Mission Control

• The user interface elements are not consistent throughout the OS. Some elements, such as the login window still have remnants of the old UI, which look out of place. While a fresh coat of paint is always something neat and to be expected of a new release, I wouldn’t exactly decide in favor of the new desaturated approach to visual design, or the buttons that look transplanted from GNOME. Don’t get me wrong, GNOME is an awesome window manager, but I’d prefer Aqua any day.
• The new ‘About this Mac’ application is a commendable effort and stays true to the ‘it just works’ mantra.
• Launchpad is buggy, slow and superfluos to desktop computing. I understand that they want to get rid of the Dock, maybe even Finder, but instead of making things easier to access, they implanted a mobile UI paradigm into a full-blown OS. You can fully replace the Dock with Spaces, Mission Control and Launchpad, but why do I need three things to do what one small application does?
• I’ve wanted for so many years to get back to the MS-DOS days of single tasking, and full screen applications do just that. Aside from photo and video editing, which already had full screen views, why would I want to fill my entire screen with just one application? To make use of the Spaces feature and distract myself with beautifully rendered smooth transitions… .
• They’ve implemented Sessions, which means that when you restart, the n-th applications that you had opened, will be restored, which does an amazing job at simulating how time would pass if you were in the accretion disk of a black hole.
• The new Mail app is wonderful from both a design and functionality standpoint. I’m sorry for the developer of Sparrow.app which will have its user-base significantly diminished.
• FileVault had its security significantly boosted, with whole disk encryption now implemented.
• Scrolling is bass-ackwards. They’ve removed the open application Dock indicators by default. The WiFi status icon is always animated, even when connected (AirPort Express) and options like show time connected don’t do anything. You can now reset your account password using an AppleID and use iChat with your Yahoo! Messenger ID. FaceTime is installed by default. Accounts for services like Gmail, Yahoo and MobileMe are available to all applications that make use of the API. For example, if you set up your email account, those settings will be available to chat applications.

As you’d expect from a web 2.0 start-up – the interface is clean and simple. Let’s look at it tab by tab and check out the functionality of each one.

Dashboard allows you to track:

• Overdue or upcoming assignments and exams.
• Lists your classes along with the current average for each.
• Recent notes or files that have been uploaded.

The Dashboard makes it extremely easy to stay on top of everything you have to do with a glance. Isn’t it better than your Sticky Notes?

• Next up we have the Assignments tab which only shows, you’ve guessed it, upcoming and completed assignments with grades attached.

• Exams tab let’s you set up detailed reminders, with both SMS and email support for notifications.
• The Notes tab contains a rudimentary word processor, more likely a text box. It is a big downside for those who are used to process their text to highlight ideas and important aspects. It has revisions which means you won’t lose any changes – if you’re not happy with the outcome – just revert to the previous edit.
• The text editor is Markdown enabled which means:

[…] a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). –a Daring Fireball project.

• Calendar tab, let’s you see – in a manner similar to Google Calendar – your assignments and exams. It is iCal format compatible so you won’t have any problems importing your current calendar.
• The best part yet, the Files tab let’s you upload/download any kind of file you might want to use, PDF, Word, JPG, you name it.

TrackClass is completely free and available for everyone to use. If you want to organize your student life TrackClass is the way to do it, it is for normal people. Of course, if you’re a geek, you could always use the Google Apps suite to achieve the same result, it has more features – but you won’t get cohesion and a one stop shop for all of your needs.

As always, I look forward to your comments – what do you use, and what do you think about TrackClass.

In this article we’re going to take a closer look at the service, deconstructing its features and weaknesses. Plus, for those not lucky enough to live in one of the officially accepted countries, we describe a simple way to circumvent the protection and gain immediate access.

The Selection: Is it enough?

The current music selection will not impress a hard-core audiophile, or fans of Britney Spears – but it certainly will satisfy the needs of most casual listeners and even the more pretentious ears of an indie-lover; Spotify features bands such as Decemberists, The National, Atlas Sound, CSS, The Shins, Feist and many others.

Nobody is arguing that the current song count is significantly lower than the catalogs of any major seller – the fact that it is completely free is what’s so compelling about this service.

