“Linux doesn’t have viruses at all!”

Most of the time this is just a case of over simplification made by ‘Linux people’ in order to convince Windows people to try Linux. The truth is that there are about 30 viruses for Linux. I know this number sounds extremely large, but bear with me.

The trick is that there aren’t any viruses in circulation – that can currently infect systems and are present on USB sticks, malicious servers, etc. In fact, most of those viruses are gathering dust somewhere on a floppy disk. How come there are so few viruses for Linux? Linux is radically different from Windows because:

1. The source code is freely available, which means more eyeballs are staring at the code, ever since the 90’s, continually improving it. On the other hand, it’s a felony to decompile or reverse engineer any component of Windows. Which means only  Microsoft employees and hackers see the code.
2. Linux was built with security in mind. Windows started paying attention to security well after Windows NT. Like putting the money into the bank and installing the safe afterwards: the robbers came and went.
3. And even then, they set the combination on the lock to ‘1234’.
4. On any modern Linux OS, you get updates for the system as well as for the apps, automatically. On Windows, every app has its updater program, which isn’t as robust or reliable.
5. Multiple Linux package managers means that a Debian virus can’t infect a Mandriva system. To cover all the major Linux distributions, a virus programmer needs to write the same virus about 5 times.

Linux can however store the Windows virus executables without getting infected itself. Which is why the bad guys use Linux themselves. Smart, isn’t it?

The structure of Linux makes writing a virus very difficult as it requires root access to do anything of significance. For a virus to run it would have to be granted root access with a password request. If you fail to give it root access then the most a virus could do, if anything, is damage your home directory. It is unlikely it could even run again so it would die there in your home directory. Most smart Linux users grasp the power of root access and would question why an unknown program is suddenly requesting root access. (You don’t enter your password for just ANY prompt do you? Only for programs YOU have called up, right?) –BrunoLinux

There’s a Linux antivirus called Clam AntiVirus. Which is completely useless, because finding a Linux virus in the wild is like finding a unicorn in your backyard.

Windows fanatics, please leave angry thoughts using the comment form below. Yes, make the pain go away.

I recently wrote an article about Opera 10 – which is currently in development – and got a lot of backlash from readers.

According to about 70 comments which were published, I downplayed Opera’s importance as a browser and as an innovator.

Jon says:

I agree with N_P. To say Opera has stagnated because it has not brought true innovation is just wrong. For one, they were the first to introduce a system like “speed-dial” which you describe as being familiar to rival browsers who were simply emulating Opera’s innovation.

I left the Opera camp a long time ago, at least 4 years, and according to some, I’ve missed the mark completely when I said Opera didn’t bring true innovation these past years.

You are wrong, then. Firefox’s awesome bar? Ripped off from Opera. Chrome and Safari’s top sites feature? Ripped off from Opera. And so it continues… Just look at the feature list for Safari 4. It’s like looking at a list of existing Opera features!

Thomas Ford, Communications Manager at Opera, contacted me after a day or so with some clarifications. We continued our conversation, and, as a result, I’ve got some interesting bits of information which I’m going to share with you.

A lot of the comments raise different points, but I’d like to highlight a few that they didn’t. I won’t take issue with you saying there isn’t much new in the labs release. That’s fair. The labs release of Opera 10 with Turbo is essentially to showcase that technology only. It certainly isn’t a complete representation of Opera 10.

Thomas then goes on to point out an interesting aspect about the Opera Turbo technology:

One important thing about Turbo though is that it is different from Opera Mini technology. Where Opera Mini’s OBML is actually a transcoding technology, Opera Turbo is a compression technology. They have fundamentally the same client-server architecture, but they work quite differently. Opera Mini translates the code from the Web into OBML then spits it out on the handset. Opera Turbo simply compresses things. It doesn’t transcode. This means you can use technologies like Ajax which are broken in the transcoding process.

I replied shortly:

Truth be said, I’ve lost my faith in Opera a while ago and I didn’t give Opera Turbo enough time when I wrote the review, which was clearly pointed out by the comments.

Referring to ads integrated into the browser interface, one of the main reasons I gave up on Opera years ago:

Totally fair. I think the ads turned a lot of people off. We faced a problem. We used to be a paid product, then wanted to release a free version. Of course, we had engineers to pay and our mobile business had yet to really take off. So the ads were a necessary evil to make enough money to keep operating. I think that was in 2000 or so. In 2005 we were able to go free through the same monetization strategy Firefox uses (Google search).
I think there are a lot of users who went through the same thing with Opera. Convincing them to try us again is a challenge, but I think we’re trying even harder now.

How would you feel about releasing the Opera code into under GPL, like Mozilla did with Firefox? What are the benefits for keeping the source code closed?

It’s actually something that has come up a lot. I should point out that some things we do are open source. We released Opera Dragonfly (our developer tools) under a BSD license and we’ve released a bunch of open developer libraries.
But in terms of releasing the browser core under a GPL or other OS license, the benefit isn’t necessarily there for us. We make a significant amount of revenue from licensing the browser. Since we have only one core (the same browser core is at the center of Opera on desktop, on mobile and on TVs, etc), we would give away a lot of our competitive advantage.
Our CEO I think had a decent answer to the question. He’s a computer scientist by training and has worked on open source projects before. Here’s an interview that might be interesting if you have the time.
You raise a valid question and it’s definitely something we can’t rule out for the future as our company evolves. Overall though, I think our resources are best spent trying to bring open standards to the Web to improve interoperability.

If Mozilla comes out with a decent competitor for Opera Mobile, they showed some alpha code recently, what would your response be to that situation? It would probably cut a whole lot of your revenues from OEMs.

In practice OEMs and network operators expect many things from a Web browser. Often it requires a great deal of customization to meet their demands. No two OEMs or operators have the same demands so it makes the mobile browser space quite different to the PC browser space.
I don’t think that it necessarily would cut into our revenues. Currently there are several Windows Mobile browsers already available. Even with those competitors we have been able to grow our revenues every quarter.
Mozilla does present a more formidable competitor due to its brand recognition and pre-existing user base. I guess we’ll have to see how it plays out. I’d like to think we add value to operators and OEMs through close collaboration and partnership and thus would continue to earn their business.

To conclude, I think Opera 10 is definitely worth another review when it reaches Release Candidate status.

Before we start
Fedora is a popular Linux distro (ranking number 4 on Distrowatch), sponsored by RedHat and developed by the Fedora Project community, with a 4-6 month release cycle. Actually, it may be considered a “beta” version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat’s supported distribution with a release cycle of 18 month.
Red Hat recommends Fedora for developers and highly-technical enthusiasts using Linux in non-critical environments. I’m neither a Linux developer or highly-technical when it comes to Linux, but at least I’m enthusiast.
Because both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 use the latest versions of Gnome and Nautilus, they look quite similar.
What’s different
Editor’s note: Bogdan is the resident Mac geek, and has just started using linux. This article is not an in-depth comparison between Ubuntu and Fedora.
The main features that differentiate Fedora from Ubuntu are:
It uses RPM packaging and YUM for command-line package management, which some may find slower than Ubuntu’s apt-get and aptitude, but I didn’t notice that much of a difference.Community is smaller, number of pages indexed by Google is smaller(31 mil compared to 75) but the forums are active and you will definitely get your questions answered.It is considered leading-edge, because it always integrates the latest open-source technologies. (For example: OpenOffice 3.0, that didn’t made it to Ubuntu 8.10)Comes only with FOSS. So you don’t have MP3 support out of the box.because security is one of the most important features in Fedora, it has Security-Enhanced Linux(SELinux) which provides advanced security policies trough the use of Linux Security Modules(LSM) in the Linux kernel.

Installation
Fedora’s installer, called Anaconda, looks like a mature installer, with a lot of options if you know what you are doing (fully unattended installation with scripts or VNC support).
Partition configuration is easy and more intuitive than Ubuntu’s and you can also choose which software packages to install. During installation, you are asked for the root password. In Ubuntu I had to search the forums to figure out how to do a sudo, because the installer did not ask for a root password.

