Too bloated – Ubuntu now comes in many flavors and for anyone who is at least at an intermediate level, turning off or even removing unneeded services or applications should not be an issue.

Slow compared to other distros – aside from the previous point, Ubuntu has also sped up its boot time quite a bit with the Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 release.

Not enough packages available – with the usage of universe and multiverse, you can obtain just about any application you need.

Bloated default kernel – Ubuntu has improved its core kernel quite a bit over the years and there is a way to recompile the default Ubuntu kernel to suit your needs if you are that picky (if Im not doing it, you probably don’t need to).

Not flashy enough – Ubuntu’s use of compiz and it’s improved grub splash image are sleek and seemless.

64 bit – Ubuntu’s 64 bit version is as polished as any other distros these days.

Community – Ubuntu has a wealth of information on their forums that is useful not only for Ubuntu for other Linux distros.

Benchmarking – when anyone does benchmarking, Ubuntu is the version that just about everyone uses so you get to see what your OS can do and how it compares.

Safe upgrading – Although Ubuntu doesn’t have a rolling release style of upgrading, it does have a graphical upgrade tool (update-manager) which makes moving to the next major release quite painless. I have thoroughly used Ubuntu through alpha, beta and offical releases and I can say that by the time the official release comes around, there are fewers issues upgrading with Ubuntu than even its own derivatives.

I’ve been a long time user of a distro that afforded me all of the control I wanted over the years, but ultimately, now after several years of Ubuntu polishing, that control is no longer an advantage. It’s time to make the switch. At this time, there is no other distro that meets the mark on as many levels as the product of Canonical. It’s clear that they are here to stay and have conjured up a well oiled machine that continues to glide smoothly across the Linux landscape. Ubuntu is not just worthy of converting Windows users, it is worthy of converting most Linux users.

If you happen to have any video files that are 720p and in an MKV (mastoska video) container, you will soon find out that your PS3 will not play them.

There are various arguments on the net about using MKV as a video container. Apparently it offers a bit more versatility in terms of encoding options so the vast majority of hi-res videos are done in the .mkv file extension.

I found a fast and easy way to fix this problem. I use a program called MKV2VOB. Unfortunately it only seems to work well enough in Windows. I tried it in Wine but it wouldn’t even open properly. If anyone knows of an app that will work in Linux the same way, then please let me know.

Another catch is that I find this only works well with 720p files. Essentially what the app does it change the container which the video is within. So, if you have an mkv file that you know won’t work on your PS3 (yes, I did try transcoding from a media server but the power required must be astronomical because my dual core AMD 3500 with 4gb ram couldn’t play these files. All you need to do is load up MKV2VOB and then open your file and select a destination where you want your redone video placed. I did not change any default settings at all.  Essentially it is doing is changing the container from mkv to mpeg. It does not need to transcode to do this. It only will Mux the video so that it is in a different container. I find it takes only about 30 seconds at most for a video even of around 4gb size. Note – this is the result only for 720p resolutions or lower. If you want to change the container for a video file with 1080p resolution, it seems to require transcoding which is a very long process in comparison. I have not noticed any 720p files that required transcoding yet. The resulting file should be an mpeg file and should play just fine on your PS3 while still retaining the same resolution and quality including the sound.

I am hoping that newer versions of MKV2VOB will work better with 1080p videos but at least it makes all of those 720p mkv files useful for PS3 owners.

I did try to play some of these videos through PS3 Media Server and have it transcode on the fly, but my CPU on my server was not powerful enough to do so. With my dual core machine with 4gb ram not being able to properly play a larger mkv container file without slowing down or clipping, it makes me curious as to what would be necessary to play these files with mkv container files.

Hopefully this post can save some people some of the time and trial and error I went through to figure things out. Better yet, hopefully down the road we will get a better container that offers all of the same benefits of mkv but also has better compatibility and doesn’t seem to require such vast amounts of CPU power to play.

Downloadable Music – By far Rock Band has the most downloadable music (often referred to as downloadable content) in comparison to any other music game. Not only is the mass of DLC superior, but Harmonix also allows you to import almost all of your Rock Band 1 songs for play into Rock Band 2 for a $5.99 fee through the corresponding store (Playstation Store or Xbox Marketplace). Despite its dominance, Rock Band’s DLC can be improved. Recently Harmonix decided to expand its horizons and release a country pack and for the holiday season, a collection of Christmas songs were released. It would be interesting to see the sales on these items. I wouldn’t expect them to be best sellers. While downloadable music opportunities are restricted to an extent by the willingness of the record company to license the music as available, it might still be a good idea to allow user voting and then communicate more with the users as to what the status of the development is on these tracks.

Presale Previews – A very simple enhancement that might really help sales would be to put either audio or video previews on the Playstations Store and Xbox Marketplace. In some cases, the user may not know the song by title and artist but rather by listening to it. Even a short audio preview would accomplish this reminder. A video showing the song playing and how the notes are organized ingame might be even more useful.

Game Enhancements – While Harmonix may be hesistant to do this due to concentrating on getting more downloadable music and also wanting to leave some new features for future Rock Band releases, consumers no doubt would appreciate some game enhancements. Criterion who make Burnout Paradise have probably done the best job with DLC to improve the gaming experience. Criterion also made all of the enhancements free which Harmonix would not be required to do, but some specific improvements would really make game play better. Here is my wishlist:

• Countdown into game after pausing (this could be added as an option as it is in Guitar Hero)
• Ability to create your own tour (pick your own songs to be played on whichever level you want and construct your own custom tour which would add replayability)
• Song timer – add an option to include the time remaining in the song on the screen.
• More freedom in Quickplay with setlists – when making a setlist and choosing a difficulty level, the user is chained to placing all songs on the same difficulty level. As we know, some songs on medium as equivalent in difficulty to some songs on expert.
• Reward instead of punishment for trying higher difficulty levels – Despite your current status (on tour your user should have a # of stars and a noted difficulty level), you are punished by losing fans if you fail on a higher difficulty level. This takes away from a user trying out a harder setting. I would suggest not taking away any fans unless the user is already at the same or higher difficulty level than the setting they are currently attempting. For example, you have 5 stars on Hard and try expert and fail – no fans are lost. However, you have 5 stars on Expert and try a song on Hard, you would lose fans if you failed. This does not take into account that different songs vary in challenge depending on the song itself, but it’s a start.
• Better stats recording – Have a separate high score for each difficulty level. A comprehensive chart in the main menu showing all high scores for each instrument for each level would be a nice add-on.
• New High Score notification – this can be done on all modes. When a user attains a new high score, include a new high score notification once the song is done.
• Include an option to show how many notes are consecutively correct on screen during gameplay.

These are all ideas for enhancements that could be done via patching or even made available for a fee through the respective storefronts.

Will we see any of these improvements issued by Harmonix or are they too nervous to ruin a good thing as it stands or maybe they need to save features to help sell future Rock Band releases?

The web interface is professional in appearance (along with the Community edition, there is an Enterprise version as well) and had many features built right in that were convenient to install. I decided to try it out. As part of this upgrade, I decided to use a gigabit (10/100/1000) network card for my LAN so what I could get better internal speed for copying files within my network. Along with that, I bought a gigabit switch as well. I chose the intel GT nic (many other gigabit cards were not compatible including a Dlink one I tried and a Linksys one that I researched and noticed would not work) and I bought a green friendly Dlink gigabit switch.

The install went fine however, I would have liked to see better instructions along the way. For someone who may not be familiar with setting up a home gateway/router, it could be very confusing. At times, I was unsure what the prompts were asking me and yet I was quite familiar with what I wanted to do. I could imagine some people giving up after not knowing what information to enter. Once done, I removed my previous box which had served me well and replaced it with something a bit more powerful but still not a powerhouse: P3 450 mhz, 256mb ram and a 12 gb HD. I could have used more ram but the motherboard was picky and would accept certain types. I tried several banks but was only successful getting 256 to work. I decided to give it a shot anyway although the recommended amount was 512 for a network of under 5 users. Instantly after plugging everything in and power cycling my cable modem, I was able to visit the Clark Connect internal web interface.

Some of the added features that I can now use are intrusion detection (snort) which IP Cop did have built in but my previous box could not realistically run as well as Windows File Sharing (samba), Web Proxy Filter, Content Filter, Web Server, Mail Server, FTP Server as well as a DHCP server and Name Server. I may not use all of these services, but it would be easy to try them as the built in software retrieval method will download the appropriate packages after simply checking off a corresponding box.

I am still in a testing phase with Clark Connect but so far it has been reliable, fast and easy to use. I like the web interface and the ability to configure things further should I desire. If you have a reasonably decent older box at home that you want to make use of, I would highly recommend trying out Clark Connect and if you want something that can run on older hardware like my P166, then IP Cop could be for you. On older machines, several services may not run well or be practical such as snort intrusion detection. Research the sites and consider replacing that standard big name hardware router if you are having issues with it. You may never use one again as in my case.

A coworker had mentioned wanting to get an LCD tv but was on a tight budget so I had found some great deals several months back but he didn’t have the cash to pick one up. I subsequently stopped looking around. Eventually my own LCD monitor’s condition worsened to the point where I thought about replacing it. I opted for the idea of getting an LCD TV. This is to be used in my room and I could get cable working there as well as a bonus. I was flipping through a flyer for the source and first noticed a Sony Bravia 32″ on sale for $599 which was $200 off the original price. I decided to go online and look at it in more detail. I searched for the TV and sorted by price and ended up finding an LG 32″ which was originally $849 on for $599 also. Having just recently upgraded my main TV to an LG 47″, I decided that the 32″ LG would be best for me so I bought it.