Initially, I was deeply worried about bitrate quality, which thankfully is 192kbpps, and interruptions, but none happened. The team notes on the blog:

However, we want to make sure that everyone who uses Spotify gets the same fast, uninterrupted experience so providing a stable service is our priority. If growth happens too fast and it starts affecting quality we may have to re-instate the invitation system, hopefully this won’t happen. –UK launch of the service

It’s notable that for 9,99 pounds/month you can get the premium service – ad-free listening – and some cool extras such as pre-release songs and concert tickets:

Mikael Wiehe, sogwriter and driving force of Hoola Bandoola Band, has another solo album, Sånger från en inställd skiljsmässa, which is now available for pre-listen.

[…]and get to be one of the first to hear the new Morrissey album. –From Spotify blog

They’ve signed deals with all the major labels(EMI, Universal, AMG), and adding more music at a fast pace:

We’re currently adding about 10,000 tracks a day from our current deals. – from the Spotify blog

The application: Simplicity in its purest form

You’ll be impressed with the sheer simplicity of the Spotify desktop application – and its similarities to iTunes, Songbird or Banshee. It clocks in at a mere 2,4 MB download.

Although is incredibly small – it has all the basics covered: playlists as easy as drag and drop, an very easy to use Radio feature, saved searches, easy navigation and search.

The Radio feature is a killer one: with two clicks you can find the right music for a romantic evening, peaceful reading, or just going back in time to rediscover old classics.

Another utility I found for Spotify is quickly previewing songs – recommended from friends or iTunes’ Genius – full length quality preview of the whole album before deciding if I want it or not.

Conclusion

If you’re going to ask, I’m going to tell you that I hate not having control over my data, be it music, photos or documents, but you can’t help noticing that everything is slowly moving away to the cloud – which ultimately might be better, or worse.

If there’s something I’m not quite sure about it’s this bit of information posted on their website:

We ’ve got a far greater range of targeting than you’ll find in offline or even most digital media – starting with demographic, location and mood. Of course, detailed tracking and reporting comes as a given.

I don’t like being tracked – unless it’s Last.fm – and I certainly don’t like that they don’t mention it prominently during signup.

Spotify is a must-have in my book and definitely worth watching in the future. That being said, you should visit spotify.com/en/get-started/ and sign up. If you’re not living in one of the accepted countries, use a proxy that supports SSL and maps your location to the UK or Sweden. It’s easy to set up a proxy in Firefox using the Options menu:

Don’t forget to share in the comments your take on Spotify and other cool services(and music) you’ve discovered in this space.

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.

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.

Installation

When I clicked the download button, I was really expecting a 80 MB download followed by half and hour of installation and a Windows reboot cycle; I had sort of a kamikaze feeling, not knowing if my machine will boot again normally.

But instead I was amazed to be looking at  a 15.9MB self-extracting archive that installed in under 2 minutes and clicking Next only three times! This is a big improvement in my opinion, although it’s still twice as large as Firefox 3 at 7.1 MB.

Another noteworthy aspect is speed: both start-up and page load time have been, in my case, noticeably faster.

Features

If you’ve been keeping up with the development you’ll know most of the improvements listed here:

• Web Slices: parts of webpages that can be stored for quick access right in the toolbar; for example the upcoming stories for Digg.

• Suggested Sites: recommend you websites based on previously visited pages.
• Accelerator: apparently this manages to integrate different sources of information into one page – making searching things faster; I’m going to look further into this.

• InPrivate Browsing Mode: Similar to Safari’s ‘Private Browsing’ feature it prevents IE from storing history, cookies or other ‘tracks’.
• Google Gears and Windows Live Writer integration.
• Opera style overview of currently open tabs.

• Highlights the domain name in the address bar and prominently featured security certificates.

Conclusion

It’s not bad at all, and so far it hasn’t crashed or caused any problems. Worth the time for any Internet Explorer users. For the rest of us, who can’t get enough of the Firefox plugins – put your mouse down and continue browsing.

And a little fun fact, 3,26% of visitors to the Tux Geek use IE8, 8% Safari and 75% Firefox. Get IE8 here.

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.

I have a Mac laptop and a PC desktop at home. I also use Bootcamp with Windows XP and have several virtual machines (Vista, Ubuntu) installed with VMware and VirtualBox.