Devices
Logitech USB Webcam, Fuji Digital Camera, Wireless and Dual Monitor support worked OOB. To enable Bluetooth I had to modify a config file, but it worked great. My Canon MP520 printer refused to print with the generic drivers and no plug&play 3G internet connection with my Nokia phone. Overall, the experience was acceptable. Power management, suspend and hibernate also worked flawlessly on my MacBook.

Look and feel
As mentioned, because of Gnome, Fedora looked very much like Ubuntu. The default Nautilus is  striped down – no side panel, no buttons and no tab browsing. One little glitch I encountered: folder icons on external drives were represented with file icons.

I liked the Solar theme with it’s desktop wallpaper and the wait cursor. The boot loading bar is quite original, but the start-up tune is awful.

No luck in enabling desktop effects. It would just hang, requiring a restart. I tried to install some Compiz Configuration packages, but at every boot, it just loaded a blank screen. I had to reinstall Fedora. So no eye-candy for me. Reinstalling Fedora because of Xorg video framework errors is highly unnecessary; just remember to back-up the config files, then boot into the failsafe terminal to restore them. Unlike Ubuntu, the configuration tools are organized in folders and are easier to find.

Something very useful I didn’t notice in Ubuntu 8.10 is the File Sharing (SAMBA) configuration utility. This applet lets you easily set up a shared folder locally or access already shared resources.

Package Manager
Yum’s graphical front-end (gpk-application or Add/Remove Software) is somewhat similar to Synaptic, but a little less ergonomic and the number of available applications seemed smaller. To get the software that Fedora Project did not want to ship you need to install RPM Fusion.
Every time I tried to install a downloaded rpm package, I was greeted with some annoying warning messages and had to click “Copy File” and “Force Install”. To add to the frustration, no finish message was displayed, leaving me to think something bad happened.

I don’t know if this behavior is general, or specific just to Fedora and other RPM-based distros, but it is very annoying: I can’t install an rpm while another rpm is being installed.
Editor’s note: This is a security feature of SELinux.

Updates seem to come very often. Unfortunately, after a round of updates I started to receive Kernel failure errors. Just my luck.

Newbie friendly
In order to do some of the basic things they are used to on Windows or Mac, new Linux users must be fairly tech-savvy. This is why the ‘newbie friendly’ factor is important in attracting new Linux users from the other operating systems.
Ubuntu emerged as the most easy and user-friendly Linux distribution. I can say Fedora is not that far behind, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone completely new to Linux.

I agree with the consensus that Ubuntu is intended for the desktop, while Fedora, with its high degree of configuration and professional feeling is intended for developers, linux enthusiasts or server machines. Or NASA geeks.

The default desktop is quite good-looking – considering it is a RC release and based on XFCE.

First Impressions

My first contact with Dreamlinux was on their oficial website – which isn’t a design marvel – but does a good job convincing the visitor to give Dreamlinux a try. You’re greeted with a series of pretty good-looking screenshots, and a everything you need to know about the OS before jumping in:
Dreamlinux 3.5 RC4 can be run from either LiveCD, DVD, USB Stick or installed to the hard drive.The DVD version includes all the codecs necessary for playing popular music and video formats.A neat feature for the more ‘nerdy’ crowd, MkDistro LiveRemaster allows to custom build the OS to suit your specific needs:Its main goal is to make it possible for any user, when running Dreamlinux as a LiveCD, to customize the distro and then regenerate a new iso image mirroring the customizations made.

One of the screenshots posted on Dreamlinux official website, showcasing a Mac OS X Leopard themed Avant Window Navigator Dock and Google Gadgets for Linux.
User Interface
You’ve got to give credit to their full-on approach, from the bootloader-to the desktop, everything has the same clean ‘feel’, except for the verbose-mode being enabled by default at boot-up, which is most certainly just an RC ‘feature’.
The interface is clearly inspired by Mac OS X Aqua, with the translucent dock, shiny icons and windows borders. But the team behind Dreamlinux is working on more than just the surface – touching stuff like the control panel and making it look and work like its Mac counterpart – making it very easy and straightforward to change settings even for non-technical persons.

Admittedly its current implementation is far from perfect and it breaks down at the second step, opening a new window instead of allowing you to make the changes from inside the Control Panel app. This will be probably one of the kinks which will be ironed out before the final release.
Another thing worth mentioning is window environment: XFCE. It’s a lightweight engine which provides most of the functionality of Gnome or KDE, while cutting down on the bells and whistles. The developers said:
In this release candidate, Dreamlinux returns to its origin and comes with the XFCE Desktop only, since we are still aiming to produce a CD-sized ISO image.
Altough their goal is understandable – I really wonder why they didn’t include Gnome, a better, more refined window manager – after all Ubuntu fits on a single CD and Dreamlinux doesn’t include a lot of extra apps that would take that much space.

Overall I would say their approach to UI is a good idea, while it is currently rough at the edges.
Performance and Hardware
Dreamlinux boots up a little faster than Ubuntu with our timer stopping at 48 seconds from boot-up to desktop.
Like most linux distributions it has quite a few misunderstandings with WiFi cards – neither one of the integrated Atheros 5007EG or the external SMC stick was recognized, prompting for a 5 minute trip to the terminal and custom madwifi drivers. On the other hand, we have the ndiswrapper tool installed by default – which makes it a breeze to install wifi drivers for most cards.
No luck with the integrated Bison webcam either, something that Ubuntu 8.04 got out of the box using video4lin driver.
We couldn’t convince ALSA to work with the with the ATI chipset for audio in – but most of these problems are strictly related to our test hardware, an Acer laptop with some weirder components.
If you bought your computer with Ubuntu in mind, choosing compatible hardware, or have Ubuntu working perfectly out of the box you’ll be okay with Dreamlinux. Remember you can always use tutorials written with Ubuntu in mind because you’re using the same base: Debian.
Applications

Apart from a few useful addtions to the usual suspects, Dreamlinux doesn’t bring anything ground-breaking:
Multimedia: Rhythmbox, Mplayer, Gxine, SoundJuicer, SoundConverter, Avidemux.Internet: Pidgin Instant Messenger, Gftp, Thunderbird Mail Client, Iceweasel (Firefox)FlashPlayer, Java.Graphics: Inkscape, Gimpshop, Gthumb, Xsane.Open Office, Evince and SciTe.It’s based on Debian Lenny, which means you get the APT package manager (and the graphical interface to it, Synaptic Package Manager), .deb compatibility allows you to install a wealth of apps easily. It’s an easy switch for anyone used to working on Ubuntu – which is also based on Debian.

Conclusion

Dreamlinux is a linux distribution which promises a lot for future versions – especially on the user interface side, as developers have more time to tweak the details – for that perfect user experience.
Right now, I wouldn’t recommend installing Dreamlinux – because it just about halfway to becoming a really different, good linux distribution.

For someone looking for eye-candy and user-friendliness I would recommend gOS3 and Linux Mint, the former which I use as my primary operating system. Visit the official website here.

What’s wrong with iTunes?

It depends on who you ask. Some may say it’s bloated, it’s slow, a resource hog, lacks support for players other than iPods, you can’t customize it, it doesn’t allow you to organize music the way you want – you constantly need to import music files into iTunes library (aka no “Watch Folders” feature), no “now playing” playlist, DRM-ed songs bought through the iTunes store can only be played on iPods, cover art download feature doesn’t work most of the time and let’s not forget it’s closed source.
On the other hand iTunes is sexy, easy, pretty much painless, integrates perfectly with the Mac, iPod and iPhone, streams music with AirTunes, cover-flow library view is gorgeous, library syncing works fantastic, it has smart folders, built-in CD ripping/writing and it basically has everything you need for playing, organizing, syncing, encoding and downloading music, podcasts and movies.
We will take a look at open-source Songbird 0.7.0 and Banshee 1.4 from a Mac user perspective and compare them to  iTunes to see if there are any compelling reasons to switch.