Now, onto the geek stuff… My main concern was the limited resolution compared to my previous 22″. The new LG, even though it was 32″, was limited to a resolution of 1360×768. I was concerned that this might be too large compared to the 1920×1200 resolution I was getting from my 22″. It ended up being fine and I am writing this entry on the new LCD. The color is fantastic and it’s great to have such a nice big screen. It doesn’t look ridiculous on my desk as it only a 32″. It also helps with playing games like Fofix (Frets on Fire fork). All 4 operating systems look great on the screen as well.

I would definitely recommend going with an LCD TV with a larger screen size for a computer, if you can afford a few exra dollars.  It is definitely worthwhile. Now, what do I do with that damaged 22″ inch LCD?

Finally, after all of these releases, I encountered a problem that I could not seem to fix entirely. Not surprisingly, it was with Nvidia. The issue that I noticed was that I was not able to play any 3D accelerated games in full screen. I am not talking about high level graphically demanding games but rather Frets on Fire. I even installed a derivative of Tuxracer from the Ubuntu repos to test and it would not work either.

Normally I would have continued attacking the issue, but I really wanted to get Frets on Fire but mainly the fork called Fofix working. So, instead, I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10 on a different partition for testing. I had testing the same software on a couple of different machines running the same version of Ubuntu and one even contained an Nvidia graphics card. Both worked fine. In fact, the full screen mode had been working fine on my own install until a recent upgrade.

The main issue was with the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 file which apparently was owned by both the Ubuntu Nvidia package and one called libgl1-mesa-glx. The issue was reported as a bug. My system was actually a 32 bit install but no matter what I tried, I could not fix this issue. I tried using aptitude, dpkg and apt-get along with synaptic to force and overwrite just about anything that I thought would fix the issue. In the end, I figured that after numerous alpha and beta transitions it might be time to try a new install. So, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 final release on a different partition and everything seemed to work as planned. I did uninstall network manager and manually edit the /etc/network/interfaces file in order to achieve using a fixed IP address. Network manager seemed to allow me to edit the settings, but didn’t seem to change them properly. For example, there is no much thing as a Netmask value known as “24″, yet every time I entered 255.255.255.0, that’s what it returned. Network manager is fairly advanced in some respects, but in other ways, it needs a lot of work.

With my fresh install, I have Frets on Fire working and Fofix fires right up in full screen. I had no trouble installing the Nvidia driver provided by the Ubuntu repositories as well. My old install must contain some old files or rules that interfere. Yes, I did use the “Cruft Remover” which is a handy new tool but that didn’t solve this particular problem.

I am fairly confident that had I not taken my install through all of the alpha and beta releases that I would not have encountered this issue. It also makes it nearly impossible to get help on it as not many people would be so masochistic. I am not sure what I will do with my current previous Ubuntu install. I may just keep it around for non-production use and to see the new features only and leave my new install for official releases only.

One of the bonuses with the new install is a faster boot time, nicer and more modern boot screen. In the meantime, I can try a really thorough clean up on my previous install and see what happens from there.

In terms of the future of Carrier, we can only hope that the recent past is not an indication of future development. Carrier has a great opportunity to attract users. It won’t attract as many as it did when it initially started though since one of the main reasons for its creation was to enable the text resizing box during chats and secondly Pidgin is still the defacto IM client included with a lot of distros. While a lot of Linux users will put forth the extra effort to replace Pidgin with Carrier if they feel strongly enough about it, for most people, they are likely to leave well enough alone.

I am not giving up on Carrier yet though. The current version took a bit long for my liking to be released, but it’s here now and it works very well.

My advice for the developers at Carrier would be to make packages readily available for various distros including the most up to date version and make them easy to find on the website. For example. the preamble for the Ubuntu version still links to version 2.4.1. Also, keep up to date and respond to people in the forums more regularly. After all, from your main stanza on the homepage, you indicate: “What makes us different from the official client, is that we work for you.” If that is truly the case, then it needs to be demonstrated fully.

Ubuntu  – I’ve done several installs for people lately on newer systems and they just work. Even webcams are working instantly right after installing ‘Cheese’.

Arch Linux – I’ve had Arch installed on several boxes at home for about 5 years. It runs solidly. I use custom kernels (2.6.26) and use 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need nor want to make any drastic changes to them.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, in fact it is quite good, but it does take away the challenge I used to enjoy.

So, when I get into the mood to break something and then try to fix it, I think of using Ubuntu Alpha releases but as mentioned in an earlier post, even those don’t cause me any issues anymore.Moreso than fixing things I’d like to try something that offers some unique value in doing things differently.

I do try out some different distros here and there but I am not really finding anything unique enough to pique my interest. Recently I’ve tried OpenSolaris (just because) and it was a disaster and pretty much unusable (very slow package manager, missing common packages I wanted). I did an upgrade and it wouldn’t boot afterwards.  I also tried OpenSuSE 11, Mandriva Spring and Mint. That’s the story with Linux lately. At one time I did set up a box in only command line and I currently use a custom built Linux router as well. What else is there?

OK, so there is OSX. I’ve used OSX86 and it is a decent OS. I really don’t have anything negative to say about it. I do miss a lot of things that I have in Linux when I use OSX but I understand that it is a designed in a specific manner so I can’t criticize the product but perhaps the concept but I’m not even going to do that. The truth is that it’s decent enough, but doesn’t provide me with anything really interesting and innovative in terms of configuration and such. Also, I am of the belief to truly get the full OSX experience, one needs to switch over to it fully which I am not prepared to do right now and likely never.

In terms of Windows, I’ve made my comments on Vista already and I’m pretty tired of XP. In fact, I would be all over using Vista at work if the opportunity presented itself (assuming Linux was not an option either).

So, where does that leave things now? If anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to trying something out, but I’d like to try something that is unique somehow and offers some kind of benefit or optimization. I’ve tried just about every desktop environment and window manager as well.

Firstly, my initial disclaimer is that while there will be technical information in this article, it is also based on opinion and personal experience and therefore if anything, it is a personal account of the usefulness or lack thereof of a swap partition and thoughts, ideas and assertions are welcome.

When I first started using Linux many years ago (maybe 6 now), one its distinct unique qualities was the use of a Swap partition. Initially, I didn’t ask too many questions as I was eager to leave behind the OS that had caused me frustration over the past years. As time went on and I gained more experiences with Linux, I continually would use a swap partition on any new installs and would be asked by anyone for whom I created a set up about the reason for creating this swap partition.

In basic terms I was always told that the purpose of the swap partition was mainly to allow the system access to more memory if your RAM was used up. Therefore, this was useful on systems with low amounts of memory or on machines where there would be a lot of RAM usage thus causing it to be fully used and therefore require additional memory which swap would provide.

Even with older machines or ones lacking RAM, I observed that swap was barely used. Typically on systems with at least 1GB of RAM, I never see any swap used. I suppose this could happen if there was a great deal of memory usage due to intense audio, video, compiling or some other kind of processing.

Newer machines will often have 2 CPU cores and at least 1GB of ram and usually I recommend that at least 2GB of RAM is a decent amount for a newer machine. Considering the processing power and inexpensive nature of adding more RAM, what happens to swap? Swap once had a purpose on older machines but now it seems that it is not only becoming unnecessary but also a burden perhaps?

Swap can have some negative affects as well. With the size of new hard drives these days using up 512mb or 1GB or swap space is certainly not an issue but if you like to use all Primary Partitions like me, then all of a sudden out of the gate you are down 1 of 4 Primary Partitions used on a hard drive (I’ve heard there are ways around this but I am not including using third party software to create more Primary Partitions). So, for example, you are building a custom machine where you want several Primary partitions for a particular reason such as:

swap

/boot (to store your kernel and boot settings)

/ (your root filesystem)

/home (a separate home partition to keep your personal files on their own or even to share it with another distro installed on the same machine)

/var (separate log files or perhaps used for package building)

/usr (holds the majority of your application executables and global application settings in /usr/share)

/opt (could be used for applications you compile youself placed in a different directory other than /usr/ to keep them separated)

Clearly, partitioning is a personal choice and the decision is based upon your specific usage. However; if you use a swap partition, all of a sudden you are losing 1 primary partition. So, unless you create logical or extended partitions, it could be that one of your planned partitions is negated.

Swap Partition Pros:

May help speed up older machines lacking memory

May help speed up machines that require an industrial amount of processing (high tech audio, video or compiling) while performing other tasks

Makes your install ‘feel’ more like nix

Swap Partition Cons:

Uses up space and a primary partition

Disk Thrashing over time can damage your hard drive

Accessing the hard drive to use virtual memory is slower than RAM

Alternatives:

If you don’t want or need to use a swap partition, you can instead use a swap file. I am not going to post any links on how to do this right now, but if you do a web search for it, you can find lots of examples.

Although I do not plan on changing any of my current long running configurations as my swap partitions are typically the first partition in my table, I do not plan on using them anymore on any new systems – especially any that I plan on which I have multiboot configurations. I have one now where I can share the swap partition, but more than once I have wished that I did not create the swap partition in the first place. To me, there does not seem to be a need to use such a thing on a dual core machine with 4GB of RAM, better yet, it seems like a waste of a primary partition.