I want an easy way of syncing my files from the Mac at home with the PC at work without having to leave the Mac open all day long, like with Windows Live Folder Share.

• When running  Windows in Bootcamp I don’t want to buy MacDrive to access the Mac partition
• When on the Mac I don’t want to buy Paragon NTFS just to work on a few files.
• I want to transfer files between my Mac and desktop PC  and I don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up a home network between the two and fiddle with the sharing options – I may forget to unshare folders on my Mac, inviting everybody to steal my files when connected to a hotspot.
• When playing with Virtual Machine software I don’t want to learn how to use VM shared folders. I want an easy way of transferring a bunch of files on all my virtual machines, no matter what VM software I use.

Looks like I need some syncing software: Dropbox and SugarSync.

Interface

DropBox has no interface. After installing DropBox you get a DropBox folder in you Documents folder. It may look like any other folder but it’s actually special. Every file you drop here will be automatically uploaded into the cloud (Amazon S3 to be more specific) and then downloaded to all the computers that you linked to your DropBox account(when they go online, or instantly if they are online). The same happens when modifying or deleting files. A green checkmark will be overlayed on the icons if the files are up to date (on your machine and online) and a blue arrow when files are syncing. Unfortunately there is no indication of transfer progress, speed or ETA. Growl Notifications/Tray Tooltips when syncing is complete is all you get.

SugarSync’s interface is quite pleasant. You use it to set up the folders you want to be synced and backed up online. There is a DropBox equivalent also – the Magic Briefcase. It’s a folder in you Documents that acts exactly like the DropBox folder- all your files you drop there will be synced on all the computers you installed SugarSync on. There is no graphic representation of what is happening to the files like you get in DropBox, but if you return to SugarSync Manager you are able to see details about the transfer: speed and ETA. Too bad you can’t hide SugarSync Mac client from the dock, and access the manager just from the menu bar.

Supported platforms

Dropbox works on Mac, Windows and Linux, while SugarSync works on Mac,Windows and Phones (iPhones,BlackBerrys). So no Linux love from SugarSync.

Usability

When using Dropbox you are actually using just familiar software: Explorer, Finder or Nautilus. There is nothing to configure, just start to drag & drop files in the DropBox folder. You can access functionality like sharing or viewing all the versions of a file by right clicking on the file and choosing the appropriate item in the DropBox submenu.

SugarSync has a nice and intuitive interface (SugarSync Manager) but I’d rather it took a transparent interface approach like DropBox did.

Sync files on multiple machines

DropBox and the MagicBriefcase of SugarSync work flawlessly across platforms with no user intervention.I tested all the scenarios posted in the challenge, and both programs performed marvelously.Both offer automatically resume support so don’t worry if your connection drops or you need to turn off your machine when syncing.

Backup

DropBox is not really suited for backup. You can’t select which folders or files you want to backup online. You only have the DropBox folder where you drop files you need to be synced with other computers. You can use it for backup though: just copy the files in the DropBox folder but now you will have two copies on the machine you want to back-up, and a copy on all your other machines when they sync.A little to redundant for my taste.

SugarSync is a good backup solution. In the SugarSync Manager you can add which folders you want to back-up and sync online. Any changes you make in these folder will instantly reflect online and vice-versa. Only the files in the MagicBriefcase will be synced across all of your computers.

Access your files online

DropBox and SugarSync offer similar web interfaces where you can download or upload files. The days of emailing files to yourself or putting them on flash sticks are over.

As expected, in SugarSync you can choose between the computers you backed-up. The web interface looks a lot like the offline SugarSync Manager.

Share files

In DropBox you have a Public folder. All the files dropped here get a public access link that you can send to your friends by IM or e-mail. To reveal this link just right click the file and choose DropBox->Copy Public link. The link is now in you clipboard, just a few keystrokes away from pasting it in your IM window. For sending large files to your friends it might be easier and safer now to use DropBox than uploading you’re file through a web interface with services like FileDropper, Drop.io or YouSendIt. Just don’t forget to delete a file once everyone got it, because it will be automatically downloaded to your other machines when they get online.

The process of sharing a file in SugarSync is not as smooth. Once you select a file in SugarSync Manager and click the big Send File button on the toolbar, you are taken to the web interface, in a new browser window. Here you need to specify the email addresses where you want the file to be sent. You can import your contacts from you Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail/AOL account in the SugarSync Adress Book. Unfortunately you can’t get just the link to quickly send it by IM.