Technology used

Songbird is built on Mozilla’s XULRunner platform and it allows skinning and add-ons similar to Firefox, but it uses a lot of RAM. It is called by many the Firefox of media players. Another selling point is browsing web pages from within Songbird (Gecko engine) and automatic music discovery(“url slurper”) – music files embedded on a web page are displayed on a separate pane where they can be played or downloaded.

Banshee is built on the Mono platform and Gtk – the reason why it has a certain Gnome look and feel, which is not actually a bad thing. This version of Banshee is the first technology preview release for Mac OS X which explains the glitches and frequent crashes. Before installing Banshee you need to install Mono.
Both Songbird and Banshee use GStreamer multimedia framework for decoding and encoding media files.

Media files support

Songbirds can play MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WMA and Apple FairPlay – encoded audio, while Banshee plays Ogg Vorbis, MP3,FLAC and H.264 videos.
Library Management
Songbird allows importing your iTunes music library. In my tests, songs and playlists were imported correctly, but no ratings or play counts. Banshee can’t import the iTunes library but you can import the media from the iTunes folder. I imported more than 7000 tracks from my external Firewire drive. Both applications were quite fast, but Banshee seemed a little faster. When importing is complete, Songbird automatically searches for duplicates and Banshee tries to find cover art from the internet.
When it comes to organizing your music, you get the usual stuff you might expect: playlists, smart playlists, ratings, live search and sorting from multiple criteria. Neither has playlist folders.

A feature that we long for in iTunes, Folder-watch (auto discovery and import of new music files from specified folders), is also missing, but is promised in a future release of Songbird. At least Banshee has a Rescan Library Tool, a tool that will rescan your media collection and update your library if any changes have occurred. A very welcomed feature is the Play Queue in Banshee, which allows you to queue up songs on the fly. Why isn’t this in all media players?

Metadata and cover art
Both have good meta data editors, but Banshee’s is better. A thing I’ve noticed: Songbird did not read the whole meta data:

When you import music files, Banshee will automatically try to download cover art from Rhapsody, Amazon and Last.fm. It does a pretty good job. Way better than iTunes.
Songbird does not have such a feature built-in and cannot import cover art from the iTunes library, but you can use Album Manager and Last.FM Cover Fetcher addons. From what I can tell, you have to manually right click each of your albums to download the cover art. Ouch!

Interface
Songbird has a fairly polished interface, very iTunes-like, and many Mac users will appreciate the similarities. Unlike iTunes, or Banshee for that matter, the interface offers a very high degree of customization. You also get a tabbed browser and customizable music search box, where you can add your favorite mp3 music search engines or use the defaults: SkreemR or The Hype Machine.
Besides the playlist pane and the central pane you get three customizable panes for add-ons: two at the bottom and one on the right side.

Also with the help of add-ons you can choose the library view from: List, Filter Pane, Album List, Album View, and MediaFlow (mimics iTunes CoverFlow and it’s not to shabby) . Album List is terrible.

While some may say Banshee’s streamlined interface could use some spicing up, when compared to Songbird, I find it easy, clear and uncluttered. It has only one view for the library, with three panes: the  artists. the albums and the songs. I consider this to be the most useful way to view my music library.

Considering this is the first beta preview on the Mac, I will ignore the little interface quirks like chunks of text disappearing or the absence of a functional progress bar for songs.
Both application offer a mini-mode, but Banshee’s interface is bulky while Songbird’s mini interface is highly stylized.

Skins
Songbird’s skins are called feathers. You can choose from well over 100 feathers and with the help of the add-on manager you can easily install them. I don’t really know what is the deal with Banshee themes. Apparently it supports skinning but I did not find a way to get and install such themes.

iPod support
Songbird has built-in support for managing iPods (but no iPhones or iPod touch). You can let it sync or manually transfer the files.

The Mac version of Banshee does not yet support devices, but the Linux versions supports iPods and mobile phones (even HTC G1 Android, but no iPhone) so hopefully this will not be an issue with future versions.

Music stores
With Songbird there is a Jamendo and eMusic add-on, but the integration with these stores resumes at displaying a list of tracks and a play button in the bottom pane. To buy a song you need to visit the website. As for Banshee, there is an unofficial iTunes Music store plugin, but more about plugins in the next section.

Extension Support
The strong point of Songbird is the ability to easily add extensions. There are over a hundred extensions for library views, social services like Last.fm and Twitter, lyric finders, music recommendations, concert ticket finders, artist bios, Apple remote-control support and many more. Some of these add-ons will fit nicely in the extra panes.

The recommended add-ons you can install on the first start of Songbird are:iPod Device Support, QuickTime Playback, SHOUTcast Radio,Concerts,iTunes Library Importer,Songbird Developer Tools.

Banshee also supports extensions, but their number is very limited. Most of these plugins have been included by default in Banshee and they are called Core-Plugins. The unofficial plugins are not that easy to install- you have to know your way with the command line. Among the core-plugins you can find: Bookmarks, Cover Art fetching, Digital Media Player support, Mass storage media player support, Internet Radio, Last.fm radio and Scrobbling, Mini Mode, Play Queue and Podcasts.
I find the Last.Fm integration very well built in Banshee.

Radios and podcasts
In Songbird there is no podcast category. To get a podcast to appear in Songbird you need to right click the Playlists category, choose New Subscription and enter the feed URL. The podcast will appear as a playlist and  you can begin streaming the episode you want, unlike iTunes where you have to wait for the download to finish.
Songbird comes with SHOUTcast Radio add-on. If your favorite radio station isn’t there, then you have to follow the same procedure as for adding podcasts.You guess it, the radio station will appear as a playlist. Awkward and annoying. No to mention the fact that if you add a radio, the download animation will constantly indicate a download is in progress.

Banshee has a dedicated Podcast and Radio category. You will see the cover art for all your podcasts in the album pane. An interesting feature is the ability to organize podcasts in playlists and smart playlists. Radio doesn’t work 100%. I could add all my stations but some refused to play.

Conclusion
With good looks, customization, addons and  integrated web browser with music discovery and download features, Songbird is an ambitious project.
With sheer elegance in its simplicity, Banshee for Mac looks very promising. But at the current stage it’s not really usable- it crashes every few tracks.
If you think about it, you have great plugins for iTunes too: Last.fm, iLike or the upcoming TuneUp companion. Most people don’t even care about the audio encoding or where the physical music files are stored on the drive, they just want to listen to their music. These people and those who like iTunes the way it is, probably consider Songbird or Banshee just a crippled-down iTunes.
For those who dislike iTunes I have bad news: neither Songbird or Banshee is an iTunes killer on the Mac. Simply put, at this moment there are no real compelling reasons to switch.
On the other hand, as an iTunes alternative on Linux, the fight is tough, as there are two more contenders: Amarok and Rhythmbox.

Thanks everyone, this post made it to Reddit!

Installation

The installation of MEPIS was very easy. Since I was using a fresh hard drive, I started with the ‘automated’ installation, which set up separate partitions for MEPIS, swap, and my home directory. This is a particularly exciting default partitioning scheme, since it gives me the ability to reinstall MEPIS (or to install a new flavor of Linux) without losing my documents and configurations. I also went back and experimented with the manual installations settings. The options were very easy to understand, and after only one setup screen I was able to reach the installation phase. I’m confident that setting up a double or triple-boot system would be quite easy.
At the end of the installation process, MEPIS prompted me to install GRUB, and gave me the option to install it on the boot sector of a partition instead of on the MBR. While most users will use the default settings for this, I tend to prefer the Windows bootloader, and was happy to see this option available. This is especially important for anyone wishing to run Vista alongside Linux, as Vista requires the use of Microsoft’s bootloader.

Configuration
Almost painless…
Except for one large roadblock, getting MEPIS set up they way I wanted was very easy. MEPIS comes with KDE 3.5, which has a host of useful applications. Since this is a beta release of the next MEPIS, I expected to see the latest version of KDE. However, KDE 4 had a very rocky release, and since KDE 3 is still a very highly regarded windows manager, I understand why it would be worth keeping around for a while.