I think I’ve been testing the Ubuntu releases including all Alphas and Betas since probably Dapper Drake which was released in August of 2006. I do have to mention that I do not currently run Ubuntu as my main OS (Arch is awarded this position), however; I do support what Canonical is trying to do with Ubuntu and like to keep updated on its progress. So, the following are general tips on how to prevent breakage, fix issues and all the while enjoy the fact that you are running the most up to date version of Ubuntu available.

** Quick tip – do not delete your previous kernel and also backup your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to be extra safe

How do you upgrade to the next version when it is in Alpha or Beta?

You can do this in a couple of ways. If you prefer the graphical method, you can press Alt-F2 to bring up a run dialog box and type update-manager -d which will open up your Update Manager (assuming you have it installed) and give you the option to click on the button representing the next version. Another method is to use your terminal and type apt-get dist-upgrade which should find your latest version (although I have not tested this with Alphas so I cannot say for sure). As well, I believe that Synaptic would be able to get you to the next version as well even if it is a development version by allowing that preference.

Possible issue and their remedies:

Missing a dependency – Sometimes during upgrading, you will get a report that a dependency is missing. This is typically because the mirrors have not finished syncing. Your choices here are to simply wait until all of the packages are available (if you don’t clear your Apt cache then you can just download the missing packages instead of doing the whole lot again) or if you are really impatient, you can browse the various mirrors and try to download the individual packages and then install them using command line (dpkg -i pkgname) or by double clicking on the package icon which should prompt a GUI installer. Usually Apt is pretty good at giving you hints at how to fix the issue if one pops up so this is why I prefer to do these upgrades via the CLI (other than the initial upgrade to the next distro version).

Cannot Stop Service so Upgrade Fails – This has happened to me a few times. I like to run systems very optimized so I tend to eradicate services that I do not need. Although I can use B.U.M. to stop them, sometimes I prefer the old fashioned but more effective method of rc-update.d -f servicename remove which will remove the service from all runlevels and give you nice clear terminal output showing this has been done. While this is great for optimizing your system by ridding it of known unwanted services (ie – laptop services on a desktop), sometimes this causes some confusion when trying to move from one Ubuntu version to the next. I’ve seen Ubuntu try to stop a service and fail (because it was removed from runlevels or perhaps it isnt running) and then leave you in the cold. My solution for this is to simply repeat your original process of installing the service, allowing it to run temporarily and then disabling it after the upgrade. It is a bit tedious but it seems to get the job done.

Nvidia (I don’t use ATI) – I ALWAYS seem to run into an issue with Ubuntu and Nvidia during these upgrades. Between the combination of different kernel upgrades, restricted modules upgrades and the Nvidia driver upgrades, it tends to cause issues every single time I upgrade. I am happy to say that with Intrepid Ibex I only encountered one minor issue with this where I waited for a new repository sync and then my Nvidia driver worked. However, in the past I have had to go to the Nvidia website and manually install the driver. I would then keep testing the various incantations of the Ubuntu packaged Nvidia driver along with the linux-modules-restricted package with the corresponding kernel until it would work. The last time around was the worst as it only seemed to get resolved at Beta 3 if I recall correctly.

Application Issues – Well, these are testing versions of applications so I don’t expect perfection, but I will often get some really nice features that were not available in previous releases.

Xorg Issues – Very rarely but at least once I have had my X server screwed up by doing an upgrade. Nonetheless backing up your previous /etc/X11/xorg.conf as stated above is a good idea. This could mean no access to the proper resolution or even perhaps no access to X itself (dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg didn’t work).

That’s about all I can think of for now. Perhaps others have other issues they have run into? Maybe I forgot some that I experience, but these are the most common ones. None of them were showstoppers for me as I was able to fix them all or find a way around them. Not bad for Alphas. It seems it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find broken systems around my place. I used to enjoy playing around with them and getting them to work somehow. Ubuntu appears not to offer this feature (anymore?). For me, that can be a little bit disappointing in the sense that there isn’t much of a challenge, but overall its great because it means that the system is still fairly solid even in its most vulnerable state.

the following needs to be done in a terminal as your regular user (not root) in your user’s home directory

rm .recently-used.xbel
mkdir .recently-used.xbel

This in effect will disable your Recent Documents from your Gnome Menu.

What is strange about this is that a bug report has been filed since early 2005 and then option has still not been added.

To do my part, I registered on the bugtracker and re-iterated the option. If you want this added then the only way is to let them know on the launchpad. If you find the exclusion of disabling this feature annoying then make a comment on the bug tracker. After all, complaining is better defended when you actually do something productive to change the original annoyance

Hopefully this sells well and BestBuy continue to do this. Apparently 60 days of support and a light booklet come with this edition. More pics can be found here and here.

I am considering buying one if I can find one around here just to offer support.

With all of that said, I believe that the text area resizing feature was once again added in a later release. While sometimes I can be forgiving, there is a fundamental reason why I choose to use Linux that I really appreciate which is not being force fed any features or lack thereof. It is for this reason that I quickly adopted the fork of Pidgin called FunPidgin. Funpidgin developers advertise on their site that “Unlike the Pidgin developers, we believe the user should have the final say in what goes into the program.” To me, this is a huge selling point. Even though the Pidgin developers may have added in the said feature in the end after a ridiculously long standoff, the feeling that this disregard for the average user still lingers strongly enough for me that I will likely never return to the original especially as long as there is an alternative and one with several more features at that!

I have recently uploaded the necessary packages to switch to Carrier on the ELG Arch Linux repositories for those in the know. This is available on 32 bit and 64 bit repos. For those who just want to install it manually, you will now need two packages: Webkit and Carrier for 32 bit systems from this directory and Webkit and Carrier for 64 bit systems from this directory. These can be installed using pacman -U pkgname in the corresponding order. Special thanks to Connor Behan who is one of the developers for FunPidgin/Carrier and put the effort into making a pkgbuild for Arch Linux users.

Among many reasons why I use Linux is the freedom from the large proprietary company that invariably will shove their ideas down their throat akin to a mother bird feeding her young worms or perhaps unsavory droppings.

I have been doing PC work on the side for many years so I have to admit that I am quite tired of XP so that is one bias of mine. I have read criticisms aplenty about Vista citing its incompatibility with software and hardware along with its UAC (which prompts the user to approve any admin actions) and flashy Aero theme which many have scorned for eating up too many resources. While there is some truth to all of those claims and others, I am not going to regurgitate them here.

Instead, I’d like to discuss the mistake that Microsoft made that people don’t really talk about. Microsoft has made a huge mistake with their system requirements for Vista which they have posted on their own website. Microsoft claims the following as minimum requirements:

• A modern processor (at least 800MHz).
• 512 MB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

To me, this is plain foolish. Sure, a major criticism of the masses prior to Vista being released was their crazy hardware expectations. Realistically, I do not find the requirements to run Vista unreasonable – and I’m not even talking about the ones Microsoft recommends. I’m talking about what I would recommend:

• CPU preferably dual core but at least 2 Ghz or equivalent if not dual core
• 2GB of memory
• An add on graphics card with at least 256mb of its own memory manufactured within the last 2 years

I know there can be some scrutiny over these recommendations, however; times have changed and while some people may expect a new operating system to run on even lower specified hardware than one may currently own, newer features sometimes require more power. Vista Aero is a much nicer and more professional looking interface than XP in my opinion. It was time for the masses that use Windows to evolve. Of course I am not going to complain about those users who moved to Linux or Mac either

The point of what I’m saying goes back to Microsoft making a poor decision about their hardware specifications and then communicating this to the Vendors. Here is an example: I recently worked on a computer where someone said they hated the installed Vista mainly because it was too slow. The first thing I noticed was that this brand new machine was that it had only 512mb of memory. It had an AMD 3800 Sempron processor and an onboard video card. To me, Microsoft is basically asking the user to get frustrated with this setup. I bet if I upgraded the ram to 2gb even, the user would have a much different experience. Also, if I added a modern video card independent of being onboard, it would not only improve the resolution but also the usability of the interface by quite a bit.

If Microsoft really wanted Vista to be successul then they should have made the requirements higher and enforced vendors to do the same. If every PC shipped with Vista had a decent processor, adequate ram and a proper video card, the reviews for Vista may have taken a different tone. I’m sure people would criticized the OS for demanding too much, but realistically speaking, Apple doesn’t release any new machines with poor specifications that cause OSX to run sluggishly so perhaps Microsoft would just be lumped into the same category. I think perhaps being seen as a bit of a standoffish or expectant company for requiring higher specs would have been much better than the collective masses viewing its release as a failure.

This blog post was written on a Linux machine, but I would have done it on a Vista machine instead of an XP machine given the proper hardware if those two were my only choices.

Is Vista truly a failure or was its inauspicious release just doomed to failure based on performance issues due to weak hardware causing the masses to snowball negative publicity until it was buried?

I received some responses to my article and decided that I could look into the distros that I had listed under the CD/DVD method in more detail to see where they stood. This article is about Mandriva.

As a disclaimer, Mandrake/Mandriva and I historically did not get along well. Back in the days when the defacto easy distro race was between Red Hat and Mandrake, I always managed to get Red Hat to work very well, but I could never get Mandrake (then) to work properly. I knew people who swore by it, but it was never a good fit for me. I don’t have any bias toward Mandrake/Mandriva these days though as I don’t use it regularly on any of my boxes.

Due to my inactivity with Mandriva, I feel quite apt to evaluate it from a newbie perspective which is ideal for the type of experiment I am conducting – What it is like for a newbie to upgrade Mandriva to the latest version?

