There's a lot of good going on in the Linux world, far too much to comment on.

Just now, I'm updating some of the services on a Gentoo Linux web-services/network server system. That runs on just 42 watts total, including the power for the UPS and peripherals!

I'm always pleasantly surprised to find that any software that is of any interest at all is always up-to-the-minute available. There's very good caution where the very latest (usually experimental) versions are "masked out" so that automatically, you only get what is considered to be 'tried and tested' stable. If you're geekie enough to know to tweak the installation selection masks, you too can jump onto the cutting edge to experiment with the very latest up-to-the-minute developments... And you can immediately become involved yourself for anything you wish to modify or develop. There's none of the waiting for months for some big corporate monster to not do what you asked and paid for!


For a glib aside, here's a showing of a selection from a 'screenshots' contest run for Gentoo users:

Gentoo Linux Screenshots

It's worth zooming in on some of the selections. You have a good choice for what your desktop looks like and what you use for icons... There's many styles! :-)

One that caught my eye at first looks rather boring with just a black background. But... First-glance looks can be deceiving... "Simple is Beautiful (whtwtr): ... The rings represent cpu usage (large white rings), memory usage (green ring), and file system usage (yellow rings). The second conky instance runs the bottom info bar with uptime, temps, up/download speeds, calendar and current time. The globe image is taken from die.net and is a "Mollweide" projection of the earth's day/night shadow and He uses cron plus a small script to update the image every hour. (The clouds are updated every three hours.) Cool, eh?"

Yep... Some cool fun for all of them!


Spoilt for choice?

IT's all what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

OK... Having enthused about Gentoo just now, here's a quick way to try it out for yourself:


Gentoo 2011 LiveDVD

The LiveDVD runs entirely in the RAM of your computer. Your disk drives are not touched. Hence, you can just try it out without disturbing anything. Note though, that the DVD drive is thousands of times slower than your HDD to access data, so the 'Live' system will run slower than a normal HDD install.

Don't worry about the techno-speak for all the applications listed. Let's just say that there's a lot included! Two nicely clever bits are:

# Special Features:

    * Writable AUFS support so you can emerge new packages!
    * Persistence for $HOME is available; press F9 for more info!

That little bit means that there is a 'special' file system used that uses the compressed (read only) file system on the DVD, and then transparently overlays a writeable file system on top that is (temporarily) stored in RAM so that you can transparently add to the DVD read-only file system. That means you can add new files and install additional software to try.

The 'persistence' bit is a feature to let you save your changes somewhere, to a memory stick for example.

For the downloads:

x86 (32-bit)

x86_64/amd64 (64-bit)

Download the "iso" file that you wish to try. That can then be burnt to a DVD or written to a USB memory stick. You then boot from that.


Gentoo is very highly customisable and is considered to be 'elaborate'... A more straight-forward version of Linux to try is Ubuntu (Mac-like desktop) or Kubuntu (Windows-like desktop).


Spoilt for choice?

IT's all what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Whilst on the aspect of Linux screenshots... I guess a good wide set of examples can be seen on:

Google: Linux Screenshots


(BTW: Google runs pretty much entirely on Linux and open source solutions...)


Spoilt for choice?

IT's all what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Is this why Microsoft is now reduced to merely playing a game of FUD?


Linux Foundation Says Microsoft is a Puppy

Think Windows is the big operating system in the world? In terms of the big picture, it isn't. The little operating system that just started out as a personal project for Linux Torvalds is now what really runs computing worldwide.

The desktop and laptop personal computing market is still owned by Microsoft, but the foundation on which everything else rests is Linux. The days of Linux fearing Microsoft are over. In fact, Linux has grown to the point where it almost feels sorry for Microsoft.

"I think we just don't care that much [about Microsoft] anymore," says Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin in an interview with Network World. "They used to be our big rival, but now it's kind of like kicking a puppy."

Almost 20 years ago, Linus Torvalds released his free operating system that he said would be "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu." And now, almost two decades later, his work has shaped the IT world. ...


IT's all what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

For a whole new look:

Ubuntu 11.04 Being Released Next Week

... This new version of the popular Linux OS will sport a new interface called Unity, making the Ubuntu experience easier, more visually appealing than prior builds. It will also introduce a cleaner workspace and a launcher located on the left-hand side of the screen. ...