Software
For the most part, I’m happy to use the default software KDE offers. While I am used to instant messaging with Pidgin, I found Kopete to be more than adequate for my needs. I also found Amarok and Akgregator very useful, and I was pleased to see that MEPIS provides the new OpenOffice.org 3, which makes word processing in Linux very easy.

Other programs like Kontact and KOrganizer are useful as well, although since I tend to organize my life in Google Calendar and Gmail, all I really need is a working installation of Firefox, which MEPIS provides. However, before I could get really started, I had to get my internet connectivity working, which is when the trouble began.

Wireless
When MEPIS first booted up, it was unable to detect any network devices. I did some research, and found that my Intel wireless card should be supported, so I went into the “MEPIS Network Assistant” and manually entered the credentials for my wireless network. After fiddling for a while without any luck, I plugged in an ethernet connection. After I restarted my computer, I suddenly saw KNemo connect to my wireless network.

Thinking I had somehow fixed the problem, I unplugged the ethernet and went to work on my couch. However, the next time I restarted, wireless was gone. I eventually gathered that my wireless only works when I boot up with ethernet plugged in. This is made even stranger by the fact that my ethernet does not work in either case. I’m not sure if this is a bug or if my hardware simply isn’t well supported.
The Look
While I worked on getting my Internet to work, I started playing around with the themes. In general, I found the defaults provided by MEPIS to be somewhat unappealing. I quickly swapped the default MEPIS background for a classier KDE one, and I changed the panel configuration to be wider and slimmer. I also switched to the “Plastik” window decoration style, which I find slightly more pleasing to look at.

Updates
As soon as I was able to connect to the internet, I loaded my favorite package manager, ‘synaptic,’ and downloaded all of the latest updates, which installed flawlessly.

Graphics and Gaming
I then went ahead and grabbed the package ‘nvidia-xconfig,’ which I’ve used in the past to get my nvidia card working, and the game Planet Penguin Racer, which I use to test that my card works. After restarting X, I was immediately able to race down some stellar 3D slopes. I’m impressed that it only took me a couple steps to get my graphics working. While it’d be great if this sort of thing would work right away, setting up my NVIDIA graphics used to take hours on older releases of Ubuntu.

Finally, I installed ‘wine’ from the repositories so that I could run Steam, which I’m finding works very well in MEPIS. Compiz Fusion is also working, for the most part. I’m certain I could get it working fully if I wanted to take the time, but there are still a few glitches I haven’t bothered to iron out.

Conclusions

With MEPIS Linux, there seems to be an expectation of quality. Because of its unique relationship with Debian and Ubuntu, it has a rich library of packages, which see pretty regular updates. I am impressed with how readily-available the software is, and how easy it is to download and configure.
To clarify, however, I’ll point out that MEPIS is definitely not just another Ubuntu derivative. As of version 7, MEPIS no longer relies on Ubuntu, instead relying on Debian 5 sourcecode. Because Ubuntu is essentially rebuilt from the bottom-up with each release, Debian provides a more stable foundation for continual development. MEPIS maintains its own kernel, and has its own software repository. Since Debian 5 (Lenny) has yet to be released, MEPIS 8 is still a cutting-edge beta.
While it may not have the same kind of community support as, say, Ubuntu, MEPIS definitely has a large community and has been gradually gaining attention.
Why I Hesitate
Someone who is not an experienced Linux user will definitely take a lot of time getting things up and running. The KDE 3 menu system seems cluttered to me. Within each menu category exist many submenus, some with the name “More Applications,” leaving the user exploring for the right program. Each program is listed using both its description (i.e. “CD Player”) and its name (i.e. “KsCD”), an unnecessary addition to the clutter. The assistant software provided by MEPIS only complicates the menus further, making it hard to know where to look, since there already exist a KDE control center, a “System” menu, and a “Utilities” menu.

Furthermore, features I enjoyed seeing in MEPIS have existed in Ubuntu/Kubuntu for a while now. While MEPIS can definitly hold its own as a desktop operating system, I didn’t find it to be a definite improvement over many of the other major distributions. It’s only mostly user friendly and, while KDE is great, there are still plenty of Linux alternatives that are slightly easier to pick up and use.

Small details certainly don’t make or break an operating system (take Windows as an example), but until MEPIS can stand out from the masses, I’m not convinced I’ll be tempted to use it as a primary OS anytime soon. That being said, MEPIS is still quite impressive, and since this is still a beta release, things are definitely subject to change.

I have dealt with a lot of Linux distros since I first learned the power of my newfound penguin friend. He was free unlike a Microsoft or Apple product, had thousands of available programs (also free), and looked damn classy while he was in control of my computer.

My first forays were using live Linux CDs on an old 1998 Gateway computer, then I experimented with installing Fedora, Ubuntu, and Debian. However, after a while I started to stray from my new friend and I found myself going back to old habits, using XP and eventually embroiling myself in the OSX86 project and experimenting with Tiger and then Leopard. I gave up on Linux for a while and divided my OS use between my hackintosh and Vista boxes.

Choices
I was perfectly content with my two choices up until I started experimenting with network security. Sure, you can get network security tools for both of the major systems, but they are nothing compared to the plethora available when you choose Linux as your auditing operating system. I started with Kubuntu and customized my installation with as many security apps as I could find. This was a bit of a heavy-handed approach to things, and it took up a good size of my laptop hard drive. What I needed was a more portable solution.
Backtrack
I found everything I could ever want and hope for when a friend of mine introduced me to Backtrack. He performed a Man In The Middle (MITM) attack on a sample LAN, replacing every photo URL that I browsed for in Firefox with one of a skull and crossbones. I had never seen such pirate witchcraft done so easily, so I asked him what other things this Linux distribution could do. He basically told me that nearly everything you could ever want for wardriving, penetration testing, vulnerability testing, privilege escalation, and just all-round mayhem could be performed with this distribution. And the best part about the whole deal is that it is a live cd distro. You don’t need to install it to your hard drive in order to perform security tests, for that matter it doesn’t even have to be your computer! Just have the CD with you and you are good to go.
Backtrack is developed by the remote-exploit community over at remote-exploit.org. When I was first introduced to Backtrack the latest iteration was Backtrack 2, and I loved what I saw. Backtrack 3 has since come out and looks spiffier than ever with more tools and updated software.
Is it good?
I’ll sum up my feelings for Backtrack in one simple statement: This is the only Linux I use. It has exactly what you’re looking for. The only thing that it does not have that might be useful to me is Open Office.

Now, I’d love to list in detail all of the lovely tools that Backtrack has, but you would be scrolling for quite a while and and this article probably wouldn’t have gotten done until sometime around 2010. Don’t fear though! Here is the link to the Backtrack wiki page that details the tools that can be found in Backtrack’s arsenal.
Now, you might ask yourself, “What’s better than a live cd Linux that does penetration testing and just about any other testing I’d ever want?”. I will answer that question with: A live USB thumbdrive Linux that does penetration testing and just about any other testing you’d ever want.
Creating the thumbdrive
You only need the following to create a keychain portable Linux OS:
Requirements:
1GB or bigger thumbdriveBacktrack .iso fileNifty little program called UNetbootinIn order to guarantee a clean installation of Backtrack, be sure to format your thumbdrive to clean out any files. I suggest using FAT32 when you are formatting it, simply because I know that it works and I’ve never had any problems. The Backtrack .iso file can be downloaded here.
Because your thumbdrive is 1 GB, it can handle the USB version that has a bit more stuff packed into it. That is the version I suggest downloading.

UNetbootin
UNetbootin will take any .iso file and “burn” it to your thumbdrive painlessly and especially fast. It will do this with ANY Linux distro, not just Backtrack. I love this program and I’ve used it dozens of times. Its interface is pretty much self explanatory:

Click the … next to the ISO text field and select the Backtrack (or any other Linux distro) .iso file, make sure that the correct USB drive is selected in the Drive: drop down menu, and then click OK. UNetbootin will now copy over the operation system from the .iso file and burn it to your thumbdrive. Once its done copying the files, it will install a bootloader to your USB drive, and then prompt you for a restart in order to load Backtrack. This part is obviously optional, but if your a little zoned you you might just click ok and lose whatever you may have been working in in other windows, so try to be careful.

