3 cheers for Sony

Now, you normally won’t hear me saying good things about any big companies. Its not actually that they have done anything good anyways. Allow me to explain.

I, obviously, use linux. And this, no doubt, makes people ask me questions. One such person is a guy who is on the same Uni course as me. He asked questions, and this led me to telling him that linux is fantastic, free, etc etc etc. This obviously impacted on him, and today he told me that he installed Ubuntu 8.10 from a WUBI. Obviously, I was pleased, so I asked to see his laptop to see what it was like.

Apart from being kinda slow to start up, it was very pleasing. I assume the slow starting up was because it was going through 2 bootloaders, and stuff. He told me that he had installed compiz, and this made me very shocked, as this implies his graphics card was automatically detected and installed with an Open-source driver. Because as far as I know, Ubuntu does not install anything proprietry without actually asking you. Specifically with drivers.

So, he turned it on, asked me to turn it into a cube, and I did, thus proving that it installed open-source drivers that can handle open-gl. Score 1.

Second of all, I realised that it had automatically connected to the Uni wireless. I asked him if he had installed anything or if it had just worked. The answer – it just worked. Score 2.

Next, I installed and booted up Cheese to see if his webcam worked. It did. Score 3.

Finally, I asked if his sound was working. It was. Score 4.

So, all in all, a very good effort on all accounts. I know Sony probably didn’t have much to do with this, but it is good because I assume that most Sony Viaos will work pretty much the same way with Ubuntu. We now have a new happy Linux user. Granted he hasn’t entered the command line yet…but it’ll come. Don’t worry.

Tech Predictions

Right, ok, so its that time of year when everyone tries to say what they think will happen with tech in the next year/few years.

Now, I don’t know why people keep doing this…because they are almost always wrong. Let me give you a few examples.

Bill Gates 1982 – “640K is more memory than anyone will ever need”
PC World in 2000 – “Within 3 years we will have PDA and phone batteries that last a year, like watch batteries.”
Alan Sugar 2005 – “Next Christmas, the ipod will be kaput”

If you want more you can go here http://listverse.com/history/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/

So…the question we all ask is…why on earth do we do it?
I have an answer…because its fun.

I am not expecting anything I say to be correct…but at this point in time this is how I feel it will go this year.

1. Microsoft will postpone their deadline for Windows 7. (Currently at 3rd quarter of this year)
2. Apple won’t wait till Christmas to release their new Iphone, which is what they said they will do.
3. 10000 people will once again say that this is the year of linux.
4. This will be the year of linux.
5. I will get my computer working again.
6. Google will release 2 more versions of their G range of phones, taking as long to release the source code as they did with the first version.
7. Canonical will make an increasingly stupid name for version 9.10 of Ubuntu. Kranky Kangaroo or something.
8. We will see the start of the silicon -> something else switchover, near the end of the year.
9. Google will release a desktop OS, because they don’t have one yet.
10. Thunderbird 3.0 might get released…that would be nice…taking long enough.
11. 3d desktops will become all the rage, and noone will believe linux users when they say we’ve had the cube for 6 years.

Ok, these are my predictions. If I think of anymore, I will put them in, but I will post one at the end of the year discussing what was right, and what was wrong.

Maybe I’ll be quoted as one of the top 30 worst predictions ever. Nah…that crown belongs to the people in the link above.

Computer

I haven’t been on for a while, because I have been setting up my new computer. Took me a while, but I’ve mostly got there. I’m now just annoyed at the fact that I got such a new motherboard. A couple of things on it aren’t completely compatable with linux yet. I’m told Ubuntu 8.10 should sort these out, but we’ll see.

Just now, my sound doesn’t work properly, because I hear a crackling out the speaker. And my graphics driver doesn’t work with the drivers yet. Why O Why must I be so cutting edge. Means I can’t run Compiz yet. Ach well.

Anyways…on with the computer

Nvidia 8200 motherboard, with 8200 graphics card, 7.1 surround sound, hdmi output as well as DVI and VGA outputs, quad-core 4×2.6 AMD processor, 4GB RAM, upgradeable to 8GB, 20 GB IDE harddrive, 250GB Sata HD (once it gets support for the Sata controllers on my MB), 500 GB external HD. And currently I’m running Ubuntu 8.04, but I’m going to run Fedora, openSuse, etc, to see if I can get stuff to work.

Watch this space.