Thesis 2 = Frustrating Failure

by Mike on April 5, 2013

After spend­ing sev­eral hours try­ing to get The­sis 2 in work­ing order on this blog, I have removed it from the server in dis­gust. What a huge dis­ap­point­ment, to find it no longer is worth the effort to keep it working.

I sup­pose it is time to start inves­ti­gat­ing other options. Per­haps the Gen­e­sis Frame­work will play nicely, where The­sis sim­ply would not. Sur­prise, sur­prise, yet another license I paid too much money to own, that is now worth­less to me.

I will be remov­ing the The­sis affil­i­ate ads from this site, as I would not wish The­sis 2.0 on my worst enemy. Chris Pear­son, you def­i­nitely screwed the pooch on this one. Thanks for naught but a wasted day.

{ 0 comments }

Linux Future Is Getting Brighter

by Mike on July 31, 2012

With each pass­ing day, it is becom­ing more clear that Linux is not only here to stay, but is poised to start tak­ing more oper­at­ing sys­tem mar­ket share.

When com­puter man­u­fac­tur­ing giant Dell announced it would be mar­ket­ing a Linux lap­top, based on its XPS 13, the Linux blog­gers were sud­denly post­ing every­where.  Dubbed Project Sput­nik, Dell announced they would be offer­ing Ubuntu 12.04, Pre­cise Pan­golin, on a Dell XPS 13 Ultra­book.  They also announced the for­ma­tion of a ‘Sput­nik Beta Cos­mo­naut pro­gram’, where appli­cants could sign on to receive one of the new Ubuntu lap­tops at a dis­counted price, in exchange for some user feed­back.  And the Cos­mo­naut pro­gram exploded with thou­sands of appli­cants, which has already led to the pro­gram being closed to new appli­ca­tions.  Dell announced the Sput­nik pilot project to the world and within four days could see it was time to move from a pilot pro­gram to pro­duc­ing the prod­uct.  Dell’s mar­ket­ing lever­age will surely help peo­ple see the increased use of Linux.

One of the biggest obsta­cles to younger users con­vert­ing to Linux has been their abil­ity to game on their PCs.  But we now know that is going to be chang­ing, as well, since Valve Soft­ware announced they have devel­oped a team to port Steam games to the Linux plat­form.  I notice the pro-Windows crowd are already ques­tion­ing the deci­sion of Gabe Newell, Valve’s co-founder and man­ag­ing direc­tor, to embrace Linux.  But what they are miss­ing is the sim­ple fact that port­ing Steam over to Linux is going to rep­re­sent a con­sid­er­able finan­cial expense for Valve, yet they are still mov­ing forward.

And there is no way Microsoft can ignore how it is con­tin­u­ally los­ing mar­ket share.  When Van­ity Fair pub­lished its Microsoft’s Lost Decade arti­cle, the incred­i­ble shift in Microsoft’s mar­ket­ing posi­tion was right there, in black and white.  In Decem­ber 2000, Microsoft had a mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion fig­ure of $510 bil­lion and was the world’s most valu­able com­pany.  At the same time, Apple had a mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion of just $4.8 bil­lion and didn’t make the cut for the list of most valu­able com­pa­nies.  As of June 2012, Apple is now listed as the most valu­able com­pany with a mar­ket cap of $541 bil­lion, while Microsoft has slumped to num­ber 3, with a mar­ket cap fig­ure of just $249 billion.

Ben Hill, a for­mer Microsoft man­ager had this to say about the soft­ware giant — “They used to point their fin­gers at IBM and laugh.  Now they’ve become the thing they despised.”

Add to that the fact Microsoft recently reported its first quar­terly loss in 26 years as a pub­lic com­pany and things all point to the U.S.S. Microsoft being a ship that is tak­ing on water.

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer can say rev­enue is still good all he likes, but here is a num­ber he can­not avoid.  At one point in time, Microsoft shipped 95% of all the oper­at­ing sys­tem licenses on PCs, but that fig­ure is now down to only 75%.  Call it any­thing you want, that is still a huge decline.

