Hilarious! Sums up my own feelings about Vista!
read more | digg story
Sunday, 9 December 2007
gOS - My Official Review!
As I'm sure you're all aware, I have been raving about gOS for some time. But I didn't really tell you much about it. So, I thought I'd give you a bit of a walkthrough of it.
Here's the desktop as it appears on my laptop. Nice, huh? Of course, this doesn't give you the full picture, as the bar at the bottom (called, in true Apple-like fashion, the iBar) scrolls smoothly along if (like me) you don't have a large enough screen to display all the icons.
It was easy to boot it up from the CD - being based on Ubuntu, it's similarly straightforward. I didn't install it, I was running it in LiveCD mode. Configuring wireless was a breeze. Just click on the two computers icon at the side, select your device (here I was using wlan) and you're confronted with this screen:
From here, it was just a matter of selecting my network and filling in my password for WPA.
The one issue I did have is the one I have mentioned earlier (the DNS issue, which also affects Ubuntu). I've heard that this issue is to do with certain wireless routers which have issues with some Linux kernels (I had it with Edgy and Gutsy, but not Feisty), but I believe it can be resolved by updating your router's firmware (I haven't yet done this as I found an alternative fix, but I'll have to get round to doing it sooner or later). However, I believe this is quite rare - the firmware update was actually issued around the same time as I bought this router in September 2006 so I would think that any new router you buy now would already have this issue resolved. If you bought a gPC for your granny and bought a new router to go with it, you'd almost certainly not have an issue with it.
As you can see, there's a very nice desktop indeed installed by default (the people who normally whinge about Ubuntu being brown won't have any issues with it - although there's nothing wrong with the Gutsy desktop, it's chocolate brown), but there are no doubt other desktops available, though as I'm only trying this as a Live CD I'm not going to be able to find out.
Despite its bias towards web apps, it does still have an excellent series of desktop applications - the full Open Office suite, The GIMP (which I used to capture the screenshots), Firefox as the default web browser, Thunderbird as your e-mail client (and unlike in Ubuntu, it includes easy Gmail configuration - why was this taken out of Ubuntu?) and Pidgin for IM - all excellent applications which are more than able replacements for the kind of thing you get on a brand-new Windows desktop - in fact, I'd say they are far better apps than what I got with my Vista laptop.
The media player that comes with it is Rhythmbox. I'd rather use Amarok, but I understand why they used Rhythmbox instead - although great, Amarok is quite complex, and is a bit harder to get your head round than Rhythmbox. Also, as it's a KDE app, Amarok would need the Qt widget toolkit installed to work, which would mean that gOS would have to make more space on the disc, and would slow it down. Rhythmbox is a good choice under the circumstances, and is nice and straightforward, although maybe they might consider Banshee instead in future, as that aims to be an "Amarok for GNOME".
But of course it's on web apps that gOS really shines. Startup times in LiveCD mode for most apps were on the order of twenty seconds, but much shorter if Firefox was already running - in practice you'd probably have Firefox running in the background most of the time, so it would be quite quick, and of course you'd normally have it installed. The apps are well-chosen ones that people use a lot anyway, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia, as well as others that people may not be so aware of, but deserve to be more popular, such as Meebo or Google Docs.
Even running as a Live CD it's surprisingly fast - faster than Ubuntu would be as a Live CD, so it would be blazingly fast if I installed it (and this laptop is not terribly fast - a three-year old Dell Inspiron with 512MB ram, a Celeron processor and a 40GB hard drive - it was painfully slow running Windows XP with Service Pack 2).
And it's almost childishly simple to use - everything you might need is clearly indicated - for Wikipedia, you click on the easily recognisable Wikipedia icon. Anyone can use this - if you think Linux is for nerds only, try gOS and you'll think again. But, at the same time, its Linux underpinnings give it speed and reliability - no need to worry about malware.
Inevitably, there's some bad: The Google search box on the desktop is a great idea, and is really useful, but for some reason the creators of gOS chose not to open the results in Firefox. Instead, it uses WebRunner, a fast but not very well-featured browser. Why? It's probably faster than Firefox, but you have to start it from scratch, whereas Firefox will probably be open all the time. It takes up additional space on the disc, and it doesn't show a consistent approach - a better way would have been for it to have automatically opened a new tab in Firefox. As it is, it forces you to often have two browsers open when you can make do with one.