Conclusion
It’s as simple as that, you now have Linux on a thumbdrive that can travel with you wherever you go. Be careful how you use your new found power, a lot of the apps on Backtrack are useful for security testing, but could be twisted for use on the dark side of things. I don’t condone using Backtrack for nefarious deeds, and I suggest that you do not follow that path.

If you would like some tutorials in how to use the features found in Backtrack, IronGeek has a few videos available that can help you along.

First Impressions

Ubuntu Tweak underwent an major GUI change for the better during its last 0.4.1 release.

The newest feature introduced this time is the  GUI source editor. Basically what source code editor provides an GUI for editing the source lists. Previously you would have to hack around the terminal with  “sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list”.

You can not only edit sources but also upload them to a server (which anybody can use), then these can be shared with anybody using Ubuntu Tweak.

The sources are differentiated on a language base. There is a chance that some malicious people may want to use it for evil reasons, so the uploaded source list will be reviewed by a human before being allowed to download.

Features

• Displays useful system info like hostname, distribution, desktop environment, kernel, platform, CPU, memory in one place.
• There is an Add/Remove Applications option which lets you install popular packages.
• There is an Third Party Sources to add Third Party Repositories with one click. These are useful when the default Ubuntu repositories don’t contain the packages.
• Package Cleaner was a new feature, introduced in the last release; since then Ubuntu 8.10 came with an option to clean old packages which makes this particular feature redundant.
• You can control which programs to allow at start-up. A little prettier than using Sessions app.
• Windows: Under this setting you can set cool options like changing the transparency of active and inactive windows. There is another option to set the title bar action. You can set windows to roll up as they do in Macs by using this option.
• Tweak Compiz  settings easily.
• One of the coolest features of Ubuntu Tweak is Scripts. Using Scripts you can enhance your right click contextual menu. There is a Browse as Root option which gives you an Nautilus window with administrator privileges, also another script called Link to allows you to create shortcuts.
• You can set keyboard shortcuts for doing various tasks like starting your browser when you press a certain key combination.

Third Party Sources, allows you to install the latest versions of popular software like Amarok, Wine and many others. Also present are Scripts which allow you to add few highly useful options for your right click menu. There is an Browse as Root option which gives you an Nautilus window with administrator privileges; another script called Link to allows you to create shortcuts.

Conclusion

Ubuntu is an easy way of making changes and adding functionality to Ubuntu, a great addition for those trying to tweak Ubuntu to their exact specifications but are not willing to dig into the terminal.

Download the latest version here.

I’ve used Linux distributions a couple of times, but just for Windows recovery purposes. I never really gave Ubuntu a try until two days ago. Obviously, I had to write a comparison about the differences between the features of Mac OS X and what Ubuntu has to offer. So forgive my lack of experience in the Linux field, and join me while I try to make a head to head comparison.

Here is a quick overview of my favorite Mac OS X features that would make many Windows users envious: Exposé, Quicksilver, spring-loaded folders, the Dock, iLife suite, QuickLook, Finder CoverFlow, TimeMachine, extended out-of-the-box support for multimedia devices and printers, iSync, Dashboard, Safari’s Web Clip, drag&drop support for text, Spaces, Growl notifications, system wide grammar check, Automator, smooth screen zoom, just to name a few.

Installation

Before I started on this path I had Windows XP installed in Bootcamp. I imaged the partition and stored it safely.

First of all, to make sure I can boot to Ubuntu, I installed rEFIt.

Ubuntu setup is a smooth ride until you have to choose where to install it: I formatted the Bootcamp partition to ext3 and set the mount point to / .

Look and feel

Gnome is no Aqua, but I got used to it. In fact, after two days, I didn’t missed Aqua at all, even though I could have installed a Mac theme with Mac4Lin. Changing the theme is a breeze.

I don’t know if it’s my reality distortion field, but those default fonts are really ugly. I quickly changed to some normal Mac fonts using this tutorial. After enabling Subpixel smoothing everything looks a lot better.

By default some nice visual effects are installed, powered by Compiz, a compositing window manager that uses 3D graphics acceleration via OpenGL. Installing CompizConfig  Settings Manager  to add some vital effects, that makes Ubuntu almost feel like a Mac, is a must. Most of the effects are just eye-candy, but some are really useful. The ALT-TAB is nicer. You don’t just shift through applications’ icons but through the corresponding window also. Like on the Mac, when you ALT+TAB you can quickly close an application by keeping ALT pressed and then press the F4 key.

There is another nice window switcher you can enable in Compiz and trigger with Command+Tab, a sort of a cover-flow window switcher.

I managed to get Vista-like Taskbar window previews with Compiz.

Screen zooming with Command+Mouse wheel up/down can also be enabled in Compiz and it works just like its Mac counterpart.

Exposé

With the help of Compiz, Ubuntu now has Exposé. I just enabled the Scale plugin in CompizConfig, set my corners for mouse trigger (you have a wide choices of screen trigger positions) and I was all set. One irritating thing though: I could not set a mouse trigger for hiding all the windows, which means I can no longer drag a file from a window to the desktop when the screen is all covered up.

Finder

Nautilus file browser has it strengths and weaknesses when compared to Finder. First of all, it does not have Cover Flow, Quick Preview or spring-loaded folders. If you are used to Quick Preview and you press the Space key by mistake, the file will actually open. For me, no spring-loaded folders means a loss in productivity.

External drives have an eject button for unmounting and will appear on the desktop, just like on Mac OSX. You can read/write NTFS drives and read Mac OS partitions (but you don’t have access to the user’s folder).

Unlike Finder Nautilus has tabbed browsing (like PathFinder), displays a search field when you start typing a file’s name, displays in a text file’s thumbnail the actual content, and you can modify the thumbnail size live on the spot.

But Nautilus has two killer features: you can resize an individual  file or folder thumbnail as large as you want and you can overlay “emblems”  just like you would label your e-mails with super stars in Gmail.

Another feature that surprised me was the detailed information the properties window would show for a movie file, like duration, codec and resolution.

System Speed

I haven’t reinstalled Mac OS X  since I bought my MacBook, about two years ago. I have to admit it has become slower.

Ubuntu 8.10 seems blazing fast. I was actually amazed how fast it loads applications like Firefox or Open Office. A lot faster than a clean Windows install on Bootcamp.

Software Installation

Ubuntu has an iPhone Cydia/Installer-like application where you can find, install, automatically update or remove applications (something along the lines of MacLibre and AppFresh but much better). I thought that dragging an app in the Applications folder to install or dragging it to the trash to uninstall was cool, but what Ubuntu offers is way cooler. But you manually need to add some sources for some programs you may need.

Unfortunately, I’d say about 15%  of the apps you need are not there. If you find a .deb package you are saved. It will be opened by an installer, but if you find a .tar.gz , a .rpm, an iso or bin and you’re a linux newbie like me, then you will certainly have some problems. You have to Google it and get down and dirty with the terminal. And even if you figure that out, after a ./config there are 90% chances your are missing some libraries or something is incompatible. If those 15%  of apps you need are vital, then manual installing is a deal-breaker.

Quicksilver

I have Quicksilver on Mac, Enso for Windows but is there any equivalent for Linux? Unfortunately the shell is not the answer for me or for any Mac user. I must admit that 70% of the time I use Quicksilver as a launcher, so for launching and searching needs Google Desktop for Linux does it’s job well. Combine that with Firefox Ubiquity Extension and you can overlook the absence of Quicksilver.

What you can’t overlook is the absence of an Automator alternative. No shell, please!

Dual Monitor

It works out-of-the-box. You can arrange your monitors how you like in mirror or extended mode and set the resolution and refresh rate. No color profile though. I’m not a professional photographer but the absence of integrated color management may be a serious issue for some. I had only one external monitor attached to my MacBook, but it showed up 3 monitors in the settings applet.

