Linux vs Windows vs Mac

The Register has posted an article that a round of screenshots has been posted to the web recently about the next Microsoft Windows operating system (OS).

The images were posted at ThinkNext.net but the site received a suit so the site decided to remove them. However, according to The Register’s article, people could see them at Windows7news.com at the moment. Austin Modine, the author of the article at The Register, notes that the next OS seems to be using the Office 2007 Ribbon interface in the Paint and Wordpad softwares.

A start menu, administration windows, Paint, Calculator, and Windows Media Player are shown in some of images.

A Microsoft spokeswoman responded that the company is “not aware” of issuing a take-down notice to ThinkNext. She added it’s Microsoft’s policy not to comment on rumors and speculation.

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Alpha software of any sort tends to be pretty buggy. It’s basically the developers saying that they can make this work but need a bit more time and “watch this space”. Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” Alpha 6 is no exception to the buggy rule. There are a number of things that don’t quite work. Saying that, it is not so bad as you might imagine, as I am writing this article quite happily from 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex”.

Alpha 6 is the last of the Alpha releases. The Beta release is due on the 2nd of October, and the Release Candidates will appear around the 23rd of October with the final release on the 30th of October.

I have had a look at the bug reports and the forums for Intrepid Ibex and things are being actively worked on. In the 24 hours since I installed, there have been a number of updates. I will be interested in logging onto this install and updating and seeing how things begin to work over the next few weeks.

It is interesting that the Free and Open Source Community is so open about the fact that things don’t quite work and how hard they are working to get them right.

So, after using it for a day or so, what doesn’t work?
The most obvious one is the wireless card that I have in this laptop. The Hardware Drivers sub-system comes up with the fact that the Broadcom 4318 card has been found and that there’s a driver available, however, the installation routine just doesn’t do anything. Dropping into the terminal and running the following command: sudo /usr/share/b43-fwcutter/install_bcm43xx_firmware.sh fixes it (just make sure you have a wired Internet connection).

I can then select my wireless network and it automatically selects the right encryption scheme. When I put in the WPA password it all connects correctly and I can browse my Local Area Network and the Internet (more on this on page 3).

However, I run into a problem when I restart. The system seems to forget the WPA password and I have to type it in again. Once this is done, it connects fine, so this is more of an annoyance than anything else. It has been reported as a bug and it is being worked on.

I want to listen to some music that I have on one of the shares, so I tell the music player, Rhythmbox, to go look there for the music. However, it doesn’t see any of the music files on the share. This is a Rhythmbox application issue and has been logged. I get around it by mounting the share in a different way (I want to write an article about how to do that soon) and I can successfully listen to my music.

I am sure there are more issues to be discovered, but that’s as far as I have tested so far.

My first impressions are that it’s all about the speed, the pretty and small improvements that make it more usable.

One of the generally accepted rules of computing seems to be that if you retain the same hardware and upgrade the operating system, then you can expect it to run slower. For example, Windows XP runs pretty well on my laptop, but Vista would be barely useable.

This seems to have been accepted as a fact of computing. But noone seems to have told the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community. They clearly don’t subscribe to this idea!

Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” Alpha 6 absolutely flies on my laptop. It boots faster and generally feels more responsive than the 8.04 version, which again felt faster than 7.10 and 7.04.

At the same time, I have a lot more applets loading on startup (and software installed generally) in 8.04, so I will be interested to see what happens when I enable them in 8.10. I suspect that things will just be faster in 8.10 anyway as the quality of FOSS just keeps increasing.

The biggest difference is in the wireless speed. In Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, my Broadcom 4318 WLAN card used the bcm43xx driver, which had a maximum speed of 24Mbps (3MB/sec), although being wireless it was usually quite a lot slower. This was replaced by the b43 driver in 8.04, which usually connected somewhere between 11 Mbps and 36 Mbps (although due to a bug in Network-Manager which remains unfixed, it only ever showed that it was connected at 1Mbps). I was able to get about 1.2-1.5MB/sec when downloading off my ISP’s local file mirror.

However, in 8.10 I can get 2.3MB/sec, sustained, over wireless! I am quite close to the exchange and on ADLS2+ (theoretical maximum speed of 24Mbps), so I am pretty much maxing out that connection. Interestingly, this is faster than the speeds that the Vista SP1 machines in the house can achieve (about 1.5MBps for the same file).

Having a fast connection speed - Network-Manager tells me 54 Mbps at the moment - and good throughput on wireless is a very welcome change.