But that's the only real issue I have with it. I'm rather a technical user, so it's never going to be my main OS (Kubuntu fills that role very well, thank you), but I admire gOS for its simplicity, ease of use, and wonderfully attractive and intuitive interface.
There are a couple of suggestions I would make to the creators. First of all, as mentioned above, I'd keep an eye on Banshee and consider making that the default media player, it might make a better choice than Rhythmbox. Second, as above, lose WebRunner, and just open queries in Firefox instead. Third, it might be worth their while considering having Flock as the browser instead of Firefox - it's ideal for the sort of people who might want to use gOS, as it includes full integration with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc, and the makers have also resolved many issues from Firefox.
Otherwise, I'm very impressed. As I mentioned, it'll never be my main OS, but if I had an old computer that I wanted to give to a relative for them to use just for e-mail, browsing the web and so on, gOS fulfills that role admirably. Well done gOS!
Here's the desktop as it appears on my laptop. Nice, huh? Of course, this doesn't give you the full picture, as the bar at the bottom (called, in true Apple-like fashion, the iBar) scrolls smoothly along if (like me) you don't have a large enough screen to display all the icons.
It was easy to boot it up from the CD - being based on Ubuntu, it's similarly straightforward. I didn't install it, I was running it in LiveCD mode. Configuring wireless was a breeze. Just click on the two computers icon at the side, select your device (here I was using wlan) and you're confronted with this screen:
From here, it was just a matter of selecting my network and filling in my password for WPA.
The one issue I did have is the one I have mentioned earlier (the DNS issue, which also affects Ubuntu). I've heard that this issue is to do with certain wireless routers which have issues with some Linux kernels (I had it with Edgy and Gutsy, but not Feisty), but I believe it can be resolved by updating your router's firmware (I haven't yet done this as I found an alternative fix, but I'll have to get round to doing it sooner or later). However, I believe this is quite rare - the firmware update was actually issued around the same time as I bought this router in September 2006 so I would think that any new router you buy now would already have this issue resolved. If you bought a gPC for your granny and bought a new router to go with it, you'd almost certainly not have an issue with it.
As you can see, there's a very nice desktop indeed installed by default (the people who normally whinge about Ubuntu being brown won't have any issues with it - although there's nothing wrong with the Gutsy desktop, it's chocolate brown), but there are no doubt other desktops available, though as I'm only trying this as a Live CD I'm not going to be able to find out.
Despite its bias towards web apps, it does still have an excellent series of desktop applications - the full Open Office suite, The GIMP (which I used to capture the screenshots), Firefox as the default web browser, Thunderbird as your e-mail client (and unlike in Ubuntu, it includes easy Gmail configuration - why was this taken out of Ubuntu?) and Pidgin for IM - all excellent applications which are more than able replacements for the kind of thing you get on a brand-new Windows desktop - in fact, I'd say they are far better apps than what I got with my Vista laptop.
The media player that comes with it is Rhythmbox. I'd rather use Amarok, but I understand why they used Rhythmbox instead - although great, Amarok is quite complex, and is a bit harder to get your head round than Rhythmbox. Also, as it's a KDE app, Amarok would need the Qt widget toolkit installed to work, which would mean that gOS would have to make more space on the disc, and would slow it down. Rhythmbox is a good choice under the circumstances, and is nice and straightforward, although maybe they might consider Banshee instead in future, as that aims to be an "Amarok for GNOME".
But of course it's on web apps that gOS really shines. Startup times in LiveCD mode for most apps were on the order of twenty seconds, but much shorter if Firefox was already running - in practice you'd probably have Firefox running in the background most of the time, so it would be quite quick, and of course you'd normally have it installed. The apps are well-chosen ones that people use a lot anyway, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia, as well as others that people may not be so aware of, but deserve to be more popular, such as Meebo or Google Docs.
Even running as a Live CD it's surprisingly fast - faster than Ubuntu would be as a Live CD, so it would be blazingly fast if I installed it (and this laptop is not terribly fast - a three-year old Dell Inspiron with 512MB ram, a Celeron processor and a 40GB hard drive - it was painfully slow running Windows XP with Service Pack 2).
And it's almost childishly simple to use - everything you might need is clearly indicated - for Wikipedia, you click on the easily recognisable Wikipedia icon. Anyone can use this - if you think Linux is for nerds only, try gOS and you'll think again. But, at the same time, its Linux underpinnings give it speed and reliability - no need to worry about malware.