The Dock

By default, Ubuntu doesn’t come with a Dock, but with a taskbar, like Windows. I tried two dock solutions: Cairo-Dock and AWN Dock. One was a resource hog and the other had far to many glitches. I tried installing a couple of other dock solutions but they didn’t come in a .deb package and ./config reported lots of missing libraries so I sticked with the task bar.

Dashboard

There are three important widget applications for Ubuntu: screenlets, gDesklets and Google Desktop Widgets. I only tried the first two and I was extremely dissapointed: most of them are useless and they look like old DOS programs. To simulate the Mac Dashboard effect on pressing an F key you need to enable in Compiz the Widget Layer and select one by one  all the windows that are widgets (cumbersome).

On top of that, there is no Safari Web Clip equivalent, a very useful feature.

Fortunately, Ubuntu offers you applets that you can put on the menu bar or the taskbar (referred to as panels). These turned out to be very useful and they compensate for the lack of a good Dashboard replacement.

My favorite applets are: Weather Report, Invest (stocks), Network activity, Drawer and the fabulous Force Quit applet. To kill an unresponsive application, click the Force Quit applet and then, with the cursor turned into a cross, just click the hanging window and it goes away. The Drawer applet lets you store files and folders for later operations (Similar to QuickSilver’s Shelf).

Printer & Scanner

Linux has come a long way since I last tried to print something a few years ago in Knoppix. Now, when connected to an USB port, Ubuntu automatically detected my printer type and the test page printed just fine. I didn’t perform some thorough tests because my blue cartridge is out of ink, as you can see in the picture. The scanner function worked great with Xscane.

Wireless

It worked flawlessly out of the box and surprisingly it didn’t drop the connection to my home wireless router at all in my two days of heavy testing. On Mac I’m used to dropped connections at least once a day. The network manager is quite nice.

Power Management

You get all the Mac features you are used to and one extra bonus: Hibernate. Sleep works perfect ( to wake it up I had to press the power button) but Hibernate worked only once in three tries. Battery life seemed the same.

Mail and calendar

This is a sensitive topic. You get two noteworthy alternatives: the default Evolution Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird. Both offer the same functionality as Apple’s Mail but none of them have the same look and feel. Evolution’s interface is more attractive but in Thunderbird you can easily install extensions to Sync Your Google Contacts and hide the application to tray (by default if you click the Close button the application exits.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that you cannot drag&drop a file over the taskbar, desktop icon or application window to create a new mail. You must use the Send To menu. Very frustrating for a Mac user not to be able to use the drag&drop like he is used to!

iPhoto

I used Google Picasa. When it doesn’t hang it actually rocks. You can import files from digital cameras, send them by mail or upload them to Picasa Web Albums among other things. It is permanently scanning for new image files and it doesn’t look like a resource hog at all.

iTunes

Amarok music player is simply incredible. On the other hand, Rhythmbox allows you to listen to LastFM, web radio, download audio podcasts, download music from Jamendo music store or sync your iPod. For you video podcasts you can use Miro. These are way better than iTunes.

iMovie

You can try Kino and KDEN live but you will be dissapointed. KDENlive looks quite good but the interface is not that intuitive and crashes a lot.

Movies

The default video player, Totem, has no DivX/Xvid codecs installed, but when you attempt to play a file it offers to search for a codec and it automatically downloads it. You can do that or you can quickly replace it with VLC, the player I use on my Mac.

iWeb

I managed to use Dreamweaver 8 with PlayOnLinux. It works quite nice. I can’t say the same about iTunes installed with PlayOnLinux – it’s very slow and it hangs in the iTunes Store

Photoshop

A big drawback for Linux is the absence of native Photoshop. You can use Photoshop CS2 with Wine, but it runs slow and is a little unstable. Gimp is a good-enough alternative for my needs.

Growl

Good news here. There is an equivalent called Mumbles. Worked fine with Amarok and Pidgin, but not with Firefox.

Spaces

Virtual desktops were present in Linux long before Apple introduced them in Leopard. With Compiz you get multiple ways to change between virtual desktops/workspaces (the cool cube effect:-).

Time Machine

No TimeMachine goodness in Ubuntu. By default it comes with Simple Backup Restore,a pretty basic backup client. Other alternatives are TimeVault and FlyBack. They may do their job well but they are no match for the stellar 3D interface of TimeMachine.

Sound and Microphone

I could barely hear the sound in my Macbook’s speakers and by default the mic is not working. I had to fiddle with the sound settings to get it to work.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Some little problems here: Eject button does not work and CAPS, NUM don’t light up even though they work as intended when pressed. The F keys act like FN is pressed for adjusting the brightness and volume. To actually use the F keys you have to press the FN key.

To enable right-click and scrolling with two fingers I had to follow this tutorial, but now it works fine.

Web Camera

For iSight to work I had to follow this tutorial. Now iSight works with Skype and Ekiga( a voip client).My USB Logitech QuickCam Chat worked out-of-the-box with Egika but I had no luck with Skype. So far I have a mixed feeling in the web-camera department.

Chat

Pidgin is a great chat client supporting all the protocols you need, similar to Adium. Unfortunately it has no Video/Voice capabilites like Skype, but at least the file transfer works.

99% of my friends use Yahoo Messenger. On Mac, the Yahoo Messenger client supports video,but no audio. The Linux client is a joke. There is an application called Enhanced Gyachy that supposedly supports video and voice but I did not managed to install it.

Bluetooth

It worked out-of-the-box. I managed to pair my Nokia phone immediately and I was able to browse the phone or send files through the Send To menu. To receive files I had to install Bluetooth File Sharing application.

Ubuntu 8.10 is supposed to work with 3G dongles and phones for internet connections, but I bet setting it up is not a walk in a park.

iSync

Ubuntu doesn’t have such a thing by default. I tried a couple of applications but they didn’t work for me. Solutions might exists, but they aren’t for newbies. I really need bluetooth calendar, tasks and contacts syncing(I had to manually modify some configuration files in order for iSync to pick up my Nokia 3110 classic. I just wish it was that simple in Ubuntu.)

Screen Capture

You know Command+Shift+3 and Command+Shift+F4 right? Well, in Ubuntu, when pressing PrintScreen you are presented with a window that asks you where to save the screenshot and if you enable ScreenShot in CompizConfig you can take a screenshot of the desired area by simply pressing the Command key and drawing a rectangle with the mouse.

Blogging Tools

Yes, Windows Live Writer is the best. No point in discussing that further, at least for me. But at least on Mac I can use MarsEdit or Qumana for quick blog posts or little modifications of past posts on WordPress. With Ubuntu I didn’t find anything. I had to stick to ScribeFire Firefox extension.

Conclusion

Linux has come a long way, but it’s not totally ready for the mom and pop folks, in my opinion.

In the two days of testing, with two occasions it refused to load the graphic drivers and I could not enjoy Compiz. I found a tutorial which taught me how to modify XORG.conf to load XGL. (I suspect that messing with the resolution of the second screen might have overwritten the XORG.conf file.)

I think I jinxed my Ubuntu after installing KDENlive and some updates: it didn’t want to boot anymore. Now I have to reinstall it because I have no idea what to do. Sadly, this reminds me of Windows. Stuff like this doesn’t happen that often(ever?) on a Mac.

Even so, I’d say Ubuntu 8.10 is a fantastic operating system. I guess it may take a while to tweak an Ubuntu installation to perfection, especially for more demanding users. I will recommend Ubuntu to everyone who doesn’t afford a Mac, are not into heavy media content creation or hard-core gaming.

A little history

On June 6th, 2008, Google Gadgets Team:

The Windows and Mac versions of Google Desktop has provided gadget hosting functionality on Windows and Mac for a while now and the Linux version of Google Gadgets will extend this platform to Linux users. By enabling cross-platform gadgets, a large library of existing gadgets are immediately available to Linux users. In addition, gadget developers will benefit from a much larger potential user base without having to learn a new API.

Google Gadgets for Linux is an open source project available under the Apache license. The Google Open Source blog invites everyone to contribute with bug reports and fixes on Google Code.

