Windows 7

Ok, there have been a few interesting developments on Windows 7 since I last blogged about it.

For starters, the starter edition will no longer have the 3 app rule. For those who don’t know, the 3 app rule was that you could not run more than 3 apps at once (not including A/V software). Their reasons were that the netbooks couldn’t handle it, and that most people won’t use more than 3 apps. So, it is interesting that they have stopped this, as they seemed to be taking more and more control over netbooks as time went on.

I wonder what made them change their mind. Was it the bad press? Was it the hundreds of people being unhappy bout it? I guess we will never know…

Second of all, windows 7 seems to be running at a base install (no AV software) at about 400mb on a 32-bit computer. That is interesting. It seems to be a lot better than Vista, but still quite heavy. 400 as apposed to about 150 for a base ubuntu install running compiz. But ach well, it is a step in the right direction.

Third, it seems Windows 7 will only be released as a full install in Europe. They will have an upgrade option, but it will just be the full install disk. I wonder what the point is…? But also, it will be much more expensive than in America. Up to double depending on the actual version that you choose.

So, good and bad things going for Microsoft and Windows 7 just now. I would like to point out that the RC seems to run slower than the beta.

A few predictions from earlier in the year

Ok, some of you may remember I put down my 10 predictions for the coming year. Well, a few of them have come true. Lets see…

2. Apple won’t wait till Christmas to release their new Iphone, which is what they said they will do. – Turns out I was right with this one. They have released the iPhone 3Gs already, halfway through the year
5. I will get my computer working again. – This one did happen, but I didn’t update you with it. I got my money back for my old motherboard, and bought a new one.
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. – Turns out this one is right as well, with the release today of the HTC Hero
7. Canonical will make an increasingly stupid name for version 9.10 of Ubuntu. Kranky Kangaroo or something. – This one happened as well. As we all know, it is called Karmic Koala
10. Thunderbird 3.0 might get released…that would be nice…taking long enough. – This one might happen soon, as we currently have the Beta 2 of Thunderbird, and mozilla don’t do many betas (ha…)

So, looks like a very successful year for me so far in predictions. More to come people…

Songbird 1.2 – The Review

Managed to get this up earlier than I expected, as I realised that you don’t need to build it from source from the songbird website, I just needed to download it and run it.

So, to the new features:

• Equaliser:

  The equaliser is quite interesting. It works reasonably well. It has sliders for 10 frequencies, and is quite nice. It isn’t the best equaliser I have ever said, it lacks a few features that are planned (either by the songbird team, or by addons), such as presets and the ability to remember equaliser settings for each song. That is something that would be immense, and I would really love.

• Automatically managed folders:

  Well, now this is quite a cool, interesting feature now. It is quite useful. I’m sure most of you would know what it would do, but you can turn on what it calls “Managed Mode” on. This will allow you to choose the folder for your music, the folder heirarchy, and the file name, and when you change anything in the metadata, it will change them for you. Really useful I think. It works as well.

• 2-way sync with iTunes:

  Very useful feature, not for me, but for a lot of people who love Songbird, but also love the iTunes music store. Does exactly what it says on the tin…syncs with iTunes both ways. Means you can buy music in the iTunes music store, and it will sync with songbird. Create playlists in songbird, and they will sync with itunes, and you can then sync them to your iPhone or iPod touch (which currently aren’t supported in songbird). I don’t know how to do this feature, and I don’t have iTunes so I can’t try it and tell you if it works, but it seems really cool.

  This could also be used in conjunction with dropbox (or similar) to sync itunes on a mac, with linux or windows on another computer, or to sync several OS on 1 computer. It has huge potential.

• Last.fm:

  I don’t get what is new with this. My Songbird 1.1.1 has last.fm on it, but maybe that is just an addon. I don’t know, it might be that it was an addon, and is now part of the core. But still, it allows you to do everything with last.fm that you can on the website, and also allows you to scrobble.

• Performance enhancements:

  Not as many of these as there have been in previous releases, but lets try

  • Faster searching. Definitely obvious. Searching is almost straight away in my library (its only about 1000 items just now though, not sure what it will be like with really large ones.
  • Less CPU intensive. It seems to be less CPU intensive, but this isn’t an exact science
  • Multiple files. Supposodly deleting and selecting multiple files is faster. I can vouch for the selecting, but I don’t see why I would ever need to delete lots of files at once, so I don’t feel like trying that, I’ll take their word for it.
  • Fewer crashes. Obviously I can’t test this one until having it running for a while.