One thing to keep in mind is that (as far as I am aware) Broadcom themselves have not helped with this driver, it is the open source developer community that have improved it to this point.
The second good thing that I have noticed is that it is gorgeous to look at. Compiz (the 3D desktop) is enabled by default, so I get all the nice 3D effects. This is pretty incredible as I have an onboard video card which shares 128MB of the system RAM. Vista’s Aero would just laugh at this video card and tell it to grow up!

It also seems to be a lot easier on the eyes. If the Ubuntu team has selected new default fonts then I salute them.

Applications such as Firefox and Gedit (the default text editor, a bit like Notepad in Windows, but much more powerful) just look nicer. Enabling Subpixel Smoothing makes it even better (go to System, Preferences, Appearance. Under Fonts at the top, click on Subpixel Smoothing. Makes things look nice on an LCD screen).

It might not seem like much, but now I only have to have one file manager window open, and can open tabs and copy and paste files between the tabs. This is quite simply a time and screen real-estate saver saver. I wonder how long it will take Microsoft to incorporate a tabbed file manager?

Secondly, is the icons for safely ejecting removable media, such as CD/DVD drives and USB keys. This is a bit like Microsoft’s “Safely Remove Hardware” system, just straight from the file manager itself. I find this very useful as I use USB keys a lot to carry files with me.

All in all, this is shaping up to be an interesting addition to the Ubuntu line up.

As I type this, I have been notified that there are another 30.6MB of updates! Being Alpha software, it is under heavy development. I will be watching with interest to see how the developers and the community respond to the bugs that have been raised so far.

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The latest version of Apple’s iTunes free media player for Mac and Windows seems to be a genius player, according to the description on apple.com.

Using the Genius Playlist, you can create a playlist starting from one song. The Genius Playlist will automatically scan your music collection and find songs that are somehow related to what you are listening. Then, you can use the Genius Sidebar from iTunes 8 to add similar songs from the iTunes Store to your library. This sounds like the Moodbar for Amarok, only smarter.

iTunes 8 brings some improvements to the Albums viewer and in the accessibility area. Also you can show off in front of your friends with the new Visualizer.

Overall these new features in iTunes 8 are great and user will be very satisfied by this new version.

The company behind KVM virtualisation technology,  was bought by Red Hat. 
This means thatRed Hat will be able to offer a virtualised platform to Windows desktop customers.
 

According to Red Hat company:  “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 will continue to implement Xen and no decision on timing for the transition from Xen to KVM [Kernel-based Virtual Machine] has been made” .

It will continue to support Xen through to 2014 and was at pains to point out that it has been working on integration between the Xen hypervisor and the Linux kernel. But Red Hat’s future looks decidedly KVM-shaped, a fact that could rile the feathers of virt partner, Citrix.

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst couldn’t resist putting the boot in to Microsoft either.

“This acquisition furthers our capability to widen the gap between open source and proprietary infrastructure software,” he said. “Put simply, Qumranet’s KVM and VDI [Virtual Desktop Infrastructure] technologies are at the forefront of the next generation of virtualisation.”

The first public beta of Firefox 3.1 has been delayed. Firefox 3.1 (Shiretoko) has been available as alpha 1 since June 16, and the beta version will be Mozilla’s first big update for Firefox 3
 

According to Mozilla, version 3.1 also includes all those features that just did not make it into 3.0 in time, including window previews for the CTRL+Tab feature as well as “Tag Autocomplete, Advanced Search UI, Bulk tagging support, Download History integration, Enhanced compatibility checking during upgrades and coherent startup/shutdown prefs/behaviours.”

On Mozilla’s FTP server a Firefox version is available, marked as Firefox 3.1 Beta 1, which installs as “Minefield” Developer browser “3.1b1pre”, but carries the Firefox version number 3.0.1 and release notes pointing to this current browser. There is also a directory with a browser marked as Alpha 2, which installs as Shiretoko 3.1a2. 
 

The first release candidate version of Linux Mandriva 2009 has KDE 4.1.1 as default desktop.

The new version brings a greatly improved package management tool, with automatic mirror selection and repository configuration. Also replaces the old madwifi wireless driver with the brand new ath5k, for all Atheros cards, and brings further improvements to the Ora theme.

These are some features that could be part of Mandriva 2009 final, scheduled for release on October 9, 2008:/p>

• Linux kernel 2.6.26
• GCC 4.3
• GNOME 2.24
• KDE 4.1
• Firefox 3.0
• OpenOffice.org 3.0
• revamped installer
• improved boot speed
• improved DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) management
• improved language selection
• implementation of the PolicyKit and PackageKit technologies
• improvements to the Mandriva Windows Migration and Parental Control utilities
• Live Upgrade (same as Ubuntu’s update-manager tool)
• initscript improvements
• Splashy will replace the actual boot splash
• lots of desktop improvements

There are also some rumors that X.org 7.4 and GRUB2 will be included in Mandriva 2009.