Canonical said that the new Unity interface is designed for newer machines, inspired by smartphone and tablet designs. However, the new OS will automatically detect the graphics hardware and adjust accordingly, offering a "classic" version for rigs that don't have the hardware for the visually-enhanced Unity interface. Users can also manually switch...

Canonical will offer a free test-drive when the OS launches next week, accessible within a web browser. "Visitors to Ubuntu.com will be able to access a complete version of the latest product without having to download anything. All that is required is an Internet connection and an open mind,"...


All very good and very clever.

IT's all what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

For a whole new look: ...

And so it happened:


Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" Available: What's new?

The release of Ubuntu 11.04 has seen the arrival of a new look and feel for Ubuntu. A whizzy, new launcher and dash, and a clever workspace manager are some of the biggest changes. Take a look at what’s new and then feel free to choose...


Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" Available: Features

Your Ubuntu, your way

Enjoy the simplicity of Ubuntu's stylish, intuitive interface. Fast, secure and with thousands of apps to choose from...


The website 'experience' looks to be suffering a little from too much exposure to the same sort of media types that have put together the presentations for other big corporate websites... Such is the penalty for populist conforming for the masses I guess...

A less glossy and more readable announcement is given on:


Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" Available

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 11.04, code-named
"Natty Narwhal". 11.04 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating
the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality,
easy-to-use Linux distribution.

For PC users, Ubuntu 11.04 supports laptops, desktops and netbooks
with a unified look and feel based on a new desktop shell called "Unity".
...


And it is the new 'unity' look-and-feel which is generating quite a lot of controversy. Myself, I think it is an excellent idea for giving a unified and workable look-and-feel across a wide range of mobile and desktop devices that Linux so readily supports. It's good to have a good choice!

It's also good that there continues to be a lot happening in the Linux world:

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 403, 2 May 2011

Ubuntu 11.04 made its appearance as scheduled last week and all the talk on many Linux forums is about upgrade experiences and the new Unity desktop. As always, opinions vary widely...

* Reviews: Gaming with Trine
* News: OMG! Ubuntu! publishes Unity guide, Lubuntu nears "official" status, Mageia releases first live CDs, interview with wattOS' Ronald Ropp
* Questions and answers: Choosing the right distribution and software
* Released last week: Ubuntu 11.04, Slackware Linux 13.37, OpenBSD 4.9
* Donations: Calibre receives US$300.00
* New distributions: Icefeast Linux, Remix_OS
* Reader comments


Over Easter, I decided to take a look for myself at a fistful of Linux distributions and... Some are certainly a little rough and ragged but on the whole, the quality and presentation and flexibility is impressive.

One that I rather liked that is shaping up nicely is the Magia spin-off from Mandriva. Note their dire warnings for their continuing development being very much continuing. Even so, I've found their LiveCD development Beta to be pretty good. However, a little knowledge of what it does is needed to appreciate it and something that needs adding to the startup introduction that is displayed upon bootup.

Mageia: Live CDs are now available for tests!

It took more time than expected but here they are: live CD ISOs for Mageia beta2. You will find, for now, 2 ISOs; one for each of KDE4 and GNOME. ...

You can burn the iso image to CD or you can directly copy it to a memory stick as an image to automatically create a bootable device. There's some very clever formatting in there that makes the same image work for both cases. For those using *nix or cygwin, you can use for example:

dd if=mageia-livecd-1-beta2-KDE4-int-cdrom-i586.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M

where "sdX" is your memory stick to directly write the image. There's also various nice graphical ways to do it. For the not-so-geekie, burning the iso image (and not as a file) to a CD using your familiar burn software is by far the easiest!


I also stumbled into some of the cleverness in the Linux kernel for the 100ns resolution event timers and how the entire system can go to sleep between events. It's all an old development now but I'm always pleasantly surprised by the level of detail and thoughtfulness that goes into the code.

All good stuff!


Enjoy...

IT's all what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Now here's an interesting idea, and quite an apt comment on what is taught in schools:


UK developer creates £15 computer for kids

A UK DEVELOPER has created a computer for school children that will cost as little as £10 to £15, potentially ending the education gap between wealthy and poorer families.