What most North Amer­i­cans do not know is that this is the only geo­graphic loca­tion where it is still dif­fi­cult to find a Linux PC on a retailer’s shelves.  Dell has been sell­ing GNU/Linux PCs in over 1,000 retail stores in India and China.  Visit a Wal­Mart in Brazil and you will find Pos­i­tivo, a Brazilian-based com­pany, is sell­ing 21 dif­fer­ent PCs with Linux.  Dell is fac­ing the fact that they are going to have to start offer­ing GNU/Linux PCs, in order to take back some of the shelf space other com­puter man­u­fac­tur­ers have been tak­ing for them­selves.  As gov­ern­ments and schools around the world con­tinue to embrace Linux, Dell has to decide to either pro­vide Linux-based PCs and lap­tops, or to give that mar­ket share to their competitors.

Roberto Lim posted the fol­low­ing obser­va­tions about Microsoft on Mobile Rap­tor -

A near monop­oly is like a dic­ta­tor.  Even a benign dic­ta­tor runs the risk of fail­ing to respond to the needs of the peo­ple, and how many peo­ple would called Microsoft benign?

What Microsoft for­got is that sooner or later, the masses do rebel.

Yes, the mil­lions of peo­ple who are already run­ning Linux dis­tri­b­u­tions as their oper­at­ing sys­tems of choice are start­ing the put on their sun­glasses, what the the Linux future being so bright.

{ 0 comments }

GNOME In A Shell?">Is GNOME In A Shell?

by Mike on July 30, 2012

GNOME logoFor the best part of the last decade, the GNOME Project has been behind what has arguably been the most pop­u­lar desk­top envi­ron­ment for Linux users. But it seems the tide of pop­u­lar­ity is pulling back out and there is con­cern that GNOME might wash out with the tide. As GNOME users can clearly see from this blog post, at least one devel­oper is show­ing some deep-felt con­cern over recent devel­op­ments. Core GNOME devel­op­ers are leav­ing the project, the GNOME project is now under­staffed, GNOME is increas­ingly reliant on Red Hat and what is most dis­turb­ing of all is the obser­va­tion that GNOME has no goals and is los­ing mar­ket share.

I cut my Linux teeth on Ubuntu 7.04, so I’ve always tended to grav­i­tate toward Linux dis­tri­b­u­tions with the GNOME desk­top envi­ron­ment. I’ve flirted, albeit briefly, with run­ning KDE, but I always find myself com­ing back to GNOME. I run Linux on a daily basis and on all of my com­put­ers, so I’ve been very inter­ested in what has been hap­pen­ing since GNOME decided to dis­con­tinue devel­op­ment on GNOME 2. Some­one at GNOME obvi­ously thinks the GNOME Shell is a vast improve­ment over GNOME 2, but I sim­ply do not agree. And much to GNOME’s cha­grin, many other Linux users feel the same way.

There have been some inter­faces devel­oped, to try to soften the blow of los­ing GNOME 2. It was assumed Ubuntu’s Unity inter­face would gain a lot of trac­tion, but there have been count­less Ubuntu users dri­ven away by Unity. In what I see as a rather ques­tion­able move, the GNOME:Ayatana project has made Unity avail­able on Fedora 17. Time may well prove me wrong, but I do not see this as being a pos­i­tive game-changer for Fedora users.

Linux Mint’s Clem Lefeb­vre is also devel­op­ing the Cin­na­mon inter­face, which I have used on Mint with suc­cess. But at the end of the day, I real­ized I was going to have to crawl out of my GNOME 2 com­fort zone, because Cin­na­mon wasn’t what I had come to learn and enjoy in my choice of desk­top environments.

Hope­fully the devel­op­ers at GNOME will stop try­ing to posi­tion them­selves as the be-all and end-all for users of hand­held devices and remem­ber they got where they are today by devel­op­ing a really won­der­ful desk­top envi­ron­ment for peo­ple run­ning Linux on their desk­top com­put­ers. I am of the opin­ion GNOME is fol­low­ing Microsoft onto the same slip­pery slope where Win­dows 8 is headed. Per­haps if they bring their focus back to being lead­ers in the devel­op­ment of Linux desk­top envi­ron­ments, GNOME will be able to step around the rather bleak out­look they now face.

But they will need to stop cry­ing into their cups and get busy, because at least one devel­oper is intent on bring­ing the tra­di­tional GNOME 2 look and feel back to Linux. Ikey Doherty, the founder and dri­ving force behind Solu­sOS, the most excit­ing Linux project I ever seen, has decided the way to give Solu­sOS a real GNOME 2 expe­ri­ence is to cre­ate the Solus Desk­top, which will pro­vide Solu­sOS users with the tra­di­tional GNOME 2 desk­top inter­ac­tions, but uses GTK3.4 and GNOME 3 com­po­nents. Instead of try­ing to toss every­thing out the win­dow, Ikey has decided to improve on what was already there.