I have to also admit that I was given some tips via email on certain commands and such so I may appear a bit more familiar with things than my inexperience with Mandriva realistically would have elicited.

On to the test….

The first thing I did (upon recommendation) was download Mandriva 2008.0 Live CD for Gnome and the aim was upgrade it to Mandriva 2008.1. The point of this test is not to evaluate Mandriva as a distro, but I will make some comments along the way about my observations.

I managed to install Mandriva to my system and generally speaking the install went well. There is a very convenient Install button the desktop which was nice to see as that seems to be quite a friendly method. I was also impressed that not only did the live cd recognize that I had an Nvidia graphics card, but it also loaded the driver for me. So far, so good. I set up custom partitioning as I typically do. I recall feeling a bit off about the partitioning wizard though. Unfortunately I did not do any screenshots, but it seemed a bit too quick on formatting without double checking with the user on whether that was really what they wanted. A confirmation would help, I think. I can’t really dwell on it though since I didn’t take any screenshots of that scenario. The install went well otherwise and was done in about 5-10 mins on my AMD XP 3800 with 4GB memory. One thing that really bothered me was that I was forced to install a bootloader. I was given the option to install to the mbr or any other partition I wanted, but there was no option to bypass installing a bootloader. Maybe this was added to the 2008.1 installer? I added Mandriva to my bootloader on a different distro and was able to boot up fine.

Upon booting up for the first time I had to go through the paces of a first time boot configuration wizard. I have seen this before with other distros so it was no big deal. There was a small part about registering with Mandriva which made me feel like it was a bit commercial but there was an option to skip it so that was short lived.

When I arrived at the desktop, I was surprised to see some really odds things which I will list here (click on the text in each line for corresponding screenshots):

• Only 1GB of my 4GB of Memory was recognized (high memory support enabled in kernel by default?)
• Fonts were set at 60 DPI (I changed them to 96 and things were much better)
• Nvidia Driver was running but maybe my monitor detection didn’t work so well as my 22″ LCD had a max resolution of 1024×768. I ended up editing the xorg.conf file to get 1680×1050.
• The special Mandriva Gnome menu had some major redundancies here and here.

And onto the upgrade procedure. I didn’t see any pop up in the Gnome toolbar or anywhere in the menu indicating how to move to the next version. It was recommended to me to use the easyrpmi website to upgrade my version. I proceeded to (text is linked to screenshots again):

(keep in mind that I needed to use the “old” easyurpmi website since I was using 2008.0 or older)

• Pick the version of Mandriva I was using
• Select the Mirrors and Repositories I wanted
• Copy and Paste the output provided by the website into a root terminal

I was already feeling that this was quite the laborious process compared to other methods, but I continued on, undaunted and determined to give a fair evaluation.

I opened a terminal and became the almighty root user and copied the information as instructed. It went through some terminal lines and then stopped after only updating 2 additional packages – one of which was urpmi. I decided that I was going to try the same command again. This time it wanted to update 216 packages – now we’re getting somewhere. I let all of the packages update and rebooted for good measure and was disappointed when I didn’t see any evidence of being at the aim of 2008.1. So, I made sure my updates were completely done but that didn’t make any difference:

• My kernel was old
• My Firefox version was old
• My Gnome version was old
• My Nvidia driver was outdated
• My release was still at 2008.0

Easily, I am no expert at Mandriva, but I have been using Linux for several years (although anyone who reads this article only would think I’m a newbie for sure), however; the idea for this test was for a new user to the distro to be able to upgrade to the next version. I wasn’t able to do it so that doesn’t bode well for total neophtyes in my opinion. I know that I could have missed some steps or done some things wrong, there is no doubt about that, however; the point is that I should be able to do this upgrade notwithstanding or at least that was my hope. Any distro with rolling release cycles (although perhaps more difficult to set up, will automatically update you to the next version and while they may not do so in a 100% problem fashion all the time, I find them generally very stable). Ubuntu, for example, that has Update Manager which is a built in upgrade system and alerts you to moving to the next available version (not just package updates).

Mandriva could really use a step up in this department if it wants to capture more new users, but of course, that all depends on the intentions of the powers that be at Mandriva. If that is not the goal, then so be it, but it would be a great feature to add nonetheless.

The good news is that Mandriva is almost there. They have a graphical update tool that integrates nicely into the Gnome toolbar (green circular checkmark beside the volume speaker icon) and also some decent output of what is available for updating. The part that is missing is how to get to the next version.

I sincerely hope this is something that gets added to the Mandriva distribution as it will make it more accessible to more users.

I’m going to classify three categories here. The first is the rolling release cycle which basically renders a new ISO of the latest version which is only really useful to new installs because the distro gets automatically updated to the latest version through the package manager on an ongoing basis so there is no need for anything else.  The second is the distro specific upgrade tool. The third is the cd/dvd method. I know I will miss quite a few derivatives and such but you get the point.

Here are the categories…

Rolling Release

Arch
Gentoo
Slackware?
Others?

Upgrade Tool

Debian (dist-upgrade)
Ubuntu (GUI upgrade tool)

CD/DVD Method

Fedora?
SuSE?
Mandriva?

As far as I last checked, these were correct. I personally prefer the rolling release cycle method, but I do really appreciate that Debian and Ubuntu have their respective methods. I keep an Ubuntu install around on a backup box just to stay acclimated with how it is progressing and I do like it very much overall. I just prefer Arch as it seems to have less interference of built in system tools which is to my liking.

However, if memory serves me correctly, Fedora, SuSE and Mandriva all use the CD/DVD method. I know that Fedora can be upgraded through Yum but it is almost expected to have broken packages that need to be manually removed before the upgrade.

Maybe it’s just me but I find it unacceptable that any major Linux distro would expect someone to have to download a CD/DVD in order to upgrade. With today’s fast internet speeds and powerful systems, having the option and the convenience of issuing a few simple terminal commands (apt-get dist-upgrade, pacman -Syu etc) seems like a requisite feature. While I do think it is a good idea to release a CD/DVD (for dial up users etc), each major distro should have a built in option that is expected to work well to get the user to the next release version. I look at some of these major distros and really appreciate the work they put into not only making their product better, but also fixing bugs in desktop environments and keep getting blocked by this absence of a proper upgrade method when I think about the potential they could have to be on one of my backup boxes for more than just a testing stint or perhaps on one of my customer’s machines. I have installed Ubuntu for several customers and find it easy to upgrade and maintain. I could even log in remotely and do the upgrade process for them or even walk them through the literal handful of button clicks to do it themselves. Then I think about what it would be like if that was not an option and the CD/DVD method was the only safe way to upgrade. I would need to download it and burn it myself and then go over to their place and run the install and sit and wait for it to make sure everything went well. I am talking about doing this sort of thing for Linux neophytes.

Of course there is the supposition that there aren’t any decisive deal-breakers between the majors anymore which is why I can pick on something like an upgrade process. All of them basically use a fairly new kernel, new desktop environments and offer the user the choice when installing. They all seem to have access to using a variety of different file systems (not that a lot of people seem to care about that much anymore except for expert users). All have done well to make a large amount of major packages available to their users and each comes with a decent set of GUI configuration tools. I suppose I could mention that some come with all of the codecs needed to play mp3’s and videos, but that is more of a legal issue so I am giving it a mulligan.  There really isn’t much that distinguishes each of the majors from one another anymore other than say the distro artwork, the installer (seems all of them are easy enough these days) and perhaps which parent company with which it is associated. It seems to me that with all of the effort put into making a complete distro, an easy upgrade process should come as a staple item.

On a positive note, my personal litmus test for determining the quality of a distro is whether I believe I could use it long term if my precious Arch was no longer available. I am happy to say that I have no intention of doing any distro hopping for my main boxes. I’ve been running Arch solid without a reinstall for around 5 years amidst many hardware changes. However, I do feel like I would have a nice choice between some really well polished distros out there if my selection was limited. All things considered, since each seems to be on a fairly level playing field, the one that would win out would be one with an easy way to upgrade. In the course of using Ubuntu on a backup box, I’ve noticed that not only was I able to upgrade from each major release to the next, but I was also able to run through all of the alpha testing which was great (much fewer issues with the alpha releases than I expected by the way).

For any major out there — please remove your deal-breaker if you are only offering your users the CD/DVD method for upgrading. Give the users a proper, tested choice to upgrade via the internet.

OK, I’m done.

One of the major advantages of using Firefox is the accessibility to a variety of great add-ons. One of the major disadvantages is that some of these add-ons don’t get updated as frequently as you may like. Here are the add-ons I used and results of upgrading:

FireFTP is an FTP client built into FireFox. There was only a development version that was compatible with FF3 until a new release on June 17th. I like using this built in plugin as it provides the basic but necessary features. It would have been nice to have a proper release during the earlier FF3 betas, but at least the developer came through once the official FF3 came out.

AdBlock Plus is a great plugin that not only can block ads and flash content but also consequently makes web browsing faster due to not loading unnecessary garbage. This is one of the best plugins available and perhaps even a necessity. If I recall correctly, this plugin was available during the beta stages as well.