David Braben, who co-developed the Elite space trading computer game, has developed a tiny computer based around a USB stick called the Raspberry Pi. The little device will plug into a HDMI TV for video output and will allow a keyboard to be plugged in via the USB port. ...

... support for Open GL ES 2.0 and HD 1080p H.264 high-profile decode. It will also feature a slew of open source software, including Ubuntu, Iceweasel, Koffice and Python. Not bad for 15 quid. ...

... Braben was critical of the ICT classes taught in school these days, which mainly focus on Microsoft centric office skills like using Word, Excel and Powerpoint, instead of teaching the wider skills of computer science. He said college applications for computer science dropped by around 50 per cent in the early 2000s, calling it a shocking indictment of ICT. He hopes that the Raspberry Pi will encourage children to learn more about computer science. ...



IT's all what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

David Braben, who co-developed the Elite space trading computer game

I remember playing that in 1985 on my BBC B.

People soon forget just how revolutionary all that was. The BBC home computers were expensive, but they were nothing like as expensive as the 'commercial' small computers of the day. A whole generation were quickly introduced to home computing and lots more...

... Braben was critical of the ICT classes taught in school these days, which mainly focus on Microsoft centric office skills like using Word, Excel and Powerpoint, instead of teaching the wider skills of computer science. He said college applications for computer science dropped by around 50 per cent in the early 2000s, calling it a shocking indictment of ICT. He hopes that the Raspberry Pi will encourage children to learn more about computer science. ...

I've taught MSoffice in College for over 9 years and I have to disagree with Brabens comments. The job of a school or College is to teach students skills that are transferrable to the marketplace and enable them to find employment, or run their own business.

People don't need to know how a computer works, only how to use it efficiently and correctly. You learn to drive a car, you don't need to know technical details of camshafts and synchromesh etc, just how to check the tyres, oil, and water. ...

Except that my experience of supporting teachers at school for their IT is that they have no time nor any interest for learning anything new themselves, and so the computer world has left them long and far behind.

To use your analogy, that's like still teaching how to blindly drive a model T Ford just because that was the first and cheapest mass produced car. Oh, and Ford cleverly gave away a few models for free to the driving schools to drum up business.

Meanwhile, we have moved on a long way. Today's children should be learning about how to use ANY computer desktop so that they can just as easily use anything from any of Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Google, Android, and the various cloud office environments.

Why only teach what is already long out of date?

Kids don't mess around with breadboards these days, or build cats whisker radios in cigar boxes like he probably did. ...

Some cannot even change a light bulb (and not for philosophical reasons either!).

I wonder why?...


I strongly believe teaching should teach people how to learn and explore and find out for themselves. So for example, they can usefully use any computer regardless of the name on the box. Also, they should be encouraged with enough confidence so that they are not slave to the latest Marketing ploys...

Keep searchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

... I might also mention that for the last 2 years it has been a Mandatory requirement in the UK, for all FE teachers to enrol as a Member of the Institute for Learning (IfL) which requires 30 hours per year documented Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and pro-rata for part time staff.

That is pitiful and woefully inadequate for a subject that develops and moves on as rapidly as the computer world. That '30 hours' partly explains why our schools are still stuck on Windows95 and Windows98...

Meanwhile, we have moved on a long way. Today's children should be learning about how to use ANY computer desktop so that they can just as easily use anything from any of Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Google, Android, and the various cloud office environments.

I would not entirely agree with you there. Like a lot of my students, you seem to be confusing Operating Systems and Applications. Apple Macs can run MSOffice programs...

I used very careful wording to deliberately NOT be OS or application specific at all. That is especially important as we move to a mix of 'desktop' and 'cloud' computing. You never know, the latest push with the various graphics tablets may well push that mix more quickly.

Does your answer show some hidden ingrained psychology?...


Perhaps Microsoft Office is the last bastion of proprietary lock-in that Microsoft is clinging to. Perhaps their long-time influence in schools will enslave another generation or two yet?

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is steadily moving away from obfuscated and secret proprietary document formats so that everyone can much more easily work with one another.