Solus Panel with Cardapio

This will amount to a lot more than just a brand-new and cus­tomized Solu­sOS panel, as it will be extended to the entire Solus Desk­top. Every­thing will be able to be cus­tomized to the indi­vid­ual user’s tastes and needs. Are you miss­ing some­thing from GTK2? You’re going to see them com­ing back on the Solus Desk­top. If you want all the glitz of run­ning Com­piz, that is going to be part of the pack­age. Or maybe you just like the idea of run­ning a plain and sim­ple desk­top with a tra­di­tional panel and doing it with less than 130 MB of RAM.

Ikey is bring­ing the Linux desk­top back to Solu­sOS 2 users. And the future is really bright, because I’m no longer won­der­ing whether adapt­ing to the GNOME Shell will be less painful than try­ing to adapt to KDE. I’m going to be able to run the desk­top envi­ron­ment I’ve always been com­fort­able with run­ning. Solu­sOS is pro­vid­ing the sta­bil­ity of Debian, the attrac­tion of updated soft­ware appli­ca­tions, the only desk­top I’ve ever wanted to use and it’s doing all that with one of the warmest and most friendly user sup­port forums I’ve ever had the plea­sure of using. With this rev­o­lu­tion­ary way of think­ing, Ikey is cre­at­ing THE Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion every­one will be mov­ing toward in the com­ing weeks. From users who have years of Linux expe­ri­ence to users who are just start­ing to ven­ture out with Linux for the first time, Solu­sOS is already offer­ing every­thing a Linux user could pos­si­bly want.

{ 0 comments }

SolusOS 2 — The Intervention

by Mike on July 13, 2012

I admit it. I am a Linux addict. I find I can do every­thing I want to do with my com­put­ers, even though I’m run­ning Linux and not one of those Big 2 oper­at­ing sys­tems. My com­put­ers run fast and they do it for weeks and months at a time, with­out ever need­ing to be re-booted.

But I’ll also admit to not being a Linux-tech. I’ve run Linux for over five years and I’ve learned what I had to learn, in order to have my com­puter sys­tems run the way I want them to run. Other than that, I really don’t spend too much time ‘under the hood’, try­ing to learn every­thing there is to know about how Linux oper­ates. I know, the Linux purists out there are sneer­ing at me, but here’s the way I see it. Why would I ever want to run a Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion that requires me to work on it, when, like most other users, I really want an oper­at­ing sys­tem that works for me?

I’ve run the Linux gamut, from that day back in early 2007, when I set up a WUBI install of Ubuntu 7.04, to run­ning Debian Test­ing a few months back. I’ve a spin­dle of LiveCDs and LiveD­VDs sit­ting here on my shelf. I’ve installed and run sev­eral ver­sions of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Sim­ply­MEPIS, Man­driva, Fedora, open­SUSE, PCLin­uxOS and Zori­nOS. There are a cou­ple of those dis­tros that lived on at least one of my com­put­ers for quite a while, before I grew tired of them and moved on. I was always look­ing for the Linux that worked well on my machines and required min­i­mal under­stand­ing on my part. I was addicted to Linux and in search of the Per­fect Linux Distro.

I have to admit that after cut­ting my teeth on Ubuntu, I was famil­iar with Debian-based dis­tri­b­u­tions. And in spite of all the eye-candy that comes along with KDE, I’ve always been a GNOME kind of guy. Which always had me run­ning some ver­sion of Linux Mint on at least one of my com­put­ers. I first tried Linux Mint in late 2007 and there was always some­thing about Mint that kept me using it. I think it is the fact that Clem & Co. always made sure to spin an .iso that had all of the codecs and dri­vers, so I wasn’t hav­ing to be spend­ing my time try­ing to sort what I needed and where to find it all.