Heileen is a dating sim for Mac, which revolves around a young woman onboard a ship, as she is traveling to the New World. Set in the 17th century, the game has players finding Heileen’s true love.

“I’ve finished the first 2 chapters of the game,” accordin to the game’s developer.  “Writing in my own native language is much faster even if it means I’ll have to get all texts translated…! Hopefully they’ll do a good job at it. I’m really proud of the aspect of the game. The art is even better than Summer Session one” he added.

The developer confirms Heileen is indeed a dating sim. Best of all, the scenarios are allegedly thought out from a woman’s perspective.

“The fun thing is that I’m attempting a sort of new genre: dating sim (or romance adventure) from a woman’s perspective,” the Winter Wolves post reads on. “It means that the game will have his [sic] own variety of characters and some will be more polite than others,” the developer explains. “There will be also some very cute characters (two cats) and in general a more relaxing atmosphere. For now I’m not going to put any sort of scheduling mechanism, also because the game takes place for almost all its length onboard of the Cat’s Dream (the ship name).”

Talking about the gameplay features Heileen will boast on Mac, Winter Wolves reveals that a feature called “Quests” has been added. “In practice during the game you’ll be able to find quests to solve, that will award points,” the developer explains. “Discovering a new quest will grant you 2 points, and solving it another 3 points.”

Heileen’s creator concludes by noting that development on this dating sim is “very relaxing compared to coding huge games like Supernova 2.” Be sure to check out Heileen’s development blog for more screenshots and info on the upcoming Mac game.

KDE community announced the availability of the beautiful KDE 4.1.1 linux desktop environment.

Available in more than 50 languages, KDE 4.1.1 will bring to your desktop:

• Significant performance, interaction and rendering correctness improvements in KHTML and Konqueror, KDE’s web browser
• User interaction, rendering and stability fixes in Plasma, the KDE4 desktop shell
• PDF backend fixes in the document viewer Okular
• Fixes in Gwenview, the image viewer’s thumbnailing, more robust retrieval and display of images with broken metadata
• Stability and interaction fixes in KMail

Since KDE 4.0.0, Extragear applications are also part of regular KDE releases. Extragear applications are KDE applications that are mature, but not part of one of the other KDE packages.

Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) update instructions:

The KDE 4.1.1 packages will go to /usr/lib/kde4 and can be installed along side your existing KDE 3 installation.

You can find the updated packages for Kubuntu 8.04 in the Kubuntu Member’s KDE 4 Personal Package Archive (PPA) repositories. To update to KDE 4.1.1, please follow these simple steps:

1. Add deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
2. If you already have the kubuntu-kde4-desktop packages installed, simply type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and answer the questions in which you are prompted. If you do not have kubuntu-kde4-desktop installed, simply type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop and answer the questions. Both of these options are to be typed at the command prompt.

kdeplasma-addons contains new Plasma fun.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (but not RTM) and Windows Server 2008 RTM/SP1have hibernation problems on PC with AMD SB700 Southbridge chipsets. The latest versions of Windows client and server operating systems may crash when placed into hibernation.

According to Microsoft: "When you put a Windows Vista-based computer or a Windows Server 2008-based computer into hibernation, the system may crash. Additionally, you may receive a Stop error message that resembles one of the following messages: STOP 0×000000A0 (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4) INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR (a0); STOP 0×0000007a (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4) KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR; and STOP 0×00000077 (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4) KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR".

Microsoft company does not have a solution for the problem that can be served as an update to all Windows users. In addition, the issues are limited and not frequent enough in order to justify a resolve to be offered to all Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems. Microsoft however has a hotfix available, but users affected by this specific problem will have to contact the company directly in order to receive it. Customers who have not experienced any of the "symptoms" described above do not need to apply the hotfix.

Flux 1.4 for Mac brings, some code corrections, tweaks to the User Interface and, most important, support for the Komodo Editor.

About Flux:

Aimed at those looking to design XHTML/CSS websites, Flux lets you create the whole site within the WYSIWYG editor, type in XHTML, or both. The supplied templates will help you get started. If you’re in the business, you’re ready to start from scratch, without having to touch or even see XHTML/CSS, as Flux offers all the web design necessary tools you need. “You can do Web 2.0, AJAX, and most other buzzword-compliant things,” the developers note. You can access your iPhoto albums from within the application, or use Spotlight to find an image to drag it right onto your website.

Flux is a Universal Binary, designed entirely for the Mac and OS X operating system. Requirements call for a G5, or Intel Core Duo at least, and 768MB or more. More is always better.