There's more than one way to run an office. Students are actually disadvantaged if they only know one blind way of doing things. Perhaps that is why there is the continual cry that schools fail to prepare their students for the real world.


Blindly teaching one version of an Office suite is a blind alley and dead end. Much more important is to teach how to use application features in general and how features fit together. Then demonstrate that on a number of applications.

I guess teaching is stuck however many years behind for the average age of the teachers, and so teaching general practical computing skills is impossible.


Sorry, but you'll quickly need to get up to speed to use 'touch' GUIs.

Regards,
Martin


GUI: Graphical User Interface. The underlying general principles of interaction have developed steadily since first explored at the Xerox Palo Alto R&D site in the 1970's and 1980's...

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I've taught MSoffice in College for over 9 years and I have to disagree with Brabens comments. The job of a school or College is to teach students skills that are transferrable to the marketplace and enable them to find employment, or run their own business. The days of typing pools have gone everybody uses a PC and word processing in offices now.

With commerce and industry consistently cutting back on expediture to save money, almost everybody has to use a spreadsheet to monitor expenses. Even junior staff quite regularly need to make presentations to managers upon many subjects, hence the use of Powerpoint. There are many companies that don't employ office assistants without at least an ECDL.

People don't need to know how a computer works, only how to use it efficiently and correctly. You learn to drive a car, you don't need to know technical details of camshafts and synchromesh etc, just how to check the tyres, oil, and water.

This guy co-wrote Elite, so he is a programmer probably at assember or machine code level, and he would need to know about peeking and poking registers, and data buses etc. Kids don't mess around with breadboards these days, or build cats whisker radios in cigar boxes like he probably did. He's only 47, but he sounds like 67!

Teaching office skills is fine in and of itself, though it is not a replacement for computer science and we shouldn't fool ourselves that it is. A student that knows how to use excel is woefully under prepared to support a company's IT department, or indeed to develop new applications for a business to use. I suspect Braben's comments are addressing this gap in current IT courses, which sound suspiciously like a modern version of a secretarial course.

---

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

Been using UBUNTU for 2 years now. It is awesome.

... current IT courses, which sound suspiciously like a modern version of a secretarial course.

I think that is the nub of the problem for the miss-naming and pretence with calling the teaching of 'basic computer skills' something far more grandiose...

So we need to admit that Computer Science and IT are not being taught in our schools in any meaningful way.

Regards,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Been using UBUNTU for 2 years now. It is awesome.

Thanks, I can agree.

However, for Ubuntu there's some controversy over the new Unity interface for the latest Ubuntu release. Some comment that it has been pushed out too soon and may put a few people off.

It's certainly quite a radical change. You still have the choice of selecting to use if you wish the Gnome desktop instead of the Unity 'touch screen style' desktop. Myself, I think it is a good and refreshing new set of ideas and a good new look. I hope the updates to polish it up come out quickly to ease the controversy.


Meanwhile, there's still a steady stream of new distros and new updates to distros coming out. All very lively. One I've noticed that is looking good is Mageia. They're still working on their first release but that is coming up soon.

IT is what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

And amongst various developments, here is a good comment on how some of the big manufacturers now view free-libre open source:

Kernel comment: Perseverance pays off

Today, there are open source Linux drivers for all major Wi-Fi chips, which was unimaginable five years ago. The constant pressure for open source drivers has thus paid off, and this may also work in other areas in the long term.

"Buy a Centrino notebook, and then the Wi-Fi chipset will work with Linux." Five years ago, such simplifications were more common because a lot of the Wi-Fi components either did not run on Linux or took a lot of tweaking, say, with Ndiswrapper and Driverloader to get the NDIS drivers intended for use with Windows to run on Linux. ...

[Now] ... all major manufacturers of Wi-Fi hardware for PCs and notebooks are currently working on open source drivers maintained within work on the Linux kernel.

Wi-Fi chips that are well supported by the Linux kernel therefore work on a lot of current distributions right after installation, or with live media, without any user intervention. In fact, the process is much more user-friendly than in the Windows world...