Future things:
They have quite a few interesting ideas for the next few releases. The august one will have device firmware update, MSC device support, playback of AIFF MS-ADPCM, WMA 1 & 2 and AAC LC, editing metadata of ASF and M4A files, improvements to metadata editor and transcoding.

Other things they need to get done before it can surpass the likes of Amarok and Banshee, are podcasting support (it really doesn’t work just now) and cd ripping, which will be included in the October release.

To be honest, I love this release, it has a few cool features, and we are getting closer to a fantastic media player. It really needs to get into the repos for Ubuntu, in my opinion, and I’ve outlined what it needs to add in above there.

This release has gone from ~79M to ~90M of RAM with 20 addons and playing music. This is not bad, but we need to make sure it doesn’t keep going up, but this is the only bad thing I can find about this release apart from features that don’t exist yet. I love Songbird, and I really want it to be a fantastic and popular Media Player

p.s It seems I was beaten by Alan Lord to put a review out on Songbird, ach well.

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2

I have decided that I am going to go through the whole of Karmic Koala’s development, and will write bugs, and document my problems etc with it.

So, I just upgraded from Alpha 1 (in which nothing was different really…just a debian sync) to Alpha 2.

What happened now? My audio setup has been mucked up. Woop! I had a great pulseaudio setup with pavucontrol, and everything was working fine. Now…its gone back to only 1 output working. Which is kind of annoying. Will try and fix it and see if I can.

I have also notices that firefox 3.5 is in the repo now (although it is called firefox-3.1, even though the version number is 3.5b4).

Gnome 2.27.1 is the version now, but I can’t see anything different with it, and also the kernel has been updated to 2.6.30-5.6.

Apart from these things, I can’t notice anything else really new, but it is only the second alpha, so there should be lots more to come.

***EDIT***

Turns out the problem lies with firefox. I can have more than 1 app using my sound card. Unless one of them is Firefox. If firefox uses my sound card, nothing else can. And if something else is using my sound card, firefox can’t. But, everything else seems fine. Odd.

Dropbox, UbuntuOne? No? Ok…how bout Spideroak?

Let me say before any of this – this is not an UbuntuOne rant, like everyone else seems to be doing over at Ubuntu Planet. It just so happened that I just found out about this today.

I have used dropbox for a while – I use it to share things between my Desktop and my uni laptop, and also as a sort of document backup thing. Now, this is all very well and good, but what if dropbox dies? (I know, very unlikely thing, but ya never know, you can never be too careful). Well…Canonical just released UbuntuOne. A cool new dropbox-esk thing.

There are a few problems with UbuntuOne. First of all…it currently runs only on Ubuntu. It can be packaged for, say, fedora or opensuse or something, but as far as I can see, noone has done that yet. Also, it doesn’t run on Windows or Mac, and although I don’t like them as operating systems, we still need to agree that they do actually exist, and we need to create apps for them. They are not my choice of OS, but isn’t diversity everything that Linux stands for? The choice? So we need something that will run on more than just Linux.

Second of all…and I know…this sounds like a pathetic thing to say, but the back-end is not opensource. Now, yes, one might say “Neither is Dropbox”, but dropbox don’t say they stand for freedom and opensource. Canonical have said that it would be easy to create a server very similar to UbuntuOne, because it is based on, I think they said iFolder, am not sure though.

In this case, why the heck is it closed? What is the point in closing it, if it is easy to put the exact same thing together? I do use some proprietry things (dropbox, nvidia drivers) but I object to a company saying “We do opensource” and having something closed. This is, IMHO, pathetic.

So, I’m not happy with UbuntuOne, so what will I use as my dropbox’s “backup”? Well, Paul Mellors posted about SpiderOak, a new dropbox-esk filesharing backup thingy.

So, I tried it out, and I’m very happy. I much prefer it to dropbox, in fact. First of all, you have none of this dropbox folder nonesence. That drives me insane. I don’t want to link everything to my backups, thats stupid. I want them to backup where they are, and SpiderOak does this. Which is brilliant.

SpiderOak, like dropbox, comes with a free 2GB (which is all I need for my documents and pictures just now) and has a paid 100GB service (and 200GB, 300GB etc etc) for $10 per 100GB that you want. As mentioned, this works out at under £7 per 100GB of space that you want. Not bad, one has to say. Better than dropbox anyway.

