Continue reading »]]> After I experienced a big rush of disappointment with the Mac and OS X Lion (you might want to check the previous posts), I really thought I have to look for an alternative. In the very least until such a time when Apple gets their clusterfuck back in working order.

I had a look around and learned that, after quite some of development, GNOME 3 was finally released to the world. However, my favorite Linux (up until yesterday), Ubuntu, ships their controversial “Unity” interface as default. Long story short: Installing GNOME 3 on Ubuntu 11.04 will yield some pretty funky results. Do not attempt.

I spent 24 hours with GNOME 3 – here’s my mission report.

Now then. Let’s have a quick look, shall we?

One thing up front: Everything lives in GNOME Shell – THE biggest addition to their desktop implementation. It comes with all-new APIs, new libraries, complete new design. For the first time in quite a while, they are not copying anyone from anyone – this has been cooked up from scratch. Kudos for that – and actually making it work.

“Mission Control”

Now Apple, if I were you, I’d have a long good look at this. While you just plunged Expose and Spaces into one, well, some abomination of desktop management, the way it is implemented here actually works. And does not make a clusterfuck of your workspace(s). You move your mouse to the top left corner (or press the Windows/Apple key), and you are presented with it.

If you then move your mouse to the right, you’ll see a bar of Spaces that come and go as you need them. Take a window and drop it on another desktop, or move them around, or close them, or… As you can see – THIS is a REAL Mission Control and you won’t lose sight of what’s going on. I was already sold to GNOME 3 at this point.

“Launch Pad”

Now while Apple’s move to bring over the iOS Springboard to the Desktop has some merit (for inexperienced computer users maybe), their implementation on the desktop is a mess. It works great on i-devices though. In GNOME 3, the “Launch Pad” can be opened in two ways. You either press Windows/Apple key, or move your mouse to the top-left. This opens Mission Control. However you can either start to type and find the application you’re looking for, or click on “Applications”.

The difference is that you still see a dock on the left with your favorite applications, plus, on the right, you see categories. Goddamn categories, Apple. Look at that. Maybe the list is too long, you just choose a category and narrow your search. THAT’S a Launch Pad. Categories, man.

The search function currently only seems to work within Launch Pad – but I believe it’s better that way. The moment you start typing, it will start to look for possible hits. And the ones it finds, are categorised (as you can see). This is similar to the actual Spotlight on the Mac – however on the Mac you only get this kind of listing by opening the magnifying glass on the top-right, then search. For what it’s worth, searching for apps is awesome – and fast.

“Finder”

Nautilus in GNOME, if you didn’t know. Nothing major to report – slimmer interface, faster loading times, basically still the same as before. Which I think is cool. You wouldn’t want a super-fat file browser now, would you? If you really don’t like the normal Nautilus (for a number of reasons), you can always go and install Marlin.

“System Preferences”

GNOME always had its own sort of way to manage settings and stuff like that. In a very distant sense, it has a registry that, one might argue, even works similar to the one of Windows. Either way, the point is, the new System Settings app says goodbye to all that, and makes it dead simple. For everyone. Here you go.

That’s pretty much it. I mean, what else do you need, really? The grouping makes sense. Let’s hope they don’t do it like Apple, where the icons seem to magically move places and even change names. Odd.

“Safari”

GNOME 3 comes with the Epiphany browser as default. Like Safari, it is based upon WebKit, and therefore guarantees a modern, solid web browsing experience. It is tightly integrated into the new environment. Favorites can be searched for, stuff like that. It is extremely fast, snappy, and a joy to use. This post was written with it.

As you can see, it gets 100 of 100 possible points in the toughest browser test on the planet. I suggest you use this one while you use GNOME 3.

One more thing

One of the most used chat programs on the Mac, is called Adium. It’s because it can be customized in so many ways, plugins are a breeze to add and write. Now, admitted – you can’t have all that on GNOME – but one thing you can have. The standard chat program is called Empathy. Like Epiphany it integrates deeply with the environment. Since it has WebKit now built-in, it enables something pretty awesome.

You can now go and browse the loooong list of message styles of Adium for the Mac – save them on your machine and use them within Empathy. That’s right. Adium message styles for your pleasure.

The verdict

After 24 hours in GNOME 3, I think I’m sold. This is a lot more solid and a joy to work with, than what the Cupertino based company calls “the most advanced operating system in the world”. All seems very smooth and snappy, thought through, and working nicely. Make sure you have a decent graphic card to be able to use the eye-candy.

GNOME 3 is without a doubt going in a very new direction, and I think it’s the right one. While working on the desktop, I think this will work on touch devices as well. It certainly raises the bar for comfort on a computer, and should not be missed. I suggest you try it right now – and I almost promise you – you will never go back.

After 24 hours, it was clear to me: This is what I’ll use for quite some time to come.

Continue reading »]]> Alright so I bought myself a new toy, a little handy netbook. It is a bit nicer to carry a 10-inch machine, instead of a 17 inch laptop around. In the shop they wanted to sell me all kinds of crap, for example Norton 360 anti-virus. When I said I didn’t need it, he asked me 3 times if I was sure about that (like Windows asks you about 3 times for everything). I didn’t tell him that I didn’t plan on keeping Windows on the machine, I didn’t want to confuse him.

It’s an Atom chip clocked at 1.6 GHz, 160 GB drive, 1 GB RAM. It has 3 USB ports, VGA out, SD Expansion, multiple card readers, built-in webcam, audio out, microphone in, and built-in microphone, and a glossy 10.1 inch wide screen display. RAM and hard drive are replaceable. Battery lasts for about 4-7 hours, depending on what you do.

Before XP Starter Edition could even boot, I prepared a bootable USB stick with the full Ubuntu 9.10 live CD, then deleted all partitions and put Ubuntu on. I could have gone for the Netbook Remix, but I wanted the full user interface. Quickly transferred my theme data from my primary machine, installed Global Menu Bar and Cairo-Dock, and boom!

Continue reading »]]> I always liked Adium on OS X a lot, it’s the Mac fork of the famous Pidgin, a multi-protocol messaging client. I really LOVE Pidgin – but one thing was always missing – the fancy look. But finally, it can be helped!

Here’s what to do. These steps are for Ubuntu 9.10 only.

1. Open up a terminal, and type (or paste):

sudo apt-get install pidgin-dev libpurple-dev

2. Next, add the WebKit repository, as Adium styles require WebKit on the Mac. You have to open up the Software Sources tool under System/Administration/Software Sources. There, click on “Other Software”, then “Add…”, and paste this line:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty maindeb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

The content will reload as new software just became available.

3. Back to the terminal, and paste:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libwebkit-dev

This will install required development files for WebKit.

4. Next, download THIS FILE, save it to a location of your choice.

5. In a terminal, do

bzip2 -d /path/to/pidgin-webkit.tar.bz2

to extract the file.

6. In the extracted folder there are two folders which we need to copy into your libpurple folder. This is how to do it:

cp /path/to/pidgin-webkit-folder/message_styles ~/.purple && cp /path/to/pidgin-webkit-folder/plugins ~/.purple

Close Pidgin entirely and open it again. Go to Tools / Plugins, and behold your new entry!

You can now go, to use themes of AdiumXtras.com. Beware – some themes will not work, most of them will however.

To install a new theme, download any one of your choice, extract the zip, and in the folder you will find another folder named “NameOfStyle.AdiumMessageStyle”. You need to copy this to

~/.purple/message_styles

Once you have it in there, again go to Tools / Plugins / WebKit, then select “Configure plugin”. There you will then see a list… In my example I installed iChadium, a iChat emulating message style:

As you can see you can select any sub-style you want.

Once done, behold your all-new shiny Adium on Ubuntu!

Continue reading »]]> So I updated to Ubuntu 9.10 and decided to do some desktop pimping again, because I am not necessarily the greatest fan of the standard GNOME interface. So all you really need is a good looking Leopard GTK theme (there are some), good Metacity theme (again, there are some), Cairo Dock, and Global Menu Bar.

Boom!

Continue reading »]]> Songbird is pretty nice alright. It’s built on Mozilla’s code to create the Firefox of music. However, it is not native, not to Linux anyways, which causes problems. So I was looking for another music player that would have the same or similar functionality… and I found one.

The name is Exaile (probably pronounced “exhale”, only with a silent “h”).

The player is based on the GTK framework and comes with quite a few things out of the box. For example you have support for MTP devices (like phones that need a rather special synchronization mode), iPod support (don’t know if iPod touch too), amongst others. There’s last.fm support, ShoutCast support, as well as notifications if you’re on Linux. Pretty cool eh? It however lacks a music store, but oh well.

No Cover Flow, but still a pretty awesome player

If you want you can create plug-ins for the player, extending its functionality. One of the plugins that you can install out of the box is support for shared iTunes libraries, so you can listen to your friend’s music.

A pretty cool player, it now has replaced Songbird for me. Try it out, I think you’ll like it.

Ubuntu users perform a
sudo apt-get install exaile
in the console, or use the package manager to get it.

Exaile
Type: Music player and manager
License: Open Source
Platform: Linux
Arch: x86
Web: Exaile | Music Player

Continue reading »]]> What? o_O

Press release of Microsoft of July 20.

REDMOND, Wash., July 20, 2009 — Today, in a break from the ordinary, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

So what exactly is happening? Is hell freezing over? Is Chuck Norris no longer awesome? Calm down. The answer to all of this is no.

Microsoft apparently has seen issues when virtualizing Linux on their Windows Server systems that have the Hyper-V feature, a technology that enables Windows to run multiple virtual machines on one computer. In order to smooth the operation of Linux systems on Hyper-V, Microsoft is giving these kernel drivers to the community for inclusion into the Linux Kernel.

Ultimately, it is up to the distributions to include it or not. Currently the code is submitted to the people of govern the Kernel.

Linus Torvalds, the maker of Linux, comments:

“Oh, I’m a big believer in “technology over politics”. I don’t care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don’t have to worry about licensing etc issues.

In fact, to some degree, I’d be more likely to include it because it’s from a new member of the community rather than less (again, I’d like to point out that drivers are special. They don’t impact other things, so they get merged much more easily than some core changes).

I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.

There are ‘extremists’ in the free software world, but that’s one major reason why I don’t call what I do ‘free software’ any more. I don’t want to be associated with the people for whom it’s about exclusion and hatred.”

So there you have it. If Microsoft ends up in open source, you gotta admit that there’s something to it – if you don’t use this kind of software.

It is a very interesting move of them. Let’s see where this one is headed.

LinuxMag: Microsoft patches Linux; Linus responds

Continue reading »]]> Over the last few weeks things have happened that made me think. My life has changed a bit and I wanna keep riding the wave of change. Well looks like as if this wave with me riding it is headed toward the Mac world. You see the thing is I like Macs. Nice machines eh? But right now… I don’t feel the thrill anymore. What? The Mac person has no fun with Macs? Waitaminute!!

I mean, don’t get me wrong… Macs are fun. The software is nice and cool, sexy and smooth. Aqua definitely has its advantages, the object-oriented framework Cocoa certainly makes for rapid application development. You see the thing where it comes down to me right now is the “Plays well with others” part. I think there’s a slight problem here.

As you know, in an earlier post I described that I made the switch to Linux and no longer use OS X. That in itself is not the problem… The problem is that apparently Macs don’t play that well with Linux. Ever tried to run Linux on the current generation MacBook? Well good luck… restarting won’t work (doesn’t matter which Linux) and the machine gets much hotter than normal. So… no.

Anyways… since I have too much of Mac and computer hardware anyways, I gonna start selling shit. And that also includes my Mac gear. It’s time for something else. Time to walk down the open road with cheaper hardware.

I’ll keep watching the Keynotes (no longer Stevenotes, mind you! Philnotes maybe?). And I’ll still probably be amazed with what Apple came up with again, and go oooh and aaah like the people in the keynote in Moscone West. I am not an angry user or something, I just decided for me it’s time to leave this thing as an active member of the Mac community.

So yeah… that’s all I wanted to say today. The only thing that remains with me of Apple will be an iPod nano 4th gen. You know, Shake To Shuffle and shit. I have to say that is pretty amazing =D

Time to walk the open road.

Continue reading »]]> Right, so I have been playing around with Kubuntu, my new main desktop system, for like 2 days. There has been a bit of trickery and tweakery going on, like for example you have to tell ALSA that you are on a MacBook Pro Revision 3 in order to make the headphone jack work. Well I like to fiddle around with stuff, and I think I finally got my setup working and start to feel comfortable.

Here are just a few screens of the built-in functionality of Ubuntu – this is not Compiz – but it works just like it (I don’t necessarily need the Cube to be honest). There are some features I have grown attached to – I am so glad they are not missing. Others however are from Mac OS X. Like this one in my first screenshot.

Why has Cover Flow not been implemented as task switcher in OS X?

You can obviously have more than 4, but 4 Spaces kinda do the trick for me.

They call it Expose… thanks for porting that too.

Stay iTuned. On Windows, Linux, Mac.

Thing was with iTunes that I copied the entire collection of mine to an external drive as it was, then installed WINE and iTunes 8.0.2 – and then copied my collection over to my Music folder in /home, as it was, and BOOM! iTunes recognized all of it, including settings, ratings, and does even support Genius. I was genuinely surprised… WINE really has come a long way. And yes, iTunes wobbles just like the other windows do. Bujaka!

Continue reading »]]> This is the end, my only friend: me, the Mac die-hard, no longer uses Mac OS X. LOLWUT? Yeah, it’s true. After having closely followed the development on the open road for a while, I have seen that there are in fact superior applications out there. For free. I always had an eye on Ubuntu, I think it’s one of the best Linuxes around (what’s the plural of Linux? Linii? Linae? Linuxes?).

After having seen the programs listed on the page for Mac switchers, I came to the conclusion that it is time at last, to adopt Tux full-time. So I backed up all my data to another drive, and started installing Kubuntu, as I don’t really like GNOME which ships with Ubuntu. 8.10 Intrepid Ibex is the version I got obviously.

The default appearance of KDE 4′s Plasma, its new desktop engine

Install was smooth, no issues whatsoever. BUT: there is a problem when it comes to booting an Intel iMac which no longer has Mac OS X installed. You see the Mac Bootloader is ‘blessed’ during the install of Apple’s system, which means it is certified and readable by EFI – which is the equivalent to the BIOS in all Macintoshes. However, most of the time an Ubuntu is not installed on a Mac – and this proposes an interesting problem.

The machine will not boot when it doesn’t have a blessed bootloader on either the MBR of the drive, or on one of the partitions. That results in a big folder icon with a question mark, telling you it has nothing to work with. However if you boot with the Kubuntu CD, and choose ‘Boot from first hard drive’, it will work.

Obviously I don’t wanna boot with the CD all the time, so what’s there to do? Well I remembered this tool called ‘rEFIt’ for OS X, which lets you boot as many systems as you want on a Mac. So I checked if there is something like this available for Ubuntu, and of course, there is – in the Universe tree.

So what you have to do if you want to use a Mac without OS X and Ubuntu instead, is this:

1) Install Ubuntu or Kubuntu (or Edubuntu, or Xubuntu) – whatever you are fancy

2) Use the entire drive, wipe OS X

3) After the install, re-insert the CD and choose ‘boot from first hard drive’ in the boot menu

4) Log in, open a web browser, and go here:

rEFIt for Intrepid Ibex 8.10
http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/i386/refit/download – and choose a location near you.
This will download a .deb file at the location you choose.

5) Open a file browser, navigate to the .deb file, open it – the package installer will come up and you will have to enter your administrative password

6) Once installed, open a terminal and enter this command:

#> sudo /sbin/gptsync /dev/sda

It will also ask you for your administrative password. Also, it will tell you that the bootloader needs to be updated – CONFIRM THIS!! Your non-Apple bootloader is now in fact ‘blessed’ and will let the Mac ‘see’ the install in EFI.

7) Reboot and remove the CD. The machine will boot normally at this stage

I write this down so that if anyone ever runs into this, here is the solution. Note that this is for the 32-bit version – there is no rEFIt tool for Ubuntu in 64-bit yet!!!

Now you can go ahead and install anything you like or want. Compiz for example and so on. Or proprietary drivers (helps for Compiz =D).

Kinda cool eh?