... following Intel's example, AMD has been working on open source drivers for its own graphics chips for a few years, and work is improving. ... In the long run, the situation for open source graphics drivers could improve in the way it did for Wi-Fi drivers. One day, NVIDIA might even realise that open source drivers are important ... a realisation that the firm came to a few years ago regarding drivers for mainboard chipsets.


IT is what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

DING DING DING he just got it. Linux is software so an advertisement for server software isnt marketed towards individuals. As stated before, nice commercials but not important to the general public. As you repeated what I noted, Servers aren't desktops and server software isnt desktop software. It seems clear that the argument isnt about the software but about having the last word. I still don't see the idea of the multitude of OSes making a generic ad
I can see them advertising a website to help people choose an OS. a simple Q&A that could determine a users needs and abilities. I think that within 6 or 7 questions I could figure out if a person needs the beginners version of Linux or an advanced version

Linux is only the kernal. All the rest are apps.

So I can run the apps Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Microsoft Office suite on Linux, because they are just apps.

If you use Wine, yes. The government of Germany started doing that a few years ago. But that is not the point.

Which OS an app is written for does not make the app the OS. There is a version of MS Office written for the Mac and OS-X for the Max is a flavor of linux. That does not make MS Office either part of the Mac OS or Linux.

There are some apps which require handles in the OS but those are quite fundamental things like the type of file system that can be created and used without translation.

actually, the project failed cause it was too costly, and they went back to windows.


hups, sorry, yellow flag put me into past, that was answered long ago.

but funny, no mention of nokia choosing to use wp 7 and dropping meego.

actually, the project failed cause it was too costly, and they went back to windows.

That one looks to be more a game of politics than anything technical or to do with costs.

... but funny, no mention of nokia choosing to use wp 7 and dropping meego.

Now that example is a LOT more 'interesting'. One interpretation is that Nokia have been out-developed by new upstarts such as HTC who have taken advantage of Google's Android software system (Linux + Google proprietary bits) and remarkably quickly gained a significant market share. Nokia had nothing ready in time to compete...

Microsoft (opportunistically? desperately?) using Nokia, buys into the market for over a billion dollars!...

The Win7 mobile non-x86 architecture devices are now two years or so behind the rest of the world using ARM and Tegra cores (and others). It will be very interesting to see how well Microsoft can buy itself into the mobile market.


Possibly more worryingly is how rampantly successful the Android-based devices are and how there seems to be simply no competitor to compete against Google. Will Google become tainted by the gained power for world domination?


Interesting times...

Linux is a tool to be freely used. As with any tool, that can be for good or for bad...

IT is what we make it,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

The world is 90% Wintel and will be for the foreseeable future,. Geeks will always be using Linux as will the Desktop publishing be using Apple macs.

I'd like to see the source of your figures for that...

Last quarter, Apple made more profit than Microsoft. Also, from the various recent manoeuvrings and thrashings seen from Microsoft, there looks to be some renewed desperation to buy into new markets before the cash-cow Windows and Office products get sidelined further...

Google will probably end up becoming a second Microsoft, because nobody like an industry monopoly big-head.

That's one possibility. Also Google has to tread carefully around any 'anti-trust' and 'anti-competitive behaviour' concerns... Perhaps the new big IT companies are learning from Microsoft's examples in various ways for what not to do!


Great power corrupts, always?

IT is what we make it!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

the WP7 is much more modern and innovative than the ios phone or android, and with mango in autumn, every niche that has in previous version, will be corrected.
future actually looks good for WP7.

Last quarter, Apple made more profit than Microsoft.

Making more profit doesn't equate to selling more. More often it means larger profit margins. My guess is that most of it is coming from devices like iPods and iPads and from revenue sources such as the iTunes Music Store.

I certainly wouldn't conclude that because Apple is making high profits that they're taking marketshare away from Microsoft.

Last quarter, Apple made more profit than Microsoft.

Making more profit doesn't equate to selling more. More often it means larger profit margins. My guess is that most of it is coming from devices like iPods and iPads and from revenue sources such as the iTunes Music Store.

I certainly wouldn't conclude that because Apple is making high profits that they're taking marketshare away from Microsoft.

That depends on what market share means. If you mean desktop systems only, you have a point. If you mean computing devices you don't have a point. I believe Apple is way out in front and desktops are a dead market.

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