I would find a new and excit­ing dis­tro and would install it on one of my com­put­ers, but it seemed it was always lack­ing some user-friendly fea­ture that was part of Linux Mint. On 7 Sep­tem­ber 2010, Linux Mint intro­duced a new dis­tri­b­u­tion, Linux Mint Debian Edi­tion. Here was a chance to run Debian Linux with a Mint look and feel and I was all over it. The blog post announc­ing the release of LMDE was pay­ing spe­cial thanks to a devel­oper named Ikey Doherty. And before long, the Mint forums were full of praise for Ikey, as LMDE was the dis­tro so many of us had been look­ing for, but had never found. A rolling Debian edi­tion with all the user-friendly fea­tures of Linux Mint meant I had just found a ver­sion of Linux that would never need to be re-installed after an upgrade and I could install it with­out wor­ry­ing about my printer or sound cards being rec­og­nized. Unfor­tu­nately, things started falling apart after sev­eral months and the LMDE project was sud­denly not being devel­oped as well as we had hoped. And all of Ikey’s friendly and help­ful assis­tance on the Mint forums had ended.

SolusOS 2

Solu­sOS 2 — Is my search for the ‘Per­fect Linux Dis­tro’ finally over?

 

In March of this year, I was look­ing around at some Linux Web sites and saw men­tion of Solu­sOS Linux. Peo­ple were speak­ing very highly of it, so I tracked down the Solu­sOS Web site and started learn­ing what I could. My first con­cern was imme­di­ate — Solu­sOS was brand-new and was only avail­able as a release can­di­date down­load. I had run Debian Test­ing in the past, but I was really look­ing for some­thing more sta­ble, so the idea of Solu­sOS RC1 wasn’t very encour­ag­ing to me. I book­marked the page and went on about my day. The fol­low­ing day, curios­ity was get­ting the best of me, so I went back to the Solu­sOS Web site for another look. I found a link to their dis­cus­sion forums, so I decided to browse them and see what peo­ple were saying.

One of the first forum threads I opened had a post from a user named Ikey. Sud­denly, i was sit­ting upright in my chair. A cou­ple threads later, I real­ized this was the same Ikey Doherty who had been work­ing magic on LMDE. And with that, all my con­cerns went out the win­dow and I was down­load­ing Solu­sOS RC1. I booted into the LiveDVD and was imme­di­ately hooked, so I installed it on one of my com­put­ers. And whilst I was aware this was only a Release Can­di­date ver­sion, it was as sta­ble as Linux Mint and Linux Mint Debian Edition.

Within a cou­ple days, I was run­ning Solu­sOS on all three of my desk­top machines. I had one machine dual-booting LMDE and Solu­sOS, with another triple-booting Win­dows 7, PCLin­uxOS and Solu­sOS, and my iMac was dual-booting OS X and Solu­sOS. Here was Solu­sOS, a brand-new player in the Linux line-up, yet I was run­ning it on all my machines. Ikey was pro­vid­ing me with all the sta­bil­ity of Debian Squeeze, but with updated appli­ca­tions and I was lov­ing every bit of it.

So much so that I real­ized I was no longer down­load­ing other Linux dis­tros, to give them a trial run on my machines. I’ve been known to install a Linux dis­tro on one day and replace it with another on the very next day. But sud­denly, all that had stopped. Sim­ply because I found Solu­sOS was meet­ing all of my needs. My distro-hopping days were over. My addicted need to find the Linux dis­tro that was per­fect for my needs was sud­denly bro­ken. Solu­sOS inter­vened and I was happy and content.

When Linux Mint was updated to Mint 13 Maya, I removed PCLin­uxOS from my triple-boot machine and installed it on that par­ti­tion. But I always ran the machine in Solu­sOS. When LMDE was finally updated, I down­loaded a fresh .iso and re-installed it on that machine. It was work­ing, so I left that machine run­ning in LMDE, but it started pes­ter­ing me with some small errors. Errors that wouldn’t have both­ered me a few weeks ear­lier, but after run­ning Solu­sOS, I real­ized there was no need to put up with it any longer. I re-booted the machine into Solu­sOS and there it remained.

About a month ago, Ikey released an Alpha ver­sion of what is going to become Solu­sOS 2. I con­sid­ered grab­bing a copy to install on one of my machines, but I was so con­tent with how well Solu­sOS 1.1 was run­ning, I just couldn’t be both­ered to try any­thing else. Three days ago, I real­ized I could eas­ily install Solu­sOS 2 Alpha 5 on the machine that had been run­ning LMDE. It might sound a bit silly to be run­ning a Solu­sOS 1.1 instal­la­tion and a Solu­sOS 2 instal­la­tion on the same machine, but it had been over 4 months since I had played with a new Linux dis­tro. Tues­day evening installed it and imme­di­ately fell in love with it. I was amazed at how much bet­ter it looked. And here was a Linux dis­tro run­ning GNOME 3.4, but with a highly cus­tomized desk­top that looks, acts and feels just like GNOME 2. And using almost no mem­ory as it did it. As the night wore on, I real­ized what was going to end up happening.