TabMix Plus became a quick favorite of mine after I realized that Tabbrowser Preferences was a dead product as it hadn’t been updated since October of 2006. It was a great plugin that offered the ability to open a new tab using your homepage instead of just a blank page. This was really the main option I wanted. Unfortunately, since it has not been updated, it is no longer compatible with FF3. I ended up finding TabMix Plus when I was looking through the add-on page for Tabbrowser Preferences. I’ve come to like TabMix Plus better in many ways. It has numerous more options and does of course include the homepage new tab option. Right now it seems only a development build is available, but at least it works fine with FF3. You can download the development build here.

Download StatusBar is something I’ve been using for quite a while. It is a highly configurable download bar that appears in the bottom left of the FF window and shows you progress of your downloads. It is quite handy and a lot more elegant and less clunky than the separate download window that FF provides. This add-on works fine with FF3.

Overall, I’m a bit disappointed in some ways with the lack of development of some of the plugins, but one has to remember that these are hobbiest projects sometimes so therefore there cannot be expecations placed on the developers to get these updated. It would be nice to have a smoother upgrade including all of the previous add-ons but it is nice to find ones that are equivalent or even better such as the case for me.

Either way, find a way to upgrade to FF3 and find comparable or better plugins as the upgrade to FF3 is worth it.

With all that said, many players have reported no issues whatsoever and I am one of them I am happy to say. (note – I did upgrade my hard drive in my PS3 so I am no longer using the stock 40GB).

The game itself is extremely well done for the following reasons (my comments relate to only a 5% completion):

• It’s easy to play: practically anyone can pick up a controller and go through the motions of advancing the game. When you are given a mission you will see yellow line on the map which you follow to your destination (this is quite doable unlike Burnout Paradise at times when you are going mach 10).
• Keep enough of the old and bring in the new: Rockstar didn’t forget why the GTA series was so popular so they made sure to keep it familiar to its predecessors but also incorporate new features. In this installment, you can get in just about any vehicle you want, drive motorcycles (including doing stunts), control speedboats and helicopters (training is provided). The game has a linear yet unrestricting feel. You can explore the entire city if you like just by driving around, but whenever you want, you can select a mission and receive detailed instructions on how to accomplish it.
• Although not all of the music is my taste, Rockstar did a nice job of including a great deal of tracks for various palates.  You can feel free to change the radio station as you are driving with a quick toggle of the directional pad. (Vagabond by Greenskeepers is definitely a standout for me)
• It all adds up: The plot starts out with Roman welcoming his cousin Niko to America under the pretense that Roman was a big shot and rich. Niko soon finds out that this is horse puckey but decides to find a way to make things work for himself. The storyline stays true to itself.
• Accessories: The game feels very feature rich and the attention to detail is incredible. You can turn the TV on in your apartment and watch seemingly endless shows and commercials which provide a nice satire to various real life experiences ranging from shaving implements to republican crusades. You can go buy new clothes, buy hot dogs and hamburgers from local stands or perhaps enjoy some activities like bowling, darts or visit a strip bar or night club.
• Integration of Six Axis: This is used for steering your boat, flying the helicopter, riding the motorcycle, bowling and a variety of other activities. It is clear that Rockstar thought about giving PS3 owners a ful experience.
• What’s in the box? Although I didn’t feel it was necessary to spend the extra $30 to get the included jewelry box package, the standard GTA4 packaging is quite enough. It is the only game I have bought so far that needed to place some of the contents on the outside of the plastic disc holder. You receive a full map of Liberty City and fully detailed booklets on the game and controls.
• Playability: Although I am only concentrating on the single player campaign right now, GTA4 does offer online play. The single player experience is quite good in the sense that the graphics are very good (but not jaw dropping) and the frame rate seems to keep steady. For the PS3 version, you are forced to copy about 3GB worth of data to your hard drive and for some this may seem like a lot, however; with a 250GB drive in my system, I don’t have any concerns about this as I know it will speed up the gameplay and make things smooth. For those who complain about this – please remember that you have the more premium system compared to an Xbox 360 and a Blu-Ray disc can hold up to 50GB of data while even a dual layer DVD maxes as just over 8. Something has to give.

Overall I was a bit surprised at how easy it was to start the game and get into it. I somewhat expected to start playing it and put it down after several minutes and move onto something else. After 3 hours uninterrupted, I finally decided to get some other things done. I fully expect this game to fulfill any expectations its consumers may have. We need to keep in mind that with the ability to DLC (downloadable content), the possibilities are endless when it comes to enhancements. This will be game of the year (at least of any game with a Mature rating).

Stop doubting! Believe the hype  – go and buy this game!

This stance of ensuring users’ sentiments were slated as secondary irritated many users. It bothered people enough that they sought out a way to fix this problem themselves. There was a plugin developed and another hack to get the resizing text box function to work again. Funpidgin incorporates the text box resizing plugin as an option for the user. This would have been incredibly easy for the Pidgin developers to do as well, however; it seems that they took a philosophical hardline and decided not to included as they considered their new predictive automatically resizing text box to be more advanced. Some users felt that this sentiment sent a strong ‘we know what is better for you than you do’ message, driving them to make negative comments and move away from Pidgin software.

The Funpidin developers have promised to listen to the users and take their requests seriously. Luckily because we are dealing with open source, we have this option for all users.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. I made my choice. I am chatting with friends using Funpidgin right now. I probably will never use the original Pidgin ever again.

There are now separate buttons for settings, plugins and users which appear on each page in the top right which makes them easier to reach.

The upgrade process was quite easy as usual and went off with no hitches. If you are a Wordpress user and haven’t upgraded yet, then this might be the one to try. Obviously you want to back up all of your files first as per usual, but once you upgrade, you probably won’t want to go back.

Great work by the Wordpress team in making it the defacto blogging software in my opinion.

1 – Open Avidemux and load your video (say yes to any messages that come up).

2 – From the “Auto” menu at the top, select PSP (H.264) and then click on OK (you can change your resolution if you want, but I leave it as high quality). (screenshot shown below)

3 – Change the “Format” from PSP to MP4 and then save your video as an .mp4 file extension (the encoding process will begin). Click image below to enlarge.

Once completed, you get an mp4 file that you can play on your PS3. The encoding time involved will vary based on the quality you select, how much of a conversion needs to be done from the previous video and also the size of the previous video. It would be great if the finefolks at Avidemux would add this preset the Auto menu or let you add your own Custom Auto settings to the menu.
My testing was done on an AMD Dual Core machine with 4GB of memory using the 64 bit version of Arch Linux.

After further testing I have found that the key is make sure you select MPEG-4 AVC x264 for the video and FAAC for the audio and MP4 as the container. As long as you select these settings, your encoded video should play fine on your PS3. The PSP Hi-Res auto setting is great to use as a guideline, but just keep in mind that the video will be resized to 720×480 so if you don’t want the re-size to take place, then set the controls yourself.

The last system I bought (not including my PSP) was an Xbox (not 360). In its original state, the Xbox was not extremely useful to me other than using it for games. The reason for me actually getting an Xbox was due to me learning that it could be used for more than just a gaming machine, if it was altered by doing a software modification and installing Linux on it. This would allow for homebrew apps to be installed and would also allow it to serve as a conduit between a home server and a TV in terms of streaming media files (movies, music, photos). It also had a built in weather forecast and also the ability to play non-original games (copied). Of course, I would never do such a thing, but clearly some users would consider this an advantage. Moving on to newer technology…

One of the major disadvantages of buying anything made by a large company is that they tend to restrict a lot of features on it due to property protection. While this is understandable, it really restricts the user at times. The following information discusses the PS3’s native capabilities. I have done absolutely nothing to change any of the stock items. All of these features are included out of the box! This is what really impressed me about the PS3:

Sony’s PS3 gives the user a lot of control and here are some examples:

• Easy to swap out hard drive. The PS3 comes with a serial ata hard drive which is easily accessible and also easily changed by the user if desired. If for example, you purchase a PS3 with a 40GB hard drive and want more space, Sony includes a backup utility for your files and also will prompt you to format the new drive when installed. From there, all of your previous files can be restored.
• Install Linux. Sony even has an option right in their menu that allows you to install any version of Linux you like as long as it is compatible with the PS3. What a great way to support open source!
• Play your media files across your network through your PS3. The PS3 firmware update 2.0 added support for the Divx codec (which was a huge reason for my purchase) so that most video files can now be played. I suspect that Sony will add more when requested in the future.
• Standard USB ports. Instead of inventing some odd input, Sony chose to use standard USB ports for connecting their controllers and accessories. Did I mention that you can connect a USB keyboard and mouse and use that to browse the internet with the built in browser? Also, you can plug in any USB external device (flashdrive, hard drive etc) and copy files to it.

The Playstation 3 is technologically superior to any other gaming system on the market.

• The 3.2Ghz processor boasts 8 cores so there will be no shortage of power anytime soon.
• The Graphics processor is also multi core
• Includes Blu-Ray for both games and movies. Recently Blu-Ray unofficially cemented its place in the future of media. The massive storage capacity allows for game content which means better resolutions on games and sharper movies.

The Playstation 3 offers many cost effective values to the user:

• FREE online gameplay. Yes, Xbox zealots will find some way to criticize the quality of this, but the mere fact that Sony made the effort on behalf of their customers to do this instead of imposing a monthly fee is a great thing in my opinion. In terms of the quality, I’ve used it for several games it it seems perfectly fine to me.
• The Playstation store is a button click away from loading which does have very inexpensive older titles for purchase as well as game add-ons. Also, you can download FREE Blu-Ray previews, game demos and movie trailers.

Sony cures Cancer!! OK, well, not exactly, but they are at least doing something to help — or allowing you the chance to help.