SpiderOak allows you to add as many computers as you want to your account (Windows, Mac, Linux) and just syncs whatever folders you want on all your computers, and puts them wherever you want. I think you can also choose NOT to sync specific folders with specific computers, but will have to test this out (Ooooo…I can feel a sequel post coming on).

Finally…it is not opensource, but they are going to opensource it soon, which is good. So…for everyone who wants a (soon to be opensource) alternative for Dropbox, but isn’t running Ubuntu (or doesnt want the limitations of UbuntuOne), but doesn’t have the money to spend on their own server, I would recommend this highly.

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.

Crunchbang Planet

Just thought I would introduce myself to the Crunchbang Planet.

My name is Alistair McKinlay, I am an Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering student at Strathclyde Uni in Glasgow. I have been using Linux almost exclusively for around 3.5 years, and I am hooked. I was addicted to Gnome with Compiz, but I agreed to a bet to use something else for a month. This was when I heard the Linux Outlaws talking about #!, and thought I would try it.

Since then, I have become obsessed with openbox, and #! in general. I think it is amazing the amount of control you have with openbox, and I just find it sooooo great to just play around with it. I also think that #! in general is the most friendly distro I have come across. Everyone is so welcoming and always keen to help.

In my spare time, I help at a couple of youth clubs at my church, and I try and fit in some guitar-playing and some book-reading in amongst the configuring of my computer, and trying to learn some python.

I am also a Christian, and I may post some things to do with that now and again. I do believe that God exists, and I believe his son, Jesus, came to earth to save us for our sins. Now, you may not believe that, and I am up for any discussions you may have on the issue, but I do not like shouting matches, nor name calling.

I hope that you enjoy my blogging. It is my thoughts, my annoyances, my everyday stuff, my life essentially. If you find it boring, tell me. If you find it funny, tell me. If you agree with me, tell me. If you disagree with me, tell me. If you don’t like me and you wish I wasn’t born…keep that to yourself. Nah, I’m only joking . Tell me whatever you think about them. I want you to.

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.

Ubuntu 8.10 beta i386

My thoughts on the new beta of Ubuntu…

well first of all, it took me 3 boots off the live cd to actually get it to load up. I’ve no idea why or anything, it just would hang. The 3rd time it booted fine though. I am booting it off the real installation as we speak. I have to say, it just boot really quickly. I started it when I started this blog and it’s already up.

I have installed it onto my Toshiba Satellite Pro L20 laptop, and once I’ve finished with what I think of it, I’ll try it on my quad-core desktop, cause I saw someone saying they need a lot of testers for 64-bit versions, so I’ll have a look on that.

Ok…first of all, I notice that it no longer needs a proprietry driver for its ATI graphics card..which it always has done before. Compiz was working off boot straight away…and that is cool. One thing I don’t really understand is I thought the “new human” theme was going to be the default theme? But it isn’t. Ahh well…so I changed it to the new human theme, and I have to say I love it. Maybe not quite as dark as I might like, but its great having a dark theme that seems to jsut work. Like there haven’t been any bits of writing anywhere that haven’t shown up yet. I’m just going to go test some places where I can’t see anything with some dark themes…

Obviously, I am hoping that Ooo3 will get into the final 8.10. I’m not sure whether there has been a decision about that yet…but we will see.

To be honest, on my laptop everything is just working so far. If anything changes I will post about it, but everything just works…I’m probably going to try it on my desktop now. Lets see if it can handle my motherboard…lol

Ubuntu: "I am because we are"

…the strap line on a bottle of Ubuntu Cola.

Ubuntu cola is a carbonated drink by Fairtrade and Ubuntu Trading. In honour of Software Freedom day, I bought a bottle of Ubuntu Cola.

Ok ok, really its got absolutely nothing to so with SFD, I just had walked past it so many times and thought “hmmm…wonder if it tastes good…”

So today, I thought “ya know…why not” and I spent the overly priced £1.10 500 ml bottle of Ubuntu Cola.

And I can officially say…it tastes exactly like coke…

Well…that was great. Ahh well…thats all I have to say about it. Cool name…but its just coke. I mean, why do so many companies have to copy coke? I mean…just because one company did it doesnt mean it’ll work for you. Try something else. Don’t try and copy someonme else.

Ahh well…I’m off to kill my teeth safe in the knowledge that a farmer in Africa is getting a wee bit more money than if I had bought Coke. Thats nice isn’t it. Well…I never actually buy Coke…so really I’m not that fussed…I just wanted to see what it was like.

Has anyone else ever drank Ubuntu Cola? I’d like to hear your views.