Inevitably, there's some bad: The Google search box on the desktop is a great idea, and is really useful, but for some reason the creators of gOS chose not to open the results in Firefox. Instead, it uses WebRunner, a fast but not very well-featured browser. Why? It's probably faster than Firefox, but you have to start it from scratch, whereas Firefox will probably be open all the time. It takes up additional space on the disc, and it doesn't show a consistent approach - a better way would have been for it to have automatically opened a new tab in Firefox. As it is, it forces you to often have two browsers open when you can make do with one.
But that's the only real issue I have with it. I'm rather a technical user, so it's never going to be my main OS (Kubuntu fills that role very well, thank you), but I admire gOS for its simplicity, ease of use, and wonderfully attractive and intuitive interface.
There are a couple of suggestions I would make to the creators. First of all, as mentioned above, I'd keep an eye on Banshee and consider making that the default media player, it might make a better choice than Rhythmbox. Second, as above, lose WebRunner, and just open queries in Firefox instead. Third, it might be worth their while considering having Flock as the browser instead of Firefox - it's ideal for the sort of people who might want to use gOS, as it includes full integration with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc, and the makers have also resolved many issues from Firefox.
Otherwise, I'm very impressed. As I mentioned, it'll never be my main OS, but if I had an old computer that I wanted to give to a relative for them to use just for e-mail, browsing the web and so on, gOS fulfills that role admirably. Well done gOS!
Linux is about to take over the low end of PCs
Opinion -- Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users' hands.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Saturday, 8 December 2007
A major overhaul...
If you have visited this site before, you may notice a substantial difference. Yes, I've decided to give this blog a serious overhaul. I've completely revamped the whole look and feel of it to make it more minimal, and I've added a very nice new header, courtesy of the excellent and very useful Cool Text website.
I've also taken out almost all of the widgets. This was a very hard decision to make as I loved them, but I felt that they were getting out of hand and meant that the page took ages to load. If you're interested in keeping an eye on my music taste, please check out my MySpace instead. I've put three Last.FM widgets there instead.
I'd be very interested in hearing feedback on my blog's new look, so please feel free to comment.
I've also taken out almost all of the widgets. This was a very hard decision to make as I loved them, but I felt that they were getting out of hand and meant that the page took ages to load. If you're interested in keeping an eye on my music taste, please check out my MySpace instead. I've put three Last.FM widgets there instead.
I'd be very interested in hearing feedback on my blog's new look, so please feel free to comment.
Blogged with Flock
Thursday, 6 December 2007
Six Degrees
I've finished Six Degrees earlier in the week, and it is scary. A difference of six degrees Centigrade doesn't sound like much, but it'd be enough that billions could starve due to drought, and the survivors would besiege countries that managed to hold together. It could also release methane clathrates from the ocean floor, making climate change even worse. If you think climate change would be just about not having to go abroad for a holiday in the sun, read this book and it'll open your eyes.
The other book I'm reading at the moment is Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. Not got far into it (as with Black Man, I'm reading it at home and I hardly ever have time to spare to read it), but I'm making steady progress. Peter is an excellent and exciting SF author, and I really enjoy his work.
Tomorrow I've got my work Xmas meal. Also got the Secret Santa - it's always a pain getting something for that, isn't it?
The other book I'm reading at the moment is Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. Not got far into it (as with Black Man, I'm reading it at home and I hardly ever have time to spare to read it), but I'm making steady progress. Peter is an excellent and exciting SF author, and I really enjoy his work.
Tomorrow I've got my work Xmas meal. Also got the Secret Santa - it's always a pain getting something for that, isn't it?
Blogged with Flock
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
Course Part 2
Finally made a start on part 2 of my course today. So far, it's more technical than the HTML part was, but pretty easy - after all I've been using Linux for nearly a year, so I've learned a lot.
Also done a minor overhaul of this blog - added links to just about every profile I have anywhere, and have put this blog on Technorati. If you like reading it, please add it to you Technorati favourites using the button provided. If you think it sucks, please let me know (politely, though, and constructive criticism only!) via the comments. I'm grateful for any feedback.
Also done a minor overhaul of this blog - added links to just about every profile I have anywhere, and have put this blog on Technorati. If you like reading it, please add it to you Technorati favourites using the button provided. If you think it sucks, please let me know (politely, though, and constructive criticism only!) via the comments. I'm grateful for any feedback.