• Sony includes a built in option to use Folding at Home which is a way to use this incredibly powerful processor to do the work of complex computer equations that are helping to find the cure for many diseases. This again, is totally free. Over one million users are signed into Folding at Home through the PS3.

Someone recently asked me which system to get. I answered by saying that they are all good systems and I stand by that. It really depends on what you want to do with the machine. For example, due to the fact that the Wii and Xbox 360 have been out longer, they have a lot more games. Another factor is that the game developers will need more time to be able to use the power of the PS3. Since I am not a hardcore gamer, this is something I don’t mind waiting for. Having said that, I currently own four games: Tiger Woods 2008, Assassin’s Creed, Ratchet and Clank – Tools of Destruction and Burnout Paradise. All of these titles look amazing and are a lot of fun to play. Even the games I have downloaded are very engaging.

Ultimately it’s your choice to decide on whether you want one of these systems and also which one suits you best, however; it is very hard to beat the PS3 when you measure its all around usability.

Note – this method does not work with Firefox 3 unfortunately. I will do a new post if I find a method that will work for Firefox 3. The following instructions are for Firefox 2 only.

*************** Windows Instructions ***************

1. Close Firefox
2. Browse to c:\documents and settings\”Your Username”\Application Data\Mozilla\”Something”.Default User(Mine was zmmuzhth.Default User)\chrome
3. Open up the userChrome-example.css file and copy and paste this at the very bottom of the document:

/* Multi-row bookmarks toolbar */
#bookmarks-ptf {display:block}
#bookmarks-ptf toolbarseparator {display:inline}

4. Rename userChrome-example.css to userChrome.css

Once this is done, you should be able to see more of your bookmark toolbar items.

For myself, I had to navigate to a different directory as I use Linux. Here are the slightly modified instructions:

****************** Linux Instructions *****************

1. Close Firefox (optional)
2. Browse to /home/”Your Username”/.mozilla/firefox/”Something”.Default User/chrome/
3. Open up the userChrome-example.css file and copy and paste this at the very bottom of the document:

/* Multi-row bookmarks toolbar */
#bookmarks-ptf {display:block}
#bookmarks-ptf toolbarseparator {display:inline}

4. Save userChrome-example.css under the filename userChrome.css
5. If you didn’t close Firefox in step 1, you may need to restart it to see the effects.

Once this is done, you should be able to add more bookmarks to your toolbar and more rows should appear as needed.

It is faster, but it was a recent install so I have further testing to do to see how much faster it is. I have it quite optimized though running Arch Linux with a custom 64 bit kernel on their 64 bit OS. I am running Gnome on the desktop and have beryl enabled which runs seamlessly. Switching workspaces appears better than instantaneous if there is such a thing.

The installation went smoothly other than one thing which was my board reverting back to using the onboard video somehow. Also, I have a PCI-e Nvidia card in this box which I had to remove after setting up the bios as my 22″ LCD didn’t seem to detect the signal from the DVI connection. So, I powered off and removed the PCI-e card, connected to the onboard vga port and powered on, changed the bios setting, powered the system off, then re-inserted the PCI-e card, plugged the DVI cable into the PCI-e card, then powered back on and it worked. It was a bit of a hassle and unexpected, but I figured it out.

Linux VS. Windows…

Linux — Prior to installing the new CPU, I recompiled my Linux kernel with the latest version, ensuring I had the correct options for the new CPU in place and downloaded the new Nvidia driver so it was ready to install when I booted back into my system. My kernel booted up fine and I was able to install the Nvidia driver without issue. I would say this took about 10 minutes including the kernel compile and driver install. (The Ubuntu 64 and FC7 64 installs on the same box booted up as if nothing was changed due to using a stock kernel and accompanying Nvidia driver distro package).

Windows — It boots up to the login screen (does not show my username) and just sits there. It will more than likely require a reinstall or I may just ditch it altogether as it is only on that machine should I need to do work for a customer who uses proprietary software. Thanks Microsoft, what versatility!

Why has Canada been ruled out? In Pandora’s words: “We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.”

It’s unfortunate these sort of things happen, but it is just another example of how legislation is disorganized and unsettled. This is technology surpassing legal imagination and it surely is just another example of many more instances to come.

Why did I change hosts? My former host was having issues with stability and decided to discontinue the service. This came right out of the blue and it was not very well timed, but these things tend to happen in this manner.

What research did I do? I looked up many websites where there were ratings and such and asked lots of friends and some people I didn’t know too well for their opinions. I didn’t have much time, so I tried to make the most of it and take in as much information as possible. I found that there was quite a range of pricing for hosting.

One alternative was to use a dedicated server which runs about $100 monthly. This is a really nice solution, but the drawback other than price is diskspace. If a company dedicates and entire box to you, they are likely not going to put a large hard drive in it. There are upgrades available but they are very costly, upping your monthly costs by $20-$100 depending on the amount of space you want. Also, ram upgrades are very expensive too and these are monthly charges.

Probably the most popular hosts for regular end users are shared. The least expensive and most popular of these boast very large disk space up to 350G and a monthly transfer rate of 3500GB. This is an incredible amount of space that most people will never use. I actually called 3 places: Bluehost, Host Monster and Lunar Pages. The result of calling Lunar Pages are still somewhat unknown because I couldn’t really understand the sales agent. I discovered that Bluehost and Host Monster were owned by the same company. The funny thing was that I even got the same guy on the phone when I called the second one.

I first called Bluehost and spoke to “Joel” in sales. Maybe because I work in sales and customer service and used to supervise at a call center, I have higher standards but talking to Joel was a great experience in helping me decide not to go with Bluehost. He seemed completely disinterested in getting my business and if I wasn’t speaking, there was totally dead air. I was shocked that this kind of person was in “sales”. When he answered the phone when I called Host Monster , I did the mature thing and hung up. Although I was initially excited at the amount of space and decent pricing of these companies, I was quickly disappointed and crossed them off my list of prospective new hosts.

One of the things I had liked about my previous host was that it was a smaller business and if I needed anything, I could talk directly to him. He had been quite helpful in getting things up and running for me. I really thought a lot about which host to choose and examined all of the numbers closely.

I had viewed the hosting on Godaddy’s site not very long ago and I found that the pricing was a bit high considering the amount of bandwidth and space they allotted. I decided to give a quick visit again. This time I noticed that they had vastly increased the space for their top 2 tier accounts of the 3. The most basic – Economy offered 5GB space with 250GB monthly transfer usage for $3.99 which the next step at Deluxe offered 100GB space with 1,000GB transfer space for $6.99. The Premium offered 500GB space and 2,000GB transfer for $14.99. Previously I had been using around 1.2B of space with around 10-15GB of monthly transfer so the Economy package probably would have worked, but I ended up deciding on the Deluxe because knowing that I have the extra space, I will think of ways to use more I’m sure.

How was the setup? I processed the account online and had it all set up in terms of hosting basics the same night. I was able to get ftp access fairly quickly. I uploaded all of my files overnight and then returned to the work in the morning. I ended up getting everything done the same day. The tedious part was creating the sql databases again on the server and then importing the ones from the previous site. Godaddy makes this fairly easy though with their intuitive tools. Once this was done, I had to edit my corresponding text files that contained the proper information for the server and such and I was done.

Why Godaddy? Apart from them improving their bandwidth allotment, I have used them for my domains for several years and never had an issue. I’ve never heard anyone complain about them. I found that some of the other companies would advertise deals on their front page and then once you got in deeper, they would say this only applies to account sign ups for 1 year. Godaddy is monthly but there are options to purchase longer plans with discounts. With my domain and hosting both with the same company, I can have everything on one bill as well.

Performance? It’s still early, but I find Godaddy every bit as fast as my last host which is around 600-750 kb/s for downloading. The only downside is that I lost some of the more recent posts on the forum, but that had nothing to do with the host.

It wasn’t my favorite way to spend a weekend as I really set my free time at a premium because I am usually so exhausted during the week from working long hours. I am glad that it’s done and I don’t think Godaddy is going anywhere anytime soon so the idea of switching hosts likely won’t come up for a long time.

The entire setup took me about 10 minutes. It was about 5 minutes to rearrange some internal drives and then I had to set up the partition on the new drive. I used cfdisk to create the partition and I used the terminal to create the filesystem:

cfdisk /dev/hdb

mkreiserfs /dev/hdb1

Then it was just a matter of editing my fstab so that it could automatically mount and then I just started copying files over which didn’t take long at all.

I did end up going with another IDE drive as I did not have any more free sata ports and I found that getting a sata controller proved to be more of a hassle and more costly than just buying another drive outright.

The other major change was the relocating of the sata and pata drivers. Serial ata will no longer be located under low level scsi drivers, but instead under its own section. This was an inevitability due to sata catching on and being used more frequently. It’s nice to see some good changes in this release. Excellent work kernel devs!

Granted, it is still the first day and I am likely to get used to the expectation of viewing all of my geeky shows and such on a large screen, but it is nothing short of spectacular right now.  Gaming is phenomenal on it as well. I can now more clearly see even small aspects of the game such as fog, shadows and footprints which were an afterthought before.  I would highly recommend moving to the LCD technology. I went with Acer because they really have become solid in LCD technology. I already own a 19″ widescreen monitor for my main system which I have been impressed with since I hooked it up. Cost wise – I found a better deal at Tigerdirect but ended up buying it from The Source due to convenience mostly. I also managed to talk to the salesperson into giving me a comparable deal even though the policy is no price matching. I generally find that The Source has very competitive pricing but this one was $100 more expensive. In the end, I got a good deal and a 3 year extended warranty. Buying it from The Source also means I get in home service if ever required.