Installation

Binaries

Depending on your linux distribution, you can either opt to install via the binary packages, which are available for Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 8/9, openSUSE 10.3/11, Slackware and FreeBSD on this page.

For Ubuntu, the Google Code page points to a SuSE repository; Installing using these binaries is a bit disappointing – with no more than 8 packages to download and manually install. A better solution is via GetDeb.

Build from source code

If you want to get your hands dirty and compile Google Gadgets yourself, here’s the step by step process. You can read through the whole (very long) How-to Build Guide here.

• wget http://google-gadgets-for-linux.googlecode.com/files/google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• tar zxvf google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• cd google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3/
• sudo apt-get install build-essential zip flex desktop-file-utils shared-mime-info zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev libdbus-1-dev libx11-dev libxt-dev libltdl3-dev (for Ubuntu 8.04) or libltdl7-dev (for Ubuntu 8.10) libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev network-manager-dev libstartup-notification0-dev xulrunner-1.9-dev libgtk2.0-dev librsvg2-dev ibcurl4-gnutls-dev or libcurl4-openssl-dev libqt4-dev
• sudo ldconfig
• ../../configure –enable-debug
• sudo make install
• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
• ggl-gtk

Interface & Usability

They UI remains pretty much unchanged from the Windows version, and requires a compositioning engine like Compiz for the effects. There’s nothing really ground-breaking here – the same black transparent sidebar we all know.

• You can run “ggl-gtk –ns” to run the widget engine without the sidebar.
• You can load the widgets at start-up automatically by adding them to the ‘Sessions’. See above screenshot.
• The gtk version did not slow down my start-up time, and the app didn’t crash. Some of the widgets specifically designed for windows may not work properly but do not hang the program.
• For every widget not created by Google a pop-up appears notifying you.
• Installation of new widgets doesn’t take more than 3-5 seconds.

Conclusion

While some may argue that screenlets, widgets and gadgets are a waste of workspace and resources I have some good uses for them:

• I keep 3 clocks with the West Coast/Central and East Coast time + London. This is extremely useful when publishing and calling overseas relatives.
• Google Calendar tells me what classes I have to attend during the day; when are the articles due.
• The battery meter gives a more clear look at the status so I don’t have to squint at the monitor.
• Ah, and the plant is really cute.

Why is everyone obsessed with having the weather on their desktop? If I want to know today’s weather, I look out of the window.             -oobuntu

• The weather widget helps me pick the right clothes for the day – by giving me the high and the low.

Different people have different uses – so I want to hear from you. Are widgets useful?

Launched about 2 years ago,

It’s one of the most community driven distributions. You could literally post an idea in the forums today and see it implemented the week after in the “current” release. Of course this has pros and cons and compared to distributions with roadmaps, feature boards and fixed release cycles we miss a lot of structure and potentially a lot of quality, but it allows us to react quickly, implement more innovations and make the whole experience for us and for the users extremely exciting. –Linux Mint Team

I’m your father, Linux Mint!

While ignoring the reference to Star Wars, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), which guarantees  long term-support, APT package manager with the huge library and the best hardware compatibility so far.

Linux Mint benefits from the huge Ubuntu community, forums, websites; almost all tutorials written for Ubuntu work with Linux Mint.

Installation

Getting Linux Mint is fairly easy process: hit the download link, burn the .iso image and boot from the CD. You’re greeted with a fully functional desktop and a choice to install it – the same Ubuntu wizard we’re used to.

There’s no noticeable difference in boot-up time or install time, considering you’re getting a lot of extras from the start.

What’s new?

Booting up Linux Mint is like Christmas morning, and it’s not just eye candy either. There’s no need to manually install ubunru-restricted-extras to bring in those essential packages.

• Out of the box support for media playback, everything from .xvid to .avi, mp3 and flac. Default player: Rhythmbox, MPlayer.
• Easy wizard for installing proprietary ATI/nVidia drivers, with some additional options not included in the default Hardware Drivers app. Default player: MPlayer.
• Sun Java and Adobe Flash support out of the box.
• Drops the Ekiga package and adds an IRC client.
• Compiz Settings Manager: Allows advanced configuration options to the compositioning engine.
• Mint Update: An application specifically written from Linux Mint that allows users to install updates while providing a safety-level indicator, allowing un-experienced users to skip updates that may need further configuration or are not compatible with Mint.
• Mint Desktop: A configuration tool for various settings regarding the desktop. Makes useful stuff like hiding the mounted devices a one click affair.
• Mint Assistant: A first-time configuration tool that let’s you choose to enable the root password and terminal quotes.
• Mint Install: Allows installation of new applications from a simple 3 tab interface: .mint, getdeb.net and the APT repository. Useful for newbies, and definitely faster than loading Synaptic Package Manager.

Mint Backup: Easy wizard for setting up a backup.

User interface

From freedom, comes elegance.                              -Linux Mint motto

Initially skeptical about the elegance part, once it booted-up I was in love. The attention given to every aspect of the interface is unbelievable. From the GRUB boot logo to the login, and desktop, everything  inspires elegance. Even the start-up sound is nice – the first time I didn’t disable it.

The main menu resembles KDEs’ implementation – which initially made me wonder if this is Gnome.

Linux Mint’s purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution.   -Linux Mint Team

Caveats

No operating system is perfect, and Linux Mint is no exception.

• Not up-to-date with with the latest improvements in Ubuntu – 8.10 features like the new Network Manager are not yet implemented.
• Doesn’t have the commercial backing of a corporation like Canonical or Novell.
• The release schedule fluctuates. New features might be just around the corner or not implemented at all.
• Google Custom Search instead of Google in Firefox. Can be fixed with ‘Add to search bar’ addon.

Conclusion

A lot of people may argue that the changes in Linux Mint are not that innovative or new. Some people will argue that you could spend a couple of hours and mod the Gnome panel to resemble Mints’. You can install all the Mint apps for Ubuntu. You can install ubuntu-restricted-extras  by yourself.

But that takes time – and why waste that when you can have everything you need out of the box? Linux Mint convinced me, and now has its own partition.

Visit Linux Mint website.

What about you? Are you happy with Ubuntu as it is? Share in the comments.

In this article, we’re going to look at the top reasons behind Ubuntu’s success and discuss what’s next for the linux community.

Availability

The principle is simple: the lower the barrier of entry, the more users you’ve got. Ubuntu is very easy and convenient to get:

• Shipit: Sends you free CD’s via mail.
• Downloads: Both torrent and FTP, with mirrors around the world, extremely fast – in my case over 1Mbit/second. You are presented with an .ISO file that can be easily transferred to a CD.
• Pre-loaded on PC’s – installed on compatible hardware, the best choice for non-technical people, available from Dell and others.

Reliability

Ubuntu is backed by Canonical, a company who’s primary focus is to promote its use. They made possible:

• Sustained development schedule
• Fast updates
• Organized and unified community

Canonical can afford promoting Ubuntu by cashing in on Professional Support services, and their whole business objective is making it as popular as possible.

Community

Unity was something a lot of Linux fans were waiting for, and were quick to adopt Ubuntu. By the time of their third release, they had thousands people on the bandwagon – and a tight knit community.

• Forums: Thousands of tutorials, help topics and discussions, virtually anything you need can be found on the Ubuntu Forums.
• Bug Tracker: The Bug Tracker is super-easy to use and lots of people contribute by finding and reporting bugs; coders with some free time often create ad-hoc scripts to fix problems. Some even contribute with drivers.
• Blogs: A lot of geeks, just like you and me, took matters into their own hands and started publishing for Ubuntu users – insights into features, tutorials and reviews; creating massive exposure.

Something I missed I my analysis, eloquently  expressed by weizbox in the comments:

Advertising, clearly. The distro itself doesn’t really separate itself much from the other major desktop distros in terms of hardware compatibility or special features, since all the major desktop distros all are essentially build on the same packages, just perhaps different versions depending on the release. Occasionally there will be some differences, like with the new BBC plugin (which others would have more easily at this point if it weren’t for the Ubuntu devs using apt code instead of a standard, like PackageKit) and the new Guest account (previously, only a ~3-click process).