Blogged with Flock
The 20 Best iPod Utilities
I may have to consider using one of these instead of iTunes bearing in mind how unreliable it is with Last.fm on my Vista laptop...
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Sunday, 2 December 2007
KDE 4.0 to be Released in January
The KDE Release Team has decided to release KDE 4.0 this coming January. The release was originally planned for mid-December. The KDE developers want to solve a couple of essential issues before releasing.
read more | digg story
It's planned for 11 January. Which is, incidentally, my 29th birthday! Let's hope that I can get it working OK in Kubuntu Gutsy - I want the Ktwitter widget so bad...
read more | digg story
It's planned for 11 January. Which is, incidentally, my 29th birthday! Let's hope that I can get it working OK in Kubuntu Gutsy - I want the Ktwitter widget so bad...
Saturday, 1 December 2007
The Year of the Linux Desktop? Not Again!
Last night I read a leaflet from a local electrical retailer, and to my surprise, they were selling the Asus Eee PC (check out this link for details - they also do the black one but it's out of stock at present). I'm seriously considering getting one - it's a really great deal and I'd probably find it useful.
I have noticed a lot of positive trends in Linux adoption this year (Dell and a number of other manufacturers beginning to offer preinstalled Linux, the gPC, Tesco offering preinstalled Ubuntu Dapper, and now the Eee PC). While I'm reluctant to start shouting "2007! The Year of the Linux Desktop has arrived!", no-one can deny that Linux is now seeing increasing exposure in the mainstream.
I think the trend towards cheaper consumer electronics is likely to favour Linux adoption in future. Windows Vista is a bloated monster (Home Premium on the laptop I'm writing this on takes up a colossal 15GB, whereas a fresh Kubuntu install takes up 2GB) and a lot of your computer's expensive processing power is taken up with things you don't really want to run at all such as DRM.
Consider this example. Sim City Societies has a minimum processor speed of 1.7GHZ running XP, and 2.4GHZ in Vista! That's a staggering difference for no worthwhile improvement in performance.
Also as consumer electronics get cheaper a proprietary OS such as Windows forms a larger and larger proportion of the cost. If you're going to get better performance from a Linux distribution and it costs less, then companies which start preinstalling future mini-laptops such as the Eee PC with Linux will make a killing compared to those who stick with Windows, and pretty soon all vendors of such devices will be switching to Linux. I doubt that Apple will be able to do too well in this market, as they've spent years establishing themselves as the cool option that costs more (although I can imagine there being such a device - the iLaptop perhaps?).
In addition, as the creators of gOS have realised, the future lies in web-based applications. That's not to say desktop applications will die out completely, but they'll probably become less and less popular over time. And with that, the reasons for not using Linux will begin to fall by the wayside...
Monday, 26 November 2007
Finished Black Man
I've finally finished reading Richard Morgan's excellent novel Black Man just before 10pm today. Tomorrow I'll start reading The Dreaming Void at home and Mark Lynas's Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet on the train.
Blogged with Flock
Sunday, 25 November 2007
On and on...
Still ploughing through Black Man. I'm going to have to take it to work on the train again this week, otherwise I won't get through it. Unfortunately, I'm simply too busy most of the time to get round to reading it.
But I should finish it this week, then I'm going to start reading Peter F Hamilton's The Dreaming Void which I've been wanting to read for a long time.
But I should finish it this week, then I'm going to start reading Peter F Hamilton's The Dreaming Void which I've been wanting to read for a long time.
Blogged with Flock
Saturday, 24 November 2007
More about gOS...
It appears I spoke too soon. On a whim, I decided to try gOS on my other laptop (which normally runs Kubuntu). Turns out it does support wireless out of the box, just clearly doesn't support the wireless card built into my Vista laptop, which is odd as that is supported in Ubuntu Gutsy, on which gOS is based. Although it doesn't have Network Manager installed, it does include Exalt, which does the same thing. It does still suffer from the DNS problem with my router which Gutsy also has, but I can resolve that easily enough in Firefox by disabling IPv6 using about:config, and if I were to install it permanently it would be easy to resolve it for all applications by editing a line in my /etc/modprobe.d/aliases from
to
And it works like a charm! I'm actually posting this from within gOS running in LiveCD mode! I am seriously impressed. If ever I decide to get rid of this laptop and buy a new Dell with preinstalled Ubuntu instead, and give this one to my sister, I will be putting gOS on it. For the casual PC user, it is quite simply the simplest and most straightforward operating system I have EVER used. It has a wonderful look to it, it's made with a keen eye on what people use their computers for, and it's fast. For a budget PC, it's absolutely ideal. Give it to your kids, your elderly relatives, they'll all love it.
