacks. It works well and it is well integrated into linux.

On the right, you can see me running it in ubuntu karmic koala. It automaticly picks up any file in your user folders, it can be reconfigured (as I did) to auto-scan the whole file system or removable devices.

Compared to F-Spot, Picasa is a Brilliant Photo-Manager with crop, zoom, filters and several other good image tweaking tools. In linux, the movie feature does not work but the blog, upload, college and all the other features work.

If you want something like F-Spot that with more flexibility, tools and sleekyness, picasa is distributed freely by Google for, Windows, Linux and Mac.

Safari in Ubuntu!

Using playonlinux, I managed to get Safari working. It didn't work perfectly but it did work with the cool blue loading bar and the shiny style which I liked! Try playonlinux, it works with popular windows games aswell!

Gambas, VB for linux

The other day I was browsing around for a VB-like app for ubuntu an I found Gambas, which was just what I wanted. It's simple, straightforward and thats's all. Gambas, Vb for ubuntu.

Puppy Linux after a Day Review

My previous post about puppy linux was posted just after I managed to get it working. But now that I have used it for day or two, I've formed a more refined opinion of it.

First of all, I love the apps. There are absolutely loads of them with about two of every type(to give yo some choice!). 100mb! Now that is a good OS fr 100mb! Secondly, it just works. WEP, WPA, WPA2... Games... Bowser... Everything. I admit, it an sometimes take a bit of experimenting, but, if you're a geek, it's what you can't live without!

Third of all(getting to the bad bit now), nobody has written any of the experiments down! How to get you're wireless working... There is some info, but not enough.

So, I created a wiki to help the situation, here it is I hope to be seeing some edits soon!

I'm in puppy right now using Seamonkey Web-browser running the OS of my SD card using about 500mb max(half or less). Now, that is cool!

Puppy Linux, with a how to!

I have been looking into puppy linux, the third smallest graphical linux out there. I downloaded pup-430.iso from the puppy linux website to see if I could install it onto my SD card.

At first I tried the 'Usb Startup disk creator' under Administration in Ubuntu 9.04 but it came up with the error "This is not a desktop install CD and thus cannot be used by this application"(word by word, exactly that!) so I wasn't sure what to do.

Later on I was browsing around and I found a pogram I had tried(not suceeded) to use a while back called 'unetbootin' which I then tried on my PC using it to put pup-430.iso onto a usb. It failed(I was gonna try it again but this 8gb xp died of a blue screen!)

So, I tried the linux version of it on my ubuntu machine(emergency hard disk!), it worked. I ran the wizard onto my 2 gig usb, plugged it into my eeepc 700 and it booted absolutely perfectly!

To be honest, it looked a bit crappy(windows 98) at first but in not long it was fine after I gave it a hair cut!

That's not all. I've been looking at boot speed on OSs lately and I decided to do a comparison of puppy (running of my SD card on my EP700) and xandros(on my EP900).

So, I turned on my ubuntu 9.04 desktop, and using the clock and notepad, I got these survey results:
(The puppy on my 700 EP was on an SD card, so I had to change the boot as fast as I could at startup, this would make puppy's startup speed 3-5 seconds slower. Keep that in mind!):

Xandros Power On to Cursor View: 20 seconds
Puppy Power On to Cursor View: 47 seconds

Xandros Power On to Full Load: 48 seconds
Puppy Power On to Full Load: 53 seconds

Xandros Shut Down to Power Down: 31seconds
Puppy Shut Down to Power Down: 16 seconds

Now, if you ask me, that was a good result for puppy saying as it's running from an SD card on a slower PC!

My conclusion of Puppy is that it's a very good operating system with good apps and a good size. That's all for this post!

The Tale of Two Hard Disks

A while back (not so long ago) I decided to try and add RAM to my ancient 'deb' machine and it didn't work out so well. I had three hard disks in it at the time, one 40gb with a dual boot of XP and ubuntu, another one an 8gb with XP only and the third was a 2 gig with some old backups on it(it was unplugged at the time because I wasn't in need of it). Ubuntu worked fine with the change of RAM and sped up as I had wanted it to. The Xp on the big hard drive died of a blue screen and the other XP wouldn't log on. (That just shows how capable ubuntu is doesn't it?)

So, I tried to fix the Blue Sceened XP by putting the RAM back exactly where I found it but it didn't work. So, I put it all back like it was in the end, two OS poorer.

Then, I used the ubuntu and played around with it a lot. But one day, I was playing around with the users and groups and I accidentally made all users guests (I don't have a clue!)!?!?!

So, it was then useless to me but I left it because I had other things to do at the time. The day before yesterday, I booted from the 8gb to see what would happen and it worked perfectly. I was happy then and so I switched to the other one and reinstalled ubuntu successfully therefore havin two OS back up and running.

Then, I did the stupidest thing in the world, I decided to copy the contents of the 8gig hard disk to the xp partition on the 40gb. It went OK at first(but for the fan that was spinning tons of RPS; Remember, this is an old computer though) and then I went out for a bit and when I came back, the fan was spinning at it's usual, slow rate and the screen was blank. Nothing I did could change it so I hit the turn off button and rebooted. Then, it said "Disk Reader Error" then nothing.

So, (I thought *!*!*!) I supposed that the cable connected to the hard disks had died. I unplugged the cd and dvd drives and plugged one of them into the 40gb. Nothing. The 8gb. Nothing. Then I left them both alone and went to bed!

