Internetling

The first half of 2009 is over and after your summer vacation, you might want to start gearing up for the new distro releases. Once again open source proved that developers collaborating all over the world deliver constant platform improvement. Let’s see what they have in store for us this time.

KSplice – Rebootless Kernel Upgrade

One of the arguments I use often when talking about the advantages of using Linux is the fact that you do not have to reboot when installing or upgrading software. Most of the time. Almost every Linux user knows you have to restart your system after updating the kernel. The guys at Ksplice Inc. came up with this fascinating new technology that basically enables you to apply kernel patches and start using the new kernel right away, without rebooting. That is really all there is to it.

Comment: I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned, it is pretty mind-blowing. Kind of like making a headless chicken do your homework. Read about the underlying technology here.

USB 3.0

Via Wikimedia Commons (Tosaka)

This new bus specification promises a speed of 5 Gigabits per second, about 10 times faster than USB 2.0. And the first operating system to get a USB 3.0 driver is GNU/Linux, specifically, kernel 2.6.31 (scheduled for September).

Comment: Although we have yet to see some hardware (guess we will have to wait until good ol’ Windows adopts the tech), think about the possibilities. A pen-drive could be almost as fast as a regular hard drive, which would drive storage prices to the ground. As soon as a 1 GB or more USB 3.0 thumb drive appears, mark my words, I will be installing Fedora as if my life depended on it.

Ubuntu to support Google Android applications

Ubuntu Netbook Remix running Android (via Ars Technica)

With a user base of roughly 2 million and more than 20 Android-powered  devices coming this year, Google’s mobile operating system may become a force to be reckoned with. Developers will embrace the platform and given time, Android’s Market will contain hundreds of thousands of applications. Well, at least that is the direction in which the Ubuntu dev team is thinking. They plan to introduce an easy way to port Android apps over to their flagship Linux distribution. While most applications will be useless on a desktop machine, there might be some apps that, with their small size and modest memory consumption, might do a certain task much better than its Ubuntu-native equivalent.

Comment: I have to hand it to the Ubuntu guy who first got this idea: very original thinking. However, I do not think this is a wise way to use developer resources. There are still many things in Ubuntu that need fixing. New features are going to bring new hurdles. The Android support idea is great, though we should wait until the Android Market grows a bit.

As you can see, 2009 may not be the Year of Linux on the Desktop, but it will certainly be an interesting year. Thanks to the openness of the platform, GNU/Linux remains the driver of innovation in modern desktop computing.

Are there any interesting technologies I missed? Share your thoughts in the comments!

I have always wanted to take CrunchBang for a spin. This elegant distribution is based on the minimal version of Ubuntu, in this case, Jaunty Jackalope. CrunchBang wants to provide an alternative look and way of working with Ubuntu. The default desktop does support compositing (I barely refrained from posting some wobbly windows), but along with its window manager Openbox, the setup feels very unique. I always wonder why people prefer Openbox to Fluxbox, since the latter, while supposedly being a little more bloated, has some features (a panel, a desktop) which Openbox lacks, all while looking almost exactly the same. We will take a look at the included software after the break.

[Show as slideshow]

This review is going to ignore the Ubuntu side of things, we have all read enough Ubuntu reviews (I know I have) to know what Jaunty is like. Even though Crunchbang is lighter than Ubuntu, I think it does not necessarily strive to be a lightweight, but more of an elegant and convenient distribution. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the applications included were very similar to my preferences. Generally (though not in all cases), heavy-duty software is replaced by lighter alternatives.

Clicking “Media Player” in the well-structured OpenBox menu opens a VLC window, should cover all your video-watching needs. OpenOffice.org is replaced by Abiword, my favorite file-manager PCManFM (easiest way in the world of managing desktop icons) is also there, with Midnight Commander hiding in the shadows. The micro-blogging app Gwibber still remains one of the (c)leanest in its category. I welcome the choice of including Skype and Flash. Yes, they are proprietary, but most people install both packages anyway.

Upon further investigation, I stumbled upon a few very interesting applications. Not all followed the “CrunchBang” logic, e.g. there are two video editors, 3 text editors, 2 multimedia applications etc. While I am aware that there is a “Light” version of CrunchBang available, it would be nice for all the applications available to follow the same logic. My suggestions are: remove Leafpad, because we still have gVim and Gedit. gFTP should be replaced with FileZilla, it is just that much better. Remove one video editor, and Transmission is good, but maybe  remove it, stay with rtorrent only, and include the FireTorrent package with Firefox in order to save space and squeeze in some OpenOffice.org goodness. Far more people need a full-fledged Office application than two video editors. The Cheese web cam app is also nice, but not very useful. Switching Empathy with Pidgin would also be a good idea, Empathy seems much closer to the “ChrunchBang feel” and I hear it supports webcam chat now.

All in all, I admit I had a lot of fun testing Crunchbang. Although some people can find the Openbox Desktop and the grey-black color scheme (the window borders are a bit too dark, people may have problems seeing the buttons) a bit intimidating, Crunchbang’s main strength is that it does not make you watch, but explore.

Visit the CrunchBang website or download and install the distribution. Tell me what you think. I loved it.