The Diagnostic

I probably won’t recall all of the details but I will provide some information on what has preoccupied me for the last several days. One of the first things I did was a Google search on the issue that had apparently plagued this machine for about 2 years or more and caused frustration to its owner and others who had tried to fix it. My first Google search produced that originally there had been a class action suit against the makers of Emachines for rampant overheating issues. The end result was compensation offered on 3 tiers depending on how many times the unit had been unsuccessfully repaired or you could choose a repair. By the time I got the laptop it was about a week and a half past the due date to apply for this restitution. I advised the owner to call in anyway if desired to see if anything could be done.

The Repair

I did find a nice forum post on how to clean the internal fan which tended to alleviate the overheating issues for a lot of owners. It seemed fairly straightforward and since it was past its due date for the class action suit, I figured I might as well try it. The fan turned out to be quite dirty so once it was reassembled, it not only didn’t seem to get as hot, but also was quieter. The next day I was using the laptop while lying on my couch and I noticed the strangest thing. I was connected wired to my network and was talking to some friends on messenger and I noticed a very strange occurrence. When I pressed enter, my message would just stay where I typed it instead of going above to the body of the conversation. Then I instinctively picked up the laptop and was looking under it and such and when I returned to the screen I noticed my message had sent. I repeated this a few more times and noticed that the message would send almost immediately once I lifted it off my lap. So, something was still not right. I decided to do further testing. I ran the Maxtor Power Max Utility to test the drive which works on almost any manufacturer of hard drive. It came back with errors on several tests. Since I was given permission to erase the drive, I thought I would try a zero fill (low level format) which I have seen rescue several drives over the years – this failed also. I had never seen this test fail before. With the hard drive test not going well and the strange activity, I knew in order to eliminate some variables, the drive needed to be replaced. So off I went to my local computer store and managed to pick up a supposed 20Gb drive which actually turned out to be a 6Gb instead. I am keeping in mind while doing all of this work that I am trying to get this laptop into a condition to where I would be interested in buying it.

The Setup

Once I replaced the drive, things seemed much better. I used the laptop for quite a while with a nice trim Arch Linux install and it was working fine. I used it all day for probably about 14 hours off and on. At the end of the night, it mysteriously shut right now from out of nowhere. Was this due to overheating? Perhaps – the underside of the laptop was extremely hot. I knew the hard drive was not the issue. It could be in much better condition but still struggling to stay cool. More testing is needed. I did manage to get a moral victory tonight though – I got wireless working. It comes with a broadcom internal wireless card and used bcm4306 chipset which I loaded through ndiswrapper. I had tried ndiswrapper v. 1.26 the previous night and it would not pick up my access point. It was suggested to try the latest 1.28 version (thanks Brad!) and it went ahead and loaded up fine. It’s nice to have one less cord. It’s also nice to be able to have wireless working in the sense that it wasn’t a high priority due to all of the hardware issues which means that perhaps a lot of them have cleared up.

The (in)decision

All in all, it is a nice laptop with very decent specs. It was purchased about 3 years ago as a state of the art machine with a 15.4 widescreen (quite uncommon then), 20Gb hard drive, dvd rom and cd burner, internal wireless, 3 usb ports, modem, wired nic, firewire, 512mb ram (odd config – one 256 soldered on and a 256 added as there is only one ram slot and only upgradeable to a max of 768 – the upgrade would be worthwhile though) and the cpu is an AMD Athlon XP 2400 (1.8Ghz). It does run well, but I am still wavering on buying it. New laptops are very cheap these days and I don’t really need a new laptop by any means, I don’t need any computer related things to be honest, but if it is a decent deal and I get working, I may consider it.

• Built in Phishing Protection
• Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
• Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
• Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
• New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
• New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
• Support for JavaScript 1.7
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage
• Extended search plugin format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

I have tried it out on a couple of boxes and it does seem very nice. I am missing support for one of my favorite extensions though – tabbrowser preferences. Hopefully there will be a build for 2.0 soon. It would have been an even better idea to just build that component into the browser itself, it seems so functional and fundamental.  As of October 24, 2006 – a new tabbrowser preferences was built: v. 1.3 which now works with Firefox 2.0. Thanks!

• Pick a decent format – my preference is in this order > AVI, MPG/MPEG, MOV and WMV are equally bad last resorts, ASF (only if you are stuck and have no alternative). Make sure your file is playable in common media applications.
• Make sure it is viewable (do not upload anything too pixelated or with terrible audio quality
• Ensure the size is relative to its purpose (a quick intro should not take too long to download or cache, alternatively, something that depends on high quality should not be compressed too much
• It should be somewhat polished relative to its intention. If you want a lot of people to be able to watch it, make sure it is fairly clean and looks and sounds good.

I will give you the run down of the video I was completely disgusted to see even uploaded now. It was encoded into 4 different nsv files (yes –> Nullsoft video – this means you need to install Winamp in Windows and if you are using Linux – mplayer may work, with Mac I am not sure what would work – VLC would be worth a shot). Terrible choice of format overall. Secondly, the file was split into 4 files totally unnecessarily and it was recommended that you put them all in your playlist and make sure that shuffle is not on so they wouldn’t play in the right order. On top of this hassle, the video and audio itself was atrocious. I have never in my life seen such poor video uploaded so that there is so much pixelation I can barely even make out what is happening on the screen. When you can actually witness the person alt-tabbing back to their desktop to check their browser mid stream, this is a really bad sign. I couldn’t even watch it. I know some people will cry and say that if you don’t want to watch it, then just don’t watch it, but that is missing the point here. This example is like spam in email, if you have absolutely no clue about how to make a good video, don’t bother ever uploading it. Even if people wanted to watch your content, if it’s that horrible, it will only make them bitter and bring your reputation down. Here are some quotes from others to support my claim:

• “What a waste of time! Why would you waste YOUR time putting up garbage like this??”
• “Sorry to the uploader But this is really bad”
• “the process is ridiculously time consuming”
• “Thanx but no thanx, stick to what works”
• “Seriously this is terrible”
• “This is awful “

Just to mention a few. So, please take these things into consideration in the future for anyone who does video on the web!

Compression is a wonderful thing. Compression methods are able to shrink massive file sizes to incrementally small amounts. I commonly will take a music video which starts as 45mb and shrink it down to 15mb in a matter of around 5 minutes so I can store it on my PSP. I am scraping off 1/3 of the size of the video, that means for every one uncompressed video, I can get 3 compressed videos in their place – very nice. Of course, naysayers will say I am sacrificing quality – trust me: they look and sound exactly the same!

Secondly, you can fit about 6 or 7 full movies in divx format onto one 4.4 gb dvd. This means you are using far less media and saving money (not that blank dvd’s are expensive but why waste money?). Virtually any home dvd player should have the capacity to play these formats. If you currently have a dvd player that does not, you can check the manufacturer’s site to see if there is a firmware (hardcoded software in the machine) upgrade to see if there is a new relase that would enable you to play these other formats.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly – TIME! I’ve had people ask me to convert things for them and although I could have done it and I would not refuse to help someone who was really stuck, it would be so much easier just to spend $50 on a new player that allows for this kind of playback. It would seriously take such a long time to convert these videos requested that anyone would be better off shelling out a nominal amount to gain so much convenience.

PROS – Fantastic Viewable Widescreen area and picture quality (destroys the Ipod video in this category), Plays games, Wireless networking and wireless game play with others is available.

CONS – internal memory virtually non-existant which forces the consumer to purchase a memory card (Sony’s inclusion a 32mb card does not count). As expected, Sony is vigilant about offering new firmware upgrades that prevent modifications being made that would allow for homebrew applications and games as well as playing games stored on memory sticks. Some people would consider the PSP rather bulky, but most will understand that a screen any smaller would not be suitable for gaming.

Software – It took me a while to find software to use in Linux for encoding my videos, but eventually I came upon PSPVC (Playstation Portable Video Converter – logo shown above and screenshots available) which encodes video in H264 or MP4 – I did a comparison for encoding a file that was 350mb and I encoded one file with H264 with ended up having a prefix of MAQ and it ended up being 145mb. I also encoded the exact same file into MP4 format and it ended up being 137mb. Although the difference was not substantial, it does add up as memory cards tend not to be that large for all purpose activities like listening to music and watching videos. This software is very young in development but it does look promising. The ability to queue up files is very nice.

Optional Mods – There has been a lot of talk about using homebrew applications and games which is a nice option, but it has long been a tedious process for anyone who has a more recent firmware revision. I did see this modchip available and heralded as a breakthrough. There are three main differences with this modchip method compared to the older software mod. For one, it is done via hardware which involved soldering, secondly- it allows you to still use the PSP regular firmware by using a bootloader like screen which allows the user a choice between the original PSP firmware or this modded firmware version. Lastly, this device, once installed, allows for updates to be done via a usb cable which means as long as there is development being done on this method, there will be constant improvements. The modchip will allow the user to play games from a memory card and use homebrew games and applications.

Memory/Storage – Currently the largest card I have seen that would accommodate the PSP is 4GB and it comes at a hefty price of $240 while in comparison, I recently picked up a 2GB card for roughly $70. The convenience of having one four GB card would be nice, but I decided it wasn’t worth the ticket. Currently I have a 2GB card and my previous 1GB card which I was going to sell to my roommate but unfortunately discovered that the ‘magicgate’ series is not compatible on that particular camera past 128mb.So, I am still contemplating selling it or using it for something else.