I'd like to see a vendor selling the Everex gPC with this preloaded here in the UK. As I've mentioned previously, Tesco are selling a £160 PC without a screen with Ubuntu Dapper preinstalled - since Asda is owned by Wal-Mart, maybe they will start selling this?
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
to
alias net-pf-10 off
And it works like a charm! I'm actually posting this from within gOS running in LiveCD mode! I am seriously impressed. If ever I decide to get rid of this laptop and buy a new Dell with preinstalled Ubuntu instead, and give this one to my sister, I will be putting gOS on it. For the casual PC user, it is quite simply the simplest and most straightforward operating system I have EVER used. It has a wonderful look to it, it's made with a keen eye on what people use their computers for, and it's fast. For a budget PC, it's absolutely ideal. Give it to your kids, your elderly relatives, they'll all love it.
I'd like to see a vendor selling the Everex gPC with this preloaded here in the UK. As I've mentioned previously, Tesco are selling a £160 PC without a screen with Ubuntu Dapper preinstalled - since Asda is owned by Wal-Mart, maybe they will start selling this?
gOS - My Two-Pence Worth
I've downloaded a copy of gOS on Thursday, and earlier today I burned it to a CD and tried it on my Vista laptop. All I can say is "Wow!". I couldn't get the wireless working out of the box because it doesn't include Network Manager by default, but it does appear to be available on the CD-ROM image (if not it'll be available from the Ubuntu repositories anyway), and it does specifically state that you need to use an ethernet connection anyway. As I wasn't going to install it, I was just trying it out, I wasn't able to use the internet with it, but it didn't matter as I'm familiar with the websites it has links for.
It looks absolutely amazing - it has a very clean,simple interface that's kind of reminiscent of OS X (though I'm not really familiar with OS X, having never used a Mac). For the average computer owner - ie. someone who will use it to browse the Internet, read e-mail, chat via IM and maybe write the odd letter from time to time, it's the ideal OS. The fact that it's based on Ubuntu means you've got access to all the apps in the Ubuntu repositories (and remember, Ubuntu has big repositories, only Debian has more), so you could potentially install just about anything available from there.
It is a shame that it has Rhythmbox installed by default - I'd have preferred Amarok, but I'll freely concede that although Amarok is an awesome media player, it's quite complex, and Rhythmbox is probably easier to use.
Overall, I'm very impressed. Although I'd consider myself a somewhat more technically advanced user than the target audience, I really like gOS. I showed it to other members of my family and they quite liked it too, though they aren't Linuxphiles like me. If I had a computer-illiterate friend or relative who wanted a computer, and this OS was available preinstalled on a computer here in the UK, I'd certainly recommend they get it.
The Internet has become a killer app for the home computer, and this computer is built around that idea. In the process it may have become the killer app for desktop Linux...
It looks absolutely amazing - it has a very clean,simple interface that's kind of reminiscent of OS X (though I'm not really familiar with OS X, having never used a Mac). For the average computer owner - ie. someone who will use it to browse the Internet, read e-mail, chat via IM and maybe write the odd letter from time to time, it's the ideal OS. The fact that it's based on Ubuntu means you've got access to all the apps in the Ubuntu repositories (and remember, Ubuntu has big repositories, only Debian has more), so you could potentially install just about anything available from there.
It is a shame that it has Rhythmbox installed by default - I'd have preferred Amarok, but I'll freely concede that although Amarok is an awesome media player, it's quite complex, and Rhythmbox is probably easier to use.
Overall, I'm very impressed. Although I'd consider myself a somewhat more technically advanced user than the target audience, I really like gOS. I showed it to other members of my family and they quite liked it too, though they aren't Linuxphiles like me. If I had a computer-illiterate friend or relative who wanted a computer, and this OS was available preinstalled on a computer here in the UK, I'd certainly recommend they get it.
The Internet has become a killer app for the home computer, and this computer is built around that idea. In the process it may have become the killer app for desktop Linux...
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