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• CrunchBang Linux 9.04.1 released in 32-bit, 64-bit flavors (downloadsquad.com)

I’ve been waiting to move the site to a new server for some time now. The new server has much more bandwidth and space. I also decided to change the design of the site a bit. The old one got a bit, well, old.

The Internetling now has a new mascot (upper right), say hello to Tux’s cousin, Internetling.

The new blog has some nice new features:

• You can now easily reply to comments, look for the reply arrow
• The comment box automagically expands if you have a lot to write
• The share/save button (bottom of each post). Now you can post the content to many social media sites. Having just one button saves more space
• The Search function si now powered by Google. I believe it is a step forward from the “proper search” plugin
• Better avatar support (brought with the WordPress version update)
• The old articles are now separated in pages, instead of just linking to “Previous Entries”
• I now have a gallery function which will enable me to post shiny new screen-shots and whatnot easily. It will make it easier for you to browse the images, too. No more Photobucket!
• An image slideshow will start functioning when I post my first gallery article

Explore the blog a bit, have fun! I am also open to any suggestions and critique. Now that everything is set up, I will start churning out content fast, because we all know that a shiny site without any content is nothing. See you soon!

And finally, my favorite multimedia player has reached version 1.0

I’ve been a VLC user for a long time, it works great on all platforms. I use it to listen to music and watch videos.

Let’s celebrate together! If you can, consider giving the project a small donation, now is the perfect time!

DOWNLOAD 1.0 NOW

Features:

Free, Open Source and cross-platform
Independent of systems codecs to support most video types
Live recording
Instant pausing and Frame-by-Frame support
…

As the new version of Microsoft Windows 7 is nearing completion, many users are gearing up for the big upgrade. Since it is the most popular operating system, many people who use an alternative OS miss out on some good software made for Windows, such as Photoshop, many new games et cetera. Even though we have partial solutions like Wine, they are not perfect and remain the main obstacle for wider adoption of open source operating systems.

The ReactOS Team gathered more than 10 years ago to address this problem. I often wonder why they fail to make the headlines with their releases (probably because the project has yet to reach beta stage), as their goal is very useful to the wider open source community: to completely reverse-engineer Redmond’s flagship product, thus providing a working clone of Windows under an open source license. 10 years is a long time and although they failed to deliver version 1.0 in this time, by working closely with the WINE project, they managed to put together a working development version, which is still impressive considering the work reverse-engineering a multi-million-dollar project demands.

I know I’ve written about the project before, but I never did an extensive review. I decided to do it this week, the guys are doing a great job and they certainly deserve a mention.

So let’s see what version 0.3.9 has in store for us, shall we?

The new release is very fast, the minimum requirements are under 32 megabytes of RAM, you will need as many megabytes of hard disk space to download the live image. I took 0.3.9 for a spin using Virtualbox. The LiveCD should work fine too.

Apart from the usual apps and a skin that will make any veteran Windows 95 and 98 user shed a nostalgic tear, the Tango icon theme certainly improves the overall impression. Notice the icons do not have a transparent background. I believe this is a Virtualbox problem, it worked fine using the LiveCD. And what do we have here? Virtual desktops! Yes, ReactOS provides this essential tool out-of-the-box (unlike Windows 7).

ReactOS also features ReactX, which should replace DirectX. It is still in its early stages, but you can see it resembles DirectX very closely, even with the version numbers.

Now let us download some applications! First, we will try out ReactOS’ “Download”, an interface similar to Linux package managers. You simply select the software you wish to install, and the front-end does the rest of the work for you.

Not really a lot of apps available yet, but there is some fun stuff, like Diablo. I downloaded DosBox, Abiword and Firefox (both 2 and 3 are available). Don’t forget, these are all Windows binaries!

The installers worked fine. Now to try the software out!

Firefox 3 was a minor disappointment. Looks like it could not render the CSS. On the other hand, it did actually load the sites. And because there are lots of nice plugins like FireFTP which can replace some desktop apps, making Firefox work well would be a step in the right direction.

I then attempted to run Abiword, a FOSS word processor. In the virtual machine, there were some graphics glitches, but I could write without any problems. The toolbar buttons were a bit funky, too.

So the tested applications managed to run and perform some basic tasks. Even though ReactOS is still in alpha, let us try some untested software and see how it works. I fired up Firefox, downloaded the VLC player installer…

… when suddenly …

You have to admit this is a good Windows clone. Joke aside, I am sure this will see a great deal of improvement throughout the alpha and beta stages.

Since the restart takes about 20 seconds and I was still curious, I rebooted the VM and downloaded the lightweight OffByOne browser (interesting that they included it in Downloads) in order to obtain my VLC executable. This is how the ReactOS File Manager looks like. Like Explorer’s evil twin.

I installed VLC, but sadly it did not run. Of course, I was maybe wrong to choose a multimedia application, though I somehow had confidence in VLC’s excellent programming. However, this is still an alpha-quality operating system and multimedia is probably not their first priority.

I recommend you give ReactOS a try. You will be surprised at how far a community project can come. Programming an entire operating system is not an easy task. The ReactOS Team certainly has the vision, they want to bring you a completely free version of Windows, so you have control over what you run, but do not need to switch to an OS that works different. ReactOS gives you a choice and choice is one the most important aspects of software freedom.

You can view the project roadmap here and if you really like what they are doing, consider donating a few bucks. To download and test ReactOS click here.