Wednes­day morn­ing, I kept remind­ing myself that Solu­sOS 2 is only an Alpha test­ing release. I was still remind­ing myself of that fact as I wiped Solu­sOS 1.1 from my iMac and installed Solu­sOS 2 in its place. And 24 hours later, I was wip­ing the Mint 13 install off my triple-boot machine, so I could install Solu­sOS 2 on it. As of this writ­ing, my lap­top is the only machine not run­ning Solu­sOS 2, as it is dual-booting Win­dows 7 and Solu­sOS 1.1. Maybe I can resist Solu­sOS 2’s siren call, at least until Ikey gets to a Beta release.

I just went through a stack of Linux LiveD­VDs that have been sit­ting here on my desk. I found the most recent releases of Linux Mint, LMDE and PCLin­uxOS in that stack. And I took all of them and added them to the spin­dle with all the other disks. No more need to be try­ing other Linux dis­tros. Solu­sOS does every­thing I want, looks really great doing it and runs incred­i­bly fast on all of my machines.

Ikey, it’s a fact that Solu­sOS broke my addic­tion for yet another new dis­tro. Solu­sOS broke my need to find the Per­fect Linux Dis­tro, because as far as I am con­cerned, Solu­sOS IS the Per­fect Linux Distro.

For any­one who wants to give some­thing other than OS X and Win­dows a try, I can­not imag­ine you want­ing any­thing that Solu­sOS can­not offer.  I promise you Solu­sOS is cer­tainly worth a trial on your com­puter, so head over to the Solu­sOS down­load page and give it a try.  You won’t be disappointed.

{ 0 comments }

Time for a new Linux install

July 11, 2012

Tweet As I posted a few months back, I had installed Solu­sOS Linux and was enjoy­ing every bit of it. So much so, in fact, that every one of my four com­put­ers had Solu­sOS installed on them. I still had one sys­tem that was dual boot­ing both Solu­sOS and Linux Mint Debian Edi­tion. I had upgraded that machine to the […]

Read the full article →

SolusOS — Linux With Style and Attitude

March 9, 2012

Tweet As any­one with a bit of back­ground in Linux use can say, the release of another Linux dis­tro is gen­er­ally not earth­shak­ing news. But every now and again, some­thing really good shows up and starts demand­ing atten­tion. And Solu­sOS is that very dis­tro. To give you a bit of back­ground, Solu­sOS has been devel­oped by Ikey […]

Read the full article →

Linux Mint 12

January 4, 2012

Tweet As many of you will know, I use Linux as much as pos­si­ble. I’m yet to find any­thing I like about OS X and Win­dows is… Well, it’s Win­dows. I appre­ci­ate the free­dom of using Linux. A lit­tle over a year ago, I decided to accept a chal­lenge I had noticed on the Ubuntu forums that no one could ever man­age to remove […]

Read the full article →

Moving On and Moving Up With XenForo

December 13, 2011

Tweet After spend­ing the last 12 months watch­ing the sta­tis­tics on my Invi­sion Power Board sites tank, I decided it was time to make some changes. I sold the forum license for one site and gave the data­base to Lisa, over at AdminEx­tra. Two other sites died a mis­er­able death. A fourth site is barely hang­ing on and […]

Read the full article →

Linux — Good, Bad or Just Different

November 2, 2011

Tweet Any­one who knows me well is aware that I use Linux on my com­put­ers. I use Linux, I enjoy Linux and I pro­mote Linux. But any­one who has used some fla­vor of Linux will have one ques­tion come to mind. What fla­vor of Linux do I use, enjoy and pro­mote? One of the joys about using Linux is the ability […]

Read the full article →

The Rod Refuge Forums Software Conundrum

September 10, 2011

Tweet I’ve been con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of set­ting up a gen­eral street rod/hot rod forum for well over a year. I’ve been very for­tu­nate with The T-Bucket Forums and have watched them grow beyond my wildest expec­ta­tions. I’ve felt if I set up a gen­eral hot rod forum site and ran it with the same prin­ci­ples as the T-bucket […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries