Updates and Streaming this Friday
So because I haven't posted in a while, I do have a couple things I would like to mention, and just throw out a couple updates.
For one, I'm still on Ubuntu. =) I deleted my Windows partition about a month ago, even though I'm contemplating putting it back on the 80GB to play some games on, of course.
So, what can you probably expect in the near future? In about a couple weeks I will be giving my thoughts on Ubuntu 10.10 when thats released, also to note I will be going 64-bit again! =) About half a month ago when IE9 beta was released Adobe decided to come out with Adobe Flash Player Square, which has support for 64-bit on All three platforms, OS X, Windows, AAAAAAND Linux. 
I am definitely excited to go back to 64-bit once Ubuntu 10.10 is released.
And of course, as the title of this blog post mentions, I WILL be streaming this Friday. After a little bit of thinking, for about a few weeks I'm gonna give streaming every Friday night and doing a show a trial and see how that goes. If it goes well, and I get a good amount of Interest, I WILL continue doing it every Friday night, if not, then oh well, I might still do it. I will make a note of what time I plan on doing that, probably doing the evening.
A few updates on the IRC channel.. CondyBot is current down for the moment. Until I can get another machine to put CondyBot (that uses very little energy and is quiet), I will have somebody else running an IRC bot. Thanks to Dan/Grimreaper on that one.
Another thing that I have setup recently is a Teamspeak server that I set up for personal use, a few friends, and it also serves as the Backup Server for the This Week In Linux Teamspeak server.
And as a final note, as you may have noticed there are a few posts on this blog that were not written by me, that is because I have decided to allow FlamingLinux, someone I have met from the TWIL Community, to do blog posts on Linux related topics every now and then. 
Anyway, thanks for reading, please check later for a specific time on when I will be doing the stream this Friday, subscribe (As I normally say) to get updates on future blog posts/content, also you can follow my on Twitter which is @condoulo, and subscribe to the youtube channel Condoulo (Which I will be putting the shows up on). Until Next Time,
- Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo)
New Random Blog Post, Updates, etc.
Ok, I apologize for not keeping up with my promise last month. Summer started to drag on, I had a cold for the first week and a half of June, etc. etc. So anyway, its July 1st, new month, and I figured, time for a new blog post.
So in the past month I've probably used Ubuntu 10.04 95% of the time, and Windows Vista about 5% of the time. So, I'm definitely using Linux hell of a lot more than I have in the past, which is definitely a good thing! Yes, I have gotten used to the buttons being on the left side of the titlebar, and even Ubuntu's new Ambiance Theme (although I changed it to something else eventually anyway).
So, around a week and a half ago I decided to order a new 500GB HDD. I wasn't running dangerously low on space, but I figured I might as well order one just to have the extra space, have one nice really large drive, and for performance too (the 32MB of cache is pretty nice). The drive I ordered was a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black. Absolutely amazing drive. Boots up into Ubuntu 10.04 much quicker than the 40GB I previous had Ubuntu on. And just to bring it, my previous drive configuration was 1x120GB for Vista, 1x80GB for Storage, and 1x40GB for Ubuntu 10.04. Now its 1x500GB for Ubuntu, 1x120GB for Vista, and 1x80GB for Storage. I'll include the unboxing video of the HDD below. I gave the 40GB SATA to my younger brother to use as an extra drive, which brings up the next topic.
My younger brother having had suffered 2 months on a A8N-SLI board (after trading motherboards with my other younger brother) which wouldn't work with his video card or Processor correctly (it detected his Socket 939 Athlon x2 as a Single Core), he finally got a new motherboard/CPU with 3GB of DDR2 RAM included. He's now finally able to use his 512MB 8600GT again, and his new CPU is an Athlon II x3 CPU at 2.7GHhz. Of course, because that boards only IDE channel would have been taken up by his Optical Drive, we had to order ANOTHER 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black drive. The pure fact that it was on sale AGAIN when we realized he needed another drive was some pretty good luck, otherwise we would have had to go with a 320GB or 250GB drive instead. But basically we set up a dual-boot on his system w/ XP and 7, plus a partition to store games. My youngest brother also got an upgrade out of this, including an upgrade to 2.5GB of RAM, Socket 939 Athlon x2 2.4GHz, and an extra 80GB IDE HDD.
Another thing I would like to mention is I have an extra Pentium D + a Board laying around I am actually considering doing something with. I just need to get a case, HDD, an optical drive for it (and maybe just a little bit more RAM). What I was thinking is I could possibly set that up to do videos on AND I will also probably use that as a machine to setup and do distribution testing and reviews on.
Anyway, I did mention I was getting used to Ubuntu's Ambiance Theme, well, thats when I decided to install the Elementary Theme Package, including The Elementary Modification of GNOME's File Manager Nautilus. I absolutely love this theme, and its actually going to be the Default theme of a Ubuntu-based distribution coming out called "Elementary OS". I think I might do a review on that in the future. That, along w/ Installing the AWN Dock, and using GNOME-DO, I can definitely say this UI is heck of a lot better than Window's UI.
So to continue on with my aimless rambling (is it really aimless?), while I kind of didn't go through with my blog every day in June, I definitely plan on doing more blog posts this month. I have been messing around with some pretty interesting software packages lately, mostly ones I found via Ubuntu's Software manager, that I would probably like to talk about, including an application I'm using to type this blog post in right now. So thats what I might focus my blog posts on in the next week, and I might even include videos. So, I would recommend keeping your eyes glued to this blog.
Anyway, thanks for reading this rambling blog post just updating a few things. Please subscribe to my Blog so you can keep on reading the next series of posts reviewing certain pieces of software, and I would definitely love some Constructive Feedback/Criticism in the comments section.
~ Tyler J. Brown
My browser situation in Linux
I don't know why, but it seems with every release of Firefox, on Linux it starts to feel more and more sluggish. Not just loading pages (Thats actually improved in a way,) but in overall performance, CPU usage, Javascript performance, and overall sluggishness. It really feels as if Mozilla is catering more to those that are switching over from IE on Windows, versus those that have been using Firefox on Linux for many years, and its just been starting to feel more and more like a bad port (not entirely, but it feels like its going into that direction,)
Though, I guess one thing I do have to realize while in the middle of this rant, is the architecture of my CPU is kind of aging, bit time. I have a Pentium D (also note that I have 2GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon HD2600XT 512MB Video card, and an 160GB SATA HDD,) which is basically two P4 cores on one chip, which was fine at some point, but most developers these days, and I'm assuming the same goes for Mozilla, are developing more so for the Core 2, Athlon X2, and Phenom architectures versus the old P4 architecture, despite a good amount of people still being on that architecture (Whether it be the actual P4, Pentium Ds, or a Celeron.)
Anyway, before I go onto that tangent, I will get back onto browsers. Firefox has just not felt like the fast Ferrari it used to be on Linux, or on my system in general. On Windows Vista/7 I've already switched to Google Chrome, Webkit has got to be the fastest rendering engine I have ever used, and Chrome's V8 Javascript engine is also amazing. The way it manages its processes also allows it to have amazing performance on my system.
So what does that have to do with Linux? Well, on Linux, Chrome is not officially out yet, and the Chromium Builds have just finally started to feel better and more stable, but they're not good/stable enough to be put into daily use, although, the latest Chromium Build on Linux has possibly got to be the fastest browser I have ever seen in terms of loading pages, and, it definitely doesn't feel the sluggishness I feel on Firefox.
So, if Chrome isn't ready, and Firefox is starting to feel very sluggish on Linux on my system, where do I turn? Epiphany doesn't exactly offer what I want, Konqueror doesn't have the same feel in GNOME that it does in KDE, and many of the other browsers designed specifically for Linux are just too basic for me/don't function the way I want it to.
I think just within the past few days I have grown to really love the Opera web browser on Linux. Its fast, its stable, the Opera 10 beta has a new beautiful theme, and new functionality I have grown to love. Opera just doesn't feel the same sluggishness that I have felt in Firefox recently either. Another thing I love is Opera sync - so if I so happen to find a piece of software I want to try out of look at on Windows (natively, mind you,) but don't feel like rebooting, I just bookmark it in Opera, and then reboot when I feel like it.
A few of the other features I like? Tab locking, prevents you from accidentally closing a tab you absolutely want open (like one you are typing an extensive Google Docs, or e-mail document on,) the tab bar now has built in previews when you resize it (screenshot below,) an amazing download manager, notes, Speed Dial (which in Opera 10 beta is customizable,) and probably many other hidden features I have yet to find.
Now time for the screenshots!
Opera's speed dial is now customizable
Opera's new tab bar feature
Overall, in terms of a browsing experience, and features, I give Opera a 10/10. I feel this browser definitely isn't getting the attention it deserves, or is over-looked way too much. Maybe because its not entirely open source? Or maybe the fact its been around forever (but you think that'd be a sign of strength.) Whatever it may be, it doesn't change the fact the Opera is a great browser, and for the time being, it will become my default browser on Linux, well, unless the final version of Chrome for Linux just completely wows me (and knowing how they did a good job on that on Windows, it is very likely.)
Anyway, thanks for reading my blog, and my blog post. Please subscribe, and check back for more. I promise, this time, I will be more dedicated to blogging. (to subscribe, just click on the orange RSS icon at the top of the page that says "Subscribe to RSS")
Also, if you need great, reliable web hosting, or a VPS, please check out Constant-Hosting.
~ Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo)
Has Microsoft lost focus?
I've been looking into it a bit recently, and I am thinking more and more that Microsoft has lost their focus with Windows, and is possibly even looking into the wrong direction.
So what is that wrong direction that Microsoft is looking towards? That direction is back towards the past. Microsoft has announced that with every copy of Windows 7 Business and Ultimate, there will also be a copy of Windows XP available to Install in Microsoft VPC2007.
I know there are a lot of people who will want XP around to use, but most people who will take the time to virtualize it, probably already have a license, and for the purposes they want to virtualize it for, they will probably just use VMWare or Virtualbox, especially if they choose to play a few old games on there, Virtualbox supports Graphics acceleration, while MSVPC2007 does not.
I also think they may have lost their focus on Windows, while they are trying to compete with every market out there. I know Microsoft is a large company, and they do have quite a few divisions, but I feel that when Microsoft does pay attention to their key product, Windows, they seem to be looking again, into a wrong direction, whether it be the past, or the wrong group of users. I feel that with Microsoft offering that copy of XP, instead of listening to the users who said "I don't like Vista, but Microsoft, with the next version, you could do this, and modify this a bit, you could also work on this a bit." enough, and they decided to pay more attention to the users who were like "OMG! VISTA SUXORZ! DON'T GET IT! VIVA LA XP! THEY CAN'T DO A THING TO SAVE IT!!!1!1!1!!!"
A couple of other things that Microsoft paid attention to, that again, they shouldn't have really even considered, were listening to users who didn't have adequate hardware to run Vista and still complained about it, those that only run Windows in virtual machines to run certain pieces of software they can't run on their native OS (thats directed to **NIX and OS X users,) and one new thing that popped up in the past few years that has gotten Microsoft even more involved with keeping XP, was the Netbook market.
Yes, I mentioned netbooks, which brings me to my next point, one of the major reasons Microsoft has lost focus on their key product, is they are trying to enter and compete in other markets as well, including competing with new Phone OS', Netbooks, web-search, advertising, mp3 players, and quite a few other markets.
I know Microsoft previous had a phone OS, so I will excuse them on that, and they don't even focus on that as well, but, Microsoft's irrational fear of Linux taking over due Linux having great success in the Netbook market, kind of really dragged MS into the netbook market, causing Microsoft to loose focus, again, on the future version of Windows because Vista was just way too large for netbooks, so focusing on the past, they extended XP support to go along with the netbook craze.
Then you've got Search and advertising, while I haven't seen much in advertising, I know Microsoft has been trying constantly in the past few years to compete Google - face it Microsoft, Google is king of the Search industry. When people want to search something, 95% of the time, you will hear Google. You're trying way too hard, and are lacking the simplicity that keeps bringing people back to Google.
Then you've got the mp3 market with the Zune, ah yes, the Zune. Ok, you had a bunch of people complement the Zune, ok, but, I do believe the Zune was almost as bad as Apple in the DRM department, if not worse with the Zune subscription service. I think after you quit the Zune subscription service, your songs just won't play after like a week, while if you quit iTunes, I believe you still have your songs (but, of course, they only play on one type of player, the iPod.)
Before I loose you in the midst of my rambling, I will sum it all up: Microsoft has lost focus and keeps looking into the wrong direction. I can even imagine an Apple commercial out of this - Where PC's neck is crooked starting at his own arse. Anyway, thanks for reading, please subscribe to this blog, pass it on, etc. etc.
~ Tyler Brown (condoulo)