Conclusion – I must say that I am completely happy with my purchase of my PSP. If I could change anything about it, there would be two things – 1: Sony’s restrictive firmware upgrades preventing the usage of homebrew apps and such which I can understand from their perspective especially with the threat of users playing games from a memory card. 2: The major thing I would change at this point doesn’t really have much to do with Sony, but it is the storage capacity. Memory Stick Pro and Duos are still very expensive when you start looking at the higher capacities like 4GB and up. These cards are so expensive that you could actually purchase a second PSP in its place! In time, the cards will come down so PSP users will need to deal with lower capacities. It would be nice to have the kind of storage something like an Ipod video offers at 30GB but I am definitely not willing to sacrifice the quality of the screen, the ability to play games and the option to watch videos with audio that comes through speakers and doesn’t restrict you to only using headphones – that’s right – the Ipod video only plays audio for videos through headphones! This would have already frustrated me since I’ve sat at tables once in a while playing a video for a group of people with the audio coming through the speaker. I can live with my 2GB card for now, but ideally I would like a more complete product that can allow me to use it more like a computer which the homebrew apps offer and also with more storage which hopefully will be coming soon. I don’t think I’m asking for much, my main system has about 850GB of storage, I am only asking for a measly 10 to 40 GB’s.

There has been a growing trend over the last few years of applications becoming less exclusive to the operating system. Now there is a myriad amount of applications from which to choose for users which is basically rendering the OS underneath almost a non-issue when considering the foundation. I have listed some of my favorite applications to use below and as you will see, a vast majority of them have been ported to other OS’s. I use Linux almost exclusively – let’s say 99.9% of the time to modest (the only exception is certain rare applications built specifically only for Windows which are very few and far between experiences for me). There have been some articles here and here on longtime Mac users switching to Linux in order to reap the benefits of the OS itself since the applications were cross platformers for the most part anyway. The other trend lately is hardware interoperability including being able to use different operating systems, mainly Mac and Windows, on the same machine. Linux has long had versions available for virtually not only any hardware configuration (PC or Mac style), but also for almost every architecture imaginable (ppc, i386-i686, athlon, x64, sparc etc) which is a solid credit to Linux and the adherence to the philosophy of allowing the user a choice. Let’s take a look at some applications and how cross platforming can make switching Operating Systems a far less arduous task than it has been in the past.

OpenOffice (Linux, Windows and Mac) – Openoffice is catching more popularity as it matures in various platforms. I’m seeing more people choosing Openoffice in Windows over MS Office not only because of the financial benefits but also because of the features included. At one time, there were some import issues between the two due to fonts and buttons being different but I am finding that Openoffice does an almost perfect job of keeping the same structure and look of any documents created in MS Office which almost exclusively pertained to word. There may still be some issues with fonts, but can be easily corrected by added the font with which the document was created to the machine you are using to view the file.

The Gimp (Linux, Windows and Mac) – This is a very extensive application that allows for photo editing, creation and applying all sorts of filters and effects. The Gimp is loaded with functionality and has been compared to Photoshop.

Nvu (Linux, Windows and Mac) – Through searching for a rich featured application that was similar to Dreamweaver, I came upon Nvu which is available for both Linux and Windows. This does lack some features that are a bit more intuitive in Dreamweaver (so I have been told) such as drag and dro flash code, but it does by and large create much nicer code and obviously the developers of Nvu appropriately recognize how important web compliance is at this time. There are options to check your page online with a validator which not only tells you how many errors it may contain but also exactly where they are in your code. I have used Nvu to build some basic pages and found it quite easy to use and i’ve also edited some prebuilt pages that were done in Dreamweaver and they were imported without any glitches and edited nicely. This really looks like a promising application and definitely is appealing when comparing the pricetag with Dreamweaver.

Thunderbird (Linux, Windows and Mac) – I wrote a previous blog article on why I had switched from Evolution to Thunderbird. In short, Thunderbird allows for some extra features that I really like and also does not include some of the features that I found I was not using in Evolution anyway. If you find having a full featured calendar useful and use groupware of syncing features, you may want to stick with Evolution which is a very nice application in its own right. I personally now find Thunderbird more suitable for my needs. Thunderbird offers some nice features such as theming, allowing for viewing RSS feeds within the same window as well the opportunity to use extensions such as reminders which take the place of a calendar without having to integrate a full featured function in order to do this. I previously had used Liferea which is a very nice application for viewing RSS feeds and I would still recommend this for anyone who needs a standalone application for this function.

Firefox (Linux, Windows, Mac) – Another staple application of multi platforms. Firefox seems to be more widely used than any other web browser for anyone in the know these days. The firefox team has to a small extent revolutionized the web browsing experiencing by offering tabbed browsing long before Microsoft was bothered to copy the option in IE 7 which is still not officially being used by default Windows users. Firefox also offers a plethora of extensions and themes which users have the pleasure of customizing which again illustrates the trend of making the application being used almost irrelevant to the OS underneath.

EasyTag (Linux, Windows and Mac) – Application used to rename audio files or edit tags. This application has single handedly saved me hours upon hours of sitting and renaming songs manually. All I can say is thanks!

EmelFM2 (Linux only) – A longstanding personal favorite for pane viewed file managers. The only negative thing I can say about this application is that sometimes with new versions there is a need to create an entirely new configuration file as well as the newer version abandoned some of the older icons that were much nicer in my opinion. I personally have built an Arch Linux package to include these icons in addition to the default ones which alleviates that preference for me.

Mplayer (Linux, Windows and Mac)- Mplayer has long been regarded as the king of media players in the Linux world. The best features of Mplayer are the option to use either a graphical front end or a command line version. Both are full of more than adequate features including subtitle controls, skin choices, on screen display and easy controls for either version. Mplayer also offers mencoder which allows for encoding of media files. One of my favorite things about Mplayer is running it from the command line and using the easy and intuitive controls such as spacebar for pause and the arrow keys to adjust the playing position.

Acidrip (Linux only) – written by Chris Phillips, this application is an excellent and straighforward method of ripping dvd’s. If does require a few other dependencies like lsdvd. The interface is intuitive and logical and works well. The only suggestion I would have would be to auto scroll the output box and also to create buttons for setting the filesize and filename as these changes do not take effect unless you highlight different areas – I watch the output box to see if the settings i’ve applied actually take effect.

Midnight Commander (Linux Only) – an ncurses based file manager. This has been around for ages and is a prime example of how something simple can be powerful. This is a multi featured application allowing common file manager functions as well as ftp access from within the application itself. This application lends itself very nicely to a command line driven system but also can be used within a more complete and full featured graphical desktop offering a nice balance between simplicity and usefulness.

MPD (Linux and Mac) and GMPC (Linux only) – this is a very unique method of music management. Music Player Daemon is run at the daemon level which allows it to run without any interaction from a graphical front end. There are many frontends to this daemon such as Glurp, Pympd and GMPC as well as others. I personally use the Gnome desktop and find that GMPC fits my needs very well. I also like how the newer version allows for plugins to be added such as a cover art function. GMPC also can minimize to the taskbar to allow control from a small input box as well. Other noteable features are drag and drop re-ordering of songs (now working again since the latest version, thankfully), crossfade, on screen notification of song changes. GMPC has become a staple application of mine for music playing.

Gnome Terminal – I had previously been using Eterm for a long time but since I had been using the Gnome desktop, I decided to give it’s default terminal a try. I found some really nice features including tabs and customizations which can be created using profiles. Gnome Terminal is now my default terminal.

Xchat (Linux, Windows and Mac) – This is my favorite application for using IRC. There is a Windows version available but it will cost you. All Linux versions are free.

Nautilus (Linux only – designed for the Gnome desktop) – The default file manager for Gnome. This is a typical file manager but also offers some really nice features like original and unique view options as well as the ability to insert scripts or write your own. This is particulary useful for a lot of plugins that are fairly straight forward. There are nautilus scripts for things such as resizing images without having to open an application and also converting audio files to different file formats all within the same directory.

In the end, although at first I was a little perturbed about the idea of sharing precious Linux only applications with other Operating Systems, ultimately it is a good idea for a few reasons. Linux is all about choice and this is another indication of Linux demonstrating allegiance to the tenet of allowing for user choice. Arguably, sometimes this is giving too much credit to the user but that is a concept I am OK with overall – let the user rise to the occasion and evolve, if not, no harm done. Also, once more people become more comfortable with the applications themselves (I’ve seen situations where I have introduced someone to using Linux and most of the relevant struggle was introducing them to the different application and explaining how they can do the things in this different application that they were previously doing in something different. The end result of almalgamating people to the same applications in different OS’s is that it can allow for something that has never been available before — allowing the user to choose an OS based specifically on the merits and downfalls of the OS itself. So, instead of explaining how to use these different sets of applications, more focus can be spent on explaining the differences in things such as file systems, package management (or lack thereof), security, ability to fend of viruses and spyware as well as the concept of ‘free’ which has a few different meanings like cost and free-thinking or free-use. These are far more valuable selling points to people in terms of evaluating different Operating Systems rather than having to endure an arduous and sometimes painful task of adapting to a new application and unfortunately letting the actual benefits of the OS itself become an afterthought until such time as the user becomes adept at these programs.