The next morning, I got another cable from a bag of stored cables and I tried it. At first I only plugged it into the 40gb(for no particular reason) and booted. It worked. Perfectly. Straight back into the same old ubuntu(the xp was flat obviously!). So, as happy as an angel. I took the other cable out. I then plugged in both hard disks making the XP a slave and booted. "Disk Reader Error"(*!?) So, I unplugged the 8gb and booted, making it work fine again.

That was what it was like until I wrote this post, supposing that the 8gb was dead and diseased. Half way through the post though, I tried the 8gb seperately and it worked!

And that is the end of the tale of: TWO HARD DISKS!

Ubuntu Tweak or Ubuntu Lovers Heaven

I just got ubuntu tweak because i had heard it suggested once or twice on the forums so i decided to get it so I installed it on my 4gb hard-disk (1 gig left) netbook and...

It was brilliant, I cleaned a ton of stuff I didn't even know I had and I installed chromium complete(which work with flash!) and now I'm doing a complete switch to chromium, no opera and firefox fying out of the screen.

It also has a cool slash screen effect and some stuff that you usually have to get in the terminal, you can now to easily manually, a definetly must-get!

When Koala comes out I'm gonna put it on my 16gb netbook(it's got a bad virus/bug that has hit me loads of times with UNR) hoping it doesn't have the same virus and hasn't gone all no-desktop like the new easy peasy, I will, get rid of gnome-panel and get three things, chromium, gnome-do and ubuntu-tweak and from then see how it goes!

The Gnome Dock

When reading the Posts in mikesubuntu.blospot, I found a post about the gnome dock. So, I tried it out and, let me tell you, it is brilliant. It is really simple.
You type home(Windows) + SPACE and then it comes up and you can get qiuck acces to running/not running applications.


If you want to go to the extreme, you could remove gnome-panel from startup apps and just use the gnome dock!


Anyway, i like it

UNR 9.04, Easy Peasy 1.5 or Xubuntu

Some of you may wonder, easy peasy(1.5), UNR(9.04) or Xubuntu(9.04). Which one's better for your laptop/netbook?

First of all, I'm gonna tell you about Xubuntu(9.04),

It is a very fast OS because it's a low CPU consuming DE. Now if you have a brand new computer(desktop or laptop), don't bother with Xubuntu, Ubuntu'll be just as fast. But if its an oldie (like my old deb machine), get xubuntu, It'll run at a good speed and then you can finish off nicely what ever life there is left on it!

Then I'll tell you what you want for your netbook. If it has a tiny screen, you'll want something designed for tiny screens. And I'll tell you from experience that the best one for that is easy peasy 1.5+, I just tried it on a small screen and it works perfectly 'out of the box'. I compered that to UNR on my EP which on the default desktop was dead slow.

If you have a big-enough screen then UNR 9.4 is good, because it can have the default desktop(if you switch, add gnome-panel and gnome-wm to startup or, well, you can find out for yourself!)

So, all that in simple terms is, xubuntu for old(ubuntu for new) laptops or desktops. UNR for new netbooks(the new one's have OK screens) and easy peasy for out of the box performance on an old(or new) netbook.

An Ubuntu Blog

Here is a blog that I came acroos the other day and I absolutely love it and have read every page in the archive:

www.mikesubuntu.blogspot.com

Believe me, all ye ubuntu geeks, this blog is Fantastic!

(Note: Sorry Mike if you mind me copying your blog picture!)

The Ubuntu Family

Maybe, (if you know what it is!) the ubuntu family confuses you every time you hear abut it. And fi you want to choose quickly without any knowledge, I'm telling you, Choose the Standard Ubuntu!

But I will also give you a quick go-over of all the diffirent most popular official ubutnu family OSs:

Standard Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings Using the Gnome Desktop Enviroment. A fork of debian made to be more 'human oriented'

UNR(Ubuntu Netbook Remix): Ubuntu for netbooks. Whih is what  us and I love it! Note: Don't use the default netbook desktop, it uses up too much cpu. Just switch to the deafualt one, add gnome-panel and gnome-wm to the startup apps and voila, much better (if you want the netbook window effect, you just need to play around a bit with the toolbar!)

Ubuntu Server Version: Ubuntu for Server Machines (I you don't know what a server is, Look it up!)

Kubuntu: Ubuntu with 'KDE'(Kubuntu Desktop Enviroment) , a more flash and cpu consumptive DE. My opinion of it is that it is extremely flash with brilliant effects but it takes a lot of cpu and requires a good enough expert who is prepared to muck around and do research(unless they are extremely lucky!)

Edubuntu: An 'Educationaly Oriented' Version of Ubuntu. It is basicly Ubtuntu with a bit of 'cheezy' educational software which you can just install on ubuntu as far as I'm concerned. Unless your a teacher and want linux and is just starting.

Xubuntu: Make with XFCE which makes it better for old computers. It is very fast for old computers so don't trash you're oldies, just but Xubuntu on em!

UMR(Ubuntu Moblin Remix) An ubuntu version of Moblin(Mobile linux) I don't know much about it but please comment on this post to tell mee what it's like.

Gobuntu: A 'Green and Free' Version of Ubuntu. I think people are too crazy about green and natural so i don't agree with the philosophy of this one!

Ubuntu Studio: An Artist's Version of Ubuntu. I think it looks absolutey fantastic from the site. But you need a DVD to get it. Which is fine but I prefer to use DVDs for more important things. Otherwise I think this OS looks brilliant!

Mythbuntu: An Ubuntu for 'Myth TV'(I dont have a clue what that i)

Kubuntu Netbook(October09): Kubuntu 'Netbook Remix': Coming out in the future and i sure hope it's good!

An there are probably half a million others (Macbuntu, H...) but they are so small(and much probably worse), that I do not add them to this post!