Photo Gallery

If you wanted to quickly and painlessly share an image gallery with friends, colleagues or family from a Mac you had three options :  export the gallery from iPhoto to Picasa Web Albums or Flickr (with the help of plugins) or publish it to  your .ME  account. Now there is an even faster way!

In the DropBox folder you have a folder called Photos. When you drop a folder with images in here a web gallery will be automatically created. You follow the same steps as in sharing a file to get the public link to the gallery. The gallery is very basic, with maximum 16 thumnails per page. When you click a photo thumbnail you will be presented with a scaled down to 640 by 480 version.

In SugarSync any synced folder that contains images will automatically have it’s own web photo album. To see this albums click Go to Photo Gallery button which will take you to the web interface.

The photo gallery is more advanced. You can choose between slide show, small/large thumbnail view or mosaic view (when you click a photo in thumbnail view). To share an album you have to to go through the obnoxious process of clicking the Share Album link and then selecting the emails where you want the gallery link to be sent. One thing to notice: after sharing the gallery with someone by email, you can now directly copy and send the gallery’s link in your browser’s address bar to your IM friends.

File Versioning

Both applications are similar to TimeMachine in Leopard. They store previous versions of all your files, so you can easily restore them at a later time.

After initial synchronization, every time you modify a file in DropBox, only the changes will be uploaded in the cloud, not the whole file. In the DropBox submenu click Versions to see all the revisions you made to that file.

SugarSync works in a similar manner, but it only stores the last five versions. Luckily, only the most recent version of each of your files counts towards your storage quota.

File Collaboration

One important feature that SugarSync lacks is collaboration. In DropBox you can create special folders you can share with other DropBox users. Any member of a shared folder can add, edit and delete the contents within and changes will be instantly synced to all members. So if you don’t fancy Google Docs and rather work on your offline document editor together with a colleague now you can!

Size and Price

DropBox offers a free plan with 2 GB storage and  $99 a year or $9.99 a month with 50 GB.

SugarSync has no free plans but at least you can choose a 45 days trial with 10 GB space. There are five paid plans:

Conclusion

There is no clear winner in this fight. They both do the job extremely well. SugarSync may have more features (like iPhone sync) , but the free 2 GB plan, Linux support and the unbelievably ease of use of DropBox, makes it more appealing for many (including me).

And if you wish DropBox had backup features for any folder on your disk, like SugarSync , instead of waiting for the implementation you might want to take a look at Mozy’s free 2 GB plan. But that’s the subject of another article!

This is where TuneUp Companion comes to the rescue : a small plugin for iTunes that manages to fix your ID3 tags and add album art.

Usability

To fix an album, you just have to select ‘Clean your mislabeled music’ and drag-n-drop the song or the album into the blue box. It usually takes about 5-15 seconds per song for the algorithm to recognize the song and present you with what it thinks is the right information. You then have a choice to save the correct information to your songs.

Depending on the ID3 tag version and how much of the information is wrong it usually takes less than 30 seconds for an entire album to be saved.

Adding album art is equally easy – you’re even presented with a choice between different versions of the cover.

There are some extra features:

• Integration with YouTube, for watching music videos and content related to the artist.
• Concert notifications from StubHub
• Album recommendations using Amazon
• eBay integration for tickets, CD’s, etc.
• Analyze feature tells you how many songs have correct tags.

Cons

This application only works with iTunes – no luck for Linux users or Windows Media Player fans.

It uses a product activation scheme – same as WGA or Photoshop for example – that creates an unique fingerprint for your computer. Once activated you’re limited to 1 license transfer to another computer.

As of writing this article users are reporting some issues with iTunes 8, which are solved by reinstalling the app. Mac version is ‘coming this fall’, and signups for the beta are open.

Conclusion

TuneUp Companion is very accurate – better than FixTunes and MusicBrainz in my tests – because it uses one of the largest, most comprehensive music databases, Gracenote.

The free version of TuneUp is limited to cleaning  500 songs and 50 album covers.  For unlimited cleans and album covers a single computer license is 11.95$/year or 19.95$ lifetime.

Download it from here.