Another interesting point of view from Darkhacker:

- Releases: The release schedule is predictable and releases are made often.
- Software: Ubuntu comes with very sane defaults and I don’t need to remove a ton of packages or spend all day downloading more packages to get my desktop the way I like it. They have also found a good balance between stable and up-to-date software. Fedora can be a little too bleeding edge at times and other distros are behind the times.
- APT: I just like APT better. I’ve always used Debian based distros.
- Single CD: One of my dislikes about Suse and Fedora is it comes on like 5 CDs. Yes I could get the DVD or I could just download a portion of the CDs but that’s really retarded to me. It’s wasting bandwidth on packages I’ll never want or need. Plus, some older computers only have a CD drive (no DVD) and it’s easier to handle a single disk.
- Support: 18 months for regular releases and 36 months for LTS. It’s nice knowing that I’m not rushed to upgrade.
- Popular: Sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario but I started using Ubuntu because I saw it was number one on Distrowatch. That creates a great community and means that I’ll get a well tested distro with lots of community support.
- Company Backing: We can sit around the camp fire and talk about “power to the people”, but I really like company backing. If a company (in this case Canonical) is backing a distro, I have more faith in the quality of maintenance (releasing security updates for all packages, reliable update servers, etc) than if It’s being run by a couple guys in their spare time. Who knows if they’ll continue to support it. What if they miss a security update for a package in their repos?
Yes I know that a few other distros meet some of these criteria, but Ubuntu hits them all.

And from MaxMWood:

Lets just make it clear that it’s popular only within Linux distros. Nothing else.

What’s next?

In the light of recent events, both from Apple and Microsoft, how would you see the future of linux? Will Windows 7 be a flop, will it generate a massive wave of switchers the open source community was waiting for?

I think the progress will be incremental – and the principles and ideas behind the open source philosophy will ultimately make the difference.

What made you switch to Ubuntu?

1. ubuntu-restricted-extras – Installing this package will pull in support for MP3 playback and decoding, support for various other audio formats (gstreamer plugins), Microsoft fonts,
Java runtime environment, Flash plugin, LAME (to create compressed audio files),
and DVD playback.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

2. NTFS-Config – manage your NTFS formatted drives easily without manually editing fstab. Add/remove drives, create mount points and enable external NTFS write support. Great when dealing with NTFS partitions on a dual boot system. Much better than manually editing /etc/fstab .

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config

3. Better sticky notes – an easy addon for the main toolbar gives you one click access the yellow goodness. It’s time to leave behind the paper ones and save some trees.

4.Upgrade without burning the Ubuntu CD – why waste that CD and the time it takes to burn it when you can upgrade from the command line? Downloading all the packages and installing them may take a while, a decent broadband connection is recommended.

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

5. Better photo management – Picasa, Google’s photo management software.

Download Picasa Linux source code from here, then compile using this tutorial.

The interface  is great, it has basic photo fixes for white balance, contrast, crop etc. and even effects. Prints, emails and uploads directly to Blogger and Picasa Web Albums.

6. Better music jukebox and video player – Amarok and VLC.

Amarok is by far the most advanced player out there, although it’s a bit unstable under Gnome.

sudo apt-get install amarok

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. VLC supports a lot of themes and decodes everything from avi to matroska.

sudo  apt-get install vlc

7. Hardware testing – Let the developers know about your hardware – what works and what doesn’t, so they can fix it.

Main Menu>System>Hardware Testing

It’s a 2 minute wizard that guides that tests audio, display, networking and mouse/keyboard and then send the results, a list of your computer’s hardware and your comments to the developers.

Bonus Tip – The Matrix on your desktop:

Main Menu>System>Preferences>Screensaver

Are we living in a simulation? We are certainly capable of creating such a system, just look at Spore. Now imagine the computing power 50 years from now. Scary, huh?

In this article we’re going through 7 most requested Ubuntu features that didn’t make the cut in this release.

1. A better User Interface

As it is, Ubuntu is a great operating system, it’s based on the Unix core, it’s stable, lightweight, secure, we all know that list of features, that’s why we love Ubuntu.

But, imagine what a better interface would do for Ubuntu, something sexy and usable, while maintaining the low system requirements – a big stepping stone on the way to beat Mac and Windows and reach through to the home users.

We really have to create something better in order to persuade the average Joe, which doesn’t quite grasp the ‘under the hood’ advantages of Ubuntu.

And it wouldn’t be a very complicated task, we already have all the basics in place: Compiz for effects, screenlets and a great array of dock applications. There are all these tutorials out there written by Ubuntu users customizing their box – what would it take to integrate that into the default install?

Let’s keep it simple and beautiful.

‘I would love it if these designs received some serious consideration, Ubuntu appears to be just content to settle for the poor and unattractive orange designs. Whilst the current Ubuntu designs have worked until now, if we want to extent the appeal a real rethink and transformation needs to be undertaken. I will add commentaries to each design in due course. Stand by!’ – by willwill100

Another great proposal is the Dust Theme:

And it still remains lightweight, the author says:

No custom software. It has to use an established GTK engine. This one is made with the Aurora GTK engine in mind, which sports a very polished look.

2. An unified Hardware Driver Database

Searching the forums and scavenging sourceforge for source code is not a great experience when you’re looking for a scanner driver.

We need a central repository or a download site that aggregates stuff like custom madwifi releases and kernel patches; stuff like the Atheros E5007EG in the Asus EEE, doesn’t work out of the box and a user should be able to take a trip to a central site that explains what he needs to do and provides the necessary files.

Webcams, card readers, USB gizmos – someone probably wrote a driver – the real challenge is finding them.

3. Out of the box end-user Goodness

Please, don’t make us sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras . We all want flash, java and mp3 playback, do we really have to ask for it? Pretty please?

Taking a look at gOS3 the other day, I thought Ubuntu should really consider at integrating useful consumer oriented applications: goodness out of the box. Stuff like Skype, Wine (the windows app emulator), and Picasa (Google’s photo management software) should be preinstalled. Why? Because they’re extremely useful and make a big difference to the end user; it’s just there.

While I may get some haters on my back for saying this, Picasa for Linux is a lot better than F-Spot and so is Google Desktop compared to Tracker.

I know, it’s a compromise, and I don’t like closed source either, but ultimately it’s about offering the best experience to the user, right?

And I don’t mean dropping off the ‘clean’ image – just create a spin-off that includes all this useful stuff.

4. Multi-monitor?

Don’t worry, that is how my setup looks in my dreams. I’m running on a 15 inch Acer with some pretty crappy specs. Photo courtesy of totalAldo.

How about decent multi-monitor support? The kind that’s easy to configure and actually works. Dragging an app on the second monitor and maximizing it shouldn’t be that hard to implement – and it’s a deal breaker for someone who needs to keep an eye on more than one thing at a time(like CNN and the stock monitoring software).

5. Power (non)management

How about some power management? Admittedly there’s been some progress in this area, but it’s still rather limited, and, since the world is rapidly moving to more mobility centered devices, it should be a big bullet point on that feature sheet.

6. A sound engine that works

Don’t ask how many hours I spent trying to get 5.1 sound of Ubuntu using the Realtek ALC883. ALSA, PulseAudio, name your sound server here, are all pretty crappy. Not to mention that it’s a royal pain when the whole system locks up with PulseAudio using 99% of the resources playing a MIDI file.

7. Reader’s choice

It’s your turn; what is bugging you in Ubuntu, what would you want to be changed? Tell us in the comments. Who knows, maybe some developers will see this article, your requests, and actually implement them.

Conclusion

I love Ubuntu, and that’s why I think it should and can be better. And I love that every one of us  can give a hand and shape the future of their operating system. That’s the genius of open source and Ubuntu, and that’s why it will ultimately wash the floor with everyone else.

Even as it is now, Ubuntu is the premier operating system, and trading security and reliability for a lousy sound engine